Unfair Park from p4 cal Center and a good portion of the North Hampton Road area south of Interstate 30. Residents in West Dallas are more orga- nized than just six years ago, when Solis said she initially started advocating for her com- munity. “I got involved six years ago because we weren’t being heard in the city of Dallas,” Solis said. “So, we registered and we got a lot of peo- ple to vote. … We explained to them, we need to work together because we were getting gen- trified without getting a voice in. Now we’re trying to stay together. We’re trying to keep the neighborhood together right now.” She understand that the pandemic may have led to some lack of communication. Still, she said, “No one came to West Dallas to tell us what they were doing.” Solis said she thinks that members of the Redistricting Commission have been so fo- cused on strengthening Latino and Black representation in the city that they’re not hearing the concerns of her community. “It’s like, in every corner people are trying to just do what they want and not even think about West Dallas and our history and what we need and want.” But it’s more than just Solis’ community that could see a split. The two final maps move a historically Black neighborhood in District 2, called the Elm Thicket NorthPark area, into the majority white District 13. Some District 2 residents oppose this. The Redistricting Commission members responsible for Map 17 were open about their intentions: giving more power to vot- ers of color in Dallas. “The map is really based on the premise that we wanted to create four strong African American districts and four strong Hispanic districts,” Stimson, the commission’s Dis- trict 1 representative, said at their meeting last week. Stimson said he and the other commissioners think one of the best ways to do that is to tie the North Oak Cliff area to downtown. Their map would also see Dis- trict 9 include the area around White Rock Lake. The map would also extend District 2 to Far East Dallas and the Casa View area. Under Map 41, District 2 would still be shifted to include Far East Dallas, but Dis- trict 7 would then include the northwest side of Pleasant Grove. Normal Minnis, the representative on the commission for District 14, said she sup- ported Map 41 because she thinks it “repre- sents the best of all the neighborhoods.” The maps can still be tweaked though. There will be a hearing over the maps the following Saturday. Once a final one is cho- sen, City Council members have 45 days to make any amendments. ▼ JOBS A HELPING HAND 6 6 E THE CITY, A GROUP OF VIOLENCE INTERRUPTERS AND OTHER LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS ARE WORKING HARD TO GET EX-CONVICTS HIRED. BY JACOB VAUGHN very year, more than 600,000 people are released from prison back into so- ciety, and it’s not always easy for them to land a good job. Prisonpolicy.org esti- mates that the unemployment rate among ex-convicts in the U.S. is over 27%. That’s higher than the total unemployment rate in the U.S. at any time in history. The Dallas Cred team is one group try- ing to help people getting out of prison land jobs with competitive pay. They’re doing it with the help of the city and sev- eral other organizations in Dallas. “Cred” is short for credibility. Dallas Cred, which is an extension of the national nonprofit Youth Advocate Program, bills itself as a team of violence interrupters. They don’t intervene in actual violent situations, but they provide resources they say interrupt patterns that lead to violence. This could be anything from helping someone find their next meal to helping someone land their next job. “By us being a violence interrupter team first of all, our whole entire job is to allevi- ate any disparities an individual may en- counter that could cause them to want to turn to or enact violent behavior,” Mar But- ler, Dallas Cred program director, said. “In order to do that, it requires building these relationships with other people who will tell us more about their story, get them to open up, and just let us know what the bar- riers are.” One of those barriers is job placement. “There are individuals who have been in- carcerated for so long until they just could not get any real work,” Butler said. “The work is not competitive to the average cost of living when you’re over 40 years old and still working at the fast food restaurants and stuff like that.” The group has been hosting job fairs and workshops where formerly incarcer- ated people can get connected with train- ing and employers willing to give them a job. Earlier last month, Dallas Cred and several others hosted a day of workshops to provide people assistance with ex- pungements, as well as teach them how to create a resumé and manage their fi- nances. Two days later, they hosted a job fair that had on-the-spot interviews with “second chance” employers willing to of- fer them “careers not just jobs,” one flyer for the event said. Part-time and full-time jobs were available and transportation was provided. The events were also hosted and organized by the Dixon Circle Home Ex-cons need help to get second chances. Pablo Iglesias Owners Association, the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department and Collective Activism. Butler said they had nearly 200 people sign up for the job fair and workshops, but they’re still collecting information about how many of them landed job opportunities after their interviews. He said Dallas has the re- sources to help formerly incarcerated people, but everyone’s not always on the same page. “What we do in Dallas a lot is we have re- sources and we have the answers to address the immediate needs, but because all of these entities and organizations don’t neces- sarily work together, they don’t work in con- cert, it’s hard for people to really find out what’s what and who’s who,” Butler said. Bringing the job fair to the community and getting everyone under the same roof seemed to make these resources easier to navigate, he said. The city of Dallas also offers jobs to for- merly incarcerated people through a pro- gram called FreshStart. Staff members with the FreshStart program were also at the job fair last month. In this program, city staff create a list of jobs needed across different departments that formerly incar- cerated people can fill. Now, the city is looking to partner with more nonprofits for two new programs also meant to get ex-convicts employed. Without a good job, they may not be able to advance in life, Butler said, or they’ll turn back to a life of crime. “As long as we keep these individuals in survival mode, they’re constantly being forced to do something they really don’t want to do,” he said. ▼ CAPITOL RIOT FRISCO REAL ESTATE BROKER AND ALLEGED CAPITOL RIOTER JENNA RYAN HAS OPENED UP ABOUT PULLING OUT OF AN UPCOMING DOCUMENTARY. BY SIMONE CARTER SORRY, HOLLYWOOD tion, has managed to stay relatively under-the-radar since her release from J enna Ryan, the inimitable Frisco real estate broker who served time in con- nection with the U.S. Capitol insurrec- prison earlier this year. She’s sold more houses. She’s gone through a break-up. And now, she’s opening up about a purported brush with Hollywood. Ryan’s nurtured a love-hate relation- ship with the media ever since she hopped on a private plane to attend the so-called “Stop the Steal” rally-turned-riot on Jan. 6, 2021. She’s consistently accused jour- nalists covering her case (us included) of bias and defamation. But not long after each complaint of unfair media treatment, Ryan would again announce her next big interview. Case in point: In a March TikTok video, Ryan opened up about the dangers of cancel culture driven by the media. But later that same month, she had seemingly forgotten about her camera-wariness and announced that she and her entertainment attorney were working on a deal for a “humongous project.” “I can’t wait to tell you all about what’s about to happen,” she says in the video, smil- ing from ear to ear. “Jenna Ryan has been discovered. Yay!” But the excitement would be short-lived. Last week, Ryan posted a new video to break some bad news. She had been slated to appear in a documentary with “high-level, high-end” Hollywood producers, who had reportedly promised to film her in a favor- able light. “I’ve been told that before, OK? This isn’t my first rodeo,” she says, addressing her TikTok followers. “Last year I was courted by the media like rabid beasts, and I never dreamed that they would do some of the things that they were doing and that they did to me ultimately.” (We here at the Ob- server have already gotten our rabies shots, thank you very much.) Then, Ryan takes out a makeup brush and begins to dab on blush. She explains that a producer who had once been accommo- dating and kind had suddenly become “com- plete rabid mean.” The deal had gone south, Ryan explained, adding that she’d faced ac- cusations of being “a demanding ho, basi- cally.” Ryan notes that she has to be careful with her image. She compares herself to Taylor Swift and Prince and former Presi- dent Donald Trump, all of whom Ryan says had bad experiences with contracts and/or the media. Next, Ryan claims to have asked for a lim- itation on the producers’ rights to her image. “I don’t want you to go and create a video game or do movies about this docuseries,” Ryan says. “I want a limitation in my agree- ment. And … this particular producer went sweet mean on me. She went mean. “I was like, ‘Mm, hmm,’” she continues. “So, I said, ‘Boom! I’m out.’ So I’m not doing Hollywood right now.” Hear that? It’s the sound of Werner Herzog weeping. Maybe if Ryan has gleaned anything from this close encoun- ter with Tinsel Town, it’s that it’s wise to keep potential projects under wraps until you’re absolutely sure they’ll make. Still, it’s a lesson that she perhaps should have learned already. Ryan once tweeted that she was uncancellable shortly before her publisher canceled a self-help book she’d penned. 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