I think it would be more effective to begin organizing a primary challenge to Nancy Pelosi. Residents of San Francisco have the unique ability to send a message to the minority leader, and therefore, the entire democratic party.
The leverage, or political return on effort, for challenging a house party leader is far greater than for any other elected official. (Senate leaders have far more constituents)
Unfortunately, it's a much more systemic problem than can be solved by ousting a politician here or there.
I encourage everyone who cares about this to get politically involved at a level beyond merely voting for congress critters now and then.
There's a lot that you can do, from joining and supporting organizations like the EFF and the ACLU to getting involved in local politics, which is usually the level that can be most affected by relatively small numbers of individuals.
Yes! Put your money where your mouth is and raise money to oust Pelosi. The tech community is the "moneyed interests" here. They should be able to at least give her a big scare.
The tech industry has been complicit in this, and I think how the Democrat party resonates with them can be summarized as such:
> What you can control cannot hurt you.
I think this explains why those in the tech industry either stand firmly and resolutely with the government (and firmly belonging to the Democrat party), or their political allegiance follows along Libertarian lines because such statements instill a strong sense of anxiety and trepidation.
Are you saying the democratic party controls tech or the other way around? Neither is true. The tech industry is phenomenally impotent in political issues, and neither party cares enough about tech to want to control it.
The tech industry is to the democratic party like the faithful wife who gets cheated on. Tech folks vote reliably democrat, or not at all, so there is zero reason to care about their interests.
I 100% agree with with the sentiment behind this rally, but I often feel that rallies like this in San Francisco are preaching to the choir. They make the participants and observers feel better, but do little to effect real change.
It is hoped that this rally will inspire others, and make more people aware of the issue and the opposition the people have to living in a surveillance state.
The effects of protests might not be immediately obvious, and perhaps might never be publicly acknowledged. However, they can have a serious impact.
Here's one important example:
"Many people don't know it, but Nixon was considering using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. At that time, Nixon was also repeatedly saying that he
didn't care what the American people thought about Vietnam, and that he was going to escalate the war anyway. However, according to a
biography by a well-known historian, when Nixon saw hundreds of thousands of protesters on TV, he dropped his secret plan of nuking Vietnam."[1]
Rayiner: your comment is marked as dead, I think because you used the word circle.... Perhaps try re-posting without it.
Edit: actually here, I did it for you:
False dichotomy.
Rallies in San Francisco are just excuses for like minded people to have a merry old time. It's a politically irrelevant city, because it has no votes in play. Want to have some actual impact, some actual chance to change hearts and minds, go protest in Utah, where you can connect the cause to the site, or DC, or heck Iowa, where you can take advantage of their natural libertarian streak and there are votes to be swayed.
I disagree. The tide is turning in Congress. Since a majority of the media is incompetent, rallies are one way for the people to raise awareness. Maybe you have an idea for how we can help raise awareness?
You could also try putting out more advance notice. This is the first I've heard of it, and since it was scheduled for 2 hours ago I'm assuming it's already over.
While the Amash Amendment was defeated, it surprised a lot of people how close the vote was. [1] Pelosi wrote a letter to Obama that though she defended it, change was coming. [2]
Yeah, it's disappointing when Germany has bigger turnout over PRISM than we do in the US. But we do have twice as many people RSVP'd this time. But there will always be hope, wherever you are, until you yourself abandon it.
It's possible some apathy towards this issue and a feeling that this is no immediate threat to them, because US hasn't really been under dangerous regimes before, are at play here, but I also think people like to be led and organized. I think organizations like ACLU and EFF should do a lot more grassroots organizing of the protests, and get people to say "Yes, I'm coming to the protest tomorrow".
Reading about the protest on a website won't guarantee many will go (and most will not). People need to be contacted by these civil liberties organizations and asked to come.
Yes, people do need to be led. Civil libertarians have proven completely unable to lead in the last decade. Certainly, a bunch of people who think you can do it all on the internet won't be able to lead.
If you want to impact political change, you need to do it the way other groups do. I have teenagers coming to my door asking if I know about Jesus. Where are the young people going door to door to spread knowledge about NSA spying?
Who hung about all of 25 minutes, so people who were even slightly caught in traffic missed the whole thing. And with no online information of where they were marching to.
The hour I spent trying to figure out what was going on,there were people showing up constantly, looking lost, fiddling with their phones and then wandering off, just like I eventually did.
So there was a shortfall in planning at the last event, and thus you've decided not to participate in the future? Wouldn't the proper solution be to contact the organizers and identify the problem, or to help organize yourself so that things would run more efficiently?
What do you hope to accomplish with this comment? Why are you blaming the 400 people who showed up as "shamefully pathetic", instead of focusing your anger on those who did not show up? How do you think it feels to spend your free time working hard to organize event, only to have someone mock you for turning out a "shamefully pathetic 400"? Do you know how difficult it is to get people to show up for a protest, largely because of attitudes like yours?
The leverage, or political return on effort, for challenging a house party leader is far greater than for any other elected official. (Senate leaders have far more constituents)