I watched the promotional video from last year, and I saw six Black people among 1,500 participants.
Cross posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog, MyDD, and Culture Kitchen and PrairieStateBlue.
Recently, I came across a link to a publicity video for YearlyKos, an annual conference of Democratic Party "progressive" bloggers, and I watched the entire video to confirm a suspicion: That YearlyKos is an overwhelmingly white gathering - disproportionately white considering the number of Blacks in the Democratic Party. Watch the film for yourselves and tell me if my perceptions are in error.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1234580617661540850&q=Mark+BowllanHere's what I saw watching the film of the YearlyKos annual bloggers conference: In a thirty-nine minute video of "1,500" "progressive" Democratic Party bloggers at a hotel in Las Vegas, in all of the shots where the camera panned the crowds, the hallways, the hotel rooms, and speakers diases, I saw two Black women and four Black men among 1,500 people. If accurate, this would mean that YearlyKos was about 0.03% Black in a Democratic Party that has 20% elected and appointed Black delegates at the Democratic National Convention. This appalling lack of diversity is unacceptable for a bloggers groups that aspires to influence legislative policy and candidate selection for the Party as a whole. But, will the conference be virtually all white again when it takes place this August in Chicago?
Markos Moulitsas, the owner of the DailyKos leftist anti-war website says in the video, "Look at this conference! It's the epitome of people power!" To me, a yearly meeting of 1,500 people that includes only 6 Black people is the epitome of white people power, and that's why I think it's so important to bring this to everyone's attention.
An official YearlyKos publicity page on the Internet the conference as:
An annual convention gathering people from all walks of life who belong to the Netroots community, the US-based (but globally focused and inclusive) non-partisan grassroots political action community that uses the Internet and blogs as primary tools for: expressing viewpoints, building consensus, acting to change the status quo, mobilizing huge numbers of people and informing each other and the world about current events, grassroots actions, networks, meetings, policy and more. http://www.yearlykos...
Another YearlyKos conference website says,
The mission of YearlyKos is to encourage and facilitate the promotion of progressive values. YearlyKos uses the term "progressive" to describe the common values held by most Americans, rather than as a reference to any political or partisan agenda. Progressive values include, for example, preserving and promoting the environment, equal rights for all human beings, separation of church and state, good governance and ethics in government, the private sector, and individual behavior, enlightened international relations, media reform, voters' rights, and election reform. YearlyKos intends to pursue these broad goals through social and cultural programs that center on progressive values and worldviews. http://www.yearlykos...
It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable. http://www.dkosopedi...
This is unacceptable. No group within the Democratic Party may aspire to speak for or set direction for "most Americans" or even "most Democrats" while holding annual meetings that are virtually all-white. The Kos establishment must either broaden the base of its blog and its annual meetings or strictly limit its policy-making pretensions, making clear to the public, the media and policy-makers that its views do not reflect consultation with the Blacks and other minorities who make up 20% of the Democratic electorate.
I was not surprised by the almost utter lack of diversity at the annual meeting, since I have read internal polls from DailyKos indicating that the group is only 2.5% Black in a Democratic Party where 20% of the delegates to the National Convention are Black, and there are more Latinos and Asians who remain unrepresented at DailyKos. What is it about DailyKos and YearlyKos that makes them so overwhelmingly white demographically in a Party with so much Black participation?
If you simply don't like Black people, you will never find a more comfortable atmosphere in America than the Yearly DailyKos conference, which has less minorities as a percentage of population than any of the 50 states.
(DailyKos Internal Poll)
In the thirty-nine minute video that I watched, only one Black person spoke about the conference and his role. No Black politicians were evident in the video and none were listed on the YearlyKos website as featured speakers last year.http://www.yearlykos... In the video, exactly one Black speaker was shown on stage, but just for a moment less than would have been necessary to hear anything he said. In crowd shots, one lone Black man was shown two or three times.
Someone else said in the video, "Locked in convention hall with 1,500 bloggers," "I think DailyKos is going to have an influence . . .for years and years to come. It's where everybody comes . . .!" "We broke a record of squeezing more people into one room". If all of this is so, then YearlyKos is setting a dangerous precedent for color-based exclusiveness within the Democratic Party that may portend a new realignment of voting patterns among Blacks and Latinos in the future. I predict that if virtually all-white groups likes YearlyKos gain more prominence in the Party then Black people will vote less at the polls or vote against the candidates and issues supported by all-white groups.
At the end of the Conference video, one speaker asked,
"One more question! Do you want to do this next year?"
With respect to the near-total absence of Black people, I think that's a question that urgently demands to be answered. "Do you want to do this next year?" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1234580617661540850&q=Mark+Bowllan
A Black person watching the YearlyKos publicity video would conclude, and I think reasonably so, that this conference was for white people who were designing a new direction in which Black people and other minorities are undesirable, irrelevant and/or superfluous. It's hardly necessary to post a "Whites Only" sign, when the publicity video makes the complexion of the group as clear as a sign would. If a "picture is worth a thousand words", then a 39 minute video with only six Black people must be worth a whole hard drive of words -- words saying "DailyKos is overwhelmingly a white conference for white people".
It should be obvious that any political organizing among all-white bloggers and any political movement that results from the meeting will not include Black people. How could it? How should it, if virtually none of us have participated in the white bloggers' planning and calls to action?
Because of the pretensions that YearlyKos has for imposing its agenda on the Democratic Party, the fact that it is not representative of the Party is very significant, even without proof of the reasons for the lack of broad-based participation. Of course, the video is only "evidence" of the fact that Blacks and other minorities are not present, without offering self-evident "proof" of how or why this occurs. Nevertheless, the fact that YearlyKos is not representative of the Democratic Party is important because of the policy-making pretensions of the group.
Some "progressive" blogs like DailyKos are trying to have an outsized role in the candidate the selection process, issues development and legislation. If they are successful at defining policy in all-white isolation, they could take the Party in directions that not all of us are willing to support, unnecessarily causing resentments and alienation among the most loyal of Democratic Party voters. "When African Americans are mad at the Democrats, they don't vote Republican. They don't vote," says David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center. http://www.findartic...
My intention here is to explore the truth. If what I am reporting is incorrect, I invite anyone who has additional or contradictory information to provide it in comments, or by e-mail. Meanwhile I call upon Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos to thoroughly examine his blog and his annual bloggers conference to discover why Blacks are excluded from participation,
I hope the Blacks, Latinos and other minorities, progressives and all Democrats, political leaders, and the media will engage with the DailyKos/YearlyKos organizations and challenge them to hold a more inclusive conference in Chicago this August than they had in Las Vegas last year.
Cross posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog, MyDD, and Culture Kitchen and PrairieStateBlue.
Specifically, the Democratic party may have a large percentage of non-whites, but a Democratic web site like Daily Kos is limited by the percentage of citizens with internet access (a societal factor that favors whites). Further, a week-long conference like YearlyKos is also limited by those who can take a week from work unpaid by employers (a societal factor which further culls people of color).
These limits don't mean the conference shouldn't be held, and don't mean the attendees don't get input from more non-whites the other 51 weeks a year.
What it means is an important part of YearlyKos is what attendees can take back to spread the word to people - members of all parties, people on-line and off-line, and people of every color.
P.S. My understanding is that the same demographic issues were there for other Democratic candidates, so it's definitely not just Clark.
Based on his actions there, I refuse to take anything he has to offer with any seriousness. And I will leave my remarks there.
Those who know me realize I do not dismiss a poster because of one or even a handful of things that are egregious. My experience at big orange was that the poster consistenly went over the line. I hope for the sake of this site that we do not see a reappearance.
I however will leave that to judgment of others. I will not read.
I find the site itself has a lot of Latino activists, but I'd say blacks and women are not so well represented. Gay people
I think are probably depressed from what has happened with the hate legislation passing all over the place...but seemingly I haven't seen many gay rights issues either.
Maybe contacting minority groups to get more involved?
I can do 1 engineering society but to be frank, a lot of the engineering societies are corporate sponsored and they will not speak up politically, especially on labor issues.
Maybe do a "reach out" committee as part of Dailykos?