Poverty

Today, December 20, 2014, the City of Rochester, NY destroyed Sanctuary Village. This was the last stop for people with no place to go. Tents, sleeping bags, tarps, and, personal items were bulldozed into a dumpster. No city official present, including the RPD, would take responsibility for this atrocity, five days before Christmas.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released new proposals for preventing predatory hedge funds and hold-out investors from blocking debt restructurings. The paper proposes a series of reforms to debt contracts, including strengthened collective action clauses and a modification of the pari passu clause that hold-out hedge funds used to sue Argentina.

Open Letter to Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks Regarding Rochester's Homeless Crisis

Dear County Executive Maggie Brooks,

Monroe County has a moral and, under Article 17 of the New York State Constitution, a legal obligation to care for all its residents especially our street homeless. We implore you to reverse the lock out of homeless persons from the Civic Center Garage until Monroe County puts into place a permanent plan to house all homeless.

Check out the Indiegogo page (and the awesome incentives offered!): https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-build-p-o-w-e-r-a-workers-cente...

original article: http://jayceland.com/blog/archive/2013/12/08/let-the-fire-burn/

I got to see Let the Fire Burn at the Little on November 12. It's been a while, but I did want to give it a bit of a review.

It's an impressive document of the misguided actions of the Philadelphia government and police against the MOVE organization that led to them bombing and burning a house in 1985 containing 13 members, eleven of whom perished. In a way, it's a microcosm of war: both are avoidable, expensive, and deadly acts.

Rochester had the honor of screening the film "The Throwaways", which documents the life of Ira McKinley, an ex-felon and homeless man as he attempts to show the viewer "the throwaways" in our society.