Open Letter to Jim Dean

Written by: Annilow on Jul 3, 2008 1:23 PM EDT

Hi, Jim...

My name's Ann (Annilow on the blog), I'm 65 years of age,  and I've been coming here since Dr. Howard ran for president.  That was the first time I've really ever been active politically.  First time I'd ever given money to a political campaign, first time I'd ever 'tabled' an event or written a letter to another citizen to ask them to vote for a specific person. First time I'd ever watched Washington Journal or CSPAN or expressed my political views in public here and on Daily Kos.  First time I've stood on a corner with a sign and protested the war with other MoveOn members.  I wouldn't know how to do these things without the DFA blog and DFA link.

After Gov. Dean dropped out of the race I experienced the same huge, mournful letdown as all of his other supporters and came here for support.  Since then, I've not been particularly active politically, but I do write letters to the editor and letters to local authorities and my Congressman about important subjects like paperless voting, FISA, the snafu with passports.  And I give money when I can to the Democrats, to Barack Obama, to Darcy Burner when her house burned down, to Actblue on behalf of FISA, and to DFA when asked. If it hadn't been for this site and for the blog I would never have done any of this.  I would not be the informed voter and critical thinker that the contributors to this blog have helped me to become.

Jim, to cut to the chase, I am writing to you to tell you that I think our precious blog is in crisis.  One factor has been a very 'buggy' software that has been installed.  In spite of all sorts of 'bells and whistles' the DFA IT doesn't seem to be able to fix what should be simple problems like providing programming that automatically provides links for url's.  The DFA Link software that we used to use to communicate with each other appears to not be working at all either.

Much more important than the buggy software, however, has been the actions of the Communications Director to install 'guest bloggers' to write the main posts.  These 'guest bloggers' have really skimpy profiles in DFA, with no dates of joining, no information on their bona fides, and yet we're subjected to their posts and REQUIRED TO COMMENT ON THEM or our comments get sent to the 'Watercooler' which is an unarchived area of the blog, where our posts disappear completely after 24 hours.  

I can only imagine that one of your employees, perhaps the Communications Director, is spending PAID TIME DECIDING WHAT IS RELEVANT AND WHAT IS NOT.  There is one word that I believe describes this activity and that word would be CENSORSHIP.  

Jim, if there are money issues in DFA and you folks are trying to shut down the blog for that reason or any other it would be great if you would let us know UP FRONT.  Just say there will be a funeral for the blog on such and such a date and we will be sad but we will find another home.  

If the issue is money, if you would solicit money FOR THE BLOG I am certain we will pony up -- just ask us.

But if the whole thing is just that the Communications Director is trying to remake this blog into some vision of his own, his own KOS or Firedoglake, he ain't gonna get there with posts from unknowns who can't spell and are longwinded, on subjects that are really old news, written by people who really seem to have nothing to do with DFA - where did they come from anyway?  

I do hope you will respond to this post and let us know the rationale behind the censorship happening on the blog, the apparent extinction of DFALINK, and the gestapo techniques of your Communications staff.

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