Bryan, don't be discouraged. This is gonna take a bit of patience. It's not just that people live in fear or lack character or anything like that. Just different personalities and objectives.
I know a guy who started out so rabidly pro-program that the third thing he did after finding our forums (after trying to argue for the program and calling us all losers) was to set up his own pro-program forum. He's still got the forum but neither it nor he could really be described as pro-program.
In his deliberate, plodding way, he figured this stuff out to his satisfaction and now probably does more for 'the cause' than most people. He doesn't do suits or pickets or proselytizing or make any other sort of overt effort to shut them down or rescue kids or effect public policy. He just discusses the Program w/ whomever is interested, keeps the forum open (still, likely, for the primary purpose of hooking up w/ old friends.)
Different strokes for different folks. If you're inclined to put together a suit, just keep hooking up w/ others who are so inclined. Read up on successful and not so successful similar actions and try and come up w/ a good strategy.
Here are the two stickiest issues so far:
1) getting people who are willing and able to do this thing before any statutes of limitations expire and you lose touch w/ all wittnesses. I say able because a lot of people really shouldn't go all adversarial on Program people till they've recovered emotionally a little bit. No one should be pushed into it, ya' know?
2) chosing a defendant. When Erin Brokavitch pulled together that class action against the water company, the defendant was obvious. There was only one water company in question and they had liability insurance up the ying-yang. This industry is a little more difficult that way. In order to make a good case, you'd have to pull together enough willing wittnesses and do an incredible amount of documentation and investigation, but there's no $300,000,000 payoff possible. Unless, of course, Mr. Miller is successful in documenting abject failure and negligence on the part of the DOJ and/or State Department. But that's another story.
If you bright young bucks can puzzle through or around those issues somehow, I think you might pull it off. But if you look into it pretty well and can't find a solution to those issues then consider another tack.
Word has it that the Montel show has already taped an episode on Straight and possibly other Program survivors. They know and seemed interested in the fact that Dr. Phil and other competing shows have been hawking these places. So maybe this is the start of a trend. Ya' gotta admit, the basic story couldn't be better suited to daytime talk if it were made up just for that purpose. They may just be bored housewives who believe in magical thinking. But they're also that most awsomely potent voting/purchasing block known as the dreaded soccer moms.
So inundate all kinds of media w/ suggestions to cover this story. Or come up w/ some other creative way to address this. Whatever you decide to do I think you'll have a lot more success at it than I ever have. You're young, formally educated and SO much more lucid and oriented than I was 15 years ago.
America when will you be angelic
When will you take off your clothes....
America after all it is you and I who are perfect
Not the next world.
--Allen Ginsberg
