Specifically, I mean, is this a is this a real question?
Are you unaware of the processes of community organization and lobbying?
Do you know how canvassing and petitioning work?
This is precisely my point, is that these are all thoroughly documented, easy to understand and easy to implement technically, things that you do in order to be part of the community as a group of people who have a voice
The key thing lacking is people who give a shit about results that don’t only benefit them and take a lot of work and coordination to do
So as a result, people throw their hands up and say it’s too hard. It takes too long. It’s too complicated. The results are too obscure. It’s too unlikely… whatever whatever you can continue to come up with whatever excuses you want to not engage in your community but at the end of the day, it’s up to whether or not you care.
I'd argue you are both right and wrong here. What are constructive ways to get people to join in the process. Telling them to do it doesn't work, so how do we influence them to increase that participation? I have a kid, telling him X, Y or Z is the fastest way to get him to avoid those solutions. The only thing I have found that works is to get the real world to tell him or to have his piers tell him. It sounds ridiculous but what about a reality tv show where the contestants try to rally their neighborhoods to effect the most positive change and along the way they show how they did it. A big part of throwing your hands up is not knowing where to put them.
Like this is literally the first step in the process.
You’re supposed to be able to go to your congressional representative and local councils for your specific input. They have a entire staff and they have a process to do this. I have regularly engaged with my elected congressional representatives and my local city Council members at every step along my life to lobby them for things I want.
When I was in high school, I lobbied the Webster, TX city Council to build a skate park because we didn’t have one in the 90s. Now there’s a Webster skate park
I was elected to the planning board for the city of Cheverly, Maryland where we took citizen input every month and then at our quarterly review meeting so that we could determine what kind of new development would happen in our town
I did all of this while raising three kids and having a full-time job, including getting up at night to change diapers and all of that and I even ran ultramarathons in there too, and started a business
The fact that you think that it takes some huge effort shows how broken our system is
Are you unaware of the processes of community organization and lobbying?
Do you know how canvassing and petitioning work?
This is precisely my point, is that these are all thoroughly documented, easy to understand and easy to implement technically, things that you do in order to be part of the community as a group of people who have a voice
The key thing lacking is people who give a shit about results that don’t only benefit them and take a lot of work and coordination to do
So as a result, people throw their hands up and say it’s too hard. It takes too long. It’s too complicated. The results are too obscure. It’s too unlikely… whatever whatever you can continue to come up with whatever excuses you want to not engage in your community but at the end of the day, it’s up to whether or not you care.