Tina's comments about the Second Meeting email

This is an email from Tina who responded to my email about some of the points we raised in our second meeting. (Vincent)

HI. THANK FOR SENDING THIS. I THOUGTH I MIGHT TAKE A SLIGHTLY ACTIVE ROLE AND MAKE A FEW COMMENTS. IF THEY INTEREST YOU. COOL. IF NOT, THEN PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD. I STAND QUITE LEFT POLITICALLY, SO THINK OF SOME OF MY QUESTIONS AS DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. LOVE, T HOPE YOU HAD A HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

We love our Republic and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We are prepared to fight for the rights of the people we disagree with as well as the people we agree with.

HERE I WOULD PARE THIS THIS BACK TO: [We love our Republic and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We are prepared to fight for the rights of the ALL people]. ADDING THE AGREE/DISAGREE STUFF IS POLARZING AND COULD BE ALIENATING.

We want an America where everybody has a seat at the table: Liberals, Conservatives, religious, atheist, wealthy, middle class, poor, every race, age, sexual orientation, pro life, pro choice, mainstream, extremist. In this we affirm the principal of a political environment where no one ideology can possibly provide all solutions, not even ours, no matter how much we might wish it did.

HERE I SIMPLY SAY: {We want an America where everybody has a seat at the table. In this we affirm the principal of a political environment where no one ideology can possibly provide all solutions.}LEAVING OFF THE LIST OF WHOM THAT INCLUDES, SINCE THOSE KINDS OF LISTS ALWAYS OMIT SOME AND THEY ARE BOUND TO FEEL EXCLUDED. BY SAYING "EVERYBODY" YOU ARE INCLUDING EVERYONE.

We believe that the problems we see go way beyond partisan politics, economic class, race, or creed.

IF YOU OFFER THIS KIND OF STATEMENT YOU NEED TO BE PREPARED TO ANSWER THE NEXT QUESTION: WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS AS YOU SEE THEM?

We see evidence that the slow erosion of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights that has been going on for many years has been greatly accelerated by people in both the government and the private sector using the attacks on 9/11. If certain parts of the Moslem world can be our enemies, well then certain parts of our own political and economic system can be too.

HERE YOU NEED TO BE PREPARED TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: WHAT EVIDENCE DO YOU SEE OF THE SLOW EROSION TO WHICH YOU REFER.

We understand that the concentration of media in this country into the hands of five corporations, with the exception of certain sectors of the internet is deadly to the free and open discussion that is the lifeblood of a Republic.

HERE YOU NEED TO BE PREPARED TO LIST THE 5 CORPORATIONS AND GIVE SPECIFIC CONCRETE EXAMPLES OF HOW THE SITUATION IS DEADLY TO FREE AND OPEN DISCUSSION.

We see ample evidence that the 2000 presidential election turned out the way it did because of voter fraud. In the face of this we are unable to trust the results of the 2004 presidential election. We want no one elected by fraudulent means no matter what party they are affiliated with. It is irrelevant to us that this was done by a Republican administration. We understand that this could not have happened the way it did if certain elements in the Democratic party had not been in collusion with it.

HERE YOU WILL NEED TO OFFER UP SOME OF THE "AMPLE EVIDENCE" TO WHICH YOU REFER RE: THE 2000 ELECTION AND YOU NEED TO EXPLAIN WHY IT FOLLOWS THAT 2004 WAS ALSO FRAUDULENT. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO COME UP WITH HOW THE "REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION" DEFRAUDED THE ELECTION AND HOW THE DEMOCRATS WERE IN COLLUSION.

We are working for anti trust action against the corporations who have centralized control of our Fourth Estate. (Fourth Estate = media)

AGAIN, YOU WILL NEED TO BE VERY SPECIFIC ABOUT WHO HAD THIS CENTRALIZED CONTROL OVER THE MEDIA.

We are working for the political equivalent of anti trust action against the Democratic and Republican parties. This will result in a truly multi party system.

YOU NEED TO CLARIFY THIS POLITICAL EQUIVALENT AND EXPLAIN YOUR VISION OF THE RESULTING MULT-PARTY SYSTEM

We want a run off ballot system more suitable to a multi party system rather than the simple majority voting under the current system.

YOU NEED TO BE PREPARED TO EXPLAIN WHY SIMPLE MAJORITY VOTING ISN'T BEST.

We are ready to invest time and money into the electoral infrastructure of this country with an emphasis on making elections transparent and with active auditing from citizens from all different political beliefs.

GREAT. THAT'S AN EXCELLENT STARTING POINT. BUT HOW?

PLEASE KEEP ME POSTED. THIS IS VERY INTERESTING.

LOVE,

Tina

Second Meeting of the Shell Shocked Liberals

Second Meeting of Shell Shocked Liberals

This was the second meeting of shell shocked liberals I attended after Election Day 2004. It was Saturday, November 13 and there were six people at the meeting, with two toddlers to keep things from getting too serious. All of us Caucasian, middle to lower middle class. Four of us married. All of us consider ourselves patriots who love our country and revere the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. All of us were frightened, angry, and hopeful.

At one point when we were settling down around the kitchen table one of us said, "Oh, we're really having a meeting?" Someone else replied: "Yep. I'm sick of sitting around talking. This is where talking has brought us to." The room went silent for a moment and people nodded their agreement. It was in their faces; grave and unselfconscious. It was a simple acceptance of the self evident; nothing they didn’t already know.

What follows are what we discussed and decided on.

We love our Republic and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We are prepared to fight for the rights of the people we disagree with as well as the people we agree with. We want an America where everybody has a seat at the table: Liberals, Conservatives, religious, atheist, wealthy, middle class, poor, every race, age, sexual orientation, pro life, pro choice, mainstream, extremist. In this we affirm the principal of a political environment where no one ideology can possibly provide all solutions, not even ours, no matter how much we might wish it did. We believe that the problems we see go way beyond partisan politics, economic class, race, or creed.

We see evidence that the slow erosion of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights that has been going on for many years has been greatly accelerated by people in both the government and the private sector using the attacks on 9/11. If certain parts of the Moslem world can be our enemies, well then certain parts of our own political and economic system can be too.

We understand that the concentration of media in this country into the hands of five corporations, with the exception of certain sectors of the internet is deadly to the free and open discussion that is the lifeblood of a Republic.

We see ample evidence that the 2000 presidential election turned out the way it did because of voter fraud. Nor do we accept the authority of the Supreme Court to decide the result of an election. In the face of this we are unable to trust the results of the 2004 presidential election. We want no one elected by fraudulent means no matter what party they are affiliated with. It is irrelevant to us that this was done by a Republican administration. We understand that this could not have happened the way it did if certain elements in the Democratic party had not been in collusion with it.

We are working for anti trust action against the corporations who have centralized control of our Fourth Estate. (Fourth Estate = media)

We are working for the political equivalent of anti trust action against the Democratic and Republican parties. This will result in a truly multi party system. We want a run off ballot system more suitable to a multi party system rather than the simple majority voting under the current system.

We are ready to invest time and money into the electoral infrastructure of this country with an emphasis on making elections transparent and with active auditing from citizens from all different political beliefs.

Present for the meeting that night were Robin, Stephanie, Rick, Brenda, Gen, Vincent Present to keep us mindful of what was at stake were Audrey and Olivia; Robin and Stephanie’s two toddlers

To Do Items

Robin and Vincent to do an analysis using Sun Tzu’s Art of War of our main goals.
Brenda to do a paper on Fairness doctrine in media
Vincent to do a paper on the write in vote, how its been used, its history etc.
Stephanie to do keep on developing web sites such as fraught with fraud.
Robin and Vincent to do a report on open voting consortium openvotingconsortium.org
Rick to work on performance art type actions. We need slogans that are not so seemingly partisan!
Rick and Brenda to scout out meeting place in Montpelier. Some suggestions that came up during the meeting We adopt media people and correspond with them and inform them of issues. We adopt a whole media outlet, like a major television station, and do letter writing campaigns, etc. to persuade them that they can be more liberal without losing their audience.

Small Town Liberals in a Smoke Filled Room

Small Town Liberals in a Smoke Filled Room

A meeting of the shell shocked took place at my apartment on Wednesday November 10, 2004. Present were Bruce, Terry, and myself. All three of us liberals. All three middle aged middle class white guys. We¹ve known each other for 3 1/2 years, but have not socialized very much outside of work. Two heterosexual, one bisexual. As far as I know I was the only one of us who¹d had a lot of activist experience. (I've been active on and off since the early 80s in the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual civil rights movement.) We talked for about two hours. Terry and I enjoyed some fine cigars prior to, and during the early part of, this meeting. We all keenly enjoyed the irony of meeting in a smoke filled room. I particularly enjoyed it given the Left's absurd Puritanism about tobacco.

The reason we were meeting in the first place is that we are scared about a lot of what is going on in our Republic. We are seeing our civil liberties being taken away. We think that the presidential election of 2000 turned out the way it did because of fraud. We believe that Iraq was invaded because special interests in this country want to control the oil there. We see all the media in our country owned by 5 corporations. We are wrestling with the understanding that the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties, along with many members of the political, economic, and intellectual elite are not even discussing

We are tired, desperately tired, of voting for the lesser of two evils.

We had a free ranging talk that night. We discussed if we actually do have a two party system, or if we have a one party system with two different wings. We could not decide if we wanted to start a new organization or if we wanted to support organizations that already exist. If we wanted to support the idea of Vermont succeeding from the Republic as political performance art. How the write in vote could be used as a very conservative tool for radical change. That we do not trust electronic voting because it makes the results of elections ultimately only verifiable by technicians. That we do not feel represented in the media because with the possible exception of the Internet, you need many millions of dollars to get your message across. That I, for the first time in my adult life, was working on something other than the queer civil rights issue because now I felt that all of our civil rights were in danger.

Five main points came from our discussions. First, that we ultimately don't know if we can overcome this decay. Nations, like individuals, have life cycles. It just may be that we are devolving from a Republic to a totalitarian or authoritarian state no matter what we do. Second, if this turns out to be the case, we need to discuss the desirability and feasibility of exit strategies. Third, that we want to be as nonpartisan as we can about this. We want Republicans, and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, atheists and religionists, every group who sees the problems and wants to work on them as a part of the reform process. Fourth, we all felt that we needed to do lots of research into these issues before we could make major decisions as to what we will do next. Fifth, we don't know if we can reach much less effectively educate enough people in order to make a real difference.

The meeting was exhilarating for me because, first, it happened at all, and in so many countries we could have never openly met. It was upsetting because two of three of us left unable to commit themselves to being hopeful.