Tuesday August 15, 2023; 1:21 PM EDT
- The Americans of Conscience Checklist (introduced to me here) does what few others do, and that is they relentlessly provide action items as ways for interested citizens to register their concerns and views on a public issue. The site curates lists of these political actions and posts checklists of them on a regular schedule. It seems, based on my first encounter, that the AoCC team teaches some of the basic moves of activism and encourages people to give it a try. High level op-eds and top magazine articles usually leave out the activism step, assuming who knows what about how the information contained in a piece of writing will translate into action in the world. Not so the Checklist project.#
- While it appears that the Checklist website is a group project, upon my first visit the action items don't seem to provide a way to help form one's own collaborative team. Maybe the example of their skillful and strategic work is enough, I don't know, but I'm still hoping for a further development of tools that nourish another level of political activity. Maybe the tools can't help with the next level, I don't know, but to the degree that they don't seem to aim for it most of our tools tilt toward the consumption of curated news rather than in the direction of activism centered on the witness and reflection of new groups of citizens forming and gearing up on their own terms.#