TED Community ยป Robert Gahtan

About Me

Location:
United States, Lexington, MA
Gender:
Male
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  • TEDCred score: +0.50 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • A reply on Conversation: Draft an Activist's Handbook/wiki for Social Movements

    Feb 24 2013: Thank you very much for introducing me to Randy Shaw (the author of The Activist's Handbook. However. it does not cover the multitude of questions that activists face, and should not have to incessantly have to relearn through painful and costly experience. To be more specific, here are some of the issues such a wiki/handbook should cover:
    Agent Provocateur, Army, Boycotts, Civil Disobedience, Coalitions, Coming Out, Communism, Consciousness Raising, Cooperatives, Debates Teach-ins, Defensive Formulations, Democracy, Democratic Centralism, Electoral Arena, Expulsions, International, Internet, Local, Maoism, Marches, Membership, Non Violent Direct Action, Occupations, Organization, Outings, Outreach, Pacifism, Police, Press, Program, Recruitment, Reformers, Reformist, Sectarianism, Single Issue, Sit-Ins, Socialism, Stalinism, Third Parties, Trotskyism, TV, Ultra-Left, Utopias, Violence
  • +5

    A comment on Talk: James B. Glattfelder: Who controls the world?

    Feb 17 2013: Gee whiz, am I the only person to think that yes, a ruling class does exist?
  • A reply on Conversation: Draft an Activist's Handbook/wiki for Social Movements

    Jan 29 2013: Please let me know the search terms that you've used. I have done several google searches: Critique of social movements sociology, Hand book for social movement activists So, Social movements that succeeded, Social movements timeline, Who is interested in social change, Google Books Research Topic: Social Movement Theory, Social movement theory and research an annotated bibliography guide, Is there an idea exchange for social movements, "Granting agencies" for social change, TED: Social Movements, How do social movements begin, and have not found what you have located.
  • A reply on Conversation: Draft an Activist's Handbook/wiki for Social Movements

    Jan 29 2013: Not really. If you want to become a chef, you would get Julia Child's book. As a matter of fact any craft that you are interested in mastering requires knowing what has been done so it can be transcended. In any case, we can always start with an "Activism for Dummies" book
  • A reply on Conversation: Draft an Activist's Handbook/wiki for Social Movements

    Jan 29 2013: In view that I posted this on TED, I thought the implication would be that I am only interested in those movements that promote well being for our fellow humans. Specifically: movements that end poverty, hunger, wars, racism, sexism, homophobia,climate change, the two party system, and perhaps even capitalism.

    Such a handbook/wiki would deal with the issue of front groups. I am always trying to meet a better class of people, and am gratified that you think it to be a polo hat, unfortunately it is nothing but an out-of style bicycle helmet
  • A comment on Conversation: TED growing to be the open-sourced version of the G20 Summits.

    Jul 25 2012: An excellent summary of how a new model is transforming the world, and hopefully saving it can be found in the book: Macrowikinomics, by Don Tapscott (see his TED presentation) http://www.macrowikinomics.com/ and The Third Industrial Revolution by Jeremy Rifkin http://www.thethirdindustrialrevolution.com/. What is exciting about both of these books is that they provide links to sites that are not yet well knows.
  • A comment on Talk: Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations

    Jun 19 2012: While I appreciate the work that has gone into the presentation, I am seriously concerned that in it's observations, it appears to omit such cites as Beijing or Havana or Moscow. For me, it fails to answer the question: "does the scaling of people in cities or organizations not differ under capitalism/free enterprise, or "communism"/"socialism"?

    The presentation appears to be severely skewed toward a western European capitalist form of organization.
  • A comment on Talk: Martin Rees asks: Is this our final century?

    Feb 14 2012: I find athe background music distracting and offensive.

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