They're attacking Charlie again
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/15/2007 - 16:10I just received an email from GrapskiDefense. It pretty much speaks for itself. Let's get together and stand behind Charlie.
On February 12th 2007 Charlie Grapski was arrested for his presence at a meeting of the Alachua City Commission.
Grapski has been investigating and exposing corruption in the City of Alachua by the City's political and law enforcement officials.
Grapski refused to cooperate in his unlawful arrest and detention by going limp.
Alachua Police Chief Robert Jernigan ordered an officer to Taser Grapski because of his passive resistance.
This use of "extreme and lethal force" has been heavily criticized in the U.S. by Amnesty International. The threat to use such force in this instance is clearly inappropriate and excessive.
The Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Charlie Grapski and Alachua is calling on all concerned citizens to contact the newly elected Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, and call for the immediate suspension of Robert Jernigan and the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the numerous allega tions of criminal wrongdoing within the City of Alachua's Police Department.
(cross posted at Howard Empowered People)
What can we learn from the French Presidential campaigns?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/15/2007 - 10:10As we gear up for the 2008 Presidential Elections here in the United States, many of us may be overlooking the French Presidential Election, the first round of which is April 22 of this year. Are there things that we can learn from the French elections that could help us here?
The other day, I received an email from a German researcher asking what people thought of Segolene Royale's election campaign. She is the socialist candidate who heavily draws on "debats participatifs". These are supposed to be discussions occurring both face-to-face and over the Internet. She has received a large public response: 135,000 discussion contributions on the net, 2.7 million participants, 6,500 face-to-face meetings with 700,000 attendees. If you are a Francophone, you can read more about this at http://www.desirsdavenir.org/index.php?c=mecanique.
He asks,
Does the French public perceive this as a new revolutionary method of policy making? Or is it deemed as a form of populism (as I read her rival Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed)?
How does her rival Nicolas Sarkozy generally react to her participatory strategy? Can you observe an increased use of "dialogue speak" by him, or does he even engage himself in participatory formats?
Will it help Segolene Royale to get elected? Or will this strategy backfire because her own political profile is watered down, i.e. it is not clear what her own standpoint is (as some media reports here in Germany suggest)?
If Segolene Royale is elected, will deliberative democracy take a new step in France (and elsewhere), i.e. will it inspire a new political culture, with a better sense of deliberation processes?
My first response to the preceding questions is, “is there something wrong with forms of populism?”
I received an email suggesting that Royale’s "debats participatifs" suffers from being too much of a one way street, and not a real dialog. This lack of real dialog was perceived as potentially being a fatal flaw and the writer was suggesting that Nicolas Sarkozy is more likely to come out ahead. They pointed to his videos responding to people’s questions. My reaction to these videos was that they felt a little bit too scripted, a little bit like Hillary’s “conversations”. However, I don’t speak French very well, so I am basing these reactions much more on the visuals than a Francophone might.
As I asked around I was pointed to Wampum’s coverage of the French Election. I would encourage people to stop by and read what they are writing.
Then, please provide your thoughts on the questions above, as well as what you think we can learn from the use of the Internet in the French Presidential election.
(Cross Posted on culturekitchen)
Two houses
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/14/2007 - 18:40Today, I received two emails about different houses. One was from Jesse Lee writing about The Gavel, the blog on Speaker Pelosi’s website talking about what is going on in the House of Representatives. I’m glad to see it, and I especially like that there is a kids page on Speaker Pelosi’s site.
The other email was from a friend I know from the Edwards campaign. She writes about how the winter storm affected her in Illinois and gripes about how the AP stories about the storm talk about New York and the Northeast, but they don’t talk a lot about what is happening in Illinois.
Too much of the news and politics online have focus on the national story, and don’t get down to the how it effects people living across the country, in places like Springfield. I do hope that Speaker Pelosi remains down to earth and thinks about how things going on in Congress affects kids across the country and people living in places like Springfield.
Fighting for Democracy
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/14/2007 - 10:38When people who believe they are in power, feel their power challenged, they often react in threatening ways. In countries without a tradition of democracy powered by freedom of speech, this can take the shape of death squads. Here in the United States, we try to address transitions of power peacefully at the ballot booth.
However, this does not always work as smoothly as possible. Both the 2000 and 2004 elections were marked by accusations of voter suppression. These accusations have resulted in various convictions. Yet not all voter suppression is illegal. Negative advertising has proven to be an effective method of depressing voter turnout.
In 2004, Gov. Dean ran a campaign of empowerment, encouraging people to get involved. Many people got involved for the first time. Many of them are now getting involved in the campaigns of Sen. Edwards, Sen. Obama, and Sen. Clinton.
In 2006, Ned Lamont ran a campaign that countered the negative advertisements in a few different ways. The first was to poke fun at negative advertisements with the ‘Ned Lamont has a messy desk’ ad. Yet more important was the recurring theme from all of his ads where his supporters responded “And so do we” whenever he said he approved the advertisement. It was a message encouraging all of us to get more involved.
2006 saw the Democrats retake control of congress, and as we enter the 2008 Presidential season, those who are seeing their grasp of power slipping slowly away will become more threatening, especially to those campaigns that are encouraging involvement of new people.
We’ve seen this most recently in the verbal attacks on the Edwards campaign by conservative operatives followed up by veiled physical threats to people working on these campaigns. As campaigns continue to work to involve new people we will see these sort of attacks continue.
Because of this, we need Democratic candidates to stick together and defend one another when attacked by those who would suppress voter participation. Instead of attacking one another for minutiae of whose ideology is most pure, we need to be fighting to see which candidate will do the most to get people more involved in the political process.
Sen. Edwards’ One Corps and Days of Action are one aspect of this, the new social networking tools of the Obama campaign are another. Who will do the most build involvement in our democratic process? Over the coming months, we shall see. Who will be the winner? All of us that love democracy.
(Cross posted at Greater Democracy)
In praise of Icarus
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/13/2007 - 14:46The day that Anna Nicole Smith died, she was the top search item on Technorati. The second most popular search item was Amanda Marcotte. When I saw this, the juxtaposition struck me. Yet with a few days past now, I’m starting to see connections.
On a media education mailing list, people have been complaining about the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death. Roger Conway compares Anna Nicole’s death to that of Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson who “killed herself two weeks after objecting to the interrogation techniques being used on Iraqi prisoners”. What is this prurient voyeurism that draws the media to Anna Nicole Smith, while ignoring the tragedies of Iraq?
Others had a different view of Anna Nicole’s tragedy:
Instead of cursing another woman who had little to no educational opportunities for advancement--who married the cook of Jim's Krispy
Fried Chicken, where she was a waitress, at age 17--had a kid at 18 and then found work, as a single mother, at Wal-Mart and Red Lobster before becoming a stripper--perhaps we would be better off searching for a little empathy.
Yes, a little empathy would be a nice thing. It would go a long way. The same applies to Amanda Marcotte. Everyone is talking about whether or not the Edwards campaign dealt properly with the attack by right wing extremists for hiring her. Everyone is talking about whether of not her decision to leave the campaign is a good or bad thing for the campaign. What about a little empathy for Amanda? It sucks to have people try to get your fired because you’ve strongly expressed your views. It sucks to have to leave what could have been a really great job because you are too controversial.
I received an email today from a friend involved in non-profits. It quoted a line from a poem, which is quoted all over the place, but I can’t find the original source:
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach for another is to risk involvement.
To expose your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd, is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To believe is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The people who risk nothing do nothing, have nothing, are nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
Anna Nicole and Amanda took risks. The risks might not always have turned out the way they, or others would have liked, but we should honor such risk taking. We should show a little empathy to those who struggle to make their own condition and the condition of those around them a little better. We should all take a few more risks ourselves.
Yet, as W. H. Auden observes about the suffering that comes from risks that don’t turn out right,
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
So yes, perhaps I’ll take my risks. I will stand on the shore and point to the disappearing ripples of where Icarus fell. I will point out the need for empathy for Anna Nicole and Amanda. Like Zarathustra, I will take the corpse upon my shoulders and set upon my way, as town people say “Leave this town… there are too many here who hate thee”
Who’s coming with me?
(Cross-posted at Greater Democracy).
