lacha
25th April 2003, 03:39
Dear comrades,
I would like to ask you all to view our website www.bolivarianfund.org This site was born last fall when I returned to the states after living in Venezuela for 2 years. You can see that we had great expectations of what we could put together. Unfortunately 3 full-time working class folks have not been able to do all that we had planned, although the construction of several of the projects is still in the works.
Over the last year, many other websites have sprung up in support of the Bolivarian Revolution. Some of these are doing such a great job at disseminating information and analyzing the situation and providing forum that we dropped these tasks from our site.
Recently, we have decided to step back and look at what remains to be done and what it is that the Bolivarian Revolution needs most from us. We have come up with a plan that requires the participation of us all. Below I will outline the idea. We ask that you send this message to anyone or any group that you think would like to get involved. We then invite your comments and your statement of possible interest. From there we would like to begin a discussion of those interested through which we can hammer out the nuts and bolts and write up a proposal to present to our Venezuelan counterparts. (I will be contacting many of them today as well to start them working on the idea too.)
The overall purpose of the idea is two-fold.
Create an internet presence for as many Bolivarian Circles as possible. The goal is to present the circles to the international community directly, demonstrate their activities in their communities and generally reshape the international view of the Circles to reflect the truth instead of the “armed militia, Chavez thugs” they are being portrayed as. Having an international presence (the individuals themselves) will help to keep them safe from a witch hunt in case a right wing take over occurs in August or beyond. (Remember that Circle leaders were rounded up the first day of Cormona’s reign.
Create a relationship between international supporters of the Revolution and the Venezuelan Bolivarians. This relationship includes hosting and maintaining a central web directory and fund raising for Circle projects and Bolivarian schools etc.
The first step in achieving our goal is to create a community of international Bolivarian supporters. The members of this community would register themselves as Solidarity Circles with the Venezuelan Government. Choose a name such as: Bolivarian Solidarity Circle Miami or Bolivarian Solidarity Circle Dolores Huerta or whatever.
This community would be responsible for helping our Venezuelan counterparts get on line.
The second step is to contact all the web-based Bolivarian Circles (those that are already on line that principally exist on line as independent media, yahoo groups, etc.) and contact all the regional coordinators that are already on-line. We will foster relationships with them to gain their trust and begin the creation of an internationally organized movement.
The third step is to contact the grassroots Circles that are truly community based small groups working to make their neighborhoods a better place. We will need the above Venezuelan Circles for this third step, because, if you have ever tried to contact the grassroots Circles you have undoubtedly found that they do not trust people snooping around especially foreigners.
The Organization:
I am envisioning a central directory site where one can go to find listings of all of the above types of Circles and links to their web pages. But most importantly the pages of the grassroots Circles.
We Solidarity Circles would create a Central Site which would have links
1. to Solidarity Circles web sites (if they have websites of their own)
2. to the Venezuelan web-based Circles and regional coordinator sites (regional coordinators that do not have sites already could be hosted as pages on the Central site instead of creating a site for them),
The Central Site would host the grass roots Circles.
Home page:
This bilingual central site would explain the purpose and function of the Bolivarian Circles as an institution. The information contained on the government web site for the Circles would be reiterated here along with the history of the circles, statistics and/or demographics that we may compile etc.
Donations:
There could be a contributions form accepting Paypal. A donor could donate to the Circles in general or to a specific circle or specific project. We could post the donors names and what project their money went to. We could even feature a project of the month (or quarter) showing its progress or completion.
Each grassroots Circle page would tell about the neighborhood, the members, past activities, current and future projects, photos, needs, as well as messages from Circle members. Venezuelan web-based, regional coordinators and solidarity Circle members would go out and find, photograph, and interview the grass roots Circles and maintain contact with them.
Organizational Options: Solidarity Circles could each take responsibility for a task or each take responsibility for a number of grassroots Circles. Or we could partner solidarity Circles with grassroots Circles in a “Sister Circle” fashion.
There are still many bugs to be worked out of the idea…. However I believe it is worth pursuing.
Let’s get together and discuss how to make this a reality.
Lacha
I would like to ask you all to view our website www.bolivarianfund.org This site was born last fall when I returned to the states after living in Venezuela for 2 years. You can see that we had great expectations of what we could put together. Unfortunately 3 full-time working class folks have not been able to do all that we had planned, although the construction of several of the projects is still in the works.
Over the last year, many other websites have sprung up in support of the Bolivarian Revolution. Some of these are doing such a great job at disseminating information and analyzing the situation and providing forum that we dropped these tasks from our site.
Recently, we have decided to step back and look at what remains to be done and what it is that the Bolivarian Revolution needs most from us. We have come up with a plan that requires the participation of us all. Below I will outline the idea. We ask that you send this message to anyone or any group that you think would like to get involved. We then invite your comments and your statement of possible interest. From there we would like to begin a discussion of those interested through which we can hammer out the nuts and bolts and write up a proposal to present to our Venezuelan counterparts. (I will be contacting many of them today as well to start them working on the idea too.)
The overall purpose of the idea is two-fold.
Create an internet presence for as many Bolivarian Circles as possible. The goal is to present the circles to the international community directly, demonstrate their activities in their communities and generally reshape the international view of the Circles to reflect the truth instead of the “armed militia, Chavez thugs” they are being portrayed as. Having an international presence (the individuals themselves) will help to keep them safe from a witch hunt in case a right wing take over occurs in August or beyond. (Remember that Circle leaders were rounded up the first day of Cormona’s reign.
Create a relationship between international supporters of the Revolution and the Venezuelan Bolivarians. This relationship includes hosting and maintaining a central web directory and fund raising for Circle projects and Bolivarian schools etc.
The first step in achieving our goal is to create a community of international Bolivarian supporters. The members of this community would register themselves as Solidarity Circles with the Venezuelan Government. Choose a name such as: Bolivarian Solidarity Circle Miami or Bolivarian Solidarity Circle Dolores Huerta or whatever.
This community would be responsible for helping our Venezuelan counterparts get on line.
The second step is to contact all the web-based Bolivarian Circles (those that are already on line that principally exist on line as independent media, yahoo groups, etc.) and contact all the regional coordinators that are already on-line. We will foster relationships with them to gain their trust and begin the creation of an internationally organized movement.
The third step is to contact the grassroots Circles that are truly community based small groups working to make their neighborhoods a better place. We will need the above Venezuelan Circles for this third step, because, if you have ever tried to contact the grassroots Circles you have undoubtedly found that they do not trust people snooping around especially foreigners.
The Organization:
I am envisioning a central directory site where one can go to find listings of all of the above types of Circles and links to their web pages. But most importantly the pages of the grassroots Circles.
We Solidarity Circles would create a Central Site which would have links
1. to Solidarity Circles web sites (if they have websites of their own)
2. to the Venezuelan web-based Circles and regional coordinator sites (regional coordinators that do not have sites already could be hosted as pages on the Central site instead of creating a site for them),
The Central Site would host the grass roots Circles.
Home page:
This bilingual central site would explain the purpose and function of the Bolivarian Circles as an institution. The information contained on the government web site for the Circles would be reiterated here along with the history of the circles, statistics and/or demographics that we may compile etc.
Donations:
There could be a contributions form accepting Paypal. A donor could donate to the Circles in general or to a specific circle or specific project. We could post the donors names and what project their money went to. We could even feature a project of the month (or quarter) showing its progress or completion.
Each grassroots Circle page would tell about the neighborhood, the members, past activities, current and future projects, photos, needs, as well as messages from Circle members. Venezuelan web-based, regional coordinators and solidarity Circle members would go out and find, photograph, and interview the grass roots Circles and maintain contact with them.
Organizational Options: Solidarity Circles could each take responsibility for a task or each take responsibility for a number of grassroots Circles. Or we could partner solidarity Circles with grassroots Circles in a “Sister Circle” fashion.
There are still many bugs to be worked out of the idea…. However I believe it is worth pursuing.
Let’s get together and discuss how to make this a reality.
Lacha