The Blog Party

Just got home and was watching NY1. Very good interview with Brian Ellner. Check him out. He’s got good ideas.

Bloomberg’s polls are up and even Gifford Miller was playing nice when they announced the city’s budget. Bloomber g said:

“The speaker and I may be vying for the same office; that is politics,” he said. “But when it comes to government, Gifford Miller has been a great speaker of the City Council, and together each year, after all the pushing and shoving, we always come together, have a handshake and try to do what is right for this city.”

Which is all well and good - but a $400 property tax rebate and a reduction in the sales tax on clothing is small potatoes when it comes to significant reform. The current surplus will not last and these short-term initiatives don’t help stabilize the already precarious middle class. There are a few solid programs that were re-instated at the behest of the City Council:

“The deal, which requires the formality of a full Council vote tomorrow, would also add about $230 million to the budget that Mayor Bloomberg proposed in May, mostly for education, cultural and social service programs sought by the Council. The figure includes about $20 million for a jobs program aimed at poor minority neighborhoods; about $9 million for literacy and legal services for immigrants, and $6 million to combat domestic violence, the Council speaker, Gifford Miller, said last night.”

But we’ve still go a long way to go…

Last night I appeared on The John McMullen Show on Sirius Satellite Radio which was great fun. He’s a really good interviewer and we hit on a lot of substantive issues quickly and entertainingly. Hopefully I’ll do it again.

One of the topics that came up, or has been coming up for me throughout the campaign, is the idea of Civic Participation. Ten years ago a book came out called Bowling Alone that discussed the waning of civic participation and community involvement in American life. And while there are people that will argue both sides of the issue, I tend to think that civic involvement has decreased.

You can look at any number of factors - television, long work hours, commuting in cars - and deduce that people are not participating in community endeavors the way they did in the 50’s , 60’s or even 70’s. Also, we live in a culture where everyone - even adults - wants to be “cool” and nothing is less cool than joining some dorky political or civics club.

But I think if we want to overcome the sense of powerlessness and frustration in the face of corporate-funded government then we have to find new ways to engage. And that’s why I think the internet is so important. Friendster, Meetup, Dodgeball and other social networking sites have made it easier for people with common interests to find each other and meet offline. Blogging has made it easier for people to get their opinions out to a mass audience and to tell their stories - look at Girl Blog from Iraq, for example.

A large part of why I started to run for mayor and started The Blog Party is not to create a political action committee of bloggers, but to propound the idea that we can use the internet to increase government transparency and increase civic engagement. I dont’ have all the answers, mostly I have questions. But I believe that working together we can find new and better solutions.

Finally, a great success story:

“After 20 years of rent strikes and battles with the former owner, the tenants [of Cathedral Parkway Towers on W. 110th St.] are buying the Mitchell-Lama complex and keeping it affordable housing for middle-income New Yorkers.”

Read more in The NY Daily News.

A very interesting story of various groups working together to make positive change and a significant gain in the struggle for affordable housing.

On June 30th, there will be a Mayoral Candidates Forum addressing the issue of affordable housing in New York City. This forum will be held at St. Paul’s Chapel, Broadway and Fulton Street, beginning at 5:30pm and running until 7:30pm. Candidates Gifford Miller, C. Virginia Fields, Anthony Weiner, and Fernando Ferrer are confirmed to attend. Mayor Bloomberg has been invited.

It is being presented by Habitat for Humanity NYC.

Also - another cool affordable housing resource is Housing First! which is “an unprecedented alliance of organizations, institutions, businesses and individuals concerned with stimulating massive new investment in New York’s housing infrastructure — a campaign has been launched to build and sustain affordable housing for all New Yorkers.”

Very cool. Oh, and did I mention that I believe that government should be about facilitating networks between citizen advocacy groups, not dictating policy from the top down? Just in case I forgot.

Last night at Sunday Night FEVA I had a great opportunity to speak to people directly. Sarah Valentine interviewed me and we talked about Open Source Democracy, about the concerns of new yorkers and making government more accessible to average citizens. It was great.

Also - another campaign suggestion: get control of the MTA out of Pataki’s hands. Makes sense to me. There are a lot of local issues that are decided on the state level that is just absurd…

And finally, in conclusion, I know this sounds nit-picky, but I’m really into the idea of getting weekly e-mails from The Mayor telling me WHAT HE DID FOR ME that week. Or at least what he did at all. I think there’s so much talk about media bias - why not get your message directly to the voters via email? Tell me what you friggin’ did!?

Which is part of the campaign as well - if we created municipal broadband and free wi-fi throughout the city, we could also start a low-cost computer subsidy initiative. Every household should have a computer and internet access. And THEN we build a city-wide intranet so that each apartment or unit of housing has a steady stream of news and information about the current events and issues concering their neighborhood. Imagine that - important local news and information directly accessible by web portals in every house! I know the argument can be made that television does that. But Television is too mediated and too biased. Also, it is a one-way medium and limited by commercials and the need to be brief and entertaining. The web offers a chance to put substance back into politics and to bring it directly into everybody’s home.

Wow! I’m popular in Coney Island!

guerilla campaigning

click through for more pix

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I will post my pictures of The Mermaid Parade tonight, hopefully. I just got back from taking in some of the Gay Pride Parade, though I was there only briefly. Having attended the parade almost every year since 1996 and marched in it several times I have to say that I find it a little overwhelming and a lot too corporate. I remember my first Gay Pride Parade in Seattle in 1992 or 1993 and it was a very small, personal thing. A lot of fun, but it felt like a more immediate statement of personal pride and politics rather than a chance for beer sponsors and career politicians to court the queer demographic.

Speaking of which, the NY Times just published an article that Gay Marriage is an issue at Gay Pride Parade. If elected Mayor I will actively work to reform city laws to allow gay marriage and insure that all people of all sexual orientations are protected under the law. Marriage Equality isn’t Special Rights, it Equal Rights.

We have a LONG way to go, even in NYC, to change the bias in our culture about sexual orientation. I will fight that battle for everyone’s civil rights.

I’m about to head out to campaign at The Mermaid Parade but I wanted to thank everyone who I talked to as I campaigned in the East Village last night for their feedback and enthusiastic response. I was having too much fun to stop and take pictures (drat!) but it was really great. I met some Staten Islanders who told me about the concerns of that beautiful borough, I met all kinds of people - poets, shoe designers, medical research grants administrators - all hard-working, intelligent, engaged people who feel left out of the system and underrpresented.

As I’ve gone out and campaigned and talked - and more importantly listened - to New Yorkers, it is truly amazing how many people want the same things but feel that none of the career politicians are listening to them or working for them. Everyone has their own private issues or their own advocacy group they support - whether its Transportation Alternatives or a women’s group or something else.

New Yorkers have the power and if we pull together we can take back this city for its citizens! We have to take on the big corporate interests and entrenched politicians, we have to take over City Hall and re-design city government so its more transparent, more responsive and more accountable to the people. We need to make NYC citizen-powered!

And I’m the man to do it! Vote Andy For Mayor 2005!

“The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, in one of its most closely watched property rights cases in years, that fostering economic development is an appropriate use of the government’s power of eminent domain.”

Read more in the Times.

The case was in New London, CT but has local relevance in terms of Ratner’s project for downtown Brooklyn and other proposed projects in NYC.

There’s also an article in the Daily News about the Supreme Court decision as well as a human interest story on the effects of Ratner’s eminent domain land-grab.

And in case you needed further convincing of how unethical and rapacious landlords and developers are, the Daily News also has an article about how rent hikes in Kips Bay are forcing out tenants. Kips Bay Court was formerly a Mitchell-Lama development known as Phipps Plaza West but was taken out of the program early:

“Phipps Houses president Adam Weinstein did not return calls seeking comment. His organization - a century-old affordable-housing provider - took Phipps Plaza West out of Mitchell-Lama after it was sued by investors who wanted it converted to a market-rate property.”

The tenant profiled in the article is a quadriplegic named Sue Strong:

“Her rent was raised to $3,000 per month from $792 - and even with a federally funded Section 8 voucher to pick up part of the tab, Strong isn’t paying as much as the landlord wants. The personal funds she was living on have run out, and she’s only got a monthly Social Security check of $653.”

This is despicable.

Everyone wants a vibrant NYC with a healthy economy, everyone wants to help NYC grow and be economically viable. But if you force everybody out and make rents completely unaffordable, you ruin the fabric of the city, you kill its lifeblood.

If elected Mayor I will take on these rapacious, greedy landlords and work to create more housing for people, stronger rent controls and development accountability. New York for New Yorkers not just billionaires!