Well, since sticks have been coming in from all kinds of directions (I thank @Drachenrose, @ws_develop, @frau_semm and @jinx_hh, if i remember correctly), this seems to be one of those rare occasions in which I have to blog. To those of you unaware of the Practice: a blog-relay-stick is a fixed set of questions, that one person answers in a blog and then calls on several persons to do the same. This particular stick (aka, set of questions) has a strong thematic focus on upcoming german elections. However, since some of the advice in the following sentences can be applied universally and also since it always has been part of the mission of Pirates Without Borders to raise awareness for and provide information about the Pirate Partys in all the world, this is a good kick-off, I assume.
So, without further ado, into the questions.
If you had the choice, in which state would you vote?
This question is pointed towards the upcoming (and in part already held) elections in 3 of Germany’s 16 states, Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. Out of these 3, I would like to vote in Thuringia. Of course, all of them would deserve to make it, and all these countries would benefit from a Pirate parliamentary party, but there are two reasons for that decision: first, among the three states, the Pirates in the race for Parliament in Thuringia are the ones I know best, and therefore wish most to make it into office, because I’m looking forward in joy to what they could accomplish there. Second, out of these three States, Thuringia is, in my opinion, currently the one with the biggest political relevance for the rest of the Republic.
Why do you vote Pirate?
There are so many good reasons to vote Pirate, and I probably would have to write three to four posts to fully explain my political goals and opinions and how they perfectly align with the Pirate Party and Movement (Maybe I will write them another time, sometime in the future…). But roughly it comes down to this: First, there is still the trust I have in the Pirate Party to change the way politics work, to implement the often-cited „political system-update“ and to change the political culture for the better. Second, simply because I still find the thought of a society in which net neutrality is the guiding concept in all political areas hauntingly beautiful.
Which catchy tune comes to your mind, when you think of Pirate Events you participated in?
Well, the Pirate Party itself has got its very own playlist on my mp3-player, but if we are talking music that I connect to cooperative action, not lone contemplating… This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBLZOlUfWQk
(If you dont get the lyrics, trust me, rarely has there been a finer reason to learn German :))
Which piece of advice would you like to give to the Pirates in the State mentioned above?
Oh dear, I dont know Thuringia THAT well… But, there are a few lessons I learned from the elections in which I recently campaigned:
– Take a break after the showdown. You earned it, and you need it.
– Do a detailed documentation and retrospect of your campaign, on every level, from State down to your regular local meeting. And be sure to document it properly. You learn from your mistakes and you cannot be sure if the people in the next campaign are the same as in this one. So make sure that your self-criticism can be found again.
– And please do NOT point too many fingers, be they directed to the inside or the outside. Do not blindly blame. A true political alternative is determined by actually offering political alternatives, not just pointing at different black sheep than the others.
What would you like the Pirates to do differently? What are your wishes concerning the party in general?
Just like the second question, I could stretch this one out for a long long time. I won’t, however, mostly because this will lead to me turning into Captain Capslock and I will be off ranting for half an hour or so. And I do not want that.
So I will leave you with one, very specific point: Please learn to use different platforms according to their strengths as well as their limitations: for some things, Twitter is just great, while for others, emails are the proper tool. In other cases, it’s better to pick up the phone, and for things that cannot be solved via phone Twitter might be just right. Or you create a doodle, or open up a pad, or….
Maybe my thinking is too simplistic here, but I still believe that roughly a quarter of our problems, be they internally or externally, are caused by an inappropriate use of communication media. I am not the one to give specific rules for usage here, just ask yourself from time to time „Is this the proper communication channel for this specific thing?“
To whom do you pass the Relay-Stick?
This took me quite some thinking, mainly because most of the people I would have liked to answer these questions had already done so before it was passed on to me. But in the end I came up with three worthy names, with which I will just leave you here:
@atropos_ch
@lainee42
@BjSemrau
Bring it on 🙂
