#netroots nation

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ron Filipkowski at Medias+:

Imagine every week, somewhere in America, there is an event featuring nationally prominent Democratic elected officials, TV personalities, celebrities, artists, state and local officials, candidates, podcasters, journalists, and social media influencers. A one-day or weekend event, sponsored and hosted by different organizations, each with their own group of speakers, in different states, all year round. That is what the Republican Party has had in place for a decade to recruit, build, inspire, organize and motivate their base.  The Democrats have MSNBC. Since I have attended, watched and covered these events on the Right for years now, I am often asked why the Right has embraced these so enthusiastically while the Left has virtually nothing equivalent. My theory always was that Republicans enjoy doing things in groups and Democrats are more individualistic. But every time I would mention that while speaking to a group of activists, their response was always the same - 'I would go to something like that!

Democrats do some of this in the final few months of major election campaigns, but it is nothing like the network that the Right has created. Sure, we have all made fun of these events. Many of the speakers at right-wing conferences are nutty conspiracy theorists, christian nationalists, charlatans and grifters, and people who attend them can be fairly culty, but they are effective. While Democrats laugh at them or criticize them for what is taking place, they are doing nothing of their own to counter it. Let's say, in a few months after the mourning period is over for 2024, a major conference was announced in a major city of a swing state that featured Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Eric Swalwell, Jared Moskowitz, Jasmine Crockett, AOC, along with a few celebrities of the entertainment industry, TV news commentators, journalists, podcasters and social media influencers. Would you go if that was in your state?

Although the formats vary, most of these conferences on the Right play out a similar way using the CPAC / Turning Point USA model pioneered by Matt Schlapp and Charlie Kirk. Early on they feature panels of 3-4 speakers discussing a specific topic for 30-60 minutes, taking questions from the audience. Then speakers begin with local officials, then podcasters/influencers, then TV hosts, then celebrities, then the headliner politicians being featured. They talk about what is on their mind, what they think people need to do, propose new ideas and vision. Panel topics for one of these conferences on the Left could be: Why Are We Losing Men under 40? Why are Latino Voters Disillusioned With Democrats? How Can We Talk About Abortion in a Way That Doesn't Alienate Christians? Democrats Need to Articulate a Border Policy, What Should It Look Like? Trans Athletes and Competitive Sports. I'm sure we each could think of many more. And the panelists could be chosen who are experts in these areas, but also have diversity of thought on them.

[...] These conferences need to be a safe space where orthodoxies and conventional wisdom can be challenged and debated. People can disagree, argue their points passionately, hash things out, and still part as friends. Those kinds of debates happen on the Right, not so much on the Left where people have great ideas, new approaches, different perspectives, but are afraid to share them for fear of being shouted down, scorned, ostracized, or tagged with a odious label.

The Right invests in these conferences and events. Spends millions of dollars on them on advertising, venues and speaker's fees. But over time they have been so well attended, with attendees buying tickets and advertisers and sponsors lining up, that they now turn a healthy profit for the people who run them. While you don't have to pay for an elected official or candidate who just wants face time with activists, speakers lower down the food chain need their travel paid for and modest fees for their time.  People don't even have to attend in person anymore. These events are all livestreamed on X, Instagram, Facebook Live, Rumble, YouTube, and get lots of coverage from Fox, Newsmax, Real America's Voice, Right Side Broadcasting and other right-wing channels. Hundreds of thousands of people on the Right watch these conferences from home and on their phones, week after week after week

In addition to providing a forum to hash out ideas and policy, these conferences also provide amazing organizing and networking opportunities. Podcasters and social media influencers gain new viewers, listeners and followers so they can continue to maintain the messaging every week long after the conference is over on their own platforms. They can meet each other, help each other, and start to coordinate their efforts. Politicians and celebrities can meet these influencers and grass roots activists in attendance, get to know them, exchange emails or phone numbers. These conferences, rallies and events are how the Right has built a powerful network of activists all over the country. They meet each other, get to know each other, coordinate, and help each other. New email and donor lists are compiled. New voters are registered or brought into the party. People are convinced to switch parties, get off the fence, or become more active. 

[...] With that said, the main point of this article is that we can't look for cable news channels to be our thought leaders or the vehicle for grass roots organizing. They don't exist for that purpose. That is not their mission. Their mission is to entertain, while hopefully also informing, while achieving ratings to bring in ad dollars. But the problem is, too many Democrats are camped out in front of MSNBC as their central organizing instrument.  We need to wake up, and we need to do it now. I am certain that we have better ideas, are more sane and rational, less narcissistic, less conspiratorial, less grifty, and care about other people more. Don't get me wrong, we have plenty of issues, characters, grifters and BlueAnon conspiracy theorists - but not nearly as many and it is more of a bug than a feature, unlike MAGA.

Ron Filipkowski wrote a solid piece in Meidas+ that the left needs to get their game together and have their versions of CPAC and TPUSA’s summits, though Netroots Nation is the closest equivalent.

See Also:

MeidasTouch News: The Right Supports a Network of Conferences, Podcasters & Rallies; the Left has MSNBC

[npi]

At Netroots Nation, antiracism leaders dispel right wing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives

Welcome back to NPI’s continuing coverage of Netroots Nation 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland. Today is the middle day of this year’s conference. During a lunchtime keynote, attendees heard from a distinguished group of panelists who stressed the importance of preserving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and pushing back against far-right extremism during a difficult chapter in our…

[onthemoonarts]

FEMINIST BUZZKILLS PODCAST WITH SPECIAL GUEST JOYELLE NICOLE JOHNSON

Episode drops at 6pm ET.

LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST

[fivedollarradio]

Last night, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on an absurd resolution saying that not only is Israel not an apartheid state, but that it’s not a racist one either. Israel is apparently such a hyper-advanced and enlightened shining beacon of goodness, it’s evolved beyond the scourge of racial prejudice that today continues to plague even the most socially liberal of Western democracies. Quite an achievement. Lawmakers who spoke up in favor of the resolution upped and upped the ante on heaping praise on a government that just bombed and raided a Palestinian refugee camp and hundreds of whose citizens just rampaged through a Palestinian village setting fire to homes. [...] This spectacle was prompted by Congressional Progressive Caucus cochair Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s offhand remark this past weekend at the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago, words she swiftly walked back under criticism. After Palestinian rights activists interrupted a panel she was on, Jayapal defended her progressive colleagues, telling the crowd that “we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible.”

Utterly ridiculous that they had to "vote" on this. Also, I saw Karen -- I mean Debbie Wasserman-Schultz scolding rep. Jayapal on television the other day. I hate coerced apologies. Note: criticizing Israel is not antisemitism.

[federal-reserve-bonds-dog]

Kamau Franklin signed a letter in support of antisemitic murderer Elias Rodriguez.

Franklin has been a featured speaker at Netroots Nation.

Franklin was part of a seminar series at Columbia University in 2023 called Cooperism.

https://archive.ph/2025.05.29-155903/https://cooperism.law.columbia.edu/kamau-franklin/

https://archive.ph/2025.05.29-154644/https://www.netrootsnation.org/profile/kamau-franklin/

[antonjesus]

TYT & David Pakman Show Meetup at Netroots Nation!

[qudachuk]

Pramila Jayapal apologises after saying ‘we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state’ at Netroots Nation eventThe chair of the US Congressional Progressive Caucus apologised for calling Israel a “racist state”.“I offer my...

[berniesrevolution]

The first Netroots Nation conference in a Trump-era election year opened with not one, not two, but five keynote speakers of color, all of whom underlined the potential of a “multiracial coalition” of voters made up of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and progressive whites. Their prescription for taking back the House in the November mid-terms was not winning back Trump voters, but expanding the electorate. “Our swing voter is not red to blue,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old Bronx Democrat who upset Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley in a June primary, told an audience of progressive activists on Saturday. “It's non-voter to voter.”

The line was met with huge applause from the audience at Netroots Nation, the annual gathering for progressive candidates, activists, and organizers. Where as last year’s conference attendees saw a gubernatorial candidate’s speech interrupted with shouts of “trust black women,” this year’s felt like a very intentional tribute to people of color, especially  women.  The conference offered more than 20  training sessions and panels specifically addressing how to reach those voters, as well as the millions of eligible Americans who aren’t registered to vote. The majority of panelists and presenters, according to Netroots organizers, were people of color.

Democrats have been grappling with key questions about coalition building since the 2016 election: Should they prioritize winning back the voters they lost to Trump? Should they attempt to woo the white voters gradually fleeing the party? Progressives this weekend said, emphatically, no. It’s a genuine attempt to remake the Democratic Party at a time when racial and class tensions are the highest they’ve been since the 1960s—and it’s also put them on a collision course with party leaders and other Democrats.

“I think Trump’s win scared the shit out of everybody,” said Anoa Changa, a progressive activist and host of the podcast The Way with Anoa. “I think it’s been a wakeup call for a lot of people that we have to invest. We can’t just do the traditional model where we only talk to super-voters.”

That doesn’t mean ignoring whites and Trump voters, she says. Instead, “it’s rejecting the notion that our way to victory is having a centrist, moderate right-leaning strategy that feels like we could peel off Romney Republicans, versus investing in communities of color, marginalized groups and progressive white people,” Changa said. “There is this notion that...we can’t address the issues of race, systemic oppression because we don’t want to piss these voters off. We have to find a way to do both.”

A key voting group that progressives want to mobilize consists of more than four million voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012 didn’t vote in 2016. More than 50 percent of them  were people of color, and almost one-quarter were under age 30, according to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. “If 2016 had happened with the same voter turnout patterns as 2012 then [Hillary] Clinton would have won,” said Brian Schaffner, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who helped conduct the survey. “Clearly turnout can influence outcomes.”

But it’s bigger than the Obama voters. Roughly 59 percent of black Americans and 48 percent of Hispanic Americans voted in 2016, compared to 65 percent of whites. If progressives could just close this gap, they argue, Democrats would win more often. They aim to do that by mobilizing already registered voters—and by registering new ones: Roughly 30 percent of the citizen voting-age population is unregistered, and those Americans are more likely to be young people and people of color. These are the people activists call the “New American Majority.”

The Democratic Party so far has leaned into economic messaging as a way to win in 2018: After the 2016 election, they unveiled “A Better Deal” aimed at appealing to moderates and weary Trump supporters. They’ve been backing Conor-Lamb type candidates who, through their backgrounds and focus on jobs and wages, are able to come off as more independent. In 2016,  Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York  told The New York Times last week, “there was a blind spot that we had as Democrats with respect to engaging with the American people around the economic anxiety that they continue experience.”

But progressives are adamant that the only way to win in November and beyond has to be about more than economics, and that the right message—the one that will appeal to progressive whites, as well as turning out more people of color to the polls—invokes both race and class equally. Two Netroots trainings on developing a “Race-Class Narrative” were completely filled this weekend, with activists and organizers participating in mock-canvassing sessions in which they practiced delivering lines that contained both racial and economic messages. “The status quo has been not to talk about race, and there’s a myth out there is that if you talk about race you’ll lose,” said Causten Rodriguez-Wollerman, one of the leaders of the training, and a strategist with the public-policy organization Demos. “You cannot build a multiracial coalition by being silent on race.”

(Continue Reading)

[vice2virtue]

Full Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Closing 

Keynote Netroots Nation 2018

AOC on how to pay for HEALTHCARE.

CUOMO:

"Man!  You want to spend a lot of my tax money on these proposals that you and Bernie and others have," Chris Cuomo said. "Medicare for All, college tuition, maybe even housing that the Green New Deal that you have. It is all very expensive, especially on the single-payer side. And that it gives people sticker shock. ..."

AOC:

"... People talk about the sticker shock of Medicare for all," 

"They do not talk about the sticker shock of the cost of our existing system. 

You know in a Koch-brothers-funded-study, it shows that Medicare for all is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now. 

And let's not forget that the reason that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act is because they ruled that each of these monthly payments that every day Americans make is a tax. 

And so while it may not seem like we pay that tax on April 15th. We pay it every single month. 

Americans have the sticker shock of health care as it is."

"And we're also not talking about is why aren't we incorporating the cost of all the funeral expenses of those who died because they can't afford access to health care," 

"That is part of the cost of our system. 

Why don't we talk about the cost of reduced productivity because of people who need to go on disability, because of people who are not able to participate in our economy because they have an accident because they are having issues like diabetes or they don't have access to the health care that they need."

[thelongconversation]

We’re not gonna beat big money with big money. We’re gonna beat big money with big organizing.

[oilchangeus-blog]

This weekend, Congressman Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, joined a growing list of candidates and elected officials taking a stand to keep fossil fuel money out of politics. #NoFossilFuelMoney

Learn more and sign up today: nofossilfuelmoney.org

[npi]

Netroots Nation 2025 will bring the conference back to New Orleans, Louisiana

Organizers of America’s largest annual gathering of progressive activists and movement leaders have announced the location and dates of its next gathering. Netroots Nation 2025 will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, from August 7th-9th. It will be the second time that the city has hosted the conference; it first did so in 2018. NN25 will be the twentieth incarnation of Netroots Nation, which…

[progressivemillennial]

Support independent media, support each other, and don't believe everything you read.

Janine Jackson at Netroots Nation 2017

[rampyourvoice]

New Things On the Horizon

New Things On the Horizon

Logo design of the Wheelin’ & Dealin’ podcast

The blog has been quiet for awhile, and that is due to all that I have been getting into recently.

First is the new adventure I am on – I am the co-host of the Wheelin’ & Dealin’ podcast, which made its debut on the CSPN network last week.  This podcast is politically-focused, and I am leading it with Neal Carter.  Neal approached me earlier this…

[politiciandirect]

Ilhan Omar 'Disgusted' by Muslim Woman Asking Her to Condemn FGM

Ilhan Omar ‘Disgusted’ by Muslim Woman Asking Her to Condemn FGM

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) lambasted a female Muslim audience member Tuesday for asking her to renounce female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice common in Omar’s native Somalia.

Omar was reportedly taking questions an event for the Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy event when Muslim audience member Ani Osman-Zonneveld of Muslims for Progressive Values asked Omar to condemn FGM.

Rep.…