Netroots Nation Has Little Net or Root

The Netroots Nation conference is starting tomorrow. This event once was a cause of interest for online liberal writers because it positioned itself as a conference that was all about them: The liberal blogosphere.

“Blogosphere” isn’t a word we use much any more, because writing online has become much more technologically diversified. Still the idea inherent in the name Netroots remains powerful: A grassroots network of liberal activists who coordinate political action through the Internet.

Netroots Nation today still maintains a veneer of this online grassroots activist identity, but the bulk of the event has very little to do with the empowerment, or even the involvement, of online liberal activists. Instead, big, offline power players are dominant. Consider the event’s “premier sponsors”:

- 9 big labor unions: AFL-CIO, AFSCME, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, California School Employees Association, Communications Workers of America, Laborers’ International Union of North America, Service Employees International Union, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International, Change To Win (labor union created group)

- 3 online activist networks: Daily Kos, MoveOn, and Democracy for America

- 2 corporate interest groups: Alliance for American Manufacturing and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers

- 1 traditional activist organization: Headwaters Foundation

- 1 public relations firm: Tricom Associates

- 1 technology activist organization: Zero Divide

Online activists are still there, but they’re outnumbered.

Netroots Nation has gone from a voice of the online grassroots to just another meeting of the same old Democratic Party power brokers. It’s organized behind the scenes, and from the top down. That’s not just a problem because small online activists have been displaced, but also because it makes the event predictable and boring – a convention equivalent of the Sunday morning news talk shows.