» Europa Goes to Congress

Interacting With Your Representatives

Interacting with members of Congress that you help elect is important for communicating how national policies and local factors interact. Below are some helpful resources for determining who you should contact, the types of interactions you might consider, and materials for you to use and modify to suit your interactions.

It’s also important to remember that your senators and representatives want to hear from you, their constituent, and they want to hear about how national decisions will affect their home districts. There are many ways that you can communicate with your representatives.

Letter Writing

While form emails and letters are helpful in communicating with elected officials, most of these forms only have key points and lack connections to local areas or directly to the people Congress represents. Here are three simple rules for letter writing campaigns:

1) Whenever possible, send a fax or mail a letter: Emails, while they are certainly noted, are somewhat easier to pass over than physical documents. Thus, it’s best to send a fax or a letter to make sure your comments don’t get stuck in the spam filter.

If you do send an email, put your comments in the body of the email, but consider also attaching an electronically signed document or a scanned one that was signed by hand.

2) Make it personal: If NASA decides to send a mission to Europa, it will be a national undertaking, but it will almost certainly affect your state or district. Here are some things to consider including in your letter:

Local Jobs: Is a NASA center in your district or state? Is the local university involved in space science? Mention these direct connections, especially if your job is affected.
Local People: How does space science inspire you? Why are you interested Europa? What will science at Europa do to improve your life or the life of others?
National Prominence: High-tech jobs depend on innovation, and NASA fuels this kind of work. NASA employs some of the world’s brightest minds to work in the US, with growing competition from other countries.
Technological Advances: Mission technologies often form the basis for millions of dollars of business for local and national industry. An investment in NASA is an investment in technologies that will be in our homes, our cars, and our lives for decades to come.

3) Keep it real: Form letters and websites (like this one) can provide helpful, factual material to put in your letters. It’s important to speak with one voice about important issues, keeping messages consistent while demonstrating local connections. Use facts and figures from reputable sources to help make your point and avoid hyperbole. Europa Clipper won’t solve all the mysteries of life in the Universe, but it will allow us pick a landing site for the next generation Europa lander that could tell us if life exists on Europa. And that is important!!

The Division of Planetary Sciences of AAS has great information on how to communicate with congress and links supporting planetary science. Congress also has some tips for contacting your elected officials.

Here are some example letters supporting that you can modify or use as a guide:

Supporting Clipper, A letter about Europa Clipper and Decadal Survey priorities
Restoring the budget, DPS Federal Relations Subcommittee

You can also sign this petition to support science and end the sequester.

Visiting your Representatives

Your congressional representatives have offices in both Washington, DC and in their local districts, so it’s possible to meet with them or their staff at either location. If you are planning a trip to DC, consider scheduling a meeting or just including a quick visit to the office. Occasionally you’ll show up when the representative is in the office, but it’s more likely that you will meet with a staffer. Congressional staffers are well-educated and eager to help their representative become educated and keep in contact with their constituents, so consider it a positive that you get time to meet with them. If you plan to talk about NASA or Europa, when you call, request to speak with the staffer who is responsible for science or technology policy.

Whether or not you have an official meeting with the staff or are just dropping by the office, it’s a good idea to have some key points thought out as well as a “leave-behind” or a letter to drop off. “Leave-behinds” should be single page documents with clearly articulated facts that inform the representative about the topic you are discussing and its relationship to national and local realities. If it’s your House representative, be sure to include comments about national prominence and local area economic or employment factors. If you visit your Senator, be sure to include a state-wide perspective. Again, think about:

Local Jobs: Is a NASA center in your district or state? Is the local university involved in space science? Mention these direct connections, especially if your job is affected.
Local People: How does space science inspire you? Why are you interested Europa? What will science at Europa do to improve your life or the life of others?
National Prominence: High-tech jobs depend on innovation, NASA fuels this kind of work. NASA employs some of the world’s brightest minds to work in the US, with growing competition from other countries.
Technological Advances: Mission technologies often form the basis for millions of dollars of business for local and national industry. An investment in NASA is an investment in technologies that will be in our homes, our cars and our lives for decades to come.

Here is a leave-behind that supports Europa Clipper as a national science priority. This is appropriate for any state, or even the President!

Here are examples of state-specific leave-behinds for Texas and Maryland that you can use or modify with how the mission will impact your state or district.

Who Do I Contact?

You can look up your House and Senate members by inputting your zipcode.

In addition to your local members, there are several important committees that affect science priorities and funding. These are the House and Senate Appropriations committees, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. If your elected officials are on one of these committees, please consider asking them to support an increase in science funding and for a Europa mission. If not, you can help by contacting one or more of the members to tell them it’s time to set sail!