Information is Power
Recently I diaried about a childishly hateful opinion piece by NC State Senator Thom Goolsby, who decided that the people protesting North Carolina's draconian new teabagger-driven policies are morons and dirty, aging hippies who came to Raleigh with their hands out. I was neither the only person, nor the most prominent, to write about Goolsby's sewer spewings. I imagine that he's the new poster boy for the fanatical right (probably all to his good come primary season), but everyone else thinks he's lost his mind. One self-described libertarian who agrees with much of his political positions said: "People who talk like this are simply unfit for public office. State senators were sent to Raleigh to serve all of their constituents, not demonize some of them." And apparently they're slicing him into sushi on Reddit. Since then, Thommy's taken to Teh FaceyBook to raise his profile even more, saying that Moral Monday protesters are in front of the Capitol Building while "real taxpayers and voters" are at work (I guess we're now dirty welfare hippies), attacking commenters as "liberal cry babies," snarling about the gerrymandering that won his Republicans a majority, and not only denying that he ever called anyone "morons" (he repeated the phrase "Moron Monday" twice, once in his title), but denigrating the questioner's reading ability in the exchange. (Since then, he's disabled his Facebook page's permission to allow posts and comments. Thugs like Goolsby prefer their communications to be one-way anyhow.) Whoever's subbing for Jon Stewart during Stewart's sabbatical is missing a golden opportunity...
In the comments of my diary, the Facebook postings I've seen, and other places, there doesn't seem to be a brief, one-stop-shopping place to visit to see what Goolsby and his lords and masters are doing to North Carolina. (Goolsby and his colleagues are mere pasty-faced battle droids in the service of Governor McCrory, who himself is in the voluminous pocket of Charlotte financier Art Pope and other deep-pocketed tighty righties. They're all slinging ALEC legislation into the hopper as fast as they can churn it through.) So while we're good and pissed at Goolsby's nursery-school tirades, a lot of us -- including me -- aren't as clear as to exactly what McCrory and his droids are doing in this state, and don't know where to go to quickly find out. I've poked around and asked some people if they know of anything like this, and found nothing. (Doesn't mean it isn't out there -- if it is, post a link in the comments and we'll all go dancing over to take a gander. If they're doing it nicely, we'll disseminate the link and go do something else productive, or maybe lend a hand over there.)
I'm proposing, not merely a crowdsourced response -- that's so 2011 -- but a Kos-sourced response. Here's what I have in mind.
I have already designed the framework of a static Web page that will contain quick, info-dense blurbs on the various bills and initiatives the McCroryites have either passed, attempting to pass, or have had shot down (precious few of those, sadly). Each blurb would give a fast scan of what the bill is, how it hurts the people of the state, and a link/links for more info. There will also be a section on activism, i.e. brief accounts of Moral Mondays and other protests, meetings, Facebook campaigns, etc. The folks at BlueNC have already agreed to let me use their photos to illustrate the page, and hopefully someone from the organization will kick in some content also. I will maintain the site for its lifetime (hopefully to be archived in 2016, when we send McCrory back to the private sector to clean Pope's pool or man a desk at the Heritage Foundation or whatever.)
I need two things to jumpstart this sucker: sweat contributions for content and financial contributions for Web hosting.
Filthy lucre first. I'm asking interested Kossacks to chip in some dollars and cents via my PayPal account. I need about $80 to register a domain and get a year's hosting with a cheap, reliable host and provider, JustHost. Twice that would get three years' worth of hosting. I don't want any more than that. If you just feel compelled to throw money at me, go right ahead, I'll give the extra to my wife to feed the feral cat colony we maintain (some of whom are 11 years old and going strong!), but once I hit the target $$, I'll put up a big, Forrest Gump-inspired STOP notification in this diary to let people know that we're good.
Content: I need people to do some research on what's been passed and implemented, what's been proposed, what's in the pipeline, what's being pushed by Darth Pope and his minions, the whole nine yards. I will do some of it, but input from more people will increase the depth and breadth of the content included on the page, and frankly, you guys will find things I would miss. If you're part of an organization working to drag North Carolina back from the brink of the abyss, I'd love to discuss making this a mutual deal. I'm not exclusionary by any means, and this is not gonna become the Black Max Ego Palace.
What do you think?
If we do go forward with this as I envision it, here's how to do it:
PayPal: http://www.paypal.com for the account at purplesage23 AT yahoo DOT com
Content: E-mail it to the same address or to mtuck4242 AT gmail DOT com Sources, preferably with links, MUST be included. Content may be edited for brevity and objectivity -- I want this to be useful to everyone from activists and organizers, sympathetic state legislators and mainstream news folks (Melissa Harris-Perry comes to mind, for obvious reasons) to you, me and your Aunt Matilda who might be convinced to reconsider her 2016 vote for McCrory by a relatively calm and restrained info source, but wouldn't be impressed with a string of "fucking fuckers in the fucking legislature" inclusions.
If you don't feel comfortable sending money, hell, I don't blame you. How about sending content? Believe me, I don't like asking for money. I don't even
believe in money...
One other thing: how about a suggestion for a domain? Don't jump the gun and buy one just yet if that impulse crosses your mind, just thinking about a suggestion that isn't already in use.
I haven't been politically active on a local level since I protested against neo-Nazi Harold Covington running for NC Attorney General in, I think, 1982. (?) There were six of us outside his "compound" (his house, in a quiet Raleigh neighborhood), and a local photographer snapped a pic of Harold giving us the one-finger Nazi salute in full Nazi kit, including what sure looked like grenades strapped to his chest and his belt. Newsweek ran a cropped version of that photo in its weekly "Gee Look at the Dumbass" section, and Covington's political career shorted out immediately afterwards. Goolsby has gotten me thinking local again. But I'm still primarily an information aggregator and disseminator, not an activist per se. That's where my strengths lie. And information fuels, shapes and directs activism.
I hope you'll consider getting involved.
9:15 AM PT: Gee. Maybe I should have put up a poll...?
10:16 AM PT: Okay, question for the folks kicking in $. If I don't make it to $80, would you prefer I return the money or spend it on feeding feral kitties? You can answer in the comments if you would. No response = feed the cats (those guys eat a lot!).
If the hosted site doesn't fly, maybe BlueNC or ProgressNC would like an info site. This will happen one way or the other.
Wed Jun 12, 2013 at 10:25 AM PT: Don't know if anyone is still following this, but:
The conversation has moved here: http://www.bluenc.com/...
Don't send any more money!!! Thank you all for your generosity.