Bruce’s new album “Wrecking Ball” drops on Tuesday March 6th.

The video (with lyrics embedded into the picture) is out for the single “We Take Care Of Our Own.”

The track list has also been released–with a couple of live tunes getting their first studio treatment: “Wrecking Ball” a song that was written and performed for the final concerts held at the old Giants Stadium in 2009 and “Land of Hope & Dreams” a song that popped up on the 1999 reunion concert tour and the resulting live disc (and struck me as a more apt description of the 2008 Obama candidacy despite being written nearly a decade before.)

E Street Nation, baby!

The official description of the JVC is this:

The Jesuit Volunteer Corps offers women and men an opportunity to work for justice and peace. It sends Jesuit Volunteers for a year or more to live with and serve the poor and marginalized in the U. S. and developing countries. JVs live simply, in community, immersed in Ignatian Spirituality. The experience opens the JVs to be conscious of the poor, attuned to the causes of social injustice, and dedicated to service informed by faith. JVC helps Former Jesuit Volunteers nurture this orientation throughout their lives.

It’s not nearly that dreary. To me, the JVC’ers are mainly about idealism and being open to experience. Their tour of duty is a frontline view of poverty and its wrenching effects on individuals and families.

I talked way too much last night, (as I am wont to do) but I still got a great sense of the value of a program like this for young people. One JVC’er started talking about his frustrations about working in an organization ostensibly designed to help people facing homelessness. He was angry that he often has to tell desperate people that they are going to fall through the porous holes in the safety net. Check out his great blog, detailing some of his experiences during the JVC year.

Like most educated, middle-class folks, he prefaced the anger by apologizing to me for “ranting.” It provided me with a teachable moment, at least in organizing terms. I was able to explain how an organizer seeks to have people acknowledge their anger and then use it, focusing the ire on those responsible and demanding redress. I also pointed out that, on just a personal level, situations like this should make you angry.

I enjoyed the evening immensely. 18 years down the road, having witnessed too much and forced to endure so much of the prosaic busywork of reports and grant requests, it is often difficult to maintain that raw sense of wonder that most young folks have when they enter into this kind of field. I must admit that I do not wake up many mornings saying: “I can’t believe things are this fucked up, we’ve gotta change it.” To-Do lists kind of fuck with your revolutionary flow.

Lastly, I’m pretty confident that the progressive/humanistic side of the struggle will be receiving 8 strong new advocates after their year’s sojourn to Syracuse.

I’m going to try to do this a little differently this year. I’m going to go all theme-y on your asses!

Syracuse in 2011: “just-who-is-in-charge-here-anyway?”

Being a politician in Syracuse is like being in high school. . .
. . . and I do not mean that in a positive way. These folks are not pictures of youth, energy and idealism. Politicians in Syracuse are a bunch of back-biting, status whores–all fighting over who gets to sit at the cool kids’ table in the lunchroom. Last year’s stories were heartwarming tales of powerful and smart young women, overcoming their different party ideologies to find a way to cooperate and improve both the city and county. This year, the story is about how both Stephanie Miner and Joanie Mahoney are in open warfare with their respective legislatures. Both the Syracuse Common Council and the Onondaga County legislature are controlled by the same parties as their respective executive branches. This isn’t about ideology. It’s about hurt feelings and raw power.

In the County, Joanie Mahoney, who was never approved of by her party’s good-old boys network due to her unseemly challenge to their anointed candidate, is facing threats of legal challenges and grand jury investigations over appointments to the Legislature, to county jobs and to party committee positions. It is going to get worse, as the recent elections saw the Legislature downsize, giving the GOP a veto-proof majority–and a cudgel to beat her with for the next two budgets and over any other nit they want to pick.

In the city, the feuding has degenerated into tit-for-tat insults and spats. Close a senior center? We’ll refuse to buy your requested DPW dump truck. The Council deadlocked on appointing a replacement for former Councilor Bill Ryan, who left to work for the Mayor. The Council labored for weeks to name a replacement–the only unifying thought was the councilors’ unanimous opposition to the woman widely thought to be the Mayor’s choice–Helen Hudson. Every issue facing the city is distorted by this power calculation. The decision about a new Citizen Review Board to investigate complaints of police brutality was held up while the Mayor and Council bickered about the hiring and firing of the Board members. The Council even attempted to amend the City Charter so they could review Planning Committee cases turned down for hearings by the commission, believing the mayor has more power than they do on appointments to the commission. Upcoming discussions about the Community Development Block Grant, Inner Harbor Redevelopment and the establishment of a city/county Land Bank for tax delinquent vacant houses are all upcoming–and all have started whispered conversations about power.

Just whose fiefdom are we talking about here?
The feud erupted during the uproar following the explosion of the Bernie Fine sexual abuse case. I don’t think that I need to explain the one local story that got national coverage this year, only to point out that intense scrutiny by the national media tends to make people lose their minds. Especially people who are lose cannons even during the best of times. District Attorney William Fitzpatrick accused Syracuse Police Department Chief Frank Fowler of lording over a fiefdom, abusing his power and being unfit to be in law enforcement. When the two started duking it out over the release of records in the case, all hell broke lose. Accusations flew in the media and both sides ran to the judges. Everything got straightened out and Fitzy even started to backpedal on his statements about the Chief. But the damage has been done. Fitzy goes medieval on people’s asses when they get in his way. Especially when those people are African-Americans with their own powerful positions.

Even Nancy Cantor has the highway blues . . .
Yeah, she’s the head of the region’s largest employer and its most visible asset. She is clearly the most powerful person in town. She chaired the economic development committee that brought home more money than any other in Governor Andy Cuomo’s recent scheme to have regions compete for state largesse. But some of the natives up on the hill are restless–wondering if she’s not forcing the school to stray from its core mission. That administration/professoriate struggle for control was aired in public in an article in the national journal Chronicle of Education, entitled “Syracuse’s Slide.” This kicked off much scuffling online and in the local paper. It also resulted in a response article in the next issue of the Chronicle. A graphic portrayal of her struggles to retain control was published in the Post-Standard: an especially unflattering and not-so-vaguely sexist photo of Nancy being hoisted in the air by Shaquille O’Neal during an S.U. hoops game at the Dome.

Well, if I keep buying them off, it’s still cheaper than property taxes
The long-delayed Destiny USA project is looking a little less moribund these days. The Pyramid Co. and its dear leader Bob Congel settled its legal problems with Bank of America–got the capital flowing again, are finishing off the 880K square foot expanded portion of the Carousel Mall (promising that its cinder block exterior is due for some renovations to make it look less like a medium security prison) and announced some new commercial tenants for the space. Completing the expansion also triggers the 30 year payment in lieu of taxes deal on the space of the original mall. If he completes the second addition, an additional tax break will kick in on the new space. He paid the city $1.5 million to extend the deadline on the second addition for another 6 months. But the dynamic retail/entertainment/hotel/green technology center monstrosity that would lure visitors from all over the northeast that he originally promised? That has morphed into either a single hotel or 300 more square feet of mall retail space.

“Gentlemen, you may now resume firing.”
In the battle to reduce random shootings and murders and protect innocent citizens from out-of-control street gangs, our neighborhoods are girding for a potential setback. The NY state anti-gun violence program SNUG cut five cities from the program, including Syracuse and it disappeared with nary a whisper of complaint. In Albany, SNUG’s results were so well received that the community rallied and succeeded in convincing the city to use its own funding for the program. Despite the marked decrease in the number of murders in our community this year, the only comment about the loss of SNUG was by Police Chief Fowler, who was quoted as disagreeing with the entire methodology of the program. The model for SNUG was the Cease Fire campaign in Chicago, which trained former gang members to negotiate truces with current gang members. It will be interesting to see if widespread release of the highly touted documentary movie about Cease Fire entitled “The Interrupters” in February 2012 will create any discussion about bringing the program back to Syracuse.

You don’t live in my neighborhood
A recent study showed that Syracuse is the 11th most segregated city in America. This fact has ramifications throughout our community. The most obvious happened this year when the Democrats nominated and elected a monochromatic slate of 4 white east-siders to run for the School Board. The school Board now has only one person of color–while the student body is 74% students of color. Segregation is bound to have a political effect on a city that is now almost entirely Democratic (Mayor, Council, City Court and School Board are all D’s.) The local Democratic Party selects its candidates using a weighted system based on how each ward votes in the gubernatorial election. African Americans have a physical presence in, at most, 5 out of the city’s 19 wards. Whites make up about 53% of the city’s population, yet make up the majority population in nearly 75% of the city’s wards.

We are not masters of our domain.
In a city where 33% of the city’s budget and 76% of the school districts budget comes from Albany, when the Governor and the Legislature leaders (the famous 3 men in a room) tell us to jump, we still ask how high. This year was no exception. Pension and health care costs continue to rise, yet sales taxes and our local share of state income taxes continue to plummet due to the collapsed economy. For local governments, this is the perfect storm of disasters. The state also passed legislation capping the amount that local governments can raise their own property taxes. The result will be layoffs of public workers, increased fees for services–at least the services that aren’t cut entirely. Syracuse is starting to see this already. The city shut down the Ida Benderson senior center it ran downtown, handing over its operation and some token funding for one year to a local non-profit. The closing of the senior center was an example of the austerity fever that will continue to plague the city. The Miner administration sees the state coming in to take over the city’s finances when we finally exhaust all our savings. With the economy nowhere near recovery, we must all start discussing how to increase local and state revenue–or else face ever more extreme cuts.

The Feel Good Syracuse Story of the Year
OK, one nice story for the road! When the NY State Legislature passed and the Governor signed the same-sex marriage bill, Syracusans Ernst Schuh and Frederick Marvin were among those that took advantage of the new law to make official their 52 year relationship. Mazel Tov!

Losing the mixed pleasures of just arrived letters may not mean as much in the end as what we’re missing by not writing them. Writing regularly to several people—a parent, a friend who’s moved to another coast, a daughter or son away at college—requires one to keep separate mental ledgers, storing up the weather or the idle thoughts or the disasters we need to pass on. We’re always getting ready to write. The letters out and back become a correspondence, and mysteriously take on a tone of their own: some rambly and comfortably boring; others cool and funny; some financial; some confessional. They stick in the mind and seem worth the trouble.

That was my ballot. I voted the straight crime ticket on the three big Onondaga County races that were uncontested–also voting for Bernie Madoff for County comptroller and Sal Piemonte (the local lawyer frequently in his own legal trouble) for District Attorney.

Yes, it was a wasted vote–a protest. But what choice did I have? I have always been dismayed by the one-party rule we have in this town–Democrats in the city, Republicans in the County. Yeah, it’s difficult to win when you’re bucking the trend–but shouldn’t the parties at least be able to come up with candidates? This is especially so for the top races on the ballot in Onondaga County. If you aren’t in the race, how can you bring up your issues? Just ask Howie Hawkins, the perennial Green Party candidate, how important the races are for communicating your positions and building support for change. Unless, of course, I’m over thinking this and the D’s and R’s are just pale copies of each other–same shit, different piles.

Maybe the Democrats could rent Howie for County races and the Republicans in the city contests? Just like how we played pick-up football as kids when we didn’t have enough players: one player was picked as the “all-time quarterback.”

Over the years, the city has taken over $8 million out of the CDBG budget to repay the HUD loan. This is money that would have gone to help low income families repair their homes, fund agencies to fix up vacant houses and provide a limited amount of social services like the local community centers. In addition, the city also took money out of proceeds earned by the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency (SIDA) and sold city assets ($1 million for a city-owned parking lot.)

The city of Syracuse bought this building in the late 1990′s, borrowing the money ($18 million) from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program the city borrowed the money from is called the Section 108 economic development loan program. Under Section 108, communities can obtain financing for economic development, housing rehabilitation and large-scale development projects. The collateral for the loan is the city’s present and future Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. CDBG is the only dedicated source of funds available to the city to improve housing for low-income families. The amount of funding given to Syracuse has ranged from a revenue-sharing high of $12 million in the 1970′s to a Tea Party Republican low of $5 million this year.

Section 108 loans are supposed to go to projects that benefit low-income communities–providing jobs/training etc. The Dey’s building project was pursued to provide a high-tech call center for Niagara Mohawk. The building was purchased for a premium and outfitted with state-of-the -art high tech wiring etc. The city then gave the utility a sweetheart deal on rent (because they were threatening to move to the suburbs.) As a result, the city did not have enough rental receipts to cover the repayments on the loan to HUD. When NiMo was bought out and downsized by NatGrid, the call center moved back to Erie Blvd. The city was unable to fully replace that income, luring Bank of NY to use a portion of the space for some back office operations. The city had an even harder time re-paying the Section 108 loans.

In 2004, SUN worked with then-councilor Stephanie Miner to reform how the city approved loans under the Section 108 loan program–taking the authority for the loans out of the hands of the mayor and SIDA, requiring a public hearing on all proposed loans before the Common Council and then requiring a super-majority vote of the Council (6 out of 9 members) to approve a loan. While this has effectively stopped any future Section 108 loans, the city is till haunted by the Dey’s Brothers building loan. The city is on the hook until 2019 for this loan.

One of the most ironic facts of this case is that the man responsible for getting the city into this mess, former Syracuse Mayor Roy Bernardi, left Syracuse to take a top job with HUD, rising eventually to the number two spot in the agency. Part of his responsibility, of course, included the portion of HUD managing the Section 108 economic development loan program. SUN and city officials both had discussions with then Assistant Secretary Bernardi, essentially begging him to help us either restructure or forgive the loans that he had made and were draining our city’s CDBG budget. He refused–pointing out that Syracuse was in possession of an extremely valuable piece of real estate and would more than recoup its present losses when it marketed and sold the building. Then the real estate market collapsed, along with the national economy. The city was underwater on its loan and its final act as the owner of the building was to sell the building to a developer–for $2 million. The city even deferred a portion of the developer’s payment. Pennies on the dollar given the indebtedness of the city.

This year, the city has to repay $2.5 million to HUD and has informed all agencies receiving funding that they face an across-the-board 20% cut in CDBG funding because the city is $1.1 short on other funds for repayments. So forgive me if I don’t celebrate the arrival of market-rate loft apartments and primo coffee shops, paid for by the low-income families that continue to struggle to to find financing for home repairs and our neighborhoods that harbor so many vacant and abandoned houses. In the parlance of our times, the Dey’s Plaza is a project for the 1%–paid for by the 99%.

There was no one moment that crystallized my thinking or relieved me of my guilt. Rather, it was a series of observations: Most of the classic songs and movies that celebrate Christmas don’t even mention God or Jesus. Santa doesn’t check church attendance to decide whether he’s going to give a child a present—he checks whether she’s been naughty or nice. He’s the perfect secular judge of moral fiber. To say that the secularists injure the Christmas spirit is much like the claim that two men getting hitched will besmirch the sanctity of marriage. Why should the way I mark Christmas bother anyone? Christians appalled by my secular holiday will no doubt argue that I am depriving myself of the greater joy that comes with accepting Jesus into your heart. But I’m not attempting to take away anyone’s right to go to church or to display a Nativity scene. All I need to celebrate Christmas is a tree, stockings, baked goods, some people I love, and some gifts to give (and, yes, receive).

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.