Philadelphia

Last night I attended the second General Assembly for Occupy Philadelphia in a united methodist church one block from City Hall.

I was amazed by the energy and number of people. I estimated 850 people at the meeting (and other people have estimated 900-1000+). The Facebook Event had 830 people who said they would come. How is that for accuracy? =)

I've read that there were 300 people at the first General Assembly and 50 people at the planning meeting for the second General Assembly.

There are currently 8100 people in the Occupy Philadelphia Facebook group.

SoilKitchen.org organized free lead tests for a week. They tested over 350 samples, primarily from Philadelphia.

About 10% of the samples had > 1000 ppm lead (the point at which it becomes not so good for growing vegetables).

I color coded the markers based on lead levels and created this map:

I did some work for a friend who is starting a youth Kensington Soccer Club - Kensington is a Philadelphia neighborhood. It's a very basic drupal website.

If you happen to live in the area, he could use coaches and other volunteers!

Today I did the first official release for "Online Ballot 1.0", the software that powered PhillysBallotBox.org.

The release is at
sourceforge.net

If you are interested in holding your own referendum/ballot question, and want to only let people vote who are on the official voters list, then this software is for you!

Note: It was designed for the Philadelphia election and thus you're going to want to customize it for you own election. You might want to hire me to do this =)

27,000 Philadelphians signed a petition calling for a vote on whether to have a 1500 foot buffer zone between casinos and homes, schools and places of worship. The Philadelphia City Council voted unanimously to place this referendum, Question #1, on the May 15th ballot.

The state Supreme Court has denied our right to vote on the casino buffer zone. On Election Day, we're holding our own election so that Philadelphians will be able to vote on Question # 1 on May 15th.

May 15 - You Can Vote
1) Online
2) By phone - 215-925-6380