In May 2023, the student leaders of Lambda — an LGBTQ affinity group at Duquesne University — asked school administrators to change their organization’s name to something more recognizable: the Queer Student Union.

Today, the fate of that name change is uncertain. Catholic universities like Duquesne find themselves at a crossroad, with support for LGBTQ rights growing nationally but the Catholic Church and some of its U.S. membership still officially opposed to gay marriage and the full inclusion of transgender parishioners.

While some university administrators expressed support for the name change, Lambda President Nialah Miller said others disapproved of the word “queer” appearing in the group’s title. Still, “we’ve been trying to push it,” they said.

Gabriel Welsch, vice president of marketing and communications at Duquesne, said in an email that discussions remain “ongoing.”

University officials did not oppose including the word “queer” in a group’s title, Welsch wrote. Instead, staff members “sought to confirm that the term ‘queer’ was not offensive to the individuals it was going to represent.”

As an interim measure, university administrators allowed the group to expand its title from Lambda to Lambda Gender Sexuality Alliance. But a lack of consensus around the original proposal has delayed the group’s full name change by upwards of six months.

Meanwhile, student leaders at Duquesne emphasized that the name change is a crucial step toward the open expression of LGBTQ identity on campus.

“It matters a lot, because the words that you use — they have to align with the words that people are using to describe themselves,” said Maddie Fitzgerald, founder and president of Duquesne oSTEM, an LGBTQ affinity group within the School of Science and Engineering that frequently collaborates with Lambda.

Now, “it’s Lambda Gender Sexuality Alliance, which is fine,” Miller said. “But nobody’s saying the whole name.”

A nixed mass and a sleek, black dress

Conflicting ideas over LGBTQ inclusion in Catholic spaces came to a head at Duquesne this summer when Catholics for Change in Our Church [CCOC], a local group that hosts monthly masses advocating for “constructive reform” in the Catholic Church, planned a service celebrating Pride month on campus.

While the group received permission to host a similar mass the year prior, CCOC began advertising its event this year before seeking approval from officials at Duquesne or the Pittsburgh diocese.

As word spread about the service, local religious leaders including Bishop David Zubik urged that the mass be canceled altogether, claiming that the diocese received an outpouring of complaints. Duquesne obliged, nixing the event less than two weeks in advance.

Similar contentions between religious and LGBTQ interests at Duquesne have spanned decades, back to when Lambda was founded in 2005.

There are several theories about why the Greek letter Lambda has been adopted by LGBTQ groups, including its traditional uses as a symbol for change and balance. By creating and identifying with a covertly named group like Lambda, LGBTQ students at Duquesne hoped to signal their identity to one another without scrutiny from outsiders.

But times have changed, according to Miller, and Duquesne’s LGBTQ student body wants more visible representation. That’s why last semester the group sought approval for the name change.

“Whenever you tell people that you’re a part of Lambda GSA, they think you’re in Greek life,” Miller said. “We just wanted to change it to something that was more recognizable, and that covered more people.”

For Miller and Fitzgerald alike, pushback surrounding Lambda’s name change exemplifies limitations on how LGBTQ student groups can represent themselves on campus.

Both leaders pointed to another incident in 2019, when student and faculty organizers of an annual gender-neutral fashion show were told they could no longer use gender-neutral language or imagery for the event.

One year prior, posters for the show depicting a male-presenting model walking a runway in a sleek, black dress “generated numerous complaints,” according to a September 2019 statement by Duquesne officials. They walked back their restrictions following public outcry, but students still felt blindsided by the decision.

Although neither was involved with the show, Miller and Fitzgerald said its fallout was familiar territory.

The school community can be “finicky about word choice,” Miller said. For both groups, this means screening event ideas with faculty advisors to ensure they will receive approval.

In his email, Welsch wrote that all student groups must receive administrative approval to ensure that programming aligns with university policies, adding that “Duquesne has no restrictions for LGBTQIA affinity groups or topics.”

But Miller said their group preemptively factors an understanding of the campus climate regarding LGBTQ issues into the decision to propose events. When the group follows through with an event idea, a desire to avoid controversy on campus influences the language and imagery it uses for promotional materials.

Avoiding controversy “is just about word choice,” Miller said.

Similarly, when oSTEM hosted a fashion show featuring upcycled clothing in November, Fitzgerald said the group had to be tactful with the language and images it used to promote the event due to the 2019 incident.

When planning for the show, “there was a lot of anxiety within oSTEM and the School of Science and Engineering,” Fitzgerald said.

The school’s leadership, which Fitzgerald described as an overall supportive presence, helped oSTEM plan its promotional materials, telling the group: “We don’t want this to go poorly for you.”

“We didn’t run into any problems,” Fitzgerald said. “We just had to be careful.”

Catholic and queer

For Fitzgerald, who identifies as both Catholic and queer, tiptoeing around LGBTQ issues on campus like this is frustrating. At Duquesne, Fitzgerald said some of her peers in each community struggle to understand how she holds both Catholic and queer identity at once.

“It’s kind of crazy even to explain to other queer people that I’m also Catholic, or to other Catholic people that I’m queer,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s usually just something to avoid.”

Creating LGBTQ spaces on campus does not undermine Duquesne’s religious mission, Fitzgerald said. Instead, it opens it to identity groups historically excluded from Catholic spaces.

When those institutions uplift LGBTQ community members in the ways that they choose to represent themselves, it “legitimizes your identity,” Fitzgerald said.

Likewise, Miller, who is Black, said the goals of LGBTQ student groups mirror those of cultural or ethnic affinity groups on campus: to create a space for community-building among students with shared experience.

Students who join cultural affinity groups “want their own space where they can interact with people who know what they’ve dealt with,” Miller said.

“Queer people want the same thing,” they added — to visibly represent LGBTQ identity through resources, events and even a group name.

“Both of our groups have been approved as being aligned with the university mission,” Fitzgerald said. “We deserve to be here.”

Jack Walker is a journalist based in West Virginia, and can be reached at jackwalkerwv@gmail.com.

This story has been fact-checked by James Bell.

The post Student group’s push for name change raises questions around LGBTQ visibility at Duquesne appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

A trans-inclusive fertility clinic is expected to open in Pittsburgh next year, offering sperm and egg donations, surrogacy services, in vitro fertilization, hormone therapy and more, aiming to address shortcomings in healthcare in Pittsburgh for the trans community. 

The clinic will be a partnership between Allegheny Reproductive Health Center [ARHC] and Mate Fertility, an organization dedicated to making the parenthood process affordable, accessible and comfortable. It will be run by Dr. Sheila Ramgopal and Dr. Amy Collins, two Pittsburgh physicians. 

According to the National Library of Medicine, almost 500,000 transgender people experience health care disparities in the United States.

Dena Stanley, executive director of TransYOUniting PGH, a mutual aid non-profit providing resources to Pittsburgh’s trans community, said the coming clinic will be helpful for the region’s transgender and LGBTQ+ community.

“Having a family is still so difficult for us [the trans community],” Stanley said. “Couples are still turned away from adoption or healthcare because they are queer. … This clinic will give a safe option in an affirming place where they are not scared or discriminated against simply because of who they are.”

Dade Lemanski, 32, of Wilkinsburg, said another reproductive clinic in the area isn’t among the trans community’s most pressing needs. Lemanski said many trans people move to Pittsburgh at least in part because of its reputation for more affordable gender-affirming care through Medicaid and UPMC, but added that the healthcare providers here that brand themselves as all-inclusive don’t live up to that.

“Reproduction is an important part of life, but it’s only one part of life,” Lemanski said. “I think we need to focus on current care and truly make it all-inclusive first.”

Bridging the gap with REIs

Ramgopal said that the partnership with Mate Fertility will enhance ARHC’s existing services like administering different kinds of birth control, abortions and hormone therapy. Mate was founded in 2021 by brothers Oliver and Gabriel Bogner to create a more inclusive network of family planning services for people struggling with the high cost and low availability of fertility clinics around the country.

“We have been in talks with companies like Mate for three to four years,” Ramgopal said. “We know we want to provide as many fertility services as possible in as comfortable and accommodating a space as possible, whatever your skin color, gender identity, whatever. … Mate has the more advanced training we need and focuses on groups that haven’t been centered.”

Ramgopal said they hope the ARHC and this new Mate fertility clinic will be under one building someday.

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Gabriel Bogner said the clinic will help address discrimination in healthcare for the LGBTQ+ community. 

“Not only is it difficult to seek fertility care in the U.S., as clinics and providers are mainly in larger cities, it is even harder for the queer community,” Bogner said. “Being in an accepting place in healthcare is so rare, and it shouldn’t be; that’s part of what we’re striving to fix.”

Mate Fertility currently has locations in Oklahoma City, San Francisco and Fresno, Calif. In addition to the Pittsburgh clinic, the company is also opening clinics in Wichita, Kansas, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and Lubbock and Amarillo in Texas.

Mate Fertility’s partnerships with OB-GYNs as well as reproductive, endocrinology and infertility specialists [REIs] makes them unique among health care providers.

“REIs are basically OB-GYNs with a three-year fellowship that is mainly research,” Bogner said. “Even when people are struggling with getting pregnant, they go to an OB-GYN and then get sent to an REI. … We’re bridging that gap so people do not give up in the process and have easier access.”

The Pittsburgh clinic will offer educational programming in addition to fertility services such as consultations and resources on how gender-affirming care affects fertility, different kinds of infertility and sex education for all sexual orientations.

“Many people do not know about the abundance of fertility services and their own fertility, especially those undergoing gender-affirming care,” Bogner said. “Consultations are a big part of what we do.”

Traci Keen, CEO of Mate Fertility, said Pittsburgh was a market of interest based on the company’s value alignment with ARHC. 

“There are so many factors that go into choosing a clinic location, but geographical access to care and finding partners that align with our values as a company are most important,” Keen said. “This industry is simply not meeting its demands, but we need to work with those that put the patient experience first.”

Stanley said she hopes to partner with the new clinic to gather more research on the trans community.

“We are such an under-researched group; we need more data,” Stanley said. “We need to see how many people use these services to see how we can better help and support them.”

Lemanski said they “basically avoided doctors completely until I moved here a few years ago. … Navigating health care in my 30s is very interesting, especially when you have providers that have these biases and attitudes against [the LGBTQIA+ community] even though they say they don’t.”

Lemanski said that they have had bad experiences at clinics in the area and that they have seen the most bias in OB-GYN reproductive healthcare. 

“There is such a focus on cis-women seeking abortions, putting non-binary and trans-masc people in competition,” Lemanski said. “This zero-sum attitude that ‘this is what you have been given and you need to be happy with it’ needs to go away … We’ve been promised the world but still are not respected.”

The new clinic in Pittsburgh is projected to open next summer. 

“We just want to continue to let people know that we are a safe space and that there are a bunch of different ways to start a family,” Bogner said. “We’re a space of no judgment and are excited to be in Pittsburgh.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to better reflect Lemanski’s reasons for moving to Pittsburgh.

Erin Yudt is an editorial intern at PublicSource and can be reached at erin@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Sophia Levin. 

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation has contributed funding to PublicSource’s healthcare reporting.

The post Trans-inclusive fertility clinic to open in Pittsburgh within a year appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Hope and John broke up in fall 2022, but he still lived in the Pittsburgh house they rented with another roommate for a few months afterward. During that time, Hope said, he was insistent about getting back together. He repeatedly touched her or kissed her on the head, even though she asked him not to. It was “not overtly sexual, just romantic and controlling and explicitly outside of the boundaries that I’d set,” she explained. 

In an interview with PublicSource and in civil court documents, Hope shared that John eventually persuaded her to go on a date in early February. The two twentysomethings went out to a new bar, where she had two drinks, and a restaurant, where she had a third. The two ended up at another venue and continued drinking. She estimates she had eight drinks that night — much more than her usual intake, especially after eating little during the day. 

By 11 p.m., Hope was dizzy and asked John to drive her home. She told a friend over the phone that she’d be going straight home, but John instead drove to a local park. From there, the alcohol begins to fade Hope’s memory, but she remembers how he parked, pulled her into his lap and forcibly kissed her, grabbing her neck and sides. She remembers how difficult it was to fight him off. Eventually, he drove them home and had to help her into the house.

A road in Pittsburgh’s East End. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

She remembers sitting on the couch, and then being on the floor without her clothes. She remembers him grabbing her roughly, and later reported bruising to her legs in a court petition. The next morning, John told her he was stressed he didn’t use a condom and she said she was upset he had sex with her when she was not in a clear state of mind, Hope related in court documents.

“I slept a lot of that day,” Hope said. “I was really in shock. I kept falling asleep. I didn’t move around very much.”

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PublicSource is withholding the names of the woman and her alleged assailant under standard journalistic practice in situations involving sexual violence, referring to them instead as Hope and John.

Hope reported the attack to city police about a week later. By then, Hope and her roommate had confronted John, told him to leave their shared residence and changed the locks. But John had not stopped texting and trying to contact her, and Hope feared for her safety. Around a week later, she went to family court and got a temporary protection from abuse order. 

By reporting her attack to law enforcement, Hope triggered a process that often ends in disappointment for survivors — but unknowingly, that was also her first step in an effort to hold the system accountable to survivors and answer for why justice is not always sought, let alone served. 

Night falls on a police station in Pittsburgh. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

A typical pattern

Over 50 years spent advocating for rape survivors in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh Action Against Rape [PAAR] has learned to manage people’s expectations.

“A lot of survivors come into this really believing that there will be justice, and that people will believe them, and that their case will move forward. And to find out that the vast majority of the time that’s not true, can be very difficult,” said Megan Schroeder, director of victim response at PAAR. “You don’t want to dampen their sense of hope or their sense of justice, but we also want them to be prepared for what we know is likely going to happen.”

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According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network [RAINN], 31% of sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement — a low figure attributed in part to survivors assuming they will not be believed or supported by law enforcement. About 5% of all sexual assaults lead to arrests, and fewer still to prosecution. 

Locally, municipal police and the Allegheny County District Attorney have roles in addressing sexual violence.

The Allegheny County Courthouse, which includes the district attorney’s office. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

In Pennsylvania, “detectives build the case, but it is the discretion of the DA’s office which ultimately determines whether charges will be brought,” said Cara Cruz, a spokesperson for Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Safety. 

According to PAAR and the Women’s Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for women, girls and LGBTQ+ people, survivors assaulted by a current or former partner often hit dead ends in the criminal justice system, even when they have physical evidence. 

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“We don’t know how often it is that a prosecutor will just simply decline to bring a prosecution in a rape case,” said Sue Frietsche, senior staff attorney and interim co-executive director of the Women’s Law Project, which has offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. “However, just anecdotally, we are alarmed by the number of people who are coming to the Women’s Law Project, and the fact patterns are typically that they know their assailant, so there’s some prior relationship.” 

Frietsche said she is reluctant to second-guess the prosecutors. “But where there is physical evidence of bodily trauma and you have a willing witness, and there’s no prosecution because they knew each other, that’s really disturbing.”

Low case numbers, high conviction rates

Cruz said city police look into all alleged rapes thoroughly, without concern over whether the report will culminate in a criminal case. 

The city’s Special Victims Unit [SVU] “investigates all crimes that come in, regardless of the final outcome,” Cruz said. “The outcome cannot be determined until an investigation has been initiated and completed.” 

The county does not share publicly any breakdown of the cases prosecutors choose to take on or decline, so it’s impossible to know exactly how often the district attorney’s office declines to file charges for reported rapes after an investigation by local law enforcement. 

A PublicSource analysis of court records shows that 72 cases of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault and/or aggravated indecent assault were filed in Allegheny County between 2017 and 2022, an average of 12 cases per year. (This count does not include cases that PublicSource determined to include rape of a minor under 18.) 

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Of the 61 closed cases, 51 resulted in felony convictions, or 84%.

That conviction rate is much higher than national averages. RAINN estimates that 56% of rape and sexual assault cases that make it to the prosecution stage end in felony convictions.

Schroeder said Allegheny County’s high conviction rate could be driven by prosecutors’ decisions to charge only “the stronger cases with fewer barriers,” especially if “you're seeing the decisions up front weeding out the cases that might come with challenges or barriers."

In response to inquiries about his office’s policies in pursuing rape cases involving current or former intimate partners, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala wrote in a letter to PublicSource that a “large percentage” of sexual assault prosecutions in the county have involved intimate partner violence. 

He said his office makes “every effort … to accept a prosecution and attempt to achieve justice for a survivor.” He cited sufficiency and admissibility of evidence and a survivor’s wishes as reasons that his office may decline to prosecute cases of sexual violence.  

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“That does not negate the reality of a survivor's trauma, and we empathize when a survivor is disappointed with a decision not to prosecute,” Zappala wrote. “These decisions are based solely upon a review of the evidence that would be available at trial and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”  

Survivor advocates say a major underlying theme is the persistence of rape myths — false ideas about what sexual violence and its survivors look like, from what they wear to what they drink, and whether consent to past sexual encounters makes a difference. 

In reality, rape is largely not committed by random strangers on the street: RAINN has found that 39% of rapes are committed by acquaintances, 33% by current or former partners and 19.5% by strangers, with the remaining committed by multiple people, a person the victim cannot remember or a non-spouse relative.

“All of those kinds of stereotypes and false beliefs contribute to a culture in which it's more difficult, possibly, to get a conviction,” Frietsche said. “I'm not saying that the prosecutors themselves necessarily subscribe to these beliefs. It's just, if it's more difficult to get a conviction, then possibly those cases become less attractive when you're dealing in a world of limited resources.”

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Lack of accountability

Hope said a detective from the Pittsburgh Special Victims Unit came to interview her in her home in March. John’s behavior started to escalate in the weeks following. Hope later reported to police that John stood outside her house in the middle of the night and drove past her job while she was working. 

“I was really scared to be out in public. I felt like I couldn't leave the house safely and I felt like I couldn't be alone in places that he knew where I was. So I had to leave my job and that was really hard,” Hope said. 

In early April, Hope said, the detective came back to her with news: The district attorney’s office would not take her case any further.

Hope immediately wanted to know what she could do to make the county prosecutors reconsider their decision. She turned to the Women’s Law Project. 

When prosecutors decline to file charges for an alleged sexual assault, there are few options available to survivors, according to Frietsche. A survivor may be able to take private civil action against their alleged assailant or request that the prosecutor revisit their decision, but ultimately, it’s within the discretion of the district attorney’s office to decline any case. There is no appeal process for those decisions.

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Hope told PublicSource that she was able to get a meeting with an assistant district attorney, the SVU detective who investigated her case and her PAAR advocate. She left that meeting feeling only more frustrated, with the same answer she had before. 

To her dismay, she felt like it didn’t matter that she was a cooperative witness. It didn’t matter that she was willing to withstand brutal questioning from John’s defense attorneys and understood the possibility that the case could end without a conviction. It didn’t matter that her doctor documented her inflamed labia after the assault.

“Whether charges are filed or not, I was raped and I was hurt and then I was harassed,” Hope said. “I would like there to be some accountability.” 

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To Hope, accountability doesn’t necessarily have to mean John going to jail — in fact, she doesn’t think incarceration would help him. Instead, she wants him to have to go to therapy, to acknowledge how his abuse hurt her emotionally, physically and sexually. 

This mindset isn’t uncommon, according to Schroeder — especially in cases where survivors have a current or former relationship with their assailant. It’s one of the reasons a significant number of rape and sexual assault cases end in plea deals. 

The Allegheny County Courthouse, which includes the district attorney’s office, in Pittsburgh. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

“A lot of our clients go into the system wanting accountability and wanting the person to understand that what they did was wrong, and they want some assurances that it's not going to continue to happen in the future,” Schroeder said. “You can get mandatory treatment and court supervision and probation for a lot of these cases without incarceration. We do have a good number of adult victims who choose to go that route.” 

Another reason many rape prosecutions end in plea deals is so survivors don’t have to endure a trial. 

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The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that a survivor’s testimony, even if uncorroborated by external evidence, can be enough to secure a conviction if the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. But a survivor whose case goes to trial may be forced to testify about their trauma and have the details of that testimony picked apart by defense attorneys to sow doubt in the jury. 

“It's not an easy process. That being said, some people are willing to go through that process,” said Jayne Lester, an advocacy manager at PAAR. “They're survivors for a reason. They get through it. People will come out on the other side and say, ‘Look, I'm so glad I did that, even if it was a bad outcome.’”  

An infinite ladder

For the past six months, Hope has been working her way through the criminal justice system — from reporting the attack to police to interviewing with detectives to meeting with prosecutors to consulting with advocates.  

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“It feels like I kept climbing this ladder, and at every rung of the ladder people told me, ‘We believe you, the hardest part is over, and we are going to make this better,’” Hope said. 

“At every step I was climbing this ladder, trusting that at some point we would have reached the top and at the top things would be safe and OK. And I keep climbing, but there's no end to this.”  

Still, she isn’t ready to get off that ladder. While the district attorney’s office hasn’t changed course on its decision to not pursue rape charges, prosecutors have filed a stalking and harassment case against John. 

Hope said she plans to keep asking prosecutors to press rape charges, especially in the event of a new district attorney taking office next year.  

“I feel like giving up would mean making myself smaller and deciding that it's more important that it'd be easy than that it'd be true,” Hope said. “I feel good about what I've done. I did everything that I could have done. I exhausted every option, every avenue, and I took up space and I didn’t just roll over and let this thing happen. And that feels brave. That felt important.”  

Alexandra Ross is an editorial intern with PublicSource and a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. You can reach her at aross@publicsource.org or @AlexandraNRoss on X, formerly known as Twitter.  

This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.

The post Her ex left her bruised and in shock. Her attempts at justice illuminate the struggle to prosecute partner rape allegations. appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When a victim of gun violence is brought to UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland, a nurse in the trauma center might rush to their station and pick up a business card from Richard Garland. 

They might use a smartphone to scan the QR code on the card, which pulls up a form they can fill out and send to Garland’s team at Reimagine Reentry, where he serves as executive director. The form provides crucial information about the victim, including their name, age, where they were shot and whether they’ve consented to receiving services from the nonprofit, which is based in the Hill District. 

Within 24 hours, a violence prevention coach from Reimagine will visit their bedside and offer services such as therapy, job training and housing assistance. The goal, said Garland, is to intercept victims before they retaliate — a practice that could result in fewer gun-related homicides and help stop the cycle of violence in Allegheny County communities.      

Garland and just one other person on his team, Gina Brooks, did this work on their own for years. It would take them up to three days to reach a victim’s bedside, which meant fewer opportunities to help before they were discharged. But an infusion of cash from the county — more than $370,000 over the last year — has changed that. Garland was able to pay for the QR code system and hire three staffers for Reimagine’s hospital-based violence intervention program. Now his team is able to reach victims across four hospitals in less than a day. 

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“Being able to go to these hospitals at the drop of a hat has changed things significantly,” Garland said. 

“Just us being able to have this funding has enabled me to take things to another level.”

A QR code for Reimagine Reentry’s CommUnity Peace hospital-based violence intervention program, on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, in Gina Brooks’ Reimagine Reentry Hill District office. The cards are attached to nursing stations in the city’s trauma wards, and a simple scan starts Reimagine’s violence prevention efforts. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

It’s been six months since the county announced it would commit $50 million over five years to reduce community violence, which happens between unrelated people outside their homes and disproportionately affects youth in communities of color. The Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] selected 13 local organizations through two requests for proposals to carry out its plan: to treat violence like an infectious disease. The effort adapts programs that have proven to be successful in other cities — including three from Chicago — to “high-priority areas” in the county. 

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An act of violence is rarely limited to one neighborhood, said Rev. Paul Abernathy. “If we don’t have a coordinated effort across community lines, it will be difficult to address the violence in our region.” 

Abernathy is CEO of the Neighborhood Resilience Project based in the Hill District. The county appointed the organization to be a “countywide convener” and awarded it more than $177,000 over the last year to bring all stakeholders together to collaborate and share resources. 

Leaders at some of the involved anti-violence organizations told PublicSource they’re hiring staff and building out programs. Some said the funding is a good start, but isn’t enough to address the root causes of violence such as poverty and structural racism. Others aren’t counting on the funding to continue beyond the county’s five-year commitment. 

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‘This is the most we’ve ever gotten, but it still isn’t enough’  

Lee Davis stood on Margaretta Street in Braddock on a sunny afternoon in late August. Behind him was a memorial at the edge of a grassy patch called New Hope Green Space, which belongs to the local Baptist church. 

On the night of Aug. 27, two teens were shot and killed on the spot, which was now adorned with candles, stuffed animals and pinwheels that spun in the wind. Nazir Parker and Rimel Williamson were both 17-year-old seniors at Woodland Hills High School. A third teen was found shot in a nearby home and was taken to a hospital. Davis said he was in stable condition. 

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Davis is the director of violence prevention for Greater Valley Community Services [GVCS]. The organization will receive more than $1.3 million from the county over the next year to adapt two models to the Mon Valley: Cure Violence, which trains trusted community figures to work with at-risk youth, and the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative [READI], a transitional jobs program for at-risk men.  

Davis and about 30 members of the Greater Valley Coalition Against Violence gathered at the site of last month’s shooting to peacefully object to what happened. The practice is recommended by Cure Violence, which calls for violence prevention workers to “change norms” by visibly responding to every shooting in their coverage area. 

“People just drive by and beep and see that you’re out here,” he said, waving at a school bus as it drove past. “It lets them know that you care.” 

During an interview that took place before the shooting, Davis said the county’s funding will help GVCS “enormously” as it continues the violence prevention work that he said is helping to reduce gun-related homicides in the area. There were 7 homicides in the Mon Valley in 2020 — the lowest number since 2007, according to the county Office of the Medical Examiner. But homicide numbers have climbed since then: There were 11 reported homicides in the area this year through July, according to the county’s homicide dashboard. The number of countywide homicides — most of which are gun-related — jumped from 93 in 2019 to 128 in 2022. The victims are mostly Black men and boys.    

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Davis said GVCS has hired 10 people for its Cure Violence program — called CURE V.I.B.E. — and plans to hire eight people for its READI program, called Achieving Change Through Transitional Employment Services [ACTES]. Both programs will be staffed by site supervisors, program managers, therapists and outreach workers. 

But “I see a disaster” if the county doesn’t continue the funding beyond five years, he said, predicting that community violence will increase if funding for violence prevention dries up. “We probably need 10 or 15 [years] because we all know this stuff didn’t happen overnight. This is the most we’ve ever gotten, but it still isn’t enough.” 

From top left: Lee Davis leads a meeting of the Greater Valley Coalition Against Violence in Braddock on Aug. 29; Davis stands outside the building after the meeting; community members created a memorial on the spot where two teens were killed in Braddock on Aug. 27; Davis waves at a school bus during a Cure Violence response to the shooting on Aug. 31. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

Rashad Byrdsong, who mentored Davis in the 1990s, agrees that the funding doesn’t go far enough. Byrdsong is the founder and CEO of Community Empowerment Association in Homewood. The organization received more than $131,000 from the county over the last year to provide gun violence victims with therapy and other supportive services. 

“Even though $50 million was appreciated, you’re going to need much, much more to address this plague mainly in the Black community here in Pittsburgh,” he said, adding that the funding won’t erase “years of social neglect” and the structural racism that “incubates violent behavior” by keeping Black and Brown people from “having the same rights and access as everyone else.”  

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‘We don’t have unending resources’ 

Erin Dalton, the director of ACDHS, doesn’t dispute concerns about the limits of the effort. 

“We don’t have unending resources, but we make a lot of those investments and care deeply about making sure people have their basic needs met,” she said during a late August interview. She added that the kind of funding and policy changes that address the root causes of community violence should happen at the federal level.  

Abernathy said the programs the county selected aren’t meant to address the root causes of community violence. “It’s really focused on disrupting the violence in real time,” he said, adding that the county’s commitment is “an opportunity to leverage additional investment” to transform formerly redlined communities that have experienced “trauma over multiple generations.” 

Dalton said the county’s decisions to renew funding over the five-year period are contingent on each awardee’s performance. That includes their ability to get violence prevention programs up and running and to keep risky situations — such as fights in schools — from escalating into something worse.   

“I don’t care about all this funding if we’re not actually preventing violence,” she said. 

Read more: 911 becomes the go-to help line for ‘high utilizers.’ Who’s reaching out to help them? Pittsburgh firefighters

It’s hard to measure the outcomes of violence prevention programs, said Steven Albert, a professor of behavioral and community health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Gun violence is relatively rare, so a cluster of violent acts around one event — such as a party — can ruin the data. 

The main drivers of community violence are poverty, the availability of guns and “an underground economy that enforces using violence,” said Albert, who co-leads with Garland the Violence Prevention Initiative at Pitt’s Center for Health Equity. It’s why he believes strong gun-control measures would have the biggest impact in communities affected by violence.    

“But I think these violence interrupters are critical,” Albert said. “They don’t get the pay or recognition they deserve. And the funding for them is a good idea.”

Dalton said $50 million is the largest amount of money the county has invested in violence reduction, which has typically been funded by private foundations in the past. She said she'd hope to see “all violence ... eliminated,” adding, “That hasn’t happened yet. But I do expect that if these programs are working well and reducing violence in these communities, then we may be able to move on to a lower-level effort.”  

The county’s plan was structured in a way to encourage coordination, not competition, among the organizations that were awarded contracts, said Jessica Ruffin, deputy director for ACDHS’s Office of Equity and Engagement. 

‘Money is always the issue. Hopefully it doesn’t run out.’ 

An Lewis speaks to Garland from Reimagine almost every day.  

Lewis is the executive director of Steel Rivers Council of Governments, which received more than $900,000 from the county over the last year. A portion of that funding will be used to implement a Cure Violence program called Cure Mon Valley in Homestead, Duquesne, McKeesport and Clairton. She said her organization used the funding to hire 17 new staffers to “intervene before shootings and killings occur” across those four communities. 

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While the council of governments has worked to change the Mon Valley through infrastructure improvements, it’s never run a violence prevention program. That’s where Lewis’ regular conversations with Garland come in. 

“We really are curating these programs together,” she said, referring to Cure Mon Valley and Garland’s hospital-based work. “We have to coordinate because the people Richard’s team are responding to are coming from our communities,” she added. 

From left, Richard Garland’s email shows one of the gun violence patient information forms he receives through his organization’s hospital-based violence prevention initiative. “Everybody’s coming together as an Allegheny County unit, all the different organizations,” said Gina Brooks, director of violence prevention for Reimagine Reentry. Garland holds the elevator for one of his fellow violence prevention team members as they leave for a meeting. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

“[Reimagine’s] QR code was brilliant,” Lewis said, adding that Cure Mon Valley is considering deploying its own QR codes in the communities it serves. Since the Cure Violence model aims to detect and interrupt conflicts, the codes would allow community members to quickly send the team information about people who need help. 

In Stowe-Rox, Cynthia Haines and her team at Focus on Renewal are building an ACTES program that places participants in jobs at local businesses. 

Employers weren’t always so eager to hire Focus on Renewal’s clients, said Haines, who is the executive director of the McKees Rocks-based organization. But funding from the county — about $1.3 million over the last year — allowed her to hire a job coach and supervisor to help participants succeed in their new roles. Their schedule includes four-hour workdays, cognitive behavioral therapy and guest speaker sessions to “open their minds up” to different career possibilities. At least 20 local businesses have committed to hiring them, she said. 

“So people are opening up their arms, their hearts, and more than that, their place of business for these men,” she added.

Read more: ‘We were all blindsided’: Chatham University faces multimillion-dollar budget hole, lays off staff, cuts benefits

Mike Skirpan and his team at Community Forge in Wilkinsburg joined the effort when ACDHS officials told them they were having trouble finding a provider to launch a Cure Violence program in the eastern part of the county. Skirpan hired 16 people, including a program manager and two site supervisors who manage violence interrupters throughout the area. The team will peacefully resolve conflicts and connect families and individuals to services such as therapy, SNAP benefits and workforce development programs.     

“I am very hopeful that continued investment in these communities happens after five years,” said Skirpan, Community Forge’s co-founder and executive director. 

Back in the Hill District, Garland’s team is working to keep nurses and social workers informed about what’s happening on the streets. They give presentations to hospital staff throughout the county every six months, he said.   

“But money is always the issue,” he said. “Hopefully it doesn’t run out.” 

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org.

Stephanie Strasburg contributed reporting to this story. 

This story was fact-checked by Tanya Babbar. 

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Anti-violence teams surge as $50 million in Allegheny County funding flows appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

If your social media feeds are anything like mine, they’ve been filled with “my Barbie collection” posts ever since Margot Robbie started doing press events dressed in designer versions of the doll’s most iconic outfits. Weeks before Greta Gerwig’s film was actually released, my friends were posting about Barbies they’d had in their own collections, whether they still had the actual dolls or could only share stock images. This exercise in collective nostalgia led me back to one extra special Barbie memory from when I was 11 years old.

It was Christmas Eve 1993. My family and I had gathered at my paternal grandmother’s house for our annual feast of fish (not seven, but plenty). Once the calamari, smelts and shrimp were cleared away, it was time for the part every kid looks forward to at the holidays: presents!

There were 17 of us grandchildren – 14 granddaughters, with birth dates ranging from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. As you’d imagine, Christmas shopping was quite an undertaking. Typically, my grandmother would buy one type of present for the younger girls and another for the older ones. But Christmas 1993 was different: One by one, we were each handed a rectangular box, all the same size and weight. And all around the room, we each unwrapped Italian Barbie. Fourteen of them!

Now 95, my grandmother, Antonetta Conforto Kovacic, can’t recall exactly where she purchased all those dolls. That’s not surprising, because she had to visit multiple stores to get her hands on 14 Italian Barbies – as collector’s items, these dolls tended to be sold in fancier department stores rather than toy stores or the local Hills or Kmart. What she does clearly remember is having purchased one for each of her 14 granddaughters, including her newest one, then an 8-month-old infant.

It may seem odd to give 14 girls of such varying ages the same gift. But looking back 30 years, it’s clear to me that my grandmother’s gift-giving that Christmas embodies so much of the complexity of the immigrant experience in America, which she personified but could never express as perfectly in words as she did through those wrapped boxes.

In 1979, Mattel began releasing international Barbie dolls, the first cohort of which included Italian Barbie, Parisian Barbie and Royal Barbie (England). As the series went on, they were dubbed “Dolls of the World” and the featured countries greatly expanded. These were intended as collector’s items and were not marketed as part of the “play line” commonly found in toy stores and advertised on television.

The first Italian Barbie was dressed in clothing that was clearly more about American ideas of ethnicity than about actual ethnic garb. 1979 Italian Barbie wore a green, white and red colorblock skirt with a blue fringed apron, a frilly peasant blouse and a floppy sun hat. Looking at pictures of that original doll, I get clear Sophia Loren vibes, but the clothing is more kitsch than an homage to Italians.

Luckily, in 1993, Mattel released a second version of the doll, this time sporting actual folk costume. And it wasn’t just any folk costume; it was specifically the Neapolitan costume. I think this detail especially is what made my grandmother so keen to buy an Italian Barbie for each of her granddaughters.

My grandmother, a war bride at age 17, immigrated to the United States in 1946 from Naples. She had been dreaming of “l’America” for years by that point, and given the destruction caused by the Allied bombings of her hometown during World War II, it’s not difficult to understand why she might have dreamed of an escape.

She says she had dolls growing up – “babydolls,” as she has always called every doll as long as I can remember, no matter what age group the doll in question is meant to represent. Though none of them made the journey with her to the States, where she settled in McKeesport.

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When Barbie was first created in 1959, my grandmother was in the thick of raising six children, only one of whom was a girl. My aunt was the main recipient of the dolls until, in her later years and with grandchildren now, my grandmother started collecting Barbies for herself. Of course, as an adult, she didn’t intend to play with them. What had started as a clandestine collection of Holiday Barbies hidden from her third husband under the bed gradually migrated to a special case in her living room.

For many women, my grandmother included, Barbie represents something very American. A Barbie doll, with her pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair, is the exact inverse of women like my grandmother – immigrant women with dark skin, hair and eyes, who were trying to assimilate as best they could into American culture. In my mind, finally seeing herself and her own specific Neapolitan culture reflected in a doll she’d been purchasing for decades is what made it so important to her that all her granddaughters have one. While not all 14 of us have outwardly Italian features, we are all part of the Italian heritage that my grandmother has always been so proud to share with us, especially through food.

If there was a “representation matters” conversation happening in 1993, I was obviously not aware of it at 11 years old. But I do know that seeing a Barbie who looked like me – with brown hair and brown eyes and olive skin and wearing the gold hoop earrings I favored – made me glad. My sisters and I opened and played with our Italian Barbies, dressing them in clothing we’d stripped from their blonde counterparts. The earrings were inevitably lost and parts of the traditional costume were scattered among various toy bins. But my Italian Barbie was well-loved – so well-loved that I felt the need to hunt down a pristine one on eBay once the “Barbie” movie nostalgia machine began.

Now, as a mother myself, I can appreciate the time, effort and care that went into my grandmother’s gift-giving 30 years ago. To us as kids, they were just pretty dolls we got to unwrap. But with the benefit of hindsight, I know that particular Barbie was so much more.

Melanie Linn Gutowski is a writer and historian. If you would like to send a message to Melanie, email firstperson@publicsource.org.

The post How 14 Italian Barbies expressed, in plastic, what my immigrant grandmother could never put into words appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When Emily Loeb’s grandmother fled the Nazi regime in Germany in 1938, it was under the fiery skies of Kristallnacht, which translates to “night of broken glass.” 

Nearly a century later, as the director of programs and education at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, Loeb continues to tell her family’s story in the same way her grandmother did. 

“She saw the synagogue burned to the ground, and then their house was threatened next.” 

Her grandmother fled with minutes to spare. “Her leaving was a moment of flight and panic. She was lucky she had secured a visa, but they were unable to get their parents visas.” 

Eventually, Loeb’s grandparents made it to the United States, but her great-grandparents were never heard from again after being transported to a ghetto in Poland in 1942. Loeb’s family lost 141 members to the Nazi regime — and they’ve used their story to educate about antisemitism ever since. 

Working toward a more robust model of Holocaust education

This June, Loeb had the opportunity to attend the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Alfred Lerner Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators. Loeb was one of 28 Holocaust educators chosen from across the nation to attend the five-day event in Newark. Covering topics such as the legal system and medical community during the Third Reich, the fellowship is an intense experience, Loeb said. “This is not beginner-level information. It’s almost like a graduate course.” 

One of the biggest impacts from the fellowship, Loeb said, was hearing from some of the most experienced Holocaust teachers across the country.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize … they think the Holocaust is only taught in history class, but it’s taught in English, art, theater and social studies, too. Having lots of different info on hand to provide to teachers is really important.” 

The Holocaust Center provides a variety of ways to engage with the stories of the “heroes” of the Holocaust – from a library of books penned by local survivors, artifacts of the Jewish diaspora, from art contests, to their own series of comic books featuring Holocaust-upstanders called “CHUTZ-POW!”

Part of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s role in the region is to train local educators to teach the Holocaust, so Loeb hopes that the information and tactics she learned will positively impact students across a city and region still reeling from the most deadly antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Nearly five years after the events of 10/27 at the Pittsburgh synagogue that housed the Tree of Life, New Light and Dor Hadash congregations, Loeb and her colleagues are focused on applying their skills and knowledge to encourage students to be upstanders. Upstanders, she said, are kids who stand up against identity-based hate within their communities, rather than remaining mere bystanders.

“We have a mixture of teachers from public to private, parochial and non-parochial schools from surrounding counties attend our trainings here at the Holocaust Center,” Loeb said.

Antisemitism is on the rise

At the center, teachers hear from Holocaust survivors and their family members and are provided with resources such as comic books, videos and written materials to further study and then share. There are also school assemblies for middle school students and opportunities to visit the center itself for more hands-on learning.

“Since 10/27, the Holocaust Center has worked on developing a more robust educational effort to stand against antisemitism and the racism and xenophobia that accompanies it,” said Loeb. 

Antisemitic beliefs are still widely prevalent in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League tracks antisemitic attitudes and found that 18% of Americans believe Jews have too much power in the business world, and 22% believe Jews talk too much about what happened in the Holocaust. They also found a 36% increase in antisemitic incidents between 2021 and 2022.

Reaching local educators

For any teacher in the Pittsburgh area looking to further their education, Loeb encourages them to reach out for more information.

The Holocaust Center, currently located at Chatham University, will be housed in the new Tree of Life building, which does not yet have an opening date. The space will provide a central location for worship, healing and education. Loeb said she hopes this space will create room for memory and understanding. 

“Our community knows all too well that antisemitism did not end with the Holocaust because of how it shows up throughout history and continues to show up today” she said. “Antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish problem. It’s an everyone problem.”

By continuing to foster conversations, Loeb and her colleagues hope to prevent such horrific events from happening again. 

“Talking about it makes us aware we can’t just be passive when things happen in this community,” she said. “One of the biggest lessons was for us to see how our community came together — not just the Jewish community, but our entire community. We all need to do this together for each other.”

Meg St-Esprit is a freelance journalist based in Bellevue. She can be reached at megstesprit@gmail.com or on Twitter @megstesprit.

The post Holocaust educator works to strengthen community resilience and tolerance amid rising antisemitism appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Pittsburgh’s LGBTQIA+ Commission, created in 2020 by former Mayor Bill Peduto, started with the promise of action on behalf of the queer community of Pittsburgh.

Three years later, external displays of action have been on the sparse side — even at the admission of some of its members.

Much of the work has stagnated due to creating framework from nothing, communication challenges with the city’s administration, turnover and workload, according to commission co-chairs.

One of them, Sarah Rosso, said much of the work has consisted of figuring out how the commission can function as a group.

“I think the initial investment of time was really focused on building infrastructure,” Rosso said. “So there was no infrastructure prior to us starting and so there was a lot of time and investment from the commissioners to develop bylaws, structure and how we would operate.”

Read more: LGBTQ+ healthcare experiences inconsistent, lack some services for transgender Pittsburghers

The commission of 16 members, who have experience in various sectors including education, workforce development, homelessness and health, have met on a near-monthly basis since its first meeting in August 2021. The goals the city laid out for the commission include: developing action plans to address the challenges the Pittsburgh LGBTQ+ community faces, conducting studies about those challenges, working to develop cultural competency training opportunities and engaging with the Pittsburgh community on LGBTQ+ issues.

While some fruitful conversations have been held to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community within the city and the commission has made strides on developing its internal structure, the commission’s 20 meetings thus far have lacked public engagement and it hasn’t conducted a single study.

“The fact that I can’t, right now, fire off a list of studies that we’ve done for you, that is an issue,” said Leonard Orbovich, a commission member who advises and advocates for LGBTQ+ issues in regards to education. He added that he wants to do studies, but it hasn’t been possible due to budgetary and administration issues within the commission.

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Some efforts have, in part, been held up by what appears to be confusion with city counterparts. 

Commission-city communication

From money to meetings, the city and the commission appear to have a communication problem.

The LGBTQIA+ Commission lost out on city funds to support its efforts in 2023 because, according to commission co-chair Sue Kerr, its members didn’t know they had to submit a budget plan.

“We had no idea that we would have to prepare our own budget because we were told [we would have the money] when we saw it in the budget,” Kerr said. “So we thought we were going to have it.”

The city allotted $40,140 to the commission in 2022, according to budget documents. But Olga George, press secretary for Mayor Ed Gainey, wrote in an email to PublicSource that the commission did not use the money allocated, and it was returned to the city’s general operating funds at the end of the year. 

“This fiscal year, there’s no line item in the budget for the LGBTQIA+ Commission for general operating purposes,” George said.

Concerns over the lack of community engagement also involve the city. The commission’s website doesn’t say when its meetings occur. There are no links to meeting recordings, contact information or meeting minutes since April. And, although the commission says it wants the public to be able to attend at least virtually, no links to connect with the meetings via Zoom are posted. 

Kerr said the city controls what goes on commission websites, and they have “no control” in updating the website themselves. Kerr said the commission maintains a Facebook page where they regularly provide information, but it also lacks a link to the meetings or mention of when the meetings are, and it isn’t linked on the city website.

“I understand the website is lacking, but I don’t have any other answer except to say you’d have to talk to the mayor’s office about the resources of systems around that,” Kerr said.

Read more: ‘I put my fighting gloves on a lot faster.’ How understanding foster parents may mean ‘life or death’ for trans kids.

George said the city has not received requests from the commission to include information about when meetings occur, links to attend their meetings virtually or contact information for the commission. George added that the commission has not provided copies of the recent meeting minutes to be posted but said that, when received, minutes are usually added to the website “as quickly as possible.” 

“This is the first time we’re being informed of these issues,” George wrote in an e-mail, “and it’s coming from you [a reporter] and not the commission directly, but we’re more than happy to update the items as they’re sent to us.”

What is available to the public? The meetings are recorded and livestreamed on the city’s YouTube channel. And, there’s a public comment form on the commission’s website where individuals can submit a comment about agenda items or other concerns. The form says: “Public comments will not be read during the meeting, but Commissioners may respond to some or all of the comments during the Commission meeting.” 

Orbovich acknowledged there are “shortcomings” on the commission’s part in terms of outreach and communication but said there will be more “positive movement” for the commission.

“It is frustrating that we’re not doing a better job of putting ourselves out there,” Orbovich said. “Honestly, I’m struggling to speak, and what I’m not entirely sure of is my role.”

Progress amid shortcomings

One of the commission’s set goals is to interact with Pittsburgh City Council and produce annual reports to its members about the commission’s progress.

Kerr said the commission has set up meetings twice a year with city council to better understand how the commission can help influence or provide advice on the various legislation passed and provide an LGBTQ+ angle. 

The commission has produced two annual reports for city council but did not do so this past year, Kerr said.

“I think we did a one-page document the first year and the second year,” Kerr said. “We did not produce an annual report and I say again, a lot of that is just because of the workload that we’re juggling.”

The city hopes to soon fill a part-time role that has been vacant since April for a staff member who would support various commissions’ work, George said.

The commission has also faced issues with turnover. According to Kerr: Its third co-chair, who was supposed to serve on the board until 2025, left in May. The board also saw the departure of three other board members since 2021.

The mayor has the power to nominate commission members. Kerr wrote in an email that at its Aug. 17 meeting, the commission appointed two current members to fill the vacancies on the executive committee. The commission is seeking to add other members, specifically one who would represent the Commission on Human Relations and another member with a housing specialty.

Acting on the mandate to address the challenges the Pittsburgh LGBTQ+ community faces, Kerr cited how the commission set up talks with the Pittsburgh Pirates after the 2021 controversy around the team hiring homophobic performers.

On the other hand, the commission remained silent in 2022 when several local radio stations aired anti-trans political ads. 

Kerr said the latter incident “caught us off guard,” and the commission did not call the stations or attempt to set up meetings to get them taken down. Some members of the commission who are part of other advocacy groups denounced the ad campaign independently but not in an official capacity on behalf of the commission.

Within city hall, Kerr said the commission has helped in an advisory capacity to get liaison roles within the Department of Public Safety filled over the past year. 

Orbovich said despite some of the issues, he is proud of the advocacy work the commission has done.

“Our goals have felt developmental — in terms of what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it, who we are, how we function — and we’re still working through that process,” he said. “This has been an important part of my life’s work so far, and I hope we do better at it.”

Editor’s note: Guillermo Velazquez, a commissioner on the Pittsburgh LGBTQIA+ Commission, also serves on the PublicSource Board of Directors. He was not interviewed for this story.

Punya Bhasin is a freelance journalist in Pittsburgh and can be reached at punya13b@gmail.com

This story was fact-checked by Christine Graziano.

The post Stagnation and communication woes: Pittsburgh’s LGBTQIA+ Commission struggles to deliver on promised action appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

I didn’t feel a strong personal connection to Pittsburgh when I arrived in 2019. I knew the city was prone to harsh winters (strike one), that it wasn’t as overtly progressive as my native California (strike two), and that its limited Asian dining options did not include dim sum (game over). 

I wondered: Were there even Asian people living here?

I figured I’d complete Carnegie Mellon University’s master of fine arts program, the reason for my move, and wouldn’t linger after. 

Back then, I did not know that there was, in fact, good Sichuanese food and boba (but still no dim sum) in Squirrel Hill, where Asian and Jewish communities intermingled. I did not anticipate that I’d encounter fragments of my own family’s history by walking through the Homewood Cemetery, where early Chinese migrants were buried in temporary graves that became permanent when their bones never found their way back to their families in China. 

Identification cards from Chinatown’s last honorary mayor Yuen Yee’s archives and street scene photos from Historic Pittsburgh. (Photo stills courtesy of Lena Chen from her film, The Last Mayor of Chinatown)

I did not foresee that my curiosity about the names on the gravemarkers would lead me to Shirley Yee, the youngest daughter of the last mayor of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown, who inherited the archives her father collected, chronicling the region’s Chinese community. Nor did I realize that many other Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders [AAPI] in Pittsburgh were driven to make this long-hidden history visible.

That began to change in 2020, when I lived in Point Breeze. I became fascinated by the Chinese section in Homewood Cemetery, which I would pass when I walked to Squirrel Hill. With a Google search, I pulled up Chien-Shiung Wu’s 1982 dissertation on the Chinese in Pittsburgh and discovered that most migrant workers buried in the cemetery had immigrated from Toishan and Kaiping, the regions in China where my ancestors had roots. 

This was the “Aha!” moment that made me feel a strong tie to the city and realize that my family’s story was part of a bigger legacy, which I’ve been steadily uncovering ever since. 

Celebrating a (nearly) lost Chinatown

I was born in San Francisco, where the city’s Chinatown is one of the oldest and largest Chinese enclaves in the Asian diaspora. Pittsburgh had a Chinatown, too, on Grant, Ross and Water streets (the last of which no longer exists), and Second, Third and Fourth avenues, Downtown. Population estimates ranged from hundreds to more than 1,000.

Most of the immigrants in Pittsburgh had arrived from California, seeking economic opportunity after the 1849 Gold Rush and the development of transcontinental railroads. But the city’s enclave disappeared over half a century ago, and many don’t know it existed. 

As an artist making work that invites social engagement, I wanted to find ways to bring this history to light. So in 2021, backed by grants from the Office for Public Art, I began reaching out to friends, artists and organizers including Anny Chen and Caroline Yoo. Saddened but energized by anti-Asian violence, we organized an event for mourning and healing featuring AAPI artists, healers, and entertainers DJ Formosa and Samira Mendoza, and then founded the collective JADED to support cultural programming made by and for AAPI Pittsburghers. 

Throughout this period, I returned repeatedly to the Chinese cemetery, sometimes bringing offerings and burning incense with friends. I noticed the abundance of grave markers that bore the surname Yee, and I soon discovered that Chinatown’s last honorary mayor was Yuen Yee. His obituary mentioned he was survived by a daughter named Shirley, in Mt. Lebanon. 

The only Shirley Yee I could find was teaching at Carnegie Mellon University. On a whim, I sent her an email, and within 24 hours, I had a response. Yuen Yee was indeed her father. And not only that, but she had inherited his substantial archive.

Yuen Yee and family in Chinatown 1930-1943. (Photo stills courtesy of Lena Chen from her film, The Last Mayor of Chinatown)

As mayor, Yuen Yee acted as a translator and intermediary between Chinese residents and Pittsburgh city officials. He cared for aging laundrymen who had come to Pittsburgh decades before and were now growing old without family support. He even ran, unsuccessfully, for City Council. After a stroke paralyzed the right side of his body, he taught himself to write with his left hand and recorded his memories of Chinatown on legal pads, left to Shirley among a vast collection of artifacts.

I invited Shirley to lead a walking tour of Chinatown for JADED and to share her father’s experiences with the public. The event coincided with big news: After many years of advocacy from the Chinese community, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission recognized the original site of Chinatown with a Pennsylvania Historical Marker on April 16, 2022. The marker was erected by the Chinatown Inn, the enclave’s last remaining building. 

JADED partnered with the Pittsburgh chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans on the tour, which kicked off a daylong celebration to commemorate the marker’s installation. Despite the rainy weather, a crowd of 100 people showed up and filled the narrow streets where a vibrant Chinese community once lived. It was a testament to how many people – AAPI and otherwise – cared about this history. 

A ‘mayor,’ a homecoming, a menu

In July 2022, I moved from Pittsburgh to California to start a doctoral program. But I continued to organize with JADED, which expanded to include community organizer Bonnie Fan, artist Sara Tang and poet Elina Zhang. 

I briefly returned to create “The Last Mayor of Chinatown,” a short documentary about Yuen Yee. I spent days at Shirley’s house in Mt. Lebanon, where she brought out box after box of photographs, newspaper clippings and mementos while narrating each item’s significance. Anchored by these artifacts, the film interweaves excerpts from his memoir with Shirley’s contemporary commentary to show her father’s instrumental role in supporting newly arrived immigrants and establishing mutual aid initiatives. Through the Yee family’s story, we learn about the rise, decline and rediscovery of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown.

Newspaper clippings and photos about Yuen Lee from The Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (Photo stills courtesy of Lena Chen from her film, The Last Mayor of Chinatown)

Almost a year after I left Pittsburgh, I am returning this August for an arts residency. And on Aug. 12, I will screen “The Last Mayor of Chinatown” for the first time at WILDNESS, a summer festival at Pump House in Munhall that JADED has organized with Rivers of Steel. 

When I first arrived in Pittsburgh, I did not expect to find an AAPI community in a steel town. I did not know that I would discover so much of myself and my own family’s story in a place far from our motherland. And I could not have imagined how much I would grow to love this city, even though there wasn’t any dim sum. 

I see this upcoming visit less as a work trip and more as a homecoming. Shortly after I moved away, a dim sum restaurant finally opened in Lawrenceville. And if I’m to be honest, what I look forward to most is the experience of eating dim sum with my son and chosen family, in the city that has shown me so much love and has become a second home in all the ways that really matter.

Lena Chen is an artist, writer and scholar examining Asian American sexuality, labor and performance art. She is co-founder of JADED, a Pittsburgh-based AAPI artist collective. She can be contacted at lena_chen@berkeley.edu.

The post Uncovering Pittsburgh’s long-hidden Asian American history made me feel at home — and I learned I wasn’t alone appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Pandemonium. My mom says that, when I was in kindergarten, ‘pandemonium’ was one of my favorite words. I loved everything about the word: the look, the sound and what it felt like to say aloud.

I’ve always been obsessed with words. I collect them like pet rocks — blow off any residual dirt and put them aside for safekeeping until I find the perfect time to use them.

When I was that pandemonium-loving (the word, not the concept) 5-year-old little boy, I was confident words would never let me down and heartily believed the old adage: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The saying was so catchy, especially with its accompanying sing-song tune, as though it was a playground mantra. Slowly, though, I began to see through it. The more life I’ve lived and the more language I’ve used, the more I realize how sharp words can be, and yet how utterly inadequate and inaccurate they are as tools.

Growing up, there were times when I felt different from my peers and I wasn’t sure why, but it took a while before that gap between me and everybody else became truly noticeable. I have no idea whether most of my habits were coping mechanisms for feeling different in a world that values sameness or whether much of it was just me being me. People called me “too sensitive” and those two words became a kind of shorthand for something I wasn’t sure how else to describe. 

Apparently, no one else knew how to describe it either; it would be another decade-and-a-half before even a medical professional thought to assess me, leading to a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

July, which is Disability Pride Month, feels complicated and confusing to me, at best. I’m always disabled and rarely proud. Sometimes, I wonder if I have a fourth layer of skin except, instead of skin, it’s a saran wrap-like film of shame that holds the rest of me together. 

I think of all the things I cannot do, the limitations I have, and all the tasks I accomplish in private so nobody can see how hard they are for me. I think of confronting a tactile sensation that’s awful to me — like some metal door knobs — and needing to wait until I’m alone and can find something to wrap around it so I can open it without contact.

I don’t know how to feel proud about that. 

What I know is this: I’m never going to find pride in myself so long as I keep trying to make myself smaller and less disabled in the process. I also know: I live in a society that is run by nondisabled people and sometimes my presence becomes one of an educator.

I am expected to metaphorically hold nondisabled people’s hands as I teach them how to interact with me and treat me with basic dignity. I often find myself trapped in thinking that the purpose of my existence as a disabled person is, first and foremost, to make the hypothetical nondisabled “you” around me more comfortable.

But much of the time, I’m too tired to explain, too tired to prove my wholeness.

Zoom migraines and caption blowback

At the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was forced to go digital, I remember people conjecturing that maybe this is the nudge society needed: Maybe we were finally making progress toward being more inclusive and more accessible. In some ways, digital life did seem easier and, in certain ways, more accessible. Suddenly, I didn’t have to figure out logistics of transportation for all of my appointments; I simply needed to turn on my computer and set up my webcam. I wasn’t expected to be in loud environments like busy restaurants; in fact, we were all being told not to do that. 

As an introvert, some of this came quite easily to me. At the same time, the pandemic tested my ability to keep masking just how many support needs I actually have. My ability to mask eroded with every passing day, and I was only growing more and more overstimulated.

It seemed as though every time I signed off a Zoom call, I was greeted with a migraine and complete exhaustion. It didn’t make any sense to me; weren’t Zoom calls supposed to be more accessible? I wanted to know that other people were feeling this, too. The migraines and exhaustion, I learned, were a result of trying to process speech from several different people, while also watching the squares on my computer screen constantly light up and change positions whenever the speaker did. It was a brand of sensory pandemonium I could not love.

I began flirting with the reality that regular video calls would not be sustainable for me unless I was able to access accommodations. At first, I concluded that it would be best for me to ask for as little as possible. I didn’t want to bother anyone. Besides, I had so little experience paying attention to my own sensory needs that I wasn’t even sure I knew how to explain them to others. I convinced myself that it’d be easier to hide my needs than to ask for them to be met.

I’d be sitting in Zoom calls centered around talking about what “full inclusion” looks like for disabled people and how to move our society closer to that point, and my request for closed captions during the meeting would be declined, because it was expensive, difficult, aesthetically displeasing or — my favorite — because I really didn’t need them.

I’ve taken all those reasons people have given about why my accommodations are unreasonable and understood them to be commentary on me as an individual; maybe I, too, am messy, bothersome and inconvenient, like the captions on a screen to a person who doesn’t need them.

I’ve been told (and retold) all the ways my brain makes things difficult for other people, so much so that I believe them when they say it.

Dulling pandemonium, mulling pride

How can I be expected to celebrate the fact that I’m disabled when I’ve been led to believe that my disabilities hinder me from being worthy of belonging?

I’ve tried to ignore my needs instead of asking for others to meet them. I’ve tried willing myself out of my disabilities. I’ve tried working harder. None of that works. 

Long ago, I took these words as a mantra: The parts of me that make life difficult or inconvenient for other people are not worth nurturing. People continue to tell me I’m too difficult in all the ways I need support and yet, they insist I should be proud of being different. 

It’s hard to take pride in an aspect of my identity I was never taught to celebrate or nurture in the first place. 

Now I watch and wait and pretend to know how to adapt. Some things — events, appointments, hangouts — are still occurring digitally, but there’s also a lot happening in person. I’m still learning my way around asking for accommodations, even as I’m held hostage by memories of being labeled as burdensome. I’m still terrified of having too “messy” a brain. 

But I’m trying. 

Several months into the pandemic, I bought my first pair of noise-canceling headphones. They are far from perfect, but when I put them on for the first time and actually experienced quiet, I thought I might cry. It wasn’t a feeling of pride necessarily, but suddenly existing in this too-loud world felt doable to my ears. The pandemonium faded, just a bit, so that the language that I love could reach my ears. Once again, words could go back to being words, not daggers.

Eli Kurs-Lasky is a Pittsburgh native who still loves the word pandemonium. He interacts with the city through writing and photography (self-taught). He can be reached at eli.kurslasky@gmail.com.

The post From loving ‘pandemonium’ to enduring the pandemic, ‘disability pride’ has proved elusive appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

I grew up surrounded by women: an army of moms, some single, all occupied by the bulk of the child-rearing. Even as a small child, I saw how exhausting it was to be a mom, witnessed the lack of support for moms, and noted the way they were able to lean into each other to provide encouragement that didn’t come from anywhere else. Then, I didn’t want any part of it. Now, I celebrate those powerful women who triumphed over such challenges and adversity.

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For Black women, being a mom is a special struggle, and becoming a mom is very often filled with medical trauma. Providers are neglectful and dismissive; examinations can be violent; structural and personal racism is revealed at every turn. I have a friend who lost as many as eight babies, and her doctors never gave her any explanation, much less support. At one point, she had an ectopic pregnancy and lost her ovary. And there was nowhere for her to put her grief. Her experience isn’t uncommon: You hear about it all the time in Black communities. Women talk about loss like it’s grocery shopping.

I was very young when I had my first child, and while there were many challenges, I was nourished by the company of those other moms. Just as I had watched my mothers do, we leaned into each other, shared our pains and joys, and raised our children together. At the time, I worked in a spa where I was surrounded by women, many of them sharing the hard work of raising children.  Before my son’s birth, I had an outsider’s interest in reproductive health, and so I was there to listen to the other moms in the spa: to hear about the baffling doctors’ appointments, the loneliness, the struggles with money and so much more. So often women, especially Black women, don’t have a space to be heard as they go through the ugly parts of motherhood. It’s supposed to be such a polished, joyful time, but it really isn’t: There’s pain and hardship and isolation in mothering.

The racial discrepancies in women’s experiences of birth and motherhood became glaring to me when I moved from a spa in the city to one in the suburbs. The suburban women were mostly white, and they seemed to have a very different experience of mothering from my sisters in the city. 

Both groups had the same questions about sleeping and breastfeeding, bonding and crying, but the white moms very obviously had more supports in place and their experiences of medical care were largely positive. No one was gently explaining to Black women what our bodies were doing.

We had learned to dread obstetric care since our first gynecological check-ups as teenagers. Then, doctors’ aggressively probing fingers were accompanied by their voiced biases about what it meant to be a Black teenage girl. Later, many of my friends had intense, negative experiences giving birth in hospital, some losing their reproductive organs, losing their babies — and nobody ever took the time to explain what had happened. They just had to keep living as if nothing was the matter, as if all that pain and loss wasn’t something anybody should talk about. 

On top of the inequities in medical care, the Black women I met in the urban spa were under huge burdens to figure out how to work and have children. Who was going to take care of their kids while they work, and how were they going to make enough money? The white women in the suburban spa were wealthy or had partners able to support their families. They never seemed to struggle day-to-day with necessities.

Nevertheless, those Black women who were suffering with such pain and loss were united in struggle and triumph. We were always there to watch one another’s children, share meals, help out in times of need and listen to one another’s grief. The unity of moms deserves to be honored, and it is historical. Black women’s support for one another fills a gap created by slavery and perpetuated by the structural racism that infects our institutions.

After my third child, I was in the depths of postpartum depression when a friend encouraged  me to join a breastfeeding group at The Midwife Center. It was difficult to leave the house, but I went. What I found was wonderful: a circle of Black women with babies discussing their challenging, private experiences. I was introduced to a Black doula, and it blew my mind that someone could have a job supporting moms through childbirth. 

Then and there, my path was laid. Shortly after, I embarked on doula training and, soon after, was hired by The Birth Circle. There, I found other doulas who shared my experiences and had a passion to help. I was surrounded by mentors. From there, I moved to MAYA, a nonprofit serving pregnant, postpartum and incarcerated people. I put to work all of the experience that I had gained in the spa, as a mother, and as a Black woman sharing in the struggles of my sisters — but there was more experience to come.

At that time I was married to a man who did not support my work, and our relationship deteriorated as I found my feet professionally. Defending myself landed me in jail. There, I met women who were pregnant, detoxing from drugs, unjustly incarcerated, each one with a story — all including trauma and separation from their children. Those women were like my spa women: bonding together, sharing their joys and sorrows. Even so, I couldn’t escape the most painful aspect of incarceration: being away from my children. But I still had breath in my body. I had the power to use my experiences.

When I came out of jail, my life was in shambles, so I started working even more, at the spa, with the Birth Circle and at MAYA. At the same time, I finished my drug and alcohol counseling certification, using my fresh experience as a resource for understanding and meeting struggling people where they were. I became established at MAYA, and began working with individuals touched by the criminal justice system. I could tell them, truthfully, that I know how awful it is, but that they can do it — their stories have other, future chapters.

Now, I am director of civic engagement at MAYA, and I work with women incarcerated in Allegheny County Jail, with new moms and birthing people as a childbirth educator and a doula, and with our many partners on initiatives to improve maternal-infant care and outcomes for Black women. My outsider’s interest in reproductive health has blossomed into an insider’s expertise, and my experiences, though painful, have left me with a special connection to our clients and to other Black birthworkers. I celebrate those women and birthing people, and bear witness to their — our — struggles.

Amber Edmunds is a mother of three and director of civic engagement at MAYA, an organization that has given her one of those vital spaces where women find healing and power by leaning in to one another. She is also involved in several initiatives for racial equity in birthing spaces, including curriculum design and teaching, the creation of standards of practice for hospitals, and work to create opportunities and protect the rights and wellbeing of Black birthworkers. If you want to send a message to Amber, email firstperson@publicsource.org.

The post I’ve seen Black mothers talk about ‘loss like it’s grocery shopping,’ and I’m dedicating myself to uplifting them appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.