podcast

• Rock the Vote blog has an excellent post on how anyone can do DIY voter analysis using Census data and some cheap software. The instructions are meticulous and slightly intimidating, but the writer makes it sound like something you could figure out in an afternoon. I've got to give that a try . . .
• YouTube announced that you will soon be able to sort candidate videos by issue, making a nice little tool for compare/contrast purposes.
• Three interesting things to check out for those interested in how the evangelicals (and other young people of faith) are doing it these days: Youthroots - a social networking site for people of faith; BattleCry - the online home of a (crazy/scary) hipster evangelical movement; and with young evangelicals worrying about poverty and global warming, the WireTap Blog asks "Is God now progressive?"
• The New America Foundation documents how our generation's GI's are getting the shaft when they return home from duty:
  

  Although military recruiting literature trumpets educational benefits of up to $72,900, for most recruits the benefit tops out at $38,700. That works out to $1,075 a month for 36 months. It might sound like a lot to a teenager looking for help with college, but it’s only 75 percent of the average cost of attendance at a public four-year-college or university. To be eligible for those benefits, servicemen and women have to contribute $1,200 up front, out of their own pockets, during their first two years of service. Virtually all do so, but nearly one-in-three never collect any educational benefits, and they don’t get a refund. Most important, GI Bill benefits are counted as student financial resources when veterans apply for federal student financial aid, making many veterans ineligible for Pell Grants or subsidized student loans that could fill the gap. For recruits from low-income backgrounds, that’s a huge loss.

• Barack Obama is scheduled to be on the Daily Show on Wednesday the 22nd.
• Check out this podcast of Anya Kamenetz of Generation Debt.

Yesterday I happened upon a great podcast interview of R5 Productions' Sean Agnew at The Flux (Right click on the first link and click "save link as" to save the podcast to your computer). In this interview Sean covers a wide range of topics, including attempts to get him to run for City Council, the difficulties of staying in business as an independent promoter in Philadelphia, and the reasons why cities should support companies that bring culture to a city (like R5) and thus help it to attract and retain young people.

If you want a great example of the many ways in which culture and politics intersect, espescially for young people, give this podcast a listen!

After a successful day of canvassing, a group of idealistic young progressives gather together and cheer their hard day's labor in service to The Movement. "This is what democracy looks like!" they cheer before heading off to their mandatory socialization period.

The chant reeks of pure earnestness and energy, both of which I, too, possessed during my brief stint as a canvasser for NYPIRG the summer after college, but in Dana Fisher's new book, the scene is tragically ironic. If Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns is Strangling Progressive Politics in America tells us anything, it is that this is not what democracy looks like. And it is not what progressive politics should look like either.

I sat down with Dana Fisher for a Podcast a few weeks ago to talk about the book and her findings.

Click to download the complete podcast (35 minutes)

Part I - History of Canvassing
Part II - Young People: Cogs in the Machine
Part III - 2004, A Post-Mortem
Part IV - Solutions, The Field Infrastructure of Life

Dr. Fisher has agreed to come on the website and respond to your comments, so please leave any questions or observations you have in the comments section. If this works out, our future podcasts will have a "call for questions" beforehand to incorporate into the Podcast Q&A. I'll apologize upfront for my lack of interviewing skills. If you think I missed something, or didn't drill down enough . . . well . . . you know what to do.

A review (and a handy chart) after the jump.

Last night I recorded a podcast with Dana Fisher, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and author of the recently published book: Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns is Strangling Progressive Politics in America.

The podcast should be up on the site early next week (Monday or Tuesday) and I'll be posting a review of the book at the same time. It's an excellet study on how canvassing operations like The People's Project - despite their ability to quickly and efficiently build lists and raise money - are detrimental to the longterm health of the progressive movement. We touched on a lot of topics during the podcast - the history of canvassing and the operating models of these organizatios, the (lack of) utility of canvassing as an "entry point" into progressive politics for young people, Republican and Democratic GOTV strategies in 2004, community and local infrastructure building (something that these canvassing operations have allowed lazy Democrats to refrain from doing), and I'm sure much more.

The book was published yesterday, and I recommend anyone interested in learning about these canvassing organizations and the (mostly negative) effects they have on the progressive movement pick it up. More next week when the podcast is ready.