The beginning of a new administration and Congress brings with it an opportunity to impact science policy in the United States. We have seen considerable divisiveness between our elected officials, negative policies put into place through executive order, and politics placed ahead of solid scientific evidence. The challenge becomes what can we, as BPS members and staff, do to advocate for good, solid science policy without partisanship and political bias?
To understand what you can do, we need to understand the players involved. Out of the 535 members of Congress, only a mere handful hold STEM degrees. Members of Congress are reliant on their staff to be knowledgeable on a wide variety of issues to keep pace with the breadth of policies under each committee’s jurisdiction. In turn, staff look to organizations such as BPS and expert members of their constituency — you. Scientists can play an important role in educating the public and elected officials.
Advocacy in Washington, DC, can be a complex art, where both sides can be “right” and truthful at the same time, delivering a compelling message is everything. Truthfully, the efficacy of advocacy efforts depends on a number of factors — at least two of which you cannot control, the elected official you are trying to influence and the quality of the opponent and their message. However, we cannot win if we don’t engage with our best resources, our members.
Each elected official maintains a webpage outlining their position on key issues, particularly so called “hot button” issues. Your “target” legislator, and by extension their policy staff, have a voting record which will give you a blueprint for mapping out the type of message you need to deliver. Being armed with the issues and motivations of an elected official gives you the knowledge you need, however, you still need to develop a relationship with the office, specifically the staff covering science and appropriations. These staffers spend every day working on the issues that impact science and science funding. It all starts with building a relationship with those staff members so that when important bills start moving through Congress, you can reach out with a message of support or objection. It starts as simply as reaching out to the office regularly to ask for support or opposition or to thank them for their stance on an issue.
BPS has all the tools and resources available to help you reach out to your members of Congress through the BPS Take Action tool. With BPS advocacy tools you can track the science issues moving through Congress, send letters to your elected officials with just a few keystrokes, and request staff help in coordinating in-district meetings. It is imperative that science advocates on behalf of itself; if we don’t, who will?