Thursday, September 29, 2011

Planning a public protest

I got several good comments yesterday about planning a political protest against CPS and the family court.

This week, The Santa Cruz Sentinel had two stories about a silly Berkeley Republican diversity bake sale, on Tues. p.A8 and Wed. p.A3. It was not even an original idea, and only cost about $50 for the muffins. The event got a lot of publicity elsewhere also. It was a great PR success.

The newspaper has also been running stories all week on whether women have the right
to drive cars in Saudi Arabia. See the articles Sun., Tues., Wed., and Thurs. I guess some people see this as an important civil rights issue, but it is not. Saudi Arabia is a medieval backwater where no one has any rights except for the oil sheiks. And even California says that driving is only a privilege, not a right.

Meanwhile, yesterday was one of the most exciting days in the history of professional baseball. The Red Sox and Braves squanders huge leads in the last month in the competition for playoff spots, and the last day of the season was the most dramatic I've ever seen. The Red Sox and Braves were each one out away from winning their last games, and they each blew that also. But it just rated a few paragraphs on p.C3 of the sports section. (The online edition has a longer AP story.)

So if we are going to organize a protest, it should be carefully designed to get the publicity we want. I hate to say it, but I don't think that a few picket signs in Watsonville or on Emeline is going to do the trick. We need something like the diversity bake sale. It should be outrageous and legal at the same time. The act should speak for itself, so no one can distort our message. Other men's groups have created a scene while dressed as Batman. I am not sure how effective those protests were, but they did get some publicity. I will try to think of some ideas. If you have any, then please post them.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could not agree any more. It takes fabric. Few people with vision coming together with strategic and tactical goals. We have been working on many. But exhausted due to family courts bullshit. Enough is enough.

We have many ideas. World War 3 movement is one of the symbolic idea to highlight dire nature and extreme crimes situation in family courts. We needed WW2 to get ride of evil regime of Hitler. We need WW3 for the world family courts.

These protests or purpose goals should come from vision

1) It has to come from protecting children and innocents
2) We need to glue all groups with common vision and purpose. Not just father or mother groups.

"NYT Global Protest Movement Article" has comments to follow.

We're in Northern California.

You could send email to ChildrenUnlimited@hotmail.com with your contact info to connect. There is another site childrenunlimited which is different from this purpose. There is no site yet.

Anonymous said...

absolutely agree it should be more than just dads, I've known a few moms here in S'Cruz county that got S'Cruz'd too.

Perhaps the point is that the formation of a family is a private matter w/very few laws in terms of how to go about creating the union. The dissolution of the family should remain a private matter to be worked out between the affected parties. Hard to do, I know, that's why there's such a convoluted apparatus now strangling families completely. But that should be the point.

Post facts of the money made and by whom for what. I like hard data. Can't refute it. Straight info on whether or not family law really falls under the the norms of civil and criminal law in terms of due process, evidence, etc. Out CPS's role as judge/jury/executioner and the large industry of foster homes and the incentives to put kids there. How about the tax laws for child support?

Spell out in clear detail the wrongs, that's a good start.

Anonymous said...

Can we start coordinating this stuff on this blogsite or should we move it elsewhere?

I think we should forge some sort of charter, mission statement, amd objectives, leading ultimately to some strategizing of protests and social media to get "out" the message that something is direly rotten in Denmark and it ain't the pickled herring left sitting out on the table overnight.

Sounds to me we're largely on the same page, just have to coordinate things a bit in terms of message and come up w/the right ideas. Agreed dressing up like Batman is rather lame, this has to be fought w/data, facts, history and logic.

We do need some guidance from a legal standpoint so we can get a better sense of where family law lies in relation to the other branches of law. Someone pointed out family court is more of a court of chancery. If so, we need to know the nuts and bolts of those regs.

I think too, the radical side of feminism, specifically the man-hating part, has to be "outed" as well. This is not to denigrate or reverse the rights of women, I think a lot of good was done. I sure like the idea of my mom, sisters, daughter, and girl friend getting fair pay for work, the right to drive cars, have their own credit card, have the right to vote, etc. But unfortunately there seems to be a lot of hatred, anger, and vengence against men for sins of the past and sins elsewhere like in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Nazism flourished because it appealed to hatred against a class of people. Easy, effective. And very dangerous. Hatred in the long run doesn't work to create a stable and successful society.

Anonymous said...

Here is an example majority will persecute without any thought.Majority go sheepish. This teacher made a thoughtful comment. You know what happened to Galileo when he stated his position that earth is not the center and Sun is the center of our solar system. He has to beg for his life (What is known as "Galileo Plea") and house arrested.

Now how many people want to bet that this teacher will face anger from sheepish majority crowd just like Galileo faced.
Same dynamics are playing differently in courts. Majority, bias, fellow networks. Majority would not listen to your simple truths. Doubt is another single aspect of our life that destroys perceptions of public. If someone gets unilateral (ex-parte) temporary orders, then you will be executed by public (Lawyers, counsellors, CPS, people). Do body gives a damn and time to verify. You have already been set up by the system.

One of the law professors mentioned "Public is the system". I thought hard and contemplated on this. First, I did not understand but after many years in legal system, "Public is the System". The only way to break this is to educate crowds.
--------------------------------


The common practice of saying "God bless you" after someone sneezes is a part of American culture.

Stampede! C'mon — what's not to like?

But it sparked a controversy at a Bay Area high school this week.

Teacher Steve Cuckovich docked his students' scores after they said "bless you" in the middle of class. He says talking of any kind is disruptive and takes time away from class.

Cuckovich teaches health at William C. Wood High School in Vacaville.

"The blessing doesn't make any sense anymore," Cuckovich told the Fox affiliate in Sacramento. "When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body. So they were saying, 'God bless you,' for getting rid of evil spirits. But today, what you're doing doesn't really make any sense."

Anonymous said...

here's the website for the Occupy Wall Street protest. They've been at it for about 2 weeks.

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet

The message is a bit diffused, but the basic tenet of "anti-greed" does come through. We'd need to focus a bit more in order to cut through all the noise of mainstream media and most people's indifference/ignorance of the family law debacle. Until of course it hits them directly.....

Anonymous said...

Focus need to be on corruption of family courts and its affiliates. Once we highlight bizarre corruption and moral issues in the law that is affecting children and innocent parents, and how it destroyed lives forever, then public will start pay attention. Word of mouth will catch up. Some of the stories need to reach public regularly.

They need shock and awe to understand something insidious nature of family courts. Something that shakes their brain washed beliefs/perceptions or undisputed ideas (law is their to protect them, Judges are noble and judicious, lawyers are there to help victims, CPS protects children. Then public will turn around to support.

It takes some ground work. I am willing to dedicate my work to fight corruption and make them accountable.

I found another one by following previous comments
http://www.commondreams.org/about-us

Most problems our team (Children Unlimited)facing is to align this activism work to make it as a day job so we could focus 100%. We're passionate to dedicate our lives to children causes. We believe in active work. We have strategists and legal writers.

Write to us ChildrenUnlimited@hotmail.com

Anonymous said...

we should distinguish ourselves from the upcoming "we're the 99%" protests being planned here in Santa Cruz as these are the professional snivelers you always see around here.

Stick w/the facts and put them on placards. Marching in front of the Watsonville courthouse is a good start. Marching in front of Support Services (May St) and CPS (Emeline St) won't do much as they're out of the way. Alerting the Sentinel and one or more of the local (Salinas/Monterey/SJ) TV stations would be good.

I see no good coming from anything gimmicky if we're to be taken seriously as no one seems to want to acknowledge this or touch it. And there's lots of opposition out there to counter it like the Walnut Street Women's Center etc. Fight their phony data w/the real thing.