Saving democracy, Two Dads show how Details on page 11
FREE Vol. 38 No. 14
April 3, 2024 ■ Also serving Garfield Park ■ austinweeklynews.com
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A win-win win win tax tax, page 4
Flowers Fitness Club wins $500K grant to train youth
State grant helps Austin Boxing Club to support physical and mental health of West Side youth By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter
Roy Flowers started Flowers Fitness Club at Austin Boxing Club last August, but the idea for a program “to help the inner-city youth to get off the street,” Flowers said, started much earlier than that. Flowers, who was born and raised in Austin, registered Flowers Fitness Club in 2021 after opening Flowers Unisex Salon, 5106 W. Chicago Ave., and hearing his community discuss aspects of physical and mental health that he wanted to work toward addressing. “There’s a lot of high blood pressure, undiagnosed mental health and undiagnosed pre-diabetes See BOXING on page 3
It Takes a Village to open early childhood education center in Austin COURTESY OF TASHAWNA COOPER
A few students at It Takes a Village read a picture book with an early childhood educator. In the early 2000s, Nakisha Hobbs was Hobbs said. The new location expands living Hobbs’ mother, Gwendolyn Harris, in Austin and a graduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago. taught at Nash Elementary School in programming and services She was also pregnant and searching for Austin, as well as at a Chicago Public a quality early education program that School middle school. She saw many for kids and their families would eventually prepare her first child children who were still struggling with reading as they prepared for high for kindergarten. on the West Side “There wasn’t a program that we re- school, Hobbs said. It was something
By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter
ally felt like would meet the needs that we had for Jakya, my oldest daughter,”
See DAY CARE on page 9
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