Netroots Nation 2019 in Philadelphia, PA
It’s been one week since Netroots Nation came and went from the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection — Philadelphia, PA. As you may have seen about two months ago, I posted a musings diary about whether I really wanted to attend, given I had some reservations about whether the programming is relevant to my status as an “engaged citizen and voter”. I don’t work in politics or government, and my involvement in politics is mostly via donating and voting, plus being actively involved in this community. Thankfully, you folks convinced this local to attend, and I’m happy I did. Here is a comprehensive recap of my first Netroots Nation experience. It’s a very long recap, but I hope you find it enjoyable and informative.
My first event was attending the Daily Kos Cheers & Jeers happy hour on Wednesday, July 10 on the evening before the official conference start. I had a really great time reconnecting with some folks that I’ve previously met, either at one of many NYC Kossacks meetups, the one and only Philly Kos meetup, and the DNC 2016 (which you may recall, was also in Philadelphia). It was great to see Denise, Neeta, belinda ridgewood, John from Philly Kos meetup, Chitown Kev, and many other familiar and new faces.
Alicia Garza giving her Keynote Address
For Thursday, I was only able to make it to the evening Keynote Address, but I had a really great experience. It was announced that the total registrations was on the verge of 3,600, ~600 more than the previous high of ~3,000 from last year. That’s a remarkable one-year jump. I was impressed by all of the speakers, which featured some local activists. The head Keynote Speaker was Alicia Garza, who is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Overall, a lot of great motivating speeches. It was thunderstorming like crazy during the speeches, and as one speaker quipped, “we are the thunder!”
After Thursday’s official events were over, a bunch of us locals took some visitors to Monk’s Belgian Cafe as part of a “super secret, but maybe not so secret after all” dinner and beers gathering. For those of you who don’t know, Monk’s is one of the best bars in America, at times offering more than 900 bottles, and the current list is still very impressive. Not many places in American where you can order Cantillon bottles. Many folks had the famous Monk’s mussels, and for my beer I ordered a wonderful Russian River Supplication, which is a sour brown ale aged in pinot noir barrels with sour cherries and one of their barrel aged series. $22 for a 375mL bottle, but if there’s one thing I’ll splurge on, it’s damn good beer. Also, for Bay Area folks and visitors, Russian River brewing is only 60 miles from Oakland. I say the next Daily Kos company event should be held there!
Russian River Supplication
One last fun fact about Russian River brewing, each February they release their limited edition Pliny the Younger, a triple IPA. Pliny the Younger is such a world-famous beer that Russian River posts a detailed release website with instructions on how to travel to the brewery (including by plane), and how to form the line. Some folks literally camp outside the night before. Philadelphia is the only city east of the Mississippi River that receives kegs of Pliny the Younger, and most bars receive a small volume. Monk’s is the only bar that receives a full keg. I waited outside Monk’s for 90 minutes to receive a 5 oz. pour, as well as many other Russian River and Cantillon beers on tap. It was glorious!
For any sour beer fans returning to Philadelphia, definitely head to Monk’s. There also is a not-so-secret-anymore place called Fermentery Form in West Kensington, but they are only open by announcement; usually Thursday evenings and some Saturday afternoons, but check their social media for info. Also want to plug The Referend Bier Blendery, which is located in Pennington, NJ, about 15 minutes north of Trenton (so somewhat close to Philly, and a few bars sell their beers on tap in the city). They specialize 100% in production of spontaneously fermented beers. And as a bonus, one of the co-founders is my friend and classmate from Penn’s Cell and Molecular Biology doctorate program, which is super cool! And finally, there’s The Rare Barrel right in Berkeley.
Anyway, back to Netroots Nation. On Friday morning, I attended the Daily Kos Caucus. It was nice to see Markos and the staff, as well as Kossacks you all know well online. During this event the team officially announced the launch of Prism, which is a new media organization and platform with the goal of elevating traditionally silenced voices in mainstream media. While Prism is initially focusing on news, one of their inaugural fellows, Maurice Mitchell, spoke about how elevating minority voices by impacting culture is important. Below is a short video shown to attendees.
This echoed one of Thursday’s Keynote Speakers, Rashad Robinson of Color of Change, which among its missions is the uplifting of black voices in culture. For far too long, Robinson argued, progressives have dismissed culture as having a monumental impact on shaping hearts and minds, and we need to lean in to shape culture in our ideals. I 100% agree. I see a lot of comments here about how sports are awful, or that their influence is too high, and many similar sentiments about pop culture. Well, sports is a major way to shape narratives and truly change minds, as Megan Rapinoe has been showing this last month. So we have to embrace culture, not shy away from it, even if you think Millennials and Gen Z are frustrating, inattentive, etc.
Rashad Robinson of Color of Change
Culture is Power
Which brings me to a curious observation about the Daily Kos Caucus. Among the ~75 attendees that morning, I am quite confident that I was the youngest attendee, even at 32 years old. Netroots Nation overall had a fair amount of Millennial attendees, which was encouraging. But overall, even though Millennials and Gen Z are embracing liberal politics and activism, they sure aren’t doing much of it at Daily Kos.
Throughout one of the main hallways were these amazing graphical representations of the Keynote Speeches. Below is one about keeping families together at the border. I saw about 10 of them overall.
Families belong together
I was excited to attend some local Philadelphia panels, and although most of them were on Thursday (and thus I missed them), there were a few throughout Friday and Saturday. One was about ending mass incarceration and featured Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who has received a lot of attention nationwide for being an outwardly progressive D.A., and one who has experience as a defense attorney, rather than a prosecutor.
The panel on ending mass incarceration, featuring Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner (seated at far right)
This panel featured D.A. Krasner and others, including a former prisoner now working to help current prisoners, and a leading public defender. One of the key themes was to push even harder for criminal justice reform even as opponents are citing Philly’s highest murder rate in a decade as reasons to end reform. That struck me the most, because while I voted for Krasner in the primary and general election, and fully support Krasner’s efforts to put the Philly Police on notice, there are some concerns that I have as a Philadelphia resident.
One notable case involved Krasner giving a plea deal to an attempted murderer, who robbed an Asian immigrant deli owner in West Philly and shot the owner with an AK-47 assault rifle, leaving him permanently disabled. Despite a very violent offense, Krasner’s office offered a 3.5 — 10 year plea deal and didn’t tell the victim’s family, leaving them completely stunned. The D.A.’s office moved to reverse the plea agreement after public pressure, but they were pre-empted by a U.S. Attorney pursuing charges. And this is not the first time lack of communication with victim’s families has occurred.
In fact, there has been so much leniency that the PA State Legislature recently passed HB1416, which allows PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) to prosecute gun cases if Krasner’s office declines. I specifically asked Krasner about this during the Q&A session.
Unsurprisingly, Krasner had some very strong words directed toward AG Shapiro, saying that Shapiro probably has aspirations for higher office and how many state politicians treat Philadelphia as a “colony”. Under public pressure, a softer agreement has been reached between the state and Krasner’s office, but clearly there is tension. I agree with the panel that lower, or even medium offenders (my words) should be given a fair chance, because once in the system it just perpetuates poverty and violence. But I’m not happy with letting gun crimes off leniently in the name of criminal justice reform, so I’m not sure if I will vote for Krasner next time. Philly Police are so racist and toxic, though, that I may be left with no choice but to vote for Krasner again as a powerful check on their actions.
After lunch, I attended the Daily Kos Elections Q&A panel, which was super fun and informative. Daily Kos Elections is the definitive content that keeps me coming to Daily Kos, so keep up the amazing work. I asked two questions — one about the constitutionality of the National Popular Vote, and one about the likelihood of Democrats controlling a majority of state voting delegations in the event of a 269-269 Electoral College tie. You can see my questions starting at time stamp 22:35 in the panel video.
The Daily Kos Elections Q&A panel
In the late afternoon, I attended the Fix The Damn Healthcare panel moderated by Charles Gaba. Each panelist described the various health care proposals that are being discussed among elected officials. After a robust discussion, I chatted with two panelists about reimbursements, which will be extremely important under any system where the government is more involved as a payer. I noted that literally next door from the Philadelphia Convention Center is Hahnemann University Hospital, which announced ~1 month ago that it was closing.
Fix The Damn Healthcare panel
Part of this is due to vulture capitalism and the hospital’s for-profit status, which means it owes tons of property tax money that other hospitals, like Penn and Temple, do not. But the other part is that the hospital serves patients who are more likely to be on Medicare or Medicaid, plus patients who end up not paying at all. This is a very important detail that needs to be managed with any move to a single-payer-like system, especially with super expensive personalized medicine and gene therapy treatments entering the market (fun fact — both cited therapies were developed in Philadelphia), some of which cost almost $500,000 or more. Even though gene therapy may save millions in lifetime treatment costs, there still is that upfront $500,000 — $1,000,000 cost that needs to be paid.
Friday evening was spent at the Chairman Emeritus Pub Quiz, which was super fun. I was part of the team “Gritty in the City”, which indeed correctly answered the question on Gritty in round three. I hope Adam liked my Gritty doodle on the answer sheet. “It me.”
A bunch of us then headed to Dirty Franks, a super famous dive bar located at the corner of 12th and Pine St, to have a bunch of cheap beers. Luckily, the bar is scooter and wheelchair accessible, so we were able to include everyone in our group!
Align Left panel
I stayed out late on Friday night, joining some Philly friends for some live karaoke after we departed Dirty Franks, so I didn’t make it to Saturday’s events until the afternoon. I was able to catch one panel which was titled “Align Left: Why Designers are Integral to the Resistance”. This panel, perhaps as expected, had the youngest audience of any panel I attended. I was particularly struck about how the designers managed free work, because even if it’s a cause you support, you’re taking a paid job away from another designer. Something I hadn’t thought of before.
The main event was the Presidential candidate forum, co-moderated by our own Markos. Elizabeth Warren was clearly the crowd favorite. Of all the things she said, my absolute favorite was when she committed to investigating crimes occurring at the border regarding separating families, caging children, and physical abuses. It’s about time a candidate committed to doing so; we cannot simply end the camps and move forward, we must investigate and prosecute all crimes of any and all CBP and ICE “good employees”, to modify a phrase from World War II. Warren was definitely my favorite candidate, though I really enjoyed Julian Castro, who is super impressive. Gillibrand seemed very rehearsed. I believe she is genuine with her statements and feelings, but it just comes off practiced and stiff in a way that doesn’t occur with Warren. It was amusing when a lot of attendees just got up and left after Warren was finished, but I stuck around to hear Gov. Inslee give his answers.
Elizabeth Warren at the Presidential candidate forum
Finally, a bunch of us hung out in the Marriott hotel bar for a few hours enjoying each other’s company! It was a great ending to the convention, just relaxing and hanging out with a few drinks. In a final amusing moment, I was chatting with a conference attendee about why I’m not that favorable toward Philadelphia Councilmember Helen Gym, who excited the crowd with a speech before the Presidential candidate forum started. Just as I was going to say the first reason why I don’t really like her, my chatting partner said Councilmember Gym was literally right behind me. What are the chances of that?! So I kept my mouth shut since my criticism is better announced during the next council campaigns. Regardless of my reservations, Gym’s power in Philadelphia is undeniable, as she received by far the most votes for At-Large councilmember seat in the May primary; over 106,000 vs. next closest at ~65,000.
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