November 4, 2010

The Election is Over -- On to the Next Election

Next Up -- What to do About Our City

By Stan Shapiro

Here’s the great thing about democracy. One election ends badly, but the next one is just around the corner. That means another chance for the people to speak is always on its way.

In Philly, it’s the Democratic primary for City Council and the Mayor that’s coming soon, on May 17 to be exact. Coming off a spectacle of an election in which selfishness, greed and fear were lauded and rewarded, hopefully Philadelphia can send out a different message in the Spring....

What Should Philly Democrats Say?

What would that message look like? We don’t know for sure, but we're confident that progressives will find a way to craft it, soon and inclusively. We do have some early thoughts.

First, Philadelphia Democrats have to make one thing clear: this is not a time for miserly budgets. With corporations holding onto billions of dollars of assets and refusing to spend them on creating jobs for people desperately in need of them, government cannot pile on the downtrodden by cutting back. There is enough austerity out there; Democrats have to relieve the misery, not cut the services that can relieve it.

City Council can raise more tax revenue from out of state corporations to pay for services if it restructures the Business Privilege Tax. A bill to restructure the BPT is now on the Council floor. But Council has no current intention of using that vehicle to raise enough money even from out of state corporations that sell goods and services into Philadelphia -- to restore any of the City services that have been cut back over the past two years. That is wrong. We will be looking for candidates who reject the notion that cutbacks never need to be reversed, and, indeed, that one round of service cuts should simply foretell the next.

We Need Jobs

Next, Philadelphia needs jobs. There will be no jobs program coming from Harrisburg or Washington over the next two years. That doesn’t justify Philadelphia’s Mayor or City Council sitting back and throwing up their hands at the idea of creating work. Budget shuffling will need to be done to free up funds, but funds must be found to create public service work for people faced with losing their homes and families due to the ravages of unemployment. And we’re not talking about make-work. We all know that there’s plenty of fixing and mending and people-helping that needs to be done in Philly. We must find a way to get people to work doing it.

Jails should be for Criminals, Not the Poor

Next, the criminal justice system needs to be completely restructured, with an emphasis on finding alternatives to incarceration at the top of the to-do list. Our jails simply have no room to hold all those accused of nonviolent and drug related crimes for weeks and months simply due to their poverty. If you’re well off, you get off. If you’re poor, you sit and stew, guilty or not. As pointed out above, we have uses for the money that’s now spent on our jail em first, ask questions later justice system.

And we Must Build Community

Finally, we must consider how do we organize ourselves to promote this or any other progressive agenda. It’s been shown over and over again that the community that speaks loudest is the one whose person to person, family to family ties are the strongest. We will have ideas about how to build those ties as we get closer to primary day in the Spring.

Stay tuned. We hope to have opportunities for all of you to pitch in with your thoughts and ideas in the coming days and weeks. In the meanwhile, remember, let there be no despair. The time for us all to speak collectively again about who we are and what we stand for, will soon be here again.

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