Juneau

A visiting breakdance duo has been teaching Juneau residents some new moves. They’re featured in a documentary that’s playing in town over the weekend about hip hop culture and social change in Uganda.

About 12 people ranging from toddlers and teens to adults are learning the fundamentals of breakdance at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

“Breakdancing is one of the elements of hip-hop. It’s the way you use your body,” says Fahad Kiryowa, the dance teacher who lives just outside Kampala in Uganda.

Breakdancing is often characterized as being low to the ground. There’s spins and flips. It’s a full body workout.

But Kiryowa is taking it slow with his new students.

He’s here in Alaska teaching with Eric Egesa.

Juneau-born Rachelle Sloss convinced the pair to come up to her hometown. She’s lived in Kampala for several years and became fast friends with the two through Breakdance Project Uganda.

“By the end of my first week there, I was totally sold on this place with so many great dancers and this great community,” she says.

The dancers just attended a youth leadership camp in Colorado.

“And the camp funded their international flights. Then they were here and we thought, ‘Let’s go to Alaska,'” she says.

Egesa started dancing when he was a kid. He says it took some effort to convince his parents that breaking was a good thing.

“Anything football or any sports, back in Uganda when children join anything, they just go into drugs,” he says.

The director of Breakdance Project Uganda came to visit Egesa’s house to talk with his parents. It’s a nonprofit that offers free dance lessons and mentorship to at-risk youth.

Egesa’s parents said yes.

Kiryowa says breaking entered his life at the right time.

“I couldn’t listen to my parents. I was chilling with the gangs because that’s what I see people doing,” he says. “So I was just like that. Stealing, that was one of the things I always did.”

But he didn’t want to go down that path.

“When I started doing breakdance, they said if you love this you have to quit the other one.  It was at first hard for me, but when I got into dance I loved it. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m stopping this.’”

After a while, people started to notice a change in him.

“My mom was like ‘Wow. Are you still on drugs?’ I was like, ‘No.’ I changed my life, dance changed my life,” he says.

When he’s home in Uganda, Kiryowa says people see him as a leader. The dancers are looking forward to sharing their stories of Alaska back home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXS4RTliiO8

The head of the governor’s budget team urged local leaders on Thursday to get involved in the discussion of the state’s precarious fiscal future.

“This is not a problem on the margin, this is a real structural issue for Alaska,” said Pat Pitney, director of the governor’s Office of Management and Budget. “So let people know to learn more about it. There will have to be changes.”

She was addressing the Juneau Chamber of Commerce.

She says the governor intends to submit a budget in December that will include a revenue package. Options under consideration include various taxes and using some portion of Permanent Fund investment earnings to fund state government.

“But it really, it takes that legislative process to go through it, so tell your legislators here, ‘Yes, it’s time to do something,’ and tell them what it is you want them to do,” she said.

Without major fiscal changes, the administration anticipates consecutive years of multibillion dollar revenue deficits due to low oil prices, a decline in oil production and an increasing demand for state services.

Nearly 200 people have signed a letter asking for the removal of the Mississippi flag downtown because it features an image of the Confederate flag.

After dust settles from the controversy, the people spearheading the removal of the flag are unsure what’s next in combating racism in the state’s capital.

“What do we do from here? Because I don’t think anyone has the answer,” Secretary of Juneau’s Black Awareness Association Latarsha McQueen says. “Once we’re able to be honest with ourselves and with each other, then we can move forward and do something about it, but I don’t know where we go from here.”

McQueen is among the nearly 200 people to sign a letter asking for the removal of the Mississippi flag in downtown Juneau.

The flag, which features Confederate imagery in its upper left corner, is a part of an all-states flags display organized each year by a volunteer group called Friends of the Flags.

Controversy surrounding the flag began a month ago, after the massacre of church parishioners at a historical black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

McQueen, who grew up less than two hours from the church, says she’s dealt with racism her entire life and has become desensitized to it.

Recently McQueen, former Juneau Assemblyman Marc Wheeler and the local Rev. Phil Campbell discussed their decision to call for the flag’s removal.

For Wheeler, it’s imperative to understand the flag’s significance, especially in relation to violence against blacks.

“Somebody told a story about seeing that flag around the head of a person that was hanged. So if you can’t imagine that, what that must be like, maybe you shouldn’t talk about it,” Wheeler says.

Prompted by the events in Charleston, they believe removing the flag is a step forward.

But local writer Ishmael Hope says that while he supports the flag’s removal, it sidesteps the larger problem — racism in Juneau is nothing new.

For Hope, the flag controversy looks at an overt example of racism, without addressing deeper issues.

“When you have terrorism in Black churches, it doesn’t ignite a civil rights movement, it starts a national conversation about a flag,” Hope says.

Juneau’s largest minority populations are Alaska Natives and Filipinos.

Hope, who’s Iñupiaq and Tlingit, says more open discussions about racism and privilege is a part of the solution.

Campbell, a supporter of the Black Awareness Association and member of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, says that it’s never too late to start the discussion.

“I don’t think there’s ever a wrong time to do the right thing, so now is the moment we have,” Campbell says.

Juneau Mayor Merrill Sanford says he will let the issue play out on its own.

“I went off to war when I was young, and fought for our flag and fought for our country. All of those flags are a part of our country, whether it be good or bad,” Sanford says.

In an email sent to a supporter of removing the flag, Friends of the Flags organizer Judy Ripley says while she understood the horrific attacks in Charleston, the mission of the group is to display the official states’ flags.

Ripley encouraged the woman to write the governor of Mississippi.

The Juneau Police Department’s newest recruit is a young gun, just 18 months old and 63 pounds. He’s a German shepherd named Buddy with black and sandy brown fur. It’s been about 25 years since the department had a K-9 on staff.

His partner, Officer Mike Wise, is training Buddy at Dzanktik’i Heeni Middle School to sniff out drugs on campus.

Inside a classroom, Wise snaps on blue plastic gloves while Buddy waits in the car.

“So, basically right now. I have some narcotics on me I’m going to be planting and basically getting ready to hide,” he says.

Wise unscrews the lid off a mason jar and pulls out 4 grams of black, tacky looking heroin.

“We’re going to put it in the stash box and then we’re going to put it inside the filing cabinet.”

The police department received nearly $25,000 in grant money from the feds to bring the K-9 on staff. Buddy was Russian-born and snapped up by a recruiting agency that finds dogs with a “high drive” for law enforcement.

Officer Wise had to fly down to Alabama to pick up Buddy, then named Baddie.  He remembers walking in a kennel with 30 dogs barking. The handler pointed to a German shepherd and handed him a collar.

“And I didn’t know who this dog was, I’d never met him before, and he’s never seen me,” he says. “And for a stranger just to walk into his kennel was kind of terrifying.”

But Buddy just looked at him and wagged his tail.

“There was a huge relief to know that this dog is not going to try to eat me. The first day Buddy walked off and he just wanted to pull me everywhere,” he says.

Slowly, Wise started to bond with his new partner; he brushed Buddy’s fur, played with him and did some additional training before bringing him back home to his wife and two kids.

“And from then on it’s been inseparable. We just stay together.”

Buddy is trained to smell heroin, meth and cocaine. But not marijuana since that’s legal now in Alaska. His nose is so good that he can detect each note in the narcotics. For example, you might walk into a room and smell a delicious pizza.

“He smells every little ingredient that’s involved in making that pizza. That’s how he does it with the meth, cocaine or heroin and knows that’s something,” he says.

The police department is going to need the help. Last year, they confiscated over $4.6 million of heroin in Juneau. There’s a big incentive for smugglers. A dose here is worth five times more than down south.

Lt.  Kris Sell oversees investigations. She says Heroin gets to Juneau in a number of ways.

“The people who are importing heroin move regularly between the U.S. mail, other mail delivery services and bring it in on the airlines or on the ferry,” she says.

Last year’s seizures were made up of a couple of big busts and several small ones. A drug conspiracy involving stolen Costco jewelry yielded 10,000 street doses of heroin.

“In Juneau, we’ve had such a heroin problem, I think you’d be hard pressed to find an adult who doesn’t know a  family who’s been impacted in some way by the addiction.”

Sell says there hasn’t been a sudden spike in heroin, it’s more like a steady march. And finding it once it’s here can be difficult.

“People have done things like taped drugs to the underside of the baby’s dresser in the baby’s room,  Buddy will help us ferret out things like that. Things we’re worried we haven’t been finding.”

Back inside the classroom, Wise holds tight to Buddy’s leash which is attached to a police harness. He walks him around but, really, Buddy is leading him to the place where we stashed the heroin.

Right when he sniffs the filing cabinet, he lays down–indicating this is the spot.

A black piece of rubber hose is discreetly thrown over Buddy’s head.

It’s his paycheck for a job well done. Wise will play tug of war with it and let Buddy win. Then he’ll hurl the toy back out of sight. Buddy is restrained from going after it.

“So, he’s always assuming his toy’s in the field out there. So when we’re working. He’s looking for this toy again. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing for that thing right there,” he says. “So, we’re going to hide it from him. It kind of makes him mad a little bit, but we gotta keep working. ”

Wise hopes with Buddy’s help, incoming drugs can be kept off the street. They’ll start patrolling the airport, commercial barges and ferry system soon.

At a special meeting Monday, the Haines School Board approved an interim superintendent contract with a retired educator living in Juneau.

Rich Carlson served as superintendent in Klawock for a dozen years and worked in education for about 40 years after retiring in 2014.

Shortly after retiring, Carlson went back to work. He served as interim superintendent in Cordova for about a year after that district’s superintendent resigned shortly before the start of school.

Haines former superintendent Ginger Jewell resigned unexpectedly in June, after fulfilling one year of a three-year contract. Jewell said the main reason for her early departure was to be closer to family.

Carlson will take over as superintendent while the school board searches for a permanent hire. His start date with the Haines District is August 3rd. His contract is for six months, but School Board President Anne Marie Palmieri says it could be extended to a year if the board’s search for a permanent hire is still in progress.

The school district will pay Carlson $425 per day, which is equivalent to a yearly salary of $110,000.Jewell’s annual salary was $103,000.

The school board took another step in what Palmieri called “making a clean break” with former superintendent Jewell. Last school year, the board agreed to a contract with a company owned by Jewell’s husband, David Thompson. The Atlanta-based Global School Services uses bulk purchasing power to help school districts save money on equipment orders. The school board voted to terminate that contract. The district has not used GSS for any purchases.

The next school board meeting, with the interim superintendent present, is scheduled for August 18th.