ACTION PLAYBOOK:
Contact Your City Officials
Let’s take action.
⚡️ This playbook has two tracks. If you’re ready to Level Up!, follow the lightning bolt.
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Urge your mayor or city council to act on a climate solution.
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Find their contact info
Skim the climate policy
Send an email
Make a phone call
Tweet at them
Ask a friend to do it too
1. Gather contact information
For this action, you’ll need email addresses, Twitter handles, and/or phone numbers for your local officials.
A. Find who represents you. America has over 19,000 municipalities, so there isn’t one central database of everyone’s local representatives. First, Google: [name of your city] + mayor.
B. Next, Google: [name of your city] + city council. For small towns, you might have a uniform town council that is not subdivided by district. In that case, you can contact any city council member you want.
If you live in a smaller town, you might find a page like this:
In larger cities, your council is likely subdivided into city council districts. Look for something like this district finder on the site for Phoenix, AZ:
C. Write down the contact information. Once you have the name of your mayor and one city council member, try to find an email address, phone number, and/or Twitter handle on the municipality’s official website.
2. Acquaint yourself with a climate solution
Choose the climate policy solution you’d like to advocate for and take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the key points.
3. Send a personalized email to your local officials
It might be tempting to sign your name to the bottom of a prewritten email, but personalized emails are much more attention-grabbing. They also get processed differently than mass-produced letters, which are batched.
Edit the template below in a blank email to your mayor and city councilor about your climate solution. You can use the same email copy for both, but send them separately.
Make sure to keep a copy of your email handy to use as a phone script. After you’ve sent it, return to this playbook.
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To craft a personalized message and increase the likelihood of a response, find out where your city falls on the spectrum of climate ambition. You can use a Google search or a browse city initiatives on the official website. If you have Twitter on your phone, you can click the search icon in the top right corner of their profile pages to scan their Tweets for keywords. Once you find more information to help target your message, use it to customize the template above.
➡️ If your mayor and/or city councilors are already climate champions, thank them for their ongoing work before asking them to build on it by helping you advocate to Congress.
➡️ If your mayor and/or city councilors appear neutral or disengaged on climate, now is your chance to engage them.
➡️ If your mayor and/or city councilors is a climate obstructionist, it’s even more imperative that they hear from you. Policy issues at the city level are the least politicized among traditional party lines. Mayors and city councilors don’t have the same set of political incentives that members of Congress do, and it’s usually quite easy to find common ground. Stick to data about the area (not national statistics) and your personal story about living in the area.
It can also help to find some city-specific climate impact data to help illustrate how cities will bear enormous costs and therefore need the federal government to act. This should be particularly resonant with cities because they run very tight budgets and often need federal assistance.
Climate Costs 2040 shows projected taxpayer costs in specific cities.
This interactive map shows your city’s projected average temperatures and weather in the year 2080.
4. Make a call
Call the number(s) you found listed on the website. Use your email from Step 2 as a call script! You’ll want to identify your constituent status, be concise and specific, and demonstrate authenticity. If they don’t pick up, don’t worry—your voicemail will be documented. (And if you prefer to leave a voicemail rather than talk to a real person, call after hours!)
5. Tweet at your mayor and city council member
Public amplification of your message can grab the attention of policymakers and elicit a response. Turn your personalized message into a Tweet, being sure to preserve the specific ask. Remember to tag their handles! If you’re not on Twitter, you can try Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
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Letting others in your network know that you’ve taken action is a great way to scale your impact. Consider using social media, email, texting, etc. to amplify the action you just took and invite others to join you. Below is sample language you can adapt and customize:
I just contacted my state legislator about [POLICY ISSUE]. It’s really empowering and a lot more accessible than it seems. Here's the playbook! [Link here]
6. Ask a friend to do it too
Network effects are powerful. Persuading friends and family to take climate action is a crucial step toward changing cultural norms and making real progress. Now that you’ve taken this action, send a note to a friend along with this playbook asking them to send an email or make a call to their own city officials. Simplify the process for them by forwarding your own email as a model and the contact information you found if they live in the same city.
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A great way to take this step to the next level is by considering which city officials you’d want to target and inviting a friend to take action who also happens to be their constituent. If you're campaigning for a policy change in your own city, it's strategic to involve another local resident to amplify pressure.
However, if a different city is the focal point for your policy solution, try to choose someone who lives there. Picture a scenario where San Francisco hasn't yet banned fossil gas in new construction, unlike Oakland and Berkley. It seems likely that San Francisco will follow their lead. At the same time, in Salem, Oregon, where your best friend lives, a city council vote on this issue is imminent, and it's become highly contentious and politicized. In this case, your San Francisco friends can wait—text that Salem bestie immediately!