March 18, 2025

Alma Adams sprinkles the word salad with reality, not bluster. Bipartisanship does work. Research should precede action. Members of Congress listen to constituents. The executive branch’s job is to spend the money appropriated by Congress. There are ways individual citizens and community groups can be heard.

The 12th District member of Congress fielded a number of questions this morning along the lines of, ‘What can we do?’ It was an ironic outcry from a room full of local movers and shakers. But perhaps it was just as much a sprinkling of reality as Adams chose to deliver.

The presence of a contingent of young men from the Harding High School junior varsity basketball team cast a useful spell over the meeting. Participants welcomed the young people; the presenter, still a professor at heart, spoke into the record a number of footnotes about the Constitution and how federal agencies operate and serve the people’s needs.

Rep. Adams was the third of four Forum presenters invited to help mark Women’s History Month. She was the second woman of color to represent North Carolina in the U.S. House, and her swearing-in brought to 100 the number of females serving in Congress.

Rep. Adams’ staff made available to Forum participants five fliers related to internships, service academy nominations, visiting Washington and the IGNITE HBCU Excellence Act. The fliers are here in a single PDF file.

Calling your member of Congress

During the discussion about. whether or not members of Congress are influenced by hearing the views of constituents, facilitator Mary. Johnson urged participants to leave phone messages for North Carolina’s U.S. senators, Republican Ted Budd at 202-224-3154 and Republican Thom Tillis at 202-224-6342.

Forum participant Carrie Nelson sent in this link to a phone app that provides pre-written scripts for people who want to leave a message for their representative or senator in Congress. Topics of the scripts vary over time. The app lists the numbers to call.

This app as created by a San Francisco couple in 2017. An initial round of $100,000 funding was provided by a company that invests in start-ups. Current financial information could not be found. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit’s website lists about 20 people who keep the app going.

A Washington Post report on 5 Calls notes that “Americans used to the ease of apps like Uber Eats are bringing those expectations to their interactions with elected officials.” The report also noted that the app’s popularity has occasionally jammed the Capitol Hill phone system.