Here's my take on one of the DC events I
previewed last week: the
2004 Progressive Politics and Technology Roundtable. I was really looking forward to this event, but unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations (more on that below). However, one of the panelists really caught my attention: Bob Fertik of
Democrats.com, who put forward a bold agenda for progressive use of technology and the Internet in the future. Here's a rough, partial transcript (rough because the audio from my digital recorder was pretty bad) of what he said:
First we need to take...everything we do on the movement and move it onto the Internet. That means fundraising, ...communications, local organizing, everything we do that we can...But we need to go one step further: we need to work together as a movement
to build a massive e-mail list of 100 million Americans who support us on the issues we all care about. In Florida 52% voted for Bush but that's dwarfed by the 71% who voted to raise the minimum wage. Let's extrapolate that nationally: 150 million votes were cast for president, at 71% that means 82 million Americans would vote to increase the minimum wage. What could the progressive movement, what could we in this room accomplish if we had just 2/3 of their e-mail addresses?
Let's go further: on election day Bush claimed what I would call a fraudulent mandate to privatize social security, to eliminate progressive income tax and to do nothing about our health care crisis. I think 100 million Americans would oppose Bush's policies if they understood the end result, the consequences of those policies. What could we in this room do if we only had 2/3 of their e-mail addresses: 100 million Americans.
100 million Americans is an ambitious goal but it's one we can achieve if we make up our minds to do it and invest some serious dollars. MoveOn has 2.5 million e-mail addresses; how much did they spend collecting each name? Zero. John Kerry and the DNC built a comparatively larger list. How much did they spend? I don't know...but it wasn't a whole lot.
Think about it: this year, progressives and Democrats raised hundreds of millions of dollars...A small chunk of that was well spent: some of it on the Internet, some on paid organizers to go door to door, registering voters, educating on the issues, and getting out the vote. But the bulk of that money was utterly and completely wasted on TV. It's time to get real: TV is our enemy. OK? Every dollar we spend on TV goes into the pockets of GE, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and Fox, or right-wing chains like Sinclair. They gladly take out hard-earned money and laugh all the way to Congress, where they bribe our representatives who expand their corporate monopoly and silence our progressive voices. They've been playing us for suckers for 40 years...is it any wonder that we keep losing the political game?
I've been with the progressive movement since 1977, the year Danny (inaudible) died. Danny's most famous quote was, 'I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.' Are you sick and tired too? Let's make a decision here, today, as progressives let's decide not to spend one penny more on TV or direct mail. From now on let's put every penny into a Manhattan Project, a progressive effort to build an e-mail list of 100 million Americans who agree with us on the issues.
This is when Farai Chideya cut him off. While I don't know if I agree with everything Bob says (For example, the direct mail thing), his vision is certainly compelling and worth considering. I totally agree with his point about the poisonous nature of TV on our progressive aims. TV is so deeply embedded in our culture that sometimes we forget the corporations behind it. If the Internet can provide us with a way to avoid putting money in the money of these corporations that fight so many of our ideals, so much the better.
As I said, I had high hopes for this event that weren't quite fulfilled. The main problem with the event was organization and format. There were three roundtables: each was given about 45 minutes to discuss a topic, with a Q&A to follow. However, each roundtable was also packed with about nine panelists. Because the event started late, questions were left to the very end of the event, and "opening statements" were ditched. This basically left us with each panelist really only speaking for about 3-4 minutes. I found this to be a missed opportunity. They lined up some true heavy hitters from the world of progressive online politics, but the panels were so crammed that there was no real discussion, which is the whole point of a roundtable. Look at the list of panelists again: does it make sense to line up all these people and have them talk for only 4 minutes each? I couldn't help but think back to the primary debates this year, in which we had 9 candidates on stage and each had about 30 seconds to answer questions. I got about as much from these panels as I got from those debates. This was all compounded by the fact that the event was held in the evening. All in all, an opportunity was missed.
-- Originally posted on Another Liberal Blog
