I had a great time tonight, leading a training with residents involved with the Philadelphia Affordable Housing Coalition. I left feeling as I often do when working with poor and working class people--that there is real potential for massive positive transformation in this city. I also left with growing clarity about just how ineffective our City has been at addressing the housing crisis that we are facing. One third of Philadelphia's households earn under $20,000 a year and yet the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and other City programs continue to not be targetted to this population, particularly when it comes to helping permanently house these working families. More important than the neglect was the sense of power that I feel is growing in our city. Across race and class people are regularly moving from despair to action. People are looking at ways to strategize, to build and demonstrate our collective power. Whatever the symptoms we are addressing--casinos, homelessness, outdated zoning, corrupt and inaccessible government the solution remains the same. People are discovering that in democratic forms of decision making (small "d") and governance we can find real solutions, particularly if we do not just ask for things but truly engage in actions that reinforce our rights as citizens in what I think is one of the greatest cities in this country. I called this post winnability because it is a term thrown around by organizers of various genres. I have been an organizer in a variety of campaigns and actions which by most observers were not winnable, and won them (not all of them). But observers don't win things, actionists and engaged citizens do. It is our role to change the rules of the game, to make the unwinnable winnable. That is true for the issues that we are working on winning and that is true for the candidates that we get behind. Calculating winnability sounds scientific but developing a winning organizing strategy is more craft than math built on the art of seeing the possible. Let's go out and win the unwinnable.