Questions
People are wondering why there wasn’t more diversity at Yearly Kos?
Money.
You have to be able to afford transportation to Chicago, hotel rooms, restaurant meals, and $4.50 beers. You also have to have a job that provides vacation time. There is a notable lack of these things in liberal/progressive blogtopia™, because there is no source of financing for these types of extravaganzas.
If they were going to spend money, why not New Orleans? It needs business more than Chicago. Why not check with a college or university? My first university, Colgate, rented out facilities to groups in the summer, and I’m sure many would love to do it. They do tend to have Internet connectivity these days.
YK was a meeting of people who could afford to go, not a representative sample of anything else.
5 comments
I agree. There’s no way in blazing Hades (AKA California or Montana these days) I could afford to go.
I barely managed to snake together time and a few stray buck-o-lahs to escape to Cambria, just up the coast.
Yes and no. The people defending the lack of diversity at YearlyKos include folks who’ve put blackface on their blogs and mocked feminists as “the sanctimonious women’s studies set.” The liberal blogosphere desperately needs to get its own house in order.
I keep hearing about “vacation” and “time off,” Jill. Some day I will try to experience those rarities.
Actually, Elayne, the diversity on the liberal side is confirmed by the number of people who are mindless jerks on certain issues. Some people don’t see beyond the process, while most are championing views and values. When I was on an affirmative action committee, I was always struck by the number of otherwise intelligent people who had a total blindspot when it came to “dummy messages.” They just didn’t understand why other people might find their words or actions offensive.
There is no way anything that costs as much as a convention in Chicago is going to be diverse, because the real diversity is at the bottom of the income scale.
The process by which Chicago was chosen was fairly transparent. Anyone who’s interested can go rummage through the dKos archives and find the pertinent diaries. One factor I know they looked at was having the convention at a unionized site, which let out a lot of places. Chicago was attractive for that, plus the fact that it’s centrally located and a major transportation hub–and it has convention facilities that could handle a group of the size they expected. (Though I’ve been hearing complaints that McCormick Place was too doggone big, so go figure.) Attempts were made to keep the costs as low as possible, and mechanisms were in place whereby people could be subsidized. Hell, I let someone else have my registration when I couldn’t go. Most of the people slinging mud are the types who would be slinging mud anyway, so I’m paying them no mind.
There is also the factor that a lot of people just don’t like conventions. I had to go to a computer equipment convention in Las Vegas every year it was possible, but it wasn’t the world of excitement that other people found it to be.
I wouldn’t have gone if it had been in Destin, so I can’t complain really.