INSIDE:
PGH SCHOOLS WORK TO INCREASE DAYCARE OPTIONS
VOL. 3 ISSUE 28
Aug. 25, 2020 - Sept. 31, 2020
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S O C I A L LY
U N A C C E P TA B L E RACIST SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS BY PITTSBURGH PD SGT. FURTHER DAMAGE THE POLICE/COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIP
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PA Coronavirus Small Business Assistance Program Round two is now open! Could your small business use some extra funds to cover COVID-19 related expenses and losses? Grants are available for small businesses that meet certain criteria and are being administered by the Northside Community Development Fund and other local CDFIs. The second round of funding closes August 28. All applications submitted before the close of this round will be considered for funding. See if this program could help you at NSCDFund.org/PABusinessGrants
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 3
STAFF Publisher/Editor: Charlie Deitch Charlie@pittsburghcurrent.com Associate Publisher: Bethany Ruhe Bethany@pittsburghcurrent.com Advisory Board Chairman: Robert Malkin Robert@pittsburghcurrent.com
contents
Vol. III Iss. XXVIII Aug. 25, 2020
NEWS 6 | Socially Unacceptable 10 | Daycare shortage
EDITORIAL
Music Editor: Margaret Welsh Margaret@pittsburghcurrent.com Visuals Editor: Jake Mysliwczyk Jake@pittsburghcurrent.com Social Justice Columnist: Jessica Semler jessica@pittsburghcurrent.com
OPINION 12 | Larry Schweiger 14 | Dems Must Show Up ARTs & ENTERTAINMENT 15 | Pandemic Compilation EXTRA 16 | Where it used to be 18 | Parting Shot
Contributing Photographer: Ed Thompson info@pittsburghcurrent.com Contributing Writers: Jody DiPerna, Justin Vellucci, Atiya Irvin Mitchell, Dan Savage, Larry Schweiger, Brittany Hailer, Brian Conway, Matthew Wallenstein, Emerson Andrews, Eric Boyd info@pittsburghcurrent.com
COVER PHOTOILLUSTRATION BY JAKE MYSLIWCZYK
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The Fine Print
Bethany Ruhe Bethany@pittsburghcurrent.com
The opinions contained in columns and letters to the editors represent the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Pittsburgh Current ownership, management and staff. The Pittsburgh Current is an independently owned and operated print and online media company produced in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, 1665 Broadway Ave., Pittsburgh, PA., 15216. 412-204-7248.
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Climate Crisis and Corrupt Politics By: Larry J. Schweiger Free Shipping Paperback $29.95 or purchase an eBook for $19.00 (Read the first 25 pages for free) There is only one earth and our world is undergoing dramatic changes brought on by the climate crisis and other human-induced ecological disruptions. The world's top scientists studying these threats and the forces behind them have been warning us for decades to end the use of fossil fuels or face catastrophic consequences. Their long-ignored warnings have become more dire. Larry Schweiger has long been on the front line of efforts to enact rational clean energy and climate policies and has witnessed efforts to undermine our democratic system that has been rigged leaving America hoodwinked and held hostage to dirty fuels. Climate Crisis and Corrupt Politics pulls back the curtain on the central role of big oil, coal, and gas interests in American politics through the flow of money to fabricated entities for independent SuperPAC expenditures for mass deception through distorted advertising. Larry wrote this urgent message aimed at parents, grandparents and young adults who care about their children forced to live on the ragged edge of an unprecedented climate crisis. This book is especially for leaders who understand that we must act now with a "Green New Deal" scale response. Together, we must confront and overcome the many toxic money influences, reverse a failing democracy and retake the reins of government to enact policies that secure our shared future and the future of life on earth.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 5
NEWS
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NEWS
SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE
RACIST POSTS BY PGH POLICE SGT. ISN'T LIKELY THE CASE OF 'ONE BAD APPLE' BY CHARLIE DEITCH - PITTSBURGH CURRENT EDITOR
A
fter the Pittsburgh Current ran a story on Friday, August 20 about a Pittsburgh Police Sergeant posting racist and false propaganda on his personal Facebook page, the city announced later that evening that the matter was being investigated and the officer had been put on paid administrative leave. George Kristoff, who was promoted to the rank of sergeant in January 2015, has since made his Facebook private but his identity was verified by other personal posts on the page. But screenshots from the page were saved by a Morningside resident who discovered them last week and shared with the Pittsburgh Current. All of the information shared on Kristoff’s page appeared to be reshares of memes and other posts. One post reads: “If you don’t want to get hit by a car, don’t protest in the middle of a highway. If you don’t want to be killed by police, don’t engage in illegal activities. If you’re scared of the coronavirus, stay home. If you don’t love
CHARLIE@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
Police officers face off with protesters last week in Point Breeze (left). Above: two of the Facebook posts made by Pittsburgh Police Sgt. George Kristoff.
America, leave it. It’s really not that difficult. Another shows a photo of two Black children holding handguns. The caption underneath reads: “And they wonder why their kids are getting shot.” “I couldn’t believe what I was reading,” says resident Jen Cielslak. “This is a cop
who works in Zone 5 and has been deployed for the recent protests. Over 30 of his posts were flagged by Facebook as fake news. I worry about a police officer who spreads this kind of thing.” Cieslak and anyone else who might have to deal with Kristoff has reason to worry.
Just by the examples listed above, Kristoff, whose zone includes some predominantly black neighborhoods, thinks a protester on a roadway deserves to get hit by a car; a person “engaged in illegal activities” deserves to be killed by police; and black kids being killed, shot and murdered is the fault of simply being born black. But the worry shouldn’t just be about the post of just one police officer. Because for every racist post, it’s safe to assume that other police officers saw them and did nothing. Maybe they even reposted it or left a like. That could turn a situation of the alleged “one bad apple” in a tree rotting at its roots. “Anytime you have an officer who is employed by the city, and his job and the rest of the department’s job is to insure the health safety and general welfare of the community, make clearly racially insensitive and racist remarks, it doesn’t just call into question one officer but the entire police apparatus,” says Jerry Dickinson, the Pitt constitutional
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law professor who made an unsuccessful run for congress earlier this year. “They always tell us that it’s ‘one bad apple,’ but it’s not. The foundation of structural racism is insidious and it must be dismantled from the bottom up. Putting one officer on paid leave isn’t going to fix this problem. “We need an investigation of law enforcement across the board. Going on a case by case approach won’t make progress on these issue. There must be a much larger investigation of this behavior and law enforcement practices as a whole. So far, officials haven’t said what form an investigation would take. But, the incidents of police officers making and sharing racist posts has skyrocketed in recent years. Two prominent efforts emerged last year that discovered thousands of social media posts from current and former police officers that included racist, misogynistic, islamophobic and anti-government posts. The first, the PlainVIew Project discovered scores of officers making these types of posts. The other, Reveal, is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Among its findings were hundreds of officers who belong to and post in groups that promote ideals that are racist and support other forms of hate. And while it
was certainly challenging to find the posts, the real struggle came with getting departments to act. In a September followup story, Reveal noted, “We sought reaction from more than
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150 law enforcement departments about their officers’ involvement in these extremist groups. Yet only one department – the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which fired a detective for
racist posts – has publicly taken any significant action. More than 50 departments promised investigations, but few have taken any other steps.” Val Van Brocklin is a
NEWS former state and federal prosecutor based in Alaska and one of the country’s foremost law enforcement trainers and speakers. She has done extensive research and training on the subject of social media posts by officers. And in recent years, there has been no shortage of pertinent examples. “I take stories like yours, examples that make the news as the basis for my training,” Van Brocklin says. “Typically, the comments are related to race, gender, ethnicity, mental illness, homelessness, there's a whole laundry list of topics. Comments like this draw into question that commitment to the public trust that first responders are going to respond to calls equitably and without bias. “I do often wonder what these officers are thinking when they make these posts. Would they walk down the street with these kinds of comments written on a sandwich board? Of course not. But they think nothing of clicking a button and posting it on the world wide web, which is just one big sandwich board in the sky. There seems to be a disconnect here.” One of the first defenses to these kinds of postings is that the officer has a right to first amendment protections. Van Brocklin says that private sector employees have
Pittsburgh Police Sgt. George Kristoff takes the oath of office during his promtion ceremony in January 2015. (Screencap from City of Pittsburgh Youtube Channel)
no free speech protections on the job. And while public employees have a few more, it’s still very narrow. Van Brocklin says federal courts have found that a public employee’s right to free speech is usually decided by a three-prong test: 1. Was the speech made as a public employee or private citizen? 2. Was the speech a matter of public concern? 3. Does the right to free speech outweigh the importance of the function of the employing agency? “You have to meet the first two thresholds for the third to come into play,” Van Brocklin says. “The fact is, police officers need the
public trust to effectively accomplish their mission. Without the public’s trust, that becomes a danger to all police officers. Whenever you have statements being made that tend to disenfranchise a certain group, you’re really going to have a hard time meeting that thirdprong.” That’s why Dickinson says complete systematic and departmental reform is needed. Just dealing with one officer’s comments and then moving on won’t solve the problem. In the wake of protests against police tactics, including using armed officers in unmarked vehicles to make “jump-out” arrests at protests, Mayor Bill
Peduto said he was stopping that kind of activity and announced that a new incident commander would oversee protests. “How many officers saw these posts and said absolutely nothing?” Dickinson says. “Police officers cannot police themselves and these racist comments will send a signal to black and brown communities. It will adversely effect the community’s beliefs that these officers will keep them safe. “You’re not going to solve institutional racism by simply rearranging leaders at the top of your command structure.”
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 9
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PITTSBURGH PUBLIC SCHOOLS TEAMS WITH COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDERS TO DEAL WITH INFLUX OF DAYCARE NEEDS
What to do with the children when school is online but parents and guardians have to be at work during the school day? That’s what Pittsburgh Public Schools, the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Allegheny County and community partner agencies such as Trying Together are trying to figure out before online classes start for Pittsburgh’s 23,000 students on Aug. 31. The groups are working with an infusion of $4.35 million in CARES Act funding provided from Allegheny County’s $57.9 million share of the federal funding. The funding is for programs throughout the county, not just for Pittsburgh schools, and is aimed at providing child care for essential workers. Pittsburgh Public Schools are expected to have the greatest child care needs given its large enrollment. “We have a lot of parents who physically have to go to work...And we have families who need to provide for their households. So whether we like to have thought about (child care) for K-12 we have to now,” said Cara Ciminillo, executive director of Trying Together. It’s not just a Pittsburgh problem. Finding child care during school hours is an issue facing schools across the county and nation as the COVID-19 virus has forced schools to develop full or part-time online programs at the same time more parents are being required to return to work and essential workers remain on their jobs. How to create safe spaces for school-age children has been discussed by Pittsburgh school
BY MARY NIEDERBERGER - PITTSBURGH CURRENT EDUCATION WRITER MARY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
officials since the start of its “All In to Reopen Our Schools” effort, which started in late June, said Monte Robinson, Community Schools Coordinator for Pittsburgh schools. At the time, the district was considering a hybrid education model in which students would be divided into two groups and each group would attend school for two days and learn online for three days each week. But the school board voted on July 31 to
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offer online only classes for the first nine weeks. Robinson said he co-chaired a committee of about 30 people who discussed “connecting children to child care during remote learning days.” That discussion produced the solution of creating community learning hubs operated by some of the same agencies that provide out of school time programs for Pittsburgh students. Some of the hubs will be operated in spaces
owned by the agencies while others may be operated out of Pittsburgh school buildings with staff from the agencies. Those agencies are part of the Allegheny Partners Out of School Time (APOST) network which is sponsored by the United Way. Another solution is for parents to find available spaces at one of the 650 licensed child care providers in the county, Ciminillo said. The Pittsburgh district is
NEWS trying to determine the need for child care services via an online survey on its website. But with less than a week to go before classes start, only 1,004 families have responded and identified a need for 427 students, said Melanie Claxton, coordinator of Out of School Time programs. That information is being shared with the APOST agencies, Claxton said. She suspects that other families have made contacts directly with some of the agencies, in particular those who sponsored day programs during the summer. Others may have connected with agencies for child care centers by going through the Allegheny Child Care finder via a link on the Trying Together website. The link allows parents to search for available programs with open spaces for their children during school hours either at child care centers or at community learning hubs. Having a supervised environment during school hours will be especially important because the Pittsburgh district plans for most of its lessons to be synchronous, with students working in real time under their teacher’s direction. That’s different from the spring when remote learning consisted of lessons being posted for students to complete on their own time. “Students will receive direct lessons from teachers. Adults will be there to help with any technical issues or login issues. There could be some classroom help around making sure the kids will have structure to their day,” Claxton said of the learning hubs.. The initial learning hubs will be created for students in grades K-5 and will follow the same state Department of Education guidelines on social distancing and wearing of
masks, said Stephanie Lewis, APOST manager. Lewis said if the need arises, learning hubs may be created later for students in grades 6-12. Learning hubs will likely have 20 students but in larger spaces they could have as many students as 40--50. They will operate from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. and students will be served breakfast and lunch and possibly an afternoon snack. The staff to student ratio will be 1:10 or 1:12, Lewis said. All staff will have child abuse clearances and will be trained on social distancing regulations and other coronavirus-related procedures. Claxton said meals will be provided daily for all students by the district daily during the online lessons and that learning hub staff can pick up meals at the district’s distribution sites. At this point, the district will not provide transportation for students. But Lewis said some of the agencies may be able to do so. Neither Claxton nor Lewis could say for sure which agencies will provide hubs or what city schools may be used. But their goal is to make sure the learning hubs are spread throughout the areas of the city where the need exists. Currently, there are abundant agencies in the northern and eastern parts of the city ready to operate hubs but those working on the plans want to ensure there is capacity to meet needs throughout the city. Claxton said currently there are enough agencies at the ready to meet the needs that have been expressed. But it’s possible more sites will need to be opened to meet geographic needs or increased needs.
Some of the hubs will be located in facilities owned by agencies, such as the Boys & Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania. But some others may be operated by the agencies at district schools. “We are planning to open a number of our spaces for a daytime specialty camp and also recently joined Allegheny County DHS (Department of Human Services) as one of the learning hub partners,” Lisa Abel-Palmieri, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania. Ciminillo, of Trying Together, said recent changes in state regulations on child care now make it possible for those who qualify for subsidized child care to use their subsidies for daytime slots for their school-aged children. Previously subsidized care during school hours was available to families who make under 200 percent of the poverty level (about $54,000 for a family of four) for children from ages 0-5. Older children could receive only part-time subsidies for before and after school care. But regulations were changed after the pandemic created a need for child care for older children who are attending school fully or partially online while their parents are required to be at work, in particular essential workers. “So the state got approval to say we can flip from partday to full day and the subsidy will cover it,” Ciminillo said. As a result, child care centers can take students up to about age 12 during school hours, with some able to accept students as old as high school age, Ciminillo said. However, there are families making above that amount
who still can’t afford to pay for daytime child care for their school-aged children. Ciminillo said more than 100 families have expressed that need and the hope is some of the county CARES Act funds will be used to cover those costs or place those children in community learning hubs. “We are in the midst of working through that list,” Ciminillo said. In the meantime, child care centers that plan to take school-aged children are beefing up their technical services and staff. “They have built into their budget anything they’d need from increasing the internet connection to taking on a couple of extra staff members and buying supplies,” Ciminillo said. Child care centers are hiring some certified teachers and tutors to help students with their school lessons. “Child care as a sector has remained open since March. They have figured it out and it’s not to say that it’s perfect. But they did the work of rethinking their space, creating small pods of children and training staff,” Ciminillo said. Ciminillo said she believes with the consortium of groups that are working together, child care needs during the school day should be met. “I think we are doing the best job we can to ensure that children have somewhere that is safe. Where they can be cared for, where their learning can be supported with adults who can look out for them, Ciminillo said. . “We’re lucky we’ve got the funding. We’re lucky we’ve got the partners. The pandemic has helped us to break down the silos.”
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 11
OPINION
IN SEARCH OF A GLOBAL CLIMATE POLLUTION AGREEMENT BY LARRY J. SCHWEIGER - PITTSBURGH CURRENT COLUMNIST
INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
T
he Late Mama Cass Elliot sang prophetic verses, “There’s a New World Coming, and it’s just around the bend. There’s a new world coming. This one’s coming to an end,” The new world she sang about was a hopeful one. Unfortunately, the world we are passing on to our children will not be so. As astounding and far-fetched as this may sound, the Holocene world that humans have known for more than 11,000 years is coming to an end. It is becoming clear to many that the Earth is not what it once was, nor will it ever be what we will fondly remember. Rising global temperatures, sea levels, depleting ozone layer, ubiquitous micro-plastics, persistent pollutants, misplaced nutrients, and acidifying oceans result from human activity that has distinctively altered the world on a geological scale. A team of scientists serving on the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group voted to declare "Anthropocene" as a new chapter in the Earth's geological history. This historic vote marks an essential step towards formally defining a new chapter in the world's geologic record. The panel will submit a formal proposal for the new epoch by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which oversees the official geologic time chart. Anthropocene was first coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present geological time interval. Anthropocene has been used to describe humanity's massive impact on the environment. Jan
Zalasiewicz, a professor of geography at the University of Leicester chaired the Anthropocene Working Group, declared that we are entering a new geologic epoch “Anthropocene.” Zalasiewicz believes it started in 1950. "If you look at the main parameters of the Earth-system... things only began to change sharply, and dramatically with industrialization." He believes that "the most significant event in humanity's life on the planet is the great acceleration, the period of rapid global in-
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dustrialization that followed the Second World War. As factories and cars spread across the planet, as the United States, and U.S.S.R. prepared for the Cold War, carbon pollution soared. So too did methane pollution, the number of extinctions, and invasive species, the degree of surface-level radiation, the quantity of plastic in the ocean, and the amount of rock, and soil moved around the planet.” My only disagreement with the proposal is the name "Anthro-
pocene.” I think it should be the "Idiocene" since idiots heading fossil-fuel corporations, plastic producers, and other polluters and subservient politicians knowingly fail to confront climate crisis and address other dangerous environmental threats. Their failures create profound risks to our children’s future and the new world they will inherit. Pittsburgh’s summers are hotter and drier. The region has experienced intense rain bombs and severe storms triggering mudslides
OPINION and slope failures. Our winters are certainly not what I remember as a boy. Pittsburgh, like the rest of the world, is getting hotter, and the weather is getting weirder. Extreme weather is one of the first indicators of this “new world." It will increasingly threaten coastal cities, flood-prone riverside cities, and dry regions of the world. It will squeeze food supplies as drought, and fierce storms like the recent derecho that disrupt crop production. The West has been getting hotter and dryer for more than a decade. Bark beetles have overwintered in record numbers killing tens of millions of trees. In recent years, forest fires have exploded across the West on scorched landscapes. At this moment, two major storms are traveling parallel tracks heading towards the hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico at hurricane strength. Two weeks ago, Iowa experienced an extraordinary derecho with enormous damage and crop loss. Yet, Trump persists in dismantling policies and programs that were cutting carbon dioxide and methane pollution. At the same time, he is advancing drilling in the fragile and pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other sensitive Federal habitats. Flooding in March of 2019 caused by a "bomb cyclone" storm broke records across the farm-state of Nebraska and Iowa flooding seventy-four cities. Sixty-five counties and four tribal areas declared states of emergency covering vast acres of farmlands and impacting communities in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Successful Agriculture requires a stable climate, yet Trump’s attorneys appallingly argued before a circuit court that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee a stable climate or, therefore,
protection against climate catastrophes. We are witnessing mass climate-driven migrations triggered by sustained droughts in Syria, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The three Central American Countries lost seven hundred thousand acres of bean and maize crops in 2018. Two million Central Americans are at risk of starvation. That is an underlying reason that the U.S. has experienced an unprecedented flood of climate refugees fleeing famine, chaos, and crime. Mass migration is a last-ditch effort to avoid starvation, desperate crime, and profound poverty. Trump’s nationalism is a failed and dangerous policy in a world that must embrace global solutions through collaboration and enforceable global treaties. Instead of dismantling global climate agreements and gutting policies designed to protect the planet, America must lead the world in formulating sound climate treaties and agreements that achieve the scientifically based pollution reduction targets. This cannot end well. America cannot simply wall off the inhumane impacts of climate change because we are losing cities to intense fires, inhumane heat, and extreme flooding. Our farmers, too, are facing uncertain futures. The planet is gasping for relief. Rapid emission reductions and other interventions are called for and every nation must do its part as a part of an enforceable treaty and that includes the United States. Provisions in our Constitution make treaties extremely difficult. Our founders framed the Constitution to slow and even prevent the passage of laws and to avoid international entanglements, which made sense then.
James Madison created two houses of Congress to “inhibit the formulation of passionate factions” to ensure reasonable majorities would prevail. That’s why, for example, we have bicameral legislative bodies instead of a parliament in Washington. Getting bills passed through two assemblies. Their committees are twice as hard as a single legislative body, and lobbyists know how to kill good legislation. With two houses full of lawmakers and their various committees, it is easy for lobbyists to prevent the passage of bills, and far more challenging to enact needed changes. Lawmakers have been able to slow-walk or prevent issues like the climate crisis with almost no accountability for decades. The Constitution's framers led by Charles Pinckney from the slave state of South Carolina feared an anti-slavery treaty would undermine the sovereignty of the states and end slavery. In their attempt to check presidential power to enter treaties, they set the Senate's threshold impossibly high. Even when we had good times, it was nearly impossible to act on an international environmental issue. In these days of division and corporate interference, the ratification of a climate treaty is off the table. We have repeatedly failed to ratify various relevant global environmental treaties because of Article II, section 2. That is why President Clinton never submitted the Kyoto Agreement to the Senate and also why President Obama and Todd Stern, serving as the United States Special Envoy, pushed global talks in the direction of an unenforceable Accord at the United Nations climate change conferences in Copenhagen, at Durban, South Africa, and during other sessions, created a non-binding agreement in Paris instead of seeking a binding treaty in Paris since we failed to ratify the Kyoto agreement. We now know Paris is not working as it should since the
"nationally determined contributions" submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change under the Paris Agreement lack sufficient ambition to achieve the scientists' goals. Nor does it have an effective compliance mechanism for wayward governments. While I am generally not a fan of tariffs, I believe future global climate agreements should require carbon-leveling border adjustments. Carbon tariffs may be an effective compliance mechanism that the Paris accord lacks. Nine organizations worldwide and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore announced a cutting-edge initiative on July 15th to track human-caused emissions to specific sources in real-time. This unprecedented collaboration will monitor worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. The project will combine artificial intelligence, satellite image processing, machine learning, and other remote sensing technologies to track pollution sources. It will be independent of governments and will provide publicly available tracking data. The effort will be known as Climate TRACE (Tracking Real-time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions). If successful, having real-time information available to all will make it possible to develop a universally accepted enforcement mechanism to curtail carbon pollution through a system of border adjustments that creates enforceable pollution penalties and generate the revenue to foster a more just clean energy transition. The time for ineffective half measures is over folks. We must elect leaders at every government level who are committed to confronting the climate crisis and willing to work on a global scale to avoid climate calamity.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 13
OPINION DEMS NEED TO SHOW UP FOR BIDEN/HARRIS BY ARYANNA HUNTER - PITTSBURGH CURRENT COLUMNIST
INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
“I was born in Scranton like Bob Casey and Joe Biden!” is what my now 12-year-old would say when I was on the campaign trail for Lt. Governor in 2017 and 2018. She would often road trip with me across the Commonwealth and take over my Instagram page with her very own hashtag of #Camigram. She was born in Scranton and still affectionately loves the city even though we moved a few years after she was born. Last week when Joe Biden formally accepted the Democratic nomination for President the current President tried to undermine the acceptance speech of the former Vice President by saying “The Scranton stuff…that’s why I figured I’d come here to explain to you one thing, but I think you people know it better than I do, he left. He abandoned Pennsylvania.” According to the political prognosticators who crunch numbers and make assumptions about Presidential elections, Pennsylvania is the most crucial of battleground states. With 20 electoral votes Pennsylvania is one six states that many independent expenditure and political action committees are investing in early. Priorities USA Action has spent $46,2 million so far in the 2020 election cycle nationwide with just over $28 million dollars being spent against President Trump and according to their Battleground Briefing Pennsylvania is one of their core states that they are investing in. During the 2016 Presidential election
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
Priorities USA Action spent $133.4 million with about $126 million being spent to defeat Donald Trump. And I’m certain I don’t need to remind you that Hillary Clinton didn’t win in 2016. Hillary Clinton often touted her family’s roots in the Scranton area with her grandfather having worked in a lace mill and her father being born and raised in Scranton. This familial tie to our state still didn’t ensure that she came out on top with losing to President Trump by 44,000 votes. Last weekend the family and I spent some time in rural Westmoreland County and support for Trump was everywhere. From large plywood signs in the
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grassy front lawns of farmhouses to those picking up groceries at Giant Eagle head to toe in their “MAGA” garb. Supporters of President Trump are as just fired up as they once were. They aren’t sitting on the sidelines, watching polls, critiquing the slight difference in policy. They are shouting from their very rooftops ensuring all of their neighbors know who they are voting for in November. They don’t care how obnoxious they are. As Democrats begin to throw their support behind the Biden Harris ticket, they can’t be lukewarm in their enthusiasm. They must go all in. Ignore the polls showing him slightly ahead, the fact that they have seen Biden
yard signs in their neighborhood, and they have to ignore the fact that he might not be 100 percent in line with them on their issue. Democrats have to “fake it til they make it” if they don’t feel fired up and ready to go for the Biden Harris ticket. Put his sign in your lawn, buy a Biden face mask to wear to pick up take-out, wear a t-shirt with “Madame Vice President” scrawled across the front. Be loud and proud. Be obnoxious! In 2016 so many waited for the glass ceiling to finally shatter but it remained fully intact. I remember waiting in a ridiculously long line to vote that cold November morning and dressing the kids and I in white to honor the history that was about to be made…. I’m still disappointed it didn’t happen. In 2020, we are being given another opportunity to not only make history in our country but to right a course that has been detrimental to so many by electing the first Black woman ever on a major party presidential ticket. I love Scranton and have many fond memories of the time I lived there – especially the birth of my daughter. We need to not only make the Electric City charged up for the Biden Harris ticket we need to show in every corner of this Commonwealth that the democracy and ideals of our great nation won’t be pawns in the hands of Donald Trump any longer. We must show up this year. America is counting on us.
A&E PANDEMIC COLLECTION
A NEW COMP FEATURING THE MODEY LEMON, DEAN CERCONE, NIC LAWLESS AND MORE AIMS TO SPREAD MONEY AND POSITIVITY BY MARGARET WELSH - PITTSBURGH CURRENT MUSIC EDITOR MARGARET@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
Early in the pandemic, Terry Carroll, like many of us, was stunned at the speed of collapse. “The Pittsburgh food bank’s lines were crazy long, and just seeing that … it came so quick,” the musician (Terry and the Cops, Dark Money, Dirty Faces) recalls. Being, for the first time, in a place of relative financial security, he and his long time collaborator Eric Yeschke made their own personal charitable contributions, but wanted to do more. “I think it was Eric who said it would be cool to put out a compilation, because we’ve got all sorts of friends from elsewhere that we’ve played shows with, and people from Pittsburgh that have moved away or that still live here that we’ve worked with on various projects,” Carroll says. On August 6 they released Everyone We Love Got it On Lockdown, an assemblance of tracks from artists and bands around the world. No one familiar with Carroll or Jaeschke's many projects will be surprised by the particular brand of grimy, stripped-down psychedelic vibes emanating from this collection: From the New Poor’s brilliant little country tune, to the smart, wild garage noise of
Terry and the Cops, to the sugary weirdo dance pop of Birth Worm, to Shinji Masuko’s atmospheric minimalism, to the mystic free association of Expires, EWLGIOL’s genres overlap and intersect. Some tracks are new, some have been extracted from various vaults -- “The Candlestick Maker,” from Philly’s Rawar, for example, is a decade-old track. And some of the bands featured no longer really exist. Storied Pittsburgh rockers the Modey Lemon (the members of which are now spread cross-country) submitted “a new recording of an old song,” and Hidden Twin (side project of the Modey Lemon’s Phil Boyd) offered a cover of Martin Rev’s “I Heard Your Name.” There are some nice appearances by other Pittsburgh expats, including Dean Cercone and Nic Lawless, who
now live in New York and Colorado, respectively. The attention put into curation comes through, which makes this feel like a carefully crafted mixtape from someone who loves you, or at least wants to impress you. Like anything else Carroll and Yeschke produce, there’s a central hip-hop sensibility at work here, and dissimilar tracks are melded together with interludes by beatmakers Authentic Beats and Defame. All proceeds from the comp go directly to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, though Carroll and Yeschke advised that people make direct donations rather than involve PayPal and Bandcamp fees. Participating artists were also given the opportunity to choose their own charitable causes to promote. “We didn’t anticipate the fact that we were asking bands from all around -- Philly, New York, Colorado, DC, New Mexico, two Japanese artists,” Carroll says. “So I was like, maybe we should ask what they think, it seems weird to make it the Pittsburgh Food Bank when all these people are in their own cities.” Though, he adds, “most people said, ‘Hey, the Pittsburgh Food Bank sounds good to me.” Carroll estimates they’ve raised close to $500 so far, but
regardless of how people share money, Carroll hopes this comp will remind listeners to help someone out. “We were like, [the comp] is not going to raise a lot of money because we’re a niche band, and our friend’s bands are fairly niche,” he says. “But we wanted to give people a chance to spread more positivity. We wanted it to be a positive thing.”
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 15
ESSAY WHERE IT USED TO BE BY MATTHEW WALLENSTEIN - PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER
INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
My father and I sat in the car parked up against the curb. The heat was on but low. Like any real New Englander he had a funny economy with heat, even in the car where it didn’t cost any extra. “The light's not on, maybe they aren't there. I'll drive you around a little while till we find them.” “It’s fine.” “Maybe I’ll just stick around a minute.” “No, it's okay. Leave me here, I'll figure it out.” I closed the door, hopped the slush and made it to the door of the building just as they were coming down. “It’s fine, see, I'll see you in an hour. That place the bookstore used to be.” “Hey,” I said. “Hi.” “Hello,” the other said. We walked the blocks to the Thai food place. I didn’t remember ever going to a restaurant like that with them. Going out to eat was a very big deal when I was a kid and hadn’t happened since I was very young. We didn’t have much money when I was little. I told them about how my dog had been killed by a hit and run. How I carried his body to the backyard and buried him. I felt a little stupid saying it but it was something to say. The snow fell wetly, the traffic lights blurred into the weather. The flakes collected on everything like shed skin. Her face seemed more bloated than I remembered. “How was yoga,” I said. “It was slow, but that's okay for me,” said my mother. My sister laughed. I smiled, but I was faking it. “I'm only here till tomorrow,” she said. I had heard yoga was an everyday thing for her now. Very strange to think of my mother doing that. I’d heard she was living with
that Vietnam vet on property her parents, my grandparents, bought but never used out in PA, that mountain in the middle of nowhere where she had spent her honeymoon five years before I was born. I had trouble picturing her in the woods taking care of a man with Parkinson's disease, taking breaks to bend her body into positions named after animals; crow, downward dog. We went in. She bent towards me and said in a low voice, “Do they have a liquor license, that's all I care about.” I pointed to the bar and she said, “Good.” They figured out where to sit. The waitress came with the menus, said her greetings, and walked to another table. “I don't know what to get.” “What do you usually eat?” “I don't eat this stuff.” “Well, what do you usually eat?” “Cheese and that sort of thing.” “Do you like noodles or rice?” The waitress came over. “I think we need a minute,” my sister said. “No, I just want to take your drink order.” “I'll have whatever wine you have,” my mother said. “Iced tea,” my sister said. “Water,” I said. The waitress left. “Okay,” I said, “We'll pick two and you try them both and whichever you like less I’ll eat.” The drinks came, we ordered. The food came. “I have to pee. You eat some of each and then decide which you want.” I walked to the bathroom. There were no urinals. The first stall had a paper sign scotch-taped to the door that said “broken.” I pissed in the next one looking at the warning not to flush sanitary napkins. That reminded me of when, a few
16 | AUGUST 25, 2020 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
years back, a former roommate had clogged the toilet with tampons and flooded the upstairs bathroom. I had wrapped my hand in plastic wrap and pulled them out, running downstairs and tossing them out the front door. The plastic wrap did not do anything but trap toilet water in it. I walked back, sat. “So, what do you think?” I asked. “Hi,” a voice said, then repeated with a little less certainty. I looked up. “Hi,” I said. There was someone I hadn't seen in a while. She was standing next to the table in the corner of the room. I walked over towards her and she walked over to me. We hugged. Her breasts pressed against me, they were bigger than I remembered. I went to my seat. Her take-out order came out. “I'm just here for Christmas,” I shouted across the restaurant, “I live in Mexico now.” “I live in California.” And she walked out, brown bag in hand, some guy on her arm. I recognized the look on his face as one I’d made before. “I haven't seen her in like ten years,” I said. My mother smiled from across the table but clearly didn't know who the girl had been. “You remember her,” my sister said, “she's the one who climbed over the fence that time and got stuck in the bushes and the dog woke us all up.” “Oh, yeah,” she said vaguely. That was when I was 13 maybe 14, it was some years after my mother had started to have problems. She couldn’t be around men. They all represented something that had hurt her and so they all became deserving of hurt. This hurt extended to my father until she kicked him out, and once he was gone it extended to me, until I was kicked out too. I was around 8 when it began, when her pent things erupted. I didn’t know the reasons back then, I only knew the results, all those diseased hours, years, all
that hell tangling into itself. When my father was gone, all of that rage and fortified pain was heaped onto me. I was confused more than anything. Sitting in that restaurant I knew it had all been well over a decade before, but I still carried a lot of the residue with me. “Let’s share,” she said. “Okay.” She put some of each on her plate. I ate the rest out of the bowls. I looked above her head at the
ESSAY
mirror behind her. I was able to see the clock that was behind me on the wall in its reflection. It was just above the reflection of her back. I wanted to check the time, see how much longer I would be there. I would have seen its reflection ticking backwards in the mirror if it hadn’t been broken. The second hand seemed to be stuck and clicked back and forth between the same two numbers. She caught me looking.
“It's about ten-of. I know that because mine usually runs ten minutes fast.” She held hers up. The face of it was on her wrist just above where her pulse would be. I was eating pretty quickly but trying not to look like it. “They appreciated your letter, Grandma and Grandpa.” “I'm glad,” I said. “They kept it by the bed in this basket they had, with your cousin’s motorcycle pictures.” “I'm glad they got the letter.” “Give me your address, I'll send you the write up.” “I didn't figure a town that small had a newspaper.” “They don't, it was the next town over. What's your address?” “So are you living there now? You don’t live in Pennsylvania anymore?” I said. “I moved in to take care of them. She didn't want to be in hospice. They loved that house. Now it's just me and B— and the dog. Now I am taking care of B—. The people at the veteran thing brought us a ramp.” “It's lucky they died together. Most people don't get to have that,” I said. “I have a photo of them.” She laid it in front of me next to my napkin. The two of them sat in lawn chairs. His thin ankles poked out from the bottom of his jeans. He had a beer in hand as always and she sat next to him looking tired. “She went into a coma first. He wanted to be in bed next to her, but the bed was high and it was too difficult for him. We dragged the Lay-Z-Boy next to the bed so he could hold her hand. He looked over at me and said ‘I'm gonna’ check out soon. Bring me around the house first.’ “It took him a good half-hour just to get to the living room. He said he wanted to see the fireplace because that's where everyone always got their pictures taken. He said he wanted one more so we took one. Walked to the kitchen and looked out the window at the
backyard and he made some jokes about wanting to hunt. Then I walked him back to the room. He was tired. I helped him sit. He held her hand and just sort of went to sleep. She died first but he never woke up. He went a couple hours after her. I sat and watched them for a while. They both got to die without seeing the other one die. Can you believe that?” “That's pretty good.” “So, like I said, I sat and watched them for a long time. I called the hospice nurse in the morning. I had no idea how I was going to move them. “She said to call the fire department. She said they would help since he had been a firefighter. So they showed up. They made me laugh. They were talking to him like he was still there, saying ‘Hey Dan, remember this fire, remember that one?’ One of them put a cigar in grandpa's hand and offered to light it. Then they carried him out still joking around. Later that day they rang the bell.” “What do you mean?” “It’s something they do, ring the fire station bell.” “Oh.” “For the firemen, I mean.” She put her glasses back on. I moved my napkin around with my hand for a minute. Then I handed the photograph back to her. “So what about the wedding, when should I fly down?” she asked. “We don't know the date yet. I think it's in May.” It was April 5th, I knew that. “Well, tell me as soon as you know.” “Yeah, I will.” The bill came. I took my wallet out. She paid. My sister did the tip. I put my money back in my wallet and my wallet back in my pants. She was a hospice worker now for those who mattered to her. She seemed different. Maybe she had moved past the trap she had been in, the one I got pulled into, held in. There was time passed, but there was still the past itself.
We stood up and walked out. It was cold. I liked the frost on the sidewalk; the snow sponging the yellow from the streetlight. We passed the sex shop. “The longest lasting store on Main Street.” We looked at the display. The mannequins were wearing frilly thongs and Santa hats. "It's been here forever. All the other stores are gone in like three months, but this place keeps on going,” I said. “It used to be down at the other end of Main Street, by the nail place.” “Across from McDonald’s?” “No, where the hair cutting place is.” “Oh yeah, okay.” “Back then they sold dance costumes too. It was run by this old lady, Probably 70 years old. Seemed old then, anyway. This one time we went in there for your dance costume for the recital, when you were little,” she said to my sister, “and you grabbed some of those underwear, it’s a kinky place you know, and you put it on like a mask. You said ‘Look, I'm an elephant’ because it has that long thing in the front for the penis to go in, ya’ know?” We laughed. And we walked for a while, snow collecting in our hair like age. We continued down Main Street. The clock at Eagle Square showed the hour as we walked past it. And then we were at her car. I thanked them for dinner. “Don't forget to send me the date,” she said, “when you figure it out.” “I won’t,” I said. We didn't say I love you or goodbye. I only felt a weight, an addled thing between guilt and something else. Instinct, history, they turned me around and pushed me down the sidewalk. My pulse tolled the seconds. Pulled by a familiar movement I walked to where the book store used to be.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 17
PA R T I N G S H OT
PITTSBURGH CURRENT PHOTO BY JAKE MYSLIWCZYK PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUGUST 24, 2020 | 18
