Meeting UP
Like Mitch,
I went to a Howard Dean Meetup last night, and you
should when you can. Similar to Mitch's experience, I found myself in a
room full of angry but optimistic people–although our meeting
was in the most crowded NY bar I've seen since the old days. Probably twice
as many as at Mitch's meetup.
<goodsign>The Republicans have done the impossible! They're getting
out the vote of passive non-Republicans and have solved the post- 9/11 NY
bar depression</goodsign>
As I suggested here
and here, the part
of the blogging world that cares about policy should seek a few specific commitments
from Dean on the issues that matter most to us: Fair Use, Unconstitutional search
and seizure, Open Governance and a willingness to respond to issues that matter
to those who are active in on-line democracy. Not a laundry list, but a focused
emphasis on the things that matter to most people who take time to write online
or read and comment online.
The obvious ones to hold such a meeting with Dr. Dean are Dr. Lessig and Doc
Searls, but there's probably no shortage of volunteers who know they're
qualified for such a mini-summit.
If Dean agrees to a coherent feedback loop, then people who care about the
American Miracle (i.e., the Bill Of Rights) should spend the next year and a
half making this the first Internet Presidency and the end of political business-as-usual.
Our commitment must be to help replace the money Dean would otherwise receive
from the media who will cut him off when he endorses fair use. Further, we must
commit to getting out the vote using the Internet, so money stops driving campaigns.
When we calculate how that vision affects media's profitability, we'll understand
how daunting are these demands.
Joe Plotkin
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Joe Plotkin and his dad were there. Joe
is the irrepressible marketing guy at BWay.net,
host to the NYC Wireless meeting last week where Doc
introduced me to Drazen
Pantic. BWay is an ISP which gives responsive service and charges
for it. They also offer DSL packages through Covad and have learned how
to hate the phone company, or as Joe puts it:
Hating Verizon is too simplistic. We resent their dominance because
they hold hostage the public communications infrastructure -- built as
a regulated monopoly, the RBOCs are privatizing the benefits (promoting
it as deregulation) while shirking the concomitant public obligations.
It's as if we built the Interstate Highway system and allowed the concrete
contractor to own the tolls.
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The real problem is that the RBOCs are allowed to be in a retail business
while also being the monopoly wholesale provider of loops and other elements.
There are anti-trust actions pending. One possible solution would create "structural
separation" of the 2 functions -- in which case, competitive providers
would be treated as valued customers (to rent network elements) -- instead of
as competitive (retail) threats.
Joe and I are noodling around the idea of seemyvote.com, a domain I tied down
in January:
#fleemer
seemyvote.com:
Politicians who need our votes are acting like they don't. They're behaving
like the RIAA, pretending they can treat their customers like thieves. Why
do we spend so much time worrying about the RIAA and so little time directly
managing our elected toadies?
SeeMyVote would be based on our right to enforce full, fair and equal representation,
establishing a protocol for translating individual hot issues into votes with
teeth.
SeeMyVote would be a database of real people who have abdicated their secret
ballot to advertise their real-time responses to current issues and current
outrages. The database would match issues and outrage with politicians and
their current actions. Voters would link their next vote with their current
values and beliefs so that, for instance, a politician's cynical work against
choice would publicly guarantee my wife's vote against him. Combined with
other uppity women, some politicians would see that this particular form of
political cynicism is foolish, at least in his district. (Cynical
because few politicians give a rat's ass about abortion. They do
care about the votes of people who care about choice).
This is the kind of data which allows politicians to explain to each other
why they can't support each others' favorite causes. They all know they're
in government in order to stay in government.
Sample SeeMyVote Report:
"The Fleemer amendment to HR 419 has caused a plurality of Mr. Fleemer's
voting constituents to commit to vote him out of office in November. Based
on commitment data from 73% of registered voters, It appears that Rep. Fleemer
will lose his seat by a 9% margin unless his amendment is withdrawn.
Those voter commitments have been communicated to Mr. Fleemer's staff,
other Republican and Democratic National Committees and major media outlets.
The data are presented in detail at http://www.seemyvote.com/fleemer."
If you have any thoughts or suggestions on implementing this outrageous meme,
Joe and I would love to hear from you.
George Morin
George Morin is a my-gen communications freelancer who was a Republican until
he read enough history to learn how much blood was spilled to create the 40-hour
work week, among other things. As a professional wordsmith, he'd like to
help the Dean team craft its message, but he'd be happy to lick envelopes if
that's what's needed. We huddled after the Meetup and wondered how we might
contribute. There's a lot of talent in this town, and it ought to be put to
work on this campaign.
George and I are meeting tomorrow to tease out the idea of a Howard Dean NYC
creative brain trust teaming up internet, print and broadcast pros who want
to make a difference. The great thing about our political system is that every
four years it foments new adhocracies of people who often end up running things.
This is the first time the Internet can have a place at the grownup's table,
and it would be a shame if we sat around whining about what might be, when we're
now set up to help it be.
Chaordic Commonality - A Permission-free Zone
| Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, has embraced the Internet the way
Harry Truman embraced the whistlestop
campaign, which he used to defeat another undefeatable Republican, Thomas
Dewey, in 1948. |
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A May 22 ABC News article, Howard
Dean raises $1M via the Internet:
Dean hit the $1 million mark in Internet fund raising last week, becoming
the first 2004 presidential hopeful to announce he has done so. Dean supporters
also are using the Internet to organize volunteers across the country.
Campaign manager Joe Trippi said the Internet has matured to the point
where people are comfortable using it to donate.
Trippi concedes that unleashing all those volunteers isn't without risk;
it's impossible to be sure all will be "on message" with the campaign.
"It's an almost military structure at most campaigns," he said.
"All the orders come from on high and it's very regimented and you know
exactly how many supporters you have in one state ... Most campaigns view
the Net as trying to impose military structure on chaos."
This new chaordic reality forces Trippi
to embrace its risks which he seems inclined to anyway. This campaign may demonstrate
that chaos is the bright light shining the way to the White House. No longer
can a campaign stop George Morin and me from helping in our way rather than
the old way. A campaign manager can no longer tell a self-appointed NYC brain
trust to lay off, even if he were inclined to. It's sure to drive the political
apparatchiks nuts, but the Internet changes so much that even politics
is up for grabs.
Maybe Dee Hock, Mitch Ratcliffe and their fellow trustees
can help the Dean campaign embrace chaos as the best way to reel into the present
a future we can only imagine.
Eisenhower Republicans for Dean
George Morin was talking to a friend who, calling himself an Eisenhower Republican,
said that Dean sounded to him a lot like Ike. Is Ike the bridge this country
needs to return to civil discourse? Consider:
You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that's assault, not leadership.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has
seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of
iron.
We merely want to live in peace with all the world, to trade with them,
to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours,
so that the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads
and our churches and not for guns and planes and tanks and ships of war.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes.
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults
by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don't be afraid to go in your
library and read every book...
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace
so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and
let them have it.
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have
persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as
he is scared, and then he is gone.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration
and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
No easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If
they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.
When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose.
When you are in any contest you should work as if there were - to the
very last minute - a chance to lose it.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand
miles from the corn field.
We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else,
a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that
one objective.
There was a time when politics required the ability to form, question and communicate
such thoughts. It was once a virtual requirement to have led men into battle
and to earn your humanity, as Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated. He governed well
by governing little, and led a life so full that he really preferred not to
be president. It's a shame we must send people to Washington who want to go,
but if we need an enthusiastic ambition, Dean may be our best choice.
By then, George Bush may have demonstrated so well what we do not want in a
leader that we'll recognize one when we see one. And that may be his
contribution to history.
2:54:05 PM 
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