Identity
Filter
Visitors
(0) (0) (0) (0) (1) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (61) (0) (0) (0)Subscribers
(0) (0)
Highest posts
Latest posts
Links
Blogs
Democracy
Search
[top-politics] Re: Tree of issues
-
13/09/06 05:38
An FA/DP project.
Today, I had to drive a long distance, and had a lot of time to think. It suddenly occurred to me that, while Delegable Proxy is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it is essential in large organizations, it is not necessary in small ones, but standard proxy is. By attempting to explain DP I’ve been unnecessarily complicating matters.
In a Free Association, DP need not be formally implemented, because if there is standard proxy, anyone can use the proxy list to develop expanded votes in order to measure expected consensus. What is missing, actually, is standard proxy. Many small organizations simply do not use the device. However, it could be useful from the very beginning. And it is a standard, traditional, well-understood concept, if I write “proxy” many people will pretty correctly have a first-order understanding of it, though not necessarily of the deeper implications.
So I’m thinking of announcing locally the formation of an association. The purpose of the association is to improve communication between the citizens of our town and the town government, but, most specifically and immediately, with the police. The situation is actually pretty bad. Since my wife was stopped last week for an expired registration tag (by one business day), and the police put her and our two small children out on the street and had the car towed, I’ve been talking with people and what I’ve discovered is that practically nobody has a good opinion of the town police. One man, who owned a substantial business here for years before he sold it, who is retired except he volunteers for a sheltered workshop that employs people with handicaps, told me that the real motto of the police here was not “protect and serve,” but “harass and humiliate.” Many others told me stories of how they or their friend suffered this or that indignity at the hands of the police. And these are not counterculture people. These are pretty much mainstream here. And, at the same time, the police told me that they were seriously understaffed, that they could provide better service — which in this case was merely bringing the confiscated license plates into the station so I could get them to recover the car from the storage facility, which took them about three hours when they were confiscated about three minute’s drive from the station — if only they had two or three more officers. And they don’t have more officers because they can’t afford them, and they can’t afford them because the citizens of the town won’t vote to authorize the expenditure. And why should the citizens vote more money for the police when they don’t feel sympathy for them, they don’t like them?
So there is a wedge here, I suspect. I can hold an organizational meeting — I certainly have not worked out the details of exactly what the organization would be about, but grievances over routine police towing of cars, which has hit many people and which just may be illegal, might be the excuse. Now, most people will not go to such a meeting, but this would be the twist, in the announcement: “If you can’t come, or can’t spare the time, ask a friend to go and let you know if there is anything you should do.” I still would not expect a large number of people to show up, just a few. However, these few might represent a few more, and when someone goes to talk to the mayor, that person — or those persons — may be able to correctly claim that they represent not just themselves, but quite a few more as well. In other words, we start to get some political traction.
If things would go as I would approve, the organization would not be oppositional. The approach would be more “we have a problem,” and “we” includes the town government and the police, not just those outraged by abusive police behavior. And once we have a small proxy network, it can grow. The whole point of proxy representation is to make it easy.
I have no idea what will actually happen, but it could be an interesting experiment, n’est-ce pas?
+1
