United States Pirate Party

 
My dear pirates,
 
It has now been quite some time since I left out across the country to tour communities in a quest to identify possible municipal level policies for the party.  I met with some success on this trip, speaking to and at a multitude of intentional communities about what legal barriers keep them from growing and evolving naturally.  Shared workspaces are now more common than they where when I travelled a half-decade ago.  Makerspaces are popping up everywhere.  I found that many groups feel that their local government does not support the desire to innovate and modernize their cultural makeup, of course; but very few had any idea what could be done to help. 
 

Zoning laws, limits to the number of people who can live in a facility, inspections from health departments, and the like where all common concerns and complaints.  Most of these groups also had larger plans that they would like to follow up with but feel that there is not the support in government to ensure that these plans would not be wasted time.  It is extremely hard to get people to work together and create infrastructure when you are merely waiting for the city to come shut down your project.
 
My next phase is now about ready to initiate.  We are to find an area that is friendly at the local governance level, devoid of local businesses, lots of free space and low property cost, within reasonable range from a major city, and so on.  I have surveyed a few communities to be this site, and none have come close to being as applicable as Braddock PA. 
 
Braddock went from 20k citizens to 3k citizens.  The average purchase price for a home in the city is 6000 dollars, the elections last time had a turnout of 292, there are almost no local businesses, and is 10 minutes drive from downtown Pittsburgh (with public transit options running through town).  The mayor has been on the public scene asking for modern and experimental communities to come relocate to the city.  There are a few urban gardens here and there, a biodiesel conversion shop, Carnegies first library, and not too much else.
 
I have created a map of places available for sale and am making notes about urban features.  This will soon be a wiki.  I plan to purchase a house within the next 2 weeks and locate myself and my team into it.  I have already put out the first wave of calls out, as you see I've been asking people on my tour if people would consider relocating to somewhere with a Pirate Party presence.  My list is 28 names long. 
 
We are going to work together to perform civil service works for the city of Braddock.  We are going to push out gov2.0 experiments, door to door local newspaper (logistically simple with there only being 500 households), create wifi coverage infrastructure (3 miles in diameter), and much much more.  We will let the locals dictate what projects we work on, and we will do them. 
 
Here we will train our Pirates in practical municipal level projects to introduce to their own communities.  We will also be providing an invaluable showroom of innovative ways to approach municipal governance.  We will also most likely get a significant amount of national attention for this operation.
 
So that's what I'm doing and where I am at.  I hope to have a large vehicle here within the week that will be capable of ferrying individuals from around the US to the city of Braddock to start filling the gaps and becoming permanent residents.  I've applied for multiple 'headhunter' jobs so that I can assist finding employment for individuals, and it won't be long.  If you are interested in joining us, all I have to say is I hope you can work and work hard.  The next few months will not be glamorous, but hopefully our actions will pave the road for a Pirate Party presence in the city government by elections in 2010.
 
Thank You
 
Ryan Martin
Administrator