Finding and Using Your Voice

Monday was President's Day and I, along with ~1,000 others in San Jose and hundreds of thousands of people at cities across the country, marched at the #NotMyPresident's Day / #NoKingsDay protest. Monday was also my first time ever getting on a microphone to speak at a rally. As the organizer was explaining the mic set up to me, my hands were shaking, but when I began to speak my voice remained steady. When I expected to feel abject terror from public speaking (I've literally thrown up before a big presentation before), I instead found courage. I didn't speak for long, but I said what was on my mind. From the makeshift podium, I got to look at the crowd I had marched alongside with and actually see each of their different and wonderful faces. In that moment, I was not only feeling more connected to my community during these currently very scary times, but I was also feeling inspired by my fellow protesters.

As I was walking back to my house post-protest, I reflected on the impact that hearing others' stories and perspectives had on me. During the rally, I listened to a mom of a trans child talk about how she was here to fight for her child's rights. I heard the story of an Iranian immigrant who had come to the US with their family in pursuit of better opportunity, and were here to fight for that future. Someone read the "First They Came" poem. A woman spoke about how her father had fought in WW2 against the Nazi's and was angry that she had to be here at all. A group of organizers from a local nonprofit spoke about fighting for Indigenous rights. A young man took to the microphone to passionately demand bodily autonomy for all. One woman shared that it was her birthday and implored us to not forget to help her fight for disability rights and dignity. A public health university student reminded us to get (and stay up to date on) vaccinations. A dude with a killer saxophone went up and played Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going To Take It" while the crowd sang along. A labor union man gave us details about an upcoming strike he invited us all to participate in. I had introduced myself and reminded folks that one day we'd wake up to read the obituaries of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, but that until then, we needed to fight back against this broligarchy and keep intense pressure on our elected officials.

In reflecting about these stories, I was thinking about how only a few hours earlier I had been pacing in my living room about what I wanted to put on my signs for the protest. I hadn't realized then, but I was in deep thought about how to craft an effective and impactful message. The question I had kept asking myself as I bit my nails and stared down at the cardboard box canvas on my floor was: what do I want to say right now and to whom? I landed on two signs:

These themes have been heavy on my mind as of late. The Trump/Elon Presidency has been galloping full-speed towards violent dictatorship and I'm freaking scared. But I know that going to any protest reminds me of the humans I'm fighting for and why I'm fighting, so I wanted to balance my "Fight Fascism!" sign with something that might offer hope to anyone seeing it that there is a better world ahead of us if we can fight for it (hence my second "A Better World Is Possible" sign). If I want to invite others to join me in that fight for a better world, then I thought one small thing I can do is explain the importance of finding your voice especially in this current moment, what I do to find my voice when I need to, and how I decide to use that voice.

Why finding your voice matters right now

The US feels like it's imploding under a Trump/Elon broligarchy. There are so many things happening all at once that are eroding our democracy. We don't even have time to get into all of that in this post (and I'm sure by the time I finish writing this there will have been more 'breaking news' that's dropped), but my point is that there is plenty of chaos and plenty of issues for us to fight for or against.

There are a lot of attacks on marginalized communities and their rights, with honed targets on the backs of the LGBTQ+ community (especially transgender folks) and immigrants.

As these communities are being attacked (and in some cases, arrested and detained), it may be difficult for them to engage in the same way as others might be able to. For example, depending on where they live, an undocumented immigrant might be unable to participate in protests or contact their elected officials for fear of becoming hypervisible by the wrong people (like ICE). We have to show up for them. Attacks on these communities are ultimately attacks on all of us--whether the impact seems direct or not. It shouldn't be acceptable to watch others lose their rights, and we'd want people in our corner fighting for us if someone came after our rights. Again I say, we have to show up.

To combat any attack on rights, we have to be prepared to speak up against the people and institutions that would seek to take away those rights. Some folks might be having to consider stepping out of their comfort zones to do this. But what I encourage everyone to consider is starting that journey to finding your voice and using it, sooner rather than later, because the time is nigh and we need you in this fight with us.

How does one find their voice?

The good news is you've probably done these things before, even if not for political reasons. Finding your voice is really about figuring out what you care about, thinking deeply about why you care about it and what you have to say about it, and then using it where it'll count the most and as much as possible.

You can start with:

• Identifying what issues you care about.

• Figuring out who your audience is. By default, start with contacting your senators and your representative, but there might be times when it's more appropriate/would have more impact to reach out to another person/office. For example: when Elon Musk recently began breaking into government facilities in his capacity at DOGE, it was important to not only contact my representatives, but also to contact my state's Attorney General, to urge them to sue the the Trump administration over the illegal coup. If you're not sure where to send it, send it to them all!

• Fleshing out the most important talking points that you want to convey.

• It's your voice, your story, and perspective, so remember that there's no "wrong" way to do it and it doesn't have to be perfect!

  
  

How you can you use your voice

What to say, what to say?

There are a lot of great resources, like this one from the ACLU, that can help you craft a strong and impactful message to your elected officials. My process usually looks something like this:

• saving social media posts or news articles or just writing down the things that are on my mind (in other words, what are the issues and current events that are important to me in this moment).

• next, I think about what I can ask my elected officials to do or know/prioritize. That's the most important piece of information that you can convey when contacting your representatives. Sometimes I'll do a little Googling to see what can be done (like what's done before in similar scenarios or what are current petitions calling for) or I'll do a little brainstorming with my favorite AI for recommendations. This is usually the step where I also find out who the best people or offices are for me to contact about the issue.

• then I start writing a draft message. If I'm stuck and can't sort my thoughts out well about something (which is often because hi, ADHD), then I'll throw some bullet points into an AI prompt to ask it to create a draft template based on the information I provide and considering the audience (elected officials). Below are some of my recent AI prompts. But before we get to those, a note: you're the only one that knows your stories, connection to the issue, and perspective, and it's so important to express why something matters to you in your message, so don't forget to include that!

  • "I want to write a letter to my state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, about the Texas v Becerra lawsuit, which many states have joined. Mr. Bonta has not joined this lawsuit on behalf of California. Based on the below information, can you please draft me a letter thanking Mr. Bonta for not joining the lawsuit and to urge him to continue fighting for Section 504 and disability rights in general" (I copied and pasted some text from the DREDF website in my prompt also, but I'm not including all of that since it's a bit lengthy).

  • "There is a lot of anti-transgender legislation happening under the current presidential administration at the moment. I am not transgender, but I am part of the LGBTQ+ community and have people I care about who are transgender and I want to make sure they are safe, that they have access to all the gender affirming rights and care they deserve, and that they can thrive. To accomplish this, I’d like to write a letter to my senators. Can you please create a template for me?"

  • "Based on the below news report, can you please draft me a brief template for me to use to contact my elected officials explaining that I'm very strongly opposed to Trump's Federal funding freeze due to the reasons outlined in this report?" (I copied and pasted the text from this PBS article).

• A couple of important FYIs about using AI for this purpose:

  • Don't include any of personal information in your prompts to help protect your data privacy.

  • AI is an awesome time saver for drafts, but make sure you use your human eyes to review whatever AI barfs back out at you--the templates aren't always winners.

  • Sometimes you have to try out different prompts to get something you like. Here's a great resource from Harvard you can use to guide you in your prompt-writing (you should check it out if you use AI at all, it's all about the prompts!). Also, you don't have to stick to one AI software (my go-to is Gemini, but I sometimes use ChatGPT too, and there are others out there).

• finally, I send it. More on that below.

Contact your elected officials!

Your US representative and Senators are the ones who were elected in your state / congressional district, and are the three people you can always contact to leave your comments with. As I mentioned above, though, there may be other people for you to reach out to depending on the issue. Below, I'll outline some of the ways I engage my elected officials:

Phone calls

You can find your elected officials (and their contact info) at the USA.gov website or by Googling their websites. My strategy is to call the DC offices first, then all their other offices (California's Senator Padilla has 6 offices total!). It's really important to have a phone script or at least a few notes jotted down when you make your calls, to ensure you're conveying your most salient points. You can take your draft and modify it or craft a message specific for your phone calls. Phone calls are really impactful for more time sensitive issues (example: your elected official will be voting on a bill that day or week). Please keep in mind you'll be speaking to a staffer or a voicemail machine--either way, keep it respectful and brief so other callers can leave their comments also. Also know that the phone lines are only staffed during local business hours.

Some tips and tricks to make phone callin' a breeze:

• 5calls app - This is a super cool app that will help you quickly find issues, pull up the most appropriate elected officials to contact based on your specific location, and even gives you sample phone scripts!

• Save your representatives' numbers to your phone contacts so you can easily contact them again.

• Use AI to help you with drafts of phone scripts

Written communication

There are multiple ways to contact your elected officials in writing. This method is great for conveying longer-form messaging, but can sometimes be less effective than phone calls if you're trying to reach your elected official via, for instance, written letter (because of the time it takes for mail to get to its destination). That said, I still love writing my elected officials because each form of contact gets counted and I've gotten some written letters back (I have a signed one from SCOTUS Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson!). Below are the options for written communication:

Contact Us pages/webforms - this is the fastest way to reach you elected official through writing. These pages are often just webforms for you to fill your message into and are fairly self-explanatory.

Snail mail (letters and postcards) - this method is less fast, but is something I still like to use when sending thank you cards or longer messages that might not squeeze into the Contact Us webpages.

Faxing your letter - I'm being so serious. For many elected officials, you can send written messages via fax even if you don't have a fax machine (there are apps for that, like this one on the Apple store), and as I've said, all communication is counted. I don't use this method often, only when I'm feeling extra fancy.

Some tips and tricks to make your written communication easier:

• AI to help you with outlines or drafts of written messages. I swear I watched the Terminator movies, but AI is more like Terminator 2 when you use it for good like this. That's what I tell myself.

• Keep your letter-writing supplies in stock at your house at all times (envelopes, paper, pens, blank postcards, postage stamps, etc).

• If you have access to a printer, this makes it a LOT easier to make copies of what you've written, whether you typed it up or handwrote it and are photocopying it.

• Address labels and/or stamps. I have a set of labels and a stamp with my return address that makes sending outbound letters super quick. But, if you know you're going to write a lot of letters, then get some address labels for your elected officials too!

Last, and perhaps most importantly, your experiences, your stories, your perspectives, etc. are all what make you fabulous. Sharing that, your voice, with others--including your elected officials--is a way for those who have maybe been discounted in the past to be heard. I'm a queer, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), neurodivergent woman, and I'm often "the only one" or "one of a very small few," so I've had to FIGHT to even be present in many (not very diverse or inclusive) spaces where my voice could be heard. I'll not be shutting up any time soon, and I hope you won't either :-). Make some good noise in as many spaces as you can: protests, town halls, local legislative sessions, in your community, etc. Your voice is important, what you have to say matters, and what you say CAN make a difference.

I know this is a lot of information I just threw at you, but I wish I had had an all-in-one, "demystify the process" kind of guide like this when I was first starting to contact my elected officials, so if even ONE person benefits from this resource then I'm a happy freakin' camper. I hope it was helpful!