Democratic Underground |
Democratic Underground, or simply DU to its members, is a and other progressives. Members are expected to be generally supportive of progressive ideals, and to support Democratic candidates for political office.
Since its inception, over 76,000 forum accounts have been created with over 50,000 still remaining active. Almost 18 million messages have been posted. Membership and participation are free, although voluntary donations are solicited, and some services are available only to donating members. DU Desktop publishing articles six days a week and has an online store, a directory of links, and Internet forum where logged-in members may post on various topics of interest.
=Features of Democratic Underground=
==Columns==
DU has several regular columns, and on any given day may have a number of guest columns sent in from contributors.
Bernard Weiner and Ernest Partridge of The Crisis Papers [http://www.crisispapers.org/] are frequent guests.
==Forums==
The DU Forums are a highly active scene for political discussions by Democrats and other progressives . To maintain the desired atmosphere in the forums, the administrators will sometimes Headstone (ban) users for violating site policies, such as [http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html these]:
We ban Conservatism disruptors who are opposed to the broad goals of this website. If you think overall that George W. Bush is doing a swell job, or if you wish to see Republicans win, or if you are generally supportive of conservative ideals, please do not register to post, as you will likely be banned.
Do not publicly accuse another member of this message board of being a disruptor, conservative, Republican, FReeper, or troll, or do not otherwise imply they are not welcome on Democratic Underground. If you think someone is a disruptor, click the Alert link below their post to let the moderators know.
Have a thick skin. Please be aware that just because you consider a post to be offensive does not mean that it is against the rules or bigoted. As a general rule of thumb, posts about ideas are generally okay, but posts about groups of people are often inappropriate.
The main forums on DU have been re-arranged since the close of the 2004 US election season. They now include:
Other forums include:
An Ask the Administrators forum was maintained until April 26, 2005; this forum allowed users to pose questions to the board administrators. This forum has now been shut down by the administrators, who felt that the forum was being used as a medium for people for to issue complaint after complaint, with the nature of their complaints being inflammatory. A Rules page, a Frequently Asked Questions page, and a Contact the Administrators page showing the email addresses of the administrators have been substituted.
Two of the most controversial forums are often scenes of hot debate between posters:
Some forum posts are aimed at influencing polls on other websites. Media websites (including newspapers, television networks, and America Online), run occasional polls that do not use the Sampling (statistics) methods of formal opinion polls, but instead invite everyone to respond. Some DU forum messages, usually captioned DU this poll , urge DU members to vote en masse in such an online poll. The practice of trying to affect the poll results is not unique to the Democratic Underground forums and is employed by other activist websites of all political stripes.
==Campaign Underground==
DU has an online Political campaign headquarters named Campaign Underground. The site, which was put together with help from DU members, features a database of information about campaigns, voting trends, and media. A media blaster feature provides the ability to email local media outlets in many United States cities. Eventually DU hopes to have other features, such as integrated local news from the forums, a local event calendar, and other issues specific to states and locals.
==Demopedia==
On December 7, 2004, DU launched the Development stage of Demopedia, a Wiki based collaborative project aimed at presenting the Democratic and progressive opinion and outlook, and at collating and preserving some of the information generated on the forums. During the beta, only users who had registered at DU before December 7 were able to contribute. It uses the MediaWiki software.
==Member avatars==
Registered members can select an Avatar (virtual reality) that will be displayed along with each of their postings. For donating members, this avatar can be a custom image that they have supplied; non-donating members can choose from a set of standard images that include popular symbols, images of political figures or popular culture figures, and state outlines, state flags, and a few national flags. These avatars allow users to show some of their personality with each posting.
After the U.S. presidential election, 2004, many members displayed an upside-down American flag as their avatar; an inverted flag is an international symbol of distress.
=Ideology=
Although DU restricts its postings to people on the political left, members have many internal disagreements over a wide range of issues, as well as disagreements over tactics of opposition to the Bush Administration. Nearly all members oppose the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but some DU members favor only a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, while other members favor an immediate and total pullout. Some members favor the Capital punishment, while a majority do not. Another such issue is gun politics; DU participants include supporters and opponents of further restrictions on gun ownership.
While supporters of Ralph Nader are a distinct minority at DU, many posts criticize the Democratic Party (United States) from the left. Democrats such as Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein, who are more inclined toward compromise and conciliation with the Bush Administration, are regularly attacked at DU, while Democrats such as John Conyers and Barbara Boxer, who favor a more confrontational approach, are more highly regarded.
=Activism=
DUers are active in US politics in many ways. Sometimes DUers in different parts of the country meet at DU gatherings in certain cities. DUers have also been known to attend political protests and rallies, volunteer for campaigns, and write letters to editors of newspapers and members of Congress.
==Activist Corps==
One of the newest ways in which DUers are involved is called the DU Activist Corps. Founded on July 1, 2005, the Activist Corps is a group of over 1,000 DUers who are committed to taking action on a certain issue whenever an official Activist Corps activity is posted.
The first Activist Corps action was posted on July 12; members wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers regarding Karl Rove s role in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame s name. More than 70 letters were published in newspapers throughout the country. Other Corps activities have included signing onlinepetitions to United States Senate asking them to reject Supreme Court of the United States nominee John Roberts, and to write letters of support Cindy Sheehan.
==Political candidates==
Some DUers have run for, and have even been elected to, political offices as high as Congress of the United States. Examples of these include: *Herb Riede, the mayor-elect of McSherrystown, Pennsylvania; *Monica McGlocklin, a three-term former member of the Maine House of Representatives; *Elizabeth Rogers, Congressman J.D. Hayworth s opponent in the U.S. House election, 2004; *Jeff Seemann, Congressman Ralph Regula s opponent in the U.S. House election, 2004; (In an ironic twist, during his campaign, Seemann was banned from DU as a disruptor even though he was the Democratic Party s candidate for his Congressional district.) *Justin Sowa, Congressman Paul Ryan s potential opponent in the U.S. House election, 2006; and *The late Andy Stephenson, a voting-reform activist who ran against Sam Reed for Washington Secretary of State in 2004.
=Notable members=
Several notable figures have posted in the forums at some point. Among those who have been verified as not being hoaxes are:
=Owners=
The website is owned by Democratic Underground, LLC (a limited liability company), which is in turn owned by David Allen of Washington, D.C. He goes by the user name Skinner while on the boards and handles most of the issues relating to the forums. The other two administrators, EarlG (of Washington, D.C.) and elad (of Chicago), handle the articles and technical issues, respectively.
=Criticism=
As with any politically charged website, there are many charges made against Democratic Underground from the political left and the right.
==From the left==
Critics of the site allege that the site administrators and moderators are biased against, and unfairly ban ( tombstone ) or censorship, posters who consider themselves to be to the political Left-wing politics of John Kerry, the 2004 United States Democratic Party nominee for the US presidency. Some critics are affiliated with the People for Change forums, which were founded by Howard Dean supporters who felt alienated from Democratic Underground during the contentious primary season; many of these posters had been banned or were later banned from the Democratic Underground forums.
These people claim that DU is not truly liberal or Progressivism, but rather centrist. In particular, many members claim that the moderators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict forums enforce an anti-Palestinian bias or adhere too strongly to the politics of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).
==From the right==
Conservatives/Right-wing politics often criticize Democratic Underground for removing comments and banning users who don t fit the site s left-wing stance. Supporters of Democratic Underground respond that the site is clear about its orientation, in contrast to some conservative websites, such as Lucianne.com, which claim to be open to all views but purge disagreeing posts.
Because most of the site s forums can be posted to by anyone who has registered at the site, outlandish comments sometimes appear, and can then be cited by critics who want to discredit the site. One example of this was the dialog about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, in which a few posts suggested some conspiracy at work. Although some posts were deleted and the threads were locked, the mere occurrence of the posts was reported by The New York Times and Fox News. The DU administrators officially disavowed what they called kooky tsunami conspiracy theories . They added, One wonders why the author [of the Times article] did not spend five minutes over at Free Republic and instead write an article about how conservatives think the tsunami was some sort of retribution from God, or how Muslims deserved it. [http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.phpaz=view_all&address=104x2907807]
=See also=
*Fitzmas
=External links=
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