Woozle/drafts/2010-09-19 BoilingFrogs

Intro

This is a comment I'm thinking of posting here, but I can't decide if it sounds... off.

Text

Here's what I think needs to happen. I'll skip the "why" arguments for each piece of the puzzle because otherwise this would be a novella.

1. Activists and "would be" activists need [a way] to announce themselves. If I want to do something about this mess, where can I sign up to start communicating and working with others who also want to do something about it?

I started issuepedia.org as a fight back against the insanity of the Bush years. What I'm good at is identifying solutions, writing about them, and designing software to help facilitate those solutions. (Most significant problems these days have to do with poor communication among larger groups of people. With the ubiquity of computers and the internet, this is now a software problem.)

2. We need a forum for self-identified activists (and would-be activists) to discuss what actions are possible and arrive at a strategy.

Possible forums:

• This blog. Weakness: it's difficult to have complex discussions in a single-threaded format. It could be usable, though, with careful moderation and starting new posts when a subtopic seems to warrant it. Would require additional time-investment from someone with posting and comment-admin powers.
• Issuepedia
• other public discussion forums -- make suggestions if you know a good one that is okay with political discussions
• I could set up a new forum using whatever software seems best, geared specifically to strategizing our responses to these issues

3. Arrive at priority lists: what are, say, the ten most urgent problems we should do something about each of (a) this week, (b) this month, (c) this year, (d) this decade?

4. Consider the options and strategy for action, either collective or focused, to remedy each of these problems.

5. Begin acting.

I realize that leaves a lot of blanks to fill in, but it's at least the skeleton of a plan we can start implementing right now, today. The blanks are mostly areas where we would need a consensus in order to move forward anyhow.

If Sibel (who is probably the only person reading this comment, at this late date) could at least endorse one or more of the options for #2, I could be more specific about what needs to happen next.

If anyone wants to discuss this with me offline, I can be reached here.

Discarded Text

• after #1: (but I) recognize that it doesn't seem to be helping much (I hope it's a transmission in search of an engine and wheels, and not just useless) -- and I don't know what else I can do on my own. I'm phone-phobic, socially phobic, overworked, not good at organizing, and I have no money. (This is my hectic life in the traffic-at-a-dead-crawl lane.)