We have officially reversed our support of Direct Democracy. The basic tenet of the entire concept is “community,” and the American public has proven throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that they do not care about EACH OTHER, only their individual rights, even if it means treading on the rights and the welfare of others.

There are other reasons as well:

• The people must be willing to participate in the system, and that will necessitate standing with each other. That’s not happening here when we need it the most.
• All people will have to be accorded the same rights, and that would be all people: LGBTQ, transgender, people of color, Native Americans, Muslims, immigrants in general, women, and everyone in between. This is not the concept right now that exists in America, where people seem to think that same-sex marriage should be a ballot issue, or where states are rampantly oppressing transgender Americans. We have a long way to go here. You can see a working document of our positions on inalienable civil rights on our website here.
• The people must operate on FACTS and provable concepts, not declarations of opinion or memes. Facts seem to be a dead concept in America.  There’s a new conspiracy around every corner and the more outrageous it is, the better the people respond to it.
• Capitalism has to go. Reopening post-COVID isn’t about freedom. It’s about being a slave to capitalism. The corporations aren’t the only entities that have to change; the people do as well.
• In a direct democracy, the people will both propose and author legislation. The American people don’t even want to read the legislation being passed now or take any kind of action on it.

Perhaps somewhere down the road we can revisit the Direct Democracy model. It will be long after we’re gone, I’m sure. This is for a different generation to pioneer, but I wouldn’t count on the one coming up now, so you probably won’t be here either.