So...i joined the Black Kos boycott. And I am only coming back now.
But I took a few days' extra posting here when most who joined the boycott had already started. The reason was simple...there was an election in my hometown of NYC that needed attention, so I gave it attention. The organizers of the boycott were on board with that. Some around here attacked me for waiting until that election was finished before I joined the boycott, but the boycott organizers were completely supportive of that.
VERY few people on dKos paid any attention to these critical elections, so in one case a teabagger defeated a decent moderate Democrat and in two other cases corrupt machine candidates won over reform candidates. We could have won at least one of those three elections...possibly two. But voter turnout was miserable EXCEPT for the Teabaggers and the corrupt machine. Reform, progressive Democrats dropped the ball and if we don't face up to that we will continue in the same failing pattern here in NYC.
But what really surprised me was the fact that when I posted my final diary before joining the boycott, I got slammed for anti-Semitism. Anyone who knows me knows that is absurd in the extreme. And those who actually read what I said in a linked diary will see that my comments that got attacked were very accurate and were not controversial. My assumption is that most people who read the diary a.) had taken NO PART in the election I was discussing, and b.) did not read my linked diary. I guess my personal mistake was to assume people would click over. I didn't want to spend too much time on the failures of the progressives when there was a more important issue I wanted to highlight before joining the boycott: the local community response to rapes and assaults in the area.
I am not happy with dKos because I did my best to engage all y'all's attention in some really critical elections and no one paid attention. Then, when I gave y'all a very careful analysis of what went wrong I got accused of some really absurd shit. And no one showed any interest in the main focus of the diary, which was to help defend women against assault. Something is rotten on Daily Kos. Maybe I pushed too much into one diary, but when trying to tie up loose ends before joining a boycott, seems I had little choice.
Small update...I link to my diary explaining the election results below (though I notice Daily Gotham is down right now...I have alerted the publisher). For those who think this is only my opinion and still think I harbor some kind of anti-Jewish bias, let me link to an analysis by someone with far, far closer political ties to the Orthodox and Hasidic communities in New York than I have. Here is his analysis of the situation shortly before the election:
http://www.r8ny.com/...
And I will note that comments in that piece from the Orthodox community back up my assertion that bigotry trumped all else in that community in this particular election.
There were three local races I focused on. Number one was supporting David Weprin for Congress against a right wing extremist teabagger. This was an uphill battle around here because too many felt Weprin was too boring or too mainstream or too tied in with the local Queens and Brooklyn machines. So few people around here bothered to notice that we fucking LOST Anthony Weiner's seat to a teabagger. But I can't fault dKos too much because a.) I know some folks did try (not enough!) and b.) because I know that the fundamental failure was not here, but was in the Orthodox Jewish community which makes up a large part of the district.
Here is my diary discussing the role of the Orthodox community in that failure for everyone: http://dailygotham.com/...
My claims in that diary got praise from some of the top Jewish bloggers in NYC and was based on the actual statements of the Orthodox community itself...my statements were in no way considered controversial in NYC...but in dKos it was seen as troll worthy. Well, sorry folks, there are some seriously ethic things that go down in NYC that actually affect elections and Dems need to be aware of them. In some cases it is Orthodox or Lubavitcher or Satmar Jewish communities exerting themselves...in other cases it is divisions between Haitian and Jamaican, or Haitian and Trinidaidan or Caribbean and Southern black...ethnicity is huge in NYC and not something that can be ignored. I tried analyzing exactly why we lost Anthony Weiner's seat, and my linked diary was praised as a good analysis by the local Jewish community, yet was not considered worthy of anything but troll rating around here. Fine...maybe NYC issues aren't welcome here. Or maybe discussions of ethnic issues aren't welcome. I have been told that by many people on dKos and many who left dKos who preferred our approach to ethnic issues on Daily Gotham and Culture Kitchen.
And what really pissed me off is that I got more people attacking me for statements that were EXACTLY what the Orthodox Jewish community was itself saying about why we lost than I EVER got in diaries trying to get people fighting to win the district. If you can't take the time to fight for the district, why the hell do you come in and attack me for an accurate analysis after the fact? The Jewish bloggers who were fighting for the district alongside me felt my analysis of the race was pretty much spot on. But the dKos community who largely dropped the ball through the whole race, attacked me for my analysis. Well...honestly, no one who attacked me seemed to really know anything about the race. So why didn't they investigate? I will take some of the failure as my fault since when you write a diary you have to take responsibility for where it goes. But they also have to take some of the blame because quite simply they did not click on my link and did not have a clue as to what happened in the race.
I will say that the reaction to my post did suggest one positive thing. Perhaps the boycott worked. Suddenly everyone was oversensitive to what they saw as anti-Semitism (ironically all occurring at the exact moment when efforts of mine to save my family's ancestral synagogue in Latvia were finally bearing fruit!). I would rather I get the overreaction that I got because people misinterpreted my statements as anti-Semitic than if they let genuine anti-Semitism go unchallenged...which I have seen and objected to. I just hope the same people are at least equally sensitive to the objections Black Kos has to racism on dKos!
So to all of dKos who accused me, in an amazingly absurd farce and without actually reading my linked article, I do appreciate your sensitivity to anti-Semitism and I hope you apply the same sensitivity to racism on dKos. But I also think you all attacked me with no real knowledge. The Jewish community involved in the district I covered praised my coverage. Daily Kos could learn something from that.
I also have to say that I was appalled that the issues that I spent the vast majority of my last diary before my boycott participation was almost completely ignored. I spent most of my diary discussing rapes and sexual assaults in my neighborhood and the efforts to fight back against them. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to that. Which is sad because the efforts to fight back were damned good...but dKos didn't care about supporting self-defense for women in the face of current assaults.
And finally those who made snide comments about my writing a diary while supporting the boycott of dKos ignored direct statements I made about why I wrote articles beyond the boycott start and that I was saying that I was definitely going to do my time not writing for dKos in support of the boycott.
So I suspect the people who got on their high horse before will attack me now as well. But they should read what actually went on and what I actually wrote before throwing stones. I feel that if what I wrote got the full agreement of diverse elements of the Jewish community in the district I wrote about, then the attacks on this site don't make much sense. And they miss a key point that Democrats need to realize when approaching districts like the one I covered.
The Weprin vs. Turner race (wherin I solidly supported the moderate Jewish Democrat over the non-Jewish, Teabagger republican) is something we need to learn from. That doesn't mean I feel we need to cave to the bigotry of the Orthodox Jewish community. But we have to understand that it is that very bigotry among a particular Jewish group that lost us Anthony Weiner's seat. That is the analysis that got me so attacked. And yet it is very much true and that same Orthodox Jewish community is proud of the very actions I highlighted in my diary that got everyone so upset.
So I expect some more attacks on this diary...or more likely it will be ignored. Both are fine. I am no longer sure this is the venue for my blogging. I have loved it here, but not so much right now. The fact that the complaints of Black Kos, many Jewish Kossacks, Muslim Kossacks and LGBT Kossacks get ignored has made me unsure whether Daily Kos is my venue to blog. And the attack I got recently for a very careful and locally well received anlayisis of a local election re-enforces that uncertainty on my part.
If I am not welcome here then I am more than willing to bow out and leave Daily Kos to those who feel they know better. But my wife and I will continue to fight the good fight, including against bigotry from all sides, and against assaults on women, the two themes that really were the focus of my last diary.
I respect this community overall. But right now I am rather disappointed in it. I know that won't go over well...but that is how I feel.