Should there be a summit (poss:online) for *all* opposition groups?

I've been reading my daily DU news and commentary fix, and after a few articles a thought began to form in my head: should there be a summit (wholly or partly online, using the best virtual conferencing software(s) readily available, so as to maximize the number of attendees) for all groups and individuals dedicated to reversing the neo* crap (-con or -"liberal") of recent decades?

As it is forming in my head (subject to great modification of course):

Who would be welcome to participate would be defined broadly as something like opposed to aggressive wars/destruction of civil liberties/pro-economic justice/pro- media reform/pro-authentic democracy/pro-environmental sanity. The object of the definition would be to incorporate as many people/groups/opinions within that spectrum of "more or less like us", whether they be Democrats, Greens, churches, anti-war groups, labor unions, minority activist groups, etc., including the many tiny local organizations and ordinary unaffiliated disaffected citizens who stumble across news of the conference and drop in on it. In fact a special effort should be made to reach *outside* of the "usual suspects" to persons and groups who share this general sentiment but who are not usually considered part of the "left". After all if we the "usual suspects" were doing just fine without reaching out and broadening our base, this country and the world wouldn't be in the situation we're in now.

The purpose of the conference would be to find commonalities, understand differences, and to network. With the invitation so broadly defined that one could, presumably, see everyone from Methodist church ladies to International ANSWER members in attendance, it would be important to work hard to insure that everyone a) understands the purpose B) some means would be in place to handle both disruptions and subterfuge (I have no delusions that the extreme left would arrive without an agenda to use and abuse -- of course they will -- or that some activists of any political shade wouldn't see such a conference as a medium for their own self-aggrandizement).


My personal motivation, why I think bringing people together may be very important, is that increasingly I hear the words "constitutional crisis" and see talk of a need for a new American reevolution, or at least significant revisions to the Constitution. As someone who has studied history, and who has in the past taken an interest in the history of revolution and of political instability, I know the "winners" who emerge out of such troubled times are not those who reflect the will of the people, but those who are the best organized and are most prepared to exploit crises.

If you can look at the situation in America today and honestly say that the best organized and most prepared would be the pro-democracy forces, you are much more an optimist than I am. I see, despite their obvious failures and the unpopularity of their views, an incredibly well organized and funded extreme Right, poised to exploit any instability to achieve something that sure stinks like fascism (remember, they just love to pretend they are antiestablishment, and wouldn't blink an eye as they described their coup as the "change" we all want). Right now I can't imagine a constitutional convention where the new product wouldn't stick a knife in the back of women, gays, enshrine corporate dominance, and bury habeas corpus, even if Democrats played some role in it. I can't imagine political instability where College Republicans and others of their ilk wouldn't march to the Town Hall and declare themselves the new government, with lawyers prepared to generate legal rationalizations for the act, 24-hour nonstop radio demagogues proclaiming their act to be the will of the people, and TV "news" prostituting itself to the new "government" when not busily discussing the latest goings-on with Britney Spears.


Our side will never have the top-down disciplined structures fascists and proto-fascists can muster, but we can talk to each other, understand each other, and know who to call on and when to call on them.