At the 2007 YearlyKos in Chicago, 19 folks who otherwise would not have been able to go, did, thanks to a scholarship program headed-up by the amazing kid oakland.
This is important, people. It's important that you apply for a scholarship if you need the help, and it's important that you kick-a-buck if you can offer the help.
A self-organized band of activists and volunteers built one of the most important gatherings in modern politics from scratch in just two years--an achievement most organizations, think tanks and even well-funded corporate PACs could not match.
There is no big corporate sponsor. There is no George Soros writing the checks. There is only us. That is The Hope of the Web, to borrow the title of Bill McKibben's 2006 review of Crashing the Gate in The New York Review of Books:
At the center of this world, however, is Daily Kos, which because of its particular architecture, and the open spirit of its founder, has become an experiment in Web-style democracy. Kos himself posts a few blog entries every day. But each year he appoints five assistants who can post comments of their own on his front page. Many of these have become household names (albeit pseudonymous ones) in the blogging world—Meteor Blades or Armando are far more widely read than, say, The New Republic's TRB, despite the magazine's hundred-year head start. (As a measure of comparative fortunes, The New Republic announced last month that its circulation had fallen by 40 percent in the last few years.) But anyone who joins Daily Kos—a free and painless process—is allowed to post "diaries"—really mini-essays—about particular topics at any time. As I write this, on a Monday morning in late February, there are dozens of new diaries posted within the last hour on such subjects as "The End of Medicaid Is Beginning" by chuckles1, or "Dangers Posed by IRS Secrecy" by redlami, or "Time for a Port Pivot" by AlphaLiberal.
To sort out this flood of information (and misinformation), the site allows members to read the diaries and then, by clicking a button, "recommend" them if they think they're important. The ones with the most recommendations appear at the top of the page—at the moment, for instance, "McCain: 100% Wrong on Everything" is the most widely recommended. Members can do more than recommend diaries—they can also comment on them, and hundreds often do, rebutting or correcting or adding to press accounts. The technology works remarkably smoothly, and it changes regularly as Kos and friends develop new software.
When we consider Kos's own Web site and its numerous links to other blogs, we see something like an expanding hive of communication, a collective intelligence. And the results can be impressive. A writer with the pen name (mouse name) Jerome à Paris, for instance, organized dozens of other Kossacks interested in energy policy to write an energy plan that I find far more comprehensive and thoughtful than anything the think tanks have produced. It's been read and reshaped by thousands of readers; it will serve as a useful model should the Democrats retake Congress and have the ability to move legislation. The blogs began as purely reactive and bloggers still spend much of their energy responding to the "mainstream media." But a kind of proto-journalism is emerging, and becoming steadily more sophisticated. If you want to understand (albeit with plenty of spin) the ins and outs of Scooter Libby's defense in the Plamegate trial, for instance, the place to go is Firedoglake.
It would be great if as many of us have a chance to go to Austin this year as we can manage. That means donating a buck if ya got a buck, and that means applying for a buck if you need the buck.
How do I apply for a scholarship? It's easy. Fill out the application form here.
What does it take to earn a scholarship? First, you must apply. The answers to application questions are very important and will be reviewed carefully. Scholarships will be awarded based in part on individual need, geographic, gender, age, and ethnic diversity as well as community member support.
Who chooses who earns a scholarship? The applicant with the highest amount of support voiced on their application page by members of the DFA community will earn a scholarship. All other scholarships will be chosen at the discretion of DFA senior staff.
What is the deadline for the contest? The application deadline is June 10 at 11:59pm Eastern. Scholarship winners will be notified by the end of the day on Monday, June 16, 2008.
Last I checked (and I might not be up to date), the "transfer fees" for partial amounts of miles make that non-cost effective. Only those with enough for a full flight can really help. Several of those were used for last year's scholarship program, where the holder of the miles directly made a reservation for the individual attending the conference. Anyhow, if you have the miles to donate a full flight, or if you have a conference registration to donate (say, if you paid for one, but then were late chosen to present a panel), please contact me directly.
Email info for LoE is here. She is also the one organizing all of us wayward diarists for the scholarship-promotion diaries. A bouquet of roses for her!
So there we are, and here we are. If you gotta buck, donate, if you need a buck, apply. You can also voice support for a current applicant.
