Mayor Bloomberg won’t allow 311 operators internet access because he’s afraid they’d shop at work.

The 311 non-emergency government information system is a program Mayor Bloomberg loves to brag about, touting it as among his greatest accomplishments during the 05 campaign.

311 operators’ mission is to help citizens navigate the often confusing government agency maze. Theoretically, 311 could duplicate much of what the Public Advocate’s office is charged with doing as the people’s ombudsman. But that’s theory. In reality, 311 is not much more useful than 411 directory assistance operators, with 311 often referring callers back to the agency whose non-responsiveness or unavailability, if the problem arises after the agency is closed, prompted the 311 call to begin with. One reason for the department’s relative uselessness, is their lack of internet access.

It blows my mid, that in 2007, 14 years after the web became a mainstream information resource, that New York City won’t allow people whose primary responsibility is to provide information, internet access.

I have a long-winded blogospheric gracias up at culturekitchen.

Just to reiterate what I had written over there, thanks Mole333, Michael, Out Gal in Brooklyn, Atomic Birdsong, Take Back the City, DFNYC, New Democratic Majority and the cornucopia of politicians, friends and bloggers that make this site happen. I also want to thank Drum Major Institute, our friends at The Village Voice, New York Observer, Newsday, The Daily News, New York Times as well as on other blogs like The Politicker, On NY Turf, The Corsair, My Left Wing, WYSIWYG, Post.Thing.Net and Rhizome.

And y'all know we have to give thanks to the 2005 Elections, which were the reason that jolted me into creating this blog in the first place.

Gracias, gracias and once again, gracias.

Ben says that Freddy Ferrer poisoned his relationship with the press. Ben claims the press coverage was fine but that Ferrer off-hands attitude at first and then

Patrick says that NYT was the only newspaper that covered the issues, policy proposals. NYT asked daily the Ferrer campaign asking for the big policies. "Where are the ideas?" and the campaign kept telling they were coming. They actually wanted to give him a platform when New York Post and New York Daily News were writing about the polls and declaring the race over.

Evelyn also did issue pieces. "For the most part those pieces were responsible pieces". When you run into trouble when you start running the pieces about the reporters point of view ... how the frame it. She says that those kinds of pieces the media were kind unfair. She says the elite of the city --the people that write the checks, own the real estate-- they made the decision that Ferrer was in no way going to be the mayor of the city. One of the issues is incumbency. Beyond that, I do believe that the powers that be decided that Mike was the one and Ferrer was portrayed as a loser." The underdog quality of his campaign came too late in the game. "There is a mentality that sets in among reporters that are covering the same story ... you are all getting tired of the same candidate at the same time ... I think that journalists do think in packs ... you get often a similar take". We got complaints and criticism was too skewed for Freddy, nobody is exempt. The pollsters, the media and the elite decided he was not going to win.

Patrick disagrees : "There were sort of moments that Freddy could put something together. The question is could he build on that." When things changed was after the blog story. We made a decision to not write about polls unless we ran them. The Times made a decision to not do that. About the elite decisions, though, that is true.

Ben The decisions that went on the

Jonathan Mandell from Gotham Gazette : He asked how many people read GG and how many people voted. A mojority of the people raised their hands : "You are New York specialits." 1.2 million voted at the last election out of the 4.7 million of elegible voters. Bloomberg's mandate comes from only out of the 15% of elegible voters. If the point of the campaign is to ask New Yorkers who is going to govern, then the system is obviously broken.

Pat says that an underdog campaign like Ferrer's has to have a serious media strategy from the get go.

Mandell :

(1) The system is broken because the media focused on the mayoralty when there were 200 candidates running.

(2) On the polls : This was not a horse race. Horse races are fast and exciting. This was more like a chess game. The reporting of polls is pointless, obscuring and inaccurate.

The Gotham Gazette does it different because, back in 2001, they started mapping out the candidates and the issues. They actually asked government offices and political groups and nobody had an actual system for disseminating this information.

Ben says that he writes about what his readers want to read. He can't do what Gotham Gazette because nobody would read him. It is not his responsibility to present the issues or scolding people into getting to know the issues.

Pat says that at the Times they do set themselves a mandate to educated people but wishes they had been more creative about how they went ahead with it.

OOH! We have a heckler. I've seen him at other events. A professional heckler?

Evelyn says that Bloomberg was very insulated. He never bothered to come into El Diario because the campaign decided that El Diario was not going to endorse him --even though El Diario started invited back in the Spring. She says that Bloomberg did not put position papers out to the press, that he was running a very safe campaign and that the media was not covering his position papers. El Diario put out an editorial because they felt it was unfair how they treated the issue. The media was very unfair through out the campaign started way back in the spring.

Evelyn's point was that Bloomberg had the money to pay for negative campaigning and that makes an impact when you have someone feeding the media gossip and negative reporting.

Pat says that the mayor was influenced by NYT and other's discussing Ferrer's issues... The tabs from Diallo onward smelled blood on the water, they never gave him a break and were all over him relentlessly.

Mandell says that politics are for specialists but the every day life, that is most important. If the coverage is all about the polls, photoshopping instead of pot holes and every day life issues. The conduct of the campaign has some bearing but one of the things that disturbed me ... this is not the fault of the intelligent people covering the elections ... my thinking is that there are 3 basics : (1) character, (2) competence and (3) issues. The problem I have is with the imbalance of how the information is presented. The problem is with the narrative, of how it is framed.

Questions from the audience:

(1) Who gets to decide who is a legitimate candidate?
There is a consensus that resources were only allocated to the main characters or, as Pat said, 'star' endorsements.

(2) Same with sources. Andrea asks is it a priority to the newspapers to get more than the same 2 or 3 experts and/or advocates that get quoted all the time.

(3) To Evelyn: Did you document how the real estate and finance community were working to kill off Ferrer? She says EDLP did not consistently write about this and they did not pick up on it intellectually. "It was very hit and miss." She says they did cover the lukewarm endorsements, how Democrats did not want to make any commitments of money until after the primary.

Stopping right now. Will post the podcast afterwards.

Are you f*&^ing talking to me?

An influential voice is developed in this city by hitting the pavement not just by blogging. You've got to go out there, meet people, go to events, visit neighborhoods, knock on doors and shake hands.

We The People who blog here work our asses off in our neighborhoods and in our communities as activists. We don't just sit all day chipping our fingernails from blogging and you know what, that's how I as publisher of this blog want it to be.

We actually do not fall into the demographics of national political bloggers --we are older, sometimes much older than most. We not only have day jobs but have families. And we still find the time to be politically active.

And I am going to one-up you with a very Republican-like FU because, you know what, I happen to homeschool my kids. A liberal, atheist, soccer homeschooling mom of two who works as a web consultant and blogs. Oh yeah ... and is a political activist.

There are blogs out there, huge ones, where people go because they are more like electronic water coolers. Ask people to do something, and that is a whole different story.

Here, we walk the walk.

So you know what, Mr. Elephant? I got your vaccum right here. Now come clean my apartment.

The Media and the '05 Elections
Join The Politicker, Gotham Gazette, and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy in a conversation about the role of the media in the 2005 New York City elections

Wednesday, November 16 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
The Tank @ chashama

Featuring a roundtable discussion with:
Patrick Healy, The New York Times
Ben Smith, The Politicker
Evelyn Hernandez, El Diario La Prensa
Jonathan Mandell, Gotham Gazette
Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

To RSVP, please email dmi (at) drummajorinstitute.org or call 212.909.9663.

The Tank @ chashama
208 West 37th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.

To get to The Tank by subway take the 1, 9, B, D, F,
V, N, Q, R, W A,C, or E trains to 34th Street.
WWW.DrumMajorInstitute.org

There are many things I've learned through this whole local blogging process. I have to tell you upfront that covering local politics, especially New York City politics, is a whole different animal than covering national politics. This is a city that still relies on good all face-to-face meetings, secret handshakes and political club hopping.

All what most bloggers covering national politics need to do is scan other blogs and the media. They really do not have to do anything beyond spending their employer's time tapping into their Blogspot accounts or Scoop sites. At the local level? In New York City? Nuh-uh. You gotta get off your ass and hit the pavement. Big time.

Which is why I have to say, blog bless anybody who wants to run for office in New York City and is not Michael Bloomberg. I honestly do not know how any of the Democrats running for the mayoral primaries could do it. And then Ferrer had to marathon-it to the elections? In New York City you need a batallion of people to play the old school politics that only billionaires can afford.

Which is why liberals, not just Democrats, but hard-working liberals and progressives in this city have to counter billionaire politics with a real grassroots. Hence, my Letter to the Editor at Newsday:

[via Newsday.com: LETTERS]:

Liberals, unite

Volunteer political activism in New York City is hard work thanks to the huge scale of the city. Everybody I know who has volunteered on a campaign or is doing citizen journalism through their blogs says the same thing: It's exhausting.

That's why Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent more than $75 million on a re-election campaign. He knew that the vast majority of New Yorkers do not have disposable income to make contributions, nor can they afford to lose paid work to do volunteer work.

The loss of City Hall should be a wake-up call to the Democratic Party. This is not the liberal city we used to know, with voting blocks of democratic constituencies. VotingResearch.org recently published a survey of the 25 most liberal cities in the United States. Ours ranks No. 21. This year's election may well knock the city off the list.

We on the left need to work hard to create support systems not just for the poor but also for the working stiffs of the middle class. The Democratic Party will not win 2006 or 2008 if it keeps running away from the obvious: To fight big money you have to grow a strong grassroots.

Liza Sabater
Manhattan
Editor's note: The writer is a political activist and editor of the blog The Daily Gotham.

First, even though I'm not that hot about the title they gave the letter, here's a shout-out to Newsday for publishing it in it's entirety. Let's hope next time my writing hits the Op-Ed section. Heh.

Second, this letter is another one of those big post-election lessons I learned : keep a stack of letters to the editor at the ready to send to each and every local newspaper. Actually, let's back-track it a bit. First and foremost, get the local media to know you exist.

On the one hand, we need to read the local media to follow what's happening. On the other hand, given we here at The Daily Gotham are committed to be activists first and bloggers second, we need to keep the local mass media aware of what we are doing.

Big media and blogs --they are a symbiotic relationship. Hopefully, we'll get more writers from the blog publishing their articles and letters and broadcsting their opinions all over New York City media landscape. End of journalism? Is that going to happen? Nah. I have gone on record as saying that journalism as we know it has gone out the window and I stand by that belief. Blogs in the hands of 'We The People" can be very powerful.

For now though, many of us do not have the resources to kick it to the next level vertically. Which is why growing horizontally is imperative for the local liberal blogosphere. The Daily Gotham is a truly bootstrapped labor of love with a budget of $0,000,000.00. We could never ever have the reach that regular newspapers or news shows have. But you know what? We could never have the reach we have just by blogging.

The Daily Gotham has grown in visibility and influence because the people who are here blogging like Mole333, Our Gal in Brooklyn, Bouldin, TakeBackThe City, Atomic Bird Song and others are hitting the pavement, working for their neighborhood political clubs, attending council meetings.

We are living and breathing New York City politics, not just writing about it.

"Ideas matter more. For the last decade, Republicans have driven the city's policy agenda while Democrats have too often been seen as defending the status quo. This is untenable. New York City needs a progressive version of the Manhattan Institute to generate left-of-center policies that are urban-focused. Whether it's a new vision or a New Democratic plan, Democrats running for mayor in 2009 will have to offer more than just more of the same. This does not mean abandoning the party's core principles, but it does mean exploring updated solutions, and a willingness to test promising and innovative policies, even if we ruffle some feathers. New York City Democrats should be in the forefront of charting an urban agenda for the 21st century. If we fail to offer new solutions to our city's problems we do not deserve to lead - and we won't," Gigi Georges and Howard L.Wolfson on Saturday's New York Times Op-Ed page.

We couldn't agree more.

And on that note, some thoughts for Mayor Bloomberg as he plans his second term, courtesy of DMI Fellows who spend their days in the trenches:

Mark Winston Griffith on the Mayor talking to his girl, the New York State Banking Superintendent, about abandoning plans to permit state chartered banks to offer overdraft protection.

Andrew Friedman on a citywide commitment to making English language instruction available to the 2 million New Yorkers who don't speak English, while providing critical translation services in the meantime.

Maureen Lane on making higher education available to welfare participants - the most proven way to move from dependence to the American Dream.

http://www.dmiblog.net/archives/2005/11/ideas_matter_more.html

If only the outcome of the outcome were this silly.

With Ferrer's loss, republicans will have controlled City Hall for 16 years in a row. It goes without saying it's time to do politics differently in New York City.

The Daily Gotham will be open for business for a looooooong time.

Remember there are 2 write-in campaigns going on: One for Norman Seigel for Public Advocate and Paul Wooten for Brooklyn DA. DFNYC has a great intro at How to Cast a Write In Vote | Democracy For NYC.

The explanation though works with one set of voting machines. This is what Mole333 had to say on a recent email :

Begin voting as usual (lever to the right, etc). For all positions you want to vote for normally, just flip levers as usual. To write in, look at the LOWER RIGHT HAND SIDE of the machine for a silver lever marked "Release lever." Flip that and leave it flipped. This releases the little numbered sliding doors along the LEFT HAND SIDE of the machine.

Find the numbered sliding door that corresponds to the number of the office you want to vote for and open the door. There will be a slip of paper behind the door. Do not remove the paper, simply take a pencil (there should be one to your left in a little cup on the machine) and write the name of who you want to vote for. When you are done writing, simply close the little door.

That's it.

When you have flipped all levers and written in all write-in names, leave the silver release lever filpped (do not flip it back) and pull the big lever back to the left as usual.

Just because you are unhappy with the choices it does not mean you have to stick to the choices offered on the ballot.

Use your vote to write-in your dissent. It's the democratic thing to do.

This is from an email from the Working Families Party. I should note that Freddy Ferrer did not get enough endorsing votes to get a WFP line on the ballot, but he did get enough for an official endorsement and considerable on the ground help. If you want to see all of WFP's endorsements (not all of which I agree with, but they have the right to their endorsements) please go here. And now their statement on Freddy Ferrer:

The WFP believes elections are about issues, not personalities. Elections are a moment for society to pause and, by the simple act of pulling a lever, say, this is what we stand for.

That moment comes once every four years in New York City. And for us, the choice is clear. On the issues that matter most to working families, Fernando Ferrer reflects our values -- equality, decency, opportunity, solidarity, freedom.

Here are five examples – five reasons to vote for Fernando Ferrer:

1. Expanding the Law Requiring Companies that do business with the city to pay a Living Wage. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it.

2. Requiring Big Box Retailers in NYC to provide Health Care to their employees. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it (and vetoed the City Council’s bill).

3. Building a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel, Congressman Jerry Nadler’s extremely smart idea that will reduce traffic, pollution, and asthma. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it (and flip-flopped).

4. Postponing the city tax cut for millionaires scheduled to phase in at the end of 2005. Ferrer supports postponing the phase-out.

5. Returning the power of rent control and rent stabilization to the City so more working families can afford to live in New York. Ferrer supports it. Bloomberg opposes it.

On the issues, the WFP endorses Fernando Ferrer and we urge you to vote for him on Tuesday.

Thank you,

Jim Duncan, Bertha Lewis, and Bob Master, Co-Chairs
Dan Cantor, Executive Director