Personal Democracy Forum 2006, PDF2006

Looks like for one of the first times ever, candidates for President will be meeting with Native American leaders to discuss "Indian Country" and to beg for support. This largely unprecedented event is thanks to the organizing ability of Kalyn Free of the Choctaw Nation and the organization she founded. This comes from the Indiginous Democratic Network (INDN):

INDN's List Education Fund will launch historic Prez on the Rez in Washington, DC, February 26, 2007, 5:00p.m.-7:00p.m. Click here to view invitation.

This August the Democratic candidates for President of the United States will be coming to Indian Country for an unprecedented forum on Indian issues. Prez on the Rez will bring together the Democratic candidates for President to address the future of Indian Country in front of thousands of tribal leaders, elected officials, INDN elected officials, tribal members, and activists. You can learn more by visiting www.prezontherez. org now.

One exciting feature of the website is the ability to submit suggested questions to be asked of the candidates at the forum. We want to ensure tribal leaders and tribal citizens have the chance to ask questions from Indian Country, about the issues that Indian people face.

We expect all the contenders to participate, including: Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, and Christopher Dodd, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former Sens. John Edwards and Mike Gravel, Govs. Bill Richardson and Tom Vilsack, and Ret. Gen. Wesley Clark.

As some of you well know, Jill of Feministe mixed it all up at the Personal Democracy Forum conference when she asked why weren't women invited to some of the most important plenary panels, especially the ones involving the future of tech and grassroots politics.

After the dust settled, Christian Norton of Take Back America, approached us with an open invitation to the conference. A few days later he emailed us with not just an offer to get media credentials but full access to the conference as "featured bloggers".

'Tis when I chimed in.

Although very grateful for the knock out invitation, I explained that many women bloggers have no budgets for travel or housing for events like his; HENCE their absence. It was not for a lack of interest. It's that when you don't have the financial support to get there, why bother?

So with this in mind I proposed the following : Since I usually go to these events as a speaker, if they invited me as such and gave me a room, I was more than happy to share it with as many women bloggers as I could fit in the room. I also, gave them a laundry list of women bloggers to invite which covered not just the BlogSheroes group but women from all over the blogosphere.

It was too late to include me as a speaker and he said he'd "work on it". Well work on it he did. Let's just say that Chris Norton and his colleague in righteousness, Anasa of Progressive Majority are rock stars.

We have a room, we have badges, we have a bunch of feminists going. What's kind of like the cherry on top is that, even though I was not going to be on a panel, now that Louis Pagan of Latinopundit can't make it, I will be on the bloggers plenary as well.

I'm so there.

[via Take Back America 2006 :: Conference Agenda and Speakers]:

Monday I was all day at Conferences & Events | Personal Democracy Forum, where I talked with Nancy Scola, Aldon Hynes, Juan Melli and Gur Tsabar about The Rising Power of Local Political Blogs.

I have no idea wether anybody podcasted the panel, but it was pretty clear that we all agreed on three basic truths of blogging in the tri-state area:

(1) We're hitting insiders and wonks. We have not even scratched the surface of the local media market.

(2) Open source community platforms rule, but CivicSpace/Drupal beats Soapblox's ass 4:1.

(3) Last but not least, as I was wanton to say all throughout the conference, if there is one distinction to be made between bloggers and journalists is that we are not there to break stories like investigative reporters would do. Our brand of blogging is of activist Op/Ed writers with a simple mission : Deconstruct the news and expose the truth or lies beneath the media-speak.

Which takes me to the moral of the (conference's) story :