Difference between revisions of "User:RahalMccall69"

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(Some St. Louis arrests at Brown shooting protests)
(Waiting for a Skate Park has Been its Own Era in Boston)
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ST. LOUIS 鈥?Seventeen people were arrested on suspicion of unlawful assembly, St. Louis police said Sunday, and more protests are planned over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson this summer.
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The effort to build a skate park under the Zakim Bridge has long been caked in toxic soil, twisted in bureaucracy, and snagged by miscommunication. The Charles River Conservancy (CRC), the Cambridge non-profit that spearheaded the project more than 10 years ago, . Yet as of today, eight years later, the designated spot remains a brown field.
  
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Organizers of the four-day Ferguson October summit are protesting the shooting of the black man by a white policeman, which sparked sometimes violent demonstrations in the predominantly black St. Louis suburb of Ferguson in August.
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Because of that, I was more than a little skeptical that any progress would be made on the project when it came out in July that Vans, the California skate shoe brand, to the CRC to get things moving. The organization already had more money than it said it needed; what the hell is a million and a half more?
  
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Early Sunday morning, several protesters made their way to the south St. Louis neighborhood where another black 18-year-old was killed by a white police officer recently. Protesters occupied a Quicktrip gas station convenience store and staged a sit-in.  
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Then, on Thursday, the CRC posted to its website that an official groundbreaking was scheduled for October 23 at 9 a.m., rain or shine. I reached out to Renata von Tscharner, founder of the CRC, to confirm that I wasn鈥檛 hallucinating.
  
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St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson posted on Twitter that protesters were attempting to storm the business. He later posted that protesters were throwing rocks at the police.  
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鈥淵ou are right,鈥?she wrote in an email. 鈥?V>ery exciting.鈥?
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While I鈥檓 fully expecting an asteroid to wipe out Boston before anyone actually puts shovel to dirt on this project, it does seem that finally, after all these years, after all this money from grants and public donations has sat dormant for so long, that the city is about to receive its very own state of the art skate park.
  
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St. Louis police spokeswoman Schron Jackson said Sunday in an email that 17 people were arrested on suspicion of unlawful assembly. There were no reports of injuries or property damage, the email said.
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I鈥檓 still entrenched firmly in Camp I鈥檒l-Believe-It-When-I-See-It, but nevertheless, now seems like a good time to put into perspective just how long it has taken to get this thing rolling because the wait has truly proven to be an era of its own.
  
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On Monday, a direct action led by local and visiting clergy members is planned for Ferguson and other spots in and around St. Louis. Protest leaders don t plan to release details until shortly ahead of time to avoid tipping off law enforcement. Leaders are taking their cues from the Moral Monday demonstrations that began last year in North Carolina before spreading to several other Southern states.  
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Consider that for roughly half of Mayor Tom Menino鈥檚 21-year term in office, this project was in planning. That might be more of a testament to the Mumbles epoch than anything else, but it鈥檚 wild to think that for half of the tenure of the longest serving mayor this city has ever seen, the effort to build a skate park in the Hub never appeared, on the surface anyway, to be anything other than utterly stagnant.
  
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We still are knee deep in this situation, said Kareem Jackson, a St. Louis rap artist and community organizer whose stage name is Tef Poe. We have not packed up our bags, we have not gone home. This is not a fly-by-night moment. This is not a made-for-TV revolution. This is real people standing up to a real problem and saying, `We ain t taking it no more.
 
  
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Two months after Brown s death sparked an initial wave of violent riots and led Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to summon the National Guard, the highly organized weekend brought many newcomers to St. Louis.  
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The Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox all won a combined six titles in the time that has passed between the park鈥檚 initial announcement and its now imminent groundbreaking.
  
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The new arrivals included Vietnam-era peace activists, New York City seminarians, many college students and hundreds of fast-food workers bused in from Chicago, Nashville and other cities.  
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Whitey Bulger, on the lam for years before the project was even announced, evaded the feds for eight years before his 2011 capture in Santa Monica, Calif. Not only that, Boston鈥檚 most infamous gangster was tried and convicted for a litany of crimes in the subsequent years before we got this close to having a skate park.
  
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Outside Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis, where the Cardinals were playing the San Francisco Giants this weekend in the National League Championship Series, several dozen protesters stood on the sidewalk Saturday night, chanting and holding signs. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that fans headed to the game mainly went around the protesters without stopping to look, though a few cheered their efforts. Game 2 in the series is scheduled for Sunday night.  
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Seriously, if someone asked you in 2004 what would happen first 鈥?Boston gets a skate park or Boston gets closure to the Whitey Bulger saga 鈥?what would you have said? A skate park, no doubt.
  
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The planned events began Friday afternoon with a march outside the St. Louis County prosecutor s office, where protesters renewed calls for prosecutor Bob McCulloch to charge Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson officer, in the Aug. 9 death of Brown. A grand jury is reviewing the case and the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation.  
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Yet here we are, a little more than a week away from construction. We can finally take seriously the sign at the site that reads, 鈥淪hred Ahead,鈥?which until now has been an empty promise.
  
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Earlier in the week, a small group of protesters verbally sparred outside the stadium with Cardinals fans who support the Ferguson officer. Dotson said the city also will bolster its police presence when the St. Louis Rams host the San Francisco 49ers for Monday night football.
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But I suppose a lot can happen between now and October 23.<p>Related Articles:</p><ul><li><a href=http://www.buycelinebags.com>Celine Bags Outlet Store</a></li><li><a href=http://www.buycelinebags.com>Celine UK Online</a></li><li><a href=http://www.buycelinebags.com>Celine Online Outlet</a></li></ul>
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Organizers said beforehand that they expected as many as 6,000 to 10,000 participants for the weekend s events.
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Since Brown s death, three other fatal police shootings of black males have occurred in the St. Louis area. The most recent involved an off-duty St. Louis officer who was working for a private neighborhood security patrol when he shot and killed 18-year-old Vonderrit D. Myers on Wednesday night.
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The white officer, whose name hasn t been released, fired 17 rounds after police say Myers opened fire. Myers parents say he was unarmed, and many speakers at the Saturday rally echoed those doubts.<p>Related Articles:</p><ul><li><a href=http://www.buycelinebags.com>Celine Bags</a></li><li><a href=http://www.buycelinebags.com>Buy Celine Bags</a></li><li><a href=http://www.buycelinebags.com>Celine UK Outlet</a></li></ul>
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Revision as of 17:43, 29 October 2014

@@@ The effort to build a skate park under the Zakim Bridge has long been caked in toxic soil, twisted in bureaucracy, and snagged by miscommunication. The Charles River Conservancy (CRC), the Cambridge non-profit that spearheaded the project more than 10 years ago, . Yet as of today, eight years later, the designated spot remains a brown field.

Because of that, I was more than a little skeptical that any progress would be made on the project when it came out in July that Vans, the California skate shoe brand, to the CRC to get things moving. The organization already had more money than it said it needed; what the hell is a million and a half more?

Then, on Thursday, the CRC posted to its website that an official groundbreaking was scheduled for October 23 at 9 a.m., rain or shine. I reached out to Renata von Tscharner, founder of the CRC, to confirm that I wasn鈥檛 hallucinating.

鈥淵ou are right,鈥?she wrote in an email. 鈥?V>ery exciting.鈥? While I鈥檓 fully expecting an asteroid to wipe out Boston before anyone actually puts shovel to dirt on this project, it does seem that finally, after all these years, after all this money from grants and public donations has sat dormant for so long, that the city is about to receive its very own state of the art skate park.

I鈥檓 still entrenched firmly in Camp I鈥檒l-Believe-It-When-I-See-It, but nevertheless, now seems like a good time to put into perspective just how long it has taken to get this thing rolling because the wait has truly proven to be an era of its own.

Consider that for roughly half of Mayor Tom Menino鈥檚 21-year term in office, this project was in planning. That might be more of a testament to the Mumbles epoch than anything else, but it鈥檚 wild to think that for half of the tenure of the longest serving mayor this city has ever seen, the effort to build a skate park in the Hub never appeared, on the surface anyway, to be anything other than utterly stagnant.


The Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox all won a combined six titles in the time that has passed between the park鈥檚 initial announcement and its now imminent groundbreaking.

Whitey Bulger, on the lam for years before the project was even announced, evaded the feds for eight years before his 2011 capture in Santa Monica, Calif. Not only that, Boston鈥檚 most infamous gangster was tried and convicted for a litany of crimes in the subsequent years before we got this close to having a skate park.

Seriously, if someone asked you in 2004 what would happen first 鈥?Boston gets a skate park or Boston gets closure to the Whitey Bulger saga 鈥?what would you have said? A skate park, no doubt.

Yet here we are, a little more than a week away from construction. We can finally take seriously the sign at the site that reads, 鈥淪hred Ahead,鈥?which until now has been an empty promise.

But I suppose a lot can happen between now and October 23.

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