PRESORTED STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID MINNEAPOLIS MN PERMIT NO. 32468
Stepping out in Style At Ebony Fashion Fair
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May 4 - May 10, 2009 • MN Metro Vol. 35 No. 18 • The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • www.insightnews.com
Signing with Broncos, Ohio State
Pedescleaux, Hill discuss next level choices By Al McFarlane & B.P Ford The Editors University of Northern Iowa standout defensive end, 6-6 305lb Everett Pedescleaux last week signed as a free agent with the Denver Broncos. The former Armstrong High School star athlete spent the weekend in Plymouth, MN with family and friends watching the NFL Draft unfold, while maintaining contact with his sports agent who was furiously negotiating on his behalf for the right deal as a free agent once the draft rounds closed Sunday night. Pedescleaux departed for Denver Thursday morning. His signing with the Broncos means he still has to compete to make the team roster, but, he said in an interview Tuesday on the “Conversations with Al McFarlane” KFAI FM 90.3 broadcast, “I am headed to Denver with a point to prove. I think this is the best team for my skill-set and the best place for me to make the kind of contribution I believe I can make to the success of a team.” Pedescleaux said he and many others thought he would likely be drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA) rather than the NFL. He is big and extremely quick. He has phenomenal jumping ability, a factor he says will make him an
asset for breaking up pass plays. Pedescleaux was also an exceptional baseball player, but decided to focus on football at UNI. Taylor Hill appeared with Pedescleaux on the radio broadcast last week. And on the following day, Wednesday, she was named to the All-USA 2009 Women’s High School Basketball Team by USA Today. The 5-10 South High Senior Guard previously announced she will be attending Ohio State, where her older brother also plays basketball. Hill said in USA Today, “I started playing when I was 5. I started playing with my older brother’s team until I as 10, and then my dad got a team for us girls because they made a rule that girls couldn’t play with boys anymore.” She said making it to the McDonald’s All-American Game ranked as a huge accomplishment, along with winning the Minnesota state title. The McDonald’s selection from among more than 1.500 girls considered the students’ community and home lives as well as ability on the basketball court, she said. “Losing back-to-back state championships just made me want to work harder to win a state championship,” she said. “I knew that this year, I wasn’t walking off the court without a “W,” and we walked off with a win.” Hill praised her dad and mom, Paul and Monique Hill, for parental
Ben Jealous: On Obama’s 100th day democracy hangs in the balance
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Everett Pedescleaux and Taylor Hill appearing on the “Conversations with Al McFarlane” KFAI FM 90.3 broadcast direction including coaching from her dad and time management and academic focus from her mom. She said her family kept her centered and grounded in their faith. Pedescleaux likewise said family meant everything to him. His goals, he said, include providing a better situation for his mom. Since coming to Minnesota in Junior High School to live with aunt and uncle Clara and Ray McFarlane, Pedescleaux has been separated from his mom. He moved with
family here in order to further develop already highly refined athletic abilities. Both the Rev. Randolph Staten and Prof. Mahmoud El-Kati reflected on the legacy of athletescholars in our community. El-Kati reminded the two that they belong to a stellar tradition of achievement and excellence of great scholar-athletes who amalgamated physical and intellectual ability in pursuit of achievement both in athletics and in the civic and cultural life of our
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Suluki Fardan
community. Staten, himself a former professional football player, said our community celebrates the achievement of these and other students who are scholars and athletes. He said what is unique about our athletes is their ability to resist the temptation to see themselves in individualistic light, but rather to remember that grow and excel and achieve for themselves from the well defined and resilient fabric or community and culture.
Film review Obsessed
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New policies reduce detention By Al McFarlane & B.P Ford The Editors Part 1 in a series Part 1 in a series
StudioTobechi
Bill English
Elliot Stewart-Franzen
Rev. Randy Staten
Legislators, city hall should stand down
Critics should allow calm look at Burroughs issues By Al McFarlane Editor-in-Chief al@insightnews.com Speaking from the context of Black experience in Minnesota and the nation, the Rev. Randolph Staten and William English, co-chairs of the Coalition of Black Churches and African American Leadership Summit, Thursday aligned Minneapolis Public Schools
administrators on the right side of civil and human rights in the school district’s decision to suspend a South Minneapolis school principal. “One of the major Strategic Plan Goals of the Minneapolis School Board and Administration is to: ‘Identify and correct practices and policies that perpetuate the achievement gap and institutional
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In moral leaders’ tradition
Ellison protests Darfur inaction
In the same vain of other political agents of change such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, and Nelson Mandela, Georgia Congressman John Lewis, and Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison were arrested for civil disobedience last week Monday for protesting outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC. The act received overwhelming support form Ellison’s constituents.
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U.S. Rep Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota)
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) attempts to reduce inappropriate jailing of young people here and around the country. Jim Payne is a consultant and technical assistance provider for the Annie E Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. Payne began his career as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s office, where he spent six years, the last four trying homicides
and major felony cases. In 1982, he was appointed New York City’s chief juvenile prosecutor. After six years in that position, he was named commissioner of the New York City department of probation. Since leaving government service, Payne has worked in the private, nonprofit sector. He advises the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, which he says “is about system transformation. It’s about looking at our juvenile justice system, looking at the children that we make decisions to detain and to place out of home, and making those better decisions – keeping kids in the community, under a degree of support and supervision and monitoring that protects public
From Worthington to the White House
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www.mncourts.gov
Judge Tanya Bransford
safety and has good outcomes for the kids. “Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, MD is 18-yearsold. We work in about 104 jurisdictions throughout the
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Swine flu puts country on alert By Hazel Trice Edney NNPA Editor-in-Chief WASHINGTON (NNPA) – The Obama Administration has declared a public health emergency in the U. S. in response to an outbreak of the swine flu virus that has reportedly killed as many as 103 people in Mexico and caused at least 20 non-deadly influenza cases in the U. S. President Obama has said while the country is in a constant state of alert, there is no cause for alarm. Meanwhile, two top African American medical experts, interviewed by the NNPA News Service, are reiterating key ways to avoid getting this strand of the flu, given the disparate impacts and outcomes that medical conditions often have in Black communities. “African Americans should be indeed concerned about this, but there are a number of things that they can do and should do to decrease the likelihood of developing this infection,” says
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St. Paul student wins U of Minnesota Leadership and Service Award
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Dr. Louis Sullivan, a former Secretary of Health and Human Services and founder of the Morehouse School of Medicine. “It seems to be a very aggressive type of virus so the main thing is to avoid it,” said Dr. Rubens J. Pamies, chair of the congressional advisory committee for the U. S. Office of Minority Health and a vice chancellor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “African Americans are not
genetically predisposed to getting viruses quicker,” Pamies said. But, he stressed that socioeconomic and pre-existing medical conditions can exacerbate the spread or affect of the virus in the Black community. Lack of health care plans, lower quality health care and resistance to seeing a doctor quickly have also caused disparate illness in Black communities, experts have said.
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With the addition of Harvin, Vikings show will be worth the price of admission
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