Daily Archives: April 6, 2022

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) Sunday, April 3 marks one year since a shooting at Utopia that injured two and killed Charles Allen, whose killer has not yet been identified.

First News spoke to Allens mother at a memorial for her son at the nightclub.

I want my son back, said Aleesha Foster a mothers plea a year after her son was killed at Utopia.

He was performing for a crowd of several hundred when he was shot. Foster said when she first got the call, she didnt believe it was real.

I ran every red light coming here that night and this whole parking lot was lit up, said Foster.

Youngstown police said Allen is believed to be the target of the shooting. Allen was free on bond and awaiting trial on multiple charges at the time. Allen was found on the floor of the club.

I yelled for my son outside Utopia, and while they brought my son out I was calling his name. He turned, he looked at me and I tried to grab my son, and the police officer grabbed me until they put my son in the back of the ambulance, said Foster.

Hundreds of people flooded out of the bar, and when officers arrived there were still shots being fired.

Cellphone video showed a scene that appeared chaotic with people yelling as police gave orders to the crowd. Officers found casings from two different weapons at the scene but did not recover a gun.

I want my son to get justice. Its a year now. Nothing. Nobody has been brought forward, said Foster.

Foster said she became an ordained minister to help other families who have lost children and other family members to gun violence. She said she thinks of her son every day and tries to continue his legacy by helping to take care of his seven children the youngest who is just five months old.

I love you, son, said Foster.

Captain Jason Simon confirmed there are no new details on the case. Anyone with information is asked to contact Youngstown police.

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I want my son back: Mother of Utopia shooting victim still searches for justice - WKBN.com

It will take time and work to achieve such a utopia; the Closed capsule offers options for the journey in the form of hoodies, military jackets, jeans, and, of course, a slip dress. The cut is generous so as to be inclusive. The idea was to update some staples from the company, so it was a mix of archival researchand then we went thrift store shopping in Berlin, and a little American college influence coming from me, explains Philouze, a proud Marymount Manhattan College alum.

The overall vibe of the collection is easy, yet this is a purposeful project both on the concept and material level (eco denim, viscose, and natural dyes were used for some of the pieces.) We wanted to have a dialogue around it so the pieces would connect to you on a deeper level, Philouze says. I see capsule collections as messages to help kids enjoy being who they are, who they want to become, and feeling free with the interaction between their bodies and identities, because for me one of the strengths of fashion is to be able to give people the lift or the motivation to become a better version of themselves.

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From Closed and Vogue's Michael Philouze, a New Capsule Collection That Moves Style Beyond Gender - Vogue

Politicians and urban planners are betting on hyper-local living a future ideal that borrows much from the past. But is it a path to urban utopia or just a fad?

Illustration by Simon Marchner for POLITICO

This article is part ofPOLITICOs Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Sign uphere.

ROME

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE might look a lot like the one your grandparents or even your great-grandparents lived in.

As policymakers grapple with how to adapt urban centers to the post-pandemic economy and reduce emissions in the face of climate change, one solution is catching peoples imagination: the 15-minute city.

As a concept, its both quaint and quietly revolutionary: redesign cities so that people live, work and have access to all the services they need whether thats shops, schools, theaters or medical care within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo was among the first to seize on the idea in 2020, putting it at the heart of a successful reelection campaign that also involved pushing cars out of the city in favor of green spaces and bike lanes.

Her pitch to turn the French capital into a city of proximity where children walk to school and residents know their local baker struck a chord at a time when COVID-19 lockdowns meant people were suddenly spending a lot more time in their own neighborhoods. Enthusiasm for the idea sparked similar campaigns in Dublin, Barcelona, Milan and Lisbon.

The aim is to rebalance cities that were originally designed to boost productivity rather than well-being, according to Carlos Moreno, the French-Colombian academic behind the 15-minute city concept.

Some 1.3 million Parisians commute across the city from East where many working-class neighborhoods are located to West and back again each day. Moreno brands thisa mad way of life that means commuters hardly spend any time in the areas where they live. Many dont know their neighbors, visit their local shops or neighborhood parks.

The pandemic has been an awakening in that respect, said Moreno. People have recovered a desire to live more calmly, more socially, and with greater control over their time.

While many see in the 15-minute city a roadmap to a new utopia, others question its novelty and its feasibility.

Moreno admits the idea involves reversing 70 years of urban planning, a massive undertaking that throws up a host of new challenges, not least making sure cities dont become a collection of island neighborhoods isolated from one another.

The urban way of life Moreno wants cities to recover never died out in Testaccio, a district of Rome tucked between a bend in the Tiber River and a mountain of broken terracotta amphorae left over from a time when the area housed an ancient port.

On a recent weekday in the districts main piazza, sociologist Irene Ranaldi pointed out that everything locals might need is within walking distance.

From the busy central square, dotted with butcher shops, bars and banks, its just a short stroll to the local medical center, the primary and middle schools, a fresh food market and several local libraries.

You dont need a car if you live here, said Ranaldi. People walk and interact in places like this square, where all Testaccios social classes mix over the course of the day, walking their dogs, watching their kids play, coming down for a chat with a neighbor.

If Testaccio seems to embody the ideals of the 15-minute city concept, its also a perfect example of a late 19th-century city, Francesca Romana Stabile, an urban historian at Roma Tre University, points out.

Back then cities were planned with residential areas located as close as possible to workplaces and services concentrated throughout, she said.

Quality of life in Testaccio, which was organized around the slaughterhouse complex built in 1888, wasnt always worthy of emulation. The first Testaccini as the locals are called lived in squalid conditions, but public indignation soon forced local authorities to invest in developing the area, including by redirecting through-traffic along its perimeter and building public housing.

It was all very progressive, said Stabile, describing grand public housing blocs with leafy interior courtyards and plenty of light. The buildings also housed health care services and child care centers, and artists used nooks on the ground floor as studios.

For decades, Testaccio remained unchanged. Its robust housing and services, and its proximity to the slaughterhouse and other industrial sites meant locals mainly tradesmen and blue-collar workers continued to spend more time in their own neighborhood instead of stuck in commuter traffic in their Fiat seicentos.

More recently, Testaccios reputation for easy living has, paradoxically, forced out the true locals, who now find themselves priced out of the neighborhood by an influx of wealthier Romans.

Gentrification came for Testaccio in the early 2000s, when its public housing blocs were privatized and its prime location and general charm left it exposed to rampant speculation, said Danila Marcaccini, member of the local community group Comitato Testaccio.

People who bought their 60-square-meter public housing flat from the city for 40,000 can now easily resell it for 400,000, she said. These are humble, working-class people so I dont judge them for giving in and making some money, but its still sad to see the true Testaccini leaving.

That shift embodies one of the main criticisms of the 15-minute city that, today, it can only work for people who have the luxury of working from home.

The flat under mine used to be owned by an elderly woman who worked at the market; when she passed away an architect moved in, said Ranaldi, adding that a journalist had bought the flat next door. People with these professions are the ones who arent under pressure to show up to workplaces and can take their time to go to the caf, shop here, really live the neighborhood the way people used to.

The distances most working-class people are required to travel for work pose a major challenge to the 15-minute city, Moreno conceded.

His vision of the ideal city involves enshrining the right to work near home, something he admitted cant be done by waving a magic wand.

There are aspects of this for which we do not have a solution because its a matter thats up to private enterprise to change, he said, adding that it wasnt up to him to lead a social revolution or hang the black or red, or whatever colored flag from the rooftop.

But while people may still have to commute, city planners can still ensure workers can go home to places where they can live locally and well, he argued.

Thats something thats very much on the mind of Andrea Catarci, the city councilor in charge of finding ways to implement the ideals of the 15-minute city across Rome.

His focus, he said, is on the Italian capitals massive commuting class, rather than the lucky few who live in neighborhoods like Testaccio.

The push comes after Roberto Gualtieri took up the cause in his successful bid to be elected mayor of Rome last year, championing the concept as a way to make the notoriously chaotic capital simpler and closer for its 4.3 million residents.

Catarci cautioned that it would take time to figure out how to bring the best of hyper-local life to the sprawling city.

I have no money this portfolio doesnt have any budget assigned, said Catarci. But I do have an enormous desire to come up with ways to reinterpret and reprogram the city, and to encourage the rest of the councilors to carry out specific actions in their areas.

The solutions that have worked in Testaccio and other parts of Rome wont necessarily work elsewhere, Catarci said. Thats particularly true in the areas hes most interested in targeting the poorer, haphazardly constructed neighborhoods that have sprung up near the 68-kilometer highway circling the city.

These are places that were built for cars, where there are no basic services sometimes there isnt even a local bar or tobacco shop and residents have no choice but to drive to the nearest shopping mall to pick up basic goods, he said.

Making the 15-minute city real for those residents will mean investing in municipal services and attracting new businesses, according to Catarci, but it also has to involve building transit options that connect those areas to the rest of the city.

The idea, he said, is not to isolate residents in their own communities.

Moreno echoed the importance of keeping neighborhoods mobile a key point that differentiates the modern 15-minute city from what existed a century ago.

In the past people stuck to their neighborhood and saw the people living in the next one over as strangers, maybe even as threats, he said. We want to recover the good things from the past without going back to that. People come to cities for freedom and choice, not to end up locked in urban villages.

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The promise of the 15-minute city - POLITICO Europe

At the start of Picard season one, the disgraced Admiral begins assembling a team to help him investigate his old shipmate Data. But when his new crew included Captain Rios and former Starfleet officer Raffi, both the characters in the show and its fans had a question: Why not bring back the old crew? Over the course of season one and season two, members of that crew slowly came back together, starting with his number one Will Riker and counselor Dianna Troi, and continuing to Data and Guinan.

For the shows third and final season, the remaining members of the Enterprise crew will finally rejoin their erstwhile captain. According to Variety, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, and Levar Burton have been added to the cast of the upcoming season. Give or take a Wesley Crusher, Miles OBrien, or Tasha Yar, and these additions complete the main cast of The Next Generation. As weve already seen Riker, Troi, and the others, much has changed since that group was last seen together in 2002s Nemesis. So what have the returning characters been doing for the past twenty years?

In Nemesis deleted scenes, Dr. Crusher returns to her post as the head of Starfleet Medical. Presumably, she resolved whatever issue caused her to leave that position before the start of The Next Generation season three, when she reclaimed her job as Chief Medical Officer from Dr. Pulaski. If aspects of the future glimpsed in All Good Things remains in place, Crusher is on her way to a marriage (and divorce) from Picard, and preparing to captain her own ship, The Pasteur.

All Good Things also revealed matrimony in Geordi La Forges future, as he has started a family with Dr. Leah Brahms in that timeline. Another possible future, as seen in the Voyager episode Timeless finds La Forge serving as captain of the USS Challenger. But the most in-canon look weve seen of La Forge occurs in the Picard prequel comic book Countdown. There, Commander La Forge works at the shipyards on Utopia Planatia, helping create a new fleet to aid the evacuation of Romulus.

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Star Trek: Picard - Where Have Worf, LaForge, and Crusher Been? - Den of Geek

Selfcare, looking out for others, and building a supportive, inclusive community were the main topics of discussion at the Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice Summit on April 5.

The summit was hosted by the Division of Student Affairs and moderated by Matthew Jeffries, the director of campus climate and community building. Centered on the theme, Fostering Community and Structural Care, the event brought together nearly 200 participants from around the Washington State University system to learn about creating an equitable and supportive community for all. Attendees also learned about resources and practices they can use to help build that community.

The mantra of Cougs Helping Cougs is really strong here, said Provost and Pullman Chancellor Elizabeth Chilton in her opening remarks. If we create a safe environment for our students and fellow colleagues, we can all thrive.

The summits breakout sessions covered a range of topics, from mutual aid to mindfulness as an anti-racist practice to theEmployee Assistance Program. Sessions focused on describing what community and structural care can look like and providing tools and resources for attendees to begin building community care into their lives.

In a session on mutual aid, facilitator Josie Rodriguez provided a framework of what mutual aid can look like in different communities and challenged participants to work outside of traditional institutions to help address the needs of their communities in a non-hierarchical way.

I want to challenge folks to think about ways that we can work outside of our institutions, using the knowledge and skills and the capital that we have and the privileges that we have, to support people in our communities, she said. The most radical thing you can do is find ways you can get involved.

In their session Mindfulness as an Anti-Racist Practice, co-facilitators Trymaine Gaither and Kersten Bergstrom discussed ways to support individuals through mindful awareness, active listening, and silence. They encouraged participants to engage in mindfulness practices such as the STOP method (Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed) and the three Cs (center, check in, co-counsel) when talking with others and recommended silence as a powerful mindfulness tool.

Silence can allow others to be heard, so by listening and being present, we can honor others, Bergstrom said. In silence, we arent the center of attention. [The discomfort of] silence can give others the time they need to talk.

In his closing remarks, David Garcia, assistant dean for Health Equity and Inclusion at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, talked about the importance of moving toward systems of community and structural care, particularly as the world begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Were constructing what the new normal will become, and we can all be active participants in that, he said. Its important to think about what community care looks like. Instead of asking people to engage in self-care, what if we begin to consider care at the community level?

Creating a culture of community and structural care can seem daunting, but many people are in positions to create that kind of change at WSU and in their larger community, Garcia said. Checking in with colleagues and friends, fostering a culture of kindness and respect, and advocating for material and cultural changes are all important steps to moving from self-care to community care and, ultimately, structural care systems.

Were at a crossroads, and we have an opportunity as individuals and organizations on how we will assign and prioritize our time, he said. Its important to move from self and community care to structural care. This is the utopia Im coming to work for every day, this is what I think is worth fighting for.

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Diversity and equity summit focuses on community and structural care WSU Insider - WSU News

Musical theater has become a thing on TikTok. This Sunday, for example, The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical became the first project that originated on TikTok to win a Grammy.

Now the popular video-app maker announced that it commissioned its first original musical, called For You, Paige, led by Daniel Mertzlufft the creative force behind viral hit Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical.

For You, Paige will be available to livestream on the @TikTok account on Thursday, April 14, at 7 p.m. ET, performed at a theater in New York City.

The shows story is inspired by real TikTok creators. It features original songs written by Mertzlufft, Julia Riew, Katherine Lynn-Rose, RJ Christian, Blake Rouse, Morgan Reilly, Alex Engleberg, Kate Leonard, and Gosz & Fotos, and with orchestrations by Macy Schmidt. The tunes include Playing in My Key, Out of My Mouth and Beyond the Dome.

In For You, Paige (a pun on TikToks For You page), teen music nerd Landon (played by Roman Banks) collaborates with his best friend, Paige (played by Sri Ramesh) on a TikTok song inspired by her favorite book series. Landons TikTok goes viral, thrusting him into the spotlight and leaving Paige behind. When a producer offers Landon the opportunity to adapt the book series into a musical, Landon discovers that the glory of doing it all himself isnt worth the stress and enlists the help of Paige (and the TikTok community) to turn the show into a success.

The cast of For You, Paige also features James Henry as Tyler, Krystina Alabado as Kaia and JJ Niemann as Jarek. Maria Goulamhoussen and Emily Maltby will co-direct the live performance of the show, with Emily and Katie Spelman choreographing.

Since January, Mertzlufft (pictured above) has been documenting the creative process behind For You, Paige on TikTok, providing a behind-the-scenes of how a musical goes from an idea to reality. As you would expect, the show features multiple references to TikTok trends and communities (such as Paiges obsession with fictional YA series Utopia, which is a nod to #BookTok).

Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, based on the song Remy the Ratatouille by Emily Jacobson, became a rousing success among theater buffs (and beyond). On Jan. 1, 2021, a livestream of the show raised $1.9 million for the Actors Fund. That featured Tituss Burgess, Wayne Brady, Andr De Shields, Adam Lambert, Andrew Barth Feldman and Kevin Chamberlin.

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TikTok Is Funding Its First Musical, From Creative Lead Behind Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical - Variety

Interactive Creative Activity: Community and coursework takes place at 11 a.m. Thursday in Schwarm Commons Room 120. The public is invited to participate with a group of Community Arts and Nonprofit and Community Studies majors who will present their community-based and student-led activities. New groups of students will present at 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. at the Harry T. Wilks Conference. No RSVP is required.

Improvisational Comedy Workshop is set for 1 p.m. Thursday in the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. People who attend are invited to be in the moment, play improv games and more.

I Remember: The Race to the Moon in the 1960s, is at 3 p.m. Thursday in the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. Historian Michael Carrafiello will recount humanitys first trip to the moon from the first Project Mercury launches to landings on the moon, drawing on his own memories from those heady days of the 1960s. No RSVP is required.

SATURDAY ACTIVITIES

Student Work from MJF 146: Intro to Media Production is taking place at 4 p.m. Saturday in the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. These works are submitted by students who wish to gain experience in exhibiting their video works in a professional public setting.

Humanity: From Survival to Revival (dystopia to utopia), 5-6:30 p.m. Saturday in the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. This intermedia performance valorizes human-centered interactions and experiences by combining live music performance with an interactive, audio-visual survival game. This work depicts the transformation of the dystopian state of humanity (survival) to utopianism (revival) in the visual and sonic realms by inviting the audiences voluntary participation as part of the performance.

Sisterhood of SurvHIVors by Jennie Hawley, 7:30-9:30 p.m. Saturday in Phelps Hall 307. In this public reading, audience members will be taken back to the late 1990s, when six women deal with stigma, disclosure, and death, at an HIV/AIDS Agency. Meeting as a Task Force, they address issues affecting themselves and their families. Based on true events. A talk-back session with the playwright will conclude the evening.

APRIL 15 ACTIVITY

Steamroller Printing of Relief Blocks will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 15 in the north parking lot near Wilks and Phelps Halls. This event was previously scheduled for April 8 but due to inclement weather, it was rescheduled. Andrew Au and his students will create art right before your very eyes (heavy-duty road equipment may be involved). No RSVP is required.

For more information, visit MiamiOH.edu/Regionals/HCA.

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Arts and Humanities Festival taking place at Miami University-Hamilton today through April 15 - Hamilton Journal News

I dont remember the first time I realized that I was different from my white classmates. I dont even remember the first time I understood what race was. But I remember the first time I was made to hate myself for being Black.

I was 10 years old when I was called the N-word for the first time.

We had been dismissed from class for the day, so I went to grab my backpack from my assigned cubby in the corner of my elementary school classroom. Before I could throw it over my shoulders, my classmate had made the announcement.

Look everyone, its Tigger the [N-word].

I was the only Black girl in the room, so I immediately knew that he was talking about me. If that wasnt obvious enough, he made sure to clarify by staring and pointing at me while he said it.

The shock from the blow didnt allow me to fully process what happened. All I could think to do was to question whether I had heard him correctly. When he said it again, he made sure to remove any doubt.

One incident, one word: thats all it took for me to realize that I was considered the other. My innocence and naive childlike hope was gone as I was thrusted into a position of subordination.

My school district in Carmel, Indiana, is home to some of the best public schools in the US it is where I received my education from the age of five until graduation. Other than the less than 4% of Black students in the district, the schools are made up of white hallways, white teachers and white students.

Historically, lighter-skinned Black people were given privileges by white people. As a light-skinned Black woman, I wasnt given these in Carmel. From the moment my classmate called me the N-word, I was constantly bullied for my Blackness.

The self-hatred that followed was slowly sown into my identity. When students and sometimes teachers made fun of my exciting puff ponytail, I got braids. When I got braids, they said I looked like Whoopi Goldberg. When I finally resigned myself to perming my hair in order to make it straight like theirs, the teasing still did not cease.

I quickly realized Carmel wasnt a place for people like me to prosper. They made sure we knew it too. You could be as smart as Albert Einstein and as charismatic as Denzel Washington and it wouldnt matter. Every time I stepped into a classroom, I carried the extra burden of knowing that Id have to go above and beyond. In middle school, I had to work 10 times harder than my white classmates to get the basic acknowledgment they got for far less.

Sometimes, I try to convince myself that if my white classmates and teachers were educated on the true history of this country, then maybe my experience wouldnt have been what it was. Maybe administrators would see how their choice to dish out a year-long suspension to a Black student for drugs while not punishing the white student (who was caught with more drugs) parallels the war on drugs in America. Maybe they would see that adding extra security near the area dubbed the Black Spot mimics profiling and over-policing across the country.

My 16-year sentence in the school system ended in 2016, when I earned my diploma. After the world was forced to grapple with a reckoning on race and policing in 2020, Carmel now claims that they are ready to change, but I can tell nothing has changed. As I scroll through social media, I look in disgust, but not shock, at the use of [N-word] this and [N-word] that in comments made.

But instead of tackling this very real racial abuse, teachers, administrators and parents are more afraid of the bogeyman in the corner: critical race theory.

White parents and families across the country are panicked by the idea of students being critical of the United States dark history especially lessons that center the egregious actions of white people over time. The aim of critical race theory is to contextualize the history behind the racism and systemic oppression that we see today. But the parents of Carmel dont want their students to be taught about anything that may make their children feel guilty for their whiteness.

The school would rather cater to white comfort than address Americas skeletons.

I never got a say in learning about Black trauma: it was an expectation. At a young age, images of slaves with whip scars on their backs and the horrors of the backlash against the civil rights movement were already burned in my mind.

White students get a say in whether they want to learn about their history. I did not.

Throughout my entire education, I sat silent while teachers sugarcoated white history. I vividly remember sitting in class while my teacher glorified the actions of white people: how brave they were for freeing the slaves, how kind they were for giving Black people rights, and how trusting they were when letting Japanese people out of internment camps.

Parents are also to blame for their failure to teach their children about racism. Their refusal to educate their children sends the message that they are fine with the way society has been functioning. Through their willful ignorance, they are breeding a future generation of people who wont change the dominant culture, because they believe that everything is sunshine and rainbows.

The parents and administrators of Carmel are giving themselves a pat on the back for doing the bare minimum for finally intervening in the racist culture they allowed to run rampant. All of a sudden the school claims to care about all students. Their newfound concern involves more training for teachers and administrators, a revision to policies and the hiring of a diversity, equity and inclusion officer to make school more equitable and inclusive.

It shouldnt have taken George Floyd being murdered to start thinking about the treatment of students that look like me. If George Floyd had not died, Carmel would have continued on in their perfect utopia with their eyes shut and their ears plugged completely indifferent to the trauma occurring around them.

I refuse to believe that Carmel is ready to change. Their new diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives reek of performative progressiveness used to ease white guilt.

My pessimism stems from the bitter taste that haunts me to this day. I may not know how to fully process the racism I was forced to experience at a young age but I refuse to allow my childs hope for the future to be broken as mine was. The only comfort I have is knowing that I will never subject my future children to the suffering I had to endure.

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I was constantly bullied: being a Black student in one of Indianas whitest districts - The Guardian