| The Saturday clean-up of the North Central/Uptown area of Troy was organized by a guy I once described as a "whirling dervish of wingnut activity" -- local Bircher organizer Kevin McCashion.
McCashion recently moved to one of the toughest neighborhoods in the Capital District, North Central (north of Hoosick Street, but still pretty close to the city center), promptly joined the local neighborhood organization, and began promoting rebranding North Central as Uptown.
From the linked Troy Record article:
"This new initiative is to say that we have control over the area and the direction the area is going to take," said McCashion, a business owner from Colonie who moved to the neighborhood in January.
McCashion felt that, at North Central Neighborhood Association meetings, there was a tendency to focus on the negative and demand things from the police and the city. McCashion said that the purpose of the initiative is to create a culture of responsibility for those in the neighborhood.
snip
McCashion also emphasized that the Initiative plans to accomplish many of their goals on their own, saying: "We're going to work with the city, but we're not going to wait for the city."
So, how did the clean-up go? The Troy Record was impressed (video and photos at the link):
In the North Central/Uptown area, about 70 volunteers were spread out among the neighborhoods according to Kevin McCashion, who led a team in cleaning the creek by the stairs leading to the Martin Luther King housing complex.
Peggy Kownack, overall coordinator for the North Central/Uptown area, said that she was pleasantly surprised by all of the independent groups that had organized to help clean up.
"People have been very gracious and very open," Kownack said. "I've seen six groups I didn't even know were going to be participating out there cleaning."
It's almost unique for people to spend a sunny spring Saturday cleaning up someone else's neighborhood.
McCashion got a plug into the Record story, but he earned it:
McCashion said that many of the people who turned out to clean up the creek were from outside the area and involved with the Tea Party and Campaign for Liberty movements. He said that for events like this, politics take a side seat to volunteerism.
"The common denominator is to clean up the area," McCashion said. "Everybody can agree on that." He and others involved with the Uptown Initiative, which seeks to improve conditions and morale in the North Central/Uptown area, participate in a clean up every Saturday. Those interested in participating can visit the Web site at www.theuptowninitiative.org.
I will surely write diaries in the future about the local teabaggers' extremism and their dittohead devotion to conservative Republican candidates, but today I want to take a break from that and congratulate McCashion and his crew for a job well done. |
