Update: As of 5:36 PM, $755 is in! We're almost there! Chris is continuing the updates in a thread above this one.
Update: Also, another cool metric: 48% of the 241 contributors giving an average of $41.83- or 116- are first-time contributors. That's almost half. Thanks so much!
Update: As of 3:58 PM, $345 has come in! If you've given, you can also post the ask to your friends and on Facebook/Twitter!
Update: As of 2:58 PM, $175 has come in. That's $350 with Debra's match! Every dollar you contribute will be doubled. Chip in!
As of 2:11 pm Eastern, we are at 225 contributors, with a goal of 400. Thanks to Debra for her generosity, and please chip in! -Adam
This is an adaptation of last spring's Match Appeal. This is for both Open Left and a group from my second home town, New York City known as Living Liberally which also has Drinking Liberally, Laughing Liberally, and Eating Liberally (also organically)
Actually the title should really read Make Me Match You. And just like last year when it was celebrating my daughter's marriage to a really great guy, she and he are going to be home owners soon which of course will hopefully bring me closer to fulfilling my new obsession, baby lust. I have stopped notincing good looking guys, my eyes are always dropping lower to espy whatever absolutely adorable toddler, baby, or child there is sauntering or wobbling or racing on the sidewalks of New York. Children remind us that there is a future that must be preserved, so that their gaiety and joy in every new thing can be justified.
I consider Open Left an investment in the future that I want for my daughter, her new husband and the grandchildren I (and they too, really I am not just a typical, nudgy mother!) am hoping for.
As of 12:05 eastern, we are at 209 contributors. We need 400, and we need your help to do it! -- Chris Bowers
Building a movement is a long hard slog (as Donald Rumsfeld might have put it.) There are flashes of genius, moments where things all come together, sparks that start bigger fires at just the right time. But mostly it's just hard unglamorous work over a very long time. Lots of frustration. Little money. Allies who piss you off.
But it's work that has to be done if you are going to achieve real and lasting change for the better.
The good news is that if the work is done with a spirit of innovation and fun, things get a lot easier. That is why OpenLeft and Living Liberally are so important to support. Those of us at OpenLeft, and our dear friends and allies at Living Liberally, do all that hard movement-building work, but we have fun doing it, too. We are always trying new things, stretching ourselves to come up with new ways to make things happen.
As you may have seen yesterday, this week we are joining forces on yet another project: to raise us some money. We decided that offering you a twofer might make you interested in giving more. For just one contribution, you can support innovative activism, cogent political analysis, and important networks of people working for change- in two great organizations at the cutting edge of progressive strategy.
Please do your part and help us out. If you do, you will be supporting the work of two organizations worth of activists and writers working to build a better world, and you can feel very, very good about yourself. If you don't, we'll produce a really horrendous video of Justin Krebs and Chris Bowers moping around in deep depression, and you just don't want to have to see that.
When I have the occasion to meet other Drinking Liberally hosts -- folks who volunteer to create a progressive social space for their community -- I often hear the question: "Do you really know Chris Bowers?"
Chris, I don't want to make you blush, but you -- and the Open Left gang -- are celebs around the country. Liberal Drinkers frequently toast you...and, more critically, they regularly read you.
For many liberals living in conservative areas, the posts at Open Left serve a similar role to our political happy hours: you help people know they are not alone.
Which is why it was a natural idea to team up our network and yours to make sure both keep running.
Earth Days, the new film that opens this weekend from acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone, is being promoted as a history of the environmental movement in the United States. But it's more of a road trip, really: the road less travelled. The road not taken. The road to hell, blazed by grassroot good intentions that got asphalted and AstroTurfed.
As promised earlier today, we're liveblogging from the Working Families Party's Mayoral Forum, at the Hotel Trades Council Union Hall in midtown Manhattan. We'll be joined by two leading Democratic candidates, Bill Thompson and Tony Avella, and the incumbent Michael Bloomberg. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts for us, please let us know in the comments, and we'll try to reflect those interests in our coverage.
7:55 Thompson finishing up. They all handled themselves respectably. People are ready for dinner in back. Is it a standing O for Bill or for the food line?
Thanks to Charles, Levitan and crew for welcoming blogging and getting wi-fi back up.
And thank you, WFP, for planning this forum a 3-minute walk from Rudy's...it is Drinking Liberally night (and we're late!). Come on out to keep the conversation going. -jk
7:50 From Thompson's case for his electability: "This is not 2005. The economy was booming, people liked where they were. This is 2009, the economy is failing, people are scared and want change in City Hall." -jb
7:48 To the final question, from Dan Cantor, about convincing WFP Thompson could beat the Bloomberg behemoth, Thompson just had the first laugh-out-loud line of the night: "I'll quote someone who said, 'Rich guys don't always win.'"...which was Bloomberg's defense of spending $100 million on the campaign just 40 minutes ago.
A second reference to Obama too... -jk
7:47 Judging by this forum, one line that is going to be used against Bloomberg consistently is that hat his response to every economic question is "But we love the rich." Oh, and "Why is Michael Bloomberg willing to run on the Republican line if he doesn't believe in parties?" -jb
7:46 Uh-oh, Bill...people in the backroom are starting to eat. You're competing with food!
Good answer on the pride of running on party lines...and asking "Can anyone imagine Barack Obama on the Republican line?" got some laughs. -jk
7:44 By the way, we're not the only ones watching. Public Advocate candidate just made this his Facebook status update: "is not impressed that the Mayor said at the WFP forum that calling 311 is a solution for tenants facing eviction from their home. Wrong answer!" (He's a WFP endorsed candidate) -jk
Later today, the Working Families Party will be hosting a Mayoral Forum for the two leading Democratic candidates, Bill Thompson and Tony Avella, and the incumbent Michael Bloomberg.
One of our spies snuck into a meeting of the evil right-wing group HAARM (Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine) last week and uncovered a nasty plot to undermine efforts toward healthcare reform. Prepare to be shocked, disgusted and amused:
If this all sounds a bit unlikely to you, you're half-right: the video is the first in a series that Laughing Liberally, our national comedy tour at Living Liberally, has been working on with SEIU. The video is (we hope!) funny, but the situation it depicts couldn't be more serious - there are real efforts by moneyed interests, meeting as we speak, to make universal healthcare sound like a bad thing.
Eating Liberally Food For Thought
by Kerry Trueman Originally published on AlterNet; Painting by James Howard Kunstler
I grew up in Woodland Hills, Calif., a nominally pastoral, petrocentric Los Angeles suburb, so peak oil prognosticator James Howard Kunstler's dim view of our car-crazed culture really resonates with me.
Kunstler's relentless skewering of suburbia, and his penchant for apocalyptic predictions have landed him a reputation as a cranky Cassandra. But as Ben McGrath observed while strolling around Saratoga Springs with Kunstler for a recent New Yorker piece, "Far from the image of the stereotypical Chicken Little, he was more like an amiable town crier whom the citizenry regarded fondly, if a bit skeptically."
So, when a friend and I found ourselves headed to Kunstler's neck of the woods for a conference recently, we arranged to have dinner with Saratoga Springs' resident soothsayer. Contrary to his contrarian reputation, Kunstler proved to be an affable, upbeat guy.
A Thinking Liberally Left-Minded Meditation
by Justin Krebs, Living Liberally
"Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."
- US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
"Stop Whining and Pay Your Taxes"
- Bumper sticker my Dad wanted to print up about 18 years ago.
Congratulations, America. It's April 15th, a day we mark honorably; an annual tradition we've together reached once again. Let's trade some high-fives and puff our chests out in patriotic pride because today is Invest-in-America Day!
You don't hear many people applauding April 15th. Instead you see news stories about long lines at the post office, and businesses try to capitalize on your tax frustration (Dunkin' Donuts offered free donuts as "tax relief" last year). Because it's Tax Day in America...and thanks to an enduring Benjamin Franklin aphorism, many of our fellow citizens are more likely to associate taxes with "death" than with good schools, clean air, a strong military, innovations in health and science and all the other benefits are taxes bring us.
Just try to say "Happy Tax Day" to anyone and see what reactions you get. If you end up in the wrong place, you might even get a teabag thrown at you.
A few weeks back, the FixCNBC Campaign was launched by the PCCC, attempting to get 20,000+ signatories to their letter to CNBC pressuring them to practice responsible journalism. Well, the goal has been reached, and when it was time to send the letter to CNBC Headquarters, the PCCC reached out to several progressive New York comedians, including Laughing Liberally favorites Negin Farsad, Lee Camp, Katie Halper and Baratunde Thurston - and in the three days since it's been posted to YouTube, it's already cracked the 20,000-view mark. Watch the magic, and consider helping to support further work like this:
Seed money for start-ups may be evaporating faster than California's dwindling reservoirs, but this rocky economy's proving to be fertile ground for the seed industry. Cash-strapped consumers, scared by the specter of an empty fridge, are investing in the ultimate low-tech, high-yield start-up: the kitchen garden. The National Gardening Association estimates that some 43 million Americans are gearing up to grow at least some of their own food this spring.
And no wonder. As Roger Doiron, founder of Maine-based Kitchen Gardeners International, has documented, a few dozen seed packets costing $130 can yield more than two thousand dollars worth of produce over the course of the growing season. "We have a fabulous opportunity," C.R. Lawn, the founder of another Maine mainstay, Fedco Seeds, told an audience at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture's Farming For The Future conference last month. "The challenge is on us to come through." Lawn, an endearingly shaggy character who looks a bit like a pale Papa Smurf, rocked gently from side to side as he spoke of the challenges that his company faced following the acquisition of Fedco's largest seed supplier, Seminis, by monolithic Monsanto back in 2005.
We wrote earlier this month about how the Working Families Party is doing some of the best work out there in creating an accessible narrative for progressives in the economic crisis, the most recent example being their use of Monty Burns in fighting for Fair Share Tax Reform. Well, in the aftermath of the AIG bonuses debacle, the WFP in Connecticut is doing some wonderful narrative-building of their own - drawing attention for their "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous" tour of AIG Financial Products Division executive homes - a story in today's New York Times, after some perfunctory "it's so hard to be an executive when people are angry at you" tearjerking, highlights the effort:
The Connecticut Working Families party, which has support from organized labor, is planning a bus tour of A.I.G. executives' homes on Saturday, with a stop at the company's Wilton office.
"We're going to be peaceful and lawful in everything we do," said Jon Green, the director of Connecticut Working Families. "I know there's a lot of anger and a lot of rage about what's happened. We're not looking to foment that unnecessarily, but what we want to do is give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy."
In Kiyoshi Kurosawa's new film, Tokyo Sonata, he presents timely and interesting ideas about identity in the modern world in a way that is at times compelling and complex, but at others overwrought and unclear.
The film focuses on the four members of the middle class Sasaki family: the father, Ryuhei (played by Teruyuki Kagawa), his wife Megumi (played by Kyoko Koizumi), and their two sons, Takashi and Kenji (played by Yû Koyanagi and Inowaki Kai). In the opening minutes of the film, Ryuhei finds himself suddenly unemployed after a meeting with the boss. Unsure of what to do, he keeps this from his wife, getting dressed for work the next day and joining the stream of businesspeople walking toward the city. He soon finds that he is not alone when he runs into an old colleague who is also keeping his family in the dark.
The other members of his family embark on difficult journeys of their own: The younger son, Kenji, uses his lunch money to take the piano lessons expressly forbidden by his father, while Takashi joins the U.S. army. Megumi's internal grappling slowly builds, culminating in some surprising actions. Their troubles are similar, and achingly so because they rarely intersect.
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