Rally Against Surveillance today in San Francisco
1984day.com
1984day.com
The leverage, or political return on effort, for challenging a house party leader is far greater than for any other elected official. (Senate leaders have far more constituents)
> What you can control cannot hurt you.
I think this explains why those in the tech industry either stand firmly and resolutely with the government (and firmly belonging to the Democrat party), or their political allegiance follows along Libertarian lines because such statements instill a strong sense of anxiety and trepidation.
The tech industry is to the democratic party like the faithful wife who gets cheated on. Tech folks vote reliably democrat, or not at all, so there is zero reason to care about their interests.
It's not clear how to beat the Dem machine in California (I'm a disgruntled liberal).
The population per congressman averages 700,000
Not to mention that, horrifyingly, she's not up for election until 2018, while congressman are elected every 2 years.
But yes, her repeated use of the word "Homeland" is disturbing.
I encourage everyone who cares about this to get politically involved at a level beyond merely voting for congress critters now and then.
There's a lot that you can do, from joining and supporting organizations like the EFF and the ACLU to getting involved in local politics, which is usually the level that can be most affected by relatively small numbers of individuals.
We need to take all bullets we can get and fire them in parallel (online and in meatspace).
> They make the participants and observers feel better
To some extent, this is good b/c it helps everybody to understand they're not "the only one around here who...".
Comments like this just boil my blood. Get off your tail, stop being apathetic, be a part of the solution.
Edit: actually here, I did it for you:
False dichotomy.
Rallies in San Francisco are just excuses for like minded people to have a merry old time. It's a politically irrelevant city, because it has no votes in play. Want to have some actual impact, some actual chance to change hearts and minds, go protest in Utah, where you can connect the cause to the site, or DC, or heck Iowa, where you can take advantage of their natural libertarian streak and there are votes to be swayed.
[1] http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/313853-n... [2] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/us/politics/momentum-bu...
Seriously, the world outside of SF (including politicians/DC) view SF as a place of crazies, willing to protest any stupid old thing.
Sad, but true.
The effects of protests might not be immediately obvious, and perhaps might never be publicly acknowledged. However, they can have a serious impact.
Here's one important example:
"Many people don't know it, but Nixon was considering using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. At that time, Nixon was also repeatedly saying that he didn't care what the American people thought about Vietnam, and that he was going to escalate the war anyway. However, according to a biography by a well-known historian, when Nixon saw hundreds of thousands of protesters on TV, he dropped his secret plan of nuking Vietnam."[1]
[1] - http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Why-Nixon-Didn-t-Nuke-Viet-by-...
Reading about the protest on a website won't guarantee many will go (and most will not). People need to be contacted by these civil liberties organizations and asked to come.
If you want to impact political change, you need to do it the way other groups do. I have teenagers coming to my door asking if I know about Jesus. Where are the young people going door to door to spread knowledge about NSA spying?
The hour I spent trying to figure out what was going on,there were people showing up constantly, looking lost, fiddling with their phones and then wandering off, just like I eventually did.
Very frustrating, and why I'm not there today.
There are only so many things you can do in a day: in order to make the most of that, you have give it to organizations that have their shit together.