While Buffalo, New York, isn’t exactly a stone’s throw away from Knoxville, you can’t convince Professor Henry Louis Taylor that the plight of Black communities isn’t the same in both places Angela Dennis October 26, 2022...
By Erica Canes
Read the full article from Hood Communist, here.
The language of identity is important but can also be used to erase those who should be lifted up.
By Willow Lung-Amam and Nohely Alvarez
Read the full article from *CityLab, here.
The Biden administration has focused on homeownership in its attempts to address U.S. racial wealth disparities. There’s another kind of real estate that can help build wealth for small business owners.
By Alex N Press
Read the full article from Jacobin, here.
The atmosphere was electric at a prevote rally Sunday in Staten Island where workers prepared to cast ballots on whether to become the second Amazon facility to join the Amazon Labor Union. Bernie Sanders was among the speakers.
By Harold McNeil
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
A University at Buffalo professor is one of 10 New Yorkers who has been appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul to the 400 Years of African-American History Commission, which serves to highlight contributions by Africans and African-Americans to the United States of America and to New York State.
Read the full article from WKBW, here.
“I was shocked, not surprised,” said Dr. Henry Taylor, the director for the Center of Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo, about the verdict of Kyle Rittenhouse.
Race was one of the central issues in last year’s protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Friday’s verdict had Taylor thinking about race once again.
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 Richard Fausset
Read the full article from The New York Times, here.
The jury, which is made up of residents from Glynn County, where more than a quarter of the population is Black, includes 11 white people and one Black person. Anxiety over the jury’s racial makeup was palpable among observers and participants during the more than two weeks that the jurors were being chosen.
Lawyers have said the trial could last a month. The extraordinarily long jury selection process, a grueling process that took two and a half week and included the seating of four alternate jurors, has already underscored the explosive nature of this case. That is particularly true in coastal Glynn County, where many of the 85,000 residents are connected by bonds of family, school or work, and where racial tension and harmony are deeply laced.
By Caitlin Dewey
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
Few would argue that poverty isn’t a colossal problem in Buffalo – a problem so entrenched and ubiquitous, in fact, that it’s almost taken as a given. When Walton’s opponent, incumbent Mayor Byron Brown, entered office in 2006, the citywide poverty rate sat at 29.9%. It has not changed appreciably since then.
But Walton and Brown differ sharply in their beliefs about the policies best suited to address it. Brown, who rarely uses the word “poverty” in interviews or public appearances, has bet that economic development and partnerships with nonprofit organizations will improve neighborhood conditions and generate new and better jobs for low-income residents.
Walton, a self-described democratic socialist who has made poverty the key theme of her campaign, advocates for what some progressives call “regenerative” economics – collective ownership, such as co-operative businesses and community land trusts, that she says will more equitably spread wealth and power.