Wow, Thanksgiving is next week, and in just 7 days we will gather for the 17th Annual Chichester TurkeyFest Celebration! It really is hard to believe that many of us have known each other long enough to take part in a tradition lasting that long. However, as time passes each year and our lives following sometimes divergent paths, TurkeyFest becomes all the more important. It is the one time that everyone knows we can all go home and spend an evening with old friends and family.

This year I would like to start a new tradition. While much attention has been placed on the party's theme each year, I would like to shift focus from that element to a new idea. From now on I would like to take our annual gathering as an opportunity to not only give thanks to the bonds we have created with each other, but to do something special for a worthy cause.

So here is what I propose. This year, I have chosen a great cause and ask each of you to make a contribution of any size to benefit the program. Just like every year, you should bring something tasty to eat, but make sure you save a few dollars to make a contribution. We will pass the hat at dinner time. While I have chosen the charity this year (which I detail below), everyone will have an opportunity to vote on a list of nominated charities to support in the upcoming year. So, if there is a cause out there that you feel strongly about, send me a private email and I will take it into consideration when I create the list of nominations.

This year, I invite you all to attend TurkeyFest and help me raise money for the Attic Youth Center.

The Attic Youth Center is Philadelphia's only agency exclusively serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, and is one of only 13 of its kind nationally. The center creates opportunities for LGBTQ youth to develop into healthy, independent, civic-minded adults within a safe and supportive community, and promotes the acceptance of LGBTQ youth in society.

I know that an organization like this could have had a huge impact on my life growing up in Chi, and possibly on some of your lives. It is a wonderful program, and it would mean a lot to me if you all could help me support the program with a financial contribution.

If you cannot afford to make a monetary contribution, there is another way you can help this awesome organization. Each year in the fall, the center tries to provide winter coats to its young people who need them. So, if you have an old winter coat taking space in your closet...dig it out, throw it in the washer & dryer, and then bring it with you to TurkeyFest. A donation of a winter coat would be a great contribution to the Attic Youth Center.

Of course, there is no requirement to make a contribution, but even if you can only afford $5, any donation would be helpful. So, like always, bring your entire family, a delicious dish, and this year bring your check book along too. Donations should be made to The Attic Youth Center. You can also make a contribution online at http://tinyurl.com/6lfour.  

Check out this rad TMBG video... 

Check out Chaka Fattah's most recent commercial which began airing on Friday, May 4th.  There has been a lot of talk in this election about "reform."  Chaka Fattah wants to reform city government as well...but he is the only candidate talking about making the kind of reforms that will completely transform our city by improving the lives of the poorest among us.

Check out Chaka Fattah's recent campaign commercial which features President Clinton praising Fattah's passion for transforming Philadelphia and creating opportunity.   

With just 26 days until Democrats in Philadelphia decide on our mayoral nominee, it has become clear that this race has come down to two choices: Chaka Fattah and Tom Knox.  Even the Philadelphia Inquirer agrees that this is a race between Knox and Fattah! 

For me, Chaka Fattah is the clear choice in what is becoming a neck and neck race.  

I am truly inspired by Chaka Fattah's bold vision of a city government that actively works to help all residents have an opportunity in life, especially those in the shadows of prosperity.  So many problems in our city can be attributed to a single root cause...widespread poverty.  Poverty is an issue that politicians don't like to talk about, even though it has such a huge affect on all of us, whether we are rich, middle class, or poor. 

In Philadelphia, one in four people live in poverty, including 105,000 children.  Philadelphia is at the very bottom of the list of big cities when it comes to the number of college graduates.  When less that 18 pecent of those who live in Philadelphia have a college degree, what incentive does a large company have to locate here?  We need to focus on educating our residents and growing our employable workforce in order to create job growth.  A Fattah Administration will usher in a newly empowered generation of Philadelphians where every child has access to education, the cycle of poverty is reduced, and accountability and responsibility are renewed.  Only by attacking poverty will we truly solve our crime problem, stabalize our tax base, and make Philadelphia truly realize its potential as a world class city.

Tom Knox, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity.  He is willing to spend up to 15 million dollars of his own money to win this election, while the other candidates must follow strict campaign finance limits.  Knox's virtually unlimited campaign ads have helped him to go from 2% in the polls in December to the leader today.

We won't be able to match our opponent dollar for dollar.  But with your help, we can  win.

Ryan and I would like to invite you to an event at our home to meet Chaka Fattah, and to help us raise the money we will need to stop Tom Knox from buying City Hall.  I hope you can make it.  Here are the details:

Micah Mahjoubian &

Ryan Bunch

cordially invite you to attend

a reception in honor of

Mayoral Candidate

Chaka Fattah

on

Friday, April 27^th, 2007

7:30 to 9:00 PM

at their home

1215 Wood Street #1

Philadelphia, PA 19107

 Contribution: 

Gold         $500

Silver         $100

 RSVP by emailing Micah Mahjoubian

Please make checks payable to “Fattah for Mayor”

As many of you know, in January I left the Mayor's Office to work for the campaign to elect Congressman Chaka Fattah as Mayor of Philadelpia.  While there are several candidates running, the race has really come down to two people:  Tom Knox, a millionaire who has pledged to spend more than $15 million dollars of his own money to buy his way into city hall, and Chaka Fattah, who has pledged to make fighting poverty in Philadelphia his number one priority.  During the next 35 days, I will blog more about Chaka Fattah and his opponents, but I wanted to give everyone at Chiaddicts a preview of our first campaign commercial which begins airring today.

On Wednesday, President Bush met with national journalists for an "off the record" briefing to prep them for the national address he would be delivering later that evening about his decision to escalate the war in Iraq.  According to several reports, the President stressed the need to increase our presence in Iraq for reasons that included possible future military action against Iran and Syria.  Without giving details about why we might need to take such military action, the President would simply say that he couldn't go into details for national security purposes, but "if you knew what we know" it would be clear.

And there you have it--the classic tail of the boy who cried wolf.  When the President of the United States says that we may need to go to war with Iran, that is serious stuff that we all need to pay attention to.  But when that same President sold our country on the need to invade Iraq on the false premise that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction, how can we believe that he is telling the truth now?  Our country is in precarious situation if we cannot trust whether our leader is telling us the truth about issues regarding our national security.  And as a democracy, we are weaker because of it.

Keith Olbermann sums up this predicament nicely, and effectively communicates my outrage over the President's recent decision to sink us further into the Iraqi civil war.

Badum bump bump.

Boy do the holidays creep up on me.  Thanksgiving is just a few short days away.  And it just dawned on me the other day.  It is TurkeyFest time!

Since this is a milestone year (15) I thought we should do something different.  As the years went by, TurkeyFest has constantly evolved.  Starting as a small party of about 8 at my mother and father's house, the event has grown to include as many as 100 guests.  Each year we would celebrate traditions started the year before while adding new elements to our ritual.  We have seen the party formatted with elaborate themes as well as simple concepts.  The one big constant to each TurkeyFest has been the fact that I have been the host.  And that is part that I thought I would tinker with this year.

While I will continue to offer my home as the venue for TurkeyFest, I am asking you, the guests of the event, to also serve as its host.  I want to see TurkeyFest re-envisioned by its guests and executed completely by the participants.  To facilitate this concept, I have asked Bill Fagan to act as a convener of hosts.  He will take the lead in shaping this vision and will be the point person in organizing the event, as I step back and watch as this concept organically grows into its own event.

Fagan will follow up this communication with more specifics about how this will work.  And if you have any questions about what role you should play in TurkeyFest, reach out to him.  I look forward to seeing what you all come up with this year.

TurkeyFest 15

Friday, November 24, 2006
6:00 PM

1215 Wood Street, #1
Philadelphia, PA  19107