COMMUNITY
WELLNESS
EXPO
The presence of movie trailers in the parking lot of Arabia Mountain High School netted the school system $3,000 in parking fees. A3
The recent spate of deadly tornados in North Georgia has safety experts encouraging families to be prepared for the worst. A8
Parents and youth can explore multiple options for the summer at CrossRoadsNews’ annual Summer Camp Expo at the Mall at Stonecrest. Section B
Movie presence
Tornado prep encouraged
Summer camp info
EAST ATLANTA • DECATUR • STONE MOUNTAIN • LITHONIA • AVONDALE ESTATES • CLARKSTON • ELLENWOOD • PINE LAKE • REDAN • SCOTTDALE • TUCKER
Copyright © 2012 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
March 24, 2012
Volume 17, Number 47
www.crossroadsnews.com
DeKalb voters won’t get say in School Board size By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
DeKalb voters will get a smaller School Board in 2014, but they won’t get to vote in a referendum on the new size of that board. A House motion calling for a nonbinding referendum to set the School Board at seven or nine members was defeated 7-3 during a meeting of the DeKalb delegation on March 20. State Rep. Pam Stephenson expressed frustration with Tuesday’s vote. “It’s the will of the people we are here for,” she said. “But you render the majority of the population silent. You don’t want to hear from the people.” Stephenson said she doesn’t like that she
“If we had the referendum in November 2012, we could come back with a bill before 79 is implemented that says, ‘This is what the people wanted.’ They knew that, and that’s why they didn’t want it.” Rep. Pam Stephenson
is at the Capitol voting on maps that don’t represent the community. She said that the premise for suspending SB79 was that lawmakers would ask the people in a referendum and then act. “When they spoke, we would act,” she said. “But the next thing we heard is that we don’t need it [the referendum]. We are
going to tell the people. I said, ‘That’s not what we said.’ When we act, we should follow through with what we said. Now we are hearing it’s going to be confusing.” Stephenson, who represents House District 92, said that the people in her district are intelligent. “We go to the polls and we know how to answer questions,” she said. “No one here wants to hear the answer – do you want it to stay the same or do you want it go down. If you hear the answer, that may mean that your constituents are on a different lane than
you are.” Senate Bill 79 passed the General Assembly in 2011 as a general legislation with only three of the 19-member DeKalb House Delegation supporting it. It requires that the nine-member DeKalb School Board be reduced to not more than seven members on Jan. 1, 2013, but did not provide for a referendum to remove members who are in the middle of their terms of office. Elected officials cannot be removed from office without a referendum. Delegation members had reached a compromise on Feb. 15 to suspend the bill, which would have removed five board members Please see SCHOOL BOARD, page 5
Outrage Over Florida Teen’s Death Trayvon Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton March, address a rally in New York City’s Union Square on March 21.
DeKalb residents join activists demanding justice By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
More than a dozen South DeKalb residents were rallying in Sanford, Fla., on Thursday demanding the arrest of the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The local residents were among three busloads of metro Atlantans who left early Thursday for the nine-hour drive to the city near Orlando. Trayvon Martin They were joining the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s call for justice for Martin, who was shot to death on Feb. 26 by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. The youth was walkGeorge Zimmerman ing back to his father’s fiancée’s home from the store when Zimmerman accosted him and shot him. Zimmerman, who is 80 pounds heavier than the teen, claimed self-defense. As of press time late Thursday, police had not arrested him. Martin was black and Zimmerman is white. Only Skittles and an iced tea were found on the youth’s body. Sharpton said this case is as bad as it gets. “When you have an unarmed young man killed for no reason, and they refuse to arrest the assailant, it puts all of us at risk,” he said.
David Shankbone
The 911 tapes released March 16 revealed a 911 operator telling Zimmerman not to follow the youth and the teen’s desperate cry for help before he was shot to death. The DeKalb residents joined thousands attending a rally Thursday night at First Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford. Hundreds of buses Mawuli Davis were expected from around the country. Decatur attorney Mawuli “Mel” Davis, who made the trip to Sanford, said Wednesday that he had to go to support the Martin family. “This is not a case for us,” he said late
Wednesday. “But we feel obligated to challenge what they have done. It’s unheard of that the police have not arrested the shooter.” The Atlanta bus trip was organized within two days, and Davis’ Flat Shoals Parkway law office was one of the places that people could purchase tickets. By Wednesday afternoon, more than 10 people had been to the office to pay for the trip, which departed at 6 a.m. on Thursday from First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. Before the shooting, Zimmerman, 28, had called 911 to say the youth was “suspicious.” Records show he had called 911 perhaps as much as 50 times reporting “suspicious persons” in his neighborhood. Zimmerman is being protected by Flor-
ida’s Stand Your Ground Law that allows a citizen to use deadly force against an attacker if they feel threatened. In his 911 call about Martin, he told the operator: “He got his hand in his waist. … He is a black male.” When the 911 operator asked him if he was following the teen, Zimmerman said yes. “OK, we don’t need you to do that,” the operator told him. Even though Zimmerman replied with an “OK,” he continued to pursue the teen. Sharpton calls Florida’s Stand Your Ground law absurd. “They are saying that someone who is Please see RALLY, page A2