VOL. V, No. 16;
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Dear Arthur,
Today's newsletter includes:
1.
Information on last Saturday's High School Discussion Group which
featured the presentation of an "almost
finished" documentary film on the 2004 Congressional
campaign of St. Louisan Jeff Smith .
2. Information on
the Wednesday, April 26 Middle School M.U.N.
3. Information on Washington University's International
Film Festival.
4.
Information on Civitas Activities for the
Summer.
5. Information on our
new survey on Expanding
Barnes-Jewish Hospital into 12 acres of Forest
Park.
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Civitas Home
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Special Documentary
Film at High School Discussion Last Saturday is
Big Success!
 Last Saturday (April 15) we had a
viewing of a near-final draft of a documentary film by
Frank
Popper on the grass-roots campaign of
St. Louisan Jeff Smith
in
his 2004 race for the U. S.
House of Representatives from Missouri's Third District.
Frank was with us the
entire morning as was able to give us considerable information
about the making of the documentary. Jeff and campaign coordinator
Matt Coen joined us
at the end for an expanded question and answer period.
 While Jeff's political leanings
are clearly progressive, even the most conservative of our
students were impressed by the grass-roots nature of his
campaign, with considerable emphasis on volunteer workers and
door-to-door campaigning. There were highlights to the
campaign; and low points that took real character to bounce back
from. The unanimous feeling of the group was that
Frank Popper did a
remarkable job of capturing the intricacies of the campaign
and how difficult it is to run with problems of name recognition
and considerably less funding that your main opponent.
Frank's hope is
for the film to hit the theaters in St. Louis in late summer and
then move on to national distribution. We hope that as time
goes on, every interested member of the Civitas community will have an
opportunity to see it.
 Our next and final discussion group of
the 2005-2006 school year will be on Saturday, April 29.
While we will have ample time for free-flowing discussion, we
will also have a 30-minute "teach-in" on the civil war and famine
in Darfur presented by Danielle
Silber, chairperson of the Washington University
International Film Festival. The activities will be at
Crossroads (map)
from 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM.
Also.....
- We will wrap
the school year up with our annual Spring picnic and softball
game. It will be on Saturday, May 13, from
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM at Deer Creek Park in Maplewood. More
details to follow.
Link
to Photos from April 15 Discussion
Map
and Directions to Crossroads School
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Second Middle School Model U.N. 8 Days
Away
Congratulations to all who
participated in the first of six Spring Model U.N. sessions
for middle school students on Wednesday, April 5,
2006. The schools that participated in the first session
were Maplewood-Richmond Heights Middle School, Queen of All
Saints (South St. Louis County), and St. Gabriel School (South
St. Louis City).
Five
resolutions were on the agenda and we were able to
consider four of them. Resolutions on each of the topics
listed below overwhelmingly passed the General Assembly.
You can read the resolutions; see the amendments; and examine the
votes by clicking
here.
1. Child Trafficking (St. Gabriel's) -- Passed
2. International Adoption
(Queen of All Saints) --
Passed
3. AIDS
(Maplewood-Richmond
Heights) -- Passed
4. Tsunami & Natural Disaster
Relief (St. Gabriel's) --
Passed
Unfortunately, we did not
have time to consider the resolution on refugees submitted by
Queen of All Saints School.
Once again, you can
access
the five resolutions by clicking here.
After two
weeks off, we will come together on Wednesday, April 26 with
Cathedral School (St. Louis City), St. Francis Cabrini (St. Louis
City), City Academy (St. Louis City), St. Dominic Savio (South
St. Louis County), and St. Mary Magdalen (mid St. Louis County).
The rest of the schools will have their General Assemblies on May
3, May 4, May 10, and May 11. We will give you the line-up
for the resolutions on April 26 in next week's e-newsletter.
 If your school is not among the three that
participated in the April 5 M.U.N. session, you still have
an opportunity to have a Civitas staff member read your
rough drafts and provide you with some (we hope) helpful
feedback. E-mail your rough drafts (soon please!) to Lisa at [email protected]
and she will get back to you quickly with comments about the
resolutions and ideas for how to improve them for your General
Assembly. Of course, if you already have the final drafts
of your resolutions completed please send those in so we can get
them posted on the web.
All sessions are at the
Creve Coeur Government Center (map
and directions) from 9:00 AM - 12:00 Noon.
As
always, if you have any questions or need any additional
resources for your students, please contact Lisa Granich-Kovarik
at [email protected]
or (314) 865-4704.
Middle School
Country Selections for 2005-2006
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Washington University International Film
Festival Continues
 Two films remain in
this Spring's Washington University International Film
Festival. They are on April 20 and April 27. The one
this Thursday (April 20) is called "Favela Rising" It
is about a young man in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil who is a
drug-dealer, but following the murders of friends and family
members, he turns into a social revolutionary working to put an
end to the culture of drugs in his society, including the
difficulties arising from a corrupt police force.
You
can get more information including the listing of the
remaining films by clicking
here, clicking on the image to the right, or e-mailing
Danielle at [email protected].
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| | Photos! | | Streaming
Video! |
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Civitas Summer Plans
Evolving
As the 2005-2006 school year winds
to an end (not quickly enough for some), Civitas will have
several special "stand-alone" activities for students this
summer. We list them for you now; next week we will give
you links to forms where you can indicate if you are interested
and what dates work best for you.
- Urban Studies
Event: An analysis of the controversy over 12
acres of Forest Park located east of Kingshighway and just south
of Barnes-Jewish Hospital. We will meet with planners for
both Forest Park and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. We will also
meet officials the city of St. Louis and close-by
neighborhoods. And....we will make a necessary stop at
Crown Candy
Company. (This is the topic of
this-week's on-line survey!)
- Urban Studies Event: "Bird's-Eye View of
St. Louis"...this is an "oldie-but-goodie."
We will study how land-use changes in St. Louis from the
perspectives of the Metropolitan Life Building
(downtown); Continental Building (Mid-Town);
University Club (Richmond Heights), and possibly
the DoubleTree West Hotel (Chesterfield).
We'll also make sure that we have time for a tasty meal.
- Public
Policy by the Numbers: This is an activity open
to students and teachers alike. We'll examine how important
it is to analyze issues by "smart use" of numbers. Using
computers, we will take a look at issues ranging from
traffic management in St. Louis to
raising revenue for the United
Nations.
Once again, we want you to know
that we will have on-line sign-up sheets
available for you in next week's newsletter as well as a form for
you to indicate what dates might work for
you. If you have any questions, please call us at
(314) 367-6480 or e-mail us at [email protected].
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| | http://www.civitas-stl.com/civ0506/encroachment_on_forest_park.htm
Survey on Land Use
in and near Forest Park in St. Louis
Through years, many have wanted piece
of Forest Park
By Tim
O'Neil
ST. LOUIS
POST-DISPATCH
04/15/2006
In August 1992,
St. Louis voters soundly defeated a plan to expand the Art Museum
grounds in Forest Park. Only two months later, state highway
officials requested four acres of park land to improve Highway
40.
"This stuff never seems to end," Irving
Clay, then a city alderman, grumbled about the highway
pitch.
City leaders eventually turned it down,
but Clay was right about the big picture.
The grand park
in the heart of St. Louis draws just about everything - crowds,
praise, passionate defenders and well-intended ideas for just an
acre of grass here or there. All of that sometimes leads to
conflict. "This park is not just a piece of ground," said
Mary Bartley, who lives near the park and who served on
three park-plan commissions over the years. "So many people have
deep affection for it. Not many things in the city have that
commonality. This is a legacy for everyone."
Underscoring that is the sweeping eight-year, $96
million restoration of the park recently undertaken through a
partnership of the city and the Forest Park Forever foundation.
The results are a source of much regional pride.
story continued
here:
Click here to take the
survey:
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Previous Survey
Results!
Our survey last week was on the Bush
Administration & Possible Iranian Nuclear Weapons:
 Over the weekend, reports from
The New Yorker Magazine and the Washington Post
indicated that the Bush Administration is studying the option of
military strikes against IRAN (as opposed to IRAQ).
The reason would be that U.S. intelligence is reporting that Iran
is close to developing and manufacturing nuclear
weapons.
Conservative estimates are that to inflict significant
damage on the Iranian nuclear program, at least 400 bombs would
have to be dropped, some of them of the tactical nuclear variety.
Many of the presumed Iranian sites are concrete enclosed located
many feet below the surface of the ground.
Our survey today involves
several questions related to this subject.
COMMENTS:
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Additional
Links
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| Resolutions
(High School U.N.) for 2004-2005
| Checklist
for Writing a Model U.N. Resolution
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Reinventing U.N.Conference Home
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