Well, a very disappointing outcome today in the situation I am wrote about in my column this week: The Dallas Homeowners League has opted to bar the Belmont Neighborhood Association from membership in the DGHL. Why? Because Avi Adelman is a member of the BNA.
The DHL’s six-page letter of decision is pretty laughable, based on the hearing I attended last week. In the letter the DHL beats up on Avi for being loud-mouthed and a bigot. At the hearing Avi was a perfect gentleman, while some of the questions from the panel of DHL inquisitors bordered on racist -- and one of Avi’s detractors had to be expelled from the hearing for shouting obscenities.
What is not spoken in the letter is the real source of the dispute: the iron-willed determination of Maxine Aaronson and the Lower Greenville Neighborhood Association to kill all development in the area -- even good development -- and to push all of Greenville Avenue’s problems south of Belmont, in Avi’s neck of the woods and out of their own necks.
The other thing that struck me about the DHL and Aaronson at the hearing was that none of them seems to understand how the Internet works. Some of them weren’t real sure about e-mail. Avi, of course, is a wizard and pioneer of social activism via the Interwebs.
Barring BNA from membership in the DHL is supremely chickenshit and chicken-hearted of the DHL -- proof that the DHL lacks the political bones to handle spirited internal debate or diversity. It really makes me wonder about their political legitimacy. Why should city council members -- who have to broker tough political infighting all the time in their districts -- listen to a group that’s too namby to even let in people who might not toe the line perfectly. Avi’s right. It’s too much of a ladies' garden club.
Avi tells me “it’s not over,” which I think means he intends to keep fighting to get BNA into the DHL. I think he should forget it and start recruiting disaffected neighborhoods around the city who have figured out that the DHL is antiquated and doesn’t meet their needs. It’s high time the DHL got challenged on its claim to citywide hegemony.
I think it's time to sic the barking dogs on all of 'em. Avi for president. --Jim Schutze
