Friends, colleagues, New Yorkers, Americans:

Below is a call that went out earlier in the week for us all to gather at Wall Street tomorrow (Thursday) at 4pm to protest the inanity of the $700 billion bailout. Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars. For what? For them to screw up again and rob us blind? Please!

My big question in all of this is: who's going to bail out Main Street? What happens to the over a million people with foreclosed homes this year alone?

And hey, I've got a buncha useless crap around that I could use some money for– thanks to the folks over at BuyMyShitpile.com, there's an idea to bring it all down to Bowling Green and see if there are takers. Even WIRED Magazine is in on the fun: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/outrage-online.html

So, heed the call– the unions, the grassroots organizations, the media… everyone's in on this one. Come on down. Bring friends. Forward this on. I'll see yas there. Full details below.

————

This week the White House is trying to push through the biggest financial theft in world history with nary a stitch of debate. They’re asking for a blank check for over 1 trillion dollars to bail out George Bush’s Wall Street cronies who created this economic crisis in the first place.

If this passes, we can forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national health care, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.

This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate.

Let’s rally against this bailout in the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.

What: Say NO to the Wall Street bailout
When: Thursday, September 25: 4pm
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area, by the bull statue
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.

Do whatever you can for this historic event and contact all your groups and friends. This proposed financial bailout is without precedent and we have to stop it!

Since Wall Street is asking us to give them money for their worthless investments, some folks are planning to bring their OWN junk to Wall Street and see if they’ll buy it. Bring your collectible mugs and limited edition Thomas Kinkade prints and add ‘em to the pile! This action inspired by Buy My Shitpile - (http://www.buymyshitpile.com/)

I was interviewed for an article about the Internet and the campaign season for LinuxInsider:

"A lot of little folks are being empowered with tools and communications in ways that were previously unavailable," Zandt told LinuxInsider.

This, she said, is "a huge paradigm shift, from a small number of people controlling communications to everyone having the power to communicate with everyone else."

I feel so hardcore!

Lots of things have been happening and hence the absence of actual updates here, haha. Sorry about that. Where to begin?

• Over at Hightower Lowdown, we've launched a new weekly video series featuring America's #1 Populist. What more could you ask for? 2 minutes of Jim talking to you every single week! You can also watch it on YouTube, or subscribe to the show in iTunes.
• And for AlterNet.org, we relaunched the front page to be snazzier and brighter. Design was done by Design About Town, engineering by the ever-smarty Shawn and project management and OCD tweaking by me. Whee!
• I redesigned and launched the website for best-selling author Amy Bloom, who has been an absolute riot to work with. I haven't read her newest, but Come To Me was highly recommended to me by Bitch Magazine co-founder and feminista-extraordinare, Lisa Jervis. And it rocked.
• Lots of photosets from the last couple months.
• Um, I upgraded to Leopard last night, and so far so good. One thing that I called tech support about because I couldn't find an answer anywhere else: yes, Time Machine will wipe your external drive the first time you use it, but then you can continue putting other things on it after. It doesn't have to be a dedicated Time Machine drive, whew.

That's pretty much it. Holidays are a-comin' and I'll be up in Bingotown for a while, hanging out with the fam, and then back in NYC for New Year's. Hope all's well in the land of not-my-apartment!

Well, well, well… it's all the rage for these 15 seconds, but Time has basically crowned "Web 2.0" the official whiz-bang-iess thing out there right now. It's all about you and me, and what we do with ourselves online these days. I read a really great post over at Read/Write Web dissecting what Time got right, and what they got terribly wrong… man, this is such a strange media moment.

Brian Williams, the darling of NBC, had this to say:

We work every bit as hard as our television-news forebears did at gathering, writing and presenting the day's news but to a smaller audience, from which many have been lured away by a dazzling array of choices and the chance to make their own news.

[read the rest of this post » ]

Due to some technical complications and a short-circuited brain unit, I just found out that Brad Will was the journalist who was shot dead at the protests in Oaxaca, Mexico on Friday.

Brad taught me about white balance on my camera, how to walk slowly enough to not mess up your picture, and to always point the mic at what you're shooting. He was earnest and spirited — a wide smile and a big heart. He believed, and dedicated his life to showing others the truth.

More from Jason, and the AP report with quotes from Beka and Brandon.

News on vigils and protests, and latest reports: http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/bradleywill/archive.html

"Love is a memory that never fades. May memories be your comfort." — anonymous

A couple of weeks ago, the very kind editors of the new "Comment is free" blog on The Guardian's website (yes, that Guardian, the one in London) asked me if I would join their blogging team. Evidently they read AlterNet (who knew?) and dig my blogging there, so… there we were. It took all of, oh, 5 seconds to say, "yes please!"

I finally got around to posting my first blog over there, so go read and let me know what you think… "Evolution of geek culture."

I've had this domain up for over a year with the ubiquitous "coming soon" page covering it up; I figured as I'm about to embark on a journey to a new home in Brooklyn, maybe I should make a new home online, too. So, pardon while I'm still hanging curtains and getting the floors done nice… and welcome to my humble (?) abode.

Oh, and the site looks real goofy in Internet Explorer for PC right now (only the browser that 90% of you are using). You should really be using Firefox anyways.

Fixed that problem. Only thing not really working is the flickr badge at the bottom of the sidebar in IE6.0 for PC; I'm getting a 404 inside the iframe. sigh. You all should really use Firefox. ;-)