Now the seven-member federal panel says the proposed model is “confrontational” BUT this site says it is also historically inaccurate because the Memorial Foundation is using a picture that has been flipped claiming “artistic license” so Dr. King’s hand will point in the direction the Foundation wants it to in order to capture Dr. King pointing to the promissory note. The problem is that the same cross-armed pose though captured correctly by Erik Blome was rejected by citizens of Rocky Mount, NC as being “too arrogant.”

Thank goodness questions have been raised on the Federal level about what should be an inspiring monument to a great American. Perhaps, it’s time for more of us to attend the June 19th public meeting at the U. S. Commission on Fine Arts and speak out about the process of getting a suitable artist for this great honor. Be there!!!

In November a 17-year old male tried to get back to his juvenile center by using the chimney to the facility in Royal Oak, Michigan. He was okay until he got stuck and someone heard this groans. That brought the police and firefighters.

On the last weekend of 2007, a 19-year old female climbed down the chimney of a tire company in Cottage City, Maryland. She said she forgot and left her purse and keys inside. Only problem… her dad owned the place and she could have called him. Instead she slid down the chimney, got stuck, and caused police and firefighters to rescue her by breaking away chunks of the chimney and sliding a rope in to get her. Her day said police called and said someone was breaking into his store. When he found out that that someone was his daugher, he just rolled his eyes on camera and indicated he didn’t believe her reason for using the chimney instead of other ways to retrieve her belongings. Wonder what was in the purse. If either of these kids had been overweight, they would have had to conceive of other ways to break in.

What were they thinking?

…What were they thinking? CEO Harry Johnson, the Executive Architect (Ed Jackson), MLK Project Manager (David Hamilton), the Alpha Fraternity, and other members of the Martin Luther King Jr National Memorial Project Foundation… are drawing unnecessary NEGATIVE attention to the National Mall project scheduled to open in 2009.…Do we really need to hear the media debate the ethnic background of the person sculpting the King STONE OF HOPE monument? It’s distracting and uncivil. It could have been avoided because the King Foundation had to know a similar debate was waged in2003 when a North Carolina city (Rocky Mount) rejected a monument using the same proposed stance for their park. The complaints that kept the monument from being erected for more than three years, were the charges that the sculptor was White, Dr. King crossing his arms with legs apart made him look arrogant, and… that the sculpture did not look like Dr. King. Those are some of the complaints being heard about Lei’s clay model of Dr. King in 2007. Some even say the model looks more like Eddie Murphy than the Atlanta preacher.

…The King Foundation certainly could have anticipated similar public reaction heard in Rocky Mount, North Carolina… when it deliberately decided not to look for stonecutters in this country or to have artists compete for the honor of working on a monument for Dr. King.

From newspaper accounts in 2006 and again in February 2007, it was obvious that the fundraising leaders knew of such potential problems when Foundation CEO Harry Johnson said after the Chinese sculptor’s 2007 presentation to some Foundation members that Lei Yixin’s race should not be a factor in preventing him from building the sculpture for Dr. King. In other words, Lei Yixin, who doesn’t speak English and is guaranteed an income for life from the Chinese government… was hand-picked by a group of brothers who had fought for more than ten years to have Dr. King honored on the National Mall. No one bothered to ask, evidently, whether the sculptor could also do “realistic” models?

Certainly, no one from the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project required Master Sculptor Lei Yixin to render or interpret his clay model into granite before the fact. That and the obvious lack of a world-wide competition for the honor of sculpting Dr. King raises some, pardon the pun, red flags? That Lei Yixin was approached in June 2006 because he could, as Harry Johnson told the Washington Post (8-15-07), “cut stone” doesn’t quite make sense, given the number of stonecutters in this country. The MLK Committee’s subsequent trips to Italy and China to inspect granite for the Dr. King monument and only belatedly to Atlanta (2007) to observe granite for other parts of the project on the mall… must have been costly.

Not even the fact that Lei Yixin will end up shipping 100 crates from China to have the 30-foot granite monument of Dr. King reassembled on the mall has been a cause for concern at project headquarters. Let’s hope the granite and extra personnel are all included in the $132,000 check the Foundation gave Lei Yixin earlier this year.

BUT… the real issue, I contend, is not the race/ethnicity of the sculptor but the PROCESS! In other words, Lei Yixin was not selected competitively; the process was neither open nor transparent. That’s the same problem that plagued Rocky Mount, NC (2003) until the city where Dr. King said in 1962 - “Rocky Mount, I have a dream tonight…” finally held a more open process.

It also should not be ignored that… Lei Yixin was picked in 2006 because he could follow the then Sculptor of Record (Ed Dwight) and the Roma Design Group’s 2004 designs for the STONE OF HOPE. The public really didn’t have to know about the in-house fighting between the National Memorial Project team and the sculptor Ed Dwight who by 2007 had already designed hundreds of mini-models of Dr. King that were sent to major donors.

The media will continue to play the race card because African Americans are fussing with African Americans. BUT my research reveals that that is a major mistake because there are more serious problems with the National Mall project. As a researcher, former professor of social movements and investigative reporter, what I am going to reveal might well raise some serious questions about the $82 million already raised/spent for the King memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

For now… look closely above at which hand Dr. King uses to hold his pen in Lei Yixin’s clay models and in the Roma Design Group’s rendition below of the STONE OF HOPE and MOUNTAIN OF DESPAIR.

  DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? Which hand is Dr. King using to hold his pen in the pictures below? Is it the same hand Dr. King raises at the 1963 March on Washington? you can see the picture in the Foundation’s fundraising material on its website?

Pen in Left hand!

How do the above and Lei Yixin’s models above DIFFER from these below?

(Pen in Right Hand)

These statues are by Illinois Sculptor Erik Blome.

Blome’s 2003 model of Dr. King for Rocky Mount, NC has pen in RIGHT hand. But the stance met with resistance by Rocky Mount, North Carolina residents.

At this point it’s obvious that Lei Yixin’s clay models of Dr. King are wrong!

If he carves granite with Dr. King using the left hand to hold his pen… the sculptor will have produced a monument that is historically not correct.

WORTH REMEMBERING:

The issue is about more than whether an African American should sculpt an African American, isn’t it?

Here is Dr. King using his RIGHT Hand.

Right Hand!

Right now the 10-year old program is costing the federal governent $5 billion a year. But the president says the 6.6 million kids whose families can’t afford private insurance don’t need that much of a boost. The president proposes, instead, boosting the program only $1 billion a year for the next five years. Why so little? The president says he doesn’t want an additional 3.3 million children added to the program which the additional funds would cover… for one important reason: the insurance industry would suffer.

Specifically, the president told The Washington Post this - “My concern is that when you expand eligbility… you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”

Now that’s an old and familiar argument often served up by economists who argue that freeloaders will come out of the woodwork. This woodwork theory is an effectively protective device for maintaining the status quo. And that is, after all, the conservative way of life, isn’t it? Conservatives want to conserve or keep things as they are. BUT… should the children suffer?

The president is quoted as saying he is not going to “surrender a good and important idea before the debate really gets started.” Yet, the paradox is that expanded funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is supported by both Republicans and Democrats, at the same time that the leader of the Republican Party does not.

So when President Bush says no deal on a health plan for poorer kids because of what he calls “philosophical” differences… he is clearly putting politics before the health needs of children. He is, in effect, saying let the marketplace solve the problem. That means the president favors subsidizing private insurance companies which are then expected to subsidize health coverage for poor kids.

In other words… a conservative philosophy endorses the idea that the role of government should be minimize; marketplace solutions are the ideal…. even for health care. Sounds like the same philosophical argument for not embracing a national health care system. It’s time to forget the past! The real debate in the 21st century is not likely to begin until citizens arm themselves with knowledge and begin to understand the economic politics driving the health care debate.

Bottom line… What is in the best or common interest of the general public? Health care for all, health care only for those who can purchase it from private insurance companies or be subsidized with the purchase of policies at lower rates?

We should not accept at face value the president’s contention that expanding health coverage for poor kids will pave the way for “people to switch from private insurance.” An informed citizentry needs to ask the following questions: Under what conditions will that happen? What would prompt people who already can’t afford private insurance for their children to switch from the private insurance they already don’t have?

The president’s threat to veto compromised funding bills in the senate and house before the congressional recess in August… deserves a national debate.

Now is the time to speak out and remind legislators and the president of the public interest in the health care needs of non-insured children.

I’m a student of the Larry Cuban school of thought and an innovative teacher award recipient, so I know the importance of change from the bottom up as well as the top down.

Without parental, community, teacher, and student involvement, there is a good chance the new chancellor is either going to become a firefighter - putting out fires - or the sister of the little boy who was always plugging up holes in the dam with his fingers.  Busy, yes! Successful? 

This may be a good time to define success or what progress is going to look like over the next few years.  This month the problem is getting the funds for band uniforms… what will the problem be next week or next month for the chancellor?  I can guarantee you that whatever it is, the chancellor is most likely to hear about it first from the media, rather than from her staff.  Unless, of course, she realizes the amount of re-education that is going to have to be done starting right now.  For $250,000 I and probably a few others can show her how…

Doesn’t anyone remember the hard fought battles to get an elected mayor for the District of Columbia? Doesn’t anyone remember what it was like before school board members were elected in the District of Columbia?

Where is the rage that a newly elected mayor who hasn’t even demonstrated that he can run one of the most important cities in the world wants to strip DC residents of power?

Where is the rage that the very deputy in charge of the mayor’s take over plan is the very one who admitted he didn’t credit others for borrowing their North Carolina ideas?

Where is the rage when the mayor says he doesn’t need to ask D.C. citizens about his take over plans because he asked the D.C. City Council, instead? So he understands the importance of representation in a democracy. But even more to the point, where is the rage that Congress and the President of the United States are having input on a “state” or local matter?

A victory for the Fenty administration may well translate into a historical loss for the residents of the District of Columbia. Fenty lacks a track record for useful input about the public schools when he sat on the City Council. Just because Congress and President Bush say the Home Rule Charter can be changed to exclude an elected school board… does not mean that it should be done? The same people who are undermining the public school system with private school voucher programs are slowly deconstructing the very infrastructure that is vital to a democracy. Aren’t these the same ones who have declared the DC Public Schools to be in a desperate state? Where’s the rage? I know… it’s been coopted!