Hey New Yorkers! The primary (the election that matters in this case) is Tuesday the 13th. Take a minute to figure out where to go and go vote tomorrow.

One of the things I've been processing since I got off the road is just what it takes to change a thing, just what it takes to make tomorrow not like today. It takes a lot. I've been thinking lately about just how glacial the pace of progress really is, and on some levels it bums me out. When I first got "involved," I'd hoped to have things more or less back on an even keel in time for me to make babies. That's three presidential elections (ten years) on the outside, and given everything I don't think that's going to square us to be honest.

But it doesn't have to be a hundred years struggle, either. The journey never ends, but there are people who are moving up the food chain of political power who do, in fact, get it. Back in my adopted hometown of New York City, there's a guy named Andrew Rasiej (pronounced "ra-shay") who's trying to get himself elected Public Advocate, the #2 spot in city government. And he's got the right ideas.

I have some friends who are involved in the campaign (it's drawn some talent from the NYC Dean Internet Intelligentsia), and just as I was finishing my recent post on the Hurricane, someone sent me a link to Andrew's speech on the same topic.

You can read the whole speech (it's good), but boiling it down, his points are:

1. Our communities have become dangerously dis-integrated, especially along lines of class and race. This is the narrative of who lived and died on the Gulf Coast, and it is likely to be the narrative of who reaps the benefits from reconstruction.
2. Our ability to communicate is dangerously fragile. If the government cannot at the very least inform, it looses all credibility. When the people are allowed to intercommunicate freely, great things can happen in absence of direct government action.
3. There are too many people in power who are wedded to the old ways, either to pork-barrel politics, small-world insiderism, or ideological battles that have raged on for decades. The circle of participation in governance and critical decision-making must widen if the above are to change.

Rasiej is an internetista, but he's a staunch progressive too. His campaign is attempting to explore and advance ideas about how the new information ecology can be applied to government, and in doing so he and his people are finding new ways to think and talk about problems which liberals and progressives have been unable to gain traction on for ten, twenty, even thirty years. This is incredibly important. It is quite literally the way to the future.

Rasiej understands, for instance, that often the role of government is to get something started and then get out of the way, to create and maintain infrastructure and let the people use that infrastructure to the benefit of all. He understands the importance of public service, of government's role in raising the common denominator and in providing safety and security against the unexpected. He understands that "trickle down" is bullshit, that more prosperity is created when solutions are built with a many to many mindset. He understands the need to involve vastly more people as real participants in the democratic process to insure its integrity.

The reason I think all this is so vital is not just because these ideas would be good for New York City, but because a win for Rasiej would be a step towards bringing these ideas to the wider world. These ideas will work. They're based off bedrock principles: participation, transparency, public service. These principles are good. Combined with the possibilities of a peer-to-peer information ecology and contrasted with the status-quo, they imply frankly revolutionary changes. They are the way to better government and a better quality of life, to justice, liberty and sustainability.

A win for Rasiej can accelerate the pace of change in these United States. Put that man into office (an office, I might add, which hasn't done much for the city lately) and he'll turn it into a laboratory for new government and a bully pulpit to announce the results. Let us advance our cause in New York City and put the results on the world's stage, open-source style.

There's no deodorant like success. People gravitate towards what works, what was good and right and memorable, even retroactively, and politicians are no different. I see a possible future where one day public servants everywhere claim these ideas as their own, even claim they were always on board. Installing Rasiej as Public Advocate in NYC won't do the job alone, but it is a step in the right direction.

In the face of failure, people are looking for an alternatives. Citizens are looking for something that offers them more than incompetence, equivocation and greed. Politicians are looking for something that can create momentum in an environment defined the gaming of perception. People of conscience are looking for a way to meaningfully participate. We're all tired of the bullshit, and anyone who uses their brain can tell we're in for some tough challenges up ahead, that we need to get it together. But as long as the present establishment remains intact, that's not going to happen. Let's turn up the heat.

So to all my NYC compadres, please vote in the primary tomorrow. Check out Andrew's website; if nothing else read the lessons from Katrina speech to get a taste for what the campaign is all about. Let's make New York a free wi-fi zone, just like Philly, and more than just giving away the access, let's use that to empower people to get more out of their city, to connect our communities, to improve the local economy, develop independent culture, to help us work together in cases of emergency and times of trouble. I think it's an exciting opportunity. If I were there I'd vote Rasiej.

(technorati tag: rasiej)