The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. unemployment rate was virtually unchanged for the second straight month, down .1% from June to July. The 9.4% unemployment rate fir July is identical to May, but another 247,000 jobs were lost during this period.
The African-American unemployment rate declined for the third time in as many months, dropping to 14.5% from 14.7% in June. The unemployment rate for African-Americans reached 15% in April. Black males saw a .6% drop in unemployment to 15.8% and down from 17.2% in April.
Click herefor the employment situation summary by the Labor Statistics Bureau.
Here is a statement released by Charles Olgletree who has been retained by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. after he was arrested at his Cambridge Massachusettes home. This information was posted at theroot.com and distributed.
Statement on Behalf of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. — by Charles Ogletree
This brief statement is being submitted on behalf of my client, friend, and colleague, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This is a statement concerning the arrest of Professor Gates. On July 16th, 2009, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 58, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor of Harvard University, was headed from Logan airport to his home [in] Cambridge after spending a week in China, where he was filming his new PBS documentary entitled “Faces of America”.
Professor Gates was driven to his home by a driver for a local car company. Professor Gates attempted to enter his front door, but the door was damaged. Professor Gates then entered his rear door with his key, turned off his alarm, and again attempted to open the front door. With the help of his driver they were able to force the front door open, and then the driver carried Professor Gates’s luggage into his home.
Professor Gates immediately called the Harvard Real Estate office to report the damage to his door and requested that it be repaired immediately. As he was talking to the Harvard Real Estate office on his portable phone in his house, he observed a uniformed officer on his front porch. When Professor Gates opened the door, the officer immediately asked him to step outside. Professor Gates remained inside his home and asked the officer why he was there.
The officer indicated that he was responding to a 911 call about a breaking and entering in progress at this address. Professor Gates informed the officer that he lived there and was a faculty member at Harvard University. The officer then asked Professor Gates whether he could prove that he lived there and taught at Harvard.
Professor Gates said that he could, and turned to walk into his kitchen, where he had left his wallet. The officer followed him. Professor Gates handed both his Harvard University identification and his valid Massachusetts driver’s license to the officer. Both include Professor Gates’s photograph, and the license includes his address.
Professor Gates then asked the police officer if he would give him his name and his badge number. He made this request several times. The officer did not produce any identification nor did he respond to Professor Gates’s request for this information. After an additional request by Professor Gates for the officer’s name and badge number, the officer then turned and left the kitchen of Professor Gates’s home without ever acknowledging who he was or if there were charges against Professor Gates.
As Professor Gates followed the officer to his own front door, he was astonished to see several police officers gathered on his front porch. Professor Gates asked the officer’s colleagues for his name and badge number. As Professor Gates stepped onto his front porch, the officer who had been inside and who had examined his identification, said to him, “Thank you for accommodating my earlier request,” and then placed Professor Gates under arrest. He was handcuffed on his own front porch.
Professor Gates was taken to the Cambridge Police Station where he remained for approximately 4 hours before being released that evening. Professor Gates’s counsel has been cooperating with the Middlesex District Attorneys Office, and the City of Cambridge, and is hopeful that this matter will be resolved promptly. Professor Gates will not be making any other statements concerning this matter at this time.
Here’s a video a put together with a couple of clips from my radio appearance with my pastor, Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III on Freddy Haynes Unscripted this past Sunday. I appreciate the invite, it was a fun evening and I hope to be invited back in the future.
Late Friday afternoon I received a letter that supposedly went out from the American Postal Workers Union. This letter was on American Postal Workers Union letterhead, and signed by President Larry Crawford and Secretary/Treasurer Jennifer D. Fulbright. I was not able to call and very this information at (214)631-3162. But here is the first 2/3 of the letter.
On Wednesday, July 1, 2009, at Mountain View College, the U S Postal Service held a Public Forum regarding the closing of the Main Post Office. There was only one problem, the public wasn’t there. They (the USPS) said they notified you. They said they sent out notices and posted the meeting time and place, but you chose not to come, because you just don’t care. Funny, the Mayor and the City Council didn’t know, until we notified them. The media didn’t know until we told them, so we can only deduce from all that you now know because we are telling you. We need you to SAVE OUR LOCAL POSTAL SERVICE.
The Postal Service’s plan to shift mail processing operations from the Dallas Main Post Office at 401 D/FW Turnpike to 951 Bethel RD in Coppell, TX possess a serious threat to prompt and reliable mail service for the Dallas area.
What does this mean for the citizens of Dallas? Despite USPS assurance to the contrary, mail service will suffer. Mail will be collected earlier in the day and will arrive later, maybe even after dark. And we could experience delays of several days in the time it takes to send and receive our mail Checks and medications may not reach their destination when they are needed: credit ratings could suffer because of late bill payments, and birthday cards and gifts could arrive late. Everyone doesn’t use email or the internet. Once again the southern sector of our city will suffer if the citizens are not heard from. What a shame for the 5th. largest city in the United States to lose it’s identity by losing it’s postmark.
The letter goes on to ask citizens to “ring the phones of your Mayor, your Representatives and your Postmaster.” They list several politicians and for people to call and say that the Postal Service is accepting public correspondence if postmarked by July 16th. Because of the names in the email string I’m pretty sure this is real. It may be out there somewhere else but I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll try to verify this on Monday.
At its recent monthly meeting, the JoAnn Karr Crime Watch group heard crime stats from the Dallas Police Department. Since our Neighborhood Police Officers (NPOs) have been transferred to another department, their supervisor (Sgt. Grant) will report to the group until replacements are announced.
Sgt. Grant encouraged members to report anything suspicious they may observe. He gave an example of how a neighbor in another area saw some men running from a pawn shop and got the license plate number of the car in which they left.
Figuring this spelled trouble of some kind, she gave the number to the police, and it turned out the men had killed the employee of the pawn shop. Thanks to the neighbor’s quick thinking, one of the men was arrested the next day based on the license plate number.
Members were cautioned to always secure yard equipment when going inside to rest or get refreshment. Often people think they’ll just be gone a minute, even though that’s not always the case. Upon their return their lawnmower, edger, etc. have disappeared.
Additionally, members were encouraged to keep a close eye on elderly or disabled neighbors during excessive heat and ozone days to be sure they are cool and well hydrated. The group was also advised of work the DPD is doing with Code to stop unlicensed food, produce, and ice cream vendors in the area. Any sightings of these should be reported.
Local historian Frances James also made a presentation during the meeting. Ms. James has lived in the Pleasant Grove area and studied its history for many years. She said that many people are confused about what actually constitutes Pleasant Grove. That may sound strange until one realizes that most people define Pleasant Grove as everything south of I-30, east of 175, and west of Balch Springs. View Map of Pleasant Grove Area
Actually, Pleasant Grove began at the crossing of Buckner Blvd. and Elam Road and extended in a one-mile radius. North of that one mile radius is the Piedmont/Scyene neighborhood and then Buckner Terrace.
Ms. James and others have worked with the newspapers, Radio, and TV stations over the years to encourage them to report accurately when stating where a crime occurs. Interestingly, the very next day after the meeting, one of the members heard a report on the radio about a crime around the Fair Park area and the reporter finished by saying, “actually in Pleasant Grove.”
The member immediately called the newsroom and provided the correct information; however, the misstatement was not corrected over the air.
Other interesting points made by Ms. James included:
The first public cemetery is on Buckner Blvd., next to the Pleasant Mound Cemetery. Burials are no longer allowed. The Pleasant Mound Methodist Church established the Pleasant Mound Cemetery next to its own site. From the cost of burial, $5 went to the church. That is how the First Pleasant Mound Methodist Church which is now at Bruton and Pleasant Mound was built. In the public cemetery, the markers were made of Bois D’arc trees, some of the hardest in the world. There are a few of those markers still in the cemetery.
The first train stopped in Dallas in 1872 in the area of what is Gaston and Central today. There were about four cars on that train. One was for the passengers and the others for materials.
The T&P Railroad was originally scheduled to run along the 32nd parallel through Corsicana; however, John Lane got legislation through the Texas Legislature to have it come through Dallas at Browder Springs which is in the area of Old City Park. Money was paid to appease the citizens of Corsicana.
The Houston and Texas Central crossed with the T&P in Dallas. Thus, a thriving metropolis was born.
There really is an Elam Springs (remember Elam Road) and is located in what is now the Trinity River Audubon Center on Loop 12, West of Jim Miller Road.
There’s so much more history about Pleasant Grove that Ms. James shared at the meeting. In next month’s column, we’ll share more interesting facts.
On Monday afternoon I made a snap decision, as I’m known to sometimes do. Heading south out of downtown, I thought it would be cool to take my son to Celebration Station in Mesquite, so we headed East on Interstate 30. I set the budget at…well cheap, and figured we’d get in and out pretty quick. But a funny thing (not so funny in hindsight) happened on our way there.
As we started getting closer to Jim Miller Road, I noticed Dallas County Constables parked at the off ramps and standing outside of their cars. When I looked up and saw helicopters, I started putting two and two together and figured there must be a chase in progress.
It was about that time that I started hearing a police siren. Looking in my rearview mirror, I saw that it wasn’t a law enforcement vehicle approaching from behind, but a grey colored Nissan that was followed by a lone squad car. I really didn’t have much time to react as I drove in one of the center lanes, but both vehicles passed us to the right.
“They didn’t seem to be going very fast for a chase,” I told my son, as I estimated that they were traveling a little less than 70 miles per hour. After seeing the video later I saw that that was the only time the suspect Shane Michael was driving less that 80. We started a conversation about why someone may be chased by police and followed by helicopters, when I started to hear more sirens.
This time when I glanced in my mirror I saw a slew of squad cars. It seemed to me that there were about 9 cars barreling down on us. “What do I do,” I thought in the 8 seconds or so that this second portion lasted. “Should I move right?” Because we were coming around a curve it was hard to judge exactly which lane they were in. “Should I slow down?” It felt like they would run right through me if I did.
I can’t say what I did, but I know that some cars went right and some went left as motorists around me seemed to struggle with the same questions. After these cars passed I figured that the suspect was probably headed towards Rockwall County by now until I saw the helicopters headed north.
I started taking a deep breath (all while my son played Nintendo DS in the backseat) and replaying the situation in my head when Act III began. By now we were just about to get onto 635 South in Mesquite when I looked back and saw three more cop cars headed in our direction. I don’t even want to speculate how fast these guys were driving.
The problem at this point was that motorists were in the process of selecting one of the 635 exits there was no time to process where the squad cars were headed. It seemed like the three cars were headed at us from every direction. They all passed on the left and then made their way right to the 635 North exit. One had to go all the way out to the far left lane and make his way back right in order to make the exit.
After they passed, a motorist next to me and I looked at one another like “What’s next?” I sat still on the shoulder for about 10 seconds looking around before I continued on our trip. I sent out a Tweet asking for help on the status of the chase my Facebook friends kept me up to speed, up until this final comment:
OMG! HE WRECKED!!!! OMG!!!! HE RAN THRU A RED LIGHT AND A INNOCENT DRIVER IN A TRUCK HIT HIM! PLANO RD AND WALNUT STREET IN GARLAND/RICHARDSON.
I may not have revisited this scenario were it not for a story filed by Rebecca Lopez on WFAA 8 a couple of nights ago regarding police chases. She contrasted the Dallas Police Department’s current chase policy where they have stopped chasing nonviolent criminals to Dallas County Constables who do.
Lopez reports that this has resulted in a decrease from 354 police chases in 2005 to 39 police chases in 2008. The number of people injured in DPD chases also went down from 77 in 2005 to 10 in 2008. Dallas Police figured that the danger posed to motorists and officers by chasing nonviolent criminals was too great.
I can’t say what the correct call is for Dallas County Constables and State Troopers, but I can say that Monday’s chase presented a dangerous situation. A panicked driver could have easily make a wrong move and caused a chain reaction, even miles behind the actual chase. On the surface, it seems like adopting the Dallas Police Police -or something close- would be a no brainer for Dallas County.
I met Ryan Grim online back in 2007 when he was with Politico and have kept in touch with him over the years. I was excited to learn about his new book that I’m hoping to get my hands sometime soon. It’s titled This is Your Country on Drugs. I hope to get an interview with Ryan after I read through his book, but until then, I’ll post a few of excepts that appeared at The Root.
In the summer of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News broke the story of the connection between L.A. crack dealers and the U.S. funded Nicaraguan Contras. More than a month later, the Washington Post weighed in with a five-story, roughly 10,000-word broadside that ripped the series apart, debunking its central tenets and wondering aloud what it is about black people that makes them so paranoid.
The Post’s editorial board explained that “the shock of the story for many was not simply the sheer monstrousness of the idea of an official agency contributing to a modern-day plague—and to a plague targeted on blacks. The shock was the credibility the story seems to have generated when it reached some parts of the black community.”But it wasn’t their fault they were so gullible, the Postassured in a separate piece, blaming a “history of victimization” that had led to “outright paranoia.”
The Post’s longtime Central American correspondent, Douglas Farah, was in El Salvador when the story, written by the Mercury News’ Gary Webb, broke, revealing that the Contras, a confederation of paramilitary rebels sponsored by the CIA, had been funding some of their operations by importing cocaine into the United States. One of their best customers was a man named Freeway Rick—Ricky Donnell Ross—then a Southern California dealer who was running an operation that the Los Angeles Times dubbed “the Wal-Mart of crack dealing.”
“My first thought was, ‘Holy shit!’ because there’d been so many rumors in the region of this going on,” Farah said when I interviewed him for a book on the history of drugs in America 12 years later. “There had always been these stories floating around about [the Contras and] cocaine. I knew [Contra leader] Adolfo Calero and some of the other folks there, and they were all sleazebags. You wouldn’t read the story and say, ‘Oh my god, these guys would never do that.’ It was more like, ‘Oh, one more dirty thing they were doing.’ So I took it seriously.”
The Supreme Court has decided to reverse a decision made by the U.S. Court of Appeals which included Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I have yet to read the entire ruling but I find myself wondering about the ramifications the ruling will have on the New Haven community. It is my understanding that New Haven is predominately a minority community and will now be served by few minorities in positions of authority. I know of many people who came from areas where authority figures did not look like them. I know first hand how feelings of mistrust will pervade the neighborhood and do very little to bridge a widening gulf.
After reading the original ruling I agreed with the ruling in which Judge Areterton arrived. I can say with all honesty I am happy the New Haven 20 will receive the promotions they deserve. I will also say I am very apprehensive about the future of affirmative action.
It is my personal belief that though we have come along way affirmative action is very much needed to ensure a diverse environment,especially on college campuses. For many minorities affirmative action is our Legacy admission. It will be interseting to see how this affects Sotomayor’s confirmation I am of the opinion that it will matter little. Judge Souter whom she would replace agreed with her ruling.
It is undeniable to me that Sotomayor is right in respects that the bench is were policy is made. The supreme court basically laid forth a new policy that will have far reaching effects for the future. Exactly what those outcomes are remains to be seen.
Paul Quinn College is not dead, but the grim reaper is walking out the door and headed in that direction.
While most of us were following the developments in the death of Michael Jackson, a local story has gotten somewhat lost in the mix. Paul Quinn lost its accreditation from the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools after two years on probation. During those two years, President Michael Sorrell has instituted a number of fresh approaches to try to save the school, but the Southern Association says it’s not enough. Sorrell and Paul Quinn have appealed the decision.
Michael Davis of Dallas Progress makes a great point on why the accreditation is so important. “Because students at an unaccredited school can’t get financial aid” says Davis in a recent post about Paul Quinn.
I’ve got three questions for people reading this post.
#1 Do you care whether or not Paul Quinn is able to survive?
#2 If you answered yes, have you ever donated money (even $5) to Paul Quinn?
#3 If you answered yes, have you donated to P.Q. in the last year?
It all boils down to financial solvency. That goes for all of the black institutions that are struggling and in danger of fading away. I’m not suggesting throwing good money after bad. On the same hilltop in Southern Dallas, Bishop College was lost because they couldn’t pay the bills, and now the same thing could happen to Paul Quinn. But Sorrell has been a steadying force of the Purple and Gold, and the stability that’s been created is worth investing in.
The only overt sign of community support for Paul Quinn has been the Bishop 5 revival, which ran in the ’90s and made a brief comeback late last year. Without that type of support -from individuals and businesses- I fear that 3837 Simpson Stuart Road will become a black college memorial, a place dedicated to remembering the past instead of preparing students for the future. Paul Quinn will only go as far as the people of Dallas want it to.
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