In the midst of a rash of widely publicized suicides by bullied teens, many of them gay and lesbian, Acadiana Open Channel and The Family Tree are joining forces to combat bullying through a series of public service announcements, a website, and through social media. The Bullying Stops With Me campaign is scheduled to launch within the next two weeks, beginning with PSAs on AOC and on a YouTube channel of the same name. A website, BullyStopsWithMe.com, is up (though still under construction), and the group also has a Facebook page.
On Tuesday, District 4 City-Parish Councilman Kenneth Boudreaux, his brother Gerald, who is Lafayette’s director of parks and recreation, and newly elected District 4 school board representative Tehmi Chassion filmed PSAs for the project. Each was bullied during adolescence.
“They all have stories that they want to tell of being bullied — Tehmi Chassion especially. He’s just basically out of college; his are rather fresh,” says project coordinator Stephen Handwerk, AOC’s board president. Handwerk’s company, Affordable Consulting, also works with Family Tree.
“Since I work with both AOC and the Family Tree, I thought they could play integral roles, if they talk with each other and figure out a program,” Handwerk says. “And that’s how we kind of came together, the three of us, not only with the emergency help — the crisis hotline and case managers — but from the community conversation side with AOC; both of these guys being uniquely suited, that’s the type of work they already do: parenting courses as well as counseling. I thought it would be the perfect match.”
Handwerk says he was motivated to begin the campaign after reading of the recent suicides across the country, as well as a brutal case of bullying in our own backyard at Youngsville Middle School.
“I think now in the past 30 days, if the media report was correct, we’ve had 16 suicides, teenagers committing suicide, and all directly related to bullying,” Handwerk says.
When the Bully Stops With Me website is operational, it will serve as resource center for families dealing with bullying, pointing them to counseling services and a 24/7 hotline. The Family Tree will also compile statistics on bullying in the area, produce reports and make recommendations to schools, and AOC will continue producing long- and short-form videos addressing the issue.
Adds Handwerk: “‘We’ve got to do something locally here before our kids feel that there’s no other choice but to take their own lives.”
The video below is from the Tuesday, Oct. 12 Fort Worth City Council meeting, during which District 9 Councilman Joel Burns delivers a moving plea for his community to aggressively address bullying.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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But seriously, is this how we now address lawlessness in our society? Resource centers and counseling services? This is another symptom of the complete collapse of the greatest nation on earth. It completely misses the point, I'm sure it's publicly funded in all or part, and the issue it addresses is already handled by centuries of law and Western thought. But hey, it's all sappy and empathetic, so I'm sure you'll all want to flame me for saying anything bad about it--but I'm warning you, don't bully me!