(Originally published in Greater Democracy)

There is a mailing list where the true power elite share their ideas about the direction of democracy. Or at least where people who frequently contribute to this blog talk about posts they will be writing, as well as the direction of this blog and visions for the future of this community. There are a lot of bright and strong willed people on this list and at times it can get a bit testy.

Some of this came up recently in a discussion about how we can help bloggers become better grassroots journalists. A friend of mine is a retired investigative reporter, and she had some brilliant ideas, which we refined during brainstorming sessions, some of which spilled over on to the list of authors for this blog. Concurrent with this, my wife got me We the media by Dan Gillmor as an anniversary present. In his book, he talks about journalism changing from being a lecture to a conversation and about the former audience “learning how to join the process of journalism”.

I have been surfing a lot of blogs through BlogExplosion recently, and it seems as if a lot of bloggers may need help learning how to join the process of journalism. Yet, this joining is an important part of turning politics inside out.

Jock Gill sent a note about Micah Sifry’s recent article in The Nation, ‘The Rise of Open-Source Politics’. Jock points out that there were some successful early attempts at a bottom-up, laterally networked community of ordinary voters with the Clinton Gore campaign back in the early 90s. Nonetheless, it is now has finally become a popular topic.

Micah quotes Mathew Gross as saying, “The reason these community sites have formed is the Democratic Party is too based on insiders”. This is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. Leading up to the national convention, I ran a website where people could read a proposed draft of the 2004 Democratic National Platform, comment on the planks at the site, or find platform committee members or delegates to send comments to.

Now, the Democratic Party is talking about who the next Chair of the DNC should be. The insiders are placing their bets, but it is time to turn politics inside out. Ordinary voters need to find out who the DNC members from their state are and talk with them about where the party should be going, including who the next DNC chair should be.

It is difficult to find who the DNC members are. As I prepared for the convention, I provided some information about them at platform.smartcampaigns.com. I have revived this site, and friends have been sending me additional information about who the DNC members are. Hopefully, we can get people to use this to further turn the party inside out.

It does seem like everything is topsy turvy these days. Perhaps the problem is that they aren’t topsy turvy enough, yet.