Washblog

YOU need people on shift, working, at 05:00 out here to be ready for the 6 a.m. / 7 a.m. news out here using the lies du jour from the east coast which is 3 hours ahead of us. You need people working to correct the lies on the 11:00 p.m. lies du next day, probably to midnight.

That is 19 hours a day, Monday to Friday.  The SMART thing to do is have a morning team and evening team, AND they overlap.

You can have 1 long shift on Sat. and Sun.
That is  

HIRE people to do it. Need Money?

Of all the Democrat big check writers in this state, there have to be some who have a clue about Media and Communications circa 1950, ooops, I mean 1980, oopps, I mean 2006.  

Have them fund these salaries.

Do people NOT know,well, have them skim Kos's book, "Crashing the Gates: & Lakoff & Rob Stein &&&&&& ... have them pull their collective heads outta the U.W. theoretical ether and watch the media of of 1980 or 2004 or 1982 or 2002 ...

Worried what some whackball blogger is gonna say and cause the thugs to lie ??  

THE THUGS WILL ALWAYS LIE - FOREVER!

YOU have to learn how to deal with it, and dealing with it is MEDIA,

dealing with it is NOT avoiding a state blog, that is hiding.

IF you do not deal with this, you are going to be as marginally "effective" at PROGRESS as the rest of the Lame-O-Crat party has been for 25+ years.

That is sad for you and really bad for us peons.

rmm.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

________________
I blog here.

Crossposted from DFW

I'm not a very good blogger, honestly.  I get up to 300 emails a day, and most of my time online is spent reading and responding to those.  But every once in a while I look out further from my inbox, usually via Google Reader, and see what is going on.

So this morning I saw a post on Evergreen Politics about a white paper drafted by Ken Camp, a staffer on the Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Wells campaign.  I thought the suggestions were great, and they're close to what I've been telling Misty Shock for months.  Last word from her was that they were going to get a new website design thanks and were working with their host, Hang-wire.  Jeremy Sher is a partner at Hang-wire, and was the former Tech Director of the state party.  Great guy.

But will the new design include a blog?  Who knows.  Sounds like the answer is no, as long as Dwight is in charge, and it sounds like the reason is because we're afraid of the media or Republican Party pouncing on any random comment that gets put onto the blog.  Now, the state party does have a set of forums that are used for some internal party communications, I think using PHPBB, but they are completely closed to outsiders.

Looking at some of the specific ideas put forward by Ken:

• Meeting Tools

  These tools already exist on the DNC website.  Just like DFA, which has DFA-Link, I think organizing tools like this are better handled by online infrastructure that is prepared to handle the volume.  What the WSDCC should do is encourage the LD & County chairs to post their meeting schedules and special events on the DNC site, and link to them from the wa-democrats calendar.



• Listserv

  Yahoo Groups has so many mailing lists already, it's hard to see the need for more.  But the truth is that the state party already has several update lists that they use on an irregular basis, including one for "Party Leaders", "PCO's", and one for general announcements.  The problem is the irregular use of these lists, and the fact that the state party website doesn't have a good page with links to some of the existing lists.  Here on the DFW website, I've tried to create a collection of these lists, broken down by Legislative District and Counties.  And I know about most of the statewide lists.  If you know of one that I'm missing, please let me know.  What is missing that the state party could provide is a staff person to focus on coordinating the membership lists with these online lists so people who come into activism through  these lists get contacted by someone to invite them to events and meetings of their local party and other progressive groups around where they live.



• Blogging & Podcasting

  The State Party doesn't have a blog, at least not if you define a blog as an online space that is open for people to post comments.  But it does have a regular posting of news items, with an RSS feed now that they are using WordPress.  And the Podcasts have been going on an irregular basis since last December.  I can understand the concern over people posting something that looks bad, but that doesn't mean that comments should be denied.  The party could restrict comment privleges to state party officials, elected representatives, local party officers, and moving down to the PCO level as PCO's show themselves as people that can be trusted.  But that's only if the state party wants to continue to refuse to be the "big tent" party that they should be.  And with the number of statewide blogs like DFW, Washblog, Goldy's, and others, there's not shortage of places for the grassroots to have their say.  Maybe the easiest thing that the state party could do is have a page on their site for the PNW Topic Hotlist.



• Canvassing & Campaign Materials

  This is actually a great idea, and it would save the party a lot of money if they would post these types of things online for people to print locally on their own dime instead of internalizing all the printing costs in Seattle.  The drawbacks would be the potential for someone to modify them, which could be minimzied by the design, as well as having some people using non-union print shops like Kinkos.  If these drawbacks are so important that they prevent it from happening, I hope there are some really good discussions in the minutes of our meetings to show that we really thought about it.

To close this up, there is a lot that the state party could do to internalize what the grassroots in this state has built in support of local Democrats and progressive causes.  I question whether the state party could really gain from that, since they would be competing with groups that already have a following.  But it should be openly discussed.  I personally believe that we have gained a foot in the door, and that the party will never be able to close that door again.  Which is a good thing.  It's time the Progressives in this state found common ground, learned the ropes of all these ships that are floating almost at random in the political harbor, and brought some of them in for repair and an update.  Once we do that, we'll be able to take all the cannons that we have and point them in the right direction instead of at each other.  We outnumber the Conservatives probably 2 to 1.  We just have to act like it.