Dianne Wilkerson - Past Due
By stevegarfield - Fri, 09/12/2008 - 3:28pm.
Worst Mailer Ever:
I just got this mailing from State Senator Dianne Wilkerson. She's running for re-election against Sonia Chang-Diaz.
What's ironic is the "PAST DUE" notice on the front of the mailer.
From the Boston Globe, "Wilkerson in 1997 pleaded guilty to failing to file tax returns from 1991 to 1994. She was sentenced to house arrest, then sent to a halfway house for 30 days by a federal judge after twice breaking a court-ordered 9 p.m. curfew."
PAST DUE.
Ironic.
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The foreclosure stamp is a nice touch, too
It might remind people that, in 2000, she almost had her condo foreclosed because she wasn't paying her mortgage - and that in 2005, she was ordered to pay $13,000 in back fees on that condo (Source).
read my mind
...I was hours from posting a story about this, after a globe story about Patrick's support for her. The best part about that lawsuit was that she was a no-show and defaulted. Yet, for some unexplained reason, the judge withheld a verdict until after the upcoming election against (surprise!) Chang-Diaz. No coincidence, I'm sure. She was investigated for perjury charges in a manslaughter trial involving her nephew. Oh yeah, and there's the $70,000 campaign finance problems, which for some reason the DA felt was worth only a $10k settlement even though it was her second violation. Then there were the parking tickets she decided she didn't have to pay.
And yet despite all these foibles, both Deval Patrick and Thomas Menino are recording spam-your-dinner-hour phone calls on her behalf. She's the ONLY candidate Patrick has done that for, according to the Globe.
She's a class-A fuckup who pathologically cheats everybody in every way she can and thinks the rules don't apply to her. And she's getting away with it. She's clearly heavily, heavily protected by the powers that be. The question is, why?
A little hyperbolic, Brett
A lot of politicians have hurt people more than poor Diane Wilkerson has. "Cheating everybody in every way?" Not so much. Will a privileged, vaguely defined Astronaut's daughter do such a better job? Maybe.
Privileged?
That's a pretty broad term. Privileged in what way? In that she grew up with a caring mom, lived in a relatively safe part of the world, and received a college education? Sure. But in a lot of ways is in positions of non-privilege (went to public school, raised by a working-class single mom, female, person of color, etc.).
Besides, even if someone has privilege in a lot of areas, it's only really a bad thing if they don't recognize it. White people aren't inherently bad; people who don't recognize their white privilege and don't live from a place of recognizing it do a lot of damage. Rich people aren't inherently bad, males aren't inherently bad, Christians aren't inherently bad, and so forth.
It's okay to be white
as long as you're guilty about it.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Aw, okay, I'm just teasing you, Eeka. What you said is correct. If you're unconscious of the privilege you have, you're probably perpetuating inequality.
And as far as Chang-Diaz goes, I don't see where she is nearly as privileged as most of us here.
Honesty, not Guilt
I myself often roll my eyes when I hear "white privilege" because I grew up with very little in the way of privilege.
That said, one doesn't have to feel "guilty" - one need only recognize that you may have been born with advantages that you yourself did not earn, and others who didn't share those advantages are not inferior, lazy, etc.
I like the metaphor of the baseball diamond myself: you can't be born on base, brag about how you hit a home run, and then say "why don't THOSE people do the same?". (those people being an inclusive group of working class whites, working class blacks, etc.).
A prime example of this: one of the working class black students in my college housing was proceeding from the assumption that white poverty didn't exist. He quickly met with some reality that there were white students in his own living group who grew up with far less than he did, socially, educationally, and economically. He didn't need to feel guilty about it - but he did need to understand that he had certain privileges of access to urban magnet schools and not having to shoot his own food that others with similar stellar intellectual talents might not.
The past washes off
The fact that your colleague assumed you had white privilege meant that to some extent you did. If you can fake it, you can make it. One of the best parts of being white is that even someone who grew up in the rural South or in a trailer park can eradicate both their lack of social capital and their subaltern accent and thereby inherit a level of white privilege they weren't born to. College can help mightily with both problems if you pay attention. Once you stop being white trash, the umpire isn't against you anymore, and it's easy to steal second, third... Woo-hoo! Congrats to both of us!
Yep
Whether you are trailer trash or a member of a minority group, you can have privilege that you don't see. You can be the bottom of the barrel where you come from, and not realize what you have - be that access to education, ability to "pass" as being of higher social class, etc.
The sad thing is that she
The sad thing is that she has done some good for her constituents. Sorry, don't have links but I'm a long time JP resident and have read same in the Gazette and Globe. However, the problems cited above just destroy her credibility in my book.
All in all, she is well beyond her sell-by date and I am 100% for Sonia (as I was last time).
WTF
So what's inside this mailing? I can't imagine why she'd want people to think of words like "Foreclosure" in connection with her.
Reverse side of postcard
If the Wilkerson campaign is monitoring social networks like this, I'm sure they can explain the mailing.
The headline is, "Dianne Delivers for Green Jobs and the Economy"
Then there's four paragraphs of small type no one is going to read.
That doesn't even make sense
What do foreclosure and windmills have to do with each other?
Makes me glad I live in Marian Walsh's district.
Bizarre
One thing I know for sure, Dianne Wilkerson isn't qualified to be a State Senator.
Vice President, maybe, but not State Senator.
How about City Dog Catcher?
n/t
A Wilkerson endorsement
Queen Dee explains why she wants to see Wilkerson re-elected:
a Wilkerson Apologist
I have seen with my own eyes the energy, the brains, the compassion, the experience, the knowledge and the tireless work she brings to the State House
Right- so much brains and energy, she forgot to submit her paperwork for the next election.
Over and over again she has apologized and changed the way she conducts her personal business
No, see, that's just it. SHE HASN'T. She has neither apologized, nor changed a 10 year old pattern of fraud and cheating. She committed campaign finance fraud in '97, and then again recently. Both times she was investigated, so she knew full well what she was doing the second time.
We all "make mistakes", but they don't generally involve $70k, lying in a murder case, etc.
Are you kidding me?
That is just pathetic. You make it sound like she forgot to pay a cable bill or something...
Five reasons Menino, Patrick and Capuano support Wilkerson
Ben Alper counts them down.