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Terry's avatar

The Equity Commission is such an embarrassment. I'm glad you gave the context about Jane Grover. She was always a smart and sensible voice on the council so I was curious how she would react to this stunt. If it were me, I probably wouldn't have attended or just left when Ruggie gave her legal opinion, but Jane is much more polite than I am.

The Commission is indicative of the vacuous performative politics that plagues this town.

A few months ago they were discussing the lack of affordable housing and you have a member of the commission loudly decrying the situation who at the same time is renting out a house in the 2nd ward for $650 a night on AirBnB!

The Fifth Ward school is the biggest and most reckless example of performative politics at all costs--lets bankrupt the district and degrade the educational experiences for kids to build a White Elephant whilst we are in a state of enrollment decline. Why are we doing it? To restore some nostaligic vision for a small number of people who don't like that their neighborhood has become more diverse.

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Tom Hayden's avatar

I will say ... given that we had 130 public comments yesterday that there is clearly some need to have a platform where community members can discuss these issues in a public setting using their real names that is not a Facebook group within the bounds that come with rules of order, etc.

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Svetlana's avatar

I still don’t understand the logical connection between having an opinion and needing a government-sponsored forum to express it. Church? Synagogue? Street corner? Your (or my) dining room? Sure! But government….

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Tom Hayden's avatar

Yeah, I don't know the answer to this. I agree that I don't think it's local government responsibility but I also don't know what it should be. Our federal representatives have no interest in being part of these discussions and we're all just left to yelling into the void/facebook. Just more of an observation from me than a suggestion, I guess. Something to think about.

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