The following discussion clip is from the Occupy Wall Street demand discussion list.
Previous posts suggested the key to getting politicians to work together was getting them to mingle at more informal events. An example given was BARBECUES.
Here is the lead in post from grapes:
Absolutely, the ultimate purpose is really about uniting our country and getting things done. Barbecues may be the ice-breaker. Unless we change our political system drastically, the fix has to come from within the democratic framework. Most voters are fixated on who the President is but in our political system, the most powerful branch of the government is the Congress. No matter how much flame is thrown from the bully pulpit, without the people holding Congress accountable, NOTHING will be changed. The trick to make Congress change is to have voters concentrate on the primaries campaigns and funding. If necessary, field your own candidates to muddy the waters. By and large, when you double the number of candidates, you greatly dilute the number of votes that the incumbent candidate will get and it makes it easy to unseat the incumbent.
Nanook:
Why not choose your other alternative: CHANGE OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM DRASTICALLY. It’s not as if we don’t have a precedent for this: throw out the whole idea of kings and monarchies and create a “government by the people”; codify things like “freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech” in our constitution; ban SLAVERY; give WOMEN the right to vote!
One of the reasons our society keeps avoiding this drastic alternative is no one with “high stature” in our society has presented any models that are truly NOVEL and PRACTICAL. But, it’s not that such models don’t exist. It’s just that ALL of us are guilty of some of the elitist faults that we are preaching against. So, we won’t even look at things unless they are proposed by some PhD at some prestigious school. Let’s change that. Let’s provide a FORUM for these alternative ideas to come out. An example is the NEW form of democracy presented on my website, http://A3society.org , under the democracy tab – plural democracy. I also discuss a model for collecting, organizing and protecting those ideas ( government tab ).(
