An Update.

The democratic primary for the Philly mayoral elections are only a few weeks away. Knox has been flooding the media with his ads for quite sometime and the man just rubs me the wrong way. He’s funded much of his campaign through his own finances which is just wonderful but I feel it gives him an unfair advantage against the other candidates.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone who spent some time working on Knox’s campaign and, obviously, he supports Knox. Mainly because Knox says he’ll run the city like a business which will, hopefully, clean up corruption and get the city back on track. I do think Philly needs a drastic change in governance but I’m not sure it needs to be by someone who is, for the most part, an outsider in city politics. With him donating his own money, it also seems as though he’s just putting his name out there so uninformed voters go with a familiar name.

If I were to vote, I’d be inclined to go for Dwight Evans. I hadn’t even heard much about him until I read about his stance on crime. I like that he’s about more than just police and guns and sees that building up education and employment are just as important in the fight against crime as putting more cops on the street. He’s using his neighborhood of West Oak Lane as a model for the city and he’s had much success with that model as city councilman. The thing about Evans is that he’s not doing too well in the polls and there are some issues with how he reaches out to the public.

Before I’d heard about Evans I was leaning towards Michael Nutter and, as the race is really between him and Knox, I hope he wins. He’s received many endorsements and support from Philadelphians and, after Evans, I think he’s Philadelphia’s best bet.

Crime is playing a huge part in the primaries thanks to the whopping 10 murders this weekend. One of the murders occurred in my friend’s apartment building, a mere block away from where I used to live in center city. Sometimes when I’m walking home I think about the likelihood of my own murder; I do live just a block away from the projects. But, it’s really all the same throughout Killadelphia. Currently we’re at 128 for the year, that’s up 16% from this time last year, the bloodiest year in ten for Philadelphia.

As I was reading up on local politics and local issues I came across the name of a company I worked at over one of my spring breaks in college. At the time I had no interest in pursuing local economic or government issues as a career and didn’t take the position seriously. That stuff fascinates me now and I would love to get into it. Funnily enough, my brother is into all this local politics stuff too, he just has a more grassroots approach to it.

My work people have, once again, disabled my ability to stream internet radio. That means no KEXP for me which is really very sad. I've been listening to Phawker radio and have since discovered Arthur & Yu and am really liking them.