Let me say this up front: y'all aren't going to like some of what's in this diary. I don't agree with Markos Moulitsas' decision to not involve DailyKos in the 2015 edition of the Netroots conference. I also have a couple of gripes about Netroots and myself and what politicians say or try to do when they come to Detroit.
But it's not all negative. Overall, my day at NN14 was a good experience and gave me a lot of food for thought, some of which I'm subjecting you to right now.
I woke up on Saturday morning and finally decide to drop the $99 for a day pass and register for NN14. A quick shower, some coffee, and I'm off. From where I live in Detroit's northern suburbs, it's around a 30-40 minute drive down I-94 (with light traffic) to Cobo Hall. I found registration and a nice person set me up because I had registered an hour earlier. I remarked on a bag the person next to her had and she told me that they could be picked up at the back of the exhibit hall. She said didn't have one yet, as the people staffing registration had to wait until the end in case they ran out.
I was registered and, orange lanyard in hand, upstairs in time for the start of Mark Schauer's speech...which was sparsely attended, someone jokes, because Friday was a big party night and maybe people are just a wee bit hungover. It's a shame, really; although Schauer seemed a little slow to warm up, he ended well. He's a better candidate than the previous Dem (Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero) and people seem to like him well enough; the polls in the race for Michigan governor have tightened up considerably. Next up was Senator Debbie Stabenow, who was a more seasoned speaker than Schauer.
Both pols gave campaign-like speeches, hitting the right notes for the audience; voicing support of
X, need for electing candidate
Y, get-fired-up...but not a lot of detail, which is typical for the campaign-like speeches I've attended. Oh; and the usual statement about the just-on-the-horizon revitalization of Detroit that every politician who comes to Detroit makes. It's like they have to sign a contract when entering the city requiring they say something about restoring the city to its former glory. It
bothers me when pols of any political party come here and talk about a future turnaround.
Talk of bringing Detroit back has been going on since the late 1960's. It ain't happening.
Or at least it's not going to happen because politicians and bankers and captains of industry prescribe some flavor of magic potion that they think will make it happen. All of the things that could go wrong in America went wrong in Detroit; racism, de-industrialization, corruption, changing demographics, crime, and all the problems arising from those issues and more...and dealing with any one of those is hard enough, much less all at once. It wasn't nipped in the bud three or four decades ago, back when large-scale social engineering efforts like the ones the 1968 Kerner Commission report identified was politically possible and might have mattered. Old Detroit isn't coming back; trying to recapture the past is unworkable and wasteful of resources that could be better utilized on something else other than chasing a city that existed half a century ago.
To her credit, Sen. Stabenow did mention something that is less about restoring old Detroit and more significant of a revitalization of a new Detroit; Detroit's urban agriculture movement0 and the creation of a light rail line connecting downtown to the New Center district1. I'm enthused to hear the former; it's a people-centric (rather than business-centered) growth industry2 is continuing to develop and even expand within the city.
And then there was the panel on the Detroit water crisis immediately afterward. Wayne State University law professor Peter Hammer started off, providing a graphic validating that what the aforementioned Kerner Commission report found nearly 50 years earlier did actually happen. But since I felt that I'm familiar enough with the issue, I stepped out to go back down to the Town Square and check out the exhibits. I picked up a tote bag and passed on buying a T-shirt. I passed by the Michigan Democratic Party table to ask a couple of things but no one was there. Too bad.
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I wandered around for a bit before realizing that I didn't want to carry around a tote bag all day, so I gave it to the nice person who helped me check in but didn't have one of her own. I walked back upstairs to the water crisis panel in the ballroom, where I was fortunate enough to catch a few minutes of Maureen Taylor - yes, that Maureen Taylor - from Michigan Welfare Rights. Damn, she's good. You always can tell a difference between a person who gives a speech and a person who delivers one upside your head. Taylor's in that latter category, despite the Star Trek reference at the end.3
Then it was panel/session time. I chose the Q&A on the 2014 Midterms discussion led by DailyKos political director David Nir. The panel's knowledge of the current state of play was impressive; there was some hardcore election geekery put on display; I don't think there was one question about a federal- or state-level race that someone up there couldn't answer. But despite some expression of optimism at the start, the panel's conclusions for the 2014 election cycle weren't all that rosy. In the federal House and Senate races, Dems should consider the elections to be an overall win if they can hold their ground in the House and hold serve in the Senate. The real opportunities for increasing representation are in the various state races for a governor's seats. I got the impression that flipping a few state legislatures will be a tough slog due to gerrymandering4. It was good to hear a straight interpretation of the data from people not named Nate Silver.
Nir's presence on that panel gives me a nice segue into my criticism of the decision not to support Netroots Nation 2015. Does this mean that David Nir, as this site's political director, won't be there? I don't see Markos as the type of person who would stand in the way of one of his staffers going should they chose to do so5...but that question illustrates what I think is wrong with the reasoning: Netroots Nation (and DailyKos) is something that's bigger than Markos-Moulitsas-the-person. I support the personal decision not to go to Arizona in 2015 but not the withholding of resources needed to make a Netroots gathering a success; it's too much of a Hobby Lobby-esque decision for me in that by boycotting the event, he's making choices for the community that may not be some members' interests, or the interest of the wider public in general.
See, NN15 has to be a success because it is more than necessary for Netroots to be in places like Arizona or Texas. Those areas need what Netroots provides; a focal point for the organizing necessary to do things like getting rid of SB 1070 and building stronger union representation in anti-union states6. If Markos is going to complain about the death of the 50-state strategy:
Obama lost Idaho by 26 points. Yeah. Deep red. But Kerry lost it by 38 points. We become a national party by competing nationally.
then it defies logic that he's doing the same thing with this decision.
Before the next panel I chose to attend, 10 Years Later with Governor Dean, I got up and walked a bit to stretch my legs before it started. I passed by the Michigan Democratic Party table to ask about a couple of things but no one was there. Too bad.
I returned to the conference room and chatted a little with fellow Michigander Brainwrap about the differences in homes and home values between Detroit and Bloomfield Hills, which is one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. The Detroit 'burbs have plenty of McMansions, but Bloomfield Hills has mansions7. Brainwrap took off for a bit and missed part of the Dean speech. A woman took his seat and started eating a tuna sandwich. For future reference, don't whip out a tuna sandwich in a crowded room and start eating it. I like tuna, but there's a time and place where the smell of it is allowable and that time wasn't it. Brainwrap returned, found Tuna Woman in his seat and sat down next to her. One of the things I learned on Saturday was that Brainwrap smells better than a tuna sandwich.
The death of the 50-state strategy was one of the items discussed in the Dan interview. He's an excellent storyteller, and he used that ability to clearly articulate why he felt the need for such an effort...Dean figures that there's three kinds of people he was talking to when he visited any state, but the red ones in particular: those that would vote for him, those who wouldn't, and those who wouldn't but would come to see what he had to say. The ideas driving the 50-state strategy wasn't just about being competitive everywhere, it was about something a simple as showing up.
Howard Dean needs to put those 10 years' worth of stories into a book. There was a great anecdote he had about a meeting with Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Rahm Fucking Emanuel where Emanuel acted like a petulant child with a Tourette's-like inability to control the profanities coming out of his mouth. There's no love lost there. Dean also expressed the need for Hillary to have a challenge from her left if for no other reason to keep her from moving further toward the center and further away from a more progressive approach to policy. Who that would be other than Warren or Dean, I don't know. Dean left the possibility open with a "never say never" remark.
A quick stretch of the legs, and a visit to the Town Square to find that the afternoon snacks were all gone. I passed by the Michigan Democratic Party table to ask about a couple of things but no one was there. Too bad.
Next up was the Progressive National Security in the 2014 Elections & Beyond panel. Great information - Megan8 Minnion, Mike Darner, and Joe Cirincione were able panelists. The problem is that for such a big, important topic, there were maybe twenty people in attendance. The good news about the low attendance was that after the initial statements, the panelists opened it up for Q&A. The bad news is that it validated Cirincione's point that progressives don't care all that much about foreign policy; they're more focused on social justice, with the exception being when there's an intersection between the two such as the use of drones or the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement currently being negotiated.
Or maybe I heard all that wrong. Someone behind me was not-quite-snoring a little loudly, so I might have missed something.
The panel was fairly straight to the point about the tough spot a pitch for a progressive approach to foreign policy is in; On one side there's a strong anti-interventionist stance and on the other there's a Clintonian neoconservative-lite approach. On the other side is the American public, who has lost its appetite for military engagement and doesn't see the need to spend public monies on community-building efforts in foreign countries. My (poorly-worded and somewhat rambling) question to the panel was that, given that, what sort of progressive foreign policy message is there to deliver?
Cirincione had a couple of good responses. One was to get the use of drones for eliminating identified threats out of the hands of the intelligence community and over to the DoD where there is more transparency...and establish a clearer legal framework for the use of that military capability. Another item was to secure WMDs, with a particular emphasis on chemical weapons. It's good to have specifics, but it seems as if there's still no encompassing progressive vision that can be articulated.
That panel also leads me to my final gripes. There was a no-harm-intended request to identify yourself and who you were associated with when you raised a question to the panel. I don't belong to any group9 (I wanted to inquire about volunteering with the Michigan Democratic Party, but no one was at their booth. Too bad) and that point it hit me: I was an outsider at a kinda-sorta insider event. Don't get me wrong; at no point did I feel unwelcome...but I realized that all day long I was fighting to answer the question, why am I here at Netroots Nation? I kept getting the impression that a person would get more out of it if they were more involved with the progressive scene, whatever that is, instead of playing tourist as I did. The easy answer10 to that one is for me to become more activist. The harder thing to do is to keep Netroots from becoming more insular in nature; 'for progressives by progressives' may not be the way to go.
The other thing I'd like to mention is that what I did see at NN14 - namely the workshops and networking - shouldn't be a once a year in a single city event. There's too much work to be done and too many people to reach. Netroots Nation is what passes for a big event in the progressive community, but I don't know if it's big enough in the right ways. It needs to be more out there in the public's faces. How that happens, I don't know, only that choosing to not support it because of the location isn't the way to go about it.
Last walk, this time to grab something to eat. I passed back by the Michigan Democratic Party table to ask about a couple of things but no one was there. Too bad. Someone had been there; they left their tote bag on the chair, presumably because they didn't want to carry it around all day either.
Next event had me eating a chicken wrap - skipped the tuna, because I'm Not That Person - and laughing out loud at the Atlas Riffed: Live-Riffing Of Atlas Shrugged Part Two. I didn't think anything could be worse than the book, but that movie proved me wrong. It was like the Cliffs Notes version of Atlas Shrugged For Dummies. Thank God for Bolotsky and Filipowicz, whose running commentary made that godawful movie much less godawful.
Then it was upstairs for the closing Ignite session. Again, good information, some really good presenters, but I was pretty much at capacity11 for the day. I skipped the closing party at the Science Center; I'm not much for mingling in a room full of people I don't really know. I went home and took the wife out for some Lebanese food.
The next day I did yardwork and started this diary. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
..........comments, footnotes, etc..........
0 Which is getting noticed by outside business interests, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on the business.
1 Think Cobo Hall to the Detroit Institute of Arts. I'm skeptical as to its utility and it smells a lot like the
People Mover, which has been less than successful. I've always been of the opinion that the entire metro Detroit area could really use a regional rail-based transit system similar to Toronto's, but to me this effort is too small to have much impact on the city. But then again, it's not really for the city, is it?
2Get it? Agriculture?
Growth industry? I crack myself up sometimes...
3 In
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Admiral Kirk risks his ship and crew to find a reborn Spock "because the needs of the one... outweigh the needs of the many." Just sayin'.
4 Except for New York, where the members of the IDC need to get primaried, if not tarred and feathered and run out of the state.
5 No idea as to what Nir would really do.
6 Get the SEIU reps there and get them engaged with the local latino/latina community leaders and orgs. Those two groups should be a natural fit for each other, given their respective histories in this country.
7 So does Grosse Pointe, if you travel along the shoreline. There's a bit of rivalry there; people in Grosse Pointe consider themselves 'old money' as compared to the residents of BH. Elitism exists, especially among the elite.
8 Pronounced 'MEE-gan'. She's Canadian, so saying it that way is understandable.
9 Yes, that's entirely on me. I have a problem with (social) committment.
10 Hard for me.
11 Capacity to absorb information or to - God help me - care deeply about what was being said.