Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 49)

Just more than ten years ago, I was wrapping up my sophomore year at Delaware State University. I had spent two years in their print journalism department and had worked my way from a regular reporter to sports editor and then finally news editor at the school paper, The Hornet.

That last semester I spent wondering about the most significant phenomena of my time at DSU, I was a white student at a historically black college, one of only two white journalism majors in my department at the time.

Both my fellow students at my teachers encouraged me to write about the “white student experience” at Del State, and in doing so, I often drew into the conversation the other big school in the state: The University of Delaware.

This reflection brought to you by the historic meeting of my Del State Hornets with the (some say mighty) Fighting Blue Hens.

Some fact memories from that time:

• Despite Del State being known as “the black school,” the student body at Del State was 75 percent black, and 25 percent everything else. The student body at UD was 96 percent white. No one called it the “white school.”
• When I was high school there were more than a few urban myths about Del State, as you might imagine there are for Evergreen in Olympia. One was a mysterious female student that spread AIDS throughout the school. I was warned not to get AIDS before I started attending.
• Did I mention that Del State and UD have never played each other before. I think this has as much to do with the relatively tight football schedule (as compared to baseball or basketball, which the two schools have played against each other) and that UD has been a historic football power, and DSU not, as it has to do with race. But, in part, race had some part to play.

By the way, see that Hornet up there? Designed by my classmate Chris Brown.

DSU v UD section of the Delaware News Journal
With matchup finally set, football talk heats up
Game forum

Right back at ya, artistdogboy:

had they died by Pearse’s side or fought with Cathal Brugha*
Their graves we’d keep where the Fenians sleep, ‘neath the shroud of the foggy dew.

Also by Peadar Kearney, the Soldiers Song.

The video below is what I was talking about here. I took it from the collection I just posted below, editing down so you can see just where TJ spoke.

The funny part of this is that TJ was probably the only speaker that I can remember actually being heckled when they spoke. Seems that the small handful of pro-Baird folks who showed up had the guts to yell at TJ.

Additional videos:
“We’re so disgusted with the Republicans we have to go for a Democrat.”
The lady who missed her son being the ball boy at the CHS game
Round Four
Round Five
Round Six

This is my attempt at a more concise explanation of what this brain dump tried to get across.

Important points from Applebee’s America:

• The most important Gut Values today are community and authenticity. People are desperate to connect with one another and be part of a cause greater than themselves. They’re tired of spin and sloganeering from political, business, and religious institutions that constantly fail them.

• In this age of skepticism and media diversification, people are abandoning traditional opinion leaders for “Navigators.” These otherwise average Americans help their family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers negotiate the swift currents of change in twenty-first-century America.

• Once you squander a Gut Values Connection, you may never get it back…

Much of Applebees America is about people finding community, connections and authenticity in places like Applebees restaurants, churches and political campaigns. How these organizations make themselves a conduit of people’s lives and by being community minded and authentic, they gain the loyalty of customers. By community minded, I don’t mean these organizations donate to the local United Way and issue a press release, they allow communities to form and to be conduits of meaning.

In American sports, there is very little of this. The two places this kind of community thrives is college sports and professional soccer.

College sports has community ingrained in it. Life long fans and alumni make up the most hard core supporters of any team. They send donations, they join booster clubs, they buy season tickets. They do more for a team than any average NFL or MLB fan would do. They develop deeper connections to a team that goes beyond buying a t-shirt or a ticket.

Major League Soccer could develop this same kind of community and loyalty. Imagine if the league promoted the dozens of active supporter clubs as the backbone of the league.

Simply on the surface, supporter clubs like the Red Patch Boys in Toronto provide a much better fan experience than other sports. Coordinated chants and the passion in the stands is simply attractive to the new fan or to any fan.

But, there is a deeper social aspect to supporter clubs that the league can take advantage of.

Supporter clubs in leagues world wide are the social glue that hold leagues together. Its not uncommon for team management to meet regularly with supporter clubs. It is also not uncommon for supporter clubs to evolve into supporter trusts, charities that donate money to the club to help keep the team going.

Fans have connections to deep to a club that they would hand over money to the management with no other expectation that the team would continue to exist. That isn’t the kind of connection that exist in any other American sport (outside of college and high school). I’ve never heard of any Red Sox fan, or especially a group of Red Sox fans, simply donating money. Not, that I expect that to happen with any MLS club, I’m just using it as an example.

That said, like the Red Patch Boys in Toronto, there are things (like interfering with scalping) that supporter clubs can do to the direct financial benefit of clubs. Not that just simply providing a social structure surrounding a club and their brand doesn’t have a direct financial benefit to a club.

If people feel directly apart of something larger than themselves, they will (to put it frankly) be more loyal customers. They will buy more shirts (even after the rush on Beckham jersies falls off), they will watch more games on t.v. and they will buy more tickets.

So, what can MLS clubs do encourage fans building social bonds through supporter clubs?

1. Less of this.

2. Learn the lessons of political campaigns. Since 2002 or there-abouts, politics has been infested with bloggers, meetups and other social stuff. Learn to love this quote:

Joe Trippi: The people are coming to this thing. And whatever we do, they take it and make it better. It’s their campaign now. We’re at the point where, if this is going to work, it’s going to be because of them. All we have to do now is have faith in them.

We’ve all been talking about it, and it’s like this. It’s like we’re standing on top of this fifteen-story building. All these people have gathered. Now… what we have to do is jump. And trust them to catch us.

Howard Dean: You’re absolutely right. I can see it. But do we have to be crazy about it?

So, read The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, especially the last chapter.

Read this and…

Here’s an example. I’m at a Chivas/Galaxy derby stood next to a dude wearing a Dodgers T-shirt when the Chivas hardcore burst into the stadium like a red-and-white tornado. Dodgers dude nearly has a heart attack.

“What the fuck!” he yells, taking a step back. “Who the hell are they!” I explain they’re soccer fans and this shouting, jumping, yelling, screaming carnival is how soccer fans trend to behave.

It’s baseball dude’s first soccer match. You can bet it won’t be his last. There’s no doubt that David Beckham will put meat in the seats, but it’s the noisy, life-affirming, autonomous, independent, witty, irreverent punk-culture of the fans that’ll hook them.

Yeah, I know. I’m being ridiculously optimistic. I’m ignoring the fact there are vast deserts of inert fan-zombiedom in the MLS. And even at the noisy-fan infected grounds, the pogoing mobs of flag-waving fanatics are flanked on either side by dumbstruck armies of gawking, spoon-fed sports consumers. (Hey, English footie snobs, remind you of anything?)

But what if the disease spreads?

…help spread the disease.

Yes, we’re playing musical templates here. Just when you thought it was ok to look at that black template, I changed over the the new xml based templates here at blogger. They are cool.

And, I got this one to work for me by knowing that “absolute” was the opposite of “relative.” I didn’t even know it would work, but it did.

Change his shirt to: Politician or Campaign.

Her shirt to: Voter or Citizen.

I had two posts at Washblog this week (here and here) grinding the stone on getting a Presidential primary next year. It turned out all wrong at the state central committee in Bellingham.

The best post of the conversation was Steve’s (who turns out to be the man behind the initiative to get the primary in the first place):

A second major reason to support the Presidential Primary is that it, and not the caucus,is a better and more realistic organizing tool for Democratic politics. The Presidential Primary is a trial run for candidates to turn out voters to support them and more accurately reflects the actual pool of voters who will be voting in November Presidential election. There is a big difference in mobilizing 1% of the voters to turn out for a Democratic caucus versus trying to get the a majority of registered voters to vote for you in a primary.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post like this for a few weeks, but a post at Washblog put it over the edge for me. This is a cross between a mental exercise and simply writing down what I’ve been thinking over the past few weeks.

1. Register as a minor political party here. Actually try to stay classified as a minor party as long as possible, as far I as I can tell, the benefits of being considered “major” are far outweighed by the regulatory burdens.

2. Avoid running candidates for any statewide elected office. First, if you get over 5 percent, you’re automatically a major party, and as I said above, that is to be avoided. Second, you waste a lot of energy on getting one person elected to a highly unlikely seat.

3. Find low interest local seats and districts, where one party is dominating, that is where your opportunity is. These are places where if there is a minority party, its obviously pretty ineffective. Like my own 22nd LD, the Republicans are pretty far gone, their status as the small minority has made them not more reasonable, but rather more ineffective and extremely extreme.

4. Be the party of more engagement. Both major parties (mine included, sigh) have been working the past couple of years to get people less interested in civics, their government, and actually getting involved. From both parties messing with the primary to just the Republicans actually trying to prevent people from voting, their is a real opportunity of a “civic” party.

5. Take a page from Unity08 or rather these guys. Be a web party. From organizing local chapters on a meetup.com type system to writing a party platform via wiki, there is tons out there

At the same time, avoid being like Unity08, those sad-sack insiders.

6. Also, be like Blue Tigers, make your new party about more than just getting people elected, its about making your community a better place.

Last night at the central committee meeting of the Thurston County Democrats, former state legislator Sandra Romero announced that she’s running for Thurston County commission. She will be seeking the seat being left open by Diane Oberquell.

Jon Halverson, a former mayor of Lacey, is the only other announced candidate.