Get on your pony and ride, Get on your pony and ride

Frankly the most irritating thing about that site is the lack of an email or even comments. I think there is some cowardice in failing to have ANY mode for response or feedback, so I appreciate that you have an email address you provide.



The Nation wrote that last Monday (to C.I.) about us. Well, get on your pony and ride. Get on your pony and ri-i-i-ide. ("Too Late," written by John Phillips, recorded by the Mamas and the Papas on The Papas & The Mamas.)



First of all, we do have an e-mail address posted on our profile.



C.I. got an "Oops!" e-mail after the original from The Nation noting that we did have one.



After we were said to be cowards. The Nation called us cowards? Fine by us. They did the same with Ehren Watada. We'll happily stand with Ehren Watada any day, any hour.



Here's the deal on the e-mail address. It was up when this site started. Awhile back, Blogger/Blogspot made everyone using them switch to Beta. All community sites switched to Beta. When we did, it disappeared the e-mail address from our profiles (all profiles). We never go to them, we had no idea it had happened.



An organization wrote C.I. (in May) about something at another site and noted that there was no e-mail address posted for the site. Jess read the e-mail (Jess and Ava are among those helping C.I. with e-mails), called C.I. who had a few minutes before speaking with some college students about the illegal war. C.I. gave a bit of reply. Ava helped Jess round out some points because she knew what C.I. was talking about. But on that day, all sites (except Kat's) were informed that there was no e-mail address.



As Mike noted that same day, all anyone had to do to contact Rebecca (that's what the e-mail was about) was search her site's name and e-mail address ("Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude" "e-mail") on Google and the address was right there. You didn't even have to click on a result for the search page. When Jess read the e-mail from The Nation, the first thing he did was search "The Third Estate Sunday Review" "e-mail" on Google and there our address was. The second thing listed. And, no, you didn't have to leave the search page to find it.



The Nation wrote last Monday which was July. Our e-mail address has been back up since May. Others at The Nation have written to us in the last six months, readers have written us and all have apparently been able to do a search to find an address.



For whatever reason, The Nation couldn't even click on our profile to get our address which was up last Monday, was up all last month and was up for some of May.



We could call names here right back at The Nation, but let's move on.



We're cowardly for not having an e-mail address (we do have one) and for not allowing comments?



We don't allow comments. We've been over this before.



You'd think the e-mailer would have paid attention to what hurt Cindy Sheehan online, The Nation did write about it after all, but apparently, paying attention isn't a strong suit.



The Common Ills was the first community site. It is not a blog. When it went up, C.I. thought it would be. Comments were allowed. (Sorry to our older and recent readers, we've been over this ground before, but some, like The Nation, are really slow.) Why did comments get pulled from The Common Ills?



Because readers (they were readers then) complained. Specifically African-American readers complained. Keesha led the charge but she was not alone. She'd seen how life is online. She knew how this ended. C.I. e-mailed back that comments would be pulled, that there was no reason for anyone ever to be hurt but, "give me some time to figure out how to do that because I don't know how right now." Two days later, two Blue Dogs who haunted the comment threads let rip at Keesha with racist remarks, including the n-word. C.I. learned in thirty minutes how to close comments. They closed and they've been closed ever since.



Stan Goff has written of how women can end up feeling that they're not welcomed in the commenting. We're glad he has. But what we've heard repeatedly is that African-Americans really aren't welcomed.



Betty can tell you that. She's talked about this, she's blogged about this. She did so last in May at Rebecca's site. (Betty blogs there from time to time. She's also Rebecca's official guest blogger.) She went to many 'left' sites (really Democratic ones) and was welcomed. As long as she never wrote about an issue to African-Americans. If she did and pointed out that the Dems weren't especially strong on it, it was time to heap on the scorn and the ridicule. We didn't know Betty when we started this site. We knew why the comments were closed at The Common Ills from reading the site. We also pumped C.I. that first weekend but really didn't have to. Once C.I. started explaining it, Ty jumped in with his own experiences.



So there were never going to be comments here.



Only one community site allows comments. That's Cedric's site. Every now and then Keesha will post a comment. Most members don't post comments. (Cedric got seveal comments in May.) Cedric's been through the same crap Ty and Betty (and Keesha and Carl and Demetrika and others) have. He checked, when he started his Blogspot/Blogger site. He was already doing his site at Blogdrive. He was already getting the racist e-mails. He announced he'd be switching in the gina & krista round-robin and revealed he was thinking about allowing comments because he thought/hoped it would cut down on the racist e-mails. He shared three of the e-mails so everyone would know what was coming in. His thinking was that if comments were there, some of those types might leave a comment and might curb their racism for public consumption. Gina and Krista polled and not one member objected to Cedric having comments.



No other site does.



Oh, you're thinking, those are old stories. How old are they? Cindy Sheehan, in her announcement that she was regrouping, noted that Democratic Underground had vicious comments about her. DU staff (we're not sure if they're paid or not) responded to note their support for Cindy Sheehan. Those were people leaving comments, that didn't reflect DU.



But here's the thing. A few weeks later, when a woman (presumably African-American) shared her thoughts on Hillary Clinton (mild compared to anything we've ever posted here), she began to get attacked in the thread. F-you was repeated over and over.



We were able to see what Betty has so often described. As long as you don't note the obvious, you're welcome. Raise one issue and you're not slammed, you're attacked.



That woman was attacked. And, just like Betty, she was a Democrat. She was being attacked by other Democrats with the sort of venom you'd expect to be tossed at Jonah Goldberg. Instead it was heaped on her repeatedly.



That's when Democratic Underground got delinked from The Common Ills. Originally, it was offered along with The Green Party. Now it's just The Green Party.



That's no reflection on DU staff. They weren't doing it. But that was the mob mentality that rips apart African-Americans online. The rest of us never doubted Betty, Cedric or Ty's stories. We believed them. But seeing it play out was so different than just hearing about it.

Community members began e-mailing C.I. repeatedly about it when it started. C.I. even commented in a snapshot to the effect of "I've heard about the e-mails, when I'm at a computer, it will be delinked." And it was.



This is a really ugly side of online life. The woman at DU noted she was going to vote for whomever won the Democratic Party (vote in the general election) but shared she didn't trust Hillary Clinton. That led to not a response or two, which would be one thing, but a mob typing away "F-you" and worse.



This is a very real issue. We've heard about from African-American community members. We've heard about it from Betty, Cedric, Ty and other friends. And we saw it at DU.



Cedric thinks it was "about a year ago" that he noted here how one of his relatives wouldn't even go anywhere online now that wasn't "an African-American site." He got tired of it and washed his hands of the other sites. He's a political person. But he can't take the dog pile. In his case, he 'dared' to note that Jesse Jackson had done many good things. But this was when Jesse Jackson was speaking out on Terry Shiavo (and had the non-Democratic side) so he (and Jackson) got ripped apart in a thread. It was vicious and it was ugly. He didn't cry. He just grasped that African-Americans weren't really welcome. A White person could, and often did, sing Wesley Clark's praises (despite the 90s) and nothing ever came of that. But posting, "I don't think it's fair to call Jesse a sell out" resulted in a dog pile.



Why is that? And why are African-Americans more likely to experience that? Gina and Krista did a round-table on that last September. The general consensus was that most going to a thread hopes that others will agree or at least consider a point. They think they're among friends. That's everyone, regardless of race. But, this was the consensus of the roundtable, what happens is some people are suspect. So when an African-American makes a comment, even though they seemed friendly, suddenly they become the 'other' and the dog pile takes place out of shock that they don't agree on every issue 100%.



What's happening, regardless of why, is that some (we'd argue, a lot) of African-Americans are getting the message that you're welcome as long as you bite your tongue. Biting your tongue means every presumed White person can say who they are for and why (even cutting down another candidate) but if you are for, for instance, John Edwards and are asked about, for instance, Hillary and share you don't like her, you've 'opened' yourself up to the attacks.



The so-called free exchange isn't taking place and a lot of sites (Gina and Krista compiled a list) are seen as unwelcoming for African-Americans. That includes a huge chunk of the 'big sites.'



DU may or may not have cleaned up that thread. But it did exist (and may still) and we all saw it. The staff does some strong writing, some amazing writing. They also follow the news closely.

But it wasn't about the staff, it was about "Are we a welcoming site to people on the left or not?" (C.I.) There was no way to continue linking without ignoring the very strong feelings of TCI community members (of all races). The staff wasn't the issue but that didn't change what happened in the threads.



So the next time before The Nation calls someone a coward for not having comments, they might try learning why. We don't have comments (except Cedric) and the reason is not 'cowardice'. The reason is to be welcoming to all members. Keesha's gone through this and we're so late (in writing) that we could call her for a comment without worrying about waking her.



"When I saw that," at DU, "it didn't just make me angry for the woman. I was angry for her. But it also brought back all the times it had happened to me. I don't know how to explain it other than to say it's like you walk into a room and everyone smiles. Then a minute later, when you've got your guard down and think you can just talk, all the sudden you're being attacked and realize, 'No, I can't really be honest. Not unless I want to be attacked.' If you've been through it, any time you see it happen to someone else, you probably relive it."



Note that Keesha was fighting the Blue Dogs when they were commenting at The Common Ills with their crap about how there's nothing more beautiful than a Blue Dog Democrat and blah, blah, blah. They were doing what they always do ('Try to take control of a cool site and destroy it," says Keesha). We're glad she was fighting for the space that was her's. (C.I. will tell you, members deserve all the credit for The Common Ills and that Keesha, more than anyone, determined what it is now. She fought hard and continues to.) We're sad that she had to.



We're sad every time we write about this topic because it means someone will e-mail about how it happened to them. Then we'll realize it's even bigger than we thought. The thing is, all of us, even Betty, Cedric and Ty, think we get it. And then we find out it's even worse.



So, to The Nation, we'll say you didn't know what you were talking about when you wrote in July and stated we didn't have an e-mail address up (we did, it had been back up for over a month by that time and it was always searchable). We'll say you not only didn't know anything about us when you slammed us for not having comments, you also didn't now about a very real problem online. But, hey, pretend it doesn't exist and maybe it will go away. That seems to be the magazine's approach to the illegal war as well.

Get on your pony and ride
Get on your pony and ri-i-i-ide.