Hi, all. So, after the GM tonight - and waiting for MUNI for 20 minutes, I reworked the Background portion. Jerry - since you missed it - the plank did not pass tonight. I heard two concerns: 1) The platform is too heavy on the anti-car sentiment and 2) The platform in general does not do enough to really support the lower economic classes. While I think both of these points are uninformed and just false, I think there are a few simple things that we can do to make sure the platform gets passed at the next meeting so we can actually move forward and start making change happen. I don't think we should change anything about the platform, outside of the changes (which were minor) that were suggested and accepted at the meeting tonight. Now, on the first, anti-car point. I think that we shouldn't change that sentiment at all - I think that we're all pretty much on board that the root of the transportation problems in SF is the rampant car culture. Like I said, I don't think we should change anything, but perhaps just reinforce and further explain why we think think/how we are approaching the crisis. I have major concerns about the second point. Firstly because I don't think that an effective platform is based on a class system - it must be unilateral. Furthermore, there are repeated references in the platform about giving preference to the poorest neighborhoods and most disadvantaged. Anyway, here is my take on a rework of the Background section. BACKGROUND Our present transportation system has created a monopoly on a very basic need: mobility. Its primary function has been to nourish and coddle the massive energy and automobile corporations. This has resulted in a loss of power for the common person. Specifically, these industries have created false needs through advertising and manipulated figures in order to foster a fruitless competition for status at the expense of good transportation for all. Taking back the power to meet our own needs means we will have to overcome the addiction to the automobile as a symbol of our liberty and independence. This will be a process involving many different interconnected and interdependent factors which therefore need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. This ever-evolving document outlines the local aspects of that process. It is a collection of policies intended to work in conjunction with each other to eventually create a perfect system of transportation that supersedes economic class and means. Furthermore, we speak to a deep crisis which our mainstream leadership refuses to honestly acknowledge. To do so would seriously jeopardize the status quo, which is the bedrock of the economic stability and gain of an elite few. Consequently, taking on this leadership means we are also taking on some hard and perhaps unpleasant challenges for many of us. However, to continue on our current path would be a slow suicide for us as well as the Earth over the next several generations. Oh, and I think that maybe we should change the word "citizens" in the first paragraph to "people." Thanks, Christine