Update 2: As of 8:00 p.m. eastern, 34 members of the Open Left community have contributed $3,030. Help us reach $6,000 here. More than half way there! These are always the most humbling times to be a blogger.
Update: As of 6 p.m. eastern, 17 Open Left readers have contributed exactly $1,000. Thank you so much! Help us reach $6,000 here.
Over the next few days, we are holding a fundraiser on Open Left asking for contributions in order to maintain our operations. We are looking specifically for $6,000, which will allow us to meet our costs for another few months during what is sure to be a dramatic, even climactic, legislative season for the Democratic trifecta. If you already see the value in what we do, and the role we play in the broader progressive landscape, then click here and contribute. If you need a little more convincing, then please keep reading.
Even during a time when progressives and Democrats are ascendant politically, very few political organizations and media outlets overtly self-identify as left-wing in America. The urge that many politicians, pundits and organizational staff have to apologize for being leftist, or deny they are leftist altogether, is palpable. See, for example, Democrats tripping over themselves to call Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor moderate. While conservative, pro-corporate policies have driven the country into a ditch, being called "liberal," "leftist," and to a lesser degree "progressive," remains a label that most prominent Democrats and advocacy organizations work to avoid at all costs.
Open Left is a rare exception to this rule. We have consistently produced analysis, and organized activist campaigns, with unabashedly left-wing goals. For example:
- When the national media was looking for someone--anyone--to articulate a coherent left-wing critique of Obama administration appointees during the transition, they had few places to turn but Open Left.
- When others complained about the lack of infrastructure spending in the stimulus, we actually helped increase it.
- When, in 2007, Democratic presidential candidates were all claiming they were going to end the war in Iraq, it was Open Left that exposed the reality behind the rhetoric. We forced a national debate over plans to leave tens of thousands of so-called "residual forces". Additionally, we helped produce an alternative policy called the Responsible Plan to End the War, which was signed by several then-congressional candidates, and now-current members of Congress.
- When the Democratic congressional majority was still rubberstamping Bush's agenda, only Open Left coherently identified the perpetrators (Bush Dogs), and also assisted in every single primary campaign against the Bush Dogs (there were four). This included embedding our own Matt Stoller in Donnna Edwards's victorious campaign.
- In 2009, we have continued this accountability work as one founding members of Accountability Now, the larger, more coherent organization dedicated to progressive Democratic primary challenges. We have even helped partner with organizations like Brave New Films, ACORN, Color of Change, and MoveOn.org in producing and running our own television ads against Democrats who vote with corporations and against their constituents.
On top of these campaigns, we have always worked to ground what we do in rigorous analysis and innovative, creative leverage points. Whether it is my polling and demographic analysis, Mike Lux's expansive knowledge of progressive institutions and history, David Sirota's hard-nosed economic populism, or Paul Rosenberg's wide-ranging cultural critique, this is not the sort of thoroughgoing, left-wing, yet still realpolitik, leftism you will find in many other media outlets or political organizations in America.
I know that times are tough for people right now. In a painfully irony, the difficult economy means that we actually need your contributions now more than ever. Internet advertising is way down in 2009, and is no longer a self-sustaining means of maintaining Open Left. In order to allow David to write on weekday mornings, Paul to write on weekends, and for me to take over the main blogging duty during the weekdays, we need another $500 a month in reader donations to cover basic costs. The $6,000 goal in this fundraiser will accomplish that for the rest of 2009.
I am proud of what we have accomplished here on Open Left, and I hope to continue making new accomplishments. With health care and global warming legislation looming on the horizon, the climatic legislative season of the Democratic trifecta takes place this summer and autumn, and I am excited about Open Left playing a vital role in making that legislation as progressive as possible. Also, the 2010 elections are creeping over the horizon, and I am excited to reprise our electoral forecasts and innovative grassroots campaigns like Use it Or Lose It, Searching for John McCain and Personal Paid Media. Further, we are going to be doing a lot more series-based blogging, like the Future of the Electorate articles from two weeks ago. Perhaps most exciting of all, we will be starting up a new video podcast series focusing on a numeric analysis of the new and progressive strategy within the next month.
If thoroughgoing left-wing activism and criticism grounded in rigorous and innovative analysis is important to you, then please chip in $100, $50 or whatever you can and help us meet our $6,000 goal.
We will continue to neither hide that we are seeking left-wing goals, nor to eschew the necessary hard-work and innovation needed to achieve those goals. As always, this would be impossible without the support of the community. So please, contribute to Open Left.
|
STATE BLOGS
