dear Friends
I wish I wasn't writing this diary. But there it is. I've left the staff of dailykos and hung up my guest blogger gloves here. And I wanted to let you all know that.
This departure came down, unfortunately, to a political disagreement. In a nutshell, I strongly disagreed with an anonymous front page piece Markos published about Donna Brazile. I wrote a comment at the time, and over the next days I wrote further emails to Markos and the rest of the staff and tried to start a discussion about my concerns. We did not succeed in having the discussion I sought.
The Brazile piece raised issues for me about the structure of the website and its staff, about the meaning and ethics of open source, about race and gender, and about whether my politics and working style were a good fit for the staff of this blog. I came to the conclusion that the Brazile piece was just not me or acceptable and that, given the response from Markos and the staff, and my experience of dKos from the inside, I would chose to go.
I can't, at the end of the day, put my politics and life experience in an envelope and pretend I don't profoundly disagree with some things. Sometimes, even with colleagues you have real respect for, and I do, you are forced to respectfully disagree and move on to new projects.
I care about this community and its participants a great deal. In many ways I found my voice here writing for you. We went through 2003 and 2004 together, we fought the good fight side by side, and of that we can always be proud. It goes without saying that we are unified in our optimism about the possibilities of open source politics, and are well aware of the challenges we face ahead. In this regard, you can be certain that I am simply moving to a parallell stream somewhere. We are allies, all of us, and it will stay that way.
In choosing to make this move, I decided not to make my debate on the front pages of dKos. I said my peace to the staff and accepted the consequences. I am writing this diary because I wanted to let you, the readers, know directly that I am regretfully moving on. I would also like to convey, finally, just how deeply I respect all of you: as readers, as comment makers, as writers and as friends.
I would like to think that my next steps will speak for themselves, and enunciate a politics of optimism, hope and community building. You should be able to find kid oakland essays somewhere soon if you're interested. There are other projects I'm currently working on that will need the time to do right and the cooperation and equal participation of others. I'll let you know if and when they develop.
be well, and be in touch,
peace out
paul delehanty / kid oakland
