Why I announced and have my campaign hq in the toughest part of RI

[CarlSheeler4U]

If anyone is familiar with Rhode Island, it's a pretty state. It has some very exclsuive neighborhoods, but it also has many towns and cities with homes occupied by hard working middle class households struggling to get by usually one paycheck shy of financial ruin.

It is an ethnically diverse and culturally rich state for being as small in size and population as it is..........

But there is another side beneath the soccer moms and tailgate parties. In large part, the Democrat leadership machine while in control expended more effort on the protection of the incumbency of its loyal members than helping the shrinking prosperity of the communities they represent.

The hardest hit are what I called in my campaign speech - the "underrepresented". One third of households with children are single parent. The manufacturing economy was replaced with the lower wages of a service economy with over 25% of households in poverty. Exploitation of minorities has been the rule with funds going to "connected" communities for street repairs and education.

I believe Congressman Patrick Kennedy referred to some areas in Rhode island as "war zones". I'm not super-tough, but these neighborhoods were similar to the ones I grew up in LA, Brooklyn and Chicago. These are my "peeps".

So I announced at Hope High School, because of the irony. Hope is the state's motto. This HS is a stone's throw from two exclusive private high schools and Brown University. It is underfunded and Providence's most at risk students attend school there. Community indeference has threatened keeping the school open and put teachers at their tethers end. These were the kids who would most likely be dropping out, from broken homes and serving in Iraq. The occassional answer has ben to shut it down and sell the valuable land it sits on as a remedy to a blight that has less to do with the students than it does to do with leadership. The theme of my announcement was blood for oil in Iraq was because Bush lied. I talked about this was the two America's right here in RI, just like Katrina and how funds for education, job growth and healthcare would only come when we had leadership that demanded it for those least able to care for themselves. They did not want policy, they wanted conviction.

Drowning people don't want swimming lessons, they want a life preserver.

So to keep my faith with these folks I kept my other promise and put my campaign HQ in South Providence, which is principally populated by minorities. You will seldom see white folks here and that's the rub, because I can bet it'll be an area that becomes gentrified because of some of the beautifully constructed homes from the early 1900's.

If elected officials are not connecting with the poor, working and middle class other than to attend clam bakes and little league games, then they aren't going to prevent the true hardships our poor domestic policy has on people who have hopes and dreams just like you and me. Theirs is usually their kids stay safe when they come home after two jobs and nobody has broken into their apartments and the teacher's aide cared enough to make sure they learned someting in school.

Don't take my word for it. Just read these two posts and wonder why folks running like me have such a tough time with the Democratic Leadership.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2502957

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=132&topic_id=2502021&mesg_id=2502021

Carl
Sheeler for US Senate
www.carlsheeler

Democrats, not aristocrats.

[Warpy]

1. Wish I lived there so I could vote Sheeler

Rhode Island also provides one of the greatest lessons on class that I have ever seen, the Newport tour.

Back in the days when relative luxury for the working class meant a flat with cold running water and a shared toilet inside the building, the Robber Barons were looting entire rooms from Europe, having them dismantled from the stately mansions of the declining aristocracy and having them reassembled in huge marble "cottages" in Newport. They were enormous party houses to be used three months out of the year to impress the very European aristocrats those rooms had originated with, kept empty but heated the rest of the year, monuments to excess.

The excess had been funded by bringing in wave after wave of immigrants to keep wages at the starvation level, by goon squads to make sure unions never got a foothold, and by graft at all levels of government enabling them.

The very same thing is occurring at multiple places in the country now, although instead of looting the mansions of Europe they're bringing over European craftsmen to build that stuff here. Pleasure palaces abound in Vail, Aspen, Telluride, Taos, Palm Springs, Palm Beach, Marco Island, and wherever the opulent find a place to flaunt their wealth to the equally opulent.

Welre not back to cold water flats, exactly, but the poorest paid of us are back to housing that is not fit for dogs, camper shells on cinderblocks and homeless shelters. When are we going to realize what maintaining an aristocracy of wealth really costs the rest of us?

[CarlSheeler4U]

2. Maybe sending a few folks from DU our way will help.