There are a number of ways you can take action and help support the Lobby Team's advocacy! Some of these include:

• Attend Democracy Lobby Week, January 22 through 26, to hear more details about specific legislation League is supporting. Get more information and register here.

• Participate in meetings with your local Legislators during Democracy Lobby Week. Nervous? Prepare by getting tips on how to effectively discuss the issues with your legislators at Speak-up School, January 6. Get more information and register here.

• Read the weekly Legislative Action Newsletter and follow the Action Alerts. Pick your favorite issues and weigh in electronically. Subscribe here.

• Volunteer to become an advocate on an issue of your choice. Contact the LWVWA Advocacy Chair, Cynthia Stewart, or any of the Issue Chairs here.

• Talk to your friends and neighbors about how they also can be involved in solutions for Washington state.

And why should you help? Because many Washingtonians need help! From homelessness to health care, behavioral health to criminal justice, systemic racism to extreme inequities in wealth, crises from the effects of climate change, and so much more—we all need to be part of the solutions.

For Further Inspiration...

...read On Advocacy by Rosemary Powers, President of the League of Women Voters of Tacoma-Pierce County. Here’s what she said about advocacy as she introduced the meeting of the Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness one Friday:

“Today I am thinking about 'advocacy.'" The issues and my response seem to fit today, as this is the time of year for receiving many requests from multiple sources asking us to review budget proposals, identify legislative priorities, let public officials and decision-making groups know what we think should be done to address immediate and long-range housing needs.    

During the meeting today we will hear about the Pierce County budget, and about advocacy priorities for the coming state legislative session. And we’ll think together about advocating—in a more individual sense – about what to say in personal conversations with family, and neighbors, and officials, and strangers—who do not see the issues in the ways we’ve come to see them.

Advocacy is an old concept. From the Medieval Latin word ‘advocare’ (‘to add’ a ‘voice’) it means to plead a case or a cause, to argue that something needs to be changed or improved. Other related words and phrases would be ‘lobbying’, ‘fighting for change’, ‘standing up for rights’, ‘championing a cause’, ‘changing the system’.  We use the word easily as a shorthand way to describe acting in support of what’s important to us—sometimes with others, sometimes with a lot of planning, sometimes out of a deep sense that we cannot stay silent. It makes me wonder why we so often choose to keep silent—or stay silent until we feel compelled, and conclude that we must “add our voice”.

Read more of Rosemary Powers' inspiring remarks here.