I had a pleasant conversations with a Progressive Radio Network (PRN) host, Bill Thompson, who used to do their Tea Party show, some weeks ago. (PRN hosts a wide spectrum of political viewpoints, including Green and progressive Democrats.) I gave Bill a call today, to pitch the idea of mobilizing PRN's audience to form an immediate, boots on the ground, electoral threats at the ready, response to Protect IP. PRN was started by uber-activist Gary Null, but for some reason Null seems perpetually unwilling to challenge the PRN audience to manifest full-on, organized activism. (I note some exceptions in my piece.) What follows is a copy of my email to Bill.
Email Title: Suggestion for immediate mobilization of PRN audience to fight Protect IP (just for starters)
Dear Bill,
Protect IP is a transpartisan issue, which has people up in arms, from both dailykos and redstate. There are the usual calls to send emails to your Senator (it already passed the House): http://www.dailykos.com/...
One thing that I've considered striking about Progressive Radio Network (PRN) is that the PRN audience is rarely pushed to do much more than the occasional letter/email/fax to Congress. The exceptions that come to mind are the calls to fight mandatory vaccines in NY State, and also, more recently, to fight nuclear power starting with the Indian Point power plant.
I think that this is a gross under-utilization of PRN's potential; furthermore, it ignores the recent activist lessons taught to us by the Tea Parties, the Wisconsin recall efforts (by Democrats) and even Occupy Wall Street. All of those groups have had an effect, all have utilized "boots on the ground", and while not true of OWS, the other 2 groups both made electoral threats, and carried many of them out.
I'm basically writing this email to suggest an immediate mobilization of the PRN audience to fight Protect IP (at least in its current form) now, and other transpartisan issues going forward. I'm now going to suggest boots on the ground (primarily), directed towards fellow citizens (not lawmakers - they can get the news of their impending, forced retirements from their networks) and making electoral threats of (for now) a purely negative kind. (Eventually, we want to make electoral threats simultaneously positive and negative, saying "not only will we vote you out" but also "we have the bios of 5 suitable people online of prospective candidates that we would love to replace you with.") Boots on the ground means just about any public-facing effort to engage fellow citizens. Dailykos has been chronicling some of the efforts make to recall Scott Walker, and I must say that they are being pleasingly creative. I made many suggestions for engaging the public in a document that I delivered, about 1 1/2 years ago, to Gary Null's office. Also, I have posted some more recent ideas on political blogs, such as here: Progressives are Stupid if they don't seize their opportunity to educate their Republican neighbors. One of those ideas I stole from Gary, himself. See How squeegees can help save America, and your sanity - going beyond blogging to the choir .
Rather than trying to build new web infrastructure within the next few hours (it's unknown whether we have hours or days to straighten out Protect IP before the Senate votes on it; also, Obama has threatened a veto if the odious provisions aren't stripped out, but who trusts that liar-in-chief?), I'm recommending that PRN create a couple of hundred meetup groups ASAP, spread througout the US, and then get all PRN hosts to appeal to members to join boots-on-the-ground efforts to roll back ProtectIP. Meetup.com charges something like $12-$15/month for the ability to organize a meetup group. However, organizers can organize 3 different groups. Hence, you could cover a medium to low population state for 12-15 dollars. It's such little money that, in Phase 2, you can ask audience members who are not in the targeted meetup group locations to create their own meetup organizations, to be coordinated through PRN.
Basically, the meetups would not only educate about ProtectIP, they'd ask for sigatures of citizens who promise to vote against whatever bozo votes for any odious version of the the bill. Ideally, these signatures would be uploaded to a web site (which means you'd want people to print their names, also), say along with their city of residence. I'd also recommend hitting up signees with requests to join the new movement being formed, which solicited their signatures. (There's not much point to doing this on a one-off basis. There are an unending stream of outrages flowing out of Washington.)
I was at Zuccotti Park recently, and it's mostly empty. I expect MOST occupations to be evicted, eventually, which I have mixed feelings about. The occupation was an eyesore, and, as exciting as the drumming was, I can well understand sleep-deprived neighbors being furious.
On the whole, though, I'm very glad OWS came about. And I want to see that sort of activist energizing of the public to continue. However, from what I observed at Zuccotti Park, it's more likely to be 1 step forward, 2 steps back, without some changes. We are currently at risk of OWS becoming a mere footnote in history. That would be a tragedy, IMO.
A PRN led, transpartisan effort which looks to constantly engage citizens in public areas (but not at 3 am; and not by sleeping in parks) might be just the thing. We need to embrace what is good and useful about OWS, and let the rest of it go.
I'd appreciate it if you thought about this, and if you think it has potential, to bring it up with Gary Null. Not sure that Protect IP threatens PRN that much, but the general trend towards totalitarianism (and in which Protect IP fits, very snugly) does.
Best,
{name redacted}
Here's another dailykos article on the subject, by founder Markos Moulitsas:
Congress is close to destroying the internet (no hyperbole)