Coach Bill / Dad, Entrepreneur Special Educator, American Political Scientist, Writer, Musician.

Everyone enjoys a nice neighborhood. No one likes to grow up in squalor and poverty. In the best of cases, the redevelopment of neighborhoods includes a sincere, genuine plan to empower the poor people of a village rather than create a small percentage of affordable housing for some of them while booting out the rest in favor of folks with deeper pockets. At Norwalk's city hall, Mayor Harry Rilling and the departments he supposedly guides and manages has been focused on making Norwalk a more lucrative place amongst the Fairfield County towns. But his idea of growth leaves all the poor people behind and throws in a mega mall as the welcome mat to what could be a city with great character. In its ghetto, which is called Washington Village, the mayor and his Norwalk Redevelopment Agency have big plans. The plan, recently stuck down by the courts was to create an urban apartment complex village to replace the plantation-style brick buildings that currently house a mostly Afri...

"When you perceive the an act done to another is done to yourself, you have understood the great truth." Lao Tzu, about 2,500 years ago, China The first 'thing' that would stand out for Norwalk, Connecticut off of interstate 95 would be a mega mall in what could be a park for families and the people of Norwalk. One of the great attributes of some of the neighboring Fairfield County towns are their green parks. Norwalk needs a mini-Central Park as a welcome sight, instead of a blight like a massive mega mall.  I'm in a continued drive to shake away the entire current administration of the South Norwalk Community Center for its mishandling and prioritization of funds and time that should have been better apportioned so that youth programs could have begun being established. Yet, now after nearly two years, Warren Pena's management of how to serve the community has rested largely on paying a great sum of money for constant interior decoration. Thi...

It is a tale of two cities. In one city we  have the poor people of South Norwalk. They are African-Americans, they are hispanics (with and without U.S. citizenship) and they are white people, all of which hover around the poverty line, more or less. In this city, opportunity does not pass through the hands of the majority of the people, but rumbles through their streets in fast-paced construction vehicles. In this city, the drug-dealing is out front and center in front of what use to be the heart of the community, the South Norwalk Community Center. Aged men, like Tyrone Campbell, 71, amble by homeless and without a sense of direction. There is no future in store for senior citizens like him. He is not currently productive or desired by anyone, so he just ambles by. He cried to me in a recent conversation and it became hard for me to see his socio-economic state. All I could see was his humanity and want of dignity. I saw my late-maternal grandfather in him. We spoke of th...