Agit-Pop and Andrew Boyd

At RootsCamp DC, I went to a workshop led by Andrew Boyd from Agit-Pop on the use of irony and humor in pushing progressive issues.

Boyd led the workshop along w/ a former Onion editor and another dude.

The session started out with everyone do jumping jacks.

They went on to show some video examples of media using humor/irony to carry social/political commentary.

He talked about this Yes Men project:

And a handful of other really funny media stunts that struck me as very effective.

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Here is a video Agit-Pop helped produce that won for best Youtube political video in 2007:

Ben Smith on Obama tapping Hillary for SoS

This stuff resonates:

Insiders around Obama say the X factor at play is Obama’s icy tolerance for risk, and his belief in the power of the grand gesture.

Throughout his political career, Obama has had a tendency to “go big,” as his aides say, with dramatic moves and giant spectacles punctuating his run for president — his head-on race speech, his presidential-style tour of the Middle East and Europe, an acceptance speech held in a football stadium.

The Clinton move, like those, marries an arguably practical choice with lofty symbolism: He’s enlarging his own administration by bringing in one of the leading figures in American politics, and delivering on a promise of a new politics that doesn’t play favorites or hold grudges.

Economics of Empire

I wouldn’t usually post something like this, cause I think people have their own opinions about American foreign policy and I’m not trying to nag or put up a lot of of this kind of content.

But I wanted to mention the story of the first guy interviewed, Fernando Suarez del Solar.

He was really active in the anti-war movement when I was living in San Diego.

His son, Jesus Suarez del Solar, was one of the first soldier fatalities in the Iraq war.

He was killed when he stepped on an unexploded cluster bomb – an American weapon which very arguably violates international humanitarian law.

A long time ago, I listened to Fernando give a talk about losing his son and about a visit he made to Iraq.

His purpose for going was to show his solidarity with the Iraqi people’s desire to end the war.

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Here’s an interview with Fernando from a while back.

I didn’t realize this but he says U.S. military recruiters were going to Mexico to recruit at Mexican schools. I believe Jesus was awarded U.S. citizenship posthumously.

Nate Silver Rocked It

Nate Silver kicked some serious statistical butt:

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, which predicted the presidential election’s popular vote outcome to within a tenth of a percentage point (it projected 52.3 percent for Obama, who received 52.4; and it projected 46.2 percent for McCain, who received 46.3). Silver’s unique combination of accuracy with numbers and accessibility with narrative made FiveThirtyEight, founded in March 2008, the first blog ever to be selected as a Notable Narrative by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation.

Silver has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Science News, and New York magazine, and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, HDNet, WNYC, and Air America, among others. Silver’s newfound celebrity has led Gawker to offer him tailored advice on how he can continue to “rule the world,” Facebook members to found a group entitled “There’s a 97.3 Percent Chance That Nate Silver Is Totally My Boyfriend,” and several media outlets to refer to him, without irony, as a “wunderkind.”

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Amy Goodman/Marian Wright Edelman @ 6th & I on Wednesday

UPDATE: Here is the right place to rsvp to see Amy Goodman and Marian Wright Edelman tomorrow night.

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From Democracy Now’s Website:

November 12, 2008
Washington, DC

Washington, DC, November 12, 2008 Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, is on a national speaking tour to launch her third book with journalist David Goodman, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times.

Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of the daily, grassroots, global, radio/TV news hour Democracy Now!, is on a national speaking tour to mark DN!’s 12th anniversary and launch her third book with journalist David Goodman, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times.

WHEN: 7pm
WHERE: Sixth and I Synagogue, 600 I St NW, Washington, DC 20001
WHAT: Founder and president for the Children’s Defense Fund – and bestselling author – Marian Wright Edelman looks back on what has been done, and what still needs to be done, to make our nation and world safe and fair for all children. Edelman will discuss her new book, The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation with journalist, Amy Goodman.

Obama in Oval Office for 1st time

The Incredible Shrinking World

“When people find themselves unable to control the world, they simply shrink the world to the size of their community” –Manuel Castells

DC may not be the best place to see this trend cause just about everybody has consistently leaned to the left, but this guy has some really interesting examples of the political polarization across the country and how it’s getting hard-coded into geography/place and even into the visual landscape.

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I feel like another piece to this is our selective media consumption and how the lack of common media outlets may reinforce this segregation trend.

Baracky Roasts Rahmbo (2005)

Obama's Election Night Behind The Scenes

Courtesy of flickr.

(via the girlfriend)

Lincoln Exhibit @ National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery’s “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln” opened today.

It isn’t all that big but it is very worth the trip, especially in light of the National Portrait Gallery being the site of Lincoln’s second inaugural ball.

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After walking over there, I got back to work just in time to hear Obama’s first press conference as President-Elect.

Obama mentioned reading Lincoln’s writings so now I want to check out some of his speeches.

The historical background for his second inaugural speech is pretty rich:

At a time when victory over the secessionists in the American Civil War was within days and slavery was near an end, Lincoln did not speak of happiness, but of sadness. Some see this speech as a defense of his pragmatic approach to Reconstruction, in which he sought to avoid harsh treatment of the defeated South by reminding his listeners of how wrong both sides had been in imagining what lay before them when the war began four years earlier. Lincoln balanced that rejection of triumphalism, however, with a recognition of the unmistakable evil of slavery, which he described in the most concrete terms possible. Unbeknownst to him, John Wilkes Booth, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, John Surratt and Edmund Spangler, a few of the conspirators involved with his assassination were present in the crowd at the inauguration.

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I’ve embedded some audio of a historian talking about the photo above. I thought it was the National Portrait Gallery but I think it’s the Capitol building.

It’s pretty damn creepy that Booth is actually in the shot.