So many emails of despondency, but so many more of 'Right! What can I do?'

I've been an activist for fifteen years. It started in forests in NSW, and though the grassroots campaign against the NSW forestry commission was hugely successful, I had to face off the limitations of the movement, which was largely 'hippy' or whatever. (Caveat: the experience gave me an enormous respect for some of these 'hippies').

Then I went to the city, and was forced to face the even huger limitations of what I've come to call the anachronistic Left, who seemed to always occupy the centre of activist space.

What I'm getting at is I have never before seen the apparent beginnings of a movement like I am witnessing now. This is the activist movement I have always dreamed about - real people, from the middle, with everyday values of decency, and who do not have an ideology for a brain.

At the same time there is an incredible cross-fertilisation of views where such wasn't happening. The political fault lines have all changed. Liberals, socialists, labourites, social justice campaigners, anarchists, feminists, environmentalists, agrarian socialists (Nats, CEC, Katter), and mostly people who've never especially identified themselves with any of these, all of a sudden have a lot to talk about.

The term I've come up with for this phenomenon, which I think Margo helped pioneer with Webdiary, is glasnost. There is just too much at stake for people with values to not really, really try to talk with each other, so screw all the old fractures.

Democracy is far from dead and buried. Ozzies don't give up, ESPECIALLY when the chips are down. And that's what I'm seeing.

Omnia Vincit Amor - Vergilius