Welcome and Site Guidelines

Hello and welcome to the new St. Louis Activist Hub blog!  This will be the home of the weekly event listings sent out via the St. Louis Activist Hub facebook group.  It will also hopefully be a place where left-0f-center residents of the greater St. Louis metropolitan area can get together to discuss local issues, offer their opinions on state and national issues, and compare various strategies of working for progressive social change.  I'd love to have a wide range of participants, so if you think you'd like to contribute to this blog please send me an email at washupeacecoalition@gmail.com .

Since we all know that certain conversations (especially on the internet) can become more destructive than helpful , I think it will be helpful to lay out a few guidelines for the blog.  Right now they are pretty vague, but I wouldn't be surprised if they expanded and got more specific over time.   Here are some initial thoughts:

1.  Hopefully, a wide range of people will contribute to this blog.  Hence, there will be no grand unifying "position" of the blog.  Each person (including me) speaks only for themselves, so any claim that "The Activist Hub" has taken some position will be false by definition.  Of course, you are welcome to say that I personally have taken a position if such a position is reflected in one of my comments or posts.

2,  Personal attacks on other blog participants and abusive behavior will not be tolerated.  This will be a forum for addressing ideas, and therefore effective arguments will be those that discuss issues and facts rather than personalities. 

3.  Sometimes it is necessary to mention character traits when discussing public officials, since these traits can be relevant to whether they should be elected.  However, if one is engaging in harsh attacks on public officials, these attacks should in general be backed up by primary sources (links to news articles, TV reports, or other trustworthy sources of information).

4.  As is stated above, this blog is a place for discussing effective strategies for progressive change.  Thus, I am not particularly interested in having to deal with right-wing propaganda or talking points.  I do think it is important for people of different political persuasions to discuss important issues, and fortunately there are plenty of other places on the internet where this can happen.  

5.  In general, I tend to err on the side of free speech, and will consult with other people in cases where intervention is required.  However, I do reserve my right as the creator of the site to make final decisions.

 

Anyway, I have no idea whether any of this stuff will actually be relevant to this blog or not, but I wanted to get it out there to cut off any potential problems.  Since hopefully this blog will consist primarily of the cool people who are members of the facebook site, I'm optimistic that this will be a site full of thoughtful and productive conversations.