Local News

original article: http://www.labor-religion.org/2013/12/09/guest-post-the-rana-plaza-disas...

“We want jobs and we want them with dignity”

“Namaskaar”, Kalpona Akter greeted a small audience at the Ford Foundation auditorium on November 20th means ‘hello’ in Bengali. Please repeat.”

Jocular and light-hearted, the incredible Akter gave the keynote address in Manhattan as part of the human rights focused Mary Robinson Speaker Series. A victim of child labour, Akter has endured much persecution in her quest to seek g justice for the many factory workers in Bangladesh. With her father becoming disabled when Kalpona was twelve, Akter soon found herself in a factory making around the equivalent of 778 Bangladeshi taka, or ten US dollars a month. Angry at the situation, she began organising a group to protest against the low wages, and then found herself being tear gassed, arraigned with false charges of criminal activity, and fired from her job. One of her friends who also helped organize the group was tortured and subsequently murdered by the government.

original article: http://davyv.blogspot.com/2013/12/cedric-alexander-not-so-well-liked-by.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavyV+%28Davy+V.%29

Cedric Alexander

With the talk of the town in Rochester, NY being about whether or not former interim Rochester Police Chief Cedric Alexander, who lead the RPD for 9 months in 2005, will return to serve as Chief under Mayor-Elect Lovely Warren's new administration, I thought it would be a good opportunity to remind my fellow short-term memory Rochesterians, of Alexander's failed tenure as Chief.

In a 2005 write-up on a site called The National Psychologist, former Rochester, NY Police Chief Cedric Alexander is lauded as a hero of sorts for his creation of the Emotionally Disturbed Persons Response Team (EDPRT), a team of officers "specially trained to deal with emotionally unstable and mentally-ill individuals."

original article: http://exploringtheburnedoverdistrict.com/temple-sinai-rochester-ny-2/

For as long as we have been doing this, Chris and I have always wanted to go see Temple Sinai due to its unique architecture and its mysteriousness being tucked away back in the woods off of Penfield Road.  We have reached out to the powers that be at Temple Sinai before and have been informed that while they do not offer tours, we are more than welcome to attend a Shabbat service on a Friday evening.  Chris and I have gone back and forth on this idea as one we will “eventually do when we run out of other places to see.”  Plus, Chris did go to Temple Sinai on a reconnaissance mission when the Temple was hosting a public book sale and returned with the message of “Dude, it’s a very cool sanctuary that we will have to check out some day.”  So we continued to sit on it…until now.

original article: http://queerfamilymatters.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/what-is-a-queer-family/

The first blog post is always the…awkwardest. So let’s start with this really basic question: What makes a family queer? What is a queer family?

When we think of LGBT families, we usually think of two moms or two dads. More specifically, we think of two cisgender lesbian moms or two cisgender gay dads. When the acronym “LGBT” is used, the “B” and “T” are often silent. The “Q” isn’t even there. LGBT is often used as a catchall acronym for our communities–it’s pretty common. But LGBT organizations, service agencies, and media outlets often focus primarily on cisgender gay men and lesbian women. That’s also pretty common. There’s nothing wrong with two cis moms or dads and those families could certainly be queer, but these representations are not inclusive of all queer families.

original article: http://www.labor-religion.org/2013/10/29/local-high-school-students-join-the-sweatfree-movement/#.UrOKf41Olq4

The following article is written by Katrina Josberger, a student from Coxsackie-Athens High School.

Living our comfortable, busy lives as Americans we often forget an entire world exists outside our country. We overlook the basic structure of our economy and how most of the material products purchased in department stores and apparel shops are made using cheap, inhumane labor in India, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. Millions of people, mostly young women, work in factories all seven days of the week, often clocking over 100 hours. Women are forbidden from taking a maternity leave, like Bangladeshi worker Morium Begum who lost her unborn baby at seven months when she was forced to work through illness and exhaustion. The Ha-Meem Group, the factory company employing Begum and 30,000 other garment workers, produce 70% of the apparel for Gap and Old Navy. Workers are paid 20 to 24 cents an hour, denied paid maternity leave, banned from organizing workers’ unions, and physically beaten. They are refused basic human rights and live in poverty, unable to afford food despite working 14 to 22 hour shifts. How can this be permitted? These women are being treated worse than working animals and are desperately in need of someone to speak up for them.

original article: http://www.rochestersubway.com/topics/2013/10/durand-eastman-park-lady-in-white-ghost/

Durand-Eastman Park. So peaceful and picturesque. This time of year the autumn colors are brilliant. And the water is so calm and reflective; the landscape seems to gently float up into the sky. This could be heaven.

On the edge of one great Lake Ontario, two much smaller lakes, Durand and Eastman are named for the two men who donated the land for this beautiful park. In the early 1900′s Dr. Henry S. Durand owned a summer camp here. He and his friend George Eastman saw a need for a public park with access to the beach. So they bought a number of farms around the Durand property, and in 1907 they offered the land to the City of Rochester.

original article: http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/david-graeber-on-political-polarization-2/

In the current government shutdown and bond default crisis, the extreme left-wing position, the one that House Speaker John Boehner says would amount to “unconditional surrender,” would be to allow the government to function normally and pay its bills under the “sequester” budget.  This is the austerity budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, which at the time a surrender to the priorities of the Republican right wing.

On A Move!

4-18-11 Rochester FOIL Request.pdf
5-3-11 TBL-Rochester FOIL Response.pdf
5-20-11 TBL_Rochester_FOIL_5-20-11.pdf