Category: Features
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Village Life: Memories burned into Washington School’s demise: “This one hurts the most”
By Gary Fisher She was nearly half a century old by the time I showed up. Creaky wooden windows, stifling forced heat, so thick you could taste it, zero air conditioning, lead paint everywhere, and asbestos-covered pipes. The ancient bathrooms with the old radiators (an especially egregious artifice when some miscreant relieved himself on it),…
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Tendaji Talk: “The Deep Sting of Slavery”
By Harold C. Ford “It’s really not enough to say, ‘Those were horrible days and let them pass.’ Uncovering this buried history … could also help ease the kind of intergenerational trauma that silence can mask, trauma that can seep through entire communities.” –Margaret Burnham, Northeastern University professor, from “Healing Requires Truth” by Samantha Michaels,…
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Education Beat: Flint School Board votes unanimously to talk with Mott Foundation CEO Ridgway White about abandoned Central-Whittier campus
By Harold C. Ford On Wednesday, Oct .20, near the end of another long meeting (four hours and 22 minutes), the Flint Board of Education (FBOE) voted 6-0 to invite C. S. Mott Foundation CEO Ridgway White to visit and talk about the future of the long-abandoned Flint Central High School-Whittier Middle School campus. Votes…
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Commentary: Secure MI Vote petition won’t secure your vote — or democracy
By Paul Rozycki A few years ago I was asked to give a presentation on the right to vote to a large number of prospective election workers at City Hall. As I looked out over the audience, I realized that almost none of those present could have voted when this nation began. The great majority…
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Education Beat: Flint Cultural Center Academy survived COVID, construction and start-up challenges to make it to third year
By Harold C. Ford In its third year of operation, Flint’s newest school, the nonprofit charter Flint Cultural Center Academy (FCCA), has managed to survive and continue adding grades despite adjustments to COVID, construction at the nearby Sloan Museum and Flint Public Library, and challenges faced by some of its economically-disadvantaged students. “We’re not where…
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Dale Kildee, Flint’s Congressman for 36 years, dies at age 92
By Paul Rozycki Dale Kildee, who served as Flint’s congressman for 36 years, died Oct. 13 at age 92. He was one of the longest serving members of Congress and was reelected to the U.S. House 18 times, retiring in 2012. Kildee, who had considered entering the priesthood, earned his B.A. at Sacred Heart Seminary…
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Neighborhoods in Beecher site of this week’s mobile vaccination unit: free lunch, shots offered Thursday and Saturday
By Tom Travis A new community collaboration is bringing Covid vaccines, water, meals and other resources to Flint neighborhoods again this week, with free lunch and COVID-19 vaccines available in the neighborhoods in Beecher on Thursday, Oct. 14 and Saturday, Oct. 16 from 12 noon to 3 p.m. both days. Genesee County’s rate of full…
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Review: One weekend only of The Rep’s first show, an absurdist comedy, reminds audience of humans’ dark predicaments
By Patsy Isenberg The Rep made a surprising choice for the first play of the 2021-22 season. It was the absurdist comedy, “Happy Days,” a two-act play by Samuel Beckett, written in 1961. Theatre of the Absurd “Theater that seeks to represent the absurdity of human existence in a meaningless universe by bizarre or fantastic…
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Bill to change “Good Time” policy for incarcerated prisoners focus of Michigan Justice Advocacy event Saturday, Oct. 9
By Tom Travis In the last 40 years, Michigan’s prison population has ballooned 71 percent, with State expenditures on prisons and the incarcerated also jumping from $330 million to $2.4 billion — an average of $44,000 per prisoner per year. These are among facts that the The Michigan Justice Advocacy (MJA) organization hopes to highlight in…
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