COMMUNICATING BY ELECTRONIC MAIL

Faxes, telegrams, and e-mail messages are effective tools for letting lawmakers know where you stand on forestry issues.

Faxes
The proliferation of fax machines permits citizen lobbyists to transmit written correspondence to lawmakers quickly at less cost (usually) than a standard letter. Due to the ease of sending fax letters, this communication medium has become popular and somewhat overused; your elected officials will pay more attention to a handwritten letter.

Telegrams
For less than $5.00, you can send a Sword Public Opinion Telegram. Your message must be brief to avoid additional charges. Telegrams can be a very effective tool if you have a very limited time to reach a public official. You don't even need an address-just tell the telegraph company what you want to say over the phone and they'll do the rest. Your message will stand out from other messages when using this relatively expensive form of electronic communication.

E-mail
In general, the same guidelines for writing a letter apply to email messages. However, here are a few important tips that will help improve the quality of your e-mail correspondence with lawmakers:

• Mailing Address - Be sure to include your street address. This is the only way a legislator has of knowing you are a constituent. Also, many legislators will still reply by "snail mail," even in response to an e-mail message.
  
  

• Break your message into shorter sentences and smaller paragraphs to make it easier to read on a computer screen. Leaving spaces (between paragraphs) can also make it easier to read on a screen.
  
  

• Subject Line - Always include a subject line so that your recipient will know the general nature of your message upon receiving it.
  
  

• Don't Shout! Spelling words in all capitals implies that you are "SHOUTING," so only use them when you really do mean to shout. If you need to stress something but don't want to shout, you can surround a word or phrase with *asterisks* to note its importance.
  
  

• Stay formal-don't use "emoticons." Emoticons-the little sideways "smilies" and other faces made of typographical symbols that appear frequently in e-mail messages-are inappropriate in communications to lawmakers. For example: :-)
  
  

• Proofread messages before you send them. This may sound like obvious advice, but sometimes e-mail messages are missing key words or may have embarrassing spelling mistakes.
  
  

• Use signature files at the end of all your messages. Your signature file should include your name, title and address. Optional information could include your e-mail address and phone number.

Many elected officials now have e-mail addresses. For anyone with access to the World Wide Web, an organization called Capitol Advantage provides an easy way to find the e-mail addresses of your state and federal legislators at http://congress.org.

Web sites
In addition, many elected officials maintain their own web sites. Most federal legislators can be reached via the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate web sites (www.house.gov or www.senate.gov). Nearly every U.S. state maintains a web site offering links to state legislators using the same type of web site address: http://www.state.xx.us where "xx" represents the state's two-letter abbreviation. For example, Oregon's state web site address is: www.state.or.us.

Some web sites can give you specific information on bills recently considered by Congress and how your elected officials voted. This can be very useful information to include in messages to legislators, since knowing bill numbers and voting records demonstrate your interest in the issue at hand. If you have Internet access, you can access the following web sites:

• Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet (http://thomas.loc.gov). This portion of the Library of Congress' web site permits users to research current and past bills in Congress, review committee schedules and transcripts, and search for laws by subject area. This useful website also offers links to federal, state and local governmental offices.
  
  

• Alliance for America (http://www.allianceforamerica.org). The Alliance for American is a non-profit, grassroots organization of conservationists dedicated to finally bringing human concerns into environmental decision-making. Several forestry and logging organizations are members of the Alliance. The Alliance for America home page tracks forestry/logging-related legislation and regulations, maintains an email listserve to help keep Alliance members up-to-date on these issues, and encourages members to write/email their legislators on pending legislation.

Using the Internet
The ease in which you can communicate with lawmakers through e-mail makes most of us much more likely to send an e-note to our elected officials than if we have to use pen and paper! The "no use" groups are much more savvy in the use of cyberspace communications to influence legislative initiatives than are members of the forest products industry. However, lawmakers realize that a pressure group with a computer and a mailing list can generate a tremendous amount of electronic mail. Lawmakers' perception that an e-mail message shows less commitment to its message may lessen that message's impact.

Forest Resources Association Inc. (FRA)
600 Jefferson Plaza, Suite 350, Rockville, MD  20852
FRA National office telephone: 301/838-9385
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