Progressives in South Carolina are often undiscovered, unnoticed and unremembered, but March 12's rally at the South Carolina Statehouse it is important that we make an impact.
Twitter, drumming and Video are three components of the Saturday, March 12 Rally for a Moral Budget at the Statehouse in Columbia, SC which reflect both the most basic approach to gathering community and the most advanced technologies. We have these tools. It's time to use them at what may be South Carolina's largest progressive demonstration in many years. The cuts proposed for South Carolina are drastic. They are consequences of an unjust and dishonest system of taxation.
We need to pick up the tools which are working elsewhere. The Extended text of this post discusses how we might do that.
Tweet
Twitter expands the communication options for preparations for the event and the event itself horizontally if its used effectively. The ability to share twitter content on smart phones will allow participants to share the event while traveling and at the event itself. A hash code for the progressive network just needs to be inserted into the each tweet. That code is “#scpronet”. Expect a certain amount of right wing trolls to infect the stream, there is no perfect way to exclude them from online communication. Many of us will be tweeting updates with this #scpronet hash code and monitoring tweets with that code on our phone, as well as attaching impages and even video clips to those tweets. You can start tweeting about your preparations now.
The hashtag is already in use. Go check out the traffic on twitter for #scpronet
Beat
Drumming is low tech, but it has been a proven method for bringing people together since humanity climbed down from the trees. It's excellent if you have a cool tribal drum or something from your ethnic heritage like my family's Scottish frame drum. Bongos from the top of the closet would be fine too. However a five gallon plastic bucket and a stick have proven effective and piles of them are available at any construction site.
We plan to start drumming in front of the Statehouse at noon, pause during stage warm up's, and stop when the rally starts. We think people getting off buses and out of their cars will enjoy coming to the noise.
A quick look at the video from Wisconsin shows that this works and people really enjoyed it. http://www.youtube.com/...
It's important to remember that a sense of joy is a necessary party of an effective demonstration. Destroying people's sense of empowerment and hope is a crucial part of the right's long term strategy in SC. Note in this You Tube clip, Senator Glenn Grossman of Wisconsin complaining about the demonstrators, "Joy."
We need a little joy on Saturday.
Repeat
We're also working on video. If you have ideas on how to share the video which gets recorded, let the network know. Several people are already bringing their cameras. I'll have my netbook to get whatever I can on the spot for people to share and then get that to the network to be edited and distributed. If this event isn't recorded and photographed, it can't be distributed later and it will have far less impact. Go to YouTube and take a look at what came out of Madison, some of which ended up on CNN and MSNBC. Let's not let Jim DeMint on Fox News be all the world knows about SC.
Take a look at this video from Madison. Wouldn't you like to show your family and coworkers something like this to explain what you did on Saturday? http://www.youtube.com/...
If you have questions about the Rally, be sure to contact the SC Progressive Network as soon as possible. For information, to sponsor, or to offer transportation, email network@scpronet.com, call 803-808-3384 or see www.scpronet.com.Updated by wjhamilton29464 at Sun Mar 6, 2011, 04:41:37 PM
A note recieved through Facebook:
"William/Bill (we're FB friends because of a wide overlap of mutual friends, but I don't "know" you so don't know what you use as your name):
I'm planning to attend the rally on Saturday. A good friend of mine - . . ., a lawyer in Atlanta - attended rally of support for the Wisconsin workers a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta. He was struck by the fact that the pro-labor rally had no American flags, while the anti-labor group across the street was flying many American flags. I hate that we've allowed the flag to be co-opted, the way, in a large level, we've let conservatives co-opt Christianity. I see that the rally on Saturday is co-sponsored by a Christian group, which is fantastic. Are there plans to have flags? Can I help? I would really love to have our rally confuse the stereotype and help promote the idea that we are patriots and love our country, and for those very reasons, we're supporting a moral budget.
Just a thought."
There were lots of flags in Madison, WI. If you look closely you'll note the difference between the people waving them there and the tea party. The people in Madison with the American Flags in their hands are smiling.
Bring your drums, your flags, your tambourines and your rattles. Let your children remember you in the years ahead, loud, proud and with a smile, even in SC.