All the members and associates of the Feminist Bloggers Network [1] should pat themselves on the back for the work we were able to accomplish yesterday.
We did it. We won
We were able to pool our networks and resources to avert the disaster that would have been the firing of Amanda and Melissa from the John Edwards campaign [2].
Take a bow and pat yourselves on the back. All two million of you.
When Jill posted Two Million Strong [3], quoting me as estimating our combined constituency, it created shockwaves through the backrooms of power. I had not only sent this missive to my fellow feminists through our mailing list [4], but in my attempt to get straight answers from the campaign, I flexed my networking muscles yesterday and reached out to people in my networks in a manner I had not done before.
I didn't do this just for Amanda and Melissa, I did it for all of us. Honestly, this incident was bigger than their jobs. This was about nipping from the bud an increasingly virulent trend in the United States of using the internet and every technology running through it as a means to suspend our constitutionally protected civil rights.
In my 10+ years of internet life, work and advocacy, I have either been at the receiving end of chilling effects [5] campaigns or have had friends suffer them. I can tell you there is nothing like the treath of losing your job, losing your assets through lawsuits, losing your freedom through imprisonment or deportation to understand how powerful this thing called the internets can be. I have to say though that in all these years I have never seen anything move with the velocity of this blogospheric crisis.
It's not just that the technology is getting faster with more bandwidth and more cellular media. What is different now than ever before is the tightening of networks between different spheres of influence.
The Feminist Bloggers Network [6] is one of many groups of feminist bloggers and blogrings that are out there. Ours started first as a meetup [7], then as an advertising network [8] and now as a vibrant discussion group [9].
In the two years we've banded and disbanded in different ways. Yet we've all kept the lines of communication open among each other through these two years.
In that time many of us have either grown in traffic or influence or both. When you take a look at the partial group we have running at our newswire site [10], you can see how distinct and unique we are. You can also find the political and creative intersections that bring us together. Which is why our reach has extended beyond our slice of the blogosphere in these past two years.
Some of us have been all over the country as a experts and consultants in communications and technologies. There are more others in academia, law, and business. Yet others have gone to write for mainstream media newspapers, magazine. One or two have even gained more exposure in TV and radio talk shows.
All in all, our presence keeps expanding. Our reach is becoming more distributed and expansive.
Which is why we could hit a combined 2,000,000 unique visitors a day number with the amount of bloggers that came out in Amanda and Melissa's support. It's not an exaggerated number. Pandagon [11] and Shakespeare's Sister [12] are two of the largest feminist sites in the United States. So are Feministe [13] and Feministing [14]. Yet because of their "blog cred" and reach we had a sizeable chunk of the big blogs lending personally their support. So you had people like Atrios, Josh at Talking Points Memo, Chris and Matt at MyDD, John at Crooks and Liars, Bob at Democrats.com, Steve Gilliard, all throwing their support. And then there us, culturekitchen, the "tail rankers" of the blogosphere or the diarists at prominent places like Daily Kos and Huffington Post all joining in this effort.
I will come back later with the mathematics on this constituency, but more importantly, the psyco-demographics of this bunch.
Pew/Internet's Bloggers [15] is a study that borders on digital anthropology; because it illustrates the dynamics of people who use blogs not just as communications tools but as points for their engagement and evangelizing --whether it is for the next iPod or the next president of the United States.
And that's what matters.
The kind of consituencies we can pool together as bloggers are having pwerful effects all over the cultural landscape of our country. In the aggregate we are bigger than a Catholic League. In influence we may be even bigger than a National Association of Evengelicals because our 2 million combined represent 2 and 3 more through word-of-mouth, our campaign stumping and the non-political networks of early adopters and niche evangelizers bloggers and their commenters represent.
I would have loved to have heard Edwards use this a rebuke to the Bill Donohue's of the world. I would have loved to hear him say, "You have 35,000 but we have 2,000,000 netrooters ready to stand up to intimidation from extremists and fight". I would have loved for him to use half that number to describe the power and influence of this new constituency that comes through 2 bloggers and was given to him by the powers of the internet.
He missed that opportunity, but I believe in giving people a fair shake ... heh.
Yesterday was yet again just a glimpse of our collective politica power. What was different this time around? It was not started out by a big boy blog but us, the "pie-hating" feminists.
Girlfriends and Boyfriends, please take a bow.
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