The Primary Process

New York Times columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks go back and forth in a nicely humorous way, comparing and contrasting the Democrat and Republican primary systems.

However much I appreciated the snark, the serious pull quote from this article was from David Brooks:

“I hope at least the Dems can get rid of the superdelegates. A party in a democracy should not so completely distrust their own voters.”

Now I understand why the Times felt compelled to hire Bill Kristol to anchor the right-wing lunatic position amongst their columnists. While Brooks was thought to be able to hold down the fort for the righties when Bill Safire retired, he is entirely too reasonable and thoughtful. Yes, he is conservative, but he ain’t a hater.

Barack Obama, Organizer-In-Chief

As I’ve noted before, Barack Obama spent time in the late 1980’s working as a community organizer in Chicago, working with tenant groups in public housing to fight for repairs.

The current Syracuse New Times article has a great column by Ed Griffin-Nolan comparing and contrasting the skills of politicians and organizers. He notes that “the community organizer and the political operative each played complementary roles in the process of social change.”

The article gives a great overview of the role of an organizer, developing leaders to challenge entrenched power. Organizers stay out of the limelight and help everyday people to gain the skills, knowledge and strategic vision to best fight for their own neighborhoods.

The only jarring note in the article? Mr. Griffin-Nolan states that organizers, unlike image conscious politicians, “can reach for that second doughnut without a second thought.” I’ve been an organizer for nearly 15 years and I’ve reached for many a second doughnut in my day. I’ll try to cut back on the grease, I promise!

More Photos Of Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Photos Of Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Hose coming out of basement. Woman in window has apartment
immediately above shit pool.

More Photos On Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Photos On Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Shit rolls downhill alright. Across the lawn (dirt patch) adjacent
to apartment building.

More Pictures: The Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Pictures: The Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Sewage pooling up due to leak in hose connection–right at the front
stoop of the rear of the building. Three families, one with
an infant girl, live directly above this pool.

They Don’t Give A Shit About Us, Literally

They Don’t Give A Shit About Us, Literally

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

This photo is of the remains of a sewage backup that the absentee
landlords of 170 W. Brighton Ave. pumped out of
the basement into the adjoining yard. This apartment building tells
a years’ long tale of our neighborhood’s abuse
at the hands of slumlords and neglect at the hands of city officials.

The apartment building was owned for years by Harry Murphy, a
notorious Southside slumlord. The apartments
were actually two buildings–each containing 12 units. Tales of
drug trafficking, noise and gun shots were common
at this property, nicknamed Fort Apache by area residents. Many
members of the Brighton Brigades gang cycled
through the property. The properties taxes were unpaid for years.
This was actually a strategic move on the part of
Mr. Murphy, since the city decreed that it would not issue a
certificate of compliance–required of all multi-unit buildings
in the city–since the owner was tax delinquent. Was the logical
next step closure of the building until the taxes were
paid and the buildings inspected for code violations? No. The next
step was to do nothing. SUN complained to
Code Enforcement, the Community Development Commissioner, numerous
Common Councilors and the Mayor.
No response.

The building was sold in 2005 to an out-of-town developer based in
Long Island. The taxes remain unpaid, totaling
over $22, 000–not including the current years arrears. A fire
destroyed a good portion of one of the buildings, one
tenants manner of settling a dispute with another tenant. In 2007,
162 W. Brighton was torn down.

As a result of SUN’s complaints on Wednesday May 21st, city DPW came
out to the remaining building and stopped
the landlord’s hired men from pumping more sewage into the adjacent
lawn. City Code Enforcement and the County
Health Department both came out the next day as a result of our
complaints. The building was declared unfit for
habitation and the landlord hired a knowledgeable plumber to drain
the remaining sewage. County Health determined
that the sewage pumped onto the lawn could stay there, as the sun
would kill any toxins.

With the exception of Tim Carroll, Director of Operations, who
managed to get DPW out to the site and stop the pumping,
no one acted with concern or speed. Code did not
return phone calls on either Wednesday or Thursday evening. The
Health Department did not return Wednesday’s
phone message and when contacted on Thursday stated they would get to
the dumping site the next day
“if nothing big came up.”

Five families still remain in the unfit building. They do not
qualify under HUD guidelines for relocation assistance. The
agency the city used to help relocate families in unfit properties
went out of business and the city never replaced the
service, despite putting $10,000 into the CDBG budget for this
purpose two years ago.

Remember, when you say nobody gives a shit about us, you are
absolutely right!

Need A Babe Ruth Impersonator? Call Big Papi

Need a big, gregarious slugger to reproduce the famous Babe Ruth “called shot” during a promotion during the All Star Game home run derby? At Yankee Stadium? The Yankees are furious that State Farm went with Big Papi instead of someone wearing pinstripes.

It’s a Red Sox Nation, baby! Who’s the Babe cursing now?

Darkness At 30

Darkness At 30

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

On June 2, 1978 Bruce released Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Radically different from the romantic, word-drunk mini-operas of his first 3 albums, this album was lean and mean. The bittersweet nature of life was openly admitted and the music became more focused–no
jazzy experiments, no bar band by the sea funkiness. The music hinted at folk and country, while packing a sonic boom of rock guitar.

This anniversary also marks my conversion to the Church of Bruce. Thirty years ago I sliced off the cellophane wrap on my vinyl copy of Darkness and all truth was revealed. I joke, but the album did make me a diehard fan–a Tramp. (you know–Tramps like us . . .). I hadn’t bought any of the early albums, my teen ears were more attuned to Skynyrd, Aerosmith and ZZ Top. I thought Bruce was too soft. Boy, Darkness certainly buried that notion.

I may have been impressed as a youth by Darkness and its musical power, but as a Boomer rapidly approaching middle age, the power in Darkness is even more in the lyrics. My favorite Springsteen lyric still rings true:

some guys just give up living
and start dying, little by little, piece by piece
some guys get home from work and wash up
and go racing in the streets.

The power of Darkness is not the belief that everything will work out fine. Its power is in acknowledging that we may be screwed, but persevering anyway.

Before going off to play the album, check out this essay by the critic Joyce Millman, who maintains that Bruce found his adult political voice on Darkness. Also, dream about being at this recent show: the entire E Street Band, in a theatre show, playing all of Darkness (and all of Born To Run) in album order.

On Memorial Day

“On Memorial Day we’ll hear about men who gave their lives for their country, but many lives were not given, they were taken, and taken stupidly and carelessly. And there has been great public piety about those men and their “sacrifice” on the part of politicians who blithely sacrificed them.”

“Mutterings Over The Graves Of Soldiers” by Garrison Keillor

Memorial Day is the most somber of American holidays, the day we honor the soldiers who have died in service to their country. In 1966, Waterloo, NY was officially designated the birthplace of the holiday by the U.S. Congress, on the centennial of the village’s first celebration in 1866. The idea was a lot simpler back then. Decorate the graves of the soldiers from the village that had died in the Civil War. In fact, the holiday was known for years by my parent’s generation as Decoration Day.

The holiday has morphed into something else today–parades, picnics, baseball games. The official line is that these simple expressions of Americana represent what our soldiers fought and died to protect.

It has become much harder to celebrate this holiday, because as the quote from Garrison Keillor at the beginning of this post points out, the sacrifice of the lives of young men and women have come at the behest of politicians playing cynical and dangerous games. The unilateral invasion of Iraq has done nothing to secure the liberties of this nation. It has been plausibly argued that the war has done more to destabilize our country.

It was different when soldiers went off to preserve the Union and end slavery. It was different when fascism was confronted and defeated. The savagery and destruction that comes with all conflict, the physical and emotional scars left on combatants and their families, it was endurable because the alternative was so much worse. Citizens honored the dead and the sacrifice they made, it was the least we could do. We owed our comfortable lives and continued existence to these brave souls.

But current Memorial Days are not celebrations. We are grieving for the lost, lives lost for no good reason. Savagery and butchery with no ennobling purpose. The sacrifice of blood and treasure for the benefit of politicians, oil company executives and foreign oligarchs.

So despite the parades, picnics and baseball games, despite the unveiling of statues and monuments, despite the plaques freshly dedicated with the new names of “those who made the ultimate sacrifice”, I still feel that the only legitimate celebration of Memorial Day in 2008 is to find some posturing blowhard politician and kick him right in the nuts.

Monty Python’s Dead Scandinavian Parrot Lives!

Well, at least it did 55 million years ago. David Waterhouse, a curator of a natural history museum in England, has determined that the fossilized bones found in a cave in Denmark are those of an ancient species of parrot. This is the first evidence that parrots lived this far north, that something like a “Norwegian Blue” parrot could actually exist.

Michael Palin of Monty Python played the scamming pet store owner who theorized that the “Norwegian Blue” parrot recently sold to a dissatisfied customer was not dead, but was merely “pining for the fjords”.

When informed of the discovery, an amused Palin commented: “All I can say is that it just shows that nothing is original.”