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One Response to “Howard Dean 接下來要怎麼做呢？”

1. Schee Says:
   February 24, 2004 at 12:12 am

   論壇上 PhillipG 所提出的 DFA(DeanForAmerica) 競選活動願景，我轉一份過來：

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   ProposalÅ\What DFA Could Become

   From: PhillipG , Nashville for Dean
   (Note: I have already e-mailed a version of this proposal to Mr. Neel in Microsoft Word format):

   Here are some ideas regarding what can happen with DFA in the coming weeks, months, and years.

   I hope that you will consider them seriously.

   1. Dr. Dean should turn DFA into an ongoing reform and political movement under the umbrellas of the Democratic Party He could be its head and receive a nice salary. DFA could then become a counterweight to the DLC.

   By doing this, DFA could continue to grow and build up its organization and resources over the upcoming years. Thus, specifically:

   a. In the 2006 Congressional and local elections, DFA could end up supporting Democratic candidates that were progressive in their agenda, and who were not bought off by special interest money. DFA, could endorse such candidates. And by way of its fundraising acumen, could raise funds for such people over the Internet in such a way as to get them elected to Congress and to unseat corrupt/bought off incumbents of both parties. Moreover, through such things as letter writing, Meet-Ups, etc, it could actively recruit its interested members to go to work for these various candidates in such a way as to help them get elected.

   In this way, DFA could start putting progressive Democrats in key spots both within the Congress and at the state and local levels.

   b. DFA’s grass roots army, and the people that it can mobilize can be used as a political pressure force on whoever gets in power in the executive branch, and in the legislative branch. Through letter writing, e-mails, and grass roots methods of “spreading the word” by projects to educate the larger public about various issues (consciousness raising), DFA members could exert pressure upon political officeholders with respect to various policy issues and legislative initiatives.

   c. Through MeetUps, letter writing, word-of-mouth, etc., DFA could be slowly adding to its ranks new legions of concerned Democrats who care about their country. Thus, the movement could continue to grow.

   d. The computer network can continue to serve as a central nervous system for the movement, as well as a general information clearinghouse on issues of concern.

   e. DFA can sponsor educational outreaches to the larger public on such things as political action, media awareness and activism, etc., by way of the efforts of the interested members of its grass roots, to educate and increase awareness (consciousness raising) in the public of various political issues. This can be done through seminars that travel around the country, or other forms of outreach and projects.

   f. DFA can and should have as one of its components a media awareness/activist component. It can be called “Media Awareness for America” and can utilize as its core backbone the current members of Dean Rapid Response Network (providing they are interested). This network can be involved in projects to educate the general public about media issues such as consolidation, hidden agendas, and sources of alternative new and information on the Internet. (More on this idea below).

   g. DFA can form coalitions of cooperation with other on and offline progressive groups such as TrueMajority (located in Burlington, by the way), MoveOn, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), environmental groups, local city-based Peace and Justice Centers its.

   h. Of course, in these ways, DFA would be building and cultivating a base for a Howard Dean or Al Gore/Howard Dean run in 2008 against Hillary.

   2. Now, here is an idea that is especially dear to my heart . . . especially in light of what the corporate news media has done to us. In fact, I suspect that if we moved on this soon, while the bitter taste of media assassination was still in everyone’s mouth, we could get A LOT of enthusiastic support for such a proposal, as well as lots of people who would sign up to volunteer their time, efforts and money to get involved.

   a. One of the things that should become a crucial and integral part of our movement is some kind of a media education/activist network.

   Looking back over and considering the past several years, I have concluded that the reason that Clinton was able to be unfairly “witch-hunted,” why Gore’s character was assassinated during the 2000 election cycle, why the Bush people were allowed to steal the White House with impunity, why the Bush Administration has been allowed to get away with its travesties and acts of malfeasance for the past three years, and why (most recently) Howard Dean has been inaccurately defined and his character assassinated in the public mind, is because the media is owned and controlled by corporations, and that its employees serve the agendas of their corporate masters.

   I have come to the conclusion that one of the reasons that Kerry has been able to get away with co-opting Dean’s message, and why so many powerful forces have been able to significantly distort Dean’s record, his accomplishments, his image, his agenda, his character, his odds of “electability,” is because too many people who vote Democratic still get their news from and trust the corporate media, and do not know enough to 1) Know when they are being lied to, and 2) Know where to get more accurate information.

   Click on these links for examples of excellent editorials that discuss all of these issues, especially as they pertain to the hatchet job the media has just done to the Dean campaign:

   http://www.blackcommentator.com/75/75_cove…dean_media.html

   http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0202-03.htm

   Now, I don’t think that this situation with the media is going to change any time in the near future. If anything, I think it is only going to get worse.

   But there is hope. And I believe that this hope is the Internet and the independent and alternative news, opinion, and commentary sites that the public can access through it.

   If the Democrats who have so far voted in the primaries and caucuses had been paying attention on the Internet for the past three years, they would have been more informed about what was going on in our country, about the candidates in general, and they would not have been as susceptible to media propaganda. Hell, they wouldn’t have been misled by Bush into believing that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.

   My proposal for this media activist/education network (it could be called, the “Media Awareness for America”) would be to achieve three goals:

   1. Educate and persuade open-minded members of the public (mostly independents, Democrats, liberals, and reasonable moderates) as to the realities of the media “Matrix” that has them trapped. The idea would be to increase their awareness of how they are being lied to and manipulated by a corrupt and lazy corporate media, and how the media does not keep them accurately informed.

   2. Persuade and educate members of the public as to how they can start using the Internet to overcome the media filters, and specifically enlighten them as to particular Internet sites they can use that will inform them, give them diversity of perspectives, etc.

   3. Create some kind of media accountability network. What I mean by this, is something along the lines of Dean Rapid Response Network, where participants are apprised of media travesties, and then are alerted in such a way as they can act to expose them.

   The overall idea is this . . . .

   That in four years, a significantly larger portion of the American electorate will be “awakened,” wise and shrewd enough (perhaps a realistic goal would be 20 percent more of the Democratic-voting electorate) to:

   a. No longer trust the media as their primary source for news and information.

   b. Become habituated to searching for and regularly using independent and progressive news sites on the Internet.

   c. Become adequately suspicious and aware about when they are being lied to

   d. Be plugged into Internet-based information and activist networks, as well as media watchdog networks.

   e. Make people employed in and by the corporate media aware that they are being watched and monitored by significantly large enough members of the public such that they will be more careful about what they write and say and will strive for some degree of journalistic integrity and objectivity.

   b. I believe that NOW, while the Dean campaign is still going, and there are THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE tied into it online, and there are hundreds of people involved in Dean Rapid Response Network, that it would be a great time to start floating this idea and formulating—at least in rough outline—our ideas for the specific shape we would like this project to take. The fact is, if we could get several thousand participants in such an activist network, we could begin to formulate specific strategies for:

   a. Educating the public as to these issues through seminars, letter-writing, visibility events, conferences, handing out specific literature and flyers in public places, etc.

   b. Getting enough of the public savvy about where to find better information, and just better informed about what is going on in their democracy

   c. Creating media-watch projects on the Internet where specific “journalists,” outlets, and reporters were monitored and held accountable for their behavior.

   d. Formulate innovative strategies for media activism (e.g., getting DFA people to buy minimal amounts of stock in media companies such that they could attend shareholders’ meetings and raise issues of bias and inaccuracy in reporting.)

   Think of it: If a mere 20% MORE of the Democratic-voting public had been aware of the realities I spoke of earlier, Dean would have probably won Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have gone to war in Iraq in the first place.

   In fact, once again, we could even start coordinating our efforts with things such as MoveOn (they have 3 million people on their e-mail lists), TakeBacktheMedia, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and http://www.buzzflash, other progressive political and issue campaigns, and other independent sites on the Internet.

   c. By the way, immediately after I started thinking along these lines, I came across this piece in http://www.dailykos.com. It gives some statistical basis for why the idea that I am now floating would have effective results:

   Old Media, New Media
   by Jerome Armstrong
   Fri Jan 30th, 2004 at 06:01:49 GMT

   Most of you will enjoy reading OJR’s article: Candidates Slow to Bring Political Advertising Dollars to the Web, especially in light of the failure of TV media that we’ve all very recently seen. Of note is Glaser’s closing comment:

   Until there’s a way to make political consultants comfortable with the Internet as an advertising vehicle, it will continue to languish as a back-room experiment. Or maybe all it would take is one bold, risk-taking candidate to finally push big money online and win. Then everyone else will follow like a herd of raging elephants and donkeys.

   It sorta reminds me of blogs and meetups from a year ago when we told Trippi to get on it quick. A year later, the Trippiless Dean machine is in pause. At least for the moment, Dean has pulled the plug on the big sucking sound that was occurring via the TV media buys. I am actually looking foward to seeing television-media-less results from the 2/3 states. Imagine HD winning a state, or two.

   I want to bring up Stirling Newberry’s analysis, showing the point where the internet is at now in historical comparison:

   While people are wringing their hands over Dean’s fall and saying that “the internet” failed, the truth can be seen from a CNN.com exit poll: among those who made up their mind early - these are the political junkies - Dean by 20 points over Kerry. Among those peopel who visited candidate websites “frequently” Dean lead 40-20 over Kerry [conversely, Kerry lead by 40-20 among those who didn't visit websites]. In short, the internet delivered Dean a base of voters - who turned out - and a base of people connected to him - who turned out. The problem with most people talking about the new politics in 2003 is that they thought that it was like the new economy in 1996 - they fell in love with the technology and the tool, and forgot that tools are about what you do with them. They also, swept up in emotion, thought that 2004 was for the internet what 1960 was for Television.

   This made two big mistakes: first, it left out that JFK won 1960 not “because” of television, but because of old fashioned working the political system - TV merely tipped the balance in his favor. Second, the internet isn’t as far as long as TV was in 1960. The internet is where TV was in the 1950’s - the cutting edge of culture, with a disporportionately influential base - but still small. The “frequent” visitors to web sites were 10% of New Hampshire. The broke heavily for Dean. If that number were 30%, which is to say, the difference in television penetration between 1952 and 1956 - then Dean would have been within 2% of Kerry, a dead heat.

   The internet then, is currently on the cusp of dominance in terms of info seeking users. Jonah Seiger brings up the catch confronting the new media campaigner:

   “There’s shorthand among media strategists and pollsters: ‘Pump an extra thousand gross ratings points into a market, and we’ll see an X percent bump in the unfavorable/favorable ratings,’ ” Seiger told me. “We don’t have a similar lexicon yet for the Internet. There’s a difference in the bottom line measure. With traditional media, there’s an attitudinal measure, how public opinion has changed, but there’s no direct response measure. Internet advertising from the very beginning was sold as a direct response medium. It creates somewhat of a trap.”

   And the trap is being already addressed by ad vendors. If the methodology is proven enough for major online advertisers such as IBM, HP, Intel, Ford, General Motors, Toyota, P&G, Kraft & all the major Movie Studios (through online panel surveys that compare “ad-exposed online” vs “not exposed online”), isn’t it ready for more than 1-2% (and that’s probably on the high-end of the Democratic campaigns) of a campaign’s media budget? But the real point is that TV advertising fails to move the dial like it used too, and likewise, in terms of online advertising at the Presidential level, its just waiting to move the needle (especially in terms of offense advertising).
   Here’s some more data:

   – TV cost inflation is approximately 8 - 12% per year
   – It takes ~10X more commercial tonnage to influence the polls on an equivalent basis compared to 1992
   – Competitive campaigns caught in a tail-chasing spiral over TV share-of-voice but without the historical impact on voters
   – Voters who do see TV ads often see too many and quickly burnout from over-exposure
   – 21% of Adults under age 30 will get most of their campaign news from the Internet 30% of all online users will engage in online campaign activities (researching candidates, visiting websites, etc.)
   – Adults who say they will learn about campaigns from the Internet jump dramatically since last election:

   2000 2004 Index
   Adults 35-49 25% 40% (160)
   Coll. Grads 35% 51% (146)
   Hispanic 19% 32% (16 Independent 25% 39% (156)

   e. Here is a Specific Media Awareness Project

   In the same way that DFA wrote letters to undecided voters (and I do believe that they had a tremendous effect in introducing Dean to the public and they were responsible for pushing us into the leads in Iowa and New Hampshire), DFA supporters could write handwritten letters in which something along the lines of the following statement was included:

   Dear Friend:

   My name is _____________. I am writing to you from _____________ as a fellow American who is deeply concerned about our country.

   In the United States, the news media is owned and controlled by huge corporations. Believe it or not, they only tell us what their coporate masters and advertisers want us to know. And when they do, they do it in such a way that we are led to think about issues and events in the ways that they want us to think about them.

   As a result, many facts and stories never reach the American public, and those stories that do reach them, are often distorted in such a way as to serve the interests of corporate and other well-monied special interests.

   The good news, however, is that there is a way around this system of filters and censorthip. This way is found on numerous independent and alternative news sites on the Internet that allow Americans to access news, facts, and perspectives that the coporate media de-emphasizes or does not see fit to report, or even outright lies about. These sites include news clearinghouses, links to newspaper reports in from other cities and other countries, as well as independent opinion and news reporting sites which have come to be known as “blogs.”

   If you don’t believe the things that I have so far said, consider this: Many of us knew BEFORE the Iraq war began that Saddam Hussein didn’t have ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ that he had not ties to Al Queda, and that George Bush and his associates were lying when they said that they did. How did we know these things? Because, even though the corporate news media was mainly reporting stories and news that was consistent with the Bush Administration line, many of us were regularly checking in with these alternative and independent Internet sites that I have so far talked about. They were informing us of news and facts that the corporate news media did not see fit to report and instead was hiding from us. Thus, we knew that the war in Iraq was based on lies, and we were not surprised when, after our troops and inspectors went into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, none were found.

   In any event, I have included a list with this letter. On this are links to alternative and independent news and opinion sites that can be found on the Internet.

   My hope is that if you have some form of Internet access, you will take the time to click some of these sites on in an effort to begin to see the wide spectrum of news and information that most of us are not exposed to by our corporate media outlests. This list, is by no means compreshensive. By going to them, perhaps you will eventually find other sites that you like and/or trust even more. But by all means, they are a good place to start.

   So, please seriously consider what I have said. Our democratic system can only operate if the people are informed. And, as much as I hate to say it, the corporate news media has been largely misinforming us. But you can begin to change all that for yourself, and start becoming a more aware, sophisticated, and active citizen as a result.

   I am a member of Media Awareness for America. If you would like to find out more about us after you have begun to visit these sites, then by all means visit our website at http://www.mediaawarenessforamerica.com.

   Thanks for your time,

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