In late September of 2004, MyDD's average daily traffic had just passed 40,000 readers a day. However, the traffic surge was new, and I was still finding it very difficult to live off the $650 in ad revenue I had pulled in for the previous month (and the couple hundred bucks I had made working as a canvasser for Grassroots Campaigns). I knew that the time was soon coming when the ad revenue would be enough for me to just blog full-time, but with no money in the bank and lots of debt, I had to take on a part-time job to help pay the bills as a stop-gap measure. Fortunately, a friend of mine at Penn hooked me up with a near minimum wage job usually occupied by undergrads. For two weeks, the job allowed me to work in front of a computer, so I could blog as I worked.
One day, as I was working at Penn, I received an email from someone working at Americans Coming Together. The person wanted to know if ACT could negotiate with me to secure a lower ad rate on MyDD. This was a progressive organization that had raised more than $125 million in order to get out the vote. As I worked a job typically reserved for teenagers in order to pay some of my bills (I couldn't pay them all back then), this incredibly well endowed organization was asking me if I could cut them a break. And you wonder why the progressive movement loses so many of its best and brightest to the private sector.
I preface this post with that story because it is probably the most gratuitous example from my personal experience that demonstrates how progressive organizations view their supporters as people to be exploited, not praised or helped. There isn't a week that goes by on MyDD where I fail to be asked several times to blog more about one issue or the other. Why aren't you blogging more about labor, election reform, the estate tax, reproductive rights, any variety of congressional campaigns, the environment, and on and on and on. You name it--I get pestered to blog about it. Always, this pestering comes form people who have never given a dime to support bloggers. Always, the requests come from people who make a lot more money than I do.
The entire progressive blogosphere operates on a budget much smaller than that of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and much, much, much less almost any major progressive 501c(3) or 501c(4). Yet, despite this, we are often asked by Democrats and progressives with real influence to help flog their latest campaign. In fact, this past week we were criticized by many for "ignoring the big issues of the day," as we defended ourselves from a wave of slimy attacks by the establishment and right-wing media. Mind you, these attacks were designed to destroy our credibility to influence anything at all, but by responding to them we were ignoring the big issues of the day. During these attacks, I have now had nearly my entire employment history aired out in public. I have had reporters calling me to probe if I have done anything illegal with BlogPac. I have had reporters demanding that I tell them exactly how the combined netroots page at ActBlue works, or else be portrayed as corrupt. I have had reporters demanding to know how the Liberal Blog Advertising Network works, or else be portrayed as corrupt. And I did not even get the brunt of the attacks. That was reserved for Markos and Jerome.
During this assault, never once, not a single damn time, did I hear a major Democrat or progressive leader stand up for the netroots in the media and say that these attacks were unwarranted (there were a couple off the record, but not on). I did, however, hear a lot of major Democrats and progressive leaders demand that I "return to the important issues." I was to stop trying to defend the netroots, and instead flog their latest campaign. Now, I have never made more than $40K in a calendar year (although I am optimistic to break that record in 2006), but instead of responding when I am accused of corruption, I am instead supposed to be a cog in the wheel of some larger progressive campaign run by people who make six figures.
The longstanding practice of progressive organizations to exploit their most dedicated workers by forcing them to live ascetic lives in order to help "the cause" is being repeated with the way many progressive organizations and campaigns are now treating the blogosphere and the netroots. We are not supposed to actually make a living helping out the progressive movement, but we are supposed to be happy eating rice and gruel as we struggle to find a way to either blog full-time, or to maintain a good blog while we hold down a full-time job. The whole thing reminds me of the
Strip Mining the Grassroots series, where MyDD diarist Greg Bloom documents the crap conditions under which progressive canvassers struggle to get by. It also reminds me of
why there is such a sharp divide within the progressive activist world that almost breaks down along class lines. As the lower rung ground soldiers for organizations like PIRG and the Sierra Club struggle to make a living, they watch as well-heeled insiders run campaigns that keep losing and losing and losing. Only now, through the blogosphere and the netroots, are all of those ground troops able to gather together and fight back. Of course, even now, many people in the netroots who long ago left working in politics in favor of actually making a decent living in the private sector, are still given the same treatment.
Oh, you left politics and now you actually have money? Well, then give us that money to help our campaigns and be quiet. You found a way to make a living running a blog independent on our organizations? Great--now we'll tell you what to write on that blog so that it helps our campaigns.
This is made all the more annoying by how it replicates another dysfunctional aspect of the progressive movement: the endless meta-discussions about things we should be discussing more, and about why we aren't discussing those things more. It is one thing to have those discussions about electoral fraud. From what I can tell, the entire point of the discussion about electoral fraud seems to be to talk about why we aren't talking about election fraud more, and about who is keeping us from talking about it more. After a few years, I have come to accept the permanent meta-element of the election fraud discussion. However, when it comes to pretty much every other "issue," talk about why we aren't talking about x is time we could have actually spent talking about x. For some reason, as progressives we don't just need to talk about x, we need to talk about why people who do talk about x are somehow being ignored / persecuted by the rest of the progressive movement which is putting baby x in a corner. We must be persecuted, or else we are not real progressive activists, or something.
Over the past few years, the progressive blogosphere and netroots has emerged as a new force within the progressive movement. In fact, the progressive netroots and blogosphere have been the most energetic force behind the revival of the progressive movement in America. Democrats and progressives have witnessed our people-powered and do-it-yourself ability to actually get things done: to create buzz, to raise money, to recruit candidates, and to assist on successful campaigns such as Social Security in 2005. One of the reasons we have been able to become so successful so quickly is because we haven't wasted our time talking about why we aren't talking something. Another reason we have been able to get things done is because every blog that has been successful has been specifically tailored to focus on, and serve as an expert on, a narrow range of topics. There isn't a single major blogger who comments on all issues all the time. We work on, and focus on, what we know best.
During it all, we have found ways to talk to one another, such as the Townhouse list. During it all, we have found ways to make money for each other, such as the Liberal Blog Advertising Network. We have done this to maintain our energy and increase our effectiveness. We have done so with our best attempts to be open and fair. We have done all of this in an attempt to stop replicating the same mistakes the progressive movement has been making for decades: exploiting its hardest workers, and not talking to one another (except only when to talk about why people aren't talking more about what they should be talking about). But now, as our success is starting to show, many progressives want to get back to the business of exploiting us and telling us what to write, as they have done to their ground troops for decades.
So, here are my ranting proclamations to the rest of the progressive movement:
- Stop telling me what to write about. I know what I am doing. I know what topics it is best for MyDD to focus on. I know how what I write influences others. MyDD's traffic hasn't increased by 2000% under my watch, primarily to a very influential audience, because I was somehow ignoring your issue or not helping your campaign. The same goes for every other successful progressive blogger.
- If you think that people are not talking enough about your issue or campaign, don't whine about it and start an endless meta-cycle on how more people should be talking about it. Instead, spend that time actually talking about it. Move forward. Don't waste people's time with your persecution complex. If you provide good information, I might be able to join your campaign on that topic. But stop trying to guilt me into action you are not taking yourself. For example, if you are a candidate who does not want to do call time, don't expect the blogs to pick up the slack when your fundraising sucks.
- Stop thinking that the best way for progressive activists to help the progressive movement is for those activists to live in poverty. You can't do your best work when you struggle to pay your bills. When it comes to blogging, you can't do your best work on a dial-up modem in a studio apartment, a ten-year-old computer chair and a five-year-old cell phone. If you want to keep the best and most effective progressive activists in the field of activism rather than the private sector, don't tell them they need to live like monks.
- Stop telling us to stop defending ourselves. Virtually no one in the progressive movement is out there defending us, yet somehow we have still managed to develop a generally positive image in the media, and to remain effective in producing positive political outcomes. Unless you want to see the netroots shrivel up and stop being effective, don't tell us to stop fighting back when we are attacked.
- Find some way to support bloggers, or stop asking us to support you. I have been working on the problem of getting more money to bloggers for over a year now. The biggest obstacle I see to it is that progressive donors and progressive organizations are worried that if they fund bloggers, bloggers will eventually say something "crazy," and the organizations and donors in question will end up looking bad. Fine. If that is their rationale, I can live with that. However, don't then go and tell bloggers that they should stop criticizing Democrats and progressive orgs whenever Dems and progressive orgs do something stupid. If you think we are useful, but generally too unstable to deserve regular funding, don't expect us to be quiet when Democrats and progressive organizations do things that make us mad. Don't think you can keep us in relative poverty because you don't like some of the things we say, but also think that we should shut up when we don't like what you say or do.
So there. Stop whining about the posts I make on MyDD, and why you are not included in those posts. We all built the progressive blogosphere basically from scratch, and the last thing we need are well-endowed orgs and staffers complaining that we didn't do a better job. Until the old progressive movement stops sucking, and until it treats the netroots likes it actually gives a damn about the people in the netroots, don't tell us what to do. Get back to work instead, and let us know when you have something that is really worth our time.
(And for what it is worth, it has been thinking about this topic that has made me irritated and aggressive all day.)
