the question is, what sort of village.

Over on MyDD, Micah Sifry has posted his thoughts on the meeting former President Clinton had with a group of bloggers. Matt Stoller, who attended the meeting, has this post up talking about some of the impressive stuff another blogger, Jane Hamsher, who also attended the meeting is doing. In his post, he writes, Like Chris, I’m feeling bored by the political environment, and somewhat useless.

I mentioned this to a friend who wrote that he wasn’t worried about the post and went on to talk about new connections being forged.

Perhaps it is what is going on in my personal life that is fueling my worry. About two weeks ago, my wife’s face went numb. She rushed off to the hospital to make sure it wasn’t a stroke. It turned out to be Bell’s Palsy, a common symptom of Lyme disease.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been dealing with this. The ability to detect and treat Lyme disease, like any other important medical advance has come as a result of people working together. As John DeStefano often says in his stump speech, none of us got to where we are by ourselves. We all stand on other people’s shoulders. We go to work on roads paved by others.

It has become more personal to me, as friends have brought food, have taken care of Fiona when I’ve had to take Kim to the doctors, have given me rides to take care of a broke down car, provide invaluable moral support, and so on. To borrow from the title of Hillary Clinton’s book, It Takes a Village. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to care for a loved one.

So, I think it is useful to look at the liberal blogosphere as a special village, a global village of sorts, to borrow from McLuhan. Working with the Lamont campaign, I’ve seen the great things that can happen when nationally known bloggers work closely with local bloggers, and with people who haven’t even read a blog yet. So, when I read about Matt or Chris getting bored, I worry. They are important parts of our liberal global village. When I read about bloggers feeling left out, I worry, they too are important parts of our liberal global village.

I’m sorry to get all mushy on you and stuff like this, but this is really important. We need to find ways to work together to help our country rediscover a government, of, by, and for the people. a country where everyone’s voice is important. We need to uphold people like Matt and Chris. We need to connect with bloggers that aren’t feeling connected. We need to raise up a new generation of bloggers.

Jeffery Feldman has some good ideas on this, as does Terrance at The Republic of T. I want to thank them for what they are doing. I want to thank people standing by Matt and Chris, and especially I want to thank everyone who has stood by Kim and I while we battle her Lyme disease.

Back when I was in college, Jerry Rubin visited my campus as part of a book tour promoting his book, “Growing (up) at 37”. Some of my friends protested his visit with signs saying “Cashing in at 37”. I really didn’t pay close enough attention, so I have no opinion about whether he was growing up, cashing in, or a little of both.

Years later, during my cashing in period, I worked with a management consultant who pointed me to Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. During a particularly difficult period we talked about the return of the hero. After the hero’s life changing adventures, he returns to his town and teaches and helps those around him to learn from his experiences.

These provide a backdrop to part of my understanding of some of the larger issues embedded in the recent discussions about certain A-list bloggers meeting with former President Clinton.

Over the past few years, the community of progressive bloggers has grown stronger and more powerful. I have seen much of that power first hand with my work for the Lamont campaign. The power elite of bloggers that were invited to the Clinton meeting represent to many people the heroes of this new community, and the question that sits in many people’s minds is, will they be growing up at 37, and exhibiting the traits of the returned heroes, will they be cashing in at 37 taking from the community that has made them strong, or a little of both. It is my hope that most of them will wear the mantle of returned hero proudly and continue to help build the community and to nurture new bloggers.

Yet I’m not part of that group. Tens, if not hundreds of people read what I write. I hope my assorted posts around the blogosphere help a little bit here and there, but I don’t have the audience of the A-listers. I probably never will and that is okay.

But still, I too am driven by a desire to make this a better country, to promote progressive ideals, to get people to think and act in ways that Democrats should be proud of. So, what can I do?

What I think I do best is to help build bridges and to help train new bloggers. By building bridges, by exploring new online communities, by trying to help nurture them, I am doing the little I can. Terrence, of the Republic of T has a proposal for moving forward. It relates nice with Jeffrey Feldman’s proposal as well as a small amount of what I was driving at with this diary.

We can, and should, be looking at ways to build community, diversity and welcome new bloggers. Some of it may happen at YearlyKos 07. Some of it may happen at other events around the country. I just hope that all of us, from the mighty A-listers, to lowly bloggers like myself can work together to make this happen.

Detroit has never recovered from the riots of 1967. What does it say about a nation that, after 39 years, it can not, or will not, heal such a wound? What does it say about the future of New Orleans?

As for Baltimore, I highly recommend a few hours watching HBO’s The Wire. Although it is “fiction”, it tells more truth than any “reality” TV show and is more relevant than the vast oceans of escapism that so define American television fare.

The question is this: If our house is not in order, as the evidence from too many of our cities suggests, why should we expect any other peoples to welcome the forced imposition of our imperfect model on them?

By: Dr. Farooq Hassan

(Synopsis of address presented at World Islamic International Awards ceremony
16th September, South hall, London, 2006)

It is my great honor to be invited here to receive the World Islamic International Award for Family from the London based World Islamic Family Coalition. As a networking coalition of Muslim NGOs our host today is involved in diverse matters including the family. This NGO is designed to provide resource services and to act as a caucus for Muslim institutions internationally. Although barely set up less than a year ago, it has begun its work with some degree of earnestness with institutions in the Islamic world. I thank the Secretary General Dr. Malik for his pioneer efforts in this regard.

But I must add that much work needs to be done by them if they have to make a mark in this field as an Islamic international NGO in Family matters. All the reputable institutions that are operating presently in the field of the family are invariably Western in origin. They are primarily organized for alleviating the misfortunes and woes faced by this basic human institution in their societies. I am not aware of a single non Western NGO in the field of the family to have embarked upon a venture such as our hosts have done with any significant impact.

Three years ago, many of us went to rallies where a presidential candidate told us, “You have the power”. We dutifully replied, “We have the power” and went about owning our newfound power in different ways. Some of us did what we were told as volunteers, some became leaders of new or revitalized Democratic clubs or local parties. Some of us went on to become candidates or even elected officials. Some of us are now incumbents running for re-election. Many of us found our voice online. Gov. Dean has gone on to become head of the DNC.

At a meeting in Burlington a year or so ago, I warned that as we became the new leaders, the new consultants, we also would become the new incumbents, and we faced the danger of acting out our own version of the line from Animal Farm, “All grassroots activists are created equal, but some or more equal than others.”

This has come home to me with the recent discussions of a meeting of bloggers with President Clinton. Two years ago, I was privileged to be one of the bloggers that received credentials to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. I remember the blog posts back then about who got to go and who didn’t. It is a difficult issue when there are few slots available. Some of the posts sounded like people expressing their disappointment about not making the short list, but others raised important points about what the selection criteria was, or should have been.

Now, there is a similar discussion about the Clinton gathering. The Republic of T started it off. Liza picks up the ball and runs with it. Micah Sifry at Personal Democracy Forum and kid oakland, in a DailyKos diary explore the issue further.

The most blaring concern is the lack of racial diversity. This is a big problem that I cannot speak nearly as well as Liza can about, perhaps in part because of my own whiteness. Yet I suspect the lack of racial diversity is just the most blatant part of the problem. Micah writes about how “power is seductive” and “most of them [the invited bloggers] were pretty awed by the event”. The bloggers represented are the new elite of the fourth estate. They have a great number of readers. They are the high frequency population in a statistical distribution, and not the Long Tail.

The problem is, they also have the danger of being a monoculture. Part of the beauty of the long tail is the diversity, the hybrid vigor that it brings. So, I get worried when I read writeups about the event, such as Christy Hardin Smith saying, “we wanted to emphasize the need for better messaging and coordination/cooperation with blogs and the Democratic leadership”. Whose message is being coordinated?

Do we have a new elite in the fourth estate? Do we have grassroots activists that are more equal than others? Have we moved from Edward R. Murrow, whom the Museum of Broadcast Communications describes as “the most distinguished and renowned figure in the history of American broadcast journalism,” and Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in television news” to a new generation?

Perhaps. Yet the long tail remains. The belief that all of us have the power, and not just a select few, remains. The belief that anyone can start a blog and get their voice heard remains. Yes, there is the problem with getting people to read our little blogs. There is the big problem of the digital divide. The voices that we really need to hear, the voices of the dispossessed, the disabled and the disenfranchised, regardless of their race, do not have access to blogs, and if they do, know one ever finds their blogs. Perhaps Winston Smith was right when he wrote, “If there is hope, it lies in the proles”. Perhaps what really matters isn’t lunch with a former President to better coordinate messaging, but helping at a Community Technology Center to bring new voices online.

I’ve looked at blogs from both sides now, from win and lose, and still somehow, it’s blogs’ illusions I recall. I really don’t know blogs, at all.

This is a cross posting of an original post by: Marty Kaplan

09.14.2006
How to Hack a Diebold (Ivy League Edition)

Watch this video

Princeton computer scientists have figured out how to hack into a Diebold AccuVote [sic] TouchScreen voting machine. The subversion of democracy takes a coupla minutes, a screwdriver or paperclip, plus a floppy with the malware they’ve written.

This is no comedy video; it’s a bone-chilling, blood-pressure-raising, citizen-outraging rebuttal to all the calming unctuous bromides you’ve heard about the safety of our voting technology.

The authors of this paper may be geeks, but they don’t wear tinfoil hats. The P doesn’t stand for Paranoia; it stands for Princeton.

I’d upload the Princeton video so you could watch it right here, but the Creative Commons non-commercial license it’s copyrighted under precludes wrapping it in an ad. As long as you attribute it and don’t profit from it, you can post the video on any site you’d like. If the hotlink to the video doesn’t work for you, here’s the URL:

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/videos.html

The complete paper can be found here.

Had enough?

I strongly recommend that you establish a custom “Global Warming” section on your Google news page.

In the upper right hand corner of the Google News screen you can click on the Personalize / Edit and create a custom section. Just enter the two words: global warming — in the search box. That’s how easy it is to do. I set mine to five stories. I may set up a whole page dedicated to global warming stories.

Sadly, Reality is badly under reported by the main stream media in the US. All of the key information, all of the emerging stories, on Global Warming have to be found in foreign sources.

Now here is the real challenge: How do we get the students in our trend setting universities and especially those universities in the early primary states, to light the fuse on this issue? It is the monster in the living room nobody is talking about.

The fact of the matter is that the baby boom generation has blown it Big Time. We had the Club of Rome “Limits to Growth” book back in 1972. We ignored it, or attacked it, as we did not want to believe it. Shame on us. Our children have every right to be mad as hell at us for our willful blindness to this issue.

This is a perfect issue for women, who are much more likely to take a long term view of things — especially the well being of their children. Given that we have perhaps only ten years to get this under control, even some men might get passionate about their futures, not just the next bit of sex, or drugs or gambling.

Time to get mad as hell.