Walt Handelsman
reads between the lines
These snacks keep every guest happy
during a delay of game eatplaylive 1D
opinion 8B
ADVOCATE
THE
HIGH 57 LOW 40
FORECAST, MORE ON 10B
BATO N R O U G E • LO U I S I A N A
THURSDAY
JANUARY 30, 2014
H
THEADVOCATE.COM
89th year, No. 214
‘What
they
need is
hope’
Gardere Initiative
volunteers focus
on children
BY KORAN ADDO
[email protected]
D
rive down any street in the
Gardere neighborhood and
75¢
MELTDOWN
Advocate staff photo by TRAVIS SPRADLING
Advocate staff photo by BILL FEIG
Advocate staff photo by RICHARD ALAN HANNON
you’re more than likely to get a
glimpse of a community in crisis.
It’s a small pocket of East Baton
Rouge Parish that is frequently in
the news.
Shootings, break-ins and robberies
aren’t a big surprise when they happen in Gardere.
s
Baton Rouge lawyer
Caulette Jackson-
Guillard knows the
neighborhood well.
She spent 20 years there before leaving,
getting her law degree and becoming an
associate minister at Shiloh Missionary
Baptist Church.
Jackson is back in the neighborhood as
president of the Gardere Initiative. It’s a
nonprofit community organization, established in 2006, run entirely by volunteers.
It has ties to Southern University’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and
different Baton Rouge-area churches. The
goal is to address substance abuse, crime
and anything that negatively affects children.
Every year, the group sponsors programs. Last year, it handed out close to
äSee GARDERE, page 5A
House reaches
compromise
on Farm Bill
BY MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — After years of setbacks,
a nearly $100 billion-a-year compromise
farm bill cleared the House on Wednesday despite strong opposition from conservatives who sought a bigger cut in food
stamps.
The five-year bill, which preserves generous crop subsidies, heads to the Senate,
where approval seems certain. The White
House said President Barack Obama
would sign H.R. 2642, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of
2013, also known as the Farm Bill.
The measure, which the House approved 251-166, had backing from the
Republican leadership team, even though
it makes smaller cuts to food stamps than
they would have liked.
The six Louisiana congressmen voted
4-2 on the bill.
äSee FARM BILL, page 5A
Advocate staff photo by RICHARD ALAN HANNON
Clockwise from top left: Kat Coco, 13, left, and her 4-year-old terrier mix ‘Super’ watch as neighbor Wren Milligan, 7, kicks around
a homemade hockey puck made of frozen water and food coloring on Avondale Drive. n A car rests in a ditch Wednesday off Old
Perkins Road, just south of Highland Road, as icy winter weather returns to south Louisiana. n A DOTD road grader works along
Interstate 10 near Acadian Thruway on Wednesday. n Interstate 10 through Baton Rouge, including the Horace Wilkinson Bridge,
also known as the New Bridge, over the Mississippi River, remained closed Wednesday morning.
Schools remain closed as Louisiana roads thaw out
BY AMY WOLD
sures this week, including East
Baton Rouge Parish public and
Catholic schools.
The end is in sight for the very
With limited thawing of roads
on Wednesday and with any cold weather the area has expestanding water expected to re- rienced over the past week, with
freeze in the low overnight tem- roads continuing to clear of ice.
peratures, a number of offices A portion of Interstate 10, Laand schools decided to continue fayette to U.S. 61 in Ascension
Thursday with a third day of clo- Parish, and Interstate 12, from
[email protected]
ä Thousands stranded
overnight in Atlanta PAGE 4A
Baton Rouge to Robert, were
opened at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, Louisiana State Police announced. Other portions of the
interstate remained closed, with
an expected re-opening sometime Thursday.
Baton Rouge will wake up to
very cold temperatures in the
low 20s Thursday morning,
ä Truckers anxious for
interstates to reopen PAGE 1B
but the temperature should get
above freezing by mid-morning
and head to the expected high of
52 degrees, said Mike Shields,
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell.
That warming trend continues
throughout the week with a high
äSee WEATHER, page 4A
ä Full list of closings
WWW.THEADVOCATE.COM
Inside the PMAC, a hot upset. Outside, a cold reality.
BY SCOTT RABALAIS, JIM
MUSTIAN and KORAN ADDO
ice-cloaked Pete Maravich Assembly Center and made their
way home.
[email protected]
The crowd had to exit through
[email protected]
the floor level because the [email protected]
na’s foot ramps had frozen over.
An 87-82 upset win over No. Outside, they encountered slip11-ranked Kentucky on Tues- pery roads and a campus slickday night warmed LSU men’s ened by sleet. Many streets were
basketball fans as they left the barricaded, deemed unsafe by
police.
A day later, school officials
and others were left answering the question of whether the
game should have been played.
A decision was reached between LSU and Kentucky officials and the Southeastern Conference office by 3 p.m. Tuesday
to play the game as scheduled at
8 p.m.
Afterward, LSU athletic director Joe Alleva said he drove
home, picked up his wife, Anne,
and headed back to campus as
the weather conditions began to
deteriorate.
“Even though school was
äSee PMAC, page 4A
Business ................... 6B Comics...................... 9D Deaths ...................... 3B Opinion ..................... 8B Sports ....................... 1C
Classified ...................1E Commentary ............. 9B EatPlayLive................ 1D Puzzles ...................... 7D Television................... 8D