Congress has been on a long summer recess since the end of July, and won’t be back in Washington until after Labor Day. Recess periods often present good opportunities for constituents to communicate with members of Congress. For adult literacy advocates, August isn’t necessarily a great time to invite members of Congress to visit programs, since many of them are also on a break. But there are other things you can do. For example, many members hold town hall meetings, issue forums, and similar events where you can ask questions and voice your opinion. There was an interesting article today, for example, in the The Atlantic, about grassroots activity by both pro- and anti-immigration reform advocates  at such events over the last few weeks (or rather, the surprisingly meager amount of activity by immigration reform opponents).

I recently discovered a handy online, searchable database of events, (screen shot below), created and managed by Americans United for Change, and I thought I’d pass it along. There are still plenty of events coming up over the next several weeks. Not all of them are open to the public and some are very issue-specific, but still, it’s incredibly useful to have all of these events in one big searchable database.