‘Tis the Season

December 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Winter Solstice, that is. When it’s cold, and the days are short and grey, and any light presents itself as promise. Generosity enlightens, and for those of us who are puzzled and saddened by the dominance of exclusionist religious organizations in the press of charities soliciting our gifts, the list compiled by Techskeptic will be helpful. It’s titled “Atheist Charities”, but Techskeptic explains, “I am considering charities that do not promote a specific religion to be an atheist charity.” Seva Foundation logoSo The American Red Cross is on the list, as well as Doctors Without Borders, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Oxfam International, and a lot of other organizations whose work we read about in news accounts through the year but are liable to forget in this giving time. There are a few on the list that I’d known about but forgotten, like the Seva Foundation, and still others, like Population Connection and Mercy Corps, of which I’d never heard but which look to be doing really good work.

If you’re inclined to be generous at this time in the year when things are dark and this time in our history when troubles abound, this is a list that can stimulate that inclination and give it something worthwhile to incline toward.

Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.

Filed Under: respect rationality, take part

I Love a Parade

February 25, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Source: Orcinus
Sara Robinson tosses out what I think is a great idea: a Liberal Pride Parade, on the model of the Gay Pride Parades that are now held around the world and have become, in many cities, civic events that cut across gender divides, or even, in some cases, significant tourist attractions. She points out the small scale and diffuse sense of purpose with which those parades started, and the much more important purposes they’ve come to serve.

It was a street party; but it also put the community’s growing institutional strength on display each year, established a forum for the sharing of energy and ideas, and educated millions of straight people (who, in turn, educated others). Doing this year after year gave local gay communities a reason to get organized, and stay organized — so when trouble came calling, they could organize to fight it without a moment of confusion or hesitation.

Sara asks whether it’s time to adopt the idea and start holding Liberal Pride celebrations nationally. And she lists a number of benefits—the chance to assert our strength in the marketplace of ideas; the fact that such an event will build a widespread sense of community, even in places where liberals are a minority or have been driven underground by the chest-thumping bullies on the other side; the chance to take back a noble name that our enemies have tried to demean by using it as a pejorative; the opportunity to challenge companies widely supported by liberals, e.g. Whole Foods and REI, to return the favor with event sponsorships; and, most importantly, increasing our security at a time when the right wing is ratcheting its eliminationist rhetoric way past any responsible level. But the benefit that I spark to most is the one that Sara labels “Joy and Hope”.

These events should be massively, wildly, unapologetically fun; and fabulous PR for the cause. Without the Seriousness of Purpose required by a demonstration, a Liberal Pride festival can just loosen up and relax. It’s a celebration of all things progressive — and we do it right, the Biggest Asshole Rule kicks in when everyone in town realizes that compared to us, the conservatives are bunch of uptight, self-righteous stuffed shirts who couldn’t throw a decent party if Reagan’s resurrection depended on it.

And where there’s fun, there’s hope. People, we have gotten pretty dismal over the past 30 years. And I hate to break it to you — but, as desperate as this nation is, nobody follows pessimists. We are not going to get our political mojo back for good until we remember how to find joy in this work again. Pride celebrations could be a place to start rediscovering the lost art of raising hell and having fun.

And she points out that such celebrations, divested of any action agenda, can help restore the balance between work and play.

Having an annual just-for-fun day would enable us to offload this social function from demonstrations and protests. It seems like a lot of people turn out for demonstrations because they enjoy the street party, and the sense of connection with the larger left community. Unfortunately, … this diverse and celebratory atmosphere usually works against the intent of the protest, too often diluting the focus and message into utter incoherence and making any kind of real paradigm-busting direct action damned near impossible.

If we have annual events specifically dedicated [to] diversity and celebration and scratching that street party itch, it might liberate our protests to evolve into other more creative, focused, and effective forms. Like King Bertram, when we work, we’ll really work. And when we play, we’ll really play. Both will be vastly better when we stop trying to conflate the two into the same events.

The comments on Sara’s post are generally supportive. Several comments ask when such an event might be held, and the general sentiment seems to focus on Labor Day. My choice for a Liberal Pride parade would be Sunday, the day before Labor Day. That would associate the celebration with the international labor movement, but it would be on a day that typically has no major civic celebrations associated with it. If you like the idea, hustle on over to the Orcinus post and add your two cents worth.
Filed Under: clip, observe the passing scene, take part, vote Democratic

“What is truth?” said jesting Pilate….

January 26, 2007 By Leave a Comment

“…and would not stay for an answer.”
Francis Bacon

Some folks over at ScienceBlogs are conducting a web experiment, dealing with “viral marketing”. I’m not sure I understand it, but I’m willing to play along.

So, here you will find truth. Go for it.

Filed Under: browse the web, take part

Support the Commons

November 3, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Lawrence LessigThe work on this site is published under a Creative Commons licence, which says that the work is free for anyone to use, as long as they give proper attribution, don’t charge for it, and, if they republish it, do so under the same license. Creative Commons is the creation of Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, who was motivated by the desire to find something less restrictive, and less damaging to the creative exchange of ideas, than standard copyright, but which still reserved to the author of a work some say about how that work got used.

There are a number of different Creative Commons licenses; you can go to their website and select just what set of restrictions you want to place on works that you create, and the website then generates a license for you, complete with a graphic image that links to a human readable version of the license; that in turn links to a full legal version of the license that should get by even the most nit-picky lawyers.

This video tells you a little more about the CC concept:

And the best thing about the video is that every time you watch it, or get someone else to watch it, you help support the Creative Commons Foundation. The Foundation has formed a partnership with Revver, a new viral video network that generates revenue by tacking a short, very unobtrusive ad onto the tail end of every video placed on their site. They share the revenue generated by the advertising 50-50 with the video’s creator. Until the end of the year, they are giving 100% of the revenue generated by the several Creative Commons videos on their site to the CC Foundation.

So please, click away. And then go watch some of the other CC videos; they are interesting and entertaining, and each time you play one through, you’re doing a little bit to help a very good and innovative enterprise.

And if you want to do more, I urge you to support the Commons by buying CC-branded merchandise or donating to their fund-raising campaign.

Filed Under: observe the passing scene, take part

Participatory Democracy

July 6, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Jimmy WalesThe inestimable Jimmy Wales, founder of the invaluable Wikipedia, about which I’ve blogged in the past, has launched a new venture in citizen participation, the Central Campaign Wikia. In his Mission Statement, Wales explains his purpose:

I am launching today a new Wikia website aimed at being a central meeting ground for people on all sides of the political spectrum who think that it is time for politics to become more participatory, and more intelligent.

This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.

This is what I was hoping to do when I created the pdparty.us site, but I had neither the software engineering skills, the time, or the position within the blogosphere to get any traction with that effort. Jimmy Wales is in a better position, at least with regard to the first and last of those characteristics, and I think what he’s begun has a decent chance of evolving into something as important as Wikipedia, and even more beneficial to our society. I’ve put a link to the pdparty.us site up on the Campaigns Wikia site, and I’m going to get the reverse link up as well. If I can figure out how to do it, I’ll try to integrate some of the ideas from the pdparty site into the emerging ideas on the Campaigns Wikia site.

I’ve joined the Campaigns Wikia mail list, and I’d urge you to do so as well. Register at the site, learn how to contribute to the discussions, and let’s see if we can get something going here that will take shape before the politicians and big media get a chance to grab it and throttle it.

I’m excited, and I’m encouraged.

Filed Under: take part