Open Plea to the Blogosphere for Election Year at War

There is only one thing we can do, and that's lead by example.

for us all!
Glad you took the time to get it on the record --
JJ

All the polarizing and pumping up the partisan volume isn't practical anyway - as in, it doesn't work! It inexorably and systematically deafens any audience we otherwise might hope to energize for our causes and principles, until they can't hear and don't care about the whole show. Then we all lose:

. . .how political noise machines distort what we value most in public policy, culture, art and education. Amplified sound, in effect, may diminish rather than amplify our individualism, our audience, even our own ability to pay attention or care.

[quote=In "Pipe Down! We Can Heardly Hear You", ANTHONY TOMMASINI]

. . . when amplification took hold on Broadway, audiences inevitably grew less alert, more passive. It began changing every element of the musical, from the lyrics (which grew less subtle and intricate), to the subject matter and musical styles (the bigger, the plusher, the schlockier, the better).
Musicals became less literate and more obvious, and stars like John Raitt, who had a burnished baritone voice of operatic dimensions, became marginalized. . . .no one paid much attention to the sappy lyrics. .[/quote] .

We're suffering quite a nasty streak of this in home education politics, for example, among the folks anyone might expect to respect --if not champion!-- individual choice and experimentation, rather than community controls, dictates, limits, and self-appointed policing to force social homogenization.

All in all, too much focus on (and ceaseless amplification of) small differences, with not nearly enough creative impetus toward harmony, symphony, improvisation, beauty, truth and inspiration.
Both liberals and conservatives could speak to such deafening discord, too, or at least Ds and Rs, from what I read . . .

Jesus, don't make me think too hard. i sweat when i go on record.

i pledge allegiance to liberal principles for the betterment of people, not parties.

all this discourse should resemble a symphony, in my opinion. sometimes we clash cymbals; sometimes we ring small hand bells.

...we'd just not mug each other in the back parking lot so often before the show even starts!

Thanks for sitting in to jam, Tara. I've been finding your improv and riffs compelling, or should I say riveting. (arresting?)

Who here is for public compulsion and imposition of standards? Who is for private, individual liberties and choice?
***********
Against the former and for the latter.

But not against suing the pants of the government for wiretapping illegally. Not against insisting that some things are not a private choice -- like which laws the President has to follow. So there’s a standard I’m in favor of -- adhering to the Constitution if you are an elected official. Which of course leads to who gets to interpret it. . .

I’m for government that stays out of my personal life and personal choices. Except to help me achieve them. So I’m for public school and for being able to choose something other than public school. I’m for drastically changing public school, but that’s a completely separate issue. I’m for reproductive choice. And for tax dollars paying for all of the choices -- including the ones others may not choose.

I’m for being able to choose the best public school in my area. I’m not for the idea that I should choose one school over the other because, while it may hurt my child, it helps a larger cause. (See this link for today’s version of this: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/education/15316977.htm
And
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/education/15322797.htm )

I’m for choosing some other education alternative --like homeschooling, or a charter school, or charterhomeschooling -- if that meets my needs. Without hearing a lot of guff that I am contributing to the downfall of a sacred institution.

And we hear this spewing from the public school side as well as the homeschooling side. Apparently, any choice will bring out the crowd that claims you are destroying their choice!

Does that answer any part of your question?

Nance

Similar to Tara I feel a sense of panic coming on :-) but kudos for your astutely astute astute questions.

It's easy to see I'd take a bullet for my friends or even place a bullet if faced with that urgent need, and yet I'm sitting peacefully eating my lunch!

So what would I die for? I prefer to ask the question of myself what will I live for, you know. I've been willing to die out of hopelessness in the past and now it's more hopeful for me to live. What will I live for? It makes sense to me to devote my lifework to eliminating racism on the planet within the next hundred years. Of all the confusions I think racism is the kingpin which is holding all oppression in place.

And simultaneously see parenting well as hopeful and integral to the fight.

Thanks for your post.

Have I completely overlooked something?

Sea's Blog

Hi ladies, what a pleasure to see you gathered here!

Two thoughts off the top of my head - one, to Sea. This American Life (I think it was) did a great piece last month interviewing random folk to ask these three questions: what do you live for, what would you die for, and what would you KILL for.

Good stuff, I'll go find the link in a minute and post it so y'all can listen and think more.

Two, to Nance and Tara - check this out! I just came across it, about how lib orgs abuse canvassers with below minimum wage etc etc -- fire them for trying to unionize. A perfect example of why I wrote this blogpost and why I really appreciate all you guys (girls?) and your actual thinking abilities and willingness to use them, rather than just your (admittedly impressive!) strategy and tactical trench experience.

In the last 30 years, canvassers like Miller have become the most
common—if unsung—figures in political activism, going door-to-door or
standing on busy street corners to talk to people about various public
interest issues. It took Miller a minute to tick through the long list
of campaigns for which he’d raised money: solar energy bills, forest
protection, Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign. All were operated by the
same company: the Fund for Public Interest Research (commonly known as
“the Fund”), a national nonprofit founded by the Public Interest
Research Groups (PIRGs) in 1982. Since then, canvassers for the
now-ubiquitous state PIRGs have raised over $350 million and gathered
more than 20 million signatures for causes ranging from environmental
protection to gay rights. The Fund holds a near-monopoly on the canvass
industry, running 30 to 60 offices each summer, with thousands of
canvassers working on dozens of campaigns.

And yet, the canvassers are not members of any particular
organization—they are outsourced labor, often making less than minimum
wage. It’s not surprising that the average career is so short—few of
them stick it out.

. . .Six weeks earlier, the
Fund had shuttered his office. It seems he was too scrappy for his
employers, particularly in his role as a union steward.

——————————————-

When Miller was hired in the spring of 2002, the street office was
closed; he didn’t even know one had existed until a year later, when the
Fund re-opened it. Some months later, he discovered the reason for the
lapse: In early 2002, the street canvassers had requested a petition to
unionize from the state labor board. Within a week of the petition’s
filing, the street office was shut down by the Fund. . .

OK I'm getting frustrated. I KNOW I heard this thing on FM radio, almost certainly NPR, and it was the week in early July that my 12-year-old nephew was visiting, because I remember hearing it with him in the car as I fetched him from a couple of hours away. We talked about it; I asked him what HE would live, die and kill for. His answer was like most folks interviewed, even though he's a kid. You live, die and kill for the people you love. And having them to "live" for is the most important. Without that first, the dying and killing is empty. (Like the Middle East?)

Anyway, can someone help me FIND it??
I Googled it and also went through This American Life archives, no clue where it disappeared to . . .

This guy wrote about it.

http://mkw313.blogspot.com/2005/12/
three-questions.html

which led me to this:

http://www.wpr.org/webcasting/
ideas_audioarchives.cfm?Code=bok

But now I can't find the show. . .

Nance