Benjamin Melançon's blog

Technology won't be enough

Benjamin Melançon — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:23:30 -0500

Let's nip this one in the bud. I think tools for democratic communication are necessary for effective mass social movements, but not sufficient.

Way before the technology is in place, let's make it clear that the technology won't be enough.

With a network that has the potential to reach huge numbers of people, we (and be we I mean I) may be tempted to spend inordinate amounts of time crafting the perfect message to get it passed on to tons of people.

(Heck, I spend too much time hacking together imperfect messages now, with no hope of any distribution whatsoever.)

It's not going to work. Electronic communication is only a part of the network, let alone the movement of movements the network should support.

Knight Foundation to Award Millions for Digital Experiments in Community News

Benjamin Melançon — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 21:57:05 -0500

PWGD didn't get its project funded last round, but Benjamin Melançon got $14.1K to blog (after fiscal sponsor administrative fees), and look at this description: they're begging for our kind of ideas! Apply yourself or join PWGD in our proposal:

Knight Foundation to Award Millions for Digital Experiments in Community News

News Challenge Seeks Cutting-Edge Ideas from Anyone, Anywhere;

‘You Invent It. We Fund It!’

MIAMI – The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has launched year two of the Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news.

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PWGD as 'scratching my own itch' - the foundation of open source software

Benjamin Melançon — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:31:02 -0500

They (Eric Raymond and Karl Fogel, anyway) say the best software starts from scratching ones own itch. PWGD is much more than a personal project of course, but here's one developer's underlying motivation.

I live in a large suburban town. Like any place and time, there are many circumstances, local, national, and global, that by any reasonable assessment need to change.

To change unjust, unfree, or otherwise harmful qualities, myself or anyone else needs to find people who give a damn about one or several of these things.

To do that in a suburban town takes an incredible amount of effort, which simply cannot be repeated by any one person or small group for every issue of concern.

John Melançon, 1928 – 2007

Benjamin Melançon — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:57:03 -0500

An original incorporator of People Who Give a Damn, and a guiding inspiration.

John C. Melancon in loving, living memory.

Al Gore calls for PWGD to launch

Benjamin Melançon — Fri, 25 May 2007 00:37:55 -0500

Not that he knows it yet, but that's surely a natural corollary of his excellent denouncement of television media:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/10/1256/

Still in Denial [about NewStandard's closing]; Plan for the Future

Benjamin Melançon — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:33:07 -0500

The NewStandard shut down, which is very, very sad for me. And I callously take the opportunity to promote PWGD, hijacking the last blog post.

Making the last blog entry the unofficial forum...

First, everyone should check out Steve Anderson's Eulogy to the NewStandard and COA News itself, which counted The NewStandard as an affiliate.

Next, I want to make the observation that all the job postings I see on, for instance, the grassroots radio coalition listserve, seem to be for promotion and outreach-- never "reporter." Partly this reflects the unfortunate financial realities and also priorities of independent media, but more than that this is the difficulty in making one's voice heard about anything.

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Peace Movement and PWGD?

Benjamin Melançon — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:59:56 -0500

(To a group calling for critical articles on the anti-war movement.)

Hi, I don't have a paper to submit, just an idea/offer I'd love if you could keep in mind or share...

I think the strategy and effectiveness for the antiwar movement would have been markedly different and better if we had tools for democratic mass communication.

Collectively we would have come up with much better tactics, and would have been able to ask-- are there 1,000 people willing to maintain a militant presence? Are there 100,000 willing to (morally, materially, financially) support them? I think the answer would have been yes in the first week of the war, more in the run-up to the war, and now-- maybe 10,000 and a million.

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Democratic mailing lists for GRC?

Benjamin Melançon — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:49:46 -0500

Subject: [GRC] Free speech, destructive talk, unsubscriptions, and a democratic solution?

(This followed a few high-profile unsubscriptions over posts the unsubscribers deemed sexist. Complete with unfinished sentence typo!)

Dear all,

(The philosophical issue, below the technical, does relate to radio.)

This note suggests a potential, partial answer to inclusiveness without censorship: web software that would let people subscribe to unmoderated and
(pseudo-)democratically moderated lists. The main incentive is so direct communication can scale into the millions, but I think it could also help situations like this. Anyone can post to the unmoderated list (which should also be posted to a web site), and that person or anyone else could petition for a post to go to the whole list-- and a random drawing of people on the list would take on the short task of deciding if that particular message is important for the whole list. In this way there can be a list and public archive, quite uncensored, which anyone can go into as interested. At the same time the largest list (certainly larger than unmoderated lists can be) would be limited to the posts considered more important to the community.

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SocialWay: Sharing Stuff. PWGD Compatible?

Benjamin Melançon — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:08:49 -0500

We at PWGD are always happy if someone beats us to filling a need. But we always have to ask, is it being done in a way that will build we the people's control over our own lives? We try to ask nicely:

Dear SocialWay,

http://SocialWay.com looks just like the sort of thing I want to build, so I'd love to promote it.

However, in my view, this sort of thing is a natural monopoly-- competing services for sharing things with your neighbors just doesn't make sense.

Also in my view a natural monopoly has to be of, by, and for the people. Which in turn could incorporate:

* non-profit, non-commercial structure/goals

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Civil Disobedience as a Continuation of Participating in Democracy: War Protesters Charged with Disturbing the Peace

Benjamin Melançon — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:08:04 -0600

Five people took a step beyond weekly local peace vigils to react to illegitimate President George W. Bush's January declaration of a further escalation of the immoral war against Iraq. They blocked one lane of traffic outside the Peace Abbey in Sherborn until the police arrested them. They were in court in Natick on February 27 and each able to make a statement on the reason for their actions while pleading no contest to a reduced charge (from disorderly conduct to, ironically, disturbing the peace).

Disorderly Conduct is only supposed to have the potential for at most six months in jail, yet six months in a house of correction is the sentence for any of these five for violating the six month continuation without a finding– which nonetheless, itself, requires (I think) 10 hours of community service and miscellaneous fees amounting to well over $100.