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An update to yesterday’s post:

Substantive plans for an anarchist protest at the January 20, 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama are moving forward at Come Out 2009, with a January 5 strategy meeting in the works and the following statement of purpose:

For all those disillusioned with our country’s electoral system, who believe government “of the people, by the people, for the people” means more than a choice between two parties every four years; for anarchists crusading for workers democracy and socialists fighting for workers equality; for minimum-wage workers, recent evictees, students unable to pay off their loans, union members who lost their jobs to low-paid workers overseas, housewives, illegal immigrants, teachers and seniors; to everyone who believes real change implies a change in government– the time has come to say: Enough!

President-elect Obama faces an America deep in economic crisis, a crisis caused by the irresponsible decision-making, short-sightedness and greed of the country’s most powerful businessmen and women. For our nation to recover, and to ensure this crisis does not happen again, we need the courage, ingenuity and wisdom of the entire American people. We don’t want businessmen and politicians making anymore important decisions. We are protesting in support of anarchism and workers democracy, a system of government where all 350 million of us are counted and heard. Where all Americans have the right to be involved in economic and political decision-making: direct democracy. In other words, we believe workers should control their workplaces and people should control their government.

I don’t plan to participate, but it will be fun to follow this vehicle of activism through to its destination.

Two of the activities that currently drive Irregular Times online are podcasting (the creation and syndication of audio and video) and blogging (the creation and distribution of serial, time-stamped writing). My skills in writing, audio recording and especially videomaking could use some improvement, so it is with great interest and expectation that I see the interactive, workshop- and skills-focused PodCamp Ohio and WordCamp Columbus conferences will be held this year in the city where I work and live: Columbus, Ohio.

WordCamp Columbus, which focuses on the development of programming and writing skills for blogs, will be held at Columbus State Community College on May 16, 2009. PodCamp Ohio, which focuses on the same skills for use in audio and video casting over the Internet, will happen in the Mendenhall Lab on June 20, 2009.

Both are open to the public… and both are free. Look ahead… registration for the conferences should be opening soon.

After the elections of 2000 and 2004, progressive activists in the state of Missouri were active in the Missouri Green Party and the Progressive Party of Missouri, organizing liberal alternatives to the conservative Missouri Democratic Party (hello, Claire McCaskill) and the even more conservative Missouri Republican Party (think John Ashcroft). We were happy to recognize and promote awareness of these two groups on our Missouri Progressive Activism page while they worked to advance the state of public policy in the state.

That’s all sadly written in the past tense. Now both efforts have stalled, and the organizations behind them are now defunct. What outlets for progressive organizing are there today in the state of Missouri? And what can Americans inside and outside the state of Missouri do to support them? Let us know.

When Barack Obama was in the middle of a primary fight, he gave a good talk about civil liberty in the United States of America:

You will have elected a president who has taught the Constitution and believes in the Constitution and will obey the Constitution of the United States of America.

The Obama campaign did more than just mouth platitudes: it mouthed specific promises. The Obama campaign, and Barack Obama himself, promised that he would oppose the FISA Amendements Act, legislation to legalize warrantless surveillance, search and seizure by the United States Government. But when the primaries were over, and Barack Obama stepped back from his promises. Barack Obama not only voted for the FISA Amendments Act, but pledged to use the new powers granted by the FISA Amendments Act as president.

What’s the FISA Amendments Act? In case you didn’t know, that’s our new law passed over the summer of 2008 that lets an American president spy without a warrant for periods of up to 67 days, then keep the information even if a judge later says the spying violated your rights. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says the President can’t do that to us… but the U.S. Constitution isn’t being respected much these days. While President-Elect Barack Obama delivers smooth, reassuring talk, he has walked away from liberty.

While the campaign was still on, a group of Barack Obama supporters endured the derision and support-the-team-speak of partisans and started up Get FISA Right, an effort dedicated at keeping opposition to the FISA Amendments Act alive during the deafening general election season. Now that the election is over and we’re moving toward the inauguration of a new president, Get FISA Right is putting together a tentative strategy document for the next year. I don’t agree with that document in all points, but I have strong respect for the organization’s determination to keep going, even while most Americans seem eager to drop talk of politics and instead place their passive hope in the notion that the new president will fix everything for us like some benevolent father figure or perhaps a rich uncle. I have an even greater respect for the transparent, inclusive way in which Get FISA Right is trying to bring people in as meaningful participants in the movement, and not just as mute supporters of some top-down agenda.

If you still care about the constitution and civil liberty in America, I encourage you to head over to Get FISA Right and find some way to get involved. Remember what Sam Adams said more than two centuries ago: “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

Jon Pincus of Get FISA Right points me to a competition of ideas at Change.org. People are invited to submit their ideas for presidential priorities in the new administration, and/or to vote up or down the ideas others have submitted:

Submit your ideas for how to change America, discuss with others, and vote for your favorites. The “Top 10 Ideas for America” will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day. We will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress…

The idea that Jon Pincus has submitted, “Get FISA Right, Repeal the Patriot Act, and Restore our Civil Liberties,” is currently in sixth place. If it can stay in the top 10 until December 31, then it will be “presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day.”

Sounds pretty nifty, huh? I mean, Change.org is the new presidential transition website for Barack Obama, isn’t it? Boy, it sure looks like the presidential transition website for Barack Obama, right down to the Barack Obama quote and the weird glowy white text on the blue submit button:

But no, Obama’s transition website is change.gov. The change.org website is a completely separate entity run by a consortium of nonprofits representing a variety of interests but holding one feature in common: they depend on heavy fundraising to keep their activities going. Change.org is very interested in having you join up with an account, added to which is information about your e-mail address and mailing address and phone number. Most of the “actions” that you are encouraged to engage in on Change.org aren’t direct actions, like calling Congress or marching in the street or setting up a picket line. They’re secondary actions in which you support an organization (one of the organizations fronting the website) that will have its lobbyists do the work for you.

There’s an element of the smarmy and slightly deceptive about Change.org, I have to say that. But in its privacy page, Change.org claims to be walking a fair path about all this:

Your personal information is just that - yours. We will never give your personal information to any nonprofit without your explicit consent. If you would like to receive direct communication from the nonprofits you support, you may choose to have us pass them your name, email and/or home address after making a donation. You can also opt in to sharing your email address with nonprofits while participating in actions, or directly sign up to receive their e-newsletter.

So it is with a mild caveat of caution that I encourage you to engage in the secondary activism at Change.org. The list of nonprofits engaged with Change.org is pretty long, as you can see by clicking through to that ideas page. And if these nonprofits really will abide by the Top Ten list generated through Change.org, then it makes some sense for Americans who care about the repeal of FISA and a return to constitutional government to vote for the FISA, Patriot Act, Constitution idea.

So go ahead and participate in this secondary activism by endorsing the idea at Change.org… but by all means don’t do just that. Watch to make sure that Change.org abides by its privacy policy by refusing to rent out your information, and more importantly watch to make sure that the nonprofits participating under the umbrella follow through on their promise and actually use their resources to push for the agenda approved by website members at Change.gov after the first and second rounds of voting are completed.

Actions are planned in 93 nations around the world on December 6, 2008 to bring attention to the problem of global climate change. Taking the adage, “think globally, act locally” to heart, marches in each nation will focus on local environmental issues, seeking to bring about changes in policy that taken together may help to put a dent in global warming and environmental degradation.

For links to plans of action around the Earth on December 6, visit the Global Climate Campaign. In the US, visit the Climate Crisis Coalition and Greenpeace USA for a list of local actions.

This morning, I received an e-mail inviting me to visit a website called Get FISA Right. With Repeal FISA lying in a coma, I went to take a look. The group describes itself as “non-partisan”:

Our members are a diverse group of nonpartisans from all walks of life who believe that the rights and liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution should be protected.

But defines itself in terms of support for Barack Obama:

Together, with Barack Obama as our President, yes we can restore the Constitutional rights of all Americans and roll back Bush’s abuses of power…

We are a proud group of (organized but unofficial) Obama supporters who believe in Obama’s call for hope and a new kind of politics. We are asking Congress and all Americans to reject the politics of fear, revisit this flawed bill, and safeguard the people’s rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, the group isn’t really “asking Congress and All Americans to reject the politics of fear, revisit this flawed bill, and safeguard the people’s rights.” Its main organizing effort has been to raise money to place TV advertisements on the air. One of these advertisements inaccurately declares that “Republican Senators All Voted for FISA”, failing to mention the fact that John McCain actually didn’t “vote for FISA” (more accurately termed the FISA Amendments Act), or the fact that a considerable number of Democrats including Barack Obama actually voted for the FISA Amendments Act. Another of these advertisements declares:

For 200 years, the Bill of Rights has protected our freedoms. During the past 8 years, the Bush administration listened to Americans’ phone calls and read their emails without a warrant. If elected President, John McCain would do the same. Don’t let our Constitution die.

To reiterate, John McCain actually didn’t vote for the FISA Amendments Act. Barack Obama not only voted for the FISA Amendments Act, but on July 14 of this year declared his intention to employ the program authorized by it if elected. Don’t worry your little heads none, he wrote; as President, he could be trusted to wield the Act’s unchecked authority properly:

I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people.

Barack Obama, another “trust me” president. Didn’t we learn from the example of George W. Bush that “trust me” is never enough? Apparently the “nonpartisan” people at Get FISA Right didn’t. They put together an advertisement criticizing John McCain and another one criticizing the Republican Party, but they never got around to airing an advertisement criticizing pro-FISA Democrats generally or Barack Obama particularly.

I’ll keep one eye on Get FISA Right. Now that Barack Obama is set to become president, will the “nonpartisan” group do something when he uses the FISA Amendments Act in the manner he “deems necessary”? I sincerely hope so. Until then, concerned Americans should work independently to make sure that no president — even the Historic President of Hope and Change — wields arbitrary authority over the citizens who employ and house him.

In some impressive ways, President-Elect Barack Obama is the mirror-image of George W. Bush. Early on, George W. Bush rid the presidency of the e-mail address president@whitehouse.gov, ending the Clinton-era avenue by which citizens could communicate their policy ideas to the office of the President. To his credit, Barack Obama has created a web page on which he invites Americans to communicate their suggestions for an Obama presidential agenda.

Here’s my suggestion for Barack Obama:

On February 27, 2008, President-Elect Obama stood in front of me in Columbus, Ohio and spoke these words:

“We will lead by having the highest standards, by setting an example of human rights and civil rights, due process and rule of law, which is why I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. And we will end torture and rendition because you will have elected a president who has taught the Constitution and believes in the Constitution and will obey the Constitution of the United States of America.

All these things are possible if you are ready for change. But you can’t just sit back and wait for it. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to go out and vote for it. There are people who are now saying, ‘Well, Obama may talk a good game…’”

Were those people right or wrong? Was he just talking a good game? Since Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, he has hardly spoken of the Constitution at all. In his first radio address as President-elect, Barack Obama did not mention the Constitution. The Constitution is not mentioned on the “Agenda” page of Barack Obama’s change.gov.

What I’m asking is simple. I’m asking for Barack Obama to heed his own words and “work for it,” to obey the Constitution of the United States, to restore respect for the Constitution of the United States as the supreme law of the land.

This means working to:

* End extraordinary rendition;
* Close Guantanamo and all other facilities that serve the same purpose of indefinite detention without charge;
* Pass a major revision of the Patriot Act;
* Pass a major revision of the REAL ID Act;
* Repeal the Military Commissions Act;
* Repeal the FISA Amendments Act;
* Reinvigorate the Freedom of Information Act by revising public access to government documents in favor of disclosure;
* Appoint justices and judges to the federal courts who respect civil liberty.

Will President Obama just “talk a good game,” or will he take his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” seriously?

I hope for the latter, but hope alone isn’t enough. I will do what I can as a citizen to exert pressure upon President Barack Obama to make the latter come to pass.

Walk the talk. That’s what you asked of us, Barack Obama. Now that’s what I ask of you.

“Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism.”

That’s what we told conservatives when they tried to shut us up during the long 8 years of the Bush presidency. The phrase will still apply after we congratulate Barack Obama on his election victory and look forward to the dawning of the Obama Era.

I almost voted for Ralph Nader, because Nader comes closer to embracing my policy priorities than Barack Obama does. Most gallingly, Barack Obama acted to reject the Constitution and Americans’ civil liberties this year when he voted for the FISA Amendments Act. I did end up vote for Barack Obama because I concluded that an Obama administration would at least be receptive to my concerns, while a McCain administration would be hostile to them. But having voted for Barack Obama I feel the obligation to make it very clear that my vote is not an endorsement of his agenda. That’s why I’m trying to organize a presence of dissent at the DC Inaugural Parade. That’s also why I’m starting up a new website called I Voted for You, But….

I Voted for You, But… is intended to be a resource for independent progressive activism in the coming Obama Era in two ways. First, it provides a forum on which people like me who have voted (or will vote) for Barack Obama but have concerns can air them. As the collection of Obama voter caveats and dissensions accumulates, people can search through them by date, by keyword, by author’s state, or by a variety of other pieces of information that caveat writers can volunteer (or withhold). As soon as the website gets more than 50 contributed caveats, we’ll add RSS feeds so that people can incorporate these caveats into their websites based on keyword, date, author’s state of residence, and so on. The bottom line idea: here’s a way for us to write and promulgate criticism.

But life isn’t just held online. So here’s the second way we can use the website to get active in the real world: you can also submit information to a parallel database of information about upcoming activist events you know about: marches, rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, civil disobedience, and so on. You can search through the database to find actions in your neck of the woods, and as soon as we get a few more actions added to our collection we’ll have RSS feeds available for these activist events, too.

The ideal is that you can use the website in two ways: 1) you can visit I Voted for You, But… to read others’ thoughts and learn about social movement actions that you might want to participate in. 2) you’ll be able to incorporate others’ writing and activist notices into your blog or website about a place (ex. Tompkins County Liberal) or a subject (ex. Pro-Choice CRAB).

This is a brand-new website, and I mean that literally: I just finished it thirty minutes ago. I’m sure there are some rough edges, and I could use your help finding them. Please visit the website, try it out, participate if you like, and above all tell me what you think about it, either here or on the I Voted For You, But blog or discussion board. Feel free to tell me I’m completely barking up the wrong tree; if so, could you point me in the direction of the right tree? Thanks.

Earlier this year, before the financial markets went into their tailspin, Denny of Our Tomorrow moved to a self-built cabin in the woods of Missouri. Denny foresaw the current economic collapse and decided to teach himself the art of sustainable, self-supporting permaculture homesteading. Over at his website he’s been writing about his successes and failures as he moves toward living off the land.

Denny’s been getting ready for the winter, planting fruit trees, mulching, harvesting autumn olives and learning about the food crops that grow well and don’t grow well in his particular neck of the woods. Most of us will choose not to move to the woods like Denny (and given the size of our population, most of us can’t), but we can try to apply his lessons wherever we are in the world and in our life course as we brace for the human impact of a looming economic catastrophe. I encourage you to read his account and ask yourself what you can do.

Elle and Bob write with some despair in reaction to the Washington Post revelation that the Bush administration wrote two explicit memos specifically authorizing the use of water torture against people detained by the United States government:

Well, you see, since it is being done to arabs and other dusky skinned people, it is not torture, since torture only counts if it is done to a person.

We All know that an arab isn’t a person, unless of course he is jewish, or christian.

We also All know, that since Bush, Cheney, and their friends are all good upstanding christians, then they are all of the highest moral character and thus can’t be guilty of anything, and even if they are, then god will forgive them, and who are we to question god’s judgement in the matter?

Ben Franklin had it right, the majority of americans do not deserve liberty, since they sold their souls to Bush Inc. in order to feel a little more secure.

I think Elle is onto something, and I think the key phrase is “other” people. My fellow citizens won’t care about this, because they will always believe that torture will happen to “other” people, not to “us.”

I share Bob and Elle’s frustration with Americans’ acquiescence, with Americans’ penchant to get upset about Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s divorce but not about their own government’s torture of people under indefinite detention.

Fortunately, not all of our fellow citizens are heedless and quiet. Just this morning I spotted this “Torture is a Moral Issue” banner hanging from the Indianola Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio. The IPC and its Interfaith Center for Peace are participants in the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. The NRCAT is organizing visits by clergy to congressional and senatorial offices around the country on November 12, 2008 to confront our nation’s legislators on their inaction in the face of American torture and present a policy direction for the next Congress and administration. Also on November 12 the NRCAT will hold some form of a witness in front of the White House (with details apparently yet to be determined).

I’m not fond of the NRCAT’s division of activism into “actions individuals can take” and “actions clergy can take,” and as as a secular person I don’t fit under the interfaith umbrella of the NRCAT for its actions. But not every political action has to fit me or people like me in order to make a difference in a positive direction. If the National Religious Campaign Against Torture speaks to you, consider joining it.

In abstract, I like the idea behind Steal Back Your Vote, the collaborative project by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast to pre-emptively protect the votes of people across the United States. Why wouldn’t I want to prevent a nefarious scheme to prevent voters from casting the ballots they’re entitled to cast?

Then, I take a look at the actual web site, which seems to be little but an attempt to promote the sale of Kennedy and Palast’s political comic book, and give the authors some personal publicity as well. The front page is filled with information about the comic book, but no actual information about how I can, well, steal back my vote. That’s not very effective voter education, and so I start to wonder if voter education is really the point.

The point seems to be to establish the idea that Republicans are stealing Americans’ votes - even before they’ve voted. There’s some evidence to suggest that this is happening, in some form, in some states, with Republican Secretaries of State attempting to get some voters placed in categories of official inactivity that will make it difficult for them to vote on Election Day.

I don’t deny that this is a genuine problem, but I do question the use of language that refers to these activities as “stealing votes”. There’s no theft involved - merely the exploitation of voters who are too busy to check that their voter registration is in good standing, and has not been challenged.

There are good, valid reasons for laws to challenge particular voter registrations. There need to be procedures through which it can be ensured that fake voters are not being invented in order to manipulate the vote. In spite of Democratic Party denials, that has been a serious problem in the past, just as voter suppression has been a serious problem.

More fundamentally, I’m concerned that conspiracy theories about voter suppression efforts serve as an excuse for Democrats who don’t want to come to grips with the fact that there are enough Americans who believe in right wing ideology to elect Republican politicians. It’s easier to blame America’s problems on stolen elections than on corrupted voters. The Democratic Party has become so hungry for swing voters that it is unwilling to speak the truth that many American voters don’t give two hoots about traditional American civic values such as liberty, equality and justice.

It’s this unwillingness to speak frankly about the flaws in right wing ideology, more than voter suppression, that led to the presidential election defeats of 2000 and 2004. In both elections, the Democrats pandered to right wing ideology, rather than confronting it, and in doing so, the Democrats strengthened the Republicans’ hand.

Yes, there were problems with the election in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. However, if Al Gore hadn’t chosen Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in 2000, and John Kerry and John Edwards’s war waffling were not made the weak voice against George W. Bush in 2004, the elections would not have been close enough to steal.

In 2008, the Democrats have had a similar problem. With Barack Obama standing with Wall Street on the fat cat bailout, working to help George W. Bush spy on Americans with the FISA Amendments Act, joining in the chant of drill, baby, drill, and calling for an expansion of Bush’s megachurch kickback scheme (faith-based initiatives), the Democrats lost a huge amount of ground, and what should have been a landslide turned into a neck-and-neck contest.

Even with Barack Obama pulling ahead a few points in national and swing state polls, there’s a lot of concern among Democrats that the presidential election may be too close to call in the end. That’s why you have political operatives like Kennedy and Palast hyperventilating about stolen votes once again. They’re playing a game that wouldn’t have to be played if the Democrats worried more about persuading voters than pandering to them.

A movement has emerged in defense of Sarah Palin. Moving swiftly and silently through the hills before descending into valley towns with a message of faith, purity and good hair, the Paliban never leave a community without a message of some, as you know, with tax reduction and, um, helping, oh, it’s got to be all about job creation too, so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade.

An audio tape, apparently recorded near Kodiak and containing what experts say is the voice of the Paliban second-in-command, exhorts Americans to ignore the seductions of liberty and return, return to the country’s true prophetic path:

Sarah Palin will bring us Operation Rapture. Barack Hussein Obama, what will he bring?

Health care for all?

Who needs health care, when Jesus is coming?

Mortgage reform?

Who needs a house, when it’s going to be vaporized soon?

A higher minimum wage?

God doesn’t care about money, why should we?

She knows Jesus. What else does she need to know?

“Join Operation Rapture!” the voice on tape is heard before shifting into repetitive vocalizations that only true believers can understand. If you don’t understand, you just have to believe a little bit harder.

As much as the McCain campaign has protected Sarah Palin from scrutiny, Todd Palin has been even more insulated. Search the Google News database for “Todd Palin interview” or “interview Todd Palin”, and you’ll find exactly zero interviews of Todd Palin.

Does Todd Palin speak? We can’t be sure, but one thing’s for certain: Todd Palin does take pictures.

Apparently, Todd Palin has spent some time personally following trooper Mike Wooten around taking photographs of him, hoping to catch him in some kind of activity that would deprive him of custody of his children, or his workers’ compensation benefits, which Todd and Sarah Palin personally called to request be revoked.

Sarah Palin calls her husband first dude, perhaps first stalker would be more accurate.

This news comes to us from Mud Flats, a persistent Alaska political blog. To follow the Alaskan perspective on Sarah Palin’s political career, it’s an excellent source.