So, October 10, 2018 - for my reference if nothing else. All of the stuff I wrote and scheduled before we departed on our 3 week road trip has posted except for next Monday. All of the stuff I was going to write while we were on the road did not get written. It's funny how that seems to happen on all of my travels. As it happens, however, I have some verbiage I can throw up here all the same.
At various times, various persons, blogs, msm talking heads and others have concerned themselves with whether or not this or that specific individual or group "has an agenda", and, if so, what it might be. In addition, there have been, in my life at least, occasions when some of "us" were concerned with our own agenda, what it should be and how to achieve it, etc. At some point, in response to some of this, I began to formulate a draft approach to building an agenda, for myself, if not others, by tossing words upon electronic paper after the fashion of Dali shooting mud out of a blunderbuss at a blank canvas. How else can one even attempt to build an agenda, and at what level of detail should one operate? I shall try to clean it up and organize it a bit as I go, but it is sketchy and incomplete as, in reality, any agenda must be. First, I should note something really cool, so as not to completely waste your time. I wandered over to the internet archive looking for some cool "no known copyright" graphic to include here. My initial search term, "agenda" came up with a whole metric boatload of graphics identifying themselves as belonging to the "Fractal Art Series". You really, really owe it to yourselves to scroll through these. The link is: https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=Agenda&license=7%2C9%2C10 So, here we go. What, if anything, is my agenda, other than to have an agenda?
There's a peace symbol up there and yes, that is part of my agenda. Work toward peace, yup. Everybody talks about it, but few do anything about it, especially in the US, which really seems to love war. Damn near all of our politicians promote war at every opportunity, pass obscenely bloated military budgets, authorize the use of force over and over, ignore unauthorized military adventurism, wink at drone wars, bombing of foreign nations, regime change and the like. We can put it on the list, but the hard part is assigning it a priority. I'll get to that eventually. Power to the People has always been on my list. Expand that to all power to all of the people. Take that as expansively as you like. Right now, the people border on powerlessness. While voting isn't the only way to exercise power, it is certainly one way. The Spaniards vote on damn near everything, because they suffered under Franco for so long. Many here don't even to bother to vote for the few things we can vote for because they feel that they are effectively disenfranchised. There is some basis to that belief, unfortunately. Huge numbers are actually disenfranchised as well. We don't vote for much anyway, because we have a "representative democracy", except for the fact that we don't. Our electeds don't, as a rule, even try to represent us, they represent powerful and wealthy elites, including foreign ones, as well as nonsense political slogans like "paygo" and ideologies like "trickle down" and "pure capitalism". They also represent political parties and cadres as well as inter-party and intra-party cabals. Anything but "we the people hoi polloi". One could argue for making this a top priority, for then we could control and fix everything, but I think I'll avoid that for the moment. So, I'll just jump to my prior blunderbuss work here and see where we get to. This is not prioritized and in no particular order. It also includes various levels of detail in various areas. End Racism (and other forms of bigotry) Make use of SPLC teaching tolerance materials and "Dismantling Racism: A Resource Book for Social Change Groups" from the Western States Center Restore & Increase Civil Liberties (voting rights, speech, press, assembly, religion, etc) Police Reform (De-militarize police, stop over policing and police abuse) Do something about the lack of equality before the law in police matters that has been mandated by a handful of truly shitty ad unconstitutional court decisions/ Prison Reform End Wars, of all types, by all names End Imperialism, regime change, assassinations, meddling in internal affairs of others Women's Equality (address dominionism, Civil Liberties) End "free trade" agreements & agenda Economic fairness Ending poverty, see below, start with tax system and restoration of welfare supports if nothing else Revamp and re-design economy, Eliminate rentier state, produce goods and services for people Ungame the Market - transaction tax, etc. see preceding 3 items Climate action (This has a natural priority as a crises) Election Reform first, at a minimum, fix disenfranchisement by all means including gerrymandering, break the 2 party system, de-monetize and treat bribes as what they are Separation of Church & State (& End blue laws of all types) End the war on drugs End the so-called war on terror. belongs with peace, ending all wars, etc. Abolish the death penalty One has to start with a Start with a non-prioritized list. In theory, one cannot prioritize until it is complete, but in process bubble sorts can fill in for prioritization, since completion in a pipe dream, compounded byt the problem of levels of detail in the listing process. Also Priority can take a back seat to opportunity as occasion arises. and: Humans can multitask. A group, organization, movement, team or polity can also break into separate cadres to attack different goals. Related material available on the web - FREEDOM BUDGET(partial): [http://www.prrac.org/pdf/FreedomBudget.pdf]
the abolition of poverty guaranteed full employment (or eliminate need for same) fair prices for farmers fair wages for workers housing and healthcare for all the establishment of progressive tax and fiscal policies that respected the needs of working families. ... http://intergroupresources.com/rc/RESOURCE%20CENTER/OWEN'S%20CATEGORIZATION%20OF%20RC/2%20-%20Curricular%20Materials/2a%20-%20Publicly%20available/Dismantling%20Racism-%20A%20Resource%20Book%20for%20Social%20Change%20Groups%20--%20Western%20States%20Center.pdf This is a monster pdf file, in a workbook format with the strengths and failings of that format that still provides some approaches and tactics applicable not merely to racism, but to all the isms and is done, as such things can only be done, at the individual and small group level. No government or political party will help with this and none even wants to. (do a future column on this) Last, but not remotely least, as Ludwig Wittgenstein so wisely said:
“Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.” "If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done."The thread is open and the floor is yours. ((Image not a Mercedes Benz hood ornament)) Crossposted from caucus99percent.com