Action

There are 64 posts filed in Action (this is page 5 of 7).

Using non-violence techniques to achieve goals

In a recent post on Waging Nonviolence, organizer George Lakey related a story about use of non-violence training and techniques in a boycott of South African sport teams during the apartheid era. Through these trainings, anti-racism and anti-apartheid groups were able to work together to come up with a plan to stage de-centralized civil disobedience events. The New Zealand government could not handle this approach, and cancelled a tour by the South African rugby team.

With the upcoming mid-term elections, there may be problems resulting from election protestors and disrupters. These techniques may be of use in this troubled time. We will have to wait, watch, and perhaps take action to preserve our democracy through civil disobedience.

Upholding our democracy

The United States is having challenges in maintaining and upholding democracy. In Oregon, all of the candidates for governor have all called each other “extreme” for one reason or another. In many states, people who deny the results of the 2020 presidential election won their primaries and are candidates for high office. The Democracy Day journalism collaborative held an event in September 2022 to highlight issues and seek solutions. In a post on Waging Nonviolence, the group outlined seven ideas for coming together as partisans for democracy:

  • Look beyond electoral politics
  • Define “anti-democratic” behavior beyond partisan identities
  • Bridge the understanding of “anti-democratic” behavior to mobilize against it
  • Calling out toxic othering
  • Now is not the time for neutrality
  • Partisanship for democracy versus bipartisanship
  • A cross-ideological democracy movement is both necessary and possible

This post is excellent reading, with many links to supporting material. As for each of us, let us do what we can to help uphold our democracy.

More thoughts on organizing information for use

I recently created a web app to use the opmlPackage NPM module from Dave Winer to display the contents of four OPML files at one time. The app uses the includes feature, which can read other OPML files from a single OPML file and save the content locally for processing. I created four OPML files myself for this test app, but the four files could have been created by anyone. 

So the main benefit of the OPML Includes site is that it can display multiple outlines (which can be edited by multiple people, not just one person) and have the content refreshed whenever someone goes to the site. If the content is changing on a frequent basis, this could be an easy way to see the updates. If the content is fairly static, it may not be significant. In that case, single page apps could be used to view the outlines separately, so perhaps there is not much benefit in using the includes feature in opmlPackage.

Ken Smith has had some thoughts about potential uses:

“And I’m still musing about uses. About the slide down into the archive problem of blogging and social media, and maybe using the app as a partial remedy. Keeping the good stuff in view, and adding to the good stuff over time and linking the good stuff to a wider circle of relevant content. Taking the web part of the web seriously rather than letting the slide down into the archive turn it all into ghostly memories.”

Again, an OPML outline, rendered using existing tools, could provide a way to collect that information in a single document. In 2010, Jay Rosen’s Studio 20 journalism program at New York University partnered with ProPublica to research the area of “explainers”, or explanatory journalism at a site called explainer.net. The site is still available on the Internet Archive. I think that this is a method of addressing the “slide down into the archive” problem, but it does take effort. Someone has to create such an explainer, and then monitor the Web for items related to that topic, read and curate them, and add them to the explainer as needed. The main problem is someone has to have the desire and interest to collect information on a topic and share that information. If there is no one with that interest, no tool for collecting and displaying that information is going to be of much use.

Resistance to learning something new

In “The Art Of War”, author Steven Pressfield talks about the concept of “resistance” as it relates to creative work, that writers/creators struggle to create and have to overcome obstacles (mostly self-induced) to create. I had the experience recently to have to learn how to use a tool for work, and to figure out some tool feature for personal use. In the work instance, I delayed installing the tool, because I knew it was take a significant effort to get up to speed. When I did try to install it, the installation failed, so I had to find an open source alternative. Then, I had to learn the quirks of the open source tool before I could use it effectively, which was a significant effort.

In the personal tool issue, I had three browser tabs with tutorials/examples waiting for weeks for me to look at it, but I didn’t. I just knew that reviewing those was not going to be enough, and that it would take several hours to get the understanding of the tool feature. I finally had some free time to invest in this tool over the weekend, and – sure enough – it took several hours of reading, searching, and running examples to get a basic understanding of the tool feature – ugh!

In these examples, I resisted getting started because I felt I would have to make a significant investment of time and effort. That feeling was proved out both times. For work, I eventually had to get that task done, so I had to work on understanding the tool. For personal use, I waited until I had the time and motivation to press forward with figuring out the tool feature. I guess I should have looked back at one of my previous posts to see that a way to make progress is to figure out a first step and then take it. I hope writing this down will help me in the future, and will help my readers as well.

Whose list is it?

I make “to-do” lists all the time. I try to do them electronically, but the most successful ones are just written on a pad with a pen, and completed items get struck off the list.

My wife also makes lists of things to do, but when she does that, I tend to think of it as “her list”, not my list. If there was something on her list that I was going to do, I would add it to “my list”

So, it is important when making a list to consider “Am I doing the things on this list, or do I think someone else is going to do things on this list?”. It would be good to have direct communication with anyone you have an expectation of doing something on “your list”.

Announcing Portland Protest News

In July 2020, I created a news river to track what was going on in the Portland, Oregon area regarding the daily protests (George Floyd/Black Lives Matter). That river has been very helpful to me, but I felt that there was not a good place to capture the highlights of that river. After discussions with Ken Smith, professor of English at Indiana University-South Bend, I decided to start a project to collect those highlights, document them, and to try to provide some insights into the ongoing struggle in Portland regarding police brutality.

That project has created Portland Protest News, a news site summarizing the events in Portland related to the ongoing protests. The site publishes a daily list of links to articles and videos about the Portland protests. Users can sign up for a daily email with links of the day, subscribe via RSS, or go directly to the site. If you have any interest in following this topic, Portland Protest News is a valuable resource.

Thoughts on the political social network

Earlier this week, Dave Winer referenced the concept of a political social network in his summary of the Democratic National Convention:

 I wish one of these politicians had a practical vision — of a political social network that mobilized us 365 days a year, every year, not just when there’s an election.

The post he links to is called “The Getting-It-Done Party” from 2016, where he describes one of the successful aspects of Obama’s first presidential campaign:

One of the reasons Obama’s campaign was so successful was that it was distributed. Obama supporters met in people’s living rooms and canvassed together, knocking on doors, networking with people in their neighborhoods, for two-way communication. Not only did ideas flow from the center to the edges, but they went the other way too. This was amazing.

He goes on to say that Obama moved away from this after being elected, and how his administration did not continue the practices that helped get them elected. Here is his thought on what needs to be done:

What I think needs to be done — involve people in doing good work, with others, to make the world work better for everyone. Sort of a Uber for helping put the human race back on track for success. A Tinder of good deeds. Find me something I can do to help right now, close to home. And another thing and another.

Winer suggests that politicians who could help make this happen and start doing that good work could show they could make a difference before being elected.

I have been having some discussions with Ken Smith about how to improve/increase democratic involvement in our respective communities (Portland, Oregon and South Bend, Indiana). Ken posted a link to Dave Winer’s comments on the political social network, and I responded saying we need this. Ken then replied:

I wonder how much of the necessary toolkit already exists? Can we name the tools? The necessary skills and insights?

I have spent some time thinking about the phrase “political social network”. It seems to lead to the conclusion that there is a political solution. Here are some resources that I have found that do not stem from or flow from any organized political party:

Americans of Conscience Checklist – A crowdsourced checklist of actions that citizens can take to promote democracy, their current focus is on voter access and voting rights. The organizer, Jennifer Hofmann, will be teaching an activism course in September 2020.

Mutual Aid Societies – There appears to be many efforts to organize aid among neighborhoods and communities across the US. Some areas that have good web presence are:

After reading through this material, I think this is the “Getting-Things-Done” party in action. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.