4 ms·

Maybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm probably just cynical), but that looks like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot of 'commun

Maybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm probably just cynical), but that looks like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot of 'communicating' and no action. > edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland? Probably because it's about politics, and according to popular myth, DC was built on a swamp.

carlisle_ 14y ago
First step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants. Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at all.
- nateabele 14y ago
  In response to both you and dragonwriter, those are all totally fair points. My thought is this might be a case of poorly-managed expectations. Specifically, people generally think of petitions as things where, given n signatures, some kind of action is going to be taken (as in 'the right to petition government for redress of grievances'). In that context, it's easy to forget that the most you can 'win' is a response. Hence, 'victory' feels hollow, which can take more energy away from a movement than not having had a petition to rally around in the first place. Hope that makes sense. I'm not arguing against the system itself, but I think it's overplaying its hand by calling itself a petition system.
dragonwriter 14y ago
Its worth noting that Barack Obama, even before he was President, was very big on encouraging people to reject the "big hero to rescue us" model and take action to make change themselves. If you recognize that people who want change have been writing individually to the White House to get it for generations, redirecting some of that mostly-invisible-to-others mechanism of feedback (which, because of the volume, is pretty much guaranteed to generally produce generic responses and little action) to a mechanism where requests and the responses can be highly visible and serve as vehicle for groups to raise interest and propel a conversation that then extends beyond the WH petition forum, it has some value. If you look at the response from the WH as the end of the process that the petition starts, sure, its not particularly useful. But that's, I think, misunderstanding the point rather badly.

carlisle_ 14y ago

First step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants. Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at all.

nateabele 14y ago
In response to both you and dragonwriter, those are all totally fair points. My thought is this might be a case of poorly-managed expectations. Specifically, people generally think of petitions as things where, given n signatures, some kind of action is going to be taken (as in 'the right to petition government for redress of grievances'). In that context, it's easy to forget that the most you can 'win' is a response. Hence, 'victory' feels hollow, which can take more energy away from a movement than not having had a petition to rally around in the first place. Hope that makes sense. I'm not arguing against the system itself, but I think it's overplaying its hand by calling itself a petition system.

dragonwriter 14y ago

Its worth noting that Barack Obama, even before he was President, was very big on encouraging people to reject the "big hero to rescue us" model and take action to make change themselves. If you recognize that people who want change have been writing individually to the White House to get it for generations, redirecting some of that mostly-invisible-to-others mechanism of feedback (which, because of the volume, is pretty much guaranteed to generally produce generic responses and little action) to a mechanism where requests and the responses can be highly visible and serve as vehicle for groups to raise interest and propel a conversation that then extends beyond the WH petition forum, it has some value. If you look at the response from the WH as the end of the process that the petition starts, sure, its not particularly useful. But that's, I think, misunderstanding the point rather badly.