The Redstar Perspective

UPDATE (10:55 p.m.): Apparently I’m not the only one quitting. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson is expected to resign tomorrow. Wahoo!!! Ok, now I’m done. Read on.

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It’s with some sadness and some relief that I write this post: I will not be blogging anymore at The Redstar Perspective. This has been a difficult decision, and I’m still unsure what it means. I may retire this site entirely, or I may resurrect it at an unknown point in the future. I’m still sorting out the details.

Here’s what led to this decision, somewhat in order of importance:

a) It’s time to write my dissertation. After meeting with two of my advisors recently, it’s clear I can finish this thing in the next 12 to 15 months and GRADUATE!!! Especially since the New Year, but generally speaking, blogging has become my primary activity, and an enormous time suck for me. Yes, my stats are SLOWLY growing, and, according to readers, my writing is improving. But, in addition to feeling like I’m losing my way re: the content of this blog (more on that in a minute), I also feel like I’m investing so much time and energy in this blog and not generating the returns I want to get. It’s not ok with me that my readership grows when I discuss the general election, because that’s not my preferred content focus. The hours I’ve been spending on posts about Obama v. Clinton, etc., is distracting me from really focusing on the writing I need to be doing NOW - that is, on issues of social justice, urban recovery and contentious politics in post-Katrina New Orleans. In other words, my dissertation.

b) I no longer feel comfortable blogging without anonymity in the ’sphere. Given where I’m at in my still-emerging career, I’m not ok with folks’ ability to track down my thoughts and opinions on-line.  I regret not blogging anonymously, and any blogging I do in the future will strive for greater anonymity. For someone with deeply personal intellectual interests, the current context of the Democratic primary and the empassioned and often heated on-line discussions of race, racism, gender, sexism and misogyny, privilege and prejudice have left me feeling that the web is an even less safe space to really grapple with these issues. In our splicing and dicing interpretative world, I know my thoughts and perspectives on the primary, on poverty, on my family, etc. are up for grabs for appropriation and re-interpretation. Nonetheless, I plan to remove some of the content from this site, but will leave the rest up for the history books.
c) The RP has run its course. This blog began in part because of my work in New Orleans, because my buddy Jake urged me to blog rather than send long e-mails to everyone I knew about what I was experiencing in the city beginning in January 2006. With this dissertation, my work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is coming to a close. This blog has grown from that original reporting, to cover topics of development, poverty, housing, inequality, activism, cities, and politics more broadly, but all of this has been mixed up with odes to my boyfriend, Grey’s Anatomy, and random (hopefully amusing) stories about my childhood and roots. Frankly, I’m not interested in writing a general interest blog that’s a mix of analysis and journaling. I need the latter for my mental health, but I’ll find another outlet. My priority is to examine urban inequality, especially as it impacts low-income women, households, and neighborhoods. This is what I want to be blogging about (and working on in my lifetime), and I know there’s a niche audience who wants more of this. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for blogging, but I need a new and fresh venue. That will come in time.

So there you have it. Just in time for what would have been the second annual RP History Month. I’m still figuring out how to keep my original New Orleans posts and select others on-line and available. I’ll probably make an announcement about that in the future.

If you’d like to stay in touch, please leave a note in comments. That will give me an e-mail address for you (remember, others can’t see it) if/when I launch another blog.

Thanks to all my readers and champions over the last two years, especially NYC Weboy, and other blogging allies such as Professor Zero, DonnaDarko, Pizza Diavola and Pocochina. It’s been fun, instructive, exhausting and mostly my pleasure. I have become a blogger. Look at me.

Until we meet again, I leave you with some highly recommended reading:

Please read this disturbing, enraging and graphic coverage of the brutal rape and assault of a woman and her kids in Dunbar Village in W. Palm Beach, FL, and how you can let the NAACP know where their legal, PR and activist resources really belong.

A pregnant man challenges people’s ideas about gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights. And shakes up the healthcare profession. (H/t Echidne.) Meanwhile, pregnancy discrimination complaints from women reach record levels.

A refreshing comments thread that asks bloggers to cool it re: their election coverage. Instead of all the collective hyperventilating, let’s all check out Insurgent American’s 35-Point Practical Guide for Action. (H/t Corrente.)

Read Brownfemipower’s WAM conference speech about centering feminist activism around questions of citizenship and the problems this creates for advocating for immigrant women. (How I missed this conference - held at MIT, the irony! - is beyond me.)

Be well, have fun, and stay safe.

UPDATE, 3/13/08: NAGIN WON’T SIGN DEMOLITION PERMIT FOR LAFITTE.  GOOD FOR HIM.  I’M MOVING THIS 3/10/08 POST ABOUT MY RECENT TRIP TO NOLA BACK UP TO THE TOP. 

I am sitting at Sound Cafe in the Marigny in New Orleans.  I have a full disposable digital camera in my free conference bag that contains two very depressing photos of the partially demolished St. Bernard housing projects in Gentilly.  I am drinking iced tea and enjoying the 60-ish degree breeze coming through the open door on my last evening in NOLA.

This post is dedicated to Professor Zero, who recently meme’d me for my “excellent coverage of New Orleans.”  After being gone for six months, I have been out of the loop here, and her shout out and this recent trip are signals of my renewed involvement in recovery through ‘08.

This visit I was in the Marriott on Canal on the edge of the French Quarter.  I have stayed in the Quarter once before, but at a smaller Holiday Inn on the northern (?) / upriver edge of the neighborhood, not quite in the heart of things.  Until I rented a car today, I did not leave the FQ/Central Business District/Warehouse District areas, taking dinner the last two nights in upscale spots like Luke and Herbsaint, and spending yesterday afternoon walking around the Quarter, dropping in and out of clothing boutiques. 

As you might imagine, the trip started to feel like a vacation, not only because of my own activities, but because the streets and Jackson Square and restaurants and my hotel lobby were crowded with tourists.  On this trip I particularly feel the loss of never having visited the city before the storm, because these neighborhoods’ weekend vibrance left me wondering if this was what this area was like prior to Katrina.  I’ll never know.  All I know is that wandering around yesterday, I felt better about my post-professional relationship with the city, meaning that I could see myself returning here just for pleasure after my work here ends.  Disaster recovery work is so emotionally draining that I was not sure I’d ever find peace with the city.  Yesterday I found myself thinking how fortunate I was that I knew well many of New Orleans’s neighborhoods, so that if I did come back for a vacation, I would not be confined to the charming yet touristy FQ.

This morning a colleague picked me up and took me out to the airport to pick up my rental car.  3 minutes up river from my FQ hotel is a multi-block tent city of homeless folks living beneath the highway.  And I was back in the New Orleans I’ve come to know through my work.  My 24 hour vacation was over.

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Yesterday, after my conference ended, I called the M.A.S. and railed against the infantile on-line fighting about the Democratic primary.  More and more bloggers are equally fed up: Parachutec at Firedoglake takes us all to task for our blind idolatry, points out the obvious reality that neither Clinton nor Obama are especially progressive, and concludes with asking us what the issues are on which we’ll hold the incoming President accountable.  Much to his/her and my dismay, virtually no commenter answers the question, whether because they are unable to or uninterested in doing so. 

I can think of several issues, which I had the pleasure of discussing and learning more about in the company of 1,500+ conference attendees here in New Orleans this week.  We were at PolicyLink’s third Regional Equity summit, where major topics included poverty alleviation, affordable housing, racial equity, and social and economic justice.  One of the plenaries was a discussion of keeping race and equity on the political agenda in the ‘08 elections (though the question came up if they were even on the agenda in any meaningful way).  Comprised of Jim Wallis, Maria Echaveste, Patrick Gaspard (EVP of SEIU1199), Antonio Gonzalez, and Dr. Robert K. Ross, and moderated by Tavis Smiley, the panel was fascinating mainly in the candidates’ varying degrees of optimism or pessimism about the possibilities for a progressive agenda, and increasing the political power of ethnic/racial minorities. (With only one woman on the panel, it was the least gender balanced of the 6 I attended, indicative of the gender bias in our political sphere, including who is considered an authority.) 

Wallis, a preacher who is white, mostly focused on the religious commitments to combatting poverty: with church groups returning repeatedly to the Gulf Coast, he described New Orleans as “converting ground” for a generation of “new abolitionists” committed to eradicating global poverty, which they believe is the “new slavery.”  (He also spoke earlier this week to 200 evangelicals in Boston, which I found particularly fascinating.)  The other panelists - Latino/a and African-American - took on the issues of the a) black/brown divide, especially as it concerns economic opportunity and neighborhood violence; b) coalitional possibilities among African-Americans and Latinos, c) tremendous voter participation and mobilization within these two broad ethnic categories; d) rural versus urban poverty; e) economic mobility for immigrants versus native-born minority groups, and f) immigration policy. 

The entire panel urged the audience to continue fostering positive social change at the community level, to continue to build what many consider to be a progressive, grassroots movement for economic and social equity in the 21st century, and to never cease the “forceful agitation” against the fat cats in D.C. in pressing for social change.  Elections, said Gonzalez, are always “opportunities” for change, but nonetheless are “blunt instruments” for making change.  Most of them advocated for small steps versus big solutions, butalso called for, as Dr. Ross put it, a “transformational frame around poverty,” versus our current “transactional frame around services” that incites fear of tax increases and the free riding of the undeserving poor. 

The final session was a feedback forum for attendees to talk about what worked and didn’t at the conference.  A major critique that I also heard during a specific session on reducing poverty was that the topic was effectively framed as a problem exclusive to African-Americans and Latino groups.  An Asian/Pacific Islander (AIPA) immigrant and native born AIPA both publicly called for greater attention to poverty among all racial-ethnic groups, pointing out that between 20-30% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are AIPA, and that in places like Minnesota, for instance, poor whites are a major target of anti-poverty activism.  There was also a call for greater youth mentorship as Civil Rights activists passed the torch to a new generation of leaders, criticism of the absence of tenants’ voices from panels on housing, and making race, class and poverty more explicit topics of concern for progressive researchers. 

As Mayor Otis Johnson of Savannah, GA put it, anti-poverty and development activists need “specific [analyses] of people and place” in order to develop strategies and initiatives that appropriately respond to geographically diverse “pecking order[s] of social mobility” in the U.S. (Mayor Johnson also described his political philosophyas one of “incremental radicalism,” which I think describes mine too.)

Drinking all of this in against the backdrop of our current election, the frivolity of shouting at each other on-line is stark.  Panelists refrained from primary partisanship, and even took pains to consider our options under a future President McCain, sticking to a general discussion of what our “righteous work” (thanks Tavis) looks like going forward under any of the three major candidates.

Because, as Wallis put it, “Washington [D.C.] is the last place movements hit.”  Folks in D.C. think “history moves through them,” but “history does not bear this out.”  It is the grassroots that matter.

So campaign for your candidate, even preach (to the unconverted!) why you believe in them, but really consider what they can do for us, and how they can facilitate or empower our “righteous work.”  We cannot let our energy and passion die on November 5, 2008.  Hell, it’s just another Wednesday in the never ending struggle for positive social change. 

I’m at a conference in New Orleans covering these themes, though the words “regional,” “social” and “smart” come before them, respectively.  (Me, I’m skeptical of regionalism and smart growth.)

It’s an interesting conference in that these themes don’t necessarily go hand in hand, and it’s effectively a community development conference that’s rather glitzy: held at the Sheraton on Canal St, with talks by Danny Glover and a panel beginning in a minute hosted by Tavis Smiley.  Last night the Mayor said a few words at the evening reception.

But it’s been interesting so far, as I hear from scholars, practitioners and wonks about trends in federal policy, the rising salience of poverty among voters, and municipal strategies for combatting poverty. I’ve been surprised at how much I enjoy it, given I usually can’t sit still during conf. presentations for more than 5 minutes.

I’ll be back over the weekend when this is all said and done with some longer, more interesting updates.  For now, I have to complain about one thing: WHY DOES THE MARRIOTT NOT ONLY CHARGE IT’S GUESTS A DAY RATE FOR INTERNET, BUT ALSO REQUIRE US TO USE A WIRE ATTACHED TO A MODEM?  I THOUGHT IT WAS 2008. 

Happy Friday.

PS: Life’s a lot more peaceful without the incessant virtual shouting of the blogosphere.

Part 35.  (Because why always tear myself down?  So unbecoming.)

A Slate columnist applied the Myers Briggs personality type tests to the three presidential candidates.  Turns out Clinton and McCain are common presidential personalities; Obama, he’s more of a movement leader.  Sometimes these articles just write themselves.

So, rather than go to bed at a reasonable hour last night, I knew I needed to immediately discover my own personality type.  Using a free on-line version of the test, I discovered I’m a INTJ: Introverted / Intuitive / Thinking / Judging, with Intuitive traits comprising the majority and Introverted and Judging making up the bulk of the remainder.  Sounds about right. 

Apparently, INTJ’s are Masterminds, comprising less than 1% of the population (think Nietsche, Stephen Hawking, Eisenhower, Keynes, and Ayn Rand).  Here’s the excerpts that both ring true to my ear, and are my leadership qualities, despite my amazing capacities for sitting on my couch in my pj’s not engaging with the world for hours on end:

Entailing or contingency planning is not an informative activity, rather it is a directive one in which the planner tells others what to do and in what order to do it. As the organizing capabilities the Masterminds increase so does their inclination to take charge of whatever is going on.

…there is one attitude that sets them apart from other Rationals: they tend to be much more self-confident than the rest, having, for obscure reasons, developed a very strong will.

Being very judicious, decisions come naturally to them; indeed, they can hardly rest until they have things settled, decided, and set [like this primary, for ex!!]. They are the people who are able to formulate coherent and comprehensive contingency plans, hence contingency organizers or “entailers.”

Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once in charge, however, Masterminds are the supreme pragmatists, seeing reality as a crucible for refining their strategies for goal-directed action. In a sense, Masterminds approach reality as they would a giant chess board, always seeking strategies that have a high payoff, and always devising contingency plans in case of error or adversity [I do this nightly, as the hours pass and I fail to sleep, I reorganize the coming day to reflect how much energy and time I’ll have].

On the other hand, Masterminds can be quite ruthless in implementing effective ideas, seldom counting personal cost in terms of time and energy. [This is why I surround myself with emotional people!!]

Self-confidence; a willingness to make decisions; an analytical, organizing mind; and an ability and willingness to course-correct (one of my fave corporate buzzphrases) as we go along. Yep; yep; yep; and yep.

What’s your personality type?  Please submit all reports to my desk by 10am Monday morning, when I’ll next be on-line.  Family duties call this weekend.  Why not hang with my fellow bloggers Donna Darko and Pocochina over at The Hillary 1000 while I’m gone? 

$20M Gift Planned for Gentilly.

There’s a press conference next week.

Wahoo!

Say what you will about private sector development - I’ve certainly done my fair share - but bringing 100 homes to a neighborhood with only 25% of its population back is a noble effort.

Click here for a round-up of post-primary chatter.  I want to re-iterate what is buried in a long, late nite post below:

I like Obama’s call to increase the diversity of representation in the existing system.  Change at the top is key, but truly diversifying the ranks starts at the bottom - increase women or minority participation at the local level, and you’ll see change work its way up. 

Now, Obama’s campaign has done an amazing job at the grassroots level - their fundraising, their volunteer organization, their GOTV operation has been tremendous.  For this he is rightfully praised.  But how will this translate into the role of President? 

Organizing, no matter how routinized, depends on a symbolic position outside the system.  Obama knows this and speaks to this when he talks about changing Washington.  But, and I’m embarrassed to quote David Brooks here, “what if the 261,000 lobbyists” don’t get Obama’s message about unity?  Organizing, especially the Alinsky model to which Obama is frequently linked, is about bringing in outsiders to train community members to become leaders so that they can fight for change themselves.  Obama is doing an excellent job with inspiring and instilling skills via his campaign operations.  But this positions Obama as the consummate outsider, training others to take on the system for positive change.  How can we then elect this person to be the consummate insider? 

Strains of participatory democracy are prevalent in Obama’s campaign.  Participatory democracy, it should be noted, has highly positive impacts, mainly related to increasing people’s and groups’ sense of civic engagement and self-efficacy, and in practice at the local level, can lead to decision-making power.  But it is not a practice that layers very easily onto our political bureacracy, and, in its most reviled characterizations (from academic haters, mostly), is disparaged as process over results, or, that the process is the result.

There is a reason organizing is a distinct institution from bureacracy; there is a reason that social movements wax and wane, and that protest and direct action is appropriate in some instances and negotiating and deal-making is appropriate in others.  One thing that has been made dramatically obvious during this primary is that our current electoral system is not a fair and open one, and we’ve got two tremendous Democratic candidates to thank for exposing that with their breathtaking contest and its accompanying voter and citizen participation.  Perhaps one outcome of this campaign season will be a re-tooling our our electoral system, or more modestly, the Democratic Party’s rules.  But I’m skeptical.  Bureacracies are pretty entrenched; hence the staying power.  I hope that if Obama secures the nomination, his inside game is as good as his outside one. 

Weboy here.

It was during the third shampoo - the one before the scalp massage and the Shiatsu in my chair - that I realized I like the pampering of my hair salon. I have given up a great many extravagances - I no longer shop til I drop, or go to the Spa for massages - but my hair is one thing where I just cant skimp.

And too, there’s the moments, like the shampoo, that are just utter indulgences. I usually close my eyes to experience the sensations of having someone else touch my head; it’s not something that happens all that regularly, and because, like many, I carry a lot of stress, it does take a lttle work to let oneself be touched. I completely understand people who say they simply leave their body - I drift into semi-consciousness.

Red is quite simply the only woman I know who came with amazing hair and needs to do little to it - when I first met her we discussed hair coloring, and she decided she couldn’t do it because her natural red might never be the same. And dash-it-all, she’s right: I don’t think I will ever see such golden tresses, especially when they’re kissed by the summer sun. Not only that, but with little effort - and I mean one basic blow-and-go haircut she’s had pretty much in all the time I’ve known her - her hair falls in waves of cascading shoulder length curls that most people get perms to achieve.

Me, not one thing about my hair is natural - I’ve cut it and dyed it and straightened it and braided it and done God knows what else. My current regime is the famous “Asian straight perm,” which I love, and which is utterly time consuming. My hair stylist is a genius, a wizard at cutting straight hair, and a great chemist - the results are long and lustrous, with minimal damage.

And, with a toss of my long mane, that may be that: thanks for having me over. Red should be back online shortly. With a tan, no doubt, and a refreshed spirit. It is, after all, a glamorous life.

… or, the week The Weboy had:

Monday

• Write a little
• Drive to Boston on clear, sunny day.
• Arrive in Boston early evening, enjoy wonderful weather, visit old job
• Go back to house to pack, confront remains of leaving in haste
• Contemplate futility of current plans
• Write a little, go to bed, resolve to pack thoroughly tomorrow

Tuesday

• Feel overwhelmed; write a little
• Attempt to pack
• Realize I haven’t eaten, get food
• Attempt to pack some more; contemplate futility of moving, meaning of life, decide, sadly, to go on
• Visit coworkers, as promised, on warm sunny day; find they are very busy and can’t talk.
• Hang out with really cool Asst Manager and his fiancee and meet their new dog (a very cute small Yorkiepoo)
• Go home, pack some more; make progress, but not enough.
• Attempt to load car, only make it as far as basement; feel tired, call Mom and agree that driving late at night and tired not good
• Prepare to stay the night; get New Hampshire primary results, enjoy Clinton comeback, write a little (more…)

I’m working off a mac right now, and I don’t know where my icons are for bolding, linking, etc., so bear with me on this rough cut. - UPDATE: LINKS ADDED.  12/16/07.

See the last bunch of posts - and my colleagues in the blogosphere, inc. Brownfemipower, Kai and Cara - re: the literal battle over the future of public housing in NOLA. There’s a stay of execution for the moment, and we should give ourselves a collective moment of thankful pause before resuming the relentless pressure over this issue. But that’s not the point of this post, written during my dept.’s holiday party on this Friday afternoon.

I want to thank the blogosphere for helping me pass my general exams, which I did today, WITH DISTINCTION, a rarely invoked status here in my dept. In addition to my colleagues in the Gulf, who have educated me, often painfully, on framing, power, gender, identity, conflict and struggle, I’m indebted to my virtual peers here. The obvious is NYC Weboy, my unparalleled champion, and Prof. Zero is a close second, for hosting such a supportive environment to share my ideas and the personal struggles that inform my thinking. But it’s the debates of the broader community that I’ve been listening to, and reading, and thinking about, that I feel really helped me here at MIT and this morning in particular, especially when it comes to issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, power and equity/justice. Shout outs go to Pandagon, where I cut my teeth on the feminist blogosphere, Feministe, who’s writing I respect, Feministing, who seems to have the biggest market for throwing one’s hat in the ring, Shakesville, who’s mainstream progressiveness and f***ing hilarious snark never fails to please, and especially, Sylvia and Brownfemipower, for eloquent, provocative writing that truly leaves me thinking. Kai, Black Amazon (who also just met her own academic hurdles - check out this post!), Rachel’s Tavern, Racismreview, the Field Negro, The Curvature, Racewire, Racialicious, the Silence of our Friends and Outside the Toybox are also in my reader and in my mind. The M.A.S. wants to know why I love the blogosphere, and it’s because it’s my real intellectual community, where I shape and test my ideas.

Of course, my peeps keep me grounded and engaged and sane, and they’ll be getting their shoutouts offline. So thank you fellow bloggers. Today is a f***ing red letter day, filled with wine and good cheer and warm praise and proud, humbled tears and I hope you can all share in it with me!!

PS: If you want to add to this syllabus, pls offer your recommendations in the comments below!!

What should I/we make of the fact that I went to school with two recurring VH-1 talking heads - Nick Stevens (elementary through h.s. and neighbor!) and Leigh Kessler (college)?   Remind me again why I am blogging in obscurity????  And of course, solving the world’s problems from my living room couch….

In eighth grade I discovered that I get a cold sweat when I’m nervous.  I used to noisily slide my sweaty palms down my desk for my Jr High Boyfriend, cuz I’m classy and attractive like that.  With less than four hours to go and another two hours of work in front of me, I am in a full, cold sweat.  Believe me, it feels AWESOME.  Right.

Fortunately, I’m not really stinky. 

…endsightmilestogobeforeisleep*

In other words, in 87.5 hours I will begin my doctoral general exams, the first of the two major hurdles in my PhD program (the other forthcoming: my dissertation).  I’ve been staying up later and later, dragging myself out of bed, not leaving my house, missing my workouts, binging on food, reading a shitload, watching not so much but occasional long stretches of tv, and feeling generally anxious and like I might need the Jaws of Life to pry my shoulder blades apart.

Hence the sporadic blogging this week, both in quantity and quality.  At least, I scheduled my exams towards the end of the semester when the rest of the academic universe is aslo entering the miserable crunch period.  My more pleasurable breaks have been talking the M.A.S. off the ledge about his assignments and irritations, and chuckling over Professor Zero’s lamenting re: grading and her students’ and their families’ less than stellar - and rather hypocritical - commitment to their studies - a devastating mini-series in her usual excellent cataloging of all that is insane and intolerable about the Ivory Tower. 

For some reason, her blog invites just long, confessional commenting from me - I am not sure what it is about her virtual encouragement towards my streams of consciousness ramblings, but when I click through my Google reader to her site every few weeks of so, I end up chatting away as if we’re long lost friends.  She, like so many, maintains an anonymous blog, which in hindsight I wish I’d done, but I’ve never been very good at concealment, for better and definitely worse. So, if you are interested in the mental unraveling going on over here at The RP HQ’s, here’s some excerpts from my comments at her site re: not going completely bananas:

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Top 10 Questions You’re Better Off Not Asking

1) Is that what you’re wearing?

(Got it, mom?)

2) Why don’t you have a boyfriend? 

This might have been my LEAST favorite question of my 20’s, especially since it was so often asked in sympathy, as if I was flawed, fucking up somehow, or incomplete without the requisite romantic appendage.

3) Do you think he’s “the one”?

Yeah, if we could not get into what I think of the concept of “soulmates” we’d probably all have a much more cheerful afternoon.

4) When are you two getting engaged/married?

5) When are you two having kids?  A.k.a., when are you going to give us some grandkids?

6) What baby names are you thinking about?

I learned not to ask this one when I immediately, reflexively passed judgment on one of the options a friend of mine was considering.  Now I try to never ask.

7) Are you breast feeding? 

I’m also a guilty culprit on this one, as my friends/family are split about 50/50 between moms who switch to formula early on and women who breast feed for longer than 3 months, and so I like surveying mothers on this one.  Apparently it’s a rough equivalent of asking single or unmarried women questions like #2 and #4, respectively.  I try to turn it into a sympathetic space for venting for those who feel like they’re on the wrong side of the question to compensate for my being an insensitive, prying, childless a**hole, but maybe I should just stop asking instead.

8) Are you going to have anymore kids?  (And then, of course: when?)

And what has become my most loathed question of my 30s:

9) What will you do once you finish your degree?

%&%^*^%$*****!!! 

I can only think of these Top 9, so give me your suggestions for #10.

10) …

Legendarily agressive, fearless, obnoxious, and, apparently, stupid too.  Dare we brag, some of the most wicked, f*ckin’ stupid in the nation.  Yeah, what’s up.

Don’t look at me for pointers, I’ve already copped to failing my road test once. Though, now that I think about it, I did pass the written exam for my driver’s permit twice, given I had to renew it after I didn’t get my license on the first try.

Thanks to shame-faced IL driver O. Dear for the tip.

In my patriotic high school and hometown, we in the chorus learned all the Armed Forces songs, and performed a Veteran’s Day concert every year.  Firedoglake offers up the much more depressing facts on the state of veterans’ lives in the U.S.

I’m really late in even acknowledging the flood in Tabasco, Mexico (being a Katrina and 9/11 responder has not transformed me into a disaster specialist, by any means.)  Brownfemipower has the info, the photos and links to how we can help. 

Paul Krugman chides Reagan revisionists.  I don’t get the Reagan love at all (theoretically, sure).  Everything historical I read in terms of urban, economic and social policy in this country points to Reagan’s special powers of increasing inequality and insecurity, undermining civil rights, race-baiting, and eroding faith in government.  The guy makes me sick. 

This “newsflash” is sort of entertaining: smart chicks can’t get dates.  Not enough M.A.S.’s to go around, apparently.

Not exactly a disaster, though I’m disappointed Felix Arroyo didn’t get re-elected, here’s a breakdown of Boston City Council at-large voting by ward.  Ever heard of machine politics?

And prior to this post, I’m carrying on about housing as a human right and subprime vs. predatory lending.  Hope you all had a terrific long weekend!!

As a community development scholar-practitioner, I’m compelled to remind us of the difference between these forms of lending: a subprime loan is the product for households without access to mainstream credit.  Provided by knowledgeable (sp??), trained lenders (such as community development financial institutions) with fair terms and additional services such as homeownership counseling, subprime loans can be an important stepping stone to building good credit and asset accumulation for households, often low-income and/or of color. 

Predatory lending, on the other hand, is a distinctive type of subprime lending with rapacious terms and fees that willfully preys on borrowers that lack the same access to and information about credit products.  It disproportionately targets communities of color of all incomes, where the access issue is key, as well as the elderly, where information about lending products is likely the bigger opening for predatory lending.  Obviously, these target populations are not mutually exclusive, and many of us can probably relate to the problem of having sophisticated consumer knowledge and motivation to shrewdly navigate the lending process.  The point of predatory lending is to strip equity from homes and neighborhoods, not increase it.

I’m bringing this up as two of the mainstream blogs I read, Feministing and Pandagon, go after the subprime lending issue in minority neighborhoods.  I’m also linking again to a fairly wonkish piece I wrote in March clarifying these types of lending. 

H/t to Outside the Toybox for directing me to this sustainability quiz developed by American Public Media.  It allows me to estimate my consumption footprint compared to the appropriate productive acreage per human on the planet (about 4.5 acres; they explain what “productive acreage” means), and then calculates how many earths are needed if everyone lived like me.  Oh, and I get to design a personal avatar and a neighborhood avatar. 

So how many earths are needed if everyone else lived in a little, one-person apartment and drove a sh*tbox back and forth 5 miles to school and within a 3 mile radius for errands a few times per week?  And went shopping at least once a month and ate mostly dairy, grains and veggies?  9.6.  Welcome to the Redstar Solar System.

Turns out, I can blame the T - that’s right, the public Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority system - for my one-woman path of destruction.  What, you don’t expect me to actually ride that thing regularly, do you?  Sitting here at my PC I rarely shut off, I was flying way under the tree huggers’ radar; I live in a small place, alone, use hardly any electricity or heat comparatively (of course, I don’t pay for heat directly, so that’s probably the culprit there), and recycle A LOT.  3 acres, 1 acre, and 1 acre for my home, power and recycling habits, respectively.  Look at me! I’m a mere spec on the world’s surface.

Then the questions came about public and personal transportation usage.  Miles driven per month, mileage to the gallon, monthly miles ridden by bus or rail, and hours flown yearly, and in what class (why the latter matters I have NO idea).  Well, DAMN if I don’t take up 21 acres with my monthly first class to the Gulf Coast (thanks FF miles) and intermittent T riding ways.  I went from 1.7 earths to 6, just based on public transportation ridership alone.  Together, the MBTA and I will put this planet out of business in no time!!

My eating and shopping habits apparently gobble up 3 more planets, though a major flaw of the quiz is no available stats when I’m asked to compare myself to the average American shopper.  Well, do they mean the folks living in FEMA trailers in the Gulf Coast or the women in Lexus SUV’s in the Chestnut Hill mall parking lot?  Or apparently some combination of the two.  And who knew coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil, and also travels huge distances?   Our caffeine addiction is obviously the lesser known cousin to the American oil addiction.

I’m curious to see how you all fare.  According the comparables they offer at the end, most Americans (Dems, GOP, Green, male, female, etc.), are consuming over 99 planets with their power usage.  But when you break it down by state, and most likely only the public radio listeners/Cambridge-Berkeley-Austin radicals in each, you get much much smaller figures.  Compared to folks in MA, CA, and NY, I’m ravaging 3 to four times the number of planets. 

All without leaving my kitchen table. 

Colbert on his ‘08 election prospects:

“voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.”

Hat tip.

(Meanwhile, keeping in mind his own presidential aspirations, Weboy tries to goose my flagging blog #s…)

Following on our trip to Capitol Hill this week, the tremendous efforts of Gulf Coast advocates to bring some much needed affordable housing to the region are beginning to pay off. Word among the low-income housing advocacy community indicates that Sen. Vitter (R-LA), one of two main opponents (the other being GOP Senator Shelby from AL) to the bill is more amenable to negotiation than his earlier hard line comments indicate.

As Vitter’s colleague Sen. Landrieu (D-LA) points out, and as spokespersons from the National Low-income Housing Coalition have reiterated, his criticisms are “inaccurate.” Indeed, to the dismay of many pro-public housing advocates, S. 1668, the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, would allow the HUD/HANO demolition projects of almost 5,000 public housing units in New Orleans to proceed. What I learned this week is that, if S.1668 passes, the existing redevelopment plans for the four developments would have to be *amended* to meet the requirements of the bill. Yes, this would take some time, but, contrary to Vitter’s aides explanation of his opposition on Thursday, the HUD/HANO redevelopment would not “start over.” As anyone familiar with mixed-income redevelopments such as those proposed here knows, it is highly unlikely that the three development plans not currently in accord with S.1668 would fall apart over the bill’s guidelines.

The reason this Act is so important - in addition to bringing desperately needed resources for affordable housing to the region, an area plagued by construction and insurance premiums as high as 200% - is that it meets *two key principles* of low-income housing advocates:

a) No net loss of subsidized housing;

b) Residents’ right to return and participation in planning and development.

These two principles stand in stark contrast to the historical performance of contemporary mixed-income re-development, namely the federal HOPE VI program that ran from 1992 until a few years ago. HOPE VI produced only 60,000 “revitalized dwellings” after knocking down 100,000 “severely distressed” units between 1993-2003. And though early baseline studies documented the desire of many former public housing residents to remain in the neighborhood rather than be relocated to the suburbs, many relocated residents disappeared entirely in the redevelopment process, or fared as poorly or worse due to displacement.

The redevelopment of Lafitte, controversial as it has been for staunch activists seeking to preserve public housing as it was prior to the storm, stands now as the alternative model for public housing redevelopment under S.1668. It replaces every unit plus adds another 600 or so, with the total of ~1,500 units dispersed around the Treme neighborhood where Lafitte is located. It has worked with residents to gather their input, and provides counseling and social services to residents wishing to return. The redevelopment team is comprised of Enterprise Community Partners and Catholic Charities, widely perceived as some of the best in the business in, respectively, affordable housing development and social services for the poor, children, elderly and disabled. I imagine both would bristle at the idea that their plan for Lafitte is an effort to return to the projects “exactly as they were,” as Vitter maintains.

Furthermore, there has been one positive to HOPE VI redevelopment, which should please conservatives and be an expected outcome of the HUD redevelopment in New Orleans: through HOPE VI, $5B in government seed money between 1993-2003 leveraged an additional $11.4B in investments. That’s over $2 in private funds for every government dollar invested. At that rate, the estimated $464M price tag for public housing redevelopment in S.1668 could feasibly bring over $1B to the region, according to my *rough* back of the envelope calculations.