Getting the Public to Participate in Democracy
I have to admit frustration is getting most of my attention right now after spending the past week or so trying to find a way to use the internet to create a platform to get people to speak up for themselves in their own democracy. I’ve been working out ideas that would be able to get the voices of the people to those who represent them in congress.
What happens when you contact a politician?
The major obstacle is overcoming citizen apathy. In devising a tool that will allow internet users to contact their representatives, outside of the contact forms of the senators and representatives’ websites, the tool must be so simple that it requires almost no effort for the user besides entering their message. Think Twitter, or Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?”
My research led me to many interesting projects, but eventually to two sites created by Jim Gilliam. He created a site almost exactly like what I was thinking, where we can contact our representatives through Twitter. Check it out at www.govluv.org
Then I saw his site www.whitehouse2.org. Basically, this site allows users to write a one sentence “priority” to Obama, like, “Please end the phony war on terror,” and then other users can vote on it. Priorities are ranked and voted on and a further step of contacting your representatives is possible, and doing this and other “extra” steps earns the user points; more points equals more visibility for your priority. The goal is to get the population to say what they are interested in and participate in democracy. It’s a great idea and is something similar to what I was putting together in my mind. Fortunately, he developed the site on an open source platform and this could be the direction I want to go in developing my own site with developer, James Dabgotra. Jim has created a great tool for us to experiment with.
But the frustration, in my characteristic style, is in observing that the country is run on democratic voices, but not that many voices are saying anything. The reason I want people to speak out is because I know that the power elite are fine – thank you very much – with everyone focused on the Lakers or on getting their own TV show in Oprah. Don’t get me wrong, these things are great, but just about every area of civilization is in collapse and solutions require participation. It’s like a ship full of a thousand people is sinking but only two are bailing the water out. So maybe you can understand why I am frustrated because the work that needs to be done is extremely urgent but, people don’t seem to see the relevance to their life.
But I say this: Are we not a democracy? Are we not free to voice our opinions? Well let’s get busy! We must speak up about at least one subject that we are interested in and hold our elected officials accountable for their leadership. Is this not a cause worth at least an e-mail or phone call a week?
Find your representatives, and contact them about something:
Good luck. The world awaits your voice.
