As Chair of the Board of Directors of the FDL Association, let me extend a warm welcome to all of our Founding Members! I hope many more of you will join us. (For those of you who don’t know Ed Walker/masaccio, check out my bio on this page.)

I am a recovering lawyer, so Jane drafted me to put together the by-laws. I knew we wanted to use membership in your public radio station, or your public television station as a model, but those groups are strictly fund-raising, and do not give members any role in the station. In most communities, even the board of directors of the radio station has little role in programming, and certainly no role in determining which subjects are fit for reporting and discussion. That part of the NPR model wouldn’t work for this crowd.

And we wouldn’t want it to. FDL members want information and analysis, sure, but they want more. Many of our readers want to be involved in the issues, writing posts, engaging in discussion in the comments with everyone who posts anything. Others are looking for organized ways to engage in policy and politics more directly. Still others simply want to support a strong national presence for progressive ideas. The By-Laws were drafted to support these goals, and leave flexibility for future growth.

The By-Laws begin by describing goals and purposes of Firedoglake, Inc., the company that operates the website:

i. It provides investigative reporting on matters of public interest;
ii. It provides political and policy analysis, criticism and development from a progressive perspective;
iii. It engages in political advocacy, including but not limited to support for specific proposals, legislation, executive actions/regulations/orders and advocacy for or against specific candidates for public elected office or executive nominations
iv. It provides an internet/blog forum for the dissemination and discussion of all of the above
v. It provides a platform to develop, train, and provide experience to emerging writers, media experts, and others engaged in all of the above.

I didn’t put this into the By-Laws, but perhaps I should have: all of us try to do all of the above while maintaining a unique sense of humor. We also connect to our culture, including art, music, television, food and sports. Next there are the goals and purposes of the FDL Association:

i. To support the writers and publishers of the website Firedoglake.com.
ii. To support the political activities of Firedoglake, Inc.
iii. To practice the principles of cooperative action leading to progressive political change.

The first two are obvious: the FDL Association intends to provide financial resources to keep FDL on the internet, and to encourage direct political action. I’ll take partial credit for that third one, because it expresses my hopes for the future. Slowly but surely we are building tools to enable our community to take cooperative actions at all levels of society, government, private sector, or interest groups, in or out of the Veal Pen. MyFDL gives us a portal for that kind of organizing, and there are many possibilities for breaking away from the corporate/rich people domination of every aspect of society.

I don’t know exactly how this will work out, but I know that I am inspired by the brave and brilliantly organized young people of Egypt and by the self-organizing people of Wisconsin who came together and in the process found their own brand of leadership. I want the FDL Association to push for that kind of effectiveness.

Please help us make FDL all that our board dreams it can be.

By the way, that bio has my e-mail address … just sayin’.