The Texas Department of Transportation and its transportation-planning surrogates have unsheathed their latest weapon against the proposal to tear down I-345, and that weapon is poor people.

The argument was first voiced by Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rodger Jones, who wondered a few days ago why the urban types so eager to rid the city of the two-mile stretch of freeway separating downtown and Deep Ellum weren't equally concerned about S.M. Wright, which bisects a poor, black neighborhood in southern Dallas. As Zac Crain pointed out on Frontburner, Jones' argument is based on some faulty assumptions and just so happened to mirror TxDOT's talking points.

Yesterday, North Central Texas Council of Governments transportation director Michael Morris played the poor-people card once again, telling the DMN that the freeway is used heavily by the residents of South and East Dallas, many of whom are poor minorities. He referenced a meeting he attended recently with tear-down proponents.

See also: Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings: Fix I-345 First, Talk About Teardown Later

"They were all white, they were very wealthy and I don't think any of them live in the neighborhood," he said.

There's a grain of truth here. Those most closely associated with the teardown push so far have been white downtownophiles, and any final decision must necessarily include input from all stakeholders. It's just a bit rich to see transportation planners suddenly discovering a passion for social justice.

In an email this morning Patrick Kennedy, co-founder of A New Dallas and leading tear-down proponent, calls Morris' argument "astoundingly cynical, patronizing, intentionally divisive, and ignorant of the history of I-30 and IH345 that ripped apart poor communities in the name of 'progress,' coming from people who are a part of creating the infrastructure-coerced car-dependence that is especially crushing on the poor."

The rest of his rebuttal is worth a read: