Raise the Roof on the Reid

Tonight, there was a fund-raising dinner at a local community center, called the Reid Center. They are trying to raise money to rehab the building they have, and add on more cultural arts capabilities. The reasoning behind this is to provide an opportunity for music, dance, art, theatre projects for the children and teenagers in the area. They are already doing some of this, and they need to expand the facilities to expand the program. I totally support this effort, and the efforts of all adults who reach out to other people’s children – in order to enrich their lives and help them become all they can become.

There is a serious problem in our city with drug activities in the high school age group, and a high number of African American males who do not graduate from high school. The reasoning behind the Reid Center is to allow a space for those teenagers to express themselves via cultural media. This will also enrich the whole community, since so many of those kids are so talented. The guest speaker was Theodis Beck, the Secretary of North Carolina Department of Corrections. He spoke about the violence in our society, and how we have a culture of “Make My Day”. He also mentioned that we have a president who believes in “Make My Day”. He said that murders in North Carolina are usually between people who know one another, have been drinking or using drugs (usually drinking), who get in an argument, and have easy access to a gun. He spoke about the efforts to get our young people to turn away from using drugs and to let them know that they have options besides crime, drug and jail. What I kept thinking about though was how the CIA brought drugs into our country….. And how they may still be doing that today, for all we know. I also kept thinking about the many prisons being built in our country by private contractors (like Halliburton) and how their goal is to make a bunch of money – and to do that, we have to fill up the prisons. I thought about all the trillions of dollars we have wasted on war and weapons – and how these folks who want to help kids are working so hard to get a few million dollars together in order to do so. And how so many of our government programs are working against achieving this end of turning children’s lives away from drugs and violence and poverty and hopelessness.

On the way over, my friend said that the UNIBOMBER went to Harvard, where he was subjected by the CIA to repeated drug experiments (without his consent). She also said that the records of all this have gone “missing”. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know that many, many of our US forces will come home from war with PTSD, and will engage in repeated acts of violence and aggression. I am also confident that the US government will not face it’s responsibilities in this regard – not to mention how wrong they were to send them off to this illegal war in the first place.

As to the dinner fund-raiser at the Reid Center, it was all very nice, and it was great to see so many liberals in one place. I got a chance to talk to a city council person, staff members at my Representatives office, and a County Commissioner. I will have to talk to the County Commissioner some more – they are planning to build an oil-burning plant for electricity here locally, and this is totally unnecessary.