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Sunday, November 19, 2006

Focus

by Nanette

In the previous sentence I was going to indicate that I meant that the US does these things, but I consciously stopped myself… while I do live in the US and thus am greatly concerned about what the US government does, I think it’s very easy to become too US specific and let other things slip by. As we are an international site, and as the sites we are building will be as well, I’ll just leave that as is… because countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Africa, the Middle East and so on also know quite a bit about torture (using or condoning it), about repression of civil liberties and human rights, and support for wars and occupations. No one gets a pass. 

I’ve had the “after-election” blahs a bit - although that is not why the site has not been updated. We (meaning arin) are doing quite a bit of behind the scenes reorganizing, restructuring and streamlining of things. When we first got this software, we hadn’t a clue how to work it but even so we pretty much went from html pages to this from one issue to the next, and in meantime did an entire huge other site as well, which I will talk about here. We wound up pulling that down, for the most part, and will rebuild it step by step. Anyway, that left quite a few loose ends and stray articles and other things so, before we expand, we thought this would be a good time to get all that in order. New stuff will be up soon.

Beyond that, however, there is much to be done. And, as the title implies, it’s a time (for me) to focus. I’m very good at imagining, great at planning, but horrible at implementation. Thankfully, arin is really great taking an idea I have and figuring out how to make it work on the pages, even if I just send her a graphic mockup and say “I want this to do this or that”.

Still, even with that, it seems my brain lacks some crucial element - I can see the beginning of a project and the end result of it, but not how to get from “here” to “there” - or it does until I just give up avoiding it and hoping someone else will figure it out and just focus. Then, of course, it comes to me in a flash!

You take this block, and set it upon that block, and then another on top of that until… well, you get the picture.  Boring, but necessary.

So, some things I will be focusing on (yet again!):

The Progressive Focus Center - which is the site we pretty much pulled down completely, except for a small blog in an empty space. I thought starting with a blank page would makeit easier (it hasn’t, but still). There is lots to do there, and I actually think it will be easier to do it now that Democrats are in charge… even though it doesn’t actually have much of anything to do with politics or elections.

I was wondering why I felt that way, today, and the best I can come up with is… with the Republicans in Congress (and the White House, and the Courts) there was such a feeling of urgency, and also of despair at being able to affect change - we couldn’t stop a war, have to live with the fact that we are now a nation that openly condones and practices torture, and that compromises lives and civil liberties in the name of security.

In the previous sentence I was going to indicate that I meant that the US does these things, but I consciously stopped myself from doing that… while I do live in the US and thus am greatly concerned about what the US government does, I think it’s very easy to become too US specific and let other things slip by. As we are an international site, and as the sites we are building will be as well, I’ll just leave that as is… because countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Africa, the Middle East and so on also know quite a bit about torture (using or condoning it), about repression of civil liberties and human rights, and support for wars and occupations. No one gets a pass.

That actually will be one of the goals of The Progressive Focus Center - to be a space where there are no borders, and where we share knowledge, opinions, skills and more. And focus… for building a more just society.

Anyway, back to why I think it’ll be easier with the Democrats at least in charge of one House in Congress (I don’t trust Lieberman not to jump, but we’ll see). I sort of explained it on Kai’s site, Zuky, in the comments of one of his posts. I was sick and feeling really rotten at the time though, and probably wasn’t the cheeriest person, but it still explains my feeling a bit.

I don’t think they (Dems) are going to do much of anything, really. I would love to be pleasantly surprised, though!

However, I think most of anything that’s going to get done is going to happen outside of the political parties… for now, anyway.

In my imagining of our situation, we are in a small boat in the middle of the ocean, in the midst of a huge storm. The rain is constant, the shore is far and, with the Republicans in charge, there was time for nothing but the continuous bailing of water, to keep the boat from sinking. No time for rowing to a new destination, or even to shore - no time to fish, no space to think, plan, relax or to do much of anything in the face of the constant deluge.

The Democrats have now handed us a tiny umbrella.

I am actually quite grateful for that umbrella. We can look around now and at least start to repair the boat. I am not much into politics and political horseraces or anything, myself, but it’s my belief that in order to get true progressive/liberal/leftish people into office - people who will actually work for their constituents instead of for corporations and who will stand up to horrific politicians and policies… we have to do a lot of work on the ground, preparing the way. The more ideas people come up with for doing that, the better.

Anyway, on to my focus list.

Making HB more interactive and activist. I’ve had plans for that for a long time but, well… plans. Implementation. East and West. Still, I blunder on… it’ll get done, maybe little by little.

Speaking of Zuky, that’s a great blog and lately I’ve been finding really wonderful, smart, knowledgeable, funny and other blogs around and so I’m going to start doing blog review type things. I don’t have a blogroll and so that will function as one. We have that area almost completely set up now, so it’ll be going live when we do the updating. Oh, and we’ll be moving servers too (hopefully to one that doesn’t take ages to load the site). If this one works well, I’ll let everyone know as I know it’s difficult to find good (and not too expensives) servers to host php/drupal etc type software well.

One thing the tiny umbrella seems to have fixed is I can write again now. I don’t mean writing great and wonderful essays (which is sort of like that “Will I be able to play the piano, Doc?” joke) but just putting words to paper at all. Such a struggle, it was.

Heh, now it seems like I’ll never shut up. Which is a good thing, for now, as I have more focus lists, for another time.