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As we all know by now, Councilmen Kenney and DiCicco have decided that the city needs new laws to regulate bicycles. These proposed regulations include:
1) That not only must you register your bikes- for a 20 dollar fee- but you must have a license plate on that bike;
2) Riding on the sidewalk costs you 300 dollars
3) Riding with headphones costs you 300 dollars
4) Riding without a brake costs you 1000 dollars.
Let's examine these for a second.
1) That not only must you register your bikes- for a 20 dollar fee- but you must have a license plate;
The idea of registration is, in theory, not ridiculous. Especially if it were a tool to help recover stolen bikes. But, of course, that is not why they are doing it. Instead, they are doing it because they think it will help them track down hit and run cyclists. Motivations aside, it is totally unworkable. There are something like 50,000 bikes in the city. How many people will actually register theirs? 1,000? 5,000? People have bikes laying around that they barely use. You are telling me that if someone decides that if they are going to get off of the couch, and dust off that old bike on a Sunday in the Spring, they are at risk of a fine? And that Philly police officers will actually add this as part of their job duties? I doubt it.
Even sillier is the idea that there will be licenses plates on bikes that will somehow help capture a biker who has participated in a hit and run. Take the number of people who you think will register, and divide it by 100. That will get you the number of people who would put a license plate on their bike that is big enough for identification in a hit and run.
Sorry, it just will not happen.
2) Riding on the sidewalk costs you 300 dollars
3) Riding with headphones costs you 300 dollars
300 dollars, eh? In other words, if you text someone while driving a 4,000 pound truck, you pay 25% of what it costs you for riding your Schwinn wearing headphones?
Hell, it only costs you 75 dollars if you text, while on a bike. But, when you put headphones on, it jumps to 300. Why is that? Because the texting law was aimed at drivers. So, Council knew they couldn't get too crazy with the fines. Plus, every Councilperson has their blackberry, and they have all probably read emails when driving, so they intuitively 'get' that desire. But when you take drivers out of the equation, and instead it’s the little whippersnappers on bikes, somehow the fines skyrocket. It is punishing the 'other.'
4) Riding without a brake costs you 1000 dollars.
OK, well, people should have brakes. Yes, I know some people are skilled enough not to need them. But a lot of people are idiots, and so, they should have brakes. The fine is, again, so bizarrely high that it is silly, but yes, people should have brakes.
Anyway, I want to do my part, instead of just complaining. So, I propose we add on to these bills, to truly make the roads safe for everyone. To do this, I propose the following measures:
1) Towing any car, including people making deliveries, that pulls over in bike lanes.
2) Yanking the medallion of an taxi that strikes a driver.
3) Since bikes are forced so far over, booting the car of any driver who opens their driver's side door without looking, causing a cyclist to crash into them.
4) A 5000 dollar fine for any driver who runs a stop sign.
5) Immediately raising the cell phone fine to 1000 dollars. After all, driving in your SUV while texting is a lot bigger danger than Ray listening to a little Kenny G while riding home from work on his bike.
Let’s do it!
.......
People who don't ride their bikes want cyclists to follow all of the rules of the road of traffic... except when that means bikes get in their way and slow them down. At that point, they honk, they scream that bikes should get out of the road, they force accidents, and worse.
Cyclists shouldn't be on the sidewalks. They shouldn't ride the wrong way on one way streets. They should have brakes. But should cyclists shouldn't follow all the rules designed for cars. No. They don’t present the same dangers as cars, and so, there should be a middle ground. And considering that each year, people are time and time and time again struck on their bikes by reckless drivers, often severely injuring them or killing them, it bothers me that City Council is only taking this up now.
If the Councilmen wanted to start a conversation, they have succeeded. Yes, bikes can be a danger to pedestrians, and that should be addressed. But to do that, you also have to address just how big of a danger cars are to bikes.
Former Commonwealth Court judge Doris Smith-Ribner is running for Senate.
Her campaign appears to be just getting underway.
I don't know that much about her except that she is from the Pittsburgh although I think she has lived in Mt. Airy for some time. I don't know much about her positions on the issues.
But I can tell you from personal experience she was a smart, firm, and fair judge. She was the judge when Rosita Youngblood tried to knock me off the ballot in 2004. I was impressed not just with decision, with the how thorough and well written her opinion was but also with how she ran the trial.
Obviously her lack of name recognition makes this a tough race. It's not clear how much money she can raise.
But I have a feeling that she is, at the very last, going to make it a more interesting race.
I opened up the Metro this morning and was pretty surprised to read that the city is awarding ten grants, in amounts up to $100,000, to cultural orgs who have 'shovel ready' capital projects using CDBG money. (No link to Metro article online, but here is a WHYY link).
CDGB stands for the "community development block grant." It had always been my understanding that CDBG money was sort of a Republican concession prize to cities. Under Nixon and Ford, lots of federal sources of support to cities were cut off (and really, urban aid had been on the decline since the 1940s when the suburbs were created), but CBDGs were awarded to cities to sort of make up for it.
Mind you, every Republican congress since has tried to reduce the size of the allocation. And George W. Bush sure took a huge chunk out too. Not to mention the fact block grants are never as useful as entitlements when it comes to reducing poverty (which was part of Nixon's intention in creating them).
Nonetheless, today CBDG money has become the last line of defense against budget starvation for many cities when it comes to affordable housing and other frontline anti-poverty programs.
My experience with this source of federal money is from my time working in Pittsburgh for a welfare rights/anti-hunger organization called Just Harvest (www.justharvest.org). Each year we organized people to go to Pittsburgh City Council meetings to lobby for the use of some of that large block grant for anti-hunger programs.
I haven't done policy work around CBDG since, but it seems odd to me to give away what is essentially anti-poverty program money to fund Philadelphia's creative economy.
The total amount of the city's $14 million CDBG award to be used for creative pursuits ( which specifically include, according to the Mayor's press release, "grants...to nonprofit and for profit creative businesses for facility projects linked to job creation such as renovated office space, mixed-use facilities, artist workspace and creative industry incubators.") is about $500,000. And this award is part of a stimulus package boost to our annual federal allocation.
As many past posts of mine imply, I am not against innovative economic development. If we want to move at least some of the 1/3 of the city's population living in poverty into the middle class, we have to change what we're doing.
But...this seems to me like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Stimulus money or not, using CDBG money for non-front-line anti-poverty measure sets a dangerous precedent.
CBDG money in Philadelphia has traditionally been used for affordable housing.
You can read an exchange here between Reinvestment Fund's Jeremy Nowak, former OHCD head John Kromer and others here about the possibility of changing that traditional use in favor of out-of-the-box community development here. The one quotation from that piece that riles is this, from Gary Steuer of the City Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy:
CDBG funds here are just one test case of whether the stimulus program will challenge outmoded thinking, or simply reinforce it.
Funding affordable housing in a city where we still need to create close to 30,000 units of affordable housing is outmoded? When our own Mayor and City Council dip into the Affordable Housing trust fund to deal with other budget priorities and when Inclusionary Zoning is still not a done deal, I'd say we're far from being able to talk about affordable housing as an outmoded use of public dollars.
I would really love to hear from folks in the affordable housing world (ACORN, WCRP, Project HOME, CLS, PUP, etc.) to see if I am missing something.
Like maybe there was a deal made with other state or federal pots of money that don't make this a net loss for housing? Certainly the creation of jobs is a good thing. And I know $500,000 is not that much money.
But still...if job creation in the creative sector does not correspond exactly to the low incomes that create a need for affordable housing or other anti-poverty services for those traditionally served by CBDG then we have a real problem here with priorities.
Each year in the U.S., 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with limited options for higher education or employment. Many undocumented youth were brought to this country as children, even infants, by their parents. They are indistinguishable in every way but one from their citizen friends, classmates, and siblings: they don’t have a piece of paper that says they can stay here.
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) would change that. The Act would provide conditional legal status to applicants who:
Members of the Philadelphia Digital Justice Campaign are concerned about the potential merger between Comcast and NBC-Universal. And you should be, too. Here's why:
If the FCC approves the deal, it is obvious that consumers will end up paying higher fees for both content and access to programming. The cable giant already raises fees every few months, as it is!
In addition, Comcast would have unprecedented control over what programming we are able to watch and how we can watch it. The company could easily squash online TV like Netflix, Miro and iTunes.
Finally, if the merger goes through, Comcast will have an incentive to promote NBC shows over local or independent programming. This will make it even tougher to find alternative voices on cable.
Another thing to consider is the role Comcast could be playing in blocking the city from obtaining millions of dollars in broadband stimulus funds. Why would Comcast care? Because the funds would help pay for Philadelphia to build a publicly owned broadband network that would, eventually, offer residents affordable and reliable Internet access. The Inquirer's Joseph DiStefano wrote about the issue earlier this month:
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/technology/Why_didnt_PA_back_Phill...
The Philadelphia Digital Justice Campaign is starting to strategize around these issues. Hope you'll join us. Stay tuned for details.
I will leave it to Dan to pound the nails into the coffin, but the front page of today's papers and this quote are pretty amazing:
Perzel, the former House speaker, was charged yesterday with 82 counts of theft, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and conflict of interest. The grand jury said he and others had misused public money for campaign purposes and then tried to cover it up.
Some progressives, motivated in part by Dennis Kucinich’s vote against HR 3926 are expressing disappointment with and even opposition to the health care reform legislation going through Congress.
While HR 3926 is not perfect—and the anti-abortion language added to it is terrible and will, we believe, be removed later in the process—it is a bill progressives should and must support.
In a long post I’ve explained in detail why I think single payer advocates like Kucinich have gone off the railse in opposing the bill. Here, in this short version, I want to summarize the case for progressives giving enthusiastic support to the legislation.
Two Preliminary Observations
Let me start with two preliminary observations.
Even if Kucinich is right, he’s wrong
First, even if everything Congressman Kucinich says about HR 3692 is true, it is a moral abomination to vote against this bill and kill health care reform this years.
We are talking about real lives of real people who desperately need health care and who suffer and die and go broke because they have no or inadequate health insurance. How can anyone in good conscience vote against legislation that would help thousands of people who desperately need help?
It would be one thing if Congressmen Kucinich and Mass had an alternative that could be enacted sometime soon. But, as I’ve pointed out in other writing, single payer has no chance of being enacted in the United States (or in Pennsylvania) now or in the foreseeable future. Handing President Obama a defeat on this legislation, with the result that large numbers of Democrats in Congress are defeated next year, would just delay the time when single payer is on the table, perhaps by a decade or more.
To ask people who need help today to wait is cruel. To have health insurance—as Congressmen Kucinich and Massa, and as almost every supporter of single payer I’ve ever met does—and ask other people to wait until some ideal is attained is worse than cruel. It is a moral abomination.
This story rocks:
Eighteen months ago, Hauger set his students' eyes on what ought to be an absurd competition for a small, underfunded high-school club to enter: the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE.
The competition requires entrants to create an affordable car that gets 100 mpg and can be mass-produced. They must also submit a business plan detailing where and how the car will be produced and how it will be marketed for sale.
The contest will award $5 million for the best four-door economy car. Two prizes of $2.5 million each will go to top winners in a two-seater category. West Philly submitted applications in both classes.
Of the 111 international contest entrants, 21 dropped out. The remaining 90 submitted plans to X PRIZE judges early this year.
I cringed when I saw the cover of this morning’s Philadelphia Daily News: the blurred back of an Asian man with the headline "The lonely, illegal world of ‘Mr. Cheng’."
After all, how many Daily News covers do you see with Asians on them? So now we get a full cover story devoted to an Asian resident of this city, and darn if it isn’t a surprise that:
- we’re anonymous;
- we’re illegal; and
- we’re a symbol of a horde of illegal immigrants secretly hiding in Philly (1 of 103,000!).
A few years back, I worked with the reporter, Julie Shaw, who was circumspect and responsible in covering a case I was working on about a deaf Indonesian boy seeking political asylum. I don’t think there’s any deliberate intent to do harm here on her behalf. But the problem with the story is that it takes an extremely inflammatory issue – illegal immigration – and presents it through an extremely narrow frame without any sort of context, commentary or perspective. It alone doesn’t exude ignorance but it fosters it.
It’s not like the Daily News regularly covers immigration issues so it’s hard to think that this story fits any broader purpose than something rather exploitive, no? Hey, got a lead on a random Asian undocumented worker. Let’s follow him and report on where he lives with other undocumented people, where he works with other undocumented laborers, how he gets paid with "illegal" wages, and quote him saying how grateful he is to be working while other "real Americans" are unemployed – then let’s see what our readers think about it!
Anyone else wonder how that will go?
The story becomes more problematic when paired with the accompanying sidebar that presents a "crackdown" on illegal immigration framed entirely from ICE's point of view. Here we get real specific about who ICE’s "illegal" targets are:
The office is aware of immigrant communities' use of temporary-employment agencies to find jobs for undocumented workers. It sees such agencies as a threat.
Such agencies serve immigrants not only from Indonesia, but have cropped up to serve Hispanics from Central and South America, Africans, Chinese and Vietnamese, according to ICE.
Then to really bring out the knee-jerk reactionary in you, there's the online poll that asks you to vote on, yes, who to blame!
Who do you blame for illegal immigration?
- The illegals
- The employers
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- No one. That’s how my family came to this country
Way to really get people informed on immigration guys!
This whole package is frankly appalling in its ignorance of why there are so many undocumented people in the U.S. It treats immigrants as little more than cheap labor, and overlooks the critical role of family in drawing and keeping immigrants here as well as the complicated mixed status of a significant portion of American families. It gives no sense of contributions immigrants make overall to the culture or economic revitalization of cities in general and Philadelphia in particular (Washington Avenue, Chinatown, West Philly, Olney, etc.). And it presents ICE as some sort of protective line between real Americans and "the illegals" (cue scary music here) when in fact ICE has made it into the headlines far too often for their human rights abuses, ranging from Texas’ T. Don Hutto facility which abusively imprisoned children and political asylees to horrible immigration raids to deaths of immigrants in ICE custody.
In 2007, I worked on a case involving a young Chinese mother, Jiang Zhen Xing, who miscarried twins following a violent deportation attempt where she was denied adequate food, water and medical attention. This happened during a scheduled visit with her immigration officer at 16th & Callowhill Streets. While her husband and two young sons waited outside, ICE officials dragged her through a back door and shoved her into a van, bruising her in the process. During the ride to JFK Airport, Philadelphia ICE officers mocked her cries of pain and told her “no more American babies for you.” Their plan? To dump her onto a plane to Beijing which would have been 2,000 miles away from any relatives, without clothes, ID, money, or any notification to any family member. When her husband asked anxiously about her whereabouts hours later, the ICE officer at 16th & Callowhill refused to answer his questions, instead smugly advising him to come back the next morning when they’d tell him where she was.
It’s hard for me to understand what kind of mentality it takes to deny a pregnant woman in obvious distress and severe pain any amount of basic care. But it was clear from the commentary stream on philly.com and messages at Asian Americans United that plenty of people operate on only one plane – if she was undocumented, for any reason, she had it coming.
Today, we’re looking at a City administration that appears to be breaking a decade-old understanding that police would not conflate immigration with community policing. At last report, a Pennsylvania prison is now taking the former political asylees of T. Don Hutto, including children, contributing to PA's ever increasing incarceration rates. The D.A.’s office now plays a key role in a relatively new system of information sharing that strengthens ties among the D.A.’s office, the courts, the police, the City Solicitor and ICE. Meanwhile, we have a rapidly growing population of immigrants hightailing it out of Philadelphia for the suburbs – losing Philadelphia residents, commerce, and economic and neighborhood revitalization opportunities.
More than ever, as the city debates serious issues around immigration and specifically deportation, community policing and a new District Attorney, we need a sense of responsibility and rigor in the debate around immigration. Instead what we get from the Daily News is the "illegal world of ‘Mr. Cheng’."
It’s yet another example of a historic cycle of scapegoating immigrants in difficult economic times. It promotes and fosters ignorance on a critical issue of concern impacting the region. It paints Asians in particular and the broader immigrant community in broad strokes and feeds into anti-immigrant sentiment with "blame polls" that themselves reflect appalling ignorance.
I’d like to think that stories like this just end up lining my kids’ guinea pig cage, but the fact of the matter is that many of us will be working to combat the ignorance and fallout for a long time to come.
Political Scientist Michael Parenti catalogued seven generalizations about the way the news media create anti-union messaging--from painting workers as greedy, to omitting the salary of management or depicting public officials (like Mayor Nutter) as neutral. Using this lens to dissect the coverage of the SEPTA strike, it becomes clear that local media like the Inquirer and Daily News have a dangerous anti-union bias, once again making the case that to build our own movement we need our own media.
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Please make a few quick phone calls to help prevent foreclosures, bankruptcies and increased poverty in our communities. At present there are a number of state lawmakers working hard to promote the predatory gambling industry by pushing a bill to allow slots on credit, an issue Helen has written about here. We need your help so we can all push back.
Imagine this scene:
It's 3:30 AM, you’re still at the casino, you've been drinking the free booze all night, you've lost all the money you brought with you, and you've maxed out your ATM card. No worries — if casino lobbyists and most of the Philly state lawmakers have their way, the casinos will be able to offer loan you hundreds or even thousands of dollars or more of quick and easy credit so you can play the slots until dawn.
Our elected officials want to allow easy credit for slots. It’s the equivalent of rocket fuel for slots addicts or anyone else on their way to becoming a compulsive gambler.
We’re asking for help in contacting members of the Philadelphia delegation to oppose this aspect of the pending table games legislation – don’t allow easy credit at the slots.
Which senators are doing the dirty work? The following senators from Philadelphia either co-sponsored the bill or voted to approve it:
- Sen Christine M. Tartaglione (co-sponsor): (215) 533-0440
- Sen. Leanna Washington (voted yes), (215) 242-0472
- Sen. Shirley M. Kitchen (co-sponsor): (215) 227-6161
- Sen. Vincent J. Hughes (co-sponsor): (215) 879-7777
- Sen. Mike Stack (voted yes), (215)281-2539
- Sen. Anthony Williams (voted yes), (215) 492-2980
Please call their offices today and ask whether they will drop their support for slots on credit ("Will the senator drop his/her support for slots on credit?"). Then contact info@casinofreephila.org and let us know what they say.
All the work we have been doing to create a guarantee of quality affordable health care for all is coming to a point: The House vote on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act is scheduled to take place this Saturday, November 7 at around 6:00 pm.
The vote will be close. We don't know whether we it will pass or not.
It really depends on you. Three members of Congress in Pennsylvania--Jason Altmire, Chris Carney, and Paul Kanjorski--undecided. If we can get more of their constituents to call them, they would be more likely to decide in favor of reform.
Can you take part in phone banking with us from the convenience of your own home?
We will be using a new computerized system called Activate to do phone banking that will connect you with constituents quickly without worrying answering machines or unanswered calls. Then you can immediately patch the people you talk to through to the office of the member of Congress.
While on the subject of unions, the Temple Nurses union has been in tense negotiations with the hospital for months. At issue, among other things, is a contract demand that the union shut up about the bosses at the hospital.
The workers say the gag order sucks. Good coverage about it at WHYY this morning.
I just want to point out the Hospital's spin: "we aren't saying individual workers can't speak up, it's just the Union we want to shut up." Memo to Temple (and everyone) -- it's the same thing. A union IS the workers' voice.
The mainstream press across Philadelphia is turning commuters against transit workers. Instead of practicing journalism and explaining to the public why transit workers have gone on strike, they have instead given a platform to one side of the contract negotiations and helped the Mayor pit working people across the city against the drivers and engineers who get us to work everyday.
The Inquirer recently printed a cheerleadery puff-piece about Marcellus Shale development in Southwest and Northwest, Pennsylvania. Too bad they didn't combine the story with about how the drillers managed to weasel out of a severance tax (and the Governor's very unconvincing rhetoric about it).
Today, DEP admitted that it took them ten months to get Cabot, the drilling company that wrecked the water supply of Norma Fiorentino, to provide any water at all to locals whose water supply has been wrecked (that's what the linked press release means by "interim solution.")
Clearly, DEP isn't quite cutting it, which makes Secretary Hanger's objection that they are hiring up ring a little hollow. This is the same DEP that decided they'd trust any engineer willing to sign off and say that a drill site complied with environmental regs. So far, the Commonwealth is doing nothing in the face of the drilling onslaught but standing down.
Since it was a front page story, we had to criticize it. They didn't print my letter so I thought I'd throw it up here:
To the Editor-
Clean Water Action takes exception to the portrayal of Marcellus Shale development in Pennsylvania in your article "Pa. Tapped, Drillers Not." Your paper gave short shrift to the destrurctiveness of shale drilling, dismissing it out-of-hand with a quote from the CEO of a natural gas company. As someone who has made several visits to the heart of drilling country, visited rigs and talked at length with leasholders: it's not all smiles in Marcellus land. In many cases, the checks aren't that big and they don't do anything but shrink. Meanwhile, residents wonder if they'll still be able to stand living on their land once the drillers are done. It's only going to get worse Philadelphians have to start paying to clean frack water out of our drinking water because we haven't protected ourselves the way New York City has.
Click read more for the rest!
My ancestors immigrated to the US for the assortment of typical reasons we all know about, including escaping the hostile climate towards Jews in Eastern Europe, and leaving Ireland in search of a better, more secure life.
It wasn't an uncommon story. My great-grandfather supported my Grandmom and her 11 siblings by driving a trolley for the Philadelphia Transportation Company- the precursor to SEPTA. He and his wife raised my grandmom and her brothers and sisters in a small Southwest Philadelphia row home.
My great-grandfather's oldest daughter married my grandfather at a young age. My grandfather played a little minor league baseball, and with a high school diploma in hand, went to work at the Aerospace program of General Electric (with a trip to the Army mixed in for good measure). Like many Americans in that time, he worked his ass off, never took a sick day in his life, and steadily moved up at GE, receiving promotions and increased responsibilities, letting him provide his 6 daughters, including my mom, with a 1960's style middle-class life, including a suburban home in South Jersey.
My mom put herself through college, and then grad school, becoming a Physician’s Assistant. She married another descendant of semi-recent immigrants (and another grandfather with an education and a home courtesy of an assist from Uncle Sam), and together they raised a comfortable, middle-class family in Germantown. My mom then took a stressful job at Penn because it provided great tuition benefits, which allowed her to send all three of her kids to wonderful, overpriced liberal arts schools. Two of the three of us have graduate degrees, with the third likely on his way. We live comfortable, privileged, middle class, lives.
From each generation to the next, parents worked to make the lives of their kids easier, and to give them more opportunities than they themselves had. And at each step, they were helped with an implicit and explicit social compact: that Americans could work hard, earn a decent living, and make the lives of their kids better. Signatories of that same compact included unions, big companies like GE, the American government, and quasi public employers like SEPTA’s predecessor, the PTC.
I go through this all thinking about the trolley drivers of today, who are out on strike across the city, because SEPTA will not properly fund their pension. (If you don’t think this is a big deal, ask city workers, who are now dealing with the fact that the city underfunded them for years, how employers underfunding pensions works out.) People I like, including some of my friends, as well as our less-rotund, but still bombastic Governor, seem to think it is incredible that the Transit Workers Union would make 'crazy' demands like SEPTA properly funding their pensions.
Me? Despite their poorly timed, late night decision to walk out, I support the TWU. The social compact that existed from the time of my great-grandfather, the working-class, trolley driving father of 12, all the way to my parents, is slipping away. With desperate poverty, crappy schools, and little to no manufacturing base, social mobility is less and less a realistic option for way too many families in America.
Every single job in Philadelphia that still pays decently, is secure, and doesn’t require a higher education, is an absolute blessing for our society, and is an avenue to empowerment for another family. Each one holds our society together. The higher we pay our janitors and security guards and nursing assistants and hotel workers and construction workers and SEPTA bus drivers and mechanics, the better off we all are. That is why I support the TWU.
Man, I knew him when:
This was Seth Williams at Drinking Liberally at Ten Stone, if I remember correctly. It was 2005, there hadn't been an Obama campaign yet, YPP was still in its infancy, Seth had some more hair, and a lot of us (i.e. me and Dan) were really excited about this former ADA running for DA with a totally different vision for the office.
Fast forward to yesterday. A long struggle, primary challengers, a lot of money raised, lots of volunteers mobilized, many events attended, and Seth wins.
First African-American DA in the city. A new day, a new DA. Long time coming.
Congratulations Seth!
In other election news, we did very badly in statewide judicial races though some great people got onto the bench locally. And what the hell is up with New Jersey?
Right behind Norma Fiorentino's house, they have been drilling for natural gas. Some of the gas is coming from under Norma's property, so she gets a little money for it (not all that much so far, though). She also got a present on New Year's Day. Her water well exploded all over her yard. Now she can't drink the water from her tap anymore and she's worried that her kitchen might blow up.
Good times, right? And when the checks stop coming, the gas won't stop. It will still be there in the water table. Totally ruined. Won't that be great when she her or her heirs try to sell her land?
Clean Water Action is meeting with people and talking to them about their experience living nearby or around natural gas drilling rigs.
So what can you do? Watch this video, then I have two quick things for you after the jump.
In addition to Dan's post, check out the endorsed Liberty City candidates and see a brief description of the offices they seek here:
Judges really, really matter by the way. Find your polling place here.
SEPTA is on strike.
I spent a lot of my walk to work today thinking about the strike. And although there is a lot more that could be said, more than anything I was happy that in this country--which has been ravaged by corporate interests and a rapid right-wing--that every day people still have some power to organize for change.
Don't get me wrong, the strike sucks. And more than anything this strike is going to hurt low-income and working folks a lot. At a time when things are already pretty bad. And I recognize my privilege to be able to deal relatively easily with a strike as an able-bodied person with no kids who lives four miles from work.
But the onus of the burden to end this strike is not on the workers of Local 234 but on SEPTA management. They are to blame for the inconvenience.
Yes it does annoy me that the strike happened just before rush hour. And the fact is we have all had many experiences with rude SEPTA drivers doesn't help. But the timing of the strike was likely strategic, and there are just as many nice drivers as there are rude ones. And rejecting an offer of a pretty pitiful pay increase for not-that-well-paid workers who do really important work makes sense to me (remember, according to the Inky, the highest paid, longest serving bus driver makes only about $50,000).
But that stuff is all beside the point anyhow.
More than anything you have to support this strike because you have to support unions.
As union density has declined, we have all suffered. We should ALL be in unions. We all need the help of our co-workers sometimes to bargain with bosses who are unfair. Can you imagine how much better "customer service" would be at just about any store if workers were paid and treated better?
And seriously, how often do you see a group of individuals organizing for collective action and making real change? How often? Not much in my opinion. Especially compared to the victories that very rich and very greedy corporations achieve.
SEPTA management may not be a corporation, but it's been run like one when it comes to top-heavy management. And it's an agency that has not often served the city of Philadelphia nearly as well as it should considering how many riders live here. Instead, it's been a suburban and republican patronage mill. Um, and visionary transit and economic development-oriented planning at SEPTA...how's that going?
The tendency of some people who are NOT right-wing folks at all to blame workers astounds me.
Like many Philadelphians, my own middle-class existence can be traced back to the economic stability that my father's union and his father's union before him provided to our family.
The right to organize, collectively bargain and strike if necessary is incredibly important. Lots of us have been able to build paths out of poverty and into the middle-class because of unions. And that path should not be cut off for anyone today.
We can have a conversation later about how much more organized labor needs to do to actually engage and organize the thousands of working class and low-income Philadelphians who have no hope right now of ever joining a union and who will suffer badly because of this strike. That's an important convo to have too.
But today, I support Local 234.