One thing about me people should know… I hate phone calls. I just don’t want to talk on the phone. Text, email, chat… all good.
But a phone call?
It’s the one thing I’ve avoided while doing my own acts of resistance. I’ve emailed, signed petitions, and the like. I’ve wanted to fax, but never had a way to do that.
And now I do, and you, can, too.
It’s resistbot.io, and Teen Vogue has a great write-up about it…
When it comes to resisting the Trump administration’s policies and making your voice heard, we now know that the “old-fashioned phone call” (in the words of Congresswoman Katherine Clark) is one of the most valuable tools we have. But, we also know that supplementing emails, postcards, and faxes to elected officials is also effective — especially when said officials’ lines are busy and voicemail boxes are full. And now, one company is making it really easy to send those faxes: All you have to do is text.
Resistbot is a new service that turns your text messages into faxes, and sends them to your elected officials for you, Recode reports. Want to urge your House representative to oppose the Affordable Care Act replacement, or ask your senators to demand an independent commission to investigate Russia’s involvement in the election, or block the implementation of the revised Muslim ban? Just text “resist” to 50409.
So I set it up, and here’s how it works…
1. You text “resist” to 50409.
2. ResistBot responds, welcoming you, and asking you what name you’d like to sign your faxes with.
3. It then asks for your zipcode, so it can connect you to your senators and representatives.
4. It will then give you a breakdown of how this whole thing works. You can then write out your first fax to your senators and representatives. The response will be “Anything else to add?” You can then add more or respond with “no”.
5. Once you’re done, and have responded with “no”, it’ll give you options: “send”, “preview”, “edit” (to keep adding), and “start over” (self-explanatory).
6. Once you text “send”, it’ll send you pictures of the generated faxes. Once the faxes are sent, you’ll get a notice that they’ve been sent.
And that’s it!
I’ll be using this. Will you?
When confronted with solid evidence that “representatives” have negative interest in the public’s opinion, telling them our opinion is a waste of time. It’s no longer even feasible to staple a letter to a banknote, because they don’t come in denominations high enough to get a “representative”‘s attention. Your opinion didn’t count and never will. Mark Zuckerberg’s might.
The idea is to flood them to the point of annoyance. I’m for it. I will force them to listen to me (using non-violent means, obviously).
Looking up the origins of the .io domain led me to this appalling story of colonial crimes.