Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, October 04, 2008

MundiMuster! Bold Progressives: Take the Pledge

The Election Is the Starting Line, Not the Finish Line. No More Business As Usual. Take the Pledge and Pass It On.
For some reason, we can never find money for kids' health care, clean energy, or other progressive priorities. But when it comes to right-wing priorities like war and giveaways to failed Wall Street executives, Republicans always find the money and Democrats go along...

ENOUGH. Anyone with common sense will vote for Barack Obama and Democratic congressional candidates this November. But it's time for citizens to fight back and take this pledge -- will you join in signing it?
"In 2009 and beyond, I will be part of the movement that pushes Democrats to be bold progressives -- and that helps pass a bold progressive agenda into law."
What does taking the pledge mean? It means that when Democratic "leaders" tell Americans we must settle for watered-down solutions while bold back-benchers in the House or Senate are pushing strong progressive alternatives, we will clamor for those bold alternatives together until they are passed into law.

What else does it mean? It means we will turn those bold back-benchers into leaders. Just as grassroots progressives fueled Howard Dean's election as Democratic National Committee chair and pushed aside insiders who wanted more of the same, we will make sure that Democratic "leaders" are the ones who actually show bold progressive leadership.

What else does it mean? It means we will no longer just write checks to the Democratic Party and assume they know how best to spend it. We'll give our money to bold progressive candidates -- bypassing the influence of corporate lobbyists and entrenched Democratic insiders who are used to picking the winners and using their purse strings to make bold progressives in Congress fall in line.

The era of Nixonian cultural division is over. The Big Con epoch of Reaganomic looting in the name of cruel short-sighted market fundamentalism is over. The rule of the self-appointed would-be aristocrats of neoliberal-neoconservative corporate-militarism is over.

Else, the American democratic experiment will fail, else the human race is truly in peril.

We peer-to-peer progressives see things very clearly, and we speak our minds very clearly, too, and to a powerful, general, and still gathering hearing.

Progressives have always been strong and we have usually been right, and now we know this about ourselves again and are acting accordingly.

We are educating, agitating, and organizing peer-to-peer.

And if you're not with us it's time for you to spend more time with your families so that we can clean up this mess together, solve our shared problems of artificial poverty, organized lawlessness, and ecological catastrophe, and build a world worthy of our collaborative intelligence and diverse flourishing.

1 comment:

jimf said...

Dale wrote:

> We peer-to-peer progressives see things very clearly. . .
> We are educating, agitating, and organizing peer-to-peer.

I know what you mean here, but every time I see this
phrase on your blog ("peer-to-peer"), I have to remind
myself that this is a **derivative** use of the term,
and has nothing to do with ed2k:// , Ares Vista, or
PeerGuardian vs. Media Defender.

;->