[WB-Discuss] The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind

[PHWernick at aol.com]

The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind
  
Dear Folks:

At the next meeting of the WBGRP I would like to place on the agenda,near the 
top, the issue of the WBGRP list servs and the following items:

1) Who is the moderator of the list servs? What authority does this person 
have to decide whether or not an item belongs on the list servs?
2) What are the purposes of the list servs, especially in the infancy of the 
WB GRP?
3) How to involve the maximum number of Watertown Belmont citizens,utilizing 
the list servs?
4) How to encourage the free flow of ideas and to encourage folks to post to 
the list servs and have discussions since meetings are only once a month?
5) How to encourage town citizens with specialized information as well as 
teachers and academics and professionals to inform us of ongoing developments in 
their field, especially as they may affect local politics.

Let me pull some reverse ageism here, though noone wants to hear it, 
especially those younger.I wake up on this crisp wintry Sunday morning and wonder how 
I will find the time to not only exercise but also to read umpteen articles in 
half a dozen fields.At age 63, and ailing, I  find so many streams to cross 
and mountains to climb.

As those terrible "Syms" ads on radio and TV go, the best public citizen is 
an informed one.Thus, I am restless with those may want to compartmentalize the 
flow of ideas and do not see the priority of such flow.

As I encounter not only the print media but today the glut of data on the 
internet, I think that there is so much I do not understand ,despite my 
background in several academic fields.I feel like a dunce at times and mildly retarded, 
in order to keep up not only with the current flow of information ,but also 
trying to retrace historical footsteps, to cipher out the "truth" of old 
historical disputes.

On the GRP state level, there is a State Committee Discuss List and sad to 
say that out of a GRP membership in the thousands, a handful of the same well 
informed individuals post to this list, but not much discussion takes place. 

If 10, Or 20, or 50 of our neighbors walked into a WBGRP meeting and joined 
our little group,without question we might have 50 new opinions on schools, 
taxes, housing and foreign affairs.Any political grouping usually has within its 
boundaries a left, center and right, a convenient way of lumping together 
fragile intra-group coalitions. The GRP may not have recognized on the state level 
this tendency,to its peril.The discussion around supporting a Dean candidacy 
is one expression of how ideas tend to congregate.

Here on the local level, in the infantile stages of developing a new party, I 
see the need to leave the widest latitude for shadings of thought.Marx used 
to have a few words to say on this when he said that the workers'movement 
needed to educate itself.It was not and is not a simple question of throwing down 
to the workers the plans of the party.

Paul Wernick









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