[Mpls] Part 2. The violins continue to sob but play on the wrongpage

[Michael Atherton]

Bob Johnson wrote:

>  Once again, occupancy limit ordinances are irrelevant here since the 
>  three students were not killed by overoccupancy.  You are really 
>  trying hard to ignore this fundamental fact.

I always knew that the housing sweeps were BS.  Dinkytown
is no more safer now than before.  You need better
smoke detectors not fewer numbers of roommates.  Those
kids were not killed as they were tramped on the
way to an exit. If people think that PPERRIA members
are truly concerned about students they should sit
in on some neighborhood meetings and listen to what
is said either explicitly or between the lines.  

>  You are quite consistent in your exclusion politics.  For you it is 
>  apparently acceptable to exclude students from neighborhood 
>  participation (as Prospect Parkers do on the basis that students 
>  are not PERMANENT residents) just as NRP process excludes the great 
>  majority of residents from decision-making on the expenditure 
>  of large sums of taxpayer dollars, allowing mainly the 
>  participation of activists.

I attended Prospect Park's Phase II initiation meeting and
inquired about the number of students who were in attendance.  
There were, besides myself, three students who were there as
part of a class project, one of whom lived in the neighborhood.
I told this resident that he could and should participate
in meeting and that he was guaranteed this right by law.
He didn't believe me and went to ask Mr. Cross, who was 
chairing the meeting, if he could participate.  When I made
a motion that the meeting should be postponed because PPERRIA
had failed to garner enough student participation (there are
approximately 3000 to 4000 students living here), those in
attendance voted to continue.  Just on causal observation,
it appear that there were two major groups represented.  A
contingent of Somali residents from Glendale and a bunch
of White folks 95% of whom appeared to be PPERRIA board members.
There was just one person there to represent a whole section
of the neighborhood south of Franklin and no one for the area
North of University.  To me, two students (one of them me) is
not sufficient to represent the interests of 3000 others.  NRP
citizen participation is a joke.

Dan Miller is a PPERRIA boardmember.  I'd like to hear his
honest opinion on how inclusive he believes PPERRIA to be,
but I don't think I'll get it.

Michael Atherton
Prospect Park