What does modern-day advocacy look like?

For certain, it's still pounding the pavement of Capitol Hill, pressing the flesh, putting in face time with your members of Congress. In my time serving in office, the stories that struck me the most were always those I was told in person; stories told not only with a voice, but with the look on someone's face, strained in passion, knotted in concern, as an individual who I'd been elected to represent told me why they had traveled to Washington and what I could do to help them.

These meetings, which are simply crucial to any industry's advocacy efforts, are why we push so hard for credit unions to attend events like CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conference and League Hike the Hill events. To this day, I find it difficult to imagine a time in which in-person advocacy doesn't play a central role in how we fight for our interests, in how we convince lawmakers of the need to stand behind our movement and the 110 million members we serve.