All posts in the topic Re: Hayden Officially Files Papers for House 61B Seat (Short link)

From: leigh combs Date: Jul 04 16:52 UTC Short link

Brandon
i am not sure i get what your point is...why do you think you haven't heard of
Jeff before?
peace
leigh combs
Powderhorn park
plant trees not statues and stadiums
    

From: Wizard Marks Date: Jul 04 23:50 UTC Short link

B. L. Campos: "My point very specifically is that as a neighborhood activist,
.. as I want to hear from the people whose lives he has impacted.
Unfortunately, there is a mentality in the city that DFL endorsed=Best Choice
and Annointed. I thoroughly disagree."

Mr. Campos, yours' is a dishonest post. If you wanted to know about Jeff
Hayden, you need only have asked your friend Andrea Jenkins, who works in CM
Glidden's office, and can tell you about the man. So, your post is just a
matter of shilling for Hakeem, who also wants to be the state representative
for 61B. That's fine, but come at it head on. It is a wonderment that, having
been a neighborhood activist as you ay your are, that you haven't stumbled
across Jeff Hayden at some time or another while he volunteered for various
chores.

Also, "community" is a slippery word. It can mean a whole bunch of people who
are one color, or one religion, or one orientation, or just all of the people
who are named Bob. But the community of people who actually live in the central
Southside constitute the community that people like Hayden work to improve.
This has been a long-standing tradition of the Southside and one which is
valued by those of us who continue to live here, principally because of that
tradition. I have yet to see Ms. Hakeem display any understanding of that
dynamic, but that dynamic is the glue that keeps the Southside whole.

I served on one of those endless Lake St. remodeling committees with Jeff some
years ago. Here is how the work directly impacted my
queer-as-a-set-of-purple-teeth life.

The county and city collaborated so that the Park Av. and Chicago Av. bridges
over the Greenway were down at the same time that Lake St. was dug up (more
than a year). While neighborhoods worked (and Jim White at MCDA slaved) to get
Sears back in order, the loss of those two bridges and the mess concomitant
with repaving Lake St. drove the considerable drug trade away from Lake and
Chicago and environs because the customers could not get to the dealers. God,
it was glorious! Yeah, the street was a mess, the bridges were down, which
annoyed us no end, but there were no gunshots, no fire bombings, arson went
down, and all manner of disgusting activity drifted away. Good riddance to bad
stuff.

That didn't happen out of the blue. People on committees like the one Jeff and
I served on suggested those strategies. All that disruption put paid to the
dark night of the drug trade around my house, and around your apartment in the
Sears building. That does not mean that there is no drug dealing around
Midtown, but that it no longer has the grip on our lives that it had before.

Did Hayden do that to help this poor queer? Of course not. He didn't care about
that and neither do I in the context of a cohesive community. He did it, like I
did, to keep up the cohesive community tradition and further stated community
goals. And, lo and behold, all the discrete communities that make up this
community benefited. Hot damn!
    

From: Brandon Lacy Campos Date: Jul 06 22:51 UTC Short link

BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }
What what? Are you saying that the center of the Milky Way is not in
my back pocket? Huhhh...then I wonder where all those comets keep
coming from...

	I sat and read ridiculous racialized attacks and assumptions on this
very list centered on Farheen and whether or not she was a Jew-hatin',
anti-War Nazi, Communist. And, thankfully, the bulk of folks on this
list jumped in on that to squash it. That, by the way, is an example
of someone trying to malign a candidate.
 Why should I care about Hayden? I care about any candidate that is
seeking to represent me, because, frankly a persons candidate of
choice is not the one that always wins. I am supporting Barack Obama,
but I want to know what John McCain is all about because, frankly, if
he wins he is my President too and I need to have some understanding
about what to expect. For example, I expect that should Jeff Hayden
win that I will actually see and meet the man doing work that is
important to me and the segment of the community with which I
identify. I have every right to ask questions about Jeff Hayden and
his work. Saying that I have never heard of him before is not an
accusation...it is a statement. The validity of which is only up for
debate, it seems, when it comes to folks that are only willing to
engage in some sort of partisan debating that still does not answer
the question for me...give me examples of the work the man has done
in the community that has created change. Serving as President of
PPNA is admirable. But what I want to know is what was accomplished
because of his leadership at PPNA? How many units of affordable
housing has Jeff been able to lead the charge on creating? What
public policies have been changed in the city because of his work to
help secure housing for low income families, immigrant families,
families of color? How has his work impacted the now-slowed-down but
still present gentrification of Powderhorn Park, Corcoran and the
surrounding neighborhoods.

	Because he is identified as a affordable housing adovcate, these are
the questions I have for him. If he were an anti-prison activist, I
would have a different set of questions. I want to know if the man is
going to be effective in the state house based on his work, not based
on the fact that DFLers in the hood say he is a nice guy. Your
critique of Farheen's in your face style for you is a negative. For
me, I want someone at the state house that is going to take
oppression head on and rip its head off.  Minnesota Nice in the
Minnesota Legislature has gotten us a Minnesota that is slowly
becoming unrecognizable from the Minnesota of my youth. It isn't all
Pawlenty's fault that our social safety net has slowly been
dismantled in this state. He had help from the DFL as well.

	I supported Neva when she ran specifically because I knew her from
her work in the community. In all places, but particularly Minnesota
and even more so Minneapolis, politics are personal. We don't live in
New York or Los Angeles where the only time you might see your elected
officials is on public access. We, and I believe rightly so, have an
expectations that our electeds are going to be front, center,
visible, and accessible. I stated before that I thought it was
interesting that I had not heard of Jeff Hayden.I also find it
interesting that all of the value put on the statement came from
other people and not from me.

	Cheers!

	-Brandon Lacy Campos

	-Midtown/Phillips
 W. Brandon Lacy Campos
 Associate Director
 Democratizing Elections Fellow
 Liberty Tree Foundation
 www.libertytreefdr.org
 612.408.7375
 <email obscured>
 On Sat 05/07/08 8:49 PM , WIZARD MARKS <email obscured> sent:
  B. L. Campos: "While I am supporting a candidate for the race, I am
not working for a campaign. And, frankly, it is a legitimate question
to ask questions about a candidate that is seeking to represent my
community. While many who have replied to this thread are DFLers with
a vested interest in the DFL, I am a long term resident of the
community and am asking questions about a person that is seeking to
represent me."
 I'm having a real hard time finding the logic in the post above. If
you are supporting one candidate, whether signed on as a campaign
worker or not, and have stated so, then the other candidate's
particulars are immaterial. You've declared for Hakeem, why should
you care what Hayden's about except to argue for the candidate you've
chosen.
 If, on the other hand, you are writing to promote your candidate,
implying that your candidate's opponent is not really a community
advocate because you have not seen him around advocating is no more
than shilling for your candidate. Of course, it also posits yourself
as the center of the universe around which all planets revolve. Very
hard position to maintain.
 As a wishy-washy DFLer, on the other hand, I do have to have some
knowledge of the other candidates because there might be a non-DFLer
out there who could be better at the job of representative, so I
should know about those candidates' particulars in order to judge.
 Alas, that is not the case this time. From what I can gather from
Ms. Hakeem's friends and supporters, her approach is an in-your-face
challenge to prove to those she challenges that they do not have
sterling diversity credentials, while she has. In so doing, she
proves that she is both more argumentative and less genuine than the
next guy, but that is not necessarily a plus at the legislature.
Politics is still the art of the possible; digging your heels in for
the impossible makes it very difficult to see the path to better
conditions for constituents.
 There is a very particular ethos that is District 61B. Nothing that
Ms. Hakeem has said or done to date demonstrates that she has even
the tiniest clue about that ethos. Without understanding that, she
would be a beached whale at the legislature, unable to articulate the
needs of 61B or write bills that would keep intact the gains we have
made under a series of legislators and further the aspirations of
constituents.
 On the other hand, I've found Jeff Hayden to be a listener and those
who listen and ask questions are more likely to learn. No one goes to
the legislature without signing on for a steep learning curve that
continues for the whole time he or she is there. Once declaring that
you know everything as Ms. Hakeem repeatedly does, there is no reason
to try to learn anything new. After the last eight years of the
Bushies, I've had it up to my eyebrows with that kind of arrogance.
 Wizard Marks
 Central, Mpls.
 Info about Wizard Marks: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/wizardmarks
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