As an observant, young reporter, I have ears that are consistently in tune with the conversations of my peers and instructors. One topic of conversation that seems to arise more times than not is the need for a Starbucks in Florence.

Some people are simply baffled about the absence of one in our town, as if the cookie-cutter, corporate chain is a staple to every community in the U.S. Despite the fact that there are locally owned and reputable coffee shops within walking distance of campus, many people ignore the fact and are outspokenly angry about it.

For those students, the possibility of having a Starbucks may soon become a reality, as UNA recently signed a contract with the corporation in hopes of putting it in the new student center in the coming years.

I do not support this anticipated new addition to our campus. Why would students, in a struggling economy, willingly choose to give money to distant executives and not to the perfectly great, mom and pop’s shops down the street?

The dilemma doesn’t just affect coffee shops. Local businesses everywhere are suffering the repercussions of the economic crisis as more and more “for rent” signs appear in store windows.

When will people start thinking more proactively about their local economy rather than dumping their hard-earned cash into mega-stores where almost no profits re-enter the community?

I am one of the thriftiest, money-savvy college students out there, so I understand the allure of finding the cheapest prices on common goods. I am also guilty of giving money to corporate businesses, but the change which I hope to make doesn’t require that I or others completely reconfigure their spending habits all at once.

The 3/50 project, created in 2009 and popularized by a blog post, proposes that if half of the employed population spent $50 every month at local businesses, it would produce more than $42.6 million in revenue. With every $100 spent, $68 dollars returns to the community. The project reports that at a national chain, only $43 of the same amount spent returns home.

Investing in this frame of mind doesn’t mean that one must swear off buying from corporate businesses altogether, as certain items are only available through larger chains or the Internet. The project does, however, force people to think more about maintaining a happy medium with where they spend their money.

While buying local may seem like a trendy or hip thing to do, just as the idea of being more environmentally friendly has its own stigma, it may be one of the wisest decisions we can make as community members in saving our local economy.

While New Orleans is not usually known for its good health habits; in fact, it was ranked 47 out of all 50 state health-wise in 2009; there is at least one annual event that tries to whip it into shape.

The Crescent City Classic is a 10k race organized by the Crescent City Fitness Foundation open to anyone who is interested.

The race, which is approximately 6.2 miles, starts in Jackson Square and ends in City Park. It has become a favorite of locals and visitors alike since it began in 1979. Each race is followed by a festival in true New Orleans fashion. Weary participants are treated to a variety of food, drinks and music.

In 2008, I started following in the footsteps of my father, who used to run the Classic in the mid-80s, by participating for my first time. After running the race for the past three years, I have decided to run the Classic until I am too old and decrepit to move.

This is one of the events that has become part of the living and breathing entity of New Orleans. Many of the comical and unusual sights that make the city great can be found at this event. There are people who run while in full costume, the guys who race with kegs of beer strapped to their backs, people who hand out hot dogs and jelly doughnuts to participants and most importantly, bass bands that line the race course.

Now with the good, comes the bad.

I was one of the lucky people who received a ticket for parking on the neutral ground during the 2010 Classic. While some people believe these tickets were justified, I have to state my case for why they were not. In 2008, participants were allowed to park in this area on Marconi Drive. Everything was fine. In 2009, the area was roped off, letting people know not to park there. Even this was understandable. The parking situation became shady in 2010 when the area was not roped off. The city claims that there were sufficient signs posted informing people not to park in this spot. However, something I saw with my own eyes led me to believe that this was a clever ploy by the city to cash in on Classic participants.

After parking, I started walking to the bus line that takes runners to the starting line. This is when I witnessed a N.O.P.D. officer helping to push a car stuck in the mud on to the median. It’s funny how there was no discouraging of them parking in this area. There was no warning, such as the previous year, to not park in this area. It also seemed very coordinated to have the police come in like a pack of ninjas, ticket every one of these vehicles in about an hour and disappear without a trace.

The city of New Orleans did agree to drop these fines, but only after they basically extorted the foundation that holds the race to make repairs to the city.

Even though I consider the city to have acted in bad taste in this situation, I don’t plan to let it ruin the race experience for me.

If you decide to run in the Crescent City Classic, just be careful where you park. I think I’ll probably have a cab drop me off next year.

Putting that behind me, I would encourage everybody to come and take part in this tradition. The Crescent City Classic is a day of accomplishment, fun, food and celebration. It is a part of New Orleans heritage that I hope remains for years to come.

You will be sure to run away with many flavorful New Orleans memories.

Shortly after becoming U. New Mexico President, Dr. David Schmidly signed UNM onto the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. The commitment is to achieve “climate neutrality as soon as possible.”

Given that transportation creates about a quarter of our carbon emissions, one would think decreasing UNM’s transportation-oriented carbon footprint would be a high priority. So why does Parking and Transportation Services, the department charged with transportation planning, continue to build more parking structures?

Everyone agrees that the streets and available parking in and around UNM are often burdened.

There’s a theory in transportation and land use planning that different housing densities lend themselves to different modes of transportation. The lower housing densities, like most of Albuquerque, lend themselves to single occupancy vehicle (SOV) travel.
Ultra-high densities, like the island of Manhattan, lend themselves to more human-scale transportation modes like walking, taxi and transit. The middle densities, like the UNM, Nob Hill and Downtown areas lend themselves to transportation modes that reduce congestion, but can get you further faster than walking. In this middle ground transportation options like transit, bicycles, in-line-skates, skateboards, scooters and motorcycles work best.

Just watch Central Avenue at noonday, four-lane de facto parking lot or ask the Frontier owner if he has enough parking for the lunch crowd for proof of how car un-friendly middle density land use can be. Conversely, the congestion brought to the University area by more cars than the area could comfortably handle makes it less pedestrian and bicycle friendly for those of us who know better than to drive a car around here during peak traffic hours.

If you live in those lower densities, up in the heights or on the west side, you need a car. But when you bring your car into town you’re coming into an area that, by its very nature, is not car friendly.

John Dewey once said, “A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved.” The thing is that not everyone agrees on the solution(s) because not everyone agrees on how to define the problem. Whereas I have always seen this situation as a transportation problem, UNM has always seen this situation as a parking problem.

Therein, as they say, lies the rub.

Part of the reason for our disparate views is mindset. I’ve always lived in high– to-mid-density areas and use bicycles, motorcycles and mass transit as my main transportation modes while (I’ve always presumed) the people who run parking have more of a car mindset. The fact that the department was called “Parking and Transportation Services” is a giveaway.

The other reason for our disparate views is the fact that PATS funds its operations and some of its capital improvements with the parking and permit fees it collects from you. Successfully dealing with the transportation problem means fewer cars, which means fewer revenues. Anyone else see the conflict?

But there’s more.

Over the years, PATS has contracted a company called Walker Parking Consultants to solve its parking problem. If how you define a problem defines its solutions, then which consultant you hire further defines those solutions. Walker designs, builds and recommends parking structures as a solution to parking problems. With “transportation” twice removed, it’s no wonder that every Walker study recommends more parking structures to be built on the UNMmain campus.

The thing is that more parking structures may alleviate, but not solve, the parking problem, but more parking structures will exacerbate the transportation problem by attracting more cars that will continue to overburden the streets in surrounding communities and reduce the bicycle and pedestrian friendliness of the area while increasing UNM’s carbon footprint.
So why is UNM continuing to build more parking structures?

Aug. 28 was the forty-seventh anniversary of the day the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The speech marked the climax of the civil rights march on Washington and is one of the most eloquent, impassioned and beloved speeches in American history.

The men and women who stood on the capitol grounds and heard his words had endured great hardships to be there. They had suffered harassment and intimidation along the way, often at the hands of state governments, and many had risked arrest or worse just by going on the march. To say it was an iconic moment in American history is an understatement.

Dr. King had for months been preaching a message of peaceful, non-violent resistance in the face of extreme injustice. This was not a message for cowards – the non-violent resister does, in fact, resist, as King said. He does so by not being physically violent or confrontational toward his opponent. As he wrote in his essay “Nonviolence and Racial Justice” in 1957, the non-violent resister is “passive physically but strongly active spiritually” and is convinced that “the universe is on the side of justice.” In the face of extreme evil, the temptation toward retaliatory violence is strong, but the non-violent resister rejects it as self-defeating.

The methods of passive non-violence advocated by King and practiced by the civil rights marchers worked; of this there can be no doubt. When the white police turned dogs and fire hoses on black protesters in Alabama, it did not destroy the movement. Instead, it turned the nation’s eyes collectively toward the racism and oppression of the American South. The actions of the state government at the time only strengthened the movement and brought about the most sweeping social change the country had seen in generations. Non-violence works.

Which brings us to another event that happened this weekend. On Aug. 28 of this year, a young Marine, Staff Sergeant Michael Bock, was laid to rest in Omaha. Attending his funeral, aside from his family, friends and fellow Marines, were several members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. They were there with their usual assortment of signs and songs designed to inflame emotions and incite a confrontation from bystanders. Present in silent counter-protest and protecting the church were about two hundred members of the Patriot Guard, a band of motorcycle enthusiasts who attend and provide moral support for the families of the fallen.

Midway through the protest, however, one bystander took it upon himself to engage in more direct action. A man driving past the church fired pepper spray at the WBC protesters. It’s not clear whether or how many of them he hit; they, of course, deny being affected. He did, however, manage to hit a few counter-protesters and innocent bystanders.

Back to non-violence. What the Westboro Baptist Church does is not non-violent protest. It is in every way the opposite. Their signs and songs, as I have said, are designed to inflame and incite, and that is the essence of spiritually violent protest. As tempting as it is to respond in kind, the only way to deal with this kind of protest is by non-violent resistance. Confronting them, whether by verbal or (in this case) physical methods, only emboldens them and gives them a propaganda victory.

By attacking them, our passing motorist (who has since been charged with sixteen counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of felony assault for spraying a police officer) unwittingly made them the victims.

I am not writing this to defend the WBC. Their actions are abhorrent and despicable. They neither need my defense nor deserve it. Can there be anything lower than protesting the funeral of a Marine who died defending your right to protest?

I am instead writing this as a caution to future counter-protesters. You cannot counter violence with more violence. Doing so only emboldens them. Thanks to the misguided actions of one lone motorist, Omaha can now surely expect even more attention from the WBC in the future.

Those who would counter their violence must meet it with peaceful resistance. Take a page from Dr. King’s book and meet violence with peace. Let them do the shouting and screaming. Let them make fools of themselves. Someone has to be the adult; let it be you.

I have never swayed sharply to the left or the right when it comes to politics, but one position I do like to take is that popular pundits on television or broadcast should, at the very least, have the credentials to back up their claims.

It seems that some of our nation’s most popular political voices have a very checkered past when it comes to substance abuse and education. At what point does a person take a bunch of drugs, drop out of college and then decide, “Hey, you know what I would be really good at? Telling America everything that is wrong with one side of the political system. Yes, that is what I will do with my life!” Whatever that point is, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have both reached it and they now have the popularity and the paycheck to prove it.

Fox News commentator and radio talk show host Glenn Beck struggled for years with alcohol and drug dependence, according to Alexander Zaitchik in a 2009 interview with Salon magazine. Beck was quoted as saying that for 15 years, there was not a single day when he was not high from smoking marijuana. Glenn Beck also has no college degree, according to the same interview. Originally planning on being a part-time theology student at Yale University, Beck only made it through one class before dropping out. Will somebody please explain to me how a college dropout with a history of drug and alcohol abuse got a job as a political analyst and receives a seven-figure paycheck? If I dropped out of K-State to go on a “spiritual search” and converted to Mormonism, could I also buy myself some weed and get my own radio and TV programs? What do you even put on a resume when you have no degree in broadcast? “I didn’t go to school, but I was a disk jockey for a radio station.”

If Glenn Beck were the only pundit with no credibility pushing the conservative agenda, it would be annoying, but dismissible. However, Glenn Beck is not the only public figure at fault. Rush Limbaugh, who dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University in the early 1970s, has enjoyed wild success through radio, television and book deals despite having no degree and several issues with substance abuse.

In October 2003, the National Enquirer ran a story about the conservative and outspoken radio host having an addiction to prescription painkillers. As little merit as the National Enquirer has, Rush Limbaugh confirmed the rumor on his radio show in 2003 when he admitted his addiction and announced that he would seek in-patient rehab. Fine, Mr. Limbaugh. You go ahead and do that.

It would not be an issue if his problems ended there eight years ago. But they didn’t. In 2006, The Associated Press broke the news that Rush Limbaugh was again in legal trouble and could face jail time for violating Florida’s “doctor shopping” law. “Doctor shopping” is a term used for people who go to multiple physicians in a relatively short period of time, usually in order to get multiple prescriptions. After paying some steep fines, Rush Limbaugh did not spend any time behind bars, which is once again a subtle reminder that money might not buy you happiness, but it does buy you a clean slate every once in awhile. Those $400 million contracts with Clear Channel Radio sure do come in handy sometimes. So much for his on-air denouncements about the penalties people should pay for abusing substances in America. In the spirit of the pot calling the kettle black, I raise my liberal glass to you, Rush.

The biggest issue I have with these public figures is not that they are successful or conservative. The problem is they are successful despite having nothing other than strong opinions, outspoken attitudes and histories of substance abuse to qualify them. The variety of substance abuse issues surrounding their personal lives seems more than inappropriate. These are the people that are getting huge paychecks to ramble about the liberal agenda and why it is wrong. If you ask me, the biggest problem in this situation is that they are being allowed to ramble about anything at all.