How're you going to keep them down in the Beltway after they've seen old L.A.?

EG present cert JC
Originally uploaded by CD-13

Reverend Jeff Carr is back. Yes, that Jeff Carr: the one who ran the Bresee Foundation in East Hollywood where we built the Bimini Slough, our first eco-park; the same Jeff Carr who, after an emotional sendoff (see picture) packed his family in an R.V. to see America and wound up in Washington D.C. as the chief operating officer of Sojourners, mixing religion, social justice and national politics. Mayor Villaraigosa has appointed Rev. Carr to be his Deputy Mayor for Youth Development and Gang Prevention. I'm glad he's back in town.

His job won't be easy, but having worked closely with him in CD13, I'm glad he's going to be doing it. One of the heartbreaking paradoxes of the city we live in is that while crime has plummeted to a rate unseen since well before I was born, youth homicide remains unaffected. At the same time as Connie Rice's city-funded study came out, the council created the Ad Hoc Committee on Gangs; adding this appointment by the mayor, we're reaching the kind of critical attention that will hopefully allow us to break this cycle. Good luck, Jeff.