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  • Author unknown

    Blue Majority versus K Street

    http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4888
    114 days ago in Open Left · Authority: 1,783

    I was at a conference today called Freedom to Connect with Donna Edwards, Micah Sifry, and Alec Ross an Obama advisor and the head of One Economy (a rough transcript of my remarks is here). It was one of those conferences with open internet advocates who are incredibly empowered, quite progressive, but still in the Silicon Valley vaguely techno-libertarian mindset that is both conducive to both creativity and an anti-political organizing model. The dynamic between Donna and the crowd was fascinating, as it showed there's a real distance between the people fighting the intellectual and business fights for openness and those fighting the political fights. In a lot of ways, we in the political blogosphere are the bridge between the political world and the world of tool creators. We understand that the people in Web 2.0 land and the sustainable energy industries are figuring out the tools and models for how to build progressive communities, while our job is to build the political power and policy apparatus to make that possible. I attempted on the panel was to enlarge the discussion about technology to one of power, to show that a room of progressive white dudes who can build mesh networks have a responsibility as citizens to ensure that everyone has the same voice they have access to. And they are there, or at least much further along than they had been a few years ago. Today is the last day of the fundraising quarter, and we are trying to get to 1000 donors for each Blue Majority candidate. If you haven't given yet, please give. We will never see another political environment like this in our lifetime, with so much capacity to put new and creative people into Congress with such independence and so little reliance on institutional deadwood. But your money, your $10, $100, $1000, matters, it will not only put these new people in there, it will put them in there with the independence to make progressive change. And then all the wind power and solar experts and sustainable agriculture specialists and green job trainers will be able to work their magic and transform this great country. So throw in some coin. I'll leave you with this message, from Donna Edwards, talking about how the K-Street lobbyists are already calling.