The Debrief: Activist Isn't a Dirty Word
April 9, 2024
Welcome back to the Clif Note. This is my personal mailing list; chronicling just a little of the work, we are doing in Indianapolis. If you aren’t an Indy native, I hope you stick around because you may be able to take some of this home with you! It is part personal, activist, political, and gossip.
The Personal:
Today is my 52nd birthday. It also represents my twelfth year of sobriety. It represents about 15 years since I first started therapy, which pushed me to the last milestone. And it represents the move from the me to the we. I know, I know…I say this in a newsletter with my name as the title. However, the truth of the matter is that when you live day to day with no thought of the future, your frame of reference is one of yourself and yourself alone. And this is the reality for so many people. People are struggling, and it’s impossible to help others when you can’t help yourself.
The Activist:
I’ve lived in the Holy Cross neighborhood for the last twenty years. My friends have lived here longer than that. We are fighting to save our community namesake.
History: The neighborhood has been named after the Church of the Holy Cross, which was built in the late 1800s and its current version in 1920. For much of its time, it housed a convent and a private Catholic school. The Church closed in 2014 to merge with another and has sat vacant. The elementary school closed last year, and the Church put it up for sale.
Our neighborhood has been begging for an audience with the head of the Parish to speak about reuse, but has been rebuffed every time for over a decade. In the last few weeks, we received news of an order to demolish this historic building.
Win: Our neighborhood successfully petitioned the Indiana Historic Preservation Commission to deem this a Historic Site. This is only a temporary win.
Our Loss: Hogsett To Sit This One Out Again
The Ask: We need audience members to show to the Metropolitan Development Commission public meeting on April 17 at 1 PM to help us win. The more we can pack in, the better. More information is included in the link to this event.
Updates
The fight against Shotspotter and other Gun Shot Detection programs was successful. The fact of the matter is, these types of programs just don’t work. Data collected showed there was no crime prevented nor crimes solved as a result of this. The only people who win in these situations are FOP Presidents taking kickbacks for pushing these programs and inept politicians. In the case of FOP Presidents, they are not ‘public officials’. They have no duty to report outside income and they don’t. They can own a luxury cabin two hours from the city they claim to work in — one the size of most mansions — on a salary of $60k a year. They grift their officers and then grift the communities they claim to represent.
For the record, this is an indictment of FOP presidents in general, and not of any specific FOP president.
https://mirrorindy.org/shotspotter-impd-gunshot-detection-tasers-update/
Activism works. It is not a dirty word, and it is only a problem if you have to go it alone. While I feel that the media represented me as the lone voice against the Gunshot Detection Systems in Indianapolis, it would be a mistake to believe I was representing my own views and beliefs. This was a community effort. And we were SUCCESSFUL.
The Political
This last weekend, I spent two days in campaign training courses organized by Jesse Brown. We learned the basics of canvassing, fundraising, and leading a campaign.
I learned a lot. I will have more to say about this in the future as I am still processing the information. I wish I had done this before I ran for office last year, but I still accomplished everything I had hoped to and far more. Beyond this, I met Indiana’s very own
in the flesh! Subscribe to his Podcast!Most of the attendees are planning on supporting Katrina Owens in her fight to unseat Republican Aaron Freeman. I donated last night, and I will be donating more in the future. And I have promised I will be there knocking on doors and making phone calls, attempting to put my newfound knowledge to work to elect a woman who truly cares about Indiana.
The Ask: Visit https://www.owens4in.com and give a few bucks. Send me a note saying you did, and I’ll even send you a few of my stickers!
On Going: SB52 and No Turn on Red
Just today, the IBJ reported that as a part of killing SB52 and saving our bus system in Indianapolis, we have to give up three NToR signs:
“Legislators don’t want No Turn on Red signs in their own front yard, while failing to grasp the fact that in their back yard we are in the midst of a nationwide crisis that Indianapolis is disproportionally affected by, due to our aging infrastructure that prioritizes cars over people,” Holt said in a written statement. “It also sets a very poor standard that we must have documentation of incidents at a specific location to warrant any type of preventative initiatives. This is about preventing injuries and death.”
Clif’s Take: The activists involved in getting SB52 killed in the Indiana House were assured that it was being taken care of but that lawmakers needed to appease Aaron Freeman ‘up to a point’ to get him to support other Republican-led legislation. Once this was done, most Republicans returned to the same opinion that the rational citizens felt about Aaron. It was done and over. And then Joe Hogsett and Samuel ‘Voice of the People’ Osili got involved at the very last moment to make the deal far worse while patting themselves on the back for doing so.
With lawmakers like Joe and Samuel, we should just expect the very worst take on anything.
How do I get involved?
Thank you for reading! We make it easy to unsubscribe if this is not the newsletter for you— the unsubscribe button is at the bottom of the newsletter! If this was sent to you by a friend and you want to subscribe, the links are scattered where Substack decided to place them in this article. If you want to read my newsletter without all this you can find me at clifmars.com. You can find my resources and other documents on that same page and through social media such as Twitter or Mastodon. A group Discord has been created and still beta-tested…friend me and I will invite you! And finally, if you are old school email at info@clifmars.com or text (317) 520-2543. Let’s get to work!!!