One of the current trends in Australia at the moment is the GetUp! Action for Australia political movement. Their site describes themselves as "a new independent political movement to build a progressive Australia. GetUp brings together like-minded people who want to bring participation back into our democracy."
GetUp started up in 2005 following the techniques of its American predecessor MoveOn.org. 1 With some fairly heavyweight political names as well as its reliance on the nature of the internet, GetUp has been involved in several large campaigns in Australia aimed at bringing political will to bear on issues that, in their view, weren't being addressed by the mainstream political parties.
I want to be clear that I am a GetUp supporter, and you'll hear many similarities in their view of participation in the political process.
At the moment they are running a campaign that I love- Oz in 30 Seconds. A competition for people to create ads to promote their views on Australia, the winner of which will be screened during the elections later this year.
What other innovative ways are there to express your views? What's your favourite innovative political statement been? There's been some good ones- the No War posting on the Opera House comes to mind!
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2 comments:
Maybe a good way to make people contribute is to challenge them, so they act defensively. It might work better than acting ideologically. For instance, another competition to compare Australia UNfavourably to other countries, then have people counter it. There'd be a lot of "That may be the case, but..." and "If that were true, wouldn't..." both of which would give an alternative, therefore a discussion, and simultaneously show where people accept our weak points to be.
Or have a Jerry Springer style argument, where similar-aged, and non-similar-aged people from privileged backgrounds have a yelling match with non-privileged backgorunds, then pick out the real hurtful or surprising remarks and see if they're true. It'd attract people, then some might make an input about a point, or to take a side. Either way, it's a great, plato "really real" discussion scenario cos there's no formalised contribution process, just two de-socialised humans.
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