Michael kindly took notes at this meeting and posted them at the EdgewoodDC.org website. Here is the link: http://www.edgewooddc.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/mag_august_2010.pdf. Michael makes it clear that his meeting notes are not official meeting minutes.
His notes were posted at the Historic Washington list at Yahoogroups.
Bloomingdale resident Mehdi Mansouri also attended this August 2010 MAG meeting.
Mehdi has responded with this open letter to Michael Henderson regarding his notes from the MAG meeting:
I have copied in Mehdi's open letter below:
Michael,
Your notes similar to the following were posted on Scott`s news a while ago. I see you are now distributing it to even a wider audience. That is why I think it is important to mention that you seem to be on the side of the City and not people. I say that because a) your notes are (severely) deceptive either intentionally or unintentionally, and that night in the meeting you did a number things to show your support of what the City and developers were saying, which were all nothing but deception. As your actions that might, your notes too are in complete support of the actions of the City, no matter what the City does. For example, you have mentioned ``The City has decided to pull together a full public process; asked a design team to work with the stake holders/ community; will be 3 public meetings; first one will be scheduled in September;`` Some questions are: Why has the City decided to this open process now after three years of telling people that the McMillan has been a ``full public process`` all the time, when in reality it was only the developers and the City who were making the plans behind heavily guarded closed doors? By saying this and doing this, the City is proving that they either lied for the past three years, or they are lying now, or both. If you think I am not right, tell me why am I not right? Why don`t you ask the City what made them ``open`` their process now? And how are they going to ensure that this process will truly involve and include people`s reasonable ideas and is not just anther empty word to deceive people? Why don`t you tell us why you think we can trust the City after three or four years of doing the closed process and now all of a sudden they decide to ``open the process?`` Is it not important to you to find out what changed? And what do you think the difference will be between the plan that will come out of this process this time, versus the infamous ``EYA Plan?`` Is it not important to you that if the City has been deceiving us for three or four years already, there is no reason to trust and believe them now in what they are saying, especially because still the same people with the same ultimate goals are running the ``show?``
I am fairly confident that you won`t answer the above questions or you won`t continue discussion with me until we come at truly logical and reasonable conclusions. My guess is that you have been hired by the City to pretend that you are not affiliated with the City and then distribute reports like this so the City can deceive people even more. If you think I am not correct with my evaluation of your report, I hope you would be willing to answer my above questions and continue our discussion until you truly show why you seem to be fully supportive of the City (because there is no single point in your report about what the City has been and is doing wrong out of countless cases that are there). I look forward to hearing from you.
Mehdi
6 comments:
mr. mansouri sounds like someone who sees shadowy figures lurking behind every tree, out to get him in the night.
My guess is that you have been hired by the City to pretend that you are not affiliated with the City and then distribute reports like this so the City can deceive people even more.
seriously? 9/11 was an inside job too, right?
LOL, I had the same reaction to that statement as IMGoph. Not sure alleged corruption is in the same league as alleged treason though.
I can't get past the notion that Mehdi sees the People and the City as on opposing sides. Medhi also seems to believe that Michael Henderson has taken one side over the other. What ever happened to everyone just trying to getting along, and working towards a compromise? I would like to know what measure Mehdi has used to determine that the City is not on the side of the People. In the end, I don't see any benefit from having a disagreement, let alone either side of the argument. Unless of course we want to see nothing happen at the Site.
Here we go again with Mr. Mansouri accusing everyone of being corrupt and criminal; now he's after Mr. Henderson who is a great asset to this community. When is this community going to take some action with respect to Mr. Mansouri? His actions, comments, postings, and displays of bad behavior in public and at MAG meetings are outrageous. It's time that this community speaks up. Mr. Mansouri believes that anyone who has a different opinion than his is evil; sounds like he's with G.W. Bush on this! The only evil in this community is Mr. Mansouri's propaganda.
Come out to the community meetings on Oct 2nd, 16th and Nov 20th so you can see the plans and review the studies and help to shape this development. Don't let someone who has only lived in our community for 3 years try to destroy another chance to development a fair and balanced project that will bring many positive things, to not only our community, but our District! Let Mr. Mansouri know his opinion is just that his. It hardly represents this community nor the residents he is supposed to be representing, but instead only represents his personal interests. Mansouri needs to be removed from MAG. So if you live on Channing Street and have had enough of this anti-government, anti-US rhetoric and propaganda, reach out to the ANC commission and let's see if we can put forth an election for this seat on the MAG. Channing Street Residents deserve better and can once again have a "good" representative on the MAG.
If you didn't know Mr. Mansouri has verbally threatened Councilman Thomas and his family, Mayor Fenty, the Office of Economic Development Staff, several members of MAG along with me. Mr. Mansouri has also stated he's going to file a lawsuit against all of us! Just so you know! Now think about it, everyone else is wrong but Mr. Mansouri is right. Mr. Mansouri fails to understand that here in the US, we are a representative democracy, he gets one vote not all of them! Speak up! Reach out! Take back your hood before Mr. Mansouri does it for you!
Nut bag much?
Anonymous...thanks for you comment...image that MAG has been dealing with Mr. Mansouri for almost a year....extremely frustrating for all the members! Thanks again
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