Day: October 25, 2002

Categories
Weblogging

Lets hear it for bad ideas

BetterBadNews has a new video online…or is that vidcast? Anyway, this one covers the new idea of Citizen Public Speakers, as a complement to Citizen Journalist. In this initial broadcast, Huffington Post and Jeff Jarvis are featured.

If the idea of twice chewed weblog posts appeals, then Citizen Public Speakers ought to ring your bells. As the Moderator explains:

…most good ideas fail…I lost everything I had on some very good ideas. I want to be sure it’s a bad idea next time. I have learned how to recognize a really promising bad idea by the lack of competitors. This helps provide a safe space for experimentation.

I want to see BBN take on Web 2.0, next. In the meantime, there’s a fresh market for developing a podcast extension to RSS2Blog. Get in on the ground floor.

Categories
People

The heart of the civil rights movement

Rosa Parks, the heart of the civil rights movement, died at her home Monday.

When the KKK tried to adopt part of the I-55 freeway outside of St. Louis under the highway cleanup adoption plan, which would force the state into acknowledging the group’s effort with a sign, the Highway Department responded by naming that stretch of the freeway the “Rosa Parks” freeway. Every time I head down south, I see that sign and I’m reminded that the civil rights movement didn’t stop when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

Fifty years ago, by quietly refusing to give up her seat to a white man on the bus, Mrs. Parks taught us that the fight for equality is just that: a fight. A struggle. True equality does not come about by compromise and complacency–something to remember, because the struggle still continues.

Categories
Political

It isn’t always ideal

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Warning: this is yet another disconnected ramble.

I never publicly thanked Dorothea for her strong defense of me in my recent confrontation with a well known weblogger. I did privately, but didn’t want to publicly because, well, I wanted to let the whole thing just die out.

However, now is the time for me to thank Dorothea, not so much for speaking out for me, but for speaking out for, to paraphrase Dorothea, the kind of talk that makes you uncomfortable. Stripping away social politeness, dropping the niceties. Yelling fire in a room full of fireman.

A little digression: You know why Vietnam ended? I got into an argument once with someone in California about this. He said it was because people like him (and myself) protested it when we were younger. Thirty years ago, I would have believed him, and marveled at the power of my flowerchild-like fingertips. However, today, I know that the reason the war ended wasn’t because people like me got sick of the war. It was because people who were not like me got sick of the war. When almost every family in this country had received at least one body bag. When people at home, watching news on TV watched yet another film about the atrocities committed in Nam, by both sides. When middle America wearied of the blood and the cost and the horror, that’s when the war ended.

This all leads me to a thought: You want to change this country? Convince someone who is totally unlike yourself to want this change. Then you have a chance.

Tomorrow big anti-Iraqi invasion demonstrations throughout the world. I think it’s great that people are making a show of solidarity about this issue, and will be attending a rally here in St. Louis. However, I hope people remember that though great big group hugs among people of like mind might make us feel good, they won’t change minds. Calling President Bush “King George” or “Shrub” won’t change minds, either.

You want to change minds? Find your way into the kind of mind you want to change, and speak the language it can understand. That’ll change minds.

Well, bit of a ramble. Time for bed. Big rally day tomorrow.