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Post by kjlowry on Jul 8, 2012 9:16:17 GMT -5
Greetings from TX-12 after 3 days driving home through some TRULY MAGNIFICENT countryside...I have taken two trips that I call my "looking for America" trips - last year to Florida for the last shuttle launch and this year to the CC 2.0 and I am still looking...any suggestions for future trips? I have attached a copy of the 7/04/2012 Grievances that includes 17 grievances that were written by myself and 2 others on the style committee for the verbal version of the Petition from what the committees submitted and the "body" voted to include at 51% or more in the document. I no longer refer to it as the 99% declaration BECAUSE, if you assume (big Assumption) that our body represented the 99% then including grievances that voted at 51% takes away that title...IMHO. I don't have time to finish this right now, but I will finish describing my grievance with the grievances and What went Wrong as soon as I have a few more moments...I am hoping that with a clearer view of what went wrong described to the "powers that be" whoever that is...maybe we can figure out the way forward?! But right now I have been interrupted by life for a while...be back ASAP! KJ Attachments:
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Post by davidindc on Jul 8, 2012 9:49:46 GMT -5
Thanks KJ.
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Post by jondenn on Jul 8, 2012 9:53:31 GMT -5
I agree KJ. I think calling it the 99 Declaration is false advertising. Here is Kent Greenfield's article in the HuffPost on why Progressives should oppose the end of Corporate Personhood. I left Philly early when my committee passed it with only my dissent. www.huffingtonpost.com/kent-greenfield/why-progressives-should-o_b_1231884.html You can't have a 99D if many the items on the list make moderates ambivalent or worse, and conservatives angry, because the 99 is roughly one-third each. Jon
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Post by Julio on Jul 8, 2012 10:26:38 GMT -5
Jon, the worse thing you can do is abandon your position. The best thing you can do is stay and persist. A movement like this needs checks. As much as I disagree with some of your stuff, I think people like you are essential and needed. Much like the old greeks, I believe reason will prevail in the end - but it can't if people jut leave.
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Post by kjlowry on Jul 8, 2012 10:28:54 GMT -5
Ready to finish my earlier message. When we voted on the ~20 groupings (later committee topics) of the 100 statements from the original website for the first time...The ONLY two topics that received >90% for inclusion were "Campaign finance reform" and "Election Reform".
My "WHAT WENT WRONG" is focused on what happened next. If we had been true leaders and representatives of the 99% we should have stopped at that point and made a logical, but impassioned series of speeches.
Title: "We must only have 2 committees for the actual grievances to be included in our petition #1 and #2 about those two issues that got >90%" OR -- even better, both of those issues can be condensed into ONE THING: Our government and politicians are being bought and sold by the highest bidders (including anonymous bidders - likely even foreign countries) and it must be stopped!!
One committee should have been formed -- a committee of the whole...to hash out the wording of the ONE grievance and ALL suggested remedies to the grievance! Then the next round of voting should have been on the remedies that >90% agreed should be presented in the petition.
THEN and only then - the other topics getting less than 90% on the first vote could have been hashed out in new committees to be presented to the government for legislation after our 99% Declaration had been redressed by the courts or in elections of our 99% candidates that agreed to it. THOSE secondary concerns should NEVER have been part of the 99% Declaration because with those in there...it is NOT truly "of the 99%, by the 99%, and for the 99%".
I am going to copy these two messages and try to post them everywhere that the people have been communicating about this...can anyone suggest where all those places are? FB pages? email lists? SC questions? other discussion groups? Thanks for reading this and please respond and let me know what you think. Thanks, KJ Lowry
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Post by kjlowry on Jul 8, 2012 10:45:40 GMT -5
Jon ...I have never been so disappointed as I was when NO ONE made any impassioned or logical arguments to the whole in support of the TOTALITY of the 99%. Many of the dissenters just grouped together and mumbled amongst themselves. I am sorry but I have to blame it on the lack of enthusiasm? or shyness? or ease of frustration? of those that were more centrist, conservative or libertarian! During deliberations, the silence from the right was deafening. At least I hung in there and got the top two grievances combined into one, but it was the desertion of MANY reasonable voices that left the document in the final form with all of those 50+% solutions and grievances included. We could have done SO much better if we had ALL stayed in the fray!
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Post by indecankelly on Jul 8, 2012 13:02:18 GMT -5
Jon, just for the record, and a point of clarification, I voted with you in committee.
I for one feel like one of the biggest disappointments, because I attempted to be a consensus builder, and failed miserably. I spoke on most of the topics, and to challenge KJ's assessment of someone not making logical arguments, I DID make LOGICAL arguments, that I guess fell on mostly deaf ears, though I swear I heard some claps and enthusiasm of support after each attempt to clarify the guidance of this whole debacle. Unfortunately, the extremists only hardened their positions, called us out for being "white men" (crazy right?), "far right" (really? we're they listening to what we said?), and someone actually said to me that I was afraid of real change in this country. Regardless, what we were supposed to be doing was building a mountain of support, and instead dug a deep hole, so deep that moderates, conservative, pragmatists, and regular underinformed Americans will not hear, because the hole is too deep, and no on can hear the disjoined voice that whispers out of this hole.
Early on in the committee assignments, I attempted to get committees 1, 2, 3 combined, which nearly occurred, only to have one or two extreme views not see "corporate personhood" and "money out of politics" as the same thing (which they are by the way) because those voices are so fixated on the word corporate, and they couldn't see the same need to bring into the conversation "campaign finance".
Later on, "campaign finance" and "election reform" decided to combine (great idea again), only to have similar 1 or 2 folks think that they should be separate, when they both fly under the need for "clean and fair elections". KJ, I do wish that some logical folks would have spoken more, because I know they felt the same as those of us who tried to keep everyone on focus. But when you have stalwart folks who want the legalization of marijuana & decriminalization of hard drugs (both with weak national support), want to demolish the Federal Reserve, and stupidly put it under the Executive Branch (wtf?), want World Peace Day everyday even though Industrialized Warfare is THE ECONOMIC ENGINE of our modern economy, want to beat the Health Care drum immediately following a terse political reality with regards to the Affordable Care Act (couldn't that just wait at least a year?), what more can one do.
The bottom line, I fought hard in committee (1 & 2) for our well crafted grievances to not use the divisive terms "corporate personhood" and "money is property", to which I also campaigned for their defeat (which I won both times) during the "amendment process" where the terms returned, only to see them in the style committee's final assessment. So, the question is, what rules were we following? What did democracy look like in that little (minded) room? And at every step of the process, why was the "consensus building" voice silenced even after winning at each phrase? KJ, as a member of the style committee, which SC asked you to put that language back in, or what it a product of your own decision?
Bottom line, the most fun and the most I learned were from that group of dissenters who snickered again and again at the illegitimate process being played out, as Michael Pollack attempted to get a duped of citizens together to validate and give credence to his awful attempt to do something extraordinary. These dissenters were dissenting the puny amount of power that existed in the collected thought of all the delegates that was hijacked by extreme interests. Instead of listening to the dissenters, who were more inline with that of the authentic 99%, those dissenters knew that no matter what they said, did, or challenged, their voice, just as that of the real 99% would get silenced; and you know what, it did. As a member of many boards and commissions, who routinely use Robert's Rules of Order, what da funk rules were we supposedly following, and who can I slap for lying and manipulating them? Also, who kept records? In any meeting of this nature there should have been a secretary, and you know the stall on the first day was to get people to forget that we were suppose to elect a proper chair. Alex Easton Brown has the leadership abilities of an ant licking a turd, and you know what, it showed. I love my country, and believe in the structure of our founding documents and of our government. What we need to do, time and time again, is to change the people, and have folks in place who are making "consensus building" and pragmatic decisions, rather than fall victim to the same emotional thinking we all rally against. I said numerous times, people should go back to their localities and run for local office, and again, for the occupiers that means being co-opted (which they always define inaccurately), for the tea party folks it means having to compromise or wither away electorally, and for other progressives it means to be challenged on their golden ideals and find common ground with common people. I for one have election politics in my immediate future, and therefore could never sign such a ridiculous document, that speaks to such a minority of the minority of Americans, it would be null in the court of public opinion. Again, I appreciate those of you that ACTUALLY read my words, and ACTUALLY LISTENED to the same logic I spoke at the microphone, many times during the convention.
Peace and love to you all.
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Post by kjlowry on Jul 8, 2012 15:20:16 GMT -5
I should have said Impassioned AND logical ... You guys were just too polite? Shy? Softly spoken? I am pretty sure that even the most passion and forcefulness would not have changed the minds in the room, however. The language you mentioned was in the draft they gave us to summarize,etc...except the last phrase/sentence in each of the first two listed grievances was actually written at the beginning for us to use. kjl
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Post by Julio on Jul 8, 2012 18:11:31 GMT -5
I agree with Mrs. Lowry (She was wonderful by the way). I think the self-proclaimed dissenters (many of whom I talked to and are nothing but fascinating, intelligent, and wonderful people and patriots) should have spoken far more and opened up. Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with some of the ideas that were thrown about (and that actually won support) but that doesn't mean I wanted those ideas to die a quiet death or to be shoved in a file cabinet somewhere. Discussions and the exchange of ideas means just that - that discussions and exchanges have to be made. I'm happy Kelly Allen will be in it for the long haul, as well as others. All I can say is that, to me, this process is merely just beginning. It's going to be painful, and its gonna suck at times - we won't agree all the time (or maybe even never), but so what? Neither did many of the framers and look what was born. I still believe we can address most of these problems in a single document without exclusion, save for some exceptions perhaps.
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Post by davidindc on Jul 8, 2012 20:10:00 GMT -5
The deck was stacked. My first official greeting, when I handed my license to Stephanie, was "You're David Itkin? Why are you such an asshole?"
It went downhill from there.
While we waited two hours for the credentials to be handed out and the magic remote control voting machines were registered, we tried to talk to one another using the Mikes, only to b shooed away from them because they were only for SC-sanctioned communications, and those weren't to happen until Alex was ready to preside. (If Farrell and Alex were wrong about that, no one challenged them.)
When Robert Manning brought up the invitation to David Cobb, I tried to clarify whether people other than the Steering Committee could add votes to the Agenda. I was jeered. After I left the mike, I approached the loudest jeerer (the stern fellow with the longish salt and pepper hair.) I asked for a little civility and pointed out that I'd gone out when I saw the staff volunteers were working their tails off with no cold water and bought some. He replied "Do you think that makes you special? Yeah you're so special you don't even need to wear your badge."
I tried to explain that I'd taken it off when I went out onto the streets for the water and had forgotten to put it back on upon returning, he repeated his mantra that I wasn't special.
I can go on about a gaziliion other things that made it an unwelcome proposition to try to challenge the steering committee, but I think Julio can recall our two conversations about the committee on style and buying a pig (or tofu) in a poke.
Each time, I was bringing him information he hadn't heard, and that he tried to intercede with the rest of the SC about.
Given that open challenge was useless and trying to work through the sane SC liaison seemed to bring about at least infinitessimal progress, it's unsurprising that no one spoke up as KJ wishes they would have.
It's a testament to her boundless good faith that she thinks it would have mattered. Mine isn't boundless, and the steering committee had already drained my reservoir of good will bone-dry.
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Post by kforthun on Jul 8, 2012 20:33:12 GMT -5
David Your a Sweetie Pie! And, Penelope is to lazy to join the forum right now and she says, "YOU'RE DA BEST DON'T LISTEN TO ANYONE ELSE". (we just finished new member conference call
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Post by christucker72 on Jul 9, 2012 1:48:18 GMT -5
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Post by davidindc on Jul 9, 2012 6:23:22 GMT -5
Awwww. Thanks.
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john
New Member
Texas-12
Posts: 39
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Post by john on Jul 11, 2012 19:21:10 GMT -5
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john
New Member
Texas-12
Posts: 39
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Post by john on Jul 11, 2012 19:23:20 GMT -5
Is the document signed by delegates and read in Philly available somewhere to download. Perhaps the media might want to avoid it but why are we hiding it from ourselves?
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