This is so super awesome, that I’m pissed I didn’t think of the idea. It’s one of those “duh” concepts.

Lowell Launches Neighborhood Innovation Grant Program

Want to make your neighborhood a better place to live, work and play? Funding is available to put your ideas into action. The new Neighborhood Innovation Grant Program, administered by the Department of Planning and Development, provides seed funding of up to $1,500 for collaborative, community-driven neighborhood improvement projects.

For details, please visit: www.lowellma.gov/neighborhoodinnovationgrant.

Just hearing about it makes me want to put together some ideas with my neighbors. It’s such small potatoes as far as money goes, but it encourages us to invest ourselves in our own neighborhoods, gets critical work done that might otherwise be overlooked or not prioritized by city government, and by its very nature, being citizen-driven, will address the things that specifically concern a particular neighborhood.

Nicely done, Bernie. Nicely done. Whoever came up with this idea, give them a raise.

As I wandered around the internet today reading political blogs, tweets, Facebook posts of articles, and other news from the Occupy front, I reflected on the path that populism has taken over the decade or so…the various movements ebbing and flowing and the process that has brought us to this point. I was reading this well-written Daily Kos post musing on the movement, and it seemed like I could see the path behind us, which started out narrow and has become, with the Occupy movement, suddenly wider and easier to tread.

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I spent most of Friday during the day in Boston, at Dewey Square, taking in OccupyBoston. I brought all the donations I could scrounge up (for instance, my entire adult history in mothballed bed comforters and towels) and hoped to hang around and get some video interviews and stories I could tell. Instead I wound up volunteering for a web project they needed - I thought my time would be better spent utilizing my skills as a developer rather than working on Occupy content and publicity for a small, local blog.

I haven’t written much here on the Occupy movement in the last few weeks, though I’ve been more than keenly following it online. There are so many thoughts swirling around in my head that I’ve been paralyzed from writing an essay-length post about it, although if you follow my Twitter account, the Facebook page which features many of the tweets, or keep up with @leftinlowell on the left sidebar here, you’ll know that I’ve been a very active author about OccupyBoston and OWS in the 140-character arena.

I could write a lot (and may yet) about what I found at Dewey Square on Friday - the strong sense of community, amazing solidarity, the organic means of organizing they employ - but many others have written about that already and you can find reams of pixels devoted to covering the news and day to day life of Occupiers.

But this afternoon, I found the 140 character limit failing me, and as I said in a direct response to an inquiry, needed a full blog post to explain my feelings and thoughts, specifically regarding the pressures that the Occupy movement is and will face in the coming weeks and months. Via @BostonPhoenix, I found this short description (and full video) of a Harvard political panel hastily formed to facilitate a discussion of the Occupy movement, including visiting fellow Ed Rendell, former Governor of Pennsylvania.

A far greater percentage of the audience than of the panel had actually spent signiicant time at an Occupation — Williamson has spent time at #OccupyBoston — but that didn’t stop anyone from speculating or projecting.

Rendell is not alone — especially and not surprisingly among Democratic politicians — in wishing that some of the enthusiasm of Occupy would carry over to the ballot box. What Democratic politicians have been very slow to acknowledge is that many Occupiers are as sick of Democrats as they are with banks — and are not enthusiastic about the possibilities of a two-party system they see as being hopelessly corrupted by corporate campaign contributions.

As a thoroughly committed progressive electoral political activist, I have, and will continue to, volunteer my time to electing good candidates at all levels of government, turning out the vote, encouraging voter participation, and going to the polls myself. It’s the least I can do for my democracy. But as an electoral activist, one who also has some experience in movement politics (the anti-war Bush era) I want to caution the Occupation against giving in too much to the powerful forces that would love to squeeze out this amazing energy for their own use.

There are so many pieces of evidence I could use to back that up. The most obvious is to look at what happened to the Tea Party movement. Although I am in total opposition to just about everything the TP stands for, the movement at its inception was grassroots at its core, expressing anger at the status quo. (I don’t argue about the need for such anger, but the TP is, at least in its current incarnation, gravely wrong on who was to blame.) Even one of its founders, a conservative blogger, now repudiates what it’s become - a front group for the financial backers of the Republican party and its politicians.

Or look at the Obama 2008 campaign. The enthusiasm of young volunteers and voters was part of the reason he was propelled to such heights of popularity. They were fired up, ready to go. And when they got there…they got some of what they wanted, sure. At least a modicum of health care reform. A half-measures stimulus package for jobs that turned out to be only partly effective - because the downturn was steeper than anyone knew, and because a third or more of the stimulus was ineffective tax cuts instead of direct stimulus spending. He has had a weak stomach for the fight…the opposite of a firm, demanding executive branch leader that we so need…instead, “capitulating” and “pre-compromising” are the catchphrases that come to mind about Obama’s first term.

Obama also put Wall Street execs into his economic brain trust. Wall St certainly doesn’t love this president, but if you were looking for them to enact policies against greed and corruption, you were sorely disappointed…besides the Elizabeth Warren-driven Consumer Protection Agency, we extracted no price from the financiers - not jail time pursued where possible, nor reigning their excess in, or asking them to pay their fair share of their own ridiculous bailouts.

The last of which, along with prolonged unemployment woes, prompted the Occupation movement to begin with.

If I have any advice for the burgeoning Occupy movement - if I could make any appeal at all to them that would matter (and by them, I do mean us, since I will continue to do what I can to support it), it would be this: if you allow yourselves to be coopted and pressured to work on elections, driven by the necessarily short-term thinking of electoral activism, you will be distracted from your larger goal, and you will be disappointed, time and again.

There are a few reasons for this, some inevitable in any circumstance, like the fact that we cannot all agree, even with those we agree, 100% of the time. I eased out of the anti-war movement because of the 2006 campaign for Governor Deval Patrick, swept up in the enthusiasm of what he was trying to accomplish, and believing that I could be more effective as an electoral activist than trying to change the stubborn mind of the Bush administration on its war policies. Choose between bashing my head on a wall repeatedly, or use a hammer to break through? Give me that hammer!

And in some ways, in some campaigns, you can be more effective as an electoral activist; ask for, and receive, real and lasting change. I am largely proud of my Governor, and the work I did to elect him. He has been an effective economic leader to say the least, nevermind his progressive support for gay rights, and for most social programs (your mileage may vary). But even I have had my enthusiasm for his tenure brutally dampened at times, especially now, that he, who should be smart enough to know better, has been on the forefront of the impending legalization of casinos. I have been disappointed, even in the best of our leaders, enough to distract me from more far-reaching goals.

If I can be disappointed in someone like Deval Patrick, just imagine the disappointment around a second term of Obama.

You can’t take on everything. Neither individuals, nor movements, can afford to be divided in their efforts or their aims. And in the end, electing more and better leaders will not change the system. That system is so broken, electing a Patrick or a Warren or this or that individual is like a plank trying to hold back a tide. The system needs fundamental uprooting and replanting, and no amount of progressive electoral politics (save the entire corps of incumbents being ousted and replaced wholesale at once by a massive grassroots effort of small donors and volunteers) will truly address the core problem at hand.

Electoral politics is about fraying the cloth of the “system” at the edges; Occupation should be about reweaving the entire bolt.

I have some ideas to propose (well one overarching, giant idea, really) of how Occupy can do this, for once, and for all. It’s an uphill battle so massive, so stacked against us, so big of an effort that just to think it makes me shiver in fear and excitement. But it is the only inevitable conclusion I can come to when thinking about the future of our country and how to right all the wrongs. I am talking about a constitutional amendment to rescind corporate personhood and the ruling of the Supreme Court that money equals speech.

All of what is broken with our system is about money and influence in our politics. Global climate change cannot be addressed because of the massive amount of money being pumped into stopping the regulation, and reversal of, carbon dependence. Economic justice is being thwarted by financial contributions from banks and Wall Street, so that the concept of going back to Clinton-era taxes on the wealthy and capital gains (money making money, as opposed to work making money) is nigh impossible to argue. And so on, and so on, and so on. If in a democracy being elected depends on monetary support, and people with more money can support more heavily than the rest of the 99%, then who will ever listen to the 99%?

A constitutional amendment is a big hill to climb. It’s a long-term hill, it could take a decade. It could take more. The money arrayed against such an act would be astounding - if you think Wall Street spends money on politics now, wait until you try this out.

However, no amount of cash is going to convince the American people that the system is working as it is, or that Citizens United was a good idea, or that corporations should have rights as though they were people. If lasting change is what Occupy seeks, than the moment is now.

But whatever form, and eventual goal, this movement takes on (if indeed it does not peter out after we see the economy rebound after some new temporary economic bandaid that puts off the inevitable real crash that I feel is coming) it needs to think beyond 2012. Beyond 2014, or 2016. Beyond the cyclical electoral process.

If that means fighting the pressure from Democratic politicians to elect them, as well as ignoring the temptation to help enact near-term policy bandaids, then as a staunch Democrat, I say, so be it. What you lose in short term gain is far exceeded by the long term possibilities.

I can’t help thinking that much of our future is dependent on what this nascent movement called Occupation does next (but no pressure!). And, I would love to be able to say at the end of all of this, “Our Democracy is dead…long live our Democracy.”

Parking was a bitch at the kickoff meeting happening now for Progressive Massachusetts, because it’s pretty packed! If I were a corporatist Dem or a Republican, I’d be worried. Progressive activists are in this for the long haul, in a truly grassroots effort. In conjunction with my previous post on Occupy Wall Street, if fairness and opportunity are not brought back to our political system, a movement like this will snowball into real change. Today seems like a good start.

If you are interested in my micro-reporting from the event, keep an eye on the Twitter feed to the left, or at Twitter. I’ll be sending out a feed all afternoon as long as I have battery!

(Live blogging has turned into Twitter feeds. Time marches on…)

I’ve been following (mostly online) the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston protests since nearly the beginning. They got traction and coverage on blogs and Twitter long before the media was covering it - in fact, before the unprovoked pepper spray incidents that made the news, the only place to read about what was happening was online.

The media complained that they weren’t cohesive enough and there wasn’t news to cover. Well, that has quickly changed and evolved. For starters, there were some very bad decisions from the NYPD - both institutionally, and by some idiot individuals - which put the protests on the map for the media, and solidified the motivation of participants and supporters. What’s more, it seems the organic sort of organizing that has sprung up has - and I have to use the word evolved again - to meet the challenges of running a protest, dealing with the media, finding a set of demands to articulate why they are angry and not going to take it any more. OWS has spokespeople and media tents and a strong online presence - all while being relatively leadersless in the traditional sense.

In some ways, my personal cynicism alert flag is up. (Yeah, I know, I’m too young to be truly cynical…) I spent years organizing with the peace movement against the Iraq war, butting my head up against the sheer stubbornness of the Bush administration and, later, Obama’s. After all, GitMo is still open, the USA PATRIOT Act was reauthorized and is being used to spy on Americans without due process, we’re still in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan though with some troop drawdown, and Obama even unilaterally bombed, for right or wrong, Libya, without the consent of Congress.

The only satisfaction we got out of our fight was that most of the American public got on our side after a while. But it still reelected Bush and let itself be lied to about Kerry’s war record and ability to lead, and we never got a truly different kind of leader to replace him in 2008, either. Obama put Wall St executives in charge of the economy even after it was evident they were full of shit.

But there is something really interesting happening with Occupy[America]. For one thing, it’s just average citizens (not diehard liberals or extremely informed people like me) who are protesting. Photo after photo, interview after interview, this is very evident.

There are so many people in this country who have been foreclosed on, laid off, unable to move forward, that a segment of them, with nothing left to lose, are truly taking the fight to the streets. Since they have nothing left to lose - no middle class lifestyle, no prospects - they have a lot to fight for. I always said the worst part about being an anti-war protester is that most of our citizens, even when sympathetic (and the majority was by the time I left that movement) are busy with their lives, making their livings, feeding their families, going to soccer games, and being generally content that things aren’t that bad for them, personally. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s totally human, and what’s more, a legacy of the last century of American progress. We built the middle class. A country with a middle class able to make ends meet is a relatively politically stable country. It’s a good thing.

Which is why I think there is something different in the air.

Gradually, we’ve seen the erosion of the buying power and the salaries of the middle class. For so many decades before, our children did at least a little better than their parents. Then, since the Reagan era, we started to see the slide. We began to only tread water…then occasionally swallowed some. Then we began drowning, but we as a people were the last to see it happen.

Even in the 2008 economic meltdown, we failed to notice our lungs filling with something other than air.

This generation of young people really are the first who truly believe - nay, who know - they are not destined to do better than their parents. Unlike the spoiled kids of my generation (raised largely in the 80s and coming of age in the 90s), they see the coming tide sweeping over them and pulling them under the water before they even get a chance to begin. They are left behind. And they know that if they do nothing, it will only get worse. They have nothing left to lose.

They join every one of their older siblings, parents, grandparents who have lost a house, a job, a future, despite being of the generations born with more promise. For some of us older ones, we’ve experienced firsthand how it’s gonna be going forward if there are no changes. For the rest of us older ones, we are beginning to understand how fragile our position of comfort is. The OccupyWallSt movement presents this to us in bas-relief - the notion that the middle class is under siege and has been for quite some time.

The thing that is different from now from these previous movements is that the situation that has caused these long term problems is not going to be alleviated by last generation’s leaders. Obama is cut off at the knees to even patch a pathetic temporary band-aid (the jobs bill) on our economic slide by Republican intransigence. And even Obama’s half-measures would probably only prove to elongate the stagnation, not solve the underlying problem. We’re now seeing the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us reach the levels seen right before the 1929 crash. Eventually, this was going to get noticed by someone. By everyone.

Even the Tea Party movement, while misguided to the extreme, is an expression of this loss of power by the average person. Why did they catch fire? Despite being such a minority of even the Republican party? Because poor and middle class Republicans too are suffering in this economic climate, this class warfare on us by the super-wealthy. They just aren’t right on who to blame for this.

Most of America, on the other hand, already knows what and who is to blame. They already overwhelmingly want to see taxes raised back up on the uberwealthy. They know that Wall St needs taking down a peg or three, and that we need to go back to regulating our economic system so that the playing field becomes level again. They just need the energy to look up from their day to day struggles against the tide, to look up, and see that horizon again.

I don’t know where the Occupy movement is going to go. It seems to change and swell bigger by the day, though it could have an upper limit, I suppose. But if this truly is the moment where the American people reach the tipping point, if this is the straw that, finally, after 30 years of straws, breaks the camel’s back, then maybe we can make the changes without the economic crash that I have been foreseeing for years. That crash (which will make 2008 look like cakewalk) could still be coming. But if we organize enough in advance, if we can offer an alternative to the American people now, perhaps we will not lose a decade like they did in the Great Depression. After all, we have history to inform us how best to rebuild the American middle class and spread prosperity around to everyone.

So, occupy on! There may not be an immediate result, but it could offer a long term solution. Hats off to the most powerless among us.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” - V

Chalk one up for transparency and access! The Greater Lowell Tech school committee voted unanimously (and our PAC, Move Lowell Forward, officially thanks them as well) to try live streaming online the school committee meetings. This is a good first step towards greater participation by students, parents, teachers and voters in their school committee.

The stream will be live only online, and not available for dialup (which isn’t good for streaming anyway) for at least the next three meetings, which given that Dunstable does not have a cable access station, might be the only way to reach all four of our communities. I certainly hope that the committee continues to work with Lowell Telecommunications and the other communities’ local stations to broaden access as far as they are able.

Kudos to the GLT SC, and we look forward to seeing the results on April 7th (you will be able to get the link to the live stream at www.gltech.org when the meeting is live).

In light of the uprising in Egypt, one could say that ideas are very dangerous. After all, it’s the idea of a better life, of more control over their political future, the idea of maybe seeing a glimmer of democracy for themselves that is fueling the disruption of that entire nation.

Or you could ask King George, if he were still alive, just how quickly an idea can take hold and burn like fire.

In a fair marketplace for ideas, some rise to the top, and some don’t. In an unfair market for ideas, some are suppressed when others are giving unfair advantage. In our modern age, money gives a lot of unfair advantages to ideas, but the internet is a great leveler and might, just might, save us from ourselves. We can hope.

So off of the abstract and onto specifics: the Lowell Sun wrote a piece on the simple, rather boring and wonky paper that we (Move Lowell Forward) submitted to the City Council - our second, for the record - this one on local jobs. (You can read it here [PDF]). There has been some fuss from some corners regarding this paper, which I found pretty hilarious because that fuss created a need for coverage by local media outlets where none would have existed, which I do not think was the intent of the complainers.

In the article, Rita calls me out by name, which is predictable, since she has disliked me ever since I started this blog and publicly disagreed with her. The last straw for her, I think, was that I thought at the time (2005) that no city councilor other than Milinazzo should have been reelected (at the time no one was doing anything about Cox, but Milinazzo persistently showed up for many local groups’ meetings, even during a non-election season, which I felt was a good thing). I know this because she said it to me. Yes, the internet has archives and you can go back and examine them. Welcome to the modern world.

However, Rita has little to complain about regarding not getting endorsed by Move Lowell Forward - the first qualification for getting endorsed by any organization is to return the organization’s questionnaire. She never has (not mine for the blog, and certainly not Move Lowell Forward’s). Had she returned her questionnaire, it would have been evaluated along with her voting history on many key issues and would have acquired an objective numerical score by our endorsement committee. It was quite possible that she would have ended up endorsed by MLF in that case, as we were strict about those rules.

Anyway, the Sun piece has interesting quotes and differences of opinion from various councilors on the ideas that our paper presents, which is great! We hoped that our boring little policy piece might spark some ideas or debate, and it obviously has. Of course, we just thought it would be a little discussion on an obscure subcommittee about tax rates, local businesses and how to entice them, how we deal with TIFs, etc, but we’re happy to see that it has some mental wheels turning, even if it’s a quick examination and dismissal of the ideas in the paper. What we did was to look at what the candidates (both successful and not) said in our questionnaires in 2009, so really, a lot of the paper is about ideas others had.

What I find interesting about this whole exercise, is that it illustrates the very differences between governing philosophies that MLF as a group, and I as a blogger, have always been after in the first place.

The councilors near the top of the article being quoted are looking at the ideas in the paper, and remarking upon them (both for and against). Councilor Mercier, on the the other hand, calls me out personally by name and attacks my commenters. (Never mind that she’s wrong, that “three bloggers” do not “assume 40 different names” just to attack her. When I catch someone doing this - which I can do because we record IP addresses on the back end - any time someone “astroturfs,” it’s to attack me or someone I am supporting.)

This is the politics of the personal versus the policy. MLF, and this blog, have long been about trying to get us on track for real and serious policy debates. And when I see someone like C. Mercier saying or doing something that is counter-productive, or even, outright misleading, I call them on it. And they hate that, and attack me. Honestly, I don’t care one way or the other about Rita Mercier the person. I care about Rita Mercier, the elected politician who is making policy and public statements that have serious consequences. It’s never been personal (all right, I do enjoy waxing sarcastic once in a while to relieve my feelings, but that’s not why I blog). But to people like Mercier, it’s always personal. There is no separation between getting the job done and their intimate feelings about the person delivering the message. I know which way I prefer the people I elect to govern.

I did also want to briefly refute another point the “fussers” are making regarding one’s access to presenting ideas to the Council or on the Council floor, in light of MLF’s paper presentation being compared to the decision not to hear Sean Burke in front of full Council.

What was not evident in some of the coverage of Burke (or should I say, biased Sun editorials) is that Burke did get his time to speak, in front of the relevant subcommittee, and thoroughly aired what he wanted to say there (not to mention he himself wanted to provide the service for a fee). His ideas were presented to Lynch prior to that as well, and thoroughly digested for their merits or lack thereof.

The reason Burke was refused a second airing in front of the full Council later on is that he was already heard, and his ideas presented in the appropriate forum. And my understanding is that his ideas were rejected for reality-based reasons.

This is the same access, in fact, MLF is asking for, and for far less of the Council’s or Subcommittee’s time - “here’s some ideas [for the economic subcommittee if that’s the right place], read or don’t read, and use or don’t use them, as you will.” We really didn’t think there was anything controversial about it, but of course, this is Lowell, and there is always someone willing to inject controversy where none exists.

We weren’t expecting a full debate at a CC meeting, but the procedure for correspondence to the the Council is it must be “accepted” as such by the full Council, then “sent” to a subcommittee for review. We were exactly following procedure as outlined in the rules and laws. It might well be that the Council decides it needs to go to a different subcommittee, or do something else entirely with it (circular file, maybe). It’s totally up to the Council. We just threw it out there; it is a completely volunteer effort, and there is no agenda other than our stated goals in our mission statement.

The fact that not one of us has any personal stake in the acceptance of those ideas should be pretty obvious to anyone who reads it - except, of course, that we are all Lowell residents (with a healthy mix of “grow-ins” and Lowell-born by the way) and that all of us stand to gain if the city does better.

I find it very amusing how sinister some people have made this all out to be. It’s pretty clear who is being overwrought about this, so hey, I’ll just take heart from all our unexpected free publicity that will help our ideas will go out there and compete in the world of ideas, sinking or swimming on their merits or lack thereof.

No quid pro quo about it.

Via a friend on facebook, I think this is worth a long full read. It reminds me of Sam Harris’ take on moderate religious people, who, in taking religion off the discussion table, enable the unreasonable far religious right to continue. Only, on the caricaturization of the left, maybe we lefties are actively helping it along.

I don’t begrudge the “coffee movement” or the Stewart/Colbert rally their request for less shrillality - or their satire and humor about it. However, I do have the same worries as Hedges:

The American left is a phantom. It is conjured up by the right wing to tag Barack Obama as a socialist and used by the liberal class to justify its complacency and lethargy. It diverts attention from corporate power. It perpetuates the myth of a democratic system that is influenced by the votes of citizens, political platforms and the work of legislators.

By cartooning ourselves with humor, perhaps we are helping the far right continue the charade of “lefty radicals among us” even though they have no idea what the definition really is.

The loss of a radical left in American politics has been catastrophic. The left once harbored militant anarchist and communist labor unions, an independent, alternative press, social movements and politicians not tethered to corporate benefactors. But its disappearance, the result of long witch hunts for communists, post-industrialization and the silencing of those who did not sign on for the utopian vision of globalization, means that there is no counterforce to halt our slide into corporate neofeudalism. This harsh reality, however, is not palatable. So the corporations that control mass communications conjure up the phantom of a left. They blame the phantom for our debacle. And they get us to speak in absurdities.

Reasonableness in the face of annihilation (of the middle class, of our global climate, of science) is, essentially, rolling onto our backs and letting the loud shouters on the right step on our necks heads. We already know they are capable of it. “Do not go gentle into that goodnight” wrote Thomas. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

If we stop raging in some sort of capitulation to the “be nice, stop fighting” crowd, then we automatically lose. All of us. As Hedges puts it,

The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described as apathy. If the right wing is crazy and if the left wing is crazy, the argument goes, then we moderates will be reasonable. We will be nice. Exxon and Goldman Sachs, along with predatory banks and the arms industry, may be ripping the guts out of the country, our rights—including habeas corpus—may have been revoked, but don’t get mad. Don’t be shrill. Don’t be like the crazies on the left.

Moderate, in this country, appears to be a definition of “between the left and the right.” But actual moderate philosophy is quite different. It’s the public option in the health care bill - a total compromise from what is truly “left.” I don’t think you’ll get a single moderate to say we should defund public schools or ignore the problems of global climate change. And yet, when we on the left call for such things, fight for them, we’re called “shrill” by the people cartooning the debate.

I will admit the debate has been cartooned by unreasonable people. However, the unreasonableness is largely one-sided. Let’s call a spade a spade and please, finally, admit this fact.

And remember this: people are not inspired by a vision of moderation and reasonableness. They don’t go out and vote for it, no matter what they say to pollsters. They want leadership, vision, and a sense that the person they are voting for has conviction. And even that this leader will fight for these things.

One final thought:

The modern spectacle, as the theorist Guy Debord pointed out, is a potent tool for pacification and depoliticization. It is a “permanent opium war” which stupefies its viewers and disconnects them from the forces that control their lives.

In the movie Gladiator, Gracchus, a Senator of Rome, says of the tyrant Commodus, “I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it’s the sand of the coliseum. He’ll bring them death - and they will love him for it.”

Are we still the democratic United States of America? Or are we Rome? I think the jury’s still out on that one. There is coming to our nation a crossroads, one we have experienced in the past. Do we allow the rich so large a chunk of our economy (the greatest since 1928), or do we level the playing field for those not fortunate to be born to wealth? Do we try and salvage some semblance of our world ecology, or do we let global climate change play havoc with humanity in thirty years? Do we lead, or do we blindly follow our corporate masters who gut our freedoms - indeed, coopt them for themselves - while they keep us entertained and distracted by the death and glory of gladiators on the sand?

It’s he-said she-said (well, he-said he-said) with today’s Column, in which Move Lowell Forward member Michael Ready was mentioned regarding the “after meeting party” at the GHTHS Board session wherein they crowned Santoro Superintendent. As a refresher, thus wrote the Column:

After Tuesday night’s vote to hire Mary Jo Santoro as the next superintendent of Greater Lowell Tech., School Committee member George O’Hare of Lowell and local activist Michael Ready got into a loud war of words. Ready proclaimed that Santoro’s hiring was a bag job from the beginning. O’Hare disagreed. School spokesman Michael McGovern jumped into the fray, literally blocking Ready’s access to school officials with his chest and escorting Ready out of the administrative offices.

In that paragraph, it’s obvious their source was on the GOB side of things, possibly “spokesflack” Michael McGovern himself (and again as in comments, I am wondering, what high school has a spokesflack?? I’d like to know). But Paul, who was also there at the meeting and present at this moment, gainsays this in comments to my previous post:

Mr Ready was NOT escorted out of the meeting! He (and I beside him) left of our own free will! The “war of words” was initiated by Mr O’Hare who left the Council table and confronted Mr Ready who only stood his ground. Several people at the meeting did suggest we leave but only because there needed to be an executive session which common mortals are not allowed to attend

So, two very different takes on what happened. Obviously the “initiated by O’Hare” part was not part of the GOB party line. Oops. Too bad there’s eyewitnesses to correct the record, and a blog where they post their point of view.

As an aside, I know of no two individuals as upstanding as Michael and Paul. They are both honest men, willing to take a stand, and I think deserve a whole lot of credit for bringing all of this malarkey to our attention. Taking the time out of their lives as they have on this issue is not easy, nor is being attacked personally for doing so. You have had a chance to read Michael’s statements to the Board, and in no way was he disrespectful. He and Paul take their responsibility as citizens seriously, and I have just a ton of respect for both of them for their work. I just want to say that publicly that I have and will continue to enjoy working with these two gentlemen. I’m sorry this paints them as targets, but I applaud them!

Cliff reminds us that tomorrow is the last day to register to vote if you wish to participate in the January 19th special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy

Registering is not the problem; voting is. People do not seem to be interested. This election really has not captured the hearts and minds of the average citizen. Maybe it is the holidays; maybe it is “election fatigue”; maybe it is the candidates.

The Primary Election results are not in Scott Brown’s favor and today the Herald has a Hilary Chabot story on the abandonment of Scott by the national Republican party.

And as far as Martha Coakley is concerned, the Daily Beast has selected her as a “rising political” star, “The Commonwealth’s Attorney General will face a Republican opponent in a special election next month. But it’s a formality; in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, her elevation to the Senate is all but assured.” Hey, if Tina Brown says so, than it must be true.

Even if you do not support any of the candidates whose name will be on the ballot, show your support for democracy and the election process. Go vote, and write in your name or turn in a blank ballot. We need elections, not elevations.