Preparation is an essential part of the interview process. Before you speak with your representative, organize a clear direction for your conversation and tailor your questions accordingly. At least a few of your questions should require more than a "yes" or "no" answer. If you ask about specific legislation, make sure that you are well informed about it.

It's also helpful to plan potential follow up questions. While you can't fully anticipate the responses you will hear, you want to have a clear idea about the information you're seeking. This will give you the confidence to probe spontaneously.

We've listed a few questions that were submitted by your fellow Rootstrikers. Hopefully, they will inspire you. Please share your own questions below, in the comment section.

In support of Rootstrikers' On the Record campaign, launched in conjunction with the Huffington Post last month, the Street Team is coordinating a letter writing campaign to ask members of Congress where they stand on the issue of money in politics. We're calling on Rootstrikers across the country to draft a letter by Wednesday 3/27, and to either organize and join a community workshop, (for example, such as those happening in San Francisco, Philadelphia, or New York) or post your letter online at the Street Team Blog.

This day will be a wonderful opportunity for us all to learn from each other and reflect upon the most effective ways to let our elected officials know that we need them to be accountable to the people alone.

Once we've had the chance to "workshop" our letters, we'll collect and send them, and we'll talk about the best ways to follow up so that we can make sure we know where our representatives stand on the root cause of our country's problems.

If you're interested in participating in this action, please reply to this blog post, or email streetteam@rootstrikers.org for more information.

In response to our discussion on the last monthly call about how useful it is to have resources readily available for posters, handouts, etc, we've taken a first crack at revamping the "Resources" section of the website.

I know several of you have developed some really cool resources that you've used in actions you've led, from which others would greatly benefit being able to access. In light of that, if you could please send those and any other suggestions/links for resources we might include, it would be awesome if you could send them along to streetteam@rootstrikers.org.

Hi all, here are the notes from our call. As we discussed on the call, if you could record some of your actions here, that would be awesome!