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The Politics of Hope

  By Philadelphia, Political Organizing, Progressive Politics

This is the third in a series of efforts to articulate in broad terms what it means to be a progressive or liberal in Pennsylvanian and Philadelphia today Hope is Brewing In the little over a year since Neighborhood Networks was founded, I have been asked again and again by reporters how I account for the growing movement for progressive reform in Philadelphia. What, they want to know, explains the development of our organization, the growth of Philly for Change, the Anne Dicker campaign, the two Ethics Reform charter changes that have been overwhelmingly approved by the voters, and the hundred or so new committee people that have come out of our organizations? One answer, that people are frustrated by corruption and poor government, is clearly mistaken. People have been frustrated by the corruption and incompetence of our government for years, perhaps since the day Richardson Dilworth resigned as Mayor.… Continue reading

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We’re all in this together in Philadelphia, too.

  By Philadelphia, Politics, Progressive Politics

This is the second in a series of efforts to articulate in broad terms what it means to be a progressive or liberal in Pennsylvanian and Philadelphia today. In the last post, I tried to show how the idea that “We’re All In This Together” enframes many of our aspirations as liberals and progressives in general. Here I want to say a more about this idea applies to politics in Philadelphia. To say that we are all in this together, is to say we have common problems and that can only be solved if our government recognizes and act on our common interest. In some ways, this claim is just obvious. But, quite often I think, Philadelphians don’t recognize the commonality of our concerns. If we don’t suffer directly from some problem, and don’t imagine we will, we may not recognize how much we suffer from it indirectly. So we… Continue reading

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We're all in this together

  By Health Care

This is the first in a series of efforts to articulate in broad terms what it means to be a progressive or liberal in Pennsylvanian and Philadelphia today. Democrats and Republicans have many differences on particular public policies. Underlying those differences, however, is a deeper difference about how we look at politics and what we think it is for. I want try to explain the key difference between us. Let’s start with slogans. We Democrats believe “We’re all in this together.” The Republicans believe “Everyone for themselves.” Our motto is “We get by with a little help from our friends.” The Republican motto is “I’m all right, Jack” We Democrats are the party of community, of people standing together. The Republicans are the party of individuals standing alone. That is not to say that we are opposed to individuals taking care of themselves or following their own path in life.… Continue reading

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What we progressives want

  By Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Progressive Politics, US

Some time ago I started a series on the future of progressive politics in Pennsylvania. In the first post in the series I pointed out that we increasingly face a Republican majority in the General Assembly that is controlled by the radical right wing. In parts two and three of this series, I lambasted Governor Rendell and progressives like myself for, among other things, trying to govern from a non-existent center instead of defending a liberal / progressive vision of a good political community. What I haven’t done yet is try to suggest how we liberals and progressives should define and defend that vision of a good political community. I have been working on it. And today and in the next few days, I am going to lay out three themes that, I think, can define the provide a thematic sythesis of the goals progressives in Pennsylvania and in Philadelphia.… Continue reading

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Learning from the minimum wage campaign

  By Pennsylvania, Political Organizing, Social Justice

I am very glad that I got back from my vacation in time for the ceremony yesterday at Sharon Baptist Church to celebrate Governor Rendell’s signing of the minimum wage bill. The Governor spoke passionately about helping the working poor. The sponsors of the bill Senator Tina Tartaglione and Representative Mark Cohen spoke as did Bill George the head of the state AFL-CIO and John Dodds, the leader of the Minimum Wage Coalition. There is an important lesson for all of us in this tremendous achievement. When I joined the Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition at one of its first meetings in April 2005¸ very few people outside of the room thought we had much chance of getting an increase in the minimum wage through a Republican General Assembly in 2006. Indeed, at the time, Governor Rendell did not even support an increase in the minimum wage. Many people thought… Continue reading

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Gar Alperovitz and the next left

  By Economic Development, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Progressive Politics, Urbanism, US

In April I had the pleasure of introducing the noted political economist Gar Alperovitz at an event sponsored by the Weavers Way Cooperative in Mt. Airy. The following essay is an expanded version of my introduction. They to point to the lessons we can learn from Alperovitz and how those lessons are already being put to work in my own community, Mt. Airy. During the Carter presidency people began to notice that liberals were running of out ideas for making our country more just and democratic. Carter may have been wrong to attribute the difficulties of his presidency to a nationwide “malaise” but as a description of liberal political thought, the term seemed appropriate. At the time, my teacher Michael Walzer wrote an article in the New Republic that explained this phenomenon. He pointed out that liberals, in fact, rarely had ideas of their own. Their ideas were borrowed from… Continue reading

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Learning from Jane Jacobs

  By Philadelphia, Urbanism, Zoning

Vern Anastasio is sponsoring another in a series of meetings on zoning and land use planning issues tonight at the Fleischer Art Memorial at 719 Catherine Street. I am still out of town so I won’t be able to make it. I had a family emergency in the middle of the first one and had to leave early. But it was interesting and useful. And, at one moment, it turned scary. The whole issue of zoning is quite complicated and I want to write about it at length. I very much think we need to reform the way we make land use decisions in the city. But I don’t want to see us go from a system that is already problematic to one that is disastrous. And this exactly what will happen if, as some folks suggested at the previous meeting, we return to the days when Philadelphia had an… Continue reading

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The case for inclusionary housing

  By Housing, Neighborhoods, Urbanism

Philadelphia Daily News (PA), June 19, 2006 RIDE UP AND down the streets of Philadelphia these days, and almost everywhere you’ll see housing construction and rehabilitation.  This is wonderful. It brings new people into the city. Creates jobs. And helps revive neighborhoods that for too long have been in decline. New development also has tremendous potential for ameliorating social problems. Poverty, to start with, means low wages and frequent unemployment. But that’s perhaps not the worst of it. Low wages and unemployment are made much worse when you live in a neighborhood that is declining commercially, that lacks city services, parks and recreation facilities; that suffers from housing deterioration; and that is constantly threatened by crime. Children there are cut off from mainstream economic and political life and have little hope for the future. New development offers a chance to create a city of economically, ethnically and racially diverse neighborhoods,… Continue reading

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Taking a break

  By About me

I will be out of town for the next two weeks so blogging may be less frequent than usual. This is, however, a working trip. We will be traveling to Cape Cod where I hope to explore ideas for how best to use waterfront properties. Perhaps I will come up with something better than casinos. I may also start posting some of the ideas I have saved up that have little to do with politics, such as the last post. Or, if after a week of R&R I have the energy to think about politics, maybe I will get back to some of the more general ideas about how to improve our political life that I was writing about two months ago. We shall see. At any rate, I just check the stats for my blog and I was surprised to find out that a thousand or fifteen hundred of… Continue reading

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Advice for young people: be careful what you listen to

  By Music

I am of the age where young people in their late teens and twenties, and especially my students at Temple, ask me for general advice about life. I can give plenty of advice, but most of it would take a long time to explain and I save it for articles and books I write. Here is the one piece of advice I can give quickly: choose the music you listen to when you are young—that is, when you are falling in the love for the first time—wisely because that is going to be the music that rocks you for the rest of your life. These days, the music I listen to is mostly jazz. I love the classics-Duke, Parker, Monk, Trane, Sonny, Ornette and, most of all, Miles. But I also spend time exploring new avant garde jazz made by people whose names are not widely known and who, in… Continue reading