The gridlock in New York's state capitol has gone on for way too long. It is becoming increasingly clear that working in Albany to bring about change in the way Albany operates is not enough. This election year, which may bring historic change to the State Senate, provides us with a perfect opportunity to use the election and campaign events to move reform issues back to the center of political discussions in New York.  We have to show our elected officials that the issues that we work on to bring effective and accountable state government to New York are supported by ordinary New Yorkers throughout the state. We can't do that simply by lobbying officials once they've arrived in Albany.  We have to move the discussion into districts throughout the state. The Pledge for Change campaign is designed to do precisely that.
 

In Denver, it's easy to get the feeling that the telecom companies are funding this convention.  And it's pretty close to true.  AT&T, Qwest, Verizon, and Comcast are heavily invested in the Denver DNC, and are similarly paying for a good chunk of the RNC next week.  If you want to see a big special interest buying its way further into the halls of power, you've got it here.  And anyone who cares about the future of the media, the internet, and the election system in this country should be getting mad.

On the ground in Denver, it's the little things that catch your attention - like almost every delegate has a lanyard around their neck that says "Qwest Qwest Qwest" (see the pics).  When half the people you see have a Qwest band around their neck, you notice.  And it gets in your head.

And then it's the parties.  Of course, folks like me can't get in - but delegates, elected officials, lobbyists and their staffs usually can.  AT&T is hosting a reception virtually every day, sometimes several.  (Check out Sunlight's Party Time blog for some great coverage of the convention parties.)  Yesterday I went to see who was at the AT&T-sponsored luncheon for "western delegates" only to get turned away at the door and informed that the event had been moved to a different fancy restaurant on the other side of town.  Tuesday night I wandered past a private event sponsored by Verizon for Iowa delegates; they had reserved a café on the main drag through town and locked out the public, as you can see from the photo.

Those are the obvious images, but what's less visible to the naked eye is more significant.

This morning at the Big Tent, Air America and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow hosted a discussion with Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. The subject of the talk is how the internet is impacting the 2008 elections.

Maddow started out with pointing out that for the last several elections, broad claims have been made that the internet was making a major difference - but has it? Eric Schmidt responded that it is becoming more and more the case. His example of how the internet has recently made a big difference was how in the 2006 Senate races the GOP candidate in Virginia used the word "macaca" to describe a person of color, and it got around on Youtube, which may have been the pivotal point in that election. The viral nature of that video made a big difference in the shift of power in the US Senate.

Is that just increasing? It seems to be the case. More and more citizen journalism is emerging, and here at the Big Tent that is certainly evident.

Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin dropped by the Big Tent today. Durbin is the champion and co-author with Sen. Arlen Specter of the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act (S.1285), the bill to create a full public financing system for U.S. Senate races. The average Senate winner spent $9.6 million in 2006, and as Durbin likes to point out, it cost an average of over $7 million to lose a Senate race last cycle.

Durbin spoke to bloggers and other media but I caught him on his way out. I thanked him for his leadership on public financing. True to form, he ignored the praise and spoke of the work to be done. With a hostile Supreme Court on the campaign finance front, Durbin was unfazed. "We still need to do this," he said, regardless of the Court. "I don't think we're sunk, not at all."

With folks like Sen. Ken Salazar saying we need to do something on campaign finance reform, and Durbin and Specter in the lead, 2009 is shaping up to be a big and critical year to move forward in changing how we finance federal elections.

I have to give a lot of credit to the American public. As the mainstream media headed down in quality, we the people decided to take action and instead of just whining or resigning ourselves, we decided to create our own media.

There is no better example of that than here in Denver right now. The hundreds of bloggers at the Big Tent, the public access show producers crawling all over town with cameras, and the alternative media are all doing what the mainstream media isn't.

While the big cable news networks are focused on parsing the words in speeches to try to determine the impact on the horse race for president, the citizen media is out there reporting on everything from what is going on with the police in Denver during the DNC to how well the "greenness" of the convention is working.

Cross-posted from The Hill...

The highlight of Tuesday-indeed, the most widely-attended presentation at the Big Tent so far-was longtime newsman Dan Rather giving a powerful, and at times emotional, talk that Jon covered in more depth earlier.

His key message at our symposium on media and democracy is that we NEED citizen journalism, we NEED owners with the guts to take any heat from talk radio, and we NEED to stop media consolidation. I caught a few minutes on video that don't do it justice, but hopefully they give a sense of his passion, including a moment of choking up about a minute and a half in.

But the day was about much more than Dan Rather. Indeed, that was the whole point -- that a healthy democracy depends on a diverse and free media that prods, questions, and educates the public rather than a small handful of networks controlling what people see and hear and what constitutes "news."

Yesterday at the Big Tent events in Denver, we held a workshop titled "Is Civil Discourse a Civil Right?". Right to left in the photo are:

• Alex Nogales, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition,
  
• Cathryn Hazouri, Executive Director of the ACLU of Colorado,
  
• Mark Lloyd, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Affiliate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University,
  
• and yours truly acting as the moderator.

We had a lively discussion about how access to the media, including media ownership, public access and net neutrality impact the communities fighting for their civil rights. Alex Nogales pointed out how Latinos in America have their civil rights violated day after day by the impact of hate speech on radio and TV. Cathryn Hazouri pointed out that from the perspective of the ACLU, she opposes censorship of the media to deal with hate speech, but does support the idea of a modernized version of the Fairness Doctrine so that issues are presented in a truly fair and balanced way. Among other issues that Mark Lloyd talked about, he brought up how the Digital TV Transition might impact low income and minority communities more than others, and take away their access to the information they need to participate in our democracy, unless they get the word now about how to be prepared for the transition.

This is just a short snapshot of the event, we went over our allotted hour. It was videotaped, so we hope to get that video out online in the future and possibly distributed on public access.  

In general though, while these discussions might not be happening over at the DNC Convention, they ARE happening here in Denver at the Big Tent.

Document 9 (11-23-05).pdf

Document 8 (11-22-05).pdf

Document 1 (11-7-07).pdf

Document 7 (10-27-05).pdf

Document 13 (10-26-07).pdf

Document 12 (10-23-07).pdf

Document 3 (8-28-08).pdf

28 Aug 2008 // Today CREW filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in CREW v. Dep't of Justice, a FOIA lawsuit seeking copies of the FBI's interview of Vice President Cheney in connection with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity. More»

28 Aug 2008 // Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) will not appear before an Alexandria judge on a charge of driving while intoxicated until mid-October. The case has been delayed yet again.

Fossella's case in Alexandria General District Court has been delayed several times since his May 1 arrest. He had been scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

More»

28 Aug 2008 // CREW has filed a complaint against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), based on the VA's failure to respond to CREW's Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the VA's diagnosis and treatment of veterans with PTSD. More»