Council candidate cuts through the bull

Marc Ridgill is a retired police officer running for city council. He is also a prolific blogger, utilizing the medium in ways (like local state legislator John Hardister) that one wishes incumbent council people would, explaining the issues as he sees them and offering his ideas — and he does it on a platform that doesn't require one to log in in order to be subjected to data gathering and privacy invasions. Elected officials (hello city council) and challengers (I'm talking to you Michael Picarlelli) who are okay with confining their online constituent outreach to Facebook demonstrate either unconcern for legitimate privacy issues or a general laziness; neither flattering. But I digress.

While polite commentators and genteel reporters danced around the reasons for state senator Trudy Wade's recent attempt to redistrict Greensboro's city council as mysterious and unfathomable, Ridgill cuts through the bull and comes out and says it.

Our current system lends itself to areas of our city that are more active politically than others.  Part of this problem is the apathy in many parts of Greensboro that feel their vote won't accomplish anything, citing preferential treatment to downtown development and east side Greensboro political leaders.  East Greensboro has long been more organized as a voting block in our city elections and under this system has direct effect on 6 of the 9 council seats; Districts 1 and 2, all 3 At Large seats and the Mayor.  It is for this reason that many in town want to eliminate the At Large seats for more streamlined representation of the city by reducing the size of the districts and eliminating the manipulation of the council by political activists.

Ridgill's survey of the landscape might be a bit oversimplified, as it leaves no room to explain the not so long ago upset of incumbent mayor Yvonne Johnson by Bill Knight in an election that gave city council four conservative members, but premises don't have to be correct to become motivations.

While rejiggering the system to diminish the effects of motivated constituencies and enhancing the influence of the complacent seems counter to the American spirit—or maybe the argument is that, in a different setting the currently apathetic will become motivated—either way, one cannot deny that the motive behind Trudy Wade's plan is to diminish the political influence, real or perceived, of Greensboro's minorities on city council elections, and it's about time someone said it so plainly.