aka Ken Smith: Strays

Professor Mitchell, U of Missouri, 1970s, as I remember his class on ancient Greek democracy: for a time, when tyrants sought a certain kind of political power, Athens extended the power of citizens in that area as a defense going forward.#

Timothy Snyder: Putin governs by demobilizing the population. So do the GOP. Voting made narrow, gerrymandering to make votes meaningless, insider politics, etc. Why bother? -- a citizen might begin to ask.#

IN-2nd House member Jackie Walorski steals the live conversation of democracy from Democratic voters by not spending time with them, not coming to the city part of her district, for the most part. And she steals the live conversation of democracy from Republican voters by freezing the discourse into slogans, etc., when democratic conversation must be open, must risk going beyond slogans, must illustrate and test. So who’s left, exactly, to hold the fruits of governance if all these folks are shut out of the process? Good question.#

How to remobilize a group of citizens? How to help them tune into the implications of speech and actions like those of Walorski?#