Enlarge West Charlotte sophomore Justin Henderson was among 10 students at the youth roundtable.

Posted: June 2nd, 2011 Lee Howard

Gang violence and the school dropout rate topped the list of concerns voiced recently by 10 local high schoolers participating in President Obama’s Roundtable with Young Americans initiative.

Students from West Mecklenburg High School, Garinger and Midwood High, among others, identified a list of their top concerns about living in Charlotte, then attempted to identify solutions to those problems.

Aside from gangs and dropouts, other issues that emerged from the rambling 90-minute discussion included lack of suitable role models, apathy toward education, teen pregnancy and indifferent teachers.

One West Charlotte student suggested rendering guns less accessible to young people by making the price of bullets prohibitively high.

“If you raise the price of the bullets, then you can’t buy bullets,” said Justin Henderson, a 16-year-old West Charlotte sophomore. “It’s not a gun without bullets.”

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Posted: June 1st, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• On Sunday night, large groups of young men began jostling and scuffling near the Transit Center uptown. Shots were fired; one 22-year-old man was killed. Now, with local officials trying to assess the damage to the reputation of the city that’ll host the Democratic National Convention next year, an African-American editor asks a provocative question of the organization that supposedly represents him, not to mention the people at the Transit Center: Where’s the NAACP?


• Freedom Schools, the Children’s Defense Fund summer and afterschool literacy program for low-income minority students, are nothing new to Charlotte, where they’ve operated since 2004. But this summer, Shalom Park is hosting a Freedom School for about 50 low-income students – marking the first time a Jewish organization has run a Freedom School since the CDF started the program 16 years ago. “If we stop at denominational lines or race and ethnic lines, people will fall through the cracks,” says Kevin Vandiver, the 24-year-old black Pentecostal minister organizers asked to manage the school. “We all hold the same foundational beliefs, values and mores, so it doesn't matter what you call it.” In case you’re wondering, yes, this is what we mean by “inclusion.”


• Speaking of which, if you’re an individual or member of an organization with an idea to being people together across perceived boundaries of race, class or geography, you have only a few more days to apply for a Front Porch Grant.


• Trying to sell your house in Charlotte? Avert your eyes.


• Bank of America business manager and ultra-marathon runner Jeff McGonnell plans to run around the town green in Davidson for 24 hours straight next weekend to raise awareness of Batten Disease – and he says he’ll wear a dress in exchange for donations.

Posted: May 25th, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• The Rev. Billy Graham, though an occasional player in partisan politics, tends to inspire at least respect across religious and cultural lines. Not so his son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, who’s been a far more polarizing and divisive figure – as discussed in this Observer story, which says the younger Graham acts and speaks more in the manner of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell than his own father. What’s your take on the Grahams? Is Franklin Graham’s more combative approach the best way to build trust across cultural lines in an increasingly multicultural society?


• The Latin American Coalition, Muslim American Society and Vietnamese Society have joined in a complaint to the Justice Department, alleging that North Carolina’s courts violate the rights of people who speak little or no English by failing to provide free interpreters in civil cases. The state provides interpreters in criminal cases.


• The developers of the controversial ReVenture Park project have apparently decided to scale back their plans.


• Hmm. “The same cab company that has been rejected for a contract with the Charlotte airport because its owners are convicted felons also has a lucrative contract with Mecklenburg County's Department of Social Services.”


• Teachers at Sedgefield Middle School put on an end-of-the-year skit poking fun at the familiar student-teacher dynamic. Toward the end, one of the teachers had a surprise announcement for eighth-grade science teacher Karen Meadows: She’d been named Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ Teacher Of the Year. Congratulations, Ms. Meadows!

Posted: May 24th, 2011 Greg Lacour

The Charlotte nonprofit Mothering Across Continents is trying to raise awareness of (and money for) its worldwide humanitarian projects by selling books.

But not just any books. They’re 10 nonfiction titles that tell stories of committed “ordinary people” driven to serve poor communities around the globe. MAC kicked off the I Care Book Fair, appropriately enough, on Mother’s Day, and the organization plans to keep it going until at least Mother’s Day 2012.

“I don’t know if we can say yet” whether the Book Fair will extend beyond a year, said Cindy Ballaro, who’s managing the project. “We’re committed to this first year, and I think we’ll just have to see where we are a year from now and decide if we want to continue with it.”

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