We released this in 2012. I miss the live iterations of this project, which included visual art and movement. I miss working in the studio. I miss some of my best friends.
The intro track is available on Bandcamp, but the the rest of the disc is where the real art is.
St. Patrick’s U2Charist
7 PM
Zion’s Reformed UCC
620 W. Hamilton Street, Allentown PA
Sponsored by the fellowship group New Thing in a Church Basement and Zions Reformed UCC, Allentown’s first-ever U2charist takes a page from similar worship gatherings held across the country in recent years, adding its own Celtic twist in honor of St. Patrick Day’s and U2’s Irish origins. Put simply, a “U2charist” is a worship service that uses the music and rich spiritual imagery of U2 as liturgical guides. Calls to worship and responsive readings often reference the Biblical allusions of U2’s work, and the music for this liturgical hour will be taken from U2’s catalogue and re-imagined with an acoustic, Celtic style. Echoing the band’s long-stated concerns for social justice, this gathering will also highlight unique issues of equity and avenues of help in our local setting.
Parking at Zion’s is widely available in the County lot directly adjacent to the church and at a lot off of Church Street just between Zion’s sanctuary and Walnut Street.
there are many reasons to care about this issues…here in Allentown and everywhere.
I just got home from City Council. I had to leave before the vote, but not before I waited 4 hours to share my thoughts with the public and with Council.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can learn about it here. In the interest of time, I’m just going to post my thoughts as I shared them. Some context: you should know that there was a very large union presence at the meeting, so much so that before 7 PM the Council Chamber was packed out and people weren’t being let in. It was at this point that some folks reached out to some local media, because it looked like the fairness, integrity (and possibly, legality) of the meeting was in jeopardy. Thankfully, that got resolved (and the media was already there). More context: the unions are strongly in support of the DTE project. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I’m not.
What I ended up saying, in a nutshell, around 11 PM:
Even if you don’t live in Allentown or the Lehigh Valley, if you’re interested in infrastructure, urban renewal, and stopping suburban sprawl (let’s call it “mall creep”), this post is for you.
As you might know, the former Philadelphia Phantoms are coming to Allentown. The Phantoms are the top-level developmental affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, and their new arena is being built downtown as the centerpiece of what will ultimately be at least a $600 million dollar redevelopment project in the Queen City. Honestly, redevelopment doesn’t begin to describe what the special tax zone (the Neighborhood Improvement Zone, NIZ for short) will mean for Allentown. The NIZ, created by a bill in the PA legislature, does things that make relocation to the NIZ very attractive. You can learn more about that here.
Something else the bill that created the NIZ does is return the Earned Income Tax of people who work in Allentown but don’t live there back to city to help fund the arena project. Some people don’t like that. Some, maybe most, local municipalities are used to using EITs to help fund the suburban school districts they support. Some people are starting to say “why should School District So and So pay for an Arena in Allentown?”
Those people miss the point.
For the last 47 years or so, Earned Income Tax in the Commonwealth has gone back to a worker’s home municipality instead of staying in the place where it was generated. Before 1965, this wasn’t the case. Before 1965 (read, before our core cities started failing), Earned Income Taxes stayed where they were made. Pennsylvania legislators, keen on seeing farmland turned to suburbs, put a stop to that and the townships blossomed with stripmalls, blacktop, and sprawl. Urban cores and urban schools were left to wither on the vine.
Now, the same school districts and municipalities that have benefited from this tax grab for close to 50 years are crying foul because EITs are going back where they belong. Heaven forbid the core cities and the near-broke school districts in them get a fair shake in 2012.
For shame, township people on the wrong side of this issue. The Allentown School District can’t afford year-long art, music or gym classes, even at the elementary level.
Look, I know it’s easy to get used to privilege, and then to expect it. But as Jon Geeting and others have been saying, the cost of living and doing business in the suburbs has been subsidized from the start. This isn’t about a hypothetically free market dictating that setting up shop in low-density townships made more sense than continuing to develop walkable cities. This is about, and always has been about, the myth of cheap suburban sprawl. Sprawl came at a cost to our economies, our infrastructure, our environment, and our mental and physical health. It came at a cost to our cities, to be sure, and to our schools.
No one is building an urban arena with money that should be going to buy football pads for rich school districts. No one is suggesting that we slash the budget of the Parkland High School closed-circuit television station so Spanish-speaking kids in Allentown can live in a city with a future. Who would ever suggest something like that?
Allow me to paraphrase one person who actually might. “Render onto Allentown what is Allentown’s.”
When I humbly tweeted UGI asking them to hold back some dividend payments and spend more this year on fixing the aging pipes under homes and businesses in Allentown, I didn’t know things that make the negligence that killed 5 city residents last year even more despicable:
Responding to my tweet, the PR operative charged with doing such things pointed out that UGI spent $40 million last year replacing old pipes. Excuse me if I don’t quite understand how that absolves the company from having totally corrupt priorities. Last year, when 5 people died because they had the misfortune of living above UGI’s compromised pipes, UGI, formerly United Gas Improvements, paid out $40 million on said improvements and five times that amount to investors in the form of dividends. That’s not technically a crime, but it probably should be.
https://twitter.com/#!/UGI_Utilities/status/155286257566617600
My response?
https://twitter.com/#!/ccocca/status/155364704930377728
Seriously. You spent $40 million on infrastructure last year? You want a cookie? How much of that was spent in Allentown? Five city residents died last year because you’re not moving fast enough or spending enough money.
How does that $40 million compare to the dividends you’re paying out? Let’s tweet about that.
Chris Cocca 