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AWAKE Funding Vetoed

by Bill Dusty

The controversial Springfield anti-violence group AWAKE (Alive with Awareness and Knowledge and Empowerment) was recently denied a $250,000 earmark in the Massachusetts state budget for fiscal year 2009. That’s one to the good for Deval Patrick at the Intruder. (I’d still prefer Muffy.) State Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera had inserted the earmark.

AWAKE has found itself in the headlines quite a bit since the Sarno Administration kicked in the new year. Perhaps emboldened – or even encouraged – by an administration whose staff consists of at least a couple of current and/or former AWAKE members, the group has been much more vocal about its community activities, and its president, Chelan Brown, will be running against incumbent state Representative Benjamin Swan for the 11th Hampden District in this fall’s election. Of course it wasn’t all good news for the group, which found itself under the state Attorney General’s microscope after failing to properly register with the state the past couple of years. And then there was also the Desi Jackson Level 3 sex offender-goes-to-school-to-teach-our-youth episode, as well as the Chelan Brown website hacking fiasco. But despite their woes, the organization apparently found a friend in the state Legislature who sponsored their quest for state funding of their activities – a portion of which we assume would probably go for salary money for the staff so they don’t have to get real jobs. The group has been around since 2005, with no end or even ebbing of youth and gang violence in the City of Springfield.

Springfield legislators have vowed to fight for the reinstatement of all of their vetoed earmarks, so the folks at AWAKE have still got a shot at payday.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Jul 15th, 2008 and filed under Cities & Towns, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.