When You Find Out Your Progressive Hero Is Not So Progressive
A few years ago I was very active on Daily Kos. I wrote a series of diaries to try to educate people about welfare.
Then the Measure S campaign in Berkeley happened. This was a campaign sponsored by business interests in Berkeley to get the riffraff off the sidewalks. "Kos" himself descended to comment in that discussion. He made some amazingly revealing remarks - the type that I would have associated with a Republican strategist trying to get things done. He made some B.S. remarks about his wife being "afraid" of walking down the streets. (In 20 years I haven't been afraid of walking down the streets in Berkeley, and I'm a small, disabled woman). What he meant is she didn't like being "bothered", and he was too self-absorbed to learn about why there were so many people on the streets (re: the utter failure of Alameda County Social Services). He could have benefited from reading a few of my diaries. He furthermore started referring to people as "it", dehumanizing those he wanted to scrape off his shoe. Soon thereafter I deleted all my diaries and left Daily Kos.
Today I went to check my local online news site for election results, and what do I see but Kos (who, ironically, happens to live in my neighborhood) crowing about conservative victories and strategizing about how to throw out all the left-leaning Berkeley City candidates!!!
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/11/11/berkeley-2014-elections-tune-in-here-for-live-coverage/#comment-1678182568
In the same thread he makes numerous comments about the need for further gentrification of Berkeley and proclaims support for the forces that have created a crisis of homelessness there that has been generally ignored and suppressed by the City Council. While the mayor directs city funds meant for housing to consultants and year long studies that only serve to hide the crisis by separating "couch surfers" from the "chronic" street homeless, there are desperate people in need of housing RIGHT NOW. Bates knows darned well his plan is to invite Rich People in and quietly pressure the poor people to go elsewhere while no one is looking.
Read the whole thread for other jaw-dropping remarks: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/11/11/berkeley-2014-elections-tune-in-here-for-live-coverage/
Kos is a COLLABORATOR in all this and his attitude toward Measure S, and the statements he has made on Berkeleyside about pushing all Left-leaning people out of the Berkeley City council show this. Yet he made his fortune by crowd-sourcing people's progressive values! How wrong is that?!
I am really sad and disappointed right now. I tried to make a comment on Berkeleyside, but I think it was modded since it addressed Kos directly. 
Update: Interesting - Berkeleyside did approve my comment. Well maybe Kos will read it and take a minute to actually look around his neighborhood.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Or that he was such a hypocrite. 
I can practically hear the Overton Window scraping to the right (like nails across a chalkboard) toward the property-owner's self-defined "middle".
By the way, if anyone actually read that thread, you might grok that voter turn-out was particularly low in "radical", Berkeley, and it has been that way for a while now. My guess is that demoralization has been steadily growing since the "Third Way" took office here: especially since they have so successfully covered up the problems of the poorer segments of Berkeley, particularly the ongoing chaos with regard to housing. When I challenged Kos to come listen to the daily desperate phone calls I hear just hanging out at CIL, the usual Berkeley Ayn-Rand-Over-Reality type asserted "zero" were being displaced by the way Bates has stalled over the years: and several people voted up his comment. All he has to do is SAY it, and it becomes reality: what is actually happening to people does not matter at all. That's the force that Kos is now aligned with.
