Step 5: Notify MGMbill.org
As soon as you have finished all emailing/faxing/mailing, send an email to Matthew Hess at comments@mgmbill.org to report that the job is done, along with any issues or problems that you may have encountered. Once everyone reports back, a press release will be issued to the news media. Also, if you receive replies from your legislators, please forward copies of their letters so they can be considered for posting to the Government Responses page.
Step 4: Email the federal MGM Bill to the President and your U.S. Representative & Senators
The federal MGM Bill is different than your state MGM Bill because it's a Congressional bill that applies to the entire USA. In this step you only need to write the President and the three members of Congress who represent your particular district and state. Just fill in, copy, and paste the text from this letter and federal bill into an email or webform message to your local U.S. House Representative, your two U.S. Senators, and President Obama.
Step 3: Send faxes or mail letters (to legislators who don't have email addresses or unrestricted webmail forms)
If some or all of your state legislators use only zip code restricted webmail forms, you'll need to fax or mail your cover letter and MGM Bill to those members and add the date to the top of your letter (if you have a lot of faxes to send, you may want to use jBlast). If you don't need to send any faxes or letters, skip to Step 4.
Step 2: Send emails (to legislators who have email addresses or unrestricted webmail forms)
Go to the contact page of the first member in your state legislature and click on their email link to pull up a blank email message or webmail form (if more than one email address is listed, use the one for their capitol office). If applicable, add a subject line (ie: "Please Protect Boys from Forced Circumcision). Then copy and paste the text from one of our cover letters below (or from our sample letters) into your message, followed by your state's bill text. Be sure to fill in the red text areas on your cover letter (and then change the red text to black) before pasting it. Repeat this step for each legislator in your state's House and Senate, and for your Governor.
Note: If your message exceeds the character limit of your elected official's webmail form, include a link to the bill instead. For example, you can close your letter by saying "To read the full text of the MGM Bill proposal, please go to http://www.mgmbill.org/state-mgm-bills.html."
If you are interested in becoming a temporary MGMbill.org state office, please email us at comments@mgmbill.org.
Please include your full name, age (if under 18), and city & state of residence, along with a few details about how you became involved with the issue of circumcision.
Step 1: Find your state legislators
Visit the NCSL state legislatures links website, select your state from the first column and "Legislators" from the second column, and click the "Get Legislature Links" button to pull up links to your state representatives and senators. For reference, a general list of how many seats are in each state legislature is available here.
Alternatively, you may use the Contact Your Representatives page at BeBusinessEd.com.
~Submission Instructions~
If you have access to a personal computer, you can become an MGMbill.org state office by emailing or faxing (via computer) an MGM Bill proposal to every member of your state legislature. Currently there are MGM Bill proposals available for 46 states.
You would be responsible for all costs to submit the bill. If your legislators are accessible by email or unrestricted webmail forms then you may not incur any costs at all. But if your legislators use zip code restricted webmail forms, you will probably want to fax the bill.
Here is a sample cost estimate for faxing an average size 150 member state legislature via jBlast:
Total pages to fax: 600 (150 legislators x 4 pages per legislator)
Cost per page: $0.06 (requires MS Word and MS Excel)
Total cost: $36.00 ($0.06 per page x 600 pages)
If some (but not all) of your legislators have email addresses, you may need to do a combination of emailing and faxing.
After you submit the bill proposal, your job as an MGMbill.org state office will be complete, other than answering any email messages that you may receive from the public. You can resubmit the MGM Bill as frequently as you like.
State Office Guidelines
A Bill to End
Male Genital Mutilation
in the U.S.