NorCalUrban

Left San Jose for Miami yesterday for the  CCDA board meeting and conference. 7:30 AM flight, the sky was beautiful as we took off. After a long delay in Chicago I arrived at the hotel at 9:30 pm. On Wednesday lots of EPA folks arrive. Jenni and Gil from our office at NCUD, Joe, Linda and Phil from Community Trust Credit Union, Heather from FYBY, and Rolando and Amy from BCM. I'm looking forward to hanging with all the EPA folks in Miami. I'll post updates as often as I can throughout the week.  If you're coming to the conference please don't miss the specific 'emerging' CCDA leader's track that I've been organizing. Heather and I are also doing a workshop on leadership transition on Thursday. I'm also leading a panel discussion on Thursday at lunch. Here's some details: - Emerging Leader Panel: CCD and Shalom as Implemented by the Next Generation of CCDA Leadership - Thursday, 11:45am - 12:45pm - When the Sand Shifts: Personal Leadership Tr...

The folks at FYBY and Street Soldiers are always talking about the destructive code of the street. Here's an example in today's NY Daily News where a rapper articulates a part of the code of the street, "Don't snitch." These are the folks our kids look up to. As I've said before, we have to seperate the rap form and expression of rap music from negative role modeling and image projection that negatively impact young people. Harlem-raised rapper Cam'ron says in an upcoming TV interview that he would never cooperate with cops - even if he knew his neighbor was a serial killer. The 31-year-old millionaire entertainer, founder of his own record label, says helping the police solve crimes goes against his "code of ethics" and is bad for business. "If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me? I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him. But I'd probably move," Cam'ron, whose real name is Cameron Giles, tells CBS' ...

Doug Fort speaking about the rally.

As previously written, the new year has started off violent in our community. In the last four weeks we've had four homicides and about 30 shootings, many with casualties. One unique thing about the current wave, there is no real pattern. It's all our major groups fighting amongst themselves for various reasons. We've had feuds between the Tongans and Samoans, African American gangs and Latinos with the eternal feud between the Nortenos and Surenos. Our Chief of Police, Ron Davis, has been working on all fronts to stem the violence. Last Friday night he called together the community of faith to talk and pray about the violence. Our church hosted the event (I took a rather poor picture with my treo). I was 'Godly proud' of our church for hosting the event. It ended with us praying for the leaders of the youth ministry For Youth By Youth (FYBY) since they are on the front lines with the kids. Many of those who have lost their lives have been loosly associated with FYB...