By Jonathan D. Epstein
Read the full article from The Buffalo News, here.
The money will target underserved communities most affected by the health, economic and housing consequences of the pandemic.
By Rod Watson
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
When the annual State of the City speech is given next year, presumptive five-term Mayor Byron Brown will no doubt laud what his administration has done for Buffalo in explaining how his write-in campaign vanquished “radical socialist” India Walton, the Democratic primary victor.
But assuming Brown receives every single write-in vote once they are counted, it means that a first-time candidate with a trunk full of baggage still got at least 41% – and won three of nine city districts – against a former Common Council member, state senator and four-term incumbent.
By Marianela D’aprile
Read the full article from Jacobin, here.
Public buildings — all buildings — perform social functions; they organize people and their activities. Prisons remove people from their environment and therefore their humanity; they discipline and isolate. In a capitalist state, where schools are charged largely with creating orderly and disciplined future workers, it follows that they would share their form with prisons.
Architecture serves as a billboard for the priorities of its commissioners — and generous, welcoming public buildings are low on their list. That’s how we end up with schools and libraries that look like prisons — and prisons that don’t.
By Matthew Spina & Mike McAndrew
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
Republican John Garcia appears to be the likely winner of the Erie County sheriff race over Democrat Kimberly Beaty after elections workers counted mail-in ballots and posted new results late Tuesday.
Garcia had a 3,078-vote lead over Beaty after 11,848 absentee ballots were counted Tuesday. Beaty grabbed more than half of the absentee ballot votes, but was unable to catch Garcia.
The Erie County Republican Committee posted congratulations to Garcia on Facebook at about 10 p.m.
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
Read the full article from The New Yorker, here.
Remote work turned out to be advantageous for people looking to leak information to reporters. Instructions that once might have been given in conversation now often had to be written down and beamed from one home office to another. Holding a large meeting on Zoom often required e-mailing supporting notes and materials—more documents to leak. Before the pandemic, if you thought that an anti-racism seminar at your workplace had gone awry, you had to be both brave and sneaky to record it. At home, it was so much easier. Zoom allowed you to record and take screenshots, and if you were worried that such actions could be traced you could use your cell phone, or your spouse’s cell phone, or your friend’s. Institutions that had previously seemed impenetrable have been pried open: Amazon, the I.R.S., the U.S. Treasury. But some less obviously tectonic leaks have had a more direct political effect, as was the case in July, 2020, when an employee of the city of Seattle documented an anti-bias training session and sent the evidence to a journalist named Christopher F. Rufo, who read it and recognized a political opportunity.
By Beth Krom
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
As the daughter of a television anchorman – the late Irv Weinstein – I’ve always been attentive to how stories get written. As a former elected council member and mayor who served 16 years in public office, I know something about what it takes to run, win and serve. And as a former resident of Buffalo and Kenmore, now living in Irvine, Calif., I’ve been watching the race for Buffalo mayor with interest.
By KJ Shepard
Read the full article from Protean Magazine, here.
The actual extent of homelessness in the U.S., writes KJ Shepherd, is drastically underestimated—a result of flawed counting metrics, enabled by a broader refusal by power to admit its true, staggering scale.
By Deidre Williams
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
Public safety projects account for one-third of Mayor Byron Brown’s $25 million capital spending proposal for next year.
The mayor recommends spending about $4 million for a new fire station and $1.3 million for a training center for the Buffalo Police Department among other spending for public safety – for a total of $8.3 million.
By Andrew Giambrone
Read the full article from Jacobin, here.
India Walton may have lost the Buffalo mayoral race last week, but her campaign isn’t the only socialist one in upstate New York. Today in the Mid-Hudson Valley, Sarahana Shrestha, the Ulster County cochair of the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) local chapter, announced her bid for the state assembly seat for Kingston, New Paltz, Woodstock, Rhinebeck, and other areas. The seat is currently held by Kevin Cahill, a nearly twenty-nine-year incumbent expected to seek reelection in New York’s 2022 Democratic primary.
By Jon Harris
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
Catholic Health System and the Communications Workers of America traded blows like heavyweight boxers in a 35-day main event at Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo – shaped during the prior 18 months by a pandemic that forever changed each side.
The bout is now concluded, after about 2,500 workers overwhelmingly ratified new labor contracts over the weekend and into Monday.
Now it’s time to recover. That starts now, as the 2,000 workers who were on strike for 35 days begin returning to Mercy Hospital on Wednesday.