Bottomline: Big Tulsa welcome

Big Tulsa welcome

After a month-long hiatus and a change in ownership, management and just about everything else, Tulsa has an alternative news outlet again.

"Urban Tulsa has provided news to this community for over 20 years and we are glad a paper will continue to have a presence in Tulsa,” said Mayor Dewey Bartlett. “We look forward to working with the new publisher and reporters and excited to welcome a new voice to Tulsa.”

Bottom line: Tulsa has an alternative newspaper once again!

Big Texas welcome: Racial profiling edition

When 13-year-old Tulsa hip hop dancer Landry Thompson found herself in handcuffs, a Texas police officer allegedly broke it down for her guardians like this: “You two men are black and she’s white.”

Thompson, her dance instructor Emmanuel Hurd, 29, and dance partner, Josiah Kelly, 22, garnered national media attention after a frightening encounter with Houston police left them shaken and alleging racial discrimination.

The trio wrapped a video shoot at Planet Funk Academy in the wee hours of Sun., Dec. 2. After a stop at a gas station, officers surrounded their car. Despite guardianship forms, the girl’s original birth certificate and a list of contact numbers, all three dancers were handcuffed. She was taken into Child Protective Services, while the two men were detained but not arrested.

“They had nothing on us,” Hurd told ABC News. “The only reason someone gave me was we were black and Landry was white.”

Landry was released late the next morning after Thompson’s mother called Tulsa police for help, according to the Tulsa World.

The Houston Police Department released a statement: “Given the age discrepancies between all involved, the fact that all three were from out of state, and the child had no relatives in the area, officers, in an abundance of caution, did their utmost to ensure her safety. In this instance, that involved further investigation by CPS.”

Bottom line: This story became a living Rorschach test. What do you think when you see black and white together: danger or dancing?

Hail Satan?

The Satanic Temple, a New York City-based group, proposed a memorial to be placed next to the Ten Commandments monument on Oklahoma’s Capitol grounds.

This summer, the Ten Commandments memorial drew criticism — and a lawsuit ­— from the American Civil Liberties Union, who remarked on the lone religious symbol: “The monument stands alone, with no other monuments or memorials in the immediate vicinity.”

Satan’s memorial would be an homage to His Evilness, designed to complement and contrast the Ten Commandments already in place. In a press release, a temple spokesperson said: “By accepting our offer, the good people of Oklahoma City will have the opportunity to show that they espouse the basic freedoms spelled out in the Constitution … Allowing us to donate a monument would show that the Oklahoma City Council does not discriminate, and both the religious and non-religious should be happy with such an outcome.”

So far, members of the Oklahoma legislature have called it a “joke,” (Senate Pro Tem Brian Bingman, R-Sapulpa) and “very offensive,” (Rep. Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville).

Bottom line: When the Ten Commandments monument was constructed on the Capitol, it popped open a big can of religious freedom issues, as well as the door for other faiths to gain a piece of the state’s hallowed grounds (whether you support those faiths or not).

Pants on the ground

Tulsa City Councilor Jack Henderson just can’t take it anymore. He’s proposing a city ordinance amendment and waging a one-man war against baggy, saggy pants.

“They just think that it’s the cool thing to do,” Henderson told the Tulsa World. “But it’s not cool when your wife or your mother or your girlfriend has to look at somebody’s dirty shorts.”

He said he’d been stewing over this issue for three years, and said Dallas has a saggy pants ordinance, though it does not. Henderson and his staff are researching the issue further.

Bottom line: An attempt to turn Tulsa PD into bonafide fashion police doesn’t do much for Henderson’s street cred.

Have a merry ‘Winter Tradition!’

Satan can’t catch a break around the Capitol, but Oklahoma legislators are already getting behind the new Merry Christmas bill. House Bill 2317 would “permit school districts to display on school property scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations.”

The author of the bill is Tulsa’s own Republican Rep. Ken Walker, who said in a press conference that he’d like to “put a beacon of light, a safe harbor, if you will in the pages of statutes” that would allow schoolchildren and teachers alike to “express their core beliefs and celebrate winter traditions without fear of lawsuit, retribution or reprisal.”

The Texas legislature passed a similar bill that would forestall lawsuits against schools that prefer to spread only Christmas-specific holiday cheer.

Bottom line: “This is a way legislators can score political points with the cost being born by school districts,” said American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson Brady Henderson. It’s the perfect gift for the school district that has everything.