Springfield, U.S.A. – In February, the proposed elimination of Illinois’ entire $2.6 million youth drug prevention budget by Governor Pat Quinn caught the attention of Highland Park resident Larry Goodman, who unsuccessfully advocated against the cut, but eventually reached for his own checkbook to help save youth drug prevention in Illinois.

Goodman, who along with his late wife, Lillian, founded the Skokie-based Cebrin Goodman Center, has committed $1.1 million to a Springfield-based youth drug prevention program, the Illinois Teen Institute, which will now be known as the Cebrin Goodman Teen Institute.

The three-year, $1.1 million drug prevention grant is equal to 64% of $1.6 million of Illinois drug prevention money that the Illinois General Assembly ended up cutting in the final state fiscal year 2013 budget, which began on July 1.

In fiscal year 2008, Illinois spent $7.5 million on youth drug prevention.

“Illinois is facing a deadly teen heroin epidemic that is roiling Chicago’s suburbs and downstate Illinois, and that is why I stepped up to help,” said Goodman, whose granddaughter, Cebrin, died of a drug overdose. “It is unconscionable that the governor and lawmakers could cut youth drug prevention money in the midst of this heroin crisis that is terrorizing the suburbs and downstate Illinois.”

“The days of heroin use being confined to the wrong people in the wrong places are gone. It is a plague of all communities, all incomes and all children,” said Wayne Hunter, Lake County sheriff chief of administration, Daily Herald, January 31, 2012.

The newly minted Cebrin Goodman Teen Institute, which will be administered by the Springfield-based Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association (IADDA), will take over, in part, where the State of Illinois is in retreat. Additionally, a portion of the funds will go to support Operation Snowball, a drug prevention program also operated by IADDA.

“We will be able to dramatically expand our outreach to high school students throughout Illinois and provide drug prevention programming to thousands of youth who would otherwise now be overlooked because of the Illinois budget cuts,” said CGTI Program Manager Sarah Potter.

The new Cebrin Goodman Teen Institute will be officially launched with hundreds of Illinois high school students at the start of this year’s Teen Institute conference in Bloomington on Sunday, July 22. The conference will be held at Illinois Wesleyan University July 22 through July 26.

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Presidential candidates go to great lengths to claim the moral high ground as they jockey for support from the American public. While contenders from Gingrich to Obama seek the imprimatur of religious institutions across the land, the fractious political landscape scarcely reflects the values to which all would aspire.

Into the battleground of the farm state of Iowa comes an unusual native son: Marc Daniels, American-Jewish author of the German published ‘Der Himmelsgarten: Das Handbuch des Spirituellen Gartners’ (‘Heaven’s Garden: The Handbook of Spiritual Gardening’).

As the grandson of Ross Daniels, the inventor of the Ross Root Feeder, Marc Daniels’s horticultural and Iowan roots run deep. Yet it took an eight-year journey into the mystical heritage of Judaism and studies in both Germany and Israel to reveal the choicest fruits of his Hawkeye stock.

Daniels has come to Iowa for the January 3rd caucus to advance his campaign and to meet with press and potential US publishers. His book, preliminarily titled for English publication as ‘Weed Out Hate: Sow the Seeds of Peace,’ is the groundwork for the Weed Out Hate initiative and is ripe for American publication.

One need not have a spiritual disposition to appreciate the wisdom of this work. The Weed Out Hate initiative integrates family values by addressing the epidemic bullying problem through gardening pedagogy. It is the quintessential children’s grass-roots instrument that transcends party politics, cultural, and religious differences.

Elementary schools around the country have already begun to integrate his Weed Out Hate gardening pedagogy into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s tenants of social inclusion by distributing specially designed Sunflower Peace Seed Packs, donated by Daniels, to school children.

Each of the packages contains an anti-bullying message and encourages children to email President Obama asking him to organize a Weed Out Hate gathering. At this globally televised White House-sponsored mega event, the children of the world would be called upon to fulfill Dr. Martin Luther King’s Promised Land vision by rooting out hatred once and for all.

Daniels’s  initiative has attracted endorsements from around the world, including those from German President Christian Wulff and Chancellor Angela Merkel, to Dr. Walter Milton, Jr., Superintendent of the Springfield IL Public Schools. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, and Iowa Governor Terry Brandstad have all issued children-oriented anti-bullying proclamations, calling for weeds of prejudice to be extracted and seeds of peace and understanding to be planted.

With Senator Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) assistance, Daniels is pressing President Obama for a declaration of support. He has also received endorsements and encouragement for his initiative from Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum at various town hall and Republican Party sponsored forums.

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