We had more of an outlet before the election. We could join local campaigns. We could canvas. We could GOTV. Many of us did these activities, seeing them as necessary evils - they didn't take advantage of our specialized skills, but we were bodies hustling out there in service to a cause we believed in.
But we as a community are capable of more. We've got the numbers, the passion, and the specialized abilities. The question is, what to do? Many of us are doing plenty in our "normal lives", but what else could we do as an actual community?
Consider this thread a brainstorming thread. What could come next? What could join together in doing, beyond discussion, raising money, and raising awareness?
Here are some potential ideas:
- A citizen lobbying group. We organize ourselves into a hierarchy - we each pick a representative from within the community that we believe will listen to us and will represent our views. The top 30 most popular representatives will meet every four months, on our dime, to hash out strategy and action items. Then on behalf of the community we will use our resources and money to get access to legislation, or to create advertising, or release press releases, or whatever.
- A more structured journalism group. Voluntarily form a structure that is good for better journalism. Share sources. Create leads, write stories according to journalistic standards. Edit each other's works. And then our resulting vetted stories can become a newsletter or newspaper once a week that can be forwarded around.
- Launch a dkos issue tracker. We use the wiki to put together material. We use the dkos to discuss it. But we need something to help us coordinate and actually do things. What if we had a site where we could create projects, create action items for those projects, and allow members to be assigned to those various action items?
Many of us are already involved in other causes and are using blogging and dkos as a supplement to our other activities, but many of us are looking for more to do and haven't found a fit in the real world yet. Myself, I feel like I've hit a ceiling with blogging and diarying. And I'm looking for something more. I'm looking elsewhere by investigating grad school in poli sci, but I'm also curious as to what other community members think the community itself can do to take it to another level.
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