Census 2010 and Dallas, Texas

Recently, Dallas Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Pauline Medrano was named Vice Chair to the National 2010 Census Committee.

Please take a look at this link.

In Dallas, and in every other city, town, hamlet and rural location, taking part in the census is critical to our democracy and to the well-being of our communities.

Consider just how census data is used:

--Decision making at all levels of government.

--Drawing federal, state, and local legislative districts.

--Attracting new businesses to state and local areas.

--Distributing billions in federal funds and even more in state funds.

--Forecasting future transportation needs for all segments of the population.

--Planning for hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and the location of other health services.

--Forecasting future housing needs for all segments of the population.

--Directing funds for services for people in poverty.

--Designing public safety strategies.

--Development of rural areas.

--Analyzing local trends.

--Estimating the number of people displaced by natural disasters.

--Developing assistance programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives.

--Creating maps to speed emergency services to households in need of assistance.

--Delivering goods and services to local markets.

--Designing facilities for people with disabilities, the elderly, or children.

--Planning future government services.

--Planning investments and evaluating financial risk.

--Publishing economic and statistical reports about the United States and its people.

--Facilitating scientific research.

--Developing “intelligent” maps for government and business.

--Providing proof of age, relationship, or residence certificates provided by the Census Bureau.

--Distributing medical research.

--Reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives.

--Planning and researching for media as backup for news stories.

--Providing evidence in litigation involving land use, voting rights, and equal opportunity.

--Drawing school district boundaries.

--Planning budgets for government at all levels.

--Spotting trends in the economic well-being of the nation.

--Planning for public transportation services.

--Planning health and educational services for people with disabilities.

--Establishing fair market rents and enforcing fair lending practices.

--Directing services to children and adults with limited English language proficiency.

--Planning urban land use.

--Planning outreach strategies.

--Understanding labor supply.

--Assessing the potential for spread of communicable diseases.

--Analyzing military potential.

--Making business decisions.

--Understanding consumer needs.

--Planning for congregations.

--Locating factory sites and distribution centers.

--Distributing catalogs and developing direct mail pieces.

--Setting a standard for creating both public and private sector surveys.

--Evaluating programs in different geographic areas.

--Providing genealogical research.

--Planning for school projects.

--Developing adult education programs.

--Researching historical subject areas.

--Determining areas eligible for housing assistance and rehabilitation loans.

Plan now to get involved by promoting the census in your sphere of influence.

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Grassroots Democracy

We live at a time when the dominant culture, including the media, elected officials, and corporate advertisers, herald individualism. The stories we hear in school focus on the heroes and heroines of history, rarely on the collective power of organized groups. Although it is true that good stories rely on strong characters, promoting individuals helps those in power to play down the stories of how mass movements, collective struggle, and community-based campaigns have moved resources, shifted power, and improved the lives of many people. (p. xiv).

When you set out to build the power of a community – particularly a politically marginalized community – you are explicit. You propose that the community can build power in addition to winning on issues, and you are strategic about establishing a team of community leaders who can drive the process of doing so on their own behalf. You include training and political education and get agreements on fundamental goals and principles for how the community will use collective action as a way of achieving solutions to its problems. … You take action. You do not wait for people to come to you. You find partners, go out, listen, learn, and build a network of public relationships. (p. 1).

From Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos (foreword by Peter Edelman). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Josey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint--2007).

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Arguments

To hear a thoughtful sermon by Dr. John Fiedler on the benefits of civil argument and the downside of the uncivil variety, click here and then select "What Are We Arguing About?"

Once you are there you can fast forward to 30:14 to the start of the message.

Born Again Americans

I've always appreciated Norman Lear. His creation of "All in the Family" brought Archie Bunker into every American home at a time when we needed to come to grips with the divisions that plagued our nation.

In the early days of my marriage, my father-in-law referred to me as "meat head." I wore the tag with pride!

Lear's latest interest has him encouraging the creation and growth of a new brand of patriotism. You can view and experience the website of Lear's Born Again American here. Be sure and pay attention to the words of Keith Carradine's moving song.

The focus is not new. It is a restoration movement actually--a call backward to the Constitution with a vision forward to working out the implications of those values in our new day in the United States.

The theme song that you'll hear and see performed when you visit the site is moving lyrically and visually. It is a call to each of us to work hard to restore justice, to ensure equity and fairness and to promote authentic opportunity in the beloved community that can be America. I find a healthy balance here of moral challenge and hope. I know in the communities where I word, the message and the movement is needed. Staying involved in the national political and policy process is a must for all of us.

This has been an emotional weekend for me.

I watched and listened all day yesterday as President-Elect Obama and his family took the same journey as President Lincoln down the railway line from Philadelphia to Washington, DC in preparation for the historic events awaiting them and us all on Tuesday.

What moments.

Tomorrow we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How fitting that our new President will be sworn in the following day.

We stand on the brink of a new era as a nation. The challenges will be incredibly difficult. Never before have the values of community been more important, never more essential.

The notion of being a "born again American" may sound strange to you. But at a time like this time, nothing will be more important to us as a people than a recovery of the hopes, visions and values of our constitutional democracy. Standing together--diverse, strong, determined, welcoming and committed to freedom--we will continue to overcome.

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14-1, inclusion and a lesson in Dallas history

If you want to read an informed, brief summary of the history of the advancement of civil rights and participatory democracy in Dallas, Texas, you must read the Op-Ed piece published Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by The Dallas Morning News that my dear friend and partner, Rev. Gerald Britt wrote.

Click on the title line above to get to the link.

Gerald has been making a difference in Dallas for a long, long time, and he is still a young man!

Reactions invited.

Share with a friend.


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Bill Moyers' Commencement Speech at SMU

Bill Moyers presented the commencement speech for the Southern Methodist University Class of 2007 on May 19.

The entire speech is more than worth your time. You can find it at: http://www.smu.edu/newsinfo/stories/
commencementday2007.asp.

What follows is just a section of his poignant commentary on life in the USA today, a big part of the world every graduate will face as they move out with their lives.
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Let me see if I can say it a different way. A moment ago, when the reunion class of 1957 stood up to be recognized, I was taken back half a century to my first year at the University of Texas. In my mind’s eye I saw Gilbert McAlister – “Dr. Mac” – pacing back and forth in his introductory class to anthropology. He had spent his years as a graduate student among the Apache Indians on the plains of Texas. He said he learned from them the meaning of reciprocity. In the Apache tongue, he told us, the word for grandfather was the same as the word for grandson. Generations were linked together by mutual obligation. Through the years, he went on; we human beings have advanced more from collaboration than competition. For all the chest-thumping about rugged individuals and self-made men, it was the imperative and ethic of cooperation that forged America. Laissez faire – “Leave me alone” – didn’t work. We had to move from the philosophy of “Live and let live” to “Live and help live.” You see, civilization is not a natural act. Civilization is a veneer of civility stretched across primal human appetites. Like democracy, civilization has to be willed, practiced, and constantly repaired, or society becomes a war of all against all.

Think it over: On one side of this city of Dallas people pay $69 for a margarita and on the other side of town the homeless scrounge for scraps in garbage cans. What would be the civilized response to such a disparity?

Think it over: In 1960 the gap in wealth between the top 20% of our country and the bottom 20% was thirty fold. Now it is 75 fold. Stock prices and productivity are up, and CEO salaries are soaring, but ordinary workers aren’t sharing in the profits they helped generate. Their incomes aren’t keeping up with costs. More Americans live in poverty – 37 million, including 12 million children. Twelve million children! Despite extraordinary wealth at the top, America’s last among the highly developed countries in each of seven measures of inequality.

Our GDP outperforms every country in the world except Luxembourg. But among industrialized nations we are at the bottom in functional literacy and dead last in combating poverty. Meanwhile, regular Americans are working longer and harder than workers in any other industrial nation, but it’s harder and harder for them to figure out how to make ends meet…how to send the kids to college…and how to hold on securely in their old age. If we’re all in this together, what’s a civilized response to these disparities?

America’s a broken promise. America needs fixing. . . .

Some of the elders among you will remember that Martin Luther King made a powerful speech here at SMU in 1966. It’s been said – this part of the story may be apocryphal – that when he was asked why he chose SMU instead of one of the all-black colleges, Dr. King replied: “Because if John Wesley were around he’d be standing right here with me.” Martin Luther King said at SMU: “…The challenge in the days ahead is to work passionately and unrelentingly…to make justice a reality for all people.” One of your own graduates – the Reverend Michael Waters – got it right a few years ago when he was a student here: “Martin Luther King became the symbol not only of the civil rights movement but of America itself: A symbol of a land of freedom where people of all races, creeds, and nationalities could live together as a Beloved Community.”

Not as an empire. Or a superpower. Not a place where the strong take what they can and the weak what they must. But a Beloved Community. It’s the core of civilization, the crux of democracy, and a profound religious truth.

But don’t go searching for the Beloved Community on a map. It’s not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds – our hearts and minds – or not at all.

Voting as Lotto

Low-income workers and minorities vote in much lower numbers than higher paid, white citizens. People who are working hard to make ends meet and pay the bills often don't find their way to the polls on election days.

Beyond this, there is a cynicism among the poor about the viability and efficacy of the entire political process. A "what difference will my vote make?" attitude seems more prevalent among lower wage earners than among those who earn more for their work.

In Dallas it is certainly true that persons living in lower income neighborhoods don't turn out to vote like people who reside in more upscale parts of our city. I know that is true in my state house district. People living west of Central Expressway in the Park Cities part of our district vote at a 75 to 90% clip in every election. On my side of the district we do good to turn out 40% in even the most active precincts.

Now comes Mark Osterloh with one of the "bright ideas" for 2006, at least as determined by the annual review conducted by The New York Times Magazine (Rebecca Skloot, page 34, December 10, 2006).

Here's how his idea would work.

Each person who casts a vote would also be entered into a special state lottery in Osterloh's home state, Arizona. At the conclusion of each state election one person would be selected to win $1 million. The payout would come from the state's unclaimed lottery fund.

The odds are interesting when compared to other state and regional games of chance. If 2 million Arizonans vote, as they did in 2004, in the next national election, the odds of winning would be 1 in 2 million, as compared to 1 in 146 million for recent Powerball games!

With what remained in the unclaimed gaming fund, Osterloh would award 1,700 prizes of $1,000 each. Such a move increases the odds of winning something to 1 in 2,500.

Osterloh believes that odds like these, especially for low-income workers, would increase voter turnout, while costing voters nothing.

Critics say that the idea "degrades democracy."

Osterloh is amused.

"Excuse me?" he says. "Getting all those people to vote will degrade democracy? Isn't that the definition of democracy?"

Osterloh is so serious about his idea that he got it on the ballot in Arizona last November.

Voters didn't approve it.

As the Times Magazine notes, "It is quite possible. . .that his target audience didn't show up to vote."

What do you think?