[vegetablepotpie]

I’ve engaged National, state, and, local officials on climate change. I’ve influenced my congressional representative to co-sponsor legislation, and I’ve influenced my city council to hire a consultant to do a benefit to cost analysis on energy procurement to reduce community wide emissions. I work a full time engineering job, I do my climate work for free on my own time.

Some of my take aways.

* Find your friends and allies on an issue. Got broad agreement on something with your community, adjacent communities, bystanders, and your enemies too! Have lots of meetings, go to other groups meetings. Get meetings with elected officials with your allies. I’d say six people is the sweet spot. Represent as much diversity in those people as possible young/old, rich/poor, etc etc.

* Come to the table with solutions. If you’re seeking the vote of someone for something already in the pipeline, that’s an easier ask than say getting them to introduce legislation. If you need to introduce something, best to adapt similar legislation/ordinances in place someplace else. The more track record a policy has, the better.

* Try to make change as local as possible. You’re much more likely to get meetings with city council members and county supervisors than you are with federal policy makers.

* Build relationships with staff! A lot of elected officials are focused on the connection to constituents, they’re not focused on policy, the staff make things happen, policy advisors are in a pivotal role to advocate. Getting staff on your side is almost required to get policy moving.

* If someone is already doing something, it’s easier to plug in and support their work rather than to duplicate effort. To that end, if you’re looking at advocating on tech issues, my suggestion would be to check out I Am The Calvary [1], which is grassroots public policy advocacy org that grew out of DEFCON.

[1] https://iamthecavalry.org/