Who Won Last Night’s Debate?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 13:19As with any debate, each campaign likes to claim victory, independent of what actually happened, and I like to take a different viewpoint. So, I am going to declare two winners of last night’s debate in Ridgefield.
The first winner was Howard Dean. Yes, he isn’t running for President this time around and none of the proxies were there to speak on his behalf. However, three of the five proxies had been very involved in Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid. I don’t know about the other two, although one of the other two did benefit from a fundraiser that Gov. Dean did on the proxy’s behalf.
At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gov. Dean spoke at various venues, and one of the key lines I remember from those speeches is, “If all you do is vote, you get a D.” He was pointing out that being involved in our democracy is so much more than just making it to the voting booth. The proxies on the stage, in addition to having worked hard for Gov. Dean in 2004, in addition to being proxies for candidates in this debate, have each run for elected office. They are the A students.
On top of that, every person who showed up for the debate, and those that listened to the stream on MyLeftNutmeg, somewhere between 70 and 100 people, are also honors students. Instead of simply catching a soundbite here and there and going to the polls as low information voters, each one of them stopped and participated in a grassroots discussion about where our country should be going. They are the other winners of last night’s debate.
Major kudos should go to Susan Cocco and everyone who worked together to make this wonderful event happen. It should be a model that Democratic committees and clubs around the country should emulate.
Today in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 11:37The other day on the Second Life Educators mailing list, in quick succession, I received two interesting emails. One was from a group of students organizing a game of Laser Tag in Second Life. It will take place today from 3:30 to 5:30 PM (SLT). For those of us on the eastern coast of the United States, that means the games start at 6:30. You can stop by at the Educators Coop island.
Then, starting at 5:30 PM (SLT), 8:30 PM for me, there will be an art show sponsored by students of the same class. It will take place in a different part of Educators Coop island.
Both events are sponsored by students in Joe Sanchez’ class, Working in Virtual Worlds. For more information about what Joe and his friends are up to, I strongly recommend you stop by and read his blog.
I haven’t gotten a chance to read it as thoroughly as I would like, but looking briefly, it looks like a great blog. In particular, one of the groups from his class raised L$ 72,00 for charity. I’ve also spoken with some of the students, as well as with Joe and I’m looking forward to attending at least one of these events, if not both.
If you can make the time, I hope you’ll stop in as well.
Advancing the Dialog - Presidential Proxy Debate
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 20:30This evenings debate is part of an ongoing series to discuss the major issues of our day at a grassroots level. These sort of grassroots discussions are key to promoting democracy. During the introductions, Rudy Marconi, First Selectman of Ridgefield, who was elected for a historic fifth term with over 70% of the vote was introduced as was Selectperson Di Masters as well as a member fo the Ridgefied Board of Education.
Several DTC chairs and former chairs were then introduced, including Karen Dolan of Redding, Martha Aasen, former DTC chair from Westport and State Central member, and Fran Besmer of Kent. Jim Himes, Democratic Candidate for the Fourth Congressional District was also introduced.
The proxies for the candidates where then introduced. Richard Brodsky, NYS Assemblyman from the 92nd district which is around Dobbs Ferry is speaking on behalf of Hillary Clinton. David Stevenson, a long time Democracy for America activist is speaking on behalf of Kucinch. Kim Hynes is speaking on behalf of Edwards. Susan Cocco who is running the debate noted Kim's patent in anti-fungal research, as well as her involvement in the Dean campaign and running as a State Rep candidate. Lex Paulson is representing Obama. Lex was also involved in the Dean campaign and ran for State Rep. Jim Sullivan is representing the Dodd campaign. Jim ran for Congress in the Second Congressional District in Connecticut in 2004.
Following this, Susan introduced the bloggers, Matt from MyLeftNutmeg, Jackie from YourCTBlog and myself.
Polling machine auditing and Presidential Debates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 10:43Spending time in Waterbury yesterday gave me a lot to think about, some of which may find its way into the debate in Ridgefield this evening. Kathy Dopp of the National Election Data Archive writes that “the major problem with CT's audits is that it takes place so long after the election that anyone wanting to rig the election has loads of time” to tamper with the results. She points to efforts in Utah to require a mandatory vote count audit. There will be discussions over the coming weeks about how the vote count audit can be improved, and the concern about the time between the end of voting and the auditing of counting needs to be considered.
Another topic that was discussed at the Registrars’ office during the vote counting was the great income disparity between the poorer parts of Connecticut and the gold coast. When I got home, I found an email from a friend pointing to a great website for analyzing the 2000 census figures, www.zipskinny.com. It provided a stark contrast between parts of Connecticut.
In Weston (06883) and Darien (06820) the median income is $146,000 and only 2% of the people live below the poverty level. An hour up the road in Waterbury (06702) the median income is $11,000 with 40% of the people living below the poverty level. Head up into Hartford (06120) and the poverty level goes up to 44%.
This evening at 7 PM, there will be a debate in the Dayton Room of the Ridgefield Public Library, Main St. Ridgefield, CT when the Democratic Town Committees of Ridgefield, Wilton, Weston and Westport present representatives of various Democratic Presidential campaigns. Hopefully, this event will inject a bit of retail Presidential politics into Connecticut and many of you will attend. I will be there wearing my blogger hat.
I’ve been toying with questions that I would like to ask. Being there as a blogger, my thoughts for my initial question were something like, “With the growth of use of the Internet, the media landscape is changing. Anyone can publish online, and this has great potential for our democracy. How will your candidate make sure that the Internet’s potential to facilitate our democracy is not impeded? It is a broad question providing candidates opportunities to talk about net neutrality, copyright issues, media consolidation, media education, and so on.
Yet as I look at the numbers from Zipskinny, I am considering asking how the candidates plans will affect the vast income disparity in our country, and in our state, where one community, less than an hours drive from its neighbor has 20 times the poverty level and the median income level is less than a tenth of its neighbor.
Perhaps these questions are linked. What role does the mainstream media have in its lack of coverage of issues of poverty in America? What role does the Internet have in providing tools to help people out of poverty?
Let me know what you think should be asked for questions, and check back this evening, where I hope to live blog the debate.
Debriefing Process Drama in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 09:11So, this morning, I got up at 4:45 so I could participate in an experiment in Process Drama in Second Life. About a dozen of us gathered on Godot Island to act out how our characters in the fictional town would have reacted to efforts to impose Internet regulations in response to the famous Serenity Now bombing of a World of Warcraft funeral.
For those not acquainted with the bombing, the short version of the story is that a woman, who was very active in World of Warcraft, died of a stroke in real life. Her friends organized a funeral in a player versus player combat area in World of Warcraft. Members of a rival guild attacked the funeral. You can read more about it, along with various reactions in this blog post.
In process drama, the focus is on pedagogical outcomes as opposed to the therapeutic outcomes of psychodrama, but in my mind, these are fairly similar goals and I invited friends from the group psychotherapy world to participate or follow along.
