Gerald Britt

Legislators and Lawmakers Have Killed Meaningful Payday Lending Reform

There remains a pressing need for meaningful, statewide regulation of payday lending in Texas, since the industry has shown a willingness and ability to skirt restrictions passed by Dallas, Austin, and other cities. Those reforms look like they are still at least a couple of years off. Despite high ... More >>

Minority Leaders Rallied at City Hall Today to Explain Why Texas Needs the Voting Rights Act

The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments today challenging the constitutionality of and need for Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, which requires Texas and other southern states with a history of suppressing the minority vote to get pre-clearance from the Feds before implementing changes ... More >>

Dallas Unite! Throw off the Chains of Redneck Legislators, Payday Lenders, Etc.

Maybe Dallas has a shot at stepping out from under the redneck yoke of Austin after all. In today's news we see that a Dallas judge, Eric Moye, has tossed out a lawsuit by the usury industry in which payday lenders claimed the city had no right to protect its citizens if Austin didn't want them pro ... More >>

That Fancy Golf Course Will Help Southern Dallas Only if it Doesn't Act Like a Fancy Golf Course

So by now it begins to be obvious there are two ways to go on this city-owned private high-dollar golf course being proposed in a poor neighborhood. Not one and a half ways. Not three ways. Only two, and they point in opposite directions. 1) Help the 'hood. 2) Dig a moat. The Reverend Gerald Britt ... More >>

Golf Course Plan Needs a Strong Long Game

Here's hoping golfers take their eyes off the ball and see southern Dallas' desperation.

Regulators Warn Payday Lenders to Stop Blatantly Exploiting Loopholes, or else Lawmakers Will Close Existing Loopholes

When the Texas Legislature passed new rules governing the payday and auto-title lending industry in 2011, lawmakers accidentally (or not) left gaping holes large enough to drive large, cash-laden trucks through. It was little surprise, then, that that's exactly what's been happening. The Texas Obse ... More >>

Time For Ron Washington to Stop Shilling For Ace Cash Express

If you watch a Rangers game on TV for more than about five minutes, you're bound to encounter manager Ron Washington telling you wonderful things about Ace Cash Express. If you can ignore the glare from Washington's shiny pate -- he often appears sans baseball cap, even though he is a man who benefi ... More >>

Over the Weekend, a Tense, Angry, Cabaret-Referencing Forum on Violence in South Dallas

The shooting death in late July of felon and suspected drug dealer James Harper by Officer Brian Rowden during a foot chase at a South Dallas drug house has re-opened some barely closed wounds, touching off a painful debate about crime, enforcement, and police presence in low-income black and Latino ... More >>

Dallas Has More "Income Segregation" Than Almost Any Other City in the Country

The recent police shooting on Dixon Circle and the circumstances surrounding provided a reminder, if one was needed, that Dallas has large pockets of extremely concentrated poverty. As CitySquare's Gerald Britt wrote, average income in that particular ZIP code is $8,000 per year and has all the prob ... More >>

New Black Panther Party Offers Sad Comedy in the Face of Real Tragedy

The so-called "New Black Panther Party" in Dallas, now trying to exploit the James Harper shooting in Dixon Circle, always leaves me with the same dilemma. Don't know whether to laugh or cry. I felt like this when they were doing their half-assed ineffectual protest last winter at a South Dallas S ... More >>

It's the Culture, Stupid

Tale of two cities in the morning papers -- well, two and a half, if you include Mitt Romney. The Reverend Gerald Britt has a mesmerizing op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News today about the agony of Dixon Circle, the South Dallas neighborhood where a near-riot took place last week after police sh ... More >>

As KKDA Automates, a Community Loses its Voice

It was probably inevitable, what with the decades-long trend from AM to FM, from DJ to computer, but that didn't lessen the shock when KKDA abruptly laid off most of its on-air staff. We mourned it at the time on our music blog as a loss for Dallas radio, now devoid of the unique blend of old-school ... More >>

They Ain't Heavy: Recyclers on South Side Are the Foundation of a Better Neighborhood

It speaks volumes that people at The Dallas Morning News, like some other people in Dallas who should know better, do not know what heavy industry is. Two pieces in the print edition of the paper this morning describe scrap-metal and architectural remnant recyclers near Lamar Avenue as "heavy indust ... More >>

Declaring War on the War on the War on the War on the War on Christmas

​Man. I cannot believe it. Just got back in the house. Catching my breath. Had to wade into the crowd out there on the street. Major neighborhood squall. We've been waiting 20 years for the city to patch our street. They have big crews out there now doing it -- and a bang-up job from what I h ... More >>

How Will Angela Hunt, Ann Margolin, Gerald Britt and Steve Blow (Settle Down) Fix Dallas?

Via Scott DornSay what? Jump to find out.​For those Friends of Unfair Park who don't have Jewish mothers, I will tell you: They get stuff done. That would probably be their motto, if they ever organized themselves into some kind of union. (Possible sub-motto: "But, Really, Would It Kill You To Cal ... More >>

Sorry, Guys, But Mortgage Subsidies Aren't the Answer in Southern Dallas

​Interesting blow-black -- so muted you might call it whisper-back -- to recent stories and an op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News extolling so-called economic progress in Southern Dallas. One instance is on the paper's op-ed page today, a column from respected Southern Dallas blogger-jou ... More >>

New Anti-Poverty Coalition to Demand Dallas City Hall Zone Payday Lenders Out of Business

​Been trying to reach council member Jerry Allen ever since yesterday; no luck so far. But we know where he'll be at 3 today: in the Flag Room at Dallas City Hall, standing beside Dr. Frederick Haynes and Rev. Gerald Britt at an anti-payday lender press conference on behalf of the Anti-Poverty Coa ... More >>

They're From the Business Community and Here to Help You. Yeah, Right.

​The Reverend Gerald Britt Jr. of Central Dallas Ministries (now called "CitySquare" for some unfathomable reason) had an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News yesterday that made my heart ache. Britt, a good guy deeply dedicated to southern Dallas, recited all the recent population numbers that s ... More >>

Fixing the Schools, One Screening at a Time, with CDM's Waiting for Superman Soiree

​As the education policy call-to-arms doc Waiting for Superman has been released across the country, educators and would-be reformers everywhere have been doing the thing you do when a Davis Guggenheim documentary (or a Mel Gibson film in the original Aramaic) comes out: special screenings and pos ... More >>

Mayor Leppert Feels South Dallas's Pain

​Last month, Unify South Dallas -- a relatively new coalition of community "grassroots organizations and nonprofits," in the words of The Rev. Gerald Britt Jr., vice president of public policy at Central Dallas Ministries -- asked Mayor Tom Leppert to address just hat kind of economic redevelopmen ... More >>

Trinity Toll Road Isn't a White Deal. It's a Bad Deal.

Dallas County DA Craig Watkins to Deliver Keynote at Annual Prayer Breakfast

Dallas County District Attorney Craig WatkinsLarry James, president and CEO of Central Dallas Ministries, posted this announcement to his blog this a.m.: Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins will deliver the keynote address at this year's 14th Annual Urban Ministries Prayer Breakfast, set f ... More >>

On S. Lamar, Drinks Are on the Council!

View Larger MapThis council meeting leftover, which is no small morsel: Mayor Tom Leppert was vehemently against granting Augustine Ekukpe a specific use permit to open a bar called Neighborhood Sports Cafe on South Lamar Street, between Starks Avenue and Haven Street. Said the mayor during the coun ... More >>

Die, Poor People, Die!

Who's in the right about Dallas' charity hospital?

Agin and Agin

The next city election will separate the good aginners from the evildoers

For God and Country

For a South Oak Cliff church considered a model for mixing faith and government, the line between church and state is thin indeeda

One honest man

How come the Dallas schools can't find him?

City Hall's Slam-Dunk Gang

Quick--someone take a pulse. The Dallas City Council hasn't peeped in months. And John Ware and Ron Kirk are looking awfully well-fed.

Losing Faith

Dallas Area Interfaith wants to give the city's poor and disenfranchised a voice in politics. But all critics see is another grab for power.