Performance is the plank anchoring Wharton’s bid for another term
With supporters awaiting his arrival Wednesday afternoon at the Shelby County Election Commission, Mayor A C Wharton Jr. made his way up the steps leading to the floor where he would turn left and head for the window where one files a petition to officially seek an elected office. He is familiar with the route.
Moments after submitting his paperwork and affixing his signature, the incumbent eased out into the hallway, positioning himself among those assembled to reflect their commitment to see him win four more years. Then he met the press.
Thanking his backers for continued support, Wharton said, “We will run on our record. We will run on the positives. We’ve never done negative campaign as everybody in this room knows.ver done negative campaign as everybody in this room knows.
His positive-based campaign, he said, will be based on providing 10,000 jobs, hiring police officers, bringing in technology – body cameras for the protection of the officers and the public, getting passed the “grueling nightmare” of not having paid the schools, getting the longstanding litigation over Beale St. settled.
“So many things that have been dragging on for years ar“So many things that have been dragging on for years arw history,” he said.
Under his administration the city has been very aggressive in fighting blight, he said, also noting that he filed the lawsuit against the banks that brought in millions of dollars to foster homeownership.
“Our city is now on the national radar for so many positive things. Sure, do we have challenges? Absolutely yes, but at the same time I will show you a whole lot of people out in the field working to meet those challenges.”
Asked what he thought voters would make their choice upon, Wharton said, stepping back and reflecting people would recognize that he followed through on his commitments to address items and issues upon which the residents had voiced their concerns. That includes crime, with the numbers showing a move in the right direction, he said, with more moves to come to address what still is a big issue.
“I think they will look back at what has been done, look at the challenges that lie ahead and see the only person who developed a plan to deal with poverty, which is the root cause of so many challenges that we face,” he said.
The campaign is about getting the message out, he said.
How many candidates, he asked, can point to their platforms and say to the voters, “you ought to believe me going forward because here is what I’ve done in the past.”
Pointing out that he was not the mayor when troubling issues such as stopping school funding and pension problems took root, Wharton said he never used that as an excuse for not taking action.
“I hit it head on. It would have been easy to back away from all those things. I didn’t do that. I think that is what is going to make the difference here. Everybody can promise, but nobody can point to their past performance.”
Wharton said he anticipates that debates will “turn into firing squads” with all shooting at him.
“Let’s have our debates; everybody shoot at me. I am ready to go,” he said. “Bring it on!”
White House: More internet access coming to low-income households in Memphis, other cities
By by Brianna Edwards, The Root
President Barack Obama is travelling to Durant, Oklahoma on Wednesday to officially announce a new initiative geared at expanding high speed broadband to more families across the nation.
The ConnectHome pilot program is set to launch in 27 cities and one tribal nation a and will initially be geared to reach more than 275,000 low-income households and almost 200,000 children, giving them the support they need to access the Internet from the comfort of their own home.
According to the White House, Internet service providers, non-profits and the private sector have all chipped in to offer broadband access, technical training, digital literacy programs and devices for the residents in assisted housing units.
“The stakes are clear: families living in the 21st century need 21st century tools to thrive,” Julián Castro, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development told reports on Wednesday, according to The Hill.
“While many middle-class U.S. students go home to Internet access, allowing them to do research, write papers, and communicate digitally with their teachers and other students, too many lower-income children go unplugged every afternoon when school ends,” the White House noted in its press release. “This “homework gap” runs the risk of widening the achievement gap, denying hardworking students the benefit of a technology-enriched education. “
Cities selected to be participate in ConnectHome include Atlanta, Ga., Baton Rouge, La., Macon, Ga., Memphis Tenn., New York, NY, Newark, NJ and Washington, DC. The Choctaw Nation was also selected.
Read more at The White House and The Hill.
City officials searching for answers after teens sneaks into public pool and drowns
Mayor A C Wharton Jr. spoke in hushed tones Monday afternoon, offering his public condolences to the family of a teenage boy who drowned in a closed City of Memphis pool on Sunday.
It was the second time he had extended his sentiments to the family, the first in a conversation the night before. This time he was in the Hall of Mayors at City Hall speaking to media.
Cedric Walton, 13, died after he and a group of friends maneuvered through a wrought iron fence and then climbed over another fence at the L.E. Brown pool Sunday afternoon. The City has remote security cameras at the site and loud speakers through which Delta Surveillance can issue audible warnings to trespassers.
The mayor was asked to respond to reports that the Internet was down, affecting Delta Surveillance’s ability to monitor the site, and that a Delta representative had contacted someone with the City, although it may not have been the right person given the holiday schedule.
“I don’t want to tell you something one day and then come back and say [something else],” Wharton said. “But [the call] went to the wrong person. All we know is that we have an active contract with a security company that is by sight and by sound in terms of communicating with individuals who might gain access inappropriately.”
Changes?
“We’re examining every aspect from personnel to equipment,” said Wharton. “Let’s find out everything that happened, then let’s move accordingly.”
Wharton said he visited the site and looked at the pool, adding that with a loss of life, it is appropriate to second guess.
“I second-guessed myself all last night; could we do something else?” Wharton said. “At this particular location, not only is there a fence around the pool, but there is an outer fence.
“I guess it’s just good that we second-guess ourselves.” he continued. “I never want to be so callous…stand up and say, ‘Hmmm, that’s tough.’ I’ll never say that. But as a practical matter, we don’t want our community to look like war zones with wires and lights so bright that they keep a whole neighborhood awake. It’s just a difficult situation.”
The pools being closed had nothing to do with budgetary cutbacks, with hours “having long been established,” he said.
“I don’t want to give anybody the impression that simply by keeping the pools open longer that no child will get in before we’re open or after we are [closed]. It would be misleading to say if we just keep them open longer children will not seek inappropriate access.It would be misleading to say if we just keep them open longer children will not seek inappropriate access.
On the preventive end, the city offers a number of free classes to teach children how to swim.
“I won’t offer any guess as to whether this young man [could] swim or not,” Wharton said. “This is why it is simply not enough to open up the pool. We go out of our way to offer free swimming lessons for those children who are under 13, they have to have a parent come with them. If they are over 13, you sign up for the card and you have to have your parent to vouch for you.
“Of course, in a situation like this, all forms of ID would not have made any difference,” he added.
Janet Hooks, the city’s director of Public Services & Neighborhoods, expressed her condolences, saying she could not imagine what Walton’s family is going through.
“The loss of a child is something that there is no preparation for,” Hooks said. “There is no getting over.”
Asked whether there has been any measurable progress in teaching African-American children to swim, Hooks said that swimming lessons at the Bickford Indoor pool attracted “99 percent participation” from students at the KIPP Academy across the street. But she said the biggest obstacle to overcome is youthful overconfidence.
“Most kids think they can swim,” she said. “They don’t realize you have to take lessons. We offer free lessons January through March. But as the mayor just said, we can’t guarantee that we’re going to have the kids that need it most to show up.”
After acknowledging that the best of swimmers can be caught in life-threatening circumstances, Hooks made reference to the companions who were with Walton.
“Imagine what they are going through,” she said. “It’s tragthey are going through,” she said. “It’hey are going through,” she said. “It’
Rep. Cohen’s view of a ‘historic day’
Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis was in the audience for what he termed “a marvelous service and even more marvelous speech” as President delivered remarks at the funeral for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney at the College of Charleston Arena in Charleston, S.C. on Friday.
‘I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him more on target and direct about race and about African-American issues,” said Cohen, who talked with The New Tri-State Defender by by telephone soon after the service. “He was received – as we knew he would be, hailed as a hero….”
Noting that Charleston is home to Fort Sumter, the site of the first shots fired in the Civil War, Cohen said it was quite a historic day “being at the arena with President Barack Obama talking about the Confederate flag and racism and slavery and Jim Crow.”
Asked if he thought a result of the tragedy might be an open door to a change for the better in race relations, Cohen said, “I hope it does and it may. There were quite a few Republicans there, a bipartisan group from South Carolina and there were a few others as well. It might have opened some of their eyes and hearts. But it is sometimes difficult because they do have a different constituency base, some people whose hearts have never been opened, and minds have not been open and never will. It is going to take time for those people to be phased out of our consciousness. I do think there is a possibility that there is something good that will come out of this.”
Cohen said the American people “certainly had to be energized” by the President’s eulogy, adding that he thinks it is going to be considered one of the epic addresses of the President’s time in office.
“I think the fact that he dealt openly about race, more open than I think he has ever done … more personal. I think he is heading to speak more truth and speak from his heart. Not that he hasn’t in the past, but sometimes he’s been tempered because of his election and the realization that the country still has divisions and still has animus even though he has won twice.”
The President, said Cohen, is likely going to dedicate himself a great deal to issues that are important to the African-American community.
“Not that he hasn’t done it with the Affordable Care Act, not that he hasn’t done it with calls to raise the minimum wage, not that he hasn’t done it with issues like that, and calls for voting rights extension,” he said.
“But I think you are going to see more of him kind of shifting from the President of the United States to My Brother’s Keeper and My Brother’s Keeper involves talking about people who go to bed hungry, people who may be homeless, people who need job training, people who need an opportunity to get a job.
“And the Jamal and Johnny line (from the speech) was very strong, well received and appropriate. I don’t think the President has gone there in the past as directly as he did today.”
Free test-prep program for SAT college test goes online
By by Lisa Leff -Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO – The nonprofit organization behind the SAT college entrance exam has teamed up with a Silicon Valley pioneer in online education to make test preparation materials available for free.
The move is aimed at making the college admissions race less stressful and more fair for students from poorer families. The materials first were made available on Tuesday.
The College Board gave unprecedented access to the revamped SAT it plans to introduce next spring to Khan Academy, which has developed diagnostic quizzes and interactive practice tests that will be accessible to anyone with Internet access.
Khan Academy, based in Mountain View, is known for its free web-based library of instructional videos and academic exercises.
College Board President David Coleman said the partnership aims to level the college admissions playing field by putting high-quality training within easy reach of students without the funds for commercial test-prep services.
Students who visit www.khanacademy.org/sat will find quizzes based on the math and reading sections of the new SAT scheduled to make its debut in March, as well as full-length practice tests written by the College Board.
Questions they answer incorrectly will show the specific skills they need to improve and offer step-by-step explanations for deriving the correct answer.
Nicole Hurd, founder of a nonprofit called College Advising Corps, said “I think they are really trying to change this from test preparation to an educational opportunity.
“If a young person takes the SAT math section, and they don’t do well, instead of saying, ‘Well, you don’t do well,’ it will push them back into the Khan curriculum so they can get the math skills they need so they are SAT-ready,” she said.
The redesigned SAT will be graded on a 1,600-point scale last used in 2004 and will make the now-required essay section optional. Test-takers no longer will lose points for wrong answers.
Google still struggling to diversify beyond white, Asian men
By by Michael Liedtke Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO – Google isn’t making much headway diversifying its workforce beyond white and Asian men, even though the Internet company hired women to fill one out of every five of its openings for computer programmers and other high-paying technology jobs last year.
The imbalanced picture emerged in a demographic breakdown that Google released Monday. The report underscored the challenges that Google and most other major technology companies face as they try to add more women, African Americans and Hispanics to their payrolls after many years of primarily relying on the technical skills of white and Asian men.
“Early indications show promise, but we know that with an organization our size, year-on-year growth and meaningful change is going to take time,” said Nancy Lee, Google’s vice president of people operations.
Just 18 percent of Google’s worldwide technology jobs were held by women entering 2015, up a percentage point from the previous year. Whites held 59 percent of Google’s tech jobs in the U.S., while Asians filled 35 percent of the positions, according to the report.
The slight uptick in women stemmed from a concerted effort to bring the numbers up. Google said 21 percent of the workers that it hired for technology jobs last year were women. The Mountain View, Calif., company added 9,700 jobs last year, although it declined to specify how many were for programming and other openings requiring technical knowledge.
Overall, Google employed 53,600 people at the end of 2014. In the U.S., just 2 percent of Google’s workers were African American and 3 percent were Hispanic. Cutting across all industries in the U.S., 12 percent of the workforce is African American and 14 percent is Hispanic.
The latest snapshot of Google’s workforce comes roughly a year after the company publicly disclosed the gender and racial makeup of its payroll for the first time, casting a spotlight on a diversity problem vexing the entire technology industry. Other well-known technology trendsetters, including Apple and Facebook, subsequently released data revealing similar diversity problems.
Mortified by the disclosures, Google and most of its other technology peers have been pouring more money into programs steering more women, African Americanss and Hispanics to focus on science and math in schools and have stepped up their recruiting of minority students as they prepare to graduate from college.
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who has been spearheading the drive to diversify the tech industry, applauded Google for releasing its workforce data again to help keep the pressure on the technology industry to change the composition of its payroll.
“Tech companies must move from the aspiration of ‘doing better’ to concrete actionable hiring to move the needle,” Jackson said in a statement. “We aim to change the flow of the river.”
Ready to serve Southwest
Dr. Tracy D. Hall soon will have the best opportunity she has experienced up to this point to act on her strongly held belief about the value of “quality, affordable education” to a community.
On Wednesday, the Tennessee Board of Regents is expected to approve TBR Chancellor John Morgan’s recommendation that Hall succeed Nate Essex as president of Southwest Tennessee Community College, the largest community college in the state. Essex’s retirement is effective June 30.
“I believe that access to a quality, affordable education is critical to the economic survival and development of communities,” said Hall in her application seeking the Southwest presidency. “As such, I have dedicated my career to working exclusively at urban colleges and believe fervently in the potential of all people.h, I have dedicated my career to working exclusively at urban colleges and believe fervently in the potential of all people.
Hall earned a doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia in educational leadership and policy analysis, a master’s degree from Wichita State University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She emerged from a field of 65 applicants and four finalists who visited Southwest late last month. Her first day as Southwest president will be July 13.
“We are fortunate to have Dr. Hall join the Tennessee Board of Regents,” said Morgan. “We expect she will be the right leader at the right time to help address the unique opportunities at Southwest. Her credentials are excellent, and her experience in engaging all constituents and building a strong, successful and collaborative team while recognizing unique strengths and opportunities is the right fit.”
Hall has served as vice president for academic affairs at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park since 2011. Her responsibilities included more than 30 career and technical programs, academic support services and instructional resources, stackable credentials for workforce development, faculty oversight and the African American Male Initiative.
For six years, Hall served as associate dean of instruction at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley in Kansas City, Mo., where she managed strategic planning efforts, articulation agreements, career and technical program reviews and P-16 initiatives. She taught speech, mass communication and intercultural communication at the campus from 1999-2004.
Two years prior she led Kennesaw (Ga.) State University’s minority student retention services. Hall was an instructor of speech and intercultural communication courses at St. Louis Community College-Meramec from 1993 until 1997.
On her application, Hall offers a glimpse of her thoughts about the importance of engaging students.
“For more than 20 years, I have remained committed to actively engaging students both in and out of the classroom,” wrote Hall. “In fact, my dissertation title was ‘A pedagogy of freedom: Using hip hop in the classroom to engage African-American students.’ I am particularly passionate about serving the needs of underserved students and communities.”
In addition to her membership in numerous professional and civic organizations, Hall has participated in the Thomas Lakin Institute for Mentored Leadership, the American Association of Community College’s Future Leaders Institute, National Council on Black American Affairs Mid-Level Management Institute, and the Kaleidoscope Women’s Leadership Conference.
(To view Dr. Hall’s complete application materials, visit http://tinyurl.com/tracydhall.)
Also of interest
The search for next Southwest president is down to final four
Partnership positions Southwest to funnel students to Western Governors University Tennessee
Southwest, Artesian Schools partner on new early college high school- AT&T donates $10,000 to help Southwest students
- AT&T donates $10,000 to help Southwest students
Journey of service continues for Edward L. Stanton III
The next step for Edward L. Stanton III will likely land him on the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.
On Thursday, the White House announced that Stanton, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, is its choice to fill the vacancy being created by the retirement of Judge Samuel H. “Hardy” Mays.
A graduate of Central High School, Stanton earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Memphis in 1994. Three years later, he had his juris doctorate from the University of Memphis School of Law. He has served as U.S. Attorney for the Western District since doctorate from the University of Memphis School of Law. He has served as U.S. Attorney for the Western District since
“U.S. Attorney Stanton is well respected by his peers and will serve our country in an outstanding fashion,” U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen said in statement also released Thursday.
It was Cohen who recommended Stanton to President Obama – a move that came after the Ninth District Congressman convened what his office described as “a bipartisan, biracial screening committee of local attorneys.”
“Ed Stanton has proven himself to be an outstanding lawyer both as U.S. Attorney and as senior litigator for FedEx,” said Cohen, adding that he was proud to make the recommendation.
At the U of M School of Law, Stanton was president of the Black Law Students Association, and vice-president of the Student Bar Association. When his classmates went through the process of deciding who should give the commencement address, Stanton emerged as their selection.
With that momentum, Stanton moved on to serve as Assistant City Attorney for the City of Memphis. Later came private practice with two Memphis law firms and then a stint as senior counsel with Federal Express Corporation (2002-10). In April of 2010, President Obama nominated to become the chief federal law enforcement officer for the 22 counties that make up state’s Western District. The U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination in short order.
No stranger to community service, Stanton has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including the National Bar Association – Ben F. Jones Chapter, where he served as president. He was active with the Tennessee Commission on National and Community Service and served as chairman of Shelby County Books from Birth.
The Memphis Bar Association (MBA) selected Stanton for its Sam A. Myar Jr. Award in 2005. Bestowed for outstanding legal and community service, it’s the highest honor the MBA bestows annually on a lawyer under the age of 40. Stanton was 33.
A family man, Stanton and his wife have two children.
Legacy: Kathyn l. Bowers
I had just started my journey as executive editor of the Tri-State Defender when I visited former State Sen. Kathryn I. Bowers in her Whitehaven home in July 2007. She greeted me with the warmness that I associated with her and noted that she had not seen me in a while.
I acknowledged the gap and asked if she was OK.
“About as well as I can be, given all that has happened over the last two years,” she said, making a reference to her legal case that was part of the Tennessee Waltz public corruption probe. Bowers made it clear that she could not and would not talk about any of the aspects of the case, including her decision to plead guilty to taking $11,500 in bribes. She did her time and came back strong.
“I made some mistakes,” said Bowers, who died Wednesday at 72. “And like I said (after entering her plea) I would hope that people will not use what happened to me as an excuse not to participate in the electoral process.”
I was at the Post Office on Third St. Thursday afternoon when a relative of Bowers told me of her passing. I gasped, remembering our conversation and many more that we shared over the years. Given the timing, some no doubt will find it easy to dismiss what Bowers was saying about the electoral process. Still, it is true that she had been beating the drum for participation for quite some time. Long before she became a state representative and then a state senator she was registering new voters for campaigns led by the NAACP and the Urban League.
In 1975, Bowers became the first African American to serve as chairperson of the Shelby County Election Commission. And for years she could be heard on WDIA radio talking about some element of the voting/participation process.
“I still have people who come up to me and say, ‘I wish you still were on the radio talking about the election,’” she told me.
While she was passionate about voter participation, her focus on that issue was a way to get at what she was convinced was a deeper problem – the inability for people to communicate beyond differences that are real or imagined.
“We as a people simply don’t communicate. I always thought I could help solve that problem. When I say people, I don’t just mean Memphis or Tennessee or the nation. I mean the world,” she said.
Her first glimpse of the problem came when she was about 5 years old. Her mother took her shopping to a store that was segregated down to the water fountains. “I couldn’t understand the colored water (sign). I didn’t know if they meant it was blue or green. I just knew I didn’t want any of it, ” she recalled.
Bowers said one day her mother told her that there were far more “people of color” in the world than anyone else and that they were good people. “She (Bowers’ mother) said all that has to happen is that on one day, at one hour and the same moment, all the people just spit and they will spit this ocean and spit out all the injustice.
