I haven’t mentioned yet on this fair blog, but my friend Alex Steed, scribe of Make Something Happen, fellow New Englander, and all-around super guy is setting out next month for a whirlwhind tour of these fair States to find out just what makes twentysomething activists tick. (We at Change.org are giving him a hand with a few aspects).
He’s rightly grabbing attention for the project. From Save the Internet:
But what sets Steed and other millennial activists apart isn’t
so much age – it’s how they participate in activism. Steed
says that millennial activists are defined by a sense of “digital
fluency” and leverage most of their social and political power
using the Internet.
“The same way that for many people activism means a particular
set of things, like picket signs or making phone calls at a phone bank,
to the millennial, I think one of the top three techniques will always
include the connectivity provided by the Internet,” Steed said.
Indeed, Steed himself is a self-proclaimed millennial activist,
relying on the Internet for much of his social organizing. But
he’s fascinated by the way people only a few years younger than
he is are harnessing the Internet to create change in increasingly
creative and effective ways.
Go Alex!
A couple of months ago I highlighted the awesome effort by citizen journalism pioneer David Cohn to — through his new startup, Spot.us — fund a journalistic work by tapping a community of readers. I and others contributed to the cause, and now we have a result: Alexis Madrigal’s community-funded article on biofuels and the California energy system.
Alexis writes:
In 2000, California consumed about 60 million gallons of ethanol.
That grew to 100 million gallons by 2002 and 600 million gallons by
2003, according to the California Energy Commission. In 2006,
California consumed about 970 million gallons of ethanol. That’s a
1,500% increase in use of the biofuel in seven years.
Some in the energy debate say that this type of transformation is
impossible. Other say radically changing our energy infrastructure is
necessary. Many realists seem to suggest that both statements are true.
Read the rest for more. This is journalism you can be proud of. It’s only accountable to the folks that funded it, and it’s good and necessary. A taste of good things to come.
The more I think about it, the more I’m upset about Sarah Palin’s conflicting message about her daughter — the media isn’t allowed to talk about her, but we will stage a big scene on the tarmac with John McCain and Levi in tow, and get b-roll of Cindy and baby Trig for good effect.
Jill smartly sums up growing opinion about what if this were Obama’s daughter who’d gotten pregnant. She brings up an excellent, if upsetting, point about race-based double standards (emphasis mine):
Wow. Could not have said it better myself. There remains a stereotype
that African-Americans have poor morals. If Barack Obama’s
daughter were pregnant, you’d better believe that pundits would
be tsk-tsking the dysfunctional “black family” and there
would be plenty of b-roll of black pregnant teens in our public schools
with talk about the single black welfare queens & the national
burden they create. That’s the double standard — Palin is
permitted to individualize where Obama is not.
The white Palin is perceived as everymom and her own person at once; a black Palin would be tasked with answering for her entire race.
UPDATE: This bit from Daily Show shows the crazy and hysterical hypocrisy coming from Karl, Bill, Dick, and co.
However much Sarah Palin’s negative, negative, negative speech got under my skin, nothing was worse than the cynical display of her newborn son Trig. Sullivan says it best:
Did I just see Cindy holding Trig? I mean: can we have it one way or
the other? Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the
spotlight. Brandishing a Down Syndrome child as a campaign statement is
daring the press to ask questions about him. And if you are going to
hold the baby in front of the cameras, how can you say that the details
of his birth cannot even be discussed?
I’ve been searching for the word to describe how this made me feel. And it’s “vulgar.” The use of Trig and the cynical pandering to middle America was just vulgar.
I’m burning out on Palin, big time.
In the wake of a tidal wave of negative publicity for the GOP, courtesy of a certain ex-Mayor of Wasilla who, to perilous effect, doesn’t believe in sex education, Joe Trippi sends a bit of realistic advice to the Democrats:
Expectations are so low for Palin, and the opportunity to connect
with the growing viewing audience so high – like a hit TV show that
lifts the ratings of the show that follows it, will McCain bask in the
afterglow of Palin’s success on Thursday night? Or will McCain be on
hand to provide the damage control for his own errant judgment?
It is too early to tell. But the mistake is to see the controversies
and questions around Sarah Palin as damaging, they may turn out that
way and John McCain may pay the price – but for now the interest they
are creating in Palin may actually be building the moment and the
opportunity John McCain and the GOP need to successfully turn the page.
My Democratic friends and I had a gleeful Labor Day weekend. We saw the McCain campaign deal with one piece of craziness after another (see TPM for a recap) and Obama’s poll numbers shot up.
But Palin could likely impress America when she’s unveiled later this week. Yes, expectations are low, she does have a folksy charm, and the only direction the GOP can go is up. So maybe we’l see a bit of a bounce, but I’m increasingly confident that, when viewed next to the McCain/Palin comedy troupe, Obama/Biden are looking pretty secure and serious to most Americans right now.
