"On balance I prefer legislation to boycotts, blacklists, and divestments. The former is part of our open system of checks and balances and can be challenged in the courts. The latter can be imposed by a small cadre of determined individuals who are not subject to any democratic constraints. So let us pressure Congress to enact tough gun-control laws. Let us create lobby groups to offset the negative influence of the National Rifle Association."
I find his article remarkably naive. The problem is we don't have a real democracy in the USA. We have a corpotatocracy where the elected legislators are in thrall to big business and big special interest groups like the NRA, which is helped by billionaires like the Koch brothers and ALEC. The good idea to take from Dershowitz is his confirmation that "...boycotts, blacklists, and divestments...can be imposed by a small cadre of determined individuals who are not subject to any democratic constraints." In other words, activists, if they play their cards right, and develop boycott and divestment strategies, building partnerships and allying with major retirement funds, can make big changes that legislators can't or won't do.
Then there are the retailer responses. Here, the power of the minority also has great potential. I'm convinced that now is a perfect time for social media campaigns to put pressure on retailers-- box store and on-line-- to totally eliminate high volume clips or magazines with more than 10 cartridges from their offerings. If they're not even on the market it will make it easier for legislators to pass legislation that permanently bans them.
it would be very nice if some good comes out of the Newtown tragedy. The signs are manifesting. Now is the time for activists to spring into action.
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Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
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