PETA

​I'm hesitant to tease a PETA protest scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Akard and Main only because all the other ones have been so underwhelming. (So much so I forgot till using what passes for our search engine that PETA was just at the same spot in August.) Anyway. This is what today's press release promises: "NEARLY NAKED PETA COUPLE BEDS DOWN IN DALLAS." That's their caps-lock, not mine. From the release:

Wearing nothing but underwear during a display of passion that's bound to raise a few eyebrows and turn lots of heads, two PETA members will passionately make out in a bed that will be set up on a street in downtown Dallas. While the not-so-discreet couple is getting it on beneath a banner that reads, "Vegans Make Better Lovers," PETA members will hand out copies of the group's vegetarian/vegan starter kit to gaping passersby. PETA wants people to know that they can do themselves -- and animals -- a big favor by going vegan. ...

"What could be more of a turn-on than snuggling up to someone who's both passionate and compassionate?" asks PETA's Tracy Patton. "It's veggie burgers in the kitchen for a whopper in the bedroom!"

May need to workshop that. Still, I have to say that from the looks of this account out of Shreveport yesterday, this one has promise. I wonder if they'll perform what John Crawford calls the "Downtown Dallas 360." Note to self: May need to workshop that.

Photo by Nick Rallo

Last year, when DPD guesstimated close to 100,000 people lined the parade route

​At the end of the week Joe shot up the flare: The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade is in danger of getting adiosed, unless the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association can raise $40,000 to cover the ever-escalating costs of the event. Since then a few fundraising sites have popped up to help raise the green, though as the bossman noted Monday, there's only one operating with GAABA's blessing (and it's raised about $800, a fraction of a fraction of what's needed).

But since Friday, I've wondered -- and so have many, many Friends of Unfair Park -- about using CrowdTilt, which helped the Deep Ellum Community Association raise around $14,000 in 30 days for the community garden they want to plant at Canton and Good-Latimer. So I went over to the site, typed in "Greenville Avenue Parade," and up popped this: We Have to Save the St. Paddy's Day Parade!More >>

Photo by Anna Merlan

​It probably hasn't escaped the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation's notice that an awful lot of people are very, very unhappy with the organization lately. Just to drive the point home a little further, reps from MoveOn.org, CREDO Action and UltraViolet announced they'd be hand-delivering a MoveOn petition to the Komen HQ today around noon. Yes, Komen has announced they will "continue to fund existing grants" and "preserve eligibility for future grants," including Planned Parenthood's. And yes, Karen Handel, Komen's vocally anti-Planned Parenthood senior VP for public policy, just announced that she's out. But a tiny, vocal group of protesters -- mainly composed of ladies in the 55-and-up age group -- still gathered outside Komen's LBJ office, many of them holding purple signs that read "Shame on Komen" and "Planned Parenthood Saves Lives." They were outnumbered by police, building security officers and press, who lined up on the grassy median across the street from the building.

"We're thrilled Handel has stepped aside," Dawn Mefert, a MoveOn volunteer told us. But Komen still has a lot of work to do "to repair their brand's standing within the female community," she said. "If you look online, a lot of women are saying they won't give another dime to Komen." And MoveOn wants a commitment that the organization will continue to fund Planned Parenthood not just this year, but into the future.

"They haven't committed beyond 2012," Mefert said. "They're saying Planned Parenthood can reapply, but they haven't committed to funding that application." Many of the women present said they had given money to Komen and participated in walks, runs and marches for years, but that the past several weeks had left them uncertain that they'd continue to do so.

"I'm conflicted about it," said Cynthia Beard. "This has really raised a lot of issues."

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Photo by Leslie Minora

Mayor Rawlings holds one of 30 new e-book readers donated by Comerica Bank.

​With its budget shrinking and shrinking over the past several years, the Dallas library system has an acute need for a Daddy Warbucks. Several, actually. More specifically, branches need deep-pocketed donors who can pick up the public book-houses by the boot straps, smack them in the behind and propel them into the future.

That's why events like today's announcement that Comerica Bank is donating 900 e-book titles to the public library system and 30 e-book readers to two Southern Dallas library branches was worthy of a visit by Mayor Mike Rawlings and council members Ann Margolin and Monica Alonzo. Comerica's donation totals $15,000, and it's not a one-off deal. The bank's been at this for a while, having adopted the North Oak Cliff and Polk-Wisdom library branches in 2010 with a donation of $50,000 for financial literacy materials.

Mayor Rawlings hopes to play matchmaker in more similarly perfect couplings. "If we can partner a business with one of those institutions, it makes it stronger," Rawlings tells Unfair Park. "We've got some broad strategies and policies that we've got to implement." He said he'll discuss some of these very strategies further on Monday, when he rolls out his South Dallas initiative at one of three scheduled events at Jack Matthews's South Side Studios.

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Photo by Roderick Pullum

Do it for this lady. If you feel so inclined.

​About 34 seconds after we reported Friday evening that the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day parade was on life support, reader Julie C left the first of 93 comments, and she spoke for plenty of those who followed: "NO NO NO! I live for this every year!"

As the news spread, livers across the city trembled at the idea of a parade-less St. Patrick's Day, and reporters at TV stations and The News alike were dispatched to follow up on the Case of the Dying Parade. (I'm sure they were thrilled.)

Many of our commenters asked about making donations to save the parade. The organizers have responded, launching this FundRazr campaign to collect the $40,000 that the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association says it needs to cover the rising cost of off-duty cops, barricades and other expenses.

And it's not just parade-goers who are being asked to pony up. It's also the bars and restaurants that, if you believe GAABA, do their biggest business of the year because of the parade.

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Roderick Pullum

Last year's parade drew more than 100,000 people to Greenville.

​So here's some potentially lousy news: The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade, that beloved march of green-tinted debauchery that's been blowing down Greenville since 1979, appears to be on its deathbed.

The concert at the parade route's end will play on, headlined by Ryan Bingham. The party on Lower Greenville isn't going anywhere, either. And the Observer's marketing team, which sponsored and produced the parade for much of its existence before pulling out last year, is making a last-minute effort to drum up support from the businesses that line the parade route.

But failing that support or some other unforeseen development, the event's 33-year run will come to an end, Jorge Levy, president of the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association, told me today.

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Via.

Anthony Graves, exonerated from death row in 2010

​As "the death chaplain" at Huntsville prison, Reverend Carroll Pickett has counseled 95 prisoners, one at a time, on the day the state has scheduled to end their life. Death by lethal injection, the chaplain found, is not a quiet exit. It's torturous. It's not fool-proof. And there's no guarantee that everyone put to death is guilty.

"That cruel and unusual punishment starts the minute they walk in the death house ... It's not painless. It is not painless," Pickett said last night at SMU, where was joined for a panel discussion by death row exonerees Anthony Graves and Clarence Brandley. (Brandley also spoke at an SMU death row exoneree panel last year).

"There are botched executions. I've been there. I saw it," Pickett said.

He supported capital punishment when he started his job in 1982, but death after tortuous death wore away at him. "This one young man, they tried and they tried and they tried, and they couldn't find a place to put a needle in that would flow properly," he said.

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​"Here they go again," Reverend Kyev Tatum said. He laughed, but stopped abruptly. He was talking, of course, about the atheists.

When we last caught up with the Dallas-Forth Worth Coalition of Reason, our local band of atheists, freethinkers and humanists, they were trying fruitlessly to get The Dallas Morning News to include a "secular perspective" in their weekly religion blog. Just in time for Black History Month, they're announcing their newest campaign: a billboard in South Dallas celebrating black atheists and freethinkers, both historical and contemporary. And considering the reaction their last ad campaign got -- those "Good Without God" bus ads in Forth Worth -- they're preparing themselves for a big reaction.

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Photos by Justin Terveen

Shepard Fairey on Singleton today, site of one of several buildings he'll decorate during his weeklong visit to Dallas

​The view from the foot of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge is about to get a lot cooler. This afternoon a spotless rented silver minivan pulled up at 331 Singleton, a vacant West Dallas office space with a large, invitingly blank outer wall. A group of four guys rolled from the van and started unloading things onto the ground: plastic paint bins, cans of spray-on adhesive, a paint-splattered, non-matching set of aprons.

"If there were a theme to these murals, it's peace and harmony," said Shepard Fairey. He wore a black zip-up hoodie and battered sneakers; now in his '40s, his blonde hair is tinged with gray. He unrolled a set of renderings and showed them to us. All the images are done in bold outlines of red, white and black; he pointed out one of a lovely woman with her eyes closed, a rose in her hair and a peace sign pendant around her neck. "That's a portrait of my wife meditating," he explained. "But the peace sign is subtly in there."

Fairey's in town for the first time in almost 10 years as part of a partnership with the Dallas Contemporary. The museum invited him to do a series of murals throughout this week all over West Dallas; he began today with the building on Singleton. They'll celebrate on Thursday with a DC members-only book-signing event, followed by a free discussion that's open to the public. There's also a "commencement" celebration scheduled for Saturday, a "neon-themed dance extravaganza" for which you can purchase tix here.

Fairey pointed out another image of a woman with her eyes cast upward, next to the legend "Rise Above."

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Photos by Anna Merlan

Daniel Cates of GetEQUAL, who got angry with the mayor for not signing the same-sex marriage pledge. He was not alone.

​Mayor Mike Rawlings has a closed-door, no-press-allowed meeting this morning with 25 LGBT community leaders to discuss something that's become, say, a small issue for him in the last week: his refusal to sign the "Mayors For Freedom To Marry" Pledge.

Earlier this week Rawlings also elected to back out of a long-planned neighborhood meeting rather than face protesters. So last night a coalition of community groups brought their dissatisfaction to City Hall, hosting a rally on the plaza. Around 70 people turned up, from GetEQUAL, Occupy Dallas, OccupyNOW, the Human Rights Campaign, the Stonewall Democrats, the Resource Center, the Dallas chapter of R.A.G.E. (Radical Alliance for Gender Equality) and even a few from the local International Socialist Organization . The rally was flanked by one or two uniformed Dallas Police officers and at least one plainclothes representative from the Criminal Intelligence Unit. At times the ralliers struggled to make themselves heard over a few counter-protesters -- a small but surprisingly noisy group of four guys with a portable microphone and a video camera, shouting some things about fiery pits, judgment and ... you get the picture.

"We have a message for the mayor," said Mark Reed-Walkup, a GetEQUAL board member who made headlines in 2010, his husband Dante by his side. "Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights. We're fighting for our dignity, and we're fighting for our families." The Dallas LGBT community, he said to a chorus of cheers and applause, "is loud, we're proud, and as Texans, we fight back. Mayor Rawlings, like Rick Perry, you really stepped in it on this issue."

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