As some of you well know, Jill of Feministe [1] mixed it all up at the Personal Democracy Forum [2] 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 [3], 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 [4] 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 [5] 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 [6]]:
Blogs: The Insurgent VoiceGlenn Greenwald - Unclaimed Territory (Moderator)
Chris Rabb, Afro-Netizen
Jerome Armstrong, Co-author, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics
Matt Stoller, MyDD.com
Louis Pagan, Latino PunditLiza Sabater, CultureKitchen
Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake
This should be interesting given my past criticisms [7] of Stoller's use of the word netroots [8].
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