Thanks for coming by the DemocracyInAction blog. This archive is no longer receiving live posting; blogging about DemocracyInAction, its online nonprofit tool Salsa, and all manner of dross to do with progressive online advocacy, now takes place at SalsaCommons.org.

Another nice entry in the podcast series of NYC-based consultant Big Duck, this one on designing for the web and e-mail. For some reason, it was overshadowed by something or other that happened this week.

Historian Arnold Toynbee theorized that civilizations gained the brio to flourish in the face of a "challenge-and-response" scenario: a military defeat, an inhospitable climate, or some other hindrance, was requisite to call forth the creative energy that would build an empire.

There's a lesson there for progressive advocates rolling out of bed this morning with an extra spring in their step ... and for conservatives who'd just as soon pull up the sheets.

Progressive online organizing has blossomed during the opposition's governance, and it's survived the post-2006 Democratic majority in Congress -- for understandable reasons. But one onion-layer behind the netroots in the Internet organizing history are Matt Drudge and Free Republic: online spaces that grew huge in the late 90's against the challenge-and-response scenario posed by the Clinton administration. Nowhere is it written that liberals must dominate cyberspace.

The weight of public response to the bailout measure that's had all Congress atwitter this fortnight overwhelmed House servers earlier this week, slowing or preventing some messages to Representatives.

As of this writing, with debate underway on the floor (liveblog at the Grey Lady; video stream at C-SPAN), the writerep system appears to be functioning normally for this writer but still displays this warning:

Due to an unusually high amount of emails currently being submitted through the Write Your Representative feature (above), you may experience a slow response or error message when attempting to send emails through this system during hours of peak demand. We apologize for this inconvenience. Our technicians are working to fix the problem. Thank you.

So what's an activist organization to do?

Pretty big news -- if long past surprising -- that Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobell copped to the spy ring after maintaining his innocence for the past half-century.

And an excerpt as revealing of the Grey Lady as of Sobell:

In the interview, Mr. Sobell drew a distinction between atomic espionage and the details of radar and artillery devices that he said he stole for the Russians. “What I did was simply defensive, an aircraft gun,” he said. “This was defensive. You cannot plead that what you did was only defensive stuff, but there’s a big difference between giving that and stuff that could be used to attack our country.”

(One device mentioned specifically by Mr. Sobell, however, the SCR 584 radar, is believed by military experts to have been used against American aircraft in Korea and Vietnam.)

"However"? Is that the "offensive" use of firing against the planes that are bombing your country?

The quadrennial -- or biennial, now that the summer and winter games are staggered -- hypocrisy irony of the "Olympic Movement" formulation from the mouthpieces of global capital is probably not actually any more finely described by Beijing's turn on the stage than by any other ruthless global hegemon's. Hey, Mary Lou Retton was sticking vaults and selling breakfast cereal while Central America was crawling with death squads.

But China has brought renewed hand-wringing from the guardians of right-thinking about the wrongness of bringing politics into a "Movement" so palpably political from the get-go, and so explicitly marked in its most memorable moments -- Jesse Owens in Berlin, the Blood in the Water match -- by political valences.

And then, of course, there's this:

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." -Bertold Brecht

It's now been three and a half years since DemocracyInAction and I got together -- three and a half years of change and growth and learning on the fly.

We got to thinking ... why not try out a long-distance thing?

So I'm excited -- and, yeah, a little nervous -- to announce that next week, yours truly will shake the Beltway dust off his heels and open up DemocracyInAction Midwest. (That name could be a little snappier. Suggestions?)

DIA Midwest will be based out of lovely Bloomington, Indiana, conveniently located where someone smarter than I can study something I don't understand while I do stuff like this:

(And of course, the ol' hobby blog.)

What does this mean for Salsa users in the Midwest?

If you're particularly engaged on the net neutrality issue -- or if you're not at all, but interested in new models for online deliberation -- the National Science Foundation-funded Deliberative E-Rulemaking Project (DeER) at the University at Albany (SUNY) and Texas Tech is "test[ing] a new model for citizen input on proposed rules and regulations by federal agencies. We are recruiting people to participate in an online message board discussion on a possible FCC network neutrality regulation."

The project is supposed to begin in late August, but you can sign up for it right now. » read more | login or register to post comments

And for a moment, all is right in the world.

Drop her a note if you feel so inclined.

Kansas State anthropology professor Michael Wesch apparently recorded this stunning presentation on culture, life, modernity in the YouTube community mere blocks from DIA world headquarters.

(You might remember him from such video phenomena as this, whose virality he discusses here.)

This is 55 minutes long, but you won't notice the length one bit. Here's the project's blog.