My mother has been asking how she can DO SOMETHING and make her voice heard. She’s 93 years old and grievously worried about the disgusting charlatans running roughshod over our democracy, civil rights, environment, schools, farms, justice system, humanity, and world standing. I will never ever forget how my heart broke as she cried and cried when I had to tell her the shyster had won the 2024 election. Did I mention she’s 93?! She’s been watching for a long time. She knows the ins and outs of that huckster and like so many of us, she’s crestfallen at how many of our fellow citizens fell for his propaganda and lies. So now, to Mom’s question – what can she do!? She wants to reach out to her reps and felt kind of daunted about how to do it.

Mom’s from a different state, and she knows I’m in the habit of calling my NC Senators. Even though they’re both acquiescent enablers of this rogue administration’s lawlessness, I call anyway to raise my voice and go on record. In our purple state, I tell myself our two Republican Senators (one of whom is up in ’26) need to be reminded they have constituents across the political spectrum. And I give thanks that even the laser-like precision of our gerrymandering can’t get its skanky claws into state-wide elections. Sometimes it feels truly fruitless and my energy wanes. I confess that sometimes a week or more goes by between calls, but generally I call both their offices at least a few times a week – especially lately. There’s a LOT to say! I get how it can be overwhelming, especially at the start. Good news, she has Senators who are far more likely to be receptive, so we’re optimistic it will be more satisfying than in NC.

We made a plan, and wrote a little script. Feel free to print and adapt: https://newmoonresistance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/legislatorcallscript.pdf Here’s hoping it helps you support elders or others in your life as well, who feel hesitant about calling politicians’ offices for the first time. Even as used to it as I’ve gotten, it was helpful to slow down and see through her eyes, address the nervousness about what will I say, etc. We sat down together and I asked her some questions, with a pencil and paper at hand.
#1: What do you want them to do?
Answer: “Stand up against Trump’s agenda!” Hearing herself say it aloud, she immediately asked if that was a little too broad? We agreed it is, so we dug a little deeper.
#2: What’s bugging you most about Trump’s agenda right now?
Answer: “(this is hard!) Well, put back USAID. Fix what they broke there!”
#3: What else matters the most to you right now?
…and so on; we iterated through several more items, to distill five specific action steps she wants Congress to take (What is it about that you want them to change?). She doesn’t want to dwell on the “why” of most of her issues, which seems prudent. She simply wants to speak her mind about how she wants them to work on changing what’s happening. She’s not going to be paralyzed by the firehose of disturbing news. She’ll tell both Senators and her Representative one thing that’s important to her each day, Mon-Fri. Fifteen citizen steps forward each week.

At the top of the page we wrote her full name and town of residence, as a reminder that’s all she needs to use as her introduction. Then I wrote each of her distilled messages; these of course are hers and will look different for your people, just as they’ll look different for her next week, too. Here’s how the script looks:

I’m [name], from [town]. I want you to stand up against Trump’s agenda, specifically –

[Mon] Restore and protect funding for USAID.

[Tue] Insist the administration stop deporting people without a hearing and stop deporting US citizens + children.

[Wed] Restore funding and intelligence support for Ukraine.

[Thu] Restore the Department of Education because our children desperately need it and so do we all, for a successful future.

[Fri] Tell them to keep their hands off our universities, and stop threatening their research funding.

Each weekend we can drill down with a 15-20 minute conversation about the main things that bugged her or got under her skin that week. Ask the questions, refine the nuances, and you’ve got five days’ worth of citizen input ready to go.

***Tip***: saving your politicians’ numbers with an added last name “Govt” means they all show up together. All she has to do is scroll to her “G” in contacts, then go one after the other and read the day’s script. Go Mom, go!!!!!

Keep the faith and Keep in touch.