Help save the system that runs this blog

Many people who read Swing State Project have never heard of Soapblox. It’s an “inexpensive, community-building content management platform developed by Paul Preston and currently used by over 100 progressive blogs,” including this one and several of my other favorites: Open Left, La Vida Locavore, and Progressive Blue.

The Iowa blog Bleeding Heartland, where I do most of my writing, is among the two dozen state community blogs for Democrats that use Soapblox.

This week hackers got into Soapblox and wreaked havoc with some of the servers, temporarily forcing several blogs off-line, including Swing State Project.

Preston has always charged low monthly fees to make the platform accessible for progressive bloggers, allowing many new community blogs to get going in the past few years.

If you appreciate this and other community blogs, the number one thing you can do to keep them going is to help BlogPAC save Soapblox.

Chris Bowers gives some background in this diary and explains what Soapblox needs “to become safe and secure once again.”

He has set up a special ActBlue page to raise money for Soapblox. They need $17,400 to complete the security measures.

On a related note, BlogPAC has done wonderful work supporting progressive change. For that reason, I have donated my share of the Bleeding Heartland advertising revenues to BlogPAC since I started writing there nearly two years ago.

In addition to raising money for Soapblox, BlogPAC is helping Tom Geoghegan for Congress in Illinois’s fifth district (the seat vacated by Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel). You can read more about Geoghegan here. If you can spare a few extra bucks in this tough economy, please consider throwing them his way.