I'm going to do my best to get some data on the panels I go to, just to help round out information that's out there.
apologies ahead of time-please use this as an indication, not a 'paper of record', as I'm not trained to get it all in doing these real time.
Okay:
Holding Congress Accountable
Lane Holden
Jane Hamsher, in for Jane _(who had a baby last night)
Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend
Ari Melber of The Nation
Chris Carney - disappointment, promised
Pam: a progressive agenda means something. what is the progressive agenda between different communities? a lot of times, there are some agendae that are forced to recede to elect Democrats.
we need to make the tough balance, communications
Ari: kind of an outside - worked on the hill, and presidential politics. what are our levers? votes, money, local media, local party (generally subservient to the incumbent)
Lieberman challenge was an example: the elitest reaction - lots of good people, on that issue, said 'he won a primary 18 years ago, once, that should be enough:.
National interest groups
Party leadership
Beltway media
there are ways to affect things, you can create levers, use controversey to keep them honest, engaged in the ways.
Once you elect someone, you must try to keep the communications open, but there are challenges involved.
Jerry McInerny, elected, but a supporter who put in lots of time and energy to get somebody elected, but she can't get ahold with him now.
Part of it is creating a culture within the progressive community that knows how to respond when things happen (when representatives don't live up to what they promise). (in re: Rodriguez)
When are we going to win (Pach had to talk people off the roof on FDL). If you don't win and you're going to take your marbles and go home, we have a real problem.
Blue America: train readers to give based on principle over time. It may take a couple of cycles, but we're going to do it that way.
So, we have to create a culture that has expections of those people once they are elected.
Now includes questions from the audience:
How do we define progressive?
Living wage, health care, equal rights, getting out of Iraq, our Constitution,
What are the specific things that define progressive?
We have built up enough trust that lots of people want to claim Liberal or Progressive - that's a good thing.
there's the DNC Platform - but it's not very progrrssive on things like Iraq or abortion.
Interest groups have learned how to hold people accountable - we don't like that transactional politics, but they are better at it than we are.
Progressive issues are moral issues - how does it impact regular people.
50 committed progressives at the local level can transform the local party.
The Lamont race paid off even though Lieberman is still there. The Blogosphere is great for addressing people's disappointments, working through them, and getting people out into the community to keep going.
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How do we hold them accountable, how do we craft a narrative that holds them accountable without being shrill.
We are supposed to hold them accountable! We have to do it, because in reality, we're the only ones who can do it the way we do it.
We need to be pushing staff choices as well as agendas.
We need to build our liberal muscle. One of our leverage points is primary.
Find somebody who will run who will in a primary who will be more liberal (see Kosopedia's Contender's Registry). That makes the candidate spend more of their capital - we can force them to move to the liberal.
I'm a strong patriot - I am a liberal - when the person at the top of the ticket says that, it creates space for all of the candidates (2000 of them).
We have to be thoughtful about what merits a primary challenge, though, it shouldn't just be a kneejerk reaction.
What happens when the Iraq war ends, how do we keep progressives together?
The working person is really hurting out there. Letters to the editor - you have to be out there, using local media, talking to your peers.
access is seductive. be aware that having access makes it harder to hold them accountable. how do we hold their feet to the fire when we don't have the front page power.
you're not nobody: you have a sphere of influence, a civic space to engage.
be sensitive to the fact that, even though you're writing critically, we have to be able to walk back from that - you can wail on the presidential candidates, but remember, we have to get one of them in, so keep that in mind as well.
your audience could be bigger than you think - if you're on of the bigger blogs, .gov people may be reading, and they'll respect it more if you keep the above in mind.
The media is also reading.
A lot of the most effective mass leaders reach over the heads of the established to get their word out.
People in power listen to people who have a base. If you want to be strident - the only way that politicians will pay attention is if you have a big base.
which are the good effective interest groups in Washington?
lots of bipartisan orgs are the least effective in getting things done. CRW is pretty good.
But some interest groups; disconnected from their base, membership may not be paying attention, many have become a big road block, and a big part of the problem.
Working for US (economic populism, netroots org. Kos is on the board...)
the constitution is key; Congress should have a convention. unless we have a national convention of state delegates.
the best way to hold congress accountable is to run for down-ticket races.
Creating a Culture of Grassroots Giving
Dave Brown, moderator:
only a percentage of the biggest blogs actually donate to grassroots organizations.
Joe Rospars (now Obama's net guy): they're most proud of the nunber of people donating under $5.00. Two things, besides getting out of the way:
Lower the barriers to entry
Raise the expectation of what it measns to be a supporter - tell 20 people that you know that you gave the money and why you did.
Shy Sass (new voice at MyDD): what do we need to do to have people give regularly to progressive grassroots organizations? We need a group of people who have a personal stake in it, and they have to have the money to donate. the kinds of people who might do that are people who have their careers in the progressive movement. the problem is that they're underpaid. They don't usually have the money to donate. There are people who are wealthy and upper middle class, and they're not understand the importance of donating on a regular basis. they are heavily targeted by campaigns, and that's where they give.
it's too much because of donor fatigue and too much communication.
it's not enough because, our people are incredibly talented- we're leaving a lot of talent on the table.so, strengthen the movement by giving this talented group ways to become better off.
using the power of entrepreneurship and the power of for-profit businesses, we can fix the problems we have. We have a cottage industsry, but we need to encourage that and push it forward:
- keep the conversation going about the problems
- support entrepreneurs
- provide them with funds
there's a lot of stop and start - for example: Crashing the Gates comes out, there's blogosphere discussion for a few weeks or months, and then the discussion ends. The discussion needs to be ongoing, identify problems and solutions and plans to execute, then execute them.
Mentors to connect entrepreneurs with training, then startup money (may be the biggest problem). Business plan competitions, peer-to-peer lending circles, integrate systems like that into the blogosphere.
Angel funding, venture capital funding - all are needed.
Commonweal Foundation
"Who Really Cares?" book that came out, studying giving patterns. The Right gives more than the Left: why?
- Compassionate conservatism: it's not gov't responsibility to take care of people, but the resposibility of the people themselves to feed the sick, etc.
- Religion: most religions tithe - it's ingrained in people who go to church once week - and they're usually conservative. Secular people see that as a duty.
- Charity begins at home - the right teachers their children to donate to worthy causes (from missions in Africa to the Heritage Foundation)
- the happiness foundation: giving feels good. Conservatives give weekly, the Left gives annually.
So, how do we develop a culture of giving?
churches are not always bad - sometimes they can actually help in the community
develop relationships with churches.
get kids to donate.
don't be elitist.
Home of the Blue is a portal site - sign in, belong to a caucus - the hope is to create a netroots labor caucus, netroots environmental caucus - part of the idea is to introduce people to the projects and ideas are out there. 3 times a year there's a bill before Congress - if everyone commits to invest $10.00, $60,000 arrives in the campaign account of a congressperson, the congressperson will be a lot more likely to vote progressively. People can feel a meaningful connection to where that gift is going. They'd have direct control over how that money is going to be spent.
I left at the point of audience questions because I wanted to take a quick break, ingest some sugar, and, most importantly, charge up the laptop...in preparation for Video for Change..
which had a time change and is now at 12:30, not 11:00., so I'm not going to make it, as I'm going to the PR panel at that point. Hopefully the other video panel later today will be at the same time..
now I'll head over to the African American netroots caucus...
African American Netroots
Is there a leadership crisis in the black community?
many people who are actually doing great stuff, but the media doesn't cover it.
faces have always been important, people coordinate efforts who wouldn't have been able to contact each other.
Older people talk about identity politics - the media is at fault there as well. Our issues are not addressed as part of the central discussion - see the media response to Katrina. there needs to be a dialog amongst people who are actually in the community.
NAACP has very strong corporate ties. they could have created the greatest corporate giving program ever, and they didn't do so.
there are leaders - but they are not getting the attention they deserve, and some are media illiterate, digitally illiterate.
who owns the media? of course they are not going to focus on our issues. we have to manage our expectations, and those outside of our community need to know what we're doing and what we need to help.
black people are adapting broadband at a fast rate than the rest of the population.
you could be a leader and not know what a blog is.
the crisis of leadership is basically local.
electeds are not accessible, supposed to show up, and don't.
any discussion of black issues finds its way to the media too early in the discussion. can we have a discussion: if there was no media, what would we be doing? what's the strategy, first- before thinking about the media.
people have achieved positions of power, and the way that the media and institutions have changed - they're not really interested.
through the power of numbers, bloggers can create a groundswell for change.
trying to generate interest, trying to generate money is really hard.
if we don"t empower this generation of leaders.