Boozing it up at the State of the Alcohol Industry Briefing

This post is featured on Plight of the Pumpernickel.

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Last Thursday, I finagled an invite to the first annual State of the Alcohol Industry Briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Actually, 'finagled' is a bit of a misnomer. Went to their website, registered myself and then printed out a free ticket is a more apt description. It was pretty easy to get in.

Once inside, the scene was a bit like a room in Willy Wonka's factory. Except everything was alcoholic. As the man says, candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

Set up along the walls were a myriad of alcohol stations. Custom martinis with Kahlua liqueur and pumpkin spices, flights of variously aged Hennessy, drinks mixed with top shelf vodka and gin, and more types of wine and beer than I could count. It was glorious.

A prime rib carving station, a chef making custom risotto dishes and countless hors d'oeuvres were also available for our enjoyment.

Incredibly, the entire event was free. Not to say the evening came without a price; my gaggle of friends and I found ourselves in the obvious minority as the youngest patrons in attendance. And perhaps the only liberals. Big surprise, the alcohol industry is comprised of lots of old conservatives. Who knew.

This didn't seem like such a bad thing until a particularly sleazy one began chatting up a friend. Let's just say the old guy's comments were less than PC. Here is a truncated version of the conversation that ensued:

Old guy: I like that snazzy shirt you're wearing. (Points to my male friend's red shirt) I bet you're popular with the ladies.

Friend: Um, well. I dunno. I'm here with my girlfriend.

Old guy: Because there are a lot of tasty young things here. (Points to me and my two female friends).

Friend: Um...

Old guy: That one of the right is cute. (Nodding at my friend) But she's a redhead. You never know what you're getting with those.

Friend: Yeah, uh. Well...

Old guy: The one in the middle is nice looking. (Pointing to me) She kind of has the cute Washington thing going on. Only good for one night, though.

Friend: I don't think I could feel more uncomfortable...

Old guy: Now, that girl on the left. (Points to African American friend) I've never had one of those. I'd really like to sink my teeth into that.

Friend: ...and there we are!

Ah, yes. My first taste of truly creepy, old, conservative Washington.

Interestingly enough, none of the six people in my early to mid 20s aged crowd were carded. I don't think I need to tell you that I could easily pass for 20 years old. Just saying.

All things aside, it was an extraordinarily fun evening. So much fun, in fact, that I would happily endure again a stream of come-ons spouted by a man old enough to be my father. A small price to pay for such enjoyment.

Tell Us

Over the holidays, we at Sum of Change will be hard at work redesigning the web site. I should really say "recreating" the web site, as it will look and feel very different from our current design. We are coming out with a new logo based on the DC flag as well. Before we sit down to completely revolutionize how our web site looks, we want your input.

Please send an email to info at sum of change dot com, or just use our contact page and answer these 5 questions:

1) How did you find out about SumofChange.com?

2) When you visit SumofChange.com, what are you looking for? What brings you to the website?

3) When you visit, are you able to find what you are looking for easily? If not, please tell us why and how we might be able to make things easier to find.

4) What do you like least about our current site design?

5) What do you like best about our current site design?

Please do take a minute send us an email and answer those 5 questions. We have a laundry list of things we would like to change, but your input is vitally important to us since our web site is designed for you.

Szakos' a Free Man

A while back, we covered a somewhat unique story. Joe Szako, the Executive Director of the Virginia Organizing Project, had been arrested while attempting to contact Anthem Insurance during a demonstration at their headquarters. We were there when Mr. Szako appeared in court, Tuesday September 22nd 2009, in Henrico, VA. You can read more about the arrest and watch video footage of the arrest here.

At the end of November, the case ended with Mr. Szako a free man, for the most part. He will have to stay out of trouble for six months (and yes, that includes any visits to Anthem's headquarters):

Trespassing charges against Virginia Organizing Project Executive Director Joe Szakos are to be dismissed after six months with no incident and no visits to Anthem’s property.

Evidence showed that customers are permitted in the main entrance where Szakos attempted to enter Anthem’s Richmond headquarters in July. Evidence also showed that Szakos was connected by cell phone at the time of arrest-waiting for an Anthem representative-following the instructions Anthem security had given him. Judge Neil Steverson chose not to convict Szakos for trespassing on his own insurance company’s property.

After the trial, Mr. Szakos released this statement:

I am relieved that Judge Steverson recognized that I was well within my rights to visit my own insurance company and ask them a question. I look forward to the official dismissal of these charges in six months so that we can all move on. Until that six months is up, I am barred from visiting Anthem’s property. This is not a problem since they rarely listen to their customers concerns anyway. Being officially barred is perhaps a more formal exemplification of Anthem’s existing customer service policy: ‘Don’t ask questions, just pay your bill.’

Anthem has succeeded in wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars on this charade. Anthem has used the time and resources of the Henrico County Police to arrest a paying customer who visited their building during normal business hours. Today, an hour of the court’s time was spent providing no real benefit to the County. Instead, the court’s time was spent deliberating on whether or not it is legal for a paying customer to walk up to their own health insurance company and ask to speak to a live person. It is absolutely absurd that this has gone this far.

Virginians are already paying outrageous health insurance premiums through Anthem. They should not be forced to pay for the court costs involved with Anthem’s crackdown on customers who question their business practices. I think that Anthem should apologize to the people of Henrico County for making them foot the bill for this nonsense. And then Anthem should apologize to the Virginia Organizing Project for taking up our time and resources with this trial.

The private health insurance industry has given us a health care system where customers have to deal with skyrocketing premiums, denied claims, and even trespassing charges for asking to speak to a representative in person. I am glad that Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb voted Saturday to begin debate on health care legislation that will force insurance companies like Anthem to be competitive and improve their service. We all deserve better than this.

So, in conclusion, it apparently is not illegal to visit your health insurance company and try to ask them a question. Now if only we could visit our insurance company and expect some type of health care too. Yes, I am a dreamer.

Will 2010 Look Like 2008?

As we studied the numbers after the 2009 election, one thing stood out glaringly: the Obama voters had stayed home. Nate Silver showed us that the electorate that came out that day in Virginia had voted for McCain by 51-43, a stark difference from 2008's actual VA results.

Who knows whether or not this election was a sign of things to come, or just a reinforcement of the trend that when a new President takes over, the party suffers in the next election.

But if Democrats want 2010 to look anything like 2008, they better take a cue from this recent bombshell of a poll:

A new national poll finds that fully one third of Democratic voters say that they’re “less likely” to vote in 2010 if Congress doesn’t pass a public option, underscoring the possibility that dropping the provision seriously risks dampening the Dem base’s enthusiasm.

Why am I so sure that Republicans and Blue Dogs will find a way to say that this poll shows that the President should run to the center on health care? All I can say is, polls have shown that for the last several years health care has been the most important issue amongst liberal voters, so I am not shocked in the slightest bit by the results of this poll.

© = No

After we covered the Stop Stupak rally and lobby day, we were shocked to find our pictures being used by the anti-choice Jill Stanek blog. Now, our pictures are copyrighted. And Jill Stanek had neglected to ask our permission to reprint them. What was even more "fun," was what we found on the contact page at her blog:

Reprinting WND Columns:

If you would like to reprint one of my columns, please request permission from WorldNetDaily.com, which owns the copyright, at reprintpermissions@worldnetdaily.com.

So people have to ask her permission to use her copyrighted material, but she is free to use others'?

We wrote to Jill Stanek, quoted her contact page, and asked her to remove our photos. She replied:

Dear Will,

Thank you for writing.

Please note first of all that I provided attribution and a link to your photos.

I have removed the first photo, per your request.

I am leaving the second photo of Congressperson Jan Schakowsky in place. In legal terms, this photo is “fair use” of a public figure at a public event for purposes of social commentary, which my post certainly makes.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks,

Jill Stanek

First off, she is right that she attributed the photo to us, and we do appreciate being given the credit. As for her removing the first photo, we are thankful that she did without any fight.

As for the second photo. Here, Jill is dead wrong. Yes, you have the right to publish photos of public figures. You do not have the right to publish another individual's copyrighted photo of a public figure. And I have precedent to make that statement. We have requested precedent to the contrary and await Jill Stanek's reply.

But what about the substance of her post? Our pictures were used to make the argument that the crowd was small.

Sum of Change Productions posted pictures on Flickr (bottom photo via SoC), and you'll notice there are no photos of the crowd.

And yes, we did not post photos of the entire crowd. This was the only lens I had for my camera that day. Not exactly capable of taking a nice wide crowd shot in a packed room. But here is the widest shot we were able to get with our video camera:


The room goes farther back, this shot is from up in the press box. The room was packed, and the overflow room was, at one point, overflowing. It is simply a non-sequitur to argue that because we did not post a shot of the entire crowd that the crowd must have been small.

How about we use that same logic, against, say, the St Michael Society, who "infiltrated" this open-to-the-public event? They are openly anti-choice. They did not post a single shot of the entire crowd. By Jill's logic, they must be hiding how large the crowd was!

Jill's whole point of the article was that the pro-choice rally and lobby day had a small turnout. What Jill misses, is that this was a lobby day, and the indoor rally was truly the secondary objective. The Coalition to Stop Stupak had meetings scheduled in advance between Senators and the activists that attended the rally. That requires a lot of planning, and pulling it off for almost one thousand people from across the country is an enormous feat.

This may not have been a 9/12 rally with hundreds of thousands of people, but then again, it did not get billions of dollars of free advertising from a major, national news network.

@Organizing 2.0

Last weekend, I attended the Organizing 2.0 conference in New York, put together by Charles Lenchner of the Working Families Party. This conference brought people together to hear from some of the greatest minds in the online organizing world. I came out of it with lots of great footage, and today we are previewing some of it. The majority of the footage, however, will be featured in our Training Tuesday series. So check back Tuesday at 6:00pm for more Organizing 2.0 footage. We are also collecting all our Organizing 2.0 footage onto one page here. But if you are reading this, then you really should find the time to watch these videos.

Whether you've been actively engaged in fighting the good fights online for years, or you are simply a lurker who visits from time to time to read, your intimate knowledge of the workings of the blogosphere makes you a valuable resource for candidates and organizations. This is a quality that is rather unique. As deeply entrenched as the online world may feel, online organizing is still brand new. You can think of it like this, Organizing 2.0 is still in beta format, and it is open source so people all over the world can develop new and exciting features.

The people you will hear from in the videos below, and the many to come over the coming Training Tuesdays, are about as experienced as we can get. They will provide you with many helpful tips and share some of their best practices.

Ari Melber, of The Nation, gave the opening speech:


That was followed by a conversation between Ari Melber and Nancy Scola, of the Personal Democracy Forum:


The last two videos we have for you today are the closing remarks. First, we have Dan Cantor, the Executive Director of the Working Families Party:


And the closing speech, or keynote address if you will, was given by Deanna Zandt, the author of "Share This!":


That's all for today, but check back at 6:00pm Tuesday for our running series of Training Tuesdays when we will introduce our first round of Organizing 2.0 panel coverage!

If you want to read more about the Organizing 2.0 Conference, check out these links:
DeannaZandt.com: Talk: How Sharing and Storytelling Will Change the World
Peoplesworld.com: Labor & community activists coverge @Organizing2.0 (the inspiration for my title, credit where credit is due)
Sum of Change: Musings on Ari Melber's Speech and the State of TV News
Ari Melber: Obama Campaign Organizing & New Media: Presentation to Organizing 2.0 Summit
theCoup.org: Writing for your Digital Audience

Musings on Ari Melber's Speech and the State of TV News

There was a point that Ari Melber made at the Organizing 2.0 Conference that really struck a chord with me, and has been churning over in my head for the last couple days. It was the point in his opening speech when he brought up slide 6 in this slideshow:

Obama Campaign Organizing & New Media: Presentation to Organizing 2.0 Summit

View more presentations from Ari Melber.

We all knew this was happening, but seeing the actual numbers, that is a powerful thing. And this graph is a bad thing. Make no mistake about it, it is bad for society to be so sheltered from any subject matter of real substance. And yet, it gets worse. We expect this type of treatment. We treat it as the norm, and, in effect, we accept it as an unavoidable reality.

So that should raise this question: why can we not expect substantive soundbites? The most common answer I have heard throughout my life is, the ratings. They are giving us what we want. Right? I mean, if substantive news brought in ratings, they would give it to us? Right?

I spoke on similar grounds in previous postings about the death of newspapers. We hear from traditional news experts that the death of newspapers brings with it the death of investigative journalism. To which, I always wondered why it is that we cannot possibly expect television journalists to do investigative reporting.

It is the ratings. That is what we always hear. But there was another moment in Ari Melber's speech which made me seriously question whether or not that claim is accurate.

It was when he popped up slide number 12:


There are two things we need to see here:

1) This graph represents statistics regarding a full speech, not a sound bite.
2) The media clearly failed to make the most of it.

Youtube experienced more viewers than all the networks combined. Let us, for an instant, treat Youtube as a main stream news network (we could easily fill a book detailing whether or not it actually is). But if we treat it as a network, then Youtube, frankly, kicked the competition's ass. I mean, whooped the ever living crap out of the competition. CNN, FOX, MSNBC missed out on a large swath of the population that was clearly interested in viewing this substantive, 37 minute soundbite.

What happened with the major networks' ratings? (we're back to excluding Youtube from this category) By their ratings, the speech was successful. However, when you include the Youtube ratings, the speech is no longer successful, it is powerful. So why-oh-why were the television networks (with their powerful control over a major distribution venue) wholly incapable of matching the ratings of Youtube on this speech? I would argue that either:

1) Television itself is not designed to provide its audience with substance, or...

2) The networks are simply failing to figure out how to successfully distribute substantive coverage.

(and I would argue that the latter is more likely).

Regardless, I think Ari's speech demonstrates that the internet is clearly lacking whatever trait it is that prevents the television networks from giving us more than seven second soundbites.

We should ask why the television networks have been unwilling or incapable of providing substantive coverage. We should ask in what world it is possible. We should ask what influence caused the average soundbite length to drop so drastically. We should ask what responsibility the networks have, and we should ask what responsibility we have. In what way have we failed to hold television networks responsible? We should ask these questions (especially those of us in the media). We should understand how this history of dramatically decreasing soundbite lengths came to be, should we hope to reverse the trend.

And I will end with yet another question. If it actually is an unavoidable truth that television networks cannot achieve ratings with substantive material, should we consider abandoning television networks all together?

I pose this question for one reason only. The charts that Ari showed demonstrate that people are indeed interested in substance, when substance is available to them. And his charts demonstrate that the internet (social networking sites in specific, and yes Youtube is a social networking site) is succeeding in distributing substance, or can be used successfully to distribute substance.

We know these things are happening. We know that the television news outlets are not providing us with substance on anywhere close to the same level that the internet is. We have a ways to go before we understand why entirely.