Netroots Nation Was Looking For Some Brotherly Love In Philly
And Dom was there!
A few hundred progressive activists gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this past weekend for the 19th annual Netroots Nation political conference. For three days, progressive politicos, activists, lawyers, journalists and the terminally online workshopped strategies for winning this November and beyond.
Some attendees took a moment to assist hotel workers threatening to strike during the FIFA World Cup later this month. A few even managed to slip out and join Philadelphia’s annual Dyke March in front of City Hall on Saturday.
If you’re not familiar with Netroots Nation, 20 years ago, it was the Democratic alternative to political conferences like CPAC. It was tech-centric, merging the internet’s budding social media landscapes with policymakers and the people who had their boots on the ground throughout the United States.
Netroots was born out of The Daily Kos, the proto-lefty blogging space that rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration and its Middle East misadventures. In the late 2000s, Netroots was where Democratic and progressive politicos could gather and discuss strategies and give speeches (which were carried on C-SPAN) on a national stage. It was a required stop for rising stars and prominent people in the Democratic Party.
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In 2008, then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the keynote address during the Democratic presidential primary. As president, Barack Obama gave a taped address in 2010. Then-Vice President Joe Biden delivered the keynote in 2014. In 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders got one of his first major appearances on the national stage (and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, after being interrupted by activists, nuked his 2016 presidential campaign and political career).
Twenty years later, it’s different.
The hard truth is that nobody really covers Netroots anymore. The New York Times, the AP and other major news services don’t even bother sending a human pencil to scribble the Five Ws and a few quotes. Struggling and/or lesser known progressive outlets might send someone, if they can afford the expense. In the past, Dave Weigel would show up for a day out of fairness and admitted nostalgia. But I didn’t see any major news outlets or names this year. They didn’t bother to show up in New Orleans last year either.
Political organizing and activism are very different from how they were 20 years ago. The internet has connected people in ways nobody could have imagined, for better and for worse. It’s allowed for the complex networks usually formed on the ground to flourish online, but it seems to also have led to a more disinterested media.
Further, Netroots is not a place for splashy shows and pompous theatrics, like a Turning Point USA concert. It’s mostly workshops and trainings with very specific focuses: discouraging codeswitching; achieving slavery reparations; the ethical usage of AI; how to run for political office and run a campaign through open-source social media platforms; voter registration and GOTV strategies in cities and rural areas; organizing nonviolent resistance to protect communities from ICE agents; combating the resurgence of eugenics-based assumptions about disabled people. There are documentary screenings, and lectures led by journalists and authors.
It’s nerdy. Very, very nerdy.
The general mood this year might be described as “fed up.” People were fed up with Trumpland’s unholy alliance linking theocratic cranks, fascists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, genocidal lunatics and the secret police trampling on civil rights. They were fed up with shameless corporate greed, the concentration of wealth and big tech cramming AI down their throats.
During a panel on combating corporate greed, representatives Becca Balint and Maxwell Frost pushed for journalists and voters to challenge candidates and elected officials on economic policies. Frost commented that progressive policies get a lot of flak about cost, but when paired with a tax on the extremely wealthy, those criticisms evaporate. Balint noted that Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the atrociously named One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA), has become so unpopular that Trump is demanding the bill be rebranded as the ”Working Families Tax Cut Bill” or “Working Families Tax Plan” — a wholesale ripoff of popular progressive phrases and slogans.
At a panel on defeating the far-right seizure of the Supreme Court, panelists noted that the civil rights-era SCOTUS was almost an anomaly when compared with the US’s 250-year history of disenfranchising its minority populations.
The Nation columnist Elie Mystal criticized the administration of former President Joe Biden for not using the military to provide abortion access on US bases following Texas’s abortion ban. The crowd cheered and applauded.
While Netroots has always been linked with tech — which serves as the backbone for fundraising and GOTV operations — this year there was a palpable backlash against tech and AI. I heard it from a number of people.
“AI has ruined the soundbite,” commented Erika Gulija, senior vice president of New Heights Communications, near the end of her panel on reframing activist jargon. “What AI can never replicate is the human experience.”
In an arts and crafts breakout room, people made buttons, clay sculptures and bracelets. One person had laid out beads with the letters, “F, U, C, K” followed by, “I, C, E.”
Rachel Tait with Project 26, a Pennsylvania-based advocacy group focused on student GOTV and leadership, said she felt the arts and crafts room was important for people who wanted to just get away from all the “stuff” in the Exhibitors Hall, where all the tech companies were set up. She raised her hands and shrugged her shoulders, a gesture that can only be described as “ick.”
There’s an argument that outfits like Turning Point are overtaking over the traditional wonky political convention. They don’t hold three-day policy discussions with statistics geeks, policy wonks, and the terminally online agoraphobes who make up today’s ADHD scrollitariate. They’re putting on the Ice Capades.
Turning Point foots the bill to get a lot of kids with braces in seats. They’re paying to bus in youth to sit front row at a Trump show. Kids at Turning Point rallies have explicitly told me as much. They got free tickets from their local chapters, and a chartered bus ride.
The vendors in those exhibit halls are hawking Trump-themed swag, like bootleg MAGA hats, shirts, wigs and bobbleheads. People are selling tchotchkes, wood carvings, cigars, rhinestone jackets, and whatever Mike Lindell is grifting. It’s a bit different from newsletter, marketing and donation platforms.
Old-school political conferences aren’t cheap. They’re expensive for the hosts, the sponsors, the attendees and the journalists covering them. Most people have to pay their own way in the hope of pitching a new idea, building up their network or covering activity at the ground level. It’s a chance for the rank and file to create a face-to-face dialogue with other humans. And, unlike Turning Point, nobody has to check with the fire marshal before setting off sketchy pyrotechnics.
The closest thing to that kind of fire at Netroots came from the barnburner speech by Frederick D. Haynes III, a pastor running for Congress in Texas’s 30th District, currently the seat of departing Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Haynes said, “We’re in a nightmare where we have a cult leader in the White House who is running roughshod over democracy. It is a nightmare where workers are under attack. It is a nightmare where the greedy are exploiting the needy … [but] it’s still our dream to create economic justice. It is still our dream to make America a beloved country for all, and not an empire that exploits. It is still our dream to create a class of a nation that, in a real sense, understands the real strength of a nation is not its military bases around the world, but instead bases of love and compassion and concern for all. That is our dream.”
"The hard truth is that nobody really covers Netroots anymore. The New York Times, the AP and other major news services don’t even bother sending a human pencil"
That's OK--we don't need the legacy media, which would likely just look for a PROGRESSIVES IN DISARRAY!!! angle in any event. It would be nice if MeidasTouch covered it--and I am very glad that Wonkette was there--but we're happy to get down to work and do what we have to to save our nation and build an actual democracy without the limelight.
PS: join us next year!
https://www.netrootsnation.org/
WHAT?
I was there too! I wish I had known Dom was going to be around!
But yes, it was a great event and I am already looking forward to next year. July, in Denver!