When we (thought we) was fab

I was a teen-ager in the 1960s, having come into this world in the Year of Our Lord, 1961.

Those of you who are not now or never have been journalism majors are thinking, "That does not compute."

I'm from Baton Rouge.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh . . . OK. Yeah, that makes sense."

I knew you would understand. Time moves at a leisurely pace in my hometown, and if I'm remembering correctly, 1967 hit Baton Rouge about 1974. Roughly.

Before the '60s hit Baton Rouge, I had heard of its appearance elsewhere on TV. One time, a long-haired Canadian nephew of my British aunt rode his motorcycle to Baton Rouge for a visit, and I recall that we treated him politely enough.

But there was just the one of him, he didn't seem to be plotting the violent overthrow of Separate but Equal and, besides, he'd already gotten hauled in for being foreign (and a "beatnik") somewhere in Tennessee.

Overall, though, it seemed that rednecks and old money held sway over my hometown, and "the revolution" would have to wait for another day. And the closest we came to the counterculture were star-spangled bell bottoms and the end of legally segregated schools . . . in 1970.

But the '60s did arrive by the mid-'70s, and to a teen-ager, Baton Rouge was starting to look like a happening place. Kind of.

BY THE TIME I was in high school, all that was symbolized by the existence of the city's only "alternative" newsweekly, Gris Gris. Gris Gris was what you read from cover to cover if you wanted to be hip and in the know.

Gris Gris opened young minds to a strange and enticing world -- side by side with yet light years removed from petrochemical row, hard hats, pick-up trucks and work shirts with your name embroidered above the pocket. It was a world of progressive rock, civil rights, head shops and laughing at The Man.

It was where you learned what a head shop was, along with some of the best (and snarkiest) political coverage in the state.

At my high school, there was a group of us journalism types who wanted to BE Gris Gris. Looking back at a bunch of old issues I've saved over the decades, I've come to the conclusion that Gris Gris was good, but not that good.

It was a little pretentious, in that way that young people in a redneck burg are when they realize what they are and are horrified by the revelation. It wasn't as slick as what you would have found in the Big City, but it also was a hell of a lot more down home.

In that way young people are when they realize they're somewhat embarrassed at living in a redneck burg but like it too much to just up and haul ass. And realized they weren't so cool that they stopped saying "Hey, how ya doin' today?" to folks at the grocery store.

Kind of the Baton Rouge version of New Orleans' "Hey, cap! Where y'at?" Which, of course, is never said to yo' mama an dem, because you respect your elders.

ANYWAY, we thought we were hip when the '60s hit Baton Rouge -- as I said -- sometime around 1974. We thought that everything we were just "discovering" was hip, happenin' and now.

We had no idea that, yes, our discoveries were all that. On the coasts. In 1967 -- if not earlier.

Here's a small example, some of a Gris Gris item from the issue of Aug. 31-Sept. 5, 1977:

Making Waves at WAIL

Growing pains are far from over and personality composition definitely a variable factor at BR's "AM alternative," WAIL. As we were going to press with our back-to-school issue last week, researchers were already compiling material for this Gris Gris. One of the lead stories in "After Dark" was to be the apparent success of sound in the "alternative" format at WAIL, and in particular the avid following of one Becky [Y]ates, who had developed the "Mother Nature" air character into one of the more positive forces that station has seen in some time. She was also Music Director, with responsibilities for the station's playlist.

You recall the "was" tense in that sentence. [Y]ates and Program Director/Station Manager Bonnie Hagstrom were in the process of resigning as we called to confirm photo dates. They are no longer with the station.

(snip)

WAIL, on the bottom of the Baton Rouge ARB ratings the last year, had shown some gains under the FM-style programming combination of Hagstrom and [Y]ates. They had developed five personalities, or named characters, rotating through the day's shifts as DJ, and in that way assuring continuity of the character, if not the person behind the character.

[Y]ates "Mother Earth" [sic] was the longest-lived of the experiment. She had originally been assigned duties as a weatherperson and part-time news announcer, but the character developed such an audience that she finally became the mainstay of the prime drive-time slots. The only other jock to maintain his position for any length of time is ex-English major Darrell Ardison, known on the air as "Scratch."

Hagstrom is now Media Director for the Rub Group, an advertising agency. [Y]ates was unavailable for comment last week.

At WAIL life goes on. Both sides go to lengths to make the break an easy one, at least for the public. The actual dispute that caused the eruption is rapidly becoming only a faint murmur in the reverb coil of time . . . time . . . "Time? 4:57, here in Boss Rouge on Boss Radio."

Those changes.

BOSS ROUGE? BOSS RADIO? Just think, it only took 12 years for the Big BR to become "boss" -- with its own "Boss Radio" -- after KHJ created a nationwide splash by becoming "Boss Radio in Boss Angeles" . . . one fine spring day in 1965.

Those changes, indeed.

We wish you a Merry Christmas . . .

And a Happy Red Year!

From the Omaha World-Herald:

LINCOLN — Tom Osborne returned to the NU athletic department Tuesday, charged with uplifting a Husker sports nation down and divided over firings and dismal results on the football field.

A day after axing controversial athletic director Steve Pederson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman turned to one of the state's most respected and beloved figures to run the department on an interim basis.

"I am very pleased that Tom Osborne has agreed to help bring some leadership and direction to our athletic program," Perlman said in a written statement.

"Tom is committed to making the entire program successful. He brings the right experience, an understanding of Nebraska and our aspirations. I look forward to working with him."

The statement said Osborne, the coach who won three national championships before retiring in 1997, agreed to take the position on an "open-ended arrangement" until Perlman names a full-time successor.

Perlman gave no timetable for his search.

The chancellor also gave no indication of whether Osborne's appointment would affect the status of current Husker coach Bill Callahan or his staff. Perlman was to say more in a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Osborne, 70, who met with Perlman earlier in the day, said he looks forward to the challenge.

"I've spent the majority of my life working with the athletic department at the university and I want to do what I can at this point to continue in the pursuit of excellence that has been previously established," Osborne said.

The Osborne appointment would seem to have been a natural for Perlman.

Osborne, who spent three decades as a coach in Lincoln, obviously is familiar with the department and its functions. His integrity is unquestioned. And he likely would have success raising money for the athletic program, particularly for the $40 million new football complex that now bears his name.

But more than anything that he brings to the table administratively, the former coach gives all Husker fans someone to rally around.

He may be the only figure who can unite a state divided over Pederson's firing of Osborne's coaching successor, the transition to a new regime, on-field disappointments, Pederson's own firing, and questions over what should happen with the current coaching staff.

Osborne has been a fan favorite for the job — many even wanting him to take it on a permanent basis.

Since Osborne's retirement in 1997 at the end of a remarkable 60-3 run that produced three national titles in four years, both Osborne and the football program have had their share of ups and downs.

Osborne, who had retired for health reasons and to spend more time with his family, initially missed the game sorely and on more than one occasion was nearly lured out of retirement by other schools.

He found a new life in politics, elected three times as a Republican congressman from western Nebraska's 3rd District.

But in 2006, he sought to finish off his public career with a run for Nebraska governor. Challenging incumbent Gov. Dave Heineman, he lost in the GOP primary, effectively ending his political career.

He has been a senior lecturer in the UNL College of Business Administration, teaching leadership and business ethics, and worked as a consultant for local college athletic departments.

Over time, Osborne had also become somewhat estranged from the N.U. athletic department. He was particularly embittered with Pederson's November 2003 decision to fire Frank Solich, who in 1997 Osborne had picked as his successor.

YOU KNOW, Tom Osborne may be Bill Callahan's last chance as Husker coach. T.O. is nothing if not fair-minded, few (if any) people know more about football, and if the new boss thinks this coach can be saved . . . are you gonna argue with him? I'm not.

If Callahan is willing to become the student -- and become an attentive student, at that -- work hard at impressing the boss and at turning over a new leaf with his players, maybe he has a shot now that Typhoid Stevie is just a bad memory.

But if this coach can yet be saved, Callahan's going to have to do it the way Osborne's 1994, 1995 and 1997 football squads won national championships. He's going to have to earn it.

Brother, can you spare 22 million dimes?

When the guano hits the fan, I don't know whether an academic is the guy you want emerging from an ivy-walled administration building to do crisis management.

Particularly when it involves something people actually care about. Like Nebraska football.

The Omaha World-Herald has another account from A Day in the Life of an Absent-Minded Ex-Law Professor:

This time Steve Pederson's trademark smile was missing.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln athletic director walked briskly out of Chancellor Harvey Perlman's office at 1:35 p.m. Monday after a five-minute meeting.

Asked to stop for an interview, Pederson declined.

"I've got to get to another meeting," he said.

His days of meetings at Nebraska are over.

Pederson was fired Monday following a disastrous start to the Husker football season. Perlman said Pederson's leadership, not back-to-back 30-point losses, prompted his decision.

"I have become aware since July or August of a number of concerns from people in the athletic department about Steve's management style, about his connection with the staff, with donors, with fans, with former athletes," Perlman said.

Pederson no longer had the credibility to lead his staff, Perlman said.

In July, Perlman extended Pederson's contract five years through 2013, a move that will now cost the university more than $2.2 million in compensation.

Dissent inside the athletic department has been no secret. Several key employees have resigned or been fired in the past year, including chief fundraiser Paul Meyers two weeks ago.

Perlman said he wasn't aware of serious issues within the athletic department when he conducted a review of Pederson's leadership this summer.

"You know, it's really interesting that a person in my position ends up learning everything last," Perlman said.

Perlman said he decided to fire Pederson on Thursday, two days before Nebraska lost 45-14 on homecoming to Oklahoma State. He talked to President J.B. Milliken on Saturday morning but did not alert the Board of Regents until Monday morning.

IF YOU'RE THE MAN running the state university that's home to a big-time athletic program, it's a good idea to read the sports section. And watch the TV news.

And, for Pete's sake, have someone tape the Sunday-night TV sports call-in show 50 miles up the road in the state's biggest city.

If you're the absent-minded ex-law professor who's running the state university that's home to a big-time athletic program, and if you do that bare minimum, chances are good that you'll know enough about your wildly unpopular athletic director not to grant him a contract extension. One that's going to cost your school an extra $2.2 million after reality manages to worm its way behind those ivy-covered walls and make the obvious, well . . . obvious.

Even to an absent-minded ex-law professor.

The absent-minded ex-law professor

University of Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman, when asked who's running the athletic department, now that he's canned Steve Pederson:

"I don't know. I hope someone is."

An endearing -- and funny -- response, but not exactly one that inspires confidence. You know?

Perlman said he has, in the past, conferred with former Husker coach Tom Osborne, but denied having offered him the interim-AD job. Nor did he betray any intention to offer T.O. the job.

Well, he ought to. Quick. The ship is sinking, and somebody has to start bailing, like, yesterday.

And if KPTM is wrong on their big "scoop," which made it to Drudge -- "NEBRASKA LASHES OUT AT HELL A.D.!" -- that'll be the last time I put any credence in anything coming from the Island of Misfit News People.

Words we ought to hear

"I intend to let the program gravitate

back toward mediocrity. We want

to get back to surrendering the

Big 12 only to Oklahoma and Texas."

-- NU Chancellor Harvey Perlman

He's go-on-on-on-one . . . oh, I . . . oh I'd . . .

THROW A PARTY!

Nebraska Athletic Director Steve Pederson isn't anymore. He's gone, fired, whacked, rubbed out by NU Chancellor Harvey Perlman, because you don't treat Da Family like that.

The Huskers don't get wiped out game after game after game -- the "fruits" of destroying one of the classiest and most successful football programs ever by firing and alienating those what built it -- without the guy who ordered the "hit" getting hit. And that mealy-mouthed, cynical incompetent got whacked but good.

He's gone! And NU "Coach" Bill Callahan is staying the hell away from neighborhood diners with his fambly.

BUT IT GETS BETTER, if this report from Omaha's KPTM television proves correct in 45 minutes or so:

A source close to the program tells KPTM FOX 42 News that Tom Osborne will be named interim Athletic Director.

In a release sent out this afternoon, Perlman says, "We are of course disappointed about the progress in our football program. Steve has done many positive things for Husker athletics during his tenure, but I think only new leadership can objectively assess the state of our program and make the decisions necessary to move us forward."

Pederson was hired as athletic director in December of 2002. He came under heavy fire from Husker fans for hiring Bill Callahan, who did away with the Huskers' traditional running attack and replaced it with the west coast offense.

Perlman says his decision was not made lightly. "I know Steve made the decisions he thought best for the interests of the program and University. I am disappointed that I had to come to this decision," he says.

PEDERSON GONE! T.O. BACK! Could Christmas have come early this year?!?

@#$!*% football game. . . .

Two things about college football:

* If the LSU defense that showed up in Lexington, Ky., yesterday afternoon were a condom, the whole world would be HIV-positive. I'm just sayin'.

* Fire Nebraska Coach Bill Callahan and Athletic Director Steve Pederson. Now. They've killed the last of the football tradition Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne spent 35 years building.

Who, after all, would have thought they'd ever see Nebraska fans with paper bags over their heads in Memorial Stadium?

And, frankly, the only way to even start rebuilding what's been trashed is to draft Osborne (PBUH) as Nebraska athletic director.

As an LSU alumnus, I'm comforted that there's plenty of hope for my Tigers. They still have a great coach in Les Miles, and they still have a shot at the national championship if they win out.

Poor Nebraska fans (in whose ranks I also reside) have no such hope. None.

Here in the Cornhusker State, the only faint, flickering, tenuous glimmer of hope left depends wholly upon firing Callahan and Pederson. Now. And then finding someone you'd trust to find -- and hire -- a good head football coach.

Like T.O.

Plant a 'white tree,' grow your economy

Good Lord. Imagine what an economy Louisiana could grow if only someone would convince the people of Jena to stick Negro necks through those nooses hanging from "white" trees.

I wonder whether the Alexandria Town Talk would cover that as unironically as it did this:

The choice of Alexandria as a staging ground for the Sept. 20 "Jena Six" rallies brought money and acclaim to the city, officials say.

According to an estimate provided by the Alexandria/Pineville Convention & Visitors Bureau, events directly related to the Jena rallies pumped $569,240 into the Alexandria economy.

The figure was reached by estimating money spent by both out-of-towners and locals for three events: syndicated radio talk show host Michael Baisden's book signing at the Alexandria Riverfront Center on Sept. 19; the NAACP convention at the downtown Alexander Fulton Hotel and Convention Center from Sept. 19 to Sept. 22; and the rally in front of Alexandria City Hall on Sept. 20.

During the Alexandria rally, the Rev. Al Sharpton said he and other organizers chose the city as a staging area so Jena would not benefit economically from the thousands coming from out of town.

The three events were attended by about 5,550, tourism officials estimate.

The economic impact was calculated by combining hotel rooms rented and money that was spent at other local businesses, said Shanna Worth, the spokeswoman for the Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Alexandria City Councilman Myron Lawson said Friday the numbers given by tourism officials are much lower than he thinks they should be.

"They have woefully underestimated the impact," Lawson said.

He estimates the economic impact to Alexandria at $1.5 million $2 million.

HAT TIP: Forgotson.com

Dear Bobby Jindal . . .

I know you didn't ask for any advice from me, a resident of -- and voter in -- Nebraska. But I was born, raised and educated in Baton Rouge. I'm even a fellow alumnus of Baton Rouge Magnet High School, though a few years before your time there.

It's a tragic flaw on my part, I am pretty certain, but for better or worse, I still care about Louisiana. I hate the abject crookedness that's raped, swindled and held back my homeland for . . . well, forever.

I want Louisiana to do better. I want it not to be No. 1 in suck, while being No. 50 in everything else.

But then I see this in today's online edition of The Advocate in Baton Rouge:

A Colorado-based company is making a new push to open a landfill near Alsen, and the group donated heavily to U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal’s campaign for governor.

Jindal received a total of $50,000 from supporters in Littleton, Colo. — all on Monday.

Littleton-based Louisiana Land Systems is currently applying for an industrial waste landfill permit. The contributors are from allied businesses, their executives, and family members of the executives, according to campaign records.

Members of the Alsen community in north Baton Rouge and then-state Rep. Kip Holden, now mayor, were among those who fought a previous attempt to open the landfill. The state Department of Environmental Quality denied the permit in December 2000 because of a failure to show “genuine demand.”

The landfill site is at the end of Brooklawn Drive, just west of Scenic Highway, according to DEQ records.

Alsen resident Juanita Stewart of the Concerned Citizens of North Baton Rouge said she was “somewhat surprised” to learn the Colorado company was trying again.

“We’re certainly going to fight them,” Stewart said. “We fought them in 2000, and we’ll do it again.”

Stewart said she is aware of community efforts from Louisiana Land to win public support.

Already near Alsen are the Ronaldson Field construction landfill and the PetroProcessors Superfund hazardous waste sites.

Jindal refused comment on the story. His spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said Jindal never discussed any landfill project when he spoke with the donors.

Jindal and the Colorado group discussed only how outside states can help Louisiana small businesses attract investors, Sellers said.

BOBBY, YOU SAY you're a reform candidate. Looking at the Advocate story, you have a funny way of demonstrating your commitment to reform.

I'm not a politician, but I'd like to think I have a decent enough sense concerning , uh, decency. And here is the proper response when a bunch of Colorado landfill entrepreneurs band together to give you $50,000 in campaign donations:

No, thank you.

You tell them you have plenty enough money, you can't help them, and here's all your money back.

Give the money back. NOW.

A successful Jindal Administration might be the last chance Louisiana has before irrevocably becoming some sort of American Chechnya. You're carrying a lot on your "reformist" shoulders.

Act like it.

Now he says something.

When, of course, the now-retired Gen. Ricardo Sanchez no longer is in any position to do anything about the catastrophe that is Iraq . . . and when CYA is no longer necessary.

From MSNBC:

A "failure of the national political leadership" is responsible for the “nightmare” of the Iraq war, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Friday.

If some of America’s political leaders were in the military they would have been relieved or court-martialed long ago, Sanchez told a conference of military journalists.

"Neglect and incompetence" by the National Security Council has led to an intractable situation in Iraq, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq said.

Sanchez said that the NSC, Congress, the State Department and the national political leadership are all responsible for the "crisis in leadership." He refused to identify specific individuals responsible for the failure, saying that he thought the media should be able to figure it out for themselves.

His comments appeared to be a broad indictment of White House policies and a lack of leadership in the Pentagon to oppose them. Such assessments — even by former Pentagon brass — are not new, but they have added resonance as debates over war strategy dominate the presidential campaign.

Sanchez said the war in Iraq is "a nightmare with no end in sight," adding America has no choice but to continue fighting or the country will sink into chaos, which will spread throughout the Middle East. America will be there "for the foreseeable future," he said.

The so-called surge of troops in Iraq is "a desperate attempt by the administration," and the best the U.S. can do at this point is to "stave off defeat," Sanchez said.

Asked when he realized the war was on the skids, Sanchez said, "15 June 2003" — the day he took over as commander of coalition forces.

The officers and military leadership involved in the planning for the war in Iraq suffered from "an absolute lack of moral courage to stand up and do what was right in terms of planning," Sanchez said. "We allowed ourselves to believe we would be greeted as liberators," he said.

Sanchez said that the decision to disband the Iraqi army disenfranchised 300,000 to 400,000 Iraqis and put them out on the streets, fueling the insurgency.

Asked whether he had an obligation as commander to speak up if he saw problems in the strategy for the war he said, "Of course."

Sanchez was caught up in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and although he was cleared of any involvement, the scandal cost him a fourth star and he was forced to retire.

OH WELL, better late than never. Right?

Right?

A bumper crop of nooses

Since the Great Society drowned in the rice paddies of Vietnam, Americans (and their government) have been content to let the grinding poverty, intractable hopelessness and staggering ignorance of the Mississippi River Delta region sort its own self out.

Well, it has. And that means things ain't changing a whole hell of a lot.

Squalor still abounds, government is still rotten, schools are a joke, black folk lack opportunity (and in many cases fair treatment), and white folk ain't much better off themselves. And -- as these things go in the Deep South -- the past isn't really past at all.

AND YOU GET THINGS like nooses hanging from schoolyard oak trees. White boys pulling guns on black ones. Black teens cold-cocking a white one who they heard had been hurling racial slurs.

Black malefactors getting the book thrown at them, while the white ones get a slap on the wrist . . . along with an official wink and a smirk.

Mayors of small towns in the Louisiana hinterlands thanking Mississippi white supremacists for their moral support.

You get redneck burgs like Jena, La., and the latest incarnation of America's Original Sin. You get the Jena Six. And the righteous protests. And the white right's backlash.

AS I'VE SAID, the little bigots who hung those nooses on the "white tree" at Jena High School threw a great big rock into a pond of iniquity, and the ripples have been spreading ever since, getting all the bigger the farther they travel.

And the nooses hang all across this troubled land.

From WCBS television in New York:

There was a disturbing discovery near Ground Zero in Manhattan Thursday. A noose was found hanging from a lamppost at the Church Street Post Office. This is just the latest message of hate striking the city.

Police said it wasn't clear where or at whom the Church Street noose might have been directed.

"At this point, there was no target that was evident or any motive," U.S. Postal Inspection Service spokesman Al Weissman said Friday morning. He said no postal workers had reported any threats or other problems.

Postal workers in a second floor office at Church Street noticed the noose Thursday afternoon

Building managers removed the noose, which was later turned over to the NYPD's hate crimes unit for investigation, police said.

Speaking to reporters following a ceremony at a police memorial, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly suggested that the noose outside the post office could have been an attempt to imitate the discovery at Columbia, which shocked the Ivy League campus and received extensive news coverage.

"We have to be concerned about a copycat being out there," he said, adding that police had no suspects or motives in either incident.

Meanwhile, detectives at the NYPD Hate Crime task force have 56 hours of surveillance tapes to comb through, trying to catch the person who hung a noose on Professor Madonna Constantine's door at Columbia University.

A colleague, who Constantine is suing for defamation, says she had nothing to do placing this vile symbol of racism at her door.

"This whole thing is utterly, utterly despicable, ugly. As I've said to several people, nobody in the world should have to go through something like this," said Columbia Professor Suniya Luthar.

Nooses -- deplored as symbols of lynchings in the Old South -- have appeared in recent incidents in the New York area and across the country.

In Queens, a white woman was arrested after threatening to kill her black neighbor's children with a noose.

Other nooses have been found at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, and in the Hempstead Police Department's locker room on Long Island.

According to Morris Dees, co-founder of Southern Poverty, "Maybe Jena, Louisiana, has caused a copycat situation. There is no real database on nooses around the country, but there's been an increase in the last 10 to 15 years all over the U.S. -- not just the south."

NOW THE NATION will come to understand what we Southerners know from the day we're ripe for knowing. As William Faulkner -- who knew a little about these things -- so succinctly put it, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

God help us all.

Mr. Mellencamp is right. And people are mad.

This episode of the Revolution 21 podcast goes out to those people who, seven years into the 21st century, have firm convictions that any questioning of the "justice" occurring in Jena, La., is worth "f*** you and f*** Mychal Bell" or ungrammatical assertions that you're on the side of rampant criminality.

OF COURSE, for many of these folks, I'm sure the all-black Jena Six's so-called rampant criminality equals "boys will be boys" when the schoolyard fight is an all-white affair.

In other words, we're going to hear John Mellencamp's brand-new release, "Jena." The one that's got the town's mayor so darn mad, not to mention so much of the right-wing universe railing against "liberal rock musicians."

After all, isn't the White Right rather proving Mr. Mellencamp's point with their overreaction and venom?

Otherwise, we've got a pretty diverse show for you this week -- as usual. Not to mention a sweet "little" set of tasty tunes.

It's the Big Show, and it's designed to rock your world. One way or another.

Be there. Aloha.

Welcome back to the '60s. It's gonna get ugly

Oh, Lord.

There's no way this Jena Six thing is going to end well, now. It's going to get uglier, and uglier, and uglier, and it's going to go KABOOM!

Down there in North Louisiana, them whut runs things done got their backs up. Which will help at election time, because the True Believing Right Wing has got its back up, too, and the rednecks are going apes***.

Meanwhile, Jesse and Al ain't going to let this go. Actually, they shouldn't, because this smells to high heaven:

JENA, La. (AP) -- A teenager at the center of a civil rights controversy was back in jail Thursday after a judge decided the fight that put him in the national spotlight violated terms of his probation for a previous conviction, his attorney said.

Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of Bell's attorneys.

Instead, after a six-hour hearing, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced him to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.

He had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker. Details on the previous charges, which were handled in juvenile court, were unclear.

"He's locked up again," Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. "No bail has been set or nothing. He's a young man who's been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it."

After the attack on Barker, Bell was originally charged with attempted murder, but the charges were reduced and he was convicted of battery. An appeals court threw that conviction out, saying Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that charge.

Racial tensions began rising in August 2006 in Jena after a black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for white students. Three white students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended but not prosecuted.

More than 20,000 demonstrators gathered recently in Jena to protest what they perceive as differences in how black and white suspects are treated. The case has drawn the attention of civil rights activists including the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Sharpton reacted swiftly upon learning Bell was back in jail Thursday.

"We feel this was a cruel and unusual punishment and is a revenge by this judge for the Jena Six movement," said Sharpton, who was instrumental in organizing the protest held Sept. 20, the day Bell was originally supposed to be sentenced in the case.

Mauffrey, reached at his home Thursday night, had no comment.

Bell's parents were also ordered to pay all court costs and witness costs, Sharpton said.

"I don't know what we're going to do," Jones said. "I don't know how we're going to pay for any of this. I don't know how we're going to get through this."

MONTHS BACK, I was telling Mrs. Favog that we're in for a rough ride, because the '00s are the new '60s . . . with an attitude. Sad to say, I think I was right.

Hang on, folks. This is gonna get ugly.

Floodwall . . . art and history from the ruins

A wall of ruined dresser drawers eight feet high by 100 feet long doesn't sound like a showstopper of a museum exhibit.

BUT WHEN YOU REALIZE that all these wrecked remnants of ruined furniture are the remnants of people's homes -- and lives -- wrecked when New Orleans' levees gave way during Hurricane Katrina, well, the emotion washes over you like the dirty water did that benighted city. Powerful stuff, particularly as the people behind the wall of debris tell their own stories via a sound system hidden in the wall.

It's called "Floodwall," and it's on display for a couple more days at the Louisiana State Museum, across the street from the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. I could prattle on, but I suppose the artist behind the project, Jana Napoli, better can tell the story of the art she salvaged from trash piles outside flood-wrecked homes all across the New Orleans area:

“Having to throw your furniture out in front of your house -- your life is sort of taken from you and sort of dumped out in your front yard.” . . . “New Orleans was here before America was here and we are a part of America.”

(snip)

"We were driven to create a wailing wall that builds intimate and homely detritus from a world destroyed into a wrenching cry of grief," said Ms. Napoli. "This emotional endeavor quickly grew into a sculptural and historical work allowing the people of New Orleans to tell their own story about what they value and why.”

I THINK NAPOLI achieved her objective with this amazing combination of historical salvage, art and oral history. If you can get there in the next couple of days, go to the Louisiana State Museum and do yourself a big favor.

And speaking of the year-old museum just off the capitol grounds, I'll just say that I thought it would be a fine museum, but I was shocked at exactly how good it is. If I had had more time, I could have spent the whole day there . . . and I would have, too.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Floodwall web site

Louisiana State Museum -- Baton Rouge

Muslims want to make nice. I think.

Newsweek reports that a broad cross section of the world's Muslim leaders want to make nice with Christians. Just the fact that the leaders got together to pen this letter is amazing enough, but what if they really mean what they seem to say?

Interesting would be a gross understatement:

Getting religious leaders to agree on anything is notoriously difficult. So this morning’s announcement—that 138 of the world’s most powerful Muslim clerics, scholars and intellectuals from all branches of Islam (Sunni and Shia, Salafi and Sufi, liberal and conservative) had come together to write a letter to the world’s Christian leaders—is being hailed as something of a miracle.

In a display of unprecedented unity, the letter — which calls for peace between the world’s Christians and Muslims — is signed by no fewer than 19 current and former grand ayatollahs and grand muftis from countries as diverse as Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Iraq. It is addressed to Christianity’s most powerful leaders, including the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury and the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, and, in 15 pages laced with Qur’anic and Biblical scriptures, argues that the most fundamental tenets of Islam and Christianity are identical: love of one (and the same) God, and love of one’s neighbor.

On this basis, the letter, entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” reasons that harmony between the two religions is not only necessary for world peace, it is natural. “As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them — so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes … Our very eternal souls are all at stake if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace,” the letter reads. “It’s an astonishing achievement of solidarity,” says David Ford, director of the Cambridge University’s Interfaith Program. “I hope it will be able to set the right key note for relations between Muslims and Christians in the 21st century, which have been lacking since September 11.”

One profound obstacle to establishing positive relations among mainstream Muslim and Christian groups, argues Ford, has been the lack of a single, authoritative Muslim voice to participate in such a dialogue. This letter changes that. “It proves that Islam can have an unambiguous, unified voice,” says Aref Ali Nayed, a leading Islamic scholar and one of the letter’s authors.

(snip)

Early responses indicate that Christian leaders are welcoming the “Common Word” with open arms. In Britain the bishop of London told NEWSWEEK that the letter would “invite” young people to view the world as “a place where dialogue is possible, instead of a place full of threats.” America’s evangelical Christian leaders are being similarly positive. Rod Parsley, senior pastor of the World Harvest Church in Ohio, says, “My prayer is that this letter begins a dialogue that results in Muslims and Christians uniting around the love we have for each other as God’s children.”

PUT ME DOWN for a cautious "Woo Hoo!" Assuming, of course, that these Muslim leaders can put their followers where their mouth is.

May it be so.

Jena's strange fruit spreads across the land

This is a story about how there is no such thing as private sin, or sin that stays between what we think of as "the offender" and "the offended."

This is a story about how sin is a great big rock, and how dirty, rotten sinners (and that would be all of us) take that big rock and pitch it in the pond, just for the hell of it. And then big ripples spread across the water's surface from the splashdown point.

AND THE LITTLE WAVES upend little Johnny's little boat, prompting little Johnny to take out his frustration on his little sister. Which causes little Johnny's dad, upset that the commotion has disturbed his peace and quiet -- not to mention his fishing -- to beat the hell out of both of them.

Then, little Johnny's mom, upset that her old man has flown off the handle again, starts to think that maybe this is the last straw, that she ought to take the kids and leave his sorry ass.

Now consider that the nooses that hung from that schoolyard oak tree in Jena, La., constituted a damned big rock, and it made a damned big splash. And consider that the idea of responding to a black kid wanting to sit under the "white tree" with hangman's nooses -- a potent reminder of all the "strange fruit" that's hung from Southern trees throughout history -- doesn't come from nowhere.

Consider that it does take a village to raise a child, and that when it comes to hating your fellow man, you've got to be carefully taught.

The ripples from the sins of some hateful rednecks in Jena, La., suddenly start to resemble a hurricane on the open sea.

AND IT'S JUST BEEN BUMPED UP to a Category 5, as The Associated Press reports:

In the months since nooses dangling from a schoolyard tree raised racial tensions in Jena, La., the frightening symbol of segregation-era lynchings has been turning up around the country.

Nooses were left in a black Coast Guard cadet's bag, at a Long Island police station locker room, on a Maryland college campus, and, just this week, on the office door of a black professor at Columbia University in New York.

The noose - like the burning cross - is a generations-old means of instilling racial fear. But some experts suspect the Jena furor reintroduced some bigots to the rope. They say the recent incidents might also reflect white resentment over the protests in Louisiana.

"It certainly looks like it's been a rash of these incidents, and presumably, most of them are in response to the events in Jena," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white supremacists and other hate groups. "I would say that as a more general matter, it seems fairly clear that noose incidents have been on the rise for some years."

Thousands of demonstrators, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, converged on Jena on Sept. 20 to decry what they called a racist double standard in the justice system. They protested the way six blacks were arrested on attempted murder charges in the beating of a white student, while three whites were suspended but not prosecuted for hanging nooses in a tree in August 2006.

The noose evokes the lynchings of the Jim Crow South and "is a symbol that can be deployed with no ambiguity. People understand exactly what it means," said William Jelani Cobb, a professor of black American history at Spelman College in Atlanta.

He said the Jena incident demonstrated to some racists how offensive the sight of a noose can be: "What Jena did was reintroduce that symbol into the discussion."

Though the terror of the civil rights era is gone, the association between nooses and violence - even death - remains, Potok said.

"The noose is replacing the burning cross in the mind of much of the public as the leading symbol of the Klan," Potok said.

I DON'T WANT TO HEAR a word of complaint from Jena's mau-mauing mayor about how John Mellencamp done went and did his town wrong. What's happened there -- and spread far and wide -- doesn't come out of nowhere, and I think we all have a pretty good idea about the origin of the sparks that lit a thousand fires.

The Oz Event TBA: PETA-Greenpeace cage match

Tie me kangaroo down, sport, 'cause I've got a hankerin' for a mess of 'roo burgers. Greenpeace says this is good, and good for the environment.

But wait, what's that, mate? Crikey! It's PETA! It's a bloody, bloomin' bunch of the blokes! And there's this one inflamed Sheila who seems to be screamin' at us!

This is not good.

Alas, I seem to have skipped ahead to the coming follow-up when we're not even through with the original story about how, in the name of stopping global warming, Greenpeace says Aussies ought to eat more 'roo and less beef.

The Herald Sun in Melbourne, Australia hopped right on the story:

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.

The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.
Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.

"It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make," Mr Wakeham said.

"Changing our meat consumption habits is a small way to make an impact."

The eat roo recommendation is contained in a report, Paths to a Low-Carbon Future, commissioned by Greenpeace and released today.

It also coincides with recent calls from climate change experts for people in rich countries to reduce red meat and switch to chicken and fish because land-clearing and burping and farting cattle and sheep were damaging the environment.

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane.

Roughly three million kangaroos are killed and harvested for meat each year. They are shot with high-powered guns between the eyes at night.

Australians eat about a third of the 30 million kilograms of roo meat produced annually. The delicacy is exported to dozens of countries and is most popular in Germany, France and Belgium.

The Greenpeace report has renewed calls for Victoria to lift a ban on harvesting roos for food.

Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia spokesman John Kelly said roos invading farmers' crops were already being illegally shot.

"They are being culled and left to rot," Mr Kelly said.

I miss the First Amendment, wherever it is

Like, whatever happened to the Tinker decision?

The Nashville Tennessean tells us:

Norma Super and her daughter, Dani, proudly displayed "Free The Jena Six" T-shirts at a recent Nashville march. They didn't expect censorship, however, when they arrived at Smyrna High School last week.

The message was meant to support six African-American students charged in the beating of a white peer at Jena High School in Louisiana. While the case gained national attention, primarily for its racial overtones, locally it raised the issue of students' rights to free speech.

Super's daughter was prohibited from wearing the T-shirt inside Smyrna High, along with some other students.

"When I persisted to ask why, the quote was that 'It could cause problems,'" Super said. "It's a political statement. I feel strongly about free speech. I feel like (my daughter's) rights were infringed upon."

School systems throughout the nation have enacted stricter dress codes in recent years and have effectively banned symbols such as Confederate flags and those associated with urban clothing labels. They contend such symbols and images disrupt the learning environment and could jeopardize student safety by sparking arguments and possibly fights.

Messages were left for Smyrna High School Principal Robert "Bud" Raikes for this story, but he was not available for comment.

The Smyrna High administration treated the T-shirt as a dress code violation because it could have caused disruptions, Rutherford County schools spokesman James Evans said. Earlier that morning a handful of students made racial comments in the hallways, and administrators had to intervene, he said.

While providing a safe environment, schools must have a valid reason to stop reasonable student expression, a Nashville legal scholar says.

"Public school officials can censor student expression if they can reasonably forecast that the student expression will cause a substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others," said David L. Hudson Jr., a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

Students' First Amendment rights on campus are supported by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Tinker vs. Des Moines (Iowa) Independent Community School District. In that case, two students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.

(snip)

"What educators can't do is censor simply because they don't like it or because of undifferentiated fear," Hudson said. "They have to point to facts in a school environment. They just can't say, 'Oh, we think this will cause a disruption.' It has to be reasonable."

Hudson teaches First Amendment classes at Vanderbilt Law School and Nashville School of Law. He's also written books on the topic.

When it comes to the classroom, teachers have a broad authority to censor student expression because the courts have determined that learning is more important than free speech, Hudson said.

Hudson, though, said he worries about school administrators who don't provide reasonable proof about causing a disturbance and instead create an environment "where students won't appreciate our Bill of Rights."

AMAZING, ISN'T IT, that it's the First Amendment that always takes it in the shorts when school administrators can't control roving bands of little racists obviously raised by wolves. As society continues to coarsen and people further eschew socialization, how many constitutional rights will we see disappear, all in the name of keeping order?

Don't answer that.

Finally! A video update on our pal Kristy

At long last! A new Kristy Dusseau video! We'd kind of been waiting. . . .

Anyway, since this video was filmed, Kristy has been out of the hospital, and then back in. Have I mentioned lately that cancer sucks?

Not to mention the aftereffects of what they do to you to get rid of the cancer. You can ask Mrs. Favog about that one. Or Kristy, who (sadly) may be one of the world's leading experts on that score.

Anyway, here are the latest updates from Kristy's big brother, Rob:

10-7-07

Well it turns out I was dead wrong about Kristy's getting out. She's still in the hospital right now recovering from the surgery to close up the wound left behind by her feeding tube. I guess since they've removed the tube (a week or two ago) her skin keeps breaking apart where it used to be. They've cauterized it, stitched it, stabled it, you name it trying to heal it back together.

I'll let you guys know when she's out.

I finally got the latest movie together. You can see it over there on the right. I thought it was pretty dull so I added some music to jazz it up a bit. This was taken last august at one of her stays in hospital.

Very busy, get back with you guys soon.

10-4-07

Hello everyone. Thanks for your patience. Yet another stay in the hospital. This one was a little scary.

You see I had everything figured out. Last Friday night Kristy was to accompany friends and siblings to a classy comedy club here in Michigan called Joey's. It might not sound fancy, I know, but it's actually a really nice place as far as comedy clubs go. There was ten of us in total going, and Thursday night I called to surprise her with the news.

She sounded tired, but very happy to be going. Dad and I worked out how I was going to go about getting her to the club, and I took a half day off of work just to make sure I could get her in time to make it.

Friday morning she had one of her regular check-ups at the hospital, and around noon my father called to tell me she had been omitted.

"There's something wrong with her lungs. They think she might have some kind of virus. Kristy was really upset about it because you know they don't do anything on the weekends. They're worried that the Graft vs Host might have come back in her lungs ... which would be really bad"

"But I thought Kristy was doing great?"

"She has been getting weaker over the past few days. She's only able to stay awake for about four hours at a time now. The doctors want to put her out and fill her lungs with fluid. After that I guess they take it back out and study it."

I was really bummed, worried, and angry all at the same time. Needless to say I didn't have the greatest attitude that night. The comedians only got a faint smile from me.

So the weekend went by with nothing being done. Dad reported Kristy seemed stronger, but suspected the drugs had something to do with that.

I started to worry about her. It was a fresh worry, something I had buried deep into the back of my mind had resurfaced again. If it was Graft vs Host, and it was in her lungs, that's something that would take her out quickly.

Monday they were late with the test, as was the norm, and the next day I tried calling my father to hear the results, but his cell phone was off. And no one answered the house phone. I called every hour or so, with each call implanting another terrible image into my head. Maybe they had the phone off and weren't answering because they got some terrible news. Maybe something happen to Kristy last night and they were too upset to talk to anyone. Maybe -

She was fine. It's just a virus, not the Graft vs Host, she's going to be okay. She may have gotten out of the hospital today, if not tomorrow for sure.

If you're reading this mom and dad, don't do that again.

And Kristy, if you're reading this, you're a very loving person, and everyone loves you very much, but you need to stop hugging and kissing people. I know it's hard to do, but people are walking nests of viruses, and until your immunity gets stronger, maybe you should tell people to back off a bit.

Because you and I ARE going on that plane trip to Texas this winter to visit Kenny. Mark my words.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers, working on the video now, but it's a dull one, so be warned.

AS ALWAYS, go to KristyRecovers.com and say "Hey!" And maybe drop a little scratch in the kitty, y'know what I mean?

Free booze and whores would be better

Rod Dreher reports on the New York Times' report on the latest idiotic craze among some scruples-and-cerebellum-deprived Evangelical ministers.

In a story that could have been lifted from The Onion, but in fact appeared in The New York Times, hundreds of Protestant churches are using the ultraviolent videogame Halo to lure teenage boys into church. No, really, I'm not making this up. Excerpt:

Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.

Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.

(snip)

“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”

FREE BOOZE and whores would be even better. They could call the ladies of the evening the Mary Magdalene Hospitality Corps.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

And while I'm thinking of it. . . .

To tell you the truth, not only is this a fine song, well written . . . it's probably the best thing John Mellencamp has done in years. T-Bone Burnett as your producer tends to have that effect on artists.

You'll know Jena by its strange fruit

The mayor of Jena, La., is mad at John Mellencamp in the wake of the rocker's telling it like it is about his little burg's being straight out of In the Heat of the Night.

Actually, Mellencamp uses the home of the Jena Six as a stepping stone to take an unflinching look at race in America. Never mind, hizzoner is miffed, reports The Associated Press:

A video in which rapper Mos Def asked students around the country to walk out Oct. 1 to support the Jena 6 escaped comment by the town’s mayor. When John Mellencamp sang, “Jena, take your nooses down,” he took issue.

“The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied,” Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin wrote in a statement on town letterhead faxed Friday to The Associated Press.

He said he had previously stayed quiet, hoping that the town’s courtesy to people who have visited over the past year would speak for itself. “However, the Mellencamp video is so inflammatory, so defamatory, that a line has been crossed and enough is enough.” Mellencamp could not comment because he was on a plane from California to Indiana and had not heard about McMillin’s comments, publicist Bob Merlis said late Friday.

A note from Mellencamp posted Thursday on his Web site says he is telling a story, not reporting. “The song is not written as an indictment of the people of Jena but, rather, as a condemnation of racism,” it says.

Nooses hung briefly from a big oak tree outside Jena High School a year ago, after a black freshman asked whether black students could sit under it.

IT DOESN'T MATTER, Mr. Mayor, how courteous you are to people you'd like to think well of you. What matters is how you treat your own -- how "courteous" you are to those you see no clear percentage in treating like actual human beings.

In a town where an African-American ninth-grader feels like he has to get the white principal's permission to sit under the "white tree," there's a racism problem and an oppression problem.

That hangman's nooses appeared in the tree after that request, and that those responsible weren't expelled, only exposed the preexisting gangrenous rot in Jena. Racism in Jena is the original sin -- indeed, it's America's original sin -- and every bad thing that's happened there since those nooses swung from the "white tree" are just ripples from homegrown bigots pitching a big rock into a pond called Jena, Louisiana.

Firing up the Silvertone, dusting off the vinyl

We're doing things a little bit differently on the Big Show this week, our first podcast since getting back from a trip back home to Baton Rouge, La.

The trip has led your Mighty Favog to take up the challenge of an old friend and do an extra-long, extra-tasty stroll down memory lane on the Revolution 21 podcast, looking at the music of my misspent youth, why it was important and how it fits in with who I am today.

Or something like that. Mainly, we're just reminiscing and reflecting.

Pretty much.

I'm glad I did it, being that it's been something of a tonic to salve the more bittersweet parts of the trip back home to Louisiana -- like going back to my beloved high school and documenting how it's fallen into ruins . . . all the while kids who don't deserve to learn amid squalor still attend classes there.

I guess I'll never understand how adults in positions of power can be that indifferent toward beautiful, majestic old buildings and beautiful, intelligent young people. It's a crime, and I wish the public treated it as such.

But there are wonderful things -- still -- about my home state, and I have some fond memories of growing up there. And I hope this episode of the Revolution 21 podcast conveys that with all the love I intended.

Listen now.

Be there. Aloha. Cher.

When we let our kids' schools deteriorate into dumps, is it a human-rights violation?

Let's ask the United Nations Human Rights Council . . .

Treaties and Human Rights Council Branch
OHCHR-UNOG
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Friday, Oct. 5, 2007


To Whom It May Concern:


I realize this may be something of a stretch -- all right, a big stretch -- but I was wondering whether the deplorable condition of many U.S. public schools, particularly in the context of the United States being the richest nation on Earth, might constitute violations, at least in principle, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I was thinking, particularly, of Articles 24 and 26:

Article 24

1. Every child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State.

Article 26

All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Attached are photographs I took last week at my old high school, Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Magnet High School, from which I graduated in 1979. What I found there would seem to indicate that the school, which was not in that condition when I attended there, has been allowed to deteriorate into a state of abject ruin by the East Baton Rouge Parish (county) School Board. It would appear there has been no meaningful maintenance on the building in the 28 years since my graduation, and that the copious amounts of peeling lead-based paint, crumbling terra cotta and plaster, pothole-sized craters in the gymnasium floor, rusted-over metal surfaces and gym lockers, as well as fetid, deteriorating restrooms pose a clear and present threat to the health and well-being of students who spend eight-plus hours a day there.

Furthermore, I've been informed that Baton Rouge Magnet High School is far from the only East Baton Rouge Parish school in that condition, just a particularly egregious example. One could find many schools across the American South -- and in many Northern urban centers -- in similar condition. Again, this in the context of the richest country on Earth.

I also note that -- while many Baton Rouge schools were in relatively poor condition when I matriculated some three decades ago -- Baton Rouge High's deterioration seems to have coincided with the school system's transition from 65-percent (or so) Caucasian to roughly 80-percent African American in racial makeup.
To my mind, this reflects the abject failure of school-system governors, as well as the local electorate and political and civic leadership, to provide clean, safe and adequate educational facilities for all the community's children, regardless of race, class or socio-economic status. Could not this be interpreted as a clear violation of Articles 24 and 26 of the Covenant? After all, parents with the income and inclination are able to shield their children from fetid educational facilities; the poor and working-class, largely, are not.

Is not a proper education in clean, safe, reasonably maintained facilities -- according to the standards and means of their particular country and region -- a basic human right? And is it proper for parents to expect they must pay a surcharge in private-school tuition to obtain what world governments are charged to provide as a basic service to their citizens?

These are the questions I have, and I eagerly await guidance in this matter.


Sincerely,

The Mighty Favog

cc: Charlotte Placide
Superintendent
East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools