I intend to send the following draft email out in the next few days to attempt to bring in activists and groups. I already have a list of a couple of dozen recipients. Feel free to comment; if you think it would be a good idea, we can place this letter in the other part of this site so that is can be versioned and edited by those of us participating. The content management part of our website has a tool built in to save versions of a document as it goes through the collective editing process, and this document may well benefit from that functionality and your input.

Hi,

Pardon me for sending you unsolicited email; this is an invitation to participate in an online discussion.

Our orientation is about practical action fostering economic reorganization and messaging the mainstream of America with the socialist perspective. We are pursuing the radical idea of running this website in the manner we advocate running society - as a collective .We hope for it to be a chance for those of us of like minds to create a dynamic discussion, connections between committed activists and groups, and a collectively generated resource to engage and educate the mass of the public, especially those who are currently apolitical.

With the strength of genuine historical materialism as the basis for analysis of positions taken by mainstream members, we are endeavoring to create an open discussion and content resource that will be a genuine expression of free speech, e.g. not having to abridge members' speech as so often happens on political websites.

Anyway, I am neither a brilliant theortician, nor an amazing activist, nor a competent web developer (though we do have one of those). I am just a guy who sees a need for something that is to socialists and socialism kind of like United for Peace and Justice is to the cause of "peace" generally.

What is different is that this coalition we're envisioning collectively understands that root causes must be addressed before the cause of "peace" can truly be advanced. And this coalition sees the grave urgency of the need to message the couple hundred million folks here in America and billions around the world if we are ever to actually see revolutionary activity come into being in any broad manner. Before we can grow our parties, we must grow awareness of alternatives to capitalist imperalism generally.

Please be advised that I am not claiming ownership of this effort. Rather, I am just some guy trying to get it started. We have a few members now, but they may not be too active. It was very disruptive for me to heavy-handedly change the site as has just been done. The structure of the site's current incarnation is wonderful for building community and will no doubt be familiar to some of this note's recipients, but it is not something the nascent group seemed to think necessary even as the dialogue suffered for want of this additional architecture and the goal-oriented prospects it provides. I think it is entirely possible that this will then be very nearly a start from scratch endeavor vis those initial twenty or so participants. That's OK though.

Your participation would be most appreciated. Please visit http://www.populistindependent.org and consider helping us. You will have the means to create your own blog for you personally or for your own group. As well, commit content to living documents (not unlike a wiki page) that we hope will be effective sources of learning and acitivist aids going forward. By means of a folksonomy we will keep this content very much alive even as it and the number of particpants grow. With so many people who have no socialist community near them and so many pro-socialist activities that could be done, the main idea here is to consider what actions individuals and small groups can take in their own comuinity to drive economic and political change and to share those ideas with others who participate online. Merely advocating for an extension of our individual party preferences, etc. does not begin to address the magnitude of the actions that need to take place.

Meanwhile, new possibilities for deliberative democracy that the internet provides are also a focus of this website. The matter of deliberative democracy is one that socialists and the like should become familiar with and leverage. I have put up a fair amount of content for reading on that subject and as fodder for conversation.

Thanks for taking the time to peruse this email and, hopefully, www.populistindependent.org (http://www.populistindependent.org)

Regards,

Rusty, aka "PPLE" online there = post petroleum local economy
--
Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. - Che Guevara