Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,news.groups
Subject: RE-STATEMENT of purpose for MISC.PEACE
Summary: Not a political-discussion-group
Reply-To: harelb@cabot (Harel Barzilai)
Followup-To: news.groups
Distribution: world
Keywords: 

In their rush to condemn misc.peace, it seems that our critics have
either not read or simply ignored the clear description of misc.peace
which was posted.

Mr. "pp" [pp@Apple.COM (pp) [Organization: A piece of pie]] writes:

  A moderated political discussion group is as viable a group as
  [South Africa's?]  moderated country."

And [timlee@public.BTR.COM] erroneously adds:

  Obviously, this proposed group is simply a place where one
  particular set of political alignments can post without comment..
  

Misc.peace is explicitly not a "political discussion group" -- that's
what talk.politics.misc is; in the section "What would be posted to
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misc.peace?" we clearly stated the proposed content of the group,
===========
which would include regular contributions from PeaceNet based (and
other "on-line") progressive/peace organizations from around the
country (indeed world); calendars of events/talks/demonstrations;
resource file listings of organizations, alternative publications,
videos, telephone numbers, books, etc; and so on.

Similarly [gary@neit.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand)]'s comment that:

  "let's be honest and call it talk.politics.left...it's explicitly
  political in nature, and it will involve a lot of flamage, hence the
  talk.politics."

Is not indicative of a careful reading of the purpose and structure of
misc.peace. We will shortly post an *official* Call for Discussion
with a slightly modified (and hopefully sufficiently explicitly
stated) description of the group.

The most minor proposed change is in the name. The proposed group will
be "misc.activism.general."

Since we want to be able to expand to a collection of groups providing
information, resources, and support to activists, we decided
"activism" is more appropriate than "peace"; for example,
"misc.activism.environment" would be a possible future group (among
others), while "misc.peace.environment" sounds a bit strange (not to
be confused with the Reagan/Bush moderated group
misc.environment.rest-in-peace [or misc.trees.pollution] )

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We hope the official Call For Discussion post will be read carefully
so that there will be no misunderstandings about the nature of the
proposed group. For example,

wesommer@athena.mit.edu (Bill Sommerfeld) writes:

   "While the war may be the biggest concern of most people these
   days, it seems that once this war is over, the group's focus is
   likely to shift to the next target of the wrath of the leftists."

But our introduction stated that the group would cover many, many
areas other than fighting for a peaceful resolution to the Gulf war
(in fact, the idea for the group pre-dates August); the introduction
states:

"Misc.peace would provide news, information, and resources of interest
to activists and anyone interested in promoting peace; economic,
legal, and social justice and equality; a clean environment and safe
workplace; democratic control over domestic and foreign policy, and
other issues of concern to the progressive community."

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cnorman@weber.ucsd.edu (Cyndi Norman) writes:

  "This sounds great!!  I have been looking for a place to discuss
  activist issues... When I've already made up my mind about
  something, it's nice to be able to discuss it without having to
  defend it all the time For example, soc.motss...Straight people are
  welcome... But what's not appropriate is postings about whether or
  not homosexuality is moral, `normal'... Why can't a more general
  political group exist where we can discuss issues without getting
  flamed all the time?"

Our new Proposal states:

  Misc.activism.general is not for political discussion, although we
  welcome inquiries and requests for information and references,
  announcements of local activist organizing (see below), etc.; we are
  also considering a forum for the discussion of specific activist
  strategies, support for activists, and so on.;

Hence we do intend to provide a forums for the discussion of activist
strategies, what constitutes effective activism, long term planning,etc

"Misc.activism.forum", say, would be the place for such discussions,
while "misc.activism.support" would be for posting Q/As, requests for
resources/references, etc. Until we split off into such sub-groups,
these functions will have to be accommodated within
misc.activism.general.

As far as general political discussion -- minus the flamage --
misc.activism.general is not really the place for this. I fully agree
with Cyndi about the need for a forum allowing peace/ progressive-
minded folks to discuss the issues, without flamage from the Newt G.
and Jesse Helms, and Reaganites of the Net; this is what alt.activism
*should* be providing.

The solution should be to clean up alt.activism so as to eliminate the
all-too-common 1-3 line "Oh yeah??  Well your good friend Saddam thanks
you for your ``peace'' efforts, pinko!" and similar sarcastic
"commentary." If this proves unattainable, a second possibility would
be to create alt.activism.m, or some better-named equivalent thereof, a
moderated version of alt.activism. If both of these tries fails -and
they should be given ample effort and time to work-- then by then
misc.activism will have hopefully grown enough to create also a
misc.activism.d; but I would recommend one of the first two , and I
hope Cyndi will find even the initial manifestation of misc.activism
--which is very broad indeed-- to be worthwhile, informative, and
useful.

Harel