[Peace] An opportunity

[Patrick Bahls]

	Hello all,

	First of all I would like to thank Kim Kranich for her terrific
follow-up regarding the local media coverage of last night's council
meeting.  She did a great job in holding their feet to the fire, so to
speak, and making sure they get the story right.  I completely agree with
her, in that we should offer the *entire* council our heartiest thanks for
their actions.

	I would also like to propose that AWARE and its affiliates take
advantage of an opportunity that essentially fell into our laps at the
meeting last night.

	Before lending his support to the resolution, Councilmember Hayes
gave a speech, directed largely to the members of the community, in which
he expressed his chagrin that so many people do not often make the effort
to show up and voice their concerns regarding issues of *specifically*
local importance.  He mentioned specifically the issue of unfair drug
crime sentencing laws, indicating that perhaps some of the local issues he
has in mind are issues regarding race and race relations.

	During the past weeks members of AWARE have bemoaned the fact that
we do little to counteract racism in our community.  We've even set up a
brainstorming session in order to come up with ways to better address this
shortcoming.  In some sense, I feel that AWARE sees itself as a bag of
solutions looking for a problem.

	Well, here's our opportunity to discover what those problems may
be, and to establish a dialogue with the city council, the mayor, the city
attorney, and any other local officials who are willing to engage us in
that dialogue.

	I have begun to pen a letter addressed specifically to
Councilmember Hayes, and I think it would be a good idea to present this
letter (with suggested revisions, of course) to him on behalf of AWARE in
order to introduce our willingness to act on these matters of local
concern. Perhaps this would best be done by presenting this as an open
letter to the council-at-large, maybe as a follow-up to the thank-you
statement that Kim has proposed?

	I feel that it would be utterly disingenuous of us not to take
advantage of this opportunity.

	I will finish the letter to the council this afternoon and post it
to the Peace list so that everyone may comment and offer suggestions.

	Please feel free to contact me regarding this matter -- my e-mail
is misbehaving today, but I promise as prompt a reply as possible.

	Best regards,
	Patrick


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Patrick Bahls, VIGRE Research Assistant Professor
e-mail: pbahls at math.uiuc.edu
office phone: 217-333-1504
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Department of Mathematics
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