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What Croydon, a ‘Live Free or Die’ Town, Learned About Democracy
- drumhead 4y agoI thought this was about Croydon in South London when I saw the title, which is a sort of Live Free or die place in its own way.
- VoidWhisperer 4y agoUn-paywalled version: https://archive.ph/ke1Du https://archive.ph/ke1Du
- VoidWhisperer 4y agoThis is definitely a good example to use, in my opinion, to show that the idea of 'my vote doesn't matter so I won't bother' is bad - as the article explains, the budget cut was allowed to happen because many of the residents didnt bother to show up to the town hall meetings. It is good in this case that they had a legal recourse to fix this by getting people who initially didn't bother to be involved in the process to express their opinions.
- stareatgoats 4y agoExactly my thought when I saw this. Things can go south real quick if ordinary people lose interest in politics - which is sort of the trajectory we are on. In this case people could mobilize and take corrective action; that isn't always the case though.
- feet 4y agoThis echoes exactly what's happening all across the US. A small number of extremists have taken over
- actfrench 4y agoThere is a silver lining to extremism : it awakens reasonable people out of indifference.