Tagged: repost

Preservation Board votes could threaten two city reuse projects

By Jonathan D. Epstein

Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.

Plans by two developers to tear down and reuse properties in downtown Buffalo for larger projects suffered minor setbacks last week, after the city Preservation Board recommended that the city deny the necessary permits for Ellicott Development Co. and Iskalo Development Corp.

The votes do not automatically kill the developers’ requests or plans, since the board’s actions are not binding on properties that are not local landmarks or part of historic districts. But they could influence the final decisions by city officials, potentially delaying or derailing any projects.

We Need Public Housing, Not Affordable Housing

By Dan Darrah

Read the full article from Jacobin, here.

Homeownership is out of reach for millions in Canada and the US. One well-meaning response to this crisis has been to call for more affordable housing. But we should be demanding more social housing instead.

UB Professor: Rittenhouse verdict deepens political divide

UB Professor: Rittenhouse verdict deepens political divide

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.

The Architecture of Prisons Is Everywhere We Look

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.

Garcia appears likely winner in Erie County sheriff race

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.

How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory

How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory

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.

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