Making Politically Effective Use of This Blog (and Others)

 Dear Readers,

I am very pleased that you enjoy my blog posts enough to continue to read them, and I am glad to see that my readership has grown over the last few months. Now, it is time for us to take the next step by using this blog to advance the cause of justice in our society.  In order to make our ideas effective, we have to spread them as widely as possible, and we have to make use of as many channels of communication and as many personal networks as possible. So, let's do that.

Here are a few things that we can do to increase the effectiveness abd reach of our ideas.

First, we can use the posts in this blog and others as bases for on-line discussions. If we comment on the posts, we will end up having discussions. We will not always agree with one another, and that is fine. In fact, it is the whole point. Lively discussions will help to spread our ideas and strengthen our cause not only because the discussions will be interesting but because when you comment on a post, your comment will be seen by your FB friends, and that will broaden the reach of our ideas.  If you are feeling energetic today, you can even go back and comment on previous posts.

Second, we can share the posts. Sharing is one of the keys to making effective use of social media. Sharing increases the number of people who see a post, and that allows us to spread our ideas. I post links to my posts on Facebook, and you can share those. You can also post your own links to blog posts that you particularly like. You don't have to agree with a post to share it. You can say that you think the post is terrible, is wrong, or fails to understand reality. You can even go back and share previous posts.

Third, we can use the blog posts as starting points for letters to the editor. If one of my posts gives you an idea that you would like to write about, please do so, and include a reference to the blog in the letter. If you would like editorial help with a letter, please send it to me at foxcitiesprogressive@gmail.com, and I will be glad to help with editing.

Finally, I invite you to write posts as guests of my blog. You can send them to me at foxcitiesprogressive@gmail.com. I may edit them, but I will not publish the edited versions without your permission. You can choose whether you want to be identified as the author of a post or not. If you don't want to be identified, I will say only that the post was contributed by "A Reader of the Blog."

These actions will help to spread our ideas and to make them politically effective. Local political candidates will pick up our ideas and use them in their campaigns. The ideas will become part of the broader political dialog in our state and our country, and that may lead to real, social change. That is really the point of doing this, isn’t it.