Some of my friends and I have been quietly working on a very quiet little be-the-media campaign.
We’re ready to go. And you can help.
A great journalist can explain it better than this lowly blogger. Here’s Chris Floyd:
Tired of Shouting Into the Wind? Try Whispering.
Winter Patriot has launched a brilliant new DIY activist effort: The Whispering Campaign. It’s very simple. WP has set up a website with a selection of short, succinct, printer-friendly articles detailing some nugget of unexplored or underplayed truth about our times; all you have to do is print them out — and leave them in some public place for passers-by to find and read. As WP puts it: “Ideal locations include book stores, copy shops, libraries, train stations, buses, taxis, laundromats, grocery stores, hair salons, barber shops, rest rooms, gas stations, coffee shops, truck stops… use your imagination!”
It’s real grass-roots stuff — in fact, it reaches all the way down to the individual blade, a personal form of activism either to supplement collective action or to let each person carve a particular path. It’s also a good way of reaching people outside the seething blogosphere or the media/political world in general — the vast majority of the population, in other words.
So scoot on over to the Whispering Campaign and check it out. Start moving that mountain one grain at a time.
Chris gives me too much credit, but otherwise he’s spot-on, I think. It’s a great idea, isn’t it? It’s an old one, tried and tested.
What’s new is the implementation. But I can’t even take credit for that. The Whispering Campaign stands on the earlobes of giants.
Here’s how you can stand there too:
Join The Whispering Campaign! Print the articles, make copies, and spread them around …
Send quiet messages to all your friends, post silent messages on all your favorite blogs, do any quiet thing you can think of to help publicize The Whispering Campaign and help good information move along its rightful path.
It’s not enough just to boycott the major media. We have to take over their job! We owe it to our fellow citizens to share good information with them. And this is an easy way for you to help make it happen.
All we need are 6 or 7 feisty souls. Can we include you? Good! Now Let’s Start Whispering!!
Interesting idea… except “whispering” is far less effective when you have an advertisement for “The Whispering Campaign” at the bottom of the handout.
That sort of thing just makes people feel like they’re being used by a “liberal” group. That information is best left off.
You’re trying to affect ordinary people’s opinions, not recruit for your own effort.
See, Republicans wouldn’t have had to be told this. Democrats, on the other hand, with their earnestness and desires for transparency and “community action,” do need to be told.
I think it’s important to have a URL for further information, but I don’t have a problem with not having it point to something called “the whispering campaign.” Maybe each story could have a tinyurl associated with it and, instead of having the indicia about the whispering campaign and the source of the story, have a tinyurl at the bottom of the page a user can go to for more information.
The main problem I can see with that approach is that a tinyurl ( http://tinyurl.com ) is that tinyurls can point to literally anywhere — whitehouse.gov, porn sites, whatever. Maybe someone has a better idea.
I still think, if you’re going to do propaganda, do propaganda. Don’t be all above-board about it.
Democrats, I think, tend to have this idea that if they can only spread the right thought-provoking propaganda, they can attract people to their own group, or start a “movement.” Republicans don’t think that way; instead, they exploit people’s base fears and passions, and let the chips fall where they may (usually to their party’s benefit).
You have to prompt people to DO something, not to JOIN something. The minute you answer people’s questions about “Hey, who put this out here?”, they will become disinterested. “Oh – just one of those liberal groups.”
Also, if you do a good job of writing the flyers, people will seek out information for themselves. There’s no need for an URL.
What we have in the Whispering Campaign is a hook. The hook is a short list, let’s say, of Top Ten Ways Government Curtails Your Freedom. (I’m doing this off the top of my head.) Now if you bait the hook properly people will be curious and want to learn more. If you want to do something like this (short form):
Call Senator Pettifogger’s office at (202) 555-5555 and tell him you want the government to respect your privacy and stay away from your library records.
http:// tinyurl.com/asdfasdf4
(non-clickable link because it doesn’t work) you’ve done three things. First, you’ve educated someone about the abuses the Patriot Act allows. Second, you’ve given them something to do — call Senator Pettifogger’s office and tell them you’re opposed to the Patriot Act, in so many words. And third, you’ve given them a place to go to find out more — and you haven’t identified yourself as liberal, conservative, radical, reactionary, or apathetic in doing so. (In fact if the web site is done right the visitor need have no idea that a bunch of librul commie pinko treehuggers are behind it.)
I think you’re putting too much concern into people discounting the message because of the source, and giving the average American too much credit in how and where to look for information the government would just as soon they ignored. But that’s just me, and I realize I could be wrong.