Brainstorming post

[sathari]

In addition to the master post of ideas and suggestions, on the encouragement of one of our wonderful mods tassosss, I'm offering up a brainstorming post for batting ideas back and forth--- things we've done that seem to be effective, ideas we have, especially for making activism easier in general... and, because of the fannish spirit of this comm, any ideas for activism/tools/etc. that you've gotten from fiction and other media? Or for that matter any stories/art/music/other creations that inspire and support your activism that you want to share?

Comments

Activist tools idea from the Vorkosigan Saga

[sathari]

In the comment that spawned this post, I talked a little about a tool for "organizing" a master list of the voting positions of multiple representatives on vary issues, from Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign, where Miles Vorkosigan and his political allies use them to lay out their strategy for winning multiple votes in the Council of Counts.

The tool was a very low-tech one: a stack of transparency-type sheets with grids on them that had boxes laid out in a model of the seats for each member of the Council (they weren't labeled with the count's name, but for people in this universe, to paraphrase Miles, if you have to ask, you're not someone who's playing this game anyway). The idea was that you took a stack of them, one for each motion/issue that was up for a vote, and then you went through and colored green for every square representing a count who was voting with you, and red for every square where the count voted against--- one issue per sheet. Then you put them over each other and you could see where you had support versus opposition, and especially where you had people who were on your side for one thing but not another. (Bujold has Miles give a MUCH better explanation than that.)

This one popped into my head due to the variety of issues on which the Democrats will need to get a few Republican Senators/Reps to "cross the line"--- in the version of it I'm thinking of, it'd be useful to have--- okay, for our purposes we probably want this in some kind of online format, though I may try to make something similar for using with my own reps--- some kind of master grid of where each Congressperson stands on multiple topics, so that we can see at a glance when our reps are the ones to try to nudge across the aisle. For example I have a Republican Senator with an expressed commitment to supporting Medicare/Social Security (go him for that at least!) so when issues come up that affect that, I'll want to prioritize encouraging him there--- versus... um, a lot of other issues, where my job is more like reminding him that there are voters in his state who disagree with him enough to speak up. Basically, a visual aid for where the cracks in the "red wall" are on each issue.

Obviously, this is a huge undertaking, and also possibly not one I'm explaining well, so, please ask me questions--- this is a teamwork post, after all! ;)

Re: Activist tools idea from the Vorkosigan Saga

[teaotter]

This sounds like the sort of project that would work well in GIS software -- something that's made to take a giant database of data and create maps with different colors based on that data.

I don't know where you'd get the data from, though I assume that someone out there has it. I guess you could base it on voting records...

Re: Activist tools idea from the Vorkosigan Saga

[sathari]

Oh, wow, that's AWESOME. And this is just the kind of brainstorming I was hoping for!

And, voting records, definitely, though frankly, I've just been going to my various reps' websites and looking at what they say about their stances on various issues, at least in a general way--- the pleasant surprise of finding out that I have a Republican Senator who's pro-Medicare/SS was what got me thinking, "hey, what about a map of where all our reps claim to stand so we can see where the outliers/potential aisle-crossers are?". So if we all did that for our own people and reported back, it would be a start, maybe. Again, a bit of an undertaking, but at this point it's probably a good idea to check our reps' websites on where they've taken stands on various issues--- even if, say, they don't mention something particular, the absence itself possibly suggests that they're staying quiet on that issue because they're not sure what their constituents want (so then let's tell them, shall we?). It might not help with narrowly targeted issues or specific votes, but with broad topics--- gun control, health care (and its various substrates--- someone might support Medicare but not the ACA generally), immigration, voting rights, abortion/birth control, privacy rights, etc.--- we could probably get a general idea of where the ones who deviate from party lines in our favor are?

Re: Activist tools idea from the Vorkosigan Saga

[tanaqui]

We did a post a while back on FiveThityEight's analysis of which senators are most likely to cross party lines, and the FiveThirtyEight post links to OntheIssues.org, a site which tracks candidates' positions. You'd have to dig a bit, but it looks like the data is out there for a lot of major issues.

Re: Activist tools idea from the Vorkosigan Saga

[sathari]

Oooh, thanks! OnTheIssues is very close to what I described (minus the graphical element, but that's okay) so, yay! And sorry I missed THAT post! You two are so on the ball.