Author Archives: Paul Steven Stone

Whither Goest The Republican Party?

Like most of you, I take my Republican-issued declarations with large doses of honey and over-the-counter stomach-settlers. So when Reince Priebus, or Prince Rebus as I like to think of him, the Chair of the Republican Party, started issuing declarations about how the GOP needed to change, I naturally expected a bowl of mush.Prince1

Prince was presenting the findings of his 97-page Growth and Opportunity Project Report to a breakfast meeting of assembled Republican leaders, men and women with gray hair, aged bodies, and calcified opinions.

First, the voices from the study rose up to describe how the general population views “the Republican Party today.” Those voices loudly called out, “Scary”, “Narrow minded” and “out of touch”, essentially calling it a party of “stuffy old men.”

To that, I would only add the word “white” as in “stuffy old white men.”

But there was poor Prince Rebus, this morning’s star bearer of bad news, telling his bosses they were so unpopular they needed to stay indoors and away from the windows. And then he offered each of them a tall beaker of hemlock, that poisonous brew said to have killed Socrates, when he went on to explain what the new Republican Party would now stand for.

“First,” Prince declared, defining the way forward for Republicans and their Party, “we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.” As if such heretic a thought might get lonely sitting out there by itself, he quickly continued, “Republicans today have to start speaking up for the little guy; it’s time we were the ones blowing the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attacking corporate welfare.”

Honestly, he really said that.

As blue-haired matrons and patrons of the party went faint, Prince ignored their wounded cries of protest, the shouts of pain—shouts of “Never!”, “No!” and “Say it aint so!”— from the gathered party members. Into that wall of growing agitation and protest, he blithely continued, “We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when C.E.O.s receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

“For the G.O.P. to appeal to younger voters,” Prince continued, “we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view.”

Even though everyone at the breakfast knew in their heart of hearts the Party was, indeed, totally… and irrevocably… intolerant of anyone else’s point of view!

Also, in the hope of attracting younger voters, Prince called for an ”RNC Celebrity Task Force” to host star-studded events and fundraisers. Clint Eastwood and Pat Boone were two of the youth-oriented celebrities who first came to mind.

In pushing for more openness and acceptance within the party, Prince pushed his breakfast audience, “C’mon, guys, can we lighten up a bit? Can we stop bashing the gays for once. And stop doling out invasive ultrasounds as pre-abortion punishment? And no more thumping the bible—or the constitution, please!” (Well, he didn’t really say that, but it would have been delightful if he had!)

In an interview with Bob Schiefer around this time, Prince , with great candor, admitted the GOP did a “lousy job” of marketing itself. Adding, “This is no short term view…If we don’t start now, we’re not going to have anymore success in four years, eight years, or twelve years.”

Now, about those four years, eight years, or twelve years…

Here are a few questions I wish Bob Shieffer (perhaps channeling the spirit of Mike Wallace) had had the temerity to ask Prince, starting with.…”What gives you the right to survive as a national political party for those four, eight or twelve years? Shouldn’t your survival depend on earning the support of a significant segment of the population?”

And once Bob got started in that vein, he could have asked, “Why should learning to better market your ideas change anything? If you’re still pushing unpopular or antiquated ideas, you will remain unpopular. Then, the only way you can win elections would be to nominate stealth candidates who pretend to espouse popular viewpoints, but then renege on those positions once winning office. Sort of like Mitt Romney aspired to do in his long term etch-a-sketch evolution from Conservative Republican to Moderate Republican and back to Conservative at the end. Is that the new model? Keeping the lid closed tightly on zealots like Todd Akin or Chrstine O’Donnell so that everybody appears ginger peachy to the boob in the voting booth?”

Then I would have liked Bob to sum it all up, “Prince, can you face up to the fact America has moved beyond—far beyond!—today’s Republican Party? Even if the party has managed to gerrymander enough districts to stay in a crippled position of power. America doesn’t want a Republican Party that disavows everything America stands for—tax fairness, women having the freedom to choose what happens to their bodies, gays having the freedom to marry, economic fairness, a generous government that supports, assists and protects its most vulnerable citizens, a government committed to furthering human rights here and abroad.”

And here’s what I would like to say to Prince once his proposals for an enlightened GOP fail to get traction. “Face it Prince,” I would admonish him, “The Republican Party is a gang of angry, embittered, mostly white and usually wealthy people trying to hold onto their power and their wealth in a country turning less white, more impoverished and more heterogeneous by the day. The first mission of the Republican Party today is to protect the wealth and privileges of the few, to promote a strict almost fundamentalist view of the Constitution, and to cripple the ability of the government to advocate for those less fortunate on the economic ladder.”

Those are the Republican views and policies Prince needs to rewire if the Republican Party wishes to survive as a serious political entity in America.

But rather than working to change the Party’s toxic policies or principles, Prince announced instead a $10 million dollar outreach program to polish up the GOP brand.

Anyone familiar with the Republican brand knows  $10 million won’t even begin to remove the stain.

 

 

 

THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE AND THEY’RE STILL SETTING THE TABLE FOR DINNER!

Think your opinion matters? Apparently not to our City Council. A majority of council members voted at an Ordinance Committee meeting to move along MIT’s upzoning petition before the public had a chance to speak its mind. Arguably, it was to allow our mayor, who had another engagement, to record her vote in favor of the petition. But in reality, you couldn’t fabricate a better example to illustrate what the council feels about your opinion or how they’re responding to the over-heating pressures for development in our city.Cambridge-CityCouncil2012-2013

Put simply, they appear eager to ride the rising tide of development with little concern for those of us who may get flooded out. With little concern for the diversity we’ll lose as they vote to bring in wave after wave of affluent renters. Or for families that get squeezed out by the higher neighborhood rents that accompany new market-rate housing. Or for neighborhoods that will suddenly have 14 or 16 story towers reaching into their sky, and thousands more cars clogging their streets.

The sellers of “progress” tell us this is the price we have to pay to get more housing and create a better Cambridge. Housing has become the shield behind which developers and business interests now hide their self-enrichment and self-interest. If you could prove what I postulated in the previous paragraph, that new market-rate housing chases out more families than it makes room for, and erodes diversity, they would still argue that inclusionary housing forgives all sins. And that providing 11-15% low or mid-level affordable housing in a housing development makes up for whatever loss of low- or middle-income residents it eventually chases out of the city.

Now, as the City Council pretends to effectively review a proposal that will add 2.1 million square feet of office, lab and residential space to a city already densely populated and excessively traveled by car, someone needs to shout “STOP!” Someone needs to exhort them, “Don’t agree to anything until you understand we’re facing a tsunami of development over the course of the next 20 years. Don’t agree to anything until you learn and study the consequences we face from projections that predict over 18 million square feet of new offices, labs and residences in the city. Which, according to Cambridge’s own published numbers, breaks down to over 50,000 new car trips daily, plus a similar number of additional commuter trips.

Forget the fact that MIT wants to build a skyscraper in our city, a 300 foot demonstration of their importance. Perhaps an easy way for pro-development votes on the Council to create a precedent for buildings significantly higher than our zoning has allowed to date. Forget the fact that MIT fails to address the problem of its grad student housing shortages, which seriously impacts the availability of affordable housing in Cambridge. Forget the fact that MIT operates like it can get what it wants just because it wants it.

Why would our City Council agree to such massive upzoning when they cannot imagine the consequences of such a decision? Nor can they understand the context of over-development in which they’ll be making their decision. Denise Simmons has commented on the fact that listening to presentations, citizen opinions and opposing viewpoints in a single evening doesn’t lend itself well to making informed decisions.

With the massive impacts that come with massive upzoning petitions, the City Council, as the stewards charged with protecting and guiding our city, need to do their homework. They need to find out how many thousands of car trips and transit trips this level of development would bring? They need to know how many millions of square feet of development the City is facing down the road, so we can sensibly prepare for whatever is coming.

To vote on the MIT petition, or the K2C2 recommendations without looking seriously at the future is like continuing to set the table for dinner even though your senses tell you the house is on fire.

It’s time to stop and think; to slow the rush to development and to rethink dotting the landscape with towers. It’s time to stop and study the future, before we rush headlong into it.

It’s time to say no to mindless development.

Then let’s see what develops.

NRA FIGHTS DRONE CONTROL

Washington, D.C.—Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association lashed out at critics of the NRA’s lobbying efforts to protect private ownership of drones and drone NRAmissiles.

Mr. LaPierre was speaking before a small gathering of armament manufacturing CEO’s here in the nation’s capital. They had come to lobby their Republican congressmen and senators to resist attempts by bleeding heart liberals to curb sales of any weaponry that could potentially be manufactured in the U.S.A.

Pointing at the screen behind him where a video was playing without sound, LaPierre explained, “Here you see Sarah Palin, one of the first hunters to use drone missiles. Notice, Sarah no longer needs to use a helicopter to shoot and kill moose. These days she sits at her computer piloting her hunting drone across the Alaska wilderness. Now watch this! As you can see from this Fox News documentary, Sarah was able to successfully bring down an entire herd of moose with a single hellfire drone missile.”

“Pow!,” he exclaimed triumphantly, as the missile hit the quietly grazing herd. “Good shot Sarah. Bad news mooses!”

Waiting for the spontaneous burst of applause to die down, LaPierre continued, “Hell, why is everyone in such a damn rush to limit the sale of drones? If the U.S. Government has drones, how long will it be before the drug dealer on the corner has drones? Assuming they don’t already have them!”

The question of school safety, still on everyone’s mind in the aftermath of the Newtown school shootings,  came up quickly in a question from the audience.

“But how can we keep our grandchildren safe?” one elderly CEO asked. “You called for an armed security guard in every school, but what good is that if everyone can now purchase drones with missiles?”

“Excellent question!” Mr. LaPierre replied, spinning on his feet and pulling out his gun finger to shoot at the inquiring CEO. “Thought you had me there!” he joked, blowing off the imaginary smoke from his recently fired gun finger.

Mr. LaPierre turned to face the blank screen behind him, raised a remote control and clicked it at the screen.

“Anti-missile missiles!” he exclaimed excitedly as a photo of a school-mounted anti-missile artillery battery came up on the screen. “One battery per school should do it; maybe two for schools located in ethnic neighborhoods.”

When asked if owning missile-carrying drones was enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, Mr.LaPierre answered tersely, “It is in my copy.”

Offering a wink and a smile, he added, “Right after assault weapons!”

WHEN THE BULLIES COME FOR YOU…

When the bullies came for Phoebe Prince they came in packs. They jeered her for her Irish accent, for being different, for dating popular boys. Every day they chased her down the hallways of South Hadley High and across the landscape of her Facebook page. They mocked her, cursed her, called her a slut. And after she hung herself in her family’s apartment, they wrote nasty comments on her memorial page.

And no one, not even school administrators, found the courage to stand up for Phoebe until she was gone from this life.

When the bullies come for you they will come with threats of violence and non-stop ridicule. They will shame you, frighten you and take your money. They will spit on you at school, and spread nasty rumors on the internet. They will turn your life into hell, then chase you into corners from which you can’t escape.

And no one—least of all you—will speak out against them.

When the bullies came for Corey Jones they chased him until he killed himself. They bullied him for years, unable to accept that he was gay, unable to accept his own self-acceptance. It didn’t matter that Corey was likable, funny and had plenty of friends. When the bullies came for him they taunted him so badly he jumped off a bridge to free himself.

And none of his friends were there to stop him.

When the bullies come for you, you will never know what you did to deserve their cruelty and abuse. Everyday your world will grow more dangerous, more terrifying. Your dreams will become fragile and distant; escape will seem impossible, hope will be in very short supply.

And, still, no one will speak up for you.

When the bullies came for Kenneth Weishuhn, they sent him death threats and created a Facebook hate group to torment him. His friends deserted him or joined in the bullying, afraid that they might become the next victims. His teachers and family never knew what he was going through, how bad it was. And Kenneth, only 14 years old, never told them.

Till his dying day, Kenneth never said a word.

When the bullies come for you, they will destroy your sense of self-worth. You will struggle not to cry. You will feel totally alone. Abandoned. You will struggle to hold onto yourself, no matter how many come at you, no matter how often. You will feel trapped in a nightmare from which you can’t awaken.

When the bullies hit you, take your possessions, tear up your homework and lock you in your locker, you will feel more alone than you’ve ever felt before. You will wonder how no one hears your cries for help. And no one—not even your best friends—come to your defense.

And you will remember other times when you didn’t speak up. When others were attacked, and you were the one afraid to get involved, afraid to draw their attention, afraid someone would call you a snitch.

When the bullies come for you, you will wish you had spoken up—and stood up—for Phoebe Prince, Corey Jones, Kenneth Weishuhn and all the others when they were bullied. You will regret you let the bullies set the rules.

And in the end, when the bullies come for you, you will pray for the strength and courage to finally break your silence.

Or like Phoebe, Corey and Kenneth, you will die trying.

 

Paul Steven Stone is a writer/novelist living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His anti-bullying video “To You Who Different” can be viewed on YouTube. Author of the novel “Or So It Seems” and the story collection “How To Train A Rock”, Stone is an independent advertising/marketing consultant. He can be reached at PaulStevenStone@gmail.com. For more info, go to www.PaulStevenStone.com.

 

 

 

WHY THE CAMBRIDGE RESIDENTS ALLIANCE MATTERS: The Power of Community Acting as a Bulwark Against the Influence of Money

Take a drive on the Leverett Connector alongside Route 93, and you’ll notice a curious sight. Steve K.There’s a partially-built exit ramp, hanging out from the road; its suddenly halted steel girders and roughened concrete startle you, offend your eye, like the aftermath of an amputation. As if the phantom exit ramp had been brutally excised to prevent a cancer from spreading. Which is true, in a manner of speaking. For this is a ghastly reminder of one of the most ill-conceived highway transit projects never perpetrated—the Inner Belt, which would have sliced through the cities of Somerville and Cambridge to funnel many thousands of cars daily into the City of Boston.

This amputated exit ramp also serves as a mute tribute to the power of an aroused citizenry. For that highway would have been built 42 years ago, and Somerville and Cambridge would have been split in two, had it not been for the raised voices and continuous resistance of an engaged and outraged local community.

Today, we know the cost to a community’s social fabric when you run an elevated highway through the heart of a city, but back then many of these raised voices were denounced as fighters of progress or NIMBY’s (not-in-my-backyard-ers) or advocates of the status quo. When in fact, they were authentic voices of Cambridge sticking up—and speaking up!—for the city they loved.

Today, there’s a parallel situation arising in Cambridge, and once again the sellers of progress, unstoppable and unsuitable development and unbridled profits are railing against a group of citizens who have risen up to demand due diligence and a steady hand on the helm before we chart a ruinous course for Cambridge from which we will never recover.

I am proud to be a member of the Cambridge Residents Alliance. Proud to stand alongside members of the community who have worked tirelessly over the years to serve Cambridge and its residents. People like Nancy Ryan, who has a long history of community service, Jonathan King, an MIT professor and veteran of many citizen initiatives, Cathy Hoffman, who served on the Cambridge Peace Commission, Bill Cunningham, advocate for public housing tenants, Lee Farris, an activist for affordable housing, Rich Goldberg, a leader of the Area 4 Coalition, Steve Kaiser, Traffic Engineer and outspoken critic of the city’s lax transportation study practices, to mention just a few. These people have no bone to pick with progress or appropriate development. But they will not be silenced, or frightened off, by the size of a developer’s war chest, the shrillness of the arguments and accusations made by pro-development forces, or the vision and machinations of Cambridge’s own city management and Community Development Department.

We have witnessed those forces engage in a focused effort to guide a supposedly objective study of Central Square’s future toward recommendations so drastic they endanger the character and livability of the area they’re ostensibly trying to improve.

More to the point, we have witnessed these studies move ahead without anyone—except members of our alliance—conducting studies or collecting information to project the impacts of these recommendations and other projected developments on the city as a whole. Using the city’s own statistics, we have been able to project a minimum of 18 million additional square footage of development—a virtual tsunami of new offices, residences and labs—about to wash over the city during the next 20 years. Plus a minimum of 50,000 additional car trips daily, and 50,000 additional public transit trips—on subways and buses that today have little if any additional capacity.

As we state on our CambridgeResidentsAlliance.org web site…The Cambridge Residents Alliance represents individuals and neighborhood organizations committed to preserving and promoting a livable, affordable, and diverse Cambridge community.

We believe the innovative and creative character of the Cambridge economy derives in part from the multi-cultural, cooperative and inclusive social fabric of our city, which needs to be protected, not dissolved.

We support preserving, enhancing and expanding our public and affordable housing.

We believe the choking up of travel on streets, buses and trains through over-development is not in the interest of the community.

We value sunlight, sky views, and our very limited open community spaces and parks, and seek to limit shadowed canyon-like streets from over-size buildings.

We believe traffic has to be limited to levels such that children can go to and from school and after school activities safely.

We oppose the construction of high-rise buildings designed primarily to make large profits for developers.

We need continuing comprehensive urban planning efforts to improve the quality of life and work for Cambridge residents.

And lastly, like those activists in the 1960’s & 1970’s, we will not be silenced by those who propose development at all costs, who will not learn from the lessons or the amputated highway ramps of the past. Cambridge is a city of people from diverse backgrounds, economic levels, ethnicities and visions. Rather than put any of those parties at risk by serving the vision of taxes-hungry city managers or profit-hungry developers we’re calling for an unbiased citywide study of development and growth issues from which we can fashion a sensible approach to creating a future we all can share.