Blogs
And the circus begins
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/19/2007 - 11:45About an hour before the Sen. Obama is scheduled to speak, the advance teams start getting their volunteers out in force. The lobby where people check in is swarmed with advance teams and supporters of both Obama and Edwards. Players put on their candidates T-shirts, similar to preparing for a friendly game of softball. Stickers and buttons abound, and the teams scurry to find the best place to put up their posters.
Those who aren’t at special locations head inside to find seats before they get too filled up. Outside, Politico has a poll for attendees of the conference, and one of their questions is to see if the speeches cause people to change their opinions of various candidates. It will be interesting to see the results. I suspect that many people already have their minds up.
So, what does all this jockeying for position really do? Will it impress the boys on the bus and get slightly better earned media? Is it merely protecting against earned negative media? Perhaps an important part of the circus is to encourage the supporters, to help them feel like they are part of something special, to help them feel that their actions make a difference.
Even if that is all that it does, it serves an important purpose. All of us need to do things that make us feel like we are making a difference.
(Technorati tags: tba2007, takebackamerica)
Take back America, Day 2
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/19/2007 - 09:32Ralph Nader steps up to the introduce Mike Gravel and is greeted by Boos. Yet he does have a good line about how people look at the quarterly fundraising reports the same way that people look at corporate quarterly reports. Gravel gets up and speaks, doing his standard speech about making it a felony for Bush not to have the troops home by New Years. He is getting a lot of applause.
Gov. Richardson gets up to speak, introduced by three brothers who served together in Vietnam. He talks about how this is one of the most important events he will speak at and about supporting Humphrey back in 1968. I think to myself, I bet he says that to all the women he meets. He talks about New Mexico as a state leading in clean energy. He comments to President Bush about the Kyoto plan, you might as well sign the agreement now, because if you don’t, I’ll sign it when I become President.
He talks about his plan on global warming being the most aggressive. Within 12 years, his plan would lower demand for oil by 50% and push mileage standards to 50 mpg. He encourages everyone to go read his plan on his website.
Gov. Richardson is saying some good stuff, but he is playing very fast and loose with the facts, especially about Edwards and about statistics about Iraq.
His speech ends and he gets a lot of applause. I can’t make out what the song is that is playing in the background. In the background, someone says, “He gives a good speech. I like what he says, but I don’t like him. I don’t like what he does.”
(Technorati tag: tba2007)
Monday evening ramblings
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 06/18/2007 - 20:49I’m sitting in the back of a large auditorium, waiting for the evening plenary session of Take Back America to get going. Off towards the center a bunch of the cool bloggers are gathered together. There is music playing over the loudspeakers, but for some reason, Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard Lyrics’ is playing in my mind.
I’m gonna blow this damn candle out
I don’t want nobody comin’ over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
The session begins: “We have an opportunity to have a real conversation with some of the exciting new Senators.” I wonder what sort of conversation it will really be.
My mind wanders back to the youth session this afternoon. How different the evening session is from that session. Here, we have lots of people talking about “exciting”… “Issues of vital interest”... and I think of Elandria talking about what is exciting and of vital interest to the people she works with. Being able to get enough food, get a basic education, find housing that isn’t on a waste dump.
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
Sen Klobuchar jokes about raising $15,000 from ex-boyfriends. How many of Elandria’s friends would love to have ex-boyfriends with that sort of disposable cash.
My mind wanders to Faith. She is home now.
It was kind of a system shock to me emotionally when the term "special needs child" was used during our discharge planning. It was also a shock (all though I guess I knew it the whole time) that when we went home she wasnt going to be "all better" like you think of when you get out of the hospital.
Sen. Sanders talks about those who can contribute $10 or $20 because their money is as important as anyone’s money. He goes on to talk about the middle class shrinking.
“Now it seems to me, that if we are going to be successful, we need a straight forward progressive agenda.”
Yeah, Sen. Sanders is talking about moral perspectives and saying all the right things, but somehow I’m not excited.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
“…something profoundly wrong in our country…”
Now, Senator Brown is speaking and he’s talking about being optimistic, looking at various progressive eras.
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin’ behind bottles in dark cafes
Dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days
I think I’ll leave early and get some sleep. Maybe I’ll be more excited tomorrow.
(Technorati tag: tba2007)
We’ve Got Issues: Young People in Action
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 06/18/2007 - 16:51I walk into the ‘We’ve Got Issues Panel’, a few minutes late after talking to many friends in the hall. I believe the speaker is Jessy Tolkan from the Energy Action Coalition. She is speaking with great energy. She does a big pitch for Power Shift 2007 and itsgettinghotinhere.org
Elandria Williams from the Highlander Research and Education Center talks about the privilege that so many of us have and that so many of her people do not have, about being able to come to conferences like this, about being able to go to college. She does a speech, repeating, “If you knew me, you would know….” Incredibly powerful. She absolutely rocked. She is the person who should have been the keynote for Take Back America. I cannot begin to capture a small portion of what she has said.
She is a hard act to follow for Juan Pancheco from Barrios Unidos, but he does a great job. Pulling in a peaceful follow up to Elandria. Talking about overcoming gang violence, talking about challenging assumptions. He hands off the mike to another person, whose name I miss, who talks wonderfully about peace, peace that includes black, brown and white, young and old.
(Technorati tag: tba2007)
Take Back America Plenary Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 06/18/2007 - 13:26Eli Pariser from MoveOn spoke first and spoke about looking forward to the day that the conference is renamed, “Okay, we’ve taken back America, what do we do now?”
Andrea Batista Schlesigner of the Drum Major Institute responded by talking about Nature versus nurture and Voltaire. For the right, the growing gap between the rich and the poor is all about nature. Yet she goes on to suggest that we have a choice, public policy can make our nation fairer, or not. It is a choice, it is about nurture. After all, that’s the point of government, to create fairness.
She ties it to Voltaire and the phrase, “the best is the enemy of good”. Her dad suggests “The Good is the enemy of the best.” She ponders if we are really getting to the core questions. Are we holding corporations responsible? She observes that we don’t talk a lot about how much tort reform is being driven by corporations that don’t want to be held accountable.
This led to Rep. Keith Ellison, D-MN. He opened up saying, “We are a collection of leaders here today, and we need to talk business and how to organize the people. First of all, we’ve done the right thing, we’ve put the vision up on the wall. We can all talk about the vision. The vision is about everyone counts, everyone matters.”
From there he looked at how conservatives organized after 1964. He spoke about the being patient. He had a good response to a standard old conservative talking point about how government should be run like a business. “We all know what happens when you run government like a business, Enron, Worldcom…”
He then went on to talk about the need for unity in the progressive movement. “If you want to win, if you want universal health care, sustainable relationship with nature, peace, you need everyone.”
As to the role of congress, he talked a little bit about the importance of keeping pressure on congress. “Let me tell you, LBJ did not inspire Martin Luther King…. Don’t look to congress for inspiration to end the war… Politicians see the light when they feel the heat.”
Some final comments from Rep. Ellison included, “We have to find a way to resolve conflict internally. Whenever we have an antiwar march that is all white, we need to look around and say, ‘This is not what our family looks like.’”
The plenary ended up with Rep. Jan Schakowsky amplifying the insider/outsider aspect of how politics works. She pointed out that Nancy Pelosi is on our side. “No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than she does.”
She goes on to do a plug for the importance of the “Employee Free Choice Act”
As Rep. Ellison said, the opening plenary did the right thing, it “put the vision up on the wall”. All of the speakers spoke well with this unified vision.
(Technorati tag: tba2007)
