Progressive Dane is a local political group, which has been active in city and county elections and community organizing for a number of years. Its members serve on the Madison City Council, Madison School Board and Dane County Board. Progressive Dane wishes to add its voice to the chorus of Madisonians who are appalled by the growing campaign of accusation and abuse recently directed toward Brenda Konkel and the Tenant Resource Center. Konkel, who serves as executive director of the Tenant Resource Center, has been criticized by apartment owners, who say that her advocacy on behalf of tenants betrays a conflict of interest. Officials of the Madison Area Apartment Association have suggested in meetings with Mayor Sue Bauman that Konkel needs to redefine her role in Madison's ongoing affordable housing discussion, that she lacks the knowledge to support her proposals with facts and that she should educate, not advocate. These and other outrageous charges made by landlords and the mayor's office in the press, in city government meetings and in that newest and most insidious weapon of character assassination, the e- mail gossip circuit, are as preposterous as they are politically motivated. That some of them are so wildly false as to be comical (Brenda Konkel ignorant of the facts of housing in Madison? Not likely) makes them no less unconscionable. The truth of the matter is simple: Educating and advocating go together in any progressive politics, Konkel is the most knowledgeable tenants rights expert in Madison, and her role in local housing politics is just what it should be. What Progressive Dane finds most disturbing, however, is that this episode is only the most recent in a continuing assault on the actions and recommendations of those who advocate for the rights of low-income citizens. From the obscene red-baiting that greeted the very moderate proposals made some months ago by the Equal Opportunities Commission regarding racially motivated police traffic stops, to the self-righteous frenzy with which some County Board supervisors have queued up to discredit the fierce and fiery Regina Rhyne, the friends of equality have been relentlessly attacked by Madison's political elite. Now tenant advocates are on the block, with the mayor, the Community Development Block Grant Commission, the Community Development Authority and conservative alders tripping the blade. Madison's political leaders are clearly not interested in eliminating or alleviating economic injustice. The CDA not long ago refused to even discuss the two affordable housing ordinances - one dealing with the rights of Section 8 recipients and one concerning the proper application of minimum income standards as a tenant screening device - that have for many months defined the affordable housing debate. Mayor Bauman has since managed to consign those ordinances to her favorite limbo: death by committee. She has also threatened to remove from the EOC the ordinances' most vocal champions, Ald. Barbara Vedder and former alder Bert Zipperer. In October the Common Council cut more than $5,000 from TRC's mediation program on the ridiculous grounds that the service it provides is nonessential. Not satisfied with merely wounding the program, the CDBG recently recommended another $5,000 cut. Now TRC is receiving implied threats of further funding cuts unless Konkel falls silent. As an election approaches, Mayor Bauman claims to promote increased access to affordable housing while she kills EOC proposals that would do just that, and her campaign coffers spill over with landlord contributions. Enough. All of this must stop. If you are a renter, your time is now. If you are a renter, you are one of a group comprising more than half the population of Madison. And THERE, properly organized and deployed, is real power. If over half of Madison stands together, who can stand against you? Renters must organize and fight back. Start now. Talk to your neighbors. Sign and circulate petitions demanding the passing of the two EOC affordable housing ordinances. Convince your neighborhood association to make renters' rights a top priority. Create alliances with other renters across Madison. Join Progressive Dane's Legislative Policy Committee and help develop progressive housing legislation. Contact the Affordable Housing Action Alliance and support their important work. Generate from among yourselves candidates for public office who will fight for economic justice. Make your elected officials understand that the blade will fall on their necks in future elections if tenant rights continue to be ignored. And above all, and RIGHT NOW, call your alder, call the mayor, call the members of the CDBG, and insist that funding for the Tenant Resource Center be maintained and increased, and the effort to silence Brenda Konkel be brought to an end. Brenda Konkel is Madison's most competent and courageous defender of tenants' rights, and the Tenant Resource Center is an indispensable supplier of the information and policy agendas which renters need to take their rightful place at the center of public policy making. Long may it be so!
Progressive Dane is a local political group, which has been active in city and county elections and community organizing for a number of years. Its members serve on the Madison City Council, Madison School Board and Dane County Board.
Progressive Dane wishes to add its voice to the chorus of Madisonians who are appalled by the growing campaign of accusation and abuse recently directed toward Brenda Konkel and the Tenant Resource Center.
Konkel, who serves as executive director of the Tenant Resource Center, has been criticized by apartment owners, who say that her advocacy on behalf of tenants betrays a conflict of interest. Officials of the Madison Area Apartment Association have suggested in meetings with Mayor Sue Bauman that Konkel needs to redefine her role in Madison's ongoing affordable housing discussion, that she lacks the knowledge to support her proposals with facts and that she should educate, not advocate.
These and other outrageous charges made by landlords and the mayor's office in the press, in city government meetings and in that newest and most insidious weapon of character assassination, the e- mail gossip circuit, are as preposterous as they are politically motivated. That some of them are so wildly false as to be comical (Brenda Konkel ignorant of the facts of housing in Madison? Not likely) makes them no less unconscionable.
The truth of the matter is simple: Educating and advocating go together in any progressive politics, Konkel is the most knowledgeable tenants rights expert in Madison, and her role in local housing politics is just what it should be.
What Progressive Dane finds most disturbing, however, is that this episode is only the most recent in a continuing assault on the actions and recommendations of those who advocate for the rights of low-income citizens. From the obscene red-baiting that greeted the very moderate proposals made some months ago by the Equal Opportunities Commission regarding racially motivated police traffic stops, to the self-righteous frenzy with which some County Board supervisors have queued up to discredit the fierce and fiery Regina Rhyne, the friends of equality have been relentlessly attacked by Madison's political elite.
Now tenant advocates are on the block, with the mayor, the Community Development Block Grant Commission, the Community Development Authority and conservative alders tripping the blade. Madison's political leaders are clearly not interested in eliminating or alleviating economic injustice. The CDA not long ago refused to even discuss the two affordable housing ordinances - one dealing with the rights of Section 8 recipients and one concerning the proper application of minimum income standards as a tenant screening device - that have for many months defined the affordable housing debate. Mayor Bauman has since managed to consign those ordinances to her favorite limbo: death by committee. She has also threatened to remove from the EOC the ordinances' most vocal champions, Ald. Barbara Vedder and former alder Bert Zipperer.
In October the Common Council cut more than $5,000 from TRC's mediation program on the ridiculous grounds that the service it provides is nonessential. Not satisfied with merely wounding the program, the CDBG recently recommended another $5,000 cut. Now TRC is receiving implied threats of further funding cuts unless Konkel falls silent. As an election approaches, Mayor Bauman claims to promote increased access to affordable housing while she kills EOC proposals that would do just that, and her campaign coffers spill over with landlord contributions.
Enough. All of this must stop. If you are a renter, your time is now. If you are a renter, you are one of a group comprising more than half the population of Madison. And THERE, properly organized and deployed, is real power. If over half of Madison stands together, who can stand against you?
Renters must organize and fight back. Start now. Talk to your neighbors. Sign and circulate petitions demanding the passing of the two EOC affordable housing ordinances. Convince your neighborhood association to make renters' rights a top priority. Create alliances with other renters across Madison. Join Progressive Dane's Legislative Policy Committee and help develop progressive housing legislation. Contact the Affordable Housing Action Alliance and support their important work. Generate from among yourselves candidates for public office who will fight for economic justice.
Make your elected officials understand that the blade will fall on their necks in future elections if tenant rights continue to be ignored.
And above all, and RIGHT NOW, call your alder, call the mayor, call the members of the CDBG, and insist that funding for the Tenant Resource Center be maintained and increased, and the effort to silence Brenda Konkel be brought to an end.
Brenda Konkel is Madison's most competent and courageous defender of tenants' rights, and the Tenant Resource Center is an indispensable supplier of the information and policy agendas which renters need to take their rightful place at the center of public policy making.
Long may it be so!
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