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Alexis Adams
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02/10/05 They really want to divide
this city along racial lines.
What an interesting week. We had a fake
Dallasite dropping out of a fake council race, that never made sense except as
Citizen N suggests:
Her cover story makes no sense - since her candidacy gave her the spotlight
to begin with.
Based on Analeslie's critique, Babs may have exposed herself to some
litigation for proposing initiatives that are illegal.
Gathering signatures fraudulently. Etc.
Hence this retreat. |
There's a lot of truth in his
surmises. Bah! Bah! Blackwood burst on the scene as a candidate for
District 14 by sending out a newsletter -- as if she was ever part of the
community. Her publicity stunt fell on deaf ears in Oak Lawn and
East Dallas. No one had ever heard of her. She had only moved from
the Bubble a few months earlier. So, no one should be surprised that she
would be part of a Park Cities coup to grab control of City Hall.
Make no mistake, this whole strong-arm mayor thing is a power grab, but we were
talking about Belo going subtle with their race-baiting. When applied to
Belo, "subtle" means rather than a sledge hammer smashing on our sensibilities,
they are just using a hammer to smash our knuckles.
Did you see The Dallas Managed News'
Wednesday editorial regarding the strong-arm mayor proposition? Did
it sound like an endorsement of the Blackwood plan (Proposition 1 on your May
7th ballot)? Sure sounded like it to me. Problem is, the
DMN
Editorial Board has yet to meet with the Coalition for Open Government.
Keven Ann Wiley, Editorial Page Editor (who needs to go back to Arizona),
invited the Coalition to debate the proponents (Mayor Miller and Bah! Bah!
Blackwood) in a private performance for the
DMN
Editorial Board. Our coordinator, Pat Cotton, declined the debate.
She told Ms. Wiley the Coalition would be glad to meet with the Board, but not
for a private debate. Ms. Wiley said the debate forum was very
successful in the last council races. Mrs. Cotton told her that was
absolutely untrue and most candidates complained about the process. Mrs.
Cotton further advised Ms. Wiley that she thought it was really a waste of time
because the DMN
Editorial Board endorsement was already going to the proponents, that Robert
Decherd wanted it. Ms. Wiley assured her that Mr. Decherd was waiting for
the DMN
Editorial Board to make the decision, and he would follow their lead.
Just imagine our surprise to see the Wednesday
DMN
Editorial
Vote
and Make it Count: Shared vision, not manager, is city's solution.
Right. The DMN
Editorial Board had not made up their collective mind when Ms. Wiley talked with
Mrs. Cotton, but they got together overnight in their thinking -- BEFORE
bothering to meet with representatives from the Coalition and came up with the
following:
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Vote and Make it Count: Shared vision, not
manager, is city's solution
Editorial Page, 06:34 PM CST on Tuesday, February
8, 2005 |
Over the years, Dallas has slowly
shed the gears and levers of its elitist,
racially exclusionary political machinery. Today, just one
major artifact of the old system survives: a vastly powerful, unelected city
manager.
The logical next step is to transfer
executive power from the city manager to the mayor, who is directly
accountable to voters. That is the more democratic way, the one that gives
more power directly to the people.
But many black
and Hispanic leaders, who led the fight for
reforms such as single-member council districts, find themselves in the
ironic position of opposing the change. ... In
2003 more than twice as many ballots were cast in the seven council
districts that elected white candidates as in
the seven districts that elected black or
Hispanic candidates. Those numbers suggest what
minority leaders fear: that although whites are only
about one-third of the city's population, they can still control who is
elected mayor.
... despite the high hopes of its authors,
the 14-1 system alone has not induced black and
Hispanic voters to make their numbers fully
felt at the polls.
... in a 2003 poll, 70 percent of
blacks and 53 percent
of Hispanics (plus 69
percent of whites) said that people like them have little or no influence
over the council's decisions.
... Fortunately, recent poll numbers suggest that
even whites in North Dallas recognize
.... |
The intent of the editorial is
to remind "whites in North Dallas" that blacks and Hispanics are against the
Blackwood proposal/Proposition 1. The editorial further reminds "whites in
North Dallas" that black and Hispanic voters have little influence over who wins
a mayoral election. Therefore, if whites in North Dallas" vote for the
Blackwood proposal/Proposition that it very likely that any strong arm mayor
will be white.
This is just disgusting.
CBS 11's ace reporter Sarah Dodd was the first to report (Tuesday, February 8,
2005) that the clause in Bah! Bah! Blackwood's proposal (page 5) limiting when a
council member can run for mayor only impacts the 4 Black council members.
Currently, a council member can run for mayor and hold their council seat (as
did Mary Poss) if they are "termed out" (4 consecutive 2-year terms) and cannot
run for their council again -- at least not for 2 years.
On page 5 of Analeslie Muncy's analysis of Blackwood's proposal,
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Muncy says "After serving four consecutive
two-year terms, a city council member is not eligible to run for mayor until
at least one term has elapsed. (This change is not obvious from the
petition because the mark-up does not indicate the words that are left
out.)" |
If you still think Belo and the
proponents of Blackwood's proposal do not intend to divide this city along
racial lines, then you probably ought to stop reading DallasArena.com -- because
I can't save you from yourself.
sb
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