S*#T lobbyists say. From United Republic, h/t Diane.

Open thread below. ...

In case you haven't heard, the Million Can March is a counter protest to the teabagging protest redux scheduled for the Fourth of July. Good luck wi dat, teabaggers.

Since the news cycle is spinning the Missouri legislator who thinks summer nutrition programs for kids de-motivates them, the Million Can March is all the more timely. And should we remind the leading Tea Party advocate in the Senate, David Vitter, that food banks also need donations of disposable diapers?

But seriously, I'm already in the process of cleaning out my pantry and getting some food over to the local food bank.

The idea is to do something positive in response to the Teabagger business. The instigator of this project, Rev. Phat of Les Enrages, points out:

This all started with a vague notion that we should do something more than just have a good laugh at the next round of tea parties scheduled for July 4th. I thought that if teabaggers are so afraid of socialism, maybe we could show 'em socialism on a national scale. And what is more socialistic than sharing our food with others.

And in the spirit of forgiveness, Rev. Phat invites conservatives to provide the drinks: dry packaged drink mixes and other non-perishable beverages are welcome at food banks, too.

For bloggers/webmasters the flash image above is free to copy here, and there's a free-use set of non-flash images on Flickr courtesy of Tengrain. There's also a Facebook group (login req.) for those wanting to promote the activism.

Donate a can or two to your local food bank this week. Feeding America has a food bank locator if you need help finding one in your area. Thank you.

My hat off to Natasha Chart of MyDD and OpenLeft for pointing me to this fantastic take on the issue of Web2.0, censorship and political activism.

With web 2.0, we’ve embraced the idea that people are going to share pictures of their cats, and now we build sophisticated tools to make that easier to do. as a result, we’re creating a wealth of tech that’s extremely helpful for activists. There are twin revolutions going on - the ease of creating content and the ease of sharing it with local and global audiences.

Author Ethan Zuckerman looks at political activism in Tunisia, China and Bahrain and how the respective governments tried to shut down the activists by blocking access to various sites like Daily Motion and YouTube, only to create more activists upset at the censorship of their right to look at cute kitties. The entire essay with all its links is well worth your time.

But that's international activism. Here at home, the internet has enabled a whole new swath of citizen journalists. And they are picking up the slack for the old media:

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