Friends of a friend who saw City Council candidate Kathy Podgers on Sunday's CCTV debate called her to say they were impressed. Kathy was solid on the issues, thoughtful, and she didn't seem like a "nut case."
Where could they have gotten the idea she was a "nut case"?
This is the rumor the bad guys have been spreading about Kathy.
It repeats the slander against her at the Cambridge City Council meeting a year ago when city officials mocked, threatened, and publicly humiliated her to try to silence her and get her out of the Council chamber.
They violated her civil rights to attend and participate in the Council meeting as a person with a physical disability accompanied by her service animal. The Mass. Commission Against Discrimination found "Probable Cause" to believe city officials (including two candidates for re-election) discriminated against her as she said. The persons named in Kathy's complaint are encouraged to resolve the problem before a public hearing set for December 12.
In attempting to dismiss Kathy as a "nut case," anyone spreading this rumor simply confirms his or her own bias against persons with disabilities. Would a rumor using the "N word" about a candidate spread without revealing the rumor-mongers as bigots?
On the one hand we read that mental illness is a true disability, that its sufferers have a right to respect and dignity. On the other we have people right here in Cambridge using the designation to indicate a person can be ignored or abused with impunity. Whether they apply this or other derogatory terms to a person with mental illness or a person with a physical disability, like Kathy, it is bigotry, and it plays to bigotry.
Who, and what, is sick here?
Marilyn Wellons
Monday, November 05, 2007
Cambridge Pol Advertises for Election Help, Withdraws Ad
Bob La Trémouille reports:
1. Ad on Craigslist.
2. Responses.
3. Counterad.
4. Ad pulled.
1. Ad on Craigslist.
The following ad appeared on Craigslist on November 2, 2007 with regard to Cambridge, MA:
**********
Progressive candidate for city council is looking for last minute help Monday
and Tuesday. The campaign is very tight and we are looking for the final push to
take us over the top.
Are you a leader? Put together a team and we will pay you more!
Support Workers' Rights! Make Housing Affordable! End the War!
2. Responses.
I distributed a copy of the ad to perhaps a hundred of my closest friends.
One suggested that it sounded like Decker or Seidel.
3. Counterad.
I posted the following counterad on Sunday, November 5. The PPS was added after the suggestion that it could be Decker or Seidel.
************
Work for a “Progressive” Cambridge City Councilor?
A recent posting sought workers for a “progressive” Cambridge City Councilor.
There is no such thing.
A recent MCAD ruling found probable cause of discrimination in the City Council’s attempt to keep a handicapped woman in her 60’s from using her guide dog in a city council meeting. Cambridge is appealing.
Cambridge seems to claim that Cambridge has a right to ignore federal civil rights of the handicapped because Cambridge has their own civil rights laws which do not protect this woman’s dog. They want to obey their less protective laws, not the fed’s more protective laws. Sounds like state’s rights in the Jim Crow south, but this is worse. Cambridge may think it is a People’s Republik, but it is not even a state.
The City of Cambridge is in the process of destroying hundreds if not thousands of healthy trees at Fresh Pond. Cambridge has no problem with the state Department of Recreation and Development’s plans to destroy 449 to 660 trees on Memorial Drive between Magazine Beach and the Longfellow Bridge including every cherry tree. Cambridge routinely destroys healthy trees as part of its projects.
Cambridge and the DCR destroyed the wetlands and animal habitat at Magazine Beach to put in designer bushes which kept dying.
The feds have prohibited more phosphate addition to the Charles. Cambridge and the DCR are digging up seven acres of dirt at Magazine Beach to replace it with seven acres of dirt and phosphates.
Cambridge’s buddies at the DCR spent four years denying their plans would harm the 25 year resident gaggle of Charles River White Geese. They then explained that starving them is not harming them.
Their buddies did a similar project at Ebersol Fields near Mass. General last year. The Phosphates did not work, so they added Tartan. The next day, the Charles River was dead with algae from the harbor to Mass. Ave.
A young woman was raped and murdered near the BU Bridge apparently by a guy who graduated from killing mother geese on their nests. The DCR and Cambridge were belligerently neutral on the goose killings. Then Cambridge’s city council spent more than an hour discussing the rape and murder but DID NOT WANT TO KNOW where she was raped and murdered.
Will Cambridge and the DCR obey the feds on phosphates? Cambridge considers its rules more important than the fed’s when it comes to Cambridge abusing the handicapped.
PS: The guide dog was attacked by a pit bull belonging to a Cambridge cop in the lobby of the Cambridge police station. No negative comment by Cambridge city council and no known punishment of the cop.
PPS: I just reread the posting and realize that this could be a non-incumbent. One non-incumbent has previously posted on Craigslist and claims to be progressive.
He is a member of the Cambridge Conservation Commission who, I believe, has been on the scene since after the rape and murder. His hand are filthy with the environmental destruction after that.
He has publicly defended Cambridge pols’ environmental destructiveness claiming that they have a “better” definition of environmentalism.
Sounds roughly like the claim of the City Council to defend their barring the guide dog, and their apparent response to the EPA objection to their new phosphates.
Most of us live in reality.
4. Ad pulled.
As of this morning, November 5, when I checked Craigslist, the "progressive" Cambridge City Council candidate seems to have pulled the ad.
1. Ad on Craigslist.
2. Responses.
3. Counterad.
4. Ad pulled.
1. Ad on Craigslist.
The following ad appeared on Craigslist on November 2, 2007 with regard to Cambridge, MA:
**********
Progressive candidate for city council is looking for last minute help Monday
and Tuesday. The campaign is very tight and we are looking for the final push to
take us over the top.
Are you a leader? Put together a team and we will pay you more!
Support Workers' Rights! Make Housing Affordable! End the War!
2. Responses.
I distributed a copy of the ad to perhaps a hundred of my closest friends.
One suggested that it sounded like Decker or Seidel.
3. Counterad.
I posted the following counterad on Sunday, November 5. The PPS was added after the suggestion that it could be Decker or Seidel.
************
Work for a “Progressive” Cambridge City Councilor?
A recent posting sought workers for a “progressive” Cambridge City Councilor.
There is no such thing.
A recent MCAD ruling found probable cause of discrimination in the City Council’s attempt to keep a handicapped woman in her 60’s from using her guide dog in a city council meeting. Cambridge is appealing.
Cambridge seems to claim that Cambridge has a right to ignore federal civil rights of the handicapped because Cambridge has their own civil rights laws which do not protect this woman’s dog. They want to obey their less protective laws, not the fed’s more protective laws. Sounds like state’s rights in the Jim Crow south, but this is worse. Cambridge may think it is a People’s Republik, but it is not even a state.
The City of Cambridge is in the process of destroying hundreds if not thousands of healthy trees at Fresh Pond. Cambridge has no problem with the state Department of Recreation and Development’s plans to destroy 449 to 660 trees on Memorial Drive between Magazine Beach and the Longfellow Bridge including every cherry tree. Cambridge routinely destroys healthy trees as part of its projects.
Cambridge and the DCR destroyed the wetlands and animal habitat at Magazine Beach to put in designer bushes which kept dying.
The feds have prohibited more phosphate addition to the Charles. Cambridge and the DCR are digging up seven acres of dirt at Magazine Beach to replace it with seven acres of dirt and phosphates.
Cambridge’s buddies at the DCR spent four years denying their plans would harm the 25 year resident gaggle of Charles River White Geese. They then explained that starving them is not harming them.
Their buddies did a similar project at Ebersol Fields near Mass. General last year. The Phosphates did not work, so they added Tartan. The next day, the Charles River was dead with algae from the harbor to Mass. Ave.
A young woman was raped and murdered near the BU Bridge apparently by a guy who graduated from killing mother geese on their nests. The DCR and Cambridge were belligerently neutral on the goose killings. Then Cambridge’s city council spent more than an hour discussing the rape and murder but DID NOT WANT TO KNOW where she was raped and murdered.
Will Cambridge and the DCR obey the feds on phosphates? Cambridge considers its rules more important than the fed’s when it comes to Cambridge abusing the handicapped.
PS: The guide dog was attacked by a pit bull belonging to a Cambridge cop in the lobby of the Cambridge police station. No negative comment by Cambridge city council and no known punishment of the cop.
PPS: I just reread the posting and realize that this could be a non-incumbent. One non-incumbent has previously posted on Craigslist and claims to be progressive.
He is a member of the Cambridge Conservation Commission who, I believe, has been on the scene since after the rape and murder. His hand are filthy with the environmental destruction after that.
He has publicly defended Cambridge pols’ environmental destructiveness claiming that they have a “better” definition of environmentalism.
Sounds roughly like the claim of the City Council to defend their barring the guide dog, and their apparent response to the EPA objection to their new phosphates.
Most of us live in reality.
4. Ad pulled.
As of this morning, November 5, when I checked Craigslist, the "progressive" Cambridge City Council candidate seems to have pulled the ad.
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