Lunch. in Distress

Today, while on lunch, I scarfed down some food and got to work.

First: I made sure to “follow” my U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth. I tried to follow Mike Quigley, my U.S. Representative from my district but apparently he doesn’t have a Facebook page. That’s okay, Mike. I still found you. ;)

I went to Dick Durbin’s page. His most recent post was from today and it talked about the things he was actively doing to help protect healthcare rights for his constituents and for the entire country. I like that. I like to see that he’s busy fighting for the things that are important to me. Still. I’m putting my elected officials on notice, so I commented:

Senator, I’m glad to hear you’re busy fighting for the things that are important to me. I want you to know that as long as you continue to do that, you’ll have my vote, once again, when you come up for election in 2020. However, I want you to know that I am holding you accountable. I will be following your votes. I will be watching what you do. The only power I’m left with, not that this Cheeto-in-a-suit is in office is to make sure the people elected to represent me, do exactly that.

I’ll be following up with an email tomorrow. I’ll be following up with a letter the day after that.

Then I went to Tammy Duckworth’s page. She too had something about meeting with women about the march on her page, but I felt I needed to be a bit more stern with her. I had looked up her record on govtrack.us and found out that in her previous term as a Senator, she had one of the worst records in all of Congress.

To Miss Duckworth, I wrote that while I admired her for meeting with women after the women’s march and I admired her service to our country (she’s a veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan) that I had very high expectations of her now that she was representing me again. I told her that her voting record from her previous service was not acceptable. I told her that my voice is not heard when she skips a vote. I told her that if my voice isn’t being heard because of her, that she will not be representing when she comes up for reelection again in 2022. I told her that her previous record was a disappointment but that she could redeem herself if she put in the effort.

Quigley got off easy today, with no Facebook page. Tomorrow, I do have his email though. So, when I email them, I can send that email to all three. The same goes for actual letters. I now also know where all of their offices are located locally. If Ms. Duckworth doesn’t vote as often as I think she should, I will rile some motherfuckers up in my neighborhood and we’ll march on her office.

I highly recommend you go to GovTrack.us and:

a) Make sure you know who represents you
b) Make sure you know when they come up for re-election
c) Make sure you know where they stand and what they are doing
d) If you have a Republican who is supporting Trump as one of your elected representatives, then you need to harass the hell out of him or her and get as many of your friends and family to do the same. We need to speak directly to the Republicans who are lockstep behind Trump to let him know it’s not acceptable. We need to let them know that their support of him will cost them their jobs. Direct pressure, constantly applied, from actual constituents is the only way to get them to vote the way we want them to vote. Even then, it’s our power of the people against the money that Republican bigwigs will promise your rep when it comes time to run for re-election. That’s why the pressure has to be constant. We have to let them know we won’t forget once election time comes around. Shit–Duckworth is in office until 2022. She needs to believe me when I tell her that her career beyond this term is dependent upon what she does push the agenda in which I strongly believe.
e) We especially need to identify any nearby swing districts and do what we can to create pressure there
f) We especially need to find out the officials who are up for mid-term election in 2018 and apply the MOST pressure to them. If we can control the not just the mid-term vote, but the way those up for re-election vote between now and then, it will send the most powerful message we can send that we are here to fight President Cheetodust and that this is our government, not his.

Anyway. That was my lunch. What did you have?