Free Republic

2 brothers fatally shot 15 years, 2 blocks apart As he lay dying in ’94, 1st bade 2nd goodbye BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE As Toboris Molden lay dying from a gunshot wound on a February night 15 years ago, he took care to say goodbye to his grandmother, his mother and his two younger brothers. The youngest brother was Anthony Jackson, named for his father and just a year old at the time. On Wednesday, their mother again grieved the loss of a son. This time it was Jackson, who was 16. Little Rock police found him and...

Public officials rallied for tougher gun laws Tuesday in the wake of yet another teen shooting, but of the nearly 1,000 Chicago public school students who joined them at the Thompson Center, many said the solutions are more complicated. In the chanting, sign-waving crowd, Corine Minniefield, a junior at Banner Linc Academy, said school officials need to get truants and drop-outs back in class and that police need to tighten up their protection. "I'm just tired of turning on the news and seeing my people get killed. I can't go to no more funerals. I'm tired of going to funerals,"...

For decades, school districts have organized around a simple idea: Whatever you give to white students, give it to black students, too. Put both groups of students in the same schools. Expose them to the same teaching. If they struggle, give them the same help. In the Tampa Bay area and across the nation, this was how educators atoned for the long-ago sin of relegating black children to inferior schools. Now, in a class-action lawsuit that has Pinellas County's top educators on the defensive, the plaintiffs say the policy of equal access has failed the school district's 20,000 black students....

Male wearing dress denied entrance to prom GARY, Ind. A male high school student was barred from his prom at Gary's West Side High School because he wanted to wear a dress to the event. Eighteen-year-old Kevin Logan says he is a homosexual who is exploring his sexual identity. He has dressed as a female while attending classes this year. Logan arrived last Friday for the prom wearing a fuchsia, slinky prom dress and heels but was not allowed inside. School officials say its school policy that males can't wear dresses. They refunded the 85-dollars he paid for a prom...

Boy suspended from school for wearing makeup and lipstick By Irma Lemus, Staff Writer SAN BERNARDINO - In what is shaping as a battle between conformity and self-expression, Pacific High School has suspended a ninth-grade boy for wearing lipstick and eye makeup. Officials are calling it a violation of school policy, which they seemed unable to find in writing... James Herndon, 16, repeating his second year at the school, and his mother, Valerie Wallace, say James has been wearing black lipstick and red eye makeup the entire time he has been enrolled at Pacific. He also wears his hair in...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Missouri police have arrested a mother who allegedly gave crack cocaine to her 4-year-old son. Residents at the apartment complex where the woman and her son live told police Michelle Shelton (pictured, left) gave her son crack to "calm him down." Social workers said they took hair samples from Shelton and the boy to test for illegal drugs -- and the tests came back positive. Authorities said the child didn't suffer any obvious injuries from the highly addictive drug. They have put him in state custody. Police said Shelton first drew their attention when they saw...

We live in a society where cash comes before being human Dear Socialist Worker, I am a single woman, currently unemployed, with a home-based business that is barely bringing in any income. I have always supported myself by working in nightclub industries as a promoter and makeup artist, and writing resumes (my business). In September, when I was about five-and-a-half months pregnant, I could no longer work in the nightclub industry, which was 90 percent of my income and allowed me to afford my rent and pay most of my bills. I tried to look for a job, but a...