Emergency Evacuation Plan for the City of Charlotte
Directed by John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers
10 day LAPD Residency in Charlotte, NC.
March 23 thru April 2, 2006
Saturday at Davidson College Campus.
Discussions will follow both shows.
Directed by John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers
10 day LAPD Residency in Charlotte, NC.
March 23 thru April 2, 2006
LAPD has partnered with Urban Ministry Center and with Davidson College to develop a community based performance. The performance was built during this short residency using insights of homeless and low income people living in Charlotte to gain a better understanding of the experience of Katrina. Performers consisted of a combined cast of 4 LAPD’ers, homeless neighbors of UMC and one or two college students. Residency activities included daily workshops, research activities and public presentations at Urban Ministry Center and at Davidson College.
“We lost everything,” the woman says, her face in her hands. “We don’t have nowhere to go.” The counselor nods. He’s been hearing the same sad stories from Katrina evacuees all day. Then he offers this tip: “If you ain’t got a good sleeping bag, get you one of them big, black Hefty bags. But don’t seal it up like a regular sleeping bag. Leave you a little hole up top so’s you can breathe.” Who better to advise the newly homeless than the experienced homeless? That’s the idea, anyway, behind one scene in an unusual theater piece now in rehearsal at Charlotte ‘s Urban Ministry Center.
A troupe of about 20 ministry clients, employees and volunteers has worked on the project since Saturday with four visiting artists from Los Angeles’ Skid Row. The show, “An Emergency Evacuation Plan for the City of Charlotte ,” is a series of improvised sketches looking at the lives of the needy through the lens of the hurricane aftermath. Friday’s premiere will be the first public event in UMC’s handsome new building, whose official opening will be April 9. “Evacuation Plan” will also be performed Saturday at Davidson College.
The New York Times March 20, 2006
Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn
By ERIK ECKHOLM
BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.
Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.
Especially in the country’s inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined.
Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades, the new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face.
“There’s something very different happening with young black men, and it’s something we can no longer ignore,” said Ronald B. Mincy, professor of social work at Columbia University and editor of “Black Males Left Behind” (Urban Institute Press, 2006).
Download this article: Plight Deepens for Black Men
Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men
by Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner
By several recent counts, the United States is home to 2 to 3 million youth age 16 through 24 who are out of school and out of work. Much has been written on disadvantaged youth, and government policy has gone through many incarnations, yet questions remain unanswered. Why are so many young people “disconnected,” and what can public policy do about it? And why has disconnection become more common for young men-particularly African-American men and low-income men-than for young women? In Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, Edelman, Holzer, and Offner offer analysis and policy prescriptions to solve this growing crisis. They carefully examine field programs and research studies and recommend specific strategies to enhance education, training, and employment opportunities for disadvantaged youth; to improve the incentives of less-skilled young workers to accept employment; and to address the severe barriers and disincentives faced by some youth, such as ex-offenders and noncustodial fathers. The result is a clear guidebook for policymakers, and an important distillation for anyone interested in the plight of today’s disconnected youth.
Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, by Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner; Foreword by Hugh Price, is available from the Urban Institute Press (paper, 6″ x 9″, 156 pages, ISBN 0-87766-728-4, $26.50).
The schedule included:
Mar. 27: Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), speaks about his work with NCH and the organization’s efforts to create the systematic and attitudinal changes necessary to prevent and end homelessness.
Apr. 1: Soccer match between the Urban Ministry Center and Davidson students.
Apr. 3: Representatives of local social services organizations talk about their experiences working in activism.
Apr. 4: Homeless neighbors from the Urban Ministry Center in Charlotte discuss their experiences, and a student film about homelessness will be shown.
Apr. 6: A pig pickin’ celebration and fundraiser to benefit Loaves and Fishes.
Apr. 9: David Beckman, president of Bread for the World, speaks.
EMERGENCY EVACUATION PLAN FOR THE CITY OF CHARLOTTE is supported by Sunshine Lady Foundation through Davidson College and initiated by Davidson student and UMC volunteer Kendal Stewart.
Special thanks to: Kendal Stewart, Mitty Beal of the Sunshine Lady Foundation, Professor Sharon Green, Beth Galen, Lawrence Cann, Robert Cann, Barbara Conrad, Jo Rizer, Stacey Riemer, Laura Boston, Pete Schild, Alex Gregor, Kate Wiseman, Kelsey Formost, Nicole Mader, Moria McCormick.