November 1 - 7, 2012
Volume 85 Issue 14
POWERED BY REAL TIMES MEDIA
WWW.ADWNEWS.COM
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Change Your Clocks This Weekend And VOTE On November 6th!
Local Experts React Poll Shows Negative Racial Attitudes
Obama Wins By A Landslide In Kids' Online Election It's a landslide for President Barack Obama -- at least among people too young to vote. Nickelodeon's Linda Ellerbee said Monday, Oct. 29, that the president captured 65 percent of the vote to beat Republican Mitt Romney in the network's “Kids Pick the President” vote. More than 520,000 people cast online ballots through the children's network's Web site over
one week earlier this month. Since it began in 1988, the kids have presaged the adults' vote all but once, when more youngsters voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush in 2004. Obama answered questions submitted by Nickelodeon viewers for a special earlier this month. Romney didn't participate.
Civil Rights Timeline Mural Dedicated At Wells Fargo’s West End Branch Features images of civil rights icons, scenes from civil rights struggle Iconic photos of civil rights leaders, combined with images from the Civil Rights Movement’s front lines -- such as the first group of AfricanAmerican Atlanta police officers -- make up Wells Fargo’s Civil Rights Timeline mural dedicated recently. Sixty feet long and stretching half the circumference of the lobby of the Wells Fargo West End Lee Street bank branch, the mural starts with a 1928 photo of the office of the Atlanta Daily World and ends with a mid-90s reenactment of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. In between are photos of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., former Atlanta Mayor and U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, 1940s activist Ella Baker and others. Scenes depicted include a lunch counter sit-in, a meeting of Freedom Riders who helped desegregate interstate buses and a protest of Atlanta department stores.
“Every day we strive to be the best local bank – with all you can get from a great national bank,” said Wells Fargo Area President Chad Gregory. “Something that makes us truly local is our Community Mural Program. We’ve installed over 50 murals here in Atlanta and this one, here at West End Lee is our very first timeline mural. “Atlanta was the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement – and this part of town was in the middle of that. Just look around and you’ll see a sweeping depiction of key people in the middle of key events during this world-changing era. Our customers will be reminded of this history every time they visit.” Among those attending was Brooke Jackson Edmond, daughter of Maynard Jackson, “This is a wonderful gift to the city of Atlanta. I love the sweep of it and the photos are so apropos of the people shown and what they represented.”
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Associated Press A new Associated Press (AP) poll finding that racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first Black president comes as no surprise to Atlanta experts. “The rhetoric of the Republican right wing has been pandering to these feelings and has made them acceptable and encouraged,” says Dr. Michael Harris, associate professor of African-American studies at Emory University. Dr. Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College and author of “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” agrees that the poll findings might be expected. “The combination of social change, economic distress, and growing populations of color is experienced by some Whites as threatening. In that context, it is not surprising to see a rise in negative attitudes toward the ‘other’ -in this case, Blacks and Latinos,” she says. The AP poll found that racial prejudice has
INSIDE: Black Girls Learn Computer Code page 5
Ballethnic presents Urban Nutcracker page 9
See What’s Happening Around Town page 16
increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly. In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-Black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-Black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-Black attitudes fell. “As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-Black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” says Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey. Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too.
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GA Wants Judge to Ax KKK Litter Program Lawsuit By KATE BRUMBACK Associated Press A judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Ku Klux Klan group that was turned down for participation in a highway cleanup program, the state of Georgia said this week. The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation sued last month on behalf of the International Keystone Knights of the KKK in Union County, saying the state violated the group's right to free speech. The state on Monday, Oct. 29, filed its response and supporting brief in Fulton County Superior Court. The lawsuit, which names the state and various state agencies and officials, asks the court to force the state to issue an Adopt-a-Highway permit to the KKK; issue a permanent injunction preventing the state from denying the KKK such a permit; and declare that the state wrongfully denied the group's application and violated due process. The response argues that claims against state agencies and officials are generally barred in state courts by sovereign immunity. Even if that were not the case, the suit should be dismissed because the KKK didn't file the lawsuit in time,
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