[free-sklyarov] A humble telephone protest suggestion

Benjamin Krueger roo at ufies.org
Fri Jul 27 23:53:13 PDT 2001


Telephone Protest Proposal
July 27th, 2001

	This is a really easy, yet effective protest, and even folks at work can
manage to participate. Essentially, we should choose one day and time
designated for calling your 2 congressional representatives, and the US
Attorney's Office.

	The really important part here is voicing your concern to your
representatives in as visible a way as possible, and large numbers of voting 
constituants taking the time to make a telephone call will rouse their
attention. Under 18 folks should call too. Just because you can't vote right
now doesn't mean you won't be able to vote in a couple years. (You are going
to register to vote when you turn 18, right?)

	I would suggest starting such a protest at 10am your local time. Your
representatives' offices will just be starting their day, and a large call
volume will turn a lot of heads. I'd suggest the same time (10am PST) for 
calls to the US Attorney's office in San Fransisco. If the line is busy, hang
up and try again until you get a person! Obviously if you can't call at
exactly the designated time, try and call sometime that day. Any phone call is
better than no phone call at all.

	Somebody may also want to write some scripts (the acting kind, not the
perl kind!) that folks can use when they call. For your representatives, I 
would suggest stressing your concern over the DMCA, and the fact that it is 
now being used to repress valid research and violates citizen's rights. For 
the US Attorney, I would suggest a script that emphasizes your concern that 
they are acting in an innappropriate manner, that they are violating Dmitry's 
rights by not providing due process in an expediant manner according to the 
law, and possibly that they are violating international treaties on the 
handling of foreign citizens accused of crimes. I don't know if the last is 
true, although I suspect as much. As far as I've been able to read, the 
Russian consolate has not been able to visit Dmitry. It is definately 
something that warrents further research.

	Of course, as always, be polite on the phone. You will be talking to an
operator who likely has no clue about these issues, and you want to leave as
good an impression as possible. Threats and cursing don't win followers. Make
sure you mention that you are a constituent of the representative; they will
probably ask for your name and address, or at least your address, to make
sure. Don't call representatives who don't represent you. It won't help, and
will only make the entire cause look bad.

	A protest like this should be able to rally thousands of people per
representative. The turnouts for the in person picketting protests were great,
but we should be able to get a far greater number when all thats involved are
3 simple phone calls. 


House of Representatives lookup. This has a link to your Representative's
homepage, which should have the phone numbers of their home and DC offices.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Senators of the 107th Congress. This has links to your Senator's homepage.
http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm

The US Attorney's office should be able to be found on:
http://www.usdoj.gov or http://www.usdoj.gov/cgi-bin/phonebook/db.cgi


Benjamin Krueger
roo at ufies.org
Seattle, Wa




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