How to be an activist - the content of the letter

is important. Why, you ask, should I state something so obvious? The answer is simple. Many people fail to think about. They think they can "just sit down and write a letter".

No. Campaign letters have to be thought about.

Why? Because you only get one chance. Your letter has to hit the target. If it fails to hit the target you do not get a second chance. At this point if you do not already read Nicola Morgan's "Help I need a publisher", Jane Smith's "How publishing really works" or Lynn Price's "The Behler Blog" I would suggest you do. Writing campaign letters is, I have discovered from reading them, like writing a letter to an agent or publisher asking them to consider your work.


Yes, really it is like that. You have to stand out in the crowd.


Fortunately it is not quite as difficult as breaking into print but there are some basic rules.


(1) Write to the correct person. At the very top of the tree you do not write to someone like HRH Queen Elizabeth at all. You write to her Secretary. (If you really think you need to write to someone like that consult Debrett's. There are rules and you need to follow them.)


Below that level however ask yourself, "Who is the best person to contact?" It is always tempting to send a letter to the Prime Minister but the reality is that it will almost always be read by a junior office person and passed on to the appropriate department.

(2) Address the person in the letter in the proper manner. If you are not sure how the person you are writing to should be addressed then find out. The search term "forms of address" will help. If you are still not certain ask someone in the office of the person concerned.

When I first started teaching any letter teachers wrote to the Education Department had to be addressed to the Minister of Education, even though he (it was always he) never read them. They then had to begin "Sir", not "Dear Sir" and had to end with (of all things) "I have the honour to be your obedient servant." Needless to say that is no longer the case but there are still formalities that have to be addressed - and that also includes addressing the envelope in the correct manner.

(3) State what you are writing about. This is sometimes done by writing something like "Re: the proposed closure of Book Street Library" (formal) or "I am writing to express my very serious concern..." (semi-formal) or "I am disgusted by.... (informal).

I suggest you use the first or second and not the third.

(4) State what the problem is. Stating that the library is going to be closed is not stating the problem. You have to say why closing the library is a problem. Who is affected by the issue and why? It is no good saying something like "the library is going to be closed and I won't be able to borrow books any more". That is bound to get a pro-forma answer - if you get an answer at all.
If you say something like, "fourteen community groups, two of which assist the mentally ill, three the unemployed and another single mothers, will not have anywhere to meet" then you are going to suggest that this is a community problem.

(5) If you have already done some work on the problem or conducted some research say so here.

(6) State what you believe the solution is. Here you want to say "Keep the library open" but you need more than that. If you can suggest something like "Change the opening hours to such and such because this will increase use" so much the better.

(7) Ask for specific action. At this point you can ask for the recipient of the letter to do something, attend a meeting, send a delegate, write a letter on behalf of the local community, bring the matter up in parliament or at a council meeting, meet you for further discussion etc.

(8) Conclude your letter by asking for a response within a reasonable time frame. The amount of time will depend on the nature and urgency of the problem.

(9) Thank the person for the action they will take. By doing this you show them that you are assuming they will do as you ask.

Now all that needs to go on one page. Yes, that is difficult. It can be done. However if you are very experienced (and why are you bothering to read this if you are) then you can add a second page. That is the research page. It is a precise and concise summary of the facts. Say you have user figures for Book Street Library, borrower numbers, outgoings etc. Include it. Politicians love statistics, even though they frequently abuse them.

Finally, read your letter through very carefully before you send it.

Tomorrow we will talk about what not to do.

How to be an activist - letters

If you have not already read my post from yesterday then please do so now. This will make more sense if you do.
Today we tackle the issue of letter writing. Why? Because, as I pointed out yesterday, it is the most effective way of informing people who matter of what you think. Yes, even now the old fashioned snail-mail letter is the best means of communicating. You may get a face-to-face interview but you can be pretty sure it is going to come after you have written a letter or multiple letters.
There are rules for writing these letters. Let me explain why. Politicians, even unimportant local members who sit on the back bench, get thousands of letters every year. I once had to spend six weeks in the office of a politician and I saw evidence of this.
Like a letter to an agent or a publisher your letter has to stand out. If you want it to be noticed then there are rules you must follow.
Rule 1: Be polite.
Rule 2: Be concise.
Rule 3: Be clear.
Rule 4: Be sensible.
Rule 5: Be sensitive.
Rule 6: Be sincere.
Rule 7: Do not compromise.
Rule 8: State your goals.
Rule 9: Be dogmatic.
Rule 10: Be certain of your facts.
Rule 11: State your sources.
Rule 12: Keep a copy.

Yes, it is all pretty obvious - and most people ignore it.

There is also absolutely essential information you must include in your letter.

(1) Your given name and your surname
(2) Your full postal address
(3) Your telephone number
(4) The correct title and address of the recipient
(5) A subject line - say what the letter is about
(6) If there is a file number or previous correspondence say so
(7) Include the date of any previous correspondence
(8) Do NOT be tempted to add "URGENT" or "IMPORTANT"
(9) Ask for specific action
(10) State what action you intend to take - if this is appropriate
(11) Ask for a response by a certain date - but give the recipient reasonable time to respond
(12) If you are sending copies of the letter to anyone else then indicate this. (cc)
(13) Check your spelling and your grammar.
(14) Do not send a letter in your own handwriting - however legible it might be.
(15) SIGN your letter.

Now you need to do all of that in not more than one page - unless you are a very skilled campaigner. If there are facts that simply must be included then they can be added as one additional sheet in point form. That way the recipient will, if the secretary passes it on, get three things. One is your letter, two is the page with the facts and three is advice about what might be done and what action, if any, has already been taken.

If you write a letter to the Prime Minister it is most unlikely that the Prime Minister will actually read it. It is more likely to be a very junior member of staff. We will look at that tomorrow.

How to be an activist

was the title of a workshop I once ran for a group of people with disabilities. The intention was to teach them the basics of speaking up for themselves. One of them, who is also a regular reader of this blog, left me an e-mail and suggested that I put up some of the information for people who want to join in the campaign against library closures in the UK but are not sure how to go about it.
If you already think you know what you are doing then go away and do it. If you think I am wrong then tell me - so that everyone else can learn.

Successful activists are very well informed people. They have a lot of information at their fingertips. They use it. They know where to find more information and they keep themselves informed.

Information costs time to gather. Ask yourself what is more important to you - the football match or the issue, the television programme or the meeting you might need to attend? If the football match or the television programme is more important then do not bother to read any further. Ask yourself, what am I prepared to give up to achieve my goal? Yes, you will have to give up something.

Information is not the same thing as an opinion. Information is knowing that your local library is under threat of closure because it is on the agenda for discussion at a council meeting. Opinion is believing that it should not be closed.

By gathering information you will know who to contact. Contact is very important. (We will get to networking in a moment.) Contact is what makes it possible to be heard.

Now, ask yourself. What's the problem? (Yes, I know you think you know that but you need to define it precisely so that you can start to talk about it.)
Who is in charge of the problem? - or where can you find out? Is there a local representative?
Is there an organisation? How are they handling it? Has the issue been in the media? How was it reported?
This is the beginning of the networking process. Networking takes place both inside and outside groups. Networking is about getting and giving information. Networking is about listening as well as talking. Networking is about being ahead on the facts and having the advantage.
NETWORKING REQUIRES TIME AND ENERGY. IF YOU DO NOT NETWORK YOU WILL FAIL.
With respect to the library issue specifically, ask yourself "Who runs the local library?" They are your primary target, especially any locally elected officials who hold the purse strings. I know it is tempting to blame the Prime Minister. Do not. He is actually not directly responsible. Find out who can actually do something about the problem at the local level. Target them.

There are two more things I will cover briefly today.

MONEY. (1) Do not be tempted to give money to protest groups.
(2)Use the money you might have donated to write your own protest letters.
(3) Do not spend more money than you can afford - there is a world of difference between a book of stamps and bankruptcy.
(4) While not spending more than you can afford are you also prepared to go without to get what you want?

MOST EFFECTIVE - LEAST EFFECTIVE
(1) Not all means of protest are equally effective
(2) The LEAST EFFECTIVE means of protest are rallies and demonstrations. They are also the most expensive.
(3) The MOST EFFECTIVE means of protest is the old fashioned "snail mail" letter.
(4) Somewhere in between - and can be used to advantage - faxes, telephone calls and e-mails.

Right, enough for today. Tomorrow we will tackle the letter writing business - and the rules thereof.

Australia has just wasted $45m

on a failed attempt to "win" the right to host the World Cup at some far distant time in the future. There was never any chance we would succeed and I am angry, very angry. The bid was arrogant and an embarrassment that should never have seen the light of day.
That money could have been spent on other, much more necessary things. If it had to be spent on sports related activities even then there are far more worthwhile things that it could have been spent on. We are, I believe, still going to waste an incredible some of money on "upgrading" the Adelaide Oval, home of cricket (in which I have some faint interest). The amount apparently required keeps rising, the last I heard it was heading well over the $700m mark and climbing. The locals do not want it but the Premier thinks he will be around to open the new stadium and that is all that matters.
Now, I know sport is important to many people and that public money will be spent on it. The problem, as I see it, is that more people use public libraries. Libraries are also important to people - and we spend less money on them. There are plans to spend even less money in the future. Nicola Morgan over on "Help I need a publisher" and others are, quite rightly, getting worked up about the potential closure of some libraries in the UK. You do NOT close libraries. They are the lifeblood of the community. Where the churches were once the (weekly) gathering place libraries have become a similar place for many non-church goers.
Libraries are no longer merely places where books are held captive on shelves and readers are reluctantly permitted to borrow them from a grim faced, bespectacled and elderly librarian who glared and put a finger to her lips to ensure silence.
I have talked about our local library on this blog before and I will no doubt do so again. It is worth reiterating, our library is the hub of the community. There are books (and large print books), magazines, newspapers, DVDs, CDs, talking books, computers, the inevitable photocopying machine, a Justice of the Peace service on Tuesdays, storytelling for small children and songs for babies, a parent group, a teen group, a gardening club, a knitting group and at least five "book groups". There are school term activities and holiday activities. Recently they hosted a book repair workshop. Our library is a busy place.
I am worried however by what appears on our new bookshelves. Over the past few years we have relied more heavily on "donations". Many of these are unwanted presents or books that having been read by one reader are passed on because they do not wish to keep them. Other books are clearly cheap "remainders". We get some of the standard popular fiction on the best-seller lists and we get some of the prize-winners. It can take time. We used to get a great deal more mainstream fiction, especially crime fiction. Money for that has long since been reduced to a trickle.
What is more the local library does not choose most of what is put on the shelves. That is done by a process known as "central buying". Libraries in South Australia are required to get books through a process whereby books are chosen and distributed by a central committee. There are restrictions on what they can buy. Some books will never reach library shelves in South Australia because of these restrictions. I was told recently that one book, already published in the UK, was "not going to be published". What the librarian meant was that the book was not going to be published in Australia - and therefore it would be unavailable in our library system.
If you ask why you will be told that this is designed to protect the Australian publishing industry and Australian writers. The reality is that it does not protect either group. It merely makes books (on which we already pay a tax when bought here) more expensive. Is it any wonder that more Australians are buying books from the Book Depository, Fishpond and Amazon - at the expense of our independent bookshops.
Having had a little rant about that I will now get back to the business of wasting $45m. At the price that libraries can buy books that is about four million books. That does not even translate into one book for each Australian. If the government and others who put that money into the failed bid were asked to spend another $45m on libraries they would shake their heads and say we cannot afford it. We can spend $700m plus dollars "upgrading" an oval for a very small percentage of the population to use but we "need to reduce" the money spent on libraries.
This makes no sense to me.

There was no electricity

connected to the first house in which I lived. I can remember the house although I cannot remember living there. We left when I was about five or six months old. The house itself was a galvanised iron "shack" on top of a hill just outside a small country town. It had four rooms and a dirt floor. It was also the only accommodation available at the time.
I am not sure what it was like for my parents. I am told that, even then, I had problems with the heat. My parents were then required to rent a fibro-asbestos house in the town itself. There were four of these (they are still there) built in a row. They were later backed by another four. They were occupied by government employees, teachers, electricity and water supply workers.
We had power and running water! My mother must have revelled in it - although we still relied on a Metters no 5 woodburning stove for cooking. The "no 5" referred to the size.
We moved from there to the city where power was taken pretty much for granted by those around us.
Then we moved again. My parents, who both taught, were compulsorily moved around the country many times. The power supply varied. There was no power at all in one place. My parents were bringing up four children under the age of ten as well as teaching full time and studying by lamplight at night. Most people in the district simply went to bed and perhaps listened to battery operated radios with uncertain reception for a bit.
We had 240volt (standard in Australia) in a couple of places but 32volt personal generators were the norm in others. My father wrestled with those things, with "invertors", with batteries going flat at crucial times - or dying altogether. The refrigerator was "kerosene" and once leaked all over the floor. My mother used flat irons heated on the woodburning stove and was the envy of all the women in one district because she had a gas cooktop powered by bottled gas. (That she was working out of the house all day did not cut any ice with them. They coveted that cooking arrangement, especially in summer.) There was no television and radio reception was very poor. It faded to almost nothing at dusk. We did not leave lights on a moment longer than was necessary!
I thought of all this again yesterday when Jane over on How Publishing Really Works was talking about how her husband (marvellous man) was wrestling with their power supply in a remote area of England. Yes, there are remote areas of England. There are still remote areas of Australia too. The remote areas may not be quite as remote as they once were but they are still remote. Jane's family is snowed in at present. We have never been snowed in but I can remember it being far too hot to venture out of doors - and the "cold" water being too hot to put your hands under the tap.
I wish I could send Jane some of that heat right now!

There are times when I feel completely outside

the inner circle. I was sitting there minding my own business yesterday while everyone around me was talking about a television programme they had seen. It was some apparently popular show on commercial television.
Eventually the inevitable happened.
"What did you think of it Cat?"
"I didn't see it."
"You didn't see it? Oh you had to go out did you?"
"No, I just didn't see it."
"You mean you were watching something else?"
"No, I was doing some work."
"At that time?"
"Yes but I would not have watched it anyway. We don't watch much television."
"What do you do if you don't watch television?"
"Work, read, write, knit..."
"Oh, for goodness' sake Cat chill out a bit sometimes."
The group resumed the very earnest conversation about someone doing something and someone else's reaction. This is all apparently as important to them as it would be in real life. I am bored by it. There is no depth to the characters and their actions are predictable.
If an author approached a reputable agent with this they would be rejected. If an agent approached a publisher then word would go out that their judgment was questionable. According to the people I was sitting with the programme is "just like real life". I hope real life is not the way they were describing it. If it is then I live somewhere else altogether.
I do wonder about television however. A lot of it does seem trite and superficial to me. It irritates me. I cannot be bothered. I am thankful for the 'mute' button so that I do not have to listen to the advertisements on SBS. So far the ABC (Australian) has minimal advertising - of their own products. I suppose advertising will come as a way of paying for the service.
I like reading books. I like writing. I like knitting. My working life is frustrating but often rewarding. There are other things I enjoy.
I do not need television so why does it does leave me outside the conversation?

Last month of the year and the calendar

is now showing a picture of Mumbles Lighthouse in Swansea Bay. I am not sure why we have a Welsh calendar this year. We usually have a Scottish calendar. Wales has been nice but I suspect we will "return" to Scotland in the New Year. That is the calendar in the 'loo - something pleasant to look at while sitting on the throne.
I also need to draw up the real working calendar. My mother started this years ago. It is a necessary but loathsome task. The calendars have always been drawn up on an A2 sheet of coloured card - days of the week across the top, months down the side. The daily space is not large but we supplement with the "pin-up" board - the refrigerator with an assortment of magnets where the actual appointment cards etc are kept. It is not terribly tidy to look at but it does mean that we rarely forget anything.
My mother always printed the entire thing. She was trained as a teacher of infant school children - the five to eight year old group. My mother had outstandingly good handwriting skills. Nobody else in the family is remotely legible - or so she used to tell us.
I print off the days and the months and paste them in. I have standard abbreviations for the regular events. My father and I understand it and that is all that matters.
At the beginning of each year the calendar always looks a little bare. I put in all the regular meetings, the birthdays and any appointments that have already been made. As the year proceeds the calendar begins to look messy and crowded. By the end of the year it is almost always full.
Looking at this past year I realise there is slightly less for my father. He dropped one regular activity. He rarely goes out at night - and only if someone picks him up. Once he would have been out two or three or more times in a week. I rarely go out at night either - because it worries him too much, even if friends pick me up. I know things are changing and it saddens me.
But, the lighthouse is there on the calendar and it seems to be saying something about the future. There is another year coming up. We are still here. The world has not been annihilated by nuclear war even if Haiti and elsewhere are still a mess. We still have a future.
This year the calendar will be pale blue cardboard. My father has just gone into the shed to get the long steel carpenter's rule that makes drawing it up somewhat easier.
I will make a start on it when I have posted the necessary Christmas mail. The Whirlwind 'phoned me from school this morning to remind me - in case I forgot to look at the calendar.