30 YEARS AS AN ABORTION CLINIC ESCORT
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Gerald Thomas is one of 17 who have died at the Allegheny County jail since 2020. Meanwhile, incarcerees are left without healthcare and a depleted staff continues doling out solitary confinement despite a new countywide ban.
Gerald Thomas was depressed. It was early March 2022 and he’d been incarcerated in the Allegheny County Jail for almost a year on a probation violation. Just a few weeks earlier, his family thought he was coming home after his attorney convinced the court that the March 2021 police search of his vehicle that produced a firearm was illegal. Prosecutors dropped the charges against Thomas, but Court of Common Pleas judge Anthony Mariani wanted Thomas sent to state prison and said, “I have to put you in the cage, lasso you, corral you, stuff you, because you won’t quit.”
In mid-February, Thomas was sent back to jail after the second hearing on his probation violation. On March 6, Thomas complained of a pain in his left leg that went untreated for about a week. That day, after he ended a video call with his girlfriend who had recently given birth to his fourth child, a daughter, Thomas collapsed near his cell on the upper tier of the jail.
Several incarcerated people attempted to help Thomas after he fell down at around 12:20 p.m., according to witness interviews conducted by the Abolitionist Law Center, a Pittsburgh-
based public interest law firm, and a recent National Commission on Correctional Health Care report. Jail staff sent them back to their cells and handcuffed Thomas. Someone yelled, “Medical emergency!” according to an incarcerated witness. Nurses and a medical provider rushed to his body. The medical provider slapped his face, thinking he was overdosing. Thomas was administered Narcan twice. One member of the jail staff called 911, and eventually paramedics arrived. They strapped a machine to Thomas’s chest that performed compressions. After being unconscious on the floor for over an hour, Thomas was loaded onto a gurney.
Someone picked up Thomas’s prison-issued tablet and texted his girlfriend, “Idk what’s going on with GG but he fell out about an hour ago & he was unresponsive.” The person added, “Make sure u call down here to checc [sic] the status on him or they won’t say nun [nothing].” As his body was being taken to UPMC Mercy hospital at 1:37pm, the person texted again, “Please make sure u checc [sic] on him … I hope he’s ok.”
By then, a blood clot dislodged from Thomas’s leg and was embedded in one of the arteries leading to his lungs, blocking the blood flow, causing a pulmonary embolism. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, Thomas was pronounced dead at 2:12 p.m.. He was 26 years old.
It’s unclear if Thomas’s life could have been saved, but the Mayo Clinic says prompt treatment can dramatically increase the chances of survival following a pulmonary embolism. According to the Mayo Clinic, inactivity — especially during situations where a person is in a cramped position for a prolonged period of time — can be a principal cause of life-ending clots.
According to the Allegheny County jail’s legally mandated solitary confinement reports , excluding two days in January 2022, the jail was in lockdown, when incarcerated people often spend 23 hours per day in their cells. The months before, during, and after Thomas’s death, it was the same. Including January, the jail was on lockdown for eight months in 2022.
According to a Pittsburgh City Paper, Black Pittsburgh, and Garrison Project analysis of the jail’s reports, outside of the lockdowns, in the second half of 2021 alone there were over 37,000 episodes where a person was held in a cell for a minimum of 20 hours, which amounted to over 84,500 days in solitary. Since the 2021 Allegheny County voter referendum to end solitary confinement within the jail took effect on Jan. 1, 2022, there have been 688 episodes that totaled over 1,786 days in solitary. In every instance, the jail invoked “safety” as the reason for the solitary confinement. In 2022, the jail attributed its solitary confinement decisions to “medical” causes in nearly every case and also almost always invoked the COVID-19 pandemic.
Allegheny County Jail refers to solitary confinement as segregated housing,
downs and solitary confinement when
they run into staffing trouble, because such actions lighten the workload of corrections officers. “How does he get away with it? Well, it’s called the Jail Oversight Board. If the oversight board is not criticizing him or saying enough is enough, who else does anything?”
Representatives from the jail declined to be interviewed and did not respond to the details presented in this story with a list of questions.
Over the years, the jail’s use of solitary has been targeted in lawsuits against the county and warden Orlando Harper.
Jules Williams, a Black transgender woman, was arrested on Sept. 30, 2015 and taken to the Allegheny County Jail. She has been receiving hormone treatments since she was 18 years old, and, at the time, had undergone gender-affirming medical care. But the jail housed Williams with men because she had “both male and female parts,” according to a lawsuit Williams filed in 2017 with the ACLU-PA in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas.
She requested segregated housing for her protection. The jail granted her request, but placed her in a solitary confinement cell with Djamal Eleam, a convicted sex offender who had made headlines weeks earlier because the jail mistakenly released him. Eleam allegedly raped Williams repeatedly over the next four days before jail staff removed him from the cell. Even after Eleam was separated from Williams, she told her public defender that jail staff forced her to shower with men, some of whom would come to her cell at night and masturbate on her.
In December 2016, five women filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the jail, Harper, and others because they were held in solitary confinement while they were pregnant. In November of that
“I been locked in my cell with no running water for 36 hours. Having to use the restroom on top of another man’s waste is humiliating.”
— respondent to a 2022 survey by the Pennsylvania Prison Society
year, Jill Hendricks, who was eight months pregnant, was placed in solitary confinement for nine days, during which she was only let out of her cell once, for one hour, on Thanksgiving Day.
In May 2016, Mersiha Tuzlic, who was two months pregnant, was placed in solitary confinement for 22 days. She filed a grievance with Harper on her 11th day of confinement, stating that she had a pregnancy classified as high-risk, and wanted at least one hour of recreation outside of her cell. She received a response weeks later. Her grievance was dismissed by someone who wrote over her statement, “If this is a problem don’t come to jail.” In October, she was sent to solitary again for another 11 days.
In September 2020, five people with severe mental illness filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the jail, Harper, and others alleging they were placed in solitary confinement for long periods of time, tased, and strapped into restraint chairs.
The pregnant women reached a
settlement with the county, Harper, and other defendants in late 2017 for $90,000 and changes to the jail's policy. Williams settled her case for $300,000 in 2022.
use of force by jail staff, a lack of appropriate health care and health staffing, and the repeated use of segregated housing despite the 2021 referendum.
According to data maintained by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC), the Allegheny County Jail had the highest number of documented use of force incidents — 455 — out of all Pennsylvania county jails in 2021. Since 2020, medical staff vacancies have soared to 88 unfilled positions out of a budgeted 162. And even though some positions have been temporarily filled through staffing agencies, 23% still need to be filled. The jail’s chief medical director was also recently reassigned without a permanent replacement in place.
The case with the plaintiffs who suffer from mental illness is still ongoing. Two of their experts reviewed defendant depositions, jail policies, case files for a representative sample of incarcerated people with mental illness, among other jail documents. The experts cited aggressive
“The measures taken by Allegheny County to avoid solitary do no such thing,” wrote Bradford Hansen, a former warden with more than 42 years of corrections experience. “This violates all applicable correctional standards and is objectively unreasonable.”
In fall 2020, Janet Bunts, a health services administrator for the jail, quit her job after just three months. In December 2020, she told the Tribune-Review that her bosses were not providing proper medical care to incarcerated people. “Correctional medicine is not for everybody,” Bunts said. “It’s going to take effective leadership to change that place.” Last spring, the jail’s
“When you have a situation where over half of the respondents are saying they’ve requested medical care and have not received it, that points to dysfunction, breakdown, and basic provision of care.″
— Noah Barth, Pennsylvania Prison Society
corrections officers’ union contemplated a no-confidence vote in Harper, and in the summer, the union’s president filed a complaint that he was being targeted for speaking out about the jail’s problems.
A 2021 ACJ survey of 1,418 incarcerated people by Pitt’s School of Social Work found that two thirds were dissatisfied with the medical care they received, with some saying they did not receive proper care or treatment. In 2022, the Pennsylvania Prison Society used prison-issued tablets to collect 330 responses to a health care survey. More than half of the respondents who requested medical services said they had not received health care.
“Neither a staff crisis nor the health crisis is an excuse that people’s basic constitutional rights should not be respected and maintained,” Noah Barth, the Pennsylvania Prison Society’s prison monitoring director, said. “When you have a situation where over half of the respondents are saying they’ve requested medical care and have not received it, that points to dysfunction, breakdown, and basic provision of care. And that should be a deep concern to the warden and anybody else looking at the jail.”
Unannounced visits conducted by two members of the Jail Oversight Board on Oct. 27 and Nov. 14, 2022 also found medical staff complaints and long waits for medical care.
“Unfortunately, many people in the ACJ come from vulnerable populations, and many bring with them serious medical conditions that have not been properly treated for extended periods,” Harper wrote in a response to the 2022 Prison Society survey.
In an op-ed published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in July 2022, Harper lamented that the public wasn’t hearing the jail’s success stories. “The
only news that gets coverage at the jail is bad news,” he wrote. The same day Harper’s op-ed was published, an incarcerated person died in his jail. It was the fourth in-custody death that year.
While the average number of incarcerated people at the Allegheny County jail dropped by almost 1,000 at the outset of the pandemic, deaths have grown substantially. From 2020 to 2022, at least 17 incarcerated people died at the jail, compared to just 10 in the three years prior.
According to a report by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care released last month that examined each of the incidents, the death rate for the jail since 2020 is nearly three times the average mortality for local jails across the United States. The six deaths at the jail in 2022 put its death rate above the much larger and infamous Rikers Island Jail Complex in New York City for last year.
Staff surveyed in the report said medical training, and, especially, CPR training were major concerns, along with communication of critical medical incidents “specifically deaths and suicides, or follow up or corrective information.”
The report also noted that “three of the findings had causes of death that were not explained by the documentation provided.” This included a man who died of a ruptured spleen, a man who died of blunt force trauma to the head, and another who died from asphyxiation where “the autopsy found the manner of this death undetermined.” In that case, the jail attributed the man’s death to him choking on food, although the corrections sergeant turned off his body camera before entering his cell, so the report’s team could not confirm the circumstances of the incident.
CP ILLUSTRATION: LUCY CHEN A JAIL IN CRISIS, CONTINUES ON PG. 10On March 2, people gathered at the Allegheny County Courthouse for a monthly Jail Oversight Board meeting. Harper sat with his back to the public as each person spoke about conditions of confinement at his jail. Many mentioned the low quality health care. One speaker played audio of a man who said he was put in solitary weeks ago. “The hole? That’s the dog kennel,” said the man in the recording. “They’ll send you in there for anything.”
board to take action.
Last month, Saunders said that she’ll sometimes cry for hours when she thinks of her son, and still has trouble visiting his grave. She spent over $8,000 burying her son near her father and niece, who both died during the past four years. On Feb. 25, Saunders, through an advocate with the Abolitionist Law Center, started a GoFundMe in the hopes of raising money to put a headstone on his plot.
Juana Saunders, Gerald Thomas’s mother, spoke towards the end of public comment. “We don’t know if my son’s life would have been spared or not. But what we do know is that he died in the Allegheny County Jail,” Saunders, who was dressed in all white, said from the podium. As she spoke her voice rose in anger and she jabbed her finger at the
“Y’all need to get on your job and make this man do what he need to do,” she said during the Jail Oversight Board meeting, pointing at Harper, “because they are killing people inside that jail, and they’re pushing the bodies out the door. And it’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to my family, it’s not fair to all the other families of people who died in that jail.” •
“We don’t know if my son’s life would have been spared or not. But what we do know is that he died in the Allegheny County Jail.”— Juana Saunders says of her son Gerald Thomas, who died in jail last March. CP PHOTO: JARED WICKERHAM Juana Saunders dresses in white Aug. 4 in protest of Common Pleas Judge Anthony Mariani's alleged misconduct
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https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/13/5/2818 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33680059/
HIS WIFE ANISSA walking beside him, Aaron Davis pushes their adult son Quinten in a red wheelchair up Grandview Avenue on Mount Washington.
It’s a sunny day with scattered clouds. A coal barge glides up the Monongahela, skyscrapers tower over Downtown, and the three rivers flow below in ribbons of emerald.
But Aaron Davis is missing much of this grandeur as he trains his eyes on the potholes, cracks, and broken curb of the sidewalk sprouting with utility poles. He carefully navigates the wheelchair, sometimes pushing down on the handles to lift the narrow front wheels
over obstacles.
“It’s pretty bumpy,” he tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “It could be a lot smoother.”
Residents and community groups on Mount Washington are urging the city to ease the bumps on western Grandview Avenue by fixing the sidewalks and burying the utility poles.
Toni Geyer, 52, lives a half block from the bronze sculpture of a young George Washington and Chief Guyasuta, a site called Point of View parklet. On this day she takes a walk with Bolt, her huskycollie mix, on the city-owned side of Grandview rather than her usual route on the residential side. She has used a power wheelchair since being injured in a traffic accident 25 years ago.
“It’s a great view, but I can’t access it,” she tells City Paper, noting the difficulty of riding her 34-inch-wide wheelchair on the broken sidewalk past utility poles. “Up here at the statue this is our president, George Washington, and Chief Guyasuta, and it looks like crap. This should be a respected place.”
Last year, the Mount Washington Community Development Corporation encouraged residents to contact the city with the complaints about the sidewalks along Grandview. The city last fall fixed the sidewalks of eastern Grandview Avenue from McArdle Roadway to Wyoming Street.
The next target is western Grandview from McArdle to Republic Street. Here,
a mix of pricey houses and restaurants flank the Duquesne Incline, while a stalled development, whose cyclone fence juts out over the sidewalk, creates an eyesore and restricts access.
The corporation last summer created a task force on undergrounding utilities. It will also examine the condition of sidewalks. The corporation wants to get money for a preliminary engineering study to identify ways that would help people better enjoy western Grandview.
“We just don’t know how much it would cost, how to secure money for it, and how to secure buy-in from the adjacent property owners,” Gordon Davidson, executive director of the corporation, tells CP
One section of the city-owned sidewalk contains 14 broken curbs, 12 holes, and numerous cracks. Some holes in the sidewalk are two inches deep and a foot and a half wide. The cracks in the curb can span up to a foot and a half in places.
Pat Gianella has led the charge of residents who want to improve the streetscape since about 2005. He has lived in Duquesne Heights for all but one of his 67 years.
“You take a poll of Pittsburghers, and the number one place they talk about is Mount Washington, and it’s a crime that the city has allowed their property to deteriorate to this point,” he tells CP. “If it was a residential property, we’d be cited and fined for the property.”
Data from VisitPITTBURGH, the city’s travel information center, confirm the popularity of the locale.
The Monongahela and Duquesne Inclines rank as the city's top tourist attractions in a 2019 survey administered by VisitPITTSBURGH, according to group spokeswoman Shannon Wolfgang.
The poll found that 45% of visitors to Pittsburgh ride one of the two inclines. That’s 10 percentage points more than the city’s second most popular attraction — a professional sports game.
If visitors ride an incline, it’s a safe bet that they walk down Grandview to take in the scenery.
Another survey suggests that Mount Washington could bring in tourist money. Wolfgang said a 2022 study by Arrivalist, a travel research firm, found that 75% of visitors to the Duquesne Incline were from out of town.
The Davises fit that description. The Lima, Ohio, family was visiting Pittsburgh to watch the Polar Plunge when they took the Duquesne Incline and sauntered along Grandview. “Going down’s a lot easier than going up,” Aaron Davis said as he pushed his son uphill.
Riding a wheelchair on Mount Washington can be hazardous.
In the past two decades, Marty Link, 79, was hit and injured twice by trucks as he rode his power wheelchair, according
to Tracy Link, his daughter-in-law. She discussed the incidents because he has difficulty hearing. In the first accident, he said he was trying to cross Grandview but was struck because the city at that time had no wheelchair ramp, forcing him to ride in the street.
“He was often ridiculed for riding in his wheelchair in the street because the sidewalks were not conducive to wheelchair accessibility,” Tracy says. After the second accident, her father-in-law gave up the electric wheelchair and let his family push him.
But concerns about the accessibility of Grandview are not unanimous. Tom Reinheimer, who’s in charge of tours and marketing for the Duquesne Incline, tells CP he has neither received a complaint about the Grandview sidewalks nor noticed a problem. “There are other sidewalks in the city that are in worse condition,” he says.
Maria Montaño, press secretary for Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, says the city recently improved sections of sidewalk near the sculpture, cut out the curb for a
ramp, and removed overgrown weeds to improve access. She conceded, however, that the protruding fence near the stalled development and the presence of utility poles present a problem.
“Sidewalks are a major concern, and it’s a challenge when it’s a mix of city owned and privately owned sidewalks,” she says.
Mount Washington falls within District 2 of City Council President Theresa Kail-Smith. She says she is most concerned about stabilizing the hillside but has been talking to community groups about the accessibility of Grandview. She says the cost of fixing the avenue, particularly burying the poles, is expensive, and finding the money for repairs is the key.
“I care about the disabled community,” she says.
Aaron Davis would like to see the city fix the sidewalk for other people who have to push someone in a wheelchair.
“I’m a strong 55-year-old,” he said. “If they can fix the sidewalks, that would be good for the next person.” •
“It’s a great view, but I can’t access it.″
WHENEVER PICKETERS surround Pittsburgh’s abortion clinics, volunteers are on the scene to usher patients safely inside. One of them is Laura.
Laura has been volunteering as an abortion clinic escort in Pittsburgh for more than 30 years. She calls her relationships with patients “exceedingly brief, but critical nonetheless.” Clinic escorts act as a buffer between patients walking into the clinic and the picketers Laura has dubbed “antis.”
“The intention is multiple,” Laura tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “To identify ourselves, to give the patient information, and also to give them something to listen to — so they’re not focused on listening to the [anti-abortion activists].’”
Laura is a coordinator with Pittsburgh Pro-Choice Escorts, a group that organizes volunteers to stand in front of the city’s two abortion clinics — Planned Parenthood of Western PA in Downtown and Allegheny Reproductive Health Center in East Liberty.
She got involved in 1991, when the organization was just a few years old. It was formed in response to massive demonstrations outside the clinics.
“I’m talking hundreds of people — three, four, or 500 people, blocking the streets, blocking the sidewalks, blocking the entrance to the clinic,” she shares.
The clinic escort volunteers stand outside on Saturday mornings. Depending on the amount of picketers, some will stay closer to the doors, down at the ends of the streets or even
across the street. They introduce themselves and ask if a patient would like to be accompanied. If a patient is scared, volunteers will surround them as they walk into the clinic.
Laura says that anti-abortion protestors usually target younger people on the street because younger people tend to be polite to strangers.
“And when somebody stops them on the street and says, ‘I’d like to share this information with you, here’s a pamphlet’ — they stop,” Laura shares. “So, our role at that point is to break that contact.”
The volunteer group works with the Women’s Law Project to ensure buffer zones by the entrance are respected. Laura warns patients and their accompanying loved ones not to engage with picketers. She shares that a few weeks
ago, volunteers had to de-escalate an altercation between a patient’s partner and a picketer.
“These are very litigious people,” Laura declares. “And if you were to get into a fight with them, they would call the cops, they would get your information, and you would never be done with them. Never.”
Pittsburgh clinics deal with increased hostility and picketer presence during 40 Days for Life, an anti-abortion campaign coinciding with the Lenten season. Planned Parenthood of Western PA is listed as an official vigil site, with local churches and groups covering daily shifts. Laura says she thinks it’s "creepy," but “40 Days happens every year. We are well prepared for it.”
Planned Parenthoo d hosts a fundraiser in response to 40 Days called
“Pledge a Picketer,” which allows community members to pledge a donation for every picketer who stands outside the clinic.
During high-volume periods and in general, Laura says that escorts have to steel themselves for distressing material from picketers. Closer to when she started volunteering, anti-abortion organizers would bring posters of Holocaust victims to the clinic.
“So, you have to kind of be careful about what you know what your trigger is, know what your button is,” Laura says. “And if they’re pushing it — we are all about self care. We can’t do our jobs if we can’t take care of ourselves. We can’t do the job that we need to do for patients.”
Since last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned federal protections to abortion access, clinics in Pittsburgh have faced a surge of patients from neighboring states. Growing up during the height of secondwave feminism, she believes that the movement’s narrow focus is responsible for today’s troubles.
“We were able to ignore the urgent needs of Black and Brown women, poor women, rural women — anyone not like us — as we worked to secure abortion rights for ourselves,” she says. “White women need to use our privilege to demand that abortion access be convenient, affordable, and safe for every
As a volunteer coordinator, one of Laura’s jobs is to check in on clinic escorts throughout their shifts. She asks if anyone needs a bathroom break, a coffee, or to just sit down for a few minutes. After volunteering, Laura will often go to the library or grab a dessert from Vanilla Pastry Studio.
Laura says the pro-choice movement has changed a lot in her lifetime.
single person who wants an abortion, for whatever reason they have for making that decision.”
She urges young people not to give up on the fight for reproductive justice, and is proud to be able to help community members safely get to appointments. “We are here, the clinics are here, providers are here, and we will continue to be here,” Laura says. “So fuck ‘em!” •
“I’m talking hundreds of people — three, four, or 500 people, blocking the streets, blocking the sidewalks, blocking the entrance to the clinic.”
DANIEL GINES, who performs under the name DG Deep, doesn’t shy away from his rocky past in his music. Rapping about it has helped him work through his experiences — and make sure that others don’t fall into similar traps.
On his forthcoming song “Free ‘Em All,” Gines issues a warning to the younger generation: “Youngins don’t care about honor they just do it for clout / Prisons easy to get in no guarantee you make it out.” Gines tells Pittsburgh City Paper in order to reach the youth, artists should be willing to address past wrongs.
“Life isn’t all goody gumdrops. I feel like the problem with some people is that when they try to get the youth to do good, they only show them the good,” Gines says. “You know, but I think you got to meet them where they’re at and show them that you also had bad.”
Gines performed “Free ‘Em All” and other songs during the recent 1Hoodproduced Next Level Stanzas spoken word event at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. The songs will be a part of his debut album, The Book of Daniel, which he hopes to release by the end of September. The single “One Love” from the new album is currently available on streaming platforms.
Gines may tell stories in his songs with effortless flow, but he’ll be the first to tell you that living through the experiences was a whole different matter. Originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., Gines moved to Pittsburgh six years ago. He traces his musical influences back to the Pentecostal gospel music of his parents and the hard-hitting, SMACK DVD-era gangster rap battles of NYC, though he now prefers more “conscious rap” styles.
As he got older, he started getting involved in gang culture and drugs. “We seen the people that we should have been looking up to: my grandfather, hard worker — all my friend’s fathers and grandfathers were pretty much real hard workers, you know, but we looked at the guys that was on the block with the chains
“Life isn't all goody gumdrops. I feel like the problem with some people is that when they try to get the youth to do good, they only show them the good.”
It came to a head in 2004 when, at 19, Gines began serving a five-year sentence in Georgia’s Smith State Prison. Gines was kept in one of the prison’s most notorious dormitories, known by its inmates as the “thunder dorm.” He raps about this experience in the song “Tale of Two Prisons”: “People always judge off your glory but they don’t care to know about your story / Locked up in the chain gang tryna maintain where the scenes are gory / Smith State back in G2 in the thunder dorm call it gang land / In the hole for not snitching now I’m eating mustard packs to kill the hunger pains.”
Serving time in prison was a wake-up call, Gines explains. “In a situation like that, when you see people getting stabbed all the time and robbed, and you’re like, on constant alert, it puts you in a situation where it’s like, I don’t want this to be my life, I want to do better. I want more out of life than just sitting in this prison,” he says.
Since moving to Pittsburgh, Gines has started to make his lifelong passion for hip hop a reality, putting the verses that he notes on his iPhone during the day to music in the studio. He handles
mouthfuls of rhymes with skill, like on “Real Deep,” where he raps, “As a young MC I understand my influence / I could corrupt the innocent or lead them to the limitless / Infinite, omnipotent, omniscient / Brooklyn flow stay efficient.”
The response to the songs has been validating, Gines says. In April, he will perform in NYC as a follow-up to winning a rap competition at Twentyfourpgh in Duquesne, Pa.
For Gines, making music is a community effort. When crafting the new album at ID Labs in Etna, his producer JD, long-time high-school friend King C, and fiancée London were all in the studio helping with the production process, he says.
Outside of music, Gines also works on writing letters to parole boards to try to free his friends who are still in prison. He hopes his music has a similar effect.
“I just told myself that I never want to put myself in a situation like that again, you know, and I never want to see nobody else in a situation like that,” Gines says.
“And I call that, you know, like the spirit of Harriet Tubman. Like, okay, I escaped. But I want to bring people with me, too.” •
BY AMANDA WALTZ // AWALTZ@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
RECORD STORE SPOTLIGHT is a regular column listing new releases at Pittsburgh vinyl shops. Support local businesses and find your next favorite album.
715 East St., North Side. thegovernmentcenter.com
(Virgin Records France/Mute Records) M83 fans will soon experience what’s being touted as the French electronic act’s “most personal album to date.”
The first double album from New Zealand indie pop band Unknown Mortal Orchestra draws from what Jagjaguwar describes as “the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, classic hits, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music.”
Blonde may have angered viewers and critics alike, but at least the soundtrack was produced by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Now you can enjoy it separate from the controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic.
100 Gecs,
(Dog Show Records/Atlantic Records)
Nearly four years after the irreverent hyperpop duo’s 2019 breakout, 1000 Gecs, 100 Gecs adds a zero to its sophomore album, which promises to include the songs “MeMeMe” and “Doritos & Fritos.”
Revisit why Pains Of Being Pure At Heart made such a splash in 2011 with the reissue of the indie pop band’s breakthrough album. •
THE Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ’s protracted labor struggle turned violent Saturday during an altercation outside the company’s South Side plant that reportedly left a striking worker hospitalized.
Labor leaders are calling it an “unprovoked attack” within a pattern of heavyhanded tactics they say management has relied on since the walkout began in October.
“I will not let my people be treated like this again, ever,” Darrin Kelly, AlleghenyFayette Labor Council president said during a press conference Monday. “It took a step up and it’s getting out of control. We’re asking the Department of Labor to step into this. We’re asking the state to step into this. We’re asking everybody to look into this before it escalates.”
The Post-Gazette has offered a conflicting account of the incident where it paints the contracted driver as the victim of continued harassment.
“According to an incident report, the driver, who has been the target of repeated harassment by the picketers, was physically and verbally attacked at around 1 a.m. today. Defending himself, the driver pushed the assailant away and then was physically assaulted by a second person,” the Post-Gazette release states.
A spokesperson for the company later clarified the time as 11 p.m. Saturday. She declined to share the report with Pittsburgh City Paper, or state who prepared it. The company has reportedly hired the Phillips Group, a security firm specializing in labor conflict, to monitor the picket lines outside multiple facilities.
A video released by the Post-Gazette appears to show a contracted driver swinging at a striker who approached him yelling taunts.
Kelly called for a district attorney investigation and said he wants to see charges brought against the driver who threw the punch.
“I do ask questions on why this was allowed to take place,” Kelly said during the March 13 conference. “I do ask questions on why this person was not arrested.”
Post-Gazette employees have been on strike since early October, after the company proposed new contracts that would, according to strikers, significantly increase health care premiums for many workers.
From the outset, a substantial number of News Guild employees crossed picket
ing behavior at various points during the six-month walkout.
In November, the company obtained an injunction from the Butler County court system against the picketers outside the Eagle ’s printing plant. The company said they had presented evidence of vandalism and violent threats.
Recently, the order was overturned,
aggression.
“Up until this point it’s been very peaceful and professional,” Kelly said.
“Saturday night was a new escalation.” •
“I will not let my people be treated like this again, ever.”
Mon., May 29. Carnegie Science Center. One Allegheny Ave., North Side. $6-7. carnegiesciencecenter.org
TEENS • OAKLAND
Teen Night: Artistry in Science. 4-8 p.m. Carnegie Museum of Natural History. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. Free for teens 13-18. Registration required. carnegiemnh.org
THEATER • MIDLAND
Shout! The Mod Musical 7:30 p.m. Continues through Sun., March 19. Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center. One Lincoln Park, Midland. $20-25. lincolnparkarts.org
VOLUNTEER • BRIGHTON HEIGHTS
Woods Run Watershed Trash Pick-Up. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Riverview Park. Leckey Ave. and Brighton Road. Brighton Heights. Free. Registration required. pittsburghparks.org
Pittsburgh Arts & Crafts Spring Fever Festival. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Continues through Sun., March 19. Monroeville Convention Center. 209 Mall Blvd., Monroeville. monroevilleconventioncenter.com/events
Godzilla rampages through Row House Cinema as part of the theater’s annual Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival. The lineup includes the country’s most famous kaiju, as well as anime, new films, and classic titles like Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Opening night audiences will also be treated to Electric Dragon 80.000 V, a bizarre 2001 cult semi-superhero film. Some screenings will also feature special events like beer tastings, talks, and more. 7:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Continues through Thu., March 30. 4115 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $15.30-55. jffpgh.org
BNY Mellon Grand Classics: Honeck Conducts Mozart’s Requiem. 8 p.m. Continues through Sun., March 19. Heinz Hall. 600 Penn Ave., Downtown. $20-98. pittsburghsymphony.org
Texture Contemporary Ballet presents Rediscover at New Hazlett Theater, a showcase featuring new dance and live music, and the return of an old performance. See a new classical ballet piece set to Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Piano Concerto No. 5” and a collaboration with local band Cello Fury. Audiences can also expect to see “Unchanging Change,” a 2014 piece with music by Max Richter, Macklemore, and spoken word poet Andrea Gibson. 8 p.m. Continues through Sun., March 19. Six Allegheny Square East, North Side. $14-34. newhazletttheater.org
FAMILY • NORTH SIDE
Penguin-palooza 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Continues through Sun., March 19. National Aviary. 700 Arch St., North Side. Included with regular admission. aviary.org
FLOWERS • SOUTH HILLS
Orchid Society of Western Pennsylvania Spring Show: Orchid Obsession. 12-5 p.m. Continues through Sun., March 19. Crown Plaza Hotel South. 164 Fort Couch Road, South Hills. $5, free for members and guests under 18. oswp.org/annual-orchid-show
Mechanical Canine with Psych Ward Grips and mycatseesghosts. 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. The Mr. Roboto Project. 5106 Penn Ave., Garfield. $10. All ages. dltsgdom.com
•
The Kelly Strayhorn Theater continues to showcase talented Black women with its latest Sunstar Festival. Co-curated by the SCALE Fellowship Program, this year’s event promises to take audiences on a journey across the genres of Mississippi
Blues, Atlanta Soul, folk, funk, jazz, rock, R&B, and more with performances from Toshi Reagon, Lola Cole, DJ FEMI, and Casaundra. There will also be a pre-performance artist roundtable discussion at 1 p.m. in the KST lobby. 8 p.m. 5941 Penn Ave., East Liberty. Pay What Moves You, $25-40. kelly-strayhorn.org
MUSIC • OAKLAND
The Killers 7:30 p.m. Petersen Events Center. 3719 Terrace St., Oakland. $52-140. peterseneventscenter.com
MUSIC • DOWNTOWN
Chamber Music Pittsburgh presents Takács String Quartet 7:30 p.m. Pittsburgh Playhouse. 350 Forbes Ave., Downtown. $35-53. playhouse.pointpark.edu
MUSIC • SOUTH SIDE
Clem Snide with Florence Dore. 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Club Cafe. 56-58 South 12th St., South Side. $17. ticketweb.com
LIT • OAKLAND
Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures presents Idra Novey 6 p.m. Carnegie Library Lecture Hall. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. Free. Registration required. carnegielibrary.org
MUSIC • MILLVALE
Yo La Tengo 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Mr. Smalls Theatre. 400 Lincoln Ave., Millvale. $30. mrsmalls.com
ART • NORTH SIDE
Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, Lydia Rosenberg, and Katie Bullock. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Continues through Dec. 30. Mattress Factory Monterey Annex Gallery. 1414 Monterey St., North Side. Included with MF admission. mattress.org
COMEDY • OAKMONT
Feed The Need Fundraiser for Greater Pittsburgh Community Foodbank. 7 p.m. The Oaks Theater. 310 Allegheny River Blvd., Oakmont. $30-140. theoakstheater.com
MUSIC • SOUTH SIDE
Women Who Rock Singer Songwriter
Showcase 7-9 p.m. Doors at 6 p.m. Hard Rock Cafe Pittsburgh. 230 W. Station Square Drive, South Side. $10. hardrockcafe.com/location/pittsburgh
THEATER • DOWNTOWN
Pittsburgh Public Theater presents Steel Magnolias. 8 p.m. Continues through April 9. O’Reilly Theater. 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. $32-85. ppt.org
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: No. GD-23-001516, In re petition of Uriel Sewa parent and legal guardian of Samara Darji for change of names to Samara Sharma. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 6th day of April 2023, at 9:30 a.m., as the time and the Motions Room, City-County Building, Pittsburgh, PA, as the place for a hearing, when and where all persons may show cause, if any they have, why said name should not be changed as prayed for.
Sealed proposals shall be deposited at the Administration Building, Bellefield Entrance Lobby, 341 South Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15213, on March 28, 2023, until 2:00 P.M., local prevailing time for:
• Finish Floor Replacements and Miscellaneous Work (REBID)
• Asbestos Abatement Primes
SERVICE & MAINTENANCE CONTRACT AT VARIOUS SCHOOLS, FACILITIES AND PROPERTIES:
• Fire Extinguisher and Fire Hoses Service and Maintenance (REBID)
PGH. CARRICK HIGH SCHOOL
• Whiteboard Installations
• General Primes
PPS SERVICE CENTER
• Service Center Fuel Dispenser Island Replacement
• Mechanical Primes
Project Manual and Drawings will be available for purchase on March 6, 2023, at Modern Reproductions (412-488-7700), 127 McKean Street, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15219 between 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. The cost of the Project Manual Documents is non-refundable. Project details and dates are described in each project manual.
We are an equal rights and opportunity school district.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Alcohol & Smoking Research Lab is looking for people to participate in a research project. You must:
• Currently smoke cigarettes
• Be 18-49 years old, in good health, and speak fluent English
• Be right handed, willing to not smoke before two sessions, and to fill out questionnaires
Earn up to $260 for participating in this study.
For more information, call (412) 407-5029
I am looking for the church registers from the Manchester Congregational Church in Allegheny City (Pittsburgh), PA. The church was located at 1437 Juniata Street and is now the home of the Victory Baptist Church. According to a WPA survey done in 1940, the church was established in 1864 as the First German Evangelical Protestant Church of Allegheny and carried that name until 1887. The name changed to the Manchester Congregational Church in 1887. In 1940, the church registers of confirmations, baptisms, marriages, and deaths were complete from 1865-1940 according to a WPA survey. The Manchester congregation sold the church building in 1948 and the records have disappeared. I don’t know what happened to the church members; whether they merged with a different church or as individuals became members of other churches. If anyone could shed some light on this mystery, please contact me at KansasGenealogist @gmail.com.
1. Taking for-ev-er
5. Feeling uninspired 9. “Ice Ice Baby” vis-à-vis “Play That Funky Music,” originally 14. ___ Winston (“Sons of Anarchy” character)
15. Palm Beach County city, for short
16. Part man or part woman?
17. Very faint raven’s cries?
19. Pasta strainer, e.g.
20. Garnish on a toothpick
21. “Hard agree”
23. Egg, in some prefixes
25. It’s bad in Bordeaux
26. Error in a salon?
35. It has a famous solo in Swan Lake
36. Place for a misstep
37. Petco Park player
38. Three-day weekend day: Abbr.
39. “Positive ___ only”
41. Rock to be processed
42. Smokes some weed, e.g.
45. Word alongside a harp on some Euros
46. Babymetal’s genre
47. Things you hear and see when Garfield plays a song everybody knows on
a piano?
50. Thing torn in some season-ending injuries: Abbr.
51. Play in the sand
52. Justice Dubya nominated
57. Adult
61. Mathematician who popularized pi to denote the ratio of a circle
62. Things a blackbird might win?
64. Nasty nag
65. One eliciting a message to the shareholders, say
66. Unattractive pile
67. Game that tactical geniuses play 4D versions of
68. Confession recitation
69. Jyn ___
(Rogue One heroine)
1. Somewhat, in music
2. Translucent stone
3. Chinese gooseberry, by another name
4. Forward motion in the Senate
5. Cyber crimefighting force
6. Lethargic
7. What an ice pack soothes
8. Splitting words
9. What Paul McCartney plugs into
10. Guitarist Patti in
the E Street Band
11. Here’s the thing
12. Peacenik’s symbol
13. Preposition used by bards
18. Shazam! Fury of the Gods star
22. It’ll provide you with a provider: Abbr.
24. Broadcasting
26. Barber’s props
27. WWII menace
28. Big name in small trucks
29. Rosey of the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome”
30. Very keen
31. Safari rival
32. Parkinson’s treatment
33. Weather vane part
34. Cries
40. Gmail button
43. Canine coverings
44. Memory expanders in some smartphones
46. Common computer graphic attachment
48. “___ things being equal ...”
49. “New Look” innovator
52. Related stuff
53. Toilet paper additive
54. Middle of the month
55. Vehicle with a meter
56. He plays Carl in the upcoming Paint
58. Bleu hue
59. Coups de grace
60. Phil whose #7 was retired by the Bruins, for short
61. ~ neighbor
63. Trojans attack them
