On June 9th and 10th, the fourth annual DemocracyFest will be held — this time in Manchester, NH. I will be attending as a presenter for ePluribus Media along with luaptifer. We need your help to ensure that we can all get as much as possible out of this.
First, what is DemocracyFest?
DemocracyFest is an annual educational and inspirational festival for the progressive grassroots. DemocracyFest gives grassroots progressives the knowledge and skills they need to take our country back. Participants return home to their communities with renewed commitment, and new skills to help them making a difference.
Several VIPs will be in attendance. In addition to giving our own presentation on Sunday, we’re going to try and land some interviews with these folks, and we want you to help us develop the questions.
Several of the people who will be in attendance will, in all likelihood, not have any open time in their schedules for an interview. However, I’m planning to assemble a list of questions from folks on ePluribus Media, DailyKos, BooMan Tribune and My Left Wing and then post those questions in a second diary as a poll. Since only one poll can be conducted per diary, only the most popular questions will get picked — we won’t be able to differentiate between topics or people. To partially address that, there is a poll at the bottom of this diary that identifies the people who will be attending; vote for the one you think is most important to corral into an interview.
Here’s a list of the speakers who’ll be attending:
- Gov. Howard Dean, DNC Chair (speech free & open to public)
- Sen. John Edwards
- Sen. Mike Gravel
- Rep. Carol Shea-Porter
- William McNary, President, USAction
- Bev Harris
- Mark Crispin Miller
- Jim Dean
- Sec of State William Gardner
- Asst. Sec of State Anthony Stevens
- Charlie Grapski
- Jean Sara Rohe
- Carlos and Melida Arredondo
- Paul Twomey
- Asst. Clerk, Manchester, Carol Johnson
- Danville Moderator, Wally Fries
And here is a list of the panelists:
- Jeffry Taylor
- David Lindorff
- Quintus Jett
- Deborah Langhoff
- Rev. Jerald Abbott
- NH State Rep, Jeff Fontas
- NH State Rep, Andrew Edwards
- ePluribus Media researchers: GreyHawk and Luapt
Please check in at the Poll, below, to vote for who you think the primary interview target should be, then add a comment with a question you’d like us to ask. You can include a secondary and tertiary interview choice — with target questions — too, if you’d like to help us with a more revised list. The more you can do to help us represent the voice of the people, the better prepared we’ll be to bring that voice to those who need to hear it.
Note that I couldn’t enter all the names on the poll, so if your preference is attending isn’t shown, just specify that person in a comment.
Thank you.
…and now, on to the slightly-off-topic but more fun stuff…
ePluribus Media’s special “Don’t clog my tubes” mug
Participatory democracy involves many things; physical activism, the expanding influence and involvement of the netroots, The Rise of the Blogosphere, the growth and growing power of citizen journalism and the subsequent challenges to net neutrality. As certain leaders in government have demonstrated, legislators don’t fully understand the power of the internet — but they know it has power, and to a large extent they fear what they do not directly regulate. Some have even referred to it as “a series of tubes” when discussing the concept of Net Neutrality.
((youtube URYNnF5mz84))
For Democracy to work, and in support of the concept of a democracy of the People, by the People and for the People, Roxy of ePluribus Media developed a special design to accompany the slogan “Don’t clog my tubes.”
Here’s the design:
In case you can’t make out the spiralling words, it says “bloggers…citizen journalists…patriots…ePluribus Media” with an arrow pointing to the phrase “Don’t clog my tubes.”
Here’s the design wrapped around a nice mug:
We added the mug to the ePluribus Media store to share it with folks and enable you to simultaneously show your support for ePluribus Media while also telling the government to keep “the tubes” in the domain of the people. If you’d like to purchase one (or more…more is good) just click the image of the mug. You’ll be brought to the CafePress product page for it, where you can add it to your basket, then either log in if you have a CafePress account or open a new one to make a purchase.
Footnotes:
Previous diaries with “DemocracyFest” as a tag: