How to call your Congressional Reps for the Department of Peace

The reasons for calling are similar to those for writing a letter to Congress. The difference is that calling your senators and representatives takes less time, so you can do more. For this action I am asking that you call both of your State's senators and the Representative for your district.

To find out the contact information for your members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, visit: www.congress.org. Or if you know the names of your Representative and Senators, call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Currently there are no Senators sponsoring the bill, but many representatives are. To find out if your member of the House of Representatives is already a co-sponsor of the Dept. of Peace legislation, click here.

After you have the numbers, you may want to practice what you will say in the phone call. To help you, here are a few scripts you can use. I borrowed them from the Student Peace Alliance Website.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Hi, my name is ______ I’m a constituent of Senator/Congressperson ______’s district. I’m calling to urge him/her to become a co-sponsor, if he/she is not already, of the Department of Peace legislation currently in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The bill number for the House is H.R. 808.

I would like to receive a written response as to his/her position on this issue. Thank you for taking the time to hear my thoughts on this important piece of legislation.


SENATE (There is currently no bill in Senate. Ask them to introduce the legislation!).

Hi, my name is ______ I’m a constituent of Senator ______’s district. I’m calling to urge him/her to introduce legislation to establish a U.S. Department of Peace into the Senate. For reference, the Senate bill number for the previous congress was S. 1756.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my thoughts on this important issue.

The staffer answering the phone will probably ask you to repeat your name or confirm your zipcode. This is so they can track where people within a specific district are calling from.

WHEN YOU HAVE MADE YOUR CALLS, please comment on this section of the blog to tell us what it was like, or write me an email!

Good Luck!