Wednesday, June 30, 2004
All these candidates...
I went to a 'candidates collaborative' meeting last night. 20 some candidates trying to figure out how to run a forum/debate within the district. I'm glad that there's a sense of partnership amongst some of the candidates, and that they understand the need to get out and meet people in the community... but it was frustrating to sit there and watch them try and figure out how to micromanage one meeting.
And they intend to run a whole bunch of them before November!
The second half of the meeting revolved around an upcoming "anti-violence summit", which it took me a while to understand is a couple of the candidate's idea.. at first I thought they were partnering up with National Night Out, August 3rd, or working with some of the current programs in place... but no.
They're out to 're-invent the wheel' because as they are beginning to get involved in community politics, they're finding out about the safety concerns of our neighborhoods. It's great and everything that they want to be involved and 'learn from the public' about what communities need, but come on! Aren't you supposed to have an inkling about these issues BEFORE you become a candidate?
I guess this wouldn't bug me so much if they were meshing their project into some of the existing programs and meetings... But they're going to create (and of course I'll participate) some 'summit' meeting that will attempt to bring everyone out from the Public Defenders office to the School Superintendent... all of which, if it's done well, will result in ideas to create and support (surprise!) the sort of community based work that's already going on in our community. Here's another
It sure would be nice if we didn't just run after newspaper headlines like lemmings, but instead focused on supporting the great work that's already going on. If more people (oh, say 20 or 30 from around the district... where could we find a list, hm?) got committed and involved and started talking to other people in their community about the safety, policing, and crime issues, we might actually get somewhere.
Again, I'm glad these folks want to start to get involved.
