Community to County Legislature: "Protect Our Children from Lead Poisoning!"
[permalink]In what was standing room only, dozens and dozens of people jammed into the hot county legislative chambers Tuesday night to urge legislators to "protect our children from lead poisoning".
Over thirty people addressed the county legislature, most of them speaking on the lead issue. Community members, including teachers, parents, grandparents and residents, spoke of saving the county money by preventing lead poisoning, the need to protect our children and to act as a community. Even the Landlord Association agreed that testing for lead should be mandatory.
Wayne Zyra, the President of the Monroe County Legislature, had to bang his gavel and ask the crowd to be quiet and stop applauding.
In the middle of the legislative session, Todd Bullard, a county legislator from Rochester, called for the legislature to suspend rules to consider his resolution to make lead testing mandatory for all county subsidized housing. Discussion ensued over suspending Roberts Rules in order to address Bullard’s resolution, but Zyra called for a vote. That vote split down party lines. Since Republicans outnumber Democrats, the motion was defeated. There was no debate on the issue. One Republican legislator stated a need to study the issue further.
In September, Metro Justice will be going door to door in the districts of those legislators who voted against mandatory testing for lead. MJ will inform these constituents of the vote on the issue and to ask them to write letters to their legislators urging them to protect children from lead poisoning. Read the full article.
To get involved, contact Metro Justice at 325-2560 or e-mail metroj@frontiernet.net.
Additional Information: Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning | Metro Justice
Raucous Audience of 500 Greets Contenders for the Mayoralty of Rochester
[permalink]A surprisingly contenious, even raucous, audience of about 500 greeted the five contenders for the mayoralty of Rochester, NY in St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene Episcopal Church (17 South Fitzhugh Street) on Thursday, July 28, 2005. The forum was sponsored by Interfaith Action, a local organization composed of church and business leaders in the city.
In what turned out to be a combination of revival meeting, political free-for-all and community action event, the five candidates, Wade Norwood (D) (photo: 1), Bob Duffy (D) (photos: 1 | 2), Tim Mains (D) (photos: 1 | 2), Chris Maj (D) (photo: 1) and John Parrinello (R) (photos: 1 | 2), weighed in on the Interfaith Action proposal called the "RochesterOneMonroe Community Agenda" whose core idea is to establish a $90 million Neighborhood Trust Fund to rebuild distressed neighborhoods in Monroe County.
As might be expected, the candidates with the least to lose were the most candid and controversial, while the likely winners were more cautious and inclined to the middle of the road. Read the full article.
Additional Coverage:
City Coverage of Election 2005
DOCUMENTARY REVEALS CRUELTY AT WEGMANS EGG FARM
White Washing War Crimes, by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Who will solve these war crimes?
WHITEWASHING WAR CRIMES
[Col. Writ. 5/28/05] Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Bagram. Diego Garcia....
Words have power, and what these words evoke is precisely what American policy makers want to evoke: terror.
The international human rights group, Amnesty International, recently called the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, "the gulag of our times."
The reference to the torture chambers and repressive Siberian prisons of the old Soviet Union, marked by the term, 'gulag', was remarkable. It was also correct.
Ido Aharoni: Spreading Disinformation on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Utica, NY
Ido Aharoni, Consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in New York City, came to the small city of Utica on 22 June and spoke at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) on the current situation in Israel/Palestine.
Rochester Indymedia Website Up after some Tech Problems
Sorry to readers and writers about the downtime we experienced with the Rochester Indymedia website. This does point to a need to get a solid tech working group going again. Thanks to Genesse Gateway for their quick response and Ben for his long distance tech help. If anyone out there wants to help with tech, come to one of our Tuesday night meetings. (See Calendar for meeting time and location)
The Black vote or the block vote? David Gantt - one man, many votes; control or leadership?
Prior to the Saturday, May 14th convention, the popular illusion was that the Democratic Party operated on higher principles, adhered to more legitimate processes, at least more so than the G.O.P. That somehow loyalty to democratic principles would prevail over personal loyalty or penchant to win. That Democrats would rather lose than win corruptly. All such illusions of the Democratic Party were up in the air this Saturday.
Rochester Democracy Now! Campaign Takes Message to the Streets
Text and images by Richard Freeman
June 8, 2005
The accompanying photos communicate the latest actions of Metro Justice's year-long campaign to bring Amy Goodman's award winning news program, Democracy Now!, to Rochester via WXXI. Metro Justice organized a demonstration outside of the Strong Museum in anticipation of the arrival of the scheduled speaker, Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of PBS and Norm Silverstein, President and CEO of Rochester’s WXXI.
The Assembly Line Factory in the State University of New York at Oswego
Factory at Oswego is not unlike most, if not all, establishments of “higher education.†Its architecture and design, instead of stimulating and encouraging intellectual growth and paving the way for imaginative approaches on life, gives off an aura of blandness and conformity – much like that of a factory. The campus looks more like a prison than anything else.
Nuclear Power and its Effect Upon Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes of North America possesses one of the most nuclearized zones in the entire world, in effect causing a vast amount of environmental change.
On Lake Ontario there are currently sixteen nuclear power plants. Of those sixteen, twelve of them are located on Canada’s side of the border, leaving the remaining four on the United State’s side. Lake Ontario is also home to an uranium refining plant, two low level radioactive waste disposal sites located along the shoreline, and it also sits down stream from the high level rad waste site of West Valley located in Western NY (The Great Atomic Lake, 2002). These nuclear plants and components make Lake Ontario one of the largest nuclear zones in the in the entire world.