"As you address “systemic racism” in Louisville look at pollution in Black neighborhoods and the institutions that profit from it."

Photo credit goes to J. Tyler Franklin, at WFPL's 2019 series on toxic air pollution in Louisville.

You can almost hear the rejoinder: "Well, if it's dangerous, move ... but not into OUR neighborhood, of course."

Pollution in Black neighborhoods part of Louisville's systemic racism, by John Hans Gilderbloom, Gregory D. Squires, Robert P. Friedland and Dwan Turner (Courier Journal)

Thousands of Black and white protesters got a taste recently of what it is like to feel the agony of being gassed by the police. It was painful, sickening and scary.

But citizens in western Louisville are regularly “gassed,” causing long-term health problems. The mayor’s own office admits this truth, with people dying an average of 10 years earlier in western Louisville compared to the rest of the city. In some neighborhoods, the life span is less than in war-torn Iraq according to Louisville’s Health Department.

In other words, 60,000 folks (enough to fill Cardinal Stadium) are dying prematurely and most of them are African Americans. As you address “systemic racism” in Louisville look at pollution in Black neighborhoods and the institutions that profit from it. Western Louisville’s air, water and soil are so toxic and rank among the worst of any American city. It is unlivable for a modern American neighborhood ...

snip

The calls for greater equity also means cleaning up the air, water and soil. Poor people needlessly suffer more here than the same low-income people in West Coast cites. If we adopted the same tough, environmental regulations as our West Coast counterparts, western Louisville would surely bloom.

The unfairness between black and white neighborhoods is stark and vivid. As the great urbanist, Jane Jacobs, once said: "everyone hungers for a first class neighborhood for both pride and dignity ... nobody wants a second class neighborhood." First class neighborhoods are safe, healthy, sustainable, and prosperous. It is a human right, an American right.

Nawbany's ubiquitous used cars? They're "a symptom of having such a high concentration of poverty."

Earlier this week:

Traffic Cluster, Part One: Mt Tabor Road? It's the design. You know, the design we just paid millions ... to design.

Traffic Cluster, Part Two: We'll never resolve traffic issues until "leadership" is willing to lead, not pander.

But just before them, I wrote in reference to statue rectification: "Give 'em time, and we'll have statues of automobiles. I volunteer to be first in line when it comes to bringing those symbols down."

Taken together, these thoughts of pervasive and unaddressed automobile supremacy in Nawbany prompted reader John Q. Curmudgeon (no relation to T. Potable) to write this letter to the editor.

Don't worry. He's real.

Are you?

---

We already have monuments to automobiles in New Albany. Plenty of them. It's doubtful anyone can find another 14.94 square miles in the U.S. that has more ratty little "car lots", car parts stores and other auto related businesses than New Albany, Indiana.

Cheap used cars are for sale, parked on every corner in the town - used “luxury”, “high-end cars” are offered across from a funeral home, on a highway masquerading as a residential street. Another “luxury” car lot is across the street from the YMCA.*

Not a single new car dealership in New Albany - just used cars.

It’s a symptom of having such a high concentration of poverty. Banks make good money on auto loans and lend for them freely (because the car is the loan’s collateral), but not a single new car dealership in New Albany. Not enough money in circulation, not enough people to justify the investment. Sellersburg has new car dealerships, with one-tenth of the number of households in New Albany.

Apparently, most automobiles in New Albany are used and apparently falling apart, barely kept running judging from the number of parts stores and garages.

Auto parts stores are everywhere within New Albany’s small 14 square miles - two auto glass and paint locations, two NAPA parts stores, two O’Reilly Autoparts stores, a hub cap and wheel store, AutoZone Auto Parts, Advance Auto Parts, Bennett's Auto Parts, New Albany Auto Parts & Machine Shop, Bumper to Bumper, Auto Warehouse Inc., Walmart Auto Care Center, Tire Discounters, Big O Tires - and more corner, shade tree mechanic shops.

We don’t notice New Albany’s many monuments to the automobile - because we’ve grown numb to them.

When parking four old cars with “$300 down” written in white shoe polish on their windshields is the “highest and best use” of a high-traffic downtown corner lot, it’s a glaring example that no one values retail and business opportunities in New Albany. Another symptom of having such a high concentration of poverty.

Every article I read regarding the growing restaurant business in New Albany usually includes the phrase “get people across the bridge from Louisville.” There’s a reason. When the little corner car lots go, maybe we’ll see more opportunity for everyone.

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* As to the lot across from the YMCA, reader NC writes: "I closed the lot about 3 years ago when my mom had a stroke. It sat empty for a couple years, the cars that were for sale on it were other lots parking them there or people we didn’t even know parking them there (every once in awhile the guys from the Firestone would sell a car off of it with permission ... it’s a mechanic shop for about the last year. So might want to edit that part, but yea Todd (Coleman) still owns it and rents it to the the owners of the shop. I’ve heard a couple rumors it could be for sale, but I’m not 100%. Could be just rumors."

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Friday) Jeff Gahan fired NAHA's Bob Lane to promote David Duggins, but now it's time for voters to do some firing of their own at the ballot box.

Last week was so much fun, I did it again.

As a run-up to Decision 2019, again this week I delved into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five more days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the anchor-imbedded Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult.

I've already made the solid case for Mark Seabrook as mayor.

The case against Gahanism has so many chapters that it might be necessary to lob five additional informative and entertaining installments next week. After all, heaven knows we have enough raw material.

Following are this week's and last week's Rice Krispies MisTREATments:

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.

And this week's "please let there be a pink slip" chronicles:

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Monday) No more fear, Jeff. This isn't East Germany, and you're not the Stasi.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Tuesday) In 2015 roughly 14% of New Albany's eligible voters opted for the Anchor Deity, and they’re getting exactly what they deserve – good and hard.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Wednesday) When he seized NAHA, Slick Jeffie depicted himself as a wise, caped, fatherly hero, when in fact he was more two-faced than Harvey Dent.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Thursday) Slick Jeffie's car-centric street grid remains designed to maim and kill, and his clique doesn't give a damn.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Friday) Jeff Gahan fired NAHA's Bob Lane to promote David Duggins, but now it's time for voters to do some firing of their own at the ballot box.

Today we return to Gahan's 2017 public housing putsch, which remains the single greatest indicator of his fundamental unsuitability to serve New Albany as mayor.

At the time, several DemoDisneyDixiecrats were scandalized by Gahan's hostile takeover and concurring promise to demolish living spaces as a way of purging the city of poor people who have failed to budget properly and thus failed contribute their fair share to the Genius of the Floodplain's bulging campaign finance coffers (demolition is an effort that stalled yet stands to regain lost momentum if he succeeds in securing a third term).

Many of those who dissented have since groveled returned to the fold -- because ya know, the Re-Pubs are always worse. Some might even be in this photograph of protesters from early 2017.

Here's some eye candy.

Now for the words. As we know, NAHA director Lane was fired and Deputy Dawg Duggins brought aboard to make an experienced administrator's salary absent an iota of qualifications -- when he wasn't "joking" about Tasers and various other forms of physical violence -- but of course, the idea wasn't ever that Duggins actually would run NAHA (Tony Toran does THAT boring work) but instead wheel, deal and leverage properties like a Trump lackey to keep the special interest campaign donors pumping green lifeblood into Gahan's veins.

Mission accomplished ... unless you're a public housing resident.

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March 16, 2017

Burger Chef and Jeff? No, it's TIF Man and Warren.

ON THE AVENUES: It's all so simple, says Jeff Gahan. Remove the impoverished, and voila! No more poverty!

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It was another vintage week for home-wrecking and game-playing by the tittering, braying donkeys who populate Team Gahan's toxic bunker bullpen (surely they're possessed of a remarkable consistency, if nothing else noteworthy), but let's try to disregard the latest round of slapstick and self-parody, and look instead at the purported blueprint for a "balanced mix of public and subsidized housing."

It is revealed within the recent, artfully contrived Comprehensive Plan, a Disneyesque document written by many of the same malleable functionaries now fairly itching to seize the controls of their testosterone-charged bulldozers, which currently idle nervously for the signal to VAROOM.

Bullet points "a" and "b" are sufficiently vague as to be nonsensical.

We know from long, repetitive experience that the desired Gahanian context for terms like these can be summarized in a sentence.

City Hall encourages you to redistribute a percentage of your lucrative new contract to the Gahan for Life fund, and we can assist in extracting your wallet if mandatory tithing is a burden.

Furthermore, if the objective of public housing demolitions is to reduce density, improve the condition of surviving units and geographically distribute new construction (the latter is thoroughly dubious), why target Riverside Terrace for destruction?

Riverside's units are many blocks away from the densest concentration of public housing, and make up some of the NAHA’s newest and best maintained buildings.

Location, location ... LOCATION. Riverside Terrace has the misfortune of being situated within a healthily-lofted Duggins spitball of Loop Island Wetlands, which straddles the Greenway and is envisioned by city planners as potentially rivaling New York City’s Central Park in sheer, “Are you fucking kidding me or what?” grandeur.

They must be spiking the Kool-Aid with LSD.

Point "c" is an example of classic Gahanite circular reasoning. These "recommendations" are not to be found in the detailed program already devised by the professional, trained staff of the New Albany Housing Authority, but rather as stipulated in the form of demolition-friendly reductions forced on the NAHA by means of a daintily termed Memorandum of Understanding, a writ of annexation slated for approval by a board packed by the mayor with the usual servile sycophants, as fully intended to render the result Gahan has fixed in advance.

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The scant slivers of meat on these otherwise bleached bones are to be found in points "d" and "e."

First comes the soothing panacea of "voucher-based units," which numerous local social service agencies already have publicly testified as being non-existent, at least in numbers sufficient to re-house public housing residents facing eviction.

Because Deaf Gahan and Donald Trump might be twins as it pertains to a genetic predisposition to ignore dissenting expertise, perhaps the testimony of an ordinary human being would be useful in making this fact clear.

Hmm.

Did Gahan even once bother speaking with any real people before pursuing his hygienic “reforms” on their behalf?

I'm one of those tenants with a Section 8 voucher. I've been trying to find a new place to live for over a year. Pickings are slim and coming up with the deposit on a limited income is nearly impossible. Now I'm afraid to let go of what I have, however unsuitable it is for my needs. Fortunately, I only have to be concerned about me. I don't have kids to bring into the mix. I can't imagine how much that situation would make you worry. You are very correct about low income folks being insecure about their housing, just as they are insecure about having enough food. I am a registered democrat and I do not support this administration and their agenda. This town smells fishy to me. From Breakwater to Housing Authority demolition and a few things in between. Maybe it's the river, maybe not...

Ah, yes. Speaking of the Breakwater, our flame-broiled but defiantly bocce-clad shining avatar of Gahan’s imagined “democratic” mission to bring pure top-shelf living to New Albany, we now must be reminded that luxury and affordability are not incompatible, at least on Fantasy Island.

e. When the City of New Albany is a partner in the development of housing through public incentives, a total of 8 percent of the units shall be affordable.

This empty promise should suffice for years of uproarious hilarity on the part of city officials observing it in the breach.

You’ll notice that this affordability component is applicable only to housing the city already has chosen to subsidize, implying that we’re not going to be having a discussion about this particular form of odious corporate welfare, either.

Moreover, an instructive example of what can go wrong in times of toothlessness is to be found across the mighty Ohio, where Greg Fischer, Gahan’s go-to manly man and political idol, has become the absolute master of gesture politics without content.

As Caitlin Bowling of Insider Louisville explains, a potential out-of-town recipient of public "incentive" largess is balking at the notion of an affordability component, insisting that if a mere 18 out of 272 luxury units are discounted, it simply can’t go forward with the project.

An out-of-town developer may back out of plans to build a $56 million luxury apartment complex in NuLu, according to the developer’s attorney, Jeffrey McKenzie, of Bingham Greenebaum Doll.

“Flournoy Cos. is frankly not able to go forward,” McKenzie said when addressing members of the Louisville Metro Council’s Labor and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon. The council was set to vote on a tax incentive agreement between the city and Flournoy Cos. but instead tabled it.

The Georgia-based company has asked the city for just more than $5 million in potential tax incentives, and in return, city officials told Flournoy Cos. that it must include 18 workforce housing units in its development at 700 E. Main St. and 121 S. Clay St.

The workforce housing request is part of an initiative by Metro Council leaders to ensure that there is housing affordable to residents who earn 80 percent of the area median income for Jefferson County. Teachers and police officers are often given as examples of people who would benefit from workforce housing.

Flournoy Cos. previously agreed to rent 18 of its one-bedroom apartments at $947 per month, whereas a regular one-bedroom unit would go for $1,300 a month.

However, when McKenzie addressed the council committee Tuesday, he stated that the project can’t move forward if Flournoy Cos. is required to have the 18 cheaper apartments. Either that requirement would need to be eliminated, or the property owner, Service Welding & Machine Co., must agree to sell the properties on Main and Clay streets at a lower price.

Let’s hope Fischer goes full gesture. That'll show 'em.

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You may recall that on Monday, there was to have been a pre-rigged housing board vote on the memorandum of annexation, but the measure was tabled.

Initial media reports implied cold feet on City Hall’s part, though soon enough a defensive press release was emitted, with Gahan making sure the world knew it was director Bob Lane’s illness and not his own agoraphobia to blame for the delay.

Concurrently, deputy dawg and down-low soothsayer Mike Hall covered for a typically absent Gahan here:

Mike Hall, a spokesperson for the mayor's office, said in an email, "The MOU recognizes that much of the public housing stock in New Albany is poorly located, does not reflect current thinking and best practices in housing assistance, and is not in good condition."

Principled opposition makes them testy, doesn’t it? The newspaper reporter released this overview, clarifying matters.

New Albany Housing Authority board pushes back reduction plan to April meeting, by Elizabeth Beilman (Cooking School Chronicle)

Executive Director asks for delay to prepare comments

NEW ALBANY —A plan to reduce the New Albany Housing Authority's stock has been pulled from tonight's board meeting agenda, at the request of Executive Director Bob Lane.

A vote on the plan, originally scheduled for 5:30 p.m., will now be held April 10. The 10-year plan initiated by New Albany city officials that would result in a reduction of more than half of the housing authority's stock and redevelopment and relocation of several others.

Lane, who has been on sick leave for the past two weeks because of emergency eye surgery, said he has not had the time to prepare his comments on the proposed plan. He expects to have a response ready to the city by March 24.

"The City of New Albany and the New Albany Housing Authority worked together for months to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the future of public housing in New Albany," a city news release stated. "The City was hopeful that it would have been adopted tonight at 5:30 p.m. during the New Albany Housing Authority’s regularly scheduled meeting."

Alas, with dreary and numbing predictability the editorial board already had changed into water sports attire and jumped on Gahan’s wrecking ball bandwagon with a bizarrely worded essay about the need to smash things up right away … but please be careful and make sure the flying bricks don’t hurt anyone as they queue for the cattle cars?

Of course, all but one of the editorial board’s contributing members live outside New Albany; sole local Chris Morris is always ready to shine the shoes of elected officials, and it’s never clear whether Gahan is in Bill Hanson’s pocket, or the other way around.

Looking for the world’s worst topic sentence? Try this one:

There are too many public housing units in New Albany. Most would agree with that statement.

Really?

Doesn't it depend on how we define “too many” and “most”?

You won’t be surprised to learn that the editorial board proffers no evidence to support this opening bit of fawning hearsay fluffery, although weirdly and completely inadvertently – like your dog managing to catch the occasional car – the newspaper stumbles onto a point even if it can’t recognize what it is.

That’s because New Albany has absolutely no idea whether most, some or none of its residents agree, as this question hasn’t once been aired publicly, now or ever.

Rather, the entirety of public expertise on public housing  in New Albany remains stuck in a lily-white 1980s time warp, with decades of tall tales and folk “wisdom” emanating from the upstanding suburban folks, and sufficing for those pesky facts that Gahan and the editorial board duck as if they were rotten fruit.

It’s an abysmal information gap, and Gahan is exploiting it not so much in the sense of ethnic cleansing, but of low-income cleansing. Like generations of conclusion-jumpers before him, he has hitched the cart in front of the horse and declared that the overt existence of safety nets like public housing is the cause of unsightliness -- not the poverty, because he can't bring himself to admit that such a thing as poverty exists in his city, and so he's quite sure that if we stop treating symptoms, the disease will vanish, just like in one of his beloved Uncle Walt’s animated features.

And anyway, what good are poor people if they neither vote nor give often enough to Big Daddy’s campaign finance war chest?

Nick Vaughn said it best (and also elaborated on the problem):

The proposed plan spearheaded by Mayor Gahan would effectively demolish nearly half of the affordable housing units in New Albany in the hopes that low-income housing becomes less centralized. I am against this proposal and I am writing in the hopes that not only the Housing Authority and city officials see this, but also to help my fellow New Albanians become more aware of the growing crisis in our city called poverty.

In the end, amid the intellectual squalor, there is only one inexplicable development in this absurd and discouraging tale. Why didn’t Gahan name his demolition proposal The World’s Greatest Poverty Eradication Plan of 2017?

Wait -- I forgot another.

How can Gahan be considered a Democrat?

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2019 Election Appendix

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

Jumping the loan shark: "A way of monetizing poor people."

After all, cash-stuffed envelopes can take many forms.

‘A way of monetizing poor people’: How private equity firms make money offering loans to cash-strapped Americans, by Peter Whoriskey (Washington Post)

The check arrived out of the blue, issued in his name for $1,200, a mailing from a consumer finance company. Stephen Huggins eyed it carefully.

A loan, it said. Smaller type said the interest rate would be 33 percent.

Way too high, Huggins thought. He put it aside.

A week later, though, his 2005 Chevy pickup was in the shop, and he didn’t have enough to pay for the repairs. He needed the truck to get to work, to get the kids to school. So Huggins, a 56-year-old heavy equipment operator in Nashville, fished the check out that day in April 2017 and cashed it.

Within a year, the company, Mariner Finance, sued Huggins for $3,221.27. That included the original $1,200, plus an additional $800 a company representative later persuaded him to take, plus hundreds of dollars in processing fees, insurance and other items, plus interest. It didn’t matter that he’d made a few payments already.

“It would have been cheaper for me to go out and borrow money from the mob,” Huggins said before his first court hearing in April ...

Jeff Gahan, too: "Conservatives blame the poor because the alternative is to blame capitalism."

Forget capitalism and religion. Kool-Aid-ism is the dominant ideology of our age, and it can be consumed by almost anyone -- and is, in startling volumes, regularly.

Where do you begin? With your premises, of course.

Why Conservatives Blame Poverty on the Poor, by Sarah Jones (New Republic)

A new essay by National Review's Kevin Williamson exposes the ideological blind spots of responsibility politics.

Scapegoat, prophet, moron, rogue—the poor white is a shapeshifter. He changes forms as the needs of his beholders change. When liberals need to blame a class for Donald Trump’s presidency, the poor white will do; never mind that two-thirds of all Trump supporters made $50,000 or more a year. When conservatives need to cast liberals as aloof elitists they appoint themselves the poor white’s defenders—until their ideology is threatened, and then it is time to take out the trash.

Because:

Black welfare recipients aren’t the problem; Mexicans aren’t the problem; immigration isn’t the problem. But low wages, a shrinking safety net, subprime mortgages, unattainable health care, impoverished local schools, among all the other locks that trap the poor in place, can and should be pinned to the very system conservatives want to defend. Williamson fixates on the willful stupidity of the poor because he must. If he didn’t, he’d have to indict his own ideology.

This one's dedicated to Deaf Gahan and his merry band of local Democratic Party sycophants: "America Can't Fix Poverty Until It Stops Hating Poor People."

Pay no attention to what Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey's local Democrats say.

Rather, take note of what they don't/won't say ... and moreover, what they're doing (public housing hostile takeover) and not doing (adhering to their presumed political party's own platform).

It's world class hypocrisy, right here in Anchor City. They can pray in the Church of Pretend Disney all day long, but the stench remains. 

America Can't Fix Poverty Until It Stops Hating Poor People, by John A. Powell and Arthur Brooks (CityLab)

A bipartisan plea to stop “othering” those living on the economic margins.

“Hell is other people,” famously wrote the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre at the close of his 1943 play No Exit. While for Sartre this was a philosophically sophisticated point, in America today it has become simply the way we increasingly treat people at the margins of our society. We see whole groups of people as unlike ourselves—as the undesirable “other.”

Many different kinds of people have been harmfully “othered” throughout our country’s history, and the plights of these groups have received well-deserved attention and focus. But there is one group that we systematically other today—with hugely damaging consequences—while hardly even realizing that we are doing it. Those people are Americans living in poverty.

Research consistently finds that Americans exhibit a disturbing level of antipathy towards those on the economic margins. In a 2001 word-association study, researchers from Kansas State and Rice Universities asked subjects to rate how well a variety of words described different social groups. Compared to their ratings of middle-class people, and given no information except economic status, the average subject described poor people as 39 percent more “unpleasant,” 95 percent more “unmotivated,” and twice as “dirty.”

In another 2002 study, researchers from Princeton, UCLA, and Lawrence University asked students and adults to gauge society’s views toward several often-stereotyped groups. Other out-groups were demeaned as either incompetent but personally warm, or unfriendly but competent; only the poor were consistently classified as both unfriendly and incompetent. Americans, it seems, have a uniquely low opinion of poor people: We offer them neither our empathy nor our respect.

This antipathy is not the result of comfortable Americans having to endure constant exposure to the poor. On the contrary, a sharp uptick in socioeconomic stratification and segregation has been widely documented across the right and left, from Charles Murray to Robert Putnam. For growing percentages of middle- and upper-class Americans, interactions with poor and working-class people are very rare. Well-to-do Americans have almost no meaningful cultural contact with anyone from economically marginalized communities—from struggling inner cities to decaying suburbs to depressed rural counties.

One might surmise this separation is the result of the widespread negative attitudes about people in poverty. But there is good reason to believe the causality also runs in the other direction. Psychologists have long studied a phenomenon called the “Ben Franklin effect,” named for the Founding Father’s observation that our appraisals of other people can actually follow our behavior towards them, rather than just the other way around. Specifically, Franklin noted, we tend to like people more after we have granted them a favor ...

"Christians, especially white evangelical Christians, are much more likely than non-Christians to view poverty as the result of individual failings."

Not that the rampant deficiencies of capitalism have anything to do with it.

I wonder what Wendy Dant Chesser thinks about this topic -- or even more humorously, Bill Hanson?

Maybe Bill's forced-religion columnist can take it on, and Wendy can incorporate the conclusion in a 1Si power point presentation: "Oligarchs are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of a useful college degree."

Pearls of wisdom, guys?

Christians are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of effort, by Julie Zauzmer (Washington Post)

 ... “There’s a strong Christian impulse to understand poverty as deeply rooted in morality — often, as the Bible makes clear, in unwillingness to work, in bad financial decisions or in broken family structures,” said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “The Christian worldview is saying that all poverty is due to sin, though that doesn’t necessarily mean the sin of the person in poverty. In the Garden of Eden, there would have been no poverty. In a fallen world, there is poverty.”

Gahan's magical kingdom of denial: On the one hand, there's 8% and 40 years, while on the other, 20 years to escape poverty ... maybe.

As well as a percentage it can't even recall. 

Recently one of the mayor's public housing consultancy minions emitted a deep and abiding yawn, then cut, pasted and doodled a purported statement that Jeff Gahan duly signed, as though in some parallel universe he'd actually written it himself -- you know, like Andrew Jackson was alive during the Civil War and shit.

Additionally, any new private housing development that received local government support will be required to reserve a percentage of the units for low-income residents. New Albany is a generous, welcoming community and this plan reflects that spirit.

The minion was too damned lazy to look at the recently minted (and just as quickly forgotten) city comprehensive plan to find the exact percentage, though why would he? The stacked board's votes already were purchased. At least two of the new white male board members refused the customary board training primer. Had they all died on the spot, the posthumous vote would have been the same.

For the record, it's 8%. We showed it to you weeks ago.

Gahan has been planning the public housing putsch for years, and naturally he waited until his knights in shining pasteboard (Flaherty and Collins) showered the city in bocce-intensity luxury before revealing this purely non-binding percentage, which you can bet your sweet bippy will be contested in the future, and when the howls of developers penetrate the Down Low Bunker, the "requirement" will be conveniently flushed downstream, via luxury plumbing enabled by sewer tap-in waivers.

Though once again, I digress.

At the current yearly pace of the city of New Albany serving as "partner in the development of housing through public incentives," and assuming (stupidly) that the city actually enforces the non-binding "requirement," it will take approximately 40 years for the 8% to yield the number of affordable housing units lost to Gahan's bulldozers.

In entirely unrelated news ...

Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years With Nearly Nothing Going Wrong, by Gillian B. White (CityLab)

MIT economist Peter Temin argues that economic inequality results in two distinct classes. And only one of them has any power.

A lot of factors have contributed to American inequality: slavery, economic policy, technological change, the power of lobbying, globalization, and so on. In their wake, what’s left?

That’s the question at the heart of a new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, by Peter Temin, an economist from MIT. Temin argues that, following decades of growing inequality, America is now left with what is more or less a two-class system: One small, predominantly white upper class that wields a disproportionate share of money, power, and political influence and a much larger, minority-heavy (but still mostly white) lower class that is all too frequently subject to the first group’s whims.

NAHA Monday Night Massacre: A statement by trained and experienced members of the community, but of course a former veneer sales professional knows better.

The memorandum below has 12 co-authors. It was read at last evening's "show meeting" of the NAHA's board.

Monday Night Massacre: Deaf Gahan again absent from his own power grab as Joshua, Duggins seize NAHA and appoint Coffey to new post as "Luxury Trumps Poverty" czar.

It should be noted yet again that irrespective of party affiliation, New Albany's ruling class fell into line with Deaf Gahan's public housing putsch. As Bluegill points out ...

Despite his much deserved receipt of so much derision via the bilge pump attached to his neck, it's actually pretty difficult to differentiate Coffey's voting record from those of his fellow Democrats, including a formally trained sociologist. Let that sink in for a second.

Feeling good about your mayor, Democrats?

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We are deeply distressed by the proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of New Albany (CONA) and the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA). Specifically, we have the following concerns:

• 1. The proposal to eliminate public housing in CONA contains no details of steps that will be taken to ensure that NAHA residents' lives will not be disrupted.
• 2. The proposal contains no details of steps that will be taken to ensure that the supply of affordable (lower-income) housing in New Albany will not be diminished.
• 3. While the MOU proposes that vouchers could be used to relocate current NAHA residents, the document provides no evidence that an adequate supply of vouchers exists, or that there is an adequate supply of market rental housing units in New Albany that will accept such vouchers.
• 4. It is unclear whether CONA and NAHA are, in fact, working collegially despite a claim of collaboration in CONA’s strategic plan.
• 5. In its present composition, the NAHA Board does not include any resident representatives.

The rental vacancy rate in CONA is 3.4%. This rate was calculated prior to the recent loss of 100 rental units in the Breakwater fire, which presumably lowered the above vacancy rate. Furthermore, this rate is based on availability of rental housing at all price points; the vacancy rate for affordable (lower-income) units is, in fact, much lower.

Currently, 28% of the 73 HUD Housing Choice vouchers (formerly known as Section 8 vouchers) issued through NAHA have expired because their holders could not find a rental unit where they could use the voucher. Given the low rental vacancy rate and the shortage of affordable rental units, the suggestion that current public housing residents could move to private market housing (as proposed in the MOU) is unrealistic.

Notwithstanding the fact that some public housing units are in deteriorated condition and geographically concentrated, proposing to eliminate public housing without a data-informed plan for offsetting the loss of these affordable housing units is deeply concerning. The risks of exacerbating the problem of homelessness in our community, disrupting the lives of vulnerable citizens, and violating these citizens’ fair housing rights are real and troubling.

Collectively, we have decades of experience in housing, homelessness, public affairs and public advocacy. As advocates for our vulnerable neighbors, we will continue to hold CONA and the NAHA Board accountable. We are ready and willing to work with CONA administrators and the NAHA Board to create a plan to address the above concerns while also improving community housing conditions and public housing residents’ well being. We have a wealth of experience to bring to the table, and we would welcome being part of a truly collaborative, people-centered effort.

Monday Night Massacre: Deaf Gahan again absent from his own power grab as Joshua, Duggins seize NAHA and appoint Coffey to new post as "Luxury Trumps Poverty" czar.

Elizabeth Beilman provided excellent newspaper coverage of the Monday Night Massacre. Her tweet below is a classic of understatement.

In the end, there wasn't a politician in town apart from Dan "I'm Back on Payroll" Coffey with the courage to so much as notice Deaf Gahan's Public Housing Putsch, much less place themselves within sight of it it.

John Gonder would have taken part, but Gahan kneecapped Gonder, didn't he?

In short, mythology wins. Misconceptions about public housing are almost totemic in New Albany, and Gahan vigorously scratched this anti-intellectual itch, even if it meant compromising every democratic principle he has ever pretended to support.

It's slightly encouraging that for the first time during Gahan's Reign of Error, a handful of key Democrats suddenly found themselves jolted by the reality of the mayor's vapidity.

Consider this vignette, as captured by Beilman.

Or, one leering, semi-literate functionary is seen reading words written by a nattily attired out-of-town consultant for an inexplicably absent (again) mayor. Democrats should retain this image, and never forget the fundamental crassness of a man who almost never bothers attending the beheadings he initiates in his own name.

Will they remember? Probably not for as long as star sycophant Adam Dickey is at the reins, but the fact remains that the NAHA imbroglio has weakened Dear Leader. Walking dollar signs are cute, but it doesn't mean they can lead. Local Democrats have placed themselves in the position of praising Gahan for the very same vile tendencies they denounce in Donald Trump.

Even in perennially confused America, hypocrisy of this magnitude cannot long endure. Gahan's public housing power grab is organic Himalayan salt rubbed vigorously into the local party's self-inflicted wounds.

We can only hope that more of the party's adherents begin feeling the pain borne unto it by Gahan's ego trip.

Board opts for New Albany's public housing vision, passes plan, by Elizabeth Beilman (Jeffersonville News and Tribune)

Plan calls for demolition, rehab of public housing units

NEW ALBANY — The New Albany Housing Authority Board of Commissioners initiated the first step Monday in embarking on a plan to demolish and rehabilitate hundreds of public housing units.

The board approved a plan with the city of New Albany on Monday aiming significant changes to the state's third largest public housing authority in an attempt to better leverage a backlog of federal funds and decentralize the city's low income pockets. Only commissioner Kent McDaniel voted against it, saying he needed more time to study the plan.

The board's move strays from recommendations of the housing authority director and instead takes up the vision of New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan, whose administration proposed the partnership and changes.

Vaughn: THIS Public Housing Plan Will Improve the Community.

By Nick Vaughn. 

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The members of the New Albany Housing Authority Board have a big decision to make at their upcoming meeting on Monday, April 23rd. The proposed plan spearheaded by Mayor Gahan would effectively demolish nearly half of the affordable housing units in New Albany in the hopes that low income housing becomes less centralized. I am against this proposal and I am writing in the hopes that not only the Housing Authority and city officials see this, but also to help my fellow New Albanians become more aware of the growing crisis in our city called poverty.

I think most people will agree that the centralization of low income housing has negative effects on those living in those units for a few different reasons. The biggest reason is that around the nation, pockets of poverty and low income housing is placed right in the middle of food deserts (places where there are not many options to buy food. Most options are fast food). I acknowledge this flaw and I support the idea of ending the centralization of poverty, however the plan put forth forces low income individuals with little hope and fewer options to up and leave their homes with effectively no place to go.

Our city government simply has not done enough to prevent the traps of poverty from engulfing many of our low income neighbors throughout the city. To put it bluntly, our city government has not prioritized the prevention of poverty. But our issue is not a culture issue, I know this because of the people I meet and see everyday around town. New Albanians are the best people in the country. Our problem is how we tackle the issue of preventing poverty. Some of our elected officials would rather tear down these affordable housing units because we have done our fair share as a city of housing low income individuals for Southern Indiana and Louisville. Instead of this sentiment, we need to empower our low income and poverty stricken neighbors and help them regain their footing and be able to rise above their standards. They cannot do this without a strong community and city government behind them helping them.

So in contrast to the proposal being put to a vote at the New Albany Housing Authority, I suggest some alternatives that the city can be doing to help not only improve the standard of living for individuals but also end the cycle of poverty by taking a two-generation modeled approach that helps both adults in low income situations and children.

1. Having a stronger investment in local education. Many people may not realize this, but Indiana is one of the only states in the country that puts the cost of supplies and textbooks onto the local school districts. One thing our city can do is invest in our children’s education by creating a city-wide voucher program for those most in need to cover books and supplies for our school children. This would take the pressure off of families who are deciding on buying food or school supplies.
2. Job training partnerships. This program would cost little money and would allow the city to partner with local businesses in our community to provide those most in need with proper training for jobs so that low income families can gain important skills that will allow them to enter a higher level of the workforce and begin to support their families as well as transition out of HUD housing.
3. Contracts for local businesses. New Albany is blessed to have an explosion of development in industry and entertainment. The city should be utilizing our local businesses for contracts as opposed to companies in other states. This would allow our local businesses to expand and offer employment to those benefitting from the Job Training Partnership program.
4. Realizing our assets. Our low income neighbors deserve to be able to live acomfortable life and not worry about being able to put food on the table consistently for their kids. Just because their economic situation is not the same as others does not mean they are not assets to our community. Anyone can be an enormous asset to a community if they are only given a chance. We need to start realizing our assets and give them a chance.

I hope that my suggestions are ample counter proposals and that the Housing Authority Board as well as our elected city officials will take a hard look at what I have outlined here. I also am extending my helping hand to any city official who would like to meet with me and discuss what can be done at a city level to end the cycle of poverty and help our low income neighbors.

ON THE AVENUES: It's all so simple, says Jeff Gahan. Remove the impoverished, and voila! No more poverty!

Burger Chef and Jeff? No, it's TIF Man and Warren.

ON THE AVENUES: It's all so simple, says Jeff Gahan. Remove the impoverished, and voila! No more poverty!

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It was another vintage week for home-wrecking and game-playing by the tittering, braying donkeys who populate Team Gahan's toxic bunker bullpen (surely they're possessed of a remarkable consistency, if nothing else noteworthy), but let's try to disregard the latest round of slapstick and self-parody, and look instead at the purported blueprint for a "balanced mix of public and subsidized housing."

It is revealed within the recent, artfully contrived Comprehensive Plan, a Disneyesque document written by many of the same malleable functionaries now fairly itching to seize the controls of their testosterone-charged bulldozers, which currently idle nervously for the signal to VAROOM.

Bullet points "a" and "b" are sufficiently vague as to be nonsensical.

We know from long, repetitive experience that the desired Gahanian context for terms like these can be summarized in a sentence.

City Hall encourages you to redistribute a percentage of your lucrative new contract to the Gahan for Life fund, and we can assist in extracting your wallet if mandatory tithing is a burden.

Furthermore, if the objective of public housing demolitions is to reduce density, improve the condition of surviving units and geographically distribute new construction (the latter is thoroughly dubious), why target Riverside Terrace for destruction?

Riverside's units are many blocks away from the densest concentration of public housing, and make up some of the NAHA’s newest and best maintained buildings.

Location, location ... LOCATION. Riverside Terrace has the misfortune of being situated within a healthily-lofted Duggins spitball of Loop Island Wetlands, which straddles the Greenway and is envisioned by city planners as potentially rivaling New York City’s Central Park in sheer, “Are you fucking kidding me or what?” grandeur.

They must be spiking the Kool-Aid with LSD.

Point "c" is an example of classic Gahanite circular reasoning. These "recommendations" are not to be found in the detailed program already devised by the professional, trained staff of the New Albany Housing Authority, but rather as stipulated in the form of demolition-friendly reductions forced on the NAHA by means of a daintily termed Memorandum of Understanding, a writ of annexation slated for approval by a board packed by the mayor with the usual servile sycophants, as fully intended to render the result Gahan has fixed in advance.

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The scant slivers of meat on these otherwise bleached bones are to be found in points "d" and "e."

First comes the soothing panacea of "voucher-based units," which numerous local social service agencies already have publicly testified as being non-existent, at least in numbers sufficient to re-house public housing residents facing eviction.

Because Deaf Gahan and Donald Trump might be twins as it pertains to a genetic predisposition to ignore dissenting expertise, perhaps the testimony of an ordinary human being would be useful in making this fact clear.

Hmm.

Did Gahan even once bother speaking with any real people before pursuing his hygienic “reforms” on their behalf?

I'm one of those tenants with a Section 8 voucher. I've been trying to find a new place to live for over a year. Pickings are slim and coming up with the deposit on a limited income is nearly impossible. Now I'm afraid to let go of what I have, however unsuitable it is for my needs. Fortunately, I only have to be concerned about me. I don't have kids to bring into the mix. I can't imagine how much that situation would make you worry. You are very correct about low income folks being insecure about their housing, just as they are insecure about having enough food. I am a registered democrat and I do not support this administration and their agenda. This town smells fishy to me. From Breakwater to Housing Authority demolition and a few things in between. Maybe it's the river, maybe not...

Ah, yes. Speaking of the Breakwater, our flame-broiled but defiantly bocce-clad shining avatar of Gahan’s imagined “democratic” mission to bring pure top-shelf living to New Albany, we now must be reminded that luxury and affordability are not incompatible, at least on Fantasy Island.

e. When the City of New Albany is a partner in the development of housing through public incentives, a total of 8 percent of the units shall be affordable.

This empty promise should suffice for years of uproarious hilarity on the part of city officials observing it in the breach.

You’ll notice that this affordability component is applicable only to housing the city already has chosen to subsidize, implying that we’re not going to be having a discussion about this particular form of odious corporate welfare, either.

Moreover, an instructive example of what can go wrong in times of toothlessness is to be found across the mighty Ohio, where Greg Fischer, Gahan’s go-to manly man and political idol, has become the absolute master of gesture politics without content.

As Caitlin Bowling of Insider Louisville explains, a potential out-of-town recipient of public "incentive" largess is balking at the notion of an affordability component, insisting that if a mere 18 out of 272 luxury units are discounted, it simply can’t go forward with the project.

An out-of-town developer may back out of plans to build a $56 million luxury apartment complex in NuLu, according to the developer’s attorney, Jeffrey McKenzie, of Bingham Greenebaum Doll.

“Flournoy Cos. is frankly not able to go forward,” McKenzie said when addressing members of the Louisville Metro Council’s Labor and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon. The council was set to vote on a tax incentive agreement between the city and Flournoy Cos. but instead tabled it.

The Georgia-based company has asked the city for just more than $5 million in potential tax incentives, and in return, city officials told Flournoy Cos. that it must include 18 workforce housing units in its development at 700 E. Main St. and 121 S. Clay St.

The workforce housing request is part of an initiative by Metro Council leaders to ensure that there is housing affordable to residents who earn 80 percent of the area median income for Jefferson County. Teachers and police officers are often given as examples of people who would benefit from workforce housing.

Flournoy Cos. previously agreed to rent 18 of its one-bedroom apartments at $947 per month, whereas a regular one-bedroom unit would go for $1,300 a month.

However, when McKenzie addressed the council committee Tuesday, he stated that the project can’t move forward if Flournoy Cos. is required to have the 18 cheaper apartments. Either that requirement would need to be eliminated, or the property owner, Service Welding & Machine Co., must agree to sell the properties on Main and Clay streets at a lower price.

Let’s hope Fischer goes full gesture. That'll show 'em.

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You may recall that on Monday, there was to have been a pre-rigged housing board vote on the memorandum of annexation, but the measure was tabled.

Initial media reports implied cold feet on City Hall’s part, though soon enough a defensive press release was emitted, with Gahan making sure the world knew it was director Bob Lane’s illness and not his own agoraphobia to blame for the delay.

Concurrently, deputy dawg and down-low soothsayer Mike Hall covered for a typically absent Gahan here:

Mike Hall, a spokesperson for the mayor's office, said in an email, "The MOU recognizes that much of the public housing stock in New Albany is poorly located, does not reflect current thinking and best practices in housing assistance, and is not in good condition."

Principled opposition makes them testy, doesn’t it? The newspaper reporter released this overview, clarifying matters.

New Albany Housing Authority board pushes back reduction plan to April meeting, by Elizabeth Beilman (Cooking School Chronicle)

Executive Director asks for delay to prepare comments

NEW ALBANY —A plan to reduce the New Albany Housing Authority's stock has been pulled from tonight's board meeting agenda, at the request of Executive Director Bob Lane.

A vote on the plan, originally scheduled for 5:30 p.m., will now be held April 10. The 10-year plan initiated by New Albany city officials that would result in a reduction of more than half of the housing authority's stock and redevelopment and relocation of several others.

Lane, who has been on sick leave for the past two weeks because of emergency eye surgery, said he has not had the time to prepare his comments on the proposed plan. He expects to have a response ready to the city by March 24.

"The City of New Albany and the New Albany Housing Authority worked together for months to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the future of public housing in New Albany," a city news release stated. "The City was hopeful that it would have been adopted tonight at 5:30 p.m. during the New Albany Housing Authority’s regularly scheduled meeting."

Alas, with dreary and numbing predictability the editorial board already had changed into water sports attire and jumped on Gahan’s wrecking ball bandwagon with a bizarrely worded essay about the need to smash things up right away … but please be careful and make sure the flying bricks don’t hurt anyone as they queue for the cattle cars?

Of course, all but one of the editorial board’s contributing members live outside New Albany; sole local Chris Morris is always ready to shine the shoes of elected officials, and it’s never clear whether Gahan is in Bill Hanson’s pocket, or the other way around.

Looking for the world’s worst topic sentence? Try this one:

There are too many public housing units in New Albany. Most would agree with that statement.

Really?

Doesn't it depend on how we define “too many” and “most”?

You won’t be surprised to learn that the editorial board proffers no evidence to support this opening bit of fawning hearsay fluffery, although weirdly and completely inadvertently – like your dog managing to catch the occasional car – the newspaper stumbles onto a point even if it can’t recognize what it is.

That’s because New Albany has absolutely no idea whether most, some or none of its residents agree, as this question hasn’t once been aired publicly, now or ever.

Rather, the entirety of public expertise on public housing  in New Albany remains stuck in a lily-white 1980s time warp, with decades of tall tales and folk “wisdom” emanating from the upstanding suburban folks, and sufficing for those pesky facts that Gahan and the editorial board duck as if they were rotten fruit.

It’s an abysmal information gap, and Gahan is exploiting it not so much in the sense of ethnic cleansing, but of low-income cleansing. Like generations of conclusion-jumpers before him, he has hitched the cart in front of the horse and declared that the overt existence of safety nets like public housing is the cause of unsightliness -- not the poverty, because he can't bring himself to admit that such a thing as poverty exists in his city, and so he's quite sure that if we stop treating symptoms, the disease will vanish, just like in one of his beloved Uncle Walt’s animated features.

And anyway, what good are poor people if they neither vote nor give often enough to Big Daddy’s campaign finance war chest?

Nick Vaughn said it best (and also elaborated on the problem):

The proposed plan spearheaded by Mayor Gahan would effectively demolish nearly half of the affordable housing units in New Albany in the hopes that low-income housing becomes less centralized. I am against this proposal and I am writing in the hopes that not only the Housing Authority and city officials see this, but also to help my fellow New Albanians become more aware of the growing crisis in our city called poverty.

In the end, amid the intellectual squalor, there is only one inexplicable development in this absurd and discouraging tale. Why didn’t Gahan name his demolition proposal The World’s Greatest Poverty Eradication Plan of 2017?

Wait -- I forgot another.

How can Gahan be considered a Democrat?

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Recent columns:

March 9: ON THE AVENUES: Never preach free speech to a yes man; it wastes your time and annoys Team Gahan.

March 2: ON THE AVENUES: Breaking up is hard to do. Just ask the Reichstag.

February 23: ON THE AVENUES: A stern-side view of Gravity Head, nineteen times over.

February 16: ON THE AVENUES: In 2014 as in 2015, then 2016, now 2017 ... yes, it's the "Adamite Chronicles: Have muzzle, will drivel."

1 of 2: Nick Vaughn eloquently demonstrates that Jeff Gahan's Great Public Housing Putsch of 2017 does nothing to address poverty -- the real problem.

In a letter to Clark County Now, and in contrast to the newspaper's vacuous editorial board, occasional NAC columnist Nick Vaughn compellingly counters the Jeff Gahan "demolition now, think later" plan for public housing in New Albany with an organized proposal to begin attacking the causes of poverty in this community.

Allow me to add yet again: As with Trump's tweet-driven antics taking our eyes off the Congressional ball, don't focus on Gahan tear-downs off Bono Road.

Rather, keep an eye on the public housing properties adjacent to Silver Street Park (Vance Court) and the Loop Island Wetlands (Riverside Terrace). Once cleared, these parcels will be up for grabs as "luxury" developments ... and you know that nothing lifts Def Papa's spirits quite like the "right" kind of voters.

Raise up people, not tumble housing

The New Albany Housing Authority Board has a big decision to make at their upcoming meeting on Monday, March 13. The proposed plan spearheaded by Mayor Gahan would effectively demolish nearly half of the affordable housing units in New Albany in the hopes that low-income housing becomes less centralized. I am against this proposal and I am writing in the hopes that not only the Housing Authority and city officials see this, but also to help my fellow New Albanians become more aware of the growing crisis in our city called poverty.

I think most people will agree that the centralization of low-income housing has negative effects on those living in those units for a few different reasons. The biggest reason is that around the nation, pockets of poverty and low-income housing is placed right in the middle of food deserts (places where there are not many options to buy food. Most options are fast food). I acknowledge this flaw and I support the idea of ending the centralization of poverty; however, the plan put forth forces low-income individuals with little hope and fewer options to up and leave their homes with effectively no place to go ...

All organizing is local: How to throw sand in the gears of Trumpism.

When Republican lawmakers already are proposing to outlaw free speech by banning public protests that interfere with the convenient operation of automobiles, it's merely more proof that the loony bins have been emptied and the occupants have been elected to State Senate.

As we await Ron Grooms' inevitable vote in favor of gutting the Constitution, but not before he asks One Southern Indiana for permission, here are two articles from The Nation.

First, what you'll have to be doing quite apart from posting resistance memes on Facebook.

Throw Sand in the Gears of Everything, by Frances Fox Piven

When it comes to stopping Trump, petitions aren’t going to do it.

Chanting crowds are the familiar insignia of movements. And I think movement politics may even make resistance to a Trump regime possible. But while the great movements of American history were the crucial determinant of our most important democratic reforms—from the basic electoral elements of representative democracy, to Emancipation, to labor rights, to women’s and LGBTQ rights—none of these movements achieved their successes simply through the gathering of people to show their commitment. People gathered, of course, but what makes movements a force—when they are a force—is the deployment of a distinctive power that arises from the ability of angry and indignant people to at times defy the rules that usually ensure their cooperation and quiescence. Movements can mobilize people to refuse, to disobey, in effect to strike. In other words, people in motion, in movements, can throw sand in the gears of the institutions that depend on their cooperation. It therefore follows that movements need numbers, but they also need a strategy that maps the impact of their defiance and the ensuing disruptions on the authority of decision-makers.

Piven observes that "political leaders in big cities are beginning to provide just that sort of electoral resonance and encouragement," and while noting that New Albany is a small city without a coherent leader in a county that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, there is at least a possibility that cities can be incubators for the resistance.

We may even be able to do some of it here, but if so, it will come without either political or community pillar support -- and on occasion, you might be forced to miss an IU basketball game. Sorry about that.

Cities Have the Power to Finally Bridge MLK’s ‘Two Americas’, by Ras J. Baraka and Ryan P. Haygood (The Nation)

The solutions to the enduring problem of economic inequality will have to come from the ground up in our cities, not from Washington, DC, down

Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., looked to our city, Newark, New Jersey, and other urban communities and explained that the country consisted of “two Americas,” divided by race.

... At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, on the eve of the presidential inauguration after one of the most divisive and racially charged presidential campaigns in history, our cities hold incredible promise to advance an agenda that unites us, and to incubate progressive solutions to finally bridging the two Americas.

To do this, we must ensure that every person has access to economic opportunity through employment that pays a true living wage. This is the most direct way to confront poverty in our nation, and to bridge our class and race divides.

The solutions to the enduring problem of economic inequality will have to come from the ground up in our cities, not from Washington, DC, down.