Some basic inaugural discussion about goals?

[cascadiance]

21. A strong plank of any populist movement should be a fully educated and informed populace

A common complaint I hear online and even in some conversations from the past that I recall is that many look away from populist movements, feeling that too many of their fellow citizens aren't knowledgeable enough about what is going on in our system and not feeling the desire to participate, and that we need to focus energies on those who are informed and can drive themselves towards leadership of our government and what it does. Some don't realize the sense of elitism that this puts forth at times, when they even perhaps not consciously dismiss wanting a homeless person on the corner from participating as a bum that can be "herded" in to voting for things they shouldn't.

We need to make sure that ALL Americans have an access to a decent education as far as their intellects and desire can take them, and to encourage them to pursue it to the limits of their abilities, and to grow their abilities in any way possible.

This means:
o no need for anyone to have to go to a privately run elementary or high schools, or having such public schools be dependent in any way on private funding.
o decent publicly run schools available to everyone not purchased by donations from the Koch Brothers (i.e. Florida State Univ.)
o special education for those who have challenges
o decent schools in the city with lower tax bases
o Getting RID of college debt for kids is essential!
o Perhaps free bachelors degree education for everyone to put us on the same level as many other countries.
o Continuing education, especially for older people that become unemployed.
o A media not controlled by a small number of corporations that warps what trusted information people have access to about current events.
o Rewarding of strongly skilled kids, no matter what their station of life, to be able to develop those strong skills.

By having an informed citizenry, populism will work BEST, because then as equals and an informed citizenry, we can all make a collective better decision, and most of us then will also respect that more people should be a part of the decision process if they respect that they are all well informed as well, even if they might have disagreements.

Many of us complain that so many of the right wing tea partiers are "clueless" as to what is going on and that they are voting for their own self interest. Getting them to WANT a strong education and pursue it and being well informed in a non-biased way should minimize the hold that the corporatists have over them that allows them to use them so much. Even if we might still have strong disagreement with them on social issues, if they are at least well informed, I would hope that they would want more populist solutions too and many that perhaps we can agree on at some point too.

Another part of this is that people don't get "worked to death" to the point that they don't have time to pursue additional education for themselves, and time to inform themselves for their own sense of knowledge of what is going on, not just education for things they need to do on a job. Americans have been probably working too much in recent years compared to the rest of the world, not allowing them time to pursue education and to deeply look at current issues beyond headlines from corporate television news once daily.

In short, a strong eduction and well informed citizenry is a fundamental need of a decent populist movement anywhere.

So any candidate that wants our support who intends to put any kind of selective barriers towards people being informed and educated, should not get our support.