JJIE.org has been told that all did not go well at the Yelawolf concert at the Freight Depot, a music venue, near Underground Atlanta over the weekend. Loads of people who bought tickets (for about $15 a piece) could not get into the concert venue because security closed the doors before reaching capacity. Promoter D.J. Adam Golden, an up and coming Atlanta-based music promoter, takes full responsibility and is asking ticket holders to get in touch with him on Twitter or Facebook to get their money back before the end of today, Tuesday March 8. “The cops had to shut it down because of a lack of security and that was my fault,” said Golden. “I was in charge of staffing and everything else.
I was still in Columbus, Ohio wrapping up my Kiplinger Public Affairs Journalism Fellowship at the Ohio State University when I first heard about Dr. Adia Winfrey’s H.Y.P.E. Hip-Hop Therapy. I came across it while attempting to locate some information on hip-hop’s global impact for a fellow classmate. It turned out to be yet another jewel of a find, during one of my famous (maybe infamous?) insomnia-driven Google searches that tend to take place in the wee hours of the morning. I was so very intrigued by the concept of using hip-hop as a vehicle to help troubled kids open up in therapy, that I couldn’t stop reading about it. My enthusiasm soared when I realized that “Dr. Dia,” as her clients call her, was based in the metro Atlanta area.
A room full of lawyers got a strong message from Dr. Phil McGraw, TV’s family therapist. There is “no safe place for kids anymore,” Dr. Phil told a panel on bullying at the American Bar Association’s Midyear Meeting. “Kids can’t go to their room to get away from [bullying],” he said in the videotaped address on Friday. “Bullies can still get to them through Facebook and the Internet.”
Dr. Phil said the victims of bullying need help. “We need all hands on deck,” he said. “This needs to be addressed and this needs to be addressed now.”
Other panelists echoed the call to action. Richard Katskee of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, called bullying a “systemic problem that requires a systemic response.”
“Punishing a bully is not enough,” he said. “They need therapy to help end the behavior.”
“This is a time when we can make progress and institutionalize change,” said Michael Lieberman, Washington Counsel for the Anti-Defamation league. Watch this anti-bullying PSA produced by the ABA that was featured at the conference:
The ABA’s Commission on Youth at Risk is seizing the momentum. They won support for a resolution to the House of Delegates that urges state and federal officials to take action in eliminating bullying. Dr. Phil called the resolution “top notch.” Key points of the resolution include:
Discourages inappropriate referral of youth to juvenile court
Labels expulsion and out-of-school suspension "inappropriate" punishments
Urges officials to prevent the causes of bullying
The resolution also calls for the identification of victims of bullying, a departure from current zero-tolerance policies in schools that do not distinguish between the bully and the victim. Clayton County Juvenile Court Judge Steven Teske advocates reversing these policies. “Zero tolerance policies are contrary to our fundamental right to self-defense,” Judge Teske writes in an op-ed on JJIE.org
In a panel discussion titled Bringing Youth Justice to Georgia, Judge Teske called for a reduction in school referrals to juvenile courts.
Some unlikely Atlanta women are spending hours on the Internet looking for child prostitutes, but not for personal gratification. They’re volunteers who are monitoring websites that advertise children under categories such as “escorts” as part of a new front in the war against sexual trafficking. “We have found every quarter an exponential increase in the number of girls being exploited,” said Deborah Richardson, executive vice president of the National Center for Civil & Human Rights. “One reason is the internet. Anyone can sit at home and order a young girl for sex as easily as ordering a pizza.” And just as a customer can specify pizza toppings, children can be ordered online by skin color, hair color and age, she said.
If you were expecting Dickens, forget it. Homeless kids in Georgia do not have a special look. They’re hiding right in front of you. That’s the first thing we learned from Mary, who looks like any other teenager in Atlanta. Her hair is tied up with a pink ribbon on top of her head and several subtle piercings adorn her face and ears. Dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, she is quick to flash her big, bright smile. Mary is one of an unknown number of homeless young people living in Atlanta. Mary’s experience is not very different from that of many homeless teens. After a stormy relationship with her mother, she was kicked out of her parents’ house on her 18th birthday three weeks ago. “I didn’t get along with my mom, but my dad was okay. We got along,” she said.
An Atlanta third-grader has been suspended for bringing a gun to school. After being alerted by other students, a teacher at Sarah Smith Intermediate School discovered the weapon in the 9-year-old boy’s backpack. Atlanta Public Schools spokesman Keith Bromery told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the gun was not loaded and was believed to be a BB or air gun. School officials alerted Atlanta police. The boy is suspended pending the result of a tribunal.
At Atlanta man is under arrest for sex trafficking involving children. Demetrius Darnell Homer is accused of recruiting and maintaining three young girls for prostitution. U. S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “This defendant allegedly recruited very young girls and turned them into prostitutes, robbing them of their youth, their dignity, and their freedom. Vigorously prosecuting those who exploit children and young women is a top priority for our office.”
Atlanta is considered a hot spot for child prostitution. An estimated 7,200 men are paying for sex with teenage girls every month in Georgia, according to a study called “Men Who Buy Sex with Adolescent Girls.” The report, commissioned by the campaign called A Future Not a Past, paints an alarming picture of the sex trade in North Georgia. 12,400 men pay for sex with young females each month; 7,200 of them end up having sex with underage girls. While many men were not looking for sex with teenage girls, close to half were willing to go through with the transaction even after they found out they would be hooking up with someone under 18.
A scarlet red electric guitar would normally seem out of place at a youth violence forum, but Monday evening the bloodstained instrument served as a symbolic reminder of a young man’s life cut short. Eighteen-year-old Blake Jimerson clutched it in homage to his fallen friend Katerius “Terry” Moody throughout the “Just Squash It” Emergency Town Hall Meeting, an event prompted in part by the murder of the Benjamin E. Mays High School graduate on June 26th at an East Point block party. The 18-year-old crooner was fatally shot during an impromptu performance; four other teens were wounded. “This is the last thing Terry had on him before he died,” Jimerson, a recent Washington High School graduate, told the audience of more than 100 about his friend who had planned to enlist in the U.S. Marines next month. “The blood is still on it.”
The meeting at B.E.S.T. Academy, an all-male middle school in Northwest Atlanta, was touted as an opportunity for Metro Atlanta youth -- and those who work directly with them -- to come together to propose solutions.
Eighteen-year-old Katerius Moody was in the midst of belting out a verse of the song he’d penned with fellow Polo Boys singing group members, when bullets peppered the crowd during their performance three weeks ago at an East Point block party. The young crooner, a recent Mays High School graduate, was gunned down and four other teens were wounded before he could finish the lyrics to “We Go.”
The June 26th tragedy, and others like it, have inspired an Atlanta community leader to call an emergency town hall meeting Monday, where she says “frontline” child services workers, local leaders and, more importantly, young people themselves, will get to suggest ways to curb youth violence in metro Atlanta. Atlanta Public Schools staffer Tanya Culbreth contends Moody’s death and a recent outbreak of teen violence during the popular Screen On The Green event at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park inspired her to coordinate the event. Culbreth says she wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of a similar town hall meeting Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed called following the Piedmont Park incident. “I applaud the mayor for calling an emergency meeting, but there wasn’t enough representation there from young people and those of us who work directly with young people every day,” contends Culbreth, the Home-School Parent Liaison for B.E.S.T. Academy, an all-male middle school in Northwest Atlanta. “We’re the experts and more of our voices need to be heard.
Atlanta's online teen news forum, Vox, has joined JustGeorgia in a campaign to change the state's juvenile laws. Here's part of the latest Vox post from 19 year Giovan Bazan:
The lives of countless youth are dictated by a juvenile justice system that is flawed and a code that is severely outdated. Up until recently, teens have been idly watching as their lives change for the worse either because they didn’t know how to speak out and demand change or they were unable to. Currently, the Georgia General Assembly is convening at the State Capitol, revising the laws that affect all of us teens. The Georgia Code’s Juvenile Court Provision (Juvenile Code) is a series of laws that governs how our state responds to minors and their families in cases of abuse, neglect, violations of criminal law by children and other circumstances requiring court intervention. The laws were enacted in 1971, long before any of us teens were ever born.
