Tim Shea sits in his 3D-printed home in Community First! Village in Austin, Texas, in 2020. Courtesy photo by ICON / Regan Morton Photography
StreetWise Vendor a. Allen on Ida B. Wells
She also was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). What I found to be the most intriguing thing about her story was in 1883, a train conductor with the Chesapeake & Ohio Southwestern Railroad ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies’ car and move to the smoking (and drinking) car, which Wells refused to do. Wait, hold ’em up. This sounds familiar. On Dec. 1, 1955, didn’t a civil rights activist by the name of Rosa Parks refuse to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, AL bus?
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The company has partnered with New Story, a USbased non-profit that works internationally to provide housing in low-income communities. Together, they are building houses in a community of fishermen and textile workers in Tabasco, Mexico. Elsewhere, New Story has typically constructed homes using cinder block, but they were interested in ways to work more quickly, said Sarah Lee, the group's chief operating officer. Housing is "such a massive problem, and without taking risks these families are going to be the last people to benefit from this technology," she said. Although the Tabasco project was slowed by the coronavirus pandemic, families will start moving into 10 of the houses in coming months, Lee said. ICON's work has also attracted interest from the US military. The Texas barracks - which the company finished this month - will house 76 troops as part of a project with the Department of Defense that will test a range of uses, according to Lt. Col. Alex Goldberg, a lead with the Defense Innovation Unit. The military is interested in using 3D printing to address its mammoth construction backlog and also in its response to natural disasters, Goldberg said in an interview. He added that the building process is five times faster than traditional approaches and has "significant" cost and labour savings. All of this means 3D-printed structures hold significant prospects for post-disaster missions, he noted. "Having this capability where you're not just building temporary facilities but can leave behind infrastructure that can get a foothold and begin the recovery - that has the possibility to become transformative," Goldberg said.
Ida B. Wells photo courtesy of Michelle Duster.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a very interesting African American woman, an investigative journalist, activist, educator and leader who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s.
On one fateful train ride from Memphis to Nashville in 1883, Wells reached a personal turning point. She was outraged when the train crew ordered her to move to the car for African Americans. She refused on principle (she had paid for her first-class ticket). Wells was forcibly removed from the train by the conductor and several other railroad workers. Her dress was torn in the process and she bit the conductor on the hand. She sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement in a circuit court case. The decision was later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. This injustice led Wells to pick up a pen and write. Just one of her many quotes is, “the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” www.streetwise.org
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