U.S. Congressman Joe Kennedy will be hold a town hall event this Sunday, June 30, from noon to 1:30 pm at Newton North High School. The event is free. Questions from attendees may be submitted at a ‘question sign-up’ table on site and will picked at random. Doors will open at 11:30AM. No RSVP needed but here is a link to the Facebook event page.
Joe Kennedy to hold town Hall at Newton North on Sunday
by village14 | Jun 27, 2019 | Newton, Newton North | 11 comments
I wonder if the congressman ever responds to his constituents’ concerns these days? I contacted him through the website at least three times about foreign policy issues and never received so much as an acknowledgment. My parents said that they emailed him a couple of times and never heard back either.
That’s unfortunate, but my experience with his Newton office has been excellent and here’s one example. We are going to Paris in September and the main reason is to visit the World War I battlefields in northern France. My dad was a World War I veteran and was in the thick of battle during the last three brutal battles before the armistice took effect. Somewhere along the line we lost his military records and the problem replacing any of them was compounded by the fact that the place they were stored burned down in the 1970s. John House in Representative Kennedy’s office did everything possible to help us. It took awhile, but almost by fluke, he stumbled upon a form dad used to apply for campaign medals. He went into detail describing where he was and what he experienced in those closing months of the war. It helped us pinpoint where we should go and to appreciate even more what my dad went through.
I have had the same experience as Michael. I’ve contacted him through various avenues (email, website, his twitter account) and never heard back, not even an acknowledgment of receipt.
What I’ve been told by advocacy groups I’ve been involved with is that electronic contact is the least effective way of contacting Congresspeople. They get a ton of email (and many tons of spam), tweets, etc. If you want a personal response, calling their office is usually best. Sending snail mail is good too, but best to send it to their local offices rather than to DC due to the security screening there.
Seems to me our congressman should address these issues. He’s hardly representing us if he isn’t hearing from us.
@Meredith. The lack of response is disturbing, but I’m wondering if the overload of electronic communications generally isn’t causing a lot of information to fall through the cracks. Spam, robocalls etc. are croaking the effectiveness of emails, phone solicitations etc.. When Barney Frank was our Congressman, he made it clear that he would only react to individually drafted letters that were sent via the Post Office. He didn’t respond to chain letters, letters parroting canned talking points or just about anything sent by email. I wrote Barney only four times and took a lot of time to make things as clear as possible because he didn’t suffer fools lightly. On three occasions, he responded positively adding at least once that I provided useful information and insight. Another time he implied (as nicely as Barney could) that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I still think a well written snail mail letter is the most effective way to communicate on things of substance.
I can understand the lower priority given to generic/template letters and ignoring platforms like Twitter, but basic email is the modern equivalent of snail mail. If an elected official has a formal (ie. .gov) email address listed as a contact they should be treating that method of communication the same as a phone call or formal letter. There are tools that can be used to filter out spam/junk email and they should be quicker to glance through than letters so I’m not really buying the volume argument.
It’s disappointing to see that attitude from elected officials. I’d much rather send a well crafted email as opposed to the 2m restriction in a public hearing or a phone call that then gets transcribed into a summary.
There’s really no excuse for not even acknowledging a constituent’s communication that was made (thrice, in my case) through the congressman’s official “Contact Me” form –
https://kennedy.house.gov/contact/email-me
I was an intern at the State House 20 years ago (Sen. Cheryl Jacques’ office), and we promptly responded to absolutely everything we received – that’s what the interns are there for. Obviously there have been subsequent increases in spam, but there are also much more efficient means of dealing with it, and at the end of the day it would be quite easy to prepare a few dozen form letters to cover 99.9% of the topics brought up by constituents.
The place will be packed with those seeking political office in Newton this year wanting a selfie for their brochures!
We are very fortunate to be represented in Congress by Rep. Joe Kennedy III. He was excellent and exceedingly responsive at the town hall.
I wish he’d taken questions off the cuff. He cherrypicked them instead. What’s he afraid of?