roundtable: re: "cards and letters"

roundtable: re: "cards & letters"

re: "cards & letters"

Richard K. Moore (rkmoore@iol.ie)
Fri, 20 Jan 1995 15:54:19 +0000 

Message-Id: <199501201556.PAA00606@GPO.iol.ie>
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 15:54:19 +0000
To: roundtable@cni.org
From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore)
Subject: re: "cards & letters"


W. Curtiss Priest(bmslib@mitvma.mit.edu) wrote to ROUNDTABLE:
> 
>    "We also don't know what affect we on this list can really have 
> on the process.  Lists are new.  Politics and lobbyist's are old.
> 
>    "This is a time to combine the new and the old.  We all 
> benefit from information on this list (and others).  We need, now, 
> to take that benefit and translate it into telephone calls and 
> letters -- part of the old system."
---

How true that we need to find ways to translate discourse into effective
democratic participation.

Calls & letters can be useful, but they alone are but a tiny fraction of
the options available to us. That approach also suffers from the
disadvantage that most of our efforts would cancel one another other out,
given our healthy diversity of views.

Our potential influence would be far greater if somehow expressed
collectively, rather than as individual missives. That would require us 
to accomplish two objectives:

   (1) - gather knowledge about "who's out there", other than the 
         frequent contributors.

   (2) - achieve group consensus - even if initially it only covers 
         general principles.

If we had those, then we could make statements of the form:

   "We <group identified>, after due deliberation, believe XXX <described>
    to be the case, and request/demand/suggest that YYY <described> action
    be taken."

Such statements are the opening move in any democratic dialog with an
outside party. "Outside parties" can include potential collaborators 
(other lists), govenment officials and agencies, individuals, or 
organizations.


-Richard


Richard K. Moore
<rkmoore@iol.ie>

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