Civic Participation and Community Action Sourcebook

Prep and Practice

Talking to Legislators
by David J. Rosen

In many states, adult education classes visit their state lawmakers. Students have many different purposes in mind. Some want to learn how lawmaking works by seeing the democratic process in action. Civic literacy is important in itself. It is also needed by students who are preparing for the GED test or for American citizenship. Some students may want to talk with legislators about issues of concern. Or they may want to thank them for the specific votes or other actions they have taken on certain issues. Some students come from countries where democracy is not practiced; indeed, a reason for coming to this country may have been political freedom. Visiting legislators is one way for them to see how this works. There are three parts to making such a visit: preparation, the visit itself, and processing what happened afterwards.

1. Preparation
In the weeks before the visit, students and teachers need to ask and answer some questions and make some decisions together:

• When should the visit be made?
Should it be organized to coincide with an issues-oriented event, or for a time of year when legislators have more time to visit with constituents, or during a hearing on an issue students are concerned about?

•Should it be made during class time or not?
There are many factors to think about here: the students’ available time, the teacher’s available time, whether this can be considered an educational activity – or whether it is an advocacy activity (or both.) If it is organized around a hearing, often there is no choice.

• What issues will students present?
If students are meeting with legislators to raise issues of concern, they need to decide which issues are most important, and to narrow these to one or two, and then to prepare carefully what they want to say and give legislators to read.

Here are some questions to spark a discussion to identify these issues:
• What problem in the community would you like to bring to your state legislator’s attention?
• What would you like your government to do for you?
• Are there some changes you would like your representative to support?
• Is there a position your representative has taken that you agree with? Or that you would like her/him to change?

Of course, if the teacher and students have been working together for some time, some issues may have already come up in class, and the teacher or students should bring them out as possibilities.

Students writing to their legislators
Once the issues are clear, students should compose a letter to each legislator they wish to visit. They could visit those state senators or representatives who represent the area where their learning program is located, or where students live, if this is different.

Pre-writing
Using a language experience approach or other process for generating ideas, students could generate and organize their thoughts as a group. Save the notes from this discussion, possibly on newsprint. Then, revisit them in the days before the visit.

Writing
One or two students, working with the teacher, could take these thoughts and compose and edit the letter(s). Each letter should be no more than one page. It could include attachments if there are written materials which you would like the legislator to read before the meeting. Request a meeting in the letter, and say that you will follow-up with a phone call to arrange a convenient day and time.

Replies and follow-up
Elected representatives (or their aides on their behalf) usually reply to such a letter quickly. After you receive the reply, someone – ideally a student – needs to call to arrange an appointment. The class could help the student prepare by role-playing the call, with possible questions which a legislative aide might ask such as: Tell me about your class. Is this a school? What grade levels are the students? What will you want to meet about? How much time do you need? How many people will be coming? Do these students live in the district the legislator represents?

In the days before the visit, the class will need to:
• Prepare questions to ask or points to express to the legislator
Most of these will have been raised in the discussions which led to writing the letter. The class could revisit these. It’s a good idea to write down the questions, possibly on note cards.

• Choose spokespeople
Choose more than one person, perhaps two or three representing both genders, different ethnicities and first languages. Also, have one or two people prepared as back-ups.

• Prepare or gather written materials to give the legislator
If students have a particular issue they want to raise, they must inform themselves on the issue, and in the process they may find written materials they wish to share with the legislator. For example, if students are interested in the “reform of welfare reform” they will need to show evidence of what isn’t working in the current welfare reform legislation and how it should be changed.

• Rehearse speaking, how to deal with nervousness
The speakers may need to role play what they are going to say, practice asking questions or making points using notes to talk rather than reading word-for-word. Provide students with first-time public speaking tips such as: Usually people are very nervous the first time. If you are, it’s fine to say so – this may relieve the nervousness. Don’t be surprised if this is more of a conversation than a speech. In their offices, legislators try to be informal, try to make people – especially those who are visiting for the first time – as comfortable as possible.

• Choose photographers and/or note-takers
Recording what was said at the visit is important, especially if the class plans to publish the visit later. It is also useful, in preparing for the follow-up discussion, to have good notes because some participants may not have understood all of the discussion.

2. The Visit
Each visit is unique. Even the best preparation may go awry. So students need to expect the unexpected, enjoy and learn from the experience whatever it is. For example, one time when students in Massachusetts visited the State House, they had collected thousands of signatures on a petition to support adult literacy. The plan was to roll the petition down the State House steps, down the long sidewalk, across the street and on as far as it would go. When they got there they found it was raining. But that didn’t stop them. They rolled that petition down the steps and into the street – it wasn’t long, though, before it was a soggy mess. No one wanted to save it for the archives, but we do have some great pictures of it.

3. After the Visit: Processing What Happened
Often a first visit to the legislature is a heady experience for students. They may be surprised to have met their legislators or their aides in person, in their offices. They may be surprised that their legislators took them seriously, listened, asked good questions, asked for more information. Or maybe not.

In one case in Massachusetts, a student returning from the State House told a teacher that in his country, if he had visited a legislator and raised the same kinds of issues he had just spoken about, he would have been shot. A sobering thought for those of us who take democracy for granted.

Students will probably want to talk about their experience. Some may wish to write about it. And they may wish to publish their writings about their visits. Some may want to make WorldWide Web pages about their visit. For an example of this, see the Virtual Visit to the State House at [http://www2.wgbh.org/mbcweis/ltc/alri/vv.html].

It’s sometimes a good idea to review what happened in the visit, what the students said, how the legislators understood them, how the legislators replied, what may (or may not) have been understood or accomplished. The notes of the visit will be important for this discussion.

David Rosen is the director of the Adult Literacy Resource Institute in Boston, MA.

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