Planting Liberally

This site is dedicated to strengthening the progressive movement through liberal entrepreneurship. Here's the story of Planting Liberally. If you just want to orient yourself around the site, skip to the bottom. The Planting Liberally Story Early focus When I first started the site, about 2.5 years ago, I was enamored of this kooky little concept stolen from abstract sociology called an "ideological state aparatus", which is a fancy way of describing cultural institutions which have a powerful impact on their members' political worldviews. Think unions, churches, media, schools, and families. The problem facing progressives, as I understood it, was that conservatives have too strong a grip on these institutions, or they've weakened the ones which are progressive. Unions are losing strength, conservative churches are gaining members, FOX News anchors eat kittens on air and get away with it, and so on. What followed was about two years of learning and thinking about this view of US politics, and trying to work up some solutions for that problem. This was fascinating stuff, and I think I learned a great deal, which is not too bad for a guy with a background in computer science and canvassing for left-wing presidential candidates. But it was frustrating, too, for a very simple reason. There are some fascinating problems facing unions, and some interesting ways to solve them. But since I'm not exactly in control of a union, or even remotely in contact with people who are, I'm not really in a position to do much with the solutions I've come up with or read about for helping unions. I'm not picking on unions, by the way: the same could go for liberal churches, left-wing media, and so on. Nor am I crying myself a river. Compared to most of my friends and family, I'm probably much more in touch with political types. Nevertheless, I've got ideas, and I want to see them become reality. Current focus As I was coming around to the realization that Andy Stern and Katharine Schori weren't about to come banging down my door looking for ideas, I was also going through a career change. In late January 2007, I decided to leave my job as a web developer/project manager for a firm which does IT consulting for non-profits, and strike out on my own. I started a little web development and project management consulting firm of my own, called Lightbulb First Consulting, LLC. It's been one heck of a ride - fun, interesting, a bit stressful, but on the whole entirely rewarding and worth it. That experience got me thinking about my progressive movement hobby, and how I could turn that hobby into something concrete and practical. And thus was born the idea of liberal entrepreneurship. The basic idea of liberal entrepreneurship is that a liberal entrepreneur creates a business or organization to address some of the problems facing the progressive movement. I elaborate on this idea in a lot of detail in the post How liberal entrepreneurship can help solve the progressive money problem. Liberal entrepreneurship addresses both problems in the effectiveness of progressive ideological state apparatuses, and it addresses structural problems in the movement itself. You might think of the distinction as "cultural" and "political", but I hardly think it matters. I've now decided to re-orient this site, and turn it into a blog for liberal entrepreneurs. I'll be discussing ideas which liberal entrepreneurs can steal right off the shelf, and turn into a business. I'll be commenting on ideology, cultural institutions, and progressive movement "birds eye" issues sporadically. And I'll share some ideas on liberal entrepreneurship generally. What this site offers This site is dedicated to strengthening the progressive movement through liberal entrepreneurship. To help liberal entrepreneurs get off the ground, this site offers some resources which (I hope) will be useful:

• Some general purpose posts about liberal entrepreneurship, including both the definitional post How liberal entrepreneurship can help solve the progressive money problem, and the money-grubbing post Revenue streams for liberal entrepreneurs.
• The series New Blog Friday, the newest post of which is here.
• The series New Software for Progressives, the newest post of which is here.
• A more or less unorganized list of ideas about businesses that could be profitable and helpful for progressives, like Social Networking Consultants.

In the future, I'm planning to introduce a social network for liberal entrepreneurs (see this post for a more detailed idea of what that would involve.) I'm also planning to throw off the shackles of this ancient content management system I'm using, and upgrading to Drupal 5.1. While that's in the wings, feel free to register for an account, post to the blog, or comment away! I check the comments every now and again, so apologies if it takes a while for me to respond. You can always poke me at ssachs (at) plantingliberally (dot) org if you like. About me My name is Shai Sachs, and I live in Cambridge, MA. I've been active in liberal politics for at least 10 years, depending on how you count. I started to get involved with what we now call the progressive movement during the 2004 presidential election. I volunteered for some local Howard Dean events, then quickly clawed my way to the top of the Cambridge, MA Dean meetup leadership, around late 2003. I stuck around to run the Democracy for America Cambridge group, and that's how I got involved in several local elections, and my first real experience with local blogging. That kept me busy from about 2004 - 2006, more or less. During the same time I helped start the local Drinking Liberally chapter. These days, I've sort of dropped out of the DFA scene, although I'm still involved with Drinking Liberally. I follow liberal blogs obsessively, with well over 100 feeds in my blog reader. My professional background is in computer science. I received an MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an AB in Computer Science from Harvard University. ("AB" being Harvard speak for "BA", of course.) After finishing my MS, I spent three and a half years working as a developer and then a project manager for Isovera, an IT consulting firm for non-profits. In February 2007, I left that job to start Lightbulb First Consulting, LLC, a project management and web development consulting firm which fosters community and develops bright ideas. You can reach me through the contact page.