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If your grassroots advocacy tactics rely on generating fear or anger at Congress or specific legislators, are you sowing the seeds of mistrust in our democracy? If your practices for collecting new leads for advocacy or fundraising rely on sending mass emails to Congress, are you diverting congressional resources away from more meaningful constituent engagement? 

The Congressional Management Foundation today announced the winners of its 2022 Democracy Awards for Staff Lifetime Achievement.

Congress is designed to be more directly connected and beholden to the people than the other branches of our national government, a fact that is deeply embedded into our democratic culture, practice, and expectations. Congress is, therefore, the institution most responsible for ensuring that the People's First Amendment rights are vigorously facilitated in the public policy process.

The freedoms of assembly, speech, the press, and petition are all critically important to the relationship between the institution of Congress and the People as well as between individual Members and their constituents. Organizers of grassroots advocacy help their members engage in almost every one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

Constituents look to the organizations they trust to help them monitor what is happening in Congress and to help them understand when and how to become engaged in the political process. Though they're often denigrated as "special interest groups," they, like congressional staff, play an important role in the democratic dialogue.

The First Amendment right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances is now so little understood that, in a 2011 opinion, the Supreme Court indicated that "Some effort must be made to identify the historic and fundamental principles that led to the enumeration of the right to petition in the First Amendment, among other rights fundamental to liberty." Relying on the work of present-day legal scholars, Kathy Goldschmidt delves into this mysterious First Amendment right, including what can be done to revive it to its original state and what that would look like in today's democracy relying on international examples.

Trust between Members of Congress and those they represent—between Congress and the People—is the foundation of our democracy. If, as at present, Congress and the People are skeptical, dismissive, or mistrustful of one another, democracy cannot flourish.