Sep 29 2007

Progressive Blog Party

This is a companion to the companion of Nightprowlkitty’s MANIFESTO! essay.  It’s an idea of how to reach out to our progressive allies and minority bloggers.

Have you ever heard of a Progressive Dinner Party?  It’s a party where each course of a meal is served at a different person’s house or apartment.  You begin at one house for cocktails and appetizers, go to the next place for salad, then another for the main course and coffee/dessert at the final destination. 

So how about a Progressive Blog Party (PBP)? We could organize these for any given night so that a group of us could make 3 or 4 planned stops at other blogs and engage in conversations there. It would be like we are all in the same room at the same time having a discussion. Hopefully we could give the host enough advanced notice so they could be there to talk with us too.  Otherwise, we can still talk about the selected post and leave comments or questions for the author.  After half hour we go to the next site.  And we always leave our mark…”Progressive Blog Party was here”…with an invitation to join us next time. 

I’m just going to throw out some ideas on how this would work. More thoughts and suggestions are welcome. 

The process of picking the PBP route would go something like…

Say we have a party on Saturday night 10-12 PM Eastern / 7-9 PM Pacific.
Saturday morning the party organizer posts an essay with a call for links to blog posts.  Anyone can reply with links to stories they nominate, preferably on the lesser known or minority blogs. It would have to be something fairly recent,  within the past day or two.  Then we all start rating the posts we most want to visit & discuss that evening.  At 6 PM Eastern the voting is closed.  The top 4 ratings getters are then scheduled in 1/2 hour slots.  Any ties are broken at the preference of the organizer.  The essay gets updated with that evening’s schedule. At that point the organizer could email the blog hosts and let them know the posse is showing up later.  Everyone can decide if they want to show up for all four “courses” or can only make it to one or two.  Having the schedule posted you can pick which discussions you really want to go to.  Read the article/post and register ahead of time (if thats required for making comments).  Grab your favorite drink and munchies and join the party at the scheduled time.  It could be a lot of fun!

This could be a way to form coalitions or at least socialize with people outside our white-blogosphere.  It’s a chance to be good netizens.  Visiting and linking fellow bloggers is community spirited.  I think the site host will be flattered to have people register at their site and take an interest in them.  And vice-versa, we get them interested in attending our ‘parties’ and joining the coalition and/or to help with our Manifesto. 

We can hang out here and talk at each other, or we can go out into the world and expand our horizons, make new friends, and still talk at each other. 

37 comments

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  1. I’m always up for a Party!

  2. … that is out of the box!

    I would first suggest a preliminary activity – am just going to copy my response to karmafish from my essay where he suggests acting sort of as diplomats to the other blogs.

    Again, this is a preliminary — not something that would replace your idea, just something to do before we have the party – and of course it can be modified from my response to karmafish as it is not entirely on point:

    … with a few adjustments, I like your idea.
    Not volunteers as diplomats.  Volunteers as “listeners and readers,” folks who are willing to go and familiarize themselves with the issues these blogs find urgent and important.

    If a volunteer begins to feel a sense of solidarity with anything they have encountered (sort of a “yes!  I feel that too, that is now also MY issue!”), they comment in that blog but also come back here and link to the story and blog on it like we already do with Atrios or Crooks & Liars or dKos.

    We wait and see if they notice — we see if they begin to link to us or read us.  Most of the comment sections in those blogs are sign-ups where you can link DocuDharma to your screen name, anyone can click.  So if your comments are interesting, maybe folks will come here.

    Only after that is done can we speak of coming together.  It’s sort of an introduction, in a way, a learning process for us.  We have to have a real feeling of respect and curiosity, imo, first.

    Once we familiarize ourselves with these blogs — once they’re as normal to link to as news sites or dkos or any other of the usual suspects, then there’s a whole lot of ideas we can play around with.

    I do like this idea, it’s very original!

    • Alma on September 29, 2007 at 08:04
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    Sounds like some good ideas are coming together.

    • Pluto on September 29, 2007 at 10:48
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    That this idea is outrageously great.

    Also, inviting specific blogs at specific times to visit here, where we open a live blogging thread to welcome and introduce our guests.

    That’s what good Netizenship is all about.

    • pfiore8 on September 29, 2007 at 13:37
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    i volunteer for PFF… i’ve been thinking about writing a diary there and very much for the reasons you raise: how do we get this orchestra playing great music??? how do we accept the piccolos and cellos and drums, all making our own sounds and distinctive noise, but do a collective great thing?

    count me in!

  6. I have done this within other social groups and for some reason never considered doing it for progressive socialization 😉

  7. Does the soapblox software come with a group calendar?  If so it would make organizing things a lot easier.  Put one person in charge of adding information to it, allow others read only access, new submissions will be sent to the person in charge.

    Their are several advantages to online calendars.  We should also look into promoting these small events on other sites that specialize in community events. 

  8. I insist we avoid this sort of thing though….

    http://www.kaichang….

    Hi Kai.

    This is my first vist to your blog. (Thanks, Y, for sending me over here!)

    I have sent the link to your discussion here about political correctness to many white liberals I know, and to a college discussion board where whitemale supremacist “liberal arts” degrees are all that are handed out.

    Thanks for that awesome, sharp and clear-as-new-glass essay.

    P.S.

    I’d enjoy corresponding a bit, Kai. If you have access to my email addy, please drop me a line. I’ve been a radical pro-feminist/anti-racism activist for a couple of decades.

    Peace after Whitemale Supremacy dies, hopefully without taking everyone and everything with it… except all willfully ignorant and arrogant whitemale supremacists and the institutions, laws, policies, values, and practices that maintain whitemale supremacy, including corporate capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

    I have yet to figure out how to phrase this…..

    Oh wait there its!

    Whit people can REALLY “teh suck” when they try too hard.

    Let’s not try too hard.

  9. … to blog for radical fun.  Might be interesting to read all the blogs’ responses to this.

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