Tag Archives: CitizenWill

CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, NationalPolitics, Ruminations

The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

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Keith Olbermann, Sept. 11th, 2006 – on fire:

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft”, or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

…in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”

Continue reading The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street →

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, LocalPolitics, Ruminations

North Carolina Diktat: Thou Shalt Pledge Allegiance

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It is a hollow affirmation that must be compelled.

[UPDATE:]

I find it incredibly encouraging for our country when a young person, within a deeply authoritarian framework like our school system, shows the fortitude and courage to calmly assert their Constitutional rights. Moreso in our current national anti-dissent climate – a climate fostered by officials at the highest levels of our government.

A parent must be doing something right when their child has both the strength of their convictions to stand firm and the poise, even when emotionally assailed, to do so without rancor or upset.

As encouraging? Finding leaders within our local school system who recognize the importance of strengthening our country’s next generation’s ability to respectfully stand firm on principle and create an environment cultivating that courage.

NC G.S.115C‑47.29A (2005):

To Encourage the Display of the United States and North Carolina Flags, and to Encourage the Recitation of the Pledge or Oath of Allegiance. – Local boards of education are encouraged to adopt policies to (i) provide for the display of the United States and North Carolina flags in each classroom, (ii) provide the opportunity for students to recite the Pledge or Oath of Allegiance on a regular basis, and (iii) provide age‑appropriate instruction on the meaning and historical origins of the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. These policies shall not compel any person to stand, salute the flag, or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. If flags are donated or are otherwise available, flags shall be displayed in each classroom.

NC G.S.115C-47.29A (2006) as ratified July 12th and approved July 19th, 2006:

To Encourage Require the Display of the United States and North Carolina Flags, and to EncourageRequire the Recitation of the Pledge or Oath of Allegiance. – Local boards of education are encouraged to shall adopt policies to (i) provide for require the display of the United States and North Carolina flags in each classroom, when available, (ii) provide the opportunity for students to recite the Pledge or Oath of Allegiance on a regular basis,require that recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance be scheduled on a daily basis, and (iii) provide age‑appropriate instruction on the meaning and historical origins of the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. These policies shall not compel any person to stand, salute the flag, or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. If flags are donated or are otherwise available, flags shall be displayed in each classroom.

So, recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance is required but participation, in line with the Supreme Court’s reversal of previous precedent in 1943’s WEST VIRGINIA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION v. BARNETTE, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), cannot be compelled.

One hopes that distinction is clearly drawn among those reciters within our local school district who might be tempted, in a pique of conformist zeal, to force faux patriotism.

Carrboro, ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Community, Government, Ruminations

NC’s Mental Health Crisis: Penny-wise, Pound-foolish

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A nice thread on NC’s deteriorating public mental health infrastructure is developing on local bulletin board SqueezeThePulp spawned by a discussion of the recent murder and ensuing non-fatal shooting at Orange High School by an arguably deranged individual:

Anita Badrock, says

Another problem here is the state’s attempt to restructure mental health services provided by state funds, and the resulting holes in the safety net. The taxpayers of this state need to educate themselves about how the proposed “privatization” of mental health care has resulted in some of the sickest and most needy of the mentally ill not getting the services they need.

I am generally a private sector champion, but it isn’t working with respect to delivery of mental health services to the poor. Talk to anyone who works at OPCMH and ask them what impact the state’s decisions have made in their abilty to care for their clients.

Fred Black, fresh from this morning’s NC Chamber of Commerce sponsored Legislative breakfast says “both Sen. Kinnaird and Rep. Insko emphatically made this point and said that even with what was done in the recent short session, they believed it just scratches the surface.”

Good to hear that Fred… and to see discussion continuing on this thread.

CarolinaNorth, CitizenWill, Community, environment, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, UNC

Carolina North: Crawford-Brown’s Counter-principles

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Rather than expanding upon the published principles created by Chapel Hill’s (now defunct) Horace-Williams Citizens’ Committee (HWCC) or integrating their newer environmental recommendations (which I championed), UNC’s green representative to the LAC (UNC’s Leadership Advisory Committee) offers a counter-proposal.

Why? Why follow Chancellor Moeser’s lead and continue butting heads?

To: LAC (9-3-06)
From: Doug Crawford-Brown
Re: Environmental Principles for Carolina North

I’ve taken a stab at a few principles at the end of this memo, related to environmental issues we raised in our last meeting. Before giving the wording on those principles, I want to take a moment and explain how I reasoned towards them.

1. I assumed that these should be principles, not goals or strategies. I take a principle to be a statement about a core value we want Carolina North to reflect; a goal to be a measurable characteristic that will let us know whether we have satisfied a particular principle; and a strategy to be a statement of the way in which we will reach that goal.

2. Then I assumed that we are talking here about environmental issues, and not growth per se. There are legitimate reasons to control growth, but if we want the latter, we should just say it rather than couching it in environmental standards. So I have tried to design these principles based solely on their impact on core environmental concerns.

3.Then I assumed that principles need to be applied to all sectors of our community at some time. Still, Carolina North has some unique features: (i) it will be a large change in the infrastructure of our community, giving us an opportunity to affect that infrastructure significantly in one grand step; (ii) it is being built by a university with immense intellectual resources to solve problems of sustainability – the Chancellor has provided us leadership in that regard; (iii) it will be built in part by the State, which has resources to stimulate the market for sustainable designs; and (iv) it can provide a template for what we need eventually from all sectors of the community.

Here is my wording for a broad environmental principle, followed by more specific ones.

First Environmental Principle: Carolina North presents a unique opportunity to meet the mission of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while providing a model for environmentally sustainable community design reflecting reasonably anticipated environmental goals over the next 50 years. Carolina North will therefore be an examplar of sustainability in the sense that if the entire community of Chapel Hill and Carrboro adopted the design and operational practices embodied in Carolina North, this community would be environmentally sustainable.

Then we need a principle concerning what we mean by “environmentally sustainable”, which can be a vague term. I assume that “environmentally sustainable” communities produce impacts that preserve specific conditions of the environment and public health above some level we would find acceptable as a long-term condition of life.

Second Environmental Principle: When added onto the baseline (2006) environmental conditions of the community, Carolina North will produce sustainable levels of criteria air pollutants and air toxics; emissions of carbon dioxide; carbon absorption capacity of the land; amount of land available as species habitat; amount of open land for human recreation; protection of water bodies; generation of waste; and quantity of water flowing off surfaces as run-off. “Sustainable” here means that each of these conditions and their implications for public health would be acceptable as a permanent feature of life in the community.

The community already is near natural or legal limits for some of these conditions. Important examples are ozone (related to emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds); carbon dioxide emissions (related to climate change and the town-gown Carbon Reduction pledge); run-off of water during storm events (related to impervious surfaces); and watershed protection (related to flow of sediment and nutrients into local streams and rivers). The challenge here is in (i) bringing about these community-wide improvements without placing the burden solely on Carolina North, (ii) considering the “net” impact of campus activities, with improvements elsewhere by the University in part “offsetting” the effect of Carolina North (much as a cap-and-trade program allows), and (iii) ensuring that Carolina North does not consume all of the “buffer” between existing conditions in the community and the natural or legal limit. Fortunately, meeting the CRed pledge will have the follow-on effect of keeping ozone precursors neutral, and current water practices in campus construction will ensure that the storm-water and loading conditions are met at Carolina North.

Third Environmental Principle: Carolina North and related off-setting measures will produce no net increase in emissions of precursors of ozone, no net increase in vulnerability of the community to storm-water events, no net increase in loading of sediment and nutrients into local streams, and a continued ability to meet the carbon dioxide emissions reduction goals established by the university under CRed. “Related off-setting measures” means improvements to the existing campus and/or university support of community-wide programs targeting these four environmental conditions.

Finally, we have the other environmental conditions specified in the Second Environmental Principle. For these conditions, there is some “buffer” left for development, meaning the community is not yet at any of the relevant natural or legal limits on these conditions (although we are approaching them rapidly). For these conditions, the principle adopted should reflect the desire to avoid having Carolina North consume this “buffer”, which would prevent other forms of growth from occurring in town if the community desired.

Fourth Environmental Principle: With respect to all other environmental conditions, Carolina North will leave a “buffer” to accommodate development elsewhere in the community. “Buffer” means that the incremental effect of Carolina North on all relevant environmental conditions, when added onto existing baseline conditions, will allow for reasonably anticipated future development elsewhere in the community without the community exceeding natural and/or legal limits on these conditions.

Where to start?

I appreciate Crawford-Brown’s acknowledgment “that Carolina North presents a unique opportunity to meet the mission of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while providing a model for environmentally sustainable community design”.

Diluting UNC’s responsibility by lumping in the whole community (“Carolina North will therefore be an examplar of sustainability in the sense that if the entire community of Chapel Hill and Carrboro adopted the design and operational practices embodied in Carolina North” strikes me as a precursor to a good old-style greenwashing.

For instance, what is reasonable and acceptable, as in his call for “reasonably anticipated environmental goals over the next 50 years” and his tautology that the standards applied to Carolina North simply be “acceptable as a long-term condition of life”?

Of course we don’t want a multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-financed, State project that’s inimical to life, do we?

The continuing tenor – his suggestion of applying “pollution reduction credits” accrued elsewhere to balance environmentally questionable development practices or working within a “buffer” that’s measured not by environmental best-practices but by our State’s rather weak legal requirements – makes we wonder if UNC’s current administration has positioned Crawford-Brown as more an apologist/whitewasher than a champion for world class green development.

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Community, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations

Festifall’s Annual Rock Hurl Called Off

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Thanks GeorgeC for the pointing out this story in today’s News and Observer:

The manager of the new Franklin St. luxury hotel that’s squatting on top of the old bus station, thinks Chapel Hill’s annual Festifall event will create a “a bad situation” because it’ll cut access off to what will be, this October 8th, an empty hotel. He also worries that the fire department will not be able to respond adequately, so he’s asked for the event to be moved away from the hotel.

The manager, Mr. Donaldson, cited two recent events – a break-in at Patio Loco (16 bottles of tequilla lifted) and a broken window at a local Chinese restaurant – for prompting his request for a copy of the festivals security plan.

“I have not gotten any answer back from anyone,” he said. “It happens a lot around here, it seems.”

Ouch! He goes on:

“We do have a $14 million building that does have lots of glass on the front of it,” Donaldson said.

Guess the town needs to call off the annual rock hurl and kaber toss.

Kidding aside, Donaldson obviously has conflated the problematic, recently cancelled, Apple Chill with Festifall. The character and size of the two events are quite different. During the event, I’ve never seen access to the rear of the hotel, where the parking lot is located, cut-off. Quite frequently, the fire department parks adjacent to the property.

Maybe he’s confused because he hasn’t attended either event? Is he very familiar with the Franklin St. locale in general?

From the same story, Mayor Foy said “he welcomes the hotel’s input on downtown events but stressed that the town’s concern is for serving the community as a whole.”

A good sentiment. Unfortunately, the pressure to sanitize or “Southpoint” Franklin St. will only increase as big development money flows in from out-of-town. Will RAM Development be “surprised” to find a Festifall on their new plaza?

Redevelopment downtown was meant to bring positive change without overwhelming the character and traditions of Franklin St. As we move forward on the Town’s joint private/public development project, we need to build in an expectation that Franklin St. , Rosemary St. and the environs surrounding will continue to be “real” places.

CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, Community, Ruminations, Technology, Uncategorized

Web 2.0 Activism: Yahoo Maps + Flickr

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Web 2.0 is a disputed frame of reference bounding the next generation of web-based, collaborative applications.

Once upon a time (a few short years ago), tech sales-droids touted ASPs (application service providers) as the natural replacement for individual applications. Net-based alternatives for accounting, human resources or even word-processing would be run and managed from centralized locations. Companies or individuals would “rent” rather than buy software. In many ways, it would be a return to the old lucrative mainframe time-sharing.

That hasn’t quite happened yet.

Instead, bits and pieces of these applications sprouted up on the web. First generation innovators, building upon the (almost) platform-independence of standards-based, Javascript-enabled browsers created dynamic client-server applications.

Unlike old-school client-server, both sides of the application ecosystem – desktop browser and HTTP servers – were quite flexible. Building on common standards – XML, HTTP, Javascript – developers were unbelievably agile – quickly adapting to new market conditions.

Second generation innovators stitched together (“mashed up”) these first gen applications to deploy many new unanticipated synergistic capabilities – maps and social data, photos and bulletin boards and video.

Web-based apps are seductive. Features and fixes come in a flurry. Popularity spawns copycats that thrive, spread, merge. Sites, evolving rapidly on Internet time, live or die based on attention-share.

What does that have to do with local activism?

Quite a bit, I believe. A question I hope to explore in-depth.

Today, Yahoo provided a simple tool to combine their free mapping service, Yahoo Maps, , with their free photo repository service, Flickr (an outside acquisition, by the way).

Not a novel service but one that was quite expensive a few years ago – tricky to implement within the last year.

My hope is that by melding two powerful, easily absorbed, sources of data, pictures and maps, I, and many other local activists, will be able to communicate more effectively.

Map below the fold….
Continue reading Web 2.0 Activism: Yahoo Maps + Flickr →

CarolinaNorth, ChapelHill, CitizenWill, environment, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, UNC

Carolina North: Evans Conducting an Intellectual Exercise?

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“the book says, we might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”

Dr. Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense as bowdlerdized in the fantastic movie Magnolia

UNC’s current Moeser administration likes to announce major modifications to their developmental plans and strategies either in the deep doldrums of summer or the chilly recesses of winter. True to form, the administration and Board of Trustees modified their stance on the current collaborative process, embodied by the UNC Leadership Advisory Committee, while our community took their summer break

Starting out at May 26th’s board meeting, a couple UNC-CH Trustees unleashed a few impolitic bon mots:

“I think what the town should interpret out of that is there is a very strong sense of urgency about Carolina North and it is time to deal with Carolina North..The time for talking about it and trying to build consensus is coming to an end.”

Trustee and local developer Roger Perry, N&O, May 26th, 2006

This precipitous expression of irritation from local land baron Perry came after just a handful of LAC meetings. Trying to avoid the same kind of historical missteps UNC has made with previous community outreach efforts, the LAC spent those meetings establishing groundrules, process and goals. Luckily the talk continued. As of today (Aug. 20th), the LAC, after relevant discussions, has accepted a number of key principles created by Chapel Hill’s recently disbanded Horace-Williams Citizens Committee (of which I was a member – of which I believe had much more work to perform).

“I believe the voices that choose to be the greatest obstacles to this at the moment will be the voices that have the least impact, in the end, I believe it will be taken from our hands at some point by the leadership of this state.”

Trustee Rusty Carter, Herald Sun, May 26th, 2006

Carter’s remark echoes Senator Tony Rand’s 2001 threat to remove Chapel Hill’s zoning authority over the University. Beyond zoning, the town has very limited means to corral University developmental malfeasance. Even with it, the town could barely mitigate travesties like UNC’s encroachments upon the Mason Farm Road neighborhoods.

“It is our intention to move forward with the momentum of Carolina North…We would like to see this committee be a very active part of it, but if they choose to spend the next year not arriving at any definitive parameters, we are going to continue our momentum. That’s not out of any sense of animosity; it’s out of a sense of practicality and obligation.”

Trustee Rusty Carter, June 1st, 2006 Daily Tar Heel

What’s missing, for Carter and some of his fellow trustees, it appears is BIG MO! Wasn’t BIG MO coined to describe the momentum football teams need to build up to crush their opponents?

Chancellor Moeser recently appointed Dean Jack Evans, husband of 10-year veteran council member Pat Evans, to a two-year, $208,210 per year, position as “quarterback” to drive the Carolina North project forward:

“What we need, and what we have in Jack Evans is a quarterback, someone who will be calling the signals, actually planning and coordinating the planning of all of our team — leading that team to make sure that this project continues to move forward,” Moeser said today.

Chancellor Moeser, N&O July 27, 2006

With the selection of his new quarterback Moeser signalled a change of strategy.

Two teams now: offense – heavyweight UNC and defense – the local, as Moeser says, “wary” community.
Evans, former Dean of UNC’s Kenan-Flagler business-plex – current representative to the NCAA/ACC, will earn his pay pushing for completion of a project whose underpinnings and goals are suspect.

And he’ll be hellbent to do it.

“Whether or not it’s Jack Evans in this role or somebody else, there is a role for someone to state the urgency and importance of this…”

I understand the importance, the Mayor and Council understand the importance, the folks “wary” of the direction of this project, all of us, understand the importance of this project.

Many of us will be living with and, as NC taxpayers, paying for, the consequences of Evans’ two years of quarterbacking for decades to come. Our concern is not born of ignorance of the project’s greater importance to the wider fortunes of our State but of a healthy respect for the adage that “Haste makes waste” and the waste it will make is of our cherished town.

Time to put away the plaintive wail that the citizens of our communities DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE of the Carolina North project. This continued claim, quite frankly, is pure-T, grade-A horse shit.

What does Evans think of the current process? Last May he suggested the strong possibility that the effort will end up accomplishing nada:

Evans said he saw two possible scenarios from what Strom was saying. In the first, the committee reviews the list of principles to find those principles on which there is disagreement. After discussion of those disagreements, the committee will find those areas that may not be able to be reconciled, if there are any. Under the second scenario, the committee would merely identify those areas of disagreement without attempting to remedy them. “I hope that is not what we are doing,” Evans said. If that is the case, he said, the committee would merely be conducting an “intellectual exercise” without any real promise of accomplishing anything.

Dean Jack Evans, UNC Gazette, May 06, 2006

The town’s representatives and the Mayor has always made it clear that their participation was not a negotiation but a dialogue (more like multi-logue considering the 4 sets of representatives). Unfortunately, it looks like the LAC’s efforts are being superseded by the new “offense”.

Is it going to be “50 yards to the goal line – hard-charging Jack, his band of trusty trustees, pressing forward – crushing the weak defense”? Hard to say.

Beyond what happened over the summer, there’s Evans’ recent letters and this week’s LAC meeting (August 24, 2006, at 4 p.m. in the Redbud Room of the Friday Center) to help deconstruct Moeser’s tenor.

I’m also trying to wrap my head around Evans’ claim that “the space crunch on the main campus means Carolina North will have to accommodate academic needs.” (Whoa there Trigger! Moeser has always emphasized research and living only, discounting academic usage – which made some sense considering the nearly incredible [and expensive] increase in space on Main Campus since he became Chancellor).

Over the next week, I’ll be ‘blogging a series on CarolinaNorth: Evans’ New Principles, Specifications, Outcomes in an effort to understand and predict UNC’s future directions.

If you can’t wait or wish to do your own analysis, here’s some primary source material:

[UPDATE:]

Evans’ “counter-offer” is a reflection of the proposals on the table – proposals based on the guidelines developed by the Horace-William’s Citizens group (of which I was member). The principles and a schematic chronology of their development is here. (Thanks for the tip Barnes).

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Government, Ruminations, UNC

Liz and Laura’s Excellent Downtown Adventure

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The other day I passed on a call from the Downtown Partnership for volunteers. Folks in “bright blue t-shirts” (as local crack WCHL reporter Dan Siler emphasized throughout the week) would hand out coupon and information packets to returning students. The hope? Spur more interest in our fine downtown.

I was signed up for the Sunday morning shift. Turns out I wasn’t needed.

Liz Parham, Director of the Downtown Partnership just called to let me off the hook (drat, I really wanted a 2XX bright blue t-shirt!). They and their Saturday volunteers handed out 3000 packets by 1pm.

Way to go Liz, Laura and the rest of the crew!

Liz said they might do student “grab bags” next year. I hope they’ll consider adding this little goodie from the Orange County Board of Elections.

encl: Voter Registration Form [PDF]

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Government, LocalPolitics, Ruminations, Technology

Flaming Dell

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You know your brand is in trouble when tonight’s opening skit on David Letterman features your CEO running around on stage consumed by fire.

Of course, Jeff Jarvis, the ‘blogging bullet that Dell shot itself in the foot with, can personally tell you how hot the flames of Dell hell burn.

Luckily, as Jeff observes (after a dose of Doc Searl’s ClueTrain koolaid), the power curve between consumer and producer is beginning to invert:

We are customers with our money in our fists, spending it wisely and joining together to spend it more wisely. And we are producers who can compete with the companies that thought of us as mere consumers.

So nevermind caveat emptor. This is the age of caveat venditor — let the vendor beware — and caveat creator.

Responding to a Dell PR sock puppet that criticized his criticism, Jeff fulminates thusly,

You — since you to speak for Dell — owe me a product that works. You owe me service that serves. You owe me reliability and value. You are the ones holding me hostage; you have my thousands of dollars and I have your bad products. I not only have the right but the responsibility to tell others about my experiences with Dell.

But I’ll say again that I didn’t organize that mob. The mob organized itself; I merely provided the convenient town square on which to light those torches. This is how the internet works: It brings us together and we learn from each other.

You see, in the old days, you could screw one customer with one bad product or you could insult one customer with bad service. But no more. Now, when you deal with one customer, you deal with all customers.

That, ma’am, is the real public relations. That is dealing with your public as your customers.

And that is the real branding. Your brand is your reputation, your trust, your value. You don’t own your brand; your customers do.

Elected folk of the world, substitute citizen/taxpayer for customer, Chapel Hill/Carrboro for Dell and you might get a sense where we’re going with local governance once we, the self-organizing mob, begin to meet on our new ‘net-based Town Commons.

CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, Government, Ruminations

ZeFrank: The Scale was Imaginable

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I posted this quick comment on BlueNC, a state-wide blog that appears to be hellbent on rehabilitating NC Democrats reputation.

I usually keep it local and try not to echo the meme of the moment but I thought Ze Frank was dead on with yesterday’s analysis:

The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk.

London’s police deputy commissioner Paul Stevenson said that the plot was “intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” No, it is imaginable: between three and ten flights out of thousands would have resulted in the terrible loss of human life.

Bush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don’t think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it’s a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government’s responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation.

Today the President said, “This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation.” Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism.

CitizenWill
there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. MLK,Jr. to SCLC Leadership Class

Campaign, CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, LocalPolitics, Media, Ruminations

Welcome to CitizenWill

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Over the last year, I’ve written about 300 posts now split between campaign.willraymond.org and blog.willraymond.org

Covering my 2005 Town Council campaign, I started with WillRaymond.org, a hopefully memorable Internet location for the local electorate to find both my platform and analysis of relevant issues.

November 2005, I rebranded the site as Concerned Citizen, shifted the campaign rhetoric to campaign.willraymond.org and continued with a focus primarily on local issues, events, governance and politics.

Along the way I’ve added ruminations and digressions covering volcanoes, 2006’s SouthBySouthwest Interactive (SxSWi), the dissolution of our Constitution, our country’s unexamined rush to build an Orwellian surveillance society and a slew of guest editorials from the Daily Tar Heel and Chapel Hill News.

It’s been a wild year for this netizen who originally built a reputation in the blogverse as the prolific commenter WillR (to the extent of getting a Koufax Award nomination!).

A recent Pew Internet and American Life study claims %76 of ‘bloggers concentrate on documenting their personal life with only %11 on government and politics.

I have no interest in publicly documenting my personal life.

Two years ago I asked erudite ‘blogger and local Councilmember Sally Greene, then new to the blog-o-sphere, her thoughts on managing her “personal” and “public” voices.

What about schizophrenic bloggers, like Sally, who have a political blog and a personal blog?

She answered:

That’s a fascinating question, Will. Last year I ran for office; I had never run before, although I had been on the Planning Board. I knew that I needed to get my message out and I too knew that I couldn’t count on the media to do it. It may seem strange since I’m married to one of the gods of the internet, Paul Jones, but I just didn’t know anything about blogs…..While most campaign sites fold after the election, I have maintained mine and I continue to update it with content and links to town-related news stories (which I selectively pick)….Now, for a couple of months I’ve been blogging. But it is separate from my Town Council web site. Each is linked to the other, but they are separate….But on the other hand—and this is something that I haven’t consciously thought about very much, until Will’s question—I think I do want to keep some space that is just my own, my “greenespace.” I mean, there is a difference, although of course they overlap.

Like Sally, I have generally distinct, though sometimes overlapping, concerns. Based on an analysis of a years worth of site visits, so does my readership.

During my March 2006 sojourn to Austin’s SxSWi, following Sally’s lead, I purchased the Citizen Will sites (.org,.com,.net). Why Citizen Will? This punster (yep, sorry about that) couldn’t pass up a small play on “the Will of the People”, “will power” and this citizen’s will for progressive change.

It’s finally time to split my personal, professional and public “brands”:

  • WillRaymond.org will serve as a gateway to the Will-verse.
  • with CitizenWill , I will continue my activist focus. I’ll also put reprints of my “real world” columns, editorials and letters-to-the-Editor.
  • And blog.willraymond.org will serve as a convenient dumping ground for my occassional ruminations on orthogonal concerns – technology, travel tips and other personal digressions.

Not wishing to confuse my growing audience, not willing to kill my old “brand” and trying to be a good netizen by maintaining my permalinks (the long tail of a years worth of net-based local activism) – I’m mirroring all sites for the next 90 days (roughly until the Nov. elections are over).

Over that time, each site will begin to take on a more distinctive, unique character reflective of their end purposes.

Thank you for your feedback, thank you for your readership and thank you for bearing with me as I make this slow “tri-cameral” transition.