Which is better, civil disobedience or voting?

I posted the following response to a Coffee Party article on civil disobedience and voting.  A commentator claimed that corruption was preventing people from voting.

Corruption is not excluding people from voting, individual voters are excluding themselves. When we have turnouts of less than 50% in 2010 the no shows have only themselves to blame. I often wonder how many who protested in Madison had voted. How many of those who signed the repeal petition in Wisconsin will actually show up for the recall election? Turnout in 2012 was low because too many stayed away because President Obama wasn't "perfect". If you're going to wait for the "perfect" candidate, you are going to let other people vote in some very imperfect people.

Rules of democracy - 1) show up to vote; 2) vote for who you believe in, even if you have to write some body in; 3) show up to vote; 4) the only vote thrown away is the vote not cast; 5) show up to vote!

Also make your voice known to the media; not just in the letters section. If a reporter claims, for instance, that Gingrich "won" in Georgia, email the reporter that only 6% of the eligible voters cast their vote for Gingrich in the Republican primary. If a reporter claims that someone won in a "landslide", email him or her that that someone received the vote of only 1/3 of the eligible voters. If we get more accurate reporting that show how thin the support of the "winners" is, maybe we'll get more people saying, "OMG, if I had only voted!"

Be your own little get-out-the-vote campaigner. On election day or the day before, drop off a home-made flyer at every house on your block. Be non-partisan. Make up a few catchy slogans like "Democracy counts on your vote to work".

Finally, be sure to show up to vote!

After I wrote the above I thought about how representative civil disobedience and voting are compared to each other.  If 1,000 people show up for a demonstration in a town of 200,000, how representative are they of the other 199,000?  If 60,000 people vote on election day, aren't they more representative of the 200,000 than the 1,000?  Talk about the 1%, the 1,000 are only a half percent!

Voting - many would rather complain than act

I posted the following to http://www.facebook.com/occupyvotingbooths. I have not had a single reaction. But there are plenty of other posts complaining about politicians, those who would limit voting, and the big money driving politics.

I'm disappointed with most of the postings in this community. We have plenty of places to complain about the state of politics and the abuse of power. I was hoping this community would be more focused on getting people out to vote rather than blaming others for our low election turnouts.

I was hoping that people would be suggesting letters to the editor, meetings to get out the vote, and links to stuff to help people to get the vote out - like T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Besides Occupy Voting Booths 2012, how about

Be the demōs in democracy!

Vote!

The only vote that doesn't count

Is the vote not cast!

Don't like any of the candidates?

Vote for Wright In!

You signed the recall petition,

Now vote!

A majority of a 60% turnout

could be less than

31% of the eligible voters!

Getting fewer votes than no-shows

Does not a mandate make!

(There's gotta be a better way to say this last).

Probably none of these will go viral, but one of you clever people must have something that will be repeated on both NPR and FoxNews.

Fair and balanced reporting?

Fox News posted a video clip entitled "'Occupy D.C.' Goons Push Elderly Woman Down the Stairs". But where in the video is she shown being deliberately or accidentally pushed? We only know two things for sure from this video.
1) There was a demonstration in front of an event.
2) A women fell at the bottom of a stairway and was distraught.

Did she trip? Was she bumped in the crush of a crowd? Because somebody was blaming the demonstrators for pushing the woman doesn't mean that they actually pushed her. And the use of "Goons" in the headline doesn't inspire confidence in this reporting being unbiased.

"Fair and Balanced" is still part of the Fox News logo, but is making charges without more substantiation "fair and balanced"?

For a more detailed analysis of the situation and the larger context, see http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/occupy-police.

Iranian TV playing with fire reporting on Occupy movement

The Coffee Party on Facebook had a link to "Crackdown on OWS, creative tactics and the strategy to take back power". The lead-in on Facebook is "Interview with Chip Pitts, human rights advocate and Stanford law professor. "Occupy Wall Street is the closest thing to a civil rights movement in my lifetime...Lots of strands including Occupy movement, academic research and the Coffee Party are coming together in a beautiful harmony."

It was uploaded to YouTube by PressTVGlobalNews on Nov 17, 2011.

"The United States is currently grappling with growing protest rallies against corporatism, poverty and social inequity in the country." - from the text accompanying the video.

I'd say guess who PressTVGlobalNews is, but I've already partly given away that PressTV is owned by the Iranian government.

I wonder how many Iranians watch PressTV in Iran and how many wonder why the Iranian government doesn't practice what it preaches.

Here's another piece of fire that Press TV is playing with - "Russian Opposition demands free and fair elections".

Are these cases of do as I say, not as I do?