Month: August 2014

2014 ‘Reasons to Believe’ Alumni Honor Roll announced

Their achievements and life-stories will be used to inspire today’s students as they plan for their futures. The 2014 Class of the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools’ Reasons to Believe Alumni Honor Roll has been selected.

The 12 alumni will be recognized this fall at the 2014 Reasons to Believe Celebration. The event is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, November 20 at the KCKPS Central Office and Training Center. The event is open to the public.

Members of the 2014 Reasons to Believe Alumni Honor Roll:

• Nedra Bonds, artist-social activist, Wyandotte High School Class of 1966
• Norman Brown, jazz guitarist, Wyandotte High School Class of 1982
• Wesley Guy Burt, artist-illustrator, Sumner Academy of Arts and Science Class of 1999
• Phil Dixon, author-historian-speaker, Wyandotte High School Class of 1974
• Dr. Simone Ariana Ellis, dentist, Sumner Academy of Arts and Science Class of 2001
• Lloyd Freeman, attorney, Sumner Academy of Arts and Science Class of 2000
• A. Drue Jennings, retired CEO of KCP&L, Argentine Junior-Senior High Class of 1964
• Marcus Newsom, assistant athletic director-coach at Wartburg College, Schlagle High School Class of 1988
• LeeRoy Pitts, retired educator, Sumner High School Class of 1951
• Harold Simmons, retired police detective, Wyandotte High School Class of 1965
• R. Jayson Strickland, KCKPS administrator, Washington High School Class of 1990
• Christi Walter, health systems scientist, Harmon High School Class of 1976

Reasons to Believe was established in 2002 to generate pride and celebrate the progress being made throughout the district. As part of the program, nominations are sought for the Reasons to Believe Alumni Honor Roll, which spotlights successful alumni to encourage and inspire today’s students. The nominations are reviewed by a panel of judges that includes representation from the Board of Education, the Reasons to Believe Steering Committee, students, business leaders, and a former Alumni Honor Roll recipient.

The 2014 Reasons to Believe Celebration annually showcases the high caliber of graduates that the district produces and brings a select group of them together with staff, students, community members, colleagues and key leaders for a night of honors.

To review past Honor Roll classes or to learn more about the program, go to www.kckps.org/recognition/alumni.

– Story from Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools

Public rally scheduled for ‘Taking Back Kansas’

The Women For Kansas convention will be opened Friday night, Aug. 29, in Wichita by approximately 500 women in yellow and green Women-for-Kansas T-shirts marching en masse from the convention hotel to the public rally.

The procession, led by school-aged drummers, will move from the hotel, across the street, and into the park.

The rally will be held at A. Price Woodard Park, on the west side of Century II, across the street from the convention hotel, the Drury Plaza Hotel Broadview, Wichita. The rally starts at 5:30 p.m., and the speakers begin at 5:45. The rally is not limited to registrants of the convention. The public is invited to attend.

The convention itself is open only to those who are registered.

The Cherokee Maidens with local singer, song-writer legend Robin Macy accompanied by Sycamore Swing will perform. Following the musical performance, the speakers will deliver stories that will energize participants to “take back Kansas.”

Speakers at the rally include:
• Vickie Stangl, private citizen from Wichita;
• Stephanie Harsin, educator from Topeka;
• Lindsey Benage, health care access advocate; and
• Anna Jenney, high school student concerned about her state.
There will be food trucks. Attendees should bring lawn chairs or blankets.

The convention is being held by Women for Kansas, a grassroots women’s initiative designed to energize and educate women from across the state and give them the knowledge and tools to go back to their communities to get out the vote for a new Kansas governor, secretary of state and U.S. senator. Thus far more than 500 women from 88 communities will be attending the convention. Workshops, speaker, training sessions, videos and social media will be used.

Sessions at the convention will cover education funding; tax inequities; healthcare funding and privatization; immigration, and the more than 20,000 Kansans whose voting rights are in limbo because of the new state voter registration law.

KCKCC’s Louis Center to commemorate U.N. Indigenous Peoples Day

by Kelly Rogge

One of democracy’s greatest gifts is the idea that citizens have the power to vote and bring about change. To showcase that idea, Kansas City Kansas Community College’s Henry Louis Center for Global Transitional Justice plans to commemorate the United Nations Indigenous Peoples Day in September on the KCKCC main campus.

Ewa Unoke, a political science professor at KCKCC and director of the Henry Louis Center, said when the Charter of the United Nations was originally signed in San Francisco almost 70 years ago, colonized countries throughout the world won the legal right to self-determination. But in reality, he said, the first and original peoples or ethnic nations of Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Asia, Europe and North and South America did not earn such rights of representation at the U.N.

The Indigenous Peoples Day event is from 10 a.m. to noon Sept. 13 in Room 2325 at KCKCC, 7250 State Ave.

“If the artificially created countries have the right of membership to the United Nations, then the original ethnic nations ought to have the right of representation in an ethnic united nations,” Unoke said. “While the U.N. diplomats represent their national governments, the ethnic citizens of their countries are not represented.”

On Sept. 13, 2007, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the World. Unoke said for those involved with the Henry Louis Center, it’s time to end the economic, social and political exclusion of the original ethnic nations. He said the center’s Ethnic United Nations project is a radical, but forward-looking concept – mobilize interested citizens with human rights, restorative justice views to review and adopt a covenant on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples and to establish a global parliament or forum where common issues affecting the ethnic peoples are debated and action taken to ameliorate such problems.

“The idea is to invite indigenous peoples and human rights activists to represent their original ethnic nations and vote to convene an annual conference which will incrementally lead towards establishing an ethnic united nations,” Unoke said.

For more information or to make a reservation for the event, contact professor Ewa Unoke at 913-288-7119 or email at [email protected].