Tuesday, June 21, 2005

"Move Over, Boomers"

"The old era of political party identification is giving way to a disaggregated thunderdome of cause-based politics, distributed democracy, MoveOn house parties and do-it-yourself politics," writes Dan Carol in Alternet's new book, Start Making Sense. "Peer-to-peer politics ... is replacing the party as the place where new stuff happens."

The class interests of the practivists may be their weakest link. Taught that identifying with or romanticizing the oppressed is akin to colonizing them, many of these bloggers, culture jammers and radical consultants operate from a place of privilege not rooted in working America. Howard Dean's call for small-donor support of the Democratic party, for example, applies more to middle-class voters with cable modems and time for meet-ups than to workers struggling to raise children and navigate the minefields of economic instability and mass culture."-from the article in In These Times.

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