Activism

There are 118 posts filed in Activism (this is page 4 of 12).

Can the use of semaphore be useful today?

Ken Smith recently wrote about the use of semaphore and RSS in transmitting information. He relates an experience where he organized students to send a message across a university campus. The historic use of semaphore flags was to communicate between ships. In the 18th century, the “optical telegraph” was developed, and messages could be sent from Amsterdam to Venice in an hour. With the development of the electric telegraph, the use of the optical telegraph fell to the wayside.

Today, people can use RSS readers to monitor posts on websites, and use other social media systems (Twitter, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky) to do the same. The rssCloud protocol also provides almost instant notification. I think that the question Ken Smith is asking is “can a group of individuals use this to be able to respond to a crisis“. The answer is “Yes”, but people “would have to be trained to do more than just send or receive a message on the system”.

So – do we choose to do something here? What crisis should we work to avoid?

Democracy is not a spectator sport

Several weeks ago, I read a Substack post with this same title, as well as a Vox article titled “The courts were never going to save America from Donald Trump”. The bottom line of both articles were that the only way to defeat Donald Trump was going to be at the ballot box. But what else should we do? In my post/podcast earlier this week on “The Resistance”, I also pointed out that “doing something else” meant doing more than writing a blog post or a social media post or a podcast. I did review one of the resources I linked to in my resistance post, and it offered 3 concrete recommendations for taking action:

  • Once a month, show up to either a trigger event protest with game change potential or a small, group-led action.
  • Once a week, put pressure on decision makers with phone calls or at town halls.
  • Vote for and do get out the vote work for movement candidates in local, state, and federal elections.

In addition, the resource gives some good guidance about finding or forming a group to take action. Let’s get out there and win this thing!

Where is the Resistance? (post + podcast)

I decided to record a podcast about recent posts from Dave Winer and Ken Smith concerning “the Resistance”.

I am including some links to items I mentioned in the podcast:

Dave Winer’s original comment on Scripting News

Same comment on Twitter, with Ken Smith reply

Another Twitter post from Dave Winer, giving an idea for a resistance movement

Expanded post from Dave Winer

Ken Smith summary (part 1) (part 2)

Threads post from Ken Smith, with Dave Winer reply

Atlanta activism podcast post

Lifelong Activist site from Hillary Rettig

Activism links collected by Andy Sylvester collected as an OPML file

Americans of Conscience checklist for April 5, 2024 – concrete things you can do

“Resistance Guide: How to Sustain the Movement to Win” – Written in 2017, the PDF linked to this page gives a short history of resistance movements in the US and provides ideas.

Activism toolkit by Ken Smith

The topic of text boxes

Recently, in another post on the subject of textcasting, Dave Winer made a comment about text boxes:

Every time you see a tiny little textbox that’s a sure clue they’re trying to own you, and hoping you don’t notice.

http://scripting.com/2024/02/01.html#a154043

I think this is a reach. In my opinion, the simplest reason to use a text box for text entry is that users are used to it and it is easy to implement (using Occam’s Razor here). Another explanation is that it is use of prior art, as Dave Winer has written about before (see here, here, and here). No sinister plan to “own” anyone here. Could text editors be better/have more features? Sure they could! Could writing apps cooperate with each other and have APIs? Sure they could! Should people be demanding these things? Sure…maybe….or maybe they could make those things happen…or maybe they could submit a feature request….

If the software is open source (Mastodon et al), someone could make their own changes. If the software is a service provided by a company that does not charge for the service (hmmm…Twitter, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky come to mind), it seems more difficult for users to request features and drive changes. If a group of users REALLLY wanted something and no other app seemed interested, maybe they could create their own product (thinking Kickstarter here). To me, it comes down to this: how bad do you want this?

Finally, another take on this sentence comes from Ken Smith:

Ken Smith comment on Dave Winer’s “text box” statement.

Based on Ken’s comment, I take this as “any antisocial behavior” in the blank – racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination, manipulation…the list can go on and on as Ken points out. This Quora thread has some good points about someone trying to “own” someone.

Seth Godin nails it again, identifying powers that we all have but might not be aware of:

The power to speak up, to participate, to invent, to lead, to encourage, to vote, to connect, to organize, to march, to write, to say ‘no’ or to say ‘yes’.

https://seths.blog/2024/01/unaware/

New York Times: “Here Is One Way to Steal the Presidential Election” by Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman – Gives an overview of how state legislators could direct electors on how to cast their electoral votes, and some ideas to stop this. I would say this could happen – let’s be careful out there!

New York Magazine: Do You Remember the Ecstasy of Electing Joe Biden? How the coalition that defeated Donald Trump crumbled. – I don’t agree with the title of this post. I think that coalitions can be rebuilt to keep Trump out of the Oval Office, but there has been some “splintering” since January 2021.