No Kill Advocacy in Huntsville, Alabama (Our Advice for Others and Lessons Learned)
As we have written about before, Huntsville is getting a lot of attention these days across the country as a result of the progress made at our municipal animal shelter which serves both the city and the county: Huntsville Animal Services. Shelter animals are now safer here than they have ever been in the history of the community as save rates have reached and then exceeded 90% of all shelter intake. Huntsville is being referred to as an example of what can happen in any community when a concerted effort is made to balance public safety with animal welfare. There are some aspects to our community which are not found in other places like the fact that Huntsville is a very progressive, high-tech military town which supports the space program. There are other local challenges which are faced in many other communities like the fact that we have a lot of pit bull-type dogs, many of which are not socialized to people.
We think everyone can agree that in spite of differences between communities, saving the lives of animals is more about a culture than it is about an exact methodology or a cookie cutter solution. Once everyone decides that saving the lives of healthy and treatable pets is a priority right now, that is really the first step toward change. We have always promoted the no kill equation as a methodology just because it can be molded and shaped to fit any community. Any city or county which genuinely wants to end the practice of destroying savable animals need only do some introspection on what is happening now in order to work on program development using existing funds and resources. In some places, change can happen virtually overnight. In other places, it takes some time, some planning, some coordination and a lot of effort to make it happen sooner rather than later.
We have been asked to help advocates outside our own community understand more about what happened here in order to help achieve similar results in their own community. We are more than happy to share in a lessons learned kind of way. We will not set out the specific history of what happened here chronologically; it took years for change to begin to happen and in the end, too much information is just that. We hope that reading about our activities in Huntsville will help other advocates develop a plan and work toward that plan while avoiding some of the mistakes we made here. We are not yet a no kill community as far as the members of our coalition are concerned. We see the measure of that as not one of numbers or percentages but a standard in which healthy and treatable pets are not at risk under any circumstances. But things have changed drastically here and we know we have been part of that change.
We also must acknowledge the drastic changes put into place by officials with the City of Huntsville and Huntsville Animal Services with the help of rescuers, volunteers, foster homes, adopters and the animal-loving community here. It takes a lot of courage to try new things and risk failure in the process. We are sure that working at Huntsville Animal Services is an entirely different experience than it was for the shelter director and staff a couple of years ago and we genuinely applaud them for the progress achieved.
We wish the very best to any person or any coalition which advocates to save the lives of shelter animals. Sometimes the only thing standing between animals and certain death is the voice of dissension which says loudly and clearly, "no. This is not consistent with our values and our culture."
Decide what you want. Ideally, you should be able to state your goal in a single sentence. You cannot fix our entire society or even an entire community in one fell swoop or through magic thinking. You cannot address issues related to companion animals, farm animals and wildlife at the same time. In our case, we wanted to push Huntsville to stop killing healthy and treatable animals in the tax funded shelter. We explained what we considered our vision on our website.
Do your research. If you don't know what you're talking about, you'll never make any headway because you'll have no credibility. You need to become an expert on your vision so you can speak intelligently about it from the hip. Learn the history of the issue you are working on so you know how our society got to this point. Make a decision on what methods you think work best to accomplish the goal, while being prepared to acknowledge that there are other methods which may have value. Network with people who have walked your path before you and whom are considered subject matter experts. You don't need to be the smartest kid in the class as long as you know the smartest kids in the class. In our case, we promoted the no kill equation from the start. We did local research to learn what was already taking place in our animal shelter and in our community. We also networked with successful no kill communities across the country by phone and email to learn what they were doing related to specific no kill programs. The end goal was to share our research with the city, which we did.
Find a few like minded people to stand with you - but not too many. It is incredibly rare for a single person to be effective in an effort to make things better for animals and with no support when it comes to addressing systemic issues, particularly with local governments. It's just too easy for you to be dismissed as naive or as a zealot. You will likely be able to do more good if you find like-minded people who share your vision and are willing to join you to speak with one voice. Don't make your group larger than it needs to be for the sake of numbers. You run the risk of ending up with people who say they share your values but who truly do not or who talk but don't do. Those people can be incredibly disruptive and take you way off course, wasting valuable time and energy. In our case, we began with about 30 members who were invited to participate. People either left the group or were removed over time for being disruptive and not sharing the same vision. We currently have 6 core members of our group and we do speak with one voice.
Try doing "the ask" at the very beginning. If you are trying to reform the way your local animal shelter functions, diplomacy and respect are key and you simply must take the high road even if that behavior is not reciprocated. We have heard many times that all advocates are abrasive and are too quick to engage in name calling and assigning blame from the start. We are just not that way at all because we felt it was just not productive. If you do not approach those who have the power to change the situation and simply ask them to consider doing so, you run the risk of offending them unnecessarily. Go straight to the source as your first step. In our case, one of our members paid for our shelter director to attend a No Kill Conference back in 2009 in hopes that she would proactively develop programs to save lives. After our coalition formed, we arranged for the director to receive free and confidential help from subject matter experts with us paying the expenses. The offer was refused at a time when the live release rate at our shelter was 41%. That refusal, unfortunately, set the stage for the next four years. Had the offer been accepted, much of our advocacy would not have been necessary at all.
Don't waste time or energy on someone who doesn't care or won't listen. There is no polite way to tell someone "animals are being destroyed needlessly. Please stop." But anyone who is really interested in saving the lives of animals, as opposed to defending that outdated process, will quickly let you know that they are interested in learning other ways to function and are "all in" toward embracing new ideas, particularly if you can help them understand what methods have worked in other places. You cannot force someone to acknowledge your vision and to work with you if they are bound and determined not to do so. If you hit a wall, don't keep banging your head against it. Find a way around it by involving the general public in your efforts. That is what happened in Huntsville. After the offer of free help from experts was refused, we took our subject to the public. We hosted a petition on Change.org which we augmented with signed petition pages and we held a free no kill workshop for the public to introduce them to no kill philosophies and programs. We had been told the shelter director would attend with her staff. She did not. The county animal control director did attend.
Make your message one about ethics, money and accountability - not about specific people. All animal shelters function with some oversight. In the case of municipal animal shelters which are operated by a city, county or by a contracted nonprofit, those shelters are funded by tax dollars. If your argument is that animals are being needlessly destroyed, you do better to argue that doing so is not consistent with American values, is not a good way to spend money and that those who oversee the shelter are accountable to the people who are paying for it: the public. Even if you believe that a shelter director should be removed, you won't get far suggesting that unless some actionable form of abuse is taking place. You are better off focusing on the leadership as a whole. If the leadership makes personnel changes, so be it. In our case, we hosted a series of electronic billboards at different locations around town for a period of months using a series of empowering slogans like "we are progressive enough to be a no kill community" and "saving shelter pets reflects our values." We also showed the documentary film "Redemption: The No Kill Revolution in America," at a local high school in order to reach a wider audience with our topic.
Invite the public to participate in the process. Although most Americans love animals and want the best for them, many people feel powerless to do anything as individuals to bring about change. Studies have shown that the vast majority of the public believes that the destruction of healthy and treatable animals in animal shelters is unethical and should be illegal. It is important not just to advocate for animals yourself or as part of a coalition, but to bring the public to the table. A few voices may be heard to a degree or may be dismissed out of hand as naive or uninformed. When the voting public begins to speak out to officials about what they want done with their tax dollars, it can be much more effective. Even people who don't share their homes with animals or particularly like animals likely do not want their tax dollars used to destroy animals when those same dollars can be used to save them and bring about systemic change. In our case, we not only took out subject to the public using the media, billboards and periodic events (like our workshop and showing the no kill documentary film at a local high school), we also encouraged people to speak out as individuals to tell local officials what they want and why. We set up pages on our website to help them find contact information for those officials and we helped get them started with ideas on how to communicate in direct and respectful ways.
Don't listen to the haters, enablers or apologists. Although most people outside of animal welfare circles think that all animal welfare advocates are on the same page, we are not. There are people who advocate for animals solely for the benefit of those animals. They do not seek or want recognition and the act of having helped is their reward. Then there are people who advocate for animals so that they can say that they advocate for animals. Many of these people can be your worst critics. For them, this is more about people and not offending anyone than it is about saving lives. Detach from those people and don't let them suck the life force out of you with their negative energy. When you are labeled the source of the problem because you took it on yourself to speak out, don't get trapped by the tactic of putting focus on the messenger instead of the fact that the message was necessary in the first place. You cannot win with people who point the finger of blame at you while giving the people destroying animals a free pass. In our case, we were attacked on social media by rescuers and city employees. The shelter director participated in the behavior, leading us to file a formal complaint with the city about her conduct. We later learned that a shelter employee had set up the social media page used to attack us. We simply refused to engage with those people. We instead sought advice from an attorney who specializes in cyber-bullying and we took the issue up with officials at city hall who ultimately helped stop the behavior.
Keep the lines of communication open and be respectful. Seeking reform is about advocacy, but it is also about staying on message and about being respectful in communication. Once you begin your advocacy effort, it is important to communicate with those in positions to affect change regularly and be very specific about what you want or what you are recommending. Part of this process involves the art of diplomacy. While you should be clear and direct about what you want, you must do so with tact and respect in order to make any headway at all. Look for every opportunity to applaud cooperation or progress. Also keep your communication professional. Email is an overused form of communication and while it may be convenient for you, it is not always received in the same manner as would be a letter. Seek face-to-face meetings periodically in order to have open dialogue about what you want while listening to officials about challenges they are facing. In our case, we communicated with city officials regularly in order to applaud progress, express concerns, make suggestions and make it clear that we were not going away. We sent dozens of letters to city officials and we sought and attended numerous meetings with city officials to share our research, discuss program development, talk about progress made and to have an exchange of ideas about future and continued progress.
Be prepared to see it through. Once you begin an advocacy effort, the reality is that you can't just stop if you get tired or discouraged. Be prepared to see it through, no matter how long it takes. Your efforts could take weeks, months or even years. Be prepared to stay on subject and stay committed to your beliefs, even if you are not treated with the same diplomacy you use to advocate for animals. In our case, we worked hard to remain in the public eye by using the media and social media. We shared our research with city officials during numerous meetings and helped city officials engage with people from whom they were willing to hear the no kill message and who had proven experience in developing no kill programs. We wrote numerous letters to city officials to offer both congratulations on progress and to offer observations about issues we felt still needed to be addressed. We began seeking, and still seek, public records using the Alabama Open Records Act so we can monitor shelter statistics and we can analyze data regarding the types of animals still being destroyed and the reason that is happening.


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Entertainment, Movie Reviews, Movies
'Knives Out' Gives a Voice to the Voiceless
March 25, 2020 Annlyel James	Leave a comment
Why did Knives Out get nominated for an Oscar? It clearly wasn't a film unlike any other I've ever seen. It was a classic whodunnit movie that has twists and turns, leaving you to watch the story unfold with knit eyebrows and rapt attention just for the film to conclude with a shocking reveal that you probably won't see coming.
(Unfortunately, the culprit of the crime was spoiled to me by a tweet I saw on Twitter.)
Do not worry. I will not spoil the identity of the culprit. But I will spoil a specific aspect of the film that would, in fact, garner the film its Oscar nomination. And that is the poignant plot that wraps around a foreign worker who works for a wealthy white family. Ecuadorian-American woman, Marta Cabrera takes care of the head of the household, an elderly man named Harlan Thrombey, played by Oscar-winning actor Christopher Plummer. He dies tragically and his family hungrily await the result of his will.
Turns out Harlan Thrombey, a wealthy man who possesses a mansion, $60 million, and a publishing company, provides his entire will to his Brazilian nurse, Marta Cabrera. It is a shocking turn that sends the family into hysterics. Marta is horrified. But in the end…
SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!
She inherits what he has to offer and the white well-to-do family who thinks they are the center of the universe must look on as this foreigner stands as the wealthiest among them.
I have to admit despite not enjoying the film as much as I would've hoped to, I smiled at this conclusion. The pure hatred and disgust on these people's faces as they looked at Marta standing on the balcony overhead, these same individuals who praised her earlier in the film and said "she was part of the family", these were the people willing to do whatever it took to see her pay for taking what they thought rightfully belonged to them.
In an instant, Rian Johnson thrust in the face of the world the ugliness of those with hatred in their hearts. At one point in the movie, the family is sitting around talking, discussing the controversial topic of the Mexican immigrants coming across the border (while Marta is in the room by the way.) They speak about the little children in cages but none of them really care. They believe if the immigrants committed a crime they should be punished accordingly, even the children, some as young as toddlers. That's their mentality and the mentality of a good chunk of the country. That's why we have a certain man as our president at this very moment.
I don't like getting political but I have to say, I loved the statement that Rian Johnson made with this film. For those foreign children on the border who are still suffering to this day due to horrible treatment by a lack of care, to that immigrant worker who's trying to make a living for their undocumented family member, this movie gave them a voice and a heroine who actually manages to triumph in the end over the very people who pretend to care.
Now, will this film actually do anything by making people more aware of the goings-on with the immigrant conundrum or is this yet just another privileged person taking a controversial matter to garner an Oscar nod? Unfortunately, I'm leaning toward the latter. But it's still an interesting undercurrent beneath the facade of a murder-mystery movie.
I also appreciate that Rian Johnson continues to tell stories with diverse heroines that you haven't quite seen before. Think about Kelly Marie Tran's Rose in The Last Jedi, the first major Asian female character to appear in a Star Wars movie. Or Ana de Armas's Marta Cabrera, a Latina heroine who is the driving force of his very next film. And don't forget, he gave Rey a storyline that actually mattered, providing the idea that anybody could be a powerful Force user and not be related to Palpatine, Kenobi, or the Skywalkers. Abrams retconned that notion.
Johnson knows how to highlight women as both empowering and vulnerable. I'm definitely a bit intrigued to see what new stories he has to tell in the future.
I thank you for reading and I hope you have a beautiful day.
Ana de ArmasChris EvansDaniel CraigJamie Lee CurtisKnives OutRian Johnson
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Humvee's replacement may be a hybrid
Feb 16th 2006 at 9:30AM
The current military-issue Humvee will be replaced by 2011, with contracts being awarded to suppliers sometime in 2009. At the moment the Army and Marine Corps are researching hybrid drivetrains for the Humvee replacement, with the Army conducting research on six different hybrid Humvees and the Marine's testing the RST-V (Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Targeting Vehicle) that employs electric motors in each wheel hub, just like Mitsubishi's Concept-CT unveiled at the Detroit auto show.
Hybrid technology is particularly attractive to military types because it's capable of near-silent operation when running solely on battery power, provides a source of electricity for troops out in the field, and offers better acceleration in short bursts than either its diesel- or gas-only counterparts.
The Hybrid Humvee, however, could be eclipsed by even more advanced hydrogen fuel-cell powerplants almost as soon as it reaches the battlefield. Since everyone says these guys and gals do more before 7AM than most people do all day, we should expect a commercially viable hydrogen fuel cell vehicle from them by next Wednesday.
[Thanks Noel for the tip]


Posted on October 28, 2008 by Mark Lee
An Unsung Hero
Dermot Jones, in uniform 1940s.
Dermot Melbourne Herrington Jones was in his 30thyear when he jumped from the back of the Black Maria, his boots with those of his fellow officers clattering on the Kingston pavement as the police were dispatched to quell violence and disperse marchers supporting the labour unrest of 1938. It is intriguing to think that special constable Jones was the one who on May 23, pointed his Mark 7 at the crowd when Alexander Bustamante opened his jacket and pushed out his waistcoated chest and declared, Shoot me, but leave these defenceless, hungry people alone!" but it was not Dermot.
Dermot and Busta might even have been together at Up Park Camp, where Governor Richards had imprisoned the future National Hero in 1940, to keep him from arousing more labour discontent to gain an advantage while Hitler was giving England and Empire hell on the battlefields of Europe. But I doubt it because the stories I learned from gunner Jones were of being transported in trucks between the camp, Fort Rocky in Port Royal and Fort Clarence in the southern St Catherine seaside cliffs, to constantly watch the seas for the arrival of any German boats or submarines.
I'm not sure whether it was with the Jamaica Infantry Volunteers, Jamaica Reserve Regiment, the Jamaica Home Guard or the Jamaica Militia Artillery. He just called it the army but I've seen all those names refer to the forces that were securing Jamaica during World War II.
If he did have a commonality with Busta it was provoking the ire of those sent over from "the mother country" to be our leaders. One of Grandfather's many army tales was of being on guard in the dark at a fort. He hears footsteps approach. He knows it is one of the English officers on the prowl: "Halt! Who goes there?!"
A British accent replies. "Hands in the air and advance and be recognised!" barks gunner Jones with his Mark 7 at the ready and the white khaki clad figure approaches, face pale, hands in the air and, in grandfather's view, ready to piss himself, but commending the gunner for his alertness. "'Carry on Jones', said the officer. But every time he approach after that he start to whistle and hit his trousers with his cane." A small victory for the little man.
Like Busta, reputed to be a good horseman to whom farmers sent their animals to be tamed, Grandfather had an early affair with horses. It started like this. Old Thomas Jones and his brother Jimmy, were posted to several police stations across the island, sometimes chasing thieves across rooftops, sometimes chasing skirts. About 1908, "The Old Man" arrived in St Ann and met Annie Henry, a young Indianish looking woman, whom he romanced before heading back to the estate at Picton, near Darliston, Westmoreland, in the far west of the island.
So on October 28th of that year, in the same parish that Marcus Garvey was born some years before and Bob Marley would be some years later, there arrived little Dermot. Somehow, he ended up at Picton with The Old Man, who used Dermot as his little slave, because while the "lawful" children with Miss Viv were off to school, Dermot would be helping The Old Man around the farm, drying coffee, pimiento or some other grain on the concrete barbecue behind the house, rounding up and slaughtering animals and smoking the meat in the outside kitchen and taming horses.
It was the horses that Dermot loved and he became a skilled jockey – the main reason he missed school. At 14, he was a short and tough little boy who The Old Man took to the various tracks around the island to race his horses. The one Dermot loved best being on a south coast beach in St Elizabeth.
"When I jump off in front there is no way they can catch me because I have the horse kicking sand in their eyes," he would brag as an older man, me absorbing the stories.
At some time in the 1930s the Jones children began migrating from Picton. The boys and girls first settled in Kingston. They lived in what were then the residential areas of the city, many of which are now regarded as ghetto: Admiral Pen, Jones Pen, Allman Town, Rollington Pen, with the squat, muscular Dermot and Ken acting as bodyguards against any who would dare offend their pretty light brown skinned sisters.
Soon the girls and younger brother John John would be off to the USA and later we would receive movie star-like pictures of them in red and blue edged air mail envelopes as they stood in magical scenes outside tall buildings we only saw in magazines and films. Ken with his better schooling ended up a supervisor at Soap and Edible Products (Seprod) in Kingston before going to America after early retirement.
And Dermot pressed on in Kingston, meeting a woman who gave him Clarry, a son who was his spitting image, except that he did not have his father's pretty hair which never needed combing "just some grease or water and brush it back". Clarry went off to England in the 50s and became a clippie on the bus and his mother would show up from time to time in straw hats during the 60s saying she was back from Freeport, Bahamas. Rumour had it she was in Bellevue.
Dermot flitted around Kingston, hopping on and off tram cars like all the saga boys of the day and worked out at a gym while learning the craft of boxing in a career that did not last long – although from his accounts there was nobody in his lightweight class who could beat him. I think it was a butt to the face from a competitor that made Dermot opt out of the ring.
It must have been about then that he met Hilda Scarlett from Logwood, whose father was also a roving lover boy, because he had children along the north coast from Portland to Hanover, where she was born in 1907. When they met she already had two boys, one of them my Daddy, who would wonder whether he would ever get "muscles and veins in his arms" like his stepfather.
Thus began the taming of a male shrew because as I have told you before, Dermot cleaned up his swaggering act and was in the police reserve, perhaps following in The Old Man's footsteps, and later in the militia after meeting Hilda.
Army life ended with an honourable discharge because of some raging fever that took a hold of D as Hilda had dubbed him. (He seldom called her Hilda, but Miss Jones, contracted to Mi Jones, which I suspect was the name she used when they met while she worked as an assistant in a dental office. In those days birth certificates did not have the father's name if a child was born out of wedlock and Hilda Eulalee was the "female child of Annie Jones, of Santoy, Logwood Dist".)
I doubt the fever was malaria from the mosquito infested forts, as it never haunted him in life after I met him in the mid '50s when I joined the family, but D was sure it was related to his being born in October, "a rainy month" which condemned him to a life plagued with colds.
D ventured into business. After the war, the colonial government offered to those who had served in the military some lands in the hills on the north east side of Kingston. Hilda took one look at the bush and rocks and told D to take cash instead. (The lands became the luxury residential area of Beverley Hills.) He invested the cash in a furniture store in Blount Street, west Kingston, somewhere in the area of the Kingston Public Hospital. Mi Jones gave up her job to become a housewife like her friend Kitten, the wife of a rising police officer who would become head of the force.
The furniture shop foundered and closed. Mi Jones never returned to work and D, who she had brought to church via her sabbath keeping faith, became a contractor and painter. His business card: For a good and competent painter, see Bro D.M. Jones. Tel: His core team members were Steby (Stephenson, who lived "awn de west") and Willie (Mr Williams who lived in a neat little concrete bungalow in McGregor Gully, east Kingston).
We were regaled with endless stories about Steby, Willie and the boys on the painting job at places like Light and Power, which was being built or refurbished at Foreshore Road, which I believe is now Marcus Garvey Drive, and violent confrontations on the Sandy Gully construction project.
It was mainly from politics that the drama on the sites unfolded because no public jobs were had without the involvement of party bosses. And astute Grandfather was a card carrying member of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP), attending their branch (JLP) and group (PNP) meetings in our community of Vineyard Town. It was how you got a piece of the painting action on the National Arena in 1966, or to supervise a few chains of the rowdy broom and machete crew of Christmas road workers.
Since by the time I hit the fifth grade at primary school I was a more fluent reader and legible writer than Grandfather ever was, I got exposed to business early, drafting his dictated estimates for material and labour to be presented for private jobs, a task that was previously the domain of Mi Jones, my Grandmamaa. If I could read and write better than him, he declared he couldn't be beaten with "ciphering" and he spit out the sum of the estimate in pounds, shillings and pence in no time flat.
Most of his crew were old soldiers I believe because, he and Willie, an older man than Grandfather, used to attend Jamaica Legion ex-soldiers' meetings together on Sundays at Curphey Place, Up Park Camp.
He never took his customers or his trade for granted. When water-based distemper paints were introduced, they dried leaving a powdery surface that easily dusted or washed off. He decided to boil glue and add it to the paint, a method which apparently worked. He took his idea to Caribbean Spray and Paint with a bit of wood covered in his distemper glue mix, rubbed it to show clean fingers and they told him they'd get back to him. They never did but water paints did lose their dusty characteristic.
When he joined the army he said, the recruits were told they were there "for rations and discipline". In later life the discipline must have been in the way he saved with the burial societies on Wildman Street in the city and at church, with the government savings bond programme, hoping desperately that his number would be called one Saturday night for a 10,000 pounds prize, and buying shares in the Matalon's ICD Group of Companies and Kingston Industrial Works. Once a year they sent him a few shillings (later dollars) and an annual report or certificates for split shares and an annual report. I wonder what happened to his shares?
When Grandfather's sight left him in the 1990s while I lived in the Eastern Caribbean, and Grandmamaa's memory began to fade, he was admitted to a Jamaican Legion home in the cool central Jamaica town of Mandeville. It was here that, unknown to me, Grandfather died. Later when I got the news that he had already been buried in an unmarked grave in Kingston's May Pen Cemetery, a little bit of me died.
I doubt any of his then surviving siblings or his nieces or nephews of either his father's or mother's side had got the news, scattered as they had been for years in North America and England. I, his grandson, did not. The good thing though, is that in Jamaica's Heroes' Month, more than a dozen years later he is remembered not just as the "good and competent painter" or the old soldier, who it is said never dies anyway, but as one of the unsung heroes who tried to build the dreams of the Bustas and the Garveys.
Do you have a story of an unsung hero you'd like to share. Please submit it to editorial@abengnews.com


Orchard Street
Ludlow Street
Rivington Street
Clinton Street
Grand Street
Allen Street
Essex Street
Broome Street
Stanton Street
Hester Street
Chrystie Street
Norfolk Street
Suffolk Street
Here's the Current Progress at Essex Crossing's First Park
Posted on: September 28th, 2018 at 5:04 am	by Elie
With Site 5 of Essex Crossing almost fully operational – residents now live at The Rollins and Target is open for business – the park at its backside is finally coming into view. Progress here has been a slog for the last year (our last follow-up) but it's starting to look legit.
Behind the chain-link fence lining Broome Street is a 15,000 square-foot plaza of pavers, topped with tables, seating, trees, and light poles. Park debut shouldn't be too far off, as updates from the developer indicate the last punch list item being completion of pavers (85% done).
Design for this community amenity is four years in the making, first approved way back in November 2014. West 8 is the landscape architect of record for the park, which sits at the north end of the parcel, and measures approximately one-third of an acre. It abuts a potential future school and the 15-story mixed-use residential Rollins tower.
Technically, though, this new green space is what the city calls a privately owned public space (POPS). So it's at the mercy of ownership and not governed by the city's Parks Department.
Essex Crossing Site 5 The Rollins West 8 New York
Full GovBall Lineup Announced for Summer 2020
This year marks the 10th anniversary of The Governors Ball Music Festival on Randall's Island, and Founders Entertainment has tapped some big names to kick off the celebration. Headliners for this year's festival are GovBall veterans Tame Impala, alongside New York indie darlings Vampire Weekend. New additions to the top slots include venerable Fleetwood Mac […]
International Center of Photography Launches at Essex Crossing Next Week
For the International Center of Photography, four years of transition come to an end next week, as the institution plans its inauguration at Essex Crossing. The 40,000 square-foot museum and school, reunited for the first time since the midtown move, will debut on January 25 with a free "Opening Community Day." Visitors on day one […]
Michelin-Star Chef Bringing Omakase to Former Black Tap on Ludlow Street
From shakes to sushi. After the epic bomb that was Black Tap, 177 Ludlow Street is now taking a more upscale tack. Omakase, which is Japanese dining for the ultra-luxe set. Real Estate Weekly has the scoop, reporting that a new mystery tenant, who currently owns and operates eight restaurants in New York and Tokyo, […]
'Karvouna' Evicted from the Bowery After Less than a Year
Restaurants can't seem to make it work at 241 Bowery. The latest entrant, Karvouna Mezze, just joined the growing list of failures at this address. The City Marshal paid a visit to the restaurant and shut it down. All told, Karvouna lasted barely one year. Partners Dimitris Vlahakis, Wei Chen, and Chef Giuseppe Scalco (Merakia […]
Beastie Boys and Spike Jonze Announce New Documentary for Apple+
Apple yesterday announced that a new Beastie Boys documentary is coming to its Apple+ platform this spring. Right alongside the 26th anniversary of Ill Communication. Beastie Boys Story is just that – the history of the band as told by surviving members Mike D. and Adam "Ad Rock" Horovitz. It's based on the bestselling Beastie Boys […]
On Ludlow Street, 'Burger People' Picks up Where Mikey's Left Off
For those who missed Mikey's Burger on Ludlow Street, the original owner is back with more of the same. Burger People opened shop at 134 Ludlow earlier this week. The room itself has been lightly updated with a new luncheonette feel. The menu has everything you would expect – burgers, franks, fries, and milkshakes. Owner […]
This Sixty-Foot Horse Mural Painted on Broome Street Facade
Where a giant veiny penis mural once held court, a Broome Street building facade now boasts some new art. Swedish street artist Shai Dahan painted a sixty-foot horse on the side of 303 Broome Street. It's a reimagining of the traditional Dala Horse (aka Dalecarlian Horse), which is often used as a national symbol of […]
SoHo Suffers Identity Crisis as City Planners Push for Rebranding over Rezoning
The Scholastic Building's auditorium in SoHo was packed to capacity with local residents, stakeholders, press, and members of city agencies last week for another public forum on the long-awaited Envision SoHo/NoHo Report Summary. The report, released to the public online just before the Thanksgiving holiday, outlines three guiding principles for any potential rezoning in the […]
'Fancy Pharmacy' is Moving from Essex Street After Decades on the Block
A Lower East Side retail anchor is unmoored from its longtime location at the northwest corner of Essex and Rivington Streets. Fancy Pharmacy (and its unique store signage) is not long for this spot. A sandwich board outside the store indicates that the drugstore is relocating, though not too far away. Its new location is […]
'Winky Lux' Makeup Flagship Relocates North to Hell Square
The Louis Vuitton stunt in Hell Square is history. Now, the corner store at Ludlow and Rivington Streets is continuing the trend of fashion at this address. From shoes to makeup. Indeed, Winky Lux retail operations are jumping north from its current offices down by Grand Street. The new shop opened at 100 Rivington a […]
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Faculty Spotlight: James McConnell
February 27, 2019 | dheinen
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures' own James McConnell has added another accolade to his list of accomplishments as an educator at NC State. McConnell has been with the department since 2005 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2013. Prior to joining the Wolfpack, McConnell attended the University of Arizona for undergraduate and graduate school. There he earned his Master's degree in Hispanic Literature and taught for five years.
Aside from the many courses he leads everyday on campus and online, McConnell runs a summer study abroad program in Segovia, Spain and launched a program called VOLAR (VOLuntarios Ahora en Raleigh) alongside Dr. Shelley Garrigan in 2012 which won a seed grant of $10,000. They then selected Debbie Kane as the director of the program it has become an environment for Spanish speaking students to grow and interact with the larger Spanish speaking community in Raleigh and beyond.
What follows is an interview we did with James via email in which he talks about his Faculty Fellow award, his passion for the Spanish language and his appreciation for the vast opportunities presented at NC State.
What did it mean to you to be named a 2018-2019 Faculty Fellow?
I was overjoyed to be named a Faculty Fellow. Any type of recognition at a university is welcome and it's appreciated even more when it's from a department/entity that you know well and truly respect.
Are there any specific moments in your career that you attribute to this success?
In 2011 I was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year for Higher Education through the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina. This gave me a lot of confidence that I didn't have before. However, there are several experiences I've had during my time at NC State that made me feel I had value that would make me a viable candidate to be a Faculty Fellow. Presenting on different technologies at state and national conferences helped me focus more and work harder to fine tune certain skills and the overall opportunities presented to me through my department have helped me develop skills in a variety of areas that have contributed to making me a better instructor.
What would you consider to be a highlight in your career?
This is it! Well, it is one of them. There isn't one specific highlight and that is actually good because it keeps me striving to do more. Being awarded a $10,000 seed grant, receiving awards for our VOLAR program, being named Outstanding Teacher of the Year, and acknowledgment for the summer study abroad program I run have all been spaced out pretty well during my time here, so each time I get those positive affirmations it rejuvenates me and makes me realize I'm in the right place.
How has your experience as a senior lecturer in the Department of FLL been at NC State?
Fantastic. Our department is very collegial and we're led by someone who has good vision and is willing to offer opportunities to productive individuals. If I worked at a different university, I wouldn't have had half the opportunities afforded to me here.
What drew you to a career in teaching?
I have an older sister and a younger brother. My sister taught me a lot growing up and I taught a lot to my brother. It's something I've always enjoyed: the sharing of information with others. My first semester of graduate school I was given two classes of my own to teach and the first day was a bit terrifying. After a few days, I realized I enjoyed it immensely and wanted to keep doing it.
Did you always know you wanted to teach?
In some form or another, yes. Friends and family had mentioned it to me while growing up and I had already done so in other facets; I taught gymnastics, did outreach programs for marine biology, and was a scuba instructor before moving into academia.
Do you have any passions that have impacted you personally or in your career?
Reading. I was a voracious reader in elementary school and that continued into college, pushing me to do a Master's Degree in Hispanic Literature. It opens you to so many new worlds. There's a great J.K. Rowling quote: "If you don't like to read, you haven't found the right book." Go find your book.
What advice do you have for current NC State students studying foreign languages and literatures?
Take it seriously, like you should any class. Try to do more than what you think is your best work; you can really surprise yourself. I see former students very frequently who tell me, "I loved your class but I forgot all my Spanish." No, you didn't, you're just not using it. "Use it or lose it" is true. Finding a way to incorporate the language into your daily routine will help you maintain those abilities.
How has being proficient in a foreign language opened doors for you in your life?
It's honestly given me hundreds of thousands of dollars and helped me to travel all over the world. No lie. Knowing a foreign language has provided me with multiple jobs and afforded me the ability to travel to Fiji, Egypt, The Solomon Islands, all of the Caribbean, The Galapagos Islands and more, all paid for by someone else.
Have you ever learned anything from your students?
Thankfully, I learn something from my students on a daily basis. They're the reason I was named a Faculty Fellow.
Faculty, Hispanic Linguistics, Humanities and Social Sciences, Latino and Asian Topics, Spanish, Spanish Certificate
3 responses on "Faculty Spotlight: James McConnell"
Diane Beckman says:
Congratulations, James. You are an inspiration to all and a wonderful colleague! May many such recognitions follow!
Scott Despain says:
James, well done and well deserved!
Louise Salstad says:
Felicitaciones, James, y adelante!
Leave a Reply to Diane Beckman Cancel reply


Lincoln, England, Great Britain
2376 Hotel Reviews
Exterior of Hotel and Grounds
Guest Room with Tub
Guest Room with Balcony
Superior Suite with 4 Poster Double Size Bed
Lincoln Hotel, Sure Hotel Collection by Best Western Grounds
Lobby Seating Area
Lincoln, England LN2 1PN
The Lincoln Hotel, Sure Hotel Collection by Best Western blends a contemporary outlook with the medieval tradition of the city of Lincoln, best highlighted by the beautiful cathedral that towers over the hotel. As a result guests are treated to stunning views of the grounds or the cathedral from most of the guest rooms.
The hotel offers 71 en suite rooms, each furnished with air conditioning, flat-screen television and a comfortable sitting area.
Meanwhile the hotel restaurant has become a local favorite, presenting a delicious menu in a relaxed setting. Bar 67, with its wooden beamed cellar appearance is a fun place to enjoy a drink.
The hotel also has an excellent business infrastructure with two meeting rooms available on the ground floor, which can each accommodate up to 50 people includes complimentary wireless internet and audio-visual equipment to help cater to the needs of corporate groups. Private dining can also be arranged for smaller groups.
Stayed here using Travelzoo voucher. Arrived in Lincoln by train and, although a bit uphill because the hotel is near the cathedral, it was a short 20 minute walk and easy to find. Warm welcome by...
By 561nigelw
Gloucestershire, United Kingdom on 12-Jan-2020
My wife and I were given a gift of Afternoon Tea at this hotel and booked it for the beginning of January. We have stayed at the Lincoln in the past so knowing the quality of the food etc were...
By Howard H
Kingston-upon-Hull, United Kingdom on 10-Jan-2020
We visited for two nights over new year. Our room was comfortable, but the bathroom needs an upgrade (room 127). The new year meal and entertainment was really good. The hotel is situated right...
By SueK739
Hinckley, United Kingdom on 08-Jan-2020
Booked family members here for the Christmas period. Good location for visiting historic centre. Staff were friendly and doing their best, but the lauded refurb hasn't reached all the hotel yet...
By Chalmers30
Leicestershire, United Kingdom on 05-Jan-2020
This 60's built hotel is in dire need of some restoration, the rooms are outdated, not very clean and in desperate need of some tlc. ( some rooms I understand have been refurbished). For reasons...
By Peter T
Biggleswade, United Kingdom on 02-Jan-2020
100 % smoke-free hotel
Breakfast available for a nominal fee
Exercise facility open from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. with cardiovascular exercise
Universal gym
Stair stepper
Late check out, available for a nominal fee of 40.00 GBP
Free wireless Internet available in public areas; free in-room wireless Internet access; free wireless Internet access available in public areas and all guest rooms
Parking for the physically challenged 2 spaces
Free parking 54 spaces, 24 hours
Cable/satellite television, stations delivered by Freeview, color, flat-screen, remote control
Iron, ironing board available, upon request
Mini-bar available
Bathrobe available, upon request
Air-conditioning available self-controlled
In-room safe available
Balcony available
Rooms for the Physically Challenged: 2
Physically challenged rooms/facilities available
Rails in bathroom available
Wheelchair accessible available
Raised toilet with grab bars available
Walk-in shower available
Extra wide doors in bathrooms available
0.1 mile(s) from Lincoln Cathedral, One of Europe's finest gothic buildings, once the tallest I the world, with stunning views from the roof and tower and intricate design inside. There is something for everyone to see at Lincoln Cathedral
0.1 mile(s) from Lincoln Castle, Discover a world of rich history at Lincoln Castle, dating back to 1068 and home to one of only four surviving copies of Magna Carta
0.1 mile(s) from Cathedral Quarter Shopping, Lincoln's independent shops and boutiques in the Cathedral Quarter offer a unique shopping experience. In close walking distance to all the cities main attractions, it is the perfect place to spend your day shopping
1.7 mile(s) from The New Theatre Royal, The 19th century theatre royal is Lincoln city landmark and is situated on Clasketgate a short walk from the city centre high street
1.7 mile(s) from The Engine Shed, The regions largest live music and entertainment facility, housed in a renovated engine shed and serving Lincoln with live international band performances, comedy gigs and weekly student club nights and events
2.0 mile(s) from St Marks Shopping Centre, In an open air shopping centre at the south end of Lincoln's high street, offering a fantastic range of fashion and homeware, gifts and toys
2.3 mile(s) from International Bomber Command Centre, A memorial spire, walls, and centre that mark the sacrifice of world war II aircrew that lost their lives whilst serving with Bomber Command on the top of Canwick Hill in Lincoln
2.0 mile(s) from The Collection, Award-winning archaeology museum located in the heart of historic Lincoln, with interactive exhibitions, events and talks and guided tours
Cathedral Suite, on premises, full service, International, open for: breakfast, breakfast times are 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
Lounge Bar, on premises, bar/lounge, International, open for: lunch
The Green Room, on premises, full service, International, open for: dinner, dinner service times are 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
40 mile(s) from Nottingham
46 mile(s) from Kingston upon Hull
56 mile(s) from Sheffield
2.5 mile(s) from Lincoln City Football
4.0 mile(s) from Lincolnshire Showground, The Lincolnshire showground is a major national venue, located on the 200 acre showground just outside the historic city of Lincoln in the East Midlands.
0.1 mile(s) from Cathedral Quarter, Cathedral Quarter Shopping - Lincoln's independent shops and boutiques in the Cathedral Quarter offer a unique shopping experience. In close walking distance to all the cities main attractions, it is the perfect place to spend your day shopping
30 mile(s) from Humberside International Airport
50 mile(s) from East Midlands International Airport
35 mile(s) from Robin Hood Airport
0.2 mile(s) from Bus numbers 7, 8 and 12
1.3 mile(s) from Lincoln Central Railway Station train taxi charge 6.00 GBP
0.1 mile(s) from Lincoln


Posts Tagged 'Tony Sarno'
I Ain't Superstitious — Tony Sarno
Posted: November 28th, 2015 in Art, friends, good cheer, heroes, music, The Blues
Tags: Art, blues, I Ain't Superstitious, music, Tony Sarno
You… are in for a treat! Tony is awesome… a true star of blues guitar and a Master of the Telecaster. I am proud to say that a childhood friend, Tony is.
He's real good.
Tony Sarno "I Ain't Superstitious" (Official Audio)
Icehouse Record Published on Jun 7, 2014
Copyright: 1995 Icehouse Records. Tony Sarno (and the Screamin Blue Demons). From the album "It's a Blues Thing" available on iTunes here:http://georiot.co/2eYW – also available at Amazon MP3, Google Play and other digital sites.
www.icehouserecords.com
www.tonysarno.com
"It's a Blues Thing" is Tony's debut album, recorded in seven days in May 1995 in Memphis, TN. Featuring the rock-solid rhythm section of Keith Christopher on bass and Gregg Morrow on drums with Paul Provost and Greg Reding on Hammond B3. Produced by Mark Maynard and Tony Sarno and engineered and mixed by Rusty McFarland. Hard-Rocking Blues and molten guitar directly from the home of the Blues.
Tony Sarno is an American singer and guitarist who has recorded numerous critically-acclaimed Rock and Blues albums. Tony has toured the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Argentina, and Mexico with his band or as guitarist with David Clayton Thomas' Blood Sweat and Tears, Dee Archer and Peter Tork. He has dozens of published songs and pieces written for TV and other broadcasts. Tony produced international releases Thunderhawks, Tony Sarno, Silent night, and co-produced Dee Archer's Sooner or later and Tony Sarno & the screamin' blue demons "It's a blues thing". He produces background music for CBS Sports and music for Big Fish Audio. He has shared numerous concert bills with B.B. King, as well as bills with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hall & Oates, Johnny Winter, and Little Feat. Tony has recorded for CBS/Holland, Icehouse/Priority, Marconi, and Bandwidth Records. His music appeared in the Craig Brewer film Poor & Hungry, and on the Masters of Blues CD compilation with Albert King, Buddy Guy, and the Allman Brothers Band.


[Section] City in Scenes
[Section] Real Estate Developments
[Section] Master Plan + Beirut Lighting Architecture
[Addendum] City in Portraits
Characters make entrances and exits from the stage of reality just as cities trace the contours of civilizations through time.
The currents of trade, conquest, and knowledge have, for millennia, propelled the history of the Mediterranean Basin. The people, architecture, and urban landscapes of its eastern port Beirut refract, like a prism, the stories that have accrued on this land throughout the centuries.
Meditative and introspective, the Solidere Annual Report 2011 observes how people inhabit the spaces of Beirut city center. Just as the photography and text shed light on the trajectory of the built environment – its reconstruction, development, and future, so too does the Annual Report contemplate character and how individuals constitute architecture and place.
Seasoned photojournalist Ziyah Gafic captures the latent dialogue between people and architecture. His camera turns quietly around the corner to eavesdrop on soft chatter in a garden. He peers up an outdoor staircase to follow the clacking of heels. He tracks the rhythms of children gallivanting by the sea, professionals pacing to a business lunch, and employees performing the routines of the workday. Beirut city center, in Gafic's images, is a circumstance of scenes – about camaraderie, negotiation, patience, jubilation, memory, and uncertainty. The scenes evince a paradoxical relationship to the built environment, a link as delicate and tenuous as it is deeply rooted in a complex history.
Whereas Gafic focuses on exterior and open spaces, Miguel Ángel Sanchéz communes with subjects through his renowned portraiture in the intimacy of a studio. Dozens of people who work and live in Beirut city center, people from various walks of life, sat before the camera of the Spanish sculpture cum photographer in spring 2012. His portraits are painterly and highly theatrical. In each image, an individual becomes a character – of Beirut, the Middle East, the Mediterranean Sea, and altogether the series conveys a constellation of identities, the refractions of a city.
Sunlight to back light, sidewalk to stool, architectural patterns to textures of skin, the geometry of urban infrastructure to the shapes of a facial expression: the Solidere Annual Report 2011 considers how the tides of history, of urban development, and of daily life find expression in the interrelationships between people and Beirut city center.


To High School Coaches
A letter to high school coaches:
As this sport grows, we find ourselves somehow saying yes to things far outside of our comfort zone because we love our kids, or maybe because we still love and cherish a sport we knew when we grew up. There are career high school coaches, who live and breathe the sport and their teams and there are parents who jumped in because no one else would. We have just graduated from college kids turned coaches, teachers turned coaches, dads, moms, and everything in between serving our lacrosse community in our high schools now.
If you are one of these servants to the sport, and truly that is what you are because those county stipends rarely cover the gas to get to practice and treats we buy for them, then you aren't going to be surprised to hear that it's open season on coaches these days. Sometimes these parent forced coaching staff turnovers are for the good of the kids, but what I'm seeing is good, caring coaches who can't please everyone being turned out and replaced for sticking to values and consistently enforcing work ethic, timely attendance and accountability. Because of the lack of knowledgeable lacrosse coaches, when a coach is turned out or leaves a program because they are miserable, there isn't anything behind them to bring in and the cycle of parent discontent continues.
When you truly love and care about your players, the sting of that one parent or player that want to control when everyone plays, not allow you to make corrections – no matter how gently you correct, is more intense and steals your focus more than the 10 or so other parents and players who sing your praises or the parents who remain silent and indifferent.
Sometimes we are going to ask ourselves why we are here, why we take the attacks, why we try to keep peace when clearly pleasing everyone is not possible. Sometimes as the season comes to a close we are going to look at our own families and we are going to wonder why we are trading time with our own kids and spouse to spend with a team that sometimes puts every word and action under a microscope despite the hard work and love we pour out on these kids daily. There's going to be times more often than not when the players translation to their parents or peers of what you carefully said will baffle you beyond understanding, when that kid that you put extra time and effort into helping out that season will somehow think you don't like them one day because they didn't start or some other reason, and the wrath of their angry parents will find you in an email or phone call and you will throw down your whistle and clipboard in frustration and think about walking away.
My message to coaches is this: Don't stop, the amount of lives that you are changing with your service, your genuine love of your players is making a difference and the lacrosse community needs you. Take your summer off, say no to those off season clinics if you need to recuperate from a difficult season but don't leave. Make an action plan with your athletic director for difficult situations that may arise next season, surround yourself with support coaching staff and the parents that believe in what you are doing. Be upfront about your coaching philosophy and don't stray from it for anyone. There will be seasons that are easier and some that are more difficult than others, so if this last season was a rough one – remember they are called seasons for a reason, they will pass and another one will come along.
Those players who come back years later and say that you changed their life, that you gave them confidence, support when they desperately needed it, those are the kids we are out there for. There will never be a season of perfection. We are going to mess up, and even if we don't I can promise someone will find fault with you anyway for something. Remember why we are here, look at the frightening news in the world and drive on, push forward and keep making a positive impact that is so desperately needed with our kids.
From one coach to another, thank you for being a part of something so much bigger than ourselves, so important, so hard, and yet so rewarding.
"We don't get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do it." Jon Gordon


ISAO
Artist in Barcelona
ISAO ARTIGAS ISHIKAWA
Getting acquainted with the artist ISAO was a memorable moment in our ongoing adventures in Barcelona. We were introduced to him in 2000 by the Catalan film producer Eva Baró who is married to ISAO and who collaborated with Jet Christiaanse on the magnum opus of director Peter Greenaway 'the Tulse Luper Suitcases'.
ISAO is the prime example of a world citizen predestined to be an artist. He was born in Barcelona, son of a Japanese mother and a Catalan father, both of them artists. He grew up and studied in Paris. In Japan he familiarized himself with the art of calligraphy and at the moment he has his studio at the 'Tallers Llorens Artigas' near the mountain village of Gallifa. This is a rural artist centre with studios built in honour of his grandfather Llorens Artigas, the ceramist who worked very closely with Joan Miró on many of his ceramic projects.
ISAO's parents live on the premises in the country house that formerly belonged to Miró. The world in which ISAO grew up and the settting of the multi-national arts centre are the perfect environment for an artist. Being the third generation of artists ISAO breathed art from the day he was born.
ISAO's work captured us by its pure simplicity which showed a very close relationship to the part of the universe we relate to: nature and the childlike world. The same purity also returns in ISAO's erotic work that is inspired by the art of Japanese prints.
ISAO forms part of our daily life. In the studio in Rotterdam as well as in the workspace in Gracia you can encounter ants, a butterfly, apes, birds, a panther and dragonflies, painted, drawn or sculpted by him.
He is also present in the 'Estanteria II', bookcase 2 in Gracia (see chapter interiors). I reserved two voids and invited two contrasting artists to make a work of art. ISAO saw the space as a birdcage. Four birds, each for every season, alternately occupy the cage. His idea was to change birds personally when a new season dawned.
During designing the new primary school 'Bernardschool' in the Dutch town Zoetermeer we realised that ISAO would be the perfect artist to contribute to our design. After a thorough selection procedure the municipal art commission made us happy: they chose ISAO to create the artwork for the school. His proposal to make a cloud of butterflies as a reference to the radical transformation that children experience when they grow up and eventually leave their safe environment, inspired the school board so much that at the opening of the school its name was changed into 'de Jacobsvlinder', Dutch for 'Cinnabar moth' school. Isao painted butterflies with gold on black tiles and baked them in the ovens of Gallifa and as the culmination he personally installed on the roof a swaying flock of gold colored butterflies, made in Gallifa.
Category abroad, affinities, art


Andrew Rothstein
RPD—Memories and Reflections
Source: Labour Monthly, Vol. 57, No. 2, March 1953.
Publisher: Unity Publishers (Finchley), Ltd.
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.
'A PERSON who was on my staircase last term is R. P. Dutt. He was a scholar, and last summer got shoved into jail as a CO, but was afterwards released and still comes up to college occasionally' (February 2, 1917). . . . 'Talked with Dutt. He was a socialist objector, not a pacifist[1]' (April 4, 1917). . . . 'On Saturday evening I was at a meeting of the Socialist Society . . . . R. P. Dutt, the Balliol scholar who was in prison last year as a CO and is their leading light now, made a speech saying that we were approaching the servile state, and ought to go back to the good old revolutionary Marxian, Jacobin uncompromising struggle for liberty' (May 29, 1917).
These extracts from letters home recording first impressions on a boy of 18, freshly arrived at Balliol with a scholarship but brought up in a 'hard-shell' Social-Democratic Federation family, were unforgettable, just because Dutt was so different from the other undergraduates (even those who accepted socialism), in the harsh circumstances of the middle of the first world war. I was called up six weeks later, and so heard nothing of his speech at a private meeting of students in October, denouncing the war on Marxist lines and supporting the Bolsheviks in the final stage of their struggle with the Kerensky government then still ruling Russia. It was one of the first things I learned on coming back in January 1919, together with the fact that because a group of super-'patriotic' hearties had attacked and broken up the meeting it was not they who, had been sent down from Oxford, but Dutt.
It was but the first of many such occasions on which there stand out in my memory Raji's inflexible determination to make the sharp revolutionary Marxist analysis of class issues involved, and not prevailing emotions, decide his position, whatever be the consequences. So it was on the outbreak of the second world war, so it was at the time of the Chinese attack on India.
For him the class struggle was to be judged always in its worldwide setting, nothing narrower: and this setting from 1917 onwards was that of the parallel existence of and conflict between the world of capitalism and that of the beginning world of socialism, exemplified in the state established by the victorious workers of Russia. Difficulties, errors, excesses in the Soviet Union-all those 'birthmarks' inherited from ugly capitalist society of which Marx wrote in the Critique of the Gotha Programme a hundred years ago—were for Raji always to be set against the gigantic historic fact of the proletariat leading the people of one great country in the building of the socialist order without exploitation and against the exploiters, foreign as well as native. Alike in the first articles he wrote in the Communist, the weekly organ of the Communist Party after August 1920, and in his famous 'Notes of the Month' in this journal over the next half-century, this conclusion from Marx's historical materialism—that support of the world's first socialist state against all its enemies, by whatever name they call themselves, is the unquestionable duty of all claiming the title of socialist, let alone that of Marxist-Leninist—was Raji's unswerving principle. The echo of his stand of October 1917, rings out again in his 'Notes' of December 1974, the month of his death:
The unique character of the first socialist revolution as an achievement without previous parallel in human history, eclipsing all the previous greatest, but relatively short-lived revolutions, has become increasingly manifest. 57 years after the victorious socialist revolution in 1917 which founded the Soviet Republic as the first socialist state in history, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics carries forward its continuous existence and maintains its essential basis of socialist working class power won by the victory of November 1917, developing this to further manifold forms of extended participation of all sections of the working people in all the affairs of state.
He added his tribute to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for continuing 'to fulfil the role of leadership' which had brought the working class and its allies to triumph in 1917, and which today, in the midst of current problems, goes on preparing the conditions for transition 'from the present stage of an advanced socialist society towards the future objective of communism.' Raji after the end of the first world war had drawn the inspiration from this example—however different the historical circumstances of Russia and Britain—which carried him forward from the Independent Labour Party in the war years to the Communist Party of which he became a foundation member in 1920. Communists of an older generation cannot but remember with gratitude his most detailed and conscientious work, together with Harry Pollitt and Harry Inkpin, on the Party Commission of 1922, which brought about the fundamental reorganisation of the Communist Party and enabled it to emerge unshaken through a host of subsequent trials and troubles. Moreover, Dutt was the first British journalist to have transformed the traditional socialist periodical familiar since the 1880s, a budget of articles, into a journal built up primarily out of workers' letters and news reports of their struggles in various fields, supplemented by comments on national and international affairs—the Workers' Weekly of 1924 onwards, the model carried on by the Morning Star today.
In March 1920, came his first book, The Two Internationals, written in his capacity as secretary of the International Section of the Labour Research Department. It was the first to reprint in its entirety in Britain the historic manifesto of the initial Congress of the Communist International in 1919, which, irrespective of the different trends existing then as they do today, for the first time acquainted the advanced workers and socialists of all countries with the fundamental picture of the crimes and crisis of imperialism, as it stood at the end of the first world war. The analysis devoted special attention to the nature of colonial slavery, and to the opportunities for its overthrow created by the establishment of the rule of the working class in Russia. The struggle against imperialism became one of the major guiding lines of Dutt's thought. From the beginnings of the Labour Monthly in 1921 and up to the very last issue which he edited, the exposure of the horrors of imperialism and its modern forms of neo-colonialism, the vital necessity for the socialist movement of the more developed countries to join in the fight against them, side by side with the incomparable aid which the USSR and other socialist countries were giving to the various revolutionary struggles of the still oppressed peoples, were a dominant theme. And there were no serious revolutionaries from these countries, whether bourgeois, socialist or communist, who did not seek the opportunity of consulting Dutt about their problems, when they had the chance. His travel notes on a visit to India, printed in Labour Monthly in 1946, give only a hint of this. But his books, notably India Today (1940), Britain's Crisis of Empire.(1949) and Problems of Contemporary History (1963) bear witness to the predominance of the anti-imperialist struggle in his theoretical as well as his practical work.
The first of his books had been a painstaking if brief attempt to explain the background of the attitudes on war adopted by the Second International before 1914, what happened to it during the first world war, the emergence of the Communist International and the positions taken up by the various socialist parties in the immediate post-war years. In the bibliography Dutt wrote: 'There is no standard work on the Socialist International as a whole.' Some attempts were made in after years to fill this gap, but with only partial success. Raji himself met the need, over 40 years later, in his book The International (1964): and it was no accident that he was called upon to make an important contribution to the Outline History of the Communist International produced by the institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR (English edition 1971). However, one can safely say that over these fifty years no journal in the English language anywhere has provided such a sustained series of individual studies of working class history in many countries, past and present, as has Labour Monthly under his editorship. This has held true from the very first issue, in which Dutt wrote in the first editorial: 'The situation of labour in any country has become a part of a general international situation, and it is only comprehensible in relation to it.'
The month was July 1921: burning questions for British labour at home were Black Friday—the defeat from within of the Triple Alliance of miners, railwaymen and transport workers, pledged to stand up against the attack of the coalowners and the Lloyd George government—and the consequent capitalist offensive against the whole trade union movement. The problems created by these events were to dominate the British working class movement for many a year, and they were the basic reason why that movement, instead of going on from the heights it reached in the immediate post-war years, 1919 and 1920, was driven back to engage in a far-reaching effort of self-study and self-criticism. That effort, in altered forms and with a vastly wider wealth of experience (especially of a series of Labour governments between 1924 and 1974), is still going on. To this study Raji also made his memorable contribution, from his Socialism and the Living Wage of 1927 (when capitalism and Toryism were making the most of the betrayal of the general strike in 1926), his Fascism and Social Revolution of 1934 (at a time when the most militant section of the British capitalist class was 'pushing' fascism upon the British people for all it was worth) and to the books already mentioned. But above all the 'Notes of the Month', these 53 years, have provided an unequalled encyclopaedia of British working class history, viewed and with lessons drawn from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism. Nor was it only politics and economics in the strictest sense that constantly aroused Raji's interest and his suggestions for articles. On many other sides of human activity—social, literary and artistic, as the pages of the journal will reveal to the inquirer—the opinions of sympathetic specialists were asked, and not asked in vain.
Indeed from very early on Dutt conducted Labour Monthly in a spirit of unity of all who were prepared to take a stand on socialist and internationalist principle, whatever the party card they carried. Again and again members of the General Council of the TUC and other trade union leading bodies, leaders of the Labour Party and other parties, found a common ground with Communists in such causes within the pages of the journal. Examples of this were the discussions on a new policy for the unions (1924) and on international trade union unity (1924-25), the Labour Monthly conferences for a common front of all sections of the working class against the growing war danger (1932, 1935 and 1937), the initiation of the People's Convention (1941), the discussions on 'The Arts Today' (1967-68), on the trade unions and government (1969), on the Common Market (1971) and others. These symposia, conferences and other forms of friendly debate on questions of moment for British labour made their mark on working class thinking, as the agendas of numerous conferences of the broader movement could testify. And throughout, Raji provided a brilliant illustration of how unweakening fidelity to revolutionary principle in no way excluded the tireless search for what one could unite on with those who would not go all the way with him for the moment: on the contrary, it really implied such a search.
In addition to a few months in 1921, it was my privilege for the last 35 years to take part in the collective discussions opened by Raji Dutt on all these subjects. I for one, and others can say the same, I am sure, can imagine no influence more profound and more lasting. And it is with all the greater sense of bereavement that these lines are written in the moment of RPD's passing.
1. In the first world war, conscription came into effect in March 1916. The majority of COs—conscientious objectors—took their stand on pacifist or religious grounds; but there were a number of socialists who refused to take part in a capitalist war.
R. Palme Dutt Archive | Andrew Rothstein Archive


Motorcycle Profiling is Official Daytona PD Policy
Video footage obtained by the MPP from the North Florida Council of Clubs confirms that motorcycle profiling is not only widespread in Daytona Beach, but it is also official law enforcement policy. In the words of Daytona PD Chief Craig Capri, "If you wear your colors [in Daytona Beach], you're going to get stopped." This official policy is unconstitutional and exposes the entire Daytona PD to civil liability. This video evidence also justifies a cost-free legislative solution in the form of a simple prohibition against motorcycle profiling combined with relief for victims.
Chief Capri's Statement Proves Unconstitutional Practices Are Policy
Without any other evidence, Chief Capri's Statement alone proves that the Daytona PD profiles motorcycle club members as a matter of policy. This official policy irrefutably violates the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution.
Federal courts have confirmed that motorcycle club colors are protected by the 1st Amendment. To punish an individual through seizure in the form of a profiling stop anyone "who wears the insignia of [a 1% motorcycle club], without regard to or knowledge of that individual's specific intent to engage in the alleged violent activities committed by other members, is antithetical to the basic principles enshrined in the First Amendment and repugnant to the fundamental doctrine of personal guilt that is a hallmark of American jurisprudence. see Coles v. Carlini 162 F.Supp.3d 380 (2015)
Chief Capri's statement also violates the 14th Amendment because it represents Selective Enforcement of the law. Capri's statement proves that the strategy to use traffic stops as a way to punish those exercising their rights of expression and association is premeditated and selective. In terms of the 4th Amendment, any minor traffic pretext used to stop a club member in Daytona Beach should be presumed invalid.
Exposure To Civil Liability
Motorcycle profiling as a matter of policy implicates the entire Daytona PD at an organizational level. Independent of individual officers and incidents, each profiling stop exposes the Daytona PD as an entity to civil liability. Chief Capri is the highest authority at the Daytona PD and clearly articulates a policy of discrimination and Selective Enforcement. 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 provides:
"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress."
An Epidemic In Florida
The National Motorcycle Profiling Survey validates the Florida's profiling epidemic. The 2018 NMPS lists Florida as one of the top motorcycle profiling concerns in America. According to the 2018 NMPS, 65% of Florida survey participants reported being the victims of motorcycle profiling at least once since 2012. These survey statistics are 99% reliable with less than a 2% margin of error. (See NMPS Executive Summary 2018).
Despite promises, Daytona PD has failed to address motorcycle profiling
There is a long history and pattern of evidence establishing that motorcycle profiling is engrained in the Daytona Beach PD. And the Daytona PD has made empty promises when caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
While attending the 2017 Biketoberfest rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, members of the Iron Horsemen Motorcycle Club (IHMC) were the target of blatant profiling and discrimination at the hands of the Daytona Beach PD. The incident, caught on videotape as a result of quick thinking, is irrefutable. The impact on civil liberties motivated the combined efforts of the North Florida Council of Clubs, the National Council of Clubs, and the Motorcycle Profiling Project to immediately respond with a formal complaint and public record requests. These inquiries, based on the video, sparked an investigation into the actions of the officers involved and a review of Daytona PD policies regarding motorcycle clubs, said a source inside of Chief Craig Capri's office. As a result of the State Attorney's inquiry, a curriculum was supposed to be constructed and all Daytona PD officers were to be re- trained relating to motorcycle profiling.
Unfortunately, almost 2 years later, motorcycle profiling is alive and well in Daytona Beach. As articulated, motorcycle profiling is still official policy.
A Legislative Solution
Motorcycle profiling is a legitimate national policy discussion. In December, the US Senate unanimously approved S.Res.154 which directs all states to follow the lead of Washington State and Maryland by legislatively addressing and condemning the practice of motorcycle profiling. A prohibition combined with injunctive and actual relief for victims is a simple solution with no fiscal impact. A legislative prohibition would immediately increase exposure to the issue therefore reducing incidents of profiling.
The post Motorcycle Profiling is Official Daytona PD Policy appeared first on Motorcycle Profiling Project.
http://www.motorcycleprofilingproject.com/'
https://councilofclubs.org
Mongols Biker Club Can Keep Their Logo, Judge Rules
SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) — In an unprecedented ruling, a federal judge blocked the U.S. government Thursday from stripping the Mongol Nation Motorcycle Club of its identifying logo.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter found that allowing federal prosecutors to use criminal forfeiture laws to take control of the Mongols' trademarks in their "patch" designs – often worn on the bikers' vests – would violate the club's rights to free speech and association and constitute an excessive fine, prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
Allowing the forfeiture "immediately chills" the rights of the club and its members to wear or use the symbols. Therefore, "the forced transfer of the collective membership marks to the United States violates the First Amendment," the Orange County-based judge wrote in his 51-page ruling.
The judge also ruled that taking away the rights to "a symbol that has been in continuous use by an organization since 1969" would be "unjustified and grossly disproportionate" to the group's crime, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Carter refused to throw out a December 2017 jury verdict finding the Mongol Nation guilty of racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering in connection with a murder, an attempted murder and two drug sales by club members and associates over several years.
He also upheld the jury's decision permitting forfeiture of a number of physical items seized by law enforcement, including guns, ammunition and knick-knacks bearing the club logo.
Las Vegas attorney Steven Stubbs, the Mongol Nation's general counsel, said he and the club are "ecstatic that we could defend the First Amendment for the members and all motorcycle clubs."
Stubbs described the prosecutors' forfeiture attempt as "a massive overreach" and an attempt to control symbolic speech.
In a statement, the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said it is disappointed by Carter's decision and considering an appeal. "While affirming the jury's guilty verdicts on racketeering charges, the court's ruling nullifies the jury's finding that these marks are a core component of the Mongols' decades-long pattern of murder, assault and drug trafficking," the statement said.
Stubbs and Joseph A. Yanny, the Mongols' lead defense attorney during the case, said they plan to appeal Carter's decision affirming the racketeering convictions.
Before and during the trial, the judge called the case one of first impression – or a case containing a legal question never before addressed – that might reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawyers on both sides have described the club's logo as an important symbol that members see as marking their identity as Mongols. Several times before and during the trial, Yanny said taking away the club's trademarks would be "a death sentence" for the organization.
The patch shows a cartoon Genghis Khan-type figure brandishing a sword and riding a motorcycle under a curved banner bearing the word "Mongols."
In arguments to the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven R. Welk said that Mongols are "empowered by these symbols that they wear like armor" to maintain a vicious "beehive of pernicious criminal activity" including murders, assaults and narcotics trafficking.
After one effort to win the marks failed, prosecutors filed the current criminal case against the Mongol Nation Motorcycle Club as an entity. A jury convicted the club of racketeering and conspiracy in December 2017. Then last month, it found a "nexus" between the logo trademarks and the gang's conspiracy to commit racketeering and that therefore the government had the right to take the trademarks through forfeiture.
Carter disagreed.
"That certain individual members of the Mongol Nation displayed the symbols while committing violent crimes … does not justify the government's attempts to bootstrap a conviction of the motorcycle club into censorship of uncharged members or supporters," the judge wrote.
The Mongols club traces back to the late 1960s, when Latino Vietnam War veterans who loved riding motorcycles formed it because they could not join the Hells Angels or other groups, Yanny explained to the jury during the trial. Now based in West Covina, the group has chapters in many states as well as a few in other countries, he said.
A team of agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been targeting the gang since before 2008. That year, the agents and local police rounded up dozens of members and associates in a widespread, coordinated series of raids.
Eventually, 77 of those arrested pleaded guilty to crimes. At the time, then-U.S. Attorney Michael Mukasey boasted that securing the club's patch trademarks would allow police to "literally take the jacket right off [a Mongol's] back."
David Santillan, the national president of the Mongols, who sat with defense counsel throughout the trial, said the group would probably have a party next weekend to celebrate Carter's decision.
"It's a weight lifted off all our shoulders," he said. "It's been a long 11 years."
Carter set the sentencing hearing for April 24.


SING YOUR SONG Aug 10-16, Doc, NR, 100 min, in English
SING YOUR SONG Aug 10-16
A film by Susanne Rostock, Doc, NR, 100 min, in English.
"A motivational look at an important figure in history
who inspired change." Los Angeles Times
"A celebration of singer, actor and social activist Harry Belafonte. Moving and enlightening as it serves up a crash-course in 20th-century history" Variety
This intimate, inspiring portrait surveys the life and times of singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte. From his rise to fame in a segregated era, to his provocative crossover into Hollywood, Belafonte's groundbreaking career
personifies the civil rights movement. Off-screen, he has been equally tireless fighting against apartheid, gang violence and the incarceration of youth. Through it all, an indomitable sense of optimism has motivated him, as even
today he asks, "What do we do next?"


The Organ Thieves: A Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in Virginia
RADIO IQ | By Sandy Hausman
Jay Paul
As the nation prepares to start inoculating Americans for COVID-19, public health experts worry that many people distrust the vaccine.
The problem is especially serious among African-Americans. During slavery and the Jim Crow era, Blacks were subjected to medical experiments without their consent, and after death their bodies were stolen from graves for use in medical schools in Richmond and Charlottesville.
A new book details those abuses and one modern-day nightmare at the Medical College of Virginia.
The Organ Thieves tells the story of an African-American man who – without the consent of his family – became the first heart donor in Virginia. Professional narrator JD Jackson reads from the book.
"In late May, 1968, Doug Wilder was in his law office on a tree-lined street in Richmond, Virginia. He was winding down from a long day of work when the phone rang. "They took my brother's heart!" the man on the other end of the line exclaimed in horror. As one of the best-known African-American trial lawyers practicing in the state capital, Wilder was accustomed to taking random phone calls day or night. Accusations of rape, robbery and murder were not uncommon, but taking a man's heart from his own body? Wilder had never heard of such a thing."
Author Chip Jones, a Pulitzer-nominated journalist, goes on to explain how William Tucker learned of his brother's fate.
"It all started when his brother Bruce went missing after work on Friday. It took a series of frantic phone calls to finally locate him at the Medical College of Virginia – MCV – on Saturday night. Then some bureaucrats hemmed and hawed before finally delivering the shocking bad news. His brother, who had been rushed to the hospital with a head injury less than a day before, had died only a few hours earlier on an operating table. William was given Bruce's final possessions – among them his driver's license and a business card – his business card William realized. It was for his shoe repair shop, only a few blocks from the hospital. Why hadn't anyone called him sooner?"
Credit Simon & Schuster
As the Black Lives Matter Movement evolves, there is strong interest in The Organ Thieves.
In the search for answers to that question and many others, Chip Jones learned that surgeon Christian Barnard had actually trained at MCV before returning to his own hospital in South African to perform the world's first heart transplant. He got the glory, and Jones says doctors in Richmond may have rushed to catch up.
"The head of the surgery department felt very wronged by the fact that their research and their techniques had been taken back to South Africa and that MCV had sort of been left out of the heart transplant game," he explains.
The medical college, now known as VCU Health, has quietly expressed regret over the controversy surrounding the lack of consent from Bruce Trucker's family before his heart was donated to an ailing white businessman who died a few days later. In a university magazine, VCU says the story "underscores the need to listen to and accept criticism and to learn from our past as we work to honor the dignity of all whom we serve."
But Chip Jones wonders if that's enough -- especially in light of another discovery.
"In 1994, a huge construction project on the campus ground to a halt when construction workers were horrified to see human arms sticking out of the mud," he recalls. "Police called the university archaeology department, and they began to find bodies that were in a nearby well that had been dumped some time in the past."
The remains were likely those of slaves or poor black residents of Richmond whose bodies were stolen from graves so medical students could dissect and study them. With the help of Doug Wilder, who would go on to become Virginia's first Black governor, the Tucker family sued the university and lost, but Jones says some good did come out of that case.
"Within six months of that trial, State Senator Douglas Wilder worked with some of the surgeons actually to write a new law that allowed for brain death as a concept of death, and it was only the second such law passed in the United States."
The Organ Thieves has won considerable attention from news organizations nationwide as America grapples with questions of systemic racism.
" I love a quote from Richard Rohr, the theologian. You cannot heal what you do not acknowledge. I think there is really still a lot of unacknowledged wounds that need to be healed."
The book includes a teaching guide, and Jones hopes it can be used in high schools to explore issues of race and healing with the next generation.
Audio excerpts courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from Organ Thieves by Chip Jones, read by JD Jackson. Copyright © 2020 by Chip Jones. Use with permission from Simon & Schuster, Inc.
News Health & MedicineRichmondLocal News
Sandy Hausman
Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief
See stories by Sandy Hausman


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