In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
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- How to kill a popular government institution with us since the founding of the country before everyone's eyes
- Evil Neighbor Blues
- My grandfather is doing fantastic
- Update on Housing Demolotions in Bangalore, India
- In which the hospital attempts to fulfill my grandfather's death wish
- Update on Alfred Natkin from Cape Cod Hospital
- Doing What One Can Do
- Proposition 37 Million Dollars
- Andrew Judson Grice (1969-2012)
- Peasants and migrant workers rising up, organizing, and even winning in repressive China
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PWGD
Counter-recruiting, PWGD, and Thinking Big
Sun, 2008/02/10 - 12:50pm — Benjamin MelançonCounterrecruiting: very much a project for which I personally want to use PWGD. (PWGD tools, of course, are freely available for everything. Universal. That's the point. But if we who build it don't have some specific things in mind, we really lack imagination and purpose!)
(A discourse regarding the hypothetical People Who Give a Damn website...)
PWGD.org helps people who give a damn find one another and organize to take effective action on issues they care about. Right now these tools for connecting are pretty weak.
Divide and Rule: Romney Tried to Split Supporters of Queer Rights
Sun, 2008/02/10 - 9:18am — Benjamin MelançonThe way I heard the story is that Romney shut down the William Weld initiated Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth when they tried to expand their formal charge, and name, to include transgender youth.
I can't find a news article that verifies this explicitly, but that certainly sounds like what was happening behind the scenes.
And I interpret that as an attempt, reportedly somewhat successful, to cause fighting within the movement.
In the last paragraph of these notes I go off on a tanget about economic injustice and oppression and sex and gender injustice and oppression that I think is worthwhile.
A Movement Larger Than Electoral Politics is More Important Than Who is President
Sun, 2008/02/10 - 4:30am — Benjamin MelançonQuoting myself from over at RuralVotes' The Field:
One thing is certain. As Tom W. points out, there is not much distinction between Obama and Clinton on policy, and the term movement is being used pretty loosely.
Distributed dealing with e-mail
Sat, 2008/02/02 - 6:46pm — Benjamin MelançonThis blog post, about how to outsource your e-mail inbox, may be yet another example of hierarchy – hire people to read your e-mail! – but it could also help form a model for non-hierarchical, distributed dealing with e-mail– which an organization like PWGD will need to avoid falling afoul of the too big rule.
Genocide by Public Policy: First Peoples and the European Invasion
Fri, 2008/02/01 - 7:14pm — Benjamin MelançonHere are my thoughts after talking to a friend upset by a professor who said ignorant things about the people of this hemisphere. He used the fact that most of the massive indigenous death in the Americas came from diseases, not guns, to dismiss the moral import of the centuries-long genocidal invasion of these continents by Europeans.
We need to make an exceedingly well backed up case to convince anyone of anything, or to build knowledge we can use to build a better world.
I think the argument must be, essentially, that what happened was genocide by public policy.
Power as permission to communicate
Wed, 2008/01/30 - 10:51am — Benjamin MelançonSo PWGD:
the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.
... what people really want is the ability to connect to each other
Artfully excerpted from Seth Godin's "Tribe Management" post.
If a charity is advertized on national television, it's a scam
Tue, 2008/01/29 - 11:31am — Benjamin MelançonChristian Children's Fund
You've seen an advertisement. One of the few times you see the disenfranchised, the very poor, of the world on television. I guess that's a service in itself.
But what must the expenses be like to advertise on the CBS morning show?
They bring in more than $200 million a year, mostly in direct public support, indirect public support, and lastly from the government.
Right off the top they say they spend more than $30 million for advertising and management.
Too big
Thu, 2008/01/24 - 12:15am — Benjamin MelançonIf you're too big to talk to your readers, customers, users– you're too big.
A lot of PWGD will have to be figuring out how to make connection scale.
Democracy instead of Digg
Wed, 2008/01/23 - 11:37pm — Benjamin MelançonImmigration and Failing Empires
Tue, 2007/12/18 - 8:24pm — Benjamin MelançonJust trying to look to history to understand the current situation.
(Note that I certainly don't think immigration causes empires to fail, I'm just curious if immigration stops once they do, changes in a nation's economic basis for incorporating immigration, about the tendency for fear and hatred based politics to take over, etc.)
Online searches don't turn up much:
immigration failing empires
immigration declining empires
Immigration was a political issue in Britain in the 1960s -- no coloured people from the former colonies moving into our neighborhoods -- according to
I make a living doing web design and development with a great team
The Agaric Design Collective
I'm trying to make possible a worldwide nonviolent revolution for justice, liberty, and making more good things doable.
People Who Give a Damn
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Favorite Quotations
"One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts."
--quote to Walter Daellenbach, May 31, 1915.