Advocacy Made Easy: Scheduling a Lobby Meeting

Image: A calendar grid with a giant question mark on it.

Even among seasoned activists, I don't meet a lot of folks who schedule their own lobby meetings. Many advocacy groups rely on staff for that work, but really anyone can request a meeting! Setting up a lobby meeting is a harder advocacy action than some of the other things we do, but it’s not as impossible as most people assume. This blog will give you clear steps to submit your meeting request and some advice for getting your meeting scheduled.

NOTE: I wrote this advice from the perspective of meeting with a U.S. representative or senator. The same basic process works for state officials, but I notice more variability with procedures at the state level. It might be due to state members having fewer constituents and shorter sessions. (Missouri legislators meet only five months out of the year!)

Scheduling a meeting with a member of Congress takes a lot of persistence. If possible, submit your meeting request a whole month before you want to meet, so you have plenty of time to work through these steps. That way you can get on their calendar before they're totally booked up!

How to submit a meeting request

STEP #1: Submit a meeting request by using the website form for the congressional office. If you don’t hear back from them in a week, move to Step #2.

STEP #2: Call the office of your member of Congress. Ask the admin for the name and email address of the “scheduler” for the location where you want to meet (D.C. or local district office). Ask to speak to the scheduler directly with your request. If they are not available, send them an email directly.

Here’s a picture with a sample template you can follow for crafting your email. It should clearly and concisely provide information about who you are, when you want to meet, what your organization does, and why you want to meet. Don't forget to provide both your email and phone contact information!

Image: Sample template for requesting a congressional meeting via email.
Graphic from the book "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World"

STEP #3: Follow up every couple of days with polite emails and phone calls to the scheduler if you don’t hear back in a few days.

Tips to improve your chances of getting a meeting

The following tips can help get your request noticed out of all the other people clamoring for attention. Schedulers are people, too. If you make things easy for them, they'll do their best to make things easy for you.

• Be persistent, but not belligerent.

• Offer as much flexibility as possible for times and location, including an online zoom meeting. Follow their rules respectfully. If they say you can only bring three people, stay within that limit.

Image: ONE volunteers got a surprise meeting in DC with
Rep. Cori Bush when she returned early from her prior meeting. 

• Accept a meeting with an aide if the congressperson is not available. Aides are important members of the team who help the member make decisions on your issue. Plus, you never know when you might get a surprise meeting from the member walking in unexpectedly.

• Work with a respected nonpartisan organization aligned with your position. They can support you, and their excellent reputation can help legitimize your request.

Image: RESULTS volunteers met with 
Rep. Ann Wagner during an August recess.

• If possible, request a time when you know your member will be in your local area, like August recess when members leave Washington D.C. to go home for almost an entire month. District meetings tend to be longer and more relaxed than D.C. meetings.

Resources to prepare for your meeting

I hope you're successful and move on to the happy problem of wondering what to do in that meeting. Don’t worry! My kiddo and co-author for my next book, Yara Changyit-Levin, has you covered with their blog: “How to Lobby a Member of Congress.” If it’s a Zoom meeting, you can look up a few pointers on my blog, “Advocacy Made Easy: Zoom Lobby Meetings.”

Good luck!

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Could You Set Aside Your Differences for 5 Minutes?

Cynthia with Senator Josh Hawley playing Rock, Paper, Scissors

I’d love to tell you the story of my nuttiest lobbying picture. Please read this blog to the end before commenting.

The Cause

This week, I was in Washington D.C. with the ONE Campaign lobbying for global AIDS programming and general foreign aid funding. The ONE campaign is a global campaign to end extreme poverty and preventable disease in our lifetimes so everyone, everywhere can live with dignity & opportunity. ONE has a non-partisan reputation of people of all different political stances coming together to fight global HIV/AIDS. So, when I go to visit any elected official, that’s what I’m about.

As a constituent from Missouri, I can go to Senator Hawley’s constituent coffees if I'm in DC when one is being hosted. I don’t have a lot in common with Josh Hawley besides voting in Missouri and knowing my way around Capitol Hill. He would probably admit himself that he is a polarizing figure in Congress. But my goal is to build consensus with him to reauthorize the PEPFAR program to fight AIDS and get him to remember me positively for future work together. I've met him briefly before in a similar situation when I told him about global vaccines for Shot@Life and then took a standard photo I'm sure he didn't remember at all. While in line for this picture, I thought about how I might make this encounter more memorable.

Image: Cynthia explains more about 
PEPFAR to Senator Hawley

When it was my turn to speak to him, the senator gave me a couple of minutes to talk about PEPFAR. He already knew the basics: that it provides funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in impoverished countries. I told him this is the 20th anniversary of the program and it has helped save over 25 million lives since it started in 2003. We discovered we both feel PEPFAR is the "best thing George W. Bush ever did." (his words) I asked him if he would sign the reauthorization bill coming up soon and he agreed that he'd take a look at it, which is exactly what most members will say because they want to make sure nothing weird gets attached to the bill before they commit.

Image: The signed picture of Cynthia 
& Senator Hawley posing formally

Then, I asked him if - after we took the stuffy, formal photo that would show my ONE T-shirt -could we take a picture for fun and play Rock, Paper, Scissors? His staff didn't think he would, so they all stood nervously about while I asked. But he said, "Yeah, sure!" So, we found out we have one more thing in common: that we can be a little silly at a normally tedious Senate event.

The Picture

Image: Cynthia and Senator Hawley are surprised they both chose scissors

When we both came up with scissors, all the staff and other Missouri folks shouted and laughed. He asked, “Should we do it again until someone wins?” But I said, “No, it’s perfect. We agreed on that, too!” The picture captured a moment that stood out in everyone's mind as unusual and positive.

Now, why did this work? I can't speak for the senator, but I should acknowledge some of it probably has to do with the setting on his comfortable home-turf, the bi-partisan nature of my global health request, and my privilege as a cis-gender, middle-aged, white-ish mom constituent who is already known to the senator's staff because of frequent lobby visits. All of that grants me a lot leeway in many offices, and I'm aware I have colleagues and loved ones who wouldn't feel comfortable or safe making odd requests of members. But I did use that privilege and that moment to try to work toward a program that will assist millions of people who don't have access to speak to a U.S. senator nor access to the health resources they need.

I think Senator Hawley, his aides, and I are going to remember that for a long time…or at least until the PEFAR bill is introduced and he hopefully signs it!

The Backlash

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about this picture as I am. Of course, there are always critics in the facebook comments. A common thing Missouri Democrats say to me is that I should not talk to or work with him or any Republicans at all. People call me "naive," a “fool,” an “appeaser” and worse.

Image: Facebook comment saying I am a fool and beneath contempt for my lobbying with Hawley

Image: Facebook comment saying
"I would find other supporters"

I understand emotions run very high and some people cannot set aside their deep feelings for the 5 minutes of a photo op for the sake of a global good. The trouble with that way of thinking is the reality of how the American government works. We each only get two senators and one representative in Congress. If I refused to work with members who are not of my preferred party, then I’d give up 100% of my influence with the Senate because I’m only represented by Republicans.

I campaigned for Democrats in election season, but we lost. Yet I feel so strongly about the 38 million people in the world with AIDS, that I will not take a pass right now just hoping to get lucky in the next election cycle. I do this work because other Americans give up while millions of people are still dying from treatable and preventable disease. They cannot wait for the next election cycle. Most of them in Africa don’t know who Senator Hawley is or anything about him.

When I'm on Capitol Hill with my Nigerian ONE partners, I’m not going to say, “No, I won’t do my best for you because I don’t agree with these folks on issues you’ve never heard about.” The important part is that I agree with my Nigerian colleagues that their friends and relatives should not die needlessly. Historically, corruption in their country has been a constant phenomenon. They persist a system far more corrupt than ours. So, I persist as well.

Still, because of my relationships with other activists in my state, I get to tag along with them to meet with THEIR representatives. So, yes, I work with Democrats, too! Here’s a picture of our face-to-face meeting with Congresswoman Cori Bush of St. Louis. 

She’s known as a member of the progressive coalition known as The Squad, infamous among hard-core Republicans who don’t like them. So, yes, we DO find other allies. And that's the point. It’s not easy to pass bills, so we need supporters from every party. The more different they are, the better. Because if their colleagues see that Cori Bush and Josh Hawley can agree on PEPFAR, it must be something very good and very special that everyone should agree on.

Can YOU Set Aside Differences for 5 Minutes?

Now, this is the part that gets personal. Can YOU set aside your active beef with your members of Congress for 5 minutes or less to help achieve the end of AIDS in our lifetimes? I’m not so naïve to think that one game of Rock, Paper, Scissors would assure Senator Hawley’s signature on the reauthorization bill for PEPFAR. He and his colleagues need to hear from a LOT of people.

A phone call to Congress takes only 2 minutes. An email from a weblink only takes a few seconds. Neither of those will be as publicly strange as what I did at that coffee. Add your name to join the ONE Campaign in the fight against HIV/AIDS with this link today for future actions to reauthorize the PEPFAR program this year!

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Image: Cynthia sitting on the edge of the fountain by the 
Library of Congress between the House and Senate buildings

Along with hot tips for burning belly fat, my social media algorithms insist on showing me reels of tiny girls with "10 Tips & Tricks to Take Amazing Instagram Photos." I know they’re offering to make me more attractive while boosting their own clicks, but I started to wonder: Could these influencers help my activism? Was what I perceived as shallow actually great marketing advice to help me spread the word about global health?

Image: Cynthia in front of U.S. Capitol 2009
Photo by Richard Smiley

For 15 years, I’ve been coming to advocate on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. with various global health advocacy groups almost every year. I have over a decade’s worth of pictures of me in front of the U.S. Capitol! My early pics look like 1980’s vacation photos of my youth. As I crossed the Capitol grounds on the way to the House and the Senate with my ONE Campaign group this week, my teammates helped me experiment with Instagrammer tips.

Let’s see what happens when a 51-year-old mom applies tips from glamorous influencers about how to make pictures more interesting and flattering!

This first photo is what you DO NOT want. From a publicity stance, we can’t see the organization logo, so it’s not helping to build awareness of the cause. From a composition angle, we cut the top of the Capitol off. The activist has a closed off posture with a unhappy, disagreeable face. Even if your Hill meeting didn’t go well, your face doesn’t have to tell that story!

Image: Cynthia shows what not to do in a Hill photo

This next one is the standard photo most people expect to see. I bet 95% of my Capitol Hill day photos look like this. Nothing wrong with it. Nice smile. Nametag and jacket are moved aside so people can see the logo. But every activist has this picture. Can we improve on it to be something that will cause your friends to stop scrolling on social media, read your post, and maybe even take an action to help your cause?

Image: Cynthia standing in front of US Capitol with arms at her sides

Okay, enough waiting...here it is:

5 Tips & Tricks to Make Your Hill Pics Pop!

#1 Photographer shooting up

Ask your photographer to get down low on their knees and shoot up. (Thanks, Jorge!) Show us that swag bag with your logo right out front to tell us who you are and what you stand for. I think a blend between these pictures of Angela Pancella and I would be exactly right. She looks more natural, but you can see the logo better in mine. Either way, the angle on the shot is already a bit more interesting.

#2 Swing a bag

Get this carefree, confident look by rocking back & forth on your feet while swinging the bag & taking action shots until you get a great one. Logos on both the bag & T-shirt are visible with a cheerful face on the volunteer! It looks silly when you're doing it, but the pictures turn out well. The foot closest to the photographer stays put. When your foot farthest from the camera steps forward, swing the bag forward. When it steps back, swing the bag back. FYI, the Instagrammer I got this tip from says that swinging the bag forward will hide your tummy if you are self-conscious about it. I don’t know much about that, but Angela and I modeled both options to for you to choose from.

#3 Find a Friend

Find a friend and strike a pose! Lobbying should be a team sport. We’re more powerful together, so grab a colleague and strike a dynamic pose that shows how much fun you’re having.

Image: Cynthia and Angela smiling and holding out hands together

Image: Cynthia with Shot@Life volunteers Aaron and Srihitha

#4 Add a New Level

Get down low along with your photographer to add an unusual level. These look confident and really focus attention on your location and your organization’s logo.

Image: Cynthia squats down in front of the US Capitol

Image: Cynthia seated on the Capitol steps looking down at the camera

#5 Feature a Different Architectural Feature

You don't HAVE to have a picture in front of the Capitol building to show you're lobbying in D.C. Find a different interesting feature to set you apart from other activists, like this fountain in front of the Library of Congress. Sitting on the edge of a wall with a leg up looks casual and adds interesting angles to the picture. Prominently display your organization's logo and wear sunglasses to look cool, especially if you’re facing into blinding sun. Look off-camera and add a filter for extra coolness points.

Image: Cynthia sitting on the edge of a fountain at the Library of Congress

Now that you know how to get some great photos, you'll want to share them with the world to spread awareness of your issues. Be sure to tag your organization. Better yet, tag your policymakers with a message reminding them of your request "thanks for meeting me -- counting on you to help end AIDS in our lifetime!" etc. (Thanks, Meredith Dodson of Coalition for Human Needs, for reminding me of that!)

Good luck with your photos...and good luck with your meetings!!

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

What we NEED on #MothersDay: Safety From Gun Violence

This year, I did not write a “Mother’s Day Gift Idea” blog. Because my friends and I at Moms Demand Action don’t need more flowers. We NEED our kids & friends safe from weapons of war while they are just trying to live their lives.

This advocacy fight for safety from gun violence has always been personal. From the moment my kids started practicing hiding in classrooms from armed intruders, it hit home. But 8 days ago, it finally happened. Someone I love became a victim of gun violence. A friend of mine was hit in a public shooting. 

Like so many American gun victims, Victoria Luz was out living her life doing normal things and when her life was disrupted by violence. She was at a 75th birthday party in a restaurant, travelling in New Orleans for a fun Jazz Fest weekend. She was surrounded by friends when a shooter came hunting a server (fatally shot). My friend ended up with a bullet in her back.

This is what Birthday Girl, Terri Hemmert, said about that day on Facebook:

"What I did on my spring vacation. I went to New Orleans. I did not go to the Jazz and Heritage Festival. I did not eat Crawfish Monica. I did start my big birthday party. It was interrupted by a hail of bullets. 28 of my precious friends were hitting the floor. I looked to my right. Two very special women were on the floor by my feet. There was blood. And a bullet hole in the wall. Two inches from me. And a bullet in my friend’s back. It was surreal. But it was real. Only too real."

Image: Cindy wearing a Moms Demand t-shirt

After processing the fear and relief of hearing about it and that she was in stable condition, I thought, "Sh-t, there it is." After years of advocating and wearing my now-worn-to-softness Moms Demand Action t-shirt to avoid a day like that...gun violence finally arrived for one of my Special People.

I’m very grateful she is alive, well cared for, and got to celebrate Mother's Day and her own birthday days later! Let me share a tiny bit about this wonderful woman who could never be encapsulated in a blog post.

She’s a mid-west, suburban mom who fiercely loves her two kids. She likes Chuck Taylor shoes, geeky comic-y stuff, Broadway musicals, costumes, and books and libraries. She is weird in all the best possible ways. She cheers on her friends in their life goals. She makes reading glasses look so good, that when it was my turn to need them, I thought “I get to be like her!” instead of being upset about needing readers. I'll also add that she's been acting against gun violence WAY before I started. She began volunteering for the national Coalition Against Handgun Violence when she was 13! She has always been a survivor, and now she is also a gun violence survivor.

People who know me might recognize that several things on that list describe me, too. Yeah, those are things we have in common and first drew us together. They’re also a reminder - as if I needed any more reminders - that this violent act can easily happen to me or any of us. This is not just a school problem or a concert security problem or a race problem or a “bad neighborhood” problem. It’s a nationwide problem that gets more and more ridiculous with every passing week when Americans are gunned down doing normal, ordinary things, like going to movies, ringing the wrong doorbell, pulling into a wrong driveway, or accidentally getting into the wrong car.

Over 650 faith leaders urged Congress to declare Mother’s Day to be declared a national day of prayer, mourning, repentance, contemplation, and action “so that we are able to overcome our country’s idolatrous worship of guns.” As far as I know, despite the too-common assurances that we have their “thoughts and prayers,” Congress didn't make any such proclamation declaration. But Mother’s Day 2023 is a Day of Action for Moms Demand Action volunteers.

Please honor this day by taking one or more of these three actions against gun violence:

• Find and event to attend for "Wear Orange" gun violence awareness week.

• Join in this Moms Demand online action or write a letter to Congress with the sample text below to suport common-sense gun legislation and re-instate the assault weapons ban.

I am writing to you as a constituent filled with grief, fear, and anger. I am fed up. As countless acts of preventable gun violence continue to threaten the safety of communities across the country day after day, I am urging you to oppose the extreme attempts to attack the ATF, including efforts to repeal the ATF’s arm brace rule, and, instead, support action on gun safety. I ask you to support common-sense legislation that would expand background checks to all gun sales, create a federal Extreme Risk Protection Order law, and reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban. This common-sense legislation can help prevent tragic mass shootings, as well as the 120 gun deaths that happen every day.

Please, I’m urging you to prioritize public safety. Take action and save lives.

• Write a social media post asking for others to take action by giving your version of "For #MothersDay I don't NEED flowers, I NEED my kids and friends safe from weapons of war while they are just trying to live their lives. I'm calling on Congress to reinstate the bipartisan assault weapons ban. Join me & text FED UP to 644-33"

Image: My facebook post for a Mother's Day social media action

 

Now, as I hit "submit" on this blog post, I'm headed to church wearing that broken-in, red Moms Demand shirt. Because Victoria deserves all my thoughts and prayer AND actions.

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Tuberculosis is still The Phantom Plague on #WorldTBDay 2023

Another World Tuberculosis Day has come around today. This time, I’m out and about on college visits with my youngest kid, so I’m not lobbying about TB as I have for past World TB Days. But I am still thinking about it a lot because my local RESULTS group is working hard to rally U.S. support, as Congress is now facing funding decisions for global health programs and other budgeting plans.

The fight against tuberculosis is at a precarious point in 2023. TB cases and deaths have been on the rise ever since COVID-19 caused resources to be diverted for that new pandemic.

Tuberculosis is an ancient disease that has left its fingerprints all over world history. This World TB Day, I highly recommend reading a newly published book by Vidya Krishnan called The Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History. Krishnan is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting on medical science for the last twenty years. She traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk-remedies, made way for scientific understanding of TB, so it could be controlled in the West. 

Image: Cynthia & Yara holding copies of 
The Phantom Plague

One of my kids, Yara Changyit-Levin, is now a college freshman enrolled in the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Being global health advocates, we each have our own copies of The Phantom Plague. It shouldn't have surprised us when we both arrived at our spring break destination still reading and annotating our books. We both look forward to getting to the parts where real people we actually know, like Dr. Madhukar Pai at McGill University, played a significant part in the history of tuberculosis. It will help us see our own part in defeating this disease even though we still have an awful long way to go!

Want to learn more about what you personally can do to advocate in support of global TB programs? Visit this blog from RESULTS for an overview and actions.

To give you an example of what this advocacy can look like, here is my letter to the editor published last week in my local St. Louis Post-Dispatch Newspaper that thanks our area U.S. representatives for their actions to fight against TB:

Image: Clipping of my letter to the editor
Photo credit: Greg Campbell

“I applaud Congresswoman Ann Wagner for using her leadership to fight a deadly pandemic on the rise. Not COVID-19, but tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB) – an airborne disease – was the pandemic we were fighting long before coronavirus made news. It kills more people each year than HIV and malaria combined and has alternated with COVID-19 as the leading infectious disease killer over the past three years.

COVID-19 diverted global resources meant to fight TB. As a result, TB cases and deaths increased with 11 million sickened and 1.6 million killed worldwide in 2021. Representative Wagner recently co-authored a bi-partisan letter with Representative Ami Bera to the House appropriations committee recommending $1 billion for USAID bilateral tuberculosis funding in the FY24 spending bill to properly identify, treat, and prevent all forms of TB and develop new, more effective tools to fight it.

Happily, Congresswoman Cori Bush signed onto this letter, too. I’m grateful both of our St. Louis area U.S. representatives are engaged in this effort to support global health systems.”

I invite everyone to join in the fight against tuberculosis. Whether you make a couple of simple phone calls in honor of World TB Day, tweet about it, join a RESULTS group for a lobby meeting, or write a letter to the editor of your own, you can help us write the next chapter of world history and global health.

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Racial #Oppression: Unravel the Whole Damn Cloth

Image: Hand pulling at a string, unravelling the fringe on a cloth.
Image Credit: Cynthia Levin

As I learn more about systemic oppression and racism, I’m rocked again and again by how deep our problems go in America. Here are just four injustices that are top of mind for me:

1. Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women

2. Black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime

3. Black homeownership is declining more dramatically than for any other racial or ethnic group in the United States

4. Black history is being minimized or erased in school curriculum

There are many more, but those pop up for me because of my activism in the areas of maternal/child health, housing, gun violence, as well as my mentorship of high school advocates.

Now that I’m in the college application phase of parenthood, standardized testing is on my mind. When I spoke with a friend in academia about how standardized ACT/SAT tests for college essentially prevent students of color from admission to prestigious schools without being accurate predictors of college success, I kind of threw up my hands saying “I don’t even know what to do about that.” She said, “It’s one more thing you can throw on your list of things you advocate about.” Ack. It’s so frustrating how many THINGS there are. I know there is a danger for me and others for the frustration to get overwhelming to the point of inaction.

I’m urging you NOT to succumb to inaction. Don’t become so frustrated about how you can’t solve everything, that you fail to do something. In the words of a tweet by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca a.k.a. @LadyOfSardines, a teacher and organizer in Portland, OR:

"It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that *they're all connected.* So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you're helping to unravel the whole damn cloth."

Image: Tweet by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

These words are incredibly helpful to me.

Print out that tweet and paste it to your bathroom mirror. Use it as a reminder that you’re with me, I’m with you, and together we’ll make things better if we KEEP GOING.

Allow Yourself to Be Disrupted on MLK Day

Image: MLK Jr. memorial in Washington D.C.
Photo credit: Cynthia Levin

Have you ever been to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington D.C.? It's one of the most moving memorials in a city so full of monuments and memorials that you can hardly remember all the people you’re supposed to be remembering. Rather than having some anonymous obelisk or rotunda, MLK Jr.’s figure looms larger than life as he emerges from an imposing block of stone. Surrounded by his own quotes, there is no doubt whose statue you gaze upon. When I look at the face the sculptor gave him, I see determination of a strong organizer and I see a challenge to authority. And maybe, I see a challenge for me to BE a strong organizer who can BE a challenge to authority.

Image: Tying fringe on fleece
blankets is an activity even
kids can do!

Every year, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day rolls around, I wonder if we Americans are paying proper homage to this man with our days of service and charitable acts. On one hand, the tradition of service on this day is wonderfully unique among national holidays. I have to think it would have heartened him to know that thousands of adults and children dedicate time to helping fellow humans instead of just lolling about on a vacation day. I’ve taken part with my own children by sorting non-perishable food for the hungry, making blankets for homeless folks, repairing and cleaning underserved schools, and countless other good works.

And yet, the reason we celebrate his life wasn’t because of his charity, was it? Like any pastor, he probably looked favorably upon any activities helping people in poverty. But the reason we know who he was at all is his dedication to advocacy and non-violent protest.

Martin Luther King Jr. was not an advocate who played it safe. He knew when he went to Birmingham that his actions might land him in jail. That's exactly what happened. He took that imposed time of reflection and cranked out his legendary “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” If you haven’t read it, it’s a letter written to leaders who criticized his methods as an agitator and his urgency to take disruptive action.

There are so many gems in this letter that I won’t list them all here. But I'll point out that he directed his letter at moderates who were supposed to be on his side, but were so inactive that they played into the system of oppression. If you are ever showed discomfort with Black Lives Matter by not showing up for a protest (that would be me) or insisting that “All Lives Matter,” he was writing to you, too. Read the full letter at this link or even just the passages below and allow yourself to be a bit more disrupted:

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.”

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”

When I read his words and think about the conditions he was writing from (“what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?”), I think we can all borrow a little inspiration and courage from him to be a bit more disruptive in our country and our communities.

Image: Child standing by MLK memorial quote that says
"Make a career of humanity, commit yourself to the noble
struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of
yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer 
world to live in." - MLK Jr.

We can’t all be Martin Luther King Jr, but we can strive to be like him and honor his legacy by opening our eyes to what’s around us and using our words to challenge oppression in its many forms. So after you see to your charitable action today, ask yourself, “How can I use my words in this time to fight poverty and oppression?”

Will you take a stand against book banning? Will you oppose a state bill that bans the teaching of accurate Black history? Will you ask legislators for funding for maternal care for low-income mothers? There are so many ways to fight oppression and honor the legacy of Dr. King. Let’s all pick one and commit ourselves to actions, so next MLK Day, we can say that we answered his call.

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!