Saturday, December 11, 2004
Bloggers kicked out of the DNC meetings in Florida
The reformers, the grassroots of the party are already being kept out of the process!
Get a big broom and push the garbage out!
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The reformers, the grassroots of the party are already being kept out of the process!
There's something wrong when the chairs and executive directors go on and on with their praise toward the internet that's brought millions into the coffers of the DNC, and then turns around and kicks Joe Trippi and his band of bloggers out of the meeting room when the "closed" Q & A with the DNC Chair candidates occurs. You could have walked right in off the street and into the candidate Hall unencumbered, but if you happened to be a blogger, or the guy who brought the strategy of embracing the small donor activist on the net for the Democratic Party, and he's got a blog, out you go.
There's something wrong when DNC Chair candidate Donnie Fowler, during his 5-minute presentation on his candidacy, singles out Matt Stoller as an example of embracing the technological ideas that are going to bring this party forward, and then some DNC staffer walks up to Stoller and tells him he's got to leave the room, because he's a blogger.
There's something wrong when the DNC members are holding a vital meeting on the "Fowler Amendments" which are the most reform-minded amendments to the DNC Charter in the last 30 years (a radical takeaway from DC-based members by the states), and the DNC closes the meeting to bloggers; not realizing that we are the vehicle to crusade for this reform (Stoller and I went inside anyway, even though we suffered getting kicked out halfway through the meeting).
There's something wrong when over and over throughout this meeting, there's been praise for the internet, the small donor, and I've even heard the term "Netroots" spoken here casually, a term I first used to describe what was happening with our campaign for Howard Dean back in the fall of 2002. And yet, even though we were invited to come to this event by the candidates themselves, even though there are many in DC that encouraged we come to this event and engage in the process, we were not welcome. In fact, we were thrown out of multiple meetings, even those that regular people off the street could attend.
Get a big broom and push the garbage out!
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