Brainstorm: Nonviolent but Actually Effective Dissent Ideas

[FourthBase]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrache

Not original, except in the sense that I had independently conceived of the idea back in 2008 and proposed it to the pro-Troy-Davis activists, that everyone go down to the neighborhood of the black Republican judge on the GA Supreme Court, and shame him with chants and songs ("Amazing Grace" in particular) and signs, for as long and as loudly as the law would allow, until he repented and stopped the execution. The idiots looked at me like I had four heads. I wish I'd had known there was a longstanding tradition of just such a thing, with a name, and oooh bonus it doesn't come from white people, so maybe the anti-death-penalty liberal chick in charge of the meeting would've actually listened.

Escrache! Escrache! Escrache!

[justdrew]

joining together to boycott and demand ads be pulled works...

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flush-Rush-List-of-Limbaughs-sponsors/141865815823701

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/06/limbaugh-feuds-with-host-company-over-ad-revenues-lost-to-slut-boycott/

Republican shock jock Rush Limbaugh could soon find himself without a distribution company thanks to an internal feud over ad revenues lost amid a boycott of his show, triggered when he called a Democratic activist a “slut” and a “prostitute” for speaking in favor of birth control coverage.

It’s not likely that Rush will be off the air anytime soon, but his loyal listeners in the nation’s largest media markets may have to search the dial to find him.

A source close to Limbaugh tells Politico that he’s considering breaking free of Cumulus Media once his contract is up at the end of 2013, effectively pulling his show off the largest talk radio platform in the world.

The leak from Limbaugh’s people coincides with Cumulus Media CEO Lew Dickey’s scheduled earnings call set for Tuesday morning. “The Rush Limbaugh Show” is the company’s most valuable program, and losing it could be devastating.

Politico noted that, while the boycott’s total damage is not publicly known, Dickey’s statements in 2012 and March 2013 indicated that the network’s largest stations have been bleeding revenue. While the CEO has not elaborated on the causes of the company’s financial woes, he did say in March that the troubles were “due to some of the issues that happened a year ago.”

March 1, 2012 was a particularly troubling day for Cumulus Media. Reacting to comments Limbaugh made just one day prior, Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke appeared on MSNBC and excoriated the host’s reaction to her congressional testimony in favor of birth control coverage. The boycott was soon to follow.

Within months, hundreds of advertisers fled not just Limbaugh’s show, but right-wing radio altogether, withdrawing from the whole market and washing their hands of Limbaugh’s controversy. Many companies also insisted they were not aware their ads were running on Limbaugh’s show.

It wasn’t long thereafter that stations featuring Limbaugh began running dead air instead of commercials, and public service announcements sold at ultra-low cost became the new norm.

While some of the advertisers have returned, Cumulus Media appears to have been hobbled. The company’s earnings per share growth rate plunged more than 83 percent in Q2 2013, and revenue growth was down 9.2 percent. Cumulus Media’s FY 2012 earnings statement is even more grim, showing a net revenue loss of 151.3 percent.

“It’s a very serious discussion, because Dickey keeps blaming Rush for his own revenue problems,” Politico’s source reportedly said. “Dickey’s talk stations underperform talk stations owned by other operators in generating revenue by a substantial margin. It’s not a single show issue… it’s a failure of the entire station. And trying to blame Rush for that is not much of a business partnership.”

[FourthBase]

Another night, another cross-post from Facebook:

How do we fix this mess, this glorious democratic republic, this very-necessary federal government, which is ruled by exactly 536 people of varying power and their appointed buddies and underlings? Not by voting for the same people, most of whom have been "tapped" out of the gate from the very beginning of every electoral season by one or another clique of lobbyists and mega-rich fundraisers and mega-powerful groomers. Not by violence of any kind, either! Put that rock down, self-defeating anarchist twit! Stop buying bullets, lazy paranoid extremist who idolizes violent sedition as opposed to the harder-to-conceive peaceful options waiting to be thought up! So, what then? "It's hopeless!" The fuck it is. Nothing is ever hopeless, excepting the inevitable collapse of the sun billions of years from now, which probably isn't worth getting depressed about yet. So, what then? Well...

You remember that ballot you filled out in the last election? Not much of a choice, right? Wrong. Don't neglect that blank square. That is a freedom paid for by the bloodshed of heroes. You can put any name you want there, and it has to be counted, just like every other name. For example, after no one here persuaded me to vote for them last November, I went with myself. Paul Chandler Chandler for President in 2012, lol. I would suck, for real. But, at least I would try, and be honest, and still be alive unlike the other two choices I was wrestling with, Dwight Eisenhower and Robert F. Kennedy. But surely I was not the right candidate for the job. But, perhaps you know someone who is. Your aunt, your son, your old Con Law professor, your hairdresser. A good, decent human being with an above-average IQ and an admirable moral compass and a passion for understanding the world and trying to make it better.

Is there really any other prerequisite? Perhaps also a good grasp of math, American history, and the law? Okay. Crash courses exist to train novices in those subjects. Perhaps three weeks of BARBRI's multistate lectures would be enough to familiarize an amateur enough with the relevant law; one of those at-home video-series lectures sold in the back of high-brow magazines for a survey of US History; and an adult-ed class in the basic gist of arithmetic, algebra, trig, geometry, stats, and/or maybe even calculus. Solved. All that should matter is competence and integrity. Other qualifications need not apply. Right? Wrong?

So, okay, you know this one person, but no one else does. Okay. Problem. How do we remedy that? 536 lotteries. That's how. A large pool of minimally-qualified applicants, each entered into a lottery for each of the 536 federal elected offices. What's the minimum? Meh. To be determined. Background check to make sure not a total loon or a clandestine enemy agent, or some similar rudimentary safeguard. Maybe also must earn a certain amount of prize money in a game of "Jeopardy! Civics Edition" or "Cash Cab: Math After Dark", or whatever. Not important, yet, to specify. But just know there would be some sensible standard, treshhold that could be brainstormed and devised.

Okay, so, imagine: It's the Massachusetts special election for Senate. There's one old guy with a D, one younger guy with an R, but online and door-to-door and outside supermarkets for months people have been entering hundreds/thousands of potential amateurs, vetted and tested down by crowdsourcing into a manageable 50 or so, and the night before the election those voters who voluntarily pledge to vote for whichever name is picked out of a bucket randomly Bingo-style are informed of the lottery-winner. "And the next Senator from the state of Massachusetts is...Josephine Schmo, from Dorchester! Bingo! Congratulations, Josie. Citizens who are participating, be sure to write in Mrs. Schmo's name tomorrow. Good luck, and God bless America!"

Would that violate any electoral laws? No. Would it be within the bounds of the Constitution, entirely? Yes. Would it violate the spirit of democracy? LOL, no. Quite the opposite, actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

(Consider that the other side of the Ostracon coin.)

Any downsides? Hell yes. Power corrupts, yadda yadda.
But I have a peculiar view of power, I suppose.

viewtopic.php?p=501516#p501516

Now, let's return to the 536. Imagine all 435 reps, all 100 senators, and the one president, all being randomly selected at the last moment from a pool of decent, ethical, halfway-knowledgeable, motivated-by-pure-civic-duty regular people. Is there a problem with that? I don't see any. Whatever secrets the national security complex needs to entrust to an intelligence committee, can be entrusted to a good common American. Uhhh, unless there's some really unsavory shit going on that only a species of anointed insiders can handle? Nah, methinks we actually can handle the truth, most definitely. Do we want this or that person on that wall, need this or that person on that wall? That's up to us, isn't it?

Realize something. You are the co-boss of a very powerful bureaucracy. The president of this country? You, fellow citizen, are his or her boss. Literally. Not the other way around, unless you are a soldier or intern. Your senator? Is yours. You are your senator's boss. We are our representatives' bosses. In every real possible sense of the word. How we misperceive this dynamic today, is what is unreal. But, so, if our employees suck, why haven't we fired them yet? Or, at the very least, transferred them, demoted them. I'm sure Obama was a captivating, brilliant professor. Let him do that again. Darrell Issa used to voice the car alarm in car alarm commercials. He was good at that. (He may yet still be not-terrible as the chairman of overseeing, stay tuned, lol.) Let's find out how good we'd all be doing their jobs, eh? Representing ourselves? Sound like an idea worth contemplating further?

[Luther Blissett]

Not entirely nonviolent (though it avoids any harm to a living thing) and not legal, but I have a question: could a drone be hacked to fly into a barren mountain or into the middle of the ocean?

[FourthBase]

Not entirely nonviolent (though it avoids any harm to a living thing) and not legal, but I have a question: could a drone be hacked to fly into a barren mountain or into the middle of the ocean?

Not entirely nonviolent and not legal is, uh, vastly understating things. Don't ya think?
What you ask is basically, kind of, sort of: "Would waging war on the U.S. be doable?"
Here's a question: The Weathermen, good or bad, stupid or smart, heroes or villains?
Another question: Can you start a new thread for that kind of question, please?

[DrEvil]

@Luther: Yes.
@FourthBase: Sorry!

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/hijack ... Z0CY5wuVl4

[Wombaticus Rex]

https://twitter.com/leashless/status/337313256257503234

"Subversion for Fun and Profit" - Robert Anton Wilson x Karl Hess

[Luther Blissett]

I never got a chance to apologize to FourthBase in this thread, so I'm sorry.

Now that gardening, both guerilla and conventional, is considered civil disobedience, we can add that to the list.

[FourthBase]

Bump, because I've started some awesome threads over the years, and I feel like patting myself on the back. And while the board is experiencing a news feed lull, we might as well revisit our own greatest hits, what better time, and what better use of time, compared to kicking rocks and spectating in a temporary tumbleweed valley.

[slimmouse]

Bump, because I've started some awesome threads over the years, and I feel like patting myself on the back. And while the board is experiencing a news feed lull, we might as well revisit our own greatest hits, what better time, and what better use of time, compared to kicking rocks and spectating n a temporary tumbleweed valley

And I have to say Im so glad you did, Mr President . That voting idea, which I missed the first time round in this thread uses a system thats already in place, with the injection of some right brain inspired imagination.

inform, inspire, empower.

[OP ED]

OP ED has not the inclination of yet to reread an olde thread this long.

[all of this is of course theoretical]


OP ED imagines that in an cityscape such as the one that OP ED inhabits...

[that is one which has distinct lack of public transportation and an overreliance on cars driven on crowded and ill maintained roadways]

...that a relatively small number of people driving continuously irritatingly slowly round strategic highway and near highway choke points could create temporary economic disruption across the entire local region.

[and remain mostly undetected if one wishes]

in michigan we often forced to turn around and then to our right, in place of simply turning left anyhow, so driving a route in a continuous loop is simple.

[FourthBase]

OP ED has not the inclination of yet to reread an olde thread this long.

[all of this is of course theoretical]


OP ED imagines that in an cityscape such as the one that OP ED inhabits...

[that is one which has distinct lack of public transportation and an overreliance on cars driven on crowded and ill maintained roadways]

...that a relatively small number of people driving continuously irritatingly slowly round strategic highway and near highway choke points could create temporary economic disruption across the entire local region.

[and remain mostly undetected if one wishes]

in michigan we often forced to turn around and then to our right, in place of simply turning left anyhow, so driving a route in a continuous loop is simple.

Personally, I draw the line at screwing with traffic. Ambulances gotta go places, to save people. Firefighters have to put out fires. When I met with the pro-Troy crowd in Atlanta, I was aghast at plans to disrupt and halt traffic, to cause gridlock in downtown Atlanta, because it could've endangered innocent lives, and tactically it's a loser in that regard, too, because if some old lady croaks because the stunt delayed her ambulance then the PR could be ruinous. Ethically dodgy, and the tail risk of a counterproductive clusterfuck.

At the same time, I am definitely anti-human-driving*, and pro-slowing-the-fuck-down, so if it could be managed without obstructing first responders, then I'm interested. Mass rotary-hogging for just long enough to make a scene/statement could maybe work, and probably be hilarious, lol.

*One of the ways I defy my bent toward anarcho-primitivism and against transhumanism, is that I cannot wait for the day when every car is self-driven. Vehicular fatalities would essentially cease. They'd plummet now if people would simply not insist on driving so fast, if society could make do with going half as fast as we do, if we had something like a maximum speed limit of 35mph. Or if people simply took their responsibility as pilots of two-ton missiles more seriously and learned to drive the right way. That was another of my ideas last year. (The day I unofficially won the internet, lol.) Let me find it. It might seem like a politically-useless form of dissent, but its goal would wind up saving more lives than are lost in most wars, and it'd also serve as biting satire on its methodological inspiration, heehee.

[FourthBase]

My plan to reduce automobile accident fatalities: Congregate at a DMV parking lot; trash-talk student drivers as they exit and enter on their lessons, protest those running in to renew licenses and registrations. What in the fuck do I mean? You know those pro-lifers who gather outside abortion clinics and try to shame women who most definitely do not need to be shamed at that very difficult moment? They chant, they sing, they hold signs with slogans and Bible quotes and pictures of dead fetuses, they hand out pamphlets, they jeer, they...whatever, they suck. Even if they're right, they suck at how to communicate that. But, how about another kind of pro-life movement? Directed at shaming drivers for being incompetent morons and inconsiderate assholes, reminding people of the preciousness of life, trying to change hearts and minds? So, a group of people who are devoutly afraid of vehicles and their misuse, gathering outside the venue where drivers are born and reborn. Shouting, at the top of their lungs, faux-angrily: Totally-sensible (and sometimes excessively-cautious to the point of paranoia) tips for new and rusty drivers. Holding signs that read in indignant and unfortunately-misspelled font, "REPENT! THE PERSON IN THE ROTERY HAS THE RIGHT OF WAY!" and "IMAGINE IF EVERYONE ON THE ROAD TODAY WOKE UP THIS MOURNING WITH THE EXPRESS GOAL OF KILLING YOU! CHOOSE LIFE!" and instead of dead fetuses well naturally there'd be pictures of dead and horribly disfigured accident victims; perhaps instead of little life-size fetus dolls there would be smashed Hot Wheels; instead of Bible quotes there'd be verbatim quotes from the Driver's Manual regarding, say, the appropriate situations in which to take a right-on-red or bang a U-ie; instead of trying to evoke in the desperate sorrowful minds of the soon-to-be not-pregnant any mental pictures of children that will never be, there'd be attempts to evoke in the minds of soon-to-be not-just-walking teenage children some mental pictures of their grieving desolate parents; and more slogans on buttons and bumper stickers like "DRIVE DEFENSIVELY" and "WHAT'S THE RUSH?" and just throwing a general fervent tantrum, maybe also singing hymns in honor of diligently using one's blinkers, etc. How's that for a pro-life movement? Obviously, it would have to maintain a consistent sense of humor about itself, be incessantly funny even. Otherwise, it would just get boring. If it stays a parody, then people would be more likely to keep listening, even enjoy being berated for a laugh. But, a laugh with a point. Meaning, what if there were such a faux-outrageous presence at every DMV in the country, every day, all day? Students, retirees, the unemployed, a rotating cast of people who have time on their hands. Could that, you know, actually maybe over time have a marked effect on the accident rate, the fatality rate? Wouldn't it be wicked fucking cool if it could? Wouldn't it be fun to find out?

[OP ED]

our first responders are relatively dense so any impact on them would be rather minimal. that said, this may or may not be the case in any other particular area. collateral damage should always be considered.

[OP ED]

[but anything that impacts the machine is going to impact those being machined to some degree or another]



[this has always been the most difficult aspect of fundamental oppositioning, that the vine may perish during the pruning]