Open thread: Emergent Party Debate tonight!
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Submitted by lambert on Sun, 11/04/2012 - 5:15pm
Sunday, November 4, 7:30 p.m. at Busboys and Poets restaurant located at 2021 14thSt NW, Washington, DC 20009. Busboys and Poets is a well-known venue for frequent political, civic and cultural events.
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Enjoy!
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There's still time to take the Metro into Busboy and Poets!
If anybody wants to grab a camera or a cellphone and go....
Thanks!
Totally slipped my mind. Anyway, it's still off-air with 10 minutes to go, right? (Want to make sure it's not a problem on my end)
Unwatchable
Started late, and it's on now at busboysandpoets.com, but it's constantly cutting in and out the audio, so I can't stand it. Hopefully they'll put it up on youtube or something afterwards.
cough from hell
have not been out of th house this weekend
Bummer!
And the feed doens't sound so good either. Oh well!
I tried watching, but the
I tried watching, but the video kept stuttering and the audio was not working at all for me. I hope this has been archived for later viewing.
I couldn't watch it either
Information I'm getting is that the feed from Busboys and Poets was the source of all the problems, And my guess is the restaurant wasn't prepared.
Poor advance work
I got the link from Real News Network, so kudos to somebody for making that connection, and WTF happened on the ground, since I've heard that there's considerable Green support in DC.
Every time I get geared up for something like this, and every time the Greens let me down, it makes it that much harder for me to take them seriously as a party (and this isn't a linear progression, but a geometric one). Here is one example where a robust local organization really should have been able to take care of getting a video feed organized, especially in a geek-y, wired spot like Busboys and Poets -- DuPont Circle and Adams-Morgan are chock full of techies.
To put this another way, a tiny crew in 2010, mostly from Corrente, with virtually no funding, organized the only conference anti-Peterson conference in the Capital, including video recording (which, I grant, is easier than a live recording). And a party that aspires to 5% of the national vote can't do this? Get it together, people! I want to like the Greens, which isn't the same as liking their candidates, but they make it very, very hard.
And don't say "Why don't you join them?" I'm a writer and a site builder, and Corrente has been very willing to give the Greens alll the coverage they can generate, as opposed to simply printing their press releases. Here was a fine opportunity for real coverage, a real lstory, and what happens? Feh. Clearly, whatever priorities the Greens might have, the Green brain trust -- which I assume is not Stein -- has other priorities than getting the word out in forums that support emergent parties. Why this is, I don't know, but it is so.
Gee, I'd be the first one to jump on that bandwagon, BUT
I have it from the USGP people that the Greens were just simulcasting it, the problems were all from the Bus Boys and Poets end, and they, BTW refused any remote help from our IT guys days before the event. Here's the inside scoop:
"Busboy's was a complete disaster. I have nothing kind to say about them. I reached out to Nader people a few days ago and offered to help Busboys remotely. It's what I do professionally. They had no interest in communicating with me and clearly had NO IDEA what they were doing. I could make a long post about them but suffice it to say they controlled everything and were completely incompetent IMHO."
"Nader's staff was far too gullible or naive to trust them. I think Nader's people assumed BB knew what they were doing. I looked at their recorded live streams and suspected not."
"Their Ustream channel was dead. FSTV had it on Livestream but obviously using BBs gear. The audio was bad. Real News had to run a disclaimer. FSTV abandoned the stream. BB's stream then went to recorded material. Then their channel went live. By that time FSTV gave up showing it. RN removed it from their main page. BB didn't even pay a few bucks for an ad free channel and we got commercials. TOTALLY AMATEUR, INCOMPETENT, DISCOURTEOUS. As of my last check, not even a quality recording done locally on YouTube."
"I would have recommended they simply borrow an iPad with Verizon LTE service and tether it. I am suspicious though because an hour earlier they had a stream that was OK on their channel. So why did they not stream on their channel? Very suspicious."
Our team says they could have walked them through some simple low-cost contingencies, but, again, the BB&P "media" refused their help. But the "Free and Equal" debate should go fine tonight, since they hire, and listen to, professionals.
Well, that's it in a nutshell
This is the kind of stuff we have parties for. My job was to get that video up (which I did).
So, from my perspective, and I'm trying to be direct here, and not harsh, there's a gumball machine labelled "Green."
And I put a penny in the gumball machine (not a "real" penny, of course, but a penny in terms of the effort to do a post, stickying it, some commitment from/of/to the community, and a smidge of branding).
But I didn't get a gumball! (The inner workings of the gumball machine, the gears and so forth, and which gear jammed, and "it was the other guy," are not of interest to me, and why should they be?)
And worse than that, I told other people "Be here at X time and you'll get a gumball!"
As I say, if the Greens get to 5%, I'm happy, and I did my bit, along with others. But if they don't, and if there are 1000 or 10,000 other incidents this, than episodes like this IMNSHO will be why.
The gumball machine was owned and operated by BB&P
If the Greens had control, or even any input into the setup of the event (which they did not, and it also involved three other candidates from three other parties) I could see the point. But as an emergent party (just like the other three) we face more hurdles to create the opportunities that the duopoly controls. Will we learn from this? You bet. Is it fair to say we should have refused to partake in the debate? I don't think so, IMO, not knowing it would go so wrong. And not to get foilly but it is odd that their stream was fine an hour before, and then went kaplooie.
Like I said, poor advance work
I (or for that matter the far more important Real News Network, didn't link to the debate because it was at some uber-hip DuPont Circle cafe.
We linked to the debate to hear Jill Stein, and (at least in my case) to offer her some support that, before this thread, it was my understanding that she sorely needed and appreciated.
If the Greens in DC can't get it together make sure that their presidential candidate appears in her best light in a live debate broadcast, -- no matter the institutional and factional intricacies of the venue -- then that doesn't give me a great deal of confidence in their party apparatus.
I repeat, that if a tiny crew of mainly Correntians, most of them extremely impoverished, can set up a day-long MMT conference and tape it, I would expect a national party in a presidential race to be able to rise to the occasion as well. I'm sure that people of good will are trying. That's not the point.
As I said, if the Greens get to the 5% mark, well and good. If they don't, my guess is that incidents like this are the reason.