UPW Urban Pro Weekly

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Sheriff Roundtree urges voters to support SPLOST 7 Sheriff Richard Roundtree Photo by Vincent Hobbs

URBAN PRO WEEKLY

OCTOBER 8- 14, 2015 VOL. 5 NO. 6

Julia Nelson a dance journey Dancer Julia Nelson (also in inset) does a stretching exercise after a dance class at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School. Nelson is currently studying dance at The Boston Conservatory, one of the top ten dance schools in the United States.

Photos by Vincent Hobbs

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COMMUNITY

Eagle Royalty T.W. Josey students Breanna Wilson (L) and Deonte Browman (R) pose for pictures after being crowned as Miss T.W. Josey and Mr. Eagle during during Homecoming Week coronation ceremonies. The Mardi Gras-themed event, held in the Josey gym, featured a grand procession of club king and queens and the royal court of class kings and queens. Photo by Vincent Hobbs

Students wait backstage before the start of the Homecoming Week coronation of Miss T.W. Josey and Mr. Eagle.

Photo by Vincent Hobbs

UrbanProWeekly - OCTOBER 8 - 14, 2015

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UPW

URBAN PRO WEEKLY

Urban Pro Weekly LLC

3529 Monte Carlo Drive Augusta, GA 30906 Executive Publisher / Sales BEN HASAN 706-831-7828 bzhasan54@yahoo.com Executive Managing Editor FREDERICK BENJAMIN SR. 706-306-4647 editor@urbanproweekly.com Contributors VINCENT HOBBS Photography & New Media

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Westside High School Lady Patriots celebate after scoring a point during a game against Butler at the Patriots’ gym. Photo by Vincent Hobbs

SPORTS H.S. Volleyball

Westside Patriots in the spotlight Westside High School head volleyball coach David Bradberry talks to the Lady Patriots during a timeout in a game against Lakeside. Photo by Vincent Hobbs

UrbanProWeekly -- OCTOBER OCTOBER 88 -- 14, 14, 2015 2015 UrbanProWeekly

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Dance students are instructed

by Sharon Mayfield and Julia Nelson (not pictured) during a dance class at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School. The students experienced a 3-week masterclass under Nelson, who helped teach Modern Dance Level 3 and 4 as a teaching assistant to Mayfield.

Nelson is currently studying dance at The Boston Conservatory, one of the top ten dance schools in the United States.

Photo by Vincent Hobbs

Unboun

THE DANCE JOURNEY OF JUL

S Dance instructor Sharon Mayfield helps dancer Julia Nelson with a stretching exercise after a dance class at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School. Mayfield helped Nelson tone her body over the summer to reach a targeted weight-loss goal. Nelson is currently studying dance at The Boston Conservatory, one of the top ten dance schools in the United States. Photo by Vincent Hobbs

he is simply known as “The Beast”. Not due to physical appearance - because she is the epitome of calm beauty and gracefulness. Her brilliant smile radiates warmth. There is a sweetness that envelopes her persona. But here’s the thing - her moniker comes as a result of the way she devours a stage, a dance floor, or any room where there is ample space to express fluid creativity through the movement of limb and body.

Any observer to this artistic movement is a witness to a storyteller in motion – a “beast” who vanquishes the performance floor with deliberate precision.

Julia Nelson recently shared these talents in a threeweek master class workshop at Davidson Fine Arts School.

Partnering with her mentor, Sharon Skepple Mayfield, who is a DFA dance instructor, Julia collaborated with students as a guest artist in Level 1-4 Modern Dance and

Julia Nelson

UrbanProWeekly - OCTOBER 8 - 14, 2015 UrbanProWeekly - OCTOBER 8 - 14, 2015

Q&A

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UPW: How long have you been dancing?

NELSON: I’ve been dancing for eight years. As a child, dance was merely a fun hobby - until I made the life decision to pursue dance four years ago.

UPW: How many hours do you train per day?

NELSON: During the school year, I train from 8:00AM until 6:50PM, five days a week. This does not include rehearsals for shows at the end of the day or on weekends which can range between two to ten hours! For the past three months, I have incorporated a non-stop 30-minute workout regimen, three times a day, which will be implemented into my daily training at school.

UPW: Tell us about your education.

NELSON: In my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I proudly attended Cross Creek High School. I then made the decision to switch to Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School for my junior and senior years.

As I joined the school, I became the first person in Davidson history to enter immediately into the highest dance division offered. Currently, I’m majoring in dance at The Boston Conservatory, one of the top ten dance schools in the United States. The Boston Conservatory only accepted 30 dancers for the incoming class of 2014 and I was fortunate to be picked from amongst hundreds of dancers across the nation.

nded passion

LIA NELSON

Photos and interview by Vincent Hobbs

Advanced Men’s Dance classes. The two started working together when Julia was barely a teenager, through classes at the Augusta Ballet.

Mayfield, a Bessie Award-winning dancer who performed with Garth Fagan Dance in New York, affectionately refers to Julia as “my daughter”. The affinity and warmth of their friendship is rooted within their deep respect for the art of dance.

“Julia is a wonderful source of inspiration to all of my young up-and-coming modern dancers at Davidson.

The students truly love and adore her. Her passion for dance knows no boundaries!” Mayfield shared with UPW. Julia’s mom, Manuela Nelson, has great expectations for the 19-year-old dancer. “It is important to understand that Julia is an artistic person and I am not. I would sit quietly

as parents talked about their kids wanting to be a doctor, or even an auto mechanic and wondered if I should not be asking my daughter to pursue a more financially stable career. I was scared that she would not be able to make a living in dance. Julia’s acceptance to the Boston Conservatory alleviated many of these fears and solidified the promise of her potential. You see, it is one thing to realize your child is great in the bubble of their home town, but something else when a top ten performing arts school thinks your kid has talent and potential on a national level.

“Julia’s relationship with dance is so personal and I will never fully understand it. It has been a part of our lives as long as I can remember. I now realize it was there long before I acknowledged it, this bond to emotion through movement.”

UPW: What was your fitness goal over the summer? Did you achieve it?

NELSON: This summer I had to completely rearrange my priorities in the way I take care of body through food and conditioning. I realized that I could no longer eat and do whatever I wanted because my body is a tool and I must take care of it. So I committed to simply toning up by gaining lean muscle and losing weight in a healthy manner. This commitment required me to change how and what I ate. Along with my new perception on food, I worked out intensely three times a day, every day, while teaching from 9AM until 5:00 PM with Sharon Mayfield, my mentor. I no longer ate processed food or drank anything other than water, thus shedding 15 pounds this summer.

UPW: Why do you dance?

NELSON: Dance is my safe place in life. I dance because it provides my life with structure, discipline, and beauty. When I dance I am at my purest — meaning the hardships, anger, and sorrow do not damage me, for I am at the peak of happiness. I love the blood, sweat, and tears that go into my art because that’s truly what makes it beautiful, to effortlessly move across the stage and provide people with a positive or negative aesthetic experience. The ability to make a stranger think, and feel so deeply because of the movement I presented on stage is an incredible feeling that I would be lost without.

Dance took me off the path of being a teenager with too much time on my hands, participating in unhealthy matters. Once that ambitious fire sparked inside of me, I was groomed into a beautiful, fearless, young artist.

This is why I dance.

UrbanProWeekly - OCTOBER 8 - 14, 2015

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MAKIN’ A DIFFERENCE COMMENTARY by Ken Makin

The conversation we’re afraid to have

Oregon shooting reaffirms need to talk gun control, regulations It is hard to believe that the Columbine High School shooting massacre took place more than 16 years ago. At the time, people treated the incident as an absolute tragedy – and an absolute anomaly.

Then Sandy Hook happened. That incident, which occurred on December 14, 2012 at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., should have been an eye-opener for many Americans.

Instead, our actions regarding gun-related tragedies have become more and more numb.

As a result, the community at-large has become desensitized to these shootings to the point where we won’t even talk about them, or we will make excuses for why we don’t need additional gun regulations or gun control.

Well, our country’s failure reared its ugly head at the beginning of this month at Umpqua Community College, a tragedy that followed a summer where people took aim in movie theaters and at oncoming traffic on prominent American highways.

So WHY do we refuse to have the conversation? Personally, I think it’s because the government sold us out and because our neighbors love their

guns too much.

Don’t believe me in regards to the government? Here are some stats on gun rights group National Rilfe Association (NRA), according to a recent column from political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson: “The NRA has gotten a stupendous return on the $17 million it spent on federal elections in 2012 and the tens of millions it spent on past elections. In the decade since the assault ban expired in 2004, nearly 20 strong gun control bills have died still born in House and Senate committees.”

Yes, the majority of the political prostitutes being pimped by the NRA are conservative Republicans, but there are Democrats with their hands in the cookie jar as well.

And now, for our neighbors. I have to be honest – I am SICK AND TIRED of the excuses people make for why we don’t have more gun regulations.

What I’m going to do here is address that rhetoric, and strike it down with sensible reasoning.

EXCUSE: “Criminals will always find a way to get guns.”

This assumption is not only wrong, it’s not accurate. There are deterrents set up throughout our way of life to

inhibit the criminal and/or evildoer from getting their hands on a gun. The PROBLEM is when those deterrents fail, for example, the failure to deny sale of a firearm to Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter. Statistics show that where there are deterrents in place, people are significantly less likely to get their hands on guns.

This is also a challenge to regulate where people can purchase guns. It’s practically the Wild Wild West on social media, where people are buying and trading guns as we speak. That should be disallowed IMMEDIATELY. The same goes for underground and unlicensed gun shows. The challenge is to make prospective gun salesmen accountable, not make excuses for them.

EXCUSE: “The government wants to take away the ability to defend ourselves.”

Newsflash – if the government saw fit to take your gun or guns away right now, you and what army are going to stop them?

The government will always have the biggest guns. It’s the way of our society.

I have already established earlier in this column how the government already defers to gun lobbyists. Congress

doesn’t want to take your guns.

Another newsflash – President Barack Obama doesn’t want to take your guns.

He just wants accountability and honesty when it comes to dealing with these tragic events: “…When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer. When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities. We have seatbelt laws because we know it saves lives. So the notion that gun violence is somehow different … doesn’t make sense.”

We can no longer afford to be afraid of the conversation. If we refuse to speak proactively, then we will be speaking reactively, in the midst of yet another tragedy.

Ken J. Makin is the host of “Makin’ A Difference,” an online radio program available on iTunes and Soundcloud (soundcloud.com/makinadifference).

Updates on the show are available at facebook.com/makinadifferenceshow. You can also reach Ken by email atmakinadifferenceshow@gmail.com, or via Twitter @differencemakin.

Passing SPLOST 7 will provide essential items for fighting crime For over 20 years, residents of Richmond County have devoted one penny for each dollar spent to the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST). One of the main purposes of a SPLOST package is to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of this community. This includes, but is not limited to, providing vital resources to assist your Sheriff’s Office. These resources help maintain public safety by purchasing tools to help decrease the volume of crime in your community.

This administration is dedicated to the complete transparency of the Sheriff’s Office. We support proactive programs to deter and reduce crime as well as provide better services to our citizens. That is why the proposed SPLOST package allocates almost $30 million dollars dedicated to the Sheriff’s Office.

Those monies will be used to purchase and maintain a county-owned radio system that can be used by all public safety and first responding agencies

in the entire county. The system will also allow us to directly communicate with agencies in neighboring counties, a capability we currently do not have.

At present, we do not own our radio network and have been renting airtime from a South Carolina company for almost 20 years. The Sheriff’s office contributes over $400,000 of the $700,000 per year lease agreement. Purchasing our own radio system though SPLOST revenue will result in saving the Sheriff’s Office over $400,000 a year that could be used for personnel and/or other law enforcement equipment.

The Sheriff’s Office has also partnered with Augusta Technical College to train 15 new deputies a year at no cost, in exchange for the use of Sheriff’s Office instructors and our driving and firing ranges. SPLOST funding would allow us to upgrade our training facility to accommodate more personnel and to offer specialized training for our deputies as well as law enforcement person-

nel from throughout the state.

In an effort to expand our services and improve response time in south Augusta, the old Regional Youth Development Center (RYDC) building was converted into our south precinct substation. We subsequently purchased the six acres of land and buildings behind the substation to house our special operations, traffic, and narcotics divisions. SPLOST funding would allow us to renovate the buildings and decentralize our downtown headquarters and move more services to south Augusta.

Finally, the current SPLOST package will have the potential to replace over 280 patrol vehicles over a five year period. Upgrading our fleet is one of our most critical needs, as many of our cars are well over their mileage limits.

Additionally, as we hire and train more deputies, the new vehicles would allow us enough cars to place them on patrol.

I realize there have been some concerns surrounding which items have

been included in the package, but I also understand that there is no project list which would have made every single Richmond County voter completely happy. Knowing that, I urge you to hold your elected officials accountable for the operations of our city and for ensuring that our needs are addressed. I also strongly feel that we should not vote no to SPLOST as a means of retaliation for some disappointments we may have had, particularly when this package provides so many things we so desperately need.

If the current SPLOST package fails, there is no other funding source to obtain the items I have outlined. These items are vital to the operations of your Sheriff’s Office. Therefore, in the best interest of public safety, I support SPLOST 7. Let’s not be a community of emotions, let’s be a community of evolution. Go to the polls, and vote YES. Sheriff Richard Roundtree

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