May 15, 2007

Baltimore (NON) Opportunity Summit 2007 - Pimping Out Citizens

This past weekend the City of Baltimore and Safe and Sound, a non-profit community organizing group, hosted the Baltimore Opportunity Summit at the city's convention center.

  • "The goal of the Baltimore Opportunity Summit is to empower Baltimoreans with the knowledge that they can revolutionize the way we spend our public money and increase investments in opportunities so all Baltimoreans have a real chance to grow up safe and healthy."
That's all well and fine... but was that what it was all about? Not really.

Let me first say that I applaud the intent - the intent to educate, to inform to even infuriate residents that they are not being treated in a way that any human being should be treated. BUT....

The summit was really the City of Baltimore using its citizens as drum beaters to get State funding approved and maintained. Now is that all bad? No - citizenry should be informed and outraged when Annapolis lets their city rot. But should Mayor Sheila Dixon use the summit and her residents as tools, sticks to beat Annapolis and Governor O'Malley to demand what she, as the elected leader and spokeperson of the people, ought already be saying to them? No. This is politicking plain an simple.

Banners and information were posted and made glossy and beautiful in a car crash kind of way. Empty buildings, poor folk. Statistics were rampant and pointed. Tragic numbers. Contrasted with smiling children, happy elders and green trees they told the story of what "could be". They and told people how much rehab costs less than incarceration, how education was the tool to empowerment... ad nauseum. And at the end of this "tunnel of oppression" was the gloried solution - a straw vote that asked residents to complete a ballot that asked Annapolis to continue funding somethings and to add additional funding to seed future change.

This is one huge "DUH". And it is made without forethought - indeed even irresponsibly so - without addressing where Annapolis will get those funds from, and it only comes now when we all know full well we're, like the rest of the state, on the financial chopping block. In Mayor Dixon's recent anti-gun brouhaha, "tables of guns" were paraded about to show just how many guns there are in Baltimore (another DUH - Mark Steiner mentioned the other day that guns are ambient in Baltimore like air - we already know they're here what are you doing to do about them) and in this case the same thing was done with Citizens. The caring citizens were used, and paraded about as pawns for the City's case for maintained and increased funding. Why because, in an election year Dixon doesn't want to come across too pushy. And let's face it Baltimore's management of everything from public works to schools to rehabilitation services has been less then stellar. So since they won't believe City Hall maybe they'll listen to desperate citizens?

The reality is that Dixon, and she's taken on O'Malley's mantle of problems, have deputized and pimped out their own citizens to do the work a city ought already be doing. Baltimore no doubt has some of the most engaged citizenry in the nation - from community action groups, child welfare, poverty, housing and health interventions, arts enhancements you name it. But these are wrongly identified only as strengths while ignoring they are also responses to a failed public services administration - one which fails to serve its citizens in the most basic ways at times. So much so that citizens have had to take on those responsibilities or flounder in their own despair.

I put the call out then to Baltimore City Hall, particularly Mayor Dixon, to Stop asking citizens to do more. Instead city officials should stand up and do that which they are paid and elected to do: to lead. Stop deputizing citizens and cease the incessant drum beat asking for "more community involvement" to solve problem your offices are already supposed to be working on but, frankly, don't. And It's time City Hall took the heat when they take the stand on an issue Stop using citizens as your front line response team, your political buffer. Whether against mini-bikes, assassinations (calling them murders is a misnomer if there ever was one), drugs, filth and trash, greening (as tree "stewards" again citizens are pimped out) and so much more you need to take a stand. Support the police, the courts (with and under due diligence, not some carte blanche fascism either).

Stop putting it back on "us" to do your job... Last time I checked I put in many hours for the City, my neighborhood, the trees, the kids, I picked up trash, called in stolen autos - all after I got home from my "other" job. But no paycheck appeared in my mail box for this work. Perhaps if we're going to be doing even more Sheila won't have a problem sharing her check with us. In the meantime summits are only political peaks scaled by the citizens doing all the work but the mountains being named after the politicians.



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The Wolf(owitz) Guarding the Chickens? Farmer Condi Rice doesn't think so...




How are we honestly supposed to believe anything that comes out of the White House when comments like "It seems to me that what happened there, as he said, he made some mistakes but it doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that you would want to see the dismissal of a World Bank president over," come out of Condelezza Rice's mouth in support of the beneficial, and found unethical, treatment of Wolfowitz' girlfriend. So what is the "kind of thing" one gets fired for? Firing attorneys without reason but political gain? Uh, no. Lying about WMDs so you can go to war? Uh, no. Lying to make sure Dick doesn't go to jail? - Oh, actually that one will get you in trouble.

This kind of Alice in Wonderland appraisal of Wolfowitz' actions tells one just how far the current Bush administration is willing to go in order to live in their own little world - a world where reality, never mind simple logic - never intrudes or when it does it's poo-pooed away.

It is, contrary to White House spokesman Tony Snow's fractured reality view that it is not "firing offense" it is. When other CEOs give perks to employees based on nepotism especially when acting as the de facto figurehead of that organization they are more than likely to be fired. It's paramount as part of the ability to trust that organization. Lower folk who commit stupid acts, sure. Slap them on the wrist. Do they affect our ability to trust that organization as much? Surely not. Do those at the top realize that they must act above reproach in all dealings - a helluva a lot more than the plebes at the water cooler every morning. And let's say for the moment Wolfie didn't know better... Well Wolfowitz is hardly immune from understanding public policy gaffes and image management following his Iraq foreign policy garbage. Fire him.

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Immoral Majority is Less "Major" Today...That's a good thing


There are I think very rare times in my life when the passing of some one from this planet brings me relief. But with the death of Jerry Falwell today I can only say "good riddance". There have been few bigoted persons that can compare with Falwell. I challenge any "Christian" to show me how he adhered to the word and spirit of God - any god of spiritual following for that matter - in a way that's meaningful, empathetic and in keeping with the ideals of love, forgiveness and brother/sisterhood. If there's a hell he's on the way to it in a basket... Assuming "someone" didn't give him an express ticket...

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