Local Resolutions Part 17 of 29

This is the seventeenth in a series of 29 ways to help your local community online in 2010. If you missed it, you may wish to read the introductory post.

In this post, I suggest that connecting with staying connected with your government officials is a great way to help strengthen your community while you’re online. This series has included recent posts about connecting with people different from you, taking regular breaks from digital media, and commenting intelligently on local news sites.

If you don’t know who your elected legislators are, fix that. You can use the Interwebs to find out:

• Find your federal elected legislators
• Find your Pennsylvania elected legislators

I could end this post right there. Simply finding out who represents you in government is a big step toward being a better citizen.

But to go a step further, social media are making it easier to connect with those elected officials.

For instance, here in Lancaster County, you can follow state reps Gordon Denlinger and Bryan Cutler on Twitter. Cutler has a Facebook page, too, as do State Senators Mike Brubaker and Lloyd Smucker. There’s a Mike Sturla fan club, also on Facebook.

All these local officials and their counterparts have official websites with contact information, including web forms and e-mail addresses.

So my resolution suggestion for today is: Resolve to take advantage of the ways the Internet makes it easier to follow and stay in touch with your elected officials.