It looks like C4SS has made its first blip on the “national security” establishment’s radar! Col. Jennifer Hesterman, USAF (Ret.) writes at Counter Terror Forum:

The articles are very well written and academic in nature. The lesson here: do not underestimate the intellectual wattage of some group members.

Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

To me, this small notice means we’re beginning to push up against the boundary that separates “laugh” from “fight.”

The fight in question is an important one. We’re fighting for “mindshare” in the struggle for control of the public policy narrative.

For us, that’s an uphill fight from the beginning.

Our opponents have a head start of centuries on us in pre-defining “public policy” as a monopoly function of the coercive state. All they have to do is argue over which power government gets or gets more of (and to whom it owes favor, privilege and largess in return). We have to convince an audience long conditioned to this kind of pre-fabricated “debate” that the real question is “why should government get any power at all?” and that the answer is “there’s no good reason for it to.”

The better we get at making our case and getting our arguments in front of readers, the more pushback we can expect from the establishment and its hangers-on. The good news is that that pushback will simply call more attention to our efforts. If our arguments are better (and I believe they are), that can only be good for us.

So, where are we at on the ol’ “getting our arguments in front of readers” thing?

We’re into double digits in terms of Google News indexed media mentions — mostly, but not entirely, due to our AlterNet presence. Infoshop and Anarchist News are also starting to carry some of our articles.

I’ve seen no “regular newspaper” reprints of C4SS material so far this week, but I’ll be keeping my eye out for them right up to the minute I hit “publish” on this update.

The media lists continue to grow — every piece I send out goes to more papers than the previous one did. Guesstimate: About 1,500 C4SS emails per week are landing in editor inboxes as of today. Two weeks from now, I expect that to be closer to 2,500 per week.

I’m rebuilding my “US Newspapers” list from scratch, going state by state and creating regional lists as well. The old list had 207 papers on it (after bad address culls, requested removals, etc.). The new one is already up to more than 250 … and working alphabetically by state, I’ve only finished Alabama through Connecticut so far. Bear with me, please — this is one of those slow, slogging data entry tasks that takes a lot of work up front and only produces bankable results over time.

I’ve established a C4SS “press room” at one of the free wire services to give a little extra visibility to C4SS press releases (they also go out via email). The first one — announcing Kevin Carson’s new research study — went up there yesterday.

A press release schedule is obviously heavily dependent on the Center’s tempo of activity, but I expect to be pushing at least one release per week by this fall.

And that’s the update. Have a great weekend!

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society