Alternative Convention Coverage

Tired of the feel-good mainstream coverage of politics-as-usual this convention season? Here’s our guide to alternative and independent sources of news and views of this year’s Democratic National Convention.

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Alternative News

Alternet
A one-stop shop for unconventional convention news, with links to stories from the best alternative news sources, including The Nation, Corporate Watch, the Philadelphia Weekly, Grist, and the Independent Media Center.

The Nation
Special breaking reports and analyses, as well as interactive features.

LA Weekly
THE alternative weekly of note in LA. They’ve been on this story longer than just about anyone. You want context? You got it.

LA Independent Media Center
The bad boys and girls of indy media are on the ground with the protesters, getting the stories behind the glam. Also a bulletin board of stories from eyewitnesses, updated throughout the day.

Democracy Now
Democracy Now has a great calendar of scheduled events outside the Staples Pavillion.

Free Speech TV
Video netcasts from the LA Independent Media Center.

National Radio Project
“UnConventional” analysis from voices you trust, including Andrei Codrescu, Norm Solomon, and Elizabeth Robinson.

News for Change
Working Assets’ newish alternative news channel offers audio feeds from the convention and assorted columns from the usual lefty suspects.

Tom Paine
Made in Alternet’s image but with more original content, Tom Paine dedicated its news muscle to the Shadow Conventions during the GOP gathering.


Activist Groups/Guides/Events

The Direct Action Network
Major organizers of the Los Angeles protests.

The D2K Network
A subset of the Direct Action Network, D2K is a loosely organized umbrella group of organizers and activists (known two weeks ago as R2K) who are taking to the streets of LA for the convention. The best spot to get updates on scheduled protests and organizing meetings.

Ruckus Society
Uber-organizers of the WTO and IMF protests in recent months, Ruckus is focusing on organizing protests for the Democratic Convention.

Shadow Conventions
Arianna Huffington’s brainchild is staging daily alt-convention speakers focussing on three main issues: the failed drug war, the broadening wealth gap, and campaign finance reform.

People’s Convention
The Left’s own progressive alternative to the Big Party shindig. Without the Huffington/Franken glamor factor.

LA Protestors’ Resource Guide
A somewhat comprehensive guide to planned events, marches, organizing meetings, and rallies scheduled for the Democratic Convention.

Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
Parody site and group calls attention to the problem of campaign finance. The “Candidate Price/Performance Analysis” is priceless. They’re scheduled to hold another Million Billionaires March in LA.

Stop Bush 2000
No Bush fans, these. Good-looking site with anti-Bush art and downloadable fliers.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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