Hello there ! We have now a brand new blog using Pelican.
Hello there !
It's been a long time...like two years without posting, wow.
Memopol was a bit sleepy, it's hard to find new contributors, but, still, it appears to me that this projet *needs* to go on.
So we decided to reboot this project !
As you can see, we begun with a brand new blog using Pelican, on which you will sure hear from us ;)
Don't hesitate in following the reboot discussions on our mailing list or on the irc channel (see contact page). It's a good moment to join the project.
The best way to explain what Political Memory is, is by explaining where
it came from.
So, let's start by a bit of context. Political Memory is a tool built by
[La Quadrature du Net](http://laquadrature.net). It is its major
campaigning tool.
La Quadrature du Net is a citizen group defending fundamental rights on
the Internet by:
- raising citizen awareness about their political representatives'
actions
- trying to get citizens involved in the political life and demand of
their representatives that they represent and defend their rights
- acting very closely with these representatives
- organising campaigns during which citizens contact their
representatives before certain votes or for given occasions,
educating or warning MPs about issues
- getting MEPs to sign written declarations (for instance, La
Quadrature campaigned on a written declaration about
[ACTA](http://laquadrature.net/en/ACTA) which over half the MEPs
signed)
- and most importantly, trying to increase the political cost of
decisions. Making sure elected representatives think long and hard
about what their constituents will think of their decisions. The
Hadopi “three-strike” law in France is a very good example of that.
In order to reach these goals, Political Memory tries to make it easy
for citizens to:
- follow la Quadrature's work, and campaigns
- understand their representatives' actions
- make it easy to contact their representatives
- raise the political cost of representatives' decisions by keeping
them under close scrutiny
In order to work, Political Memory gets its data from two sources:
- The European Parliament, via Parltrack, for the European MPs
- The French Parliament, via NosDeputes.fr, for the French MPs
This data is then used for several things:
- MEP listings and contact details
- voting data
- show these representatives' score according to our voting
recommendation
Once all this data is input, MEPs are rated, votes are recorded and
citizens can see what a given MEP has been up to, how they've voted on
specific issues (those on which la Quadrature works).
Citizens can easily reach out to their representative, at any time, or
during a specific campaign.
Eventually, this will increase the connexion between citizens and their
representatives, putting citizens' concern back at the centre of
politics.
For a more lengthy and detailed explanation about what Political Memory
is about, you can read [Changing Democracy with Code: a Word from the
Developpers](http://www.memopol.org/changing-democracy-with-code-a-word-from-the-developers/"Changing Democracy With Code: A Word From The Developers").
