"Don't you ever disrespect a black woman that way!"With those 8 words, Philadelphia City Councilman Wilson Goode, Jr, woke up the citizens of Philadelphia to everything that's wrong with their local government, myself included. With those 8 words, Councilman Goode alerted the public that City Council was back in session after taking their summer vacation. With those 8 words, Goode did something that needed to be done; He woke up the media.
Why did I pick those 8 words to start the story? Because they were given a much more harsh light because of what the aide held in her hands at the City Council meeting and, in turn, ignited the firestorm to begin with.
On a piece of paper, she scrawled the words "Jeff Cole: KKK".
There was so much intriguie as to why this happened that the reporter, Jeff Cole, became part of the story and a discussion, not about race, but about corruption in the halls of our government. In fact, the only people in this entire debate who have the aide and the Councilman himself.
For the past few weeks, Jeff Cole of Fox 29 has been following an aide of Philadelphia Councilman Wilson Goode. According to sources, the reporter found out that the aide, Latrice Bryant, was going to the gym on taxpayer time. The story would have been a standard story was it not for where it goes... She was found buying bear and going to the Councilman's house... and spending the night there. It's worth noting that we were, as you may have guessed, foot the bill for this as it was all done on taxpayer time.
When Councilman Goode was confronted with this information, he refused to answer his question. The local media, in a show of either unity or, even better, force against a corrupt
Councilman, than began to ask the same questions Cole had tried and he answered them. You can watch the video here and, frankly, it tells the story better than I can.
This entire mess stems from one thing: Time sheets.
According to the records attained by Jeff Cole, time sheets show that Latrice Bryant was clocked in for hours before she was spotted going to the office. It is worth noting, because it ties into the overall story, that Latrice Bryant dresses in rather, ahem, REVEALING clothing on a daily basis. A visit to her MySpace, which she made private after a local blog found it and posted images and photos from it, show's racy photos and reveals that her dream was to become a state represenative. Because of her actions, it is very likely those dreams will never come true. And, admittedly, these photos will come back to haunt her.
But this woman aside, Councilman Goode also highlighted his horrible new bit of legislation: By having one-party rule.
Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. wants to eliminate one at-large Council seat for the minority party, amending his original proposal that would have reduced Council from 17 members to 15 members with two less at-large seats. Philadelphia Metro
In part of this story breaking, he's alerted us of this. He's reminded us that, despite a mayor who is trying harder than any I've seen before to clean up this government and make sure Philadelphia shines again, that out our City Council still have members hellbent on destroying it and making Philadelphia the same culture of corruption it was before.
It also showed that the local media, as a whole, have been far to warm to City Council and, in part because Nutter has done so much good on a whole, has become latheargic and lazy about covering the events of the city and, in turn, have not done their job. Which is why I think the citizens of this city should be so thankful for Jeff Cole.
I would like to thank the following people for all the research:
Fox 29 Philadelphia for reporting on this. Philebrity.com for posting the MySpace Page.
And, most importantly, thank you, Daniel McQuade of Philadelphia Weekly! He alerted me first to the story and inspired me to write this. Dan, thanks a million and please, keep up the awesome work!
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