Pop City, November 19, 2008
http://popcitymedia.com/features/wrct1112.aspx
Tune into WRCT 88.3 FM on a Saturday morning this fall and you'll hear Saturday Light Brigade, an acclaimed radio program for families that features acoustic music and interactive puzzles and games for children. Listen to the same station later that night and you'll hear Too Evil to Have a Human Name, three hours of metal- growling vocalists, squealing guitars, and pounding bass drums in bands with names like Obituary and Cattle Decapitation.
In between there’s Radio 9, throwback to the radio shows of the 50's and 60's, followed by indie rock on Something Fell. Oh, and Radio Free Radio, an experimental music program hosted by Steve Boyle, which one caller described this way: "I tune in on a Saturday night as I'm driving down to the bar, and all I hear is noise. It wasn't a song, there wasn't even a beat, just all kinds of weird feedback and voices clipped out of movies and stuff, and it went on for like 20 minutes. What the hell is that?"
Clearly, not everyone will be a fan of every show. If you turn on the radio and you know you want to hear just jazz, or just R&B, or classical there are plenty of other stations. But, if you want to hear something, well... different? Turn on WRCT.
Underground Radio
WRCT, Carnegie Mellon's student radio station (the "RCT" stands for "Radio Carnegie Tech"), began as the project of a group of engineering students in 1949. At first they used the electrical wiring in a few academic buildings to broadcast a weak AM signal. They switched to FM at 88.3 in the mid-70's, but it still didn't reach much further than the edge of CMU’s campus. The station has grown quite a bit since then. With a new transmitter, the station is as powerful as it's ever been- covering the entire city and well into Allegheny County in most directions. Or, thanks to the Internet, it's now possible to hear WRCT anywhere in the world via streaming audio on the station's web site.
As the station expanded to serve the larger community, it opened its doors to participation from outside the university. "Community members are at least as valuable to the station as students," says Sal Farina, the current General Manager and a PhD student at CMU. Every position is volunteer ("Even at the top," he laments) and he estimates that about half of the station's DJ's, producers, engineers, and staff are not connected to the school. To get involved, simply call the station or e-mail the training director (Alex Smith at training@wrct.org).
Which means that in addition to awkward freshmen DJ's who are just learning the ropes, WRCT's programming includes veteran DJ's with years of experience on the air. Like Kevin Amos, host of African American issues and music shows Ebony Spectrum and One to One, who recently celebrated his 30th year in local radio. Or Zombo, who,now in his eighth year at the station, hosts his show with a fake Hungarian accent and plenty of energy (picture the Count from Sesame Street after say, nine cups of coffee). Zombo's Record Party, like many shows on WRCT doesn't really fit into any one genre- the playlist for a recent show included Groucho Marx, Devo, Johnny Cash, experimental music collective Negativland, a polka, a dozen other songs that have probably never been on the radio before, and an interview with a nervous Pop City writer who had wandered into the studio.
Studios Underground Too
The studios are located in the basement of Carnegie Mellon's University Center, where band stickers, album covers, and posters of concerts sponsored by the station in years past cover nearly every inch of wall. It's a comfortable space, and at any given time someone is probably sleeping on the couch in the front room. There are two soundproof recording booths- a smaller one for the DJ's and a larger one for recording live local bands on shows like Advanced Calculus and (the somewhat less creatively named) Live Band Show.
But the station's real treasure is in a room off to the side- nearly 70,000 records and CD's known as the record library. Most were donated by individuals or sent by independent record companies, and each one has a card taped to the front with a brief review written by a WRCT DJ and a list of suggested tracks. "So many stations have purged their vinyl," says Larry Berger, host of Saturday Light Brigade, who points out that many of the records were never released on CD and aren't available in electronic formats. "WRCT has been protective, and shown a lot of foresight." Berger knows about longevity and foresight in radio. Saturday Light Brigade, which he has hosted since 1978, is one of the longest running public radio programs in the United States. In 2003, the show, which is broadcast from a studio in the Children's Museum to somewhere between 40 and 60 thousand local families, switched stations from to WRCT after nearly 25 years on WYEP.
"The station is really delighting people, and taking risks, which I believe are appropriate," says Berger. "Sometimes listeners will tune in and be delighted in a way they didn't even know radio could delight them."
Hidden Jewel
WRCT broadcasts not just music, but also ideas that might not get on the radio anywhere else. For example, every weekday morning at 8 a.m., WRCT broadcasts Democracy Now, a nationally syndicated news program hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales. The station is also home to Rustbelt Radio, a weekly show produced by a grassroots collective of volunteers who report on issues overlooked by the local mainstream media.
"As far as I know, we're the only major station in Pittsburgh to broadcast shows not in English," says Alex Smith, a former GM and current training director at WRCT. Wednesday evenings the station features Barrio Latino, which covers topics of interest to Pittsburgh's growing Latin American community in Spanish, and Thursdays there's the Brazil Hour, which alternates between English and Portuguese.
"WRCT has really emerged as a champion of diverse and eclectic local radio," says Berger. He says there are only a handful of stations around the country that are "so eclectic and broadly serving the wider community... I think that WRCT is a hidden jewel in Pittsburgh. I really do."
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Da Vinci Award
Carnegie Mellon Today, Winter 2008
In his 41 years as a history professor at Carnegie Mellon, Joel Tarr has never had a parking permit. He lives a short ten-minute walk from campus (“Eight minutes if I walk fast”), just off of Forbes Ave. Walking home one night in 1991, a car ran through the intersection in front of Margaret Morrison while he was crossing. Tarr woke up in an emergency room, but luckily without serious injuries. Fifteen years later, when a student was struck by a car and killed at an intersection just up the street from where he was hit, he wondered if there was a way to make crossings safer.
Every semester Tarr teaches two classes in which students research a policy problem for a government or non-profit client. Following the fatal accident, he had both classes focus on pedestrian safety in Pittsburgh. They pored through historical records, surveyed students and faculty, and worked with doctors at UMPC's Children's Hospital to produce a report identifying hazardous intersections. Tarr later testified before Pittsburgh city council in support of a Safe Streets Initiative, which included many of the report's recommendations, such as walk signals that show when a light will change.
The project was typical of the work he has done throughout his career- applying history to a technological issue and working with experts in a broad range of fields. It seems appropriate then that Tarr, who holds appointments in the Heinz School, the History department, and the Engineering and Public Policy department, recently received an award named after history's most famous renaissance man- the Leonardo da Vinci award, given by the Society for the History of Technology. The Society has 1500 members in 35 countries, and the da Vinci award is its highest honor.
Watershed Moment
Carnegie Mellon Today, Winter, 2008
Julia Schwarz, Chris Harrison, and Bryan Pendleton were getting ready to eat the first meal of a three-day vacation paddling down the Allegheny River. Lounging on their homemade wooden raft, the three of them, all students in the Human Computer Interaction program, had just unpacked their tuna sandwiches, when the sky opened, unleashing a torrential downpour. As they dove for shelter under the tarp, the lightning started.
“It was right next to us,” says Schwarz. “Sometimes it felt as if the sound came before the lightning- it was ear-splitting.” Meanwhile, the raft, a platform of wooden planks supported by four plastic barrels, had been pushed into a faster section of river, near the shore, and was hurtling towards an overhanging tree- backwards. If the tree snagged the raft, there was good chance the current would push the raft over, knocking them into the river during a lightning storm. As Harrison and Pendleton paddled furiously, Schwarz managed to maneuver to the front and push the tree over them. Throughout the ordeal Harrison was joking and smiling. “I had to laugh to ease the tension,” he says.
The voyage was his idea- to have an adventure like the rafters who shipped timber down rivers centuries ago. He convinced Pendleton, another PhD student, to join him early on, but recruiting a third person was trickier. Harrison says he asked a half dozen people before Julia Schwarz- an undergrad from Washington studying at CMU over the summer- overheard him talking about the trip in the HCI lab. She heard, “rafting, trip, multi-day, building” and was hooked. They spent the next two and a half weeks constructing the raft in Pendleton's garage. The finished vessel was named in honor of his wife, Joy, and her decision to let him participate- The Joy Willing. After borrowing life-jackets, tents, and oars from the CMU Explorers club, they were ready to go.
Apart from the early storm, most of the trip was peaceful, but hardly boring. They constantly had to navigate around islands, rocks, and other obstacles. During quieter moments they saw turtles, otters, and bald eagles. When it got hot, they would swim in the river, checking the underside of the raft for damage. At night they camped on the shores of islands, eating smores and staring up at the Milky Way.
On the third day, the crew, and The Joy Willing, landed safely, thirty-five miles from their launch. They created a Web site, www.alleghenyrafters.com, hoping to inspire others to use the river. Maybe, says Schwarz, the trip could become a popular spring break for students. “Rafters gone wild!” Harrison jokes.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Orchid Blooms
Carnegie Mellon Today, Fall 2008
When Ralph Ashworth first tried pitching his mystery novel, The Killer of Orchids, to agents and editors 15 years ago, he didn’t have much luck. Sure, they liked the writing and they were intrigued by the plot, in which Jeff Redwing, a gay computer genius, investigates the murder of a Carnegie Mellon alumnus. But at the time Ashworth didn’t think readers would be ready for a gay detective, so when he submitted the manuscript he removed any reference to the hero’s romantic life.
“Editors would tell me, ‘We like the story, but something is missing,’” says Ashworth. “And I would think, ‘Well, you’re right…’” So he put the novel aside, took a job as a supervisor at a Borders bookstore, and concentrated on other writing projects.
Last year, he decided it was time to rewrite The Killer of Orchids, with Redwing as a gay man once again. Coincidentally, at around the same time, Borders announced a fiction-writing contest open to all 30,000 employees. The winning book would be published, sold in over 1,000 bookstores, and featured in the Borders newsletter, which is sent to 28 million people.
“Normally it’s a struggle to get one copy in bookstores,” says Ashworth. “This would have the full brunt of Borders’ promotional powers behind it.”
The deadline was six months sooner than he planned to have the book finished, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Even though it was the holiday season and he was working at Borders six days a week, sometimes 10 hours or more each day, he pushed himself to keep writing, whenever he had time to spare. Exhausted, he managed to submit the book by the deadline.
A few months later he got the call. Out of over 200 submissions that Borders received, The Killer of Orchids was chosen as the winner.
Darmen Sadvakasov
Carnegie Mellon Today, Fall 2008
http://www.carnegiemellontoday.com/article.asp?aid=616
Sixteen people sit behind chessboards along the orange and yellow walls of Amani International coffeehouse, in Pittsburgh’s North Side. They are all different ages- a boy in grade school is at a board between a goateed college student and an older man with thinning gray hair. Most of them just play regularly at local chess clubs; a few of them are highly ranked experts. Probably the only thing they all have in common is their opponent. Moving from board to board, stopping at each for only a few seconds to watch his opponent’s move and then quickly make his own, Darmen Sadvakasov, an international grandmaster takes on all sixteen of them- at once.
The term Grandmaster is a title awarded by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, to the best chess players in the world (the only rank higher than Grandmaster is the World Champion) and there are only 60 in the United States. Sadvakasov, a native of Kazakhstan who is currently working towards a Masters of Public Management in the Heinz school, was awarded the title after winning the World Junior Championships in 1998. Since then he’s competed as a chess professional in tournaments in over 40 countries. At one of his first international tournaments in 2001, he played Gary Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time, to two draws. In 2004, he defeated Kasparov’s longtime rival, former World Champion Anatoly Karpov.
“On any given day, Darmen could potentially beat one of the world’s top twenty players,” says Clyde Kapinos, a board member of the Pittsburgh Chess Club.
It’s unlikely to see Sadvakasov playing a serious game around campus- the games he plays in international tournaments last six hours, and he’ll spend another three hours preparing beforehand. Occasionally, when he’s not too busy with classes, he’ll play games for fun, usually on the Internet. And at least once a week he trains with Alex Shabalov, a former CMU student who is the current U.S. Champion, analyzing positions and poring over moves from past games.
Sadvakasov says that the skills he’s developed playing chess- memory, concentration, logic- have been extremely helpful in his coursework at CMU. Which is a good thing too- although most of Sadvakasov’s professors know he’s an accomplished chess player, “They don’t play with me for grades,” he jokes.
Always eager to get other people interested in chess, especially kids, Sadvakasov has held simultaneous games before. This match at Amani is actually relatively small for him- he’s played against as many as 50 people at once. So it’s little surprise when, 70 minutes after the first move, only one of his opponents has managed a draw. The kings on the other 15 boards lie peacefully on their sides, defeated by the grandmaster.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Referee
Unpublished, February 14, 2001
About once a week, Jason Currie has a nightmare that terrifies him. He is the field referee of a soccer game and sees a foul committed. He blows his whistle several times but no noise comes out. As he fumbles to get the backup whistle out of his pocket, the scuffle between the players turns into a bench-clearing brawl. Desperately, he blows harder and harder into the backup whistle, but still nothing. Standing helpless in the middle of the free for all, one of his biggest fears as an official is coming true. He has lost control.
The twenty-year old Currie has spent six years officiating everything from Pony league baseball games, to varsity basketball games, to college intramural flag football, and he takes his job very seriously. He's a full-time student at Carnegie Mellon and when he's not in class, it's a pretty sure bet he's on the field.
When he gets home at night, he heads to the computer to check the online referee bulletin boards where officials across the country swap stories and argue over the finest nuances of rule interpretation. He subscribes to magazines and newsletters for officials, including Referee magazine, which is full of articles with titles like "Technical Fouls are Not Created Equal", "Exercising Safe Bat Removal", "All About Your Plate Brush", and "Mechanics Illustrated: Counting Players Before the Ready Signal." There are quizzes for referees to hone their skills further, which Jason memorizes. Not only can he recite the correct answer verbatim, he can also give slightly different scenarios where the ref would make a different call. While most people are routing for their favorite team, Currie is routing for the umpire.
He started officiating in high school, refereeing soccer games in New Castle, PA, his hometown, as a way to earn some extra money. “It seemed like an interesting challenge," he says. "Plus that’s back when I was into running and I noticed that they [referees] ran a lot and thought, ‘Hey, I can do that.’” A few months after he started officiating soccer games, a substitute teacher was looking for umpires to work local little league games and Currie needed a summer job. He worked his way up to become an officer in the local umpires club, and later became certified to referee Pennsylvania high school baseball, basketball, and soccer games. When he moved to Pittsburgh to go college at Carnegie Mellon University, he continued officiating to help pay his way through school, working local high school games, adult recreation leagues, and even CMU intramural games.
In his years of officiating Currie has learned that not everything is black and white, and that there is more to being a referee than blowing the whistle at the right time. “The art of officiating is keeping your head while however many other people are losing theirs,” says Currie. “You’re really a diplomat while you’re out there.”
Just like a talented player can alter their playing style against certain teams, Currie will change his officiating style depending on the situation and the environment. When he’s refereeing a grade school soccer game he's almost more like a big brother than a referee. He'll give kids second chances, patiently explain why he made a certain call, even give kids suggestions to help improve their game. In these games his job is mainly to make sure the kids are having fun, that no one gets hurt, and to keep overzealous parents and coaches from getting too out of control. Although he wants kids to enjoy themselves, safety is definitely his most important priority. "If a kid sweeps the legs out from under another kid, it's still a foul no matter how much fun he had doing it," Currie says.
When the players are older, Currie’s job gets more complex. He starts to be more concerned with the competitive aspects of the game, like advantages and disadvantages. “You can fudge around with some of the rules for the sake of game management,” says Currie. This doesn’t mean making up rules or not calling blatant fouls, but in the rulebooks much of what is considered a foul is left to the referee’s discretion. A skillful referee can enforce the rules in a way to ensure that the game runs smoothly, and to eliminate conflicts before they get out of hand. But, in sports, when emotions are running high confrontations are unavoidable and referees are usually the first targets of the frustration of the players, coaches, and fans.
“Everybody and their mother thinks it’s the goddamn Superbowl,” says Currie. In the past year he has been physically attacked twice during games, both during Carnegie Mellon intramural games. The first time, earlier in the school year, he wasn’t actually the referee- he was the scorekeeper for a three-on-three basketball tournament with no referees. After one of the games he noticed that players on the losing team were being disruptive, and asked them to leave. One of them grabbed Currie by the neck, and started shaking him. The second time he was attacked was again at a CMU intramural basketball game, when a player Currie had ejected earlier came back and started pushing and hitting him.
Despite confrontations like these and just the day to day bruises from baseballs and pulled muscles that are a natural part of the work, Currie still loves his job and has even considered becoming a professional umpire. Becoming a professional umpire is similar to becoming a professional ball player. They go to a professional umpire school for about 5 weeks, where they are scouted, and then if they’re good, they can try and work their way up through the minor leagues and possibly into the major leagues. However, it's extremely competitive. For the 200 people that go to the school every year, there are only on average twelve openings in the minor leagues.
But for right now Currie is happy officiating local high school games. The basketball season is winding down, and Currie is looking forward to the change of sports that comes with spring. “I can’t wait until baseball starts,” he says, practicing the umpire’s trademark strike three hand gestures.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Post-er Positions
Pittsburgh City Paper, September 16, 2004
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A27975
Matt Toups, a Carnegie Mellon student, planned to drive from Pittsburgh to New York City to attend the protests leading up to the Republican National Convention. He was going up a few days early to help out with the NYC Indymedia Center, and their website, NYC Indymedia. NYC Indymedia is part of a network of Indymedia chapters around the world, which allow anyone to publish news and commentary of events going on in their area. NYC Indymedia planned to have breaking news coverage from the convention protests. The day he was supposed to leave, he got distracted.
“I’m not sure when we’re going to leave now,” he said, holding the telephone. “Apparently I’m being investigated by the Secret Service...”
The anonymous post on NYC Indymedia that started the Secret Service investigation came on August 18, and provided a list of the names and addresses of delegates to the Republican National Convention, along with what hotel each would be staying in during the convention in New York City. The post contained no threats or calls for actions. The objectives stated by the person posting the information were simply to “Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit” and to “facilitate making local connections. Many of these delegates are involved in politics and business on a town or county level.” Also, the information on the delegates, who were elected in their home states’ primaries, is publicly available on many Republican websites. One issue of the New York Times before the convention even included a map showing what hotels the delegates were staying at.
The next day, according to the American Civil Liberties Union’s spokesperson, Emily Whitfield, the United States Secret Service phoned Nicholas Merrill, president of Calyx Internet Access, the internet service provider for NYC Indymedia. The Secret Service (which, to the ACLU’s knowledge, has not yet investigated the Republican websites or the New York Times for providing this information on public figures) asked Merrill to give them the names, any contact information, and any billing records he had for the people running the site, as well as any web logs for the post with the delegates’ information. He told them that he wouldn’t give them any information without a subpoena.
On August 20, Merrill received a subpoena commanding him to appear before a Grand Jury to testify about an alleged violation of laws against voter intimidation. The subpoena also contained a request from the U.S. Attorney. It stated, “The Government hereby requests that you voluntarily refrain from disclosing the existence of the subpoena to any third party” and “if you intend to disclose the existence of this subpoena to a third party, please let me know before making any such disclosure.” It was too late though, after the first phone call from the Secret Service, Merrill had phoned the American Civil Liberties Union and emailed the four NYC Indymedia system administrators he had contact information for.
Although Matt Toups lives in Pittsburgh, he is one of the system administrators for the NYC site. Not every Indymedia chapter has a tech expert, so there is a global tech group, made up of technologically inclined Indymedia members from around the world who divvy up responsibilities for maintaining the sites among themselves. Toups also works on the Pittsburgh Indymedia site (which this reporter used to help out with).
Because Toups was the only one of the NYC Indymedia system administrators who would be in New York, before Merrill’s scheduled grand jury appearance, working with the ACLU he served as Indymedia’s umm… media spokesperson.
Calyx was hosting the NYC Indymedia site for free, so of the information the Secret Service asked for the only information Merrill had was four email addresses. The ACLU, with the permission of the four men, sent the U.S. Attorney’s office a letter with the email addresses. Then they went to the press. The New York Times was the first to run the story last Monday and the following day Toups did interviews with The Washington Post and CNN. Wired ran an article interviewing Merrill.
“They had nothing to hide,” says Whitfield about the Indymedia activists. “The post to Indymedia was clearly political speech, clearly not threatening, and clearly not inciting violence.”
And they literally did have nothing to hide. NYC Indymedia has a policy of not logging the Internet addresses of contributors to the site and so had no way of knowing who posted the information on the delegates.
According to Toups, “We’re trying to create a space that’s safe for dissent and to do that we protect people’s anonymity. We do have standards about illegal content and threats and we have policies to deal with that.” Toups compares Indymedia’s anonymity policy with that of professional journalists who protect the identity of their confidential sources.
In The New York Times, a senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying, “When you're confronted with something like this, you can't just ignore it. I think people would expect us to look into it and find out whether there is anything going on here that goes beyond the bounds of free speech.” Shortly after the national press generated by this story had made it clear that many people did not expect the Justice Department “to look into it” and were actually somewhat surprised that it was, the government responded to the ACLU’s letter by saying that Merrill no longer had to appear before the Grand Jury, although technically the investigation still underway.
Recently it seems that the Justice Department and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force have spent a lot of time “looking into” what appear to be people who are legally expressing their first amendment right to criticize the government. Last February, the New York Times, published a classified FBI memo, which gave police detailed instructions on how to target and monitor lawful political demonstrations. Before, the Democratic National Convention, the FBI visited at least five people in Missouri and Colorado, asking if they were planning criminal activities during the conventions. One of them was a 21 year-old intern for the American Friends Service Committee, a Nobel Peace Prize winning group dedicated to pacifism. That group, according to a Colorado newspaper, was found to be categorized in police files as a “criminal extremist” organization.
Whitfield says that the ACLU believes that the real purpose of these investigations is to intimidate and harass peaceful protesters. That would help explain why the Secret Service, instead of contacting NYC Indymedia directly, contacted their Internet Service Provider. According to Whitfield, there have been many cases government agencies, instead of going straight to the people who are the subjects of these kinds of investigations, will question employers, business partners, parents, and school officials, asking for information that was easily available elsewhere, like current addresses or information on their political activities.
“They probably expected that Calyx would not allow us to keep the site up,” says Toups. “If it were just some random ISP that we didn’t have a good relationship with, and the Secret Service comes to the president of the company, that’s pretty intimidating. Someone else might have just decided not to host the site anymore.”
He says that the Secret Service investigation validates the open publishing model of Indymedia, which so far, still has the information on the RNC delegates up on the site. “Unfortunately, the United States is becoming an increasingly repressive and chilling environment for free speech. This safe space for dissent needs to be there.”
Think big, be small
Pulp, 2004
Everything at the Big Idea Bookstore’s new location, near the corner of Millvale and Liberty Avenues in Bloomfield, is tiny. Tiny stairs lead from the tiny storefront to a tiny loft with low ceilings and a table with tiny chairs like they use in kindergartens. Even the cash register is tiny- about half the size of the kind most stores use.
“We have this joke that everything here is small so that there’s room for the Big Idea,” says Emma Rehm, one of the many volunteers responsible for running the bookstore, which is “a collective dedicated to the promotion of radical/alternative cultures through community networking and distribution of literature” according to their official statement. Every aspect of the store is run by volunteers, and anyone who attends a meeting, usually held twice a month, is welcome to participate in the decision-making process.
Though the store itself might be small, the move represents a pretty large step for the Big Idea. The Big Idea started in May 2001, tabling at politically oriented events and speakers around Pittsburgh, selling books on subjects like feminism and anarchism, and by radical authors like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. In August 2001 they were offered a table at Roboto II, a show space in Wilkinsburg. When that closed down, the Big Idea moved up the street into the original Mr. Roboto Project, selling books during hardcore and indie rock shows. A few months later, the space next to the Mr. Roboto Project opened up and the Big Idea moved in there, sharing the space with Free Ride, a free bike repair workshop. The move gave the Big Idea more room, but sharing a storefront with a bike workshop that tended to draw dozens of local kids and their bikes proved to be hectic.
“We never intended to stay there,” says Rehm. “We just kept hoarding our money until we could afford our own space. We didn’t specifically plan to move to Bloomfield, but the space just seemed so perfect that once we saw it we didn’t really look anywhere else.”
One of the main advantages of the new location is that they get more foot traffic in front of the store than at the Wilkinsburg location. Most of the people who stopped at the store were people who were already involved with radical culture, who either made a special trip or were already next door to see a band. But at the new location volunteers are noticing a more diverse crowd coming in, including something of a lunchtime rush from the nearby hospital.
The size of the store seems appropriate given that part of the mission of the Big Idea is to support other small things- independent presses, radical authors, and homemade zines that the national chain stores overlook or ignore. They also want to help out other independent local businesses, and for example will try not to carry too many of the same records as, say, Brave New World or Paul’s CDs, or books that other local booksellers would carry.
All this weekend the Big Idea is celebrating their grand opening. On Friday there will be a benefit concert at Mr. Roboto Project featuring four local bands: Mary Celeste, Boombox, Redshift, and Ice Capades. On Saturday there will be a reading by local zine authors with free heart-shaped cupcakes. And anyone who goes to the Sunday Brunch at the Quiet Storm Coffee Shop in Garfield will receive a coupon for 10 percent off purchases of $5 or more at the Big Idea.
“I hope lots of people get really fired up by this,” says Rehm with contagious enthusiasm. “There’s definitely a lot of ideological support for local businesses, but we’ll see if people support it financially too.”
Saturday Night Special
Pulp, April 15, 2004
This weekend, as the National Rifle Association (NRA) holds its annual convention and gun show downtown, Confluence Against Gun Violence, a coalition of Pittsburgh organizations, will be holding a sort of mini-convention of its own, with events which organizers say are designed to educate the public and NRA membership about how the NRA leadership promote hate and contribute to widespread fear and violence.
“We’re really a homegrown reaction to the NRA,” says David Meieran, a Confluence organizer. “The events have all been organized by local community groups.” These groups include the Allegheny County Million Mom March, Association of Pittsburgh Priests, Pittsburgh Branch NAACP, Pennsylvanians Against Handgun Violence/SafePennsylvania, Pittsburgh Stand for Children Organizing Group, Rosenberg Institute for Peace and Justice, and the Thomas Merton Center.
Organizers of the Confluence are careful to make a distinction between the NRA leadership and its members. “The leaders of the NRA tend to be more extreme,” says Meieran. “One of our goals is to educate NRA members of the disconnect between leaders and members.”
It’s easy to see how some people might be under the impression that the NRA leadership might be a tad extreme. Jeff Cooper, an NRA board member, was quoted in Guns and Ammo magazine saying, “the consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well supplied with ammunition.”
AT the 2002 annual meeting of the NRA, CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre called gun control advocates, “fakes, frauds, and liars,” “[a] shadowy network of extremist social guerillas,” and “a sort of Taliban, an intolerant coalition of lunatics that shelter the anti-freedom alliance so it can thrive and grow.”
On the NRA’s website there is a 19-page list of organizations, celebrities, journalists, and organizations who have endorsed anti-gun positions. This “shadowy network of extremist social guerillas” includes such radical, freedom-hating extremists as the American Association of Retired People, the National Parent Teacher Association, the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers, the YWCA, Tony Bennett, Bryant Gumbell, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Hallmark Greeting Cards, and the St. Louis Rams. The web site also promotes a contest to win a Charlton Heston, “Cold, Dead Hands” Winchester rifle.
“The NRA stands in the way of any attempt to limit the proliferation of handguns,” says Meieran. He points out that a gun kills one person every 18 minutes in the United States. Gun Violence is especially pervasive in Pennsylvania, which in 1999 ranked sixth in the United States in total firearm homicides, seventh in aggravated assaults involving firearms, and fourth in robberies involving firearms. One person is killed by a gun every day in Pennsylvania.
The Confluence is attempting to make connections between domestic gun violence and increased militarism abroad. On Saturday there will be two feeder marches- a violence prevention march, beginning at Freedom Corner in the Hill District, and a peace and justice march beginning at the North Shore Trail.
“There has been an increasing militarization of local communities, in terms of both the citizens and the police,” says Meieran. “We hope that the Confluence begins to set the seeds for a local gun violence prevention movement. One that does focus on peace and justice.”
Jamaica Explode
Peppapot.com, September 16, 2006
No one seems to know where the weapons came from. Some of them might have been from former U.S. stockpiles in Vietnam. Hundreds might have been smuggled into the country by Cuba's ambassador. Many of them were probably bought through the black market. Wherever they were from, the M16 assault rifles made the 1980 elections the bloodiest in the nation's history. Violence had long been a part of Jamaican politics, but in 1980 it reached unprecedented levels, with over 800 people killed. As former Prime Minister Michael Manley explained in his memoir, Jamaica: Struggle on the Periphery, "Up to 1976, the .365 Magnum was the deadliest weapon in common use in the political battle. It certainly was deadly enough! The 1980 campaign was to be dominated by the M16 rifle... Their rapid-fire chatter became like a theme song of the campaign. The whole period was an extended nightmare from which, it seemed, we would never awaken."
The election featured Manley and his incumbent, left-leaning People's National Party (PNP) squaring off against the rightwing Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) led by Edward Seaga. For years both parties had been linked to the gangs and armed thugs fighting turf battles in Kingston's yards. During election years, each party's gangs could be counted on to deliver votes and politicians rewarded gang leaders with jobs and favors. Seaga once responded to hecklers at a political rally by saying, "If they think they are bad, I can bring the crowds of West Kingston. It will be fire for fire, and blood for blood."
Leading up to the 1980 elections, the well-armed gangs brought those words to life. In April, five people were killed at a JLP function in central Kingston, in what became known as the Gold Street Massacre. Later in the year, five PNP supporters were murdered in a shack near the railway line out of Kingston. Days after that, five more were machine gunned to death at a PNP youth group clubhouse. The papers stopped giving labels to these tragedies, they happened so often.
As the October 30 election drew closer the violence intensified. Gunmen killed seven people on National Heroes Day in Kingston. Two children were killed in Top Hill, St. Elizabeth during a clash between PNP and JLP factions. On October 13, Roy McGann, the PNP s Junior Minister of National Security, and his bodyguard were shot to death in Gordon Town.
In addition to violence, Jamaica's economy was in terrible shape. The recession and oil crisis of the late 1970s hit Jamaica especially hard. Prices had tripled while wages fell. First World leaders, concerned over Manley's relationship with Cuba and other leftist governments, withdrew foreign aid and investments. Strapped for cash and facing enormous debt, the government agreed to accept emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which then imposed severe restrictions, causing more layoffs and shortages. In January of 1980, Manley announced that 11,000 public sector jobs would have to be cut and within days 300 workers went on strike, leaving 70% of the country without electricity.
Many people felt that the PNP government was incapable of managing the economy or maintaining order. Manley believed that the CIA had helped to create much of the instability, in an effort to bring the pro-American JLP into power. Regardless, the JLP won in a landslide with 58% of the vote.
Violence still remains a problem in Jamaica, but future elections never saw as much killing as 1980. That year was the height of what Max Romeo and Lee "Scratch" Perry called "tribal war ina Babylon".
Earth Day on Walnut
Pulp, April 22, 2004
With the Bush administration spending much of the last year apparently trying to get the country to look like Isengard in Lord of the Rings -- easing environmental safeguards and public participation requirements to promote logging in national forests and oil and gas drilling on pristine public lands, loosening restrictions on the release of inadequately treated sewage into waterways, rejecting tough new mercury standards in favor of a plan that would allow nearly seven times as much mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, creating an unstoppable army of orcs...
Well, maybe that's going too far. At any rate, for all these degradations of our air and water, it's good to celebrate the day that commemorates why there are environmental laws for the Bush administration to roll back in the first place.
Thirty-five years ago, when the state of the environment was a non-issue in U.S. politics, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson had an idea for an event to propel environmental issues into the political mainstream. By that time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and "teach-ins" had spread to colleges all over the country. Nelson decided to try the same tactic to protest what he perceived to be happening to the environment. In September 1969, he called for a nationwide teach-in for the spring of the following year, and on April 22, 1970 the first "Earth Day" was held.
It was an instant success almost from the moment of Nelson first announced it. More than 20 million people participated at thousands of locations across the country. Later that year, the Environmental Protection Agency was established, the Clean Air Act was signed into law and the President's Council on Environmental Quality was established to oversee implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires an analysis of the environmental impacts of federal actions. In the next three years, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act were passed. These landmark environmental statutes were signed into law by President Richard Nixon, helping to make him one of this country's greatest environmental presidents.
Nelson wrote later, "Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself."
Thirty-four years later, communities are still organizing events on a grass-roots level, but the idea of Earth Day is not nearly as radical as it once was; even commercial districts are sponsoring events. In Pittsburgh this Saturday, the Shadyside Chamber of Commerce is holding its second annual Earth Day on Walnut.
"We're hoping to raise awareness about environmental issues affecting the community on a local level, like recycling and litter," says Andrea London, who owns a photography studio in Shadyside and is a co-chair of the Chamber of Commerce committee that is organizing Earth Day on Walnut. "And hopefully we can raise the consciousness of other vendors and make visitors aware of what we're doing in terms of the environment."
Last year on Earth Day, the committee unveiled a partnership with the National Soft Drink Association to begin a pilot program of placing "big bottle" receptacles for recycling bottles and cans near trashcans around the neighborhood. London says that over the past year they have collected one ton of recyclable material. The Shadyside big bottle program was done in conjunction with a six-month pilot program sponsored by the Pennsylvania Resources Council (PRC), through which the big bottles were placed at large venues like Kennywood and the Pittsburgh Zoo and bright billboards were placed around the city, advertising recycling with somewhat cryptic slogans like "Cans to Pans."
This Saturday's Earth Day on Walnut events start at seven a.m., with an all-volunteer cleanup of the neighborhood. At 11:30, Agents of Change Recycling will be available to collect recyclable items that the city doesn't take, including cardboard, mixed paper, newspaper and telephone books and used printer cartridges. There will also be cell-phone recycling to benefit the Women's Center and Shelter of Pittsburgh.
"Last year people were literally bringing trunks full of old magazines and bags and bags of junk mail," says London.
In the afternoon, Jane Nugent, host of a gardening call-in show on WPTT 1360, will be broadcasting her show live from Walnut Street. From noon to three p.m., there will be an art show by Salvage Artists Linking Venues and Opportunities (SALVO). SALVO, whose gallery and performance space is located at Construction Junction in Point Breeze, creates unique pieces of art out of recycled building materials. SALVO will also be helping people make their own lawn ornaments for free out of recycled building materials donated by Construction Junction.
Proceeds from the sale of SALVO's art will benefit the PRC. Founded in 1939, PRC is the oldest citizen action environmental organization in the state. One of PRC's most famous contributions to environmental awareness in the state is the litterbug icon and the "Don't be a litterbug" slogan, which the group created in 1952.
"We work mainly on waste reduction, recycling and anti-litter programs," says Dave Mazza, PRC's regional director. The group was consulted to develop a recycling program for the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and sponsors an annual household hazardous waste collection program. Last year's collection was the first countywide collection of hazardous household waste in 25 years.
"Last year on one day at Heinz Field we collected 180,000 pounds of hazardous materials. Mainly paints, solvents, automobile fluids, cleaners, pesticides. One guy even brought in a little bottle of cyanide," says Mazza.
The PRC is involved in four Earth Day events in the area. Besides Earth Day on Walnut, the group is co-sponsoring events at the Pittsburgh Zoo, a cleanup of Negley Run Boulevard in East Liberty and an Earth Day event in Westmoreland County at St. Vincent's College.
Earth Day on Walnut organizers are aware that some people do their best environmental activism perched on a bar stool, so they're capping the day's agenda with a Happy Earth Happy Hour from four to seven p.m. A portion of the proceeds from participating bars and restaurants -- they'll have the Earth Day on Walnut logo in their windows -- will benefit the PRC as well.
Organizers hope that this event in Shadyside will show how a commercial area can demonstrate an environmental conscience. "We're about more than people coming to shop at the Gap," says London. "We're a group of people and merchants who really care about the environment."
On that North Shore train
Pulp, February 12, 2004
The papers are calling it a "blessing." The Port Authority's North Shore Connector project, a plan to extend the city's light rail system, the T, to the North Side by tunneling under the Allegheny River, was just listed as recommended in a report by the Federal Transit Administration. Of the more than 100 proposed projects around the country analyzed in the report, the North Shore Connector was one of only five that received a recommended rating. It is also listed as a Fully Funded Grant Agreement item in President Bush's 2005 federal budget. All of this means that if it passes through Congress the project will receive 80 percent of the estimated $363 million cost in federal money -- the state would provide 16 2/3 percent and the county would kick in the remaining 3 1/3 percent -- and work could begin on the project by the end of the year.
The North Shore connector would extend the T a total of 1.5 miles. One section would travel from Gateway Subway Station, underneath Stanwix Street and the Allegheny River, to two new North Shore stations, one near Heinz Field and one near PNC Park. According to the Port Authority's Web site, tunneling is preferred to building a new bridge because the construction of a tunnel won't have as great an impact on downtown and would be a safer and more efficient route for the train to travel; and, in what must be a first in the history of Pittsburgh, regional transportation planners are worried that a new bridge would have "negative visual impacts."
The other part of the project would be an extension running from the Steel Plaza Subway Station to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
It seems impossible, but could it be that a joint project between the Port Authority, local and state governments, and funded mainly based on a recommendation by the Bush administration, might actually benefit the region and not be a colossal waste of money?
George White doesn't think so. White is a retired professor of engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and as the director of the university's transportation research center he specialized in the study of public transit in Allegheny County. He is probably the best expert on transportation issues in the region who isn't already working for PennDOT or the Port Authority, making him extremely qualified to criticize the North Shore Connector project.
And he does. Thoroughly.
"What do you get for $400 million?" says White. "You get backdoor access to the three most extravagant expenditures of Mayor Tom Murphy."
He points out that the two North Side stops would hit the back entrances of both stadiums. The station at Heinz Field would be closest to the northwest corner of the stadium, while the main entrance, and the entrance closest to a planned amphitheater, is the southeast entrance. Also, the way he sees it, the stop at PNC Park only serves two purposes. One is to service the field during the 81 Pirates home games -- which, given the team's recent history, won't be difficult -- and the other is to service apartments being developed by Consolidated Realty.
According to White, the shuttle between Steel Plaza and the convention center might be even more problematic. This proposed line is in the no-fare zone of the Golden Triangle, meaning that under current rules it would be free. White has calculated the operating costs of running the shuttle for a year between seven a.m. and 11 p.m. would be between $300,000 and $400,000 a year. This expenditure would be covered by the same Port Authority that is projecting a $30 million operating budget deficit next year and was considering eliminating evening and weekend services in order to stay running this year.
So does anybody have a better plan?
Well, some retirees play golf or bridge, others go on cruises to Florida. White comes up with alternative plans for transportation development projects. He says that there is an existing railroad bridge just up the river from the proposed tunnel that is only being partially used. The upper deck of the bridge is used by Amtrak and Norfolk Southern freight trains, but the lower deck of the bridge has been abandoned by the railroads and has no connections to any existing rail lines. White says that the bridge is available for eminent domain taking, and that using the bridge would save the enormous amount of money it would cost to drill under the river -- enough money to extend the reach of the North Shore Connector.
White's route would take the T under Stanwix Street, turning to run between the river and the 10th Street Bypass. The first station would be at the Sixth Street Bridge; the next station would be at the front door of the convention center.
The train would then spiral onto the second level of the Fort Wayne Bridge. At the North Shore the station would turn left, parallel to the I-79 viaduct, where there is room for elevated tracks. White would put a station at Anderson Street, near the new ALCOA corporate building and the new Lincoln North Shore apartments. The next station would be at Federal Street close to stadium ticket windows and with under-the-roof access to the North Shore parking garage.
After diving underground beneath the Fort Duquesne Bridge, the next station would be at Robinson Street. The tunnel would turn just past the old Clark Building, and the train would come above ground where there are four railroad tacks already in place. According to White, the Port Authority could negotiate to use two of the tracks which are not being used by the railroads and convert them to light rail. He then proposes five new stations along Allegheny River Boulevard, near many of the North Side's existing businesses. This plan would also position the T facing the airport, making way for a possible extension. All of this, White argues, would cost the same as the three stops planned in the current proposal.
White says there is no chance that the Port Authority will examine this alternative plan unless there is some kind of political action. "They're not open to citizen input," says White. "They consider themselves the only experts, and they take a pious posture where they say they listen to citizen input before immediately dismissing it."
He says that because the project is counting on $65 million in state money, the state government could decide not to fund the project until the alternative proposal had been analyzed. Another hope for White's project rests with new Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato. The Port Authority gets about $22 million of its operating budget from the county, which the state matches with about three times that amount. This combined $88 million is roughly half the Port Authority's operating budget. The county, too, could threaten to withhold this money until the alternative North Shore Extension plan is analyzed. White thinks that Onorato might be more likely to challenge the Port Authority than the former county executive, Jim Roddy, who used to be on the Port Authority board. He also points out that Onorato lives on the North Side himself, and might be more sensitive to the transportation needs of the area that has always had poor public transit.
White's alternative plan may or may not be feasible. But given the history of past Port Authority projects, like the airport busway -- "They screwed us, to use an expression," says White -- it might be worth looking into.
No Spy Zone
Pulp, December 5, 2003
On December 2, just up the street from the nearly two hundred people who began to gather outside the Weston hotel in downtown Pittsburgh to protest Bush's policies during his million dollar fundraising visit, City Council heard comments from the public on why the city should pass a resolution against one of the Bush administration's most radical bills- the USA PATRIOT Act.
The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act is 342 pages of legislation, proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft and passed by Congress with little debate and passed so quickly that few members of Congress had an opportunity to even read the bill. The bill permits the Attorney General to incarcerate or detain immigrants indefinitely based only on suspicion and gives the FBI and many other intelligence agencies access to personal medical, financial, and student records, expanding the government's ability to search private property without notice to the owner. Most of these provisions do not apply only to investigations of terrorism, but to all federal investigations.
For example, the FBI which was recently exposed by The New York Times as collecting extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators could have the power to obtain an activist's financial records, medical histories, Internet usage, bookstore purchases, library usage, travel patterns, or any other activity that leaves a record. They don't have to show evidence that the individual is a terrorist agent or even a reasonable suspicion that the records are related to criminal activity. All they need to do is state that the request is related to an ongoing terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation, which they can do without providing evidence to a judge. Under the USA PATRIOT Act "domestic terrorism" is defined so broadly that it might include groups like Greenpeace, which engage in civil disobedience. However, few people know how the act is being implemented, including members of Congress, because the Justice Department has not released many of its records that should be public. Many are worried that the FBI will use these new powers to harass activists as it did to civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King in the 1960's and 1970s.
The City Council resolution, which was proposed by the Pittsburgh Bill of Rights Defense Committee (PBORDC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and sponsored by council members Gene Ricciardi and Bill Peduto, would direct that municipal resources not be used to enforce various provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. The city council's resolution does not ask the police to break the law, but directs them not to use powers they may have been granted by the act. Similarly, it recommends that libraries and businesses, who now under the USA PATRIOT Act are not allowed to inform a person if records on that person are being obtained by federal agents, to regularly destroy records of what items individuals have purchased or checked out, in particular books, in order to protect intellectual privacy rights.
The city council resolution is mostly a symbolic act and not a law, but its supporters believe that it is an important way to show that that much of the public is against the Patriot Act. According to Tim Vining, executive director of the Thomas Merton Center in his statement at the public hearing before city council, "Yes it is symbolic. But it is a symbol with an official stamp behind it, which makes it stronger."
If city council passes the resolution when they vote on it on December 10, Pittsburgh will become the 222nd municipality to pass a resolution opposing the USA PATRIOT Act and the fourth city in Pennsylvania, following Reading, Lansdowne, and Philadelphia. On November 19, Wilkinsburg passed a resolution against the USA PATRIOT Act as well.
"We were concerned with the erosion of civil and democratic rights," says Wilkinsburg Council person Denise Edwards. "Homeland security begins at home. If they're really concerned about homeland security, they should help improve the capabilities of first responders [to emergencies]. "
According to Allison Smith of the PBOR DC, the resolution was supposed to have been voted on at the council meeting on December 2, but some last minute concerns with the wording of the resolution postponed the vote.
"Minor changes to the text of the resolution are fine with the PBRODC who have been working on getting a resolution passed since April. But according to Smith, "We don't want them to change the substance. We want to make sure that they pass the resolution that we presented them."
Weapon's Grade Cosmetic Devices
Pulp, December 5, 2003
An eyebrow archer resembles an ordinary razor for shaving the face or legs. It has the same thin handle about six inches long, and the blade is about half as long as an ordinary razor's, tilted vertically instead of horizontally, with a plastic safety guard to prevent injury. It is used to shape eyebrows by shaving unwanted hair away.
"My daughter, like many girls her age, is what you would call an amateur cosmetologist," Stanley said later. She said Shawnee had used the eyebrow archer to shape the eyebrows of her friends on numerous occasions.
On Wednesday, October 29, the security officer at Letsche discovered the archer in Shawnee's purse, after it had set off the metal detector, and brought her to the vice principal's office, where it was determined that the eyebrow archer was in fact a weapon.
Rule number six of the Pittsburgh School District's student code of conduct states that any student found carrying a weapon will be expelled for at least a year. The term "weapon" is defined as "any knife, cutting instrument, cutting tool, nunchaku, firearm, shotgun, and rifle, and any other tool, instrument, or implement, capable of inflicting serious bodily injury." Letsche school officials called Shelly Stanley to inform her that her daughter would be suspended for 10 days and faced possible expulsion. Two hours later school officials called to tell her that Shawnee, who had just turned 18 two days before, and was thus no longer considered a minor, had been handcuffed and was about to be taken to Allegheny County Jail, where Shelly says her daughter spent seven hours before she was released following her arraignment.
"At first I thought it was a joke," says Stanley. "I talked to [police officers], lawyers, doctors, I even called the manufacturing company -- everyone thought it was a joke. None of them said they would call this a weapon."
Neither would airports. Even after the tightening of security after September 11, especially surrounding objects that could potentially be used to cut another person, passengers are still allowed to bring razors and eyebrow archers onto a plane, as long as they have a safety guard, just like Shawnee's eyebrow archer had. After examining eyebrow archers at a drugstore, it seems like a violent student could do as much damage with a sharpened pencil or a heavy book bag as they could with an eyebrow archer.
Because of district rules, the principal and vice principal of Letsche Alternative Education Center were unable to comment on the events that led to Shawnee's expulsion. A spokesperson for the school board said she was not familiar enough with the facts of the case to comment, but did state that the school and the district were simply enforcing a state zero tolerance law towards weapons possession in school.
Shawnee Stanley's expulsion is a troubling example of just how strict the school district's zero tolerance policy toward weapons and illegal drugs really is. "Zero tolerance" policies were first initiated on the federal level by the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act, which was passed in response to several widely publicized school shootings. Pennsylvania and many other states have gone beyond the federal act by implementing tough policies that mandate immediate suspension or expulsion for students carrying almost any object that might be considered or resemble a weapon or drugs. As a result of these new rules the percentage of students suspended per year has doubled since previous decades, even though students are reporting crime at roughly the same rates as they were in the 1970s. Last year the New York Times reported that in Philadelphia public schools, 33 kindergartners were suspended under a strict new policy, and in another school district an 11-year-old died of asthma because he wasn't allowed to carry his inhaler.
Shelly Stanley is outraged that her daughter's school and the school district had so much discretion over what could be considered a weapon. "They kept saying that word -- 'discretion,'" she says. "How am I supposed to know what their discretion is? Do you really think that I, as a parent, knowing that this was a weapon would say, 'Sure, bring it to school, get arrested'?" She hopes that, in addition to allowing her daughter to return to school, the school board will investigate its policy and make clear to parents and students what would be considered a weapon.
"I don't want any parent to have to go through what I've gone through with my daughter," she says.
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