an exciting proposal

Hello, everyone!

I have a more concrete plan to discuss this time than I did last -- so read on, I really think this could work.

As background for what led me to the current plan and how I've resolved prior conflicts (which all took place during a phone conversation with my wonderful friend Cynthia):
I realized there is a friction between service and activism that was sort of at the heart of the struggles people felt in the kind of change they could make and what we can do at this point. The thing with local/community service, which I did a lot of in high school, is that you do not ever see anything changing/happening on a larger wide scale -- you can go to a soup kitchen one night, or you can go plant a tree, which are all wonderful things to do, but ultimately I never felt like I was really doing anything to stop the underlying problems -- homelessness won't go away if you volunteer at a homeless shelter, and planting a tree is great except that people keep cutting them down anyway. And those are the drawbacks, you really have to get into the policy behind things if you want to see long-term change. However, the positive aspects of this kind of service are exactly what is missing from political/social activism in a lot of cases. So many people work on policies/campaigns/etc. and trying to get them implemented, that they might not even ever have direct interaction with the people/communities they are seeking to help - so it becomes very impersonal and can be a lot less rewarding in the sense that you don't feel like you're actually DOING anything. And that's been the biggest theme with who I've talked to -- protests/letter-writing etc all seem so removed from the issue at hand and no one feels that active/ accomplished in those tasks.

But what about a protest on such a large scale, that actually addresses all the issues we want to address and even provides detailed proposals for what the government could replace their current policies with? Here's what Cynthia and I came up with:

We keep the site -- redesign it etc. (which I will be looking to Bill and Greg for help on... and whoever else might be interested) and make it really snappy looking, and especially practical to what we want to do with it, which is:

a pooling of resources... it's more powerful than simple "discussion" b/c it's going to involve a lot more than that. we're going to pick the biggest issues we want to address, so far cynthia and i have come with

• gay rights/ gay marriage
• women's rights/ abortion/ birth control/ sex ed vs. abstinence ed in schools
• environmental issues
• war on "terrorism"/ peace/international relations

the first two play a lot into religion/religious extremists/ and people's view of "morality" which we will definitely address.

what we're going to do with each of these divisions is have people assigned to one of them, and hopefully we will get enough interest (though this all has to stay organized) that we have several people working together on each topic, and of course each topic has its sub divisions

what exactly will people do with these topics? here's the plan:

• researching policies in place right now that threaten each thing, i.e. threaten gay rights, threaten women's rights, threaten the environment, and threaten peace. so for gay rights, this would include researching in detail the policies in place already -- i.e. bans against gay marriage. for the environment, research current drilling going on in Alaska, how the Bush administration has denied that global warming exists, etc. THIS SECTION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR OWN OPINIONS YET, IT JUST HAS TO DO WITH A FACTUAL ACCOUNT OF WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW
• then we need to research all the arguments defending said policies -- we must find the BEST ones out there, and use the plethora of resources we have -- I'd say going through well-established/ respected newspaper articles and reading what they have to say, taking essays from highly acclaimed conservatives etc, just taking all those arguments likely to be used against us and...
• REFUTE them... this will require a detailed research of facts and figures in favor of what we have to say, of studies done, of history, of a lot of things that are necessary to defend our case and refute the other. often times in discussion people throw statements out there that can often be simply refuted by empirical work -- so we will pick their arguments apart basically
• then PROPOSE what could instead be done -- this will be fairly easy with gay and women's rights, we simply appeal for more freedoms and rights, i.e. giving the woman to choose in the case of abortion, giving gays the right to marry (at this point we have already refuted the claims against it) but will be a bit harder in in the case of the environment, bc we must give accounts of alternatives to oil, or energy saving policies, etc. and in the case of war, bc we will be asking to end a war that shouldn't have been fought in the first place, but we must give a practical proposal in how to get out of iraq, etc, but these can obviously be done with some research as well

i think this can be REALLY effective, and i know a lot of people have their specialty areas and/or enjoy doing thing like this anyway. this will simply just be a much more organized way to pool all the various arguments we use all the time in defending our beliefs and giving it a factual/empirical ground to it, and we will have it all in one place where it is accessible to anyone using the internet.

so then we have this great site saying exactly what we want to say, with tons of information, the benefits to what we propose, appropriate links to information we're drawing upon, etc.

AND with that the most important thing will be:

spread the word like crazy, and get a petition going -- this petition will be sort of like a "bill of rights" in that we have summed up those 4 main categories, and declaring our rights to them -- but of course we have all the detailed arguments and counter-arguments and proposals available as well, and people will sign this bill of rights in support of the causes. people can sign their names somewhere at the website, and we will set a DATE

on this set date, we will flood the government's e-mail boxes and hopefully phsyical mail boxes as well with this petition.. we will obviously send an account of the one petition which everyone signed and will hopefully have a LOT of signatures on it, but to have their boxes be flooded, everyone can just print out a summary of the "bill of rights" and actually sign it, and send one copy in. but more than that, it will be an organized day of PROTEST in which everyone declares this bill of rights ( we can call it something else.. i'm just using that name for now) and does crazy things and brings the attention of the media and government

if done on a large enough scale, and i really think college students can have this kind of impact and we have the networking means to do it (internet, reaching other campuses through nation-wide campus organizations/ headquarters, friends of friends, etc.) then that one day of protest will be effective, and it will definitely catch the attention of the media. the reason this is more effective than your normal protest, protesting a war or w/e, is bc we have this site with such wonderful information and actual well thought out PROPOSALS for what to do. so some legislators will have to take notice and it will get talked about and it could really have some impact.

so to reiterate

1. first we get the site organized to suit these needs
2. we get our committees on each of these topics and get researching and writing!
3. once we have the topics somewhat organized, we appeal to other organizations/ use resources in place already (such as planned parenthood, or on campus groups like SEA) to build on that information and to get publicity going. we can use this as a time to appeal to a number of organizations and get the word out -- for example, the issues with morality and religion in gay and women's rights issues clearly can be discussed with professors and concentrators in philosophy & religion, some of them could even write a short essay on morality to contribute to our information (i've taken an ethics class and it's clear morality is a complicated issue, so to say something like homosexuality is amoral or sinful is to ignore the whole complex issue of morality in the first place -- clearly we cannot come to those kind of conclusions by taking a look at different moral theories), etc etc. this will really build a following for our site and add to our resources. at this point the website might already want to contain a formalized "bill of rights" (just the goals/summary of what we're trying to do) so people visiting the site can really get into the idea and long term goals of it
4. when we feel we have all the steps of the writing process/website done, we set a date and start spreading the word like crazy, get the petition going, and organize what the protest would entail. at this point its all about publicizing
5. once the big day comes, we hope to reach many people and send out a clear message to the administration that we don't like what it's doing. but also, the whole point of this is that they take our proposals seriously -- we want to have some effect in the legislation being done. but nothing always comes immediately --
6. we will hopefully form relations with at least some liberal politicians and have this be a continual effort on our parts and their parts, and the website will be an established place to continue to exercise our freedom of speech and write out rebuttals to issues that continue to come up, etc. we can always add to our "bill of rights" and always organize another protest day

if any of this is unclear to you, please ask away so i can clarify! post words of suggestions/criticisms/encouragement etc. the 4 topics cynthia and i came up with obviously aren't exhaustive of the world's problems, it's just what we both feel are really relevant to the current administration and what are really threatening as well -- i'd like to keep it within that realm as it relates to the purposes of our final goal in appealing to the government, so if you do have any more ideas within that, please let me know.

so in the meantime, i'm going to get going on the site with said people, let me know if you want in

and if you are interested in any of those divisions, please start researching!! that will be the hardest part and bulk of this project. actually, go ahead and comment or drop me an e-mail letting me know what you might be interested in working on.

and, it's never too early to spread the word =) at this point we can use anyone's help in the research