by Chris Savage

I’m in Minneapolis this week attending the biggest progressive bloggers conference in the country. It’s annual event; three days of workshops, speeches, and netroots networking: Netroots Nation. This is how you know you’re at a bloggers conference:

The day started out with Lizz Winstead, founder of the Daily Show, leading a panel of progressive voices like Sam Seder, Pam Spaulding, and Shannyn Moore in a talk-show like news round-up called “The Morning News Dump.” In addition to thousands of not-so-well-known bloggers (like me), there are many more-well-known in attendance. The staff of Daily Kos are here including Markos Moulitsas, Adam Bonin and Meteor Blades, Jane Hamsher, Kagro X, and Marcy Wheeler from Firedoglake.com are here. John Aravosis from AMERICAblog is here and many, many more.

Markos Moulitsas and John Aravosis at Netroots Nation

I attended two workshops with an eye toward improving my skills as a blogger. The first was called “Breaking News with Mobile.” This workshop, hosted by the founders of The Uptake, a group that was essential in bringing the news of the labor uprising in Wisconsin to national attention. We learned how use our smart phones and low-cost add-ons to stream video and audio online, an important new tool for online activism.

The second one was “Managing a State Community Blog.” This workshop was geared toward helping state blogs (like Michigan’s Blogging for Michgan and Michigan Liberal) be more effective. We learned about how to bring in new, talented writers, how to network with other state blogs and how to involve nonprofits and other organizations to provide more rich and important content.

The “Managing a State Community Blog” panel at Netroots Nation

During my lunch break, I attended a luncheon sponsored by a consortium of labor unions like the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and the SEIU. They reached out to prominent state bloggers and asked us to join them in a roundtable discussion and brainstorming session about how the labor unions can work together with netroots activists to more effectively get out the news that the mainstream media is increasingly ignoring. As I told them, in Michigan, the heartland of labor union strength, the two largest media outlets, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press completely ignored a recent 6,000+ person education union rally at the state Capitol. If they want the news about their efforts and their movement out, they will clearly need to work with netroots bloggers. We talked about the need for bloggers across the country to more effectively work together. We talked about the need to be more effective at branding our message in easy-to-understand, repeatable, consistent ways. We talked about how the labor unions can help support bloggers by advertising on their blogs and helping to supply content that will inform blog readers about news and information they won’t get elsewhere.

For the past few months, I have been raising money on my blog for a group called Netroots for the Troops (NFTT). This is a group of progressive liberals who spend the entire year raising funds and soliciting donations. Their effort culminates at Netroots Nation where we assemble hundreds of CARE packages packed with things like gloves, sand scarfs, snacks, DVDs, and hard-to-get toiletries. My afternoon was spent running around Minneapolis trying to procure USPS boxes after the ones delivered were found to be the wrong size: too small. I was privileged to spend the past few weeks as the volunteer coordinator for NFTT, finding folks to staff our booth, help stage the CARE package items and, on Saturday we will pack several hundred boxes that will be sent to men and women in the armed forces stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq. This impressive effort happens every year at Netroots Nation and helps show the country that liberals aren’t troop-hating hippies. Rather, we are caring, compassionate citizens for whom the phrase “support the troops” actually means something. Something important.

The Netroots for the Troops booth at Netroots Nation

Tonight we are listening to speakers from all over the world talk about the importance of the netroots in all sorts of arenas. We heard from two women bloggers, one from Yemen and another from Pakistan, women who face personal danger to get out their message. As one of them said, “When I write, nobody can shut me up.” We heard from the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who decried the demonization of teachers across the country. We heard from Keith Olbermann (via video) who will return soon to the airwaves. We heard from Dr. Howard Dean who told us that, while we need to be involved in politics, we don’t need to be OF politics. We can be more effective by not becoming entrenched in the party politics that so often interfere with our national dialog.

And, finally, we heard from the keynote speaker, Senator Russ Feingold. Here are a few choice quotes from his talk that touched on campaign finance reform and the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

“Citizens United was a completely activist decision.”

“Thomas Jefferson said that there should be a revolution every twenty years. Surely there can be campaign finance reform every twenty years!”

“Money corrupts! And money isn’t speech!”

“When you scrape away all the rhetoric around Citizens United and get behind the motivations, you realize that the corporate interests saw what was happening with the netroots and it ROCKED them! They were petrified. That saw their contributions being taken away.”

“We simply have to overturn Citizens United…We can not do that unless we re-elect Barack Obama so that he can appoint a new Supreme Court justice to give us that one vote needed to do that.”

And, finally, with regards to knowing who is giving political donations to which candidates and how much:

“I want to buy Democrat toothpaste, not Republican toothpaste!”

Russ Feingold, keynote speaker at Netroots Nation

One final note. Today, while checking into my hotel, I stood behind the odious bottom feeder Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart is a man who makes a living destroying the lives of others. He is here because, simultaneous with Netroots Nation, is the conservative bloggers conference, Right Online. Every year, Right Online waits until Netroots Nation announces where the next year’s conference will be. The group then schedules its own meeting in the same city at the same time.