From time to time some of us send letters, e-mails or other communications to our supposedly progressive legislators and leaders raising what are often important questions and inviting responses. It seems, however, that almost invariably, these queries go without response.
Here's an idea that may spur those who aspire to leadership positions to actually respond.
Whether it's LibLogs or Liberals Online or Progressive Bloggers or Canadian Progressives or Rabble or whatever, we need a registry where these communications (provided they're not merely frivolous or vexations) - and whatever responses they elicit, if any - can be logged and thereby shared.
Post the communication, post the response. Let's see what these would-be leaders of our country have to say for themselves. Let's see where they truly stand on issues of the day. Let them show us the country they want to lead and create.
One thing is clear. If we, the real progressives, had that sort of registry, they would ignore us at their peril. We are a core communication base for the progressive movement, a lot of us put a great amount of time and effort into this, and we're entitled to be heard and to be answered.
So I would invite all of these aggregators to get together and create this type of registry - or explain why they won't.
5 comments:
This sounds like a good idea. Whenever a progressive actually gets a meaningful communication, it would be nice to see the response (whenever I sign petition letters, all I receive are automated email responses).
A wiki might serve as a good platform for this type of 'progressive registry'. Personally I would choose a text based wiki (e.g. dokuwiki) as opposed to a SQL based wiki (e.g. mediawiki) just for ease of maintenance.
This is an excellent idea. An easily accessible, searchable, search engine-friendly, collaborative central repository for such communications could be helpful in holding to account public officials, and those who seek election to public office. I've added it to the Prog Blog wishlist.
@ Anon. I'm sure your suggestions are great and many thanks. But I'm a guy who spent my journo days banging away on manual typewriters, today's museum pieces, so it went right over my head but I'm sure your ideas will be useful if these aggregators wanted to go for this sort of thing.
Again, thanks.
@ Chris. Thanks for taking this up with Prog Blogs. I envision a couple of things that would have to be controlled. There are some who would take it as an opportunity to be vexatious - writing to MPs or candidates at whim, making complete nuisances of themselves. Yet I think there are ways to deal with that sort of thing.
Is there some liaison among blog aggregators?
@ Mound: Although I'm sure moderators of various boards communicate personally, I'm not aware of any formal liasons between the the aggregators in question.
Agreed with your point that controls need to be in place to prevent a free-for-all. Yet the info needs to be open so that any legitimate communications can be posted, and accessible, so it is picked up by search engines. Anon's suggestions are on the right track.
Hey, Chris. I just came up with the idea but I have no, zero ability to do anything with it. Please, if you at all can, run with it. Make it your own and see if you can get the others to join with you. It would add an enormous dimension to these progressive sites if we could establish a functioning conduit to the political side.
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