My good friend Alison Duncan is running for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the Green Party ticket. She’ll be keeping a campaign blog, which I encourage you all to check out. I have to admit that I know nothing about the other candidates for the post, including Senator David Paterson, the NY State Senator, a person of color, who is Elliot Spitzer’s running mate. But I do know Alison, and I know that she’d be a superb candidate with lots of excellent ideas and her priorities in the right places. And I’m also a strong supporter of third (and fourth and fifth and tenth) party politics, so it’s kind of like a two-fer deal. Check her out!
Archive for June 1st, 2006
The National Spelling Bee is an entirely too stressful thing to watch on TV.
Also: kundalini for the second to last word in the entire bee? Way too easy. Though, um, ursprache? Kinda made up for it, though I suppose if you sprechen die Deutsche or however it’s spelled, it’s not that unbelievable. I wanted the Canadian girl to win but, oh well, go Jersey!
Today I was directed to some good (and not so good) words written on gentrification in Bushwick. For the good (at least, as of the last time I got to look), check out Penpusher’s comment. Some of the good stuff:
But I think deep down, everyone knows that “Gentrification” might as well be called “Manifest Destiny,” as people with the power come in and take what they want from an area, leaving the natives to scramble to get whatever they can before they are completely forced out. What techniques are used to get people to leave? Whatever is available. A person is late with the rent for whatever reason. Maybe they didn’t get paid on time. Maybe they had to choose between feeding their kids and paying a week later. I don’t want to overdramatize this, but this sort of thing does happen. The landlord has an excuse to evict…
… I suppose there will be people who say, ah well, that’s just business and people are permitted to do what they want in our “free society.” But until you are in the position of those forced to move, for no other reason than the metaphorical 100 year storm came and forced you out, because you were doing ok but couldn’t afford to protect your home from the surge that came in and ruined everything, you don’t really know or understand what the other side of “gentrification” is all about.
