and there it is on the top of the culture page, and with a little bee - a native species btw, not a honey bee it think. geez thanks, had i known i'd have put some effort into it - at least done some proofing. my last one disappeared down the gulliver fast as a thief at eldorado wine week. come to think of it, that final edit policy here is really key - a feature not a bug. just think of it, my name forever associated with that indecent, almost belligerent misspelling of the word poignant: magical! there's some serious potential there, if only i was a true culturejammer instead of a hugelkulture warrior :_)

Casey i have but managed to lose track of how to access it - should have been an easy one tho, thanks for the remind

pardon the typos - no sleep was had - awesome

Cog, I'm not sure that more money for education was my first point, so that's not quite accurate. I said that education is the right route to eradicating the problem of gangs. Diverting gang members from their chosen profession can only happen through school. I agree with you that education fails when home life is a shambles, but I do think that education is also the route to discovering and correcting problems for children at home. And yes, I do think more money should go to this problem, but more importantly, more thought and discussion, like the one we're having now, should go to the problem. More attention should be paid to long term solutions to persisting problems of culture, and less gut reacting should be done. I'll say again, I think the problem of gangs needs to be addressed in the minds and lives of the children for whom the gang instinct is most salient, before it hardens into reality. More money could and should be spend on education, as a proportion of our spending, and I'm sorry you don't think so as well, but only as part of a larger effort at expanding our thinking and cultural activity around the process of child raising. But the money wasn't my main point, and you do your argument a disservice by pretending that it was. Your point is that more cops and law enforcement and prisons, and tougher policing, of the cities and borders, is the solution to gang activity. So let's hear more about why you think that. Back that up with some content, because I'm severely unconvinced. I disagree that immigration "hurts everyone else". My ancestors were immigrants here and I suspect yours were too, unless you are a Native American, in which case you came here on an icebridge a few thousand years ago, and actually then you're still an immigrant. There are always immigrants, to every country, just as there is always a fringe chorus complainers who see any outsiders as an annoyance or a threat - cleverly forgetting their own origins - but that's nothing but a retrograde mentality. The education resources you mention being diverted to ESL classes wouldn't be so "precious" if we weren't pouring money into prisons and wars, and instead spent liberally on education. Solutions like the one that you advocate have the potential to make the problem worse - by creating a bigger barrier to prosperity to those outside the police wall, by creating a more hostile and antagonistic environment for citizens as well as visitors and immigrants within the protected state, and by creating a system of sustained criminality which perpetuates itself by legitimizing a culture of crime, which feeds itself just as well behind prison walls as in the streets, and provides ongoing training and education for each generation of criminals. I'm not arguing against police-work or laws, or their enforcement, I'm saying that we have to be careful not to create self perpetuating systems of violence. Take the war on drugs, for example? Do you suppose we are winning that one? I say the punitive solution is only a temporary one at best. The real, sane solution is holistic, and gets to the root of the problem: education. cheers!

I said it before but it bear repeating: Tthe city should consider a tax credit, not a debit for community gardens. City gardens improve the quality of life for all citizens, and should therefore be encouraged with small tax credits. If there are going to be ordinances, they should benefit the gardeners. For example, community gardens should be strongly protected against developers. Any permit for a city garden should automatically grandfather that garden in, so that even if the land changes owners, the garden can't be destroyed without consent of the gardeners. In New York City gardeners are having all kinds of problems with aggressive developers - after the quality of life improves in a neighborhood, thanks in no small part to the beautiful gardens, suddenly some rich developer wants to build luxury apartments on top of it, and of course NY's laws exist to protect the big developers. Sac should do things differently. Also, regulation against the use of non-organic pesticides, GMOs, and motorized garden tools wouldn't be a bad thing. If taxes are collected, they should go towards a general fund for providing a means to educate community gardeners on best organic gardening practices.