Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Friday, March 30, 2018

Housing for people, not for profit.

Should private developers like Legend Communities be allowed to intentionally create and shape entire communities into racially and economically segregated communities in quest of huge super profits?


Check out this article:


New Lakeway City Center proposal could expand size” by Bob Maxwell...

https://c4c5h4b3jv11qq3kf399hf3c-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/LTW-2018-03-1.pdf








Outfits like Legend Communities are finding huge profits in helping the wealthy continue to escape from the poor who they create.


These rich few whose wealth has been attained by exploiting working people seek out the heavily police and private security protected suburbs and gated communities.


The wealthy expect to continue to be served by poverty waged workers who must commute long distances to these jobs because they can’t afford the housing in these elite neighborhoods.


This begs the question:


What role does government have in community planning?


And what happens when the wealthy few are the majority in these small communities of the well-heeled crowd as a result freezing out those who work in these communities but can’t vote in these communities because they can’t afford to live in these communities?


This article is about “planning” in Lakeway, Texas which contains within it several guarded gated communities... armed guards to keep the hated people of color and poor out.


These wealthy people approved a forty-million dollar plus bond to build a new police station to house a police force of over fifty for a community with a population of around twelve-thousand requiring the labor of thousands of poverty wage workers to tend to their every need and whims with the main category of crime, according to the public police, being low-waged worker’s stealing from the wealthy living in nursing homes.


So, here we have, again, a proposal for more upscale housing- along with more businesses employing more poverty waged workers- with no thought to providing decent affordable housing for the workers who have to spend many hours a day, lacking even public transportation, commuting from home to jobs and back while having to pay out for child care.


This begs the question:


What is the role of the state and federal governments in promoting racial and economic diversity when planning is in progress when the planners, local government and most citizens lack basic sensibilities for equality and justice?


By the way, I have been viciously attacked by both well-heeled Democrats and Republicans for bringing this issue forward while candidates running for office would rather say nothing or call me names.


The current crooked and corrupt Mayor, Joe Bain, derides me in public as being an “activist;” what he says about me in private is anyone’s guess.


It’s a good thing I haven’t suggested free health care and child care centers... and living wages... for the workers employed who are expected to make do with poverty wages supplemented with miserly tips.