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Lou Cantori 

Lou Cantori was a force to be reckoned with.  We lost him this week to a heart attack at his home on Monday.

Lou appeared on our show dozens of times over the last fifteen years. He was just a lovely and wonderful  human being with a powerful mind.

He was every bit of the Marine sergeant that he was as a young man in the fifties. He was a patriot who continued to teach not just at his academic home, UMBC but also at our US military and intelligence academies.  He taught them reality of our world, not just what they wanted to hear. He was no one's parrot. He spoke fluent Arabic and defied America's academe by trying to enlighten us to the true nature and soul of the Arabic and Muslim worlds.

He was that unlikely combination of a military and intelligence analyst who was a champion of social justice in America and the world.

Despite all his work, his first priority was the love he had for his family. As his son Greg Cantori said to me this morning, Lou was the best father in the world.  He was always there for them.

Greg also told me the story about when they lived in LA  during the mid-sixties. Lou was the head of the West Side Housing Association, fighting racial discrimination in housing at a time when you were allowed to have "Whites Only" and "No Colored" signs in your advertising.  The great Carroll O'Conner, Rob Reiner and others were fixtures in their home, as board members of Lou's movement.  It was there that Greg first learned about fighting for social justice.

He is a beacon for all of us. He was a tough guy and gentle caring soul, he was a patriot, a progressive, a jarhead (Marine) through and through, a fighter for social justice and deeply devoted father and husband. Lou Cantori ..  I love you and will miss you forever. I will carry your spirit in my heart.

From the Cantori Family

 There will be an open house to celebrate his life on Sunday, June 8 at Nadia's home near Laurel, Md. We would be honored to have you attend. Please RSVP by responding to cantorifamily@gmail.com.

Exact details on time and directions will be available soon on our memorial blog/website:

http://rememberlou.blogspot.com

Please check back soon. We will be updating and checking this site frequently.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to either of the following:

UMBC Foundation, Lou Cantori Scholarship Fund, C/O Kim Robinson

8th Floor, Administration Building

1000 Hilltop Circle

Baltimore, MD 21250

or

Kidsave c/o Lou Cantori Memorial Fund

PO Box 277587

Atlanta, GA 30384-7487

http://www.kidsave.org/

Lou touched many lives: personally, professionally and in his community and it's been quite a job contacting so many people.  Please feel free to forward this message to others that knew Lou.

Our family would like to thank everyone who kept Lou in their thoughts during his illness.

The Cantori Family

Juvenile Justice

The Sun story on Saturday May 10, 2008 of the Juvenile Justice Center being out of control is not new news (read it here). The teachers are fearful and have had enough so they stepped up to the Governor.

Last year, we reported on the Marc Steiner Show about the potential for an explosion and the loss of control at the center.

Ray Cook, who works with gangs and inner-city kids in trouble with their lives and the law, through his program On Our Shoulders, was hired by juvenile services after meeting Secretary Donald DeVore on my program earlier in 2007. Ray is one of those unique figures who can walk into a situation and can instantly demand respect and trust on the toughest corners, with young people deeply involved in Bloods, Crips, and other gangs. He is from those streets. He has hustled, led criminal operations and been jailed on those streets. He turned his life around. Now, he’s obsessed with saving the children of our city. He is a father figure to kids around Edmondson Avenue and now down in Cherry Hill.

At any rate, Ray took a job with DJS because he thought he could make a difference. Secretary Donald Devore, who I truly believe wants to and is trying to change the system, hired him because he knew Ray could make a difference. Ray, and another man he brought in to the Juvenile Detention, Dante Wilson, who runs Reclaiming Our Children, (ROCAP,) had the hardest cases in that joint listening, weeping and talking and on the move, the slow grueling move, to come face to face with their emotions and turn their lives around.

Ray and I spoke everyday that he worked at the detention center. It was tearing him up inside. He kept saying to me “Man, it is out of control. They won’t listen (talking about the bureaucrats.) It is off the hook.” He quit in frustration.

Ray Cook is not a company man but an effective man who knows how to move children who are deeply damaged by the streets and poverty, in a way most with all the graduate degrees in the world cannot.

This is not to disparage all the teachers, social workers, counselors, and therapists working with our kids who have been busted, detained, arrested, and jailed. It is a process where all parties and skills are needed to work together to salvage our collective future.

It is to say, this is not new news. They would not listen to Ray and the others.

The solutions are right in front of us. Maybe the Juvenile Justice system ought to turn the school and therapeutic sections of that institution over to men and women who can run it successfully. Bring in an independent non-profit designed to do the job right. Give them the independence and power to do it right. Hire people who come from the streets themselves, who have track records of successfully working with children in trouble. Don’t be afraid to hire ex-cons and others who can make a difference.

Maybe the state should think twice before building more maximum-security juvenile institutions. Maybe we should start investing in community programs, halfway houses and community corrections facilities instead of prisons. Maybe we should put money into recreation centers and after school programs, turning our neighborhood schools into community schools that operate 24/7. Maybe we should invest the resources we have now in new directions. Maybe spend a little more in the right and most effective places. Maybe the state government and bureaucrats should start listening to and heading the advice of the Ray Cooks of our world.

Then maybe we can start to turn this thing around.

-Marc

VIOLENCE AND OUR SCHOOLS

On May 19th, from 6 to 8 PM, I will be hosting a special two-hour, live call-in with Baltimore Schools CEO Dr. Andres Alonso on WEAA, 88.9 FM, your community radio station.

One of the issues we will talk about is violence in our schools. In many city schools, it is palpable when you walk through their halls or when you talk to students and teachers who are in them every day.

It is fine to give more control to individual principals and schools, but there needs to be a system-wide policy to address what is in their control to address. Violence cannot be tolerated. Students who attack teachers and other students have to be dealt with firmly. Students have to know the limitations. The response can be therapeutic and healing, but it must be swift and with consequences.

Then you can talk about what individual schools can do.

So, please, join us on the 19th; it will be great being back on the air with you and taking your calls.

THAT RADIO STATION WHERE WE USED TO BE

So, I wandered over to the WYPR website yesterday. Don’t do that often. Actually, this may the second or third time I have done it since they kicked us off the air. I thought I would take a gander to see what was going on.

The Board of Directors meeting scheduled for May 20th at the Learning Tree has been turned into an internet meeting to be streamed live. Apparently, so many folks still outraged by the senseless cancellation of our show called in to say they were coming to attend the meeting. So, the folks at the top at the station said we could be in compliance with Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) open meeting rules by streaming it on the web.

It is amazing they really have no respect for the people of this community or their station’s listeners and members. It is outrageous and very telling when the leaders of that station are afraid to face and listen to their listeners.

For a while a few years ago, I was excited by how much underwriting was being brought into the station. It was to be a model for the nation’s public radio stations on how to address the dwindling federal support for public broadcasting. Then I realized that while underwriting grew, funds for expanding and building membership were being eviscerated at the station. Underwriting accounted for over 53% of funds and membership was down to the thirties. Underwriting by large corporations has steadily grown at WYPR since the station's founding. The influence that the corporate money buys is significant, but that is clearly to the liking of the management.

I now realize that this is not the salvation of public radio, but the bells chiming that could be its death knell. Public broadcasting is supposed to be adventuresome, where opinions outside the mainstream are heard and given voice, where creative experimentation is unleashed, where members and listeners actually participate.

We are losing control of our public airwaves and we must demand them back.

THE LIGHT RAIL

I was reading in the Sun about the MTA light rail dilemma, which got me thinking about mass transit. So, more people seem to be using light rail because of high gas prices. That is a wonderful thing. Most seem to believe we can’t get people out their cars into public transit. Well, I think over the long run we can. Keep gas prices high, stop building new developments, squeeze the auto industry to make hybrid/electric/hydrogen vehicles, and for god's sake put money into mass transit and stop building so many bloody highways. Life can change. It takes, it takes patience …… it takes money.

In the meantime, MTA has to get its act together. The state should take some of that highway money (those highway contractors and developers are powerful lobbies in Annapolis) and put it into MTA and the MARC to buy more cars, high speed (give them a lane) hybrid alternative diesel busses, and more maintenance workers and inspectors. In the long, they should build more rail (so MARC runs faster and the Light Rail has at least two tracks with more routes.)

That is the answer. Short term - buy more cars and busses. Long term - give us more rail.

It can be done. Am I nuts? What do you think?

DEMOCRACTIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE

The common wisdom has been, and primary election vote analyses tell us, that higher income people with more education, African-Americans, and younger voters are voting for Obama and that older voters, white women, Latinos, to a degree, and working people with less education are going with Clinton. No matter what happens, a portion of the Hillary voters will never vote for a Black man and a portion of the Barack voters will never vote for Hillary or a woman. The majority of primary voters, many of them new or voting for the first time in many years, could be Democratic voters in the fall.

It means that the two candidates have to come together and convince their supporters to support a new tomorrow together or they may once again lose despite Americans' frustrations and anger over the state of the economy and the war in Iraq.

They have to ignore the demagogic demons of cable talk TV, these so-called pundits with nothing to say but divisive viscera of mistrust and hate. Democrats have to stop talking about Reverend Wright, ignore and rise above the media’s obsession with their “bittergate" and dividing people with emotionally charged rhetoric over race and class. Sure, race and class are at the core of our fears, our mistrust, and the most horrendous parts of our history.

They have to speak forcefully, passionately, persuasively and intelligently about those things that concern Americans. You have to speak to people’s hopes and fears about the future. There is no reason why the wealthiest nation on the planet cannot guarantee a decent income, health care, and schools that we want our children to go to. Someone has to make sense of immigration and our relationship to the world economy honestly and clearly. People will hear it. Americans want us out of Iraq; we did not want to be there in the first place. Now it has to be clear that the Republican mess has to be cleared up, and it won’t be easy. Say it clearly; it will be heard. Most Americans want large corporations and the financial investment industry to be regulated and allow small business to flourish. People want immediate help and a vision for the future. Most folks don’t mind paying if they know where they are going. That is as long as the paying for is equitable where the wealthiest and the major corporations are carrying their weight and then some.

Talk about those issues and bring our future into the clear light of day and most Americans will go..."Reverend WHO?”

The Republicans have their vision and their candidate(s). The Democrats better see to theirs unless they want to sit by the gates of the White House panting like a thirsty dog for the next four years.

ABOUT TOWN

So, one of my favorite spots to eat near our new Hampden office is Soup's On, located on 36th Street in Hampden. They're closing this Saturday for three months. Just two days left to get your favorite soup, salad, chicken pot pie, iced coffee and dangerous cupcakes. The lovely Cynthia, proprietor and creator of Soup's On, is going to have a baby. Get her wares while you can, or wait till the end of the summer.

Also, went to Luca's Café in Locust Point, on Fort Avenue across from the Phillips Seafood HQ. The food was just phenomenonal and prices, well, four of with a few drinks was $96 bucks. Great wine list too. Check it out.

At the Baltimore School for the Arts, students and faculty are putting on four one-act Moliere plays. It runs through Sunday. Don’t miss it. The plays are really well acted by adults and students. My old friend Tony Tsendas is hilarious, right in his element (I think he channels the Marx brothers.) Richard Pilcher directs it all. Don’t miss it. Our School for the Arts (and Carver in Baltimore County) is among the best in the nation.

This is the fifth and final installment in CEM's series of dispatches from Indiana, courtesy of our intern Christina Arrison, who has been there working with the Obama campaign.

Last Thoughts 

CEM is pleased to be bringing you dispatches from Indiana, courtesy of our intern Christina Arrison, who is working with the Obama campaign. This is the fourth in the series.

Election Day!

Canvassing on election day is usually pretty fun because at that point the universe of voters you're communicating with has been narrowed to consist almost entirely of strong supporters and undecided people who lean heavily towards your candidate. It's an exhilarating feeling to go to a neighborhood and find that everyone you're talking to supports your candidate. It can make it a little more heartbreaking if your campaign loses, though, because after spending a lot of time with staffers and volunteers and talking to supportive voters, a win begins to feel inevitable. Today definitely felt like that – I walked this afternoon in a mostly African American neighborhood where at least two thirds of the adults I saw at their doors and out on the street were wearing "I Voted" stickers. Most of the rest said they were heading out later in the afternoon. It was a really great way to end my time talking to Indiana voters.

Voter Access

In terms of other election day observations, I thought that there were too many gaffes on the part of election officials. This year many polling locations were changed in Indianapolis for the first time in years, and the Obama campaign found this morning that in most of the old places there was nothing to indicate where the new location was. The campaign dispatched people to stay by the old polls and direct voters to their correct location, but while the authorities don't have a legal responsibility to post the new address, it seems to me like that's a simple step that could improve voter access immensely. Many of our canvassers also talked to people today who registered before the deadline but were told that they were not on the voter rolls. Instead of the poll workers telling them that they could cast provisional ballots, many of them were simply turned away. While the last time I was able to check the news there thankfully hadn't been reports of major problems, like running out of ballots or broken down voting machines, I'm frustrated because it seems like these minor mistakes are repeated each election. And now that I know firsthand how difficult it can be to win over each vote, and how excited many new registrants are to cast their first ballot, it angers me even more to see even one person turned away. We all need to do a lot of work before November to ensure that the voting process goes smoothly everywhere across the country.

After the Polls Close

But now that the polls have closed all there is to do is wait. And clean up. And sleep. And hopefully celebrate! I have to head back to Baltimore so I won't be able to see the returns in Indianapolis, but maybe by the time I land we'll have a winner, or at least be close to knowing. No matter what happens, I've had a great time working on this campaign, and thanks to CEM for the chance to post my observations!