Lurie column Nov 2nd- Rosa Parks- was her sacrifice in Vain?

Rosa Parks � was her sacrifice in vain?

This week, a true American hero lies in state in the Capital Rotunda, the first woman so honored, and one of a very few African Americans to be so recognized. The small Cherry casket belies the giant impact she had on our country.

Fifty years ago next month a tired Rosa Parks plopped down her weary body on a hard earned seat, because Colored folk had to climb on the bud, pay their fare, then climb down, and walk to the back door, and get back on. They were forbidden in Alabama, and many southern states from walking through the front seating section of the city bus- a section reserved for whites only.

Rosa had been evicted from the Birmingham buses several times before for run-ins with the drivers after they took her money, then drove off leaving the back door shuttered.

She was not a simple every-woman; she had worked for the NAACP and was an advisor to the NAACP Youth Council. She had spent many hours traveling to the few places tens of miles away from bus lines where �colored folk� were allowed to register to vote, and waited fruitlessly putting up with capricious and vagarious tests and roadblocks thrown in her face.

This time her patience was at the breaking point. She climbed into the back door and sat down, yet a few stops later the front filled up. The driver called for any sitting Blacks to get up and squeeze into the back of the bus to make room for more white passengers to sit down. Both paid the same fare, but that didn�t make any difference. Jim Crow laws in the deep south had been pervasive for almost a century. Segregation was the norm. Double standards were the standard.

Rosa just wanted a few minutes rest from her job as a seamstress before going home and doing her own housework.

When Rosa went off to a private �Colored� boarding school founded by  northern donors at the age of eleven, her Mom�s advice was "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were." In Alabama in the 1950�s opportunities were indeed few and far between.

In fact, life itself was a fearsome battle. Rosa recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down."

That upbringing gave her the courage and the convictions to stand up for others, and on that December day, for herself.

Her arrest led to outcries for justice and an end to the stifling segregation laws that kept  people of color oppressed and poor. The rest of the story is upbeat and dramatic. A firebrand young preacher, Martin Luther King took on Rosa�s case and urged the people of the south to boycott the city buses. They heeded his cry for nonviolent action. For over a year Blacks stayed off the buses, and drove the buses into near bankruptcy, while her case, brought by Thurgood Marshall, who eventually became a Supreme Court Justice. Won district approval, and then affirmation at the Supreme Court.

Of current interest as we approach con formation hearings for a new justice is that the Supreme Court overturned itself to agree with Marshall. In 1896 in Plessy V Ferguson, the Supreme Court referring to the 14^th amendment, ruled that �it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation� [is] recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures��

�The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power��

The court of the 1950�s had shifted dramatically from that of the late nineteenth century, and voted sweeping changes to equalize our nation of many colors. One can wonder if newly appointed justices in this century will exercise similar shifts in overturning precedence; and raise queries on when it might be justified, expected and accepted.

In Birmingham, the court ruling led to voter registration drives as King campaigned for equal justice for all � through the power of the ballot. In 1965, 76% of Blacks exercised their hard won right to vote. Evidently the drive succeeded- or did it?

On November 8^th the voter turnout in Miami County will be far less than 50%, and even lower among the black electorate. Last May, fewer than 30% of Trojans went to the polls.

The demand for universal suffrage without discrimination led to beatings, lynchings and Klan rallies. A right fought with bloodshed has been seemingly shed as irrelevant to many.

Yet when a Troy Council election is decided by 2 votes, and a presidential election could have been switched by 30 votes in each precinct � every vote matters. Including yours.  

 

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

Fertile Elections grow lots of signs

Fertile local elections grow more signs

Local elections draw out a different crowd and atmosphere than national politics. The campaigns are much more focused, local and low key.

Only the yard signs sprouting like weeds along our highways and byways have a similarity with the Presidential campaign of 2004. Only now the signs are much more diverse and colorful. I was really tired of the red white and blue of yore and much appreciate the vibrant colors of this Fall.

The colors are indicative of the people running. Party affiliations are rarely important in local races. Experience, attitude, focus and willingness to work masochistic hours for a few thousand dollars a year that drive me to appreciate many of those running this year.

School Board members spend hundreds of hours a year poring over budgets, working with administrators and listening to parents. They need to be knowledgeable about issues, education, our children, pedagogy theory, state and federal laws, union contracts, human resource issues and more. My fellow members of the Troy Daily News Editorial board have been and will be interviewing the candidates for election, and those running for re-election to make our endorsements and recommendations for Trojans.

We will be looking at experience, attitude and common sense. Seeking to recommend the candidates that have children in the system, that have relevant experience managing a large corporation- after all, with almost 700 employees, Troy City Schools is one of our top local employers and businesses. Those running for school board know they will be acting as the Board of Directors for the major enterprise under their care. The challenges for the Superintendent are many, I have outlined them here, and been both applauded and vilified for raising thorny and touchy issues that will need to be dealt with by the locally elected Board and our administrators.  

We will elect a few Trojans to take on an arduous task. Before you vote for them, take the time to meet the, review their positions and background. Unlike the often imperial and slanted selection of the Board of Directors at publicly held corporations, we have the ability, right and responsibility to peruse the local citizens who we select to assure our children get the best education possible.

Across town at City Hall, several City Council members are running for re-election, and a few have risen up to challenge them Concurrently with electing council members, we will be asked to approve or deny a change in election terms. Whether to have Council members serve for four year terms rather than two. This change would reduce the time our council members need to spend on what is turning into a constant election cycle that requires ever more expensive campaigns to run. Some argue a two year term makes it easier to �turn a rascal out� others believe that four year terms give members more latitude to operate independently and focus their energies on Trojans and their constituencies.

Frankly, I wouldn�t want the job. Council takes some serious abuse from people who seem to get their jolly�s challenging even the most obtuse or benign Council or committee agenda item. They are whip-sawed by events, the economy and the ever growing needs of a more sophisticated community strapped in a stagnant manufacturing economy.

 

For the competitive wards and the at-large choices; make sure to ask not what party a candidate belongs to, which matters little locally where every candidate is generally rational and fiscally conservative, but what they have and plan to do for the city. Is there a vision? A desire to serve? Or just a desire to get along/go along?

For those of us who live South of the Great Miami River in Troy, we are part of Concord Township, those who live North are part of Staunton Township. This is a little known fact until we see Township Trustees listed on our ballot and suspect the Board of Elections threw them in as a joke. It isn�t funny this year. Although city residents rarely are affected by the township activities this election is important.

Concord Trustee Bob Shook is running for re-election. Having tirelessly driven the project to build a county-wide bike path we have all benefited from his vision and leadership.

Local bank officer Bill Whidden and JVS Superintendent Karl Wilson are running for the first time. They both want to see the Township work in closer cooperation with Troy to keep the costs for fire and emergency services low and assure the township gets ongoing superior service. The barrier between city and township is blurring, these experienced folks will make sure that the needs of everyone in Concord Township are protected and served.

Former Speaker of the House Tip O�Neil famously said �All politics is local�. Your vote on these local officials will have far more impact on your economic well being and your children�s future than practically anything that happens in Washington.

November 8^th is just 2 weeks away. Study the people and Vote for the best.

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

Lurie coilumn- Notes from the Bayou

Ben Fisher is a Dayton area volunteer with the Red Cross. He knows how they can help people. With one son in ROTC, and two others with disabilities living at home he has seen his share of challenges. But nothing quite prepared him for the last three weeks in the Bayou 20 miles East of New Orleans, in the area that DID bear the brunt of a class V Hurricane barreling ashore.

His ROTC support groups sent a OneCall Now message to invite other Dayton area families to a sunshine picnic last weekend. Ben wasn�t able to go. He has been working 14 hour days in the parishes of Mississippi helping people reclaim their lives, their hopes and their dignity. The task is overwhelming.

Friends of Ben have helped set up a web site to post thoughts and prayers for the peoples of the Bayou. LibertysGhost.com is pretty sparse so far, but features some poetry and musings about the suffering and problems facing the 400,000 homeless in the region.

Ben walked around his small part of the world with his cell phone set on speaker-phone, letting me listen in on some of the most surreal and emotional conversations one could ever have.

Camping in �pop tents� just across the still swollen creek from Ben�s campground are 300 Mormon�s who, driving from Utah, arrived almost as soon as the National Guard dispatched from the next state. They brought their own chain saws, sleeping bags and tents. They shared a shower with the Red Cross volunteers. These rugged outdoors folks from the mountains overlooking The Great Salt Lake are have been cutting brush with a passion. Rogue contractors have been charging $6500 to clear away the downed trees blocking a small home lot. The Mormon�s do it for free in a few hours. In more normal times, the task would be billed out at a few hundred dollars. The Mormon campers gave Ben a weary but warm �Hello� as he walked through their camp with me on the call.

Back on his side of the creek, the singing of Mennonite volunteers around a campfire could be heard through the tinny speaker of my phone. Old favorites like �She�ll be coming round the mountain� echoed through the crackling of fire. Wood is in plentiful supply, but it isn�t till late at night that the exhausted volunteers can enjoy it. Partially because it takes a few hours after sunset for the sweltering temperatures to ease enough to sit by a fire. �A few hours later the temperatures will drop to chilly and the folks will squeeze into six cot spaces just a few inches apart in tents designed for four.� When I got here people were at each others� throats from the stress and work. I do comedy at home- and used it here to relieve stress. There are people in this camp from a dozen states, speaking just as many languages. It�s a hodge podge, but we are all here to help these folks.�

�The porta-potties were picked up today. The contractor said that FEMA had told them to pull out. That the worst was over. The Dayton Red Cross volunteers have asked to borrow the Mormon shovels to dig latrines. The government is just not doing it�

Ben walked up to a man leaving the shower. �The Army delivered a shower truck today. For the past two months the volunteers used a tarp wrapped around a few trees for privacy and a hose from a water truck. Captain Pierce in M.A.S.H. had a much better set-up.�

�There�s still no electricity anywhere nearby. All water has to be trucked in. Keeping food from spoiling is a serious challenge. The nearest ice source is 100 miles away, and its� just as far to get sheet rock. I do sheet rock work in Dayton, we charge about $40 a sheet to buy, mount and tape a new 8x4� board for painting. A 12 by 12 foot room will use 14 sheets. Folks here are being charged $125 a sheet to rebuild what�s left of their homes.

Benny is 78. He rode out the storm in his trailer, He is now living in a burrow scraped out beneath the battered and roofless remains of his home. He shares the hole with 58 ducks. But Benny isn�t bowed. �Could�a been worse. Gators could�a gotten my dog. Yep, could�a been worse.� He crawls out a few times a day to scrounge for materials to build some more permanent  shelter for winter and find something to eat.

�The Baptists have been wonderful. They showed up with trailers and gas grills and wooden tables and chairs. They have been up every morning at 4 to start making breakfast and doing our laundry by hand in barrels and tubs.  They sleep in one of the brick church, one of the few buildings left standing. They make the food for us to distribute to the people of the Parish.

�I drive under fallen trees, and around a tugboat hanging over the road hung up in trees to hand out the meals. I turn the radio speaker into a megaphone and announce �Hot meals and cold drinks� as we drive through what used to be a town. People are embarrassed and humiliated to take a handout. An elderly couple is reduced to begging for food. Their million dollar house is now totally gone.

The next meals are given to a woman who had nothing but a shack which is also gone. �Most of these folks have never went further from home than New Orleans. There are 6 generations of family that all living back-to-back in a long term culture mixing self-sufficiency and poverty. Now its� all gone and they don�t know how to take it.

Around the bend a man living in a scrap wood lean-to had painted a sign saying �HELP FIMA!� Ben stopped to give him a meal and point out that FEMA is the proper spelling. The geezer said, �Nope, they can FInd My A-- in the swamp�. Ben and the guy laughed at the joke. �That guy took me gator hunting last week, I have a Gator tooth necklace to bring back to Dayton.

Ben walked over to a young child and handed her a McDonald�s Happy Meal toy. She sounded a gleeful squeal. Her parents are traumatized and she has had nothing to for two months now. The trash heap piled ten feet high near what used to be a home is festering, the smell of dead animals permeates the air around her. Ben gave her a piece of bubble gum and it was received like gold.

Ben introduced me to the Parish President, living with the Red Cross folks in a tent. He said, �This will unite us again, we are so diverse and strong. But it ain�t gonna be easy�.

Finally, Ben asked me to pass on this message from his web site, referring to Liberty�s light; �We shall keep this torch burning bright in the hearts of all Americans knowing that though we are free to speak, and pray we are never free to forget.

 

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com

Leib Lurie 

Lurie Column oct 12: Ohio Issues worth time to vote yes

In less than 3 weeks we will have the opportunity to try out the new electronic voting machines in Miami County.

If the machines clog and jam, you can thank the cronyism politics that issues 2,3,4,5 are out to cure. If the touch screen instructions are confusing, and difficult to read (and to vote on all the issues you will have to wade through screen after screen to read all 2,000 words before proceeding.

Too many people will be frustrated and confused, and bail out before completing the process, which is too bad because all 5 issues are worthy of support.

Issue 1 is a bond issue to improve infrastructure (repair and re-build brides, roads, and facilities in the state), clean up old industrial brown sites (finally) and provide funding for advanced R&D projects by education institutions and businesses. This will create new high tech jobs and technology projects to help offset the 25% decline in traditional manufacturing jobs here in Ohio over the past five years. The issue is being opposed by a small group of legislators including our State Representative Diana Fessler who decries it as another way for government to spend money. She is wrong on this one. Our state needs to maintain infrastructure, and the amounts for this bond issue are in line with ongoing needs.

The R&D portion however has been contentious. It is intended to create new jobs and new opportunities to replace those lost such as when Panasonic shifts from traditional CRT manufacturing here to Plasma and LCD manufacturing in Asia. When Delphi declares bankruptcy for its US plants, but not its many overseas facilities, Ohio workers will lose more jobs. Election machine maker Diebold has already moved almost1/3 of their jobs offshore. High tech jobs need not just a focus on excellence in high tech education, but novel ideas and new businesses based on the Research our Universities produce. Issue #1 will provide incentives and support to bring the �D� part of R&D, Development, to entire sectors of R&D put on the ballot by a bi-partisan vote of the legislature. Both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly support Issue #1. A yes vote on Issue #1 will allow our state to use its� borrowing power to raise low interest monies and grants for these endeavors to create needed new high paying jobs in Ohio.

Issues 2,3,4,& 5 will require even more scrolling, bring your reading glasses. Thousands of words will need to be passed over or read in detail while hundreds stack up behind you in line.

Yet the issues are straight forward and all make sense, particularly given the mug slinging before and after the 2004 election.

Issue #2 will allow anyone to vote up to 35 days before election, so called �early voting� process. Just vote by mail, or in the courthouse anytime up to 5 weeks before the traditional date. I also like the idea of voting early because you can vote before the last minute crud on TV tries to make a logical choice an emotional one.

Issue #3 Places strict caps on how much individuals can donate to candidates; making it harder for cronies such as, say, antique coin dealers or imagine this, golfing buddies, to influence our elections.

Issue #4 takes the management of our elections out of the hands of political appointees and party officials; and creates a non-partisan commission with no hidden agenda to run our elections in the future. In 2004 Secretary of State Blackwell issued numerous memos and directives that many believed were aimed at reducing the voter turnout of some parties while benefiting others. Since he held a senior state position with one Presidential candidate, many felt that he was less than independent. YES on issue 4 will take the politics out of managing elections.

Issue #5 is aimed at the cartographers in all of us. Currently, when the legislators re-draw boundaries for districts, the process is fraught with politics. The word Gerrymander comes from Governor Elbridge Gerry who drew a meandering boundary for a Federalist district in 1811 that looked like a Salamander wandering through Massachusetts. Many say our Ohio districts were created in heaven, but they really mean our districts often look like constellation star maps with illogical lines running all over the place. Voting yes here will create an independent commission to manage changes logically and fairly.

So I urge you to try out the new machines, it will be a lengthy and frustrating experience for many, but by voting yes on issues 1-5, maybe we will get on the path to better jobs, saner elections and assure more rational candidates (well 2 out of three isn�t bad).

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

 

Lurie column Oct 5: People with Disabilities have Possibilities

Riverside is no longer a traditional school and cloister for the mentally handicapped; it is the modest office for one of the state�s most cost effective programs for people with disabilities.

The Miami County Board of Mental Retardation and Development Disabilities (MC MR/DD but more commonly called Riverside) has a 3 year renewal levy on the ballot in November. There will be No tax increase, this is just a request for the funds to continue serving more than 800 people in the county.

Hundreds of children, for some starting when they are just a few months old, are helped with new and advanced programs of intervention and assistance to treat development disabilities early and head on. The results are often dramatic. Many children receiving this help enter school testing normally.

Watching youngsters practice balance and motor skills as they learn new neural pathways to grow beyond development disabilities that previously were untreated and resulted in a lifetime requirement for care is satisfying to watch, and even more so to know how much the small sum expended early saves so much in emotion, lives and money through life.

For years, the brown brick school house opposite Duke Park was where �those people� were sent as children. Away from the mainstream, away from other kids. Put in an environment where they were isolated and hidden. Like my Great Uncle George who spent 7 decades locked away from society because he had the misfortune to be born with a low functioning IQ. Today, most kids are seen as having possibilities, not disabilities, as they are helped through early childhood intervention and training, and then in classrooms with other Trojans. Today�s �normal� kids are much more likely to go to school with a classmate that has challenges, yet significant possibilities.

Although our schools and I am frustrated that the Federal government in forcing the end of separate but equal education facilities for those mentally retarded or with developmental disabilities also made the nonsensical ruling that most of these children should be tested and need to achieve normal grade levels of performance, or the school will get a failing grade. I wish our Federal Government would realize that you cannot simply legislate retardation out of existence. But maybe expecting intelligence in the White House and Congress is my failure to recognize THEIR unique developmental disability diagnosed as �cuttaxesfortherich - syndrome.

The MC MR/DD does take a load off our schools by providing after-school and weekend programs for these kids in ways that address their specific needs through childhood and into self-sufficient adulthood.

Hundreds of otherwise unemployable adults are helped by MC MR/DD. Hand holding and guiding their training, people with limited capacity are transformed and grow to support themselves, take on jobs that are hard to fill, and participate in our community.

Our aging population includes parents of people with disabilities. Riverside has specialized help and assistance programs to help adults when their care giving parents are no longer able to do so. My neighbor is a proud client of the program to get work, support and activities that challenge her, and help her widowed mother cope. MC MR/DD has helped thousands of families set up trusts, guardianship and other methods to assure continued care after the death of parents.

A separately operated entity, RT Industries, on Foss Way in Troy, is the local sheltered workshop for these people with possibilities. Here, people are given ongoing productive work and projects. My companies have used RT Industries to cost effectively assemble mailings and label / pack software disks. Fellow Optimist Larry Henry was impressed as RT workers assembled thousands of Hobart battery chargers with not a single defect.

This levy funds 45% of the annual budget, another levy provides 30%, and the balance from state and federal government programs; but recent changes at the federal and state level will reduce their contribution next year. So every penny is needed; and having reviewed a state report of each Ohio county, I can assure you that Riverside serves more people per capita, with more services, for less money than all other counties in the state.

Riverside has a simple sounding mission that requires hard work by their 160 dedicated staff. �Empower children and adults with developmental disabilities to live, work, and play as full members of the Miami County Community.�

Voting YES on this renewal levy will not raise taxes, but will allow Riverside to continue raising the bar for improving the life and opportunities for their clients, our fellow Miami County People with Possibilities.

Leib Lurie is a Troy Civic Theatre Board Member, Optimist Club member and CEO of phone message service OneCallNow.com. You can reach him at Leib@Lurie.net

Or see these columns on his blog at www.llurie.blogspot.com