Gun Violence Strikes Close to Home Again

This weekend (for the second time this summer) my daughter Angel, the young woman I have been mentoring and co-parenting for the last four years, will attend a funeral of a 17-year-old friend whose life was cut short by gun violence.

Sadly, this is not -- as they say -- Angel's first rodeo. It seems that every summer this young woman attends funeral services for a friend or classmate who died as a result of gun violence. Every time it is a young African American male killed on the brink of manhood.

This is not a new epidemic. It is just hitting closer to home, now that I have a daughter in this age range. While I realize the stories of these young men get 30 second blurbs (sometimes) on the evening news, they go largely unnoticed by the general population. Unfortunately it takes the tragic death of a young white suburbanite to call this city to action.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about the guns themselves here. I have talked at length about my views on handguns in this city. Instead, we must, as a city, as a state, as a nation, start to value all human life. Until we break the poverty cycle, provide good jobs at a decent wage, create affordable housing and decent education -- this epidemic will only grow. We have to do it neighborhood by neighborhood. It is the only thing that has proven to make a difference.

That is why I'm glad the new city council has combined the neighborhood committee with the public safety committee. Under the leadership of City Councilwoman Cathy Jolly, I am excited to see some innovate proposals that take a holistic view of the issues facing our entire community.

If your block has a success story; if your neighborhood has an innovative program; if you need assistance from the state or city to start a new project; please contact me or Cathy Jolly and let us know how you are making a difference in your neighborhoods. I don't want to see another mother put her teenage son in the ground this summer. I don't want Angel to spend the rest of her high school career attending the funerals of friends.

Good Deeds in Midtown KC

I had a great meeting today with Diana and Trish at Redemptorist Social Services Center, 207 W. Linwood, KC, MO. For over 20 years, the staff and volunteers of the center have been quietly serving the most vulnerable populations in up to 83 of Kansas City's neighborhoods. If you haven't seen what they're doing, I would suggest you check out their site or stop by and volunteer.

We spent a few hours working on strategic long-term planning for a changing neighborhood and changing population. The focus, as you can imagine, is on healthcare and low-income housing. Of course the center does so much more. From providing a cool place to sit in the hot summer, to delivering meals to homebound seniors, they truly are a full service agency.

I talked with Diana and Trish about the need to add advocacy to their daily work. It seems impossible to find time to call your city councilperson or write a letter to a legislator when you are doing good to find time to deliver one-on-one services to over 1700 people a month, but the only way we will make big picture change is to hold those accountable that are creating the cycle of poverty in this city, state and country. It was a good, productive meeting and I look forward to working with them for years to come.

Another Blow to Women's Health in MO

The Gov signed HB 1055 last week. This horrible piece of legislation has three parts: 1) alternatives to abortion; 2) abstinence only (sex mis-education); and 3) the ambulatory surgical center requirement (which will close two of the last three abortion clinics in the state).

I worked the entire session with six other senators to mitigate the havoc caused by this bill. In the end, the right to life gang put theocracy ahead of good public policy and women's health and the majority was unwilling to compromise with us on any of the issues.

If I tackled all three components of this bill the post would take an hour to read, so I've decided to break it in to three separate posts. Today I will cover the abstinence only provision. It is truly scary.

Just as we started the debate on the abstinence only bill I was excited to see that a study ordered by the pro-abstinence only Bush Administration showed what we have known for years -- abstinence only does not work.

In an era when more and more schools are turning down federal dollars available for abstinence only education and in the face of mounting evidence that abstinence only does NOT work, it is absolutely absurd that our state will take a step backwards and allow school districts to opt out of medically-accurate, fact-based sex education.

As a preliminary matter, you need to know that the only way the senate could pass this bill was to cutoff our right to debate as senators. In the minority, one of the only tools we have is the filibuster, which allows us to keep the bill from coming to a vote until we reach a compromise or until the other side gets sick of hearing us talk or until we collapse from exhaustion.

Filibusters were used by both parties this session -- the Republicans used filibusters in an attempt to block a gubernatorial appointment, the gaming bill and some tax credit legislation. There was bipartisan support for a filibuster on MOHELA and the other issues that caused great concern among the Dems were abortion, guns and English only. Unfortunately, there is a rarely used procedure called the previous question that allows a simple majority of senators to cut off debate and take the issue to an immediate vote. The procedure, which we refer to as the nuclear option, has only been used about 7 times in the last 30 years or so. The Republicans used it THREE times this session, but only against the Democrats. They never once used the tool to stop their own party members from filibustering. It's really a sad state of affairs that led Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman to declare that the "Senate is Dead."

One of the many offers that I made to the Republicans was that we would sit down and not filibuster the bill, thus preventing the unpleasant nuclear option, if they would strip the abstinence only section from the bill. We not only got a no -- we got a "hell no," in the form of no counteroffer at all.

At least that was the official line. Several of the Republicans were telling me individually that they should take the deal and run with it. That it was a great compromise and they couldn't remember a single instance of pro-choice legislators trying to work a compromise in the past. My opinion was -- it's gonna pass -- they're going to PQ (move for the previous question) to end debate, so why not mitigate some of the harm.

While several individual Republicans agreed with the compromise, they would not take a stand as a caucus. They said the race for the Attorney General in 2008 had created a political problem in their party and that only one, maybe two people were willing to go against their party. They said they were scared that they had delivered bad votes to the MRL (Missouri Right to Life) crowd in the form of MOHELA and they were too scared to cross that lobby again. All my negotiations -- from March through the last hours of the last day of session -- were pointless. The Repubs were going to do things their way, regardless of the havoc they would wreak on the Senate by using the PQ yet again.

So in the end -- we had a few brave Republicans who were willing to listen, but no one who was willing enough to grow a backbone and go against their party (can we revisit the official state invertebrate?). Another sad day in the MO Senate.

Tomorrow I will describe in detail the mess of trouble caused by the ambulatory surgical center provision. Needless to say, by creating a climate of abstinence only education in this state, the net effect will be more unintended pregnancies and only one abortion clinic left in the state. Anti-choice people cry victory, but we know from history, that this will simply result in more abortions, but they will no longer be carried out in a safe and legal environment.

Farm Living is the Life for Me

Just got back from 10 days on the farm outside of Jefferson City. It was great to catch up on work and gossip at the Capitol, but it was even better to spend some quality time sweatin' in the sun, digging in the dirt and watching the dogs run through the hay fields.

The toughest part about time on the farm was the complete lack of the internets. No TV either. Actually, that was part of the beauty too.

I did miss my daily Google Reader fix and coming back to several thousand unread blog posts feels similar to coming back to the office after a relaxing vacation, only to find an overflowing voicemail and e-mail inbox.

Looks like The Gov was busy signing bad laws while I was away. I've got enough blog material to keep me busy through at least the veto session (which it sounds like will feature an actual veto this year).