What I did to fight Trumpism this week

Every Friday I fight Trumpism. I start by donating to a cause that advocates for good. I then contact government representatives to urge them to either oppose or support policies I consider important.

My donation this week was to the National Physicians Alliance. The GOP has already moved forward with their plan to condemn 20 million Americans to bankruptcy, sickness, and death by repealing Obamacare. NPA is one of several national organizations that are fighting back by spending money on TV ads and lobbying. You can find its donation page over here.

I also called the office of GOP Senator Susan Collins. Collins has signaled that she might oppose repeal if there’s not an adequate replacement plan in place, and we all know there isn’t a replacement plan in place. Here’s the script I used:

“Hi there. My name is Simon Owens. I’m self-employed and I have a pre-existing health condition. Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act I was rejected from buying health insurance on the private market and wasn’t able to purchase this type of insurance until after the Affordable Care Act was passed. I’m calling to urge Senator Susan Collins to reject the efforts to repeal the ACA because it’ll throw me and 20 million other Americans off our insurance.”

Want to help fight Trumpism too?

Here are the steps you can follow:

1. Pick a day of the week as your Fight Trumpism Day. That way, you always have a day set aside so you have no excuses to put it off. At most you’ll need to devote an hour a week to fighting Trumpism. My day is Friday.
2. Create a spreadsheet with two tabs. The first tab is for your donations. The second is for contacting your representatives. For the donations tag, track the organization, the issue it stands for, the donation amount, and the date you donated. On the contact your representatives tab, track the issue you’re contacting about, the representative you’re contacting (often it’ll be your local representative or the head of a congressional committee), and the date you contacted them.
3. For every Fight Trumpism Day, make your donation and contact your representative and then record it in the spreadsheet. I’d say you should donate the same amount every week. Even if it’s only $10, it will add up to $2,000 by the end of Trump’s four years. You will have also contacted your representatives 200 times.
4. After you’ve done these things, post about it on social media (like I’m doing here) in order to inspire others. Let’s say we got 10,000 other people to do this who weren’t doing it before; that would mean $20 million in donations and 2 million phone calls to representatives during Trump’s term. That kind of impact would be yuuggee. Get to it!