May 2008

  • Diverse Workplaces Work, Why Not Neighborhoods?

    To continue the collective efficacy discussion, I want to throw the work of Professor Scott Page, author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies, into the mix. While Robert Putnam’s more recent…

  • N.Y. Legislators: Don’t Sleep on Foreclosure Prevention

    It seems surreal, or like a nasty joke. How can Americans be so far into the foreclosure crisis and still not see any significant foreclosure prevention legislation from their lawmakers? As The New York Times commented last week: In responding…

  • A Good-News Economic Story for the Disabilities Community

    Lost in the endless political campaign and Iraq news is an emerging success story. The Real Economic Impact Tour conceived and sponsored by the National Disability Institute has seen a 10-fold increase in the past three years in assisting people…

  • You’ve Seen One Hussein, You’ve Seen ‘Em All

    I’ve been thinking about democracy a lot lately. It happens every time there’s an election. Every time I start getting bombarded by mailers for candidates and propositions. Every time I realize how susceptible people are to propaganda. Week before last,…

  • Leadership Afraid to Cling to Immigration

    While lots of us fired up the grill over the Memorial Day weekend, a story came out Saturday in The New York Times about the previous week’s prosecution of 270 undocumented workers, arrested May 12 at an Iowa meat-packing plant.…

  • Golf Course Wars in Benton Harbor

    Golf courses have been lightning rods and symbols for class struggle around the world, as in Morelos, Mexico, where a golf course sucking up the town of Tepoztlan as water led to deadly violent clashes in 1996. Golf courses are…

  • Summertime, and the Budget’s Sleazy

    Is it ever an inappropriate time to reflect on the idealistic 1960s? Energy was cheap, America’s role as a global hegemon was secure, Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater left conservatism seemingly dead in the water (does anyone else see…

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    Do New Yorkers Need an Emerald City?

    The Christian Science Monitor reported a few days ago on the Bloomberg administration’s plans to redevelop the Willets Point industrial area of Queens (just east of Shea Stadium) as a mixed-income development with 5,500 units of housing and a new…

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    “Let’s Refuel America”

    According to a report in The New York Times Monday, auto sales are down by more than a million compared to 2007’s 16.2 million cars sold. Auto lenders are less likely to lend to customers with less-than-stellar credit, and home…

  • “Nation’s Poorest 1% Now Controls …..

    Two-Thirds Of U.S. Soda Can Wealth, so reads a headline from the latest issue of The Onion, my favorite source of political commentary. The article goes on to talk about the growing and possibly unbridgeable gap between the rich and…

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    Countrywide CEO’s Cyberblunder

    We hear it a lot these days, the Dante Alighieri quote that declares that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality. And of course we’re all down with…

  • Putnam’s “E Pluribus Unum”: Part of the Story

    A few weeks ago I had the chance to spend a weekend on a tiny island in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay that has just enough room for 700 year-round residents. Maybe it was because I knew a few people there, but…

  • Countrywide Is Not On Your Side

    Angelo Mozilo, the Countrywide financial chairman who is arguably the poster child for the current subprime meltdown, just learned the difference between e-mail reply and forward. A beleaguered Countrywide customer, Daniel Bailey, Jr. had sent Mozilo (and various other Countrywide…

  • Putting Our Heads Together vs. Knocking Heads

    Read Rob McKay and Ori Brafman’s recent post at Huffington Post and you’re likely to feel your pulse race over the transformative possibilities of grass-roots action. “Progressives are forming more and more community circles. They are beginning to organize around…

  • Measuring the Millennials’ Ups and Downs

    It’s still the most popular show on television, but “American Idol” has seen its ratings plummet this season. While a record number of Idolators texted or phoned in their votes in last night’s epic David-off—the season finale contest between finalists…

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    Sustainability’s Bottom Line

    Are our presidential candidates (yes, including vice presidential candidate Clinton) thinking about sustainable initiatives for environmental improvement, city vitality, and sound fiscal order? Or is the sustainability movement still regarded by the mainstream as a pie-in-the-sky set of objectives advanced…

  • Collective Efficacy—Who’s in the Collective?

    Kari Lydersen’s post on the challenges of mixed-income communities yesterday reminded me of some things I’d wanted to bring up regarding the conversation Alice was starting on collective efficacy. I do think the end goal of mixed-income communities is a…

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    Signs of the End Times

    The end of attack politics, that is. Could it be? Ask Mark McKinnon, who resigned from the McCain campaign Tuesday, fulfilling a vow he’d made last year not to help John McCain in a battle against Barack Obama. more

  • Divided We Subsidize Agribusiness

    Does anyone else feel a little like we’ve entered the Twilight Zone? Today we have Bush—yes, that same Bush whose gall in blatantly supporting corporate and wealthy interests over those of regular citizens has seemed to know no limits—vetoing the…

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    Thrown into the Mix

    “Mixed income” is the hot phrase in housing developments and neighborhoods across the country these days. It is the bedrock of the Hope VI plan for redevelopment of public housing nationwide. And it is the goal of private developers and…

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