shouting loudly

I spent last weekend in Las Vegas, presenting some of my research at Netroots Nation’s”The Past, Present, and Future of Progressive Media” panel.  This was my fourth year attending the convention, and the most striking thing about the event continues to be the quality of the audience itself.

Netroots Nation has become a standing appointment for top elected officials.  Past years have featured presidential debates (’07), Senate primary debates (’09), and keynote speakers ranging from Bill Clinton (’09), and Al Gore (’08) to Nancy Pelosi (’10), Howard Dean (’07), Harry Reid (’10) and Al Franken (’10).  Several Senators and Representatives show up on panels as well.

The public image of the netroots depicts a horde of angry leftists, critical of the Obama administration and other elected officials.  Given this parade of key decision-makers, you’d expect some fireworks from the audience.  ”Harry Reid is gonna be there?  Let’s break out the big, cool puppets!”  ”Pelosi will be speaking?  Let’s harangue her over single-payer!”

In the four years that I’ve attended the convention, only once have a seen this sort of action from the crowd.  It was ’08, I believe, and a small group of Code Pink protesters showed up and unfurled a banner during a lunchtime keynote (I forget who the speaker was).  The audience basically self-policed, giving them cold stares and shouting them down until they were escorted out of the room.  That style of radical, “speak-truth-to-power” activism just isn’t well-received by the netroots community (at least when directed at allies).

Three notes about this point:

1. Just because the netroots don’t embrace protest tactics against their guest speakers doesn’t mean they aren’t asking tough questions.  Harry Reid may have had the quote of the weekend when he said “I’m told that I get on your nerves.  And I’m here to tell you that you, at times, get on my nerves.”  The formats for these speakers generally include an interviewer/moderator on stage and questions from the audience, so there is a lot of room to move beyond stump speeches and delve into substantive criticisms.  Joan McCarter raised Don’t Ask Don’t Tell immediately with Reid and presented him with Lt. Dan Choi’s West Point Ring.  After Reid stutteringly accepted it, Choi, stood up in the front row, saluted him, and stepped on stage to give him a hug.  Given the stutters in Reid’s acceptance, I’m pretty confident that the moment hadn’t been rehearsed with him in advance.  That’s pressure politics, just conducted in a more artful manner.

2. The netroots aren’t as mad at Obama as you’d think.  They’re frustrated, sure.  There’s a lot of strategic and tactical criticism.  They’d really like to see Elizabeth Warren appointed to head the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.  But the common refrains from the weekend included “filibuster reform” and “motivate the base before November.”  This audience would like to see more bold and progressive policies from the government they helped elect, but they’re also very focused on the structural factors that have made enactment of such a policy platform difficult.

3. Netroots =/= bloggers.  I’d estimate that maybe 40% of the convention attendees raised their hand when asked whether they blog.  It’s probably closer to 30%.  ”Netroots Nation,” includes a wide array of digital activists — MoveOn, Democracy for America, PCCC, Living Liberally, Credo Action, Media Matters, Center for American Progress, Sunlight Foundation, and Organizing for America all show up on the panels and in the audience.  The conference is also well-attended by labor groups, and by some traditional issue groups.  Blogging is one component of the netroots repertoire, and it certainly remains an emblematic activity, but we can no longer draw a simple equivalence between “bloggers” and the netroots.  It’s a lot more complicated and interesting than that.

All-told, the image that comes out of direct interaction with the netroots is very different than what you’d get from either mainstream media or much of the academic discourse.  In particular, I don’t think a group like the Sierra Club could pull off events like this without attracting an influx of Code Pink-style protesters.  Some combination of community norms and technological affordance allows the DailyKos community to signal to outspoken radicals that “this isn’t the place for you, it’s a big internet and you should go self-organize elsewhere.”  The legacy organizations, even ones with a decidedly mainstream grassroots base, have historically been a lot less comfortable/effective at communicating this signal.