To the Editor:
As an activist labor Democrat on a national scale it pains me to admit that Alexandria’s Democratic Party produces elected mutants. Euille, Donley, Pepper, Smedburg and Krupicka betray everything genuine Democrats are fighting for nationally in rust belt and shuttered economies where not having enough goes without saying. Bereft of Alexandria’s relative abundance, these less privileged cities and townships produce elected Democratic leaders who actually stand for something besides their own venal self interests and dull, uninspired thinking, knowing that the future lies in building a vibrant green economy that defends the working people at the bottom, the ones who play by the rules and who shoulder the burdens.
Here in Alexandria, it is elected Republicans who have the courage to stand for honoring our local environment and history, placing citizen’s rights over developers, and offering a creative vision for our future that integrates our city instead of triangulating special interest power plays pitting neighborhoods against each other to incite municipal civil war so that a specially selected few benefit at the expense of the resident many. While we are blessed nationally with a Democratic President who has the guts to reject the ecologically destructive Keystone pipeline, our Democratic-controlled City Council displays no such qualities but instead has pandered to the lowest possible payola denominator in voting to approve the density-destructive waterfront plan in Old Town that aids and abets developer-outsourced upzoning.
Enlightened Democrats free of Alexandria’s corrupt machine politics honor Alicia Hughes and Frank Fannon for their vote against the City’s poorly conceived developer bonanza waterfront conspiracy. So do all my neighbors as evidenced by our super majority petition that now has standing thanks to our collective efforts and their conscience-inspired votes. We will either have transparent democracy in Alexandria or we will become a ward for Gotham-on-the-Potomac practitioners. The jury is still out.
Michael A. Peck
Michael A. Peck lives adjacent to Robinson Terminal North and leads a two decade-old consulting business registered in Alexandria.