$273k grant to fight the Goth culture?
 

Almost Half of Grant to Combat Goth Culture in Blue Springs Returned


BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. (AP) -- Almost half of a $273,000 grant awarded in 2002 to fight the Goth culture in Blue Springs has been returned because of a lack of interest -- and the absence of a real problem.

Blue Springs received the grant two years ago from the Youth Outreach Unit, money the city and U.S. Rep. Sam Graves trumpeted proudly as a way to fight a perceived Goth problem.

But $132,000 of the grant was returned because officials never found much of a problem with the Goth culture, which some students called a fad that most people eventually outgrow.

Slightly more than $118,000 of the money was earmarked for therapy, assessment and case management, and the plans also included a series of town meetings to discuss the issue.

"It never happened because referring someone for looking, acting Goth is not a concept that ever got imbedded in people's heads," project manager Allyce Ford said of the therapy proposal.

The town hall meetings didn't happen, either, she said, because there wasn't enough interest in the community to conduct them.

About halfway through the project, the focus shifted from Goths to counter cultures and negative influences facing children, Ford said.

"You have to admit if you saw one, two, three, four or more people dressed in traditional Goth, it would be discerning," she said. "Those kids have every right to be there. I hope the lessons you're teaching are tolerance and understanding."

Assistant City Administrator Eric Johnson said despite the change in focus, the project helped dispel myths and stereotypes associated with the Goth culture.

"That was part of the goal," Johnson said. "If we were able to accomplish that, we are able to accomplish something effective."

you remind me of vegas2003

This is what happens when the South decides to fight the Goth culture:

http://www.wm3.org/

Burn all the witches and sinners!

$132k left to fight sykboy and fletch

so whats wrong with goth!

anyone else going to Lipzig on the Wave Gotik Treffen ? =)

Only 273K budget?

Sounds more like "Your Tax" dollars hard work and up for grabs ie, to fight "Unseen" enemies.

Yet another sure sign that the American system is broken.

I can't believe no one sued these people.

Whats wrong with goths? Ok they might be scary but they dont really bother me.

"the final swing is not a drill,
its how many people i can kill."

"Pessimist, Terrorist targeting the next mark
Global chaos feeding on hysteria
Cut throat, slit your wrist, shoot you in the back fair game
Drug abuse, self abuse searching for the next high
Sounds a lot like hell is spreading all the time
I'm waiting for the day the whole world fucking dies"

If they're looking for cash to fight emo, I'll chip in.

next they'll be fighting against ravers... :1orglaugh

I don't mind goths. They have better music than wiggers :1orglaugh


yes, Marilyn Manson is better than DMX!

Good to see someone else following up on that case. What happened to those three guys is total bullshit. I keep hoping Damien will be set free, but it just seems like no matter how much evidence they have to prove he didn't do it, they keep him locked up anyway....

That's fucked up and sad! I feel for the guys!

jDoG

Wow, that shit is fucking scary.

thats fucked up what happend to being able to express yourself...

:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh

absolute bullshit.

America is drowning in a bowl of fear belched forth by the corporate slavemaster media outlets.

NO SHIT!! I can not even believe you posted this.. I was obsessed for about 2 years over this case!!

I live around where is happend and went to court for the sentencing and so on.. THE BIGGEST PILE OF BULLSHIT IN THE USA!!!!
These kids have been in prison for over 10 years .. the state of Arkansas has NO EVIDENCE that these boys did this.. and they are about to EXECUTE Damien Echols for this crime..


I better stop now before I lose it lol

PS..

EVERYONE SHOULD CHECK OUT THE SITE BELOW... it is a fucking terrible situation...

http://www.wm3.org

FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS 3 !!
:feels-hot

More good reading:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notoriou...1.html?sect=13

Wow. Wasting money on such stupid shit is even more retarded than goth kids.

http://www.wm3.org




Shortly after three eight-year-old boys were found mutilated and murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, local newspapers stated the killers had been caught. The police assured the public that the three teenagers in custody were definitely responsible for these horrible crimes. Evidence?

The same police officers coerced an error-filled ?confession? from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio-taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes. Jessie recanted it that evening, but it was too late? Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were all arrested on June 3, 1993, and convicted of murder in early 1994.

Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. Unfathomably, Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus 40.

For nearly 11 years, The West Memphis Three have been imprisoned for crimes they didn?t commit. Echols waits in solitary confinement for the lethal injection our tax dollars will pay for. They were all condemned by their poverty, incompetent defense, satanic panic and a rush to judgment.

But there?s still hope for them, and you can help.

Here's my favorite thing to say to Goths:

"Just because you suck doesn't mean you're a vampire."

bump :Graucho

Only in America could we piss away such large sums of money. I love this place! lol

Cheers,

Brad

thats fucked up

:glugglug

Sounds good to me

I have posted about this Satanic Panic many times on this board.

Geraldo Rivera is to blame for a lot of it.

In the 80s he ran story after story of Satanic Kids Killing Baby stories and Ritual Killing alongside KKK episodes he totally made the public fear these Satanic Cults. But the fact is there have never been ritualistic baby killings in America. At least not by anyone modern. Sure the Christians killed a bunch of babies but no Satanists have, in fact killing a human who does not threaten you directly goes against everything Satanic.

I wont explain anything about it, but its been shown there was nothing more than hysteria that created this Satanic Mythy, and people are in fact being burned alive so to speak these days, no differenly than the old witch burnings of the past.

America is afraid to admit it but they are still witch burners, and thats why I will fight christianity until my death, these peopkle are still killing under gods thumb.

Don't forget Damien's notebook and the funeral register he had turned into a Grimoire which they claimed as "evidence" that Damien had sacrificed the boys.

Some people's ignorance of Wicca just amazes me sometimes...

Here's a part of the site that talks about these two things they found in Damien's room, if anybody is interested to read about them:

"Various items were found in his room, including a funeral register upon which he had drawn a pentagram and upside-down crosses and had copied spells.

According to an interview with Damien, this funeral register was in fact confiscated by Jerry Driver a year before the murders, at a time when Driver was investigating Damien for, of all things, possible involvement in the train robbery of a top-secret Army laser rifle which had occurred hundreds of miles away from where Damien lived. No evidence ever came to light to even remotely connect Damien to this caper. (38)

An upright pentagram is a "white witchcraft" or wiccan symbol, yet upside-down crosses are a symbol associated with "black witchcraft," according to the testimony of Dr. Dale Griffis. (39) What the jury did not hear, however, is Damien's claim that he had loaned out this funeral register (which he had transformed into a grimoire, or Book Of Shadows, a book in which witches record their spells) to a former girlfriend, fellow wiccan Deanna Holcomb, who added the crosses to the cover. Damien was displeased with the mixing of symbols and, apparently sensing something bad might come from it, thought about getting rid of the cover. But at the time he was very emotionally involved with Deanna, and so decided to keep it. (40)

These points will be very important to keep in mind later when discussing the significance the prosecution attempted to make out of Damien's poem "In the Middle" during their cross-examination of him. The spells contained within Damien's Book Of Shadows include one to improve the memory, a love charm, improve your chances at success, a cure for worms, and a cure for cramps. Only one "spell" apparently had any sinister implications, "Sacrifice Addressed to Hecate." Fogleman, naturally, chose this one to read to the jury, ignoring the rest. (36)

A journal was introduced, and it contained morbid images and references to dead children.

This handwritten journal was confiscated from Damien in May of 1992 along with many other personals items after he was arrested for breaking into an abandoned mobile with a girl, Deanna Holcomb, whose parents had forbidden her to see him. In July Prosecutor John Fogleman agreed to drop the charges in consideration of Damien and his family moving to Oregon. (41)

The journal turns out to contain an eclectic hodgepodge of quotations from the likes of Metallica songs and Shakespeare, mixed in with Damien's own moody "teenage angst" style poetry. A selection of this material culled from the file is available online. (42) An obvious counter-argument to the state's insinuations is that to present any writer's material -- whether he or she is a professional or novice, or it is poetry or fiction -- as something which necessarily has a one-on-one relationship to how the author conducts himself in society, is not only groundless but usually foolish.

The Opinion did not find the following to constitute "substantial" evidence, but there was additional evidence presented by the state or elicited from witnesses during the trial for the jury to hear intended to show that Damien Echols delved deeply into the occult, specifically Satanism:

* The fact that he'd read books by Anton LaVey (the founder of the modern Church of Satan, which does NOT advocate human sacrifice), horror novelist Stephen King, and one tome called "Cotton Mather on Witchcraft" which is decidedly ANTI-witchcraft. (36)

* Det. Bryn Ridge's expert testimony that these kinds of reading materials are "strange" in a teenager. (43)

* The fact that he was at least familiar via secondhand research with the theories of Aleister Crowley, a turn of the century occultist/magician whose writings seem to advocate -- arguably in a tongue-in-cheek manner, according to scholars -- human sacrifice but are more likely sexual references. (36)

* The fact that he had a Wiccan pentagram and an Egyptian ankh tattooed on his chest. The E - V - I - L tattoo across the fingers of one hand, something which the defense brought up on its own. (36)"


Abnormal reading material for someone that was his age?! Yeah right... I was about 10 years old when I read my first Stephen King novel ("Misery") and by the time I was his age I had already read plenty of books on Wicca.

As for the lyrics he wrote down....what kid DOESN'T write lyrics to songs they like when they're bored...

The things they come up with throughout this case are absolutely absurd. A modern day witch trial, that's all it is.

Ok, I'm done ranting now. :1orglaugh

THANK YOU! :thumbsup I'm not a Satanist, but I understand and have read of their TRUE practices, because I'm all for reading up on and understanding other religions. Unlike some people that are so ignorant they won't even listen to someone that practices the religion that's being filled with untruths and misunderstandings when they try to correct them.

Such as the way some Christians belive that Wiccans and Pagans worship the devil, when in fact, we don't even believe in the devil...

All I know is if someone accuses me of murder, theres no way I would say I did it.

How fucking stupid.

:2 cents:

:1orglaugh

They just kind of suck. The fewer we have hanging around the better.

"The same police officers coerced an error-filled ?confession? from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio-taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes. "

what's scary..she cute imo:2 cents:
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/811...hickNAMM51.jpg

If only the West Memphis 3 were good football players or oversexed basketball superstars, they could be sitting at home while the legal drama unfolds :(