(Howie rocks, he has a heart almost as big as his mind. Please spread the word on this. – promoted by blogswarm)

Howie Klein, of Down With Tyranny and Blue America,  will speak to Democrats of the Desert about the netroots here in Palm Springs on May 16th.  This is such a gift to us, the latest of many.  Thank you, Howie!

Like most Dem clubs, our membership is largely senior, and many of our members don’t drive at night.  Imagine the manpower they’d represent if they spent those evenings in the blogosphere.  I’m also hoping to appeal to the younger set, who already spend excessive time online, but don’t yet get involved in politics.  They really need to see what Howie’s doing. 

So much more after the jump:

I first discovered DownWithTyranny while googling for mentions of Mary Bono, and soon found this: Nobody Knows the Trouble I’m In, complete with excellent photoshopping of Bono as a rubberstamp.  David Roth found a trusted and valued ally in Howie Klein.  Here’s the Blue America profile of David Roth.  Here’s the Team Roth staff profile on TRex’s Virtual USO Tour which got picked up by Hotline, btw.

Blue America gave David Roth the Have You Had Enough? video, a fundraising link on the BlueAmerica page, a slot in the BlueAmericaVirtual Tour, and raised over 6 grand for Roth online.  Even so, many active Democrats here still don’t realize the scope of the netroots role.  I know you’re wondering- Is Roth running again?  Well, we don’t yet know if Roth is running again, but Democrats here in red, red Riverside County need this information for 2008 no matter what.

Event details are posted at the Calitics events calendar.  If you’re in California, you’ll find it extremely helpful.  Naturally, the local media got a presser as well:

Democrats of the Desert will welcome Howie Klein of Blue America on Wednesday, May 16th from 5:30pm to 8pm.  Howie will address the current state of national politics and the 2008 races from his perspective as a netroots activist.

Who  After completing university Howie Klein spent 7 years wandering around the world and living in places like Afghanistan, Nepal, Holland and Morocco.  He moved back to America when Richard Nixon resigned and promptly helped start the first punk rock radio show in the country and then a DIY punk rock record label.  His adventures in the music business ended a couple of years ago when he retired as president of Reprise Records.  He began blogging almost immediately, starting Down With Tyranny.

What  Blue America works actively in congressional districts and states (in Senate races), collecting money and placing radio and TV spots, like the “Have You Had Enough?” video.  Blue America is an online collaboration of Firedoglake, Down With Tyranny, and Crooks and Liars. In the last 4 months of 2006 they raised $545,000 online for progressive Democrats and helped elect Jerry McNerney (CA), Jon Tester (MT), Joe Sestak (PA), Ben Cardin (MD), John Hall (NY), Mike Arcuri (NY), Chris Carney (PA), Bruce Braley (IA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Patrick Murphy (PA), Paul Hodes (NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Jim Webb (VA).

When Wednesday, May 16th from 5:30pm to 8:00pm

Where The Cathedral City Senior Center
  68-727 East Palm Canyon Dr., Cathedral City (across from Starbucks)
  $10 suggested donation, easy parking, refreshments

Contact: Beth Caskie, VP Programs for Democrats of the Desert
  at [email protected] for more information.

Democrats of the Desert is the largest and oldest Democratic Club in the Coachella Valley, chartered by the State Democratic Party of California.  Its mission is to advance Democratic values and to elect Democratic candidates at all levels of government. Democrats of the Desert has active programs of speakers, publications, political action, fundraising, and outreach.  Membership is open to all registered Democrats.

Here’s a photo of the Roth team from last year:

I know I’m not the only one grateful for the chance to thank Howie in person.  If you live in driving range of Palm Springs, you should come.  There’s an outside chance we’ll experiment with some video live-blogging. 

(In Orange and In Blue. Please give out some rec lovin! Oh, and at Facebook – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Join us on April 27th for a very special Blue House at the Brew House Blograiser to benefit the campaigns of Representative Jerry McNerney (CA-11) and Lt. Col. Charlie Brown (soon to replace John Doolittle as the representative of California’s 4th District).  This is a production of California’s blogger community (and our now moth-infested pockets), and we encourage everyone to come out and enjoy great food, delicious San Diego microbrews, and a big step towards making California even more Blue!

Organized to coincide with the annual California Democratic Party’s Convention, this year in San Diego, we’ll be gathering bloggers, delegates, activists and politicos of all stripes at Karl Strauss Brewing Company downtown to pay our literal and figurative respects to these two great Democrats:

Who: Charlie Brown, Jerry McNerney and friends
What: give $40 (split between the two) via ActBlue
When: 8:30 PM Friday April 27th
Where: Karl Strauss Brewing Company, Downtown San Diego
1157 Columbia Street – San Diego, CA  92101
Why: Cause good beer tastes better with politics

Space is limited! To pre-register with an advanced donation, visit the Blue House at the Brew House ActBlue page to contribute your $40 today.  All advanced contributors will be checked in at the door.

Jerry McNerney knocked off one of the biggest Republican villains in the country last November, and Charlie Brown is poised to capitalize on his near miss as John Doolittle goes down in flames.  Neither race will be cheap, and neither race will be easy, which is why we need your support to deliver victory.

Karl Strauss Brewing Company is ready for you.  California bloggers are ready.  Charlie Brown and Jerry McNerney are ready.  Now, are you ready to support Charlie and Jerry?

Guest-blogging at the Cafe San Diego blog today is Murtaza Baxamusa, senior planner, Center on Policy Initiatives.  It’s a relatively brief, bullet-point rundown of ways in which San Diego has been fiscally irresponsible with its development deals over the past 10 years or so.  It’s by no means an exhaustive list and it by no means covers everything that’s wrong with the given examples (Qualcomm Stadium, College Grove Wal-Mart, Navy Broadway Complex).  The real kicker- the part that has implications to everything we do here and everywhere else online- comes right at the end:

The last example illustrates how our officials are sold on the idea that any development benefits the community. Seldom does anyone sit down with a calculator and fill in the costs and benefits columns. The CEO of the downtown redevelopment agency, Nancy Graham, recently told reporters: “We don’t get into the financial analysis, and neither does the city.”

Yesterday, Francine Busby sent out an email wondering aloud whether San Diego could become “A Democratic Powerhouse”.  It recounted a recent meeting in which

Party Chairman, Jess Durfee laid out strategic plans to increase and mobilize Democratic voters and elect Democrats who will work for high quality education, energy independence, affordable housing, access to healthcare and other progressive priorities.

All of those, without a doubt, are important tent issues with national, state and local implications.  And while I might be unfairly critical, it sounds a lot like what sank Busby in her congressional race.  Big, national, non-specific ideas without providing me any inkling of what it would look like day-to-day in my life.  San Diego as a Democratic area isn’t as crazy as it sounds.  There are four congressional districts, 2 Democratic, 2 Republican.  The 50th is competitive, which tips the scorecard 2-1-1 if we’re talking about demographic makeup.  But that also means that the county Democratic party isn’t fighting too many tough Congressional races.  The County party is going to be involved exclusively in GOTV for state elections because, at least in the near future, that’s all the SD Democratic Party will be asked to do from state-level campaigns.  So what will it do locally?  Assembly, State Senate, City Council, Mayor and offices on down the line need to be strongly contested and/or defended, but when will the party actually take up the cause of accountability?

This is a tricky line for a party to tread.  Turning on the people you got elected to be representatives of YOUR party is tough to say the least.  But if the Democratic Party isn’t the party of accountability, then what else can it be that will ultimately matter?  If it isn’t the party providing the mechanism to actually get good things done, then as all these young people awake to politics and want to get involved, why would they use the party?

There are lots of reasons why public and party officials would overlook important aspects of this stuff, ranging from the well-meaning to the nefarious.  Maybe they have bad advice, or just a flawed perspective on the situation.  Maybe they just don’t have time to read through everything, and have to delegate to a staffer who misses the boat.  Maybe they’re looking forward to another nice campaign check from the beneficiaries of their actions.  Maybe it’s a healthy dose of condescending contempt for the general population.  Either way, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the more pressure is placed on government officials, the more responsive they end up being.  That applies whether it’s blog posts, MoveOn petitions, letters to your Congressperson, organizing primary challenges, or anything in between.  The end result is that our government is held mroe responsible and forced to be more responsive.

Now, the stuff in Baxamusa’s blog post isn’t sexy.  It’s not exciting, and it isn’t the stuff that mass movements are made of.  But it’s the day-to-day stuff that adds up to quality of life.  And it’s not that difficult to change.  It can be difficult to find an audience for local and state issues at times, but you don’t need Obama’s million Facebook friends to make a big impact.  For the hundreds or thousands of calls that might be required to get noticed on a national issue, I’d imagine getting five or ten people in one day to express an opinion on a San Diego development project would knock the city council right out of their collective socks.  It’s all a matter of degrees.

Not all places are like San Diego, where the general levels of political awareness and involvement are pretty low.  It’s not a tough bar to clear if you want to get involved and make an impact.  But even in places where civic participation is already a big part of the game, infrastructure gets built by local issues.  We chide our candidates to campaign on local issues, because that’s what resonates.  But too often we forget the implications of such an outlook.

If we want a 50-State Strategy, a 58-County Strategy, generally a party that reflects the people it aspires to represent, local issues ARE the infrastructure.  A party that’s involved all day, every day is the party who’s there to push these issues, because the party that can mobilize people and support their efforts to demand accountability and responsibility from their local government is the party that has the system in place when the national elections come around.

We talk often about changing the party.  Not wholesale, not violently or radically (crashingly?), but making it stronger by making it more able to use the power available to it.  Right now, too often, our local governments just aren’t getting the job done.  It’s not a partisan problem (members of both parties have shown the ability to be bad at their jobs), but a Democratic Party that is not just progressive, not just people-powered, but people-oriented, can provide the support for people to demand better.  And when it comes down to it, that’s what I want from my party and it’s what I’ve found more of in blogging: I want my demands to be loud enough to be heard.

Crossposted at Dailykos, MyDD, and my completely neglected blog

I am honored to be serving as a delegate to the CDP along with Ellis Perlman, a Professor Emeritus in political science from the University of Michigan-Flint.  He has been a keen observer of grassroots politics as it relates to this state for the past 100 years, and I asked him to put together some information on it, to serve as a historical perspective for those of us who don’t quite remember the days of Hiram Johnson and Earl Warren.  There’s some very good information here, and it all speaks to the fact that this “people-powered” movement is nothing new, it’s just being adapted for the 21st century.

The report, on the flip…

Grass Roots and Political Change in California  Jan. 21, 2007

Progressivism, building on earlier populist movements, has spurred a variety of grass roots movements during the past hundred years in California.  The state’s political history is encouraging.  It demonstrates that progressive grass roots movements can achieve power and influence public policy.  The examples below illustrate such achievements and influence.

Two factors should be noted.  One is that the movements typically have been rooted in the middle and upper middle class.  The second is that conservatives have had similar successes, especially in the 1960 and beyond.  -Ellis Perlman  January 24, 2007 

The Progressive movement in California was founded by Chester Rowell and Edward Dickson, two journalists who had become disgusted with the Southern Pacific Railroad’s control of the state legislature.  Their efforts ultimately led to formation of the Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican League, with clubs forming throughout the state.  This was a grass roots movement, largely from within the Republican Party, to clean up California government, and make it more responsive to Progressive ideals.
Source:  Joseph P. Harris, California Politics (Chandler:  1967), pp. 1-13

Another form of grass roots action and accomplishment in California involved the response of women when they first gained the right to vote.  Women’s suffrage was opposed by the elite in Los Angeles, and especially by the Los Angeles Times.  It was approved by 2000 votes in Los Angeles, and by 3587 votes statewide in a special election on October 10, 1911.  By December, more than 82,000 women had registered in Los Angeles, and more than 90% voted in the mayoral election.  Ironically, the Times, having opposed the women’s vote, congratulated women for their “intelligent voting” in defeating the Socialist mayoral candidate, John Harriman. 
Source:  Jane Apostal, “Why Women Should Not Have the Vote:  Anti-Suffrage Views in the Southland in 1911,”  Southern California Quarterly  70:29-42 (Spring, 1988)

A group of Republicans, mainly liberals, met in August, 1923, to organize a campaign to secure a liberal state legislature, and to oppose Friend W. Richardson, the conservative Republican governor.  They created the Progressive Voters League to contest the 1924 and 1926 elections.  The very conservative Richardson followed two progressive governors, Hiram Johnson and William Stephens.  The Democratic Party was weak, commonly winning no more than a third of the gubernatorial vote.  When Richardson was elected in 1922, conservative Republicans had a majority in the Assembly, and almost a majority in the Senate.  The Voters League was instrumental in electing a Progressive, Clement Young, as Governor.  The League then disbanded, and Conservative James Rolfe was elected governor in 1930.  As with most revolts against dominant political authority in 20th century California, grass roots organization played a major role, and the revolt came from within the  Republican Party.

Source:  Russell Posner, “The Progressive Voters League, 1923-1926,” California Historical Society Quarterly  36:251-261 (September, 1957)

Progressivism is generally considered to have faded as a force in California and nationally by the 1920s-1930s period.  Rosanne  M. Barker demonstrated that Progressivism continued as an active movement during this period, sustained by women’s organizations, particularly in small towns.  She highlights the activity of Pearl Chase and other women activists in Santa Barbara, and notes that progressive women activists were achieving success in other towns, as well.  The types of activities and accomplishments described by Barker did not draw much attention, at the time or later.  It represented, however, substantial grass roots effort and achievement of progressive goals.
Source:  Rosanne M. Barker, “Small Town Progressivism:  Pearl Chase and Female Activism in Santa Barbara,” Southern California Quarterly  79:47-100 (Spring, 1997)

The California Republican Assembly was organized in 1934 as a response to Republican losses in 1932.  Clubs were formed throughout the state.  By 1938, Earl Warren had become the key figure in bringing moderate/progressive Republican leadership to power, to control the state for the next twenty years.  Subsequent grass root movements, beginning with United Republicans of California and the John Birch Society regained conservative control of the Republican Party by the 1960s.
Source:  Richard Harvey, Dynamics of  California Government and Politics  (Wadsworth, 1970) ch. 2

The California Democratic Council, with chapters throughout the state and a peak membership of 66,000, grew out of Adlai Stevenson’s unsuccessful 1952 campaign for President.  The political leader most associated with the CDC was Alan Cranston, State Controller and later U. S. Senator.  The CDC was a grass roots movement, one generated from within the Democratic Party.  Its membership tended to be middle class and suburban, as were the several Republican grass roots movements that fostered progressive reform.
Source:  Clyde E. Jacobs and John F. Gallagher, California Government:  One Among Fifty  (Macmillan, 1966), pp. 102-106

I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did (or perhaps not; I’m a history nerd).  It’s interesting that grassroots movements in this state have traditionally started in the middle and upper-middle classes; not surprising, certainly on the basis of leisure time.  I think our challenge in the netroots is to ensure a multiplicity of voices, to understand and hear from the concerns of the poor and those typically not present in the larger political debate.

The other factor is that our opposition is just as equipped to pull this off, so we must be smarter, and grow larger, and continue to innovate to maintain any kind of advantage.  We also must keep an eye on our legislators in Sacramento, as the “clean up government” mantra has bounced back and forth between the parties over the years.

I’m going to try and get Ellis to write a little more for the site, if you have any specific areas of interest, please put them in the comments.

Save the Date —
8th Annual Organizers’ Collaborative Grassroots Use of Technology Conference
Friday & Saturday, June 22-23, 2007
co-located with the Grassroots Radio Conference and hosted at the University of Massachusetts Lowell

Organizers Collaborative’s 8th annual conference will be co-located with the Grassroots Radio Conference, a gathering of grassroots, volunteer-powered, community radio stations. We look to expand our impact in using grassroots communication tools for social change.

The 2007 Conference will present tools intended to ease the challenges nonprofits and organizing groups face in meeting their missions. More effective use of email, dynamic websites, ideal data use, new social networking tools, and rich online media are technologies that should and can be used by organizations and movements to achieve thier goals.

The first day (June 22) will be devoted to highlighting Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) solutions for NPO techies and managers. Our co-location with the Grassroots Radio Conference will allow us to expand our mission to bring the technology of radio to communities.

As always, the Grassroots Use of Technology conference is one of the only events that brings technology and endusers together, allowing us to learn from each other.

This event is also presented in collaboration with the CTC VISTA Project at UMass Boston.

Registration will open in February 2007.

More info: http://organizerscollaborative.org/conference

Let’s get the particulars out of the way.  I’m dday, in the real world I answer to Dave Dayen, and I, like hekebolos, am running for CDP (California Democratic Party) delegate this weekend.  In fact, there are over 20 progressive bloggers running for CDP delegate slots all across the state.  My district, AD 41 (the fightin’ 41st), stretches along the coast from Santa Monica all the way up to Oxnard.  There’s a map here.  The 41st AD caucus meeting is on Saturday, January 13th at 10 a.m., at the Malibu Library, located at 23519 Civic Center Way (Mapquest it).  If you or someone you know is a registered Democrat in my district, I’d be honored to have you (or them) vote for me and the entire Progressive Slate.  The full details are at this DFA link.

But what I want to tell you about is my experience last night, where I gave the first campaign speech of my entire life, and how I have the blogging community to thank for the results.

So MoveOn.org is doing this “Mandate for Change” campaign, where members get people in their community to sign “photo petitions”.  Instead of just signing a petition asking for bold leadership on major issues (Iraq, health care, clean energy, restoring democracy through election reform) and sending it to your Congresscritter, in this campaign people are asked to take a picture holding up a personal message for their Congresscritter.  Then we’ll hold personal meetings with the Congresscritters or their staffs and hand-deliver the photos of their constituents asking them for change.  It’s a nice little idea.  Here’s a flickr photo set of hundreds of these photo petitions.

My local MoveOn chapter (yes, they have chapters now) held a meeting yesterday to discuss the photo petition project.  I’ve been fairly active in this campaign and with this particular chapter, so I attended.  I also printed up a bunch of flyers about my election on Saturday to distribute to the group.  We ended up having about 35 people at the meeting.

I actually had a separate role to play at the meeting, to lead the discussion about the latest part of the Mandate for Change campaign, which is a drive to write letters to the editor (not astroturfing, but ACTUAL grassroots action!).  So I went ahead and discussed that, and gave my thoughts on how to get a good LTE published (key point: less use of the phrase “ignorant MSM fuckhead” increases chances of publication).  And right after that, the meeting organizer said, “And Dave also has something exciting that you can get involved in this weekend, and that’s his election for CDP delegate.  Care to tell us about that?”

This wasn’t totally unexpected, but also not expected to the extent that I prepared anything.  But in a way, I’ve been preparing since roughly 2002.  This community and the progressive blogosphere is an incubator for ideas and framing and ways to relate your message.  I knew why I was running (in fact, I wrote about it right here).  The California Democratic Party is an invisible institution that comes around for two weeks every two years and places election ads.  Other than that, they’re a nonentity.  Here’s what I wrote then:

I’ve lived in California for the last eight years.  I’m a fairly active and engaged citizen, one who has attended plenty of Democratic Club meetings, who has lived in the most heavily Democratic areas of the state in both the North and South, who has volunteered and aided the CDP and Democratic candidates from California during election time, who (you would think) would be the most likely candidate for outreach from that party to help them in their efforts to build a lasting majority.  But in actuality, the California Democratic Party means absolutely nothing to me.  Neither do its endorsements.  The amount of people who aren’t online and aren’t in grassroots meetings everyday who share this feeling, I’d peg at about 95% of the electorate. 

I mean, I’m a part of both those worlds, and I have no connection to the state party.  I should be someone that the CDP is reaching out to get involved.  They don’t.  The only time I ever know that the CDP exists is three weeks before the election when they pay for a bunch of ads.  The other 23 months of the year they are a nonentity to the vast majority of the populace.

And this has a tremendous impact.  The state of California is hardly deep blue.  It’s had Republican governors for 80 out of the past 100 years.  The last time the Democratic Party meant anything to California’s citizens was in the time of Alan Cranston and Pat Brown in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Democratic Club movement began, and when the state party was most involved with the grassroots.  At the time, the party was committed to progressive values and offered a real politics of contrast to move the Democratic brand in the state forward.  This has receded in the past 30 years.

But it’s actually worse than all that.  The Republican Governor of this state is getting a lot of publicity this week for submitting a universal health care proposal that essentially says: “I won’t rest until everybody in this state is paying for really crappy coverage!”  The plan doesn’t go far enough in addressing cost containment, forces people to buy insurance without defining what “basic coverage” is, provides a cheap opt-out of providing coverage for employers, and basically maintains the same system where greedy insurers get rich off the backs of the citizens of this state.  Most solid progressives, like my state senator Sheila Kuehl, understand this.  There are only two figures statewide who have had nothing but good things to say about the governor’s proposal.  They are Don Perata, Democratic leader in the Senate, and Fabian Nuñez, Democratic leader in the Assembly.  It’s a curious way to negotiate.

That’s because the state party and its top officials are primarily interested in maintaining the status quo.  They have incumbency protection through redistricting, are slathered with special interest money by being in the majority, and have no desire to upset that apple cart.  This is EXACTLY why membership in the CDP is slipping.  They work around the margins and do generally a decent job, but they have no leadership on the big issues, and no connection to the grassroots progressive movement that attracts ordinary citizens and lets them know that the Democratic Party is working in their interests.

So it’s with this as background, that I began to say a few words about the election.  And it became entirely clear to me that I was actually making a campaign speech.  I was talking about the need to build a movement from the bottom up and not the top-down.  I was talking about how the national agenda is important, but what happens in your own backyard really matters, especially in a state like California, which oftentimes sets the agenda for the rest of the nation to follow.  I was talking about the need for bold, progressive leadership, to make the CDP more responsive, more effective, and more relevant.  I was talking about the Governor’s health care proposal and how we need a credible alternative.  I was talking about how we had to wrest the party away from the narrow-cast, special interest-driven agenda of the current leadership and return it back to the people, about how we have to compete everywhere in the state and not just where we have large majorities.

And I realized that I have written about all of these things at one point or another.  I’ve internalized the concepts and sharpened my dialectic to a knife’s edge.  I’ve tried arguments, seen them rise or fall, seen people agree or disagree, and tried them again.  I’ve been running this speech through in my head since I first discovered blogs in 2002.  It came out so naturally and easily, that I have to conclude that the blogosphere is the greatest primary campaign that any candidate has ever experienced.

Now, this was a friendly audience made up of MoveOn members.  But I’m fairly certain that a bunch of them had about as much of a relationship to the CDP as most of the rest of the state, which is to say none, before that speech.  But before I even got around to saying “I’d like your vote, and I have some flyers here with all the information,” one of them asked, “How can I get involved?”  Then another.  They were really interested in the process and surprised that they didn’t know about the election at all.  I sent around the flyers and got commitments from a bunch of people to come out and vote.

(I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the people at the meeting was a fellow colleague on the Progressive Slate, Ellis Perlman, a retired political science professor with an incredible array of knowledge about state politics, and a desire to see change.  He spoke as well and he was fantastic on giving the history of grassroots movements in the state, and the need to check runaway executive power – sound familiar? – with a robust legislature committed to offering real alternatives.)

Upon leaving to go to the crappy night job I have this week (I didn’t get home until 5:30AM last night, so forgive me if this is rambling), I reflected on how this speech and this moment changed me.  In a way it was both a culmination and a beginning.  If we’re ever going to change America, all of us need to understand that democracy demands participation.  Online activism of the “I did something for the movement!  I clicked SEND!” variety is nice and all, but it’s ultimately insufficient.  I’m comfortable with public speaking but not necessarily with being a leader.  But what I took away is that we all have the capacity to lead, to call for change, to be a part of this progressive movement all across the country.  All it takes to do so is the will.  You can create the opportunity.