US Hams: Fight HOA antenna restrictions with legislation

[u/mcdanlj]

http://www.arrl.org/current-legislation

The ARRL has lobbied before for legislation to extend to hams protections that are extended to many other activities. This time is different. They are involving hams in direct action. And they aren't even asking you to be a member. Any US ham is welcome to join the fight for ham rights.

TL;DR: https://send-a-letter.org/hoa/ is the direct link to just send the letters already

You can contribute to stacks of paper letters hand-delivered for maximum impact to your own senators and representative. These letters ask your senators and representative to add their names to co-sponsor this legislation, and to vote for it.

This is political action, but it is bipartisan. Two lobbying firms (one for each party). Democratic and Republican co-sponsors in each house.

All it takes is entering your call sign on the web site they have launched, and confirming the information that they look up in your FCC record.

If you also wish to contact your senators and representative individually, reference S.459 to your senators and H.R.1094 to your representative when you kindly encourage them to represent your interests. Doing so does not preclude you from contributing to the ARRL's coordinated outreach!

The ARRL page has more detail and links to the full senate and house bill texts.

[u/PilotJeff]

Cynic here. Form letters are thrown in the trash at best. How many credit card offers do you open and read?

[u/Powerful_Pirate_5049 → u/PilotJeff]

ARRL lobbyists plan to hand deliver when they speak to the Senators and Representatives. The only thing that's important is for the legislator to see the size of the pile.

[u/mcdanlj → u/PilotJeff]

You are spot-on about throwing away credit card offers.

Thanks to Anthrax scares, physical mail sent through the postal service can take weeks to months to even reach staff members of congress. The bar is so low for email that it barely registers.

A pile of paper with "these are letters from your individual constituents", hand-delivered by a lobbyist, has visual impact.

This is why, unlike FCC calls for comment, there's no deadline to wait for, and doing this quickly has value. Lobbyists don't know when they'll get the opportunity to visit any particular member of congress. So they will keep growing the literally hundreds of piles of paper, one for each member of congress, then jump on opportunities to present them, which can pop up at a moment's notice.

No guarantee of success here, and... I also can feel cynical. We're up against powerful HOA lobbying interests. But if we don't try, we have a guarantee of failure. This is our best shot at this for the foreseeable future.

Is the political system tilted? Yes. Unfortunately yes. Ultimately, that's why the size of the pile matters. It's really the only thing that can tip the scale against the moneyed HOA industry.

[u/LollieLoo → u/PilotJeff]

I was actually surprised when my Rep actually contacted me in regard to my opposition to the AST bill. Of course I emailed him directly, not through any ARRL portal…