Informed and Empowered > Advocacy
10 Steps to Advocacy for Yourself, a check list.
Communicating with Policymakers
Persons with disabilities often don’t exercise their political power. Yet, explaining why disability rights issues are essential to the local, state, and national economy is vital to improving independence for persons with disabilities.
How can you help? Many ways.
- Add your voice to ours by writing to your legislators in support of disability rights.
- Make sure we have your email address so we can contact you about legislative issues related to independent living.
- Invite your representative to visit you locally and explain how your work in the community impacts persons with disabilities.
- Provide personal stories to us that we can use when called by the media or legislators. People love good stories, especially when they demonstrate how problems have been fixed.
- If you are invited to a government forum to talk about disability rights, let us know, so we can coordinate our efforts and maximize the impact.
Writing to Legislators
Because most of our elected representatives can’t
come to southern Alameda County regularly during a legislative session, it’s
important to keep in touch with your lawmakers in other ways. Personal, thoughtful,
well-written
letters have a significant impact on lawmakers, especially when the
letters
are from their constituents.
Here are the four most important things to remember when writing
elected representatives:
- Tell them you’re a constituent (that you live in their district, you belong to their party,or you voted for them).
- Tell them the issue (when the Legislature is not in session) or the bill number and subject (when the Legislature is in session).
- Explain the local impact.
- Be clear about the action you want them to take
(support the bill, oppose the bill, etc.).
Write your California Legislators to share your voice.
Write your Senator to share your voice.
Write your Federal Representative to share your voice
Tracking Legislative Policy and Resources for the State of California