Urban planning as a tool of white supremacy – the other lesson from Minneapolis
By Julian Agyeman
Reposted from The Conversation
July 27, 2020
“Racial segregation was not the byproduct of urban planning; it was, in many cases, its intention – it was ‘not by accident, but by design,’ Adrien Weibgen, senior policy fellow at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, explained in a 2019 New York Daily News article.”
A reckoning: Reconsidering Millard Fillmore’s legacy
By Stephen T. Watson
Reposted from Buffalo News
July 19, 2020
“‘What’s named after Fillmore does matter, because it can send a chilling message to members of the community,’ said Robert Silverman, a UB professor of urban and regional planning who has publicly urged the university to stop honoring Fillmore.”
University at Buffalo Student Association – Town Hall on Racial Injustice
Hosted by the University at Buffalo Student Association
July 16, 2020
“UBSA hosts a panel discussion with Black professors, staff, and students in the first hour to discuss their experiences with systemic racism and anti-Blackness on campus and how best to work towards a more equitable atmosphere for the prosperity of the Black community.”
Beyond the Railroad Presents:
Hosted by Melanie Eversley
An Evening with author Connie Rose Porter and scholar Henry Louis Taylor; Black America, the Great Migration and Broken Promises of the North.
With faculty nudge, can UB lead on social justice?
By Rod Watson
Reposted from Buffalo News
July 8, 2020
“UB has the resources, expertise and prestige to lead in this effort. And once you’ve been awakened, you can no longer pretend that you don’t see what’s going on around you.”
Black applicants are more likely to be denied mortgages, study finds
By Amy Scott
Reposted from Marketplace
June 26, 2020
“While Black Americans made some gains in homeownership last year, they were far more likely to be turned down for a mortgage than other racial and ethnic groups.”
Why It’s Time to Pay to Play
Lori Latrice Martin
A Talk from TEDxLSU
“A former collegiate athlete herself, Lori uses the lens of sports to study important issues of race, education and class, revealing the ways in which race and sports are related historically and in contemporary times.”
Racism is a Public Health Issue
From the Jacobs School of Medicine
June 28, 2020
“In support of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) and the local chapter, Jacobs School SNMA members and faculty have created a video pledging their sincere determination to acknowledge and address racism as a public health issue and to take action against the deleterious effects of systemic racism on minority populations.”
Whose Streets? Black Streets
By Amina Yasin
Reposted from The Tyee
June 18, 2020
“Planners and urbanists, it’s time to reckon with the racism rampant in city building. Here are four actions to take…”
Forget snow. Treatment of fired cop now shapes national image
By Rod Watson
Reposted from Buffalo News
June 24, 2020
“Buffalo’s insecurity and paranoia over its national image are well-known. But now it might actually do some good after Cariol Horne made the rounds of network TV and radio shows in recent days, from CNN and CBS to “The Breakfast Club,” the nationally syndicated radio show.”
‘UB Black faculty are disappointed with UB response to BLM movement’
By Alexandra Moyen and Reilly Mullen
Reposted from The Spectrum
June 19, 2020
“Concern spurs SUNY-wide meeting among Black faculty to discuss SUNY’s inadequate response to global protests…”
Buffalo’s Police Brutality Didn’t Start With Martin Gugino
By Geoff Kelly
Reposted from The Nation
June 16, 2020
“On June 4, two cops shoved this segregated and poor city into the center of the month-long national uprising precipitated by the killing of George Floyd. The spotlight—the harsh glare that erases nuance—has moved on to new outrages in bigger cities. The local aftermath has fallen into familiar and frustrating tropes: police circling the wagons, a package of ill-defined reform proposals, and attempts at scapegoating that serve politics rather than progress.”
The End of Black Politics
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Reposted from The New York Times
June 13, 2020
“Young black people have exploded in rebellion over the grotesque killing of George Floyd. We are now witnessing the broadest protest movement in American history. And yet the response of black elected officials has been cautious and uninspired.”
“How Do We Get More Power?”
By Will Doig
Reposted from Open Society Foundations
May 4, 2020
“Faced with an existential threat from the forces of gentrification, residents of Buffalo’s historic African American Fruit Belt neighborhood organized, joined together, and took control of their destiny.”
Mass Evictions Predicted as Short-Term Economic Relief Runs Out
By James Brasuell
Reposted from Planetizen
May 4, 2020
“Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo, is featured in an ABC News article about the ongoing risk of mass evictions as the country’s millions of renters collides with tens of millions of new unemployment claims across the country.”
‘Mass evictions’ on the horizon as US confronts coronavirus housing crisis: Advocates
By Deena Zaru
Reposted from ABC News
May 1, 2020
“More than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance since the COVID-19 crisis hit the U.S. in March, and despite a range of temporary federal and state eviction moratoriums, some Americans are still being served eviction notices amid a public health crisis that requires many people to stay at home.”
$8M will fund fight against Covid-19 in Buffalo’s most ‘vulnerable communities’
By Caitlin Dewey
Reposted from Buffalo News
April 22, 2020
“Among other measures, the plan will funnel more than $1 million to the African American Health Equity Task Force, a joint project of East Side faith leaders, University at Buffalo academics and community health organizations, to conduct Covid-19 education and outreach efforts in Buffalo’s black communities. It will also provide grants to health care providers on the East and Lower West Sides to establish more sites for testing.”
Universities must help shape the post-COVID-19 world
By Ira Harkavy, Sjur Bergan, Tony Gallagher and Hilligje van’t Land
Reposted from University World News
April 18, 2020
“The safe prediction that the world will change leaves open the form and direction this change will take. But it cannot and should not be left unguided, subject to those seeking to re-establish old systems of power. We contend that higher education must play a major role in helping to shape the post-COVID-19 world and do so by reshaping higher education itself.”
Black health experts say surgeon general’s comments reflect lack of awareness of black community
By Curtis Bunn
Reposted from NBC News
April 15, 2020
“Black health care professionals are offering unsolicited advice for Surgeon General Jerome Adams after his much-publicized remarks about “drugs, tobacco and alcohol” and “big momma” related to the black community and the coronavirus: Watch your mouth.”
Stop Blaming Black People for Dying of the Coronavirus
By Ibram X. Kendi
Reposted from The Atlantic
April 14, 2020
“On April 1, hardly any states, counties, hospitals, or private labs had released the racial demographics of the people who had been tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by COVID-19. Five days later, citing racial disparities in infection or death rates from five states or counties and the racial demographics of the worst coronavirus hot spots, I speculated that America was facing a racial pandemic within the viral pandemic. But we needed more racial data to know for sure.”
Yes, this virus discriminates, because we still do
By Rod Watson
Reposted from Buffalo News
April 1, 2020
“In fact, many of the same health disparities that disproportionately affect African Americans are the very same health conditions that make a person more susceptible to severe illness from Covid-19.”
Black Businesses Left Behind in Covid-19 Relief
By Natalie Hopkinson and Andre Perry
Reposted from CityLab
March 30, 2020
“The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (Cares) package is an attempt to offset an impending recession caused by mandated and voluntary social distancing, which will last until at least April 30. Congress should also pass a relief package for people who’ve suffered from the de jure and de facto social distancing of racial segregation, which still sets African Americans apart from white people today on both a spatial and economic basis.”
Spain’s Hospitals Have Suffered Death by a Thousand Cuts
By Brais Fernández
Reposted from Jacobin
March 30, 2020
“Spain’s requisitioning of private hospitals is a fine example of government mobilization to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet the country’s overwhelmed wards also show how neoliberal policies have chipped away at public health care — starving hospitals of resources while siphoning them off to paid-for alternatives.”
A Green Stimulus Plan for a Post-Coronavirus Economy
By Brentin Mock
Reposted from CityLab
March 24, 2020
“If we’re going to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, then let’s do it in a way that shakes up the status quo. This is the message that a group of U.S. economists, professors, and veterans of the last financial crisis sent in a letter to Congress yesterday asking for “green stimulus” legislation to jump-start the economy in a way that controls for climate change and poverty.”
How Coronavirus Affects Black People: Civil Rights Groups Call Out Racial Health Disparities
By Royce Dunmore
Reposted from Newsone
March 13, 2020
“Disparities Black people face when dealing with the coronavirus could affect everything from voting to being incarcerated to socio-economic status, and more.”
A Golden Opportunity for a Green Stimulus
By Kate Aronoff
Reposted from The New Republic
March 13, 2020
“New polling finds support for big, earth-friendly spending—fighting both the coronavirus-fueled recession and climate change at once.”
Rising home values: As investors cheer, low-income owners despair
By Caitlin Dewey
Reposted from Buffalo News
March 8, 2020
“John Howell and his wife have begun to wonder where she will live when he is dead. The 65-year-old retiree has terminal cancer – and since the city reassessed his home late last year, he’s unsure his wife can pay the taxes without him. Those taxes, on a dated, three-bedroom home south of Forest Lawn, for years totaled roughly $1,000 a year. But this year, following Buffalo’s first true revaluation in almost two decades, they rose to more than $2,500.”
Fighting gentrification and displacement: Emerging best practices
By Juliana Broad
Reposted from The Next System Project
February, 19, 2020
“California’s Bay Area is home to one of the country’s worst housing crises, where despite soaring rents there are still far more empty homes than unhoused people. In late January 2020, a group of unhoused mothers—organizing under the name “Moms 4 Housing”—took matters into their own hands, occupying a home in West Oakland that had been vacant for two years.”
Beneath Amherst’s Audubon Golf Course, a long-forgotten mass grave
By Stephen Watson
Reposted from Buffalo News
February 9, 2020
“In 1964, crews working to build a new roadway on the University at Buffalo’s Main Street campus dug up several graves. What was all but forgotten was where the remains were unceremoniously reburied. In two locations on and near Amherst’s Audubon Golf Course. Now, the town is figuring out what to do to give the dead a proper final resting place.”
As nation honors King, some local governments ignore the holiday
By Stephen Watson
Reposted from Buffalo News
January 20, 2020
“Thirty-six years ago, President Ronald Reagan signed a law designating the third Monday of every January as a federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Monday, state and local governments across the country again will mark the day as an official holiday for their employees. But a small number of cities, towns and villages – including a handful in Buffalo Niagara – will remain open for business as usual. …”
Will Buffalo Become a Climate Change Haven?
By Jeremy Deaton
Reposted from City Lab
December 5, 2019
“The Western New York city possesses a distinct mix of weather, geography, and infrastructure that could make it a potential climate haven. But for whom?”
The Cancellation of Colin Kaepernick
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Reposted from The New York Times
November 22, 2019
“We are being told of the evils of ‘cancel culture,’ a new scourge that enforces purity, banishes dissent and squelches sober and reasoned debate. But cancel culture is not new. A brief accounting of the illustrious and venerable ranks of blocked and dragged Americans encompasses Sarah Good, Elijah Lovejoy, Ida B. Wells, Dalton Trumbo, Paul Robeson and the Dixie Chicks. What was the Compromise of 1877, which ended Reconstruction, but the cancellation of the black South? What were the detention camps during World War II but the racist muting of Japanese-Americans and their basic rights?”
Arts beat: Innovative art, Mark Twain and a Musical Feast
By Melinda Miller
Reposted from Buffalo News
October 2, 2019
“There is only one “Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent,” and it is only right that the comic periodical be celebrated upon reaching its 10th anniversary. More than 70 comics from the series will be on display for the next month at the Western New York Book Arts Center (468 Washington St.) with an opening reception from 5 to 9 p.m. Oct. 4. …”
Residents’ fears stall project near Medical Campus, Fruit Belt’s character, affordability threatened by tall building, they say
By Jonathan Epstein
Reposted from Buffalo News
“Timothy Leboeuf is learning some valuable lessons in how not to handle development in a historic, low-income neighborhood like Buffalo’s Fruit Belt. First rule: The fear of gentrification is real, it’s strong, and it’s not to be taken lightly…”
Exhibit highlights those working for better health
Reposted from UB Now
September 27, 2019
“‘The Future of Health in the City,’ a new exhibition presented by the UB Art Galleries that highlights individuals working together to bring better health and healing to the Buffalo community, will open on Oct. 8 in the Connect Gallery at the Conventus building with a public reception from 5-7 p.m.”
“ To build a Just Society, we must be able to imagine a very different, but possible, world. To create that world, we must be prepared to cast away our illusions and exercise our right to the city. And we must dedicate ourselves to building a bold new world based on participatory democracy, social-racial justice, and anchored by prefigurative planning.”
– Henry Louis Taylor