Tag Archives: Cortez Charles

Community

The South End’s Annual Turkey Bowl Brings Celebration and Service to Seattle All November

by Troy Landrum Jr.

The 9th Annual Turkey Bowl — a community-wide week of sports, games, and service — has arrived in the South End once more for 2023. This South End tradition is steeped in a history of getting the community involved in brag-worthy football games and dinners, and benefiting the community through acts of service. This annual event is led year after year by community builder and youth developer Cortez Charles and his organization, the Fatherhood Accountability Movement, aka F.A.M., which allows the work of this one-week event to last year-round by giving young people a place to continue to scratch that itch for service and to be embraced by the community they call home.

Continue reading The South End’s Annual Turkey Bowl Brings Celebration and Service to Seattle All November →
Features

The Legacy of the Turkey Bowl Week of Service Continues With the 8th Annual Event

by Troy Landrum Jr.

“I don’t ever want to be able to help, and not help.” Those words from Cortez Charles signify the foundation and the mission of the 8th Annual Turkey Bowl Week.

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Voices

OPINION: Fatherhood Is a Journey to Be Celebrated

by Cortez Charles

In my experience, the journey into fatherhood isn’t celebrated the way it often is for mothers. In a lot of cases, mothers get together with friends and family and have exciting gender reveals and immaculate baby showers. There is a wave of support and excitement around new moms. For expecting fathers, in a lot of cases, it’s the exact opposite. The news is often met with negativity and an obscene amount of pressure to provide, to love, and to protect, as those are viewed as key aspects of being a “man.” But now, it’s being a man and a father, and that puts a lot of pressure on men entering fatherhood, often without community offering them the additional support that they need.

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Community

Football, Fun, and Helping Those in Need Highlight Turkey Bowl Week of Service

by M. Anthony Davis

This week is the seventh annual Turkey Bowl Week of Service, and Cortez Charles is back with his team of youth volunteers to build on this prominent Rainier Beach tradition. The Turkey Bowl is an annual, youth-led flag-football game and service event. The football game was cancelled last year due to COVID-19 so the event pivoted toward three days of community service, and local youth helped package and distribute nearly 1,000 hygiene kits and turkey-sandwich lunches to community members in need.

“The original Turkey Bowl Week is back and in full effect,” Charles says about this year’s event, which will be held Nov. 21–25 between Rainier Beach Community Center and Rainier Beach High School. On Nov. 24, in addition to the annual youth flag-football game, there will be a community dinner hosted by food trucks. 

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Community

The Morning Update Show — 11/15

The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.

We also post the Morning Update Show here on the Emerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.

Morning Update Show — Monday, Nov. 15

It is Choose 180 Day at Converge Media Studios. As we celebrate and uplift the work of Choose 180, we are joined by their Executive Director Sean Goode as well as Cortez Charles as they update the community on the work the organization is doing and share some new and exciting news.

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Community

Rainier Beach Turkey Bowl Skips Football This Year to Focus on Feeding the Community

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by M. Anthony Davis

This week marks the sixth annual Rainier Beach Turkey Bowl Week of Service, and even with new COVID-19 restrictions putting our state back under lockdown, Cortez Charles and his team of youth and community partners have found a way to make this event just as impactful as ever.

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Community, Features

Youth Mentor Envisions Inaugural Peace Festival Bridging City, Police Divide

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by Marcus Harrison Green

A police officer drives down the lane of a hardwood court only to dish off a pass to a South Seattle teen standing right underneath the basket for layup in a 5 on 5 game of basketball.  A “Bernie Bro” from Fremont and a Hillary Clinton backer from Seward Park share laughs over plates of barbecue wings, and elementary students longing for summer vacation lock themselves in fierce concentration to solve math puzzles their peers helped create.  Neighborhood organizations joining forces to put on a successful community gathering with each rushing to heap praise on one another as opposed to taking sole credit for the outcome. Continue reading Youth Mentor Envisions Inaugural Peace Festival Bridging City, Police Divide →