Catholic Identity Politics: A Priest Replies
Monsignor David Gallivan of Holy Cross Church responds to Bruce Fisher’s essay in last week’s AV about Obama, Reverend Wright and the Catholic identity politics that are exploited by these conversations about race in America. An excerpt:
Many of us, in spite of personal feelings, have endured silently and even participated in family conversations at dinners, picnics and birthdays in which people of any race, gender, sexual orientation or color not our own, have been ridiculed, insulted, accused or joked about. We have endured this or participated in it for years and generations among parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbors, work mates, etc. and others whom we love…
Read the whole text of Monsignor Gallivan’s response after the jump.
The Parking Lot Letters, Vol. 2
Last week we posted here a scathing letter written by developer Carl Paladino to the city’s Planning board in regard to his plan to build a 150-space surface parking lot at 175 South Division Street.
Paladino accused Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis and outgoing Strategic Planning Commissioner Tim Wanamaker of interfering in his project, which would provide parking to ECC, on behalf of his nemesis, developer Jim Sandoro, who lost the ECC parking bid.
Paladino’s letter is being filed this week with the Common Council, along with this this letter, written by attorney Rich Stanton of the Knoer Group (and an assistant corporation counsel under Mayor Tony Masiello), arguing that the surface parking lot Paladino proposes to build is not only out of character with the city’s future plans for the Michigan Street corridor (as Wanamaker had argued in the letter that so exercised Paladino) but contradicts the city’s past schemes to promote residential development in that downtown neighborhood.
Facts: ECC needs and wants parking; surface parking lots are a blight on donwtown’s landscape.
Fact: The city decades ago instituted programs to encourage housing in that neighborhood.
Opinion: The result has been crappy, suburban-style houses that did more for the developers who built them than they do for the city.
Facts: Sandoro is one of the homeowners Stanton represents; he is not ideologically opposed to surface lots.
Do we file this story under “Developers squabbling over bones”? Or is this occasion for a larger debate?
Audrey Chen/Frederic Blondy show change of venue
Tuesday, April 1, 8pm, pay what you can ($7 suggested)
Audrey Chen, Frederic Blondy Duo. Chen on cello/voice/electronics, Blondy on Prepared piano.
Show has been moved from Soundlab to NEW LOCATION: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave. 854-1694
Echo Chamber: New You Could Have Read Anywhere
- The Sabres squeaked by the Bruins at home last night in a 2-1 overtime victory, keeping playoff hopes alive, but gasping. With three games left, they are still five points behind the 8th place Flyers the 7th place Bruins and 6th place Rangers. Buffalo needs all three remaining games, and for Washington and Philadelphia, Boston or New York to drop each of their remaining three if the Sabres want to make the post season. Of the five teams, Buffalo has the second easiest schedule remaining. One slip-up, though, and it’s all over.
- The governor and legislators have reached a final budget agreement for the state with well over 24 hours remaining to enact it before the 2008 fiscal year begins tomorrow. Major changes include increased school funding, a $1.25-per-pack increase in the cigarette “sin” tax, increased funding for the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) and rejection of a gasoline tax. The total budget—about $124 billion—constitutes a 4.5 percent increase from the 2007 state budget. (more…)
March 28, 2008
THE JOKE’S ON US!
Our scary world got a little scarier mid-week, when WGRZ-TV, WKBW-TV, WIVB-TV, the Buffalo News and several local blogs started reporting that the La Mara Salvatrucha (aka MS-13 or MSX3) gang was infiltrating the city and initiating new recruits by having them rear-end motorists before shooting them after they stopped to assess the damage.
But now, two days after the mayhem was to ensue, the question has become: Were we all hoaxed when the media was hoaxed when the police were hoaxed?
Snopes.com, a Web site devoted to following urban myths, has thus far listed the MS-13 “car bump” story to be of undetermined veracity. They do note that Buffalo is the only city to have treated the threat as legitimate. Police spokesman, former WGRZ newscaster Mike DeGeorge, says, “the department would not have put drivers on alert without credible information.”
Graffiti: 537 Delavan
Some graffiti at 537 Delavan (a few more pics after the jump). A former auto parts manufacturing plant, the sprawling complex was sold in 1997 by its last operator, Vibratech, to Mario Pugliese of Niagara Falls, Ontario, who shuffled ownership through holding companies created especially for the purpose—possibly to muddle the question of environmental liabilities—until it finally defaulted to the city, which sold its tax liens on the property to MBBA, the state agency whose stewardship of abandoned properties in the city remains a sticky problem that both parties are seeking to resolve.
In its last Restore New York Communities grant application, the city sought funds to demolish the facility—nearly 400,000 square feet occupying a city block, where upward of 2,000 people once worked, now flooded with rain and melting snow, its wood-block floors scraped into piles on the cavernous factory floors.
March 27, 2008
SAIC still = spooky
Earlier this week I wrote this post about SAIC, the giant defense and intelligence contractor that inexplicably telephoned the Artvoice office last Friday to inquire about our advertising rates, just hours after I received an email from a friend that mentioned SAIC in a less than flattering light. I wrote about the call as a curiosity—after all, why would this 44,000-employee behemoth want to advertise with us?—and I referenced this Vanity Fair article about SAIC, which is worth a read.
I didn’t expect the post to receive much attention; you see, this AV Daily thing hadn’t been promoted anywhere and was difficult to find.
Nonetheless, the post got traffic almost immediately and its first critical comment just three hours later, and a comment the next day that was SAIC’s official response to the Vanity Fair profile, written a year ago. Nothing else—just a cut-and-paste job of SAIC’s official response.
The IP address says it came from the Pentagon, specifically the US Air Force. Make of that whatever your tin-foiled head would like.
Dave Matthews Band at Darien Lake
DMB with special guest Paolo Nutini on June 17 at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, 7pm. Tickets on sale March 29 at 9am. $39.50-$70 at Ticketmster, LiveNation.com
Mary J. Blige & Jay-Z tickets on sale Saturday
“Heart of the City” Tour with Jay-Z and Mary J. May 1st, 7:30pm at HSBC Arena. Tickets go on sale March 29 at 9am at HSBC Box Office, LiveNation.com and Tickets.com. $49.75-$250 (Golden Circle).
Poloncarz assesses the assessors
In this week’s AV, I noted Erie County Comptroller Mark Poloncarz’s report on the cost Erie County pays for having some many different municipal governments assessing real property taxes. You can read the news brief here, if you want, or better yet just download the report and read it for yourself.
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