Left In Lowell

It was a busy weekend of sunshine (and a little rain), fresh air, great live music, fried plantains, art exhibits, and making cultural connections at this year’s Lowell Folk Festival.

I’ve lived in the greater Lowell area for four years and managed to miss it until now. I’m rather kicking myself; I had a really good time. I know I gripe a lot about local politics-as-usual and sometimes it must seem like I really don’t enjoy living here…but Lowell puts on her best face for this, the largest free folk festival in the nation (or so it’s said), and that face is open, joyous, tolerant, celebratory, artistic, and fun.

My compliments to my friend, Mehmed Ali, the current director of the Folk Festival. Great job! You could have ordered better midday weather for today, but everything else went swimmingly.

More on my weekend at the Festival after the click: (more…)

I don’t have as much time today to be blog-prolific, but you should check out wonk NOT! author Michael DeChiara’s excellent rundown on his interview with the candidate.

[UPDATE: I should mention, in his blog, Michael focuses on issues of political “framing,” an idea in George Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant. He interviews Deval Patrick with that in mind.]

Just a quick mention: we welcome Noho-Missives back among the living (blogs). We missed ya. Now, get back to work!

So I went on WUML’s Thinking Out Loud today. It was surprisingly fun, though generally I don’t like microphones or video cameras of any sort. My DVD/Karaoke machine notwithstanding.

There was a lot I didn’t get to talk about in the 20 minutes I had, such as the specific impacts that blogs, local or otherwise, have had on the media and the political discourse, such as with the Downing Street Memo (which, you may recall, didn’t get much traction in the media until the left wing blogs had agitated so much, they had to). Bloggers such as SusanG and NYBri of DailyKos, who helped expose Jeff Gannon as a right wing shill lodged in the White House Press Corps, have had huge impacts in getting coverage for stories the mainstream media is either too lazy and cheap to investigate, or else is putting out news that is not put in the proper context. Susan and Brian have now formed ePluibusMedia, a community group volunteering thousands of hours for group investigative journalism, a model they formed while investigating Gannon.

The mainstream media is famous for sticking to easy-to-cover storylines, such as the “he-said, she-said” coverage of the 2004 presidential election. The best and brightest blogs try to put the news in its proper context, while still sticking to objective facts. The most influential of these can successfully compel the media to do the job they were supposed to do in the first place.

There’s a lot more navel gazing I could do, but you’re not here for that. If you’re here for the first time, take a look around. Have a click or two at the links - I maintain a growing list of other progressive Mass bloggers. Maybe there’s one living near you.

Well, I promised I’d have this done tonight, and I’ve made it with 40 minutes to spare! (Here is the previous shorter post.)

As an aside, I’ll be on WUML’s (91.5 FM) Thinking Out Loud, Dan Toomey’s 10am morning show. I’ll be talking about blogging, politics, suddenly finding myself in the middle of local and state politics, or whatever, for about 20 minutes near the start of the show (that is, if I don’t freeze up or something! ha!).

After the flip, I’ll post the entire Deval Patrick interview transcript (minus some of my inane chattering) so you can read our conversation for yourself. [Update: Duh, I’ve fogotten a link to Deval Patrick’s campaign site.]

Deval Patrick is nothing if not ambitious. From health care to public education, job creation and public transit, he has a lot of sound ideas on how to reverse some of the negative trends in this state. Make no mistake, it’ll take some doing. He advocates, for instance, smaller class sizes and longer school days (not just classroom, but other school-related activities). He wants to move towards universal health care coverage, whether that’s privately or publicly funded or both. He has some ambitious ideas about investing in transit infrastructure to help ease housing costs (and presumably, attract some of those fleeing businesses).

I love all the ideas. They’re right in line with many of the things I think would fix the state’s problems in the right way. They’re big lofty goals with (hopefully) big payouts in the long term.

But these ideas will take money. Whether that’s from tax increases, budgetary changes, or something else…at some point, reality could set in. Frankly, I’d settle for one or two of Mr. Patrick’s proposals to be successfully implemented (as in, not watered down by special interests or grabby politicians). The true test of leadership will come when reality and short-term pain or gratification tries to interfere with evoking real change. Selling far-off gains and long-term thinking to voters is notoriously difficult.

That said, Mr. Patrick can present his ideas perfectly well on his own, so click on to read the transcript.
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…could, maybe, this little blog be influencing the Lowell Sun?

OK, I find it an unlikely scenario too, but lookey here…I mean, snippets about last night’s City Council. Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly or I’ve missed some coverage in the past, but as far as I know, it’s the first time I’ve seen them put the coverage of a Council meeting together like this (by the way, go Dick Howe! I agree wholeheartedly - bold text for emphasis):

* Rezoned a parcel of land off the Lowell Connector near Connector Park that will allow the Gervais family to build and operate a Suzuki dealership.

* Referred to the Law Department a request from Councilor Richard Howe to change the Planning Board membership from appointed by the city manager to elected positions. Howe also wants a report on the feasibility of having the City Council serve as an appellate board for petitioners rejected by the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Howe believes both boards are too cozy with developers.

* Transferred to the Fire Department’s wages and salary account about $360,000 from the manager’s contingency account. The money is needed to fund the recently approved firefighters’ contract, a pact that gives firefighters a 3 percent raise in each of the next three years.

* Agreed to form a subcommittee to investigate cable-TV fees from Comcast, the city’s cable provider.

Or maybe they have done little summaries covering all aspects, great and small, of the Council meeting before. Regardless, I like it. (By the way, LTC’s TV Guide is wrong, so I haven’t yet seen the meeting myself, though I did try, honest!)

I’m busy typing up a transcript of my Patrick conversation for you all, among other things. Expect it tonight sometime.

I’ve just finished my conversation with Deval Patrick, and will be posting a more detailed report soon, as well as a transcript.

I hardly knew what to expect, having never had the chance to hear to him speak before. My initial reaction is that Deval Patrick is a very likeable person who is easy to talk to, and engaged and interested in what I had to say. I believe that whatever else, he would be a thoughtful, deliberate governor who would operate by gathering the best information on whatever issues were in front of him before making a decision.

We talked about issues of affordable housing for both the middle class and the poor, an issue that you might have seen me cover quite a lot here. We also talked a lot about education, the MCAS, and health care of course.

I’ll share with you now a part of Deval Patrick’s eloquent conclusion about his personal approach to the campaign and leadership:

…The way in which we have to rebuild our sense of community, in neighborhoods in cities and towns across the state…has got to be top of the mind for anybody who’s serious about leading this state, because much of the leadership we have had has helped this notion penetrate that we, each of us, is in this on his or her own. And that’s wrong. You know, personal responsibility includes shared responsibility, and we haven’t had leadership in my view for too long now that is willing to call up the question of what shared responsibility entails, and I think it’s time for that. And that is not a platitude, that has something to do with how we practically live our lives, and how we practically make public policy decisions…So I’m trying to bring that theme forward not just not for purposes of the campaign, but to help alert people to the way I want to