Category: Politics

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Take action to repeal Act 193

  By Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Urbanism, Zoning

About two months ago I blogged about Act 193. Now is the time to take action to repeal it. Act 193 threatens the rights of Philadelphia community groups to protect our neighborhoods from harmful development. Community associations—and city-wide groups like SCRUB and the Preservation Alliance—rely on zoning to prevent bad development that undermines our quality of life. We fight zoning variances that would allow new developments that is out of character with our communities. And, if we lose at the Zoning Board of Adjustment, we appeal their decisions to the courts and win there. Continue reading

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Neighborhood Defense.org kickoff

  By Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Urbanism

Press Release Neighborhood Defense.org kicked off its effort to repeal Act 193 today at a press conference at City Hall. Neighborhood Defense.org is an alliance of Philadelphia community associations and civic groups working to protect their longstanding rights to appeal decisions of the Zoning Board and other city agencies that regulate land use. On Monday, Neighborhood Defense.org launched a website where individuals and community organizations can register their support for the repeal of Act 193. The website will be used to fax and email state representatives and senators and create local networks of community activists who will contact and lobby their legislators. Continue reading

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Mad dogs and Democrats

  By Pennsylvania, Progressive Politics

Some of the folks who commented on my post endorsing Casey for Senate made interesting arguments to which I want to res pond here. Albert pointed out that the process that gave us Casey will go on if we don’t stop it. And Liz said that the first rule of dog training is don’t reward behaviors you don’t want. These are arguments well worth reading and considering. But I think they both miss a key point about how our party works. Ask yourself, who is in control of this process we want to stop? Whose behavior do we want to stop rewarding? Continue reading

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Against Independence

  By Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Political Organizing, Politics

This post is occasioned by the entry of Michael Nutter into the Mayor’s race. But it is not meant to be a critique of Nutter, who is someone I like in many ways despite my doubts about his ideas on taxation. (I’ll write about him and other Mayoral candidates soon.) It is, however, a critique of a style of politics that Michael Nutter, more than any other Mayoral candidate, exemplifies. You might call it the politics of independence. It is a style of politics that I grew up with, and that is important for some people in Neighborhood Networks. But it is a style of politics that I have come to distrust and that I hope will play less and less a role in Neighborhood Networks and other progressive circles in future. The politics of independence has an ideal for candidates and an ideal for voters. Continue reading

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Political disaster strikes city neighborhoods

  By Philadelphia, Urbanism, Zoning

The City of Philadelphia suffered a disaster this week. It was not a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, but a disaster created by our political leaders. Recent rulings by Philadelphia Common Pleas Judges have undermined the right of community organizations and neighborhood groups to appeal variances granted by the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA). As a result, the right of these organizations and groups to even appear in front of the Zoning Board has been called into question. Continue reading

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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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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