Update [2007-8-8 23:50:24 by Steven D]: Revised to address Carnacki’s concerns in the comments.
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First, let me say I didn’t attend Yearly Kos this year, so maybe I’m speaking out of turn. But I came across this story on the intertubes about Yearly Kos and it made me angrier than anything other than the recent Democratic Party’s betrayal on FISA :
You can watch some powerful video of our August 5th Coffee with the Troops online at AfterDowning Street and Alternet. We filmed the entire event, which was attended by more than one hundred people at the Yearly Kos Convention Sunday in Chicago. We plan to have the entire one hour session viewable on YouTube soon.Leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against the War spoke at Coffee with the Troops hosted by the Center for Media and Democracy and moderated by yours truly John Stauber. Speaking for IVAW were Garett Reppenhagen, Aaron Hughes, Josh Lansdale and Geoffrey Millard who then answered questions about the growing resistance to the war among active duty troops. IVAW members believe that the war on Iraq is illegal and that soldiers have the right to refuse an illegal war.
The event has begun to stir what can only be a healthy discussion and debate about the Netroots, its relationship to the Democratic Party, and the horrific quagmire that is the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Author and filmmaker Stephen Marshall of GNN TV has posted a challenging critique titled Bad Cop, bad cop… in which he concludes:
“If the progressive blogosphere is going to play a meaningful role in the future of American democracy, it is going to have to wean itself from celebrity nipple of the Democratic party. If that doesn’t happen then we are going to zoom into 08 with the most influential leftist bloc on the net acting as a de facto adjunct of the establishment Democrats. In that capacity, MoveOn and DailyKos will simply limit the parameters of the debate and push for the most winnable candidates in a game of lesser evils that can only drive us further into the war-torn destiny of a declining empire.”
I’ve been asked how exactly this event came to be organized. A few weeks ago when I examined the schedule for Yearly Kos it was clear that there would be no meaningful strategy session on the war in Iraq. I decided to create that session, and I arranged through the convention hotel for a Sunday morning event that would feature leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against the War.
The Yearly Kos refused to put our event Coffee with the Troops onto their convention schedule despite the fact that no other event was scheduled at the time. Not to be deterred, I arrived at Yearly Kos with 800 flyers that I personally distributed to attendees, and I blogged about the event during the conference.
The event was a tremendous success and one of the best-attended sessions of the Yearly Kos, demonstrating the hunger of the Netroots’ grassroots to address this issue.
I checked the YKos convention schedule and found nothing that pertained solely to the Iraq war. Considering this was a convention of progressive bloggers and other netroots members, I find that shocking. Even more shocking is Mr. Stauber’s claim that when he did organize such an event the YKos organizeers refused to include it on their schedule, even though it did not conflict with any other previously scheduled panel.
Maybe it’s time to organize a netroots convention that has absolutely no ties to Daily Kos in any shape or form, because this just stinks of hypocrisy. The single biggest issue in this country today is the Iraq war, and yet the convention’s organizers couldn’t find the time to schedule a panel discussion on it? And when someone else took the bull by the horns and organized their own panel, the Yearly Kos organizers refused to place it on their official schedule? Something is rotten in more than Denmark my friends. Maybe there is an innocent explanation for this, but I find it difficult to believe that this was simply an oversight by the convention organizers.
So Yearly Kos organizers, what gives? Is Mr. Stauber of Center for Media and Democracy – PRWatch.org lying when he makes these claims? And if he isn’t, why wasn’t there an a panel discussion dedicated to the Iraq war until these people organized one themselves, and why wasn’t it put on the official schedule? I’d like to know, and I’m sure many other people would too.
