Sunday, March 3, 2024

Affordable Places For Activists to Stay in Washington DC

Image: Cynthia pulling a suitcase through Union Station in Washington D.C.

NOTE: This blog was posted March 2023, so prices may rise over time.

Washington D.C. is THE place to be when it comes to advocacy on a national level. This is where our decision makers work and where professional lobbyists and volunteer advocates flock to learn together and inspire each other. Unfortunately, since lobbying is big business, D.C. is an expensive place to stay. I once went to an anti-poverty conference where the main conference hotel was about $600 per night! Yikes!

One of the hardest things about being an activist is figuring out a place to stay in D.C. while you lobby, protest, or attend conferences without breaking the bank. Here is a list of my favorite places I’ve found to be clean, convenient, and affordable when I stay in Washington D.C. 

NOTE: I know some of these prices are still going to seem pretty high to folks used to paying $130 for a Homewood Suites in middle America, but the Capitol Hill area is prime hotel real estate and I’d be wary of a $130 D.C. hotel. Besides, when I tried the Homewood Suites by the Convention Center in D.C., we had multiple problems with cleanliness, excessive street noise, a faulty safe that wouldn’t release our valuables, and a super loud room fridge! 

Yotel DC (about $200-250 per night)


Image: A hotel room with two queen beds and 
green lights around the mirror and TV set.
415 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20001 

Yotel is a popular place for advocacy organizations to hold small conferences of 100 people or so. It’s a 10-minute walk to the Russell Senate Building on Capitol Hill. It’s very clean with futuristic styling. Beds incline with a touch of a button to become couches if you’d like more room during the day. 

I enjoy changing the room’s mood lighting to the brand color of the organization for the conference I’m attending. In this picture, I’ve changed the Yotel branded purple to Shot@Life green since that was the conference I was attending. Amenities include free coffee on every floor and a rooftop pool in the summer. The hotel bar has great, but pricey cocktails. If you’re saving money on that, too, you can visit Kogod Liquors next door. A full FedEx business center and Starbucks are in the Hyatt across the street. If you join their rewards program, you can get a little cash back on your room.

Hotel Hive (about $180-$250 per night) 

Image: Cynthia with a towel on her head pointing to
the words "WORK HARD. TRAVEL HARDER."
on the wall.

2224 F St NW, Washington, DC 20037 

Hotel Hive is a micro-hotel. The rooms are tiny, but the vibes are fun, the rooms are very clean, and the price is right. Some rooms only have one twin bed. The old historic building is irregular, so every room is a little different in size and shape. Rooms have funny or positive statements painted on the walls in big block letters. Everything is bee themed. Their “buzz” room label is a cutesy way of saying that they are potentially noisy, located above or below the bar or pizza shop. The website says, “What they may not offer in views or silence they make up for in value.” I’ve seen a buzz twin room as low as $157/night ($181 with taxes and fees).

It has a rooftop bar and yummy flatbread style pizza in the pizza shop. It’s 2.7 miles from Capitol Hill, which is about a 12 minute drive. 

AirBnB (varies widely) 

If I have to do an extended stay in DC, I enjoy reserving an AirBnB apartment because they come with kitchens (so I can eat healthier for less money) and laundry (so I don’t have to pack as much). The cost can vary widely, but I’m usually able to find something safe, clean, and within a short walk to Capitol Hill for about $200-250 per night, inclusive of fees and taxes. I like to get units with fold-out sofas, so I can invite another volunteer to join me and share cost while having their own space, unlike a hotel room, which would have us in the same room. 

Here are two listings that I especially enjoyed. In both cases, the owners live upstairs from the basement, so they are on the property in case anything goes wrong. They both look exactly like their pictures in the listing.

Image: Convenience store
Capitol Hill King 1 Bedroom Apt + Free Parking

Comfortable, spacious, and very near the Senate buildings. This one is my favorite because of the location. I got complimented on the outside flowers every day because people passing by would think I was the owner! Next to a convenience store with affordable and delicious made to order sandwiches. Around the corner is a street with a pub, a Vietnamese pho restaurant, a barber, and a nail salon.


Capitol Hill Charm ~ Modern Refinement

Image: Queen sized bed with 
attractive bedding
Super cute decor. It’s in a neighborhood with lots of parents out and about with children and dogs after school going by the neighborhood parks. It’s a 10-minute walk away from a fantastic Jamaican restaurant called Jerk at Nite/District Jerk. Be advised the fold down couch only fits shorter folks, so keep that in mind if you're inviting a roomie!



Friends Place on Capitol Hill ($50 per night)

Image: Bunk beds at Friends Place 
515 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003 

If you have three or more in your party and don’t mind a summer camp sort of vibe, Friends Place is a fantastic resource. Run by the Friends Coalition on National Legislation (FCNL), an advocacy group started by the Quakers, Friends Place is a Quaker learning center and a guesthouse open to activists in town to take action on issues aligning with their missions to advance peace, justice, and environmental stewardship.

For just $50 per person, Friends Place has rooms with a handful of bunk beds in each of them. Each room has a digital lock on and a private bathroom. Guests have access to communal living spaces and kitchenettes on each floor. You can even rent out their meeting spaces. There are many stairs, but I know at least one room is ADA accessible. 

My favorite thing about Friends Place is that it’s only a 2-minute walk to the Senate buildings, so you’re pretty much on Capitol Hill. You can easily walk to Union Station. There are little convenience stores and restaurants nearby.

Because of the bunk beds and shared spaces, Friends Place is very popular with student group trips, so book early! Check out a video walk through of Friends Place on YouTube.


Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Sharing About Giving: Let Your Light Shine

“Hi! I need your help…”

A friend reached out to me last year asking me to take part in her client’s social media campaign to share acts of kindness of social media. An organization called Alight used the hashtag of #AlightChainReaction to inspire good works from individuals throughout the 2023 winter holiday season. Alight is a global humanitarian organization dedicated to providing support and resources for over 4 million people displaced by conflict, exclusion, and climate change.

Image: Cindy with a stuffed Pikachu pokemon
donated to Toys for Tots
What started out as a favor turned out to be a fascinating social experiment for me. As an author and speaker with a brand about advocacy and helping others, it’s common for me to post about acts of advocacy actions. Yet I rarely post about local, personal volunteering. Maybe part of me feels like it’s bragging to say “look what a good person I am” when I know I’m full of little foibles and bigger flaws. Reactions to my posts on #AlightChainReaction turned made me rethink that attitude. I quickly lost those awkward feelings when I my friends started asking where they could join in or reporting that they, too, took the same action because of my post.

Image: Cindy in front of a Red Cross van
A great example was my post about giving blood. Donating blood to the Red Cross is just something my mom (a nurse) taught me to do when I became an adult. But there’s a physical limit to the amount of blood one person can give! Once I give my pint, that’s all I can do for the next 8 weeks. So, when I saw a couple of friends jump into the comment section of the post right away, saying they made appointments, I thought, “Wow! That’s 3X what I could do alone!”


Image: Cindy's hand with wrapped gifts
Another fun action was gift wrapping presents for kids experiencing homelessness at a pop up wrapping station in a mall. I stopped by and gave an hour of my time doing that fun task, but my schedule didn’t allow me to sign up for another shift. I was thrilled when I got a text of a family member who loves wrapping gifts and had the spare time!

Image: A box of snacks with a note saying,
"THANK YOU for delivering our packages!
Please help yourself to a snack"
The last one I’ll mention is the snack box for delivery people. I got the idea off of social media during COVID-19 isolation in 2020 to make a box of snacks and water for folks delivering packages to my door. They work very hard during the holidays to make sure gifts get delivered on time. It brings a smile to my face to see USPS and UPS drivers walking away from my door with water, granola, or chips. I liked the enthusiastic responses I received when I posted about it, but I am genuinely touched when I visit my friends that commented and see that they’ve made their own similar boxes!

This is proof enough to me a chain reaction of kindness is possible. I’m grateful to Alight for teaching me that sharing about caring can spread kind actions throughout our community.

How appropriate that after the campaign ended, the scripture assigned to me to read at church was from the book of Mark when Jesus said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.” If no one can see your light, it can’t spread around and inspire others to have their own experiences like it. Which is to say - as the children’s song puts it best- “Let your little light shine!”

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Friday, July 14, 2023

Advocacy Made Easy: Scheduling a Lobby Meeting

Image: A calendar grid with a giant question mark on it.

Even among seasoned activists, I don't meet a lot of folks who schedule their own lobby meetings. Many advocacy groups rely on staff for that work, but really anyone can request a meeting! Setting up a lobby meeting is a harder advocacy action than some of the other things we do, but it’s not as impossible as most people assume. This blog will give you clear steps to submit your meeting request and some advice for getting your meeting scheduled.

NOTE: I wrote this advice from the perspective of meeting with a U.S. representative or senator. The same basic process works for state officials, but I notice more variability with procedures at the state level. It might be due to state members having fewer constituents and shorter sessions. (Missouri legislators meet only five months out of the year!)

Scheduling a meeting with a member of Congress takes a lot of persistence. If possible, submit your meeting request a whole month before you want to meet, so you have plenty of time to work through these steps. That way you can get on their calendar before they're totally booked up!

How to submit a meeting request

STEP #1: Submit a meeting request by using the website form for the congressional office. If you don’t hear back from them in a week, move to Step #2.

STEP #2: Call the office of your member of Congress. Ask the admin for the name and email address of the “scheduler” for the location where you want to meet (D.C. or local district office). Ask to speak to the scheduler directly with your request. If they are not available, send them an email directly.

Here’s a picture with a sample template you can follow for crafting your email. It should clearly and concisely provide information about who you are, when you want to meet, what your organization does, and why you want to meet. Don't forget to provide both your email and phone contact information!

Image: Sample template for requesting a congressional meeting via email.
Graphic from the book "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World"

STEP #3: Follow up every couple of days with polite emails and phone calls to the scheduler if you don’t hear back in a few days.

Tips to improve your chances of getting a meeting

The following tips can help get your request noticed out of all the other people clamoring for attention. Schedulers are people, too. If you make things easy for them, they'll do their best to make things easy for you.

• Be persistent, but not belligerent.

• Offer as much flexibility as possible for times and location, including an online zoom meeting. Follow their rules respectfully. If they say you can only bring three people, stay within that limit.

Image: ONE volunteers got a surprise meeting in DC with
Rep. Cori Bush when she returned early from her prior meeting. 

Accept a meeting with an aide if the congressperson is not available. Aides are important members of the team who help the member make decisions on your issue. Plus, you never know when you might get a surprise meeting from the member walking in unexpectedly.

• Work with a respected nonpartisan organization aligned with your position. They can support you, and their excellent reputation can help legitimize your request.

Image: RESULTS volunteers met with 
Rep. Ann Wagner during an August recess
.

• If possible, request a time when you know your member will be in your local area, like August recess when members leave Washington D.C. to go home for almost an entire month. District meetings tend to be longer and more relaxed than D.C. meetings.


Resources to prepare for your meeting

I hope you're successful and move on to the happy problem of wondering what to do in that meeting. Don’t worry! My kiddo and co-author for my next book, Yara Changyit-Levin, has you covered with their blog: “How to Lobby a Member of Congress.” If it’s a Zoom meeting, you can look up a few pointers on my blog, “Advocacy Made Easy: Zoom Lobby Meetings.”

Good luck!

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!