If you have a plan that seems workable, there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to join you. If you don't, then jurisdictional arbitrage will continue to be the order of the day.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I can't come up with a clear and fully appropriate medium to actually challenge government overreach in a significant way.
It seems to me, viewing history as an example, it used to be possible to legitimately petition the government by means of demonstrations, protests, contacting legislators, etc. Now that's been completely replaced with lawsuits. Only by one party with significant means and resourcing sueing the other and waiting a long time to reach the Supreme Court do things get accomplished.
As this has to do with the drug war, however, I think things are slowly changing. If the Prohibition of alcohol can be any guide it will take a large enough public outcry along with voting people into office that share your point of view. All that takes time, money, and at least some way to sway the public (generally meaning control in some kind of large media company that the public believes/trusts).
The only way to get started is for people to get together and say they want to do it and start doing it. Apathy and complaining about it goes nowhere.
Don't confuse disagreement with apathy. Remember that post-Snowden Congress had the ability to put a stop to the NSA program and didn't, and the public outcry (outside of HN) was fairly muted. So it seems that you've got to win some hearts and minds first.
And winning the hearts and minds is not going to be easy. Consider the Tea Party (and importantly consider your own feelings toward the Tea Party) A bona-fide grass roots movement that the establishment has marginalized, ridiculed and baselessly accused of violence and racism and now stands charged with holding the nation hostage, by exercising legal and constitutional rights. I suspect you're movement would not fair any better.
>Remember that post-Snowden Congress had the ability to put a stop to the NSA program and didn't, and the public outcry (outside of HN) was fairly muted.
I don't see the public outcry as muted at all, but I suppose it depends on where you look. Remember, we're in a transition of traditional/oldschool media to new media.
I also don't expect the body politic to simply throw out their beloved spy apparatus after some public outcry. This isn't just a decision of Congress, but of a state funded military industrial complex that exists out of bounds of any kind of oversight with their own secret budgets -- something almost unheard of any prior state and without historical precedent. Trying to tear down the walls of that is going to be an extremely complicated and time consuming process, and I think its going to be a piecemeal affair.
> I suspect you're movement would not fair any better.
Obviously its very hard to establish a movement in the 21st century that can effectively alter the status quo. I look at Occupy as a better example -- and without getting into arguments regards one vs the other the Tea Party has continued where Occupy faltered and disintegrated. You may not be able to control what people say about you and its hard to keep a movement from splintering, but if you go by the basic tenants of creating a popular mass movement with leadership, specific political objectives, and enough funds, I think it's very possible to get things accomplished.
