The current wave of progressive and reform-oriented electoral energy in Philadelphia began in 2003 with the effort to nominate Howard Dean (and I am sure Wesley Clark and John Edwards and Al Sharpton and some of the others brought folks in too). The desire to beat George Bush in the 2004 General is what really galvanized a generation of voters, grassroots volunteers, and even political organizers. Even though we lost that election, a whole bunch of us made it our mission to take action and make progressive change a continuing priority.

It was 2005 in Philadelphia when some of us got a chance to apply some of the skills we'd learned in a big, national election to our local politics.

Fresh from my first gig working at MoveOn, after reading an amazing Kia Gregory piece in the PW, I emailed Seth Williams out of the blue and pitched myself as someone who could help him use the internet to organize his voters.

This was also a seminal moment for Young Philly Politics as a political blog. We made our bones, so to speak, on the Seth Williams for DA campaign. If you read YPP every day then, it would have been hard for you to imagine any problem Philadelphia faced that the DA was not in some way able to solve or impact.

Seth lost. The DA still played a huge role in terms of day-to-day quality of life in the city, and also as an architect helping to design Philadelphia's future. But other things came up, and the talk here, and in progressive offline groups, and in others places turned away from the District Attorney's office.

Goldfish memory.

The reality is that the problems Philadelphia faced before the election, and right after, and now, can be traced back to the style in which the DA's office is run. Now we all know in the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important, groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. We all know that, but why did we lose the focus on the DA's office, especially as gun violence has only increased since 2005?

I was happy today to see the Inky put this issue back into the spotlight.

The Inquirer had an interesting news analysis piece today about Jerome Whitaker, the man who shot and wounded PPD Officer Mariano Santiago:

Before the incident completely fades away, the story of how Whitaker came to be armed, dangerous and on the streets that day is worth unraveling as a case study of how Philadelphia's justice system works.

The most salient piece of information I extracted was this stat (which should not be news to those who followed the 05 DA's race):

A U.S. Justice Department study released last year found that 59 percent of all felony cases here ended in withdrawals, dismissals or acquittals - the highest non-conviction rate among America's 100 largest cities.

It's important to remember that many of us who support Seth Williams for DA in 2009 supported him in 2005 not because we were political insiders or because we had a personal beef with Lynne Abraham. The reality is that when you take a close look at our city's prosecution office, we seem to come up short.

I for one supported Seth because he made a compelling and intelligent case for specific reforms to the DA's office that would do more than bandaid crime, but actually get to its roots and fix the a lot of the people who are affected by and perpetrate it.

The Inky article contextualizes today's piece as an illustration of "the legal headaches prosecutors and police will face as Mayor-elect Michael Nutter pushes them to pursue a stop-and-frisk strategy to cut violence."

That may be true, but once again, if we plan to rely on Michael Nutter to solve every single problem this city faces, we are in deep trouble. The Mayor-elect's call to public service is well-timed: we all need to take more responsibility and we all need to pay attention to the current operations of the DA's office as well as the election in 2009 of a new DA.

The biggest fear I have about that election is that the current DA may retire before it happens. This would force the appointment of an interim-DA. That person would gain an incredible advantage over any challenger in 09 through the high media-profile role the office comes with. There's more party politics at play in the current jockeying for position in the 09 race. However, there is only one DA candidate that Philadelphians who really want to reduce crime in the city should support and that is Seth Williams.

We need to elect a DA who will curb over-charging (a huge cause of a low conviction rate). We need to implement real community-based prosecution. More than a majority of crimes are committed by the same repeat offenders in neighborhoods. Identifying the causes these folks that compel these folks to commit crime will do more than any tough cookie can to slow the crime rate. We need a DA who will use his/her office to go after illegal arms dealers as seriously as we currently pursue people who get their car insurance in New Jersey.

Seth Williams is all that and more.

Don't submit to goldfish memory. Don't rely on Michael Nutter or the new Police Commissioner to deal with crime alone. The DA race in 09, though likely to be low turnout, is one of the most important races a Philadelphia voter gets to participate in. Get informed about it and support Seth now.