<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">You are right, however, we are political parties not activist groups -- we need to remember that. Our job is to spread our message and influence policy. We should be leaving the activism to the activist groups, which we can be part of, but should not become ourselves. Yes, we do things from time to time which are activist in nature but they are still providing publicity and upholding our values: TPB servers hosted by PPSE falls under that category. <div><br></div><div>We have nothing to gain, and a lot to lose by limiting our message to people who already know about us. It's actually highly elitist to think that only people who jump through the hoops that we lay out for them are worthy of hearing our message. I know that we are a party of nerds, geeks, and social outcasts (I, myself, fall into at least 2 out of 3 of those, maybe 3 out of 3) and it is in our nature to be cliquish now that we have our own community and it happens too frequently in our circles: The people who think that all flavours of linux should be difficult and not n00b friendly are a great example of this.</div><div><br></div><div>We are not in some computer club or even NGO -- we are pirates trying to affect change. If we want to be seriously considered to do that we need to step out of our comfort zone and try to appeal to people who have not thought about being a pirate before, or might not even be comfortable with computers. We need these people to vote for us, we don't need to "pander to them" but we certainly need to make it possible for them to stumble onto our "propaganda" easily. If only 1% of the population agrees with RMS' extreme views on non-free software, then he is fine with that and he can keep only using non-free software to talk to that 1% and as long as they keep donating he can keep doing his work. We need to reach at least 5% of the population in many areas and in places like the UK, Canada, US, Australia, etc we need many more %s to hear our message and agree with it. </div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps you need to adjust your sails.<br><div><br><div apple-content-edited="true">
<div><b>Travis McCrea</b></div><div>Pirate Party of Canada</div><div>The Ultimate Ebook Library</div><div>Kopimist Church of Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>Phone: 1(206)552-8728 US Call/Text</div><div>IRC: <a href="http://irc.freenode.net">irc.freenode.net</a>, <a href="http://irc.pirateirc.net">irc.pirateirc.net</a> (TeamColtra or TravisMcCrea)</div><div>Web: <a href="http://travismccrea.com">travismccrea.com</a></div><div>IM: <a href="mailto:teamcoltra@451.im">teamcoltra@451.im</a> (jabber) teamcoltra (AIM)</div>
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<br><div><div>On Feb 18, 2013, at 12:46 PM, Anouk Neeteson <<a href="mailto:jakobsheep@gmail.com">jakobsheep@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p>Pragmatism is no substitute for activism or vice versa, although they overlap from time to time. This discussion is of an idelogical nature about this differation, not just about how to spread 'propaganda' best.</p><p>my 2cents,<br>
mrNatural</p>
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