Thanks, Rick. There are some incredibly good and informative documentaries on all this which we have in our orgs. library. For anyone interested I will get the list and post it here in the enxt day or two. Several have been shown on PBS, including "Not in Our Town" and Not in Our Town II".

For those of you who saw the symbol a lot of us had in our windows and which was seen in CA and elsewhere, when Mathew Shephard, the gay college student,was killed, it was the "no" cicle with "hate" crossed out in the middle. Around the edge was "Wyoming - the Equality State". It was usually seen on yellow paper with black ink. I am proud to say I made that up on my computer and sent it out in about 400 emails to people who requested them from all over the US. We distributed thousands of them. It is still a constant struggle and I tire of it as the opposition seems so strong here in a state which has never caught up to the 20th century, let alone the 21st!

On a more positive note I wrote several op/ed pieces about an organisation which started up when Ken Starr kept going like the energiser bunny, called MoveOn.org. It is cyber grassroots at its best. For those of you who are interested and won't be offended by a decidedly opinionated and liberal piece, here is the last one, which explains how people can harness the Internet for grassroots organising:

"Congress Underestimates Resolve of the People"

Throughout the entire impeachment fiasco of President Clinton, I quite often find myself shaking my head at the apparent lunacy of Republican members of Congress. It's as though they've all become megalomaniacs. They are not listening to the people who voted them in as well as those who voted in President Clinton twice. Through the influence of the far right, their party has adopted a "we know better than you" attitude of self-righteous morality which has knocked the underpinnings out from under ourgovernment, taking away its stability and separation of powers. The on-line, grassroots movement known as "Censure & MoveOn", along with People for the American Way, an organisation which works on fairness and justice issues, are not about to let Congress, particularly members of the House, forget their flagrantactions with regards to the will of the people, President Clinton and his impeachment.

While they continue to pressure the Senate to "Censure and Move On", MoveOn.org also has started another simple pledge, "In the 2000 election, we will work to defeat Members of Congress who voted for impeachment or removal." Through this effort, they are recording the monetary pledges of members who agree to provide those funds directly to candidates in the 2000 election who openly oppose those members of Congress who supported impeachment of the President. They are not soliciting funds through MoveOn.org, just pledges.

Within one minute after Representatives voted to impeach, MoveOn.org notified its 450,000 petition drive members of this new effort. By the end of the next day, over 8,000 pledges were received with a total of over $5,000,000 in value. The "We will remember" pledge can be accessed at http://www.moveon.org.

As Joan Blades, one of MoveOn.org's co-founders put it, "Politicians think the public has a short memory...we will remember that these representatives did not reflect our values and did not hear our voice." Indeed, with the ease of the Internet, MoveOn.org promises members a simple process of selecting candidates and donation recipients, via "a few mouse clicks".

People for the American Way, a much older organisation, joined MoveOn.org, just before the impeachment process, with information on their website and coordination of toll-free phone lines through Working Assets Long Distance Company for citizens to call their Congresspeople. Phone lines were jammed. When I tried calling my representative's office, as well as those of key leaders in the House, I was put on hold; dumped out of the system; routed to answering machines which were unable to take anymore input; and one miraculous time, I actually spoke to a real live harried staffperson who clearly wished to be anywhere else but there. I never was able to use the PFAW toll-free number as it was constantly busy, which means a lot of Americans were tuning into the message of MoveOn.org and telling their representatives, in loud, clear and no uncertain terms to "Censure and Move On".

Congresspeople, especially those arrogant, self-righteous Republicans, who keep declaring their sureness that by the 2000 election this (the impeachment) will all be forgotten by the people are fools. They underestimate the resolve of ordinary citizens who have at their fingertips, and know how to use, the Internet, the most powerful lobbying, voting, public information tool this world has ever known.

When a thirty year old man started a business out of a garage in 1994, using the power of the Internet to sell goods and that man, at thirty-four is now worth an estimated $2 billion dollars, because his business, Amazon.com, has grown so much, it is hard to believe politicians can be so delusional or naive enough to believe, We, the People, can't use that power to remove them from office come the next election. It will be a great and good fortune for our country if democracy is finally protected and saved, brought back into balance, by the people, through use of what was originally a government tool. Here's to the Internet and People Power!

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