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5A OPINIONS/ Zht Cliairlom $o0t Thursday, July 27, 2006 No killing on our playgrounds I recently sat down with some extraordinary stories shared with me by Janula Larson, a former colleague at the Children’s Defense Fund. Jamila is now a social worker with the National Center for CJiildren and Families, assigned to a public elementary school in one of Washington, D.C.’s most troubled neigh borhoods, where she has gotten to see first-hand how the community’s troubles affect the children too, and how the children cope—or can’t. She regularly shares her experi ences in a series of essays she calls “Notes From a Hopeful Social Worker.” Last December, Jamila wrote “No Killing on Our Playground,” about an especially chilling school day not long before the holi day break. That cold morning, two teachers who were arriving to work aroimd 7 a.m. saw what appeared to be a pile of old clothes in the middle of the playground. As they got closer, they realized it was actually a woman’s body surroimded by a pool of fiozen blood—the victim of a gunshot wound to the head. Children arriving later that morning had to navigate through a sea of police cars, as police “do not cross” tape surroimded homicide officers hard at work on the crime scene between the hopscotch squares and monkey bars. Tfeachers found themselves scrambling to tape paper on their classroom windows to block the view of the police activity and the covered body, which wasn’t removed from the playground until several hours later. The day after the murder, Jamila writes, she asked a small group of children to brainstorm ways to help stu dents feel safe again on their playground after what hap pened. “[One child] chimed in, ‘Let’s put a sign on the play- groimd that says, “No killing on our playground.” Another child said, ‘But they have signs about “no dogs allowed,” but people do it an3nvay’.... and so, our table of six thoughtful little boys were scratching their heads about what to do, as the abandoned public housing buildings hulked over their heads outside the window, and their feet swung from their chairs, barely touching the floor.” Even as these small children were trying to figure out how they and their fiiends could feel safer, they were not supported by a commimity and city of concerned adults ris ing up in outrage to demand the same thing: the killing on their playground was only a two-sentence mention buried in that day’s paper. In a neighborhood saturated by gun violence, even a murder on what should be the protected space of a school was treated as more of the same, just old news. Jamila came to realize that for children who were already coming to her with stories of parents, relatives, neighbors, and fnends who were also victims of violence, even something as traumatic as the discovery of a body on their playground would soon enough be old news for them too, In fact, it wouldn’t even be the only incident of gun vio lence near the school that year. Just a few weeks later, a car chase in front of the school complete with police exchanging gunfire with two suspects put the school on lockdown again, although that came too late for the chil dren and teachers who had been outside and witnessed it as it happened. Later in the year, there was yet another shooting directly in fi* *ont of the school—this time at 4 in the afternoon, when Jamila was among the dozens of staff and students inside at the after-school program. The injured victim turned out to be an uncle of one of the stu dents. As Jamila wrote in July, “People often ask me how the children are doing following the murder.. .In aU honesty, it has receded into the background because the shootings keep piling up in their memories.” She remembers, “Even several months later at the end of the school year in June, as I was escorting a second grade girl to the playground, she cowered at the sight of a police helicopter fl5dng over our school. 1 don’t want to get shot!’ she said. Her panicked face looked like a war tom child in Palestine, Croatia, Iraq, Sudan..,At the anger manage ment group that I led on the day of the car chase and shoot ings right past our playground, I asked the group how they felt. ‘Sad,’ said one. ‘Angry,’ said another. ‘I want to go home,’ said a third. ‘I almost had a heart attack’... .1 asked the group what they thought about the suspects. The chil dren were remarkably forgiving ‘Maybe they didn’t know there were kids here.”’ Maybe they didn’t know there were kids here. This can’t be the excuse adults give for letting our children grow up imder these conditions. It can’t be the excuse our commu nities and nation give for protecting some children as sacred but letting others grow up in neighborhoods where violence is’so commonplace we treat it—and the effect it has on the children—as invisible and inevitable. But what better excuse do we have? Bemettsville. S.C., native MARIAN WRIGHTEDELMAN is pres ident andfFoimder of the Children’s Defense Fund and its Action Council. North Carolinian takes us deep into Guantanamo Bay Would you like to spend a few months down at Guantanamo Bay? Are there no takers? Nobody wants to spend timp in the confine ment area where prisoners from Afghanistan and similar conflicts are held and interrogated? Wouldn’t you like to sit in on some of the interrogating sessions? Or hang around the living and social areas where the military and civflian base personnel gather and blow off steam? Still you say, no? Me neither, but I sure would like to know more about the place-and what goes on there. Now, thanks to a brand new “international mys- teiy” by a North Carolina connected author, we can. The author, Dan Fesperman, grew up in Charlotte and graduated from UNC Chapel Hfll. He is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and has previously written several prizewinning mysteries, all of them set in areas where his reporting duties have taken him. His latest, “The Prisoner of Guantanamo,” grabs its readers and takes them to the eastern end of Cuba and places them in the mid dle of life in an isolated American military base. He gives them a close look at how life is experienced by the “640 prisoners from forty countries, none of whom,” according to Fesperman, “had the slightest idea how long they would be here. Then there were the 2,400 other new arrivals in the prison security force, mostly Reservists and Guardsmen who would rather be elsewhere. Throw in...120 or so interrogators, translators, and analysts fi*om the mil itary and half the branches of the federal govemment-and you had the makings of a massive psychological experiment on performing under stress at close quarters.” Fesperman’s inside description of the workings of the operations at Guantanamo is particularly timely and valuable given the struggles at the highest levels of our government to come up with a set of rules and guidelines to govern the treatment, interroga tion, and trial of those who are imprisoned there. The book’s complex mystery story is engaging, fiiU of puzzles and clues that entertain— and sometimes friistrate a reader trying to follow the plot. Revere Falk, the story’s central character, is an FBI officer who speaks fluent Arabic. His assignment at Gitmo (the insider’s term for Guantanamo) is to interrogate some of the prisoners. One of Falk’s subjects is a young fighter from Yemen, Adnan al- Hamdi. Adnan has some knowledge about an extremely important foreign agent. But, like most of Guantanamo’s prisoners, he is bit ter and non-cooperative. As an FBI agent, Falk must follow the Bureau’s standards of interrogation. The FBI emphasizes patience and trust building as the way to persuade prisoners to give up important information, Other interrogators at Guantanamo, like those working for the CIA and the Pentagon, oftsn use more aggressive tactics. As described by Fesperman, their techniques are sometimes much more than just “torture-like.” Although the FBI interrogation techniques have been framed in the context of the restrictions of American court decisions, Falk beheves they lead to more reliable results. In the case of Adnan al-Hamdi, Falk’s FBI trust building tech niques are more effective. Adnan gives Falk a key piece of infor mation, one so important that it could be used to “justify” another regime changing military operation, like the one in Iraq. Although Falk does not immediately appreciate the value of what Adnan has told him, a battle for control of the discovery erupts between different groups in.the U.S. government-some who would use the information to push for another preemptive war, others to keep the information from being “misused” by the war enthusiasts. The struggle for control of this information is complicated by Guantanamo’s location in Cuba. When the body of an American soldier washes up on Cuban territory, the Cubans and the Americans have to come together to transfer the body. Later, it turns out that there is an undercover agent of the Cuban govern ment on the base. TTiese Cuban connections lead the story to Miami, where Fesperman takes his readers inside the Cuban espionage operations in South Florida. As much as “The Prisoner of Guantanamo” teaches us about important current events and issues, its greatest appeal is that it is a fast-paced, action-oriented mystery, a good candidate for a summer vacation read. D.G. MARTIN is host ofUNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwarch, which airs Fridays at 9:30 pm. and Sundays at 5 pm. Connect with ®[)E ^osit Send letters to The Charlotte Post, P.O. Box 30144 Charlotte, NC 28230 or e-mail editoria]@thecharlottepost,com. We edit for grammar, clarity and space. Include your name and daytime phone number. Letters and photos will not be returned by mail unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Smaller is better as far as finding school building solutions By Christopher Cole SPECIAL TO V-IE POST When it looked like politicians would again wonder what “no” means, they instead voted against a pro posal to use Certificates of Participation to replace school bonds voted down last November. However, they punished renegade voters by replacing COPs with... nothing. In other words, when they can’t get their big-gov ernment wishes, government politicians aren’t inter ested in doing their jobs.In contrast, the Libertarian Party of Mecklenburg County offered three proposals for solving crowding in local schools. In opposition to the debt-based proposal of education bureaucrats, the Libertarian proposals could only be described as ’’small-govemment.” ;. In fact, two of the three proposals would require no' government funds at all. In addition, while the three proposals would work best in tandem, any one or two could be enacted alone. .First, Libertarians propose and support the repeal of compulsory-attendance laws. Getting hooligans and deadwood out of the schools wQl leave more space and resources for motivated students. Some wUl claim that this will leave some students with no edu- ■ cation.However, this begs the obvious question of how- much education gang members, other bullies, and the unmotivated are currently getting. In addition, it ignores the advances of motivated students as they.' receive teacher attention, greater resources, and free-^j; dom from intimidation by thugs in the next seat. ^ Second, Libertarians propose the repeal of the cap* on charter schools. While such schools still get publio^ funds for the educational process, their facilities ar^ provided by private and charitable sources. With th^ benefit of educational choice, parents will be motivat ed to fund facilities for their children,instead of cast ing that responsibility on the tax-paying public at- largeAnd third. Libertarians AGAIN urge the state of North Carolina to institute a tuition tax-credit for families who home school their children, or send them to private schools. In addition to the simple fairness of letting people keep their own money when they save money for teix- payers, tax credits would provide an incentive to move more children to privately-funded educational facilities.In the discussion of school facilities, the pari ticipants have discussed facility supply while ignorr ing the impact of facility demand. The big-govemr- ment solution, the expansion of faciltties,alwa3^ prer- ferred by educational bureaucrats because it expands i their fiefdom,. and requires debt and higher taxes to bmld new or expanded schools. The small-govemment. Libertarian solution, in con trast,reduces the demand for school facilities, weak ens the educational bureaucracy, strengthen.-^ parental control,and shrinks government, rather than expanding it.Hold on, Mecklenburg County! While the state might be keeping you from voting for any Libertarians this year, the Libertarians will be- back! CHRISTOPHER COLE is a longtime member of the Ubertarian Party and former candidate for several elected, offices in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.. In opposition to the debt-based proposal of education bureaucrats, the Libertarian proposals could only be described as "small government." MY GRANDFATHER, DESpTE THE FACT THAT NE IS WWRE THAN SEVENTY YEARS OIP AND AGAINST THE REPEATED WARNINGS OF HiS GRANDSON, DECIDES TO TAtTE UP THE PSEUDO MARTAt-ARTS EXERCISE CRAZE SIMEPING THE NATION. TAC-&0. TOO CHEAP TO ACTUAUY BUY THE TAPES, MY GRANDFATHER ATIEMprs TO work: OUT WITH THE infomercial AT THREE IN THE MORNING. MINUTES LATER, HE EITHER COLLAPSES DUE TO CHRONIC EXHAUSTION OR FALLS ATTEMPTING A BILLY BLANICS-STYLE ICiCiC. EITHER WAY, SOMETHING IN HiS PACk" IS NOW MISALIGNED AND HE LIES MOTIONLESS ON THE GROUND • UNTIL SUNRISE, WHERE HE HAS pEW FOUND PY THE VERY GRANDSON WHO FOREWARNED HIM, PUT WHO HAS FAR TOO MUCH RESPECT FOR HIS aPERS TO SAY "I TOLD YOU S0.‘“
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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July 27, 2006, edition 1
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