Comment by jdp23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdp23 | Hacker News Reader

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It's only one data point, but here in Washington state grassroots organizers have stopped Amazon (and Microsoft) from passing the Bad Washington Privacy Act three years in a row now. The key has been the Tech Equity Coalition, a loose coalition group of organizations and individuals (including civil rights, labor, immigrant rights groups). Local progressive activists have also gotten deeply involved, and of course we've gotten help from national groups like EPIC, Consumer Federation of America, and EFF. We also got the King County Council to pass a ban on government use of facial recognition -- and that's Amazon and Microsoft's home turf!

Of course, we still haven't passed strong privacy legislation yet. In the 2021 session Amazon and Microsoft's lobbying was enough to prevent the bill we brought from even getting a hearing. So, we'll see what happens in 2022. But it feels like momentum is on our side.

This - is not it. He who plays in the defense has to be eternally vigilant and can not loose once.

Best approach in my eye is to form a "one" cause party, whos only "cause" is to power-bust and promptly dissolve afterwards, and not touch on partisan issue. "Block Buster"Party might sound strange, but if the only purpose is to disrupt power imbalances and then self-dissolve to trigger the next election - that could get a majority.

How would this one party overcome the partisan divide? Seems like wishful thinking. Is there any evidence of this strategy working somewhere?

Parties don't just float candidates in elections. They also form policy, endorse, fund raise, lobby, etc.

Tammany Hall was this party in New York for a long time. They just didn’t go away.

More recently, New York had a thing called the “independent democratic conference” that caucused with the Republican Party to provide them with majority control of the NY Senate.

The problem with these types of entities is that they are about power, not policy.

It wouldn't, that's the whole point of partisan divides, to distract people from what really matters with more emotional and easy-to-understand but less consequential issues.

Yes and: Offense beats defense.

My own efforts gained far more traction when I pivoted from opposing evil stuff to advocating good stuff.

Further, yes and: With the decline of our political parties, issue based advocacy has filled that void. For better or worse.

I know I’d be instantly suspicious of such a party, there’s a long history of groups saying similar things and then just staying in power once they’ve actually gained it.

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