Thomas Merton Center Pittsburgh’s Peace and Social Justice Center
PITTSBURGH’S PEACE & JUSTICE NEWSPAPER VOL. 45 No. 10 November 2015
The Place to Be November 9 The Merton Center Award Dinner has been moveable, but we can’t always say a moveable feast. Some of us remember the meager meals, in solidarity with those who never have anything but a meager meal. There has been plenty of pasta primavera, and some pretty good Indian meals. If you have wondered why we are most often at the Sheraton, it’s because we want a hotel whose employees belong to a union, and can accommodate the large crowd we have, often over 500 people. The dinners began 43 years ago and the list of awardees reads like the stars that light up the heavens where peace and justice reign.
1972- James Carroll 1973- Dorothy Day 1974- Dick Gregory 1975- Joan Baez 1976- Dom Helder Camara 1978- Dick Hughes 1979- Bishop John Burt & James Malone 1980- William Winpisinger 1981- The People of Poland 1982- Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen (continued on page 3)
43rd Annual Thomas Merton Award Join Us As We Honor
Monday, November 9, 2015 6:00pm Sheraton Station Square Hotel Reception
Capitalism, Climate Crisis and Laudato Si system that enabled small businesses to innovate and thrive and she approved. On a recent visit to Ireland I experienced an interlocutor making a similar argument when he declared that for him capitalism meant a system where there was freedom to innovate and create jobs and opportunities for others. The sentiments expressed by these defenders of capitalism seem fine and praiseworthy but the real question is whether their understanding of capitalism is correct and accurate. In response, these descriptions of the capitalist system do not capture its essence. In the stage preceding the industrial revolution and capitalism, a good argument could be made that the system promoted small businesses and freedom to innovate. (continued on page 7)
Dinner
Raffle
General Admission $60 $75 at the door Low income/scholarship tickets available please email admin@thomasmertoncenter.org or call 412-361-3022
By Michael Drohan
Among liberals and moderate progressives, interesting exchanges take place when the capitalist system is critiqued and/or rejected. A case in point is what happened during the Democratic Party presidential debate that took place on October 13, 2015. When Bernie Sanders was put to the test for being a socialist, Hillary Clinton piped in as a defender of capitalism. She said that what capitalism meant for her was the
By Bette McDevitt
Congresswoman Barbara Lee (13th District California) cast the lone vote in 2001 against authorization of force following the September 11th attacks, was Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and was the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Congresswoman Lee is an advocate for reining in the bloated military budget,
raising the minimum wage, equal pay for women, ratifying CEDAW, ending the Cuba embargo, equality for same-sex families and passage of the Drones Accountability Act.
In this issue… Fighting For Women’s Health… Page 5
Restaurant workers fight for paid sick days. For more on labor news see p 8 & 9.
Local Labor Progress….
Page 9
Housing, Transit Activism…
Page 10
Laudato Si In Ireland….
Page 12
Oct 14th Climate Day of Action. Photo by Randy Francisco. More on p 12.
ATI Exemplifies Corporate Duplicity While Promising "Good Jobs" for a Region By Neil Cosgrove
If ATI’s (Allegheny Technologies, Inc.) recent aggression directed towards its workers doesn’t convince state and local governments that offering “incentives” to corporations in exchange for the promise of “good paying, middle class” jobs is bad public policy, then it’s hard to say what would convince them. Less than a decade ago, when ATI decided it needed a new, $1.2 billion hot steel rolling mill for
its operations in Brackenridge, PA, the company talked the state into providing it with over $8 million in tax breaks, grants, and low-interest loans. The United Steelworkers (USW) helped ATI lobby for state assistance, and also agreed to change work rules and collaborate with the company on training programs, believing the mill was the best chance of preserving and growing steel jobs in the region. The newly completed facility, a USW publication
gushed in early 2013, “will secure some 1,400 manufacturing jobs, union and salaried, and create the possibility of more growth in the future.” The then USW Local 1196 president, Fran Arabia, must now reflect bitterly on his 2013 statement that “fortunately, we have good rapport with the company.” The union’s contract with ATI expired on June 30th of this year and in early August (continued on page 8) 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.
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Thomas Merton Center
East End Community Thrift Store
Monday—Friday: 10 am to 4 pm Saturday: Noon to 4 pm
Tuesday—Friday: 10 am to 4 pm Saturday: Noon to 4 pm
Office Phone: 412-361-3022 — Fax: 412-361-0540 Website: www.thomasmertoncenter.org
The NewPeople Editorial Collective
Paola Corso, Neil Cosgrove, Michael Drohan, Marni Fritz, Bette McDevitt, Thomas Mulholland, James McCarville , Joyce Rothermel, Molly Rush, Mary Sico, Jo Tavener,. Quinn Thomas
TMC Staff, Volunteers & Interns
Interim Managing Director/ Operations Manager: Marcia Snowden Finance Director / Project Liaison: Roslyn Maholland Administrative Assistant: Marni Fritz Support Staff: Sr. Mary Clare Donnelly, Meagan McGill Office Volunteers: Monique Dietz, Lois Goldstein, Joyce Rothermel, Judy Starr New People Coordinators: Marni Fritz, Tom Mulholland East End Community Thrift Store Managers: Shirley Gleditsch, Shawna Hammond, & Sr. Mary Clare Donnelly TMC Organizers Gabriel McMorland (New Economy), Molly Nichols (Pittsburghers for Public Transit) Pittsburghers For Public Transit Program Coordinator: Casey Stelitano
Thomas Merton Center Interns Raphael Cardamone, Nick Furar, Meagan
McGill, Earl Pearson, Deepti Ramadoss, Miriam Reichman, Aly Smyth, Lliam Stevens, Quinn Thomas, Hannah Tomio, Vivian Tan, Brett Wilson , Andrew Woomer, Zheng, Peter Shou An
2015 TMC Board of Directors
Thom Baggerman, Ed Brett, Theresa Chalich, Rob Conroy, Kathy Cunningham, Mark Dixon, Art Donsky, Michael Drohan, Patrick Fenton, Mary Jo Guercio (President), Wanda Guthrie, anupama jain, Ken Joseph, Anne Kuhn, Jonah McAllister-Erickson, Joyce Rothermel, Molly Rush (co-founder), Tyrone Scales, M. Shernell Smith.
The East End Community Thrift (Thrifty) is an all volunteer-run thrift shop which provides quality, low-cost, used clothing and household goods to the surrounding community. Thrifty needs volunteers and shoppers! Please contact us at (412) 361-6010 and ask for Shirley or Shawna, or stop in at 5123 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224. Email shawnapgh@aol.com.
TMC Projects
TMC Affiliates
(TMC projects follow TMC guidelines and receive financial and ongoing resources and support from the Thomas Merton Center.)
(Affiliates are independent partner organizations who support the nonviolent peace and justice mission of TMC. - Articles may not necessarily represent the views of Affiliates)
Anti-War Committee awc@thomasmertoncenter.org Book‘Em: Books to Prisoners Project bookempgh@gmail.com www.bookempgh.org Capital’s End 724-388-6258, iamholtz@iup.edu CodePink: Women for Peace francineporter@aol.com, 412-389-3216 www.codepink4peace.org East End Community Thrift Shop 412-361-6010, shawnapgh@aol.com Economic Justice Committee drohanmichael@yahoo.com Environmental Justice Committee
environmentaljustice@thomasmertoncenter.org
Fight for Lifers West Greater Pittsburgh Interfaith Coalition Anne Wirth 412-716-9750 Harambee Ujima/Diversity Footprint Twitter @HomewoodNation
Human Rights Coalition / Fed Up (prisoner support and advocacy) 412-802-8575, hrcfedup@gmail.com www.prisonerstories.blogspot.com Marcellus Shale Protest Group melpacker@aol.com 412-243-4545 marcellusprotest.org New Economy Campaign gabriel@thomasmertoncenter.com Pittsburgh 350 350pittsburgh@gmail.com World.350.org/pittsburgh Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance 412-512-1709
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
We are mission driven volunteers who look to build love and community by serving others in times of need.
Publish in The New People The New People is distributed to 3,000 people who belong to diverse organizations, businesses and groups each month. The deadline for all submissions is the 13th of the month for the following month’s issue. To Submit Articles, Photos, or Poems: Visit www.thomasmertoncenter.org/newpeople/submit. To Submit an Event to the TMC Calendar: Visit www.thomasmertoncenter.org/calendar/submit-event To Advertise: Visit www.thomasmertoncenter.org/newpeople/ad Advertising prices range from $15 for a business card size to $250 for a full page. There is a 10% discount when purchasing 6 months of ad space at a time, and a 20% discount when purchasing a year of ad space at a time. An additional 10% discount is available for non-profit organizations and faith-based groups.
Pittsburghers for Public Transit 412-216-9659 info@pittsburghforpublictransit.org Progressive Pittsburgh Notebook 412-363-7472 tvnotebook@gmail.com School of the Americas Watch W. PA 412-271-8414 drohanmichael@yahoo.com Shalefield Stories (Friends of the Harmed) 412-422-0272 brigetshields@gmail.com
Westmoreland Marcellus Citizens Group 724-837-0540 lfpochet@verizon.net
Table of Contents
Page 1 The Place to Be November 9 Capitalism, Climate Crisis and Laudato Si ATI Exemplifies Corporate Duplicity While Promising Good Jobs for a Region Page3 TMC Radio Program Index 2015 The Place To Be November 9th Cont’d Page 4 TMC Member, Dr. Leila J. Richards, Named Distinguished Daughter of PA Dr. Jim Withers: Cast Your Vote for Pittsburgh’s Hero of Philanthropy Final Speaker for the APP Speaker Series Page 5 Media Echoes Congressional Attacks on Women’s Health Military Sexual Assault Attorney Comes to Pittsburgh Page 6 Fear of Syrian Refugees Unfounded... 2 - NEWPEOPLE
November 2015
Amnesty International info@amnestypgh.org - www.amnestypgh.org Association of Pittsburgh Priests Sr. Barbara Finch 412-716-9750 B.a.finch@att.net Battle of Homestead Foundation
412-848-3079
The Big Idea Bookstore 412-OUR-HEAD www.thebigideapgh.org The Black Political Empowerment Project Tim Stevens 412-758-7898 CeaseFire PA www.ceasefirepa.org—info@ceasefirepa.org Citizens for Social Responsibility of Greater Johnstown Larry Blalock, evolve@atlanticbb.net Global Solutions Pittsburgh 412-471-7852 dan@globalsolutionspgh.org www.globalsolutionspgh.org North Hills Anti-Racism Coalition 412-369-3961 email: info@arc.northpgh.org www.arc.northpgh.org PA United for Single-Payer Health Care www.healthcare4allPA.org www.PUSH-HC4allPa.blogspot.com 412-421-4242 Pittsburgh Area Pax Christi 412-761-4319 Pittsburgh Matanzas Sister Cities Partnership 412-303-1247 lisacubasi@aol.com Pittsburgh North People for Peace 412-760-9390 info@pnpp.northpgh.org www.pnpp.northpgh.org Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee info@pittsburgh-psc.org www.pittsburgh-psc.org Raging Grannies 412-963-7163 eva.havlicsek@gmail.com www.pittsburghraginggrannies.homestead.com
Religion and Labor Coalition 412-361-4793 ojomal@aol.com
SWPA Bread for the World Joyce Rothermel 412-780-5118 United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) 412-471-8919 www.ueunion.org Veterans for Peace kevinbharless@yahoo.com 252-646-4810 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Eva 412-963-7163 edith.bell4@verizon.net
Stop Sexual Abuse in the Military 412-361-3022 hildebrew@aol.com
For more information: Call 412-361-3022 or email newpeople@thomasmertoncenter.org.
Abolitionist Law Center 412-654-9070 abolitionistlawcenter.org
The Marshall Islands Take on the Nuclear Powers Page 7 Climate and Prisons Capitalism, Climate Crisis and Laudato Si Cont’d Friday Night at the Movies with Thomas Merton Page 8 ATI Exemplifies Corporate Duplicity… Battle of Homestead Supporters Re-Organize What’s It Like, Being a Steelworker? Page 9 Steelworkers Fight On While Local Labor Scores Other Victories East End Food Co-op Now Unionized Page 10 Community Land Trusts and Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Crisis Pittsburghers for Public Transit Win Page 11
TMC is a Member of TMC supports these organizations missions. Pennsylvania Interfaith Impact Network 412-621-9230 office@piin.org Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Martha Connelly 412-361-7872, osterdm@earthlink.net
November 12: Care = Prosperity: The Caring Economy Starter Course Ft. Benning: Here We Come Page 12 Climate Justice Action Response in County Waterford, Ireland to “Laudato Si…” Page 13 Jorge, Working Up North in the U.S.A. The Truth Is In Memory of the Passing of Thomas Schaub Grace Lee Boggs: Rest in Power Page 14 Growing Merton and Camus Page15 Culture Watch NRA Violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution Page16 November Calendar
Merton Center Events TMC Radio Program Index 2015 September: “20th Century Persian History: Why June: “The Threat of Nuclear War: World Peace Iranians Donʼt Trust the Intentions of our State Activists Meet in New York to Assess the Success Department Regarding Nuclear Proliferation” and Failures of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty” Economist and TMC Board Member Michael Drohan recounts the turbulent history of the US and March: “Celebrating Thomas Merton” TMC Board and New People Editorial Collective western nationsʼ involvement with Iran. Contrary to Center Co-Founder Molly Rush and Managing Di- member Michael Drohan analyzes the Nuclear Non- the claims of right wingers in Congress and the conProliferation Treaty as it comes up for a 5-year rector Diane McMahon discuss the author/poet/ servative US media, the people of Iran have reasons worldwide review this summer. What can internaactivist monk Thomas Merton, the Centerʼs nameto fear the incursions of western democracy and tional peace activists do to wind down and abolish sake, his influence on the 1960ʼs civil rights and capitalism in their affairs. peace and justice movement, and the myriad events nuclear weapons? October: “The Thawing: US-Cuban Relations” scheduled for April and planned by the Center in July: “Gov. Wolfʼs Moratorium on the Death commemoration of Mertonʼs 100th birthday. Penalty: Local Prison Justice Activists Respond” TMC member and former PA State Senator Jim Ferlo, a founder of the Pittsburgh-Matanzas Sister CitApril: “The Movement to Divest from Fossil TMC activists Martha Conley and Suzanne Powell ies Partnership, talks about his recent trip to Cuba Fuels: What You Can Do” discuss the status of death row prisoners in our state and his hopes and concerns about the future. Jim Wanda Guthrie and Gabe McMorland, representing and the reasons why a death penalty moratorium also discusses California Congresswoman Barbara the Environmental Justice and New Economy Cam- makes sense. Conley, an attorney and member of the Lee, the honored guest and Lifetime Achievement Prison Society, relates her visits to inmates. Powell, Award recipient at the TMC annual dinner to be paigns of the Center, explain our planetʼs global a volunteer with “Book ʻEm,” tells how this unique held November 9 at 6 PM at the Sheraton, Station warming crisis; the choices all nations face for developmental sustainability and equity; and how ac- program helps individuals confined in our overSquare. tivists are mobilizing to urge governments at all lev- crowded jails imagine the outside world. November: “Can We End the Cruel Torture of els to divest their investments from fossil fuel enterprises that contribute to the problem, and to instead August: “Remembering Hiroshima: TMC Activ- Solitary Confinement of Prisoners in the US? A Landmark Lawsuit Settlement Shows the Way” invest resources in alternative energy and sustaina- ists Organize for Worldwide Nuclear Disarmament” bility planning. Former TMC Board Member and University of Peace activist and organizer Jo Schlesinger discuss- Pittsburgh Law Professor Jules Lobel discusses the May: “Letʼs Strengthen, Not Privatize, a Great es the progress of local lobbying activities in suprecent landmark settlement of a lawsuit brought by Public Resource: the US Postal Service” port of the proposed US and Western nations agree- prisoners against the State of California over the NewPeople Editorial Collective member Neil Cos- ment with Iran on prevention of Iranʼs building a unlimited and pervasive use of solitary confinement nuclear weapon. Also, an array of local activities are in that stateʼs overcrowded prisons. The prisoners grove and local Letter Carriers Union leader Gary described as part of the campaign, co-sponsored by were represented by the New York-based Center for Bluestone tell how the US Postal Service has bethe TMC, called “Remembering Hiroshima, Imagin- Constitutional Rights. Professor Lobel is the Cencome a target for dismantling by private profiteers ing Peace.” and anti-government ideologues, despite the fact terʼs national president and chief counsel in the case. that no tax dollars subsidize this impressive and efficient public service. (Monthly programs air on Pittsburgh Radio Station WKFB, 770 AM and 97.5 FM, on Tuesdays at 3:30 PM. All programs may be downloaded from the Merton Centerʼs website.)
The Place To Be November 9th Cont’d By Bette McDevitt
1983- No Awardee 1984- Bernice Johnson Reagon 1985- Henri Nouwen 1986- Allen Boesak 1987- Miguel D’ Escoto 1988- Daniel Berrigan 1989- Comrades of El Salvador & Elizabeth Linder 1990- Marian Wright Edelman 1991- Howard Zinn 1992- Molly Rush 1993- Reverend Lucius Walker 1994- Richard Rohr, OFM 1995- Marion Kramer 1996- Winona LaDuke 1997- Ron Chisholm 1998- Studs Terkel 1999- Wendell Berry 2000- Ronald V. Dellums 2001- Sister Joan Chittister, OSB 2002- Bishop Leontine T.C. Kelly 2003- Voices 2004- Amy Goodman 2005- Fr. Roy Bourgeois 2006- Angela Davis 2007- Cindy Sheehan 2008- Malik Rahim 2009- Dennis J. Kucinich 2010- Noam Chomsky 2011- Vandana Shiva * 40th Anniversary Peace and Justice Award – Medea Benjamin 2012- Martin Sheen
2013 – Bill McKibben 2014 – Jeremy Scahill Peace and Justice Award Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Thomas Merton - Jim Forest 2015 – Congresswoman Barbara Lee Molly Rush has been at every award ceremony, and so have some of you. She remembers well when Dorothy Day came in 1973. “I picked her up at the Greyhound bus station; she had been in California with Cesar Chavez. I was terrified of her, and all she wanted when she got off the bus was a cup of coffee and a cigarette. She wanted to see Father John Hugo, a local priest. At the dinner in the big hall at Duquesne University, there were a thousand people.” Molly remembers Don Helder Camara from Brazil, one of the early lights in Liberation Theology. “He was wonderful. It was one of our meager meals. Our offices were on the South Side, in the old building with the primitive bathroom in the basement. At the dinner, Suzanne Hudson was doing an interpretative dance, and she took his hand and he did a little dance around the floor with her.” Many of us remember Howard Zinn, for his wonderful sense of humor. He had us laughing all evening, not the usual experience with the somber topics on which we choose to focus. It was quite different from the presentation many years later given by his friend Noam Chomsky, who can lead you down a dark path with the truths he speaks. And some will remember Daniel Berrigan, one
of Molly’s colleagues in the Plowshares Eight action who, she recalls, spoke in poetic prose, with a touch of humor as well. There have been moments of panic, such as Cindy Sheehan canceling at the last moment, but sending her friend Colonel Ann Wright. And of course, travel delays, such as Jim Forest, who came from the Netherlands only to be marooned in Newark, New Jersey. Thanks to the wizardry of Carol Gonzalez, we heard him speak through Skype, and were able to have a conversation with him following his remarks. The speakers have inspired us, and there is nothing quite like the solidarity and delight at being together, that makes the room buzz, every year, and every time. So come, be a part of it, one more time. *Additional award ceremonies throughout the year. Bette McDevitt is a member of The Thrifty Shopper, Frederick, Age 11, NewPeople Edito- made his Halloween costume with clothes from Thrifty! rial Collective.
Don’t Forget to Buy Your Raffle Tickets! This year’s prizes include: Two-Night Stay at the Sheraton Hotel in Station Square; Barnhardt Bed and Breakfast all-inclusive two-night stay; Indigo Hotel allinclusive two-night stay including breakfast of your choice at Wallace’s Tap Room & Complimentary Valet Parking; Jazz & Wine Basket featuring two bottles of highly-prized wine; a bike from Free-Ride; a bundle of Tickets to Pittsburgh Attractions including: Carnegie Museum 1 year membership, Carnegie Museum of Natural History pass (good for up to 4 visitors); Andy Warhol Museum (4 passes); Tickets to the zoo & Aquarium, $50 gift certificate to Dinette, $10 gift certificate to East End Food Coop, August Wilson Center- 2 Tickets to “Sancho: An Act of Remembrance” on Dec 12th, and 4 tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony.- Wow! Don’t miss out on winning one of these absolutely amazing prizes. You can buy your ticket for $5 the night of the dinner or at the Merton Center. Won’t be attending the dinner? No problem! Winner need not be present. Call 412-361-3022 to find out how you can buy your raffle tickets! November 2015
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Celebrating Local Activists TMC Member, Dr. Leila J. Richards, Named Distinguished Daughter of PA By Joyce Rothermel
It was with great enthusiasm that many gathered at the Governor’s Mansion in Harrisburg on October 14 for a luncheon in honor of nine new Distinguished Daughters of PA. Among them was Dr. Leila J. Richards, nominated by the Merton Center. Leila has committed her entire professional career to international health and humanitarian programs. Edith Bell represented the Merton Center at the event. A public health care physician, noted author and advocate for people worldwide suffering from oppression and war, Leila has worked with many groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization, ministering to vulnerable populations, primarily those who have been impacted by the tragedy of international conflict and poverty. Over the course of more than 20 years, Leila has served in Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Lebanon, India and Cambodia. Leila has authored numerous articles and reports addressing important medical and social issues facing refugees and displaced persons. Her book, “The Hills of Sidon: Journal of an American Doctor in Lebanon” has received wide acclaim. Now retired in Pittsburgh, Leila remains in-
volved in advocating for the oppressed and supporting international efforts to find a just peace, especially between Palestine and Israel. She currently serves on the board of Friends of Sabeel North America, which supports Sabeel, an ecumenical liberation theology movement founded by Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land. They work with people of all faiths and convictions to secure a just peace in Palestine – Israel. Other new Distinguished Daughters named by Governor Dr. Leila J. Richards (left) and Edith Bell outside the Governor's Mansion at the New Distinguished Daughters luncheon on Oct. 14, 2015. Wolf this year from western Photo Credit: Son of Kim Tillotson-Fleming Pennsylvania are Barbara Baker, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium and Kim Til- join in the mission and community life of the Merlotson Fleming, Chair and CEO of Hefren-Tillotson, ton Center. Inc., a privately held Pittsburgh-based financial Joyce Rothermel chairs the Membership Commitplanning and investment advisory firm. tee of the Merton Center. Congratulations, Leila! We are grateful you have returned to Pittsburgh to continue your efforts for a more peaceful and just world and to actively
Dr. Jim Withers: Cast Your Vote for Pittsburgh’s Hero of Philanthropy By Michael Drohan
Jim Withers, a Pittsburgh physician, has pioneered a new type of medical care: medicine for the homeless in the streets of Pittsburgh and under its bridges. He began in 1992. His work has become internationally recognized as he journeys to the far ends of the earth to spread this innovative type of medical care. He dresses as a homeless person, travelling with a backpack to the locales where homeless people seek shelter around the city. In the backpack he carries basic medicines and instruments of his trade: thermometers, blood pressure kits, and stetho-
scope.
He has also expanded this work to provide housing for the homeless through an organization called Operation Safety Net. It has helped to find apartments for 1,200 people in the city. His work has now earned him the honor of being named one of “CNN’s Top 10 Heroes for 2015.” With this honor goes a remuneration of $10,000 to carry on this work. Now he enters the competition for “Hero of the Year” with the other nine nominees. The winner will get $100,000 to pur-
sue their mission. We can all help Dr. Jim pursue this noble work by voting for him at CNNHeroes.com once a day from now to Nov 15. Get your friends to vote also. You can vote as often as you desire. You go, Jim! To watch a documentary on Dr. Withers, go to: www.juliesokolow.com. Michael Drohan is a member of the NewPeople editorial Collective
Final Speaker for the 2015 APP Speaker Series By Joyce Rothermel The final talk in this year’s Association of Pittsburgh Priests Speakers Series will be given by St. Joseph Sister Kathleen Sherman from La Grange, Illinois. She is a musician-composer, a gifted singer— liturgist and a Director of Spiritual Formation. Her talk is entitled: “Love Cannot be Silenced: Our Message and Our Mission,” and will be offered on Thursday, November 12. Our world is crying out for healing, hope and communion. The evening will invite reflection on the gift and challenge of incarnating the Love of God at this moment in history. As disciples in community, Christians give witness to the Gospel by proclaiming to the world that “love cannot be silenced.” Reflection will include scripture, story, and original music by Sherman, who began writing music and lyrics in 1966 and has published at least fourteen CDs. Her song, “Language of
the Heart,” addresses the images of families affected by the Vietnam War and reaches across boundaries to reconcile and interconnect divisions. This event will be held from 7-9 PM at Kearns Spirituality Center, 9000 Babcock Blvd. in Allison Park behind the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Divine Providence. To RSVP, call 412-366-1124 or contact kearns@cdpsisters.org. The fee is $20. For further information, contact John Oesterle at 412-232-7512. An additional opportunity to be with Sister Kathleen will occur Sat., November 14 when she leads a day of reflection at the St. Joseph Sisters Motherhouse in Baden, PA. The day’s theme is “Listening to the Desires of Your Soul: Songs for the Journey.” There will be time and space to reflect on the gift and challenge of attending to the longings
Kudos The TMC proudly recognizes its member, University of Pittsburgh Law Professor Jules Lobel, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who was the lead attorney representing California prisoners in a landmark suit against the state's practice of keeping more than 2,500 inmates in solitary confinement, some for more than 10 years, solely for suspicion of gang activity. A settlement of the lawsuit was recently forged. All affected prisoners will be moved out of solitary confinement and provided the regular rights to social contact and open space as regular inmates. NewPeople readers can hear Professor Lobel discuss this significant victory in an interview posted on the TMC Website. It's the November TMC Radio Program. 4 - NEWPEOPLE
November 2015
and desires of our souls. The day will include input, music and reflection along with time for small and large group conversation, leading to action on behalf of our planet and all creation. The program begins at 9 AM and ends at 4 PM. The cost is $25. Scholarships are available. It is a complementary event to Sr. Kathleen’s talk on Thursday. To register, send a check made out to CSJA (Associates of the Sisters of St. Joseph) to Kathy Lotzmann, 105 Wingate Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15205. For more information, call Kathy at 412-5081623. Joyce Rothermel serves as the Chair of the Church Renewal Committee of the Association of Pittsburgh Priests.
Fighting For Women’s Health Media Echoes Congressional Attacks On Women’s Health By Marni Fritz
Earlier this year, the United States Congress decided to launch a well-calculated, propagandabacked attack on women’s health. Threatening another government shutdown, the Republican Party rallied around videos allegedly proving that Planned Parenthood (PP) sold fetal tissue for profit. As if these playground politics weren’t bad enough, it has been revealed that these videos were, in fact, edited together to provide false evidence. Since July 14th, the Center for Medical Progress has released ten videos trying to show that Planned Parenthood is illegally selling fetal tissue and altering abortion procedures in order to profit from the sale of fetal tissue. Ryan Gonzalez and David Daleiden have admitted to editing this footage over an 11-month period. The original, unedited footage shows Planned Parenthood representatives clearly stating that their organization does not sell fetal tissue nor does it profit from it. Five congressional investigations, along with individual state inquiries, have been undertaken since the release of these videos. Seven states (Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Georgia, Indiana, Florida and Missouri) launched investigations and have concluded that Planned Parenthood broke no laws. The government held hearings to tackle these claims. What really occurred during said hearings were anti-choice testimonials by people with no actual affiliation with PP. Cecile Richards was tried like a criminal for five hours in front of a mostly-male hearing, and responded continuously to false allegations. The hearings were simply a soapbox featuring all antichoice rhetoric, with no real relation to the case or PP as an organization. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, submitted a fake chart into the Congressional record in an attempt to use propaganda as evidence. One witness came to the stand as a former employee of PP and had nothing to say in relation to the videos or the scandal at hand, but rather discussed her own personal experiences and regrets involving abortion What is truly outrageous is that even with no evidence to support these claims, members of Congress are continuously repeating falsified information loudly and publicly at every opportunity. After turning up zero evidence of wrongdoing, having been caught planting false documents, and admitting that PP’s finances were legal, Rep. Chaffetz continues to call for more investigations.
With all of this media coverage of PP, one income women access to health care. would think that the four arson attacks in only three months against the organization would garner media Marni Fritz is a member of the NewPeople Editorial Collective attention. Unfortunately, the media is so obsessed with rehashing falsified video content that the arson Update attacks have gone virtually unnoticed. The media Cecile Richards (CEO) has since decided that the also doesn’t cover the threats of harassment, intimionly two clinics that had accepted cost reimbursedation and violence against the organization which ments for tissues, in California and Washington, no have significantly increased since 2010. Instead, longer would. media personalities like Bill O’Reilly compare PP to Three days after Texas defunded PP, the Texas Of“Nazi stuff,” Fox News deems women’s health profice of Inspector General, a division of the Commisgrams as “obsolete” and the RedState blog compares sion, raided PP clinics across the state. PP to Auschwitz. These comparisons are outrageous, offensive and disrespectful. What is actually at risk is affordable access to healthcare for low-income women across the country. PP currently receives $528 million a year and federal law prohibits any of that money going to abortion. Seventy-five percent of that funding comes from Medicaid reimbursements for providing care to low-income patients. If defunding PP becomes a General Health Services: reality, PP will be cut out of the Medicaid program. Anemia testing The sad reality is that, according to the Government Cholesterol screening Accountability Office, less than half of health care Diabetes screening providers accepting people on Medicaid are taking Physical exams, including for employment and sports new patients. Public health clinics are already Flu vaccines Help with quitting smoking strained. High blood pressure screening Cutting PP from the Medicaid program means Tetanus vaccines cutting millions of women from access to medical Thyroid screening care. PP provides 2.7 million Americans annually with cancer screenings, birth control, gynecological Women’s Health: exams and STI testing. An estimated one in five Reversible contraception procedures women has visited PP for various services in her Emergency contraception kits lifetime. Medicaid patients should have the right to Gynecological exams choose their health care provider. Already, as a rePap Tests sult of this smear campaign, states like North CaroliBreast Exams/ Breast Care na and New Hampshire have dropped their contracts Cervical cancer treatments (including Colposcopy and LOOP/LEEP Procedures) with PP, forcing PP to stop running teen pregnancy Pregnancy Tests prevention programs. It is clear that our politicians Prenatal Services do not respect the concept of a woman’s autonomy over her own body nor do they value women’s Men’s Health Services: health as an institution. Checkups for reproductive or sexual health problems With the help of much of the mainstream news Colon, prostate, and testicular cancer screenings media, Republican representatives continue to reckCondoms and vasectomy lessly throw false information into the public’s face Erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation services, to promote their own anti-choice agendas. We are including education, exams, treatment, and referral General health care and routine physical exams not getting facts; rather we are consuming wellJock itch exam and treatment crafted fear tactics to support a smear campaign Male infertility screening and referral against Planned Parenthood, an organization that STD testing and treatment serves low-income women. Representatives in our Urinary tract infections testing and treatment own government are tirelessly working to deny low-
Health Services Planned Parenthood Offers
Military Sexual Assault Attorney Comes to Pittsburgh By Jo Schlesinger and Marni Fritz
“Rape (in the military) is an occupational hazard.” This disturbing quote, from the 2012 documentary The Invisible W ar motivated Stop Sexual Assault in the Military (SSAM) to action. SSAM has sought to educate the public about this epidemic of sexual assault in the military (one in three women and 1.2% of men are sexually assaulted) and support legislative solutions. On Saturday, November 14, Attorney Susan Burke will visit the University of Pittsburgh. Starting with a film showing of The Invisible War at 11:00 am, Burke, who served as a collaborator on the film, will lead a discussion on the current state of this issue. Ms. Burke serves as lead counsel in a series of lawsuits against the Pentagon seeking to reform the manner in which the military prosecutes rape and sexual assault. She has argued before the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia and the Fourth Circuit. Named as one of the top 75 female US attorneys, Susan Burke is an experienced litigator with 28 years of experience in federal class and complex litigation, specializing in bringing class action or mass tort lawsuits to reform broken systems or fix societal problems. Her social impact litigation includes, in addition to rape and sexual assault in the military, cases on environmental harms, torture and war crimes, campaign finance reform, gun control, mental illness, disability rights, prison reform, and health care fraud and abuse. On behalf of Iraqi vic-
tims, she successfully took on US defense contractors involved in torture at Abu Ghraib. She has represented prisoners against excessive force and disabled clients in Baltimore. She was part of a lawsuit that is credited with reforming the Washington, DC Mental Health system. And she has stood toe to toe with the NRA in Philadelphia. Ms. Burke has had many TV, radio and print media appearances and has won numerous awards. The Invisible War won the Sundance Audience Award (January 2012), was nominated for an Academy Award (February 2013), and was awarded the Silver Gavel Award by the American Bar Association at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. (July, 2014). In March 2015, Ms. Burke filed a suit, Baldwin vs. the Department of Defense, confronting how the military investigates and prosecutes sexual assault cases. Currently, both the investigation and prosecution lie within the Chain of Command. Unfortunately this system is biased. The complaint asserts that “the Department permits military officials involved in creating and fostering the sexually hostile environment to control the military judicial process... As a direct result of the Department’s failure to operate an impartial system and instead place power in untrained and biased hands, Plaintiffs Baldwin, Rodriguez and Swain are among the thousands of service member survivors who have to endure seeing their rapists go unpunished in any way.”
Come hear Susan Burke speak on November 14th at 12:00 noon and learn more about what SSAM is doing in Pittsburgh. The event will be held in the Pitt Law building in the Alcoa Room. If you have not seen Attorney Susan Burke The Invisible War, please come early for a screening of the film at 11:00 am. There will be free bagels and coffee. SSAM (Stop Sexual Assault in the Military) exists to help inform Pittsburghers of the scourge of military sexual assault and, in collaboration with national efforts, to mobilize support for litigation and legislation to force Congress, the White House and the Military to effectively and swiftly remedy this cruel injustice. Rape cannot be dismissed as an “occupational hazard.”
Jo Schlesinger and Marni Fritz are active members of Stop Sexual Assault in the Military. November 2015
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Embracing Refugees, Not Nukes Fear of Syrian Refugees Unfounded, Given Long, Careful Screening Process By Danielle Fritz
Last month, President Obama called for the resettlement of 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States by the end of the next fiscal year. He further called for the resettlement of 100,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2017. With over 3 million recognized Syrian refugees, how does the government select refugees for resettlement and what happens when refugees reach the United States? Each year, the President consults with Congress to establish a limit on the number of refugees admitted to the United States. The U.S. Refugee Admission Program manages the referral system that determines which refugees gain admission. The entire process can take between 12-33 months, and it involves multiple domestic and international organizations and agencies. Only U.S. embassies, authorized nongovernmental organizations, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) may make referrals to the U.S. Refugee Admission Program. In practice, UNHCR makes most referrals. UNHCR first conducts what is called “refugee status determination” to establish whether a person is a refugee as defined by international law. According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person who is outside her country of origin and cannot return due to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” UNHCR then seeks solutions for recognized refugees, which include integration into the country currently hosting the refugee, voluntary repatriation to the refugee’s country of origin, or resettlement in a different country. Due to restrictive immigration policies around the world, resettlement is very rare.
Only one percent of the world’s refugees resettle abroad. UNHCR applies its own criteria to determine whether a refugee should be referred to a resettlement program.The agency will not recommend a refugee for resettlement if she falls into a “category of concern.” For instance, UNHCR resettlement officers will not refer Syrians who previously worked for government ministries. The screening process for resettlement is unforgiving, and the agency will not recommend a refugee if questions exist about her background or affiliations. Following a referral to the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, the refugee’s case progresses to one of the nine Resettlement Support Centers around the world. The center prepares the refugee’s case for presentation to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This often involves taking photographs, checking facts within the refugee’s file, and collecting information for the security clearance process. The center also prepares the cases of the spouse and children of the refugee, if applicable. An officer of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a component of DHS, then interviews the refugee to determine whether she is admissible to the United States under domestic immigration laws. Non-citizens seeking admission, including refugees, may be refused for a variety of reasons, including criminal, health, or securityrelated grounds. DHS also consults its own law enforcement and terrorism databases to screen applicants. Refugees who are granted admission may then receive a loan from the International Organization for Migration to cover the costs of travel, repayable after the refugee has resettled to the United
States. Upon entry into the United States, each refugee is sponsored by one of nine agencies that participate in the Reception & Placement Program. Sponsorship typically lasts between 30-90 days, during which the agency and its affiliated offices provide housing, food, clothing, and other necessities to the recently arrived refugee. The agencies also help refugees access social, medical, and employment services. Refugee status lasts for twelve months, after which the person may apply to become a legal permanent resident. After five years as a permanent resident she may then apply for U.S. citizenship. To date, UNHCR has referred over 15,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, yet less than 2,000 have successfully resettled. The lengthy application and screening process, often justified on national security grounds, has delayed the resettlement of the relatively few refugees that the United States has agreed to accept. Many claim that accepting Syrian refugees poses a security risk, yet the resettlement process already involves multiple checks into a refugee’s history and affiliations. These include UNHCR’s initial refugee status determination, UNHCR’s resettlement referral process, and the interviews and investigations conducted by the DHS. Fears and prejudices lacking evidentiary support should not drive U.S. policy towards Syrian refugee resettlement. Instead, we should work to speed up and expand resettlement for those in desperate need of protection and assistance. Danielle Fritz is a New York licensed attorney. She recently completed a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Human Rights at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.
The Anti-War Committee of the Merton Center recommends donations to the following organizations to assist Syrian refugees: International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) http://www.iocc.org/countries/countries_syria.aspx It is one of the few international non-governmental organizations working on the ground across Syria to provide aid to people who have been displaced inside the country. UNHCR, United Nations Refugee Agency https://donate.unrefugees.org They provide basic and necessary humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees and helps the most vulnerable refugees with urgently needed relief.
The Marshall Islands Take on the Nuclear Powers By Jo Schlesinger On October 1, the group Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace presented “David and Goliath: The Marshall Islands Take on the Nuclear Powers.” It was co-sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild (University of Pittsburgh School of Law Chapter), the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and Service Employee International Union Healthcare PA (SEIU). With excellent timing, also on October 1, the Right Livelihood Honorary Award Foundation announced that the 2015 award was being given to Tony DeBrum and the people of the Marshall Islands "...in recognition of their vision and courage to take legal action against the nuclear powers for failing to honor their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." This provided the backdrop for the presentation to students, lawyers and activists at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. Speakers included Ed Aguilar, PA Director for the Coalition for Peace Action; John Burroughs, Executive Director with the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP); and UE’s General Counsel Joseph Cohen. Aguilar started the program with a powerpoint history of the Marshall Islands. He described its nuclear testing contamination and relationship to climate change, suggesting clean-energy solutions to reverse the effects of human activities on climate. Burroughs explained the case filed against the nine nuclear weapons powers before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that seeks to compel them to negotiate in good faith for the elimination of nuclear weapons, as required by the Nuclear Non6 - NEWPEOPLE
November 2015
Panel speaks at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.
Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law. Because the United States did not accept the court's jurisdiction, a similar complaint was filed in Federal District Court in California and is now on appeal. Burroughs also discussed the Amicus Brief filed by the LCNP in support of the Marshall Islands’ case. Cohen explained how the District Court erred in finding that there were no judicial standards for determining whether the parties failed to negotiate in good faith. In fact, labor law has much experience with the “application of ‘good faith standard’ in collective bargaining”. The panel presentations were followed by a
Photo Credit: Jo Schlesinger
thoughtful and provocative question and comment period. We were fortunate to have these experts share their knowledge and direct involvement with these groundbreaking cases, and look forward to following their progress. To learn more about Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace and to listen to the panel presentation, go to rememberinghiroshima.org. Jo Schlesinger is a member of Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace and the western PA coordinator for the Coalition for Peace Action.
Prisons and the Climate Crisis
Capitalism, Climate Crisis and Laudato Si Cont’d By Michael Drohan Wealth was pretty well distributed and competition between producers flourished. Competitive capitalism, however, is long deceased and what we have today in all the major capitalist countries of the world is a mixture of oligopoly and monopoly where most of the small fish, so to speak, have been eaten up by the whales of the system— conglomerates, multinationals and economic behemoths. This is a logical development from the profit motive that drove the system from its origin and now has morphed into maximization of profits. The result is an intense concentration in industries and across industries, with a consequent massive concentration of wealth and economic inequality. In the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders gave some shocking figures for the US: the top one-tenth of one percent of the population own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of the population. When Sanders spoke of “casino capitalism” in the debate, he was alluding to yet another degenerate element of the system, that most of this wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the financial sector: the hedge funds, the banks, the money speculators and vulture fund managers. To add insult to injury, none of these sectors and their owners add one cent of value to the economy and to the
well-being of a nation. It is totally parasitic. According to the logic and approach of the capitalist system, the non-human world, constituting the other animals, the trees, the water, the soil, the minerals, the oil, and the air are looked upon as raw materials or resources used to make commodities. They have no innate purpose nor any reason to be valued other than production. It has been pithily put that the capitalist system looks upon the earth as a quarry and a dump. From the quarry it extracts all that it wants to the maximum amount possible to achieve maximum profits. Then it dumps back into the seas, the rivers and the land the refuse it creates. A major consequence of this dumping is the pumping of carbon into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. The result of all the pumping is global warming and the endangering of all life on the planet. This is the distillation of the meaning of capitalism in the real world. Pope Francis, in his new encyclical whose title is “care for our common home,” propounds a contrasting vision. In the encyclical (letter) he presents the metaphor of nature as our mother, a living organism, a home where we are inseparable from nature and each other’s welfare. In this document, Francis presents another way of conceptualizing the world in which we live, a new paradigm
completely antithetical to that of the capitalist economic understanding. The earth is our mother and the giver of all life and not an inanimate object which provides us with the raw material from which to make profit. The animals, the birds and the bees are our companions and fellow brothers and sisters on a par with us. The sun is our brother and the moon our sister, just as St. Francis of Assisi believed almost a thousand years ago. But Pope Francis goes on to lament what we have done with this our common home. He says “the earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” He relates global warming to human activity and our economic system which pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But he goes further when he states “both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest;” all in all, the most devastating critique of capitalism ever, even including Karl Marx. Michael Drohan is a member of the Editorial Collective and the Board of the Thomas Merton Center .
TMC Meet & Greet Activist Fundraiser At Franktuary November 4th Wednesday, November 4th 5:00– 7:00 pm Franktuary, Lawrenceville. 3810 Butler St Pittsburgh PA 15201
It's a happy hour where Franktuary donates a portion of sales to the TMC. Guests dining in just tell their server or bartender "We're here to fundraise for TMC!" and the Franktuary staff will take care of the rest. The regular menus are open to you, and we have happy hour specials that run from 4-6pm. The menus can be found online here: http://franktuary.com/menu-lawrenceville/ Come meet other local activists in the community while promoting Pittsburgh's Peace and Social Justice Center! Bring your friends and stop by for a quick drink or stay for a meal. Don't forget to tell your server you are here to support TMC! RSVPs are welcome. marnifritz@thomasmertoncenter.org
Friday Night at the Movies with Thomas Merton Please plan to attend and spread the word about this wonderful opportunity to continue to celebrate the 100th birthday of Thomas Merton in Pittsburgh. A free night at the movies awaits you on Friday, Nov. 13. Morgan Atkinson, maker of the 2015 documentary on Thomas Merton, The Many Storeys and Last Days of Thomas Merton, will be in Pittsburgh for the viewing of his film at Duquesne University. The film will be shown at 7 PM in the Bayer Building, 600 Forbes Avenue, on the Bluff.
There will be a reception with Mr. Atkinson following the film. The Many Storeys and Last Days of Thomas Merton includes interviews with several noted Merton experts and authors, such as James Finley, Richard Rohr, James Martin, Paul Wilkes, Tori Murden McClure, Judith Valente, and Kathleen Deignan, as well as others who knew Merton during his life. Morgan Atkinson, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, writes and produces films that examine issues
By Joyce Rothermel
of community and culture. The Many Storeys and Last Days of Thomas Merton is his third Mertonrelated film, along with Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton, and Gethsemani, an account of life at the famed Trappist monastery where Merton lived in rural Kentucky. Joyce Rothermel serves on the planning committee for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton.
Please mark your calendar for Sunday, Dec. 6 at 8 PM for a prayerful celebration in memory of Thomas Merton. The service is free and open to the public and will be held at Compline Service at Heinz Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh in Oakland. All are welcome. November 2015
NEWPEOPLE - 7
Supporting Steelworkers ATI Exemplifies Corporate Duplicity While Promising "Good Jobs" for a Region
(continued from p.1)
By Neil Cosgrove
Allegheny Technology made a “final offer” that would further change work rules, mandate large increases in worker contributions to health care, and decrease retirement benefits for new hires. The union rejected that offer but said its members would continue working during ongoing negotiations. Instead ATI locked-out its unionized employees on August 15, idling 2,200 workers at Brackenridge and 11 other sites in the Pittsburgh region and five other states. In addition, ATI has brought in “contract labor” recruited by Strom Engineering of Minnesota and claims that most of its plants are, according to a Post-Gazette article, “operating at the same level they were before the lockout began.” Strom’s scabs are expected to work 12-hour days,
seven days a week, for the duration, while receiving pay exceeding that of unionized workers. ATI’s strategy seeks a 12-hour standard work day, thus eliminating the need for overtime pay, and for the once-promised creation of new jobs. In fact, at the time the new mill project was announced the Brackenridge operation had around 950 employees, which dropped to 575 employees at the time of the lock-out. Although the contrast between ATI’s past promises and current behavior is notably outrageous, the incentives offered to the company were relatively small scale. Last year, Pennsylvania’s legislature offered $1.65 billion in tax credits to Shell Chemical if it followed through on construction of an ethane “cracker” plant in Beaver County. As many as 20,000 jobs have been promised, with 400 to 600 in the plant itself. While Shell is now spending millions cleaning up the site of the proposed facility, it has yet to commit to actually building the plant; none of the promised permanent jobs have materialized. Also last year Nevada granted $1.25 billion in “economicdevelopment incentives” to Tesla to support its Reno battery plant, predicted to operate at capacity by 2020. According to business scholar Richard Florida, if the most optimistic projected job creation occurs (such projections are commonly overstated), Nevada will pay $55,000 for each job. With the most pessimistic projection, the state’s cost is $400,000 per job. Florida argues that companies usually base their decisions about locating facilities on “fundamental factors like labor costs, the quality of the
workforce, proximity to markets and access to suppliers,” not on government tax breaks, which they will still openly court, skillfully playing one region against another, and happily accept. Recent corporate decisions appear to reinforce that argument. Shell holds back on its Beaver County plant because of uncertain market conditions. ConAgra Foods is moving its headquarters from Omaha to Chicago, says Omaha’s mayor, not because Omaha lacks the incentives for ConAgra to stay, but because the company seeks to consolidate its operations in northern Illinois. A study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy concludes that the main outcome of offering tax incentives to corporations is the depletion of local and state tax bases. Pennsylvania’s tax base is stagnant, primarily because of slow job growth; and without new sources of revenue, the governor’s office predicts a $2.3 billion structural deficit in next year’s budget, even if spending remains flat. Without more education spending, after 4 ½ years of cuts, the state risks damaging the quality of our future workforce, one of the “fundamental factors” Florida says companies do consider when choosing where to locate. What makes more economic sense—giving tax breaks to corporations in exchange for ephemeral future jobs while lowering future tax revenues, or preserving those revenues for investment in education and infrastructure? Who benefits from one policy or the other? Last year ATI’s executives received pay increases of up to 70%, despite the company’s “under-performing” stock; the CEO’s pay was valued at $8 million, ironically close to the amount of incentives ATI received from Pennsylvania to build their new rolling mill. Neil Cosgrove is a member of The NewPeople editorial collective.
Battle of Homestead Supporters Re-Organize, Meet Nov. 17 By John Haer
The Battle of Homestead Foundation (BHF) is in a reorganization mode. What began 10 years ago with a few people having breakfast in Homestead has grown to 30 or more people who come every Wednesday morning for a spirited discussion , as well as to plan a series of programs at the Pump House from April through October. Now, the assemblage, sometimes called “the Pump House Gang,” have a mailing list of several hundred, and ambitious new projects in the works. Reluctantly abandoning their wonderful disorganization, supporters are formalizing BHF as a member-based duespaying organization, Want to join? The mission is as follows: The
Battle of Homestead Foundation is a non-profit charitable group of citizens, workers, educators and historians, who come together to interpret, preserve and promote labor and people’s histories and to provide a forum for speakers and events at the historic Pump House, the site of the Battle of Homestead on July 6, 1892. Their mission is to both memorialize the tragic events of 1892 and to focus on the consequences that remain with us yet today. BHF members will elect a working board and confirm an advisory board. A suggested donation of $20 (or less if need be) will make you a member. The first membership meeting will be Tuesday, November 17, at 7 p.m., at the Letter Carriers’
Union, 841 California Avenue near Brighton Road. It’s recognizable as a former movie theater, and there is parking in the back, reached through Marquis Way. A short video, “Out of This Furnace,” which shows a walking tour of historic Braddock led by the late Dave Demarest, a BHF founder and former CMU literature professor, will be shown. There might be some music, for sure spirited discussion, and camaraderie. Come and join up! John Haer is a volunteer with the Union Edge and the Battle of Homestead Foundation.
What’s It Like, Being a Steelworker? At the breakfast gathering of the Pump House Gang, we discussed the recent op-ed piece in the Post Gazette, The Homestead Battle Revisited. Mike Stout and Joni Rabinowitz submitted it, with input from Joe White, Chuck Passon and everyone else who sits around the table. Chuck Passon is one of the locked out steelworkers at ATI (Allegheny Technologies Incorporated). “Being a steelworker is the only job I ever wanted to have,” he said. Chuck worked in Milwaukee at Crucible Steel and when it was sold and closed down in 2013, he put all his belongings in a truck, and headed for Pittsburgh. His belongings, by the way, included all the books written about the steel industry in Pittsburgh. He was familiar with all the players in the history of this steel town and knew about Mike Stout, for example, before he arrived in western Pennsylvania. “I wanted to work at ATI because of the reputa8 - NEWPEOPLE November 2015
tion of the mill. Allegheny Ludlum [Allegheny Technologies former name.] is pretty highly regarded in the specialty steel industry. I had known about it long before they put in the new rolling mill, at Brackenridge, where I work. This mill is the most powerful rolling mill on the planet. We can make in three days what it takes a year to make at another mill. It cost over a billion dollars to build. And when a company invests that much money in a location, you get the sense that they plan on being there awhile. “I like it that the work I do creates jobs for about eight more people, down the line. The product I make, specialty rolled steel, is used in many ways It goes into planes, parts for jet engines, stainless steel for car parts such as the exhaust system, massive refrigeration units, pipes tubing, It can be real thin gauge, as thin as paper. And we make some electrical steel, used to line the inside of massive
By Bette McDevitt
generators, because of its conductivity. My hands are the last ones that touch the product before it goes out the door. My name is on that.” Both Chuck and Mike Stout, former steward at the Homestead Works, commented on the camaraderie of the mill. “It’s much more than the work you do. Our lives depend on one another when we’re working together,” said Mike Stout. “At the end of the day all you have protecting you is the guy next to you”, said Chuck. And at the end of the day it’s important to have a job you like. “It’s the only kind of work that makes me happy. And besides liking it, I’m really good at it. It makes me tick.”
Bette McDevitt is a member of the NewPeople editorial collective. .
Regional Labor News Steelworkers Fight On While Local Labor Scores Other Victories By Patrick Young
Steelworkers Standing Strong as Lockout at ATI press time, talks between the Steelworkers and US Continues Steel were continuing. Steelworkers at eight sites around Southwest Pennsylvania are holding strong on the Allegheny Technologies (ATI) picket lines, as the unfair labor practice lockout continues. The parties briefly returned to the bargaining table with a federal mediator on September 11th, but ATI management refused to move from its demands that workers submit to deep cuts in healthcare, retirement security, and job security. About 2,200 members of the United Steelworkers—including 1,000 workers in southwest Pennsylvania—have been locked out at ATI since August 15th. The union has put forward proposals that would save the company tens of millions of dollars over the term of the agreement, but ATI management has consistently rebuffed those offers, demanding even deeper cuts. The continuing lockout is taking a significant toll on the company. Workers staffing picket lines report very sparse shipments coming out of the locked out facilities and in early October, ATI reported to investors that it projected a quarterly loss of $142 million for the 3rd quarter of 2015. At the print deadline no new negotiation dates had been announced and picket lines remained up at each location. Bargaining Continues at US Steel Against the backdrop of the ATI lockout and a very slow market for steel, workers at US Steel facilities in the Mon Valley and around the country continued working well past their contract’s September 1 expiration date. At the bargaining table, US Steel continues to demand deep and permanent cuts in healthcare for active and retired workers, less job security, and altered work rules. United Steelworkers members say they will not allow US Steel to use a temporary downturn in the market for steel as an excuse to erase decades of progress at the bargaining table. At
Locked out union workers fight for their rights.
Home Rule Charter prohibits the city from establishing “duties, responsibilities or other requirements placed upon businesses, occupations and employPoint Park Adjuncts Win First Contract ers.” The City of Pittsburgh has vowed to fight the Adjunct faculty fighting for job stability and legal challenge; the coalition that backed the law, fair working conditions at universities and colleges spearheaded by Pittsburgh United, is mobilizing to across the region won a major victory this Septem- shine the spotlight on the restaurants behind the lawber. The more than 300 adjunct faculty at Point suit. Pittsburgh United activists have held demonPark, who voted last year to join the United Steelstrations at the Church Brew Works and Modern workers, reached a tentative agreement on their first Café and plan on organizing additional actions as contract. The adjuncts will vote on the agreement, the lawsuit moves forward. which includes wage increases and increases in job security, in a mail-in ballot in the coming weeks. Security Workers Make Gains in their First ConIf ratified this would be the first new collectract tive bargaining agreement for adjunct faculty in years. Thousands of other adjunct faculty around the Security guards at many of Pittsburgh’s largregion are working to form unions and win first con- est buildings, members of SEIU (Service Employees tracts. Adjunct faculty at the Community College of International Union) 32BJ won their first union conAllegheny County (CCAC), who recently voted to tract on October 1 after months of organizing and join the American Federation of Teachers, and fac- negotiating. The agreement, covering nearly 1,000 ulty at Robert Morris University, who voted to join workers, provides improvements in healthcare benethe United Steelworkers (USW) earlier this year, are fits, universal training, and wage increases of $1.95/ currently negotiating their first contracts. Adjunct hour over three years. At the end of the contract faculty at Duquesne University, who voted to join workers would still earn an average of just $11.75 the USW more than two years ago, launching a rean hour. surgence in academic worker organizing, are awaitAlthough the wage package still falls far being Duquesne’s latest appeal to the National Labor low a living wage, workers saw the contract as a Relations Board (NLRB). In June the NLRB reject- major step forward. David Cornish, an Allied Barton ed Duquesne’s assertion that as a religious institusecurity guard, said, “This is a major accomplishtion, it is exempt from federal labor laws. ment, to have been a part of this from the start. Things that I wanted for my family, which once The Church Brew Works is Making Us Sick! seemed unattainable, now seem possible.” The new contract covers security officers at Just weeks after the Pittsburgh City Council Allied Barton Security Systems, G4S, Securitas, St. passed an ordinance calling for paid sick days for all Moritz Security Services, ISS, SOS, and Chelsey workers in Pittsburgh, a group of businesses includ- Brown. ing the Church Brew Works, Rita’s Italian Ice, Storms Restaurant, Dirt Doctors Cleaning, Modern Patrick Young is the Financial Secretary/ Café and the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Treasurer of Fight Back Pittsburgh Association filed a lawsuit against the city, asserting (fightbackpittsburgh.org), an associate member program of United Steelworkers (USW) Local the new law violated the city’s charter. The filing, which asks a judge to declare the 3657. ordinance “null and void,” argues that Pittsburgh’s
Photo Credit Justin Lascek.
East End Food Co-op workers celebrate joining the UE.
East End Food Co-op Now Unionized
By Deb Gausmann and Kate DiPrinzio
On September 14, 2015, the East End Food Co-op (EEFC) made history when 81% of the rank and file workers voted to join the United Electrical, Radio and Machinists Union ( UE ). The fact that 81% of those eligible to vote (any staff who did not hold supervisory roles or deal with confidential information) elected to go with UE is phenomenal. This was one of the largest voting majorities in the UE's history.
Already, morale among employees has improved dramatically. There has been an uplifting feeling of hope and solidarity. By the time you read this, local officers will have been elected and contract negotiations will be happening in the near future. The EEFC staff are proud, invigorated and excited to be a collective entity with a voice! With unionization, EEFC can reflect the true co-operative
values it was founded on and live out its mission more fully. We can now negotiate for living wages, job security, and a democratic workplace, among other things. Congratulations to us on this accomplishment! Deb and Kate are staff of the East end Food Co-Op
November 2015
NEWPEOPLE - 9
Housing, Transit Activism Community Land Trusts and Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Crisis By Mary Sico
Pittsburgh’s affordable housing crisis is no secret. In 2011, the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research identified a shortage of 30,000 affordable housing units in Allegheny County. In this context, “affordable” just means that no more than 30% of residents’ income goes to rent and utilities or mortgages and related costs. It’s estimated by a 2015 study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition that there are only 25 to 40 affordable and available rental units per 100 extremely low-income households. The need for an effective solution to affordable housing is obvious. Just what will be the most effective long-term solution is less so. Founded in January 2015, Pittsburgh’s Community Land Trust (CLT) is dedicated to finding an answer. The land trust is not a new idea. Traditionally, a land trust is usually dedicated to maintaining green spaces. Landowners will either will or donate their land to a land trust, with the promise that the land will go undeveloped and remain as needed natural space. Allegheny Land Trust is one such organization in the area, operating in the county for more than twenty years. A community land trust is a little different. Instead of being devoted to the purpose of green space, a community land trust is an attempt to make affordable housing more available. In a community land trust, the trust remains the actual owner of the land onto which housing is developed. This way, those who buy houses on community land trust land
then only pay for the actual house, and not the land beneath it. When those homeowners sell their home, the land still belongs to the land trust, making sure that the house goes for below market value and remains an option of affordable housing. “CLT offers a path to creating permanently affordable housing, ensuring mixed income neighborhoods continue to exist,” says Henry Pyatt, from Mayor Peduto’s Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment Office. “Today the only tools we have to make home ownership affordable is to subsidize the buyer, not the home, and so when that buyer moves on to a new home the subsidy they received in the form of a second deferred mortgage is repaid to the public, but the affordable unit is no longer affordable. CLT means our hard work in creating affordable units will benefit many generations to come, not just one buyer.” The CLT Working Group is a collection of individuals and organizations invested in exploring the feasibility of a community land trust that will ensure affordable housing in the Pittsburgh area. The CLT Working Group is a grassroots organization consisting of community members as well as representatives from the Allegheny Land Trust, Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, the Larimer Consensus Group, Grow Pittsburgh, ACTIONHousing, and Mayor Peduto’s office. Though its main goal is to provide affordable housing, the CLT Working Group sees community land trusts as potentially providing much more. A
community land trust could be used to promote urban agriculture, protect green space, and even create a venue for potential affordable commercial space for small businesses and mom-and-pop shops. The CLT Working Group completed its first feasibility study in July 2015, studying community land trust models from other cities and comparing these to Pittsburgh’s particular needs. As of now, its eighteen -month plan includes completing additional studies and finding and educating individuals who might be interested in participating in the trust, once it comes into actuality. The number and diversity of groups in Allegheny County that have expressed interest in a community land trust is indicative of the model’s flexibility. The CLT Working Group has garnered the attention of communities as diverse as Larimer, Lawrenceville, and Millvale. All are interested in exploring community land trusts as a potential solution to their affordable housing problems. The cases of Lawrenceville and Larimer are particularly interesting. Though the communities’ situations could scarcely be more different—skyrocketing real estate prices in Lawrenceville and a lack of development investment in Larimer—both see an opportunity in community land trusts, and a potential to find longterm and sustainable solutions to their respective housing crises. Mary Sico is a member of the NewPeople Editorial Collective
Pittsburghers for Public Transit Celebrate Win, Push for More Service By Casy Stelitano
The organizers and volunteers of Pittsburghers for Public Transit (PPT) have been hard at work this fall. September buzzed with excitement and triumph due to the restoration of two bus routes to transit deserts in Baldwin and Groveton. Residents from both neighborhoods, transit workers, and volunteers celebrated the victory by ceremoniously riding the new buses and rallying together in downtown Pittsburgh. The celebration included several dozen labor union members, social activists, and organizers. Mike Harms, an Amalgamated Transit Union member, declared that “with the work of the community, activists, and the union, we were able to restore the service. They said it couldn’t be done but together we got it done and it proves that there is power in the people.” PPT is proud to have supported these communities in their campaigns. Dietra Hawkins, Groveton resident, started school last January and was stranded, with the nearest bus stop located over a mile away. Now she has graduated and with the return of service to her community can safely travel to her new job! Although the celebration highlighted a big win for public transit, our work is far from over. Following recent successes, PPT has launched three new community campaigns for better bus service. Residents and community leaders in Garfield, Penn Hills, and the North Hills have drawn our attention to the serious lack of public transit in their communities. Since 2011, when service was cut, Garfield Commons has become a “transit desert” in the middle of the city, totally cut off all day every Saturday and Sunday. Neighborhoods in Penn Hills, including low-income housing communities, have been facing a dearth of service during the middle of the day. Additionally, students, businesses, and residents in the North Hills are fighting for a service return to Perry Highway. PPT volunteers and members have been working together with residents and leaders in these communities to make their voices heard. Canvassing days in Garfield and Penn Hills, in conjunction with community meetings in each neighborhood, have produced over 200 requests for service. In addition to on-the-ground campaigns, PPT is also working to make service planning decisions more equitable and transparent. Thanks to pressure from PPT and transit activists, the Port Authority is 10 - NEWPEOPLE November 2015
Dietra Hawkins of Groveton, PA celebrates the return of service to her community. Photo by Molly Nichols
publicly sharing how equity informs their decision making. The agency is legally obligated to consider minority groups and persons with disabilities, but the Port Authority now also accounts for the needs of low-income persons, persons without access to a vehicle, and senior citizens. While we support the Port Authority’s responses to our region’s equity needs, we will continue to push for the rights of transit riders, workers, and residents. The Port Authority is currently reviewing their fare policy and PPT has maintained a steadfast position against any proposal to raise fares. Riders should not have to pay more for transit than they currently do. Pittsburgh has one of the highest costs for public transportation in the nation, and riders will not tolerate an increase. Any organization that would like to support PPT’s stance on this issue
is invited to sign on to a letter opposing a fare increase, which you can read here: www.pittsburghforpublictransit.org/campaigns/ affordable-fares/. Please help us continue fighting for more accessible and equitable service and against fare increases. PPT is launching an online fundraiser through Indiegogo. The site will be open from October 15th until December 15th, and you can access it from our website. Don’t forget to join us in protesting Black Friday consumerism on Nov 27 by giving to your favorite transit activist organization!
Casy Stelitano is a PULSE Fellow working as the Program Coordinator for Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
Invitations to Activism November 12: Care = Prosperity: The Caring Economy Starter Course By JT Campbell
On November 12th Riane Eisler and the Caring Economy Campaign will offer a free one-hour live/ online webinar. In a caring economy, there is enough to go around. The vast majority of people living in poverty in our wealthy nation are women, children, and communities of color. We can -- and must -- change this through paid family leave, affordable child care, child care tax credits, and other policies that support the most important human work: caring for people, starting in early childhood. The Caring Economy campaign shows the profound impact that caregiving work has on human development and well-being -- and that to shift our patterns of investment, we must show the value of care, not only in human but also in economic terms. You can learn how to use this effective approach to changing inequality and injustice by joining our Caring Economy Starter Course, which introduces the economics of care.
By providing the hard evidence of the connections between care and prosperity, and by offering our unique Social Wealth Economic Indicators, the Caring Economy Campaign provides the missing foundations for organizations working to end cycles of poverty, empower women, provide good care and education for children, and promote economic justice and security. Making the work of care visible and valued repairs and restores wholeness and functionality to a fragmented economic map - closing the gaps of inequality and creating an economic system that works for all.
Learn why GDP = Grossly Distorted Picture and why Care = Prosperity. The Caring Economy Starter Course is offered in partnership with The New Economy Coalition as part of New Economy Week: November 9-15, 2015 Care = Prosperity: The Caring Economy Starter Course Thursday, November 12, 2015 11am-noon Pacific online free www.caringeconomy.org
Ft. Benning: Here We Come By Joyce Rothermel On Nov. 21 and 22, our Pittsburgh delegation to Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia will be joining thousands from across the western hemisphere for the 25th anniversary Vigil calling for the closing of the School of the Americas. U.S. tax dollars are used there to train Latin American military and police in methods of control and torture. Graduates from the School have been found guilty of the illegal assassinations of many of their own people. Famous among those killed are Archbishop Óscar Romero and the religious women martyred in El Salvador in 1980. We will stand in solidarity with those impacted by oppressive U.S. foreign policy. This year’s theme is Resist Empire, Militarization and Migrant Imprisonment: Create a Culture of Justice and Peace. Participants will vigil at the gates of Ft. Benning and march to the Stewart Detention Center close by, attend workshops and concerts, and join in the presentations by the puppetistas (people carrying large puppets depicting current issues of injustice). This could be the greatest act of solidarity you experience this year. The Pittsburgh delegation will travel to Cleveland and join the buses organized by the Interreligious Task Force on Central America. We will carpool to Cleveland early Friday afternoon,
Nov. 20, then travel overnight on the Cleveland buses, arriving at Ft. Benning Saturday morning. We will participate in the events there on Sat. and Sun. Nov. 21-22, getting lodging in the area. We will then head home on Sunday afternoon and travel through the night, arriving in Cleveland Monday morning, Nov. 23. We will arrive back in Pittsburgh midday on Monday. Cost of the trip is $235. Scholarships are available. Would you like to participate this year? Do you know others who would? To register or find out more, call Miriam or Joyce at the Thomas Merton Center at 412-361-3022. Information is available at www.thomasmertoncenter.org/ soawatch. Since this is the 25th anniversary year we are hoping for a strong Pittsburgh delegation. We are looking for drivers to carpool to Cleveland. If you can drive, please let us know how many others can travel with you. If you are unable to attend but would like to sponsor someone who can go, you can send a donation to Thomas Merton Center and put SOA Watch W. Pa in the memo section of the check. Thank You! Joyce Rothermel is a member of the SW PA School of the Americas Watch.
November 2015
NEWPEOPLE - 11
International Climate Events
Climate Justice Action On Wednesday, October 14th, around 100 people delivered a giant bag of “dirty money” to the office of US Representative Keith Rothfus, demanding that he take real action on climate change instead of serving his corporate donors from the banking and fossil fuel industries. People marched to the stirring sounds of a brass band, chanting “Dirty money, dirty air, we can see that you don’t care!”. That same day, more than 150 cities also brought people out for the national day of action called for by the People’s Climate Movement, the broad coalition that organized last year’s 400,000 person climate march in NYC. Participants included members of The Thomas Merton Center, The Sierra Club, Action United, One Pittsburgh, and other local groups. Rothfus has publicly denied that climate change is occurring or that it could be caused by human activity. Why won’t he take urgent action to slow climate chaos, move to clean energy jobs, or protect our communities? Hasn’t he seen the science? Rothfus doesn’t need a science lesson; he just needs to stop listening to his top donors, which include Exxon Mobil, Alpha Natural Resources, Consol Energy, the American Bankers Association, and First Energy Corporation. We can also expect to see climate justice actions throughout the fall from multiple cities participating in Flood The System, a national call to fight back against the root causes of the climate crisis. Climate change is just one more threat created by a power structure built on racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. Solving the climate crisis isn’t a science problem, it’s a power struggle. The day after last year’s NYC climate march, more than 1000 people shut down Wall Street in an act of mass civil disobedience called Flood Wall Street. Flood Wall Street and Flood The System both want to directly challenge the billionaires, banks, and corporations profiting from climate destruction. To get involved with Flood The System actions in Pittsburgh, contact: info@threeriversrisingtide.org. The Thomas Merton Center also leads the Divest Pittsburgh Campaign, asking the City of Pittsburgh to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The City of Pittsburgh manages more than $600 million in the pension fund, and none of it should go towards such a dirty, dangerous industry. To get involved with Divest Pittsburgh, contact gabriel@thomasmertoncenter.org. Photos on top and right by Randy Francisco from the October 14th Day of Climate Action
Response in County Waterford, Ireland to "Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home" By Joyce Rothermel and Michael Drohan
Last month we traveled to Ireland for our biannual visit to the Drohan family. Our brother and sister-in-law remain on the family farm where I (Michael) was born. While at Church one weekend, we learned of an upcoming day-long conference organized by the Diocese of Waterford on Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical “On Care for our Common Home”. Its purpose was to raise awareness of the extent of environmental degradation and to explore how they are responding locally to the challenges it raises. A brochure for the conference quoted Pope Francis: “Our sister earth now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by irresponsible use and abuse of the good with which God has endowed her…. The violence present in our hearts…..is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.” We were hooked. On Saturday, Oct. 3, we made our way to the Waterford Institute of Technology. Our attention remained focused for six hours on the nine well-informed and committed speakers who delivered their urgent messages on behalf of our planet and all of life dependent upon it. In Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan’s opening remarks he reminded us that the encyclical of Pope Francis is an ecumenical one, directed to all demanding a global ecological conversion in both the external environment and the internal one within us. He noted, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we are borrowing it from our children.” The opening address was presented by Mr. John Halligan, former Mayor of Waterford City, a member of the Dail( Irish Parliament),an Irish Representative on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and a member of the Committee on Human Rights. He told us that two thirds of the world does not have access to adequate food, clean 12 - NEWPEOPLE
November 2015
air and water, and medicine. The worst polluters are the U.S., Saudi Arabia and China. Data shows the increases occurring in the earth’s surface temperature, the ocean temperature, ice melt, and sea levels. He stated that we are individually and collectively responsible. We must all answer the question: Are we doing our part to slow down global warming? Mr. Halligan was followed by two people on staff at the Waterford Institute of Technology: Dr. Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, a physicist, and Dr. Tomas Murray, a zoologist with the National Biodiversity Data Center. Their recommendations were the reduction of emissions from fossil fuels, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies, and reduction in hydraulic fracking. They warned, “There will be no solution without acceptance of the scientific realities. We are in a clear and present danger.” They fear that the 2020 goals for protection, set by the European Union, are inadequate. The keynote address was presented by Dr. Sean McDonagh, an ecological theologian, who spoke on “Why should people of faith be concerned for the environment?” He focused on chapter two of the encyclical, the gospel of creation. In addressing the current crisis, Dr. McDonagh believes that no form of wisdom from both faith and reason should be left out. He asked the question, “What is enough?” and said that the gifts of the earth belong to everyone. He shared a quote from the German Bishops, “There is a priority of being over that of being useful.” In the face of the urgency of addressing the environmental crisis, he calls for a theology of hope, encouraging everyone to take concrete steps now toward saving the planet. He sees facing the current environmental challenges as a huge part of Catholic Social Teaching calling us to live in a new way with support from within the Christian community.
The next speakers were Dr. Denise O’Meara, a molecular ecology researcher and Dr. Michael Lehane from Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency. Both were very specific to Ireland. Nationwide, Dr. Lehane says the country’s three major concerns are agriculture, energy and transportation. He recognized that sustainable development in the future must be done in view of society, the economy and the environment. Through policy growing dependence on fossil fuels must be less. Two Waterford City and County Council representatives, John Nolan and Liam Fleming then gave very practical steps that are being taken in their part of Ireland. A theme they are promoting among the people in Waterford County is “Take One More Step”. It is very empowering. Leading environmental campaigner John Gibbons was the most powerful of all the speakers. He noted that problems have solutions and predicaments have outcomes. We must overcome the denial of the current situation within ourselves, and come to grips with the tremendous loss we are facing. We would very much like to see a conference in our region that has the kind of integration of faith, science, religion and government that this one had. Missing were the media and business sectors. As Catholics, we will reach out to Bishop Zubik to share with him the positive action taken by his colleague, Bishop Cullinan “to raise awareness of the extent of environmental degradation and explore how we are responding locally to the challenges it raises.” Joyce and Michael are members of the Editorial Collective.
Poetry and Remembrance Jorge, Working Up North in the U.S.A.
By Marilyn Miller Brusca
Listen to him as he thinks and speaks; a word might escape with some clues; listen to him and watch his eyes, what he’s saying just might be true; and listen to him, notice his hands for some signs of language moves; listen for Latin you had two years, and remember the Mass, the creed and prayers; and listen to him as he praises your food, but the meat was dry, de nada;* listen he laughs he doesn’t care, he liked the rice he loves the beer; listen to him, he’s glad he’s here, he knows the scene, the vibes the space; listen to him his philosophy is all about thanks and grace; and listen well and take to heart, he likes your poems, your style, your taste, de nada, de nada, de nada, all over the place. Is he a sweet talker, smooth talker, fast talker, which? Don’t know, don’t care, he’s “a wayfarer;” listen to him in his language probe of the Latino vernacular to English switch; listen and learn; listen and teach; listen to him, Jorge, the undocumented poet of speech *no problem Marilyn Miller Brusca grew up in Homewood, and has had poetry and short stories published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, America Magazine, the Pittsburgh Quarterly, and even The NewPeople in 1972 and 2014. She is retired from nursing since 2008, enjoying her grandchildren and great-grandchild, and still writing poetry and short stories.
The Truth Is
By Christina Zierenberg
The truth is I'm very ashamed of my past. The truth is I lied, cheated and stole. The truth is I put myself ahead of my children. The truth is driving drunk and high is putting many others at risk. The truth is I'm selfish and self-centered. The truth is I have lost relationships with family that seem unrepairable. The truth is I'm unable to work and supported by welfare. The truth is I put getting high in front of my education. The truth is I spent time in jail. The truth is .. .I am now in recovery and I'm trying to rebuild the last twelve years of my life that 1 destroyed. It seems as if only two good things came out of it-my girls. The truth is ... I see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The truth is .. .it's not too late to repair these damages. The truth is .. .it's not too late to go back to school. The truth is ... I am a good mother, lover, sister, daughter, granddaughter, and friend. The truth is ... I'm starting to see my self-worth and my positive qualities. The truth is I now can say I'm starting to love myself. The truth is I can't understand the love of the drug. The truth is I love getting high. The truth is my name is Christina and I am an addict.
In Memory of the Passing of Dr. R. Thomas Schaub Long time member of the Merton Center Dr. R. Thomas Schaub passed on October 19, 2015. He, his wife Marilyn, and daughter Helen supported the Center and often attended our annual Thomas Merton award dinners and other events. Tom’s long-time career was in Biblical studies, world religions and Palestinian archaeology at the Indiana University of PA’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. In addition, Tom served as co-director of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan. A believer in multi-disciplinary archeological research and academic collaboration, he educated and mentored many young people and authored numerous publications on the results of his expedition.
Free Piano A Henry Herbert piano made by Mason and Reisch. Wood is slightly worn but keyboard is in good condition. Must provide pickup and transportation. The piano is 52” long, 24” deep and 39.5” high.
From “Words Without Walls,” a book of prose and poetry that is the result of a collaboration between Sojourner House and Chatham University’s MFA program, in which Sheryl St. Germaine and Sarah Shotland taught a creative writing class called “Make Mine Words” to the women at Sojourner House.
For more information please email Marcia at snowdenm@thomasmertoncenter.org
Christina Zierenberg is a former resident of Sojourner House
Grace Lee Boggs: Rest in Power Grace Lee Boggs, the long time activist who campaigned for gender and racial equality for more than seventy years, passed away at the age of 100 on October 5, 2015. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she grew up in Queens, New York, and worked with fellow activists and cultural figures including Malcolm X, CLR James, Raya Dunayevskaya, author Richard Wright, and James Boggs—whom she would later marry after working with him for ten years. Boggs founded both Detroit Summer, a multicultural intergenerational youth organization, and the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, the latter founded after her husband’s death in 1993. The Center to Nurture Community Leadership continues to be a hub for grassroots organization in the Detroit area. Boggs
By Mary Sico
wrote actively for the Michigan Citizen newspaper until the age of 95. Writing on the philosophy of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx in her book The Next American Revolution, Boggs wrote “Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.” It is without a doubt that Grace Lee Boggs used her life to leave the rest of us a bit wealthier. Mary Sico is a member of The NewPeople Editorial Collective.
Grace Lee Boggs. Photo By Robin Holland
VOTE FOR PEACE & JUSTICE Help to give voice to those too often not heard. Donate to the Molly Rush Legacy Fund now or in the future. All donations, no matter how modest, are greatly appreciated. Complete, clip, and mail this form to: Thomas Merton Center, 5129 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224. In Honor/Memory of:___________________________________________________ Merton Center’s Molly Rush Legacy Fund Donation/Pledge: $__________________
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November 2015
NEWPEOPLE - 13
Readers’ Reflections Growing By Jim McCue
Our children are being sold down the river. Not by evil foreigners or criminals or extraterrestrials or religious zealots. We ourselves are destroying their future, and ours - by putting money foremost in our decision-making. Money is important, but we have become addicted to an idea. Can you eat it? Can you burn it to keep warm in the winter? Can you use it to keep cool in a summer disrupted by rapid climate change? Buying personal comfort and safety will be impossible in a society which has had its whole fabric torn by the problems connected to the environmental crisis we are all now facing. Money was never, is not, and never will be something intrinsic to life. Look at the birds; do they eat money? Do they burn it to keep warm? Do they drink it? Do they breathe it? How about the flowers do they need money? How about the honeybees? Do the deer care about money? No, they're worried about the people that make and use arrows and guns and bullets. My, aren't we humans intelligent, though. We're all the time figuring out how to take down Nature for our enjoyment. So we have as a species painted ourselves into an historic corner. It's anybody's guess who all will
survive. Think I'm exaggerating? Think I'm a little hysterical? Think I'm only thinking about your great -great-grandchildren or your great-grandchildren or your grandchildren or your children? No, the destabilization of our climate and overfishing and the acidification of our waters and pollution and the loss of Earth's biological diversity and the increasing number of earthquakes due to side effects of human activity and our (seeming) inability to stop fighting (and with ever more advanced weaponry) - are all making environmental change so immediate that it is OUR generation that is in trouble. It is WE who are in a fix, NOW. Not in the future. It's time to wake up. I know we all need money to survive. But there was a time when people didn't. So let's talk about REAL progress, about growing a REALLY sustainable economy, not one that throws people all over the world away because they can't fit into the system. We need an economy that pays people to grow and feed people real food, not industrially processed fake food that kills slowly. An economy that pays people to plant food forests rather than to cut forests down to make paper for junk mail advertisements. An economy that pays people to learn how to
Merton and Camus It has been over 50 years since I read Seven Story Mountain, the autobiography of Thomas Merton. I am still slowly recovering from Merton's implicit presentation of what Albert Schweitzer deemed the primal Christian command: "Follow me." Father Louis (Thomas Merton’s religious name) was able to lead a full and complete life within an austere Christian context living John Wesley's claim, "The whole world is my parish." It is difficult to think of a contemporary of Merton's whose basic life assumptions were more diametrically opposed to his than Albert Camus. One embraced the Roman church, the other, a product of a Jesuit education, ran as far from the Church as was possible. Camus was not an atheist; but no, he was what theologians call an "anti-theist." He refused to even acknowledge a deity who countenanced a world where "little children suffer." With the exception of a long flirtation with some forms of Buddhism, Merton's religious thinking would not have been any concern, I think, to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His life and his free spirit were of great concern to his abbot, but that is another issue. Before his accidental death at 53, Merton seems to have concluded that he had more in common with a Buddhist monk than he did with another Christian. This is akin to James Baldwin's realization that after nearly 20 years of exile in Paris he had more in common with a "redneck" from Georgia than he had with any black African. Similarly, the American writer Thomas (not "Tom") Wolfe con-
Have Something to Say? The NewPeople Editorial Collective is a group of volunteers with a wide-range of interests and varying beliefs. We welcome “Letters to the Collective” at any time. They can be emailed to newpeople@thomasmertoncenter.org with “Letters to the Collective” as the subject, mailed to the Thomas Merton Center Attn: NewPeople, or submit through our form on our website. Have an opinion or a response to an article in this month’s issue? Disagree with all or part of one of these articles? Write it down and send it in! We are looking for opinion pieces to fill an opinion page in each issue. Are you a poet in the Pittsburgh area and would like to showcase your work on peace and social justice issues? Send it in! We are always looking for peace and social justice poems to feature in our newspaper.
Submit here: thomasmertoncenter.org/newpeople/submit-an-article/ 14 - NEWPEOPLE
November 2015
This author is an urban farmer living in the city's Hazelwood neighborhood.
By H. John Rogers
cluded after visiting the Octoberfest in the late 1930's that a German SS man had more in common with an English bobby than he did with another German. Merton's thinking about Buddhism did not conflict with the thinking of the greatest Catholic theologian, the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, who said that we are always torn in our thinking between idolatry and agnosticism; and that it is preferable to err on the side of the latter. Although it is bad form to generalize, it has been my experience that when most Buddhists talk about nirvana (or some such thing) they are not talking about Heaven or the "Happy Hunting Ground." The denotation is extinction, total extinction, as when sea bubbles disappear. To borrow from Dylan Thomas, "After the first death, there is no other." Camus and Merton shared the Mediterranean (Camus was born in Algeria in 1913 and Merton in the southernmost part of France two years later) but although they were contemporaries there seems to be little that they had in common. Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957 when Merton was 43 and some 11 years before Merton's death. Camus does not seem to have been aware of Merton, but Merton did seven long essays on Camus and referred to "the prophetic witness of Albert Camus." It almost seems at times that Merton has set out to redeem the soul of Camus. He says that Camus is almost applying Pascal's famous "wager" about the existence of God in reverse: He is betting that there is no deity or, even worse, the deity is unworthy of
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use our technology to solve our problems rather than exacerbate them. We have forgotten how to get along with and help each other and live in harmony with nature. So, let's grow up. The only thing that gets me up in the morning in the face of all these problems is that I'm thoroughly convinced that the core nature of reality is miraculous. We are only now on Earth growing mature enough to see that we have always been part of a living universe, which is infinitely more intelligent and knowledgeable than us and has been helping us all along. There are civilizations out there far more technologically and spiritually advanced than we. We have to put down all our tribalism and nationalism and speciesism and racism and survivalism and moneyism and materialism. The only way to survive, paradoxically, is to stop fighting to survive and surrender to the love that is our basic nature. Only then will we survive and be part of a great growth rather than an extinction event.
human fealty. In a way Camus seems to have anticipated Merton's position in his best novel The Plague (La Peste.) On one level the plague is a metaphor for the Nazi occupation during World War II. In one part of the novel an unbelieving doctor and a priest combine to help victims of the plague and also work together to eradicate it. The doctor, a humanist (of sorts), and the priest realize that even though they come from the antipodes, as it were, they do have the same goal, i.e. the alleviation of human suffering. Merton quotes with seeming approval the doctor's rationale: "In every social situation, there are two classes, the oppressors and the oppressed. [The personae may change; an oppressor may become oppressed.] Our goal in every situation is to ally ourselves with the oppressed, not that we necessarily will accomplish any positive good, but by always allying ourselves with the oppressed, we will lessen the sum total of human suffering." Some say that Camus was trying to posit a Christian ethic without Christ. I agree to a certain extent and Merton seems to have thought along these lines. By dint of his great compassion and understanding of the human condition, I would suggest that Merton may have believed that Camus' soul was redeemable, and that after a respectable interval in purgatory Camus might attain the beatific vision. H. John Rogers is a retired lawyer and a member of the Franciscan Order of Divine Compassion.
Challenging “Hyperreality” CULTURE WATCH: Reflections on Our VirtualInfested Lives and Other Tidbits By Jo Tavener
I begin this blog to share my thoughts on what I read or see in the “hyperreal” of the popular, mass media. It’s a space to reflect on how we experience our lives, so seamlessly bound to media representations that we often misconstrue as real. It is not only the free market and the Republican party that grow bubbles in which to live. Between my awareness of myself and the world around me arises a multi-headed Hydra of interconnecting media, much of it misleading and untrustworthy, all of it framing what we see and how we see it. As in the movie, The Truman Show, this life can seem real--both for Truman, and for his audience, living vicariously through his scripted and melodramatic life. Life is a stage; we are both performers and audience. The Truman Show’s circular representation of reality is a good example of the “hyperreal,” coined by the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard around 1981. No longer a copy of or tied to the original, media representations retain their own reality and hold their own truths. In the 1980s I found the notion difficult to grasp. Today’s media surround-sound makes it as clear as day, yet still we look through the glass darkly. The Matrix played around with some darker implications. In CitizenFour Edward Snowden, explaining why he did what he did, describes the general tenor of life in the U.S.; folks working all day, then watching their shows at night. I assume he was describing his own life as well: lonely, fragmented, hollowed out by a loud, insistent consumer culture. His whistle -blowing was one way to crack the mirror. More recently, a high point for many media pundits at the first Democratic debate was the moment when Bernie Sanders supported Hillary Clinton’s exasperation with the ongoing email scandal. There’s a shot of them looking at one another with warmth and laughter. This is the Democratic Party, it reads: civility instead of Republican rancor. I watched The Rachel Maddow Show the next night and noted how the moment had already turned iconic, transforming itself into the hyperreal. The relation of the real to the ‘hyperreal’ moves in both directions. The ‘hyperreal’ bends back on itself and enters the real through advertising and the mainstream press, which in turn get reflected politically in legislation and personally in the opinions we form and, most importantly, how we experience each other. Think about our image of Hillary Clinton. In her role as politician, can we honestly say there is a real Clinton not reshaped and hopelessly mediated by the political stage on which she acts? That grand smile of hers in response to Bernie’s comments seemed a tad bit performative. And how could I not mention Donald Trump and the media circus he creates to the delight of many. The pundits are calling his act “Reality TV” as if their shows are any less scripted to entice and amuse, obfuscate and misdirect.
It is my intention in this blog to reflect on happenings in our culture, some of them obviously infused with hyperreality, others so deeply embedded in our cultural matrix that we hardly recognize their presence. I mean to connect the dots as best I can. I leave it to others to make associated moral judgments and find appropriate practical applications. And yet, Culture Watch is written for The NewPeople readers. I’d appreciate your reactions. The world moves too fast. We need time to reflect. I invite your comments and welcome your reflections. Culture Watch #1 This entry has an historical and philosophical bent, prompted by the Atlantic Magazine’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” that speaks to the controversies surrounding Identity Politics and its unruly daughter Political Correctness. I’ll be suggesting that the American Jeremiad, a rhetoric deeply embedded in our cultural narrative of national identity, as identified by Sacvan Bercovitch, is an age-old way of thinking about our present, past and future that shapes the character of our politics of dissent. The Jeremiad calls us back to the original path of righteousness. It evokes a moment of crisis to forge consensus and inspire action, inviting us to turn away from our degenerate habits before it’s too late and recommit ourselves to our founding values and traditions. First expressed by the Puritans, we can recognize its current use by Donald Trump: ‘our leaders are weak, our institutions are failing, we are losing our way; we need to take the nation back and make it strong again.’ In other words, we must recommit ourselves to America the redeemer nation, that Puritan vision of the shining city on the hill, and end the internal threat to the nation. This rhetoric is, for many historians, the ground of our paranoid politics. It is also responsible for our tendency to see all social problems in moral terms, framing the issues as personal and individual. Identity Politics and Political Correctness (PC), as I define it descriptively, not prescriptively, is also rooted in the American Jeremiad. PC arose more recently in the 1990s on college campuses, attempting to codify and enforce behavior as well as thought and speech patterns regarding race, color, creed, gender and national origin. Arguments were made that freedom of speech should be abridged in some cases, much like legally defined ‘hate speech.’ We can see the outline of the moral, Manichean universe, either right or wrong, working here. It follows the jeremiad rhetoric: one’s biases are a moral failure that must be expunged from the campus. Tools like micro-aggressions and trigger warnings attempt to silence certain forms of speech and correct specific behavior to protect the community and make it safe. Micro-aggressions may be unconscious figures of speech that can be experienced as having a deprecating subtext, such as relating to the female gender as “ladies” rather than “women.”
Trigger warnings are also useful weapons, alerting us to a book or film that might trigger discomfort. Almost anything could call for a trigger warning, from Lolita to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Still, the power of Identity Politics lies in its ability to break apart a conformist and generalizing view of a culture and its mythos. It enables an oppressed group to find its voice, speak its truth and demand change within the public arena. Controversy over proper language and the narrative of identity is inevitable, inside the group as a process of definition, and outside the group in response to definitional demands. Identity politics often exaggerates the difference between groups by telling one group’s story without referring to the larger arena where powerful forces are at work, dividing and oppressing us all in the process. Our shortsightedness prevents us from identifying our common exploitation. Instead, we rank oppressions or reject the thoughts of others as outsiders. Infighting becomes censorious and toxic. When feminist Professor Catherine MacKinnon typifies the first amendment as “a tool of privilege,” I am back in the 1950s, when internecine battles on the left exhausted its resources as the state’s anticommunist propaganda did its best to destroy the progressivism of the 30s and 40s and rewrite its history, The politics of trigger warnings and microaggressions have little to do with “coddling.” Rather, it is a new iteration of traditional antagonisms, arising from the foundational ellipsis of Identity Politics as framed by the Jeremiad. There has to be a larger context in which we place our understanding of oppression because it is that context that created its very conditions. Because the late 19th century working class was hopelessly divided by race, creed and national origin, it was unable to forge a unifying labor party and build a powerful American left. The political machines of the era used such divisions to create a partisanship that embedded itself deep within our cultural matrix. Today’s campus skirmishes continue that tradition at our peril. We need to fight for common ground and tolerate our differences. To begin that process I proscribe a binge viewing of South Park, to enjoy the ironies and satirical spirit that holds a mirror up to us all. Note: For mor e on Baudr illar d, go to per due.edu for its postmodern modules For “The Coddling of the American Mind,” go to the A tlantic For criticism of it go to The Nation, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine. Jo Tavener, in her early fighting days was a founder of New York Radical Feminists. Today, she is a retired assistant professor of media and cultural studies, and is on the editorial board of the New People.
NRA Violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution By Fr. Vincent Stegman
The recent massacre in Oregon emphasizes again the ignorance of the American public and the uselessness of the United States Congress. The question of President Obama is the question for the citizens of this country. When will adequate and just laws be promulgated to eliminate such actions by the unbalanced members of the community? The NRA’s Pavlovian response to any attempt to make rational laws is that any restriction of gun ownership or use is a violation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Really? The Second Amendment states that citizens are allowed to carry arms to protect the nation. This amendment was written into the Constitution at the beginning of our nation when there was no federal army sufficient to keep order or oppose any foreign intervention into the country. At that time firearms were muzzle load-
ers that took thirty seconds to one minute to reload after firing. Conditions have changed and the arms industry has advanced to where they now have firearms that can shoot twenty or thirty bullets in one second. In one sense that is wonderful technology. But these weapons are no longer firearms for public use. They are weapons of mass destruction which should be allowed for use by the police or military only. To allow them to be bought and used by the average citizen is insane, immoral and a disgrace to the nation. It is a corruption of the meaning of the Second Amendment. The purpose of any weapon is to shoot something or someone. To allow these automatic weapons in the hands of any person from the age of ten years to one hundred years is completely against the meaning of the Constitution. Why do lawmakers allow it?
The NRA and the arms industry in America spend millions of dollars every year to maintain the present sale and use of arms. Are the politicians getting so much money from these principals that they can blithely ignore the safety of citizens and the reputation of the United States, just so they can increase their bank accounts above and beyond their already huge salaries and perks? The people of the United States deserve some rational action, not just meaningless words. Fr. Vincent Stegman is a chaplain in Campus Ministry at Duquesne University.
November 2015
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“Semper Fi Always Faithful” screening— 6:00pm– 8:30pm— Coolidge Hall, Chatham University
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Activist Meet & Greet at Franktuary in Lawrenceville— 5-7pm
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Saturday
Regular Meetings
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Post/ Colonialism and the Pursuit of Freedom the Black Atlantic Conference— University Club University of Pittsburgh
Post/ Colonialism and the Pursuit of Freedom the Black Atlantic Conference (cont’d.)— University Club University of Pittsburgh
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Merton Award Dinner Honring Barbaree Lee — 6:00 pm Sheraton Station Square Hotel
The Elliott Group and United Steelworkers— 2:00pm– 3:00pm— Foerster Student Service Center Auditorium CCAC
Black and White Reunion Summit Against Racism Planning— 6:30pm— Theological Seminary
Thanks, Birth Control Pot Luck—5pm-9pm– email mritchie@ppwp.o rg for event details
Oil Train Conference— Wyndham University Center, Pittsburgh
Conversation with Susan Burke (“The Invisible War”)— 12:00pm-1:00pm— Alcoa Room Pitt
Larry Siems Reading—7:00pm– —City of Asylum
Caring Econony Online Course
“Many Storeys Last Days of Thomas Merton” 7:00pm 600 Forbes Ave Bayer Building
“Birth of a White Nation”—12:00pm —Cathedral of Learning
APP Speakers Kathleen Shuman 7:00pm 9000 Babcock Blvd
“The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” ($6)— 4:00pm– 7:00pm— Carnegie Library Homestead Oil Train (cont’d.)
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TMC Board Meeting— 6:30pm– 8:30pm—5129 Penn Ave
Solar Focus 2015—Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington DC
Shale and Public Health Conference (pre -registration required)— 8:30am– 5:30pm— University Club, 123 University Place
National Trans March of Resilience— 5:00pm– 8:00pm— Garden of Peace Project 801 N Negley Ave
Roundtable Discussion on Latino Issues with Rep. Leslie Acosta— 2:00pm— University of Pittsburgh Law Building
Fight for Lifers West Meeting—10 am –12:30 pmThomas Merton Center
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Buy Nothing Day
1962 Farenheit 451 published by Ray Bradbury
Battle of Homestead Foundation Meeting 7:00pm Letter Carriers Union 841 California Ave.
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W. PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare meeting—7:00pm– 9:00pm—Sixth Presbyterian Church, Murray Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15217
The Issues of the Draft: Peace Forum—3:00pm– 5:00pm—Kearns Spirituality Center
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Wednesday
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Labor History Tour of Pittsburgh— 1:00pm– 2:00pm—USW Headquarters, 60 Blvd. of the Allies
Trans Voices: Open Letters— 7:00pm– 10:00pm—801 N Negley Ave
International Day Thanksgiving for Elimination of Violence Against 1948 Scrabble Women Invented
SOA Watch
SOA Watch
Sundays: Book’Em: Books to Prisoners Project First three Sundays of the month at TMC, 46pm Contact: bookempgh@gmail.com Anti-War and Anti-Drone Warfare Coalition 3rd Sunday at 11:30 am at TMC, 5129 Penn Ave., Garfield, PA 15224
Mondays: SW Healthcare 4 All PA /PUSH Meeting 1st Monday, 7:30 —9 pm Association of Pittsburgh Priests 2nd Monday, 7—9 pm, Prince of Peace Rectory 162 South 15th, Southside, Pgh. PA 15203 Amnesty International #39 2nd Monday, 7—9 pm First Unitarian Church, Morewood Ave. 15219
Wednesdays: Human Rights Coalition: Fed-Up! Every Wednesday at 7p.m. Write letters for prisoners’ rights at the Thomas Merton Center Darfur Coalition Meeting 1st and 3rd Wednesdays, 5:30 – 7:00 pm, Meeting Room C Carnegie Library, Squirrel Hill 412-784-0256 Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (PADP) 1st Wednesdays, 7-8pm, First Unitarian Church, Ellsworth & Morewood Avenues, Shadyside Pittsburghers for Public Transit 2nd Wednesday, 7pm, 1 Smithfield St., lower level
Thursdays: International Socialist Organization Every Thursday, 7:30-9:30 pm at the Thomas Merton Center Global Pittsburgh Happy Hour 1st Thursday, 5:30 to 8 pm, Roland's Seafood Grill, 1904 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
Fridays: Unblurred Gallery Crawl 1st Friday after 6 pm, Penn Avenue Arts District, 4800-5500 Penn Ave., Friendship and Garfield 15224 Hill District Consensus Group 2nd Friday, 10 am — 12 pm, Elsie Hillman Auditorium, Kaufmann Center 1825 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 People of Prisoners in Need of Support 3rd Friday, 7:00pm New Hope Methodist Church, 114 W. North Ave, Pittsburgh 15212
Saturdays:
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1 Day of Giving – Give to the Merton Center!
International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
1955 Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to go to the back of the bus. World AIDS Day
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Project to End Human Trafficking 2nd Sat., Carlow University, Antonian Room #502 Fight for Lifers West 3rd Saturday, 10 a.m. to 12:30 pm, Thomas Merton Center
November 2015
EVERY MONDAY @ 9 PM during November
COMCAST 21 & VERIZON FIOS 47 (inside city) Mark Dixon "Pgh to Paris: Connecting for the Climate" markatcop21.wordpress.com
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