How To Pressure Your
Elected Officials
Take action to pressure your elected officials, from City Council to Congress.
First, Email Congress: Block Bombs for Genocide!
Over 2 million Palestinian people trapped in Gaza are living through U.S.-funded genocide in real time, as Israel bombs, starves, and displaces them. Email your representative now to demand they cut off deadly weapons to Israel.
The Local Level: Why We Need To Escalate To Divestment
Divestment is a key strategy because it’s tangible: It moves dollars away from weapons companies and complicit corporations that fuel genocide, making the war machine increasingly less profitable.
USCPR Action’s City Council Organizing Toolkit, which helped spur 200+ local ceasefire resolutions, has been updated to focus on divestment resolutions to get your city/town to materially divest from genocide.
Use this guide to organize for a divestment resolution at your local city/town council. Demand that your city withdraws investments from corporations complicit in genocide and apartheid.
How To Pressure Politicians from City Council to Congress
When we chant “no justice, no peace,” we affirm its promise that we will not rest while the people in power arm genocide. In that spirit, make Palestine unavoidable for your elected officials. Here are the most common ways people have won campaigns to pressure elected officials.
1. Schedule an advocacy meeting.
Schedule a meeting with your member of Congress to bring your demands. Force them to confront the endless documentation of U.S. participation in genocide.
Look up their legislative record and how much money they receive from anti-Palestinian groups using the USCPR Action Congress Scorecard (will be updated soon for the 119th Congress). In particular, check if your House representative has already signed on to the Block the Bombs Act (H.R. 3565) and demand they cosponsor if they haven’t yet.
2. Protest your elected officials.
The history of social justice movements has given us a legacy of creative ways to capture our elected officials’ attention. Mobilize your community to show up in numbers and remind your electeds who they represent. In the past two years, activists have held demonstrations such as:
Sit-in at an elected official’s office
Loud “wake up call” noise demonstration at their house
Car caravan or other transportation disruption
And more…
Make sure to check local laws, which may vary, and plan for safety.
3. Birddog & disrupt politicians.
There will be NO REST for politicians while they fund and enable genocide. Blood is on the hands of every elected official who has armed Israel.
Birddog members of Congress so that they can’t be seen in public without being confronted about their choice to fund killing over care for constituents’ human needs.
Find out where your elected official will be, and approach them with your questions and demands. Disrupt events such as local town halls, classes, and speaking engagements with a group of trusted friends. Bring a camera.
Town hall disruption in Lisle, Illinois. Video by Palestine Activism Collective.
4. Organize Block the Bombs letter-writing gatherings.
It can be far too easy for compromised elected officials or their staff to filter out emails that refer to Gaza. Writing a letter ensures a human being opens it and reads it. A sudden flurry of multiple letters demands attention.
Gather in community to write letters to your representative and demand they sign on to the Block the Bombs Act (H.R. 3565). You can start by spending ten minutes before family dinner writing letters together. To go bigger, organize a letter-writing event in your local community to generate even more letters. While most of us witness the genocide from our screens, we must make every effort to get off screens, collectively process, and make Gaza unavoidable.
Find the mailing addresses for your members of Congress:
5. Host a phone bank
Whether it’s your church group or your favorite Discord server, invite your community to phone bank with you for 30 minutes. If a staffer receives ten calls about an issue throughout the week, they may or may not take note. If they receive ten calls within the same hour, that’s more likely to be conveyed to the Congress person.
This could even be as simple as sending this message to your group chat:
Have y’all seen the footage out of Gaza today? I can’t tolerate another day of our tax dollars funding Palestinian suffering. Will you join me in calling our representative to demand they sign the Block The Bombs Act (H.R. 3565) and stop arming Israel? It only takes a couple minutes, and the auto-dialer will call you and walk you through it. Thank you for helping me restore my faith in humanity: https://act.uscpr.org/a/call-for-gaza
More Ways to Take Action
Go to USCPR’s Stop Gaza Genocide toolkit.
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