Our Right To Participation

GUEST EDITORS: Feel free to change this text or to ADD BELOW your ideas for what belongs in our Right To Participation. My discussion of this concept occurs first. Following that you are welcome to be involved by telling us all ...

What Belongs In This Right?

Below the short summary is a space where you can begin identifying the elements that belong as parts of our Right To Participation. Feel free to:

Once the project has a good shape, I will modify the site so the core elements stay strong and people can add their own refinements as we go.

This is the beginning, I trust, of a project that grows large in substance if not size over time. The ideas you share will belong to the public through the product that results. However, I will do my best to identify all who wish to be identified in a listing of contributors. (I would appreciate it if you could email your language to me as well as posting it here, just to make sure that no evil participant uses his or her right to be a pain.)

Thanks.

RESPECT FOR OTHERS AND THE IDEA

Please DO NOT destroy what is already HERE. Simply add your ideas under a heading with your name or email address. I will monitor the site on a regular basis and save what is there. After a reasonable time, I will clean up the text and re-enter it for purposes of further, monitored editing.

MY THOUGHTS ON: Defining the right to participation, by Ted Broomfield, CEO and cofounder of Changester

The "Right to Participation" is not an ennumerated right as such according to the law of the land (The Consitution and the Statutes put into place under it).

US Citizens do have the "Right to Free Speech" as well as the "Right to Vote" which combine in my mind to form the right to Participation. Unfortunately, as all large organizations with near unlimited resources, government entities stymy these rights by creating a vast, confusing bureaucracy that is time consuming to navigate. If an individual somehow manages to penetrate the veil, he or she is often belittled, ignored, of their points 'obfuscated (the ultimate in disrespect....)'

How many times have you written a letter of complaint or request that was obfuscated away....my favorite example is a corporate one. I recently wrote an e-mail to Priceline, in which I complained that given the inferiority of their travel product - inability to choose times - their recent price uncompetitiveness made their service unattractive and a waste of my time. Priceline responded with an e-mail explaining the mechanics of how I could increase my bid. I responded that I knew how to use their service, but I also knew how to use competitors' services as well, and as a result of their smarmy response, I would certainly check their prices going forward, but would never alert them of their competitive position again.

As far as the right to Free Speech, despite what alarmist state it seems to be relatively in tact in today's society.

As Allan Shore notes below, the tool used by the "powers that be" is obfuscation. Elected officials (and corporate actors, as well) simply twist words, or answer unasked questions of their own design rather than address reality.

That is what Changester is all about. Rather than individuals being stymied by manipulative individuals employing their superior resources of confusing beaurocracy and unlimited ability to waste time against helpless individuals, Changester aims to unite large numbers of indviduals, use innovative web tools, such as a Wiki, to form a real consensus opinion, and deliver this opinion to elected officials with the power of large numbers.

That is something that politicians cannot ignore; large numbers of voters saying the same thing.

OUR RIGHT TO PARTICIPATION:

Allan Shore allanshore@msn.com

What ideas belong in this right? Or should we even design such a right at this time?

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