Sandals at the Gate

Litquake

I'm honored to have been invited to read my work at Litquake, San Francisco's premier literary festival, in October of this year. The last day of the event which is referred to as Litcrawl sees writers from the area performing in open air venues and at shops in the Mission District in San Francisco. That night I will be reading in the Spirituality venue at Forest Books. Stay tuned for details!

Karekin

technorati tags:litquake, litcrawl, punkmonksf, sanfrancisco, poetry

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My heart will sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn ...
(from a hymn based on Luke 1:46-58)

Yesterday was the investiture of Marc Andrus
as our new bishop here in California.

It was a glorious day ...The cathedral was full ...
more than 30 bishops in attendance
from all around the country ...

Banners from all the congregations in the diocese,
with ONE banner clearly the most beautiful!

The hymn we just sang, The World is About to Turn,
was from that occasion ...
It was the closing hymn from Bishop Marc's investiture ...

And seemed appropriate to sing here to help us all
connect what is happening here at Holy Innocents
to what is going on in the diocese and even
in the greater church ...

Also this week, on Friday,
there was a story on KQED on the California Report ...
about the differences between our diocese,
and the Diocese of San Joaquin.

They featured two churches ...
the Cathedral of St. James in Fresno ...
represented San Joaquin ..
and Holy Innocents, the Diocese of California.

Our own Andrew Aldrich started the piece
with a great statement that was very clear
about how we understand scripture:

Writings that come from a historical context
that can give us guidance about how we live our lives
when understood to have been written
to a different group facing different particular issues.

and Davey Gerhard closed it by saying
that Anglicans were born in conflict
and that we learn and grow in conflict ...

One of my church history professors says that without
someone disagreeing
(and that someone is called a heretic)
there is no movement ...
no change ...

And we know that Christianity has changed over the centuries ...
as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said
The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice ...

That has been the story of our faith ...

What Stephanie Martin, the reporter who did the story
used that I said was that I believe that Episcopalians
are on the leading edge of a new reformation of Christianity ...

I do strongly believe that ...
The world is turning.

We can look at the last 100 years
and see the arc of the history of the Church bending toward justice ....

First the full inclusion of women,
then of people of color ...

We're certainly not at the end of the struggle
for either women or minorities,
the patriarchy still has a powerful hold on us all,
and will until Jesus comes back ...

Yet we know, we can see in our own lifetimes
that the world is turning ...

We can see the reformation happening all around us.

I don't know about you all, but sometimes the voices
of hate and discrimination are sometimes so loud
that I begin to question myself.

Are we right?
Maybe we ARE those nasty revisionists ...

You know ... that is what they call us ...
They are the traditionalists, or the orthodox, and those of us
who teach and believe in the full inclusion of all people
in the life of the church are the revisionists ...

I have to tell you, I CLAIM that title ...
We are ...
We are absolutely re-visioning the world
in a different place than it is now.

BUT (and I want to be absolutely clear about this!)
we are NOT revisionists
when it comes to the teachings
of the early church ...

We heard that most clearly in the readingfrom Paul's letter
to the church at Ephesus today.

There was a powerful argument going on in the first century
about who was in ...
only Jews? or could Gentiles,
the uncircumcised,
be Christians, too.

and Paul was painfully clear:

In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God ...

2,000 years ago, and another fight about genitalia and
what should be done with that most important part of the body.

Not to put too fine a point on it,
but for the Jewish people it defined who somebody could be.

And Paul said to the Church at Ephesus:
Not SO!

The dividing wall in the first century was the hostility between
the Jews and the Greeks.the Jews and the Gentiles ...
the circumcised and the non-circumcised.

Paul said,
in the Body of Christ,
these artificial barriers do not matter.

I have had discussions with fundamentalists who would say to us ...
but what we are talking about now is SIN,
not circumcision.
Let me be VERY clear here:

What they were arguing about then was SIN, TOO.
To not be circumcised was to be ritually unclean.

In their way of viewing the world, it was a SIN to not be circumcised.
One was unclean.

And Paul said it didn't matter.
You are no longer strangers and aliens but Citizens ...

Not aliens,
but members of the household of God.

It was the understanding of what SIN was, and was not ...
not the people's actions, that had to change.

I do have a new vision of the Kingdom of God.
but it would not be new to the people of the first
century ...

The particulars of the disagreement would be different,
but the tensions
and anxieties would be exactly the same ...
“You mean we have to let people fully into our church
who we have always thought of as sinners?”

In the first century ...
"How can we let uncircumcised people
who are ritually unclean into our community?"
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ...
"How can we let people of color ...women ...
gays, lesbians ... transgendered folks fully into our Church?"

Paul told them, and tells us ...
"The dividing wall has been pulled down ..."
We're just slow in realizing that really ...

no --- REALLY --- means EVERYBODY ...

And the world is about to turn.

I want to share a story on the internet is attributed to
Bible scholar William Barclay
but I first heard Bishop Gene Robinson tell:

A group of soldiers during World War II had lost a friend in battle and wanted to give their fallen comrade a decent burial. So they found a church with a graveyard behind it, surrounded by a white fence. They found the parish priest and asked if their friend could be buried there in the church graveyard.

"Was he Catholic?" the priest inquired.
"No, he was not," answered the soldiers.

"I'm sorry, then," said the priest. "Our graveyard is reserved for baptized members of the holy church. But you can bury your friend outside the fence. I will see that the gravesite is cared for."

"Thank you, Father," said the soldiers, and they proceeded to bury their friend just outside the graveyard on the other side of the fence.

When the war had finally ended, before the soldiers returned home, they decided to visit the gravesite of their friend. They remembered the location of the church--and the grave, just outside the fence. They searched for it, but couldn't find it. Finally, they went to the priest to inquire as to its location.

"Sir, we cannot find our friend's grave," said the soldiers to the priest.
"Well," answered the priest. "After you buried your fallen friend, I went to sleep that night and thought about it and it just didn't seem right to me that he should be buried there, outside the fence."

"So you moved his grave?" asked the soldiers.
"No," said the priest. "I moved the fence."

For all of history we have been putting people
outside the fence ...
then going to sleep and waking up and realizing what we have done.

Then in our re-visioning of the world
we come to understand that we have no choice but to move the fence.
That is THE vision of the Kingdom of God.

Moving the fence further and further out
until we understand that
All are welcome ... All are included ...
There is no dividing wall ... no litmus test about who one must be
in order to be a full member of the household of God.

My heart will sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn!

technorati tags:inclusion, christianity, episcopal, anglican, glbt, rosaleeharden

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

This is an expanded version of the column appearing in the July 21 edition of The Moscow Times.

Well, that didn't take long. Two weeks ago we wrote here that the "lockstep, lickspittle"  U.S. Congress would scurry to give their approval to the dictatorial powers asserted by President George W. Bush after the Supreme Court struck down those claims in the Hamdan case earlier this month. And lo and behold, last week Republican Senator Arlen Specter introduced a bill that would not only confirm Bush's unrestrained, unconstitutional one-man rule - it would augment it, exalting the Dear Leader to even greater authoritarian heights.

A more slavish piece of work - and a more abject surrender of Congressional authority - can scarcely be imagined. And the implications are profound. Besides providing what amount to ex post facto cover for Bush's clearly criminal domestic surveillance programs, the measure is a stinging confirmation that there is no crime the Bushists can commit that the craven rubberstamps in Congress will not countenance. Aggressive war, torture, rendition, indefinite detention, "extrajudicial killing" (i.e., murder), monumental corruption, spying on citizens, megalomaniacal assertions of tyrannical power - it's all good for the corporate bagmen, gormless goobers and extremist cranks now polluting the chambers on Capitol Hill.

But the reverberations go even further. Specter's bill also represents a message from the American Establishment, giving its imprimatur to the codification of presidential dictatorship as the new form of government in the United States, replacing the constitutional republic established in 1789. The bill explicitly embraces the core of Bush's claim to authoritarian rule: that the president cannot be restrained by any law or court ruling in his arbitrary actions on any "matters pertaining" to national security - and of course it is the president who will decide, in secret, what pertains to national security and what does not.



As Glenn Greenwald notes, Specter's obsequious offering "bolsters the President's theories of unlimited executive power beyond Dick Cheney's wildest dreams." And Deadeye Dick has been dreaming of Oval Office tyranny since his days as an errand boy in the pay of Beltway crime boss Richard Nixon. As you recall, Nixon went down for a technicality - covering up a two-bit break-in -rather than for, say, murdering hundreds of thousands of people in the illegal bombing of Cambodia. Yet even that narrow avenue of redress has been closed off now. Obviously, Bush, like Nixon, was never going to be brought to justice for a war crime in which the entire Establishment was deeply complicit; but under the new dispensation, a renegade leader can no longer be removed even for a "lesser" infraction - like eviscerating the liberty of American citizens - because the president has been placed beyond the law. Whatever the Leader does is lawful and right, no matter what the legal statutes say.

You think this is an exaggeration? Not a whit. Bush's own top legal minions have asserted this royal prerogative in sworn testimony before Congress - after the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan. Last week, Deputy Attorney General Steve Bradbury told the Senate Judiciary Committee - chaired by none other than our old friend "Spineless" Specter - that "the president is always right" in his interpretation of judicial rulings. Even when, as in the case under discussion, Bush was publicly lying by stating that the Court's decision had approved the establishment of his concentration camp in Guantanamo, when of course the justices had not even addressed that issue. But who cares? After all, the "president is always right" - even when he lies, even when he breaks the law, even when he orders torture, even when he rapes a nation in an unprovoked war.

Specter obviously took the Bradbury's hint and jumped to do the Regime's bidding. But you would expect that from a man who's been toting Establishment lumber since his days as assistant counsel to the Warren Commission. It was Specter who devised the ludicrous "magic bullet" theory, claiming that a single shot from the enchanted rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald cut a merry, zig-zagging caper in several conflicting directions as it plowed through the body of John F. Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally. The Commission's closing of every avenue of investigation that led away from its pre-ordained conclusion - the usual lone nut, bad apple, etc. - has poisoned American political life for generations, sealing one of the nation's greatest traumas in impenetrable murk, breeding suspicion, mistrust, fear and anger. (Not unlike the Bush-appointed 9/11 Commission, in fact.)

Specter later popped up as one of the chief inquisitors of Anita Hill, whose forthright testimony of her sexual harrassment at the hands (or rather, the hubba-hubba voice) of Clarence Thomas threatened to sink of the many sinister pranks the Bush Family have played on the American people -in this case, elevating a clearly unqualified, emotionally unstable, hard-right crank to the Supreme Court. Employing  the traditional Bushist tactic of muddying the waters with smear and innuendo aimed at anyone who stands athwart the Family's ruthless agenda, Specter helped plant doubts about Hill's credibility in enough senators to ensure a razor-thin majority for Thomas' confirmation. Thus Specter was instrumental in placing a loyal factotum - and reliable supporter of authoritarianism - on the nation's highest court, for decades to come. Thomas later repaid the favor with a decisive vote in the judicial coup d'etat known as Bush v. Gore - despite the fact that Thomas' wife was working with the Bush camp, vetting potential courtiers for the coming imperium. A more blatant conflict of interest is hard to imagine, short of Thomas himself pocketing Bush cash under the transom. (A possibility not to be lightly dismissed, of course, given the pervasive criminality of Bush Family and its retainers.)

Now this good and faithful servant has once again delivered the goods for the high and mighty - with the help, as always, of the mainstream media. All the initial stories portrayed Specter's bill as a "grand compromise," a "retreat  by Bush" to sensible, moderate, middle ground - despite the fact that, as Greenwald notes, the measure "expressly removes all limits on the President's eavesdropping powers" and gives the White House carte blanche to sidestep the bill's few toothless oversight procedures any time it wishes. By reporting the precise opposite of what the bill actually does, the pliant press has established a comforting storyline in the public mind: "The system of checks and balances still works, everything's fine, nothing to see here, move along folks." Now any opposition that might arise to this egregious power-grab can be dismissed as "partisan quibbling" or "shrill Bush-bashing." After all, who would object to a "grand compromise" of "sensible moderation" - except some traitor or jihadi-lover?

Of course, none of this repressive machinery would be necessary - if your actual intention was to track terrorists and uncover potential threats. Presidents in need of domestic surveillance have long had access to the secret FISA court that greenlights eavesdropping whenever there is even the remotest hint of possible danger. Since 1978, the court has approved more than 18,700 such requests and rejected only four. It even has an emergency provision that allows presidents to start wiretapping without prior approval. But these vast powers aren't enough for Bush; in fact, he apparently began circumventing the court with warrantless phone record spying seven months before the 9/11 attacks. (One measure in Specter's bill will allow Bush to quash the lawsuit from which this revelation emerged.) Whatever he is really doing with his warrantless spy programs - whatever he's trying desperately to keep hidden from independent oversight - it has little or nothing to do with "fighting terrorism."

Naturally, Specter's kowtowing concoction is larded with pious claptrap about "protecting civil liberties." But it's all just the proverbial lipstick on a pig, a cynical attempt to gussy up the ugly reality of raw, blunt, brutal power that has cowed - if not quelled - the once-proud spirit of American freedom.

Source: Empire Burlesque
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=
com_content&task=view&id=759&Itemid=135
 

technorati tags:empire, congress, chrisfloyd, civilliberties, FISA

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Not Easy Being Pope

"Mortal, I have set you as a watchman to the house of Israel." Note that Ezekiel, the one the Lord sent to preach the word, is called 'a watchman.' A watchman or sentinel takes a post on the highest point, in order to see whoever may be coming from a distance. Similarly, anyone appointed watchman to a congregation should live a "higher" life so as to keep all things in sight.

As I say these words, I realize I am reproaching myself. For I do not preach as I ought, nor does my personal example accord with these principles that I’m preaching even now. I can't deny my guilt, for I've become lethargic and negligent in my work; though perhaps by recognizing my failure I'll win some sympathy and pardon from the judge. Before I started this work, while living in a religious community, I was able to refrain from talking about idle topics and to devote my mind devotedly to prayer. Since taking up this new pastoral position, I have been unable to concentrate on prayer, because I'm so distracted by my responsibilities.

For example, I have to consider questions about churches and communities and make assessments about people's lives and acts. One minute I'm involved with a public policy issue, and the next minute I have to worry over outside threats to the well-being of the church under my care. I have to accept a public role in political matters in order to support good government. I have to bear patiently with law-breakers, and then confront them with an attitude of charity.

I am split and torn to pieces by the variety of weighty things on my mind. When I try to concentrate and pull myself together to preach, I feel inadequate to that sacred task. I am often compelled by the nature of my position to associate with worldly people, and sometimes I become casual in my speech; because if I spoke my conscience dictates with all formality, I know some of them would simply drop me and that I could never influence them towards the goal I desire for them. So I endure their aimless chatter in patience. Then, because I am weak myself I am drawn gradually into idle chitchat -- and I find myself saying the kind of thing that before I didn't even want to listen to! I've come to relish wallowing where once I would have been ashamed to stray by accident.

What kind of a watchman am I? Far from the heights to which I aspire, I am constrained by my weakness. And yet -- the one who created me and redeemed me and all humanity can give me, even in my unworthiness, some grace to glimpse the whole of life, and the skill and ability to speak of what I see. So it is for the love of God that I do not spare myself in preaching.

-- Gregory the Great, from a sermon on the Book of Ezekiel

---

technorati tags:blog, gregorythegreat, power, haller

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 3:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have often struggled with the choice between two futures; one that I can discern with my limited vision and the other that belongs to Christ. I believe that there are, in fact, two futures.

The first, the one that I discern, is the future that is obvious to me given the facts that I can see. Given the circumstances of today's world, that future seems mighty bleak. It is filled with the effects of environmental degradation, poor international relationships related to human politics, a lack of social justice, and a culture that seems increasingly divorced from ethical and moral direction. It is into this future that I often project all of my plans, my hopes and desires for my life... my career choices, my future education plans, my desire to one day own a home, or whether I will write that collection of poetry I've always wanted to write.

It is that other future that I often lose sight of, the one that is rooted in the faith that God is working in the world in surprising ways, and that God in Christ has a plan for the whole of Creation that includes redemption, real justice, and the love that typifies the reign of God on earth. As Saint Paul says in Ephesians... we are to "set our hope on Christ" who has a plan to, in the fullness of time, gather up all things in himself – all things in heaven and on earth.

Being raised among die hard Scottish Presbyterians in a rural community of like-minded Protestants, I am afraid that I was raised with a rather pessimistic view of human nature and our capacity for redemption. It is a legacy that I often hope I have left behind in my decision to become an Episcopalian and, hence, a member of God's one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Our catholic view of humanity is very much at odds with the Protestant understanding that I was raised with. It is a view that believes that human kind is good, innately good, and predisposed to goodness in spite of our sin. The Protestant view that I inherited believes quite the opposite – that we are predisposed to sin rather than goodness and that given a choice we will almost always choose sin. Therein lies my struggle and my choice. Either I believe that I am redeemed or I do not. Either I hope in a future that has been redeemed by God... or I do not.

I entered religious life in my twenties as a way of participating in the redemption that God has planned for the world. I believed then, and still do, that God has a plan for the future that is beyond my knowing and beyond my understanding. My choice to live my faith in this concrete way in the world was a choice to enter into God's purpose as a way of life. It is a choice to do the work I believe God calls me to do as a way of helping to bring forth that purpose in the world. It is an act of hope and an act of trust. Having made this choice, I daily try to confront the future that I can discern with my two eyes and say "No... God has something better in mind."

It is by the choice to live in this manner, dedicated to the work necessary to prepare the way for the reign of God, that I avoid the kind of quietism that is a danger to our lives as faithful Christians. It is too easy to slide into apathy when we believe that God alone will take care of the future – and quietly retreat into lives of inaction or complacency. In Baptism, God and I established a Covenant with one another. God promised me certain rights and gifts when I was baptized, but also asked that I take on certain duties in return. I need to remember that these duties are not simply about the way I see or think about the world in my life of faith. They are not simply about what I believe but what I do – the actions I take as a result.

I am asked to strive for justice, to resist evil, to continue in faith, to respect the dignity of all, to proclaim the Good News, to seek and serve. These are all duties that involve choice and action. All of these duties come to bear on the future that I choose to live for and the hope that I choose to live into. Further, before I make these promises, I vow to renounce the forces of wickedness and evil, to renounce desires that are contrary to God's purposes, to accept Christ as the power that transforms and saves me, and most importantly... to put all of my trust in Christ's grace and love. These all have profound implications for the measure of Christian hope that I allow to take hold of my vision.

If I were a perfect Christian, then the choice between the kind of future I see and the kind of future that I trust God will unfold for us would be a simple one. But I am not perfect and my faith often falters. To live a Christian life within my Covenant with God, with all of its benefits and responsibilities, requires a great deal of patience, humility, quietness, prayer, and above all trust. I try my best. The delicate balancing act between these two futures is the story of my faith life in its entirety. The struggles, the victories, the doubts and the hopes all have their rightful place in this struggle.

As long as I still see as through a mirror, darkly, I choose to hope in a future beyond my capacity to see or understand. Although I am often tempted to allow my own view of the future to eclipse the one that Christian hope demands, God reminds me at the Eucharist of the vision of the future to which we are called. If I choose to act with the certainty that God needs our participation to make that future happen, and as long as I am willing to do my part, then my hope shall never be lost. Christ will surely see to it that all will be well.

technorati tags:hope, christianity, episcopal, punkmonksf, witness, baptism

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Bsh Administration has been rumbling for war against Iran. They have used the nuclear issue to stir up the public in support of action, ignoring the fact that Iran is in compliance with the NNPT. Iran has the right to pursue civilian technology and has submitted to one of the most rigorous inspection regimes ever devised by the IAEA.

The United Nations has ben resistant to support any American action against the regime, the American public, fatigued by the war in Iraq, has not taken the bait. And the Administration is getting anxious. So... what do we do?

Could it be that we use Israel as a tool yet again and have them escalate the situation in the Middle East as an excuse for us to finally get our way and attack Iran? Listen to the press... Iran supporting Hezbollah, Iran mad missiles being used to attack a ship off the coast of Israel, etc.

It would appear that Israel is conveniently providing the final excuse that this Administration needs to attack Iran.

I wonder what we've promised them in exchange?

Today Hugo Chavez publicly stated that the United States' unequivocal backing of Israel is leading the world toward a holocaust. Israel... a state that has consistently defied United Nations resolutions. That has consistently flouted the calls for retraint demanded by the international community. That has nuclear weapons at the ready in defiance of the NNPT.

Bush must consider himself very lucky to have such good friends... friends that will risk a war in order to give the Bushites and their war machine exactly what they want. I hope the price was worth it.

Br. K

technorati tags:Israel, Iran, war, Bush

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a while since I posted anything. Just been spending a lot of time thinking with God about direction and ministry in my life. All is well and God is good. The good news is that I don't need o have any answers today. God has them and will reveal them in God's good time.

Pax,

Br. K

technorati tags:punkmonksf, faith, journalling

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales, July 4, 2006

For more than 50 years now, we have been living in the era of television politics. In the 1950s television first began to have a major impact on politics, and the results were overwhelming.

Broadcast media brought us broadcast politics. And let's be simple and bluntly honest about it, left or right, conservative or liberal, broadcast politics are dumb, dumb, dumb.

Campaigns have been more about getting the television messaging right, the image, the soundbite, than about engaging ordinary people in understanding and caring how political issues really affect their lives.

Blog and wiki authors are now inventing a new era of media, and it is my belief that this new media is going to invent a new era of politics. If broadcast media brought us broadcast politics, then participatory media will bring us participatory politics.

One hallmark of the blog and wiki world is that we do not wait for permission before making things happen. If something needs to be done, we do it. Well, campaigns need to sit up and take notice of the Internet, take notice of bloggers, take notice of wikis, and engage with us in a constructive way.

The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens.

I am launching today a new Wikia website aimed at being a central meeting ground for people on all sides of the political spectrum who think that it is time for politics to become more participatory, and more intelligent.

This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.

Together, we will start to work on educating and engaging the political campaigns about how to stop being broadcast politicians, and how to start being community and participatory politicians.

How will we do that? Is it possible? Jimbo, are you crazy?

Ok, I might be crazy. I founded Wikipedia, which is of course about as crazy an idea as anyone might imagine. And you know what? I was not and I still am not smart enough to figure out how to make Wikipedia work. The Wikipedians figured that out, my role has only been to listen and watch, and to guide us forward in a spirit of sincerity and love to do something useful.

So, I will frankly admit right up front: I don't know how to make politics healthier. But, I believe that you do. I believe that together we can work, this very election season, to force campaigns to use wikis and blogs to organize, discuss, manage, lead and be led by their volunteers.

We can turn this into the first beginnings of what is to come. This can be the start of the era of net-driven participatory politics. And it does not matter if you are on the right, on the left, moderate or extreme, socialist or libertarian. Whoever you are, and whatever you believe, you can share with me my sincere desire that the process start to be about substance and thought, rather than style and image.

Here is what to do:

First, sign up for the mailing list. Let's start a conversation, let's start teaching each other how to reach out and get the attention of the campaigns. Or drop me a personal email at jwales at wikia.com to talk more.

Second, sign up here on the wiki, and let's start building the knowledgebase to make this happen.

Third... blog about it, email about it, talk about it, contact your local politicians and help them to get involved. Make a big noise that there is a broad non-partisan effort to making politics smarter, in engaging people at a personal level. Politicians will respond, but they need to hear us demand it, in a big way.

For now, just sign up on the mailing list and give a shout out about what you are interested in. We will get this ball rolling.

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)