In May, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce brought in urban studies theorist Richard Florida as the keynote speaker for its annual meeting. One of Florida’s theories is that cities that are inclusive toward gays are the ones that draw the creative types – artists, tekkies, engineers, university researchers – who in turn make the city attractive to others. But after the police raid on Fort Worth’s Rainbow Lounge last weekend, which left one man hospitalized with head injuries, the national media aren’t tossing many bouquets to Fort Worth for its inclusiveness.
Static has a hard time believing that local police and the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission agents decided, on purpose, to bust some heads in a gay bar on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall bar raid in New York City, which spawned the gay rights movement. Law enforcement folks generally don’t keep up with such events.
But this is just one more sign that the Fort Worth establishment doesn’t like gay clubs or having a part of their town seen as a gayberhood. GLBT bar owners have long complained about harassment from the city. “No parking” signs pop up on the streets in front of clubs, and patrons say cops pull them over without cause after they leave the bars. And then you get TABC raids like the one at the Rainbow where men were grabbed and arrested for public intoxication without any breathalyzer tests being conducted.
The police contend that the event turned violent because some patrons resisted and even dry-humped and groin-grabbed the cops. Could patrons of a gay bar that has just filled with cops really be that stupid? That’s also hard to believe.
Power of Poly
Polytechnic High School is truly the comeback kid this year. With 78.4 percent of students graduating on time in 2008, the school has met the state’s final accountability test, guaranteeing it will continue to be the “beacon on the hill” to future generations of students from Fort Worth’s Eastside neighborhoods.
Poly’s achievements were no small feat. After four years of failing to make the cut in the state’s academic accountability ratings, time was running out: If it failed to meet standards for a fifth consecutive year, the school as we know it would have been toast.
But this year the students made one of those only-in-Hollywood last-minute, nail-biting plays that won the game. The school’s overall academic passing rate for 2009 was high enough to earn it the “academically acceptable” rating it needed to stay open. There was only one more hurdle to leap: Poly also had to raise its completion rate to at least 75 percent for the student body as a whole, as well as for students in certain groups: African American, Hispanic, white, and economically disadvantaged. This week, school district officials announced that Poly had met that test as well – and then some.
Principal Gary Braudaway said that staff, students, and the community refused to be “paralyzed by fear” and worked together for three years to turn the school around. It required “an unshakable belief that everyone matters … and that everyone contributes” to reaching the common goal, he said.
The principal had earlier described one of his most successful methods of keeping kids in school. Absent students were called at home and, if there was no answer or no valid excuse, Braudaway and a team of coaches jumped in their cars, went to the homes, and hauled the kids to school.
Superintendent Melody Johnson gave credit to the leadership of Braudaway and the “power of a school and community coming together in support of
its students.”
Who knows what’s next? “We have many more goals to reach,” Braudaway said.
