“Participation
comes from Latin, pars capere,
which means to take,
or retake the part that belongs to you,
and in a democracy,
the part that belongs to us,
the people,
is the sovereignty.
We are, in theory,
legally the source of power and decision making.”
(ref)
If you are eager to participate, send me an email and include your postal code.
Too often, and for too long, people have deferred to others.
In the absence of scrutiny and renewal, government bureaucracies become bloated and dysfunctional, at best. Often they become ripe with corruption.
In Alberta, “participation” has begun.
In 2021, determined board members of just 22 UCP (United Conservative Party) Constituency Associations (CAs) forced the review of the Party's leader, Jason Kenney.
From early January to mid March 2022, meeting across the province in kitchens, barns and community centres, people gathered, and started to participate.
Overcoming tremendous disadvantages, and a lopsided playing field, they gathered and persevered enough to do something that has never been done before, they forced a Premier to resign.
They then ensured that the new leader and Premier was committed to respecting the people and truly serving them.
They then took control of the UCP's provincial board, electing a preferred candidate to each of the available positions, more than half of the total positions.
We are now getting involved in UCP CA boards across the province, and preparing to ensure that the political organization we now control wins the Alberta general election in 2023.
In this short clip from the movie A Bug's Life (1998), Hopper, conveys to the grasshoppers what can happen to ruling elites when large numbers gather in support of a few brave individuals.
While many groups contributed to the accomplishments, Take Back Alberta (TBA) deserves much of the credit.
Going forward, we will support front line healthcare workers to clean out and renew Alberta Health Services.
To eradicate "Hoppers" elsewhere, good people everywhere need support. Join a school board. Join a committee. Social media commentating is not going to get things done. Participate.
People are NOT as polarized as it seems.
If organized groups of sensible people participate in effective ways,
the endless tug-of-wars can be ended.
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In March 2021, with the limited skills and technology available to me, I created a 7 minute intro video to provide some general insights:
If you want some insight into more details of what we're ultimately trying to achieve, the liquiddemocracy.ca webpage will provide that. (2 minute read)
If you want to investigate this initiative more thoroughly, wethepeople.ca was the first website, and has lots of information. (Please note that some of the information is out of date, but it will give you plenty of insight.)
If you're ready to participate, send me an email and include your postal code.
No experience? No worries. I will step you through everything. If you're not yet a member of a provincial political party, then choose one and offer to the join the Constituency Association (CA) board. For friends that didn't know what a CA board was, I created a 2 minute video that gives a short explanation, and it briefly describes how CA boards can be used to accomplish our objectives.
I know the idea of getting involved in politics will turn most people off, but don't worry, this is NOT what we are going to be doing. CA boards are simply what's available for the grassroots to use to take control. Think of it as a benevolent coup.
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Hopefully, you're ready to send me an email. If that's the case, then you don't need to read anything else on this page.
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December 30, 2021
(Blain's note to his friends, particularly the ones that post on Facebook and talk at parties, but are not getting on board.)
Getting people to “get on board” has been perplexingly difficult.
A very small amount of assistance would make a BIG difference, and you're not being asked to get involved in “politics”, because none of us wants to do that!
Also, this isn't just about COVID restrictions and vaccines.
With this recent cold snap, someone could be dead, frozen in their home, because bureaucrats and politicians have been ignoring my appeals to change electricity load limiters.
People get murdered by career criminals, days and weeks after release, despite pleas to change the parole system.
People were raising the alarm about conditions in long term care facilities for many years, but problems persist.
There are countless other examples, and I'm sure that each and every one of us has been negatively impacted on multiple occasions.
The systems are broken.
Politicians and bureaucrats will not fix them.
Protesting will not fix things, and Posting stuff on Facebook will certainly not fix things.
If you think I'm crazy, and that my idea will not work, then please tell me.
If not, then please agree to help me, which will involve the following:
1) Become a member of a political party. This will cost you $10.
https://www.unitedconservative.ca/take-action/membership/
https://act.albertandp.ca/donate/join?source=hp_menu
https://www.albertaparty.ca/membership
https://wildrosenation.com/memberships/
2) Send me an email, letting me know what party you joined, when you joined, and whether or not anyone personally contacted you and welcomed you.
3) Assuming no one contacts you, I will find an email address for you to send a request to join the Constituency Association board. (This video gives a short explanation of Constituency Associations: https://youtu.be/6zJLaBmaH-0)
4) Sit in on the next board meeting, a Zoom meeting that will last about an hour, then let me know how many people are on the board, and what your sense is of their willingness to embrace new ideas and function like what I described in the above video.
5) Some boards meet monthly, others meet every other month. Since they are done via Zoom, you don't need to travel anywhere, and you can do other stuff while the meeting is going on. Most board members say absolutely nothing during most meetings, so you can engage as much or as little as you want.
That's it! That's all I'm asking you to do!
Of course, if you want to do more, the sky is the limit.
The images below don't accurately convey the situation, but maybe they will help.
It takes more than just 3 people.
It happens in real life. Below is a monument to the Famous Five.
These categories are from a presentation that I did a while ago, and the blurbs refer to something else, but the categories apply to getting on board or not.
Maybe this one represents your perspective.
You're still reading, therefore, you chose the red pill. How can you watch a video like this one: https://youtu.be/Lyg9lxB0yxc, telling of a doctor being put on unpaid leave, and AHS then being at risk of having to fly patients to other hospitals, and not be compelled to DO something??!
The fact that Martin Luther King struggled with the same challenges that I'm having, brings no comfort.
I'm stubborn and determined, and I'm willing to do a lot with little or no help, but I'm not going to foolishly persist like the hummingbird forever.
Simple example of what 50 people can do:
On Monday, October 25, 2021 I attended a Zoom meeting with Premier Jason Kenney, for UCP members. At the beginning of these meetings, people are invited to submit questions, and to vote on the questions of others. The questions that get the most support are the ones that get posed and answered. As you can imagine, by the time you've written a question, there are dozens, and eventually a couple hundred. Many are very similar, there is no organization or flow, and only a small fraction of the questions get answered.
After the meeting it occurred to me that, since the top question got 49 votes (thumb up 👍), an organized group of just 50 people could have controlled the Zoom meeting that was attended by over 500 people.
We could have decided in advance what questions we wanted to ask, have them already written out, so that a quick copy and paste can be done, decide who is going to submit which questions, and then vote for our questions. (We could even establish the order of the questions, although votes from other participants would probably shift them around a bit.)
While this might seem unfair to others, it would result in a much better Zoom meeting, benefiting everyone, and those others would always be welcome to participate in the question preparations for the next meeting.
Current Initiative - Provincial Constituency Associations:
Constituency Associations seem to have a general mindset that they exist to get volunteers and donations from people, and then work their butts off to get the party's candidate elected.
A grassroots mindset recognizes that a Constituency Association board is simply a dozen or so people that chose to sprout out of the roots and start doing some things.
A grassroots mindset recognizes that a Constituency Association, CA, can be a place where people engage in the functioning and shaping of the society in which they live. The members of the CA choose someone to run as a candidate in an election, with the hopes of that person then representing the constituency in the next government.
If that happens, then the MLA is the representative of the people that got them there. There's no reason for the CA board, the volunteers, and the donors to become dormant for three and a half years, then come forth like mindless little minions to dutifully work on behalf of the politician to get them re-elected.
CAs can be an ongoing point of connection for people.
For example, the CA can provide a connection point between Bridgeland-Riverside and Sunnyside, on issues specific to them, and can provide a connection point for all of the physical communities in an electoral district to come together and participate in the functioning and shaping of our society.
People live their lives in a variety of communities, in addition to the geographical one(s). CAs can be the place that people from these communities come forth and work together. (Church groups, business districts, industries, schools, athletic groups, dance groups, etc.)
I like the sounds of this and want to do something!
Send me an email, so that you can start coordinating with the rest of us. If you live in an electoral district that no one is active in yet, then you can buy a membership in a provincial political party, then get some information about their CA board, and then join the board, to start getting insight into the general mindset of that particular board, and be positioned to start influencing it.
Liquid Democracy Initiative:
Democracy has been dysfunctional for a long time.
Technology has gotten to the point that we can do things VERY differently. If all the provincial parties have the same policy regarding democratic reform, then top down resistance will be futile.
With as few as one person in each constituency, for each party, we can collectively put in place such a policy.
Analogies:
A small amount of water inside a closed container can generate tremendous force when frozen.
Hail storms are powerful, but the landscape doesn't get significantly changed. So, if you've been protesting, keep doing it, but consider strategic approaches as well.
When enough tiny, fragile snowflakes accumulate and then move together in a common direction, the force of the avalanche is tremendous. However, getting enough people together and moving in a common direction is nearly impossible.
Water wears down stone, but it takes a long time.
This was hastily put together, but hopefully it's sufficient. If you're interested, then please contact me:
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(Email script compliments of Joe Maller.)
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