On these winter mornings, there is still a way that we can remain union activists from the comfort of our laptops as we sip our tea and coffee and muse on the hubbub outside our doors. In December, we sent out a call to all retirees for whom we have email addresses on ways to have a voice in the federal budget negotiations:

EMAIL YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS ON THE BUDGET.

It appears the Congressional Budget Committee has come to agreement on a modest recommendation concerning the January and February 2014 deadlines for a continuing resolution to prevent another government shutdown and a solution to yet another debt ceiling crisis. This bipartisan committee headed by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Congressman Paul Ryan must have heard our voices. But we cannot leave final passage of budget legislation to chance. Now is the time to contact your senators and member of Congress.

We have to remind them that any budget deal must not be on the backs of seniors when it comes to earned benefits (which we shouldn’t call entitlements because we did earn them) such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and health care.

The American Federation of Teachers has set up an Internet email/letter campaign that is easy to use. Go to their website link and type in your ZIP code. The names of your senators and representative will appear. There is a prewritten letter on union-supported issues that you can send immediately or you can compose your own and send that instead.

You and I have weathered many a crisis throughout our in-service and retiree careers. Lobbying elected officials is what we do and we do it well. That is why we retirees are lucky individuals, but we are retirees who have earned that luck.

Now it is time to fight to maintain and even advance those benefits for both ourselves and for all those for whom organized labor speaks.

Please act now. More than 2,800 messages have already been sent by UFT retirees. Go to http://bit.ly/1fbEkeL on the AFT website.

In addition, local newspapers are often eager to publish letters to the editor from their reading public. You can respond to or raise progressive labor-friendly issues where it does the most good: at the grassroots level of your community. We have on our RTC website a primer on how to do that, preferably by email or by regular mail. You can get tips on how to improve your chances of being published; what to say, what not to say, and the length and format.

You will find examples of member letters and even how the newspaper edited down the original letter.

Go to:

• Resources for writing letters to the editor — www.uft.org/chapters/retirees/letters-editor
• Published letters to the editor — www.uft.org/chapters/retirees/published-letters

Those letters are particularly important in promoting all the local issues we look forward to as our new mayor, Bill de Blasio, takes over stewardship of the city: the long-delayed fight for a contract, the fight for real school reform, the struggle for pre-K and, of course, a state budget that supports reforms.

Another way of taking action without leaving the house is to join in Alliance for Retired Americans campaigns, AFL-CIO (ARA), to advance retiree interests. The ARA notes that there are many commonsense proposals to expand benefits while extending Medicare’s huge purchasing power that can be used to lower drug prices just like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does today.

Tell Congress: Don’t cut Social Security and Medicare. Expand them.

Join the Alliance for Retired Americans at 815 16th St., NW, Washington, DC 20006 or via www.retiredamericans.org.

Our voices must be heard.