I don't know a lot about Netroots Nation and I've never been to one, although everyone else from Blue America usually goes and generally speaks well of it. I always thought Markos from Daily Kos was the founder and owner. But over the weekend I read a post he wrote about next year:, Netroots Nation is going to Arizona, Daily Kos is not. That provoked an evolving discussion of Netroots Nation both at Kos and among progressive bloggers in general. And it certainly went beyond Markos' complaints about Arizona's anti-immigrant posture. Our old pal, author Dave Neiwert, summed up a lot of complaints about how Netroots Nation has been evolving:
For me, Markos' decision underscores a lot of my growing unhappiness with NN. It's been obvious for some time that this convention is less and less about its heart and soul-- the bloggers, journalists, and other content providers who gave its founding impetus-- and more about organizers and political professionals. That's a natural and probably necessary evolution, to some extent, and understandable, but it has now reached a tipping point to where that heart and soul has been completely marginalized and shunted into a corner.Look at this year's panels: Not a single one was about blogging. And where is the environmental community? They were nohere to be seen, and not a single panel focused on environmental issues. That's inexcusable in an era when Keystone XL and climate change are defining issues for progressives.Instead, the overwhelming majority of panels were about and for organizers. The meat-- a discussion of the issues themselves that face progressives-- was as thin as a slice of prosciutto. It all felt like a big fat fuck-you to the bloggers and journalists.My overwhelming feeling this year was that there was little there for me and my friends and writing colleagues. The chief draw always been and will be about the great NN community, and that is being systematically gutted into nothingness.Considering that it usually costs a large sum out of my not-very-large personal account to attend, it no longer seems worth that expense or my time. If NN works to repair that damage over the coming months, I will reconsider, but as things now stand, I cannot justify going to Phoenix for what would have been my ninth Netroots.
Wow, 9 Netroots nations; I think that's every one of them! I never went to any although I almost did a few times and I've been supportive financially and used to encourage Blue America candidates to go and to participate and network. But it reminded me too much of the music business conventions had had seen start up so strongly and then devolve into profit-making, corporate endeavors whose ideals and vision were easily compromised away.In 1980 I had been running a small independent record label in San Francisco, 415 Records, for a couple of years, writing for local alternative rock publications and doing a weekly alternative/punk radio show. There were people all over the country working on the same kinds of projects. Some of them worked with alternative rock bands-- managers, agents, indie labels-- and other worked at supporting the bands and the ethos around a DIY music scene-- publications, radio, a new distribution network, etc. Organizers in NYC launched the New Music Seminar at an SIR rehearsal studio in Manhattan. Everyone in the alternative/punk rock business was there-- all 200 of us-- from everywhere in the U.S. If it cost anything-- I don't recall that it did-- it was certainly never about making money for the organizers. It was about building a community and an infrastructure for a cultural revolution we were helping to define.That first New Music Seminar was great in so many ways and for me that included meeting, for the first time, promoters who were booking my label's bands, journalists, record store owners and djs who were getting our music out across the country, other record label folks who who facing the same trials we were facing... It was a major turning point for a new genre of music. And it became an annual event and got even better-- for a few years. But then it got so much better that the major labels-- the Establishment it was organized in opposition to-- wanted in, a music biz version of the DNC, DCCC, DSCC... Joe Biden. And it died. It died ugly and unloved, but-- by then a stinking wretched zombie corpse-- it kept moving, although it really was just for the Establishment by then-- no one could even afford it anymore unless they were having their expenses picked up by corporate entities-- and had nothing substantive to do with the indie spirit.15 years after it started, it finally realized it had been dead for a decade and... well, not many who hadn't been making money from the corporate enterprise bothered going to the funeral. And no one missed it. For some reason-- not sure exactly why-- it was relaunched in 2009, an entirely corporate affair with relatively minimal pretense about having anything whatsoever to do with anything grassroots. Mayor Bloomberg's office was a cosponsor by 2012. The president of Clear Channel gave the keynote address. (Another president of Clear Channel gave the keynote the following year too. And-- note to people who don't know about the music biz-- Clear Channel means the exact same thing there that it means to people working in progressive politics.) I had stopped going many years before and never heard anything since that would have made me want to go again.Like Dave suggested, this is usually the way these kinds of great ideas become victims of their own initial success. Genuine progressive champions like Elizabeth Warren, Raul Grijalva and Shenna Bellows still go-- worth the price of admission, I'm sure-- but hey also invite conservative careerists like New Dem Gary Peters, Third Way mainstay Joe Biden, and Chuck Schumer who represents Wall Street banksters in the U.S. Senate. NSA enablers/partners Google and Facebook were sponsors, as was the anti-progressive Beltway political operation EMILY's List. I have no first-hand knowledge about where Netroots Nation is in the cycle-- getting better, declining, zombie-like... True believers I trust, who are not on the commercial side of it, have assured me they are getting value out of it. When I read Markos' post, I sympathized with the personal and political argument he made for reconsidering Phoenix. Sounds like it might be worth doing even if just to avoid a schism-- either moving it to a random other city not in Arizona or compromising on Tucson, a progressive bastion in Arizona. Maybe some day John and Digby will persuade me to go with them... although, neither one of them-- for whatever reason-- went this year... so they haven't been to as many as Dave. Hard to imagine going to a convention with Chuck Schumer other than to throw rotten tomatoes at him though.Always an early adapter, I think this is when I may have stopped going to the New Music Seminar: