The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable
The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable,civil rights leaders, and family members of victims of violence call for a 40 Hour King Assassination Moratorium on Killing. It begins at 6.01 PM Friday April 4th, the exact time and date King was killed forty years ago. It ends at 10.01 AM Sunday.

The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable also will host a “ 40th Anniversary King Assassination Dialogue on Violence Roundtable” on Saturday April 5. Community leaders, elected officials, law enforcement are invited to dialogue on specific initiatives that the community can implement to reduce murder violence.

Honor King on the Fortieth Anniversary of his Assassination with a 40 Hour King Assassination Moratorium on Killing. Pt 1
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

“a check of the hospitals in any Negro community on any Saturday night will make you painfully aware of the violence within the Negro community.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Forty years ago on April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. There is a chilling parallel in his assassination and the recent murder of Jamiel Shaw and the near killing of Lavarea Elzy. They, as Dr. King, are innocents. The victims in the recent spike in the mostly black on black and Latino on Latino murder violence in Los Angeles has stirred hand wringing, head scratching and finger pointing among LAPD officials, local elected officials and community residents in a desperate effort to get a handle on the violence.
But whether it was the assassin’s bullet that claimed the life of one of history’s most prominent and beloved fighters for peace and justice, or an innocent such as Shaw it’s still painful, heart wrenching and screams for an answer. The King led civil rights movement provided two answers to the violence plague. The first was King’s fight for racial justice and economic uplift. That meant far more than simply integrating a lunch counter or drinking out of a white’s only fountain. It meant ending the disparities in the criminal justice system, a full court attack on failing public schools, providing affordable health care and housing for all, decent jobs at decent pay especially for young black males that face near Great Depression chronic levels of unemployment, and comprehensive family support programs to prevent family break-up. Economic and racial equality are essential to boosting self-esteem, self-worth, and community caring values among young African-Americans and other minority youth. That would be a giant step toward cutting down the carnage that has plagued many poor black and Latino urban neighborhoods.
Even before James Earl Ray’s bullet tore through King’s neck, he had denounced the attacks against stores, shops and police by young blacks following a march by striking Memphis sanitation workers. King’s horror of violence by blacks or whites was never far from his mind. But he knew that simply calling for an end to the violence was an empty gesture if he and other civil rights leaders weren’t willing to lead by example and make nonviolence the heart of their philosophy, practice and preachment, and if need be sacrifice their lives rather than resort to violence.
King’s second answer to ending the carnage in Los Angeles and other urban neighborhoods was to instill in young blacks a reverence for life. He and other civil rights leaders understood that a big reason it was so easy for blacks to slaughter each other with impunity was that their lives were devalued by the killers and by larger society. This indifference to life created an internal hostile climate that was fueled by the endemic high unemployment and poor education among many poor black and Latino youth.
Though black-on black murder did not top the murder charts in some big cities during the heyday of the 1960’s civil rights movement, the seeds of the violence were there. The seed remained the economic and social neglect and destitution of the inner cities. King did not explicitly call for a moratorium on urban killings during his lifetime. The issue for the civil rights leaders then was still the fight to end the vestiges of Jim Crow discrimination and the developing battle against poverty.
The assassin’s bullet that felled King sent the horrible and grotesque message that if violence could claim a King, it could claim anyone’s life. The only thing that could stop it was a deep, intense, and sustained commitment by society to work toward peace and social justice and by African-Americans to fully repair and restore pride and devotion to family and community.
Forty years after the murder of one of the world’s leading martyrs for peace and justice, what better way to pay tribute to his sacrifice than with a 40 Hour King Assassination Moratorium on Killing. A community, South L.A., and a city, Los Angeles, that can start and end 40 hours with not a single recorded murder is a community and a city that has shown that forty years later it can still embrace the message of peace and nonviolence that King preached and that ultimately cost him his life. It’s a small gesture time wise, but a monumental feat human life wise.

The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable
will host a community discussion on “Sexual Predators and LAUSD Classrooms: The Steven Rooney Case May Be The tip of Tipberg”
Parents, Teachers and Adminstrators Urged to Come Forth and Discuss the Issue.

Saturday 10:00 to 11:00 AM, March 22
Lucy Florence Coffeehouse
3351 W. 43rd St. L.A. Leimert Park



Passing the Trash
The Dirty Secret of School Sexual Abuse
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Passing the trash doesn’t have anything to do with a garbage pickup. It’s the practice that school officials, teachers and administrators whisper about among themselves when school districts routinely move a teacher or administrator accused of sexual misconduct to another school, file no charges against the accused, make no public disclosure about the charges, and even make a financial settlement with the accused if they move on. Invariably, the offending teachers are dumped in the poorest of the poor mostly black and Latino inner city schools.
The practice of shuffling sexually tainted teachers and administrators is a dirty secret and a national disgrace. Yet dozens of school districts engage in the practice. Hundreds of teachers accused of or that are guilty of sexual abuse of students have skipped away scot free or with minimal disciplinary action. This practice has left countless student victims and their parents in emotional rage and turmoil. The practice recently bit the Los Angeles Unified School District hard when Steven Rooney an administrator was charged with the sexual molestation of a 13 year old middle school student.
The Rooney case was a textbook example of the all too prevalent wink and nod of many school districts toward sexual abuse. Rooney was under investigation for a prior suspected sexual offense against a teen student, yet was shuffled around to several South Los Angeles inner city schools. Finally he was dumped at Markham Middle School in the heart of Los Angeles’s Watts district. There was no public disclosure that Rooney might be a problem. Rooney’s arrest brought howls of rage and protest from dozens of parents. Embarrassed school officials scrambled fast and offered profuse apologies, promised to set up a task force and conduct a rigorous investigation.
The problem though is that the Rooney case may be just the tip of the iceberg. The great likelihood is that there are other teachers and administrators that have committed acts of sexual abuse within the LAUSD and parents, students, and even teachers and administrators may be totally in the dark about them. And it’s not just the Los Angeles school district.
Education researchers estimate that fifteen percent of the nation’s 50 million school children could be the victims of sexual abuse. The sexual abuse involves not just inappropriate physical contact between teachers and students but involve sending emails, text messages, and digital photos, as well as My Space postings, seductive notes, and even anonymous gifts. A majority of the cases go unreported out of fear, shame, embarrassment, and reluctance on the part of some teachers and administrators to blow the whistle on their co-workers. Some districts dread the prospect of costly liability suits and settlements, and the adverse publicity from sexual abuse cases.

The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable
will host a community discussion on “Sexual Predators and LAUSD Classrooms: The Steven Rooney Case May Be The tip of Tipberg”
Parents, Teachers and Adminstrators Urged to Come Forth and Discuss the Issue.

Saturday 10:00 to 11:00 AM, March 22
Lucy Florence Coffeehouse
3351 W. 43rd St. L.A. Leimert Park


Even when abuse is documented or strongly suspected, the discipline is often spotty, inconsistent and arbitrary. From 2001 to 2005, states suspended or revoked the licenses of more than 2500 teachers and administrators guilty of sexual misconduct. A handful such as Rooney was jailed. In far too many other cases, the offending teachers and administrators were transferred within the district, or got jobs with other school districts, and were given glowing recommendations. There was no known public disclosure in most of these cases. There is no federal law that bars teachers accused of sexual malfeasance from moving from one school district to another.
The school districts where the sexually suspect teachers resurface did not know that they were ticking sexual time bombs. Some states have moved aggressively to get a better handle on teacher and administrator sexual abuse. They mandate fingerprinting, criminal background checks, and the automatic revocation of a teacher’s license for conviction of sexual molestation. Many other states have done little to crack down on school sex cases.
There are still more gargantuan loopholes in the laws. The FBI’s background checks disclose felony convictions only. In many teacher sexual cases, the charges are reduced to misdemeanors. And sexual accusations are reported to police and child welfare authorities only when there is sufficient proof of abuse. Since much of the abuse is through the internet, in secret, and the victim is threatened there is no smoking gun proof of abuse. This insures that thousands of sexual abuse cases slip through the cracks. That’s what happened in the Rooney case.
The LAUSD, as other districts, were not simply clueless. They are hamstrung by their own vague and lax provisions in dealing with suspected or actual sexual abuse. The LAUSD, for instance, conducts investigations into suspected abuse only after a criminal investigation is completed. There is no mandatory transfer of teachers and administrators under a sexual abuse cloud to non-classroom assignments during the district investigation. There is no mandatory public disclosure of the results of investigations in sex cases involving teachers and administrators. There is no determination whether teachers and administrators in sexual abuse cases are disproportionately dumped at the worst performing South Los Angeles schools. These loopholes scream for closure.
In a 2007 national survey, the Associated Press found that sex cases were on the rise in many states. California was at or near the top of the list. The Rooney case and others like it show why teacher and administrator sexual abuse remains the nation’s dirty secret.