February 2014 New People

PITTSBURGH’S PEACE & JUSTICE NEWSPAPER Stand with UPMC Workers to Build a Better Pittsburgh

VOL. 44 No. 2, February 2014

IN THIS ISSUE: The Predator

by Barney Oursler —Page 3 This March, we are inviting people who Does This City of Immigrants care about workers and our city to Welcome New Immigrants? join us in calling on UPMC to do —Page 4 better by its own employees and by all working people.

March 3, 2014 Stop Sexual Assault in the Like many cities, Pittsburgh is 12:00 noon Military facing uneven prosperity.

—Page 8 Income inequality in the Rally at the city is as high as it’s been U.S. Steel Building Economic Freedom Zones and since the Depression, and our in solidarity with Pollution in West Virginia middle class is shrinking UPMC workers!

—Page 11 rather than growing. While unemployment rates are better Table of Contents —Page 2 than elsewhere, a major problem facing Pittsburgh workers is low and stagnant wages. Workers also face ferocious January 20— “UPMC Workers, Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network, and community allies joined together today to honor Dr. King's legacy of fighting for worker justice by and organized campaigns to prevent them from calling on UPMC to pay all its workers a living wage.” Photo by Make It Our UPMC. challenging and improving poor standards and 27 executives and key employees working conditions. more than $1 million each in 2012, UPMC is at the center of this problem. It employs staff is $12.18 an hour ($25,334 a year). Put another with their pay totaling more than $47.5 million. more than 60,000 people, most in the Pittsburgh Exacerbating these problems, UPMC is way, a typical service worker at UPMC is paid region. The largest group of these employees — systematically and aggressively retaliating against the anywhere from 8% to 30% below a basic family service workers — work full-time jobs without any very workers who are coming together to call for -sustaining wage in the Pittsburgh region—and hope of earning enough to sustain their families, let better jobs for themselves and their families—and for alone enough to improve their economic standing over many make 31% to 59% below a family all of Pittsburgh. Rather than paying its workers what sustaining wage. time. they need, UPMC is spending millions on aggressive UPMC has the third highest number of full-time UPMC doesn’t pay service workers enough to cover anti-union campaigns and working alongside wellworkers on Medicaid, after Walmart and McDonald’s funded anti-worker organizations like the National their basic expenses. While studies estimate that workers need to make between $13.13 and $15.85 an in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; workers are in Right to Work [for less] Foundation, to prevent hour to get by in Pittsburgh, UPMC pay starts service debt to UPMC for healthcare bills; and some UPMC employees from working together to make employees wages at as little as $10 per hour ($20,800 workers are relying on food pantries and food stamps improvements for themselves and our community. to feed their children. UPMC, on the other hand, paid (continued on page 5) a year), and the estimated median wage for support

Don’t Let Congress Fast Track Corporate Rule

50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty

A New Economy Strives for Ethics in Business

by Michael Drohan One of the greatest economic heists of all times is the misnamed “free trade treaty” entitled the TransPacific Partnership (TPP). This treaty has been in negotiation since 2008 under George W. Bush but well under the radar so that most people have never heard of this agreement and its negotiations. The reason for the secrecy surrounding the negotiations is that when the details of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) became public, the treaty was derailed. The negotiators do not want another derailment this time around. In the U.S. and in the other 10 countries which are to be part of TPP, Congress is not involved and the negotiators are corporate lobbyists and lawyers.

Only two of the 26 chapters of the draft document concern trade in any recognizable form. Even the two chapters which cover trade are in many ways redundant since most of the eleven countries involved have bilateral trade agreements already which have eliminated trade tariffs between them.

In point of fact, much of the trade draft, insofar as we know its contents, is highly protectionist.

by Joyce Rothermel In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty in the United States. The safety net programs created during that period have been hugely successful in reducing the miseries associated with poverty, especially hunger and poor health.

Since 1980, we as a nation have been retreating from earlier won victories; we have been following a formula of tax cuts, high military spending, and cuts to social programs.

In this Congress, they seem set to make cuts to one of the most successful of the War on Poverty programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program). The Farm Bill before the conference committee in January contains close to $9 billion in cuts to SNAP over the next ten years. This kind of erosion to the War on Poverty as the unemployment rate hovers over 7 percent will have very negative impacts on those struggling to meet their basic needs of food, shelter, education, and health care.

by Ron Gaydos The New Economy Working Group of Pittsburgh is honored to have the sponsorship of an institute at Pitt that focuses on sustainable business to help support the New Economy Celebration activities being planned for March 20-22.

The David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership was established in 1999 as part of the Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh. Its mission is to add value to organizations through ethical leadership. To accomplish this, the Berg Center focuses on new practices in ethical business, experience-based teaching, and active community engagement. The Berg Center also supports ongoing research that addresses issues of social responsibility, ethics, leadership, and sustainability, both locally and globally. As the sponsor of Pitt's Net Impact Chapter, the Berg Center supports an innovative project that examines how to measure the impact of socially responsible efforts among regional small and medium size enterprises.

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The Thomas Merton Center works to build a consciousness of values and to raise the moral questions involved in the issues of war, poverty, racism, classism, economic justice, oppression and environmental justice.

TMC engages people of diverse philosophies and faiths who find common ground in the nonviolent struggle to bring about a more peaceful and just world.

February 2014

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Page 3  The Predator

 One Billion Been Rising for Justice  New Economy Book Discussion 2 - NEWPEOPLE

 Bread for the World  Empty Bowls Dinner  Muslims and Christians Page 4  Does This City of Immigrants Welcome New Immigrants?  Potential Budget Cuts Worry Obama Academy’s Swim Team  The Angel’s Pathway Page 5  A New Mayor for the Next Pittsburgh Page 6  THE ARSON YEARS, 1970-1980 Page 7

February 2014

Global Solutions Pittsburgh 412-471-7852 dan@globalsolutionspgh.org www.globalsolutionspgh.org Citizens for Social Responsibility of Greater Johnstown Larry Blalock, evolve@atlanticbb.net PA United for a Single-Payer Health Care www.healthcare4allPA.org www.PUSH-HC4allPa.blogspot.com 2102 Murray Avenue Pgh, Pa 15217 412-421-4242 Pittsburgh Area Pax Christi 412-761-4319 Pittsburgh Committee to Free Mumia 412-361-3022 pghfreemumia@gmail.com

Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop

Pittsburgh Cuba Coalition 412-303-1247 lisacubasi@aol.com

Pittsburgh Campaign for Democracy NOW! 412-422-5377, sleator@cs.cmu.edu www.pcdn.org Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition jumphook@gmail.com; www.pittsburghdarfur.org Pittsburgh Haiti Solidarity Committee jrothermel@gpcfb.org 412-780-5118 Progressive Pittsburgh Notebook Call 412-363-7472 tvnotebook@gmail.com

Pittsburgh Independent Media Center info@indypgh.org www.indypgh.org North Hills Anti-Racism Coalition 412-369-3961 www.northhillscoalition.com Pittsburgh North People for Peace 412-367-0383 pnpp@verizon.net Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee info@pittsburgh-psc.org www.pittsburgh-psc.org Raging Grannies 412-963-7163 eva.havlicsek@gmail.com

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Roots of Promise 412-596-0066 brigetshields@gmail.com

East End Community Thrift Store

Page 1  Stand with UPMC Workers to Build a Better Pittsburgh  Don’t Let Congress Fast Track Corporate Rule  50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty  A New Economy Strives for Ethics in Business

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Displaced After Fire  Human Rights and Victory Day Celebrated in Bangladesh

Local Cooperatives Building for the Future: Passive Houses

Page 8  Stop Sexual Assault in the Military

Page 11 Industry Polluting West Virginia and Beyond Fight Still On Against River Barges Used to Transport Toxic Frack Wastewater Unconventional Gas Well Permits Could Be Issued in PA Until the Year 2093

Page 13  Is it Time for PA to OK Pot, Hemp, and a State-Owned Bank?  Pennsylvania Inmates Explain Their Living Conditions  Water Crisis at SCI Fayette

 (1%, 99%, 47%) = MATH IN A FLAWED WORLD Page 9  Transfrom Now Plowshares AntiNuke Activists to be Sentenced  Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution Page 10  The August Wilson Center: Dollar Value?

Page 12 Pennsylvania Farm Show

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 Summit Against Racism Turns 16 Page 15  TMC Board news

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 Molly Rush Legacy Fund: Sliding Scale Legal Services for Your Will

Save the Date February 10

The Predator: A Play Reading About Drones

by Charles Pierson 10 event will home in on the complex On Monday, February 10, at 7:00 moral, ethical, and national security p.m., the Anti-Drone Warfare issues surrounding the use of drones.

Coalition, the Bricolage Production The reading will be followed by a Company, and the World Affairs panel discussion. Panelist Tom Council of Pittsburgh will present a Sanderson is an expert on counter staged reading of the drone play The Left: Thomas Sanderson terrorism and transnational threats at Predator. It is a part of Bricolage’s Right: Daniel Simpson the Center for Strategic and series of “Fifth Wall” events. The International Studies, Washington events are designed to break down the barriers DC. He will speak in defense of drones. Panelist between scripted storytelling and current events in Dan Simpson is a former United States Ambassador our community and around the world. They are and a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He intended to make audience members think about will speak against drone strikes. (continued on page 8) issues from different vantage points. The February

February 14

One Billion Been Rising for Justice Last year on Valentine’s Day at least a billion people in over 190 countries of the world came together and, through dance and song, called for an end to violence against women and girls- One Billion Women Rising.

The word "billion" refers to the statistic that one in three women will be raped or beaten in their lifetime, or about one billion In Pittsburgh we gathered at Market Square to remember those in our community who were victims of sexual violence and were empowered through dance

February 16

to raise our voices for this to end.

This year once again One billion will raise their voices for justice.

Justice for those victims of sexual violence, for those in prison who were February 12, 19, & 26 forced to defend themselves against sexual violence and for those in the armed forces who have

by Ninamary Langsdale been and are being Anyone interested in sexually abused with learning broadly about no recourse. national development of the Rally in Market New Economy should read, Square at noon!

What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution by Gar Alperovitz and attend a book discussion at the Big Idea Bookstore. On succeeding the Offering of Letters in your Wednesdays, February 12, 19, and church or campus. You’ll find the 26, from 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., key resources and information you need at the workshop. More March 2 background on Bread’s 2014 advocacy campaign will be available soon at www.bread.org/go/ol.

Help save more lives of hungry people: Sunday, March 2, 2014 reform U.S. international food aid! Join us for the annual Pittsburgh and Southwestern 2:00 - 6:00 p.m.

Rodef Shalom, Fifth Pennsylvania Offering of Letters training Avenue, Oakland workshop. The workshop is free and open The Empty Bowls dinner to the public. is a meager meal of soup For more information and to register for and bread, reminding us that the workshop, contact Joyce Rothermel at too many people in our region still 412-780-5118 or have empty bowls and face hunger. jrothermel@pittsburghfoodbank.org.

The event has helped raise as much as $50,000 in prior years for Just Joyce Rothermel is Co-Chair of the SW Harvest and the Greater Pittsburgh PA Bread for the World Team.

Community Food Bank.

New Economy Book Discussion

Bread for the World Regional Workshop

by Joyce Rothermel All who are interested in joining the Bread for the World efforts on reform of international food aid in 2014 to make it more efficient and effective are encouraged to participate in a training workshop being held on Sunday, February 16, from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m. at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 4503 Old William Penn Highway in Monroeville.

Participants will hear from Larry Hollar, regional coordinator of Bread for the World, and Paul Nelson, professor of international development at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School for Public and International Affairs. Legislative aides of our U.S. Congressional delegations have been invited.

Those attending will hear updates on key hunger issues in Congress, and prepare for

the New Economy Working Group will host a study group open to anyone interested learning and talking about how we can build the New Economy in Pittsburgh. Email NEWGPgh@gmail.com for more information.

Ninamary Langsdale is a member of the New Economy Working Group, with developing expertise in Benefit Corporations.

19th Annual Empty Bowls Dinner Highlights include: Celebrity guests, strolling entertainers, children’s activities, a silent auction of ceramic art and celebrityautographed bowls, soup-togo, and a beautiful hand made bowl to take home.

To purchase tickets, go to www.justharvest.org or call Just Harvest at 412-431-8960.

March 9

Muslims and Christians: How Do We Build Common Ground?

by Joyce Rothermel A growing number of people on the planet are becoming Muslims, including people throughout our region. Many of us know very little about Islam and for a variety of reasons have many misconceptions about it and its followers. This upcoming Pittsburgh event is for us!

We are invited to participate in this year’s spring conference by the Association of Pittsburgh Priests entitled: Muslims and Christians: How

Do We Build Common Ground? The event will be held on Sunday, March 9, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at St. Mary of the Mount’s Sullivan Hall, 131 Bigham Street in Mt. Washington. The goal of this conference is twofold: to learn more about Islam and to learn more about Christian responses to Muslims.

Participants will be invited to respond to the following:

What do I know about Islam? What would I like to know?

How do I learn about Muslims? How many Muslims do I know personally?

What would help me go forward beyond the stereotypes to build bridges?

To inform the conference is the main speaker, Karen Hussaini. Her presentation is entitled “Islam, the Quran, and Muslim Life and Spirituality.” Karen Hussaini is president of the Syed Farooq Hussaini Islamic Interfaith Network, an organization bringing people and communities together through respectful dialogue and action.

February 2014

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NEWPEOPLE - 3

Fostering Community Does This City of Immigrants Welcome New Immigrants?

by Scilla Wahrhaftig Pittsburgh has always been a city of immigrants, and many have found here a welcoming home. Can we become a welcoming city again? Our new Mayor Bill Peduto is interested in exploring the idea and making Pittsburgh a “Welcoming City.”

Unlike many Eastern cities Pittsburgh has an immigrant population that is more dispersed and less visible, thus less organized and less able to make its needs known.

Vibrant Pittsburgh has been working on bringing new immigrants to Pittsburgh but is focusing mainly on immigrants with college degrees, who are professionals in their fields. A coalition of groups consisting of the Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network (PIIN), American Friends Service Committee PA (AFSC), One Pittsburgh, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are interested in exploring having Pittsburgh become a “Welcoming City.”

The idea of a “Welcoming City” has been piloted in Dayton, Ohio.

“The Welcome Dayton effort

promotes immigrant integration into the greater Dayton region by encouraging business and economic development; providing access to education, government, health and social services; ensuring equity in the justice system; and promoting an appreciation of arts and culture.”

“This is not a City of Dayton government program,” says Mayor Gary Leitzell. “For this effort to be successful, it will take the support and active participation of businesses, schools, institutions and organizations throughout the Dayton area. The Welcome Dayton plan represents an attitude we all must adopt to take advantage of the brainpower, energy and resources available through the various immigrant groups coming to Dayton.”

A Welcoming City recognizes that a vibrant community can incorporate all its citizens and the many skills and abilities they bring.

Pittsburgh has a long way to go before it becomes a “Welcoming City.”

Those working with the immigrant community are hearing about many abuses within the community.

Deportations are up. There is concern about police referring people who are being held for minor offenses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE will deport those who are undocumented. There have been reported instances of ICE agents waiting outside apartment buildings that house immigrants hoping to catch people who are undocumented as they leave. They have even been known to force their way inside and to search apartments without a reason or warrant. This is causing a great deal of distress to the occupants, especially the children.

Our immigration coalition is in the process of working with the Mayor’s office to get a number of steps in place that will help our immigrant population and move us towards

being a city that welcomes all. Some steps, such as ensuring the police are not collaborating with ICE to deport people, can be taken immediately. We are hoping the city will make available a city picture ID card which will show people are registered with the city. We are especially concerned about our young dreamers who are on deferred action and are hoping the city can help them get Pittsburgh Promise money to go to college. (These are youth who came to the U.S. as young children and are now able to stay in the country for at least two years.)

Dayton has benefited greatly from welcoming immigrants and has seen whole blighted neighborhoods revitalized by groups settling in their city. We are hoping Pittsburgh will follow their example and that we will once again become a city that welcomes all people.

Scilla Wahrhaftig is the American Friends Service Committee PA Program Director.

Potential Budget Cuts Worry Obama Academy’s Swimmers, Coach

by Lucy Newman for the Obama Eagle EAST LIBERTY, PITTSBURGH—“I would cry if the swim team got cut,” says Danielle Lewis, a ninth grader on Pittsburgh Obama’s girls swim team.

Yet that is exactly what could happen if Superintendent Linda Lane’s proposed budget changes go through.

The district is currently $584 million in debt, and our deficit is hovering at around $55 million; according to The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, we are on track to declare bankruptcy in 2016. Linda Lane spoke recently about how she may attempt to address these problems.

Whether the debt is reduced by making cuts or by raising taxes, or whether we ignore the problem and declare bankruptcy, there will be many people unhappy with the solution. The proposal includes increased class sizes, closed schools, and changes to special education programs that would encompass sending special education students to their home school rather than the schools that are prepared to teach them.

One particularly controversial measure that Lane proposed in her speech is cutbacks on sports. This includes middle school swimming, wrestling, and volleyball, as well as high school swimming, golf, and tennis.

According to Mark Rauterkus, the high school boys swimming and golf coach for Obama Academy, “Dr. Lane speaks highly of teamwork. It’s a core principle that the district likes to value.

But teams are one of the first things they’re cutting in this new round.” High school sports teams are important for “a million reasons.” They teach good interpersonal skills, time management skills, and make students more attractive applicants to colleges and employers, according to Rauterkus.

At this point, it is difficult to say what will happen with the proposal. It is possible that the proposed plan will not 4 - NEWPEOPLE

go through. It is possible that the sports teams will be picked up by some other organization, such as Citiparks. But it is also possible that our school district is about to remove a priceless enhancement to our school’s community and an invaluable contribution to its students.

But to be sure, running a sports program of any kind takes money, and funding for any given team at any given school can entail many purchases for many needs. This point is not lost on Coach Rauterkus. ”Last year the swim team didn’t even get new suits. The only thing we spent was $200 on those purple latex caps. We still have the Schenley backstroke flags and Schenley lane lines,” he explains. ” Last year the district purchased new starting blocks and a new timing system. The scoreboard costs somewhere around $8,000 to $10,000. The starting blocks were probably around $2,000 each.

That’s around $20,000 total for this hardware stuff. Being in the WPIAL, we have to have meets. And meets mean we have to have officials. That’s $200. A bus for one meet is $200 more. Last year the other big savings was that I coached both the boys and girls teams. That saved around $3,000. This year we have Mr. Boyce, which is good. We have to make sure we have good instruction and safety for all of our swimmers.”

Multiply these expenses by the number of PPS high schools, and then add in similar needs for each various sport, and the problem becomes clear.

Where does the funding come from?

Is it possible that the teams would continue but not sponsored by the school district? Mr. Rauterkus believes that it might be a blessing to have the school pools be run and operated through another agency such as Citiparks. “Then we could have water polo, triathlons, varsity teams that could compete at the highest level.”

But for the moment, he says that he

February 2014

hopes the proposed cuts will mean that more kids will get involved in swimming, and “that kids will get involved in the discussions at every level.” He adds, “Not having a swim team is, I don’t know, bizarre.”

Mr. Rauterkus points to what athletics and more specifically, swimming, can do for young adults, and points to his own son, an Obama graduate, as an example.

“Where Erik goes to college, at Swarthmore, 55 percent of the students were varsity athletes. Now he’s a swimmer at Swarthmore. He loves his coach, he has a lot of friends on the team. At Washington and Jefferson, 45 percent of the students were varsity athletes. Being on a sports team in college gives you a support group. If we want the students to be “Promise Ready,” we need kids who are good athletes. You learn time management. It makes you more attractive to possible employers or universities. It presents job opportunities. There are lifeguarding jobs, you can work at Summer

Swim practice at Obama Academy. Photo published by The Obama Eagle.

Dreamers, there are college scholarships especially for swimmers. Lifeguarding can be the first rung on the ladder to becoming a doctor. You learn CPR and first aid. You can save someone’s life.

High school sports is really a beautiful career advancement.”

In the next few weeks, the school board will hold meetings; public discussions will be held, as well.

Lucy Newman attends the Pittsburgh Barack Obama Academy for International Studies and is a senior writer for the Obama Eagle Online at www.obamaeagle.org.

Creating the Angel’s Pathway

by Renee Irwin Unfortunately, troubled times, family issues, school challenges, bullying, etc. cause children to be stifled and blocked in a world where they are almost unaware of what is going on inside them and they don't have the ability to define, express, or to know what they are actually feeling.

The pressures of the outside world, competition, distractions, and the need to please others, numb hearts and minds and removes the opportunity for children to be true to their inborn gifts and desires.

I believe that by utilizing the creative arts process, children can identify what

they're feeling, shed their emotional weight, and have the tools and skills they need to live a happy, fulfilling life in the direction of their dreams.

In this way we can bring each child back into their center, help them find balance in their lives, and listen to their heart’s dreams and what they desire to do.

I am working on creating such a space. If you are interested in helping please email me at rcirenee@msn.com.

Renee Irwin is an advocate for children and their rights to feel safe, nurtured & have creative outlets for healing in their community.

Pittsburgh Politics Stand with UPMC Workers to Build a Better Pittsburgh (continued from page 1)

The Thomas Merton Center is a proud consumer of TriEagle Energy.

To date, the Labor Board has issued two massive complaints against UPMC, which settled the first of them by committing to refrain from illegally harassing, intimidating, discriminating against and firing workers. But the behavior didn’t stop. A trial around the second complaint is scheduled Above: 20-foot tall UPMC letters getting ready to be mounted by helicopter on top of all three sides of the U.S. for February 3.

UPMC is also pursuing a case in Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh at a cost of $750,000.

Federal Court to roll back decades Photo published by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 2008. of progress for women and minorities by 2. Respect workers’ right to a voice and challenging the government’s authority to equality on the job. UPMC must stop retaliating require federal contractors to abide by equal and harassing its workers who are pointing to a opportunity and affirmative action regulations. way out of poverty, must stop working If UPMC were to succeed in its outrageous suit, alongside anti-worker groups, and must stop its no federal contractors or subcontractors attack on affirmative action and equal anywhere in the country would be required to opportunity regulations. comply with regulations designed to eradicate The strength of our city depends on UPMC discrimination and ensure equal employment playing a stronger role in improving our opportunities in federally supported programs. economy. Please join us on March 3 at 12 noon It doesn’t have to be this way. UPMC has the at the former U.S. Steel Building on Grant power to reduce inequality and open up middle Street to help our brothers and sisters at UPMC. class jobs to service workers. The steps are simple, and the impact would be great. We are Barney Oursler is Executive Director of calling on UPMC to: Pittsburgh UNITED, a coalition of faith, 1. Provide jobs that let service workers cover community, environmental and union their basic expenses. Raising the median wage organizations focusing on making economic for support staff from $12.18 an hour to $15 an development benefit communities and hour would lift thousands of families out of a create family- sustaining jobs. daily struggle into a sustainable life.

It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhoods:

by Carol Gonzalez opportunity and, as Mayor A polar vortex could Peduto phrased it, “duty to not keep a couple create the next Pittsburgh.” thousand of us away on From the high-school the sixth of January as we marching bands (Obama gathered in the warmth Academy, Allderdice, & and beauty of Heinz Hall Westinghouse) pre-show to for the Inauguration of recessional and parade to a William Peduto as the receiving line at PPG 60th Mayor of the City of Wintergarden, this Pittsburgh. It had been inauguration pulsed with eight years since music and the passion of neighbors and I met with HEINZ HALL—Carol poetry and prayer. Opening Gonzalez at Peduto’s Bill Peduto at a ‘Meet & with the heart-warming Mr. mayoral inauguration Greet’ in Manchester Rogers’ theme song, “It’s a during his exploratory run for mayor in Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and 2005. I was delighted on that day at the woven together with diverse offerings of Blackwell’s to learn Dan Gilman, a Celtic bagpipes for the Presentation of former student-leader from my teaching Colors, along with Bob Dylan’s “Times days at Shady Side Academy, was They Are A-Changin” and Pete Seeger’s working for Bill as his chief of staff. It “This Land is Your Land” performed by cemented in my own mind a sense that the Afro-American Music Institute in Bill Peduto we just might have “the Choir, Vanessa German’s poetic spoken real deal.” word brought the crowd to its feet in With 19 years track record on hopeful cheer for this moment in Pittsburgh City Council and in so many Pittsburgh’s proud history. With the community gatherings over the years, presence of the interfaith community in Bill Peduto has proven to be one of those the Invocation & Benediction, Rev. rare politicians who speak of and lives Randy Bush’s (ELPC) cogent pastoral ideals of “keeping faith.” So it was remarks spoken directly to Mayor something of a full circle to hear at this Peduto seemed a centering and sobering celebratory culmination the new Mayor prophetic call on perspective, for a Peduto give a shout-out to Dan Gilman governance that always acts with the (newly elected member of City Council) poorest citizens among us in mind. No in recognition for Dan’s contribution to surprise then that the line that garnered this poised moment for a progressive the most applause during Mayor opportunity in da ‘Burgh! Sitting next to Peduto’s thoughtful, intelligent another Northside friend I’d met during address—just after taking the Oath of the Occupy Pgh actions, Bram Office—was when he spoke of acting Reichbaum (of Pgh Comet), just with a vision for the future, keeping in contributed to this sense that we were all mind the ‘seventh generation’ impacted joyfully taking in this inaugural moment, by the choices we make in our day. this new beginning offering a unique Humble enough to realize his election

A New Mayor for the Next Pittsburgh!

as mayor isn’t the reform itself, but just the beginning of achieving the accountability, responsibility, and sustainability that Mayor Peduto has promised the citizens of this beloved city, it is heartening that just a few days later on, Thursday, January 9, those goals were reinforced at Pittsburgh UNITED’s* celebration hosted in the Kaufmann Center (Hill House). A spirit of ‘Happy New Year’ was in the air as Mayor Bill Peduto spoke to a full room of about 150 progressive allies from a coalition of labor unions and nonprofits and City Council members gathered in the Hill District to make a public commitment towards “good jobs, smart development and strong, sustainable communities.”

Mayor Peduto's image of cooperative collaboration— improving the city block by block— for small, real changes that contribute to a mosaic of transformation in our beloved city dovetails well with PIIN's economic and moral "Love Thy Neighbor Campaign.” United we aim to not "just get by," but "get ahead," as one union worker gave witness, with the understanding that we all do BETTER when we ALL do better. Mayor Peduto explained that this is best accomplished by city government infrastructure, education, and economic development investments directed to grassroots neighborhood groups rather than large developers. The stunning statistic quoted

by Natalia Rudiak (City Council) that one quarter of Pittsburgh citizens live in poverty is a sobering reality check for any new mayor, reinforcing the initial focus for PIIN’s campaign of a living

*Pittsburgh UNITED Coalition of Partner Organizations:                  

Action United Clean Water Action GASP Hill District Consensus Group Ironworkers Local 3 Just Harvest Mon Valley Unemployed Committee NAACP PIIN SEIU32 BJ Sierra Club UFCW Local 23 I.A.T.S.E. Local 3 Laborers’ District Council of W. PA Nine Mile Run Watershed Assoc.

PennEnvironment Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers United Steelworkers International

wage, particularly for service workers of Pittsburgh’s largest employer. Promising “square deals rather than special interests,” I smiled in hearing Mayor Peduto’s call for a healthy, integrated balance where “Profitability is never, ever at the expense of People and Planet.” Yes, indeedy. It’s lookin’ to be a “beautiful day in the neighborhood…”

Congratulations to Mayor Peduto and the City of Pittsburgh!

Carol J. Gonzalez, former TMC board member, continues to serve on the New People editorial collective and is a member of the New Economy Working Group of Pittsburgh.

February 2014

NEWPEOPLE - 5

Economic Justice Don’t Let Congress Fast-Track Corporate Rule (continued from page 1)

It is above all protectionism in regard to corporate rights granting pharmaceutical companies rights to extend patents on drugs and giving corporations the right to sue governments for profits that they have been unable to realize because of government regulations.

The proposed pact would limit even how governments can spend their tax dollars. Buy America and other Buy Local procurement preferences that invest in the U.S. economy would be banned, and “sweat-free,” human rights or environmental conditions on government contracts could be challenged. In a word, TPP puts another nail in the coffin of country sovereignty or peoples’ sovereignty.

Through TPP, corporate global rule and sovereignty will be proclaimed.

In the U.S., President Obama was initially against TPP since it so conflicted with his campaign rhetoric and promises. TPP was considered a Bush corporate enterprise at that time. But now, not only is Obama pro-TPP, but

by Russ Fedorka he is pleading with all his might with Congress to give him fast track authority with the treaty.

Fast track would play a more active role in the economy. Today, give the we need an agenda that is every bit as focused on President and his creating jobs and making sure they pay a living negotiators, who wage as it is on strengthening the safety net.

50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty (continued from page 1)

Congress’ failure to extend unemployment benefits expiring last December is yet another way that the nation’s safety net for millions of people has been weakened.

Now, it is time to acknowledge that to win the War on Poverty, we must wage a battle against income inequality. There is a push locally, in Pennsylvania, and in Washington, D.C. to increase the minimum wage and to index it to inflation or productivity growth.

President Obama has declared his support. Such action would ensure that everyone is gaining a share of prosperity as the economy grows. A war on unions for the past several decades has weakened their efforts to create and sustain a strong middle class.

The War on Poverty created today’s safety net. It was never as strong as it needed to be, so there is plenty of room for improvement. The issue of income inequality demands that the government

Joyce Rothermel is Co-Chair of the SW PA Bread Team.

A New Economy Strives for Ethics in Business (continued from page 1)

One of the new program enhancements within the Berg Center is the creation of the Socially Responsible Investment Club.

Members examine the impact and parameters of socially responsible financial investing. More information on the Berg Center is at www.business.pitt.edu/katz/berg We look forward to even greater participation by institutions like Pitt in the establishment of business and development practices that create shared value for all concerned.

Among the highlighted activities during the New Economy Celebration will be speaking and workshop appearances by Gar Alperovitz, a leading voice in new economy action. We will also make small awards of New Economy Demonstration Project Grants to people or organizations who want 6 - NEWPEOPLE

February 2014

to undertake a small project that demonstrates new economy principles in action. The projects could be urban agriculture, renewable energy generation, resource “upcycling,” forming a cooperative business, or other ways to show the way out of the many extractive and wasteful practices that dominate our current economy.

We are asking anyone who wants to specifically support the New Economy Celebration – and the New Economy Demonstration Project Awards – to send an additional check – in any amount – to the Merton Center. Please make a note on the check to earmark it for NEWGPGH. Thanks! Stay tuned!

Ron Gaydos works in economic development.

remain secret, entire authority to negotiate the treaty. By law, Congress has the sole authority to negotiate treaties. Giving away this authority is an extraordinary abdication of duty on behalf of Congress. The only authority Congress would retain under fast track would be to vote the bill in its final form up or down. No amendments or alterations to the corporate written treaty would be allowed. Congress’ likelihood to grant Obama fast track is all rather extraordinary given that the present Congress is hell-bent on obstructing every initiative of Obama’s. Perhaps the only explanation for the compliance of Congress in regard to fast track for TPP is that on corporate welfare and rule, there is quasi-unanimity among all parties and the Administration.

Corporate rule is the rule of the land.

2014 is apt to be the year of the big push on fast track to finalize TPP. For those committed to social justice, however, the defeat of this legislation is paramount. We have to block fast track and put TPP in the trash can of history.

Call your Congressperson, your Senators and the President and take all measures to stop the passage of the TPP .

Michael Drohan is a member of the Board of TMC and co-chair of the editorial collective.

THE ARSON YEARS, 1970-1980 —by Michelle M. Tokarczyk It costs to heat the pipes, keep water in the faucets, repaint walls chipping lead.

So the landlord stopped. Some left.

Others bundled coats on beds, blasted their ovens, carried buckets from hydrants, walked up flight after flight, spilling.

Only one way to get rid of renters with nowhere to go.

He ripped out copper pipes and lighting fixtures.

Then hired a torch to concoct acid and oxidizers, douse the walls and floors, ignite. The fire burned right through.

Nothing left, but hundreds of thousands to collect.

Again. In five years an average of three fires a day.

Families slept in jeans and shirts, ready to flee.

The sky, always orange, always alight, people prayed Dios mio….Jesus, my savior…If I die, before I wake.

For some, it was the second, the third burn out.

They escaped grabbing sweaters, IDs, rosaries.

They covered their mouths, their children’s eyes. as they ran from smoke and stories. People, many people, dying with arms outstretched on the bathroom’s chipped floor. Survivors with chopped-off finger tips, leather faces, hiding their fates in an aunt’s locked bedroom.

Our ancient mariners harmed no one.

Yet they wandered, throats singed silent backs bent as if still weighted.

If you dared look, their eyes told everything: Some say the world will end in fire.

We say our world already did.

Michelle M. Tokarczyk is a long-time scholar in workingclass studies and a poet who has published work in numerous journals and anthologies. She is working on a collection of poems about the Bronx from 1960 until the present.

Tokarczyk teaches at a liberal arts college in Maryland and divides her time between Baltimore and New York City.

International News Locked in Winter: Nine Afghani Refugee Families Displaced After Fire

by Kathy Kelly January 6, 2014, KABUL—The fire in the Chaman e Babrak camp began in Nadiai’s home shortly after noon. She had rushed her son, who had a severe chest infection, to the hospital. She did not know that a gas bottle, used for warmth, was leaking; when the gas connected with a wood burning stove, flames engulfed the mud hut in which they lived and extended to adjacent homes, swiftly rendering nine extended families homeless and destitute in the midst of already astounding poverty. By the time seven fire trucks had arrived in response to the fire at the refugee camp, the houses were already burned to the ground.

Zakia. Photo by Abdulai Safarali.

Zakia, age 54, said this is the worst catastrophe she has seen in her life, and already their situation was desperate.

Zakia had slapped her own face over and over again to calm and focus herself as she searched for several missing children while the fire initially raged. Now, three days later, her cheeks are quite bruised, but she is relieved that the children were found.

Now the nine families have squeezed in with their neighbors. “We are left with only the clothes on our body,” said Maragul. She added that all of the victims feel very grateful to their neighbors. “We cook together,” she said, “and they offer us shelter at night.”

Three or four families will sleep together in one room. Asked if their neighbors were all from the same clan, Maragul,

Nadiai and Zakia immediately began naming the different ethnic groups that are among their neighbors. Some are Turkman, some Uzbek, some from Herat or Kabul, others are Pashtun, and some are Kuchi. The women said that they begin to feel like brothers and sisters, living together in these adverse circumstances.

The Chaman e Babrak refugee camp spills over the grounds of a large field formerly used for sporting events. With 720 families crowded into the camp, it is second in density and size only to the Charahi Qambar refugee camp, on the outskirts of Kabul, which is twice as large and more than twice as full as the Chaman e Babrak camp.

Years ago, before the Taliban originally captured Kabul, some of the families in this camp had rented homes in the area. They had fled to Pakistan to escape the fighting, hoping to find a future with security and work. After the U.S. invasion, with President Karzai’s accession to power, they’d been urged to return, told that it was safe to go back.

But upon their return they’d learned their old homes and land now belonged to victorious warlords, and they learned again that safety is painfully elusive in conditions of poverty and the social disintegration that follows years, and in their case decades, of war.

Asked about prospects for their husbands to find work, the women shook their heads. Nadiai said that her husband has occasional work as a porter, carrying materials in a wheelbarrow from one site to another. Sometimes construction projects will hire him, but in the winter months construction projects are closed and already scarce work vanishes altogether.

There was never any plan announced to house these families, even before the fire. And since the fire, there has been no offer of aid aside from those seven fire trucks, rushing in to contain an immediate threat not only to the camp but of course to neighboring businesses,

Survivors of the fire survey the damage to their homes. Photo by Abdulai Safarali.

several wedding halls and a plastic surgery hospital, up against which, in a city no stranger to glaring contrasts of wealth, the camp finds itself pressed. I came to the camp with young activists of the Afghan Peace Volunteers there to distribute heavy coverlets, (duvets), manufactured with foreign donations by local seamstresses, precisely for distribution free of charge to Kabul’s neediest people in the winter months.

The UK sister organization to my own group, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, will distribute food packages in the camp during the coming week.

“Conflict affects more Afghans now than at any point in the last decade,” according to Amnesty International’s 2012 report, Fleeing War, Finding Misery. “The conflict has intensified in many areas, and fighting has spread to parts of the country previously deemed relatively peaceful. Four hundred people a day are displaced in Afghanistan, on average, bringing the total displaced population to 500,000 by January 2012.”

The vast expenditures of the U.S. government and its client here simply

can’t be designated as contributions toward “security.” These funds have contributed to insecurity and danger while failing to address basic human needs. The realpolitik of an imperial power, as utterly disinterested in security here as it seems to be in its own people’s safety at home, will not notice this camp.

As we pull together in our communities to kindle concern, compassion, and respect for creative nonviolence, we are in deep winter hoping for a spring. We are right to work and to hope, but faced with the spectacle of winter in Chaman e Babrak I can’t help remembering Barbara Deming’s lines: “Locked in winter, summer lies; gather your bones together. Rise!”

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) cocoordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). In Kabul, she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (ourjourneytosmile.com)

Human Rights and Victory Day Celebrated in Bangladesh

by Amirul Haque Amin The National Garment World Human Rights Workers Federation Day and National Victory represents a part of Day were celebrated in the Bangladeshi Bangladesh in December. workforce consisting On World Human Rights of mostly women.

Day, the National Garment Here the NGWF Workers Federation celebrates women’s rights with a female (NGWF) demanded that empowerment Free Trade Union Rights be symbol on their ensured in the Garment banner.

Sector of Bangladesh with the implementation of conventions 87 and 98 of the ILO streets of the city. General secretary of (International Labor Organization), Bangladesh Youth Unity Sabbah Ali dealing with Freedom of Association and Khan Kolings and General Secretary of Protection of the Right to Organize, and Garment Tailors Workers League ratification of ILO convention 135 for the Bodruzdoza Nizam expressed their protection of workers’ representatives. solidarity with the program.

To mark the occasion of World Human Speakers noted that in Bangladesh Rights Day, the NGWF organized a Red garment is the biggest industrial sector.

Flag Human Chain of garment workers There are 5,000 factories and four in front of the National Press Club in million workers. In the absence of trade Dhaka. More than one hundred unions in the factory level, many times garment workers participated in a human different types of unwanted situations chain that moved through different happen. Recently there was the

amendment of labor law in which there are some positive steps, but still these are not enough. There are still many sections of labor law that are contradictory with ILO convention 87 and 98; like the consent minimum of 30% of the workforce to form a trade union and firing from job without reason (called termination). These types of actions do not match with conventions 87 and 98.

And Bangladesh has not yet ratified the ILO convention 135.

The National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) observed the National Victory Day along with the rest of the country. In 1971, Bangladesh became an independent country. Twenty -three years ago Bangladesh was part of Pakistan. After a long struggle, direct war for freedom was started on March 26, 1971, and it ended on 16th December.

We became an independent country BANGLADESH. In this war 3 million people, including workers, were killed; 200,000 woman were raped by the Pakistani army and their collaborators.

The whole nation of Bangladesh celebrates the Victory Day. On the occasion, President, Prime Ministers, all the democratic parties and all other organizations observe the day and pay their respect at the National Victory Monument in Savar - 40 km away from the capital city, Dhaka. NGWF on behalf of garment workers paid their respects at the national monument.. More than one thousand garment workers participated with Bangladeshi flags.

Amirul Haque Amin is president of the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF). Editorial collective Member Kenneth Miller submitted the article to The New People.

February 2014

NEWPEOPLE - 7

Art Against War Crimes Stop Sexual Assault in the Military (SSAM)

I urge the editors to go beyond empathetic phrases. Join the real fight to stop the rape of the next 26,000 soldiers.

by Ginny Hildebrand President Obama’s, to be anemic, On January 4, 2014, the when an unambiguous Ginny Hildebrand is the founder of Stop Sexual Post-Gazette wrote an endorsement of the Military Assault in the Military, a project dedicated to editorial outlining the Justice Improvement Act (MJIA) raising awareness and changing legislation to vastness of sexual assault is an option. protect people from abuse and lack of crimes occurring within the Out of the Pentagon’s representation and due prosecution in the military.

U.S. Military that have estimated 26,000 rapes and largely been hidden and gone other sexual assaults in unpunished. The editorial 2012, only 3,374 were also describes a few of the reported and only 302 Still from the documentary The Invisible War went to trial. Why? Not positive reforms recently signed into law. It adds that because identifying and Congress did not take a stand on removing “the locating an accused assailant is a mystery.

—by Marilyn Miller Brusca prosecution of sexual crimes in the U.S. military Terrifyingly, he’s in the barracks next door! from the 2012 presidential election campaign from the chain of command and turn(ing) it over to So why? independent military prosecutors,” which is the most The brave men and women in the film We live in a flawed world crucial reform needed, according to survivors of describe how their commanders—when not The worm in the apple sexual assault and their advocates. The PG editors the perpetrators—shielded the accused then Pitting on the chrome don’t take a stand on this either, nor does President blamed and retaliated against the victims.

Insects in our harvest Obama.

The second devastating crime.

Canes and crutches In fact, the President backs a year long delay Our outrage is hollow unless we The demise of Work before considering any further reforms. The PG support real solutions including vigorous The disintegrating Home concludes its editorial with the vague investigations, prosecutions and severe We live in a flawed world recommendation that the process of addressing the punishments. This will happen only if Deafness, blindness epidemic of sexual violence “continue and unbiased legal professionals, not The loss of faith intensify.” commanders, take charge when sexual Wild destructive weather; an apocalyptic clash Like your editors, I too viewed The Invisible assaults are reported. Senator Kirstin Greed and corruption War, which powerfully documents the plague of Gillibrand’s MJIA would do this.

In the 1%, privileged class sexual assaults in the U.S. Military. I was so jolted Rape and other forms of sexual Compromise and shame; in this we’re all the same that I helped form a local organization, Stop Sexual violence are hideous, life-shattering We live in a flawed world Assault in the Military (SSAM— contact us at crimes. They are weapons of choice for We live in a flawed world, insisting ssam@thomasmertoncenter.org) to defend survivors, torturers and terrorists worldwide. What On our feeble explanations expose these crimes and fight for policy changes to grotesque hypocrisy to allow this within For every jot or tittle that ushers forth frustration stop them. Frankly, I find the PG’s response, like the U.S. military.

We quibble, “Mistakes were made”

(1%, 99%, 47%) = MATH IN A FLAWED WORLD

Bricolage/ Fifth Wall Theater Takes on the local Campaign to Stop Sexual Assault in the Military Performance and Talk Back Saturday, March 8—3:00 pm Screening clips from the documentary The Invisible War AND acting out scenes from Tammy Ryan’s A Soldiers Heart Talk Back Panelists: Ginny Hildebrand (SSAM), Tammy Ryan (Playwright), Tami Dixon (Producing Director, Fifth Wall), Sgt. William Jenkins, and Joyce Wagner (Iraq Veterans Against the War). Audience participation welcomed. More information is available at www.bricolagepgh.org.

February 10:

The Predator, a Play About Drones

(continued from page 3)

Drones are unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft equipped with missiles. Drone “pilots,” such as one of the characters in The Predator, sit safe and sound in Nevada and elsewhere thousands of miles away from the people they monitor and kill. Soon drone pilots will begin to operate out of Horsham Air Force Base outside Philadelphia.

The United States first used a killer drone against members of Al-Qaeda in Yemen in 2002. Since then, the United States has used drones to conduct targeted assassinations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iran, Libya, and Somalia. The U.S. drone campaign is nowhere near an end, so expect other countries to be added to the list.

Washington does not release figures on the number of civilians killed by drones. President Obama and administration officials insist that drones are precision, “surgical,” weapons which pinpoint terrorists but which kill very few civilians. This is contradicted by evidence that drones kill large numbers of noncombatants. This is borne out in studies by independent organizations such as the New America Foundation, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the (British) Bureau of Investigative Journalism, to name only a few.

Given how drones are used, the large civilian body 8 - NEWPEOPLE

February 2014

We bray, “To the Victors go the Spoils” We plead, “We have no choices” When we wage yet another war We suffer the scarcity of gentle hands Artisans, carpenters, teachers, sowers We’ve too few dreamers, and fewer strangers To rely on for acts of kindness We live in a flawed world And no poet need remind us!

Marilyn Miller Brusca is a retired nurse and persistent writer with a degree in English from LaRoche College. Her poems have been published in America Magazine, the Pittsburgh PostGazette, and (on the subject of Thomas Merton) an early issue of the New People.

State University, and various venues in New York State, Georgia, Chicago, and North Carolina.

Jeffrey Carpenter, Artistic Director at Bricolage, who is directing the reading, told The New People that Bricolage is “interested in the robust dialog associated with this issue. As sweeping technological advancements enable us to protect our soldiers and law enforcement officers by keeping them out of the line of fire, how do we maintain a sense of what is reality and the consequences involved, take responsibility for socalled ‘collateral damage’ and human suffering? Do the pros outweigh the cons? Where will it all end? We want to create a safe space where all sides are heard, and people can work it out for themselves.”

Bricolage is located at 937 Liberty Avenue (downtown), First Floor. Tickets: $15 ($10 for students with I.D.) available through the Bricolage website at https://bricolagepgh.secure.force.com/ticket/ #details_a0SE000000DU474MAD Tickets are also available at the door. A “happy half hour” begins at 6:30 p.m. before the 7:00 p.m. reading.

If you’d like to join the Anti-Drone Warfare Coalition in our work, please e-mail Francine Porter at francineporter@aol.com or go to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Pghadwc

count is unsurprising. On December 12, in Yemen, a drone killed twelve members of a wedding party and wounded five. The strike was intended to kill members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula but according to Reuters all those in the wedding party were civilians.

Attacks on wedding parties and funerals are common.

So are “double tap” strikes at rescuers who go to help persons wounded in an initial drone attack. What’s more, military-age males killed in a strike zone are counted as militants unless posthumously proven otherwise—and the Pentagon and CIA aren’t straining themselves trying to find out. It’s much easier to win a War on Terror when you’re the one who gets to decide who counts as a terrorist.

The Predator is written by Catholic peace activist Jack Gilroy. Jack was arrested for his nonviolent protest of drones at Hancock Air Force Base in Syracuse, New York.

The central character in The Predator is Ella, a college student who has joined the movement against drones. Ella’s mother is an Air Force officer and drone pilot. A third character is Ella’s mentor, a seasoned activist. Rounding out the cast is a U.S. Senator who defends drone attacks.

The Predator has received staged readings before Charles Pierson is a member of the Pittsburgh Antienthusiastic audiences at Georgetown University, Drone Warfare Coalition.

Syracuse University, Wittenberg University, Memphis

Faith in Peace Muslims and Christians: How Do We Build Common Ground? (continued from page 3)

Ms. Hussaini founded the organization after the death of her husband, Syed Farooq Hussaini, a leader in the interfaith community, in an effort to carry on his important work. Ms. Hussaini was raised a Catholic and embraced Islam in 1990.

Facilitators for the conference are Slippery Rock University’s Jessamine Montero Michaels, senior officer for diversity and inclusion, and Holly McCoy, assistant vice president for diversity and equal opportunity.

The suggested donation for the conference is $20. Checks can be made out to Association of Pittsburgh Priests and mailed to them at P.O. Box 2106, Pittsburgh PA 15230. You can also register at assocpghpriests@yahoo.com and pay at the door. For more information

Book Review

about the conference, please contact Fr. John Oesterle at 412-232-7512 or johnoesterle2@gmail.com The Association of Pittsburgh Priests is a diocesan-wide organization of ordained priests and non-ordained women and men who act on their baptismal call to be priests and prophets. Its mission is to carry out a ministry of justice and renewal, rooted in the Gospel and spirit of Vatican Council II. Their general meetings are the second Monday of the month at 7:00 p.m. at Epiphany Administrative Center (next to the Consol Energy Center) in Pittsburgh.

Joyce Rothermel is Chair of the Church Renewal Committee of the Association of Pittsburgh Priests.

Transform Now Plowshares Anti-Nuke Activists to be Sentenced

by Jim Ullrich The sentencing date for the Transform Now Plowshares resisters, Greg Boertje-Obed, Sr. Megan Rice, and Michael Walli, was set for January 28, 2014, in federal court in Knoxville, Tennessee.

[Update: The January 28 sentencing was recessed due to snow until February 18.]

Previously, Greg, Megan, and Michael were being held in Ocilla, Georgia. On October 2 Judge Amul Thapar denied the defense team's motion to dismiss the sabotage charge which sets the stage for sentences up to 30 years in length. In his denial Judge Thapar did indicate that the nonviolent nature of the action should be taken in account at sentencing. The court has received more than 2,100 letters and

postcards from individuals and groups in 45 states and 16 countries that support the protesters. OREPA (Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance) has rallied local and out of state supporters during the sentencing trial in Knoxville. Information about what happened can be obtained at www.orepa.org.

Jim Ullrich is a peace activist formerly from Pittsburgh. He now lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Moshé Machover's Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution

by Michael Drohan This book is a compendium of essays written by Moshé Machover between 1966 and 2010 on various aspects of the conflict in Israel-Palestine with suggestions on the principles underlying its resolution.

Machover is an Israeli born in Tel Aviv in 1936, but he has been a resident of Great Britain since 1968. He is professionally a mathematician and an emeritus Professor at London University.

For Machover, in order to understand the conflict and work towards its resolution it is essential to recognize the historical reality that the origin of Israel is as a colonial settler state which traces its origin to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War 1 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Under the Ottomans, the Arab East (Machover’s name for what is known as the Middle East) had a political and cultural unity which Britain and France slivered up for political purposes of control and domination. An essential dimension of the Zionist colony from the very beginning was

that the communities so formed were based on the exclusion of the local Arab population rather than on the exploitation of the labor of the Palestinian Arabs.

The exclusion has taken the form of removal of the indigenous Arabs beyond the borders of historic Palestine or “voluntary” migration to other parts of the Arab or wider world. In this regard Machover quotes Theodor Herzl, who stated in 1895, “The poorest among the population we try to transfer quietly outside our borders by providing them with work in the transit countries, but in our country we deny them all work. Those with property will join us”. When it comes to considering the resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian problem, it is essential to keep this feature of its origin in mind. It sets Israel apart from the other main genre of colonization such as took place, in Africa and Asia particularly, where the colonial settlers were in a minority among a majority of native peoples whose labor the colonizers exploited.

From its beginning, the Zionist colony was conceived as

an arm of imperialism in that part of the world. Machover insists that Israel’s role in the imperialist project is to be a kind of watchdog controlling any nationalistic urges of the Arab peoples. Historically, it has executed this role admirably in its success to defeat Nasserism in Egypt, Baathism under Saddam Hussein in Iraq and presently political Islam in Iran. Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State of the U.S., summed up Israel’s historic role when he stated, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security”. Any appearance to the contrary which would suggest that Israel is directing U.S. foreign policy and is a kind of Rottweiler that has got off the leash is a delusion.

Machover rejects both the two - and one-state solutions to the Israel-Palestinian problem. The two-state solution is the easiest one to dismiss since such a solution has been made impossible with the pursuance

of more and more Israeli Although one may regret the settlements in the Occupied Zionist colonial settler origins of Territories on the West Bank of the state of Israel, one has to the Jordan. All that is left for the recognize that Israeli Hebrews Palestinians is a series of do constitute a nation with all disjointed Bantustans with no the characteristics of a distinct contiguous borders for a future nation and with consequent state. The so-called peace rights to self-determination. process is a charade and a The solution for Machover to stalling process as more and the problem demands that one more settlements are go outside the “Palestinian box” constructed. The end game is that colonialism, imperialism unstated but becomes more and and Zionism created. Outside more obvious with the passing this box, the solution that of time, and it is the total suggests itself is a federated removal of the Palestinian united Arab East which Arabs from the West Bank. recognizes the right to selfUnlike most other analysts on determination of the different the left, Machover also rejects a nationalities in the region one state solution to the including the Hebrew nation as problem. The idea of a unitary constituted by Jewish secular state was put forward inhabitants of the region. Only first by the PLO prior to the within a socialist Arab East, 1967 war. Spelled out, this which rises above the present formula in the fine print read “a corrupt petit bourgeois democratic non-sectarian aggrandizers in the region, is a Palestine where Christians, Jews human solution possible. and Muslims can live, work and worship without Michael Drohan is co-chair of discrimination.” Machover the editorial collective and a understands this formulation to member of the board of the deny the existence of a Hebrew Thomas Merton Center. nation in Israel and sees its citizens as members of a religion and not a nation.

February 2014 NEWPEOPLE - 9

Sustainable Construction The August Wilson Center for African American Culture: Dollar Value?

by Ginny Cunningham We in Pittsburgh know about construction costs and overruns.

The North Shore Connector? In August of 2010, according to a PostGazette article by John Schmitz, overruns had “pushed the price from an original estimate of $390 to the current $528.8 million.”

The Petersen Events Center? The University Times reported in April 2004 that “the cost of building The Pete increased from $35 million to $119 million from concept stage to completion, including construction cost overruns of $28.5 million. Taxpayers’ share of the project increased from $13 million to $66 million . . .”

The Consol Energy Center? Though news reports don’t talk about cost overruns, TribLive reported in July 2010 that the facility’s “$321 million budget included $47.6 million in public funding,” even though the Penguins’ new home “initially wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers anything. . .”

Pittsburgh Housing Authority?

Pittsburgh International Airport? The Stadiums? Do we really want to go there?

Yes, this is a diverse list, a hodgepodge of apples, oranges, and bananas. Yet, at the end of the day, we do, indeed, have an operating North Shore Connector; the University of Pittsburgh has The Pete. The Penguins fill Consol Energy with screaming fans; planes arrive and depart from the airport; and the Housing Authority and the Stadiums occupy the Pittsburgh landscape almost as permanently as the three rivers and the Mount with its inclines.

Clearly, costs that escalate during a construction project and cost overruns are not a good thing. They must be managed; and, if the context above is an indicator, they usually are. Which makes the case of the August Wilson Center all the more puzzling. We’re talking about a $35.97 million construction budget that escalated only to $42 million. Relatively

speaking: chump change. (The renovation of the lobby of New York’s Public Theatre cost $40 million, paid largely by New York City taxpayers.)

Criticism abounds. The August Wilson Center for African American Culture built something it couldn’t afford. Doesn’t everybody? The Center took on an $11 million mortgage with no plan for how to pay for it. Well, whose idea was that? Can we move past the criticism and on to problem solving and planning?

Listed on the August Wilson Center’s board of directors, according to its website, are a president and CEO of an engineering firm; a president and CEO of a technology and services company; the president of an advertising firm; the deputy general counsel of Lincoln Center; a principal of an accounting firm. Etc. People with talent, creative minds and entrepreneurial skill have made commitments to the August Wilson Center. The potential clearly exists for

successful collaboration where there now appears only pending collapse.

August Wilson belongs to the ages, but he belonged first to Pittsburgh.

August Wilson’s plays are produced, published, read and heard at countless theaters in cities throughout the United States and the world, but they were born out of the Pittsburgh experience. August Wilson’s life and work are as vitally woven into the fabric of Pittsburgh as sports, jazz, churches with domes and riverboats.

Pittsburghers, proud people in their own inimitable way, will not permit a Center dedicated to August Wilson’s legacy to fail. Will they?

Ginny Cunningham is a writer whose career was in public relations for nonprofit organizations. She lives in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh with her husband Pat Fenton and is a member of the editorial collective.

Fourth River Workers Guild and Local Cooperatives

by Brennan Komlenic Fourth River Workers Guild is a growing, worker-owned, for-profit Cooperative committed to enhancing social and ecological diversity and vibrancy.

Our core services of construction and landscaping are intended to be a model for individual and community capacity building. We believe that the border between home and garden, shelter and land, is being softened and that it is necessary to understand the two together. We share the belief that as landowners, we should take individual action to reduce collective burdens on our earth through rain gardens, food abundance and re-used building material.

Our services are continuously evolving as we work with our clients to improve the land and homes around us. We seek new products designed by the community instead of large

corporations. Through linking together with other cooperatives and local businesses we hope to create a strong network of support for us, and everyone involved.

Our workshops offer a unique look into permaculture projects and alternative living.

“We seek the language of the land to live harmoniously within our environment, develop regional trade and create wealth through craft and character.”

You can find more information about us, our services and workshops on our website: www.LanguageOfTheLand.com Rain barrel Brennan Komlenic is a Worker/Owner of Fourth River Workers Guild.

Building for the Future: Passive Houses

by Lucyna DeBarbaro I grew up in Krakow, Poland, behind the Iron Curtain. There, an individual did not have much opportunity or choice for the bigger decisions of life. Now that I live in America it seems that the choices are abundant, yet so few people make them. Mainstream ways of doing things persist without much question. This holds especially true in regards to the construction of the homes that we live in.

Before I moved to Pittsburgh, I lived in a dreadfully sprawled American suburb where the daily routine included burning excessive amounts of gasoline to get from place to place. Farmland gave way more and more to paved roads and strip malls.

And the oversized, poorly constructed homes require a lot of energy to heat and cool.

Pittsburgh has been a saving grace to my environmental conscience. My husband and I live in a small apartment in a big building located in a densely populated neighborhood that allows us the luxury to walk or bike most places we want to visit. While we enjoy this, we realize that our living arrangements don’t make a significant environmental impact when compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country.

Being from Europe, we are well aware of the advances in building construction 10 - NEWPEOPLE

that are spreading widely there, but remain almost unknown here. Buildings are an important part of the sustainability puzzle: they currently use 70% of the country’s electricity and contribute to 40% of all the emitted greenhouses gases.

In our opinion, these practices are not sustainable and are out of line with taking care of the Earth. So my husband and I are now on a quest to help improve the built environment in the U.S.!

As a model for both the local and national community, we are planning to build a “passive” house on two vacant lots we have acquired in Squirrel Hill.

This building project will be constructed in compliance with the Passive House Institute definition and we will seek certification (www.passivehouse.us).

This house will adhere to strict and measurable standards of energy use; it will require 80% less energy to operate compared to current standard new construction and will cost only 10% more to make.

Currently, we are looking for another eco-enthusiast household to join us and underwrite the second half of the duplex construction we are envisioning.

Contact us at 412-681- 0483 or email at pghcoho@gmail.com for details about this opportunity.

February 2014

installed by the Fourth River Workers Guild.

to the outside,) further improving whole window thermal performance, new techniques and sealants to achieve airtightness, advances in scientific research to understand water, vapor, and moisture penetration through walls, in addition to detailed computer modeling for tracking energy losses and gains. There’s also now an extremely efficient ventilation system that can continuously bring fresh air into the house (1/3 of the volume of the house air is exchanged per hour) while retaining most of the heat and humidity level of the inside air. This “energy recovery” ventilation is probably the most important new development that enabled the widespread production of these homes in Europe.

We will construct our house to absorb and/or delay rain water discharge to protect the overrun sewers in response to Pittsburgh’s rain water problems. There may be a green roof sharing space with solar panels. Rain water will also be collected in two 1000 gallon cisterns for use in gardening. The driveway and other walkable spaces will have permeable surface. Retaining walls will be green and living rather than just concrete. The materials to be used in insulation and cladding have been well scrutinized for their global warming potential, embedded energy, waste and pollution indexes, in addition to cost and durability.

Passive houses were pioneered in the 1990s in Germany and Sweden. They are so well constructed and insulated that they don’t require a furnace – they are kept cozily warm simply by the waste heat from appliances and body heat from occupants. There is a small electric heatpump system as a backup that’s needed only for the coldest days of the year. As a result, these houses leave about 70,000 cubic feet of natural gas per year in the ground, compared to standard new construction while typical Pittsburgh houses use up to 150,000 cubic feet.

About a thousand Passive Houses would make one whole fracking well obsolete. With energy use in the Passive House so low it is very feasible to offset all of its electricity use by solar power generation, which makes the path to NetZero homes available to many, rather than a few. In the European Union, all new buildings will be required to be near zero in net energy use starting in 2021 (public buildings, in 2019).

Super-insulated and solar passive homes sprung up around the U.S. in 1970 -80, but they didn’t fare very well on account of moisture and mold problems.

Since that time, many advances have been made: there are now triple pane windows with thermally broken frames, (which means that the frame is not Lucyna DeBarbaro is a member of the continuous from the inside of the window Thomas Merton Center.

Industrial Pollution ‘Economic Freedom Zones’ and Freedom Industries: Polluting West Virginia and Beyond

January 12, 2014— West Virginians fill water bottles to take home, having spent days without safe tap water after a chemical spill in the Elk River.

Photo by Michael Switzer, Associated Press.

by Wanda Guthrie This is too surreal, too much like science fiction— as Karen Bernard says, too much like a “zombie apocalypse!”

Members of the U.S. Senate are continuing to push forward a bill to create "Economic Freedom Zones" that would exempt polluters from complying with the Clean Water Act in high-poverty regions. Economic Freedom Zones Act would completely wipe-out the EPA’s enforcement of water pollution restrictions and oversight of state pollution permitting activities.

The two Senators from Kentucky who introduced this bill are calling it “an anti-poverty measure.”

Yes, this would “free” unemployed residents from the environmental laws that protect their health and

well-being and “free” polluters from accountability for the potentially deadly impacts of their actions!

West Virginia has had a glimpse of what an unfettered Economic Freedom Zone would mean. The chemical leak into the Elk River caused a State emergency affecting the drinking water for 9 counties, 300,000 people. This occurred in a region known as Chemical Valley. Big coal companies have made all the rules and lifted restrictions on just about everything— a long history of assaults on human health and the environment.

The tank owned by Freedom Industries is one of 14 placed along the Elk River. Altogether, these tanks have the capacity to hold 4,000,000 gallons of chemicals. Three of the tanks hold 4methylcyclohexanemethanol, used to wash coal.

Most of the tanks are approximately 50-60 years old, originally part of an old Pennzoil refinery dating back to the 1930’s or 40’s. This particular one is older and the inch wide holes in the retaining wall were big enough to see with a bare eye. We can assume that Freedom Industries did not want to replace these tanks if they didn’t have to, as this might be expensive. The industry claims they take a look at these regularly and that they don’t know what caused the leak. The truth is that these storage tanks are exempt from regulatory inspection.

We can assume that if the drinking water from the reservoir and the river hadn’t stunk so badly, the

industry would not have sent someone out to look. No one knows how long this had been leaking and even after the leak was discovered it took another hour for the EPA to be notified. Both the coal and the chemical industries, drivers of much of West Virginia’s economy, are powerful forces in the State’s politics and continuously fight federal health, safety and environmental controls, kind of like the Senators from Kentucky.

An estimated 30,000 gallons went into the river and there was no contingency plan or procedure for dealing with this.

Methylcyclohexanemethanol can be dangerous in high doses according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It can cause pneumonia if it’s breathed deep into the lungs and nausea if it’s swallowed. There are other symptoms of exposure like vomiting, dizziness, headaches, diarrhea, reddened skin, itching, and rashes. More than this, we simply do not know. The West Virginia Poison Control Director, Dr. Elizabeth Scherman, says it has never been adequately studied.

To quote Peter Ustinov, “In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.” We cannot continue to let this be true.

Wanda Guthrie is chair of the Environmental Justice Committee at the Thomas Merton Center.

Fight Still On Against River Barges Used to Transport Toxic Frack Wastewater

by Carlana Rhoten West Virginia’s experience of a chemical spill getting into the American Water Treatment plant has given us a clear picture of what can happen when

elected officials are devoted to corporations instead of the citizens who vote them into office. Everything has had to be shut down: schools, hospitals, businesses, government agencies, et al. It is difficult for much to function when the water has been poisoned.

If Pittsburgh ever suffers such a catastrophe due to a wrecked barge, we can blame the Bush and Obama Administrations along with our own governors, and those frack-supporting state legislators, and frack-supporting senators and representatives we send to Congress. We can blame our commercial and public TV and radio stations for failing to report on the truth about the Natural Gas Industries and their toxic fracking fluids. That stuff has to go somewhere. As with the horror of nuclear waste, the frackers are desperate to make their fracking waste disappear from sight.

PITTSURGH— Barge on the Ohio River. Photo by joseph a on Flickr.

The recent record freeze has created ice jams in the rivers that could potentially damage barges. What if toxic chemicals from these barges get into the in-take valves of our own water treatment plants? How long might Pittsburgh be shut down? And as the poison is flushed out of one system, it travels down the river to poison the water of the next community, and so on until it poisons the ocean.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has become the biggest booster of fracking the Marcellus Shale. We should express our concerns to him as well as to other elected officials at every level.

The Port of Pittsburgh Commission Director is also responsible, as he promotes the use of barges on the rivers as a transport medium, without regard for citizens’ safety. His name is James R. McCarville. You can contact him at (412)201-7330 or 425 Sixth Ave, #2990, Pittsburgh, PA 15219.

Carlana Rhoten is the community producer for Progressive Pgh Notebook TV Series.

Unconventional Gas Well Permits Could Be Issued in PA Until the Year 2093 from Marcellusgas.org At MarcellusGas.Org, we have been collecting, compiling, and publishing information on unconventional gas well activity in Pennsylvania for nearly 4 years. Recently, our database team decided to analyze the rate at which well permits are approved, and project a date when all available shale extraction areas would be "permitted out."

At the current rate of permit approval our initial findings show that well permits could be issued until the year 2093.

To arrive at that projected date, we had to define a set of assumptions, along with assigned values: Available extraction area: 20,000 square miles (13 million acres) "Extraction footprint" of an average horizontal well: 60 acres Extraction area that is currently permitted: 1,112 square miles Number of permits approved per year: 2,535

Using those values, permits on a state wide basis would be issued until the year 2093.

On a county-by-county basis, the time-line changes significantly.

Bradford County, which has the highest number of approved unconventional horizontal gas well permits (2,627), has permitted an estimated 21% of its extraction area. At the current rate of permit approval, the county will "permit out" in 18 years (2032).

Washington county, with 1,372 approved horizontal wells (3rd highest in the state), and which approves permits at the rate of 268 per year, would "permit out" in 29 years (2043).

While these time-lines above are at best, estimates, they do reflect a relative picture of how the unconventional gas well development may play out. (continued on page 12) Marcellus shale formation as mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey

February 2014

NEWPEOPLE - 11

Pennsylvania’s Natural Resources Three Snapshots of the Pennsylvania Farm Show

by Kenneth Miller HARRISBURG, PA — The Governor’s opening ceremony at the 98th Pennsylvania Farm Show on January 3 included a demonstration by the State Police of how they use their 21 horses to manage crowds and control protesters. The horses were mobilized 121 times last year, more than in previous years. The State Police assert that one policeman on horseback is worth 10 on foot.

The mounted police came out into the Large Arena followed by the class of police recruits on foot and carrying picket signs with Pennsylvania professional sports logos on them. Then, with the police recruits pretending to be a rioting crowd of sports hooligans, chanting slogans like, “Let’s go Bucs,” the mounted police demonstrated how their horses control crowds, with the Wedge and the “Left, Right” and “Split Echelons” and the “Charge”. In a grand finale, the faux sports hooligans surrounded a police car and the mounted police demonstrated how they could move protesters away from the police car and clear the way for a fast escape.

Hobnobbing: State Liquor and Stadium Politics The members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23 are very concerned that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board will be abolished and with it the labor union contract for the Local 23 retail workers. I had three conversations about this at the Farm Show.

First I hobnobbed with Governor Corbett at the Pennsylvania Preferred Reception on Friday night. He said that he was confident that most state employees working at the liquor stores would be able to find other jobs.

Then I talked to a legislator in the State House (a privatization bill has already passed the House and is before the State Senate). He was proud of the fact that he had voted for the bill and was pleased to inform me that he had hosted meetings with his most important constituency, owners of beer distributorships in his district. Intentionally confusing the laws governing the distribution of beer and those related to liquor is a popular move by politicians these days.

At the opening ceremony, while the police charged one another on horseback, I sat next to a gentleman from Schuylkill County. He was pleased to inform me that “kill” means river in Dutch. In his opinion, the drive to privatize the liquor stores was supported by retailers like WalMart and Sheetz. We also had a conversation about how the interests of the cities compete with those in the middle of the state. His example was the first initiative to build new stadiums.

Sixteen years ago, the plan was to privatize the liquor stores and use the money to build stadiums in Philly and Pittsburgh.

Mounted police demonstrate crowd control tactics.

Healthy Farms, Healthy Families Campaign

by Wanda Guthrie Every year, 2 million people contract antibiotic resistant infections. Unless we rein in the rampant use of antibiotics on factory farms, the medicines we rely on won’t work when we really need them. Right now, 80% of antibiotics in this country are used in industrial agriculture, mostly to make animals grow faster and to prevent disease. This misuse of antibiotics kills off all but the strongest bacteria, creating a breeding ground

for superbugs and a mounting public health crisis. We have a chance to protect public health and hold big agriculture accountable, starting here in Pittsburgh – but we need your help. Please contact Margaret KranAnnexstein at Margaret@fwwlocal.org for more information.

Wanda Guthrie is chair of the Environmental Justice Committee at the Thomas Merton Center.

Emily Coyne, her short horn beef cattle, and Kenneth Miller discuss politics and agriculture.

Exhibitors and competitors are fantastic and teach about farm animals I found the exhibitor I was looking for right away.

Emily Coyne is the granddaughter of Lila Coyne, a coworker of mine from the bakery at Giant Eagle Store 47. Lila’s been attending the Farm Show for 12 years and showing her short horn beef cattle. Their family farm is in Burgettstown near Washington, Pennsylvania. This year she brought three cattle.

Trooper placed 5th, Holly placed 2nd, and Princess placed 3rd in their respective divisions. Lila loves showing her animals and talking about the beef industry. She is a student at Delaware Valley College near Philadelphia. She is studying agriculture and aspires to work in veterinary pharmaceutical sales.

When she is home from school, she works as a hostess at Applebee’s.

Emily says that “politics is everything.” She has concerns about how the use of corn ethanol in gas affects the price of gas and subsequently the price of feed for cattle. The most exciting part of the Farm Show is moving her cattle through the crowds for the competitive events. There are so many people and they all want to touch and rub the animal she has just finished grooming for competition. People need to stand clear when she is coming through with her cattle.

The Pennsylvania Farm Show should be added to the annual rounds of activists here in Pittsburgh. The show provides a great opportunity for outreach. People have time to talk and are hungry for issues. What we brought in 2014 including a pile of IWW buttons and 200 copies of The New People was a unique and positive contribution. There was thirst for more.

Kenneth Miller is a member of the editorial collective.

Unconventional Gas Well Permits Could Be Issued in PA Until the Year 2093 (continued from page 11)

To the right is a graph that shows the number of permits per year issued in the state by the DEP. A few notes on the values we used for our projections: Our "available extraction area" for the state (20,000 square miles) represents 43% of the total area of the state. For our county "available extraction areas", we used the county's total area. Reductions in the available areas would shrink the projected time lines in a linear fashion.

The 60 acre extraction footprint for a horizontal well is based on our review of thousands of the drilling maps we've collected over the years. These maps indicate the average length of a horizontal well bore is approximately 1 mile, with the extraction swath averaging 500 feet wide a 60-acre footprint for each well bore.

MarcellusGas.Org is an independent entity that is not affiliated with any other company or organization.

Our information relates to Pennsylvania deep well gas activity, and covers development, production, inspections/ violations, waste, impact fee revenue, and more. Visit www.MarcellusGas.Org to learn more.

12 - NEWPEOPLE February 2014

Pennsylvania, Prison State Is It Time for Pennsylvania to OK Pot, Hemp and a State-Owned Bank?

by Carlana Rhoten In 2014, 20 states plus the District of Columbia have passed laws allowing people to buy marijuana with a doctor’s prescription. Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational pot, with Alaska expected to soon follow. Thirtytwo states have introduced pro-hemp legislation while 20 have passed prohemp legislation.

In the Pennsylvania Legislature, Senator Daylin Leach has introduced three pieces of legislation in regard to these subjects: SB 1182, SB 770, and SB 528.

The billions of dollars expected to be generated by sales, translates into tax dollars and a need for the creation of

state-owned banks to process the cash. So long as marijuana is illegal at the federal level, Wall Street banks cannot accept the cash. This has created a great opportunity for states to follow the North Dakota example, which has served its citizens well. Since 1919, tax revenues go into the state-owned bank where it provides the capital for low interest loans to students, home buyers and farmers.

In Germany, 40% of banks are publically owned. This may have accounted for the stability of the German economy during the recent financial crisis that crippled many other nations. (See Business Week, Jan 9, 2014: “Legal Pot: The Gateway Drug to

State-Run Banking?”)

THE BENEFITS: (1) Fewer citizens in jail and prison (2) Unhampered medical use (3) Hemp can be grown as a cash crop for farmers. As the resource for many products, industrial hemp would open employment and small business opportunities.

(4) The creation of a Pennsylvania owned bank would give citizens an alternative to the predatory profit-driven banks that deny credit to middle and low income folks.

(5) Possibility of using the State Liquor Store System to sell marijuana products.

PROBLEMS: As with alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, and gambling, the use of marijuana will cause serious problems for some individuals and their families. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to all the above vices. Medical treatment and counseling will be needed for some and present a dollar expense while some suffering may never be fully measured. Unfortunately, all these problems exist in full measure today, while marijuana is illegal.

Carlana Rhoten is the community producer for Progressive Pgh Notebook TV Series, a project of the Thomas Merton Center.

Pennsylvania Inmates Explain Their Living Conditions

by Muwsa Green and Darrell Ameen McKelvie, edited by K. Briar Somerville

provided by the DOC is gratuitously cruel because the prisoners start off with 19 cents an hour, where the working wages PA’s Exploitation of increase to 42 cents an hour. The Post Conviction Relief Act’s mandatory oneInmate Labor Makes year deadline suffocates indigent prisoners Justice Unaffordable who can’t afford a jail house lawyer to assist them on their litigation.” The Post From a cell in SCI (State Correctional Institution) Fayette, Muwsa Green writes Conviction Relief Act allows defendants to make a second appeal if their first lawyer to NewPeople: “In a capitalist society, did a poor job, if evidence was fabricated prisons are not designed to rehabilitate prisoners or teach us – they are designed to against them, or if they were “unlawfully induced” to plead guilty despite being warehouse and neutralize us.” innocent, among other things.

Try telling that to Pennsylvania Correctional Industries (PCI), whose Health in Prison slogan is “Teaching inmates to work in Muwsa Green believes, “At least 300 Pennsylvania.” PCI operates its business severely mentally ill people, most likely under the authority of the Pennsylvania another 15,000 who have some form of Department of Corrections (the DOC), mental illness in the moderate range, overseeing manufacturing operations languish in the prisons of PA.” He says within the state prisons. At SCI Fayette the mentally ill prisoners suffer the worst where Green is housed, PCI “teaches” “daily deprivation and psychological inmates to produce license plates, metal torture” alone “in these cells without TVs products, and signs. or radios because they are unemployable.”

Green says, “The low-wage income Lack of nutrition is a problem for most prisoners, but especially those with diabetes or other Please write to these individuals: conditions. Green says, “Indigent Frank Hafer Joe Dyson

Prisoner Pen Pals Needed!

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Patrick Holness #JB-6240 1100 Pike Street Huntington, PA 16654

Wayne Pettaway #HM-1581 10745 Route 18 Albion, PA 16475

William Miller #GB-0894 10745 Route 18 Albion, PA—16475

Jeremy Anthony #DQ-1846 1111 Altamont Boulevard Frackville, PA 17931

William Lincoln #HZ-7773 175 Progress Drive Waynesburg, PA 15370

Ken Gochring #AK-5350 P.O. Box 99991 Pittsburgh, PA 15233

Daaron Shears #KV-1912 P.O. Box 945 Marienville, PA 16239

Richard Hammonds Jr. #JD-8826 1111 Altamont Boulevard Frackville, PA 17931

Robert Donaghy 1211 Bainbridge Street Philadelphia, PA 19147 William Lee Whitehead #CA-9461 P.O. Box 1000 K-A-01-04 Houtzdale, PA 16698 Marty Dunbar #CM-9649 P.O. Box 945 Marienville, PA 16239

Muwsa Green #HV-5362 P.O. Box 9999 LaBelle, PA 15450 Darrell Ameen McKelvie #AF-5156 Box A Bellefonte, PA 16823

prisoners have no control over their diet because their funds are insufficient . . . we receive a lack of calories because the milk is spoiled, fruit rotten, bread stale, meat processed, etc.”

as conspirators . . . The riot charge is in all of our institutional files, and it has not been an issue until I arrived here at Rockview.”

When McKelvie moved to SCI Rockview, he was immediately placed in solitary confinement and denied access to “Animosity Still Exists” his personal property and basic hygiene Riot Retaliation 24 Years necessities such as towels. To recover his property, over 2012 and 2013 McKelvie Later went through a process familiar to most inmates: repeatedly filing grievances and Darrell Ameen McKelvie recounts, “Unfortunately I was housed at getting little response from the institution. Once he tracked down the SCI Camp Hill during the 1989 property lost to him in the move between spontaneous uproar that affected many prisons, the guards took or threw away lives, and we all deplore that it occurred.” Over three days in October of things McKelvie was “approved to have” and had been in his possession for more 1989, inmates at the overcrowded Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution than fifteen years.

McKelvie interprets the guards’ at Camp Hill rioted in response to intentions: “They wanted me to know their visitation rule changes. The rioters overtook a number of guards, disabled the animosity for me . . . Those who are locks on their cells, set fires, broke down familiar with Camp Hill’s riot are aware that all the inmates’ personal property was walls, took hostages and made demands destroyed by their staff, and now I am such as improved healthcare. experiencing this dastardly act all over Some of the Camp Hill inmates negotiated with then-Superintendant of the again.” prison Robert Freeman, who was later suspended as a result of the PA inmates Muwsa Green and riots. McKelvie continues, “I along with a Darrell Ameen McKelvie can be few individuals volunteered our service to reached at the addresses listed in the try to bring some reconciliation to the pen pal box at left. tumult, and that service got us all charged

Water Crisis in SCI Fayette

by Muwsa Green SCI Fayette is surrounded by a coal ash site, operated by Matt Canestrale Contracting (MCC) in LaBelle, Pennsylvania. The Human Rights Coalition has learned that residents and environmental groups are pressuring the Department of Environmental Protection to deny the handful of permits for that site that are currently up for renewal.

I talked to Stephen Buzas, unit manager at SCI Fayette, about the water crisis. He said the prison had two or three prisoners in the last year or two die of cancer. He also said that his guards would never poison me and it was the water causing my stomach pain. Some guards allege they had the same problem with the water when working at SCI Greensburg. Is that the real reason why SCI Greensburg was shut down?

I have been having intermittent stomach pain since 2011, and the SCI Fayette medical department failed to give me an answer about my health. I went to the hospital in 2013 but still receive no answer. It seems like the Fayette medical department is hiding information from me; they withdrew my medication though I am still in harsh pain.

It’s very hard to walk away from the water when it

is the only liquid provided to indigent prisoners. The processed juices are made with the water, and the food we eat is cooked with the water. SCI Fayette Warden Brian D. Coleman is refusing to pass out fresh bottled water or bottled juices to prisoners to protect us from the water crisis.

I have been suffering the following effects: 1) I have pains when I urinate. 2) Every time I turn the water on in my cell it is brown. 3) When I take a shower my entire body breaks out. 4) In 2013 I was diagnosed with glaucoma and have a hard time seeing. 5) When I finish eating a meal, my throat feels irritated. 6) The water has me dehydrated and I have trouble getting oxygen. 7) I feel sick to my stomach every time I lie down or drink water.

How can prisoners at SCI Fayette file a class action suit against the prison and the local coal industry? Who is able to look into the cases of cancer among guards and prisoners at SCI Fayette? How can sick prisoners like me be removed from the water at this prison? We need a lawyer and a state representative to come in and protect prisoners’ rights and safety.

To help, please write to me and contact a prisoner named Hammonds (#HP-6723) at SCI Fayette who is suffering from the same crisis, and also a Richard A. Hammonds (#JD-8826) who was transferred to Frackville for medical reasons.

February 2014 NEWPEOPLE - 13

Racial Justice In Memoriam: Amiri Baraka, 1934-2014

by Sean Nolan As many New People readers will know, the poet and activist Amiri Baraka has passed away. He lived from October 7th, 1934 to January 9th, 2014. His long battle with diabetes probably contributed to his death. His funeral was held on January 18th at Newark Symphony Hall. He lived life to the fullest by establishing himself as a radical poet, community organizer, and fly in the ointment of authority everywhere that he went. He is remembered as a warrior for social change in Black America. His efforts on behalf of the poor and struggling in America’s ghettos and prisons illuminate much of his poetic vision, and his keen sense of history shone a light on ignorant corners of America’s conflicted soul.

Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, NJ. He graduated from Barringer High School.

His father, Coyt Leverette Jones, worked in the postal service and as a lift operator. His mother, Anna Lois, was a social worker. After winning a scholarship to Rutgers University in 1951, he transferred to Howard University in 1952. He left there before obtaining a degree, and his major fields of study were Religion and Philosophy. He entered the U.S. Air Force, working as a gunner there in 1954 until his commanding officer received an anonymous letter accusing

Baraka of being a Communist, which led to the discovery of some of his writings.

From then on he was given gardening duties in the Air Force, until a dishonorable discharge in 1954. He moved to Greenwich Village where he began to circulate among the Beat writers, Black Mountain poets, and the New York school poets. With his first wife Hettie Cohen he had two daughters, Kellie Jones (b.1959) and Lisa Jones (b.1961). Hettie and Amiri established Totem Press, publishing Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Totem Press also published eight issues of the poetry magazine Yugen between 1958 and 1962.

He will be remembered as a founding member of the Black arts movement during the 1960s and 70s.

With Diane DiPrima, Amiri Baraka founded the New York Poets Theatre in 1961, and that year he also wrote a Declaration of Conscience in support of Fidel Castro in Cuba. He had visited Cuba in 1960 as a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

It is difficult for someone outside the cultural and political revolution to speak about Amiri Baraka’s influence and presence as a unifier, a prime mover, a man without whom much else may not have happened. Baraka was a constant reminder to America of the sins of its patriarchal, slave owning classes. He was a fighter for human rights, and he spoke for the same agendas which Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale espoused. He was not an assimilationist nor was he an accommodationist.

He didn’t care what anyone in white America thought of him.

Some of his best known works include the plays Dutchman (1964) and The Slave (1964), as well as books of poetry Black Magic (1969), It’s Nation Time (1970), Slave Ship (1970), and New Music, New Poetry (1980), as well as Wise, Whys Ys (1995), Somebody Blew Up America (2002), and The Book of Monk (2005). There are many extant videos uploaded to You Tube which feature Amiri Baraka reading from and reciting his work, for he was a gifted and well practiced orator who could

use the idiom of jazz or blues to accent his words with varying degrees of spice and flavor. He knew very well how to emphasize syllables and words for heightened effect, and his style of delivery influenced other poets, such as Miguel Algarin of the New Yourican poetry movement.

Baraka knew that people were transfixed by the charismatic, colorful style which he cultivated, and so he knew that his message would be heard because of his multi-tonal, jazz inflected riffing and scatting. He aspired to and succeeded in being a jazz poet, linking the poetic language with the original American musical improvisation. His love of jazz masters Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane inspired much in his poetry. He received numerous awards and honors from many foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City College of New York. He made and appeared in many films, and has a cameo role as a Rastaman in Warren Beatty’s political comedy Bullworth (1998).

Editorial note: The Dutchman was presented locally by Bricolage Theater in 2012, and each show was followed by intense audience discussion.

Sean Nolan is a massage therapist who returned to Pittsburgh three years ago from Monterey, CA area.

Pittsburgh’s Summit Against Racism Turns 16

by K. Briar Somerville and R/B Mertz EAST LIBERTY, January 25, 2014 – Opening the 16th Annual Summit Against Racism was budding Pittsburgh recording artist Armahn Ashley’s a capella rendition of the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” first performed in 1900.

This year’s Summit was organized by members of the Black and White Reunion in memory of the late antiapartheid leader Nelson Mandela.

Organizer Chris Mason presented a video tribute to Mandela, which featured footage of South Africa’s Soweto Gospel Choir performing in a department store a flash mob sung for Madiba, and author Maya Angelou (age 85) performing the poem she wrote upon the news of Mandela’s death, “His Day is Done.”

The 17 workshops offered at East Liberty Presbyterian Church included: “Indian and Black: Decolonizing Yoga and Hip Hop,” “Community Development in Pittsburgh: Equity, Inclusion, & Sustainability,” “Civil Rights Unschooled: People of Color and Radical Thought,” “The Color of Justice and the New Jim Crow, “Ending Juan Crow: The Fight [for] Immigration Reform” and “Practical Steps Towards Dismantling Structural Racism in Organizations.”

Members of the Pittsburgh anti-racist dialogue group WWHAT’S UP?!

(Whites Working and Hoping to Abolish Total Supremacy Undermining Privilege) facilitated a workshop to 14 - NEWPEOPLE

“encourage white people to understand and acknowledge white privilege as well as the historical (and present) advantages based on skin color.”

At the talk “Unhealthy Choices: How UPMC Promotes Poverty and Racism,” eight-year UPMC housekeeping worker Lou Berry explained why he thinks the service employees should unionize: “I have seen how my white coworkers were promoted and how black workers are kept from advancing.”

The Human Rights City Alliance Pittsburgh task force organized presentations from youth and teachers who addressed the human rights violations occurring in Pittsburgh as a result of underfunded or closed schools, unaccountable police forces, and poverty, which New Voices Pittsburgh founder La’Tasha Mayes called “the stages on which these issues of racism and sexism play out.”

The panel presenting on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow highlighted the Reagan-era “Southern strategy,” which appealed to the racism of white Democrats to persuade them to vote against their own economic interests in favor of harsh crime legislation and cuts to benefit programs.

While in 1985 the U.S. maximum sentence for a drug violation was one year, today drug violations can carry life sentences and even the death penalty.

75% of those in prison for drug violations are people of color. Proposed solutions included calls from panelists to legalize marijuana, end mandatory minimums, cease charging children as

February 2014

adults, and end “ban the box” (which prevents felons from voting and receiving basic benefits).

Jonathan Reyes, of the Braddock Carnegie Library’s Art Lending Collection, led a workshop asking, “How can art fight racism or work for social justice?” Reyes projected slides of local, anti-racist modern art (all of which is available for checkout to any library patron at the Braddock Carnegie Library). Beginning with Ayanah Moor’s painting This Black is Just for You, the art was a focal point of a largegroup discussion touching on prejudice, irony, an independent Black economy, the co-opting of Black culture by whites,

font typefaces, and the question “How do you pronounce [A Wopbopaloobop a Lopbamboom]?’” A crowd-pleasing Jon Reyes sang out the answer in the style of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.”

The closing ceremony featured affirming hip-hop performances from Amil Cook and K-Rocz of 1Hood Media Academy, founded by Jasiri-X and Paradise Gray to give voice to Pittsburgh youth.

K. Briar Somerville is a member of the editorial collective, and R/B Mertz teaches in Pittsburgh.

Jonathan A. Reyes of the Braddock Carnegie Library’s Art Lending Collection leads a discussion on Ayanah Moor’s painting This Black is Just for You. Photo by K. Briar Somerville.

Thomas Merton Center Community News from the TMC Board

by Mary Jo Guercio I hope this edition of the New People finds you well!

Although the temperature during the month of January has been bitter cold, the TMC Board of Directors and staff have been staying warm by expending lots of energy around peace and justice activities.

During the month of January, TMC was honored to have three new individuals join the Board of Directors: Anne Kuhn, Theresa Chalich, and Thom Baggerman. Each brings a wealth of knowledge, expertise and energy we need to fulfill the mission, values and guiding principles of the Thomas Merton Center. Please join me in welcoming the newest members of the board!

The Board of Directors developed a five-year strategic plan two years ago. As part of the plan, seven initiatives were adopted in the first year. These initiatives include: to Build and Strengthen Our Membership; Work to Put the Center on a Stable Financial Path; Improve Organizational Capacity; Develop Education, Training, Networking Resources; Build a Strong Board to

Govern Policy; Utilize Space in Welcoming and Efficient Manner; and Build Diversity Among Board, Staff, and the Membership.

In our first two years many of the strategic goals centered on building a solid foundation related to four focus areas that are the heart of a healthy world; Economic Justice; Environmental Justice: Human Rights; and Peace and Nonviolence.

About a year ago, it became evident to the board and its members, that TMC needed to become more active in the many issues that have greatest impact to the environment, economy and the fair and equal treatment of all people.

The board developed and adopted a new goal in 2013. That was to build the community organizing life of the Center. The board is now moving forward, in a strategic fashion, to identify and coordinate specific campaigns to address issues relevant to our four focus areas.

At our January board retreat we determined the focus areas that we will place our efforts on will be economic justice, environmental justice, and human rights as it relates to the work presently occurring in the Center’s New Economy Working Group Pittsburgh. We are

Molly Rush Legacy Fund:

pleased to announce that a part-time (20 hours per week) community organizer will be hired to focus on this effort in the next few months.

It is also my pleasure to also announce TMC has received a grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation. This grant will allow TMC to recruit, educate and train interns as they endeavor to become future peace and justice leaders. Board members, project leaders and staff serve as mentors to the interns. The grant empowers us to work with and train 33 interns a year in the fall, spring and summer semesters.

We look forward to working with our future leaders.

Finally, TMC is working on building its membership, and the New Person and Merton Award events.

This year TMC will honor Shirley Gleditsch, founder of TMC’s East End Community Thrift Store with the New Person Award on May 22, and Jeremy Scahill with the Thomas Merton Award in November.

We hope to see you at these award events!

We are also looking forward to supporting our 25 TMC projects (listed on page two) that are an integral part of the Center.

Mary Jo Guercio is the President of the Board of the Thomas Merton Center.

Veteran Peacemaker Joins TMC Board

by Joyce Rothermel With early beginnings in New York City and Cranford, New Jersey, Anne Kuhn moved to Pittsburgh at age 10 where she attended and graduated from Winchester Thurston School. Higher education was at Vassar College where Anne studied philosophy; Dartmouth University where Anne majored in art; and finally, Bryn Mawr College where Anne graduated with an English major. Anne married her husband Jim and returned to Pittsburgh to live and raise their three children.

For twenty years, Anne designed and built stained glass windows throughout the Pittsburgh region, mostly in private homes, some as big as 25 square feet. She has created the stained glass Merton awards since 2001. For a time Anne was a Yoga teacher. Another business venture Anne shared in more recently was the growing and selling of ornamental grasses.

In the midst of a very active life, Anne has been and continues to be a peacemaker! This began while Anne was a student in college with her involvement in anti-Vietnam War activities. Anne has been a member of the Friends meeting since 1973 and a long time member and volunteer of the Thomas Merton Center. Anne’s values and convictions have led her into positions of responsibility and leadership in many organizations. Over the years she has served on the staff of the Pittsburgh Peace Institute, served several terms as board president of Peace Links for the Freeport and Pittsburgh

chapters, was arrested at the Nevada nuclear test site, was active with the W. PA Campaign for a Comprehensive Test Ban, and worked for the World Federalists.

Anne has been to China several times: once with the Peace Links Women for the All China Women’s Federation, again for the UN Women’s Conference, and finally heading a delegation to participate in an event by the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament. She also helped host Chinese delegations in both Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh in her work with Peace Links.

For many years, Anne has been a strong supporter and volunteer of the East End Community Thrift Shop. Anne now brings her wisdom and experience to a three year term on the Board of the Merton Center.

Anne has a positive attitude about peace and the future, believing that more and more people value peace and see war as unacceptable. As a board member she hopes to help strengthen the work of the Thrift Shop and work to continue to grow the membership of the Merton Center for it to further its mission of peace and social justice in the Pittsburgh region.

Currently Anne practices Reiki, energy work for healing, and Qigong, a form of eastern meditation and exercises. When asked who inspires her, Anne responded: the Dalai Lama, Pope John XXIII, and now Pope Francis.

Joyce Rothermel is Vice-President of the Board of the Thomas Merton Center.

In Memoriam Fr. Bob Nugent Co-founder of New Ways Ministry, Fr. Bob was a pioneer in the Catholic world, working to educate people about lesbian and gay issues and to build bridges between them and the Catholic Church. Nugent served as a consultant for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on its 1997 pastoral document on homosexuality, "Always Our Children." Together with Sr. Jeannine Gramick, he moved the hearts and minds of thousands of people. We are grateful for Fr. Bob’s life and his legacy of love and inclusion . He died at age 76 from cancer.

Sr. Mary Dennis Donovan, CSJ After an 83 year commitment to the Sisters of St. Joseph in Baden, Sr. Mary Dennis died last month at age 98. Sr. Mary Dennis bore witness to peace and justice struggles in both word and deed, speaking at many interfaith gatherings. She was one of the founding members of Network, the women religious social justice lobby in Washington, D.C. (known recently for their “Nuns on the Bus” tour opposing a proposed federal budget that would have greatly harmed the economically disadvantaged in the U.S.).

Sliding Scale Legal Services to Help Prepare Your Will

by Joyce Rothermel Last month we invited you to make a new year’s resolution to make out a will if you do not have one or a current one. Just checking – have you acted on this yet?

In 2013 the Thomas Merton Center launched The Molly Rush Legacy Fund. The Legacy Fund honors the work of Molly Rush by providing financial support for the Thomas Merton Center through planned giving.

Many of our members have told us that they have already made the Legacy Fund part of their wills and estate planning -- Thank You! Now, we are reaching out to you and asking that you make the Merton Center a part of your legacy through your planned giving. If you don’t have a will or if you are planning on updating your will, please consider remembering the Merton Center and including the Molly Rush Legacy Fund as part of your estate planning.

A simple will and a careful, well-considered estate plan can bring peace of mind and provide your loved ones with clear and thoughtful directions. To help you consider if you need to make or revise a will, here are a few Q & A’s: Q: Who needs a will?

A: Anyone who owns real or personal property and cares about the eventual distribution.

Q: What if I already have a will?

A: Your will should be reviewed periodically. A will does not give anyone any rights until you have passed away. It is important to update your will to reflect changes in your life such as marital status, births, deaths, financial changes and your personal goals. Tax law changes may also prompt a review of your plans.

Q. Does a will cover all of my assets?

A: Not always. Assets that have named beneficiaries such as retirement accounts and insurance policies will pass directly to those named beneficiaries bypassing the directions in a will. It is important to consult with an attorney to discuss the nature of each asset in your estate.

Q: How much does a will cost?

A: The costs normally depend on the amount of planning. The fees associated with drafting or updating a simple will can be quite reasonable. (Two of our TMC friends are available to help at reasonable costs/ sliding scale. See the end of article for their names and contact information.)

Q: What is the best way to make a charitable

gift to the Thomas Merton Center as part of my will?

A: There are a number of ways to include the Thomas Merton Center in your will.

•Specific Charitable Bequest: A specific bequest is where you designate a defined dollar amount or a percentage of your estate to one or more charities.

•Residuary Charitable Bequest: A residuary bequest is a bequest that is accomplished from the remainder of your estate after all other gifts to loved ones have been fulfilled.

Two friends of the Merton Center have agreed to provide their services on a sliding scale during the months of January and February to anyone who mentions the Merton Center: Virginia I. Cook, 103 Maple Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15218 (412)247-1012 Sam Hens-Greco, Cole and Hens-Greco, 429 Fourth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, (412)391-0800 Please watch for follow up articles on the Molly Rush Legacy Fund in upcoming issues of The New People.

Joyce Rothermel is a member of the Cornerstone Sustainer Committee.

February 2014

NEWPEOPLE - 15

February Activism in Pittsburgh Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

“Freedom is never given; it is won.

“You can be up to your [chest] in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”

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Regular Meetings:

Saturday

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Sundays:

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Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (PADP) 7-8pm.

First Unitarian Church at Ellsworth and —Dr. Martin Morewood, Luther King Jr. Shadyside.

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Tuesdays: Women of Men Incarcerated Network 2nd Tuesday, 7:30-8:30pm, St. Peter’s United Church of Christ, 18 Schubert St., North Side

Wednesdays: Human Rights Coalition: Fed-Up! Every Wednesday at 7p, Write letters for prisoner’s rights at the Thomas Merton Center Darfur Coalition Meeting 2nd and 4th Wednesdays, 7-9 pm, 2121 Murray Ave., 2nd Floor, Squirrel Hill.

412-784-0256

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Muslims and Christians 2-4 pm St. Mary of the Mount Mt. Washington Sullivan Hall 131 Bingham Street Pgh., PA 15211

The Ethical Dilemma Above: Drones and the 21st Century Security State 7-8pm Bricolage, 937 Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh $15 ticket 412-281-7970

Black Political Empowerment Project Meeting 6-7pm Hill House Assoc.

Second Floor 1835 Centre Ave Pittsburgh

Mothers of Bedford Friends Meeting House (Oakland) 7-8:30 pm

Free Pgh Symphony Orchestra concert at East Liberty Presbyterian Church 7-9 pm

1 Billion Been Rising for Justice— Rally at 12:00pm Market Square Pittsburgh

Support Black Voices for Peace as the stand in Solidarity to protest all wars.

1-2 pm Corner of Penn and Highland EVERY SUNDAY

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Bread for the World Training Workshop 2-5pm Good Shepherd Lutheran Church ,4503 Old William Penn Highway Monroeville, PA 15146

TMC Board Meeting at 6:30 pm.

Thomas Merton Center

Forum on Public Banking, Mt.Lebanon 7-8pm Mt.Lebanon Lib.

Monthly PUSH Meeting 6:15-8pm Health Care 4 All PA office, 2101 Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill

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Mondays: Association of Pittsburgh Priests 2nd Monday, 7—9 pm, Epiphany Administration Center, Uptown

Stratification Economics: Implications for Understanding Inequality 12-1:30pm Social Works Conference Center, 2017 Cathedral of Learning

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

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Book’Em: Books to Prisoners Project First three Sundays of the month at TMC Contact: kurbaga@comcast.net Anti-War Committee 1st Sunday at 1:30 pm at TMC, 5129 Penn Ave., Garfield, PA 15224 Women In Black Monthly Peace Vigil 2nd Sunday 10 to 11 am, Ginger Hill Unitarian Universalist Church, Slippery Rock Anti-Drone Warfare Coalition 3rd Sunday at 1:30 pm at TMC

Africa Calling Concert Series at New Hazlett Theater, Allegheny Square East, Pittsburgh, PA. Tickets on sale at ShowClix.com —Billie Holiday or 1.888.71.tickets

—A. Philip Randolph

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Friday

Thursdays: International Socialist Organization Every Thursday, 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the Thomas Merton Center GlobalPittsburgh Happy Hour 1st Thursday, 5:30 to 8 pm, Luke Wholey's Grille, 2106 Penn Ave, Strip District Green Party Meeting 1st Thursday, 7 to 9 pm, 2121 Murray, 2nd floor, Squirrel Hill Black Political Empowerment Project 2nd Thursday, 6 pm: Planning Council Meeting, Hill House, Conference Room B TMC Potlucks! Are on occasional Thursday evenings. Interested in having one on an issue that’s important to you? Contact: mcmahond@thomasmertoncenter.org

Justice Conference Simulcast 6-7pm (Online) Register online: thejusticeconfer ence.com

“Love one another.”

—Jesus

Fridays: Hill District Consensus Group 2nd Friday, 10 am — 12 pm, Elsie Hillman Auditorium, Kaufmann Center 1825 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Amnesty International #39 2nd Friday, 7—9 pm First Unitarian Church, Morewood Ave. 15219

Saturdays:

”The greatest movement in social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in love ethic.”

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—bell hooks

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“What Then Must We Do?” Big Idea Bookstore 8-9 pm Book discussion on Gar Alperovitz new book.

Sponsored by the New Economy Working Group.

Email EricBWilhelm@gm ail.com

Subscribe to The New People by becoming a member of the Thomas Merton Center today!

As a member, The New People newspaper

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and behold, service was joy.”

— R. Tagore

Mail this form and membership donation to: Thomas Merton Center, 5129 Penn Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15224

_____ Check here if this is a gift membership

will be mailed to your home or sent to your email account. You will also receive weekly e- Select your membership level: __$15 Low Income Membership blasts focusing on peace and justice events in __$15 Youth / Student Membership Pittsburgh, and special invitations to mem__$50 Individual Membership bership activities. Now is the time to stand for __$100 Family Membership peace and justice! __$500+ Cornerstone Sustainer Membership Join online at www.thomasmertoncenter.org/join__Donation $____________________________ donate or fill out this form, cut out, and mail in.

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February 2014

Black Voices for Peace Vigil to End War, Every Saturday, 1—2 p.m., Penn Ave. and Highland Ave., East Liberty Citizens for Peace Vigil Every Saturday, noon to 1 p.m., Forbes Ave. and Braddock Ave. Project to End Human Trafficking 2nd Saturday, Carlow University, Antonian Rm #502 Fight for Lifers West 3rd Saturday, 10 a.m. to 12:30 pm, Thomas Merton Center Save the date: Monday, May 12 at 7:00 p.m.

John Dear’s The Nonviolent Life book signing tour visits Pittsburgh, co-sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center. Location TBA.

Or Become an Organizational Member:

__$75 Organization (below 25 members) __$125 Organization (above 25 members) Name(s):________________________________ Organization (if any):______________________________ Address:________________________________ City: ___________________ State: _________ Zip Code:_______________________________ Home Phone:____________________________ Cell Phone: _____________________________ Email:__________________________________