In the last post, we looked at how accountability is not only in the center of politics, it’s also important for making PeopleCount work. What’s the proper relationship for you and PeopleCount.org? It is for you to hold PeopleCount accountable for delivering the results with which we all can transform politics together.
If enough of you hold me accountable, I’ll be reporting to you. I’ll be able to ask each of you for a donation. If there are enough of you, we can fund this from small donations without investment capital. If we can do this, I can take PeopleCount non-profit, or make it a customer-owned business (a mutual company). Americans could own this 4th estate (or 5th or 6th, depending on your definitions).
Even if we don’t raise enough to fund PeopleCount fully, funding it partially will also be a newsworthy event. We can leverage that publicity to add more supporters and make more news as well as get the attention of wealthy donors. There are enough wealthy donors to make this happen, but they won’t listen without some noise.
In my view, the Occupy movement has largely failed. I don’t know any results that people attribute to the Occupy movement except that it fueled the start of other movements. The reason it failed is that they couldn’t agree on what they wanted. I read that the leadership came to some agreements, but the word never got out. It certainly didn’t get out to the mainstream press in a way that inspired people to generate actions that produced results regarding their core issues.
Imagine that PeopleCount had been available to the Occupy movement. They could have communicated with each other about what they wanted. They could have seen how many of their supporters were behind their various wants. And they could have seen how much support they had in each district and state. Plus, their desires would have been in a form that the rest of America could look at and either agree with or disagree with.
We commonly say that Democrats and Republicans disagree. But the fact is that there also areas of widespread agreement. Some of those were in Occupy’s list.
Hold PeopleCount accountable for transforming Congress. You do your part and we’ll be able to do ours.