A Wisconsin Teen's Dream of a 3-day Music Festival to Help Fallen Officers' Families Needs a Dose of Reality

I have no interest in taking down a recent high school graduate who appears to have good intentions, however unusual his approach. I hope everything Zak Chaouki is promising comes to be, and that 10 months from now we are packed into Fair Park for a joyful, cathartic and successful music festival rivaling the best of the benefit concerts staged in the aftermaths of tragedies. But Chaouki is a 19-year-old from Wisconsin whose prior fundraising experience involved raising money for a terminally ill classmate. Now, he's come to Dallas promising to fill the Cotton Bowl with a star-studded three-day charity concert during Memorial Day weekend 2018 "centered around the 2016 Dallas police shooting." We should be a little wary. Do not be swayed, at least yet, by the effusive music-trade coverage and buzz-worded press releases and newspaper and TV stories that have run in the young man's hometown.  Continue reading...