Brian Rudnick for City Council- and Beyond

Green Party Parties at Greenfest Philly

Shown here are PA State  Green Party Chair Hillary Aisenstein and Philadelphia Green Party Chair Charles Sherrouse. Click here for a little video of 2008 Greenfest Randi Peters from the Berks County Greens helped out too!

Nutter Welcomes Students Back to Their Future: the underfunded public school system of the past

Mayor Nutter appears on the City of Philadelphia’s website sitting at a chair with an attached arm tablet. Juxtaposed to the photo is the text “Welcome Back to Your Future.”

My daughter came back from the first day of public school complaining that her legs hurt from sitting at just such one of these uncomfortable and ergonomically horrendous desks. I have a 50-some year old version of this public school chair in our garage and its future, like the ones in our public schools, belong on an internet auction.

The future I would like our children to go back to is one

• where a public education system is valued and generously financed because it promotes egalitarian and civic values.

How wonderful it is that new sports and science wings and who knows what else are getting built at schools in Germantown and Chestnut Hill- for those, that is, in the privileged, private school community.

In 1902 Anatole France wrote, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread -- the rich as well as the poor." In its majestic equality, our system allows parents to choose to make a $15-$20,000 a year payment to send a child to private school, and the public even pays the cost of bus transportation to get the child there.

•  where kids walk to their neighborhood schools,

•  where the only uniformity imposed is courteous behavior and not military style uniforms

•  where students are taught more than they are tested

• where separate and unequal schooling is as unacceptable as it was in the early, heady days of the civil rights era.

A year ago, Mayor Nutter, welcomed the citizens of Northwest Philadelphia back to the future by helping finance the re-election of the then 3-term incumbent Democratic councilwoman who is just about to have another, now-former, staffer hauled off to jail for corruption in the Council office.

While Mayor Nutter is making a lot of wonderful, positive changes in Philadelphia, is he making any fundamental changes or merely consolidating his power?

I recall how candidate Nutter, on the campaign trail, said he was keeping his eye on the ball, in order to get elected. We, in the Green Party, who are running former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for President, believe that as citizens, we need to keep our eye on the ballgame and not just the ball .

If you want to play the current ballgame and meet the Democratic candidate (who’s hugely preferable over his Republican opponent) at rocker Jon Bon Jovi’s down the Jersey shore, be sure to bring along $31,000.

I don't think it's sliding scale.