A Big Day at Philadelphia's City Council
There was, shall we say, a lively meeting of Philadelphia's City Council on Thursday, April 23. Among other things, two speakers in the public comment period were expelled from the chamber. I'd never witnessed an expulsion before. But there are rules. The big one, which is frequently broken or at least bent, is that comments must be related to a bill that is up for a vote in that session. One of our two offenders didn't like the mayor very much and called her a queen; the other started to talk about how immigrants in Sweden were raping the local women in vast numbers. I think he got in about a sentence and a half.
Neither the queenliness of Mayor Parker nor the misbehavior of immigrants to Sweden were up for a vote on Thursday. Two big bills, or actually bill packages, were. One was encapsulated as ICE OUT; the other had the nickname of Safe Healthy Homes. The basic idea for this second item, it seems, is that when it's raining outside it should not be raining inside.
Both of these packages had been in development for a while. I don't think it was by accident that they came up for a final vote on the same day. The council chamber was packed, those in attendance were quite energetic, and not surprisingly many people were strongly in favor of both packages. I guess we could call that tactical synergy.
The left is, I think, getting very good at building coalitions.
For more on the ICE OUT package, click here. For more on the Safe Healthy Homes package, click here.
See also They'll Kill Anybody for No Reason; It Was Wet, We Were Angry; General Strike.
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