Lists, with the personal contacts they encourage, the vast volume of news and argument they distribute, and their low cost and high speed are near the core of the internet's value to activists.

All the local leftists chime in right on key whenever their side launches a new national or international campaign. Lists are a big factor in their wide-scale coordination of ideas and actions. A friend who monitors some enemy traffic reports that they have an extensive network of lists on almost every imaginable topic. It's time our side learned to use lists!

In January, 1998, I started a list: QRN. I expect the intial volume of the Quackgrass Roots Network to be about 30 to 60 posts per month, but growing as I find new sources. I'll be sending requests to various interesting people to keep me informed on their site updates, news relevant to their specialty, and their new thoughts. I'll relay the best of what I find to QRN.

I'll also be sending QRN brief observations of my own that either don't merit a full-dress article, or that I haven't yet figured out how to jam into the restrictive mold of a Quackgrass Press article.

You can lurk in security! I'll send posts as blind carbon copies, so subscribers' email addresses will not be broadcast to the world.

If you send me something for QRN, I'll assume that you are eager to drop your anonymity so that other subscribers can contact you--unless you most earnestly and vigorously request that I anonymize your item. I will honor requests for anonymity--but with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I prefer that you welcome personal contacts with new allies. When such contacts flourish, they become spawning grounds of new ideas, plots and plans!

Please DO send news items relating to the progress of our ideas! I hope that such news will become the list's main content. Please do send brief comments (like letters to editors) that connect a new point to our basic ideas, or that make an old point in a vivid way. Please do send tips and hints for fellow thinkers and activists.

Please DON'T be insulted if I don't relay your item; I'm remarkably picky. That's probably why you like my site!

Those who subscribed to the paper Quackgrass Roots will know what to expect from the Quackgrass Roots Network. It will be devoted to the same newsy snippets, tart comments, philosophical observations and activist speculations that made Quackgrass Roots such an interesting read--and such a good source of short items to pass along.

And please! Cut me some slack! I've never run a list before. If I stumble, please help me to dust myself off.

PS: In case you're wondering how I can call a basically one-way list a "Network," it's because I monitor some lists which are run by others who monitor other lists--and because I can foresee you monitoring other lists and setting up your own list, and the people on your list setting up lists, and ... . Get the picture?

Use the following link to subscribe to QRN. I manage the list handraulically; you're not talking to a computer! (If your browser can't handle the pre-set subject line, just use the link below the orange table.) Feel free to introduce yourself with a few remarks-- Michael Miller.