Call for Boise Residents and Supporters!

Here is the orginal post..

Yes the comedy trio,better known to the Boise residents who attend the Boise Neighborhood monthly general meetings, as The Mississippi Loft developers, will once again be trying to pressure the Boise community into signing a letter of support for there 4 story condo project, that has already received a vote last Decemeber 2005 with,14 yes 24 no 23 abstain.
Please come and share with the community your voice,your stories,your struggles and take part in building a neighborhood,building a community that everyone can be proud of and afford to be part of. Your voices have been clear and strong from the pulpits and pews,gentrification is destroying our community & we want it stopped, now bring that voice & your vote on Monday night to the,Albina Youth Opportunity School, on the corner of N Beech & N Mississippi at 7pm, and take part in community activism and a democratic process that people like Rosa Parks,Malcolm X, Angela Davis and Martin Luther King Jr fought so hard to give us a place at the decision making table.

On December 1st 1955 a young civil rights & community activist named Rosa Parks, in Montgomery,Alabama . Disobeyed a bus driver's demand that she give up her seat to a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott. One of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history. Racial and economic segregation is still at work in America. We can keep silent and hide in our homes, hoping it does not affect our security or livability, or we can raise our voices in solidarity .

"Today, racism is far more camouflaged than it was earlier in the century. It is buried in institutional practices. It is hidden in coded language and subtle messages some people get when they shop, or look for a place to live or for a taxi, or have dealings with the police". Project Hip-hop, 1997

............. la lucha sigue!.........
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Here are some links to online discussions..

portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/04/337989.shtml

portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/329095.shtml


portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/03/336664.shtml

portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/03/336631.shtml




Hello neighbors,

Your monthly Boise Neighborhood Association meeting will be held next
Monday, May 8th at 7pm at the Albina Youth Opportunity School (NE corner
of Beech and Mississippi).

This month's agenda includes:

Announcements from the community (10 mins)

Announcement from the Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force (~5 mins)

Land Use Reportback (5 mins)

Safety Committee Update (5 mins)

Pedestrian Safety Presentation from ACTS Oregon (10-15 mins)

N Mississippi development update (25-30 mins total)
-Randy Rappaport (new owner of Richard's Home Furnishings) will announce
preliminary plans for that site redesign (5 mins)

-Kurisu International will give a brief presenation on their planned
mixed-use building at Mississippi & Shaver (5-10 mins)

-Developers from the planned Mississippi Lofts building (N Mississippi &
Skidmore) will present the updated designs for their project. They will
once again ask the community for a letter of support. Discussion and
Vote. (15 mins)

Spring CleanUp (5 mins)
This event will be held on Saturday, May 13th from 9am-1pm. Anyone who
wishes to volunteer at Spring CleanUp can stay and discuss the details.

Enjoy the rest of the week, we'll see you on Monday.

Emily Kearns and Justin Arnhalt
BNA cochairs
homepage:  http://www.boisevoice.org

heres the latest issue of the boise voice:

May 2006

there is an article in there about the developers that will be coming to this months meeting and what their agenda item will be. if you live in the neighborhood and would like to have your voice heard, attend the meeting this Monday the 8th, 7pm, AYOS (Mississippi and Beech).

If you would like to help distribute the paper, stop by the Blackrose Collective Bookstore and Community Resource Center (4038 N Mississippi) today or tomorrow between 12 noon and 8 pm to pick up some copies and find some streets to distribute to.

Dear Eliot,

Part of the strategy of engineering growth is to spout this red herring, this chestnut, every time that someone attempts to reveal the truth about growth. Don't be another sucker by letting the growth engineers brainclog you with this BS as well. Liberate your brain and your heart and pay attention:

The reason why tens of thousands of people have moved here in the past twenty years is not because it just keeps getting more beautiful and livable and sustainable and people can't help themselves. The reason why--as it becomes less beautiful, livable and sustainable here--is because BILLIONS of dollars of taxpayer subsidies have been handed to giant and non-local corporations, new construction, and MASSIVE marketing campaigns to draw more people and businesses to the area. The reason why this growth MAY continue to happen here is because we MAY continue to allow these public funds to be mismanaged in this way.

The marketing campaigns to draw more people here, in order to fulfill the corporate wet dreams, include print and broadcast media, planted PR articles and TV news stories, gubernatorial and congressional junkets abroad, statewide commissions, wining and dining of bigwigs of potential corporate transplants, preparation of prime farmland into "ready-to-go" industrial sites, Brand Oregon, and tourism boosterism (to ensure that at least some of the tourists want to return as residents). These campaigns have been in full swing since at least the early nineties, and they are well-orchestrated between State and local agencies. The members of the commissions and committees are CEOs and other managers of large corporations as well as venture capitalists, local managers of large, non-local banks, real estate investors and brokers--all of whom rake in huge piles by revving up the growth machine by a few more rpms each year. It is a close, tight circle

The, conservatively-speaking, 1.2 BILLION taxpayer dollars of direct subsidies to growth spent each year include millions in tax breaks to Intel, Nike and other corporate extortionists; the costs of new schools for residents of new subdivisions (not paid by the builders or buyers, but by everyone else--why do you think there's no funding for existing schools?); the costs of new roads, fire stations, and extension of utility services. These are called system development charges (SDCs), and they are financed by other taxpayers to the tune of $50,000 average per each new house. We PAY people to move here!

The economic benefits to all this exploitation is always touted as increased tax revenues, more new jobs, and economic development. But the stats easily obtainable directly from the shelves of our state economist paint a picture of higher taxes per resident, skyrocketing housing costs, an ever-widening income gap between rich and poor, and increased poverty, homelessness, hunger, and incarcerations. These conditions are not merely coincidental with the engineering of growth in the area, but are direct results of the growth. This is something that progressives and others have not gotten a firm grip on. The same politicians and business leaders who claim to be proponents of environmental sustainability, social justice, and prosperity for all are the same who who actively seek more growth each year not because they care about area residents and the local ecosystems, but because they benefit greatly from more growth, the rest of us be damned! The very machinations of economic growth are to suck the wealth away from local resources, residents, and communities and concentrate it into the hands of the few elite. More overpopulation and more overconsumption are constantly needed to serve as fuel for this conversion of natural and human capital into fiscal capital for the few.

End these publicly-financed subsidies and marketing campaigns, and our local population will stabilize to within the carrying capacity of the region. Stabilized so, and living conscious lives directly connected in reverence to the limited resources of our land, we will automatically stop producing more babies than we can care for, and we will stop exploiting people and resources in other regions. People will stay put and have to figure out how to live in balance with their own limited resources.

It's been said before, but you need to understand--increasing density without increasing a corresponding number of open spaces for urban residents has been doing nothing to alleviate sprawl, and to continue believing otherwise is to be willfully closing your intelligence and senses to the reality. New roads and developments bumped up years ago to the original Urban Growth Boundary, and the UGB has in recent years been expanded by about 30,000 acres, further removing unfettered countryside from inner city residents. We haven't been subjected to less sprawl, only a more dense and more sprawling sprawl! Billions of dollars (all subsidized) of new freeway widenings and bridges are in the works, going along with the widenings and new bridges to which we have already been subjected. Those "vacant" lands you speak of that you think should be filled in are lands that need to be preserved for community gardens for growing food that we will need as peak oil kicks in.

Wake up and realize that all this talk of preserving countryside and reducing traffic, as the former disappears faster each year and the latter balloons more each year, is nothing but a clever sleight of hand.

Peel your eyes from the legerdemain and see what is happening to our beautiful Oregon, our Portland. Bigger is NOT better, nor is it inevitable. We don't have any obligation to accept ugly, outsized human storage units in our neighborhoods. Our obligation to the planet and to humankind is to do otherwise.

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re: Growth Engineered
08.May.2006 14:17



Elliot
link


"The only thing that will end and reverse sprawl is stabilization of our local population to within the local carrying capacity."

You cant tell people they cant move to Portland! Tens of thousands will keep coming and coming. Are we going to put them on wilderness destroying sprawl or increase density? From what I see on my walks in inner Portland is thousands of empty lots and rundown buildings and places that could be redeveloped for these newcomers in nice multiplex type housing which uses a lot less energy than single stand alone houses. Its a horrific environmental crime to pave pristine land when we have so much inner city land undeveloped. Yes greenspace parks an be developed for this too. Look at the 3 block sized parks in the Pearl District which are surrounded by nice condos and apts. I wish Portland didnt allow any sprawl at all but they have the 2040 plan area to fill over the next years. Vancouver BC doesnt allow any urban sprawl at all which is what we should do.