Networking

Access Washington : Tracking the anti-immigrat movement from grassroots to online

Start: 18 Dec 2007 - 1:30pm

End: 18 Dec 2007 - 2:30pm

Timezone:

ACCESS WASHINGTON: TRACKING THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT MOVEMENT
FROM GRASSROOTS TO ONLINE

WHAT: New America Media conference call with Washington experts to track immigration legislation. This weekâ€™s call will look at how anti-immigrant movement has been organizing online as well as the grassroots and how they have been accessing media. From national organizations like FAIR to blogsphere how effective has the anti-immigrant been using new media and getting their message across? What are they doing to put immigration in the hot seat ahead of the caucuses in Iowa? Which are the best-known blogs? Are immigrant rights organizations able to fight back? Who's who in the anti-immigrant movement?

WHO: Participants will include

Henry Fernandez, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center
Liza Sabater, Blogpreneur, CultureKitchen and The DailyGotham
Devin Burghart, Director of Building Democracy, Center for New Community

WHEN: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:30 AM PST (1:30PM EST)

RSVP: All ethnic media are invited to participate in the call though space on the call is limited. The call-in number is 1- (866) 244-4629 . The conference ID is 1180231 . For any questions or further information please contact Sandip Roy at sroy@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: NAM offers this service to ethnic media across the country. The fee to subscribe is your agreement to send us clippings or links to any articles you produce based on the call. Your stories help NAM sustain the program through foundation support. Please send clippings or links to Sandip Roy at sroy@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170.

» read more | calendar | email this event | 138 reads

Ten question for my blog friends

I have now for some time been asking bloggers, privately and semi-privately, about how the different campaigns are reaching out to them.

I just decided, after the string of posts about campaign blog outreach, to put all my questions together into a post. I'd like to use your answers in a follow up post here and at TechPresident.

Here they are :

1. How early in the campaigns have people reached out to you?

2. Did they come directly to you or did they come recommended by another blogger?

3. Are you receiving direct communications from their online organizers and/or blog outreach people or are you getting standard press releases?

4. Have they hit you with ideas, fundraising requests or both?

5. Have they asked you to recommend other bloggers?

6. Have they invited you to events with the candidate?

7. Have they offered you to be in a conference call or an email exchange?

8. How about actual to an sit-down?

9. Do you appear in the candidates blogroll?

10. Have your site been ever mentioned on any of the candidates official blogs?

11. Who would you consider the best blog outreach director?

» liza's blog | 2 comments | email this blog | 458 reads

Barack Obama's online campaign strategist is gone. Should we be shocked?

The Barack Obama campaign has one of the worst track records in reaching out to the blogosphere for support. Not only have they snub the so-called netroots bloggers that strategize through the Townhouse mailing list, but they have actually gone out of their way to not reach out to prominent black, latino and women bloggers who are outside of said mailing.

The best example of this snub was the campaign's absence from BlogHer, the largest convention of women bloggers in the United States and, technically, the world. At BlogHer we had the pleasure to have Elizabeth Edwards as one of our keynote speakers. The Hillary Clinton campaign made a lukewarm appearance by sending in a representative. The biggest omission was Barack Obama himself. After all, the conference was in his hometown of Chicago.

Not sending Michelle Obama to speak to the 800+ networks of vote-ready of mostly mommybloggers who were in attendance has been, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes of the Obama campaign. Worse than the unforgivable muscling-out of the volunteer Joe Anthony from the largest volunteer Obama network on MySpace.

So it does not come as a surprise that Barack's blogger outreach guy has left the building :

» read more | liza's blog | 10 comments | email this blog | 1982 reads

You want chat parties to be on Sundays. Now my question is, at what time?

Submitted by liza on 13 August 2007 - 1:59am.
Networking | social | Chat Party | Chatroom | Events

» email this poll | 988 reads

Goodbye static blogroll, Hello dynamic directories

What!?!? You're getting rid of your blogroll?

Not so fast, no.

We are getting rid of the static blogroll in order to introduce not one, nor two but three directories of links.

Recommended stories

We will have a reincarnation of my long lost sideblog. If you go to the old culturekitchen home page, you will notice a sidebar with short blog posts. The sidebar is not coming back per se, but I can't wait to go back to pointing to you the good, the bad and the ugly I stumble across during my daily perusing of the net. These new posts will be now all indexed in a "recommended storylinks" page.

Recommeded blogs

We also have the recommended links directory back. Almost a year ago I started writing short reviews of the blogs I enjoy. If you go in a little while (I am still re-indexing the links) to the weblinks directory, you will see the thousands of hits I have sent the way of blogs like Republic of T or Women of Color Blog. It took me almost six months to rebuild the directory, but finally I can resume my blog reviews.

Links Directory

In order to maintain our mission to promote other bloggers and to create a strong networking relationship with our peers, I am happy to announce that culturekitchen will not have a static blogroll anymore. In its place we are creating a directory of links to the different blogospheres we belong, as well as including a list of resources and other important places on the web. And for this part of our networking puzzle, anybody who is a registered member of our site will be able to suggest a link for inclusion in our directory.

Submitted by liza on 18 June 2007 - 1:11pm.
Networking | Administrivia | Blogroll | Recommended Blogs | Recommended Stories

» read more | liza's blog | add new comment | email this blog | 437 reads

The Feminist Bloggers Network : An example in distributed political power

All the members and associates of the Feminist Bloggers Network should pat themselves on the back for the work we were able to accomplish yesterday.

We did it. We won

We were able to pool our networks and resources to avert the disaster that would have been the firing of Amanda and Melissa from the John Edwards campaign.

Take a bow and pat yourselves on the back. All two million of you.

When Jill posted Two Million Strong, quoting me as estimating our combined constituency, it created shockwaves through the backrooms of power. I had not only sent this missive to my fellow feminists through our mailing list, but in my attempt to get straight answers from the campaign, I flexed my networking muscles yesterday and reached out to people in my networks in a manner I had not done before.

I didn't do this just for Amanda and Melissa, I did it for all of us. Honestly, this incident was bigger than their jobs. This was about nipping from the bud an increasingly virulent trend in the United States of using the internet and every technology running through it as a means to suspend our constitutionally protected civil rights.

» read more | liza's blog | add new comment | email this blog | 854 reads

Rise of the neighboroots

Personal Democracy Forum asked the following:

As we approach the 2006 mid-terms and look ahead to 2008, the editors at Personal Democracy Forum are asking technologists, journalists, bloggers, and politicos to send us 200-word responses to the following questions:

Was the role of technology in politics different in 2006 than in 2004? How did new technology most affect Election 2006, and do you see any lessons for 2008?

Here's my response, included with comments by other technologists and political observers over at PDF:

Itâ€™s more than netroots activism. Itâ€™s more than neighborhood politics. Neighboroots is becoming and interesting trend : I find myself exchanging on almost a daily basis notes about what is happening here in my little slice of New York City with people who are in far along places like Oregon, Texas and Ohio.

The idea of neighboroots is simple : Many people are using the social networking practices theyâ€™ve developed online to expand their political engagement and strengthen relationships within their offline neighborhoods. So I have been able to share notes and ideas with bloggers and campaign volunteers in cities and towns across states such as California, Virginia and Connecticut.

These are not people involved in high profile national races. These are micro-targeted or hyper-local politics offline : City councils, school boards, state senates. Contrary to the trend of online activists or netroots to target national campaign or high profile races, neighboroots are hyperlocal, microniche politics that are being discussed and even provided with resources by online activists across the country. In most cases, these are the races abandoned by their local party machines. So finding others in similar situations is key to some of these activists. You can say that, as they are more engaged in localities, neighboroots activists also happen to be creating online neighborhoods or affinity groups through forums, blogs, wikis an email lists, in order to to exchange ideas and share resources.

So if there are many more local races these year too close to call, now you know why. Thank the activists who are growing the new political phenomenon, the neighboroots.

» read more | liza's blog | 1 comment | email this blog | 1253 reads

Run, run as fast as you can! The almighty powerful bloggers attack!

Yesterday I attended Fair Media Council's "Connections Day". I was one of the participants in the Blogging: The Power of Citizen Journalism panel.

I had a blast because I finally met Bob Cox, founder of the Media Bloggers Association and Steve Safran of Lost Remote. Bob is the patron saint of bloggers and Steve? Well, as you can see by his energy in this post, he's Bob's so-good-yet-evil twin.

As Steve points out, the debate was rather agitated and it went from, how can blogs be used by disseminate your message to the "we still own the media and you bloggers suck" debate. The three of us agreed we are in a transitional period at the moment, because the rules of engagement through reading and writing are changing.

Here's what I get from the discussions we had during the panel and afterwards: