The AP is reporting that a community in Pheonix is asking their Church to stop feeding the homeless. I shit you not.
Residents say the homeless create blight and pose a danger to them, pointing to the case of a homeless felon caught with child pornography in the neighborhood. A complaint prompted city officials to order the year-old breakfast halted, saying it violated zoning laws.
snip
"We're glad in the city that they're trying to help out," says Patrick Ravenstein, the city's area manager for neighborhood preservation. "However, the type of help they're giving can only be conducted in a certain zoning district."
snip
Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the Nashville-based First Amendment Center, said such spats have become quite common across the country since Congress passed the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act in 2000.
The law gives religious groups a high level of protection in zoning cases and forces cities to show there's a compelling reason, such as public safety, to restrict them.
So years of providing food for the homeless and one person's disgusting actions will be used as "proof" that there is a legitimate public safety concern having poor people bussed into the community.
There is another question raised here, and that is the right to assemble. While receiving food from the church, homeless folks also get a plate-full of sermons. I would imagine the Church has a very legitimate argument that it directly restricts their right to assemble and practice religion.
UPDATE: We are currently planning our efforts to cover the Breitbartocalypse as the destruction happens, equipped with in-the-field reporters and our very own Senior Breitbartocalypseologist. Check back at 10:45pm EST on Monday, March 15th, just 15 minutes before it is expected to hit, for our first round of coverage.
If you do not know what I am talking about, take a gander at this, then take a minute to pick yourself up off the floor after a good laugh:
You have to hand to the folks of conservativeland. We progressives have hope, the conservative movement has pipe dreams.
Oh yeah, we are talking grassroots communications. There has been an explosion recently in the availability of free and low cost tools to do almost anything online.
Our panelists today are Jason Lefkowitz, Shireen Mitchell, and Ben Kallos. They will cover everything from simple blog platforms to domain and hosting services. If your group/campaign/company has not explored the free tools available to them, do it now. Some will work for you, and some will not. But the internet is one of the only places where you do not get what you pay for. You can spend tons of money online for the most useless technology in the world while spending nothing for some of the most innovative and creative technology.
On Saturday, we were excited to join Yvette Lewis and Grow the Hope at the Millenium Bible Fellowship Church for an event on economic empowerment. Last time we joined them, it was quite a powerful event, so we came with high expectations. As usual, Yvette did not disappoint. We will have plenty of coverage of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and the various workshops to help folks with resume writing and basic financial counseling. Today though, we are just releasing our interview with Michelle Singletary and her speech.
Part 1 of 6
Part 2 of 6
Part 3 of 6
Part 4 of 6
Part 5 of 6
Part 6 of 6
Mrs. Singletary gave an impassioned speech about individual fiscal responsibility, stuffed with plenty of comedy and personal stories. And there was plenty of tough love to go around. In this economy, it is more important than ever to hear the truth about money, regardless of how hard it may be to hear.
We got a chance to chat with her for a few minutes after the event and got a little advice for folks that are thinking about trying the Financial Fast she details in her book, The Power to Prosper: 21 Days to Financial Freedom. We send a big thanks to Mrs. Singletary for sparing some time for us:
(I'll be getting a copy of her book and trying out the financial fast, I'll share with you all some of results of that along the way)
I do love math sometimes, although I worked real hard to pass BC Calc in high school so that I would specifically be able to avoid taking any math classes in college. You just cannot argue with numbers, as hard as Karl Rove may try.
Well, today my good friend, Jeremy Koulish of The Carrots And Sticks Project, emailed me the charts below, put out by the House Budget Committee. They detail the economic progress that has been made under the leadership of President Obama. Consider OFA's recovery chart just a preview, here is the full story of our economy:
(I have some great progressive friends that are part of the Coffee Party, and I have huge respect for a lot of the folks leading the efforts, they are brilliant and inspiring people, so I hope none of them take offense to this editorial.)
I get it. It is clever. And I completely agree with the message that the Coffee Party is putting out:
We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans.
If you follow them, you will also hear a lot about civility in public discourse, clearly a response to the childish antics of teabaggers that we witnessed last summer during the health care town halls.
I am totally in agreement with them on this, so what are my qualms with the Coffee Party? It is indicative of what I have always liked least about the progressive movement: we are far too often responding, always reacting and never acting.
There is no shred of doubt in anyone's mind that the Coffee Party is a response to the Tea Party. It shouts it in the name. "Hey look at me! I'm not like that radical group of whackos that seem to get wall-to-wall coverage!" And it shouts it again when you look at the description. "I swear, I'm like, totally, nothing like those freakin' teabaggers! Really!"
When Republicans controlled Congress and the White House it made some sense to be responding. They led the agenda and the best we could hope for was to fight it. Yet with full control we are still stuck there far too much. We propose health care reform yet spend the first several months of the debate responding to accusations of death panels and rationing.
I have grown tired of responding. And while I cannot make claims that I will stop any time soon, I certainly will not be joining any Responders Anonymous. I will not join a group that would never exist were it not for the teabaggers. I will not dignify their nuttiness. We have more potential to act and not react than we have had prior to this in my lifetime, so I apologize to my progressive friends if I find little excitement in the Coffee Party. I do, however, find excitement in the thought of civil discourse and using collective will to shape a government that works for the people. Yet I see little hope of that happening when we cannot stop giving these radicals attention, let alone naming groups after them.
This is not treating the teabaggers for what they are, a rather frustrated group representing a very tiny segment of the nation. They absolutely do not deserve the coverage they get. And part of that is our responsibility. We should not be treating them with respect. And frankly, when you make a group that is so blatantly and solely a response to the teabaggers, you elevate them.
We should be treating the teabaggers as what they are, the whacko base of the Republican party and nothing more. These are the racists, radical anti-Democrats, and conspiracy nuts of the right and nothing more. These are the same folks who protested the counting of ballots in Florida and nothing more:
These are the same folks we have been stuck responding to for far too long. And while we will surely be obligated to respond for the rest of time, can we not work to shift the balance our way a little? Can we not use what little influence we have to give more attention to our ideas and less to theirs?
Posts
