Stop and frisk

February 27, 2015February 26, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I never met Questlove, but when I was a little kid, my aunt and cousins lived in Bartram Village, where we could hang out in the stairwell and listen to Lee Andrews (Questlove’s father) and the Hearts practice their harmonies. When I listened to his story about the constant indignity of “stop and frisk,” I wanted to cry — especially when a Philadelphia cop explained to him he was driving the “wrong” car.

Democracy Now:

On the heels of this week’s historic ruling declaring the “stop-and-frisk” tactics of the New York City Police Department unconstitutional, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Grammy Award-winning band The Roots joins us to talk about his own experiences being racially profiled by police. Questlove describes the first time he was harassed by police, as a young teenager in Philadelphia on his way to Bible study, to the most recent: being pulled over in his car by the NYPD two weeks ago, despite being one of the most acclaimed artists in hip-hop. He also discusses the message he took away as an African-American male from the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin: “You’re guilty no matter what, and you just now have to figure out a way to make everyone feel safe and everyone feel comfortable, even if it’s at the expense of your own soul.”

Class segregation

February 24, 2015February 23, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Isn’t it ironic? If I have to move again, I will probably end up in the suburbs — because my city, which used to be one of the most affordable on the East Coast — is now too expensive for me to get an apartment:

Concentrated poverty is one of the biggest problems facing cities today, as more of the urban poor become isolated in neighborhoods where the people around them are poor, too. Growing economic segregation across cities, though, is also shaped by a parallel, even stronger force: concentrated wealth.

A new analysis from Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander at the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, which identifies the most and least economically segregated metropolitan areas in the United States, makes clear that economic segregation today is heavily shaped by the choices of people at the top: “It is not so much the size of the gap between the rich and poor that drives segregation,” they write, “as the ability of the super-wealthy to isolate and wall themselves off from the less well-to-do.”

Florida and Mellander created an index of economic segregation that takes into account how we’re divided across metro areas by income, but also by occupation and education, two other pillars of what we often think of as socioeconomic status. Among the largest metros in the country, Austin ranks as the place where wealthy, college-educated professionals and less-educated, blue-collar workers are least likely to share the same neighborhoods.

[…]

Before calculating their combined index, Florida and Mellander also looked at separate measures of segregation by income, education and occupation, and an interesting pattern arises across all three. Within a given region, such as Washington, we can think about income segregation, for example, in at least two ways: To what degree are the wealthy isolated from everyone else? Or to what degree are the poor concentrated in just a few parts of town? The wealthy can be highly segregated in a metro area (occupying just a few neighborhoods), even while the poor are pretty evenly dispersed (with low segregation).

The interesting pattern: By income, the wealthy (households making more than $200,000 a year) are more segregated than the poor (families living under the federal poverty line). By education, people with college degrees are more segregated than people with less than a high school diploma. By occupation, the group that Florida has coined the “creative class” is more segregated than the working class.

The problem of economic segregation, in other words, isn’t simply about poor people pushed into already-poor neighborhoods — it’s even more so about the well-off choosing to live in places where everyone else is well-off, too. In fact, of all the different forms of segregation that Mellander and Florida examined, the segregation of the wealthy was the most severe.

Exploiting dead cops

February 20, 2015February 19, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Yes, that would be Pat Lynch, the NYPD’s PBA president who’s running for reelection:

The outspoken president of one of New York’s main police unions has come under fire for a campaign video critics say exploits the deaths of two NYPD officers who were killed in an attack in December.

Some officers from New York City’s 84th precinct, where officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos worked, are upset that the video includes an image of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) president Patrick Lynch attending a makeshift memorial for the officers, according to a report by the New York Daily News.

“It’s disgusting,” said an officer assigned to the 84th precinct, according to the newspaper. “I just don’t think a death of a cop should be used as an election tool.”

The video, which runs just over a minute, shows a series of images of Lynch dressed in blue, some taken at the Brooklyn street corner where the officers were shot by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a 28-year-old with a history of mental health problems, while sitting in their patrol car on 20 December. As the photos of Lynch appear, the video states: “He has brought back pride to the PBA” and “unmatched dedication to the members” and “re-elect team Lynch in 2015”.

More layers

February 20, 2015February 19, 2015 ~ susie ~ 6 Comments

How cold is it? Let me put it this way: I was meeting a friend downtown for dinner last night, and the wind chill was 20 below. I wore leggings, pants, wool socks, suede boots with wool lining, a tank top, a flannel shirt, a fleece pullover, a neck scarf, a down-filled parka, a wool hat, and suede fleece-lined gloves.

I thought I was overdoing it, but I was FREEZING. Even in the restaurant, I was a little cold, and my feet never really did thaw out. I may have mentioned something to my friend about a desire to cut Jim Imhofe’s balls off with a rusty knife, but under the circumstances, it was understandable.

Damn it’s cold

February 16, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I’m trying to work up enough motivation to go out and start my car so the battery doesn’t die, but it’s 0 degrees and I’m not feeling it yet.

Here in the urban hellhole, when we have an extended deep freeze, our 150-year-old infrastructure starts blowing up: water mains and gas pipes.

I feel for the people who are forced out of their homes in the middle of the night, or the ones who are home without heat of water. Thanks, Republicans! Imagine if we’d replaced those pipes instead of giving tax cuts to rich people.

Friday the 13th valentines

February 14, 2015February 15, 2015 ~ odd man out

It was Friday the 13th, a good day to play it safe. But the sun glared through the leafless trees and into my shack, urging me to greet the day with good faith. “Go out and slay dragons,” Swamp Rabbit said. He was hungry and out of bourbon. There were supermarkets and liquor stores to rob. There was money to be made, if I could find a place to sell magic electricity.

“It’s a bad-luck day, but I feel like I’m stagnating here,” I told the rabbit.

“Of course you stagnatin’,” he said. “You live in a swamp, Odd Man.”

So I jumped into my rusty Honda and hit the road. A black cat crossed my path before I was even out of the swamp. Then I sideswiped a parked car on Chemical Road, breaking its side mirror. But my luck seemed to hold. I set up my table at a popular emporium on the Main Line, where the buildings are less tacky and the people more hip to the eco-benefits of magic electricity.

But the shoppers were grumpy old men and housewives seeking air freshener and hipsters staring at their phones as they walked, as if taking directions from an unseen taskmaster. Everyone had to run a gauntlet of heart-shaped holiday balloons. They ignored me or said things like, “I have ADD, my wife handles the bills” and “Talk to my husband, I can’t wrap my head around that stuff.”

I called it a day and somehow ended up driving west on City Avenue, straight into the low-hanging sun, looking for a SuperFridge. I found a Shop-Rate, which is even better. You can usually count on them to have cameras that don’t work.

Back at the shack I unloaded fruits and greens and canned beans from my overcoat. The rabbit was happy when I pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey, but then he twitched his whiskers and made a face.

“Ain’t no balloons or candy for my valentines,” he said. “You goin’ out again?”

I thought of former valentines and shivered. “I do Friday the 13th but not Valentine’s Day,” I said. “Don’t want to push my luck too far.”

Violence against children

February 12, 2015February 11, 2015 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Teacher Steve Singer over at Gadfly On The Wall:

As any experienced public school teacher knows, you have to satisfy a person’s basic needs before you have any chance at teaching them something new. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is always at the back of mind.

Students must have their physical needs met first – be fed, have a full night’s rest, etc. Then they have to feel safe, loved, and esteemed before they can reach their potentials.

But meeting these needs is a daily challenge. Our students come to us with a wealth of traumas and we’re given a poverty of resources to deal with them.

How many times have I given a child breakfast or bought a lunch? How many kids were given second-hand clothes or books? How many hours have I spent before or after school just listening to a tearful child pour out his heart?

Let me be clear. I don’t mind.

Not one bit.

It’s one of the reasons I became a teacher. I WANT to be there for these kids. I want to be someone they can come to when they need help. It’s important to me.

But what I do mind is doing this alone. And then being blamed for not healing all the years of accumulated hurt.
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I am amused to announce

February 10, 2015February 10, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

That this happened in the only Republican area of Philadelphia. This is a big deal, it’s a major traffic artery (one I avoid at all costs). Maybe they will finally wake up:

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A huge water main break Tuesday morning closed the Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia.

Water on the roadway forced traffic to detour between Conwell Avenue and Grant Avenue. Both the inner and outer lanes were affected.

The outer lanes of the boulevard, both northbound and southbound, were reopened south of Red Lion Road just before 9am. All inside lanes remained closed.

The water main broke around 6:15am near a crosswalk just south of Conwell Avenue, between Red Lion Road and Grant Avenue. Water bubbled out of the street, covering all 12 lanes of the boulevard.

The main was reported as a 16-inch transmission line, though crews are working to get in and confirm that. The water department reports that the main was successfully shut off sometime around 8:15am.

As of now, there’s no timeline announced for when the entire highway will reopen.

Oops

February 10, 2015February 10, 2015 ~ susie

I hate reading stories like this. It’s so painful to know this child would be alive if this operator had been properly trained and knew how to do her job:

Just 12 hours before police say a man threw his five-year-old daughter to her death off a Tampa Bay bridge last month, his own attorney called Florida’s child abuse hotline, warning that his client was suffering from mental delusions. But the hotline operator didn’t refer the call to investigators because she didn’t think the child was in danger, according to documents released by Florida child welfare officials Monday.

One week earlier, another worried caller told the Department of Children and Families that John Jonchuck’s daughter Phoebe had been physically abused in the past. But that call also failed to get to DCF investigators because the operator hung up before she got Jonchuck’s address. Instead of calling back, she simply closed the case, according to the state’s investigation.

The lapses have cast the already troubled DCF in a harsh spotlight, prompting the agency’s new secretary Mike Carroll to change hotline protocol. Going forward, if a caregiver seems to be experiencing a psychotic episode, a child protective investigator will be required to visit within four hours.

Police say Phoebe Jonchuck was likely alive when her father sped past a police officer on 8 January, stopped on the Sunshine Skyway bridge, pulled the girl from the back seat and dropped her to her death. He was arrested and accused of first-degree murder, but hasn’t formally been charged as he is undergoing mental health evaluations.

Jonchuck’s own divorce lawyer had warned authorities of his mental state on 7 January, telling the hotline operator that Jonchuck had driven to three different churches in his pajamas with Phoebe in tow and asked his attorney to translate a Bible in Swedish. Jonchuck was also expressing paranoid fears that Phoebe was not his biological daughter, his lawyer said.

I hate drugs

February 6, 2015February 6, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I’ve heard the intersection of Kensington and Somerset described as “the largest open-air drug market in America.” (Yay, we’re number one!) Junkies from all over the country move here because heroin is so cheap, and then they panhandle to stay alive.

I hate drugs. I hate what they’ve done to the city, and to the people.

If everyone lived where where they could see the human remains left behind, they’d feel the same. When I see the expensive cars from the suburbs and New Jersey that come into the neighborhood to buy drugs, I want to throw a brick through their windshield.

Here’s a story about the mothers of the heroin addicts.