Democracy Awareness Campaign...an idea

[OnionPatch]

A friend and I were lamenting the lack of citizen awareness and involvement in govt. and wondering what could be done about it. The schools don't seem to teach the constitution or the concept of free speech, democracy, etc. The media never talks about it. Many people actually want to get involved but don't really understand enough about how govt. works to feel they can contribute. Lots of people think they are actually staying informed by watching the TV news.

Our idea was this: What if there were to be a campaign that would be focused on educating people about political process, issues, etc. It would be similar to "get out the vote" drives but would have a wider focus. There would be billboards similar to the "got milk" type of campaigns only they would say things like "Got Democracy?" "It's 12:00...do you know where your vote is?" "Don't rely on the TV news...dig a little deeper" and so on. All of it could lead to websites, flyers and so on that educate people on the very basics democracy and our government and the importance of getting involved politically. It could point out that the corporate media has a profit motive and so on. Since our schools refuse to teach, maybe its time to do it ourselves. I know it would be hard to get commercials on the corporate television, but maybe billboards, mail flyers and so on. It would have to be non-partisan but anything that gets regular Joe involved in politics is working for us and against the RW. Is this idea stupid? Could it work at all?