Like a picture perfect painting of American life, evenings at McCoy Park in New Columbia have been a gathering spot for the neighborhood's residents. Mothers and fathers are out congregating at the covered picnic areas; residents are tending their community garden; and children are everywhere – on bikes, on the playground, on the basketball court and on the climbing wall.

Washington D.C. — Civil rights leaders predicted the recent Supreme Court decision regarding race in public schools, but they are dismayed by last week's high court decision nonetheless.
On June 28, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision to limit the voluntary use of race in public school desegregation, in effect undermining the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education.
"What the court did today is unfortunate. This is not a good day for our country," says Ted Shaw, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund outside the court last Thursday. "The court … walks away from both the spirit and the substance of Brown and in one fell swoop overturns years of precedent."
However, the ruling is not a complete overturn of desegregation programs, Shaw added.
"The court did not, under any reading, ban all considerations of race in elementary and secondary school education," he said. "This decision today is a mile post, not an end point. This does not mean that we will be done with the issue of racial justice in this country."

Oregon's first elected African American female senator is leaving politics for a career in higher education.
Sen. Avel Gordly, I-inner N/NE Portland, announced late last week that she will not seek re-election when her term ends in 2009. Instead, the senator who has championed quality education for all children will join her alma mater, Portland State University, as an adjunct assistant professor in the Black Studies department, where she will "focus on understanding and fostering the development of African American servant leadership and public service."
Gordly, who recently gifted nearly 30 years of her personal papers to the PSU Library and the Department of Black Studies, quotes Nelson Mandela when talking about her move from politics to higher education: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

Driving around with a bus full of teenagers isn't most TriMet bus drivers' dream job, but for A.K. Rucker, it sure comes close.
During the summer, Rucker is in charge of the First Step cleanup crew, a group of about 20 teenagers who spend their summer picking up litter on about every major bus line in the city. On an average day, the crew will collect 75 33-gallon garbage bags, as much trash as a typical family might throw away in six months.

Read here a day-by-day diary of free community events to fill your week...

The Total Experience Gospel Choir performs at the Rainier Valley Link Light Rail Block Party on June 30 to celebrate the progress being made on the light rail system, which will begin operating in 2009 with service to Downtown Seattle, South Seattle and Tukwila. By the end of 2009, the Link light rail will run all the way to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The Seattle School Board is considering a proposal to name the new building housing Garfield High School's auditorium, music room, athletic facilities and locker rooms in honor of alumnus Quincy Jones, a graduate of Garfield's class of 1950.
In 1983, Seattle Public Schools honored the award-winning Jones by naming the Garfield auditorium the Quincy Jones Auditorium.

Kevin Durant hadn't been a member of the SuperSonics two full days before one of the most popular players in team history anointed him Seattle's basketball savior.
"I don't want to put pressure on Kevin, but I think you will save the Sonics," Slick Watts, who played for the Sonics from 1973-78, said Saturday to Durant, the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft.
"I think you will help keep them in Seattle."

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is urging a former White House political director to ignore a subpoena and not testify before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors, her lawyer says.
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Sara Taylor at its hearing Wednesday and she is willing to talk. Testifying, however, would defy the wishes of the president, "a person whom she admires and for whom she has worked tirelessly for years," lawyer W. Neil Eggleston said.
Eggleston stated, in a letter this weekend to committee leaders and White House counsel Fred Fielding, that Taylor expects a letter from Fielding asking her not to comply with the subpoena.

TEXARKANA, Texas (AP) _ A Texas appellate court has upheld the felony conviction of Shaquanda Cotton, the Black East Texas teenager freed in March amid heightened racial tensions in her small town and a shakeup of the state's troubled juvenile prison system. Found guilty in March 2006 of shoving a teacher's aide at Paris High School. She was 15 when a judge sentenced her to a state youth prison in Brownsville, where she served one year...