You Gotta Have Heart February 24, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Education, School Desegregation, St. Louis Local.comments closed
School closings “take the heart” out of urban neighborhoods
(snip)
Steven Bingler, the president of Concordia, Inc., a New Orleans architectural and educational planning firm, has studied the impact of school closings on urban neighborhoods. He says St. Louis residents have good cause for concern on several fronts, not the least being the impact that closings often have on student performance.
“If kids can’t walk to school, then their parents can’t get to school either,” Bingler pointed out. “And when parents can’t participate in their child’s education, in many cases that child will fail.”
Martin Blank, the executive director of the Coalition for Community Schools in Washington, contends that St. Louis, like many urban (and sometimes rural) areas, often pull the plug without exploring the alternatives.
(snip)
“For our most vulnerable kids, smaller places are better. People know who they are and they can stay better connected to their community,” he said.
This is the same mentality that bought St. Louis interdistrict deseg, which took kids to suburban schools that are even further away for them and their parents.
What Kind of Fool Would Bring an Injunction to a Gun Fight? February 24, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Hispanic Crime.comments closed
A gang’s staying power
Entrenched for years in Northeast L.A., the Avenues continues to defy the forces of law and gentrification.
The young men who rule Drew Street have survived countless convictions, injunctions, evictions and deportations.
Over the years, they have called themselves the Cypress Assassins, the Pee Wee Gangsters, the Brown Crowd Youngsters. They are as much clan as gang, deeply interconnected by family, with decades in their Glassell Park neighborhood.
Police have tried to crush them for years, but for all the law enforcement rained upon the shabby two blocks of wrought-iron fences and stucco apartments, homeboys still command the street, as evidenced by the wild shootout Thursday in Northeast Los Angeles. The gun battle, which followed a drive-by attack near an elementary school, prompted police to shut down dozens of blocks, stranded thousands of residents and left two people dead.
The Drew Street crew is just one clique of the notorious Avenues gang that has tenaciously retained control over a wide swath of Northeast L.A., defying both the forces of gentrification and heavy crackdowns by police and federal agents.
The gang, deriving its name from the avenues that cross Figueroa Street, took root in the 1950s and has wreaked havoc ever since. The insignia tattooed on many members’ bodies speaks to their virulent history: a skull with a bullet hole, wearing a fedora.
The city attorney hit the Avenues with a gang injunction in 2002, making it illegal for known members to congregate or ride in cars together throughout much of Highland Park, Glassell Park, Cypress Park and Eagle Rock.
Wow. A piece of paper. I hate to break it to you, city attorney, but they got guns and family solidarity. They could easily take your piece of paper in a fight. And they wouldn’t have a much harder time against the cops that are supposed to enforce the words on that paper.
“They Have Been More Pro-Immigration Than the Democrats” February 24, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Campaign 2008, Immigration.comments closed
There’s the money quote from an article where New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg praises President Bush, John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Somehow, I think this pretty much extinguishes the Obama-Bloomberg rumors.
