Saturday at Yearly Kos

by: Tony S

Sun Aug 05, 2007 at 11:01 AM EDT

Friday at Yearly Kos

by: Tony S

Sat Aug 04, 2007 at 09:23 AM EDT

I'm going to temporarily pretend that the appalling FISA vote (the Trust Alberto Gonzales Act) last night never happened, just because I need to hold on to the idea that what we're doing here in Chicago still has some semblance of purpose and meaning. Any lawmaker of either party who voted for this travesty of a bill should be ashamed of himself or herself.  

Fourth Amendment, R.I.P. Thomas Jefferson spins in his grave.

More YearlyKos

by: Isaac Smith

Thu Aug 02, 2007 at 05:12 PM EDT

A big topic among the netroots is, as one might expect, Internet policy -- making sure that broadband Internet is accessible to all Americans, and that people doing politics online aren't subject to unnecessary regulations, either from the government or from the telecom industry. Matt Yglesias, reporting from the YearlyKos convention in Chicago, muses on why this is so:

People -- lots of people -- want to hear Copps talk about telecommunications regulation and what they can do to help fight for a better regulatory environment. And the people aren't lobbyists for phone companies or cable companies or television networks or anything. They're ordinary citizens (relatively speaking) who've gotten interested in telecom regulation and doing public interest activism on that topic.

This is, in my view, one of the aspects of the netroots that gets most overlooked in the media coverage I tend to see. This nexus of issues is an area where until very recently the conversation was entirely dominated by interested corporations. There was no equivalent to labor unions or environmental groups to anything else in civil society to way in. And now there is! It gets much less attention than anti-war activism or sending mean emails to journalists, but these telecom and media regulation issues are a very big deal to the netroots. People didn't just show up to hear Copps speak (and he's not a very good speaker), but gave him a standing ovation when he took the podium and are laughing at his broadband policy jokes (which aren't, in my view, especially funny). And it's not just an audience of obsessives, either, of the dozen or so people I recognize here none of them are specialists in this area as such.

YearlyKos!

by: Isaac Smith

Thu Aug 02, 2007 at 11:47 AM EDT

Unfortunately, Free State Politics is not going to the big progressive confab, YearlyKos, this weekend in Chicago. But in the interest of solidarity, I'd like to follow some of the topics that will be discussed there on this blog, and how they apply to the Maryland political scene. To start off, here's Chris Bowers talking about a subject near and dear to my heart: Support from progressive donors for the progressive blogosphere, and progressive activists in general:

It is remarkable what a couple million dedicated progressives can do when they have a place to freely congregate, talk and organize.  What I call the progressive working class is just another term for the progressive grassroots, which, I believe it is fair to say, had atrophied during the 1980's and 1990's.  By serving as the largest media that is directed primarily at the progressive grassroots, the progressive blogosphere has helped to more fully tap the potential of the progressive grassroots. This is an absolutely vital service, since it impossible to have a successful political movement, or even a successful political party, if your grassroots activist base feels apathetic, disengaged, and alienated from the organization, party or "movement" it is supposed to be supporting.  The progressive blogosphere has helped re-connect, excite and more fully engage "working class" grassroots progressives after the corporate dominance of the 1990's, and the failure of many liberal and progressive elites in stopping one conservative power grab after another over the past ten years. Finally, there was a place for them too, a place where other progressive grassroots activists were talking with one another and fighting back.

Given this, to leave the progressive blogosphere in its current state of under-funded, perpetually near-collapse subsistence would be one of the biggest mistakes in the entire history of the progressive donor community.  Even though the economy for progressive, political donations surpasses $1B annually, the entire economy of independent, progressive, political blogging is less than $10,000,000 a year (and most of the that goes to a handful of larger websites).   Considering that the progressive blogosphere provides as much activist support to the Democratic and progressive cause as any other constituency, the lack of money directed toward the progressive blogosphere is, quite frankly, scandalous. There are even a few advocacy organizations, not to mention larger newspapers, which run on annual budgets surpassing that of the entire progressive blogosphere. To allow such an important development in the progressive ecosystem continue to starve is a travesty.