11 years ago: I dream’d a dream

September 4, 2002, here on slacktivist: I dream’d a dream

Hosting a convention not only brings in money, it also brings in national attention and media focus.

So here’s my suggestion: Let’s have our political conventions in cities that really need this infusion of cash and, even more, attention. Four years from now, I propose that the parties hold their conventions in Camden, N.J., and Chester, Pa.

These are two once-great American cities that today, to be blunt, are post-industrial wastelands. They have failing schools, few or no employment opportunities, crime, blight. Each is cleft into two unsustainable parts by a superhighway that takes travelers through and past, but never to, the city itself.

For the delegates of both parties — and even more so for the corps of media elites who trail along to both conventions — a week in either of these cities would provide a healthy dose of perspective and of reality.