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Netroots Nation
Jul. 25th, 2010 05:12 pmJust got back from netroots nation, the annual conference for progressive bloggers/netroots. It started as a daily kos meetup but grew far beyond that community, and had > 2000 attendees, including many advocacy groups & political figures.
I went because some friends were going and encouraged me to go; and because I've been doing some online/offline organizing and wanted to meet with folk doing similar work - it feels like sekrit magick when I do it. For people who are close participants in the community, netroots nation is like old home week. For me, I knew enough people to bump into folk in the halls, know some people at parties, and join for dinner; but it wasn't that reunion; and because my organizing has been very local, I didn't have as much serious networking as some of my more connected friends. For people who've been following the scene closely, the sessions felt elementary, but since I haven't been paying that close attention, I got substance from the program as well as the socializing.
For the last couple of years I haven't been following big-picture politics that closely - I was really disillusioned in the early days after Obama got elected, when it was very clear from following financial expert bloggers like yves smith that financial policy was going to be driven in the interests of the failed banks. Not that I ever thought Obama was a progressive - I always knew that he was moderate, and feared that his tendency to compromise would prove perilous in the game of washington hardball, as in fact it did. Perhaps part of my reason to go was deal with those feelings of frustration.
Turns out that feeling of frustration was a major theme of the conference. The sense at the beginning of the event was of people feeling adrift; despite all their work for democratic candidates and policies, the powers that be scorned and dismissed them, and reached out to opponents more strongly than allies. Politicians at the podium tried to sell the Democratic administration's progress, but that sales pitch rang hollow. Van Jones was the person who reached the emotional core of the experience, when he acknowledged that people were feeling sad and angry and distanced, but counseled the crowd that 2008 was just a start, that building a movement was a long effort, and that people should reach out to each other instead of pulling apart.
Jones also spoke with insight about the perils of the internet-driven news cycle, discussing the parallels between his experience and the recent Shirley Sherrod brouhaha. In case you have't followed either story-- Jones had been an early Obama hire. He had been an activist for green jobs. When the right wing media publicized a (real) example of Jones using a four-letter word about republicans, and a (false) story that he had signed a petition alleging that the US blew up the twin towers on 9/11, he quickly resigned, not wanting to cause a distraction for the administration. Last week, a right wing reporter publicized a video clip that seemed to show Sherrod - a black woman in Obama's agriculture department - treating a white farmer unfairly. She was fired within 24 hours. It quickly came out that the clip was taking out of context - in her full speech, she described how she came to empathize with the farmer's situation and helped him save his farm. Though her father had been *lynched* when she was a teenager, she came around to see how poor whites also experienced oppression. Jones remarked that our culture now has better tools for sharing information, but we haven't yet developed the wisdom to deal with the information.
One of the substantive highlights for me were meeting a number of people who have been working on immigration and doing impressive-sounding work. Apparently they have made a lot of progress in moving good reform ideas from "unthinkable" to practical over the last decade. Immigration was a major theme of the conference, with a panel on immigration in nearly every time slot. Several of the immigration activists have been using blogs and social media with traditional organizing, and seem like good role models for the work I'm starting to do in other areas. I have blogs and resources to follow up and learn more about what's going on.
A less encouraging session was on surveillance and racial profiling. The panelists, who've been following the topic closely, agreed that the Obama administration's policy and implementation was indistinguishable from the Bush administration. The rhetoric is more sensitive - less reference to "Islamic terrorists" but the surveillance of muslim groups and many interest groups (like the radical Audobon society!!!) continues unabated, and 1.7 billion messages from US residents are spied on every day. The washington press doesn't cover the story, since they pick up stories if a member of congress is pushing an issue, or if there is partisan controversy. Under the Obama administration, members of Congress who criticized the Republican administration have been silent about identical policies coming from a Democrat. For the washington press, shocking facts alone aren't enough to make news.
The one encouraging moment from that session came from a member of the audience who spoke during the comment period. He had been Sacramento chief of police when the Bush Administration directive came after 9/11 to put the Muslim community under surveillance. He refused; he had been managing community policing efforts that built good relations with people, and putting folk under surveillance without suspicion would cripple his ability to work with the community to find bad guys when needed. Since then, he has been leading an organization to work with local police organizations about immigration and racial profiling. This was inspiring, since at the street level, profiling is about how police see and do their jobs.
Netroots Nation has become, among other things, a job fair for progressive candidates - dozens of candidates came to the conference to meet netroots activists who've done a lot of grassroots fundraising and support for candidates. Over the last five years or so, many early "netroots" participants have professionalized, joining mainstream publications, taking on party roles and paid campaign work, and advocacy organizations. On the one hand, this is a positive trend - there was and is concern that progressives fail to financially support people who devote their time and skills to progressive causes. On the other hand, it lead to some dead spots. The California Caucus was dominated by party members, candidates, union officials, and other official-ish people. The session was poorly run (45 minutes of introductions and 45 minutes of undirected conversation about ballot propositions with no follow-on actions), and it felt perhaps like a replication of the disorganization, ineffectiveness, and malaise of the California democratic majority.
Oh and I hate Vegas casinos. A walk across the casino floor makes me feel like crying. The clashing noises, the flashing lights, the stale air, the trickily designed maze layouts, the underdressed waitresses and dancers who I hope are well-paid, the intoxicated, glazed expressions of visitors, all of the well-honed tactics to separate visitors from money. A friend and I decided to go out of the rio for dinner - we walked through three parking lots across six lanes of traffic just to cross the street, and had simulated mexican food - we were both wanting bay area burritos at 1/3 the price and 10x the quality.
Summary: I'm glad I went. I made some good peer contacts in organizing, met some new friends, spent time with folk from across the bay that of course I need to go to nevada to talk to, and put some of my thoughts and feelings about larger political trends into context.
I went because some friends were going and encouraged me to go; and because I've been doing some online/offline organizing and wanted to meet with folk doing similar work - it feels like sekrit magick when I do it. For people who are close participants in the community, netroots nation is like old home week. For me, I knew enough people to bump into folk in the halls, know some people at parties, and join for dinner; but it wasn't that reunion; and because my organizing has been very local, I didn't have as much serious networking as some of my more connected friends. For people who've been following the scene closely, the sessions felt elementary, but since I haven't been paying that close attention, I got substance from the program as well as the socializing.
For the last couple of years I haven't been following big-picture politics that closely - I was really disillusioned in the early days after Obama got elected, when it was very clear from following financial expert bloggers like yves smith that financial policy was going to be driven in the interests of the failed banks. Not that I ever thought Obama was a progressive - I always knew that he was moderate, and feared that his tendency to compromise would prove perilous in the game of washington hardball, as in fact it did. Perhaps part of my reason to go was deal with those feelings of frustration.
Turns out that feeling of frustration was a major theme of the conference. The sense at the beginning of the event was of people feeling adrift; despite all their work for democratic candidates and policies, the powers that be scorned and dismissed them, and reached out to opponents more strongly than allies. Politicians at the podium tried to sell the Democratic administration's progress, but that sales pitch rang hollow. Van Jones was the person who reached the emotional core of the experience, when he acknowledged that people were feeling sad and angry and distanced, but counseled the crowd that 2008 was just a start, that building a movement was a long effort, and that people should reach out to each other instead of pulling apart.
Jones also spoke with insight about the perils of the internet-driven news cycle, discussing the parallels between his experience and the recent Shirley Sherrod brouhaha. In case you have't followed either story-- Jones had been an early Obama hire. He had been an activist for green jobs. When the right wing media publicized a (real) example of Jones using a four-letter word about republicans, and a (false) story that he had signed a petition alleging that the US blew up the twin towers on 9/11, he quickly resigned, not wanting to cause a distraction for the administration. Last week, a right wing reporter publicized a video clip that seemed to show Sherrod - a black woman in Obama's agriculture department - treating a white farmer unfairly. She was fired within 24 hours. It quickly came out that the clip was taking out of context - in her full speech, she described how she came to empathize with the farmer's situation and helped him save his farm. Though her father had been *lynched* when she was a teenager, she came around to see how poor whites also experienced oppression. Jones remarked that our culture now has better tools for sharing information, but we haven't yet developed the wisdom to deal with the information.
One of the substantive highlights for me were meeting a number of people who have been working on immigration and doing impressive-sounding work. Apparently they have made a lot of progress in moving good reform ideas from "unthinkable" to practical over the last decade. Immigration was a major theme of the conference, with a panel on immigration in nearly every time slot. Several of the immigration activists have been using blogs and social media with traditional organizing, and seem like good role models for the work I'm starting to do in other areas. I have blogs and resources to follow up and learn more about what's going on.
A less encouraging session was on surveillance and racial profiling. The panelists, who've been following the topic closely, agreed that the Obama administration's policy and implementation was indistinguishable from the Bush administration. The rhetoric is more sensitive - less reference to "Islamic terrorists" but the surveillance of muslim groups and many interest groups (like the radical Audobon society!!!) continues unabated, and 1.7 billion messages from US residents are spied on every day. The washington press doesn't cover the story, since they pick up stories if a member of congress is pushing an issue, or if there is partisan controversy. Under the Obama administration, members of Congress who criticized the Republican administration have been silent about identical policies coming from a Democrat. For the washington press, shocking facts alone aren't enough to make news.
The one encouraging moment from that session came from a member of the audience who spoke during the comment period. He had been Sacramento chief of police when the Bush Administration directive came after 9/11 to put the Muslim community under surveillance. He refused; he had been managing community policing efforts that built good relations with people, and putting folk under surveillance without suspicion would cripple his ability to work with the community to find bad guys when needed. Since then, he has been leading an organization to work with local police organizations about immigration and racial profiling. This was inspiring, since at the street level, profiling is about how police see and do their jobs.
Netroots Nation has become, among other things, a job fair for progressive candidates - dozens of candidates came to the conference to meet netroots activists who've done a lot of grassroots fundraising and support for candidates. Over the last five years or so, many early "netroots" participants have professionalized, joining mainstream publications, taking on party roles and paid campaign work, and advocacy organizations. On the one hand, this is a positive trend - there was and is concern that progressives fail to financially support people who devote their time and skills to progressive causes. On the other hand, it lead to some dead spots. The California Caucus was dominated by party members, candidates, union officials, and other official-ish people. The session was poorly run (45 minutes of introductions and 45 minutes of undirected conversation about ballot propositions with no follow-on actions), and it felt perhaps like a replication of the disorganization, ineffectiveness, and malaise of the California democratic majority.
Oh and I hate Vegas casinos. A walk across the casino floor makes me feel like crying. The clashing noises, the flashing lights, the stale air, the trickily designed maze layouts, the underdressed waitresses and dancers who I hope are well-paid, the intoxicated, glazed expressions of visitors, all of the well-honed tactics to separate visitors from money. A friend and I decided to go out of the rio for dinner - we walked through three parking lots across six lanes of traffic just to cross the street, and had simulated mexican food - we were both wanting bay area burritos at 1/3 the price and 10x the quality.
Summary: I'm glad I went. I made some good peer contacts in organizing, met some new friends, spent time with folk from across the bay that of course I need to go to nevada to talk to, and put some of my thoughts and feelings about larger political trends into context.
