Where are the phone calls?

Over this past year, I have had the opportunity to intern for one of California's Representatives. The Representative that I have been interning for is State Senator Elaine K. Alquist (D).

During my time interning at this office, I have been able to see in bits and pieces how the real world works, what problems constituents are going through, and just in addition how constituents are dealing with the continuing cuts in the State budget.

In this time of pliable budget cuts, our constituents have mainly voiced their concerns on the topics of health care and unemployment. These two very important issues have really taken this office by storm, as our constituents have heavily explained their views and what they want done in regards to each of these issues. However, the issue of funding higher education has not been greatly addressed by our constituents.

The point I'm getting at is that in addition to the towering pressure that is already being applied by Organizations such as Students For Quality Education (SQE) and the California Faculty Association(CFA), there is another way that we can help these organizations apply an additional amount of pressure to all State Representatives.

The simple way to do this is to call both of your State Representatives every week and voice your opinion about the budget cuts or your support on SB 218 and AB656. The other thing to help make this method work to the fullest extent is to inform people around you to do the same. If a State Representative's office is constantly experiencing phone calls on this subject for instance, it will be a great message sent to that State Representative, causing them to even take a harder look at the actions they are about to take.

This may not be the most demiurgic idea, but being that I'm already in this environment, it would be amazing to constantly hear from our constituents on the critical issue of rightly funding higher education. A simple phone call can make a difference, but an overwhelming amount of phone activity can bring a District Office to pay even greater attention to these problems at hand. So, if you have a few free minutes, feel free to call your representative and let them know what's on your mind.