One of the best ways to help get our message out is to work message boards and chat rooms. Political boards or even ones of your special interest (though believe me the Republicans do not stick with their interests often sending people who are obviously old grouches in to pretend they are twenty somethings or teens. (Teens of all ages are important because they are tomorrow's voters.) (In fact we seem to be losing the young people in the latest polls because the Republicans understand that they spend a lot of time online chatting and messaging each other. How they do it is that they will pick a certain number of young people and pretend to be yound themselves, yet and then try to subtly turn the subject to politics both in public and in private messages.
I and my teens been recipients of such messaging so I do know about this.
At AOL they infect every chat room not just the political ones and the young folk get a right wing political message when they are just looking to chat about music, fashion, whatever.
We need everyone with extra time to help counter this.
We usually have more information and better ideas, but if we aren't there then our young people are being educated by those who love war and greed.
And yes because we are better the right wingers are truly obnoxious to say the least in their postings and replies (and will do everything they can to get you banned so try not to break rules).
If the Republican or avowed libertarians, and independents gang up on you and call you names, or threaten to turn you in to Ashcroft, remember that the tactic is spelled out in Mein Kampf as a way to drive good thoughtful, caring, and informed people out of public political expression. To know that they are using such tactics should spur us on not drive us out of mixed groups.
This is an action that is not given much regard in Democratic circles, but believe me Rove knows an duses it and the thought of us becoming as active in the message boards, chat rooms and using instant messaging like they do to break their domination of the political discussion in many places scares him.
We will still need this board for balance and information, but we also need to get out in the mixed world where so many young people spend their afternoons and evenings chatting.
(And we need to keep it up between elections though probably it will not be possible to keep at the intense level we need in the next few weeks.)
I can't find that poll I saw a few days ago that says that young people favor George Bush by a small margin. That is terrible, a complete turn around of what we can expect, but the internet chat room factor has never been recognized.
Who are the easiest to lie to? Those with less experience in life, politics. That's our young people and they are online a lot everyday looking for people to talk to about their interests.
We need to be there to help set the record straight. (BTW I am not saying you should pretend to be young if you are not, it's just what the Rs do. But a person with interest in music is not banned from a chat room just because he, she is not "young".)
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