Arnold has to be given a pass?  I wouldn’t be so quick.  He got into this business via Enron and anyone who would sell California out to Texas and Wall St. as an entre to government needs to be watched very, very closely.

A suggestion:  one of the best books about urban poverty:

Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community
http://tinyurl.com/yyzkko

I believe that our indifference to the poorest in our own society is a key to understanding why the antiwar movement has not been more effective. 

Most simply:  many liberals (à la Nation magazine) are more interested in co-opting minorities in pursuit of their lofty objectives than joining with minorities to fight for theirs.  Because of this, the antiwar movement has been more a club than a movement—because the poor (who don’t vote) refuse to waste their time.  We may be impressed by the large numbers at the rallies—but take a good look at the faces—these are mostly white college educated voters.

Disenfranchised people recognize the cant which protects the status quo.  The first 100 days agenda of the new Democrats in power illustrates this.  What indeed have they tangibly done for the poor other than promise more trickle-down benefits?

Does he have enough knowledge to know about such topic ? I don’t think so.

I’m glad you guys are following the Oakland story, even though I am not from Oakland.

I think progressives often waste too much energy on state or national electoral politics where they do not have the numbers to have an impact. Here in Tennessee we couldn’t even get a conservative Democrat elected to the Senate, yet progressives ran third party candidates for governor and the senate, without sending a single name up for local offices. What a waste!

People seem to have decided that local offices aren’t worth running for, but we have so many problems at the local level. If progressives can demonstrate that we can improve those situations, perhaps then we can take that experience, and build towards electoral successes at the state and national levels.