Calling London

If, like me, you´re living outside the US, the activism tips in the sidebar aren´t much help. So here are some suggestions for Britain. If you have ideas for lobbying in other countries, please do share them in the comments.

In the UK, the best route is to aim for some kind of personal contact with your MP. If you write directly to Tony Blair or Jack Straw, you´ll get a form letter in reply and basically be ignored. A large part of an MP´s job is to pass your concerns up the chain of power, and bug ministers until they do something about it.

You can write to your MP via the excellent faxyourmp, which converts entries in a web form into free lobbying faxes. Or you can call the parliamentary switchboard on 020 7219 3000 and ask to talk to your MP. Since MPs have far less constituents and work than US senators or congress(wo)men, you stand a decent chance of being able to talk to your MP in person. Finally, you can try good old-fashioned post to: [your MP´s name] House of Commons London SW1A 0AA

Then you need to decide what they can do about Sudan. The UK Today suggests asking them to sign Early Day Motions 1051 and 293. These are basically parliamentary petitions, calling for the British government to step up its action on Darfur. Or you could send them a list of government action points (like those from the International Crisis Group), and request that they forward them to Jack Straw with a covering letter of their own. Ministers often give personal attention to letters from MPs, so this is a good way of getting high-level attention.

Comments

[Namir]

Hi,

Are you in the UK?

If so do you know of any vigils or meetings about Darfur in the coming times?

Thanks,

Namir,
London, UK

[Dan O'Huiginn]

Yes, I am in the UK. I haven't come across any vigils yet. If I do, I'll post them. If not, perhaps we should think about organising one ourselves?

In theory, this is something that could happen via the Sudanese Peace group on Meetup (sudanpeace.meetup.com), but there so far there are only two members in the UK.

[bobbie]

could you please syndicate this site? i would love to keep up on this and an rss or some syndication would be helpful. i am in the US and will be contacting my representatives to urge their participation, and of course, to pray for peace.

[Dan O´Huiginn]

Bobbie, our rss feed is at http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/index.rdf - I´ll see if we can find somewhere more obvious to put a link to it. Thanks, and good luck with your prayer and contacting reps.

[Jim Moore]

I put a link to our RSS feed up in the "take action" section, with a little explanation. Perhaps that will make it easier to find..
I wish typepad had those big display buttons for feeds, and also allowed several types of outputs--including simplest RSS. Anyone from tyepad listening? :)