Fair & Equal According to Whom?
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." That quote is traditionally attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. In this scheme of things, whether Roosevelt's or not, there is no category for those who are reluctant to consider an idea unless they know whose idea it is. For folks in this category, the Fair & Equal campaign to eliminate the weighted vote and bring the principle of one person, one vote to Hudson has identified everyone involved in the initiative on their website: "Who We Are."
COPYRIGHT 2016 CAROLE OSTERINK
I hope it wasn't just for those "reluctant to consider an idea unless they know whose idea it is" that F&E put up a Who We Are" page -- I hope it was because it' a good idea to do so. --peter m
ReplyDeleteNone of us to our knowledge has had any desire to keep our identities secret (heck from my perspective we have been quite "open and notorious" as it were), but yes Peter, you deserve credit for suggesting that we state our names on the Fair and Equal website. That was a good idea, which we readily accepted. Accepting good ideas on their merits, irrespective of the source of the idea, or how such good ideas evolved, is well ... a good idea!
DeleteAnd these are good people, not a shadowy and nefarious cloak and dagger group that others have implied. Oops! I'm being small-minded--sorry!
ReplyDeleteYears ago, in Dublin, Ireland, I formed a group which spent its Sunday mornings picking up litter along the beautiful Grand Canal. The amounts of trash left from the previous two nights' revelries was astounding, amounting to 10 tons city-wide.
ReplyDeleteThe garbage we collected kept pace with our group's swelling numbers (unsurprisingly, only Americans took an interest), until we were in need of bigger and better equipment.
We approached the 340-year old "Dublin Corporation" only to discover the predictable consequence of a city divided into multiple public works departments. Each was run like a fiefdom.
We explained who we were to our own local chief, and what we were doing, and what we needed in order to do it better.
It was no use. In Irish culture, the only context for voluntarism is enjoining in battle.
In the end, we could not get beyond the man's fury that we would not name names.
The interview ended with the official pounding his desk, repeating the same phrase over and over:
"Who authorized this?!"
Dickens must have had a character incapable of considering ideas without knowing from whence the ideas came, but which character?