Apologies and More on Netroots
This week we, that is I, missed the Monday Markup. I do not imagine that the majority of WMassP&I’s loyal readers went into convulsions over it, but an apology is in order. As you probably guessed from the post to that effect, I was at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis this weekend. Originally, I had a grand dream of blogging about the whole conference. That did not happen.
First a little bit more about the conference. It was a great time. I had an opportunity to meet and network with lots of other people interested in using the Internet as a means to effect greater change. In addition for a political junkie like myself, I got to meet politicians from all over the country from Rep. Donna Edwards in Maryland to White House Communications Director to Minnesota Senator Al Franken. Earlier I had tweeted a photograph from a Franken fundraiser. During my brief discussion with the Senator he made a point (when he learned I was from Massachusetts) that John Kerry did a hell of a job getting the START treaty through the Senate.
Rep. Keith Ellison who represents Minneapolis brought the house down with a rousing closing speech calling on activists to not be mad at the president, but rather to push harder to “liberate the president” to get the America we want. Earlier in the day Van Jones offered a similar perspective, saying sometimes we need to “walk ahead” of the president.
In addition I met numerous other online activists including residents of Wisconsin who have seen the dramatic changes being brought to that state. Although all were definitely on the progressive side, they explained about how these changes were entirely unlikely anything that had happened or was proposed, even under Republicans, in the past. Another Wisconsin figure I had the pleasure of meeting was John Nichols, the Washington editor of the Nation.
Back to some of the apologies and excuses. First of all this post is intended to bounce Rep. Mark Cusack off the top of our page. I am sure the Rep will appreciate that even though it is doubtful he care, knows or would do anything about it had I not done so. However, there is some need for house cleaning. Hopefully there will be some big changes here at WMassP&I in the upcoming weeks and months. There are some big decisions ahead for myself that may or may not affect this blog. Certainly there are questions about where opinions that do not fit on this blog should go. If nothing else, Netroots made me consider where I should put some more personal viewpoints, while reserving this space for news, commentary and analysis on the politics in the city and region. In other words, there may be some commentary that may be too personal or subjective to be propertly placed on the blog, admittedly, per my own standards.
One such outgrowth of these changes will be my starting a separate twitter feed for myself to separate some of my opinions from those of WMassP&I. Do not expect there to a divergence, but rather simply a consideration of where some tweets may be appropriate coming from a person rather than, broadly, a blog.
These ideas will take some time to revise. Expect at least one more posting like this while, we, that is I, flesh out the details. Thank you for your readership and we hope you will continue to look to WMassP&I in the upcoming weeks and months.
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