Netroots Hero

This is the second in a weekly series of articles, written by John Javna, that will appear on BlogPAC.org, recognizing unsung heroes of the progressive movement — ordinary people who are working tirelessly to make America a better place. If you have suggestions about people who deserve more recognition for their work as progressive activists, please contact us at fighttheright-at-opendoor-dot-com.

Cliff Schecter (www.cliffschecter.com)
A Progressive Pundit

Think about it: The Right has dozens of hard-ass TV pundits—Buchanan, Coulter, Malkin, and so on. But who do we have? Sure, a few mainstream Democrats show up regularly on talk-TV, but where are the attack-dog progressives—the ones who’ll throw right-wingers’ bullshit right back in their faces? The ones who say what YOU’D want to say?

This is the first in a weekly series of articles, written by John Javna, that will appear on BlogPAC.org, recognizing unsung heroes of the progressive movement—ordinary people who are working tirelessly to make America a better place. If you have suggestions about people who deserve more recognition for their work as progressive activists, please contact us at
fighttheright-at-opendoor-dot-com.

In the late 1990s, Raven Brooks was a member of Texas A&M University’s elite Cadet Corps—a four-year military program similar to West Point. “I wasn’t very politically aware at that time in my life,” he explains. “I would have said I was a Republican, because growing up in Texas, in a conservative family, that’s all I knew....but I didn’t really agree with my parents—or my classmates—on many topics.”