How do we know that our political phone calls to our representatives work?
An article in a newsletter from Semafor titled “What Happened to the TikTok Band?” starts out by saying, “Capital Hill’s effort to delete TikTok from American phones has lost momentum, with multiple bills stalling out.”
The article says, “Competing priorities, policy clashes, and concerns about political blowback have stalled progress.”
They’re talking about political phone calls from constituents to their representatives. That’s us making the phone calls.
More from the article, “A Democratic pointed to fear within their own party a backlash from young voters as another reason the effort to regulate TikTok had dropped off on Capital Hill.”
Apparently, during the Restrict Act talks, there was quite a bit of engagement about the ban on TikTok, which led people to call their representatives and oppose the TikTok ban.
It’s not to say that the ban can’t come back or they won’t try it again under a different guise. But this tells us that they listen when we unite and make a deafening noise to our lawmakers.
Young Voters
So YES, calls to representatives work. And YES, your voice matters.
Young people, YOU, who are becoming the largest voting bloc in the country, never forget your power.
Now channel that energy into other things you care about and watch yourselves win.
If the TikTok ban comes up again, here’s a script you can base your call to your representatives on:
I understand that Congress wants to ban Tiktok because it’s an “urgent threat to national security.”
If this is the standard by which we are going to ban technology platforms I just want to make sure that Congress also intends to ban Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—all of which are known to have been infiltrated by foreign agents who are actively using these platforms to harm our country.
These platforms are also havens for white supremacists, whom we know right now present the most serious terror threat to the US.
And if Congress is worried about Americans being spied on, I expect them to also ban DHS, who is running a covert program gathering intelligence on Americans that many of its own employees think is illegal.
And you should throw in google and Amazon, who are unabashedly spying on millions of Americans every day.
Will Congress be banning all of the above? Because otherwise this Tiktok ban will do nothing to protect Americans from real threats. Thanks.