Ay, there’s the rub. Where do you draw the circle and say “these are the people who are legitimately part of the community and need to have their voices heard, and others are not”? Because in practice it’s very difficult (impossible?) to include all the people in the circle and still have any voices actually heard.
At Occupy Vancouver there were lots of passionate folks who were participating primarily through on-line discussions on platforms like Facebook, and they felt frustrated that they weren’t being included in the vital decision making processes. On the other hand, the people on the ground (sometimes literally, or at least in tents) were creeped out and angry that some inaccessible floating cloud of internet-people were trying to silently, invisibly influence the community that they themselves were physically a part of.
Tricky tricky. The circle probably can’t be squared, but it probably can be rounded off an important amount. Good on you for taking that challenge.
