Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 168 of 177)

Some people don’t get something that is going on right in front of them until it does something for them.

John Carlson, KVI 570 host and no new gas tax fan and contributor, finally gets that grassroots activism is helped, yes indeed, helped by the internet. That revelation came to John after No New Roads in Eastern Washington Gas Tax turned in their wad of signatures on Friday.

I wish I had the direct quote, but John said something like: I really thought grassroots politics was gone for good, that we had really moved on, that our society wasn’t like that any more.

In regards to the power of the internet, his minds has been changed. Well, thank God. What took him so long probably has a lot to do with his view on Howard Dean and that Dean and deanforamerica.com probably pissed him off and that he couldn’t see beyond that to appreciate the good work done by Dean folks to improve the Democratic process.

That said, I think No New Gas Tax is a really bad idea, a boner if you will. But, I’m not going to let that get in the way of appreciating what they did. If you take out what would turn out to be some necessary promoting by KVI, No New Gas Tax showed how in a short time to get petitions out there, filled out a returned with no paid gatherers.

Recently I’ve been reading about how individual contributions to initiative campaigns can’t be limited, under the logic that limiting contributions to initiative campaigns would also be limiting speech (contributions can be capped to candidates because candidates, not ideas or laws, can be bought). Anyway, the idea was to eventually file an initiative to put a cap on individual contributions, thereby opening up the initiative process to “the people” and take it away from initiative pros like Tim Eyman and their hordes of paid signature gatherers.

But, now I’m on another kick, to open up the initiative process. If we can’t limit access to big money guys, or if you follow the logic that big money guys will always find a way into the initiative process no matter what kind of road blocks we put up, the only way to open up the process for you and me is to just open it up.

One of those ways is inspired by the NoNewGasTax.com folks:

Reduce the size of an initiative petition from 8.5×17 to 8.5×11

One of the speed bumps that NoNewGasTax.com has to deal with was how to distribute the petitions and, they suggested to supporters to go to Kinkos or wherever they could print out on legal sized paper, because not everyone has a stack of legal just sitting around.

By having legal petitions be the size that most people have in their home printer, internet centered campaigns wouldn’t have to worry about mailing or sending their supporters across town. Download, print, mail.

While you’re chewing this over, go to Keep Washington Rolling.

This isn’t meant to be expert opinion or anything, just reflections on some reading I’ve been doing.

I recently finished Noah Feldman’s After Jihad. A great book, especially for me, since I hardly ever pick up books like that (the last book I read about “foreign policy” was We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families), since it helps me put a focus on some of the stuff that I feel day to day.

Anyway, a couple of things that Noah has helped me put together:

1. They’ve been protesting in Egypt since May 25. Has anyone noticed this? I don’t get this listening to talk radio all day, but there is a democratic uprising brewing in Egypt and no one seems to be paying attention. This has to do with Egypt’s president for life (don’t call him a dictator, call him President Mubarak).

2. While the Egyptians are protesting, we’re using Mubarak as our man on the scene for torturing terror suspects. We can’t do that in the United States, but we don’t have any qualms about asking our dictator friends to do it. This is similar to the insanity going on over in Uzbekistan, but at least we’re talking a good game with that particular monster. That probably has something to do with Al Qaeda in Iraq killing the Egyptian envoy.

But, here’s the thing. We talk a good game about building a good and just democracy in Iraq. But, when democratic protests erupt in Egypt, we conspire with their dictator to torture terror suspects because that kind of thing is illegal here in the most free country in the world.

All at the same time, we see from 1999 to the present day, moving East from Serbia, a non-violent revolutionary movement that has successfully overturned non-democratic regimes, most recently in the Ukraine and in Kyrgyzstan. By subscribing to the violent overthrow model, we invite violent reaction. But, as we’re seeing in Egypt and in Lebanon, non-violent protest may very well lead to democratic government in the Muslim world.

Other good books:
From Dictatorship to Democracy
The unconquerable world

Our new page is here.

Our new email list is here. I also posted the first email to our list this morning, and its here.

Pretty sweet, kudos go to to Christi McGinley with the Thurston County Democrats!

Also, next month’s meetup: Framing Healthcare!

Andrew’s post on the puzzling demise of Columbian Watch, in which he references the “True Blue” version of the Pacific Northwest Portal got me thinking about activities by great Democrats in Montana.

Matt Singer and his good friends in the Big Sky state are putting together an online community, which up until recently was called the Last Best Ass, a reference to the phrase “Last Best Place.”

Anyway, their effort is now called ProgressMontana, an open, CivicSpace based, online community for Progessives. I wonder if we could do something similar here in Washington? We have gobs of liberal blogs in Washington, but the GOPers are the only ones that are putting their work together, even though its a fairly sad cross-post website.

What I would propose would be a stand alone, while cross posting would be allowed, but with some tools that would include diaries and new content. And, based on CivicSpace.

Jan Frel has a great post on the new democrats.org, in which she shares my early pessimism:

…I can’t find much here that’s different from the old Democrats.org, except that there’s the Democracy Bond — (read here monthly political subscriptions), but that isn’t great web design, just a marketing concept.

While the world waits for the organizing tools to arrive, how about a simple directory of links to the state parties — they often list their local events with some efficiency — with a subdirectory listing for contacts to county chairs? It would give at least some appearance that the Democrats are including the web in their 50-state strategy.

She also includes an email from the DNC’s Internet Director, Joe Rospars, which includes:

The ambition is to provide tools so that every person can organize in their precinct and make a meaningful political impact. Most organizations still don’t even try to embrace the idea of empowerment; they’re still completely closed off to people. Many that do tend to do empowerment for empowerment’s sake (asking for feedback that goes nowhere, asking people to take actions that don’t accomplish anything real, asking for money without explaining the content or the plan in a real way, never taking actions offline into the street or into the room where decisions are made).

We all can agree that if more people were involved in political parties, political parties would be stronger. Andrew and I can agree that stronger and more inclusive political parties would benefit the democratic process.

The problem comes along now as the parties try to grapple with the new Top Two primary in their current state. Right now, the parties aren’t exactly the most open organizations around, and it looks like their King County parties are nominated county council candidates that probably won’t get beyond the Top Two primary in September.

The Top Two conventions for both the GOP and the Democrats proved one thing, that in this crazy world, it counts more to motivate people than raise money. In my humble opinion, that is what matters most in politics, or should matter most. Unfortunately, Bob Ferguson and Steve Hammond are likely to get beat in September because people matter little in elections, it is money that counts. And, if Edmonds and Dunn can get on the ballot (we’ll see what the federal courts have to say later), money may very well trump people.

I guess my point though is that it shouldn’t be that way, people should matter more than money.

And, political parties have a lot to say about to what point people can be involved in the democratic process. In short, political parties should be a significant conduit for people to easily involve themselves.

Think yourself a Democrat, though, and show up to the King County convention last weekend, you wouldn’t have had any say on who was nominated. It was PCOs only that could vote.

In a way, that is an open nomination process, because, all King County residents could vote for PCOs. But, how many of Democrats in King County knew they were electing nominators last fall? Either way, there aren’t enough people who are active in political parties for nominations to mean anything really right now.

Now, if we had half the turnout and the exact same setup that we had for the presidential caucuses for the county conventions this year, that would be an entirely different bowl of noodles.

Other King County Dem Convention stuff:
NPI Blog: KCDCC media coverage
NPI Blog: Summary of the KCDCC Winners
Pleasing to Remember:The King County Democrats Nominating Convention

Two folks I respect and like to read came up with different takes on the democrats.org. Matt Singer and Julie at Red State Rebels both liked it way more than I did. Julie says:

There’s also the opportunity to invest $20 a month in DNC “Democracy Bonds,” with the quip, “you don’t get any money back – but you do you get your country back.” Howard Dean bought the first bond today, renewing his campaign idea of building a party fueled by many small donors. “You can decide to commit more money per month, depending on what you can afford, but the principle is democratic with a small-d — one person, one bond. Every person can be a stakeholder in our party,” the website says.

And, she has a good point, Democracy Bonds do what I and a lot like me want to see, campaign finance reform the only way it has to work, by regular folks giving small amounts regularly, investing in Democracy. I’m a bit jaded and I really want to see a meetup like tool.

But still, Democracy Bonds rock.

At another blog I did once, but gave up on, I had a list of blogs from Olympia. I’m trying that list again.

Its pretty cool after a few years how many people I couldn’t find, and how many more there actually are. I didn’t look very hard, but I got a pretty good list in under 20 minutes. Some of my favorites are still out there (Flummel…, Atomic Raygun) and some are still there, but haven’t been updated for awhile, but I listed them for old times sake (Making Mistakes).

Some new cools ones are Lacey Libertarian. If you go to his blog, its titled Puget Sound Libertarian, but his url is way cooler. Just something about being a Lacey Libertarian that sounds good to me, maybe its the alliteration.

Best name? The Pillow Farm. And, I don’t know why.

Man, that wasn’t much of an improvement.

The design is certainly, uhmmm, shiny, but the content isn’t all that differerent from the old, clunky democrats.org

Democracy Bonds? Huh? Is this just a dedicated fundraising tool for the 50-state strategy? It seems like a “I’ll give $20 a month” sort of thing, but its not particularly inventive, not what I expected at all.

And, democrats.org/meetup is totally gone, I think meaning they have no plans on resurecting it, which was my hope. Or at least providing a similar tool, like house parties or something.

Surpringly, the blog didn’t get much of an update either. At least, they could link to some of the blogs the state parties have up.

One things includes the local portion. The Western section almost reads like westerndemocrat.com.

But, I’ll say it again for anyone hasn’t gotten it, Give Us A Meetup.com Like Tool!

For the last few days I’ve been seeing a new splash page on democrats.org, and it seems like that about this time Monday, I’ll know what the brand new DNC website is all about:

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been a special splash page on Democrats.org for the past few days. Tonight we’re working on re-launching Democrats.org so that we can bring you a better and more powerful website that’s built entirely around the Democratic community.

So sit tight, and when you wake up in the morning, come right back here and see the new website built with you in mind.

You want to know what I want Santa “New DNC Website” to bring me? A tool, like meetup.com, for Democrats to organize online and meet offline. But, I bet you already knew that.

Hopefully, the new website won’t be a prettier version of what is already up there, which is a pretty shallow and pretty useless for the typical Democrat. Sites like mydd.com, and deanforamerica.com have done a lot more than democrats.org.