Martyr or nuisance? Pham-Remmele strikes again

Brenda Konkel having been defeated in the last election, Madison Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele looks to be working hard to take the mantle of most notorious Council member in town.

That could be a badge of honor, or a mark of shame.

Controversy and strong opinions about Pham-Remmele's tenure have been building for some time now (as far as I can tell, pretty much ever since the big neighborhood safety meeting last year), and the local press has taken notice. That led to the Wisconsin State Journal printing a piece by Dean Mosiman all about Pham-Remmele and her critics. The article was, in my opinion, somewhat slanted in her favor, making her out to be an outspoken maverick willing to stand up to the mayor and fight for the rights of her crime-weary constituents.

Clenched fists in the air!

This is a tricky issue, though, because the problems faced by those living in Pham-Remmele's district are very real, very pressing, and very complicated. And I can understand why so many of them are so fond of their alder, who has done much to lobby for certain security measures aimed at improving their situation.

The problem, however, is that that appears to be Pham-Remmele's only issue, and she seems to spend the rest of her time rambling on for far too long, asking questions that have no real purpose, and repeating herself. By all accounts, when Pham-Remmele takes the floor at a Council meeting, everyone battens down the hatches and prepares themselves for some long, meandering tirade or another.

At the most recent meeting, she apparently did not disappoint. Both reporter Dusty Weis and former alder Konkel have interesting and detailed accounts of what happened, and I recommend checking out both of them.

Is she drunk on her recent glut of publicity? Or is this just business as usual? I have no idea, but regardless of the reasons, it does appear that she's turning into more of a nuisance than an effective, take-no-shit advocate. And that's a shame, because we need more elected officials who are willing to ask the tough questions and get at the root of issues. We need people willing to disagree openly with the mayor and others when necessary. But we need these people to have some measure of tact and forethought, so that meetings don't get needlessly bogged down. That's where important policies are supposed to get worked out, after all.

I admire Pham-Remmele's obvious passion for the job and the neighborhood, but it's becoming more and more clear that her shortcomings, unfortunately, far outweigh her good intentions.

Working out the kinks in digital rights and expectations

All politics is local. All politics is global.

The former has always been true, while the latter has only really come into its own truth with the advent of the internet and our ever-evolving digital age. For instance, in the past week, comments made by former Madison alder Brenda Konkel on her blog were used, out of context and without attribution, by an online newspaper. Said alder then commented on the article via her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and those words were picked up by a blog/online magazine and posted as a screen shot (still following me?).

Charges of impropriety were leveled at pretty much everyone involved for a whole variety of issues, but as I said in my piece on Dane101 yesterday, I think the really interesting issue at hand here is that of our increasingly online lives. How much online exposure is too much? What rights do we maintain in the binary world? What's the reasonable expectation of privacy for individuals using the web? For public officials?

Happily, a fairly in-depth and civil discussion of these issues was the main result of the posts, and many valid critiques and theories have been posited.

I maintain that, while it was improper that the first version of the screen shot included a comment from an unrelated person (it has since been removed), the use of the quote was fair. Konkel made the comment both on Facebook--which admittedly has a few more privacy filters--and on Twitter, which is quite public. Konkel herself has offered some thoughtful responses to this storm in a bottle:

What was cross-posted on Facebook - the same content - was also not that big of a deal to be used publicly, especially because it was political content. I think what surprised me was seeing my subsequent comment posted. Again, probably splitting hairs, but I guess I'll be more judicious in my comments in the future. If I wanted my comments to be more public, I could have just twittered it. Like I said, my twitter has more public comments, on my facebook, you'll see that I painted my toenails purple. I use them differently. Perhaps it was a distinction in my own head, but I thought it was more widely understood. Otherwise, I'm surprised by what some public figures (members of the media included) post on facebook and I'd hate to see all of that fair game for the press.

As you can see, it's a multi-layered debate, but an important one for everyone to be having as more and more news is gotten and purveyed online, and more of us are making our lives open to total strangers through the internet. Because we all need to realize that, if we put it online, someone is going to see it. We need to decide what that means, and how it can or can't be legally used.

I don't pretend to have definitive answers to all of these questions, but I'm glad we're at least really starting to discuss them. I wish the major news organizations would do more of the same, frankly. It behooves us all to figure these things out before bigger, potentially more damaging instances of personal data mining occur in the press.

Meanwhile, there's still that pesky issue of racism brought up by the original posts and articles. Over on the far more inconsistent side of things, Dave Blaska accuses Konkel of resorting to McCarthy-like tactics in her comments about Alder Pham-Remmele that helped kick off this whole thing:

...Brenda Konkel has turned the racism card face up, as the Left is wont to do so promiscuously.

Yes, because "The Right" is so free from prejudice of any kind. The unfortunate thing is that, in the middle of Blaska's name calling, self-aggrandizing screed, there are actually a few decent points to be had--namely, that we all need to do a better job of figuring out when we're just asking people to be more responsible for themselves and their children, and when we're taking that to a classist, racist level by including stereotypes and derogatory sentiments.

Take the comments Pham-Remmele made that are at the center of this debate. Back in October of '07, the Common Council was discussing redevelopment in the Allied Drive neighborhood when, as the Capital Times then reported,

Jaws dropped...As a number of residents of the neighborhood looked on and city cable Channel 12's cameras rolled, Pham-Remmele said that, based on her 30 years' experience as a teacher in the Madison school district, some Allied Drive families made expensive hair braiding a higher priority than their children's lunches.

It's one of those cringe-worthy statements that may have a kernel of truth at its core, but is expressed in such a crass manner that any chance for reasoned, constructive dialogue thereafter goes understandably out the window.

I suspect that the issue with Pham-Remmele has more to do with her inability to express herself properly rather than serious racism. She is often accused of making rambling, incoherent statements at council meetings, and that, combined with her no-nonsense approach to public service, is a recipe for discord.

We owe it to ourselves to have serious discussions about neighborhood safety and quality of life, as well as finding a balance between personal responsibility and community assistance. And yes, racism still exists in this Obama era, whether the Dave Blaska's of the world would like to admit it or not. We've all got our little prejudices, our ignorance of certain people or cultures, our preconceived notions that need straightening out. And so it's good that there are forceful voices out there, like Konkel and like Pham-Remmele, to keep us on our toes. It's up to the rest of us, then, to make sure those forceful voices are countered, when necessary, by equally honest but perhaps more thoughtful and nuanced discussion.

Name calling or coddling aren't going to get any of us anywhere good.

Pham-Remmele not feeling very welcoming

"We must not continue to welcome into Madison more at-risk populations from elsewhere because we will never have sufficient resources to provide for them." - Madison Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele, 20th District.

I'm aware that sentiments such as this one exist, but it's somewhat rare to see them laid so bare, and by an elected official, no less. And I couldn't disagree with it more.

A skirmish of sorts has broken out between Pham-Remmele and those who advocate for more affordable housing and public services, the result of an email sent by Madison Police Captain Jay Lengfeld (West District) to Pham-Remmele. In it, Lengfeld argues that:

1. The City needs to reduce or freeze the number of subsidized housing units in the city. The at risk population in Madison has exceeded the ability of service provides to service them.

2. The City needs to license landlords, so we have citywide standards and can weed out the bad ones.

3. Landlords need more protection to deny applicants with a history of bad behavior. The Russett Rd shooting is a prefect example: a family was evicted from an address on the Southside for behavior reasons and within weeks they had the same bad behavior in the Russett Rd area. We are now evicting them from Russett, but I am sure they will find housing somewhere else in the city and bring the same problems to that neighborhood.

At first blush, I think most folks would agree that landlords should be able to better screen out bad tenants. But, according to Ald. Brenda Konkel, they already do have that ability under the law, so Lengfeld's point seems redundant. Konkel further breaks down his arguments, going on to note that:

1. The City hasn't increased its subsidized housing stock in, um, years. CDA hasn't built any new public housing units since the 1970's and the section 8 program hasn't added any Section 8 vouchers since the 1990s.

2. Landlords have all the ability in the world to deny tenants for bad behavior and eviction records. They simply have to do landlord reference checks and check CCAP.

3. There is no money in the City budget for increased community services to help service providers because we gave it all to the police department last year for their 30 new officers to deal with these problems. You can't have it both ways, do we need police to solve these problems or services?

I'd be curious to look over just what money is and is not allocated in the City budget for community services, and what, if any, those services are. But otherwise, Konkel makes some good points. We poured a ton of money into adding 30 new officers to the rolls--which still seems pretty excessive to me--and now Lengfeld's complaining that that's not enough. Since we clearly don't have the money to both add lots of officers and increase city services, we should maybe be spending more time figuring out which is the better investment. Me? I suspect we could have met in the middle, adding a smaller number of new officers and somewhat better funding for community services.

Law enforcement is important, but it doesn't solve everything. We need to work harder at preventing crimes in the first place, and a lot of that relies on making sure all of our citizens, at-risk or otherwise, are well served: good schools, affordable housing, accessible daycare, respite centers, job training, and after school programs are all good examples.

Simply saying "stop letting at-risk people move here!" does not solve the problem, and likely just makes things worse by demonizing an entire population and forcing them to pool in areas that don't have services. Then the cycle just tends to continue, with little progress for anyone.

Happily, I'm not the only one who's more than a little put off by Pham-Remmele's comments. But we need more voices chiming in, from all sides, so we can better devise good solutions and tactics for tackling what is a very complex--and very crucial--issue.