politics

Fishtown Library Rally on Channel 6 Action News

Chan­nel 6’s Jes­si­ca Borg cov­ered the Save the Fish­town Library ral­ly last night. You can see me sport­ing my Phillies play­offs hood­ie and hat 37 sec­onds into the clip. I want­ed to post this not only because I think that this is a sto­ry that deserves a great deal of vis­i­bil­i­ty, but also because I want­ed to note that not every­one present felt that Bill Green’s com­ments artic­u­lat­ed what we want from the City.

As a Philadel­phi­an, I want it all. I don’t want to sac­ri­fice things like the Office of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. A lack of sus­tain­abi­ity is how we got here in the first place. The hous­ing mar­ket was­n’t sus­tain­able; now it beg­gars us. I want the City to pur­sue an aggres­sive pol­i­cy toward bik­ing. I ride a bike and want to be safer as I com­mute to work. Why can’t we have that and our libraries, too?

What we may be see­ing is the down­side to May­or Nut­ter and Gov­er­nor Ren­dell endors­ing Hillary in the pri­ma­ry. I hope that’s not the case and that Pres­i­dent-elect Oba­ma can see why our politi­cians endorsed his oppo­nent but then worked hard to ensure that Penn­syl­va­nia went his way in Novem­ber. If there is mon­ey out there for banks, insur­ers, the auto indus­try, and unpop­u­lar wars, there needs to be mon­ey for ordi­nary cit­i­zens, too.

This makes me won­der what’s next for Fair­mount Park. I vot­ed ‘no’ on that bal­lot ini­tia­tive specif­i­cal­ly because the only thing I’ve ever seen the Recre­ation Depart­ment do is close pools. I seri­ous­ly hope Nut­ter and City Coun­cil aren’t con­jur­ing up ways to sell off our com­mon wealth. We real­ly need to do better.

Save the Fishtown Library!

Tonight, Helen and I attend­ed the ral­ly to save the Fish­town Library. It was great to see such turnout to save our com­mu­ni­ty library. I’m hope­ful that we’ll be able to find a way to save these pre­cious resources in the face of May­or Nut­ter’s dra­con­ian cuts. There sim­ply has to be a bet­ter alter­na­tive than shut­ting down pub­lic pools and libraries and putting res­i­dents at risk by cut­ting fire depart­ment resources.

There’s no ques­tion that we as Amer­i­cans are fac­ing tough times, but I’m dis­ap­point­ed that our lead­ers aren’t will­ing to fight the good fight, rather than fold like paper tigers. Whether it’s the Oba­ma tran­si­tion team try­ing to low­er expec­ta­tions, or it’s May­or Nut­ter sac­ri­fic­ing the things that made his can­di­da­cy attrac­tive to so many Philadel­phi­ans, it’s hard not to be dis­ap­point­ed. We expect more. We expect bet­ter. We’re not get­ting either.

There’s a great piece by Paul Krug­man in today’s New York Times about the fail­ure of F.D.R.‘s New Deal. It only failed because F.D.R. was­n’t aggres­sive enough! If our cur­rent crop of politi­cians are to get us through this cri­sis, they’ll need to be aggres­sive in order to pre­serve our great insti­tu­tions and to build new ones. But they won’t do it with­out con­stant pres­sure from the peo­ple who vot­ed them into office in the first place.

Now it’s our turn to hold them account­able. You did­n’t think that sim­ply elect­ing a bunch of Democ­rats to office would result in Utopia, did you? It’s time to hold their feet to the fire and make them live up to their promises!

Want to get involved? Vis­it the Friends of the Free Library site for more information.

A QUICK WORD ABOUT “FAKE EMPIRE”

When I first heard the Nation­al’s “Fake Empire” used dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, I was­n’t sure if the Democ­rats quite under­stood the reflex­iv­i­ty of its use, i.e. that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has been half awake in a fake empire since Sep­tem­ber 2001. It’s time some­one — or some­thing — woke them up.

A QUICK PROGRAMMING NOTE

I’m writ­ing about pol­i­tics again for the first time in for­ev­er here. I’m cov­er­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion and so far it’s been a lot of fun. When you’re not teth­ered to any par­tic­u­lar pol­i­tics, events like this can only be viewed as a laugh riot. In short, my view of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty remains unchanged.

Where are peo­ple fol­low­ing con­ven­tion cov­er­age? I’ve been out of the loop on good polit­i­cal blogs for quite some time, but I’m cau­tious­ly dip­ping my toe in the pool. Hit me with your rec­om­men­da­tions in the comments!