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Revision as of 07:32, January 12, 2012

Project:Stop SOPA and PIPA
Grassroots whip-counting on Internet censorship.
Senate whip count  · Senate contact log
Tips for contacting senators  · Participate

Members of Congress and lobbyists use "whip counts" to talk to and keep track of where senators and representatives stand on bills they care about. Now we're going to do it for the people, and we're going to do it in full public view.

Below there are instructions for getting senators' positions and recording them using our whip count tool. If you support a free and un-censored Internet, we've also got tips on how to lobby your senators and representative on the bill.

This is a bare-bones, non-profit operation. You can help us keep OpenCongress free and open-source and bring a whip count tool to every bill in Congress by donating your money or time. We always need volunteer editors, organizers and especially designers and developers. Get in touch.

How to use the whip count

We're starting with the Senate, because they're scheduled to vote on PIPA first. Get the senator's position and then enter it in the whip count. There's three ways:

1. Call the senator's office. Here's some tips on how to do it.
2. For full transparency, use OpenCongress' Contact Congress tool to get a publicly viewable email correspondence with the senator on PIPA. Here's how.
3. Find a published online source (like an article or press release) with the senator's position.

Then go enter the position on the whip count page and note your call on the contact log sheet.

How to further lobby Congress on SOPA and PIPA

Your calls and emails really do sway votes in Congress. Here's one example on SOPA/PIPA alone.

When you've called and emailed in order to update the whip count (see above), you've already let your position be known. (You did that already, right?)

To go further, share your Contact Congress (here's a great example with Sen. Maria Cantwell) on social networks to raise awareness of PIPA and put more pressure on senators.

Nothing is more influential than a visit to a member of Congress' district offices. Here's how to do it:

Visit this campaign by the American Censorship coalition, composed of non-profit open Web advocates, technologists and public-interest organizations. Simply find your state and join the discussion about how you can request an in-person meeting with your two U.S. senators and their offices during the January 2012 recess (in advance of PIPA’s first vote, fast-tracked by Sen. Majority Leader Reid for Jan. 24th) and register your opposition. In-person visits are a crucial and compelling component of the grassroots effort to combat net censorship. Your fellow constituents and American Censorship organizers can help provide you with talking points and factual materials for your vital face-to-face meetings with your senators. Even if you’re there to reinforce what others are saying, don’t miss a chance to add your presence to this netroots community effort. There's a backup list of state meetings on Fight for the Future.

About this project

The initial structure was set up by the OpenCongress staff, but the project is open to participation and leadership by all. Our non-profit, the Participatory Politics Foundation, is a founding member of the American Censorship coalition to stop PIPA. We're launching this whip-count page to facilitate constituents contacting their senators before the crucial first vote on PIPA on January 24th, 2012, in four successive ways: 

Other resources

This wiki project is slightly different from the great independent site SOPAOpera in a couple ways: we're encouraging people to contact their members of the U.S. Congress in all the above layered ways, publicly sharing notes about their communication; and our methodology for determining supporters of PIPA is slightly different (more on that below), resulting in a close-but-not-exact number of Senate PIPA supporters. Find materials and research for fighting net censorship.

Note: we're effusive admirers of SOPAOpera, shouts to Dan, really slick & useful - but I mentioned above our methodology varies slightly - SOPAOpera stands at 49 Senate supporters b/c it includes eight senators as supporters based on documented support for previous versions of PIPA-like bills - we do believe this is valid & meaningful context, and we're glad it's out there on that site, but we're specifically whipping PIPA in its specific individiual legislative context heading into the Jan. 24th vote - and so our initial count stands at 41 senators supporting, in the detailed ways broken-out above. Help us develop this whip-count project and expand it to SOPA, other bills, and companies' stance on net censorship - get in touch , make a tax-exempt donation, sign up for a free MyOC account and join our email list, and follow us on the micropublishing and social networking services.

Four-Step Whip-PIPA Summary: 

1. Find your state's two U.S. senators on the whip count page and call their offices, asking about their stance on PIPA and requesting a response from the office. We've prepared step-by-step talking points & instructions for callers below.
2. After you've called, email your senators and U.S. representative to oppose PIPA using our free Contact-Congress tool on OpenCongress.
3. Immediately upon sending, you'll have a permalink to your publicly-viewable letter, which you can share on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and over email. For more impact, find your members' Twitter handles and 'cc' them on your tweet. 
4. After you've emailed & shared, sign-up to visit your senators' offices in-person to oppose PIPA as part of a grassroots effort coordinated by AmericanCensorship, a stop-SOPA coalition. You'll receive instructions & factual materials about how to schedule an effective visit with your community and your elected officals' staffmembers.

More Detailed Whip-PIPA Instructions ::

1. When you call Senate offices, a junior staffer or intern generally answers the phone. Say, "Hello, I'm a constituent of Senator "Name" and I'm calling about a specific bill. Let me first give you my contact information to verify I'm a constituent, and I request a response from your office about this bill."
2. Then give your name, mailing address, and if you're comfortable doing so, other contact info such as your phone number or email address. The staffer will generally be writing or typing it down. 
3. Then say, "I'm calling because I strongly oppose Senate bill 968, the Protect-IP Act, which will receive its first vote on January 24th. Does Senator [Name] have a position on S. 968? You may want to ask the legislative assistant who oversees technology issues." In response, the staffer will do one of three things:

a) Most likely, he or she will say, "I don't know the senator's position offhand, but I'll make a note here and have our office get back to you", at which point say, "Yes, please note that I strongly oppose the Internet censorship bill S. 968 and that I request a formal response from your office regarding the senator's position. I'll be sharing the response with my community and online social networks."

• In this case, by way of response, you may simply receive a form letter in a couple of weeks about, say, technology issues, that may mention S. 968 by name only in passing -- but at least you'll have registered your opposition.
• Ask them specifically to call you back as soon as possible before Jan. 24th, if you’ve given your phone number, as opposed to mailing a form letter with their position.
• If you’re able to keep the staffer on the phone for another moment, add a short personal statement as to why you oppose PIPA - for example, “I oppose PIPA because it would create the first-ever China-style internet censorship in the U.S. and would blacklist the websites I use every day to follow the news and share content with my friends”. If your profession involves the internet, or you know fellow constituents who work in technology, be sure to mention these relevant facts. You may seek to first look up your senators' campaign contribution sources on OpenCongress, and note that supporters donated over four times as much as opponents, cit. MAPLight's list of donations by supporters/opponents to all 100 senators. Another talking point: SOPA & PIPA are the two least popular bills of the past year in the OpenCongress user community, with only 1% of users supporting and thousands of emails written to Congress in opposition. More info via past OC Blog coverage. 

b) Or, the staffer may put you on hold, and then return to say something like, "The senator does not have a position at this time but we're tracking its progress / considering input / work with all parties to improve it / compromise with all sides / good resolution / etc. etc.".

• At which point say, "On Jan. 24th, I ask that my senator side with the four bipartisan senators who have already recorded their opposition to this harmful Internet censorship bill. Please let me know if the senator takes a public stand before the vote, and I ask him/her to vote against S. 968."
• If the staffer happens to ask who the other senators are who have pledged to filibuster PIPA, they’re Senators Cantwell (D-WA), Moran (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), and Wyden (D-OR). PIPA is sponsored by Sen. Leahy (Independent- VT) and unfortunately has the support of Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV). PIPA opponents need at least 41 senators to vote against the bill on Jan. 24th to prevent it from advancing.

c) Or, best-case scenario, the staffer may share with you that the senator has taken a position and that he or she is either for or against S.968, or leaning one direction or the other.

• If no position is recorded, record the outcome in the wiki below, choosing between the eight nuanced options in the drop-down menu, such as:
  
• Yes - published -- you can find a reputable citation of a news or blog article in which the senator states his or her position.
• Yes - verbal -- verbal confirmation from an official staffer. If possible, ask politely for the staffer’s name.

4. After your call, login to your free MyOC account (required to edit the wiki), then click through to the next page, and simply make a note of the date & time that you called and your OC username (or real name if you prefer). Feel free to add any additional notes or context -- e.g., if you were able to speak to a legislative assistant as opposed to a junior staffer, or if they promised you a phone call before the vote and not just a letter in the mail later this month. So please do leave a note saying something simple like, “Just called - davidmoore, Jan. 3, 3:54pm ET, staffer answered the phone, said she didn’t know senator’s position on PIPA but she’d mail me a response and noted my opposition”.

• Even if your call’s outcome was the same as a previous constituent, it’s good for the stop-SOPA campaign to know how many constituents have called each senator with their opposition.
• After all, we hope that most senators’ offices will receive more than one call from constituents opposing SOPA / PIPA and requesting a response before the vote. Bigger-population states especially, such as CA & NY, should be able to generate hundreds of calls against these bills.
• If a previous OpenCongress user has already recorded a position for a senator on the bill that’s not “undeclared”, please consult the wiki notes from that user before changing a senator’s position using the drop-down menu in the main form. After all, many different staffers will be fielding the initial request for info, and it’s better to be cautious when recording a stance for a senator in our whip count.
• If, on the other hand, you switch a position from “undeclared” to support or oppose, please make notes on your evidence in the wiki page that comes next, and let us know that you’ve found valuable new info by emailing us: david at opencongress.org. It’s possible there are senators who are on-record in support or opposition to SOPA of which we are currently unaware, so if you find a reliable news article or blog post or Tweet, please provide the specific URL in the wiki notes.

5. Email your members of Congress - next, send your members an email using Contact-Congress on OC and our unique message builder interface, then share a link to your letter with your community and social networks. Follow this link or the link on the whip count itself to get started. 

• Enter your email and full street address at the top of the message builder to auto-find your senators and representative.
• Compose your letter, clicking on information (especially campaign contribution data) on the right-hand side to bring it over to the left-hand side. Constituent communications can be enhanced by personal testimonials about how you value net freedom, as an Internet user, or how perhaps as a technologist you oppose the bill’s attempt to enforce China-style DNS blocking, or how you support free political speech online and don’t want one single government official to be able to ban a URL without review & accountability.
• Complete the process to send your email through OC, and you’ll be taken to a permalink page to your letter. There, you can share it over social media and email with your community. Any auto-generated or form-letter response from the offices of your elected officials will automatically appear there, and you can comment on their response and share the results with your social network. It’s unlikely that the auto-response to your email will contain a new position on #SOPA or #PIPA, but if it does, please use that as documentation to add to the wiki community project and add your notes in the added-context page for that senator. (Next, we’ll offer a similar community-driven, volunteer-powered whip-count for SOPA specifically.)

Please compete all the above steps to fight censorship online: call your senators’ offices, email all three of your members of Congress, share your anti-PIPA letter over social media, and sign-up for an in-person meeting. Let us know how it goes - to get started, visit the first link below for the Senate whip count. 

Whip counts

• Protect IP Act Senate whip count
  • Senate contact log
• SOPA House whip count (coming soon)

• Positions of companies on SOPA and PIPA

Ways to participate

How to contact congressional offices

• Tips on how to effectively contact Congress on PIPA

About the Contact Congress feature

About SOPA and PIPA

• Protect IP Act of 2011
• Stop Online Piracy Act