(Photo: With my Buddy Jo Hogan at a party. Hogan left, always informs me about the culture keys a gringo like me should avoid even in this English speaking country.)

On the other hand, I am the foreigner here, too. I am the gringo. I am the guy with the funny sounding accent and, strange clothing. As a Black American I am also a bit of an exotic here. A rarity and, a curiosity. At the same time, I feel immensely proud that Barack Obama, a fellow Black American man, is the president-elect. And these people called Australians, Black and white alike, seem genuinely happy that he is the new guy coming into power, as well. Yet, while we speak a common language and, while guys like Andrew has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about guys like me, I could not help but think about what some new friends over here, two native Aussie women, Jo and Lori, told me about this "Typical Yank" thing, that hangs in the air with their countrymen.

A thing, I should point out, that may not be immediately recognizable, even for a very un-typical Yank, who calls New York City home. It is coming around I have to say, slowly but, surely.

I leave you with this piece that appeared in THE AGE newspaper about that very thing. Read on.....

See you back here again soon. Same time. Same Channel.

AUSSIES AND AMERICANS: ONE VIEW

Typical Yanks. They've pinched our prejudices
by Tom Hyland

TYPICAL Yank. The thought might have crossed the mind of the guard at the Shrine of Remembrance as he lectured the elderly American tourist with his camera, plaid jacket and slacks.
The old Yank was my father's cousin, one of dozens Dad had in the US, the children of Irish uncles who migrated early last century and settled in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
His name was John J. Hyland, and when he arrived in Melbourne on a brief holiday, Dad asked me to show him around. So we went to the shrine, where he had a conversation with the guard, a man with a slouch hat and, it seemed, a kitbag full of prejudices, including a defensive resentment of Americans.

Typical Aussie.

Cousin John listened to the guard's account of Australian military history, then quietly revealed that he had served in the Second World War with the US Army Air Force in Burma. "Yanks weren't in Burma," the guard snapped.

I hoped cousin John didn't understand what this boofhead was saying. But he understood all right, and insisted that indeed the Yanks were in Burma, that he was one of them, and that he'd flown in support of a legendary British officer named Colonel Orde Wingate. "Never happened," insisted the guard. "Yanks weren't in Burma."

I can't remember how the conversation ended, but I ushered cousin John and his wife Carol away, telling them there was much more to see. Twenty years on, I bristle with shame and anger as I recall the encounter.

I never saw Dad's cousin again. He died in 1998. The following year his name was inscribed in the USAF Special Operations Force Hall of Fame at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. He had been in Burma, not that I'd doubted it and not that he'd boasted about it.

Typical Yank.

His wife Carol, a school teacher for almost 50 years, died only last month, aged 95. Her obituary in The Salem News reported that at one time she'd taught in Arlington, Virginia. And there was this: "All her life, she had a knack for hobnobbing with the famous, and while in Virginia often played golf with Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel … She also introduced many of her students to Robert's brother, president John F. Kennedy, when he was still a senator representing Massachusetts."

Typical Yanks, my distant relatives. Descendants of migrants, community-minded, ordinary, decent, totally unremarkable.

And they'd "hobnobbed" with the Kennedys, the grandchildren of migrants, including one who became president when the idea of a Catholic in the White House was almost as unthinkable as, well, an African-American in the White House.

(Below an image Aussies Surely don't Want)

From the shrine, let's move to Kirribilli House, where Kevin Rudd interrupted a party one night last month to take a call from George W. Bush. Out of this call a yarn was spun and spooled out to a journalist. The gist of the story is that Rudd had to persuade Bush that, to deal with the global financial crisis, he had to call together the G20 group of nations, to which Bush responded: "What's the G20?"

Let's accept Rudd's denial that he leaked this conversation, and White House denials that Bush said the words attributed to him. Instead, ponder the purpose of the person who decided to spread the story.

It shows Rudd putting an American in his place — a profoundly ignorant American, who obviously didn't know what he was talking about. Typical Yank.

When it comes to Americans, we are well-balanced, with chips on both shoulders. Left and right, we resent them because we depend on them, because we're junior alliance partners. We mock them because they, unlike us, are boastful, brash, crass, and ignorant of the world. We accuse them of racism. Yet we consume their culture, movies, TV, books, music, fashions and ideas. We ape their accents. Our anti-American left adopts their styles of protest.

So now that we don't have George W. Bush to kick around anymore, how do we sustain our consoling prejudices? It's going to be tricky, with an African-American in the White House. He's educated, articulate, inspiring. Maybe he's tough, too, this son of multi-racial parents with family and personal links scattered across the globe. Typical Yank.

Adding to the City’s Coffers, One Ticket at a Time

Yana Paskova for The New York Times

A couple approach a tow truck hauling away their car on West 14th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, the most-ticketed block in the city.

By JO CRAVEN McGINTY and RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: November 27, 2008

The most-ticketed block in New York City is 14th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

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A Traffic Agent Writes Himself a Record, but Few Drivers Are Cheering (November 28, 2008)

Jacob Silberberg for The New York Times

A traffic enforcement agent at work with a handheld ticketing device in Brooklyn. The devices scan data from a car’s registration sticker.

Enlarge This Image

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Tickets pile up on a car that was apparently abandoned near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The number of parking tickets issued citywide has surged 42 percent since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office.

The day after Thanksgiving was the most-ticketed day of the last fiscal year.

And, no, Virginia, there is no five-minute grace period.

These facts are among the findings of an analysis by The New York Times of how the city enforces its parking laws. While the city has worked to explain the tactics it uses to curtail crime, its strategy in issuing parking summonses remains a poorly understood area of law enforcement and one that, even when done fairly, makes people cringe.

But through interviews with experts and a review of nearly 10 million parking tickets issued last year, a portrait emerges of how the city, increasingly starved for revenue, has energetically raised money and moved traffic by increasing the number and cost of tickets it issues each year.

Since Mr. Bloomberg took office, the city has hired 793 more traffic enforcement agents and doubled some penalties, collecting 64 percent more in fines in fiscal year 2008 than it did in 2002. During the last fiscal year, it collected more than $624 million in parking fines — more than the city spends to run the Department of Transportation.

City officials say their parking enforcement is not driven by revenue goals. But City Councilman Vincent J. Gentile said his district in southwest Brooklyn has been so overrun by traffic agents that it is hard to conclude otherwise.

“It’s a growing recognition that the city is using parking enforcement as a means of revenue generation, not as a means of traffic management or safety management,” he said.

The data show that the day after Thanksgiving has become a special time for more than retailers. On Nov. 23, 2007, enforcement agents papered the city with more than 41,000 citations, almost double the daily average.

Part of the increase is explained by ramped-up enforcement associated with the need to keep traffic moving during the holiday season. But it is also a day when drivers forget that parking regulations remain in force. Half of the tickets written that day last year were for failing to move cars in accordance with alternate side of the street rules.

“A lot of people think it’s a holiday,” said Andre T. Strothers, a former agent who set a record that day last year when he issued 227 tickets in a five-hour streak across Brooklyn. “They stay up late the night before.”

The surge of ticket writing has swept away some of the civilities of life in New York, like the five-minute grace period that was once part of the city’s official enforcement policy. Police officials say there is no longer a grace period, just a suggestion to agents that they use common sense, but many motorists still believe one exists. At least 276,000 drivers found out sorrowfully last year that the tradition is dwindling; they were ticketed for violating alternate-side parking rules within five minutes of the time the rule went into effect.

In fact, a full 10 percent of the tickets for alternate-side parking violations were issued within two minutes of the time that the rule went into effect. Of those, some 28,000, or 2 percent of the total, were issued exactly on the hour.

“I walked out at 11 o’clock on the dot one night, and my car was already being ticketed and towed,” said Gus Markatos, who manages the Donut Pub on West 14th Street. “There’s no courtesy anymore.”

Traffic agents may be emboldened in part by the precision of their equipment. The city has furnished all traffic enforcement agents with handheld computers that spit out more tickets in less time and with fewer errors than handwritten tickets.

The device scans a vehicle’s registration sticker for some information and the agent, using a stylus, fills in the rest.

Police officials say that the time on the instruments is synchronized with the atomic clock when they are plugged into a docking station at the end of the day. But a television reporter for Fox 5 News, John Deutzman, was able to establish, on one day this year, that some of the devices were more than two minutes fast. And Sanford F. Young, a lawyer, successfully fought a ticket by questioning that level of accuracy.

“I parked a car on First Avenue at 7:02 p.m.,” Mr. Young recalled. “I knew that from my cellphone. I was going to dinner at Petaluma. When I got back, the ticket was on my windshield, and it was for 6:59 p.m. They claimed I parked somewhere between one second and 59 seconds too soon. Come on — give me a break!”

The judge in the case sided with Mr. Young, and the ticket was dismissed.

Police officials said the time on the ticketing devices is now coordinated with more than one source.

The city says the vigor of its ticketing corps has not been a result of requiring agents to fill quotas. That word is never even whispered, agents say, and officials say that productivity is measured not by the number of tickets written, but by “individual job performance.”

Ross Sandler, who was commissioner of transportation from 1986 to 1990, said, “What we always said was we never had a quota, but we always had a goal.”

To achieve those goals, the parking czars within the Transportation Division of the Police Department have adopted several strategies.

Deputy Inspector Michael W. Pilecki, who oversees the 2,529 traffic agents, about half of whom write tickets, says the core mission is not revenue, but keeping traffic moving and reducing the number and severity of accidents.

“What we ask our agents to do when they’re out in the field is to be particularly aware of those types of violations that really impede the flow of traffic and increase the likelihood of accidents,” he said. “We want them to focus on things such as double parking. Vehicles parked in bus stops. No standing. Obstructing a traffic lane. Obstructing a bus lane. Those are the biggies.”

Though more than 30 different agencies can issue parking tickets, about 80 percent are written by traffic agents, who work out of 12 traffic commands across the city. Five are in Manhattan, where most tickets are written.

Traffic agents patrol congested areas on foot, covering about 10 to 15 blocks a day. Less busy areas are patrolled by car. And agents are deployed primarily from early morning to midevening, with a small crew working overnight.

“We call them the nighthawks,” Mr. Pilecki said. “They address conditions around bars and clubs and dance clubs and things of that nature.”

The most prevalent reasons for tickets were expired meters and alternate-side violations, which together accounted for nearly a third of all parking summonses last year.

The agents get their marching orders at roll call, when they are dispatched according to a monthly patrol guide with input from supervisors who canvass the city daily. Additional instructions come from weekly TrafficStat meetings, which are modeled after CompStat, the data-tracking program the city uses to fight crime. Michael J. Scagnelli, the Police Department’s chief of transportation, leads the meetings.

“Chief Scagnelli will say, ‘Let’s not forget why we’re all here: We’re here to move traffic, move traffic, move traffic, reduce injuries, move traffic, move traffic, move traffic, reduce accidents, move traffic, move traffic, move traffic, reduce fatalities, move traffic, move traffic, move traffic,’ ” Mr. Pilecki said.

With these mechanisms, combined with community complaints, Mr. Pilecki and his commanders adjust postings as parking problems are corrected or as new hot spots emerge.

One focal area for enforcement last year was 14th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, which was the most-ticketed block in the city. It is one of the places in the city where parking is forbidden after 11 p.m.

City officials say the rules are set to discourage clubgoers drawn to an area’s night spots, and many nights on 14th Street, the tow trucks show up with precision. Tow truck drivers call it “disco towing.”

“They sit right there and wait for people to park,” said Carlos Martinez, a bouncer at Honey, a restaurant and bar on 14th Street, pointing to a truck. “Once people park, they just tow their car.”

Nothing about such a process makes the traffic enforcement agent a particularly popular figure, and agents are increasingly the targets of verbal and physical attacks.

“Every day, you go out there naked — without a gun — in the back of your mind is, ‘Is this my day?’ ” said Robert Cassar, the former president of Local 1182 of the Communications Workers of America, which represents most agents.

Critics of the city’s enforcement policies say that some agents, under pressure to produce numbers, write bogus summonses by, for example, “dumping” them repeatedly on abandoned cars. City officials say such instances are isolated. But the data do present some curious situations, like the 267 tickets, all unpaid, issued to a 1989 Nissan that was parked near the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the past 17 months. Most of the tickets were issued by a police officer, although several traffic agents had also left summonses on the car. The fines now total $32,964.

City marshals and sheriffs are authorized to tow cars with at least $350 in delinquent parking tickets. But this car was tagged repeatedly for the same three or four violations, even after it had two flat tires and no visible license plate and was parked about two blocks from the Brooklyn Tow Pound.

After The Times began asking about the car, it was towed away by the police.

The city’s aggressiveness in ticketing has not gone unnoticed in neighborhoods like Riverdale, in the Bronx, where a dozen residents claim a traffic agent issued them phony double-parking tickets. Some said they were out of the country at the time the tickets were written. James Huntley, the current president of Local 1182, defended the agent and said she remained on duty. The police would not comment.

Councilman Gentile held his own forum in Bensonhurst several weeks ago to air complaints from residents of his district.

“We have traffic agents who get bused in by van each and every day to these communities,” he said. “They’re deployed like an army regiment.”

Police officials said that vans are routinely used to transport agents, and a police captain who attended the meeting defended the ticketing.

But Ron Galluccio, a retired Navy veteran who walks with a cane, told the gathering that the agents had overreacted. He got one ticket, he said, while dropping off his wife in a bus zone. Another summons was for parking in a spot that he said should have been permitted because he has a handicapped license plate. And a third occurred last winter when he double-parked during a snowstorm because another vehicle was blocking his driveway.

“I said, ‘Look, I can’t get in my own driveway,’ ” Mr. Galluccio said at the meeting. “I said, ‘I don’t deserve a summons.’ ”

His argument had no effect, he said. “I had to pay the ticket.”

Joel Stonington contributed reporting and Carolyn Wilder contributed research.

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Senate 'Gang of 3' have the courage of their acquittals

Despite past differences among them, the so-called "Gang of Three" Democrats who have withheld support for Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) as majority leader share at least one other thing - clean criminal records. And this hasn't always been for lack of effort by prosecutors.

Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) was cleared decades ago of charges he and others tried to induce bribes from a developer. Pedro Espada Jr. (D-Bronx) was acquitted in 2000 on charges he illegally used funds from a health plan for the poor to pay campaign expenses.

And last year it was reported that Ruben Diaz Sr. (D-Bronx) and his son, Assemb. Ruben Diaz Jr., drew FBI probers' attention. Sen. Diaz has said this was because he'd made political enemies. No charges have been filed.

Some background reading on Espada, from Robbins in the Voice a while ago, is here. Also, Liz has WFP's Bertha Lewis with a line about Kruger "palling around with Republican terrorists," in talking about the prospect of Kruger trying for the housing committee, here.

At the end of the tape below is a primary-season reaction by Espada and company to a maverick blogger, Rafael Martinez-Alequin, whom he says he wishes to teach some "manners." Assaults aren't a great way to fend off criminal charges.

Hiram Monserrate: Creating A New Politics

Hiram Monserrate and Mike Schenkler

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

Last week, Hiram Monserrate was the man of the hour.

He set the standard by which City Council members will be judged in having input over redevelopment projects in their districts.

Championing low income and affordable housing, the rights of property owners, Monserrate stood up to the Mayor and his high-power Willets Point redevelopment effort, his Queens front headed by Claire Shulman, and prevailed over what appeared to be an unyielding City Hall onslaught.
For months, they painted Monserrate as the renegade, the self-serving politico who was preventing Willets Point, the blighted area north of Shea Stadium dominated by junkyards and chop shops, from becoming a true neighborhood and contributing to the local economy.

The redevelopment was needed to clean up the polluted soil and connect it to city water and sewer lines. Then there were housing units, roads, a hotel, a convention center, a neighborhood which would grow from the formerly polluted iron triangle.

And Hiram Monserrate said no. He said no without a greater commitment to affordable and low income housing and he said no to the City’s use of the threat of eminent domain to bully landowners from their property.

Sure the $3 billion plan made sense and will ultimately return to the city many times its investment. But did it make sense to the local community? To Monserrate’s constituents and local property owners?

Monserrate didn’t think so and stood his ground. And the Willets Point redevelopment forces tried to paint him as the villain. Months of lobbying, bullying, threats couldn’t make Monserrate blink.

For the second time this year, Monserrate, a former Marine and NY Police Officer, stared the power structure down and we watched the other side blink. Monserrate is going to the State Senate after bullying the Queens Democratic organization and incumbent State Senator John Sabini into handing over Sabini’s Senate seat to avoid doing battle with him.

And now, in Willets Point, the city blinked and compromised, Hiram won, and it appears the community was served. The revamped plan includes an 850-seat school and a mandatory level of permanent affordable housing — 35 percent of the 5,500 planned units must be affordable, with 250 units exclusively for low income earners. Compromises were also reached on the use of eminent domain.

More importantly, Hiram elevated himself and the role of the Councilman in controlling the development process in his community.

“The end game here was always to ensure that we had a project and a plan that was fair to all parties,” he said, “I think we’ve achieved that.”

Hiram, never the Council consensus builder, marshaled the council members and demonstrated all land use fights do not get decided by the Mayor.

Yes, one little Councilman stood up. And whatever baggage he may have carried previously, he is not so little anymore.

We should all watch him in the State Senate.

Pollster: Bloomberg 'Hasn't Closed The Door' on '09 Competition

Here's Marist pollster Lee Miringoff parsing today's poll on Mayor Bloomberg, 2009 and whether the mayor has been damaged by his push to change term limits and seek re-election.

Miringoff notes that Bloomberg is still ahead of his prospective Democratic challengers, but not by as much as in previous polls.

He's leading his strongest likely opponent, Rep. Anthony Weiner, by 14 percentage points, but gets just 51 percent of the vote with 37 percent for Weiner and 12 percent undecided.

"Firty-one is about as slim a majority as you can have, at this point, as an incumbent. So that is we think troublesome for the Bloomberg administration in terms of re-election prospects. He's ahead, but he certainly is far away from closing the door on that race."


Bloomberg is, of course, not the only New York elected official in an executive post whose popularity suffered a hit lately. In a Marist poll released earlier this week, Gov. David Paterson saw his approval rating drop six points, from 57 percent lasrt month to 51 percent this month.

The question, as Miringoff sees it, is whether Bloomberg gets blamed for the pain he will have to inflict in the face of the economic downturn. The same case holds true for Paterson, who has been warning of major fiscal distress and tried - unsuccessfuly - to get legislative leaders to make a second round of mid-year budget cuts earlier this week.


Marist Pollster Lee Miringoff On Bloomberg's Numbers from Elizabeth Benjamin on Vimeo.
By Elizabeth Benjamin on November 21, 2008


Marist Pollster Lee Miringoff On Bloomberg's Numbers from Elizabeth Benjamin on Vimeo.

Cheney Indictment Moves Forward In South Texas

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN | November 19, 2008 09:25 PM E |

Compare 09:25 PM EST09:23 PM EST09:10 PM EST08:58 PM EST07:25 PM EST06:51 PM EST and 09:25 PM EST09:23 PM EST09:10 PM EST08:58 PM EST07:25 PM EST06:51 PM EST versions

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U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, left, and Vice President Dick Cheney are shown in this 2006 file photo at the White House. Cheney and Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, file)

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others named in indictments accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a federal detention center.

Cheney, Gonzales and the others will not be arrested, and do not need to appear in person at the arraignment, Presiding Judge Manuel Banales said.

In the latest bizarre development in the case, the lame-duck prosecutor who won the indictments was a no-show in court Wednesday. The judge ordered Texas Rangers to go to Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra's house, check on his well-being and order him to court on Friday.

Half of the eight high-profile indictments returned Monday by a Willacy County grand jury are tied to privately run federal detention centers in the sparsely populated South Texas county. The other half target judges and special prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of Guerra.

One indictment charges Cheney and Gonzales with engaging in organized criminal activity. It alleges that the men neglected federal prisoners and are responsible for assaults in the facilities.

The grand jury accused Cheney of a conflict of interest because of his influence over the county's federal immigrant detention center and his substantial holdings in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies.

The indictment accuses Gonzales of stopping an investigation into abuses at the federal detention center.

An attorney for the private prison operator The GEO Group filed motions accusing Guerra of "prosecutorial vindictiveness."

Was the Lie of "Consistent Leadership" Old Media's Last Stand?

By Gary Tilzer

"It is a function of government and politicians to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience." - Murray Kempton

A couple of weeks ago New York City’s term limits law was extended legislatively by the New York City Council and Mayor Bloomberg based upon the rationale that the City needs consistent leadership to get us through the coming economic crisis. The editorial boards of all the city’s daily newspapers made this exact case to their readers and our elected officials echoed their argument. Council Speaker Quinn said “given the level of economic tumult that exists, I have decided to change my position [opposing the extension of term limits] because I believe the potential of consistent leadership by this council and this mayor would be in the best interest of the city during these hard economic times."

But just eight days after the extension of term limits became law the City Council’s professed agenda of economic cooperation with the Mayor was all but abandoned. Expressing outrage at the Mayor’s fiscal stewardship, the Council blocked Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to rescind the City’s promised $400 homeowner property tax rebate without the Council's approval.

All of a sudden, the Council had forgotten about the Mayor’s economic expertise, which they asserted was so important to save our City from financial meltdown. What changed in eight days? Now that the City Council has successfully overruled two public refenda and the 89 percent of New Yorkers who opposed a change to the term limits law, they no longer have to worry about maintaining false pretenses to keep their jobs. Speaker Quinn, Bloomberg’s staunchest ally for extending term limits, and Councilman James Vacca, who was one of the 29 Council Members who voted “yes” on term limits, have already gone so far as to protest the Mayor’s plan to restructure the City’s senior centers to improve efficiency and save money.

Are the editorial boards of the City’s three dailies suddenly crying foul? Not a whisper.

Bloggers Got the Real Story When It Counted.

“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what news was and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore.”- Rupert Murdoch

Only the city’s bloggers like Your www.freepress.blogspot.com, Pardon Me For Asking, The Brooklyn Optimist, The Daily Gotham, Queens Crap, and Washington Square Park reported to their readers during the term limits debate that the Council’s argument for continuity of leadership to save the city’s economy was nothing more than public relations spin to cover the Council’s blatant power grab for an additional term in office. At the same time these citizen journalists across the City were reporting the real facts, the Mayor was meeting with the publishers of the three major dailies to coordinate a cover story for his support of extending term limits. Working in concert, the dailies provided the Mayor with the rationalization to disregard Bloomberg’s previous public statement that “it would be an absolute disgrace to go around the public will” to extend term limits.

Rafael Martínez-Alequín, publisher of Your Free Press.blogspot.com, wrote on his blog that it was a sad day for democracy when the Council passed the term limits extension. He openly expressed anger at those that voted for its passage, echoing the spirit of Former Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin. As Breslin said, “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns that exposed the wrongdoing in government.”

It is bloggers like Martínez-Alequín who are keeping journalism alive and vital in New York City. They are following in the footsteps of newspaper greats like Joseph Pulitzer of the long lost New York World, whose legendary name is ascribed to journalism’s greatest honor. Pulitzer’s passion-filled editorial pages were the true heart of the World. There he crusaded against the robber barons and oil and rail companies, exposed corrupt politicians and brutal policemen, and advocated for decent working hours and humane living conditions for the poor.

That’s just what Martínez-Alequín has dedicated his life to trying to do. And that’s just what has gotten Mayor Bloomberg so mad at him.

Norman Siegel Sues on Behalf of All Bloggers

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” - Thomas Jefferson

New York City blogger journalist Rafael Martínez-Alequín and his lawyer, civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, recently filed a lawsuit to protect the First Amendment Constitutional Rights of bloggers in a case which has the potential to dramatically change journalism in New York City and the rest of the county. Siegel is challenging the New York City Police Department's policies for issuing press credentials. (For somewhat arcane reasons having to do with access to crime scenes, the NYPD issues all City media credentials.) Martínez-Alequín was a credentialed member of New York's working press since the early 1990s, but in 2007, his yearly press pass application was suddenly denied.

The NYPD officials decided that Martínez-Alequín and two other independent journalists weren't entitled to a press card because they didn't regularly cover breaking news for a professional news organization. The other two journalists, Robert E. Smith, publisher of The Guardian Chronicle and David Wallis, founder and CEO of Featurewell.com, are also plaintiffs in Siegel’s case.

Siegel’s lawsuit argues that the current system of issuing press passes amounts to privileging those who work for large corporations. Besides unfairly excluding citizen journalists like Martinez-Alequin, the problem with this system is that those who are credentialed often find themselves in situations that pose a certain conflict of interest between reporting the facts and not offending the corporate policies of the media giants for whom they work. As a result, in favoring corporate-employed reporters over citizen journalists and independent bloggers, the City’s press credentialing system effectively chooses to license primarily staid, cautious reporting - with a strong bent toward corporate coddling – over the dynamic, unadulterated articles of journalists like Martínez-Alequín.

Given the high stakes for citizen journalists like Martínez-Alequín, Siegel’s lawsuit is now seen by the blogging community as the epicenter of its battle against the old media for equal legitimacy of the New Media; the New Media being defined as essentially anything published online that is not affiliated with a major corporate news entity.

Martínez Alequín, an independent gadfly who has reported out of City Hall for the last two decades, is a modern-day Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine was one of the first journalists to use media as a weapon against the entrenched power structure controlled by the King of England. He is often credited as the journalist that propelled the American colonies to break free of British rule.

It now falls on the shoulders of Norman Siegel, who always seem to be around when the rights of New Yorkers need to be protected, to ensure that Internet bloggers in New York have the same rights as Thomas Paine. The city’s fast-emerging community of bloggers is quickly growing its readership simply by providing the type of truthful analysis that is hard to find in the City’s dailies. In so doing, New York’s blogosphere has established itself as the City’s premiere forum to debate controversial opinions, encourage participation in local politics, and further the belief that people should control their own lives.

“It’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and the country is in great danger.” - Hermann Goring, at the Nuremberg trials

New York has always been at the epic center of the fight for a free press

John Peter Zenger was editor of the New York Weekly Journal in 1734 when he was jailed by British colonial authorities on charges of seditious libel. He had criticized the corrupt administration of New York's governor, William Cosby. Zenger's subsequent trial and acquittal is considered a landmark case in the history of freedom of the press, paving the way for the American Revolution.

On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a documentary history tracing the ultimately doomed involvement of the United States in a grinding war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia. They demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance. The Government sought and won a court order restraining further publication after three articles had appeared. On June 30, 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of 9 to 0, that publication could resume.

Paine and Zenger have now passed the Freedom of the Press touch to a new generation. The success of President Elect Obama’s Internet new technologies has given us the opportunity to democratize journalism like our founding fathers envisioned.

The Founding Father of Blogging: Thomas Paine

Siegel should start his case in court by filing a brief entitled, “Thomas Paine is the moral forefather of Internet blogging.” The example Paine set for the need of freedom of the press to ensure our Constitutional liberties, and the sacrifices he made to preserve the integrity of his work, is being resuscitated by a means that hadn't existed or even been imagined in his day - the blinking cursors, clacking keyboards, hissing modems, and bits and bytes of another revolution: the digital one. If Paine's legacy was seemingly derailed by the Nixon Administration’s FCC changes that have led to increased corporate ownership and consolidation of the media, the Internet has brought Paine’s vision back to life.

The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaining a competition of ideas and you do not do that by silencing” Max Lerner, former NY Post columnist

Early in this century when New York City had dozens of daily newspapers engaged in fierce competition it would not have been possible for elected officials to extend their terms in office for their own self interests. William Randolph Hearst’s conservative New York Journal, Dorothy Shifts’ liberal New York Post, the original New York Sun’s crusading muck breaking journalist and the other great passion filled paper of that time would make politicians scared of even dreaming about the scam they pulled on us.

It not just the term limits swindle. Lobbyist and the Robber Barons they work for have destroyed our economy and have left millions without proper medical care. Only on the Internet could you read in when the Glass- Steagall Act was repealed in 1999 of the dangers that action fueled by campaign donations, posed to the nation’s banking and housing industry. Only on the blogs could you hear the voice of opposition to Bush’s request to the Senate for permission to start the war in Iraq, during the congressional debate to grant him those rights.

Paine’s mark is now nearly invisible in the old corporate media culture, but his soul is woven through the Internet’s New Media, his fingerprints on every Web site, his voice in every online thread. That spirit was part of the political transformation he envisioned when he wrote about change 250 years before Barack Obama ever uttered the word. "We have it in our power to begin the world over again," said Paine. Through media, he believed, "we see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used.”

If we let the City of New York deny bloggers like Rafael Martínez-Alequín one of the most essential journalistic tools – a press pass – we consent to accept a media that is not truly free. Bloggers, citizen journalists, and all of the readers of their important work must band together and raise their voices in support of Norman Siegel and Rafael Martínez-Alequín. Their fight belongs to all of us who believe that citizen journalists can help change our government and make ours a more just society.

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BLACK POLS IN EUROPE

OBAMA’S LEAD GIVES HOPE TO BLACK EUROPEANS

Oct 28 (IPS) – European society may be ready for a Black candidate, says Christiane Taubira, a Member of Parliament from French Guyana who ran in France's 2002 presidential election and won 2.32 percent of the vote.

"I think, very sincerely, given my own experience in 2002, that French society is ready to enjoy the beautiful adventure that Obama has offered to Americans," Taubira said in an interview in Paris.

"That's not to say that there's no racism in France. There is racism, there are racists and there's discrimination based on racial prejudice. There is that, but I think that France is ready for this adventure."

The only black woman in France's current cabinet, human rights minister Rama Yade, agreed.

"The French themselves are ready, “she told Le Figaro this week, “but our political system would stop an Obama appearing… "Not because he's black, but because he comes from a background of recent immigration. Here, integration is much more difficult."

Jean-Leonard Touadi, who was in 2008 elected Italy's first and only black MP, said he thought the European left's love of Obama was based more on wanting end to Republican rule than on enthusiasm for racial integration.

Asked whether he could imagine a European Obama, the Congolese-born 49-year-old said: "Going on how many blacks are currently in political parties here, we're going to have to wait a while.

A recent poll showed French voters prefer Obama against his Republican rival John McCain by a factor of eight to one, Germans, Spaniards and Italians by seven to one and the British by five to one.

But this apparent enthusiasm for a candidate running for office across the Atlantic, is not yet matched by any great success for minority politicians on the Old Continent.

In multicultural Britain, where eight percent of the population is from an ethnic minority, only 15 out of 645 or 2.3 percent of members of parliament, are people of color

A Plan to Change NYC from ChangeNYC.Org

From www.changenyc.org

New York City needs change and ChangeNYC.Org has a plan to ensure we get the kind of change real New Yorkers want. It involves the Internet, grassroots organizing, the wisdom of the Obama campaign, and, above all, you, your family, your friends, and every other proud Democrat who loves our City.

This is one of the most exciting times in our nation’s history! Barack Obama’s landslide victory has paved the way for community organizing and political involvement in a way never before possible.

Please take the time to read this plan and learn how we can all work together to bring the change to our City that we have begun to bring to our nation.

Why NYC’s Democratic Leaders Abandoned NYC’s Democrats

In New York City, there is only one political party with any real power: the Democratic Party. It controls almost every single elected office in the five boroughs and sets the City’s policies practically unopposed. As Democrats, you would think that would make for an ideal government. But, as we all know, New York City’s government is far from perfect.

The problem is that the comfort of one-party rule has let our City’s Democratic leaders settle into a pattern of indifference to the people’s concerns, dangerous inaction, and, all too often, corruption.

Our City’s elected officials and political bosses deliberately keep our government dysfunctional to preserve and advance their own interests. The clearest example of this self-serving agenda is the City Council’s recent vote to extend term limits. New Yorkers had voted twice in the past fifteen years to have term limits, and there was no reason to believe we had changed our minds. In fact, just two days before the Council voted to treat themselves to another four years in office, 89 percent of New Yorkers polled said that they opposed the Council’s power grab.

The Council voted against us anyway.

How “The Incumbent Protection Society” Denies New Yorkers Change

The reason our Council Members felt at ease ignoring the public was they knew the system is rigged to keep our elected officials in office. No matter how angry they make us, over 95 percent of incumbents get reelected.

In fact, in the last two City Council elections in 2003 and 2005 only one single councilmember was voted out of office in the five boroughs, and that was only because he was censured by an ethics investigation for harassment and a host of other accusations. Even then, it took a former Councilman unseated in 2001 by the City's term limit laws to beat him.

Why do we keep getting stuck with the same elected officials? Because the deck is stacked against candidates who dare to challenge incumbents. Heard of Congressional pork barrel projects? Well, New York’s elected officials receive hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in “discretionary” money – known as “member items” – that they use to buy support for their reelection campaigns or to threaten organizations that if they don’t play ball they’ll wind up stripped of their government funding.

At the same time, the petitioning system – how candidates get on the ballot so you can vote for them – is carefully designed by our incumbent elected officials to help them knock their opponents off the ballot, so you never even get the choice to vote for anyone but the same old crowd. The few opponents who do survive the petitioning process are drawn into costly legal battles by the incumbents to drain their challengers’ campaigns of resources and time.

They also get to plaster their names on garbage cans, government buildings, and community developments to ensure they have superior name recognition – all too often the decisive factor in local races where only the most attentive voters know who the candidates are and the majority of people cast their vote simply for the name they’ve heard the most.

There are many other advantages that keep the same old elected officials coming back election after election, like media favoritism and the ability for incumbents to send out taxpayer-funded campaign literature that they pretend is a community report, but to list all their tricks would take days.

The bottom line is that without term limits incumbents stay in office for as long as they like. The only way they leave is if they are elected or appointed to higher office, retire, die, or go to prison. Far too often in New York City politics, the last of these is what finally brings our incumbents’ careers to an end.

Barack Obama and Why Now is the Time for Change

The Obama campaign didn’t just succeed in rallying a nation behind an extraordinary candidate, it proved that democracy is once again alive and well in America. By using the power of the Internet and grassroots organizing with unprecedented intelligence and purpose, the Obama campaign gave America what we were craving: choice.

For once, we had the choice of a candidate who wasn’t a Washington insider, who wasn’t already owned by lobbyists and special interests, who wasn’t the heir to a family fortune or a dynasty of elected officials. Given real choice for the first time in many of our lives, the people responded with awe-inspiring excitement, gratitude, and dedication. Millions of donors gave what little they could afford, understanding that no sacrifice was too great to buy back our country’s founding principles. Tens of thousands gave up days, weeks, months of their lives to volunteer.

Everyone told someone that it wasn’t too late to change America if we all worked together.

ChangeNYC.Org is here to change New York City, just like Barack Obama emerged out of nowhere to change America. We know that in order for the Obama Administration to succeed in achieving its great countywide aims, every city, every neighborhood and every block in this country must do its part.

And the greatest city in America – our City – must work harder than any place to ensure that the change we need is the change we accomplish.

We have a long way to go. Before we can fully restore the people’s faith in our local government, we must renew our voice in our own communities and reconnect to the decision-making process that shapes our everyday lives.

Thankfully, on the national level, Barack Obama has already shown us the way.

How the Internet Will Change NYC

Just like the Internet has transformed the media, shopping, and business, now it can be used to transform our government. The Obama campaign proved that the Internet can increase the participation of ordinary people in their government, democratize campaign fundraising, build a political organization run by regular citizens, and educate the public about the many important issues that affect our everyday lives.

Up until now, politics as usual has thrived in New York City by hiding its true face from New Yorkers. Under a thin guise of transparency, the majority of decisions really affecting our political system are still made in backroom deals between all-powerful party leaders – just like they were in the infamous days of Tammany Hall. Government contracts, judgeships, influential appointments, candidate nominations – all are divvied up by these powerbrokers behind closed doors.

These party bosses aren’t the politicians pushing their way in front of the television cameras. They’re the guys who understand that real power resides behind the scenes, so that the media and the public don’t think to ask too many questions. They’re the players who get together behind closed doors and pick the Council Speaker, the second most powerful person in New York City after the Mayor.

But now with the Internet, we finally have the tool to expose these shadowy figures. We also have the instrument to make the critical decisions these bosses have made in our name for decades. The key to this transformation is Internet voting.

Choice is Change: The Power of Internet Elections

The more choices voters have, the stronger our democracy. That’s the spirit of the government our Founding Fathers set up. The record-breaking turnout in this year’s Democratic presidential primary was in large part a result of the fact that voters felt that for the first time in recent memory they had real choice at the polls. As an old-time New York politician said, if one candidate gets 51 percent of the vote and the other gets 49 percent, it’s the people who win.

It’s uncompetitive elections that keep our government from moving forward into the future. We have elected officials in New York City who have been in power since the early 1970s, who haven’t once faced a serious opponent since they got into office. What’s the incentive for these politicians to keep doing better?

If more people participated in voting and saw how limited their choices really are, then there would be more interest in the candidates and a greater motivation for more concerned citizens to run for office. There’s no better way to open the system and get more people involved than Internet elections.

Many people are suspicious whether Internet elections are safe from manipulation. These are the same fears that many of us had about our credit card information when we first started shopping online. While protections against identity theft have become very sophisticated in the private sector, we must still be careful to test the security of online voting technology in the early stages of its implementation.

This testing is already being performed on a national level. In 2004, Americans living abroad were allowed to vote on the Web in the general election for President for the first time in our nation’s history. In 2008, the Democratic Party extended this right to Americans living abroad to vote in the presidential primary. Democrats who registered to vote online received an encrypted email with a 10-digit ballot number and an eight-digit PIN. Of course, experts admit no online voting system is 100 percent secure, but Americans who cast their ballots for President in Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, know that no voting system – paper or electronic – is 100 percent tamper-proof. What is clear, say many Americans living abroad, is that they wouldn’t have bothered voting, if they didn’t have the option to do so from the hassle-free convenience of their home or a nearby Internet café.

Everyone who believes in the people’s right to participate in their government and determine their own destiny must join the effort to accomplish this goal. Especially in a City filled with so many busy people, it makes sense to give New Yorkers an option to vote where they don’t have to stand on line or miss work. They could even do so from their office desk in ten minutes or less on their lunch hour.

The best way for New York City’s Democratic Party to reinvigorate its members is to embrace this 21st Century approach to democratic action that the national party has already begun.

To make sure Internet voting works, Democrats should start by electing our party officials online: county committee members, district leaders, even the county leader. Right now, the majority of these officials don’t have to worry about elections, because they’re never challenged by an opponent. But even in the rare case that they are, county committee and district leader are positions that inspire so few Democrats to come out to the polls that they wind up decided by only a few hundred votes – and in some cases, a few dozen.

The all-powerful county leaders are currently selected exclusively by party insiders at each borough’s biennial meeting, thus ensuring that the existing power structure stays firmly intact year after year.

Without a doubt, these county leaders will heatedly object to a shift toward online voting. They will attack the move as impractical and expensive, despite the fact that according to an article in Wired Magazine, the online system Democrats used to vote abroad for President cost “under $100,000”.

But the real reason the party bosses will object is that the Democratic leadership sustains itself on the disillusionment, isolation, and inconvenience of its members. The truth is that when you vote, the people win. When you stay home, the bosses win.

The current system of elections creates weak representation. But it even debilitates our good elected officials, because when so few people feel connected to City government our politicians lack the powerful public mandate necessary to achieve great change. Thousands of more New Yorkers voting online would give our best leaders the momentum they need to push back against the special interests, lobbyists, and elected officials who refuse to act for the public good.

Online elections will also allow voters to make smarter choices at the polls. Rather than checking off a slate of unfamiliar names, voters will be able to instantly Google websites, interviews, blogs, and newspaper endorsements that will give them much greater insight into the candidates’ merits. For once, the majority of us will have the tools to make an educated choice in races we haven’t bothered to study before Election Day.

To bring real change to New York City’s Democratic Party, ChangeNYC.Org will spearhead this movement toward online elections by funding initiatives and supporting candidates who will fight for voter participation and transparency. And we will use the strength of our numbers to pressure the party bosses to let the rest of us Democrats finally move our party and the City into the 21st Century.

After a few years of successfully testing online party elections, ChangeNYC.Org will campaign to extend this innovative voting system to all City and State elections.

A Great Way to Improve Voting For Those Who Don’t Surf the Web

Online voting will not replace traditional voting, it will enhance it. But for seniors who don’t know how to the use the Internet, or New Yorkers who don’t have easy access to a computer, there is another important way ChangeNYC.Org aims to open up the political process to increase public participation.

New York has one of the most restrictive systems of voting in the country. That’s the main reason why New York ranked an embarrassing 43rd out of the 50 states in voter turnout in 2006.

Almost every other state in the nation makes our voting laws look primitive. There is no good reason why in a busy city like New York we can’t allow early voting. In states like Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico it is estimated that as many as 50 percent of voters cast their ballots before this past Election Day. Residents of Virginia, Kentucky, and Georgia had more than a week and a half to vote prior to November 4th. To encourage early voting in California, a suburb of Los Angeles even set up drive-thru voting machines.

ChangeNYC.Org will challenge our elected officials and any candidate running for office in New York City to demonstrate that they are really serious about encouraging New Yorkers to vote. We’ll make sure they make it clear to our members how they stand on early voting, and then pressure them to turn their public position into legislative action.

How You Can Finally Attend That Community Meeting You Never Have Time For

Thousands of New Yorkers log on to read their favorite neighborhood blog each day, but only a handful of us make it to the local community meetings that decide what goes on in our neighborhood. That’s because so few of us, despite our best intentions, have time to attend these meeting.

Mayor John Lindsay once dreamed of setting up “little City Halls” in storefronts all around New York, so that voters in all five boroughs would have grassroots access to city government. Now, thanks to the Internet, we can make his dream a reality.

In 2009, ChangeNYC.Org will host a series of Internet town halls and ask all New Yorkers how they think we should revise the City Charter and improve our local governments. We will unify the recommendations made by the public and present them to the Mayor, the City Council, and the media, so for once they can see what the people really think and what we really want done to improve our neighborhoods and the City as a whole.

How Community Boards Could Really Represent the Community

In conjunction with this neighborhood-building initiative, ChangeNYC.Org will petition Mayor Bloomberg to include in the next Charter Revision Commission a proposal to reorganize the City’s Community Boards to allow Internet membership, online discussion, and Internet voting on issues that come before the Board.

Right now, the way the system is set up, it is very difficult for New Yorkers to oppose anything the government does that they don’t like. But if the people had a real say in their Community Boards they would finally have the resource to express the needs of their neighborhoods and empower their grassroots initiatives. Right now, neighborhood groups fighting overdevelopment have no real ally in their battles to preserve their communities. ChangeNYC.Org wants to return the City’s Community Boards to the community, so that New Yorkers will have a tool to fight back against their government when their government is refusing to respect and represent their will.

Opening our City government onto the Internet isn’t just about voting. It’s about empowering the people to break down the barriers that keep us apart, so we can create communities that work together to decide what is best for our City.

And we don’t need to stop at Community Boards! We can upgrade precinct councils, neighborhood advisory boards, and parents’ school associations to operate online too.

This is how New York City can reconnect the disconnected and revitalize our democracy. Just like BarackObama.com brought millions of Americans into the political process, bringing our City government and Democratic Party online can restore the transformative power of choice to the people of New York.

A Brief History of Change in NYC

In the past 60 years, only two people have truly dared to reform New York City politics. In both instances, their motivations were not so much altruistic, as they were fueled by personal ambition and attempts to gain greater power over their party.

The first wave of reform came under Carmine De Sapio, the last head of Tammany Hall. In 1954, De Sapio campaigned against Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., the late President’s son, eventually persuading Roosevelt to abandon his run for Governor. Eleanor Roosevelt, the former first lady and Franklin’s mother, blamed De Sapio for derailing her son’s political ambitions and vowed revenge. Using her enormous political influence, over the next seven years Eleanor Roosevelt battled to oust De Sapio from his post as Manhattan’s Democratic county leader. Eventually, even De Sapio’s old allies, like Mayor Robert F. Wagner, decided it politically expedient to denounce him, and De Sapio’s leadership came to an end in 1961 along with the dynasty of Tammany Hall.

What is truly interesting, though, is that in the course of his battle with Roosevelt it was actually De Sapio who became the reformer. De Sapio calculated that his best chance to stay in control of his party was to recast himself as the real reformer and open up the Democratic Party to as many people as possible. It was De Sapio who first welcomed women, African-Americans, and Latinos into New York City’s Democratic Party. He named the first Puerto Rican district leader in Manhattan, Anthony Mendez, and pushed Hulan Jack as New York City’s first African-American borough president.

De Sapio also fought for rent control and lowering the voting age to 18. He even changed the Democratic Party’s rules to allow for the direct elections of district leaders. Prior to De Sapio’s reform, district leaders were selected by the county committee and the county leader in the same kind of shady backroom deals in which the county leaders are still chosen today.

Of course, De Sapio was also a crook – he was convicted of conspiracy and bribery in 1969 and ended up serving two years in federal prison – but he was a crook who, unlike today’s Democratic leaders, was sensitive to what the people wanted from their elected officials. At the end of the day, De Sapio realized that as long as there were two candidates, he still needed the people to come out to vote for his choice.

The party bosses of today have succeeded in undoing De Sapio’s reforms by bringing back the days of Boss Tweed and making sure that the public really only has one choice in elections. That way it doesn’t matter what the people want. They only get what their incumbents and the party leaders decide to give them.

Robert Kennedy, the Reformer

After sweeping away the Republican incumbent Kenneth B. Keating in 1964, New York’s newly-elected Senator, Robert F. Kennedy, set his sights on claiming control of the State legislature. Throughout his campaign for Senate, Kennedy had been roundly attacked as a carpetbagger – like Hillary Clinton 36 years later – and now with his victory was intent upon consolidating New York’s power structure around him, so there wouldn’t be any more irritating dissent.

Kennedy tried to clean up Manhattan’s Surrogate Court, which to this day remains a piggy bank for party patronage, calling the Court "a political toll booth exacting tribute from widows and orphans." He took aim at cronyism in Albany and fought to strengthen home rule of New York City. He also proposed non-partisan redistricting, a move aimed at eliminating one of the main tools party leaders use to keep their incumbents in office for decades.

Fiercely battled by a faction of the Democratic machine, Kennedy’s attempts to take over Albany were ultimately repulsed with the help of the Republicans, who were as deeply invested in maintaining the status quo as the old-line Democrats. Rather than engaging in further infighting, Kennedy, instead, took his movement for reform to the national level, using his Senate seat to advocate for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, waging anti-poverty campaigns, and eventually running for President in 1968.

Had Kennedy not been assassinated, who knows how he might have changed New York politics forever?

A New Day, A New Formula

In Kennedy’s absence, politics in New York has continued as backward as ever for decades now – if not more so. Even Tammany Hall seems a step up from the blatant disregard for the public with which today’s party bosses control the City.

''You're living in the past if you think you can still force the public to swallow any candidate you nominate,'' Carmine De Sapio told Life magazine in 1955. ''This is a new day and we need a new formula. We have to offer the public what it wants – a slate of reputable officials who will give them good government and after they're in office we'll follow through to see that the people get what we promised them.”

Unfortunately for New Yorkers, this formula has never been discovered.

Until now.

ChangeNYC.Org’s plan to change New York is an effort to localize the success of Barack Obama and the millions of supporters who joined him on his historic journey to the White House. Our goal is to welcome every New Yorker back into the political process and unify all of us behind a movement for transparency and true representative democracy. We want to give the people of New York City real choice so they can decide for themselves who the best leaders to represent them will be and how they want those leaders to govern.

This is the most exciting time in American politics in generations. Now that all of us have achieved something so special in electing President Obama, it is absolutely essential that we keep up this amazing momentum for change. If we all just pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and give up pushing for a better nation, we will never accomplish the change we so desperately need.

This change begins at home. We all have to get involved to make sure President Obama’s reforms don’t bypass New York. By bringing the spirit and the innovation that made the Obama campaign such a success to local politics, we can change New York City the same way we have all worked together to change America.

The failed government of our parents’ and grandparents’ New York City need not be the government of our children and our grandchildren. By coming together as one City, we can finally change New York once and for all.

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