Live from Netroots Nation! The most redundantly covered event on the internets. Ever sense Neanderthal man scraped two opinions together to make a flame, he has dreamed of such a place. Two interesting things that have happened and I have learned.

1.    You know that crazy guy who comments on the blogs you read? The one with the bad grammar? Yeah, he talks like that.

2.    Wesley Clark and Howard Dean were the keynote speakers last night. Immediate Vice-President speculation/debate over who was better looking. Clark won after Dean tried to smile.
…

Howard Dean should never smile.

More soon! 

As I mentioned in parts one and two of this series, there’s power in funding your own movement and in having a broad base of support. When we support our own projects, we get to decide what we work on and our continued existence becomes less dependent on any single source.

As part of walking the walk here, we’re now accepting blogads in the sidebar of the YP4 Blog. We’re screening them for congruence with our values. Nonprofits, progressive blogs and socially responsible businesses? Absolutely. Soulless corporations? Not so much.

We intend blog advertising to become another intentional way to build our network and strengthen our partnerships.

Jeremy Bearer-Friend, a YP4 Leadership Academy fellow currently with Justice Now, just posted to Feministing:

Prisons are bad for everyone--not just for the people in cages within them, not just for the children who have lost their parents to them, or the social programs who have their budgets cut because of them.

Prisons distract us from the root causes of violence and ultimately exacerbate the deeply entrenched challenges of racism, sexism and transphobia facing our communities.

Although I must admit it's not a regular occurrence, I do occasionally stumble across the capitalist screed known as the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday, in their Campaign 2006 section they featured an article on a new wave of social networking sites with a political bent.

Read more after the break.

The art of online communication has gone to a new (slightly absurd?) level as couples, sitting side by side, converse through the internet rather than speaking. Take this account, for example:

"Realizing that communicating via typing was far more comfortable ... we conducted ... our date without speaking. We traded headphones back and forth and typed and ordered beer and wine and more food ... The waitress thought we were crazy," wrote singer Amanda Palmer on her Web site.

As the progressive blogosphere grows, so does the debate about its role, its influence and its relationship with the mainstream media. While there is enormous potential for advancing a progressive agenda, this burgeoning phenomenon provides a unique opportunity for expanding participatory democracy. Yet, while there is potential, there are still major hurdles to crossing the digital divide and answering questions about access and diversity.

Lakshmi Chaudhry has an excellent article in The Nation

today about the role of the blogosphere. Chaudhry was one of the featured panelists on March 2nd for a discussion co-sponsored by Demos, The Republic of Blogs: New Media and Democracy at the Andrew Heiskell Center for Democracy at People For the American Way Foundation's Northeast Regional Office.

As this blog community grows, I am very interested to hear everyone's thoughts on the blogosphere and democratic participation.

Andy