Politicians influencing citizens' agenda influencing politicians' agenda

I think I'll be coming back again and again to the three points written by Luca De Biase about possible ways for the citizens' agenda to manifest itself, gain public momentum and acquire the ability to influence the political debate. Perhaps the most difficult one is the symbiosis between established, traditional media and the blogosphere.

But there are other relevant forms of possible symbiosis, and one of those is interwoven with the discussion in local councils, directly affecting the territory and where information can be directly transformed into a call for action. It is not a coincidence that Beppe Grillo, from his blog tribune, began to overtly influence the political landscape by proposing to endorse civic lists at a local level.

Today's example is the initiative started by Marcello Saponaro and Giuseppe Civati, members of the regional Council in Lombardia, aimed at blocking a decision to soften some of the regulations restricting building activities in regional parks (colorfully described as "decreto ammazzaparchi" - park-killer decree).

The initiative is a simple chain of posts, challenging bloggers to:

• conjure up an invocation (to Roberto Formigoni, president of the Lombardia region) to reconsider the decision;
• provide a link to the online petition;
• provide the list of links for the whole chain, and tag the post with "salva+parchi".

Despite being the most basic form of online direct participation, the petition is nonetheless an effective way to leverage the blogosphere - and its attentive, responsive nature - in order to mobilize a larger audience and perhaps raise the attention of the media, while the apparent #1 issue regarding Lombardia in the news (source: Corriere della Sera homepage, 25.02.2008) is the daily chronicle of a process for a murder case.

(the video - not suitable for kids in my personal, overcautious rating system - provides a humorous take on the subject of annoying bongos players in public green spaces and the recent developments at Bosco di Gioia in Milan)