RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina motorists could soon face a tougher penalty if the driver passes a stopped school bus on the road and strikes a passenger who dies after getting off the vehicle.

A Senate judiciary committee approved Tuesday a measure designed to let school districts use cameras and recording devices to collect evidence designed to prove that someone broke the law passing a stopped school bus.

The committee approved the bill and an amendment making a motorist guilty of a felony for striking a passenger who dies. The offender could now receive active jail time if the discharged passenger dies. The current law allows for community service as a punishment and doesn’t differentiate if the passenger is killed.

The measure now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

RALEIGH, N.C. – The North Carolina House has approved an effort to increase the prosecution of drivers who pass stopped school buses.

The legislation, which passed 115-0 on Wednesday and was sent to the Senate, was named for 16-year-old Nicholas Adkins of Stoneville in Rockingham County. A 60-year-old woman pleaded guilty Tuesday and was sentenced to three years of probation for passing a stopped school bus and killing Adkins.

Judy Earlene Stilwell had a clean record before passing the school bus which had its lights on and stop sign extended.

The bill would let school districts install cameras on stop arms that extend from parked school buses, and allow the resulting photos to be used in prosecuting violators.

BY AMY DOMINELLO AND SEAN MUSSENDEN
Media General News Service

WASHINGTON – For decades, Mutter Evans organized a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Winston-Salem, N.C. This year, she organized two busloads to travel to the nation’s capital for Barack Obama’s inauguration.

For the first black president to take the oath of office the day after the MLK holiday is especially gratifying, said Evans, 55.

“It’s perfect timing. It’s like the planets lined up,” she said. “Without Dr. King and others who worked in the movement, the way would not have been paved for Barack Obama.”

Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president in Denver in August on the 45th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

On Tuesday, Obama will be sworn-in as president on the West Front of the Capitol, two miles away, at the opposite end of the National Mall. Crowds of perhaps 2 million are expected to reach the Lincoln Memorial.

The connections are not lost on blacks who say they never imagined they would live to see a black person become president. Some black political leaders see Obama as an illustration of the faith King had in the American people and its political system.

Obama’s election showed what America can do, said former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who was the first black elected governor in the country.

“Can America change? Has there been progress?” said Wilder. “Yes. My God, yes.”

For many, Obama’s inauguration represents the culmination of decades of work towards the advancement of civil rights. For Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., this is a time to remember King and other black leaders, such as the late Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks.

“I knew these people,” said Clyburn, a civil rights activist in the 1960s. “They’ve long since left us, but I’m here because of their sacrifice. …What I think about is all that these people did, step by step, inch by inch, that led to Barack Obama being president of the United States.”

Some who were active in the civil rights movement in the South say they want to experience the moment when their work reaches its pinnacle.

Addie Green, 60, who grew up in rural Mississippi, helped organize a bus trip to Washington and said she wants to be able to tell her grandchildren about it.

“I worked too hard with the NAACP over the years to see this change happen,” said Green of Bolton, Miss.

“I’m coming to Washington, D.C., to be able to witness the work that we have done,” she said.

For some a generation removed, the moment is a time to honor the work of those like Green. David McGill, a 34-year-old lawyer from Miami, came not only to witness the historic moment himself but as a testament to family members who grew up in the Jim Crow South and experienced oppression first-hand.

If they could stand in line for hours to vote, he said, he could travel to Washington and stand in the freezing cold for this significant event.

“I’m witnessing something monumental, and I’m bringing all the McGills with me,” he said.

And for those even younger, the moment is more an indication of political change. Makeda Johnson of Atlanta said her 15-year-old daughter Saramaat Imhotep helped register voters and has been passionate about the change Obama could bring to the country and the world.

Johnson had no intention of coming to the inauguration until her daughter announced in mid-December, “I’m going.”

“As she communicated how important it was to be here, I had to acknowledge that this was very important to her generation as the March on Washington was to ours,” Johnson said, after touring the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum on historic U Street in Washington.

Jerry L. McCombs, president of the Catawba County, N.C., branch of the NAACP, hopes Obama’s election resonates with young people.

McCombs, 47, of Newton, N.C., was in elementary school shortly after schools were desegregated in North Carolina. He was the only black in his third-grade class, and when a classmate passed out party invitations, she skipped him.

“She said, ‘Sorry. My mama don’t want no colored people at my house’ and continued to pass out invitations,” McCombs said.

Today, King’s message of equality has become real, and McCombs is in Washington to watch it in person.

“Obama’s inauguration shows that we can teach our young people, regardless of skin color or religion, that you can do whatever you want, if you put your mind to it,” he said.

President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration is still more than two months away, but local charter bus services say they’ve been swamped with phone calls.A week after the election, Lynchburg Bus Service already has seven buses booked for the Washington, D.C., trip.

“They are calling like crazy,” Mary McConville said. “It started at the end of last week. Monday was unreal. They called every time you’d hang the phone up.”

In 35 years in business at Lynchburg Bus Service, McConville said she has never experienced anything like the enthusiasm for Obama’s inauguration.

“It sends cold chills over you,” she said.

At Discount Cruise and Charter in Madison Heights, owner Alfred Thomas said he has been getting his share of calls.

“We’ve probably got a busload already,” Thomas said.

A representative at Cosmo Coach Line in Rustburg said her company also is becoming overwhelmed with requests.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is organizing the inauguration. According to the congressional Web site for the inauguration, tickets will be available for free from congressional offices, although the Associated Press is reporting speculation that the tickets are going to be hard to get and could be scalped for several thousand dollars.

McConville said about half of her buses will drive up and back in the same day for the inauguration, at a cost of $1,200 per bus. The per-person cost is around $30 for an average busload of 40 people.

Finding a hotel room could be a lot more expensive, she said.

A quick check of discount reservation Web sites showed most hotels had no vacancies for the evening of Jan. 20th. One that did, a three-star Holiday Inn in College Park, Md., was charging around $230 per room.

McConville said she believed just being on the National Mall during the ceremony would be exciting.

“It’s just the idea of being there,” she said.

A big Bush bus will roll into town Monday. 

Americans United for Change, the progressive issue-advocacy group best known for leading the successful fight to beat back President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005, has hit the road with its latest effort, the Bush Legacy Bus: a 45-foot long, 28-ton, clean bio-diesel powered museum on wheels featuring several interactive exhibits on how two terms of failed conservative policies supported by Bush and his allies – including Senators John McCain and Elizabeth Dole and Reps. Frank Wolf, Virgil Goode, Thelma Drake, Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Foxx and Robin Hayes – have weakened America’s security abroad while neglecting and undermining important priorities here at home.  

The bus will stop in Fayetteville Monday. Specific details about the stop have not yet been released.

Kicked off across the street from the White House on June 24, the National Bush Legacy Bus tour has visited more than 40 states – from New Hampshire to New Mexico – and racked up over 20,000 miles in the process. 

Learn More About the Bus

DURHAM, N.C. — Through the joint efforts of more than 100,000 Democratic and Republican voters working over the last 16 years, Project Vote Smart has completed the nation’s first Voter Self-Defense System. It will be launched by Vote Smart staff from an enormous mobile training center in Durham on Friday, Oct. 10.

The bus has traveled more than 35,000 miles across the country, and highlighted the Project’s resources at both the Republican and Democratic Conventions.  After the Durham event, the system will make stops throughout the Northeastern United States, and deliver the Voter’s Self-Defense System to Washington, D.C. on Election Day.

The mobile training center is complete with a movie theater and free wi-fi computer terminals to train voters how to defend themselves against self-serving, manipulative claims made by campaigns. For a little fun, the Project is rolling a 9-foot, American flag ball coast to coast, collecting messages from outraged voters about the abusive behavior of the candidates. Citizens will also have the opportunity to strip a candidate pinned to an enormous wheel, allowing them to see what the candidates really look like.

The demonstration on the mobile training center will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10.