Letters/Replies
Collective 20 welcomes letters and a member or members will in many instances reply – in which case both the letter and the reply will appear below.
6 comments
Patrick Fish
“How to keep activist movements from burning out”: wonderful.. as i have said for near 40 years.. change starts with the self… 40+ years of progressive politics have gained little because they want their exclusivity.. they fail to understand that inclusivity is how democracy works.. you must compromise.. you must talk in a language of the common person… the notion of using words like Oligarchy and neo-liberal.. and non-inclusive words… to get to the future you can’t count of your enemies in the wealthy right wing to help you.. you must count on people power.. and that requires keeping it simple.. a single message is 100x more powerful than a long agenda… when i broke down bernie’s recent defeat in the polls.. people hated me.. I got lambasted for seeing the simple truth… Bernie was out fire and brimstone preaching revolution… but the people were scared.. and when scared people, want stability and comfort… It wasn’t bernie’s agenda.. ( which i support fully) it was his messaging… you need to speak to the people’s concerns and fears and feeling in the moment in time… what we say is much more important that what we want… KISS.. like in 2016.. I broke down the trump campaign into a single Phrase: “bread and circuses”: he promised them bread.., and provided a circus… Roman Politics 101… worked in 2016.. I don’t have much left in my old tank and old brain and body.. but i am a person who sees patterns well and can analyze information.. I suffer from PTSD.. and was born with a form of autism… but if you need a sounding board on a campaign.. i was a Professional organizer who worked for MN COACT back in the day campaigning on Single payer back in the mid 1980’s…
Mark Kirkwood Callingham
Re: “…is it the stupid economy?”
This recent article of yours shared by Countercurrents.org was a very sweet argument full of beautiful ideas. Hats off to the work and accomplishments of everyone at Collective 20.
I believe the simplest and strongest way “to reorganise the economy on the principles of prioritising the wellbeing of people and of the planet; of sharing resources so that everybody has enough; of conducting production and consumption based on sane and humane need” is to create and then use a publicly owned currency system that carries a code of ethics.
moneywithmorals.org
Money with morals would be a global agreement by most of the Left as well as a good many of the Right to a better way of life and living. A new economy that only comes from one side of the fence would be considered unfair for millions and millions and destined to fail unless it was backed by some serious state enforcement.
Appreciate your time.
Mark
Charlie Newman
Just read ‘Never Biden? How to resolve the vexing dilemma for many left voters’ on AlterNet.
Sounds like just another call for people on the left to give up their ethics and vote for a corporatist.
If both major parties can depend on voters to sell out their beliefs, we’ll never get the candidates we want.
Voting for lesser evils got us where we are today.
As the—admittedly conservative—cliché says, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
Alton C. Thompson
Here are two related papers of mine that, I believe, express ideas closely related to yours: https://www.academia.edu/41668653/Viking_Villages_for_Today and the much longer https://www.academia.edu/39328067/A_Road_to_Survival_1
gabriel cammarata
I would be interested in being part of collective20.
I am a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and I have worked for Doctors without Borders and Save the Children around the world for over 10 years. As a social-libertarian in my work as a Liberation Psychologist I refer to the work of Martin-Baro as well as Fanon, Basaglia and Paulo Freire but also to the theories of Fromm with regards to Freudo-Marxism in the attempt of building a Democratic Psychotherapy socially grounded.