De facto Democratic candidate Manny Innamorato, in the technically nonpartisan special election campaign to fill Andrew Lanza's usually empty Staten Island South shore/Mid-Island council seat (Lanza, Marchi's successor and Matt Titone's State Senate opponent had the worst attendance in the Council )against State Assemblyman and Vito protege Vincent Ignizio, holds a Manhattan fundraiser tomorrow Jan 24, 2007 at the Beekman Pub, 15 Beekman Street adjacent to City Hall from 5:30-7:30 pm.

Suggested Donations are $75, $125 and $150.

Council Members Christine Quinn, Mike McMahon and Vinnie Gentile are among the hosts..

For more information contact Laura Sword 718 556-3823 or Jason Ascher 917-750-4206 Main office (718)317-0206

mannyforcouncil.com

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Yeah. Pimping the ads does the blogging good.

'Tis the season for giving y'all.

While other blogs have sugar daddies covering their expenses, here at The Daily Gotham, we're a completely bootstrapped operation that relies 100% on advertising. We don't bug you for money because we believe we will, one day, become profitable through advertising.

We will stoop, though, to any depths to get you to visit our advertisers.

Pageviews are not just a way to measure the "advertisability" of a blog. How many 'qualified' readers end up at an advertisers site and how long they stay also counts. When it comes down to it, that's what targetted or niche marketing is all about. It is not about volume but quality.

So, for the sake of helping out your the progessive gaggle of bloggers New York City loves to fear and hate, please take a moment and peruse our advertisers sites like Fresh Air Fund. And since they rotate, please also make sure you give props to the advertisers on the Google boxes and sidebars.

While you are at it, don't forget to pick up some goodies over at our CafePress store, the new MaryCheneyBaby store and our Amazon Affiliate sidebar.

Get the t-shirt and shwag and join in on the dissent.

With the homesland security money going to empty corn fields, New York is poised to become one serious series of unfortunate events. Might as well get the t-shirt before hell breaks loose.

And, oh yeah baby. We even have the thong.

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DMI Annual Benefit 2006
June 22, 2006

6:00 pm / VIP
6:30—8:30 pm / General Reception

at Lotus / 409 West 14th Street, New York City
Cocktail reception plus

Tickets
Tickets are $125. All contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
To purchse tickets, please click here.

For Brooklyn's progressive Democrats, there is no political race this year more important than in the 11th District to succeed Congressman Major Owens.

We have an opportunity to elect someone who is courageous, bright, compassionate, articulate, a good listener, and a very good friend to us all – Chris Owens. Chris is right on the issues that we care about, and he is the ONLY one of the five declared candidates who has shown the foresight and the guts to oppose Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development scheme. Anybody who saw him debate his four opponents at the Lambda Independent Democrats meeting last month can tell you that no candidate is more outstanding than Chris Owens.

But Chris cannot get to Congress without our help. That’s why I’m inviting you to join Chris and his staff for a short get-together at Magnetic Field on Tuesday, February 21, at 7:00 pm. Chris will give a short speech and then answer any questions you may have for him. Please come out to see what you can do to help elect Chris, and please bring your checkbooks.

Magnetic Field (that's where we used to host the Howard Dean meetups) is located at 97 Atlantic Avenue (between Henry & Hicks Streets).

Directions: Take the 2, 3, 4, or 5 train to Borough Hall, or the R or M to Court Street, and then walk down Court to Atlantic Avenue (4-6 blocks) and turn right and walk 2-3 blocks. Or take the F or G to Bergen Street, walk up Smith Street and turn left onto Atlantic and walk 3-4 blocks. And if you're coming from Williamsburg or Greenpoint, take the B61 Bus to Atlantic and get off near Magnetic Field.

Please RSVP. I hope to see you there. Bring all of your friends. If you can't attend, please make a contribution.

Hi Mr. Fundraiser,

Thanks for inviting me to Mr. Candidate's fundraising event, but for now I have to decline. I am sure this is not going to be the only fundraiser for him, so please keep me in mind for future events.

I actually met Mr. Candidate at a "New Democrat Movement" event and have given him the thumbs up among different bloggers here in NYC. We have discussed even the possibility of using BlogPac; and as a member of the ImpeachPACs steering committee, I've tossed his name around.

That's why I am writing this post.

You see, I am more useful to you as an evangelizer for candidates like Mr. Candidate than as a donor.

The threshold for impacting politics has been lowered dramatically by the appearance of blogs in the media landscape. It does not mean there is no cost to it. It takes a lot of work, marketing and talent to do a good blog. But what it means is that bloggers and blogs are a whole different kind of resource. Blogs are not effective because they accelerate the spread of just content, information, data. They are effective because they can rapidly build or flatline reputations.

An effective blog community is not a noise machine. An effective blog community is a reputation engine.

That's why it is not enough for me to blog about Mr. Candidate and ask my community of readers to give him money. You need to prove to us you are one of us. You need to show us you share in on our social values and political principles.

Landing in blogs here and there and asking for money is not enough. Being part of the communities we are building, that is part of the key of reaching out beyond the geographical boundaries of Mr. Candidate's Congressional District or your fundraising events. Either you as a fundraiser or the candidate themselves have to be part of my communities at The Daily Gotham and culturekitchen in order for people to understand or "get" why he is worthy of a donation.

I have seen that Mr. Candidate has been diaring at one of the Big National Blogs to raise his visibility in the blogosphere. I have said to him and his staff that coming to NY-centric community blogs is probably one of the most important steps he needs to take.

In my case, I am a blogger's blogger and that is where most of my sphere of influence extends to. Traffic statistics are not the only way to look at a blog's influence. You have to look at the bloggers and publishers of those blogs to understand their reach.

Even though I think Big National Blog is a good start, I can't honestly say there are too many grassroots activist New Yorkers coming out of those blogs and jumping into action. Ask anybody at the several grassroots clubs and organizations here in New York City if there were throngs of New Yorkers coming out of the Big National Blog eager to work phone banks or hit the pavement for candidates. They will tell you they can count with one hand the amount of people who came out of those blogs.

Why you may ask? National community blogs are reputation engines. Local community blogs act more like conductors of political action. They are not either or propositions. You need both.

Big National Blog is a blog read by Washington insiders. That's why it's a good start for Mr. Candidate since it may gain Mr. Candidate visibility among the Washington crowd. To get people moved and eager to hit the pavement for him and move the grassroots? You need to go local. I tell you what Mr. Fundraiser, Mr. Candidate needs to focus on cross-posting on more New York political community blogs like this here blog.

But let me get back to you Mr. Fundraiser.

We need to talk.

You need to get out more into the blogosphere. How you decide to engage as a political fundraiser, that is of your own making. What I would like to communicate in the most ... ahem ... gentle way I can is that you can't treat this as regular media or even regular internet media. Blogs are about community, about involvement and ultimately about action.

The #1 mistake advertisers, marketers, political strategists and fundraisers make when hitting the blogosphere is to think of bloggers and readers as just consumers.

We are a new economy. An economy being built on a currency of interactivity, trust and reputation. This is not a consumer economy; it's a creative economy. Still in its infancy but the matrix, the core is there.

People gravitate to political blogs because they are view not as just publication but as politics in action. When was the last time you could have your comments of a newspaper article printed on the paper and ciruclated among all readers? Never. On a blog though you can comment on a post and that automatically adds you to the larger discussion. Blogs, diaries, comments, they augment us. Little itsy bitsy tech details like the ability to leave comments on a blog post is revolutionary. For the first time in generations, citizens have a way to effect politics by augmenting with their voice and their opinions a larger political discussion. People feel they are doing something; that they are not just watching passively and impotently.

With interactivity, blogs are not about consuming information, they are about enhancing it, augmenting it and ultimately changing it.

You and I know that comments on a blog are a very small part of actual political action. There are thousands of details and tasks that need to be attended to in politics and they mostly require money and people. But I want to stress how different this world of politics is online.

To understand how the new economy of blogs works you need to be a creator, an investor and a worker. You need to get down and dirty here and work to make us part of your efforts.

It's something to remember next time you invite me to one of your events; which I do hope to attend in the future.

Thanks again for the invite and good luck with your event.

In Peace and Prosperity,
Liza Sabater, Publisher
http://www.culturekitchen.com
http://www.dailygotham.com

Chris Owens is one of the best candidates around. Not only a good progressive, but a great person as well.

If you believe as we do that Brooklyn’s neighborhoods should be preserved and not turned into playthings for greedy developers, then you need to support Chris Owens in his bid to become the next Congressman for Brooklyn’s 11th District.

Chris Owens is on our side, and he always has been. He has been an advocate for many progressive causes, and most recently has stood firmly and courageously, along with Norman Siegel, against Bruce Ratner’s ill-conceived Atlantic Yards development scheme. He is the ONLY candidate in this race who has stood by the community rather than the developer. (By the way, in case you don't recognize the guy standing between Chris and his dad, it's the legendary Pete Seeger.)

Chris is running for the seat now held by his father, Congressman Major Owens, who is retiring after 24 years of service. It is in our interest that this seat remains in the hands of a true progressive Democrat and that it not be taken by an overly ambitious politician who will compromise our future.

Chris is fighting to defend our neighborhoods and our homes, and now it's our chance to help him as he runs for Congress.

Please join us at the historic Freddy's Backroom (and yes, they have air conditioning), in the endangered heart of Central Brooklyn, for a Sunday afternoon of live music and fun. Music will be provided by Dave Benjoya & Friends, with a special guest performance by Chris himself. The suggested minimum donation is only $10.

Today has been "Get Behind Dean Day" in honor of his recent run ins with Fox, Cheney and Biden, among others. Simply put, Dean is fighting the good fight and some are ragging on him for it. So, the litte old grass roots have been spending the day helping him out. I am hoping to give these efforts a little boost and, maybe, spill it over into the next couple of days. The ultimate goal is to give DNC and DFA a spike of fundraising in honor of Dean's efforts.

Today DFA has raised, last time I checked, more than $60,000 in one day. They plan on devoting the whole amount raised today to publicizing the Downing memo. You can help them!

Also today, many people have ways of donating to DNC on behalf of Dean. I do not know how the overall effort has been doing, but one particular effort is an extention of the blogsphere's previous show of support for Dean when he first became head of the DNC. This ActBlue site has gained (I think) at least $12,000 today after months of inactivity.

Let us make sure we send a clear message. We LIKE Dean's style. We like grassroots. We like the fact that he has raised $19 million already and is using that money for an ambitious (and, to the Repubs, scary) 50 state strategy. And we LIKE his Truman-style straight talk, telling us the TRUTH which is something we never get from the Republicans these days. The best way to send this clear message is to send him some money, either to DFA or to the DNC. Money now gives him the credibility and the tools he will need to first reform the Dem party and then to kick Repub butt in all 50 states.