Dan Coleman's blog

Perhaps I'm the first back from the packed house at Dock side so I'll get the ball rolling.

What impressed me most was the strong group of progressive activists assembled from Chatham County. These folks are committed to achieving the kind of sustainable land-use planning and economic development strategies that progressive orangepolitics would surely endorse.

Based on last year's election, we can see that real change is coming to Chatham. Allies in Orange should acknowledge their leadership on their own turf (as was the case tonight) and work in solidarity where possible.

Some tidbits:
Wasn't expecting Kevin Foy who apparently carpooled with Bill Strom, Cam Hill, and Mark Chilton. The way my brain works, I noted that they comprised a group of Town Council members elected in 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2003 and a mayor to fill in the missing year of 2001 if you count Foy twice. I guess Alderman Chilton counts twice too.

Nearby was a table with Joe Capowski, Terri Buckner, Laurin Easthom, Alex Zaffron, and Mary Rabinowitz. Now there's a fivesome Roy might balk at coaching!

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday July 23, 2005

Last week, Internationalist Books give this year's Bob Sheldon Award for social justice to Orange County school board member Liz Brown.

I was surprised that Brown was even in the field of vision of the Ibooks volunteers.

After all, these are people known for their engagement with U.S. and international issues, whose concern is with globalization and war, not school budgets and the three Rs. I suspect Brown was not well-known around Ibooks before last week.

Consider the other nominees. Ibooks board member Michal Osterweil said of nominee Vinci Daro "one of the most amazing things about Vinci is that she participates in many of the most important protests internationally and serves as a tremendous resource and thinker for developing effective alternatives here, and yet she is so modest and effective, that often you don't even know how much a project has depended on her work and her inspirational energy."

I was thinking of writing my own column on the question of the UNC system president's pay and the implications thereof. Perry Deane Young has done such a good job in today's News that I may not have to:

the university system's governors have suggested they may raise the university president's salary to $500,000 in order to attract the best candidate for the job. Never mind that the current president's salary of $300,000 carries with it an extraordinary expense account, a free car and one of the grandest historic houses in Chapel Hill.

Well, boy howdy, I hope you'll agree, it doesn't take a doctorate to figure out how wrong-headed this kind of thinking is. If candidates come here for $500,000, they would just as easily keep on going to the next place for even bigger bucks. Furthermore, if they're in it for the money, we shouldn't want them; we don't need them.