City Council Member Kshama Sawant visits

20150409_083357 — Councilmember Sawant after a great program with President Mike and Rotaract members Mariah Kimpton (L) and Devon Hay. 4/9/2015

Kshama Sawant, she of volubility and endless energy, became a city councilwoman as a dark horse candidate. Much of her support came from numerous random meetings with working and needy people. She thus became virtually evangelistic about their needs, the burdens upon them, and the widening disparity between the affluent and the rest of the population. In that regard, she takes only $40,000 of the $117,000 annual city council salary and allocates the rest to her solidarity fund. Her concerns entail several matters. One is that of the homeless. A bill to allow encampments on city property was narrowly defeated. She has mounted a crusade to reverse this ruling.

Another is the minimum wage. She contends (and who can deny?) that the $15/hour wage prices anyone out of decent Seattle housing. She contends that the hard-won $15 wage shall help, rather than inhibit, business. With purchasing power on the increase, people can support business by becoming more frequent customers. Affordable housing is diminishing. Corporations buy up affordable housing in order to raze the land for luxury apartments. She named the prices of both rents and homes, stating the fact that they are far out of reach for the working class and the poor.

She advocates a year-round female shelter. This would fill a need for victims of domestic abuse who would otherwise have to return home for financial reasons. Sawant also points to a regressive WA tax system, which offers corporate rewards but little or nothing for others. She offers quite a bit more of her observations and items needing action, including unfair city subsidies for large developers, the ecological consequences of Arctic drilling, the threats to labor unions, and hate crime.

Comment: A dynamic councilmember, with verve regarding several simultaneous issues. The fact that she enjoys considerable support suggests belief in her diagnoses and plans for remedies,

Bright Future with Reza Khastou

Our speaker for March 5th was Reza Khastou, founder of Bright Future & Basic and Transitional Studies, posits that our education troubles stem from two internal enemies. They are the unjust distributions of wealth and of knowledge and skills. Despite several government attempts at remedy, nothing availed. Moreover, appallingly low graduation and high dropout rates, mainly among black and Hispanic students, needed to be addressed. Other issues entailed, for those who made it to graduation, insurmountable student debt and inability to find work in one’s field. In many cases, career training should have begun much earlier, to wit, in high school.

To deal with these troubling circumstances, Khastou instituted the Bright Future & Basic and Transitional Studies program. Its aim: to make education meaningful to targeted students…to provide workforce education with hands-on…to have this work force education focused and intensive…to provide a tighter community that can focus on the individual. Case management is an integral part of the program.

Bright Future provides that students enter a college-level training program in the high school of parents’ choice. Credits go to both high school and community college. There is academic career counseling for either a job or further education.

Transition to a job is the ideal to be aimed at. Programs include Health Care Specialties, Cosmetology, Applied Math, Elective English, Social Studies, and more. Some scholarships and other financial aid are available.

Benefits from the program, already observed include:

–Higher high school and college graduation rates
–Close advisory system by the staff leads to students’ success.
–Unlike much college preparation, this program is practical.
–Dropouts often return and are re-engaged.
–Many benefactors have become interested.
–Skills can be taken anywhere there may be opportunities.
–Income from jobs circulates through the community and in turn aids the base.
–Social Security benefits are enhanced.

Comment: A vision whose results speak for themselves

Risibles

#1. The owner of a clothing store, returning from lunch, was met by his jubilant salesman.

“C.J.,” exulted the salesman, “I just sold that suit that had been hanging for years in the corner!”

Owner: “You mean the plaid, double breasted one with the pink lapels and the gold stripes running down the bell-bottomed trouser legs?”

Salesman: “Yes, and I got top dollar for it, too!”

Owner: “Nice going—-but why is your hand bandaged?”

Salesman: “As the customer was leaving, his seeing-eye dog bit me.”

#2. The rescue party arrived at the scene of the plane crash. The sole survivor was observed leaning against the fuselage. He was surrounded by a small mountain of bones and was busily gnawing at another one.

Noting the aghast stares of the rescuers, he remonstrated, “Look, I know what you’re thinking. But I had to survive. It has been done before. Think of the Donner party!

Said the leader of the group, “Yes, but good God, man–your plane went down only last night….”