What Obama's FCC is about to do to the Internet is similar to what Clinton did to broadcasting in 96

[truedelphi]

104. Right now, there is only one way to enable ourselves at the expense of

Our "Beloved Party."

Community Rights organizing.

This is a movement we can join to take back our rights as individuals, and our rights as community participants.

We certainly cannot hold our breath and hope that Hillary Clinton will step aside, announcing how sad she is that she has been bought and paid for, and then saying she will encourage Liz Warren.

It also is extremely difficult to change the Democratic Party from within. Way back in 2012, when I let it slip that I wouldn't support Hillary for Prez in 2016, I was forced out of local Democratic shindigs, even things I previously had done with recommendations (phone banking for John Garamendi, for instance.) Why couldn't Cindy Sheehan run as a Democrat? Why was Steve Westley, who had the backing of the people of California, forced to let Phil Angelides serve as gubanatorial candidate instead, thus losing another four years to Ahnold?

Changing the party from within is almost impossible.

But here is what is working:

There are over 150 communities in the USA who have banded together to take on Corporate Personhood.

Now if you have ever been involved in local politics, you find out rather quickly that local citizens must usually "kow to" to the elected supervisors, or city council people, or even to local employees, such as city or county engineers and planners etc.

And then there are other disconnects. Your elected Board of Supervisors will never ever sit down with the US Federal Senators from your state, and rarely do city council folks or Board of Supervisors even meet with state legislators.

This furthers the huge disconnect. There are so many separate layers of government. It certainly doesn't seem like there is any way to have a Grand Over View. Nor does there seem like there is much of a way to have any re-arrangement of components that might result if the various layers of government communicated with each other.

For instance, my small, Northern Calif. community recently received "free of charge" a piece of modern military over design, this $ 360,000 MRAP vehicle which was designed to take on the IED's of Iraq warfare. This is all part of the militarization of the local police force. Meanwhile our schools have little monies, the local swimming pool may not be opened as it needs $ 40,000 worth of repairs, etc. To add insult to the injury, the state of Calif. just "awarded" my community twenty two millions of dollars to remodel and re-furbish one hundred local prison cells. Where did this amount of money come from? In part, through the state legislature and the governor knocking one billion dollars out of the state budget for health care-related matters over the next ten years. (At the very time that community clinics will need more money as they are going to be swamped by people who now have health insurance through "CoveredCalifornia.org )

People are connecting the dots, but then, what can they do? When confronted by activists wanting solutions, our elected community leaders say that all the problems are divided up in various departments of various layers of government and that you can't, for instance, transfer the MRAP vehicle's worth over to the schools. But over time, the community rights' movement could end up doing a re-arrangement of the layers so that common sense solutions could occur.

I really truly think that the community based rights movement is being designed to handle all these problems and more, including the complete dismemberment of the Corporate Beast. ((Er, Corporate Personhood.)

Through community activism, connected with real political know how, a small farming community in Pennsylvania tackled the problem of keeping out a 14,000 pig, Corporate Pig Farm. The community succeeded despite the fact that elected officials said, "An American owned business, regardless of what it does, always has the right to come into a community." In other words, if you little farmers do not like the destruction of water and soil, and the ability to breath air that doesn't reek of pig shit, move somewhere else!

Their efforts succeeded. They created a community based, County based piece of legislation that kept the Corporate Pig Farm out.

A small community in New Hampshire, and despite opposition from state and federal elected officials and agencies, took on a huge Quebec -based utility and put sustainable energy in its place.

So what are the particulars of how we go about doing this? There are many splendid vids on Youtube about how this is happening.

Here is the first video I would recommend, with an interview by Paul Cienfuegos. I love the quote from the woman writer he cites, Jane Anne Morris, to the effect that environmental regulatory agencies exist to regulate environmentalists!

Intro to Community rights movement - Interview with Paul Cinenfuegos