Find the people who can make change happen
Today is Day 3, and we will be researching who your two Senators and one Representative are.
You already do so much for the FASD community, either as a self-advocate, a loved one, or a professional. But there is one piece of advocacy that can truly help bring about real change: Sitting down, face to face, with the people who vote on the federal budget. Meeting with your two Senators and one Representative is incredibly impactful and surprisingly easy, especially now that these meetings can take place on a video call! Congressional offices track who shows up, and a constituent (that’s you) in the room speaking from living experience moves them in a way no lobbyist or press release ever will.
But you cannot meet with someone you cannot name, so today you can take a step that makes everything else possible by finding out who represents you in U.S. Congress.
You have three federal legislators: two U.S. senators, who represent your whole state, and one representative, who represents your district. Each one of them needs to be FASD-informed in order to help Fund FASD, and that is where you come in.
Here is today’s way to make an impact: find your two U.S. Senators and one Representative using this link. Once you know who they are, you can find their phone numbers and meeting request form on their websites. You can even find their social media so you can tag them in FASD content.
You can also find your representative at house.gov and your senators at senate.gov by inputing your address.
Write it all down. Two senators. One representative. Know their names, how to contact them, and start thinking about how FASD could fit into their agenda. This is the sort of advocacy that got the Respect Act passed, and now it will help Fund FASD.
Take a look below for a sneak peek at what we have planned through September 9!
- 9/3, Research. Find out exactly who your two senators and one representative are.
- 9/4, Share Your Why. Put your story into a few clear sentences you can actually use.
- 9/5, Visibility. Show how you spread awareness, and help make a non-apparent disability impossible to overlook
- 9/6, Growth. Invite one person to advocate alongside you.
- 9/7, Close the Gap. Connect your experience to what funding would actually change.
- 9/8, Practice. Get call-ready with your script and your numbers in hand.
- 9/9, Make the Call. Ask your legislators to fund the law they already passed.
