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RACE FOR RESPECT
J.C. Smith builds
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^ flank New York senior
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Volume 29 No. 26
www.thecharlottepost.com
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The Voice of the Black Community
James B. Duke Library
100 Beatties Ford Rd
Also serving Charlotte NC 28216-5302
WEEK OF MARCH 11-17, 2004
Graham a
candidate
for N.C.
Senate
City Council
member to make
it official Monday
By Herbert L. White
herb, white @ thecluirlottepost.com
Charlotte City Council
member Malcolm Graham
won’t say for sure, but he
sounds like a candidate for
the N.C.
Senate.
Graham,
who has rep-
resented
District 4 on
the council
for five
years, will
announce
Graham his inten-
tions to run
in Senate District 40
Monday at Overflow
Printing, 511 Enterprise
Drive. Although he wouldn’t
confirm a campaign
Tuesday, Graham, a
Democrat, has long been
considered a candidate.
“We’re going to announce
our intention to run or not to
run,” he said. “A lot of people
have asked what we’re going
to do and a lot of people have
encouraged me to run for the
Senate.”
The district, which was
drawn by the General
Assembly last year, has a
similar footprint to the City
Council District Graham
represents. Neighborhoods
common to each include
Sharon Park, Optimist Park,
Hidden Valley and
University City, which gives
District 40 a mix of low- and
upper-income communities.
“If I decide to run, I want to
talk about issues that affect
the district,” Graham said.
“I’m not simply passing
through. I live in the district,
I bank in the district, my
children go to school in the
district 'and I get my health
care in the district. We’ve
been here.”
The Senate district has
been the source of debate as
to whether it and a district in
eastern N.C. marginalizes
Please see GRAHAM/6A
CMS capacitft spending dileninias
Inner city schools to remain underused; 25% budget hike proposed
By Herbert L. White
herb, white @ thechdrlottepost. com
Black students are more like
ly to win preferred seats in
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
than their white counterparts,
all but ensuring underutilized
inner city schools.
Lottery results for the 2004-05
academic year showed that 76
percent of all students partici
pating in the lottery receiving
their first option and 86 percent
of all students participating
received either their first or sec
ond option. Seventy-one per
cent of African American fami
lies received their first option,
compared to 81 percent for
white families and 79 percent of
Hispanics
With fewer black and
Hispanic children getting their
top choices, inner city schools
will likely remain segregated by
race and economics. Many of
CAROLINAS RELIEF FOR HAITI
i'--;
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE PHOTOA'URI CORTEZ
A U.S. Marine points his rifle up a street as a man pulls a cart during a patrol of the Bel Aire dis
trict of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Looting has been rampant since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
was ousted last week, which has left thousands without food and medicine.
Region active in sending food,
medicine to alleviate suffering
By Herbert L, White
herb.white@thecharlottepost.com
Carohnians can respond to
Haiti’s political crisis by
feeding the hungry.
The global humanitarian
agency Church World
Service sent the first ship
ments of emergency food and
medicine to Haiti Monday.
The shipments include
17,280 pounds of dehydrated
food as well as 30 standard
medicine boxes and eight
disaster medicine boxes.
“The Carolinas are particu
larly good at responding to
these types of situations,”
said Kevin McCoy, CWS
associate director for the
Carolinas in Charlotte.
Because of looting in Haiti,
supplies fi'om the U.S. will
be sent to CWS affiliates in
the Dominican Republic,
who will then truck them
into Haiti.
When hydrated, the food
packages will provide
432,000 servings. Each stan
dard medicine box contains
enough medicine to serve
1,000 people for three
months, while each disaster
box contains medicine to
treat the immediate medical
conditions of approximately
115 people in a disaster situ-
, ation, and is about 90 per
cent antibiotics.
“The Haitian people were
in dire, long lasting poverty
and showing signs of malnu
trition even before the upris
ing began three weeks ago,”
said Joe Moran, CWS
regional director for the
Carolinas in Durham.
McCoy added: “People
were already living a precar
ious life because it’s the poor
est country in the Western
Please see CAROLINA/6A
Lead scare has Washington residents boiling mad
By Michelle Phipps-Evans
WASHINGTON AFRO-AMERICAN
WASHINGTON - When
northwest D.C. resident
Barbara Philips found out she
was pregnant with her second
child last September, she took
all the pre-natal precautions
the doctor recommended.
She took her vitamins daily,
stayed away from caffeine and
got at least eight hours of
sleep. Then, media reports
revealed that approximately
23,000 District homes were
equipped with lead pipes, and
that the D.C. Water and Sewer
Authority may have known
about lead in the water since
2001.
Recent reports have suggest
ed WASA may have been
aware of the lead in the water
for 10 years.
‘’I just started going through
my mind whether I had ever
drank the water from the taps,
but besides that, we cook with
it, brush our teeth, and even
my son mixes his Kool-Aid
with the water,” said Philips,
who was relieved to find out
finm WASA that she has cop
per pipes leading to her home.
‘We also drink water with a fil
ter.”
Philips could be one of the
lucky ones. According to earlier
reports, there have been
instances of pregnant women
drinking water and mixing
baby formulas with water that
may have contained lead.
Testing last year found that
drinking water in more than
4,000 city homes exceeded the
federal safety standard of 15
parts per billion of lead, set by
the Environmental Protection
Agency. Lead poisoning is
especially harmful to infants
and children. It can stunt men
tal and physical development
and, in some instances, cause
adult schizophrenia.
This is a travesty, said
Councilman Harold Brazil (D-
at-large), one of a handful of
D.C. City Council members
Please see D.CySA
Pughsley
the district’s newest schools,
built as part of an effort to pro
vide equal access in core neigh
borhoods, will have more seats
than students. As a result, the
school board voted 8-1 Tuesday
to instruct Superintendent
James Pughsley to review
See BLACK STUDENTS/2A
Bobcats
launch
network
Carolinas sports anchor
cable television channel
By Justin Crump
THE CHARLOJTE POST
Bob Johnson’s vision of a regional sports net
work is a step closer to reality.
On Wednesday, Johnson annoimced plans for
Carolinas Sports Entertainment
Television, a new 24-hour net
work. The channel, which debuts
in October, is a partnership with
Time Warner Cable and will be a
part of the basic cable packages in
North and South Carolina.
C-SET will broadcast a variety
of sports programming, including
Johnson’s Charlotte Bobcats and
WNBA Sting, minor league and Johnson
colleges. The network’s headquar
ters will be located in uptown Charlotte.
“C-SET is the next step in our goal of developing
the pre-eminent sports and entertainment entity
in the Carolinas,” Johnson said. “The Bobcats,
Sting and new Charlotte arena will serve as the
cornerstone of the network’s broad reach into the
Carohnas. Other outlets provide very limited
regional sports coverage on a daily basis and over-
Please see REGIONAL/2A
Virginia judge quits
after racist comments
By Jeremy M. Lazarus
RICHMOND FREE PRESS
RICHMOND, Va. - Facing disclosure of racial
ly charged comments that he had written on the
Internet, Judge Ralph B. Robertson is quitting the
bench after 19 years of hearing criminal cases in
the city General District Court.
The veteran, snowy-haired jurist stopped hear
ing cases last week, went on sick leave and filed
for retirement, which will be effective April 1. He
threw in the towel after the Free Press notified
him of plans to publish an article about the dis
paraging views he had expressed about Black peo
ple over the past few weeks in participating in an
on-line chat room.
In his wide-ranging conversations on the
Internet, Judge Robertson, among other things,
approvingly endorsed the notion that “Afncan-
Americans are prone to crime and violence
because it is in their genes” and supported the
words of another chat-room member defining
some minorities as “people who have no regard for
sanitation, courtesy, private property, etc.”
Specifically, Judge Robertson also criticized the
intellectual integrity of Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. and described the Rev. Jesse Jackson as “a
Please see VA JUDGE/3A
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