Markos has posted one of his longest and most interesting blog's in a while. Coming off some lefty get together -- I don't even know which one, that's how out of it I am -- he writes Half-baked observations of a VLWC conference. VLWC stands for Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, and it's a bit of a joke. Here are my favorite paragraphs:

So there were the crazies, some of them in leadership positions of fairly prominent organizations. Fucking obnoxious, and clearly a reason why our side can seem out of touch.

But there was another wierd dynamic at play -- this one generational. There were leaders, all of them older, of extremely prominent liberal interest groups. We're talking labor, environmental, economic justice, things like that. And some of them were genuinely awesome.

But there was a large contingent of them that were obsessed with one thing -- their pet issue. It was about them, them, them. Why wasn't their issue being addressed? Did they have to stay in some meeting if their issue wasn't being discussed? Etc.

Wow! Their self-centerdness and lack of interest in working together (unless it revolved around their issue) was breathtaking.

On the other hand, most of the younger activists at this retreat ran community-style groups. They weren't focused on any single issue, but on using the collective force of their communities to bear pressure on various issues.

That's something I've been seeing and feeling for over a year. I would add that in addition to being more community-centric, younger activists are more outcome oriented. What's the point of being a community pillar if you're not capable of bringing home the bacon. "What is effective?" is a question I've heard thrown around quite a lot lately.