Dallas Examiner, 10/28/10 - “Dallas wet or dry: proposition 1 and 2 on the ballot”

Proposition 1, a controversial ballot initiative that, if passed, would open all of Dallas to retail beer and wine sales, couldn’t help laying bare some of the fault lines that have long defined political life in the city ‒ wet vs. 

dry, suburban vs. urban, Black vs. White, religious temperance vs. a secular commitment to the bottom line.

Both sides of the fight draw their ranks from concerned members of the community as well as more self-interested elements. Some city council members, such as Steve Salazar, worry that opening the dry areas of their districts to alcohol sales will lead them to resemble those portions that are already wet, complete with beer barns, higher crime, prostitution and blight. Others question the motives of those sponsoring the move, which include major retailers such as Costco and Kroger.

An organization called Keep the Dollars in Dallas is spearheading the initiative. According to its spokesman, Gary Huddleston, Dallas is losing sales tax revenue to the suburbs where buying alcohol is a less complicated ‒ and confusing ‒ undertaking. With its patchwork of wet and dry boundaries that overlay neighborhoods, people have to cross arbitrary boundaries in order to make purchases.

Dallas Examiner, 10/7/10 - “Working together to promote jobs, diversity”

It is relatively late in the game for both Democrats and the “professional left” who are trying to jolt the party into moving decisively on their central concerns. With many experts predicting the loss of one or both houses of Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections, Democratic strategists may be more preoccupied with minimizing losses than with charting bold new paths.

Opposed to this hunker-down mentality, and partly as a response to the high visibility of the “Tea Party” phenomenon over the past year, a number of progressive organizations joined forces to hold the “One Nation Working Together” march last Saturday  at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Billed by its organizers as a counterpoint to the anti-government pitch of the Tea Partiers, its line-up of speakers included a number of liberal stalwarts who argued forcefully for government intervention to create jobs, protect civil rights and promote fairness and justice.

“This march is very much in the tradition of the 1960’s marches,” said NAACP National President Benjamin T. Jealous. “It’s a march for jobs and justice. It’s a march that’s been organized by the civil rights community in concert with a broader range of faith, labor and student organizations. In that respect it’s really wider than the 1963 march or the 1995 (Million Man) march.”

Dallas Examiner, 9/23/10 - “City council votes to increase taxes”

The battle over the city budget came to a head over the past two weeks as city officials crossed swords over one big question: to tax or not to tax? Rejecting a tax hike would leave the city council with no choice but to cut funding to various programs in order to balance the budget.

The Sep. 15 straw vote on the budget saw the momentum swing away from Mayor Tom Leppert’s vow not to raise taxes to a modest tax increase designed to save essential city services from the budget ax. Then yesterday, in an 8 to 7 vote, the council finally decided on a budget that would raise property taxes by 4.91 cents per $100 of property value.

Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway, who delivered an impassioned speech during the Sep. 15 meeting in which he summoned images of the pot-holed streets that mark South Dallas, sees the shift as a win for the underserved neighborhoods of South Dallas, who tend to be most dependent on well-funded public services.

“I think that the [council members] who represent primarily the southern sector made a determination that raising taxes was the best thing for the folks that we represent,” said Caraway. “Who should be happy are the people who voted us to go down and speak on their behalf.”

Dallas Examiner, 9/9/10 - “Airport contracts divide city council”

The arcane world of airport concessions contracts has been laid bare, and for some what they see isn’t pretty.

After hours of sometimes heated discussion, a racially divided city council voted 8-7 against a proposal that would have given more than half of the concessions space in a renovated Love Field terminal to the airport's current vendors—without a competitive bid— for a term of up to 18 years.

To the surprise of some long-time council observers, the council overruled a recommendation by city staff to extend the contracts of Star Concessions and Hudson Retail Sales—two firms with ties to prominent Democrats, including State Rep. Helen Giddings and Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson—without a competitive bid.

The essence of the city staff recommendation, that the no-bid contracts would be appropriate given the incumbents’ experience, the desirability of minimizing disruptions during the renovation, and the business risks taken by the incumbents—which included significant capital investments—during a period of uncertainty following the 9/11 terror attacks, ultimately failed to carry the argument.

Dallas Examiner, 8/19/10 - “President speaks on a brighter future”

Before a mostly adoring crowd of about 3500 at the University of Texas at Austin, President Barack Obama gave a short, spirited address that touted his administration’s commitment to education and to addressing the most common travails faced by college students. Burnt orange festooned the auditorium at Gregory Gym as the President took the opportunity to show off his unique touch with one of his core constituencies—young people.

“When I look at the faces of America’s young men and women, I see America’s future,” the President said at one point during the speech. “And it reaffirms my sense my hope, it reaffirms my sense of possibility, it reaffirms my belief that we will emerge from this storm, and we will find brighter days ahead.”

The President opened with a friendly anecdote about a stop in Austin during the ’08 Presidential campaign, then dropped the names of a number of local luminaries, including Congressman Lloyd Doggett, state senator Kirk Watson, and Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who were among the attendees.

Dallas Examiner, 8/12/10 - “Marcus Graham project bridges corporate gap”

The Marcus Graham Project hopes to kill two birds with one stone. First, it hopes to connect promising young African-Americans with opportunities in the fields of advertising and marketing that would otherwise be out of reach. Second, the organization, through its partnerships with major corporations such as AT&T, tries to function as a bridge between corporate America and underserved communities.

Named for the ultra-suave advertising exec portrayed by Eddie Murphy in the 1992 film Boomerang, Marcus Graham is the brainchild of Lincoln Stephens, a former employee of TracyLocke, a Dallas ad agency. Stephens credits a former professor with implanting the idea for an organization that works to foster networks of diverse professionals.

“I noticed that there was an underrepresentation of African-Americans at [my] agency, and specifically African-American males, working in roles outside of the mailroom and accounting and that type of thing,” Stephens said. “As I progressed further in my career, and started reading more about the inner-workings of the industry and so forth, I recognized that diversity was a problem.”

“When I got here, I didn’t really know what to expect,” said intern Chike Onourah of his summer with the Marcus Graham Project. “I think the main difference here is that it’s a very sink-or-swim environment—you basically have to learn a lot of things through trial and error, and honestly that’s a good way to learn for me because it teaches you to think on your feet.”

Dallas Examiner, 7/15/10 - “TSU Academy gives students second chance”

“These young people need an opportunity to become educated and earn their degrees,” says Dr. Betty Cox, tenured professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas Southern University, reflecting upon her inaugural year as director of TSU’s newly-launched Summer Academy program for high school students.

The program is one university’s answer to the challenge presented by underprepared yet eager students, and it’s also one veteran teacher’s platform for putting into practice everything she’s learned about getting through to young minds.

 “As I told [the students] this morning, ‘We don’t want you to stay here for six years. We want you to get your work and get out of school in four years, not longer than five years’,” said Dr. Cox.

Divided into two sessions, Academy I and Academy II, students are immersed in a rigorous five weeks of academic and social preparation for life at TSU. Academy I was completed last week. Academy II has just begun and will run to mid-August.