The next big election happens in November when all the House of Reps come up for reelection and about a third of the Senate stand for election. And there is a worry about that election and our direction. I don't think we can look to anybody to save us except ourselves. Are you up for that? Are you game to see if we can make a difference?
As Thomas Frank said on Bill Moyer's Show:
A huge part of the problem, because look, the conservatives have for decades now made their-- the whole point of their party is to attack government, attack the state, encourage cynicism about government. And then wreck it when they're in charge, right?
Democrats never defend the state. They never come out and say, "No, no. It's important to have, you know, government. It's important to have a Department of Labor. These are, you know, having government actually-- a good government increases your freedom. It doesn't ruin it." They never fight back consistently.
Bill Moyer's PBS site
As you know Bill Moyer's is retiring so that is one less voice on our side and more reason for us to become more aware and active on our own behalf.
And then this from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont:
In Senator Barack Obama, Americans at every level reached out to an inspiring young leader who, through a brilliant campaign, brought enormous energy into the political process. Young people who had never given much thought about elections were not only registering to vote in record-breaking numbers, but their newly tapped idealism was leading them to actively participate in the campaign. Workers and their unions, who were victims of corporate greed and the ongoing collapse of the middle class, were determined to elect political leadership that represented ordinary Americans, not just the wealthy and large corporations. Women, who had battled for eight years to maintain the reproductive and legal rights they had struggled for over generations, were eagerly awaiting an administration that was on their side. Seniors, who were tired of hearing about Republican efforts to privatize Social Security and Medicare, wanted a president who understood the importance of those vital federal safety-net programs. And minorities and people of color, some of whom had experienced the hurt and humiliation of American apartheid, were ecstatic that the dream of a nondiscriminatory society was taking a giant step forward. The result: with a strong voter turnout, Barack Obama was elected president; the Democrats picked up twenty-one seats in the House and seven in the Senate (eight by the time Al Franken survived a recount and court challenge).
Bernie Sander's piece in the Nation
So we have not met the attacks and we have not kept the energy level up. As I see it, we can continue to watch the swirling toilet bowl action or we can get off the pot and do something!
As I see it we have to start with a Vision and then work our way into strategy and from there bounce into tactical actions.
Let us start from scratch. The rethugs have trashed every bit of our society with malice aforethought. Their alliance of cults, corporatists and neo cons have left us with a completely empty slate of bill of rights. As I see it, this community is diverse enough for us to create mini think tank in all the areas now either trashed or still under attack. We have lawyers, we have educators, we have health professionals, we have politicians, we have accountants/ economists, we have bankers, we have bureaucrats, we have military, we have social workers, we have community organizers, we have ordinary but hard headed citizenry with ideas and oldies but goodies with good memories for what works and what doesn't. And as a hard headed ancient I can tell you that sitting on our butts won't do it unless we do some serious communicating and thinking!
We are looking at corruption eating at the vitals of our economic system, our legal system, our commercial system,our educational system, our energy systems, our military system, our legislative system and our executive branch. I think we need to be able to parse these pieces out. Those folks who have expertise in any of these areas would you identify yourselves and your expertise and your ability to contribute? Here I don’t mean money; I mean energy, time, creativity, expertise, talents, etc. What I envision is that each of these areas get taken over by those who have that expertise and once a week, say Sunday, which is a slow day diary wise usually, you all report via a diary on that area.
What we are looking for is 1) Vision, 2) Strategy and 3) Tactics. I don’t see all of those things happening at once. But I do see that some action needs to come out of the weekly report that all of us can contribute to. For instance, I see that in the latest SCOTUS ruling, we ought to have a vigorous LTE and letter writing campaign to all parties – SCOTUS itself, Senators and President. You on the legal team would give us the best phrases to use and the best strategies in our letter writing campaigns. And perhaps could give us links that would further our knowledge.
Energy levels go up when we have concrete actions to take, a coherent message to deliver and a feeling of "rightness" about our actions. The sense of "rightness" can be misleading and we have to be skeptical and wary about letting it take us over, but we also need that energy. For those of you who have building community in the face of people who cannot understand community - i.e. Bill from Portland and the Pootie and Woozle faction, give us a community feel for this project. Help us create icons and auxiliary diaries that promote that feeling of belonging of caring and the ability to laugh at ourselves and the never ending trolling and pie fights. Help us keep that energy level at a high plane.
Will some of you volunteer to take over areas? Teacherken could you command the education portion of this effort? TexMex, could you lead us in how to work with communities and get them up and going? Not just on the blog but in reality. If any of the front pagers want to take this on fine, the more the merrier. I think Darksyde might could help with the energy policies and the scientific areas. We need places to weed out the no science crowd such as school boards. We need local eyes to tell us where and how to work this problem. We did have Bonddad who knew quite a bit about the economy but our rowdy crowd threw him away. We need to stop that. We cannot afford to throw anybody away. Somebody in the community effort help us get rid of that nonsense, if you can.
For those of you willing to take the lead in certain areas, what might happen is that this next Sunday you announce that you are taking the lead and asking folks with an interest to contribute ideas and perhaps some could email you using your email in the profile. It would mean that others who have an interest subscribe to that leader so that the diaries won't become lost if they are not recced.
So the first Sunday's action is: take charge, help with the vision thing, look for ways to raise your energy and others and think of actions within your chosen area that would have a great impact. And now for the Vision thing: Where do you think we, in this community, can find agreement?
If you are wanting to email me, warn me first. My yahoo account is spam city!