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Okay. Question: What laws, policies have you passed? Who's on your board of directors? Who's advising? What's your fund raising experience? Suggestions: #

Okay. Question: What laws, policies have you passed? Who's on your board of directors? Who's advising? What's your fund raising experience? Suggestions: #1: Focus on one issue. Or create one org per issue. You can't assume allies will support your entire platform, so remove deal breakers. #2: Pace yourself for a marathon. For example, a friend of mine worked EIGHTEEN years to get the first statewide family leave act law passed. Had to build the coalition one vote at a time. #3: What are you for? Where's your model legislation? Be specific. Offense beats defense, have an affirmative agenda, etc. #4: Start locally. It's easier to move the needle, one jurisdiction at a time. #5: Why not partner with existing orgs, create a local chapter? Is there something wrong with the current public financing advocates? The people fighting for RCV? Bonus #6: Pick a strategy for privacy. Like extend property rights to personal data. Like new accounting rules to make data aggregation a financial liability. Something, anything that people can wrap their heads around.

r3trohack3r 6y ago
This is super valid, and something I spend a lot of time thinking about. The task ahead is monumental, but these are sub-goals. This spawned from an observation that our representative democracy isn't representative. We worked backwards from what caused that. The mission is cultivated from identifying and attempting to disrupt the viscous cycle of power imbalance. The strongest branch of the U.S. government is supposed to be the voters, not the few but the many, we aim to make that happen. I don't think any of these three points can succeed without the other two. Mass surveillance, if you click through, isn't about mass surveillance. It's about a government not being held accountable to it's own laws, which are meant to be governed by civilian oversight. Our government must follow it's own laws, it must pass laws that are foremost in line with our founding documents and then inline with their constituent's desires. The mechanism for civilian oversight is broken. While reading the ACLU FOIA requests and court documents, it was clear to me that the government wasn't playing by the rules. When you read the reasons the government kept these programs secret on write-ups from leaked documents, it was for fear of being subject to civilian oversight. This isn't how our government was designed to operate.
- specialist 6y ago
  Preaching to the choir. I'm trying, and failing, to make the point that policy work is real work, and that if you want to make a dent, I encourage you to learn how the professionals get it done. But you don't need all that to get started. Just call your rep, at any level, and get on their calendar. You'll have 5 minutes to make a pitch. You'll probably meet with a legislative aide. Bring some position papers. Weigh in on current (or recent legislation). If there's an upcoming vote, specifically request they vote Yay or Nay (per your position). Then followup with a thank you note. Then do it again.
  - r3trohack3r 6y ago
    Sorry I misunderstood you... I appreciate that it is real work, and I hope I don't come across as making light of that. I've spent a lot of time the past few weeks grappling with imposter syndrome while trying to set this up and constantly questioning whether I would be a net positive in this space. I hope I will. Part of shipping was to try to cultivate the relationships to do that learning and bring in resources to fund folks to do that learning, and work, full time. If you have resources that could help me ramp up, I would really appreciate them, and could use mentorship if you know of anyone. On nights and weekends, I've been sitting through days of senate hearing recordings and reading hundreds of pages of court documents over the past few weeks. I do feel that is helping, but there are definitely "meta" parts of this field I'm missing (like legal research). I also feel policy work is different than influencing elections. Part of what we benefit from, as voters, is having representatives handle some of this policy work. When you listen to the first Senate Intelligence Committee hearing after the 2013 leaks, it's clear they are out of touch with who they are representing. When it comes to the Presidential Surveillance Program, that committee knew about it and oversaw it. They were actively involved in keeping evidence out of the courts, preventing citizens doing the policy work necessary to hold them accountable. I don't fully understand how professionals do this, but I do get the feeling these senators had a non-negligible impact on making that surveillance program a reality. Only one senator put truth to power during that hearing, everyone else defended the program and focused on "restricting access" to the database and improving reporting. Many of those senators are still sitting in their seats. An underlying goal of this project is to rally the voting population against the current representatives. I want to understand and be involved in the policy to apply that pressure correctly, but at the end of the day I want our representatives to be driving that policy change. We apply pressure to them, through a downward pressure during their election cycle, to guide them towards doing right by their citizens.

r3trohack3r 6y ago

This is super valid, and something I spend a lot of time thinking about. The task ahead is monumental, but these are sub-goals. This spawned from an observation that our representative democracy isn't representative. We worked backwards from what caused that. The mission is cultivated from identifying and attempting to disrupt the viscous cycle of power imbalance. The strongest branch of the U.S. government is supposed to be the voters, not the few but the many, we aim to make that happen. I don't think any of these three points can succeed without the other two. Mass surveillance, if you click through, isn't about mass surveillance. It's about a government not being held accountable to it's own laws, which are meant to be governed by civilian oversight. Our government must follow it's own laws, it must pass laws that are foremost in line with our founding documents and then inline with their constituent's desires. The mechanism for civilian oversight is broken. While reading the ACLU FOIA requests and court documents, it was clear to me that the government wasn't playing by the rules. When you read the reasons the government kept these programs secret on write-ups from leaked documents, it was for fear of being subject to civilian oversight. This isn't how our government was designed to operate.

specialist 6y ago
Preaching to the choir. I'm trying, and failing, to make the point that policy work is real work, and that if you want to make a dent, I encourage you to learn how the professionals get it done. But you don't need all that to get started. Just call your rep, at any level, and get on their calendar. You'll have 5 minutes to make a pitch. You'll probably meet with a legislative aide. Bring some position papers. Weigh in on current (or recent legislation). If there's an upcoming vote, specifically request they vote Yay or Nay (per your position). Then followup with a thank you note. Then do it again.
- r3trohack3r 6y ago
  Sorry I misunderstood you... I appreciate that it is real work, and I hope I don't come across as making light of that. I've spent a lot of time the past few weeks grappling with imposter syndrome while trying to set this up and constantly questioning whether I would be a net positive in this space. I hope I will. Part of shipping was to try to cultivate the relationships to do that learning and bring in resources to fund folks to do that learning, and work, full time. If you have resources that could help me ramp up, I would really appreciate them, and could use mentorship if you know of anyone. On nights and weekends, I've been sitting through days of senate hearing recordings and reading hundreds of pages of court documents over the past few weeks. I do feel that is helping, but there are definitely "meta" parts of this field I'm missing (like legal research). I also feel policy work is different than influencing elections. Part of what we benefit from, as voters, is having representatives handle some of this policy work. When you listen to the first Senate Intelligence Committee hearing after the 2013 leaks, it's clear they are out of touch with who they are representing. When it comes to the Presidential Surveillance Program, that committee knew about it and oversaw it. They were actively involved in keeping evidence out of the courts, preventing citizens doing the policy work necessary to hold them accountable. I don't fully understand how professionals do this, but I do get the feeling these senators had a non-negligible impact on making that surveillance program a reality. Only one senator put truth to power during that hearing, everyone else defended the program and focused on "restricting access" to the database and improving reporting. Many of those senators are still sitting in their seats. An underlying goal of this project is to rally the voting population against the current representatives. I want to understand and be involved in the policy to apply that pressure correctly, but at the end of the day I want our representatives to be driving that policy change. We apply pressure to them, through a downward pressure during their election cycle, to guide them towards doing right by their citizens.