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The fall issue of
Yes Magazine is devoted to these
issues...
Government of the People
. . . Shall Not Perish
The 2004
election may be the most critical in decades. Throughout the U.S.,
grassroots voter drives, teach-ins, unusual alliances, and internet
networking are helping to bring forth an agenda founded in the American
values of liberty and justice for all.
From the Fall 2003 issue of
YES! Magazine
2004
survival guide
by Rik Langendoen & Megan Tady
How
you can get involved in
transforming U.S. politics
Research the issues
Public Agenda,
founded by social scientist Daniel Yankelovich and former secretary of state
Cyrus Vance, provides non‑partisan information on policy issues, including
crime, gay rights, immigration, and others, and public opinion research.
www.publicagenda.org
Urban Think Tank,
a source of non‑partisan
analysis of political, economic, and cultural issues of concern to people of
color, with the perspective of the hip hop generation.
http://urbanthinktank.org,
718/670‑3739
Truthout, CommonDreams,
and the Progressive Review,
are progressive newswires
with critical news and political commentary you might not find in the
mainstream media. Find them at:
www.truthout.org,
www.commondreams.org,
www.prorev.com.
Get
cyber‑active
Progressive Portal
allows for "easy online
activism" by providing form letters about issues such as the environment and
the media to send to elected officials.
www.progressiveportal.org
Move0n.org
with
an international network of more than two million online activists, has
raised millions of dollars for political campaigns and ad campaigns, and
helped organize peace vigils and meetings with political leaders.
www.moveon.org
TrueMajority,
a
non‑profit founded by Ben Cohen, co‑founder of Ben and Jerry's, makes
working for social justice fast and free. Registered users of the web site
can take action by sending faxes to Congress and other national leaders and
receive monthly issue alerts.
www.truemajority.com,
212/243‑3416
Congress.org,
a
"one‑stopshop," allows users to identify and contact elected leaders,
research congressional voting records, post letters to leaders online, and
create and post "Soapbox" action alerts to enlist others on your issues.
http://congress.org
Working for Change,
a website provided by
Working Assets, offers opinion, news, and action opportunities by allowing
people to speak out on urgent issues, read informative columns, and e‑mail
comics to friends.
www.workingforchange.com
Common Cause,
a
grassroots lobbying organization, promotes accountable and effective
government. Its online CauseNet Action Center allows users to identify and
contact elected officials, receive action alerts about recent legislation,
and get contact information for local media.
www.commoncause.org
Institute
for
America's Future,
organized by citizen activists, works to strengthen a
progressive agenda and create a fair economy for all by organizing campaigns
centered on issues such as budget cuts and Social Security. The Action
Center on the website links users to actions they can take, as well as past
action results.
www.ourfuture.org,
202/955‑5665
Debate
The
Commission on Presidential Debates
offers a compilation of
guidelines for sponsoring debates of any kind, including those in political
issue forums, races, and student debates.
www.debates.org 202/872‑1020
DemocracyGroups.org
is an online directory
designed to connect users to U.S.‑based e‑mail discussions and e‑newsletters
related to social change and democratic participation. DemocracyGroups.org
is sponsored by the Organizers' Collaborative (OC), a group formed in 1999
to use technology to enhance grassroots organizing.
www.democracygroups.org
Research candidates
Project Vote Smart
provides a comprehensive database about
thousands of candidates and elected officials
and lists
information in five categories:
backgrounds, campaign finance, issue positions, performance evaluations, and
voting records.
www.vote‑smart.org ,
800/868‑3762
The League of
Women Voters
offers voters a guide to choosing a candidate and gives tips on how to
analyze campaign information, how to read polls, and how to recognize
distortion tactics. www.lwv.org, 202/429‑1965
DemocracyNet
(DNet) is an interactive website that allows users to locate candidates
in their districts and learn about where they stand on certain issues.
www.dnet.org
The Center for
Responsive Politics
offers a
guide to who is making what size campaign contributions and to whom. You can
find out all the nitty‑gritty details here.
www.opensecrets.org
League of
Conservation Voters
works to
get pro‑environment candidates elected. The website includes a national
environmental scorecard that exposes the environmental voting records of
elected officials and an action center where users can write letters to
Congress and receive weekly e‑newsletters.
www.lcv.org 202/785‑8683
Global Stewards'
webpage provides a guide to the 2004 Democratic presidential
candidates, as well as a Congressional voting record scorecard for
environmental, civil rights, labor rights, animal rights, and war‑related
issues.
www.globalstewards.org/democrats.htm
Create fair elections
The Center for
Voting and Democracy advocates
voter reform through instant run‑off voting (IRV) and proportional
representation. The website offers an IRV activist kit, which includes tips
on how to join a voting reform group, how to speak at a city council
meeting, and how to share voter reform literature with others.
www.fairvote.org, 301/270‑4616
The Project on
Campaign Conduct
asks
candidates to voluntarily adopt a code of campaign conduct and to run
campaigns free of attacks and truth‑twisting assertions.
www.campaignconduct.org, 207/236‑6658
Learn skills
Wellstone Action,
a nonprofit inspired by the
late Senator Paul Wellstone and run by his sons, trains people to get
involved in politics and organizing through Camp Wellstone, a weekend‑long
training program that teaches Wellstone's progressive approach to effective
political engagement. Participants learn about issue advocacy, community
organizing, and electoral politics through lectures, videos, guest speakers,
role playing, and Q & A sessions.
www.wellstone.org,
651/645‑3939
RESULTS,
a grassroots citizens' lobbying
organization, presents effective methods for working with Congress, dealing
with the media, and fundraising.
www.results.org, 202/783‑7100
Charity Lobbying
in the Public Interest
(CLPI) helps organizations and individuals be effective public interest
lobbyists.
www.clpi.org,202/387‑5048
Global Exchange
provides a how‑to guide for
communicating with legislators, organizing a demonstration, passing a local
resolution, and conducting a teach‑in.
www.globalexchange.org/countries/iraq/toolkit.pdf
The Progressive
Government Project
works to
promote progressive values in government and teaches users to understand the
executive branch. The website provides a database of 600 appointed officials
and their backgrounds, and an Executive Order Watch monitors decisions being
made in the White House. The Shadow Government asks activists to role‑play
as high‑ranking officials to show what a progressive government would look
like.
www.progressivegovernment.org
Become an activist
Voice4Change
offers a "Rolling Regime Change Action Kit," designed to help you reach
out to your neighbors about the need for leadership change. The kit includes
literature about Bush's priorities on economy, education, and healthcare, as
well as a sign‑up sheet to create a mailing list in your community.
www.voice4change.org
AFL‑CIO,
the federation of America's labor
unions, has a political webpage that contains congressional voting records,
a Bush Watch link, and an opportunity to learn about candidates. A Working
Families Activist Toolkit can be downloaded from the site and offers fliers
and campaign material, e‑mail actions, and legislative updates.
www.afl‑cio.org,
202/637‑5000
Progressive
Majority
works to get
progressive candidates elected by providing early support to campaigns and
conducts outreach and recruitment to cultivate future generations of
candidates. The website offers tips on how to create a progressive network
by hosting house parties and signing up to receive action alerts through
ProgressiveNet.
www.progressivemajority.org, 202/408‑8603
EMILY'S List,
the nation's largest grassroots political network, raises campaign
contributions for pro‑choice Democratic women candidates. The organization
provides campaign training and job placement for activists, as well as a
state legislative training program, for female candidates. Campaign Corps, a
project of EMILY'S List, trains recent college graduates at a week‑long
Campaign School and places them on progressive Democratic campaigns.
www.emilyslist.org,
www.campaigncorps.org
Motivate youth
Millennialpolitics .com
encourages young people to get involved in politics by hosting discussion
boards about political issues, organizing "Coffee and Politics" group
meetings, and promoting books about politics and youth activism through
national book clubs.
www.millennialpolitics.com
The Freechild
Project
supports young people
in their work for social change, particularly among groups that historically
have been denied political participation. The website acts as a directory
for social change organizations, provides free literature through the
Freechild Library, organizes letter campaigns, and provides a database on
youth rights.
www.freechild.org, 360/ 753‑2686
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Books
SPIRITUAL POLITICS:
Changing the World From the Inside Out
by Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson
(Ballantine Books 1994)
Foreword by H.H. The Dalai Lama
Spiritual Politics
provides a sense of hope and positive vision about how to change the
world from the inside out--as well as the outside in. It helps you
heal the split between social activism and personal growth by showing
how a changed person can become a more effective change agent.
http://www.visionarylead.org/spirit2.htm
The Tao of Democracy:
Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That
Works for All
by Tom Atlee explains how 'We the People' can build our collective capacity
to see where we're going and govern ourselves wisely. It's about breaking
through to conscious evolution and co-creation of our shared future.
http://www.taoofdemocracy.com
While the abridged N.Y.Times version of Mr. Berry's
historic essay has been seen by millions of people in the United States and
abroad, the full version of the essay, nearly double in length, has been
read by far fewer. The current project of the
Thoughts on America Initiative
is to disseminate the full essay, now available in book form, as part of
Orion's New Patriotism Book Series. The new volume, Citizens
Dissent, pairs Berry's "A
Citizen's Response" with a poignant
essay on America's policies in Iraq by David James Duncan, "When
Compassion Becomes Dissent," both essays from
Orion magazine.
Go to Orion Magazine's
website to read about this Initiative
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/os/media/ThoughtsInitiative.html
 What Could We Do to Take Back Our Democracy?
by Tom Atlee
For the full article on one page,
click here.
High Leverage Proposals for
Electoral and Political Transformation
June 2003
What would really sane elections be like?
Imagine:...
It is election day.
None of the candidates has accepted any
private money.
Since they voluntarily agreed to spending limits, your tax
dollars paid for their campaigns. Political advertising has
been minimal, but there have been many opportunities to
hear candidates talk about the issues and their visions.
You've watched presidential and
gubernatorial debates each
of which included two third-party candidates as well as
the Democrats and Republicans.
You browse through your voter information
booklet. Among
the candidate descriptions and pro and con arguments for
ballot initiatives, you find ratings of all the major candidates
done by random citizen panels who interviewed them. Other
random citizen panels studied the ballot initiatives for you
and clearly describe the trade-offs you need to consider, as
well as their own recommendations. You find most of their
recommendations make sense to you.
You read up on a half-dozen federal ballot
initiatives dealing
with major tax cuts and environmental, technological and
foreign policy issues that have been in the news. Thank
heaven for the citizen panels. You realize you would never
have been able to fairly weigh both sides of these complex
issues yourself....
In the voting booth you touch the computer
screen to register
your votes. Candidates who have been rated by random citizen
panels are listed in the order of their ratings. For the major
candidates like President and Governor, you get to pick two,
so you vote Democrat and Green for President, and Republican
and Libertarian for Governor. The computer prints out two
copies of your ballot with an anonymous code on them. You
drop one in the ballot box and take the other home.
The next day you use the code to check the
Web, verifying
that your vote was actually included in the list of everyone's
anonymous votes publicly displayed there. You feel confident
that the voting machines were OK because a programmer friend
checked the open source code, and surprise recounts are being
done in hundreds of randomly selected precincts.
You think back on how frustrating
elections used to be, and
wonder about why it took so long to change that....
I can almost imagine a "call" being issued
to save our democracy. It might go something like this:
Today the corruptions and shortcomings of our
beleaguered democracy make it hard -- and often impossible -- for We the
People to secure the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
for ourselves and our posterity.
We see our social, economic, and environmental
problems growing. We become angry or alienated as we experience avoidable
crises and wars, the decay of communities and morals, threats to our
liberty, and the degradation of our quality of life.
Our election machinery is no longer dependable.
Our campaigns and governance are corrupted by money. Our two-party system
silences important voices. Our policies are not wise -- in fact half the
time they are seriously crazy. And we, the citizenry, are alienated from
each other and our representatives.
We believe that we are unjustly denied our
proper role in shaping the destiny of our country, our state, our community.
Some of us are convinced that it doesn't have
to be this way -- that a better democracy is possible.
And so some of us are taking responsibility now
to envision and create the democracy we want -- to create our world again,
as Thomas Paine called us to do back in 1776.
The better democracy we will create will give
ultimate power back to We the People while at the same time ensuring that
wiser decisions emerge from our citizenship and the work of our
representatives.
The better democracy we will create will be
based on our beliefs about democratic power and wisdom:
DEMOCRATIC POWER:
We believe that democratic decision-making power should rest with the
majority as it seeks the common good, and should be protected from
manipulation by powerful minorities, while respectfully considering minority
views and the needs and rights of minority populations and individuals. We
believe this is the essence of democratic power.
But today's challenges are unprecedented, and
democratic power can only address those challenges successfully to the
extent it is also wise. And so we also believe we need democratic forms of
wisdom.
DEMOCRATIC WISDOM:
We believe that democratic wisdom can arise only from informed dialogue,
deliberation and reflection among diverse citizens. Our diversity and common
ground are to be equally treasured as resources in our exercise of
democratic imagination. This is possible in a deliberative democracy -- a
reflective democracy -- in which we
-
hear each other across our differences;
-
learn the important facts and diverse views
regarding the issues before us, and the merits and limitations of various
options; and
-
seek creative consensus that takes into
account the valid concerns, views and dreams of all involved.
 We believe the following innovations and
initiatives can provide both the democratic power and the democratic wisdom
we need to improve the decisions that affect our lives.
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Voter-verified paper trails and open source software
to prevent computerized election-day corruption.
-
Clean money initiatives
to handle special-interest distortion of election campaigns and
governance.
-
Multi-candidate debates and voting
to handle two-party domination.
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Citizen reflective councils
to bring wisdom to all public decision-making, including elections.
-
National and state initiative processes
through which We the People can pass needed laws when our representatives
are not able or willing to do so.
Each of these, by itself, is necessary but not
sufficient to give us the democracy we want. And many other things COULD be
done to create a democracy that works for the common good (see
http://www.democracyinnovations.org).
But TOGETHER the innovations above will give us ENOUGH democratic power and
ENOUGH democratic wisdom to create the democracy we want, step by step by
step, learning as we go.
Here are five other comprehensive political
reform proposals/campaigns that overlap with each other and with the one
above.
Healthy Democracy offers popular structural reforms
http://www.healthydemocracy.org/structural.php
but most their most powerful contribution is
their vision of deliberative democracy:
http://www.healthydemocracy.org/plan.php
State PIRGs' Americans Against Political Corruption
http://pirg.org/democracy/democracy.asp?id2=5989&id3=CFR&
(sponsored by state PIRGs - Public Interest Research Groups)
The Voter Bill of Rights
http://www.ips-dc.org/electoral/intro.htm
(sponsored by Progressive Challenge, Institute for Policy Studies
and The Nation magazine)
Reclaim Democracy
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/democractic_elections_primer.html
The Center for Voting and Democracy
http://www.fairvote.org/
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Events
Palm Springs Riviera in Palm Springs, California
A Call for Collective Wisdom and Spiritual Activism
September 17-21, 2003
As we face tremendous challenges at this defining moment in our global
history, you are cordially invited to participate at this extraordinary
inter-national conference. How do we move from our individualized, personal
practice into a unified field of sharing, listening, learning and knowing?
Is it possible to tap into collective wisdom and consciously awaken a new
call to action? A new kind of activism is emerging that incorporates prayer,
meditation and silence as well as new modes of engaging in the world. Join
our exploration through dialogue, discussion, meditation, music, laughter,
body movement, reflection, and more.
For registration go to
www.agnt.org
General conference info: conference2003@noetic.org
Washington, DC. USA
The Global Renaissance Alliance DEMOCRACY CONFERENCE
September 13-16 2003
Four extraordinary days of education and training in how you can make a
powerful contribution to the transformation of our world. Learn how to apply
spiritual principles to the social and political issues of our time. Work
towards a Dept. of Peace, and a ban against the weaponization of space. Learn
how to lobby your own Congressional representatives. Together we can forge a
genuine pro-democracy movement, harnessing the power of our own wisdom and
intelligence in the service of a better world.
Speakers include Marianne Williamson, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Thom
Hartmann and others. Washington, DC.
Information at-
www.marianne.com,
or
www.renaissancealliance.org
For a
printable version
of this page
click here
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