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The Bush Fishladder

Bumped: because this turned out to be a pretty hot topic and its getting towards the bottom of the page - Mike

Not to be a naysayer, but I think one question we need to grapple with is “what happens when Bush is no longer on the ballot?” Turnout and activism among young voters is up, but will it stay up? After 2008, and we “throw the bums out,” will Millennial turnout continue to rise?

I ask because this came up in a conversation last week with Fred Gooltz wherein Fred explained to me the concept of the Fishladder, which I’d never heard of before.

A fishladder is a manmade series of shallow pools, arranged in tiers, down which water flows so that fish like Salmon, which need to swing upriver to spawn, can travel over/around man-made obstacles such as dams. The water flows down the steps of the ladder, creating a current that entices the fish to swim upward. But it’s a delicate balance. Make the current too strong, and the fish tire and give up. Too weak, and they won’t be enticed to swim.

Right now, Bush is our current, and we’re all hopping up the many steps of the fishladder, fighting against him. We’re voting, participating in blogs or on myspace, volunteering on campaigns, maybe giving money. Working our way up that ladder.

What happens when Bush is gone and there is no current to fight? I’m not pessimistic, I hope things will keep going because I have faith that what we’ve seen in the last few years is about more than Bush - it’s about a whole new way of living and conceiving of oneself as part of a society. But it’s another reason to work extra hard in the next two years - to make the most of these opportunities while we have them.

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March 15th, 2007 1:55pm
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Clearly

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Tue, 2007-03-13 21:57.

Clearly as the political situation becomes more bland, we can expect to see a drop in activity, or perhaps in intensity of activity. The two ways to deal with this are:

  1. Broaden and connect “political activity” to a wider cultural context which connects people socially. Basically building a stronger civic society. I think we are well on our way there.
  2. Shift from working against to working towards something. Here we’re doing less well, and not least of all because this kind of movement can’t really happen without leadership. Currently we are headed towards a vacuum of leadership, with Bush weak and unpopular, but Congress lagging behind the Public on most fronts.

On the former, I think we’ll continue to make progress, and in the long run this is important. The latter worries me. I’m just not seeing it. At some point in the next year, this leadership will either emerge — and it could be from many sources at once, not just (hopefully not, indeed) from a single individual or campaign — or not. If not, it will be a setback.

Good answer

Submitted by Michael Connery on Wed, 2007-03-14 05:41.

Good answers, though my take is slightly reversed.

I agree with your take on point #1. Generally speaking, this is progressing and will continue to progress. I see weakening in some areas, but it’s not a zero sum thing, and much will change and/or emerge in the next couple years that will more intentionally connect the cultural/social contributions to the political.

W/r/t your second point, I guess I’ll ask what you mean by leaders. If you mean congress and the majority of elected officials, then yes, there will be a vacuum. But as I go about researching my book, I’m realizing that leadership development is one area that progressives are really starting to invest in (though still not nearly enough). And that perhaps some of this momentum can be sustained if channeled into participating in and continuing to build the structures that are/will create new leaders and new ways of contributing. In a sense, intentional movement building as the “for which” (not “against which”) people are working.

That’s probably not enough, and only engages a certain percentage of people, but it is one thing that can keep the momentum and activity up. But I think you are right that we do need to start working for something. Maybe with more progressives in power, but with recalcitrant and/or uninspiring leaders, we’ll be in the unenviable, but advantageous, position of doing both - working for specific goals like a new energy policy, but against those progressives who are blocking real reform.

Leadership Development

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 07:26.

I’m highly skeptical of “leadership development” programs for a few reasons:

  1. These programs tend to emphasize management skills rather than leadership.
  2. Funding and control comes from a major donor elite with a watered-down (at best) agenda, and a questionable interest in actual leadership.
  3. Even under the best of circumstances, this development is a long way from bearing fruit.

As for the idea of movement-building as the “for,” it’s a tautology. We’re “for” movement-building? But what’s the movement for? Getting Democrats elected? Nobody really knows.

counter culture vs. creative culture

Submitted by Joshua Gorman on Wed, 2007-03-14 08:03.

While things might become a little more “bland” on a relative scale, this historical moment - and by this i mean the coming decades - will not fail to provide a succession of catalysts, fishladders, thorns-in-our-species-ass, etc. When the world is falling apart, the progressive movement is coming together. (I think a great topic to begin elucidating on is that of “integrative” activism/movement-building.)

I think both of Josh’s points are right on:

1) The first is already happening and needs to continue, but to the degree that I think we all would like to see this take place, there’s quite a distance to travel. I’m still hopeful about seeing our political movements - specifically our electoral movements - increasingly work hand-in-hand with our social/cultural/grassroots movements. But to what extent is this really possible? In many ways, they are entirely different creatures? In other ways - and in their most ideal forms - they are all embodiments of “the progressive force” moving our world forward.

2) On the second point, I don’t worry about the “leadership vacuum”, because as History has shown time and time again, they never last for long. That’s the beauty of this whole historical drama - the stakes are high and great leaders will always rise to the occasion. Empowering a leadership society/movement is a whole other discussion.

I think the real “future majority” lies with Josh’s “shift from working ‘against’ to working ‘towards’ something.” Counter culture (by itself) will hopefully die with our generation. A growing and conscious contingent of the Movement (who aren’t suffering from a poverty of imagination) realizes that we don’t need to simply ‘counter’ what is wrong, we need to ‘create’ what is right - hence, a “creative culture” (or whatever language jives with you). But for us to build a progressive movement working ‘towards’ something requires first and foremost a “vision” of where we’re headed and how to get there, and this is something I rarely confront in compelling form, and when I do, it often only comes in pieces and never integrated together into a full-on movement manifesto, plan-of-action for the twenty-first century. But I’m hopeful that enough of us are realizing this and finding our calling as this movement builds and this new century roars on.

Way to take the long-view

Submitted by Michael Connery on Wed, 2007-03-14 10:16.

(I think a great topic to begin elucidating on is that of “integrative” activism/movement-building.)

Can you tease that out more, Josh? That word is pretty packed so I'm wondering how you are defining it and what you see developing, in practical terms.

In many ways, they are entirely different creatures? In other ways - and in their most ideal forms - they are all embodiments of “the progressive force” moving our world forward.

I think this was the big idea behind Music for America. Nurturing the understanding within cultural communities that they had the collective power and common interests to also be political communities/communities of action. So that is - in one instantiation - what it might look like.

There are lots of other cultural communities out there that can/might wake up to the same realization. That's what makes things like YouTube and iMovie and proTools so cool - they make the production and distribution of cultural artifacts cheap and populist. So it really takes just the will to create something political in nature. It doesn't necessarily need to be institutionalized - in fact, when you think about campaign cycles and the way issues catch fire and fall off the radar, being nimble enough to spring when and where needed is a huge plus.

But if you want to institutionalize it, this is the reasoning behind my suggestion that College Democrats reach out to the theater, film and music departments to help with their YouTube channel. You gain access to cultural capital and technical expertise lacking among the usual suspects, and the increased political activity/involvement creates a new mindset about participation among the cultural/technical creatives who would normally avoid campus political groups like the plague.

Counter culture (by itself) will hopefully die with our generation. A growing and conscious contingent of the Movement (who aren’t suffering from a poverty of imagination) realizes that we don’t need to simply ‘counter’ what is wrong, we need to ‘create’ what is right - hence, a “creative culture” (or whatever language jives with you).

That is a great formulation.

But for us to build a progressive movement working ‘towards’ something requires first and foremost a “vision” of where we’re headed and how to get there, and this is something I rarely confront in compelling form, and when I do, it often only comes in pieces and never integrated together into a full-on movement manifesto, plan-of-action for the twenty-first century.

It's a chicken and egg problem. We can't stop the movement and wait until this emerges. We're building this plane as we fly it. And I actually think that we won't get this from the current crop of leaders - Barack's inspirational speechifying aside. As we build this movement, we'll produce our own person who'll elucidate all of this. I think Koenig said something to this effect the other day - that we're only now beginning to produce our own writers to cover the actions of our generation. Similarly, we're still waiting for our own generations great voice to really lay out the progressive vision for which we're all looking.

the medium _IS_ the msg--no, really!

Submitted by jpb on Wed, 2007-03-14 14:11.

But for us to build a progressive movement working ‘towards’ something requires first and foremost a “vision” of where we’re headed and how to get there, and this is something I rarely confront in compelling form, and when I do, it often only comes in pieces and never integrated together into a full-on movement manifesto, plan-of-action for the twenty-first century.

It’s a chicken and egg problem.

I think its a little more straightforward. No chickens, no eggs.

We don’t need to articulate a Compelling Vision For The Future before we move down the road towards it; we just need to get moving down the road. Right now, we know that road has a lot to do with emerging technologies that allow and encourage expression and communication. The larger story here is that hierarchical models of society and governance are giving way to emergent models. This is the same vector that leads from despotism to democracy. Even if we don’t know exactly what an society led by emergence will look like, we do know the tools we need to build to get there.

Perhaps the reason we’ve yet to see a 21st Century Manifesto is that static manifestos are sooOOOooo 20th century. I don’t know what the Vision Of The Future looks like, but I do know that it comes out of a public conversation that happens when ppl reared on YouTube and LiveJournal get together and start hashing things out collectively. In the past, these things probably would’ve been decided by 5 guys in a smoke-filled room. Here’s the thing—if anyone, if any 3 or 5 guys try to write that manifesto, they are in the smoke-filled room. I believe the next manifesto—if indeed there’s room for manifestos in the 21st century—must be a collaborative effort. But in the meantime, there’s plenty to do. Building infrastructure may not be the most glamorous thing in the world, but we’re fortunate enough to live in a time where the infrastucture to be built is the new crop of talent on current.tv rather than stringing up telephone lines or building dams. This stuff is fun.

Viacom just sued GooTube for $1b. That doesn’t bode well for a generation of iMovie auteurs. Even when we don’t have Bush to kick around any longer, there’s no shortage of bad guys to catalyze a movement.

I'm jumping in this late after being referenced so excuse my

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Wed, 2007-03-14 23:08.

rampant commenting. But I must say that Koenig’s comment that “we’re only now beginning to produce our own writers to cover the actions of our generation” is ignoring the last few years of wayward “leadership.” (this is what was meant by leadership referenced below too, I take it…)

What happened in 2003/2004 was a revolution. And like any revolution [and they are all the same] you have a breed of semi-involved stenographers who document the broad, brush-strokes of the activity, (but they can’t get the detail, either because they aren’t there or they need plausible deniability). People like this are dudes like Sam Adams, Jerome Armstrong and the other middlemen between the power-brokers (to be) and the actual shit kickers in the trenches.

Did Sam Adams know the names of the Loyal Nine? The ship builders, whalers, rope makers, blacksmiths, street thugs who plotted in the back room of the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston to plot on the best practices on how to steal gunpowder from the Red Coats, where to stash it, or how best to sabotage the cannon lines along the Belknap Path from Ticonderoga. NO! And it’s preferable that a professional “outsider” like Sam didn’t know.

What happens in Revolutions is that the stenographers who get attention go directly for profit. And any part that they couldn’t profit on, they edited out of the official history of the revolution. Only now, are people actually looking, Howard Zinn-style, for the People’s History of the Dean Revolution. And lo, they’re finding us. The shit-kickers from the trenches.

So, I must say, we’ve been writing the actions of our generation, but it’s only now that anyone is bothering to look deeper than the guy who sends out the pres release entitled, “I Will Tell the Story Of Dean.”

Your Revolution is Over, Lebowski

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 07:33.

Don’t forget, the “revolution” of 2003-04 failed dramatically. Despite the grasping need, nothing has emerged as a contemporary analogue.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir!

Submitted by jpb on Thu, 2007-03-15 08:21.

which “revolution”? Dean taking the White House by storm? Or Dean replacing Terry Mac? There’s no denying that the Dean campaign transformed the way politics and campaigning are done in this country. It also transformed the relationship bw politics and technology; campaigns are now aligned w Moore’s Law.

Think for a second about how game-changing that it.

In the past, there was a set of strategy and tactics and assumptions which governed campaigns. Now, there’re big question marks. In 2004 it was blogs, in 2006 it was youtube, in 2008 it’ll be social networks. Or maybe it’ll be Pipes-led mashups. Or maybe it’ll have to do with opencongress. We just don’t know. But we can say a few things about it: the skills which lead politicians (and their teams) to victory have way less to do with living in the beltway than they did 15 years ago. This decentralization of power is more important to the ideal of “citizen legislator” than anything since the 26th amendment.

The Bums Will Always Lose!

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 14:57.

Forgive me for being harsh, but the above sounds like hand-waiving technobabble to me in terms of accomplishing anything. Certainly as the way in which we as a society move information around changes, the means and methods of politics changes as well. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything in terms of outcomes, though. Right now I worry that these new forms amount to re-arranging the same pile of shit.

As a rather intensive participant in the 2003-04 cycle, I can say we didn’t accomplish any of our revolutionary goals. The objective was to alter the content and effects of the political process. This has not happened meaningfully. We did move some debates forward in a marginal fashion, and we have strengthened the Democratic Party and to a lesser extent the progressive/left wing of the political establishment.

The question remains, to what end? I’m concerned that the only answer we have is to “movement build” without any real sense of what the movement is supposed to accomplish.

"The revolution starts with a single step." -Mao Tzu

Submitted by jpb on Fri, 2007-03-16 17:39.

I wasn’t there, so I can’t speak to “Was the Revolution Accomplished?” question, but from an outsider’s vantage point I can tell you this: the Dean campaign’s demonstration of the fund raising ability of small donors totally changed the game. It legitimized online political activity and organizing. The internets gained the attention of the status quo. It certainly isn’t a sufficient step for Revolution!, but its a damned necessary one. And of course we can speculate that “somewhere along the pike, something like this would’ve happened”, but this is where and when it happened. A lot of the interesting work happening now is a direct result of the Dean Campaign’s legacy (money, institutional recognition, technical innovation—all things which seem to ride exponential slopes, ie, benefit from snowballing).

Orange beanies aside, having an anti-war fringe candidate from the democratic wing make good was a pretty nice way for the internets to break mainstream. It coulda been different. Don’t forget the right’s early lead in political blogging; its not too hard to imagine the first really big political moment for the internet being about Instapundit.

Things may may not have played out the way you were hoping for, but outcomes are rarely what we expect.

That was an interesting conversation and

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Mon, 2007-03-19 10:24.

reflects Josh’s point that Dean didn’t win, ergo the revolution failed. But my comment was actually about organizational structures like campaigns. Literally the campaign changed.

The Dean campaign did something different in Q2 when they were losing the money game, they embraced the blogs, they linked to them, they blockquoted them, coordinated with them, farmed out oppo to list groups from them, farmed out lobbying on local pols, to other blogger lists. They filed their FEC reports early. They said all cards are on the table, we’re going to lose… unless you Deaniacs, unless you pony-up and kick ass with me.

But we’ve regressed. No campaign is doing that now. I blame our Sam Adamses as much as I blame the campaign comm shops and political guys.

emergence, a living manifesto, & the "both/and" generation~

Submitted by Joshua Gorman on Wed, 2007-03-14 15:45.

I’ll have to hit you back regarding “integrative” activism/movement-building as it opens up a lot, i.e. everything!

I knew I was in danger by throwing the word “manifesto” out there as it’s such a heavily loaded and stigmatized term, but in either case, they will inevitably continue to be born as they are an essential part of what it means to be human: shedding light on our ‘emerging’ understanding of reality as History unfolds.

I strongly agree that “emergence” is a key concept for our generation, and that as Mike has pointed out - “We’re building this plane as we fly it.” or alternately “We’re laying down the tracks as we speed ahead.” - so our theorizing and praxis have to go hand in hand. I guess what I was giving voice to is the fact that we have so many new “emergent” pieces of this emerging new Movement puzzle that are converging and are ready to be put together in a fuller and more integrated light. (much more to share on this down the line.)

I don’t fully agree with the above comment that “we just need to get moving down the road.” That’s seems as “smoke-filled” of a path as a “static” manifesto born of a smoke-filled room. Yes, it’s important to know what the “tools” are that are facilitating the “structural” part of this emergence, but we also have to know how to use these tools in the most strategic and progressive ways. Hence, we’re back to the need for Vision. It’s not simply about the medium ‘or’ the message, but both together, a ‘means’ AND ‘ends’ movement.

“A society led by emergence” will be one with a living and ever-evolving manifesto, alongside our ever-emerging tools & technologies. Your central point is solid: “I believe the next manifesto—if indeed there’s room for manifestos in the 21st century—must be a collaborative effort.” That’s exactly what I see happening here at FM and in many other points convergence.

This may be a little too abstract & philosophical, but something once struck me a couple years ago: We’re the generation that has finally solved the ultimate riddle of Life: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The Millennial Generation’s answer: Both/And.

Emergence

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 07:42.

Emergence is the phenomena of simple systems which exhibit complex behavior. It’s quite something, but be careful when applying this to human endeavors, especially your own. In an emergent system, the constituent parts — that’s us — are dumb units. It’s a great excuse for not having a plan.

Laying down the tracks as you steam ahead hasn’t worked in the past and is not going to work now, even if we describe it in 21st Century tech-jargon.

Group behavior is in many ways “emergent,” but the simplest and most obvious example is mob violence.

Emergence, Stupidity, Democracy

Submitted by jpb on Thu, 2007-03-15 08:34.

Emergence is the phenomena of simple systems which exhibit complex behavior…In an emergent system, the constituent parts — that’s us — are dumb units.

I’m not so sure that the latter point is a necessary one*. The constituent parts don’t have to be dumb. But they can be. In some systems, that’s the reason emergence is an attractive strategy.

In the political context, the meaningful bit about “emergence” is the flow of control. Rather than command flowing downward from whoever’s on top of the hierarchy, it flows up from the constituency. And that’s what democracy’s supposed to be about, right?

* A little OT, but: would you describe all complex behavior exhibited by dumb constituent units to be emergent? I’m thinking specifically of human beings: a collection of semi-autonomous cells and bacteria which’ve co-evolved into what we consider a “single” human. We could describe this as “emergent”, and the process by which it all came to be is certainly a strong candidate for the term “emergent”, but I don’t know that this sort of emergence is the same thing as all this gushy web-two-point-oh-y goodness about the Very Bright Future Ahead.

Drupal

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Thu, 2007-03-15 09:24.

Linux, Wikipedia, they are all emergent projects - actually what many of us work in, communications networks like blogospheres and decentralized campaigns are technically stigmergic emergent systems. There is a slight difference.

I disagree

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 15:01.

That which is emergent is “Observable in a high-level view of a complex system but barely deducible from the description of its components.”

I believe it’s important to observe the distinction between mass-conjoint/collaborative activity (wikipedia, the stock market) and emergent behavior (mobs, slime mold). Both are important features and phenomena of the 21st Century, but they’re not the same thing.

Indeed

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 15:06.
In the political context, the meaningful bit about “emergence” is the flow of control. Rather than command flowing downward from whoever’s on top of the hierarchy, it flows up from the constituency. And that’s what democracy’s supposed to be about, right?

Don’t confuse politics and democracy. We’re nowhere near developing a working bottom-up politics, and still in the process of frittering away our bottom-up democracy (although this seems to be slowly turning around). This all still doesn’t have much to do with “emergence.” You’re probably better of using the term “democracy” or “democratic.”

We could describe this as “emergent”, and the process by which it all came to be is certainly a strong candidate for the term “emergent”, but I don’t know that this sort of emergence is the same thing as all this gushy web-two-point-oh-y goodness about the Very Bright Future Ahead.

Many behaviors of biological life are what you might call “emergent,” and in fact the study of these sorts of complex systems is what originally drove the field. As for the “gushy web-two-point-oh-y goodness” it’s at best marketing and and at worst total bullshit, IMHO.

I Believe The Wiki Is The Future

Submitted by jpb on Thu, 2007-03-15 08:56.

…teach them well and LEEETTT them lead the way…show them all the beauty they posess inSIIIIIDDDEEEEE

don’t fully agree with the above comment that “we just need to get moving down the road.” That’s seems as “smoke-filled” of a path as a “static” manifesto born of a smoke-filled room.

A big part of my impluse to “keep moving” is an acknowledgment that we don’t know what this going to look like. No single person can. Its gonna be a hive-mind thing. The whole point is that the sun is setting on the era of the Great Man or the Lone Genius. What defines “smoke-filled” is that there’s a room full of Very Important Geniuses and a door on that room and a lock on that door; its a question of access.

So if we don’t know where we’re going, but we do know what we find unattractive about the current system, we have to 1) open that door, and 2) keep moving. What’s wikipedia going to look like in 5 yrs? Will it still resemble its roots as a repository of knowledge? Will its conversational aspects overshadow its role as a reference? We can’t make long-term calls yet. We’re just not that smart, and there’re too many unknowns. All we can do is hedge our bets a little, try to be in the right place at the right time, and hope that nothing goes kablooey. Personally, I’m pretty optimistic. There’s a happy confluence of progressive values and social/technological trends.

“A society led by emergence” will be one with a living and ever-evolving manifesto, alongside our ever-emerging tools & technologies. Your central point is solid: “I believe the next manifesto—if indeed there’s room for manifestos in the 21st century—must be a collaborative effort.” That’s exactly what I see happening here at FM and in many other points convergence.

To flesh it out a little: manifestos of the past have primarily been authored by a single hand; in a few rare occasions by collaboration, but always by a small number of people. Future manifestos can be wikified. I assert there’s a massive difference bw the two; nowhere moreso than in the context of democracy. Its like the difference bw reading a rulebook on baseball and playing baseball.

DESPITE all of this wispy Rumsfeldiand talk of “there are unknown unknowns”, I’d like to take a moment to say that I wholeheartedly agree that we need concrete goals and visions for the short- and (possibly) medium- term. But we need to foreground that with a real hard acceptance of the fact that we can’t plan too far out; too much changes too fast, and if we ossify, we’re dead.

Since I'm the designated Curmudgeon

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Thu, 2007-03-15 15:23.

The point of a Manifesto is to be a statement of principle and intent. While there are plenty of interesting possibilities in terms of what that can mean online, expressions of principle are still likely to come from articulate individuals, and without a high level of focus (read: control over authorship) when it comes to intent, you’re left without anything actionable. Successful wikis have a small number of primary authors.

I’m optimistic about humanity’s future changes, but I don’t have any faith at all in some kind of “inevitable progress” which will come from greater technological/social development. What will work is individual people getting together and doing concrete things. This can happen more and more because we’re lowering the costs of participation. However, without these instances of people actually deciding to take specific actions (which is by its nature and exclusive act) nothing will happen.

Moreover, without some larger organizational framework or network, 1000s of individual actions are just noise. They’re unlikely to lead to any kind of aggregate result, especially in the political context, where an entrenched power-elite remains comfortably in control of national affairs.

I’d like to take a moment to say that I wholeheartedly agree that we need concrete goals and visions for the short- and (possibly) medium- term. But we need to foreground that with a real hard acceptance of the fact that we can’t plan too far out; too much changes too fast, and if we ossify, we’re dead.

Tactical agility — flexibility in method — is clearly necessary, but establishing long-term goals is vital. If all you set is short-term objectives, you’re going to get beat to shit by people who plan two moves ahead and/or have an actual end-point in mind. Goals are goals precisely because they’re ossified. That’s why they’re hard to pick (because usually you fail), and it’s also why they’re important (because otherwise you have no real idea if things are working or not).

Constructive Curmudgendry

Submitted by jpb on Fri, 2007-03-16 17:45.

I think we agree on the overall stuff; we probably wouldn’t be here if we didn’t. So let’s pick a few nits, shall we?

I’m optimistic about humanity’s future changes, but I don’t have any faith at all in some kind of “inevitable progress” which will come from greater technological/social development.

Darn tootin’! The trick there is the word “inevitable”. I’m no utopian; the point isn’t that Michael Arrington or Malcolm Gladwell will make the world a better place. The point is that

  1. society’s undergoing massive structural changes fueled by Moore’s Law and the “information revolution” (or whatever you want to call the project of replacing human information processing with machine information processing), and

  2. those structural changes line up pretty nicely with the ideal of (big “d”) Democracy. Thus far, that ideal’s been implemented reasonably well by an overclass of 19th century thinkers living in a country of mostly farmers. There’ve been incremental changes over the last 200 yrs, but the notion of a representative democracy hasn’t really been challenged yet. It might be about time to take a look at involving more people in the project of self-determination.

Progress isn’t inevitable; its just a hell of a lot more likely than it seemed a few years ago. That makes me a little warm and fuzzy inside.

If all you set is short-term objectives, you’re going to get beat to shit by people who plan two moves ahead and/or have an actual end-point in mind.

Absolutely. There might be a bit of dissonance in this conversation abt what constitutes “short-“, “medium-“, or “long-” term. Kurtzweil makes a really important point that we’d do well to heed: not only is the rate of change increasing (Moore’s Law), but the derivative of the rate of change is increasing. The rate at which things are happening faster is itself increasing. We can’t talk about long-term planning without taking that into account. But that aside:

Yes, tactical planning is necessary. Yes, strategic planning is necessary. Do you need a manifesto for strategy? I don’t know. Will a traditional manifesto be useful towards progressive strategy? I’m not sure that it will. Boomers tried to use their own frame for the Gen Xers, who famously wouldn’t agree that Kurt Cobain was the Voice Of A Generation. Is there any reason to think that Millennials (with a much more diverse and robust media ecosystem) will be any more amenable to that sort of One Size Fits All contract? Mmmmmaybe. But is there any reason to thing a single hand (or small number; say, few enough to fit into a room.) will draft that contract? I doubt it.

SO: rather than getting all meta about a manifesto (because that horse is lookin’ pretty beat from over here), maybe a nice use of this wiki would be to start drafting one. [[What Values Should A Millenial Manifesto Include?]]

Two points

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Sat, 2007-03-17 14:39.
I’m no utopian; the point isn’t that Michael Arrington or Malcolm Gladwell will make the world a better place. The point is that… those structural changes line up pretty nicely with the ideal of (big “d”) Democracy.

They also line up really well with a panopticonal police state, or with social dis-integration as cliques turn inward (c.f China). My point is, there’s no reason to trust that the macro arc of change (information revolution, etc) will yield positive results for Humanity in general, or democracy (it’s “small d”) in particular.

Is there any reason to think that Millennials (with a much more diverse and robust media ecosystem) will be any more amenable to that sort of One Size Fits All contract? Mmmmmaybe. But is there any reason to thing a single hand (or small number; say, few enough to fit into a room.) will draft that contract? I doubt it.

I doubt there will be any single cultural artifact which could be called a “one size fits all” manifesto or contract. However, without a consensus on principles and priorities — which can be expressed, promulgated, remixed a million different ways — we won’t be able to build power to accomplish anything. I believe that it’s incumbent upon us to work on discovering and building that consensus, because it seems clear that the current power elite are not going to undertake that effort, and even if they did their idea of principles and priorities would probably be quite different from (though not necessarily incompatible with) ours.

Another part of that

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Wed, 2007-03-14 23:38.

conversation that Connery and I had was with the indefatigable Lorraine Bieber from the League of Young Voters.

We talked about how our lists are tired. They are tired of the culture of oppression that says that we're up against this big evil Bush Machine, or this big evil military industrial complex, or this Medical Industrial Complex, woe is us, sign our petition.

It worked in 2004 but it won't work anymore. What our lists know but we can't fathom is that Bush is the lamest of lame ducks ever in the history of waterfowl. WHAT'S NEXT!? is what they demand to know.

Koenig is right. What is next must be not just solutions, it must be a sign that this org, LYV, YDA, MFA, is a vital part of the power structure of the future. A power structure that will take the reigns and kick ass.

Progressive electoral groups who bemoan that progressive liberals are boxed out of the primaries by the parties and the money, frankly will not exist after one more cycle. Period. Unless they can do two key things:

  1. prove to the candidates like Hackett that the progressive infrastructure is formidable enough to trust for a run, so much so that they don't have to cave on no brainers to get the $2,300 check from so-and-so...
  2. encourage our lists that we're worth investing in. That we get power. We understand how to leverage it and how to affect change -- AND we are committed to building our presence as a power center in ways other than through garbage email blasts. We have a ground game. And a network. ie. a machine of our own that listens to THEM.

To bitch and moan about your lack of health care is not a winning impetus for community-building anymore. It must be coupled with a "let's write a single payer health care policy and share on the wiki who to call to scream at in rotating shifts on the phone from 8:30 am until 6:00pm about the need for whatever we're pushing." And then when our policy is done, we hand it off to the chairman of that committee and call in rotating shifts on the phone from 8:30 am until 6:00pm until the bill leaves committee and heads to a vote. And then we go national with our advocacy and shaming of conservatives.

Interactive flash ads that say, "Have no heath care? Sign up for my emails," they are insulting. An action plan that participants feel invested in, that's a winning strategy.

This is hard. Fighting Bush was easy. Building a power structure is hard. What we have to do now is hard. Prepare.

Bowers checks in on post-Bush Progressive Activism

Submitted by jpb on Tue, 2007-05-01 05:51.

This thread’s been quiet for a while, but Bowers checked in with [[http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/1/0535/34095|some thoughts about “activist endgame”]] and it seems like a good time to check back in. He frames the question nicely: not “what do we do when Bush isn’t around to galvanize activists”, but “when will the work of repairing our country be finished?”

The flip answer is “never” and its true; politics are personal, and anyone who cares enough to be involved during these dark years (esp 2000-2004) probably cares enough to stay involved for the rest of their lives.

But Chris raises a point worth discussing: imagine yourself on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The wind is in your hair, the sun is shining. You’re standing at attention, awaiting the words of a wise, heroic leader who commands your respect and admiration.

What does a progressive “Mission Accomplished” look like?