Tag: politics
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Moving Toward a Metro-Regional Approach to Planning and Advocacy
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on December 8, 2018 New York City and its neighbors have a problem. Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago, and the other major U.S. metropolitan areas that fit neatly within the standard city, county, and state political boundaries, our metropolitan area of over 22 million people does not. We’re […]
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Making the Libertarian Party Viable in New York City
This article originally appeared on Gotham Gazette on June 29th, 2018. New Yorkers are constantly complaining about the two-party political system. Democratic domination of New York City politics means Democratic primary elections are more impactful than general elections. Republican domination of the national political system means New Yorkers’ progressive cultural values are rarely reflected in […]
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As City and State Politics Fail Us, Time to Rethink New York Metropolitan Area
This article originally appeared on Gotham Gazette on September 25, 2018 New York City is the world’s most popular city. We do lots of things exceptionally well here. But one thing we don’t do well is democracy. Voting rates within New York City are at historic lows, and corruption in Albany is at historic highs. Our politics […]
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Anatomy of an Open Source Political Campaign at Open Camps Conference, 2018, New York City
I presented the following slides at the Open Camps Conference in New York City. PDF Download
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Debrief: My 2017 Campaign for NYC Public Advocate
Every vote has been counted, and 74% of NYC voters want Democrat Letitia James to continue as Public Advocate. I congratulated her on her success and will happily work with her to make NYC’s government more open, transparent and participatory. I hope she’ll take me up on my offer. Those experienced in third-party NYC politics […]
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“Big City” Libertarianism
The Libertarian Party (LP) is the third largest political party in the United States, with a membership that’s twice as large as the Green Party and twenty times as large as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Unlike the Greens and DSA, which draw a significant support from urban areas, the LP is significantly more […]
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Why I Didn’t Participate in “Occupy vs. Tea Party”
I was initially very excited to participate in “Occupy vs. Tea Party” because I viewed it as a platform to bring the two political movements together through dialogue. The confrontational framing of the “debate” seemed like an obstacle that could be overcome by focusing on problems upon which both “sides” seem to agree: the central banking cartel, the destruction of civil liberties, the disempowerment of the general public, etc.
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The FLO Consensus: Author’s Cut
Within the Occupy Movement and, from what I understand, in many of the social movements that preceded it, there has always been a conflict between the “revolutionaries” that want to create a crisis to first disrupt, and then destroy, the existing social order; and the “reformers” who want to take control of existing power structures and change society from “the inside”. Within the occupy landscape, the “revolutionaries” gravitate towards the language of “occupy” and “direct action” while the “reformers” gravitate towards the language of “99%” and “protest.” This essay is concerned with a third group within the occupy movement – a group rarely mentioned by the media and often discounted by the activists who spend their time doing the type of self-promotion that gets them on to panels. I’m referring to the “providers”: activists who invest their time and resources into providing services to individuals and groups within “the movement”.
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As If We Couldn’t
If you listen to media’s murmuring, you’d think that the American people were ready to give up. The bankers are too crafty, the corporations too powerful and the politicians too pliant. We don’t know which way is up, where to turn or on whom to depend. We’re lost, sad, unhappy, and maybe a little overweight. For a few brief moments we had HOPE that that America’s most powerful institutions could still solve our problems during commercial breaks. Yes we can, they whispered in our ears. Yes we can…
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Political Structure in 3D
Dahl’s definition of polyarchy is good, but it’s not complete. His theory doesn’t account for the most powerful force in politics: information distribution. Those who control access to information have tremendous political power because they can amplify certain elements within society and silence others. By adding openness to Dalh’s polyarchy graph as the third dimension, the possibility of a relationship between competitiveness and inclusiveness arises within the newly created 3D space. This relationship manifests itself in the graph z=x^3 + y^3. In this graph, a positively transparent society appears in the top left area of the plane while a negatively transparent society appears in the bottom right area one.