Let me see if I can help address your question. I do not speak for Cenk nor TYT - anyone, including any of you, may disagree with this but this is as I understand it /slash/ what I recommend:
Operation Hope’s Ultimate Goal: To build a powerful team of progressive activists that self-organize together in order to help to get legislation passed so that we can make real-world change for our families and communities.
Operation Hope’s Current Objective: To self-organize around our first piece of legislation in order to make real-world change and begin building our experience and strength together as a team.
Operation Hope’s Current Mission:
Decide on top three pieces of legislation (THIS IS THE STEP WE’RE ON NOW)
Decide on THE piece of legislation we will organize around based on the top three list
Develop a strategy for helping to get the legislation to pass
Develop a plan for how to execute the strategy
Execute Strategy
Evaluate
Adjust accordingly
Repeat steps 5-7 until…
Celebrate!
Debrief for learnings in preparation for next campaign
I do want to make sure we talk about Student Loan Forgiveness as an option here too. Originally, I was thinking that we didn’t need to consider it because of Biden actually working on it and making some progress. BUT… It still isn’t enough and if we were to focus on it and it did happen we could use it as a springboard to Pre-K through College/Tech for free. Thanks for making me think on this @jared123456
This makes much more sense to me now! Though, probably many of my concerns are still pertinent, (if previously confused). I could probably reword my previous comments, but, could we still address the concerns despite the confusion?
Other than those, also, I feel as if being limited in scope to legislation is probably not my best place. Since, for instance, my primary topics of running progressive republicans (which would be “a strategy for helping to get the legislation to pass”), and also targeting the deep capture industry are both broader in scope than singular legislation.
So glad that helps! Would you mind repeating what concerns I haven’t addressed yet? If it’s about you and others not necessarily having the experience to know what legislation would be the most feasible - that’s totally okay!
That where Cenk, myself, and all of us will work together to provide guidance. We are genuinely interested in what you all think (and why). We certainly don’t have all the answers either. Plus, remember that this is really about building a self-sustaining, self-organizing team. That’s where our real power lies moving forward.
As a result, we can help with any parts where the community feels stuck or needs guidance/expertise, but we really really want you all to learn together and make it happen together.
I should add, though, that I appreciate your comment about not knowing what legislation to prioritize. That’s actually really helpful for us to know where you all may need guidance and support from us. Not only can I relate to that feeling from when I was getting started in political activism, but I do see that as something that activists in general struggle with. It’s a lot! So, I hope you can take comfort in knowing that we are here to help our TYT fam learn and grow together.
I think strategizing is something that can be done along the way if we think of blanket strategic ideas that might work for any of the legislation ideas that is going to be the target.
I have one idea: Maybe when deciding what would be the piece of legislation, we can take into account these two ideas that are on the forum (as a strategic component):
*I would like to point out that an idea that antagonizes like this one, if we are to antagonize, I would make sure that the narrative is Undeniably Clear directed to Republican Politicians rather than the whole conservative population. It would defeat the purpose of uniting for a common goal in which conservatives should also be included as takers of the positive change we are trying to bring forth.
We can point to choose that one that serves both purposes: Have greater chances of success and can generate buzz to the movement and spread hope to the public.
@jared123456 You said you have a thread in here for your “Run a progressive Republican” idea right? There is nothing saying you can’t kept that thread going and people can discuss that issue in there and it would probably be of use sometime town the line. It could even be one of the issues that we decide to move to after we cover some others
Hey everyone @here - let’s set our deadline for deciding on the top three pieces of legislation by this Sunday. See the list here (feel free to still add ideas if you haven’t yet).
You do NOT need to have the reasoning behind them done, although providing your reasoning now may help ya’ll to decide on those top three. For now, though, you’re just deciding on the top three and then AFTER that you’ll agree on the language for why and what they’re about. See my post here about our overall goal/plan.
Remember that this is just a draft, so don’t sweat getting it perfect. Just do your best and then I’ll be happy to weigh in when and where I can.
Also remember… have fun! Enjoy the process and opportunity to connect with and collab with one another.
Thanks @alison_hartson . That will give us the entire weekend to collab together and come up with a consensus for this. And remember, everyone can participate in this collab. If you think we should do one of the ideas listed then let us know. If you like an idea on the list but have a different take on it let us know. If you have an idea that isn’t on the list let us know. All are welcome in this.
I think I will join the Discord voice chat this weekend for anyone that would like to promote their idea or help improve an existing idea. I will be there from 2-4 pst if anyone can’t meet at that time but would still like to talk send a message, or reply I am flexible.
I think this is a great direction. I think we need some sort of way to score the feasibility of something passing.
I think we should also have a way to propose draft idea or outline key points the legislation is meant to achieve.
The last part is how do you fund or think about a control that mitigates the impacts of this control being enacted.
One point I would like to make is money in politics is a very dynamic issue. The odd part is also popular, I think this is why it maybe a great issue to work on due to the problem being language and disillusionment. I think you could start with local bills with a donation fees associated with accounting for contributions over a certain size. This could help states defray the costs for the state conventions to ban special interest money in politics. This is symbolic at first but could help gather support long term on both sides.
Attacking the obvious corruption, passing paid family leave, pushing for Medicare for All/ taking cannabis off the schedule/ ensuring that the incarcerated population in the USA has the right to unlimited access to medicinal herbs.
@fourthwall_dragon your voting tool simplified each user’s ideas for consumption, could it be used to condense the list of proposals into a single post that can be linked here? @Galphar included all the proposals, but it is a lot of jumping between posts and filtering the specific legislation from each person’s post to go through. If I had more time I wouldn’t be concerned, but I’m probably not the only one who can’t sink an hour or 2 into going through all 15 of these and weighing the viability from multiple angles.
If not don’t sweat it, you’ve done a tremendous job already! I’ll get my 3 votes in by Sunday night. And thanks to @Galphar for linking to discord and getting more people involved, has anyone done the same with the Twitch community?
Happy weekend, dragons!
I would love for PFL to be a part of Medicare4All. I’m 100% for Medicare4All. The reason i like PFL more as a single issue is that it seems more achievable short term. Then Medicare4All as soon as we can manage it.
What you are asking for would actually complicate things for people. What we are doing now is just looking at the basic ideas and trying to come to consensus on which ones we think should be focused on AND which would be the easiest to accomplish. Details on how to accomplish these can be discussed AFTER we decide which to pursue.
Think of it this way: The simpler we keep this discussion and the more people will participate in the discussions.
I totally agree with you on having all the ideas in a list with a small description of each for everyone to use as a quick reference. Hopefully I can get the time today to add some simple descriptions to the List post with the links I did at the start of the thread.
As far as the Twitch community and informing them goes: I did “promos” on all 4 TYT Platforms throughout the day yesterday: Twitch, here in tyt.com, and both YouTube Public and Members Only. Also a lot of the YT and Twitch members hang out over in the Discord too so that should get some more participants too.
@isp Can you elaborate some on that? When I think of the Green New Deal; to me it is a bunch of environmental issues under one big banner. I know that Bernie and the Squad have a bill written for it that they have tried to get through committee but never did. Maybe the thing to do then would be to look at each environmental issue separately and try to do it that way. Something like maybe upping the Environmental Regulations here in the USA or maybe a bill to create a new High Speed Rail system in the USA for not only freight but passengers too.
Medicare4All is one of mine also so I’ll leave that one alone lol. Campaign Finance reform for me is what Wolf-PAC has been focused on and I’d be fine with leaving it to them as we focus on another issue
I am not sure which part you mean. I think feasibility is the heart of the problem here. I am not saying stop what were doing an make some scoring, I am saying we should keep this in mind when talking about an idea.
Part of our issue maybe that we don’t know what is feasible and what isn’t.
I think most of the ideas presented to be a legislative focus are excellent, and probably things that every member here would get behind. One of our biggest hurdles in pushing a piece of legislation will be both how it has been presented to the public already and how it gets disseminated once it’s made known.
Many of the ideas we’re voting on have already been poisoned by far right media, it’ll be an overwhelming feat to get enough moderates to sign on because they fear losing support. If it was just voters who needed convincing it wouldn’t be so bad, but like Cenk said 90% of voters want it but 90% of politicians don’t so it’s not gonna happen.
Nothing is impossible, and I will continue trying to make whatever we vote for become a reality. If we can get right wingers to openly support something it WILL pass. Establishment doesn’t fear either far right or left, but definitely fears populist.