Category: General

Just, you know, stuff. And things. Things and stuff. Yeah, basically that’s it.

Task force recs “would violate federal law”

Headline in today’s Worcester Telegram & Gazette: Social service plans decried: Worcester taken to task.

WORCESTER— A Washington, D.C., mental health legal advocacy group says the recommendations of the Mayor’s Social Service Task Force would violate federal law if they were adopted.

The Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, since 1972 a national legal advocate for people with mental disabilities, produced a legal analysis that said the recommendations, released Oct. 10 by the 14-member task force appointed by Mayor Timothy P. Murray, would violate the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 if adopted as city zoning or funding policy. People with disabilities and social service agencies would then have standing to sue in federal court under the Fair Housing Act, according to the group, formerly known as the Mental Health Law Project.

The text of a memo from Bazelon with their legal analysis follows.
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Remembering 2,000 US dead in Iraq

Two thousand U.S. troops have died in Iraq. In Indiana, where I am travelling, there are some statewide rallies planned for the weekend to use the 2,000 number to call for an end to the war/occupation. I think it is important to remember our fallen troops locally as well.

A memorial was held today at Worcester Common with 2,000 white crosses. Many photos at Indymedia.

The photo below is from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette of yesterday’s Lincoln Square peace vigil, held weekly since 9-11-01.
Lincoln Square, Worcester
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Cairo 2

Last night, I taught another English class. For some reason, this time people saying bebsi (pepsi), sank yo (thank you), swotr (sweater), and ce…tly (certainly, which seems to be a constant pronounciation problem for everyone) made me laugh just a bit in class. To be fair, I think that they have laughed at my Arabic since day 2. It may be a sign that my students and I are getting closer.
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Cairo 1

I am teaching English classes on Monday and Wednesday night to men and women from Cairo, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Sudan.

Man, I wish it would rain. Somehow that really sums Cairo up for me at the moment. I guess it may also seem somehow incongruous for those of you in Worcester, which has been getting drenched as far as I can understand. But rain falling on Cairo would be…magnificent.

OK, back up. I’m not sure if these posts will even really be appropriate for pieandcoffee, as I don’t expect to write anything really socio-politically relevant. However, I do hope these posts will be interesting in one form or another or for some reason or another.

At the moment I am about mid-way through a fever which has yet to turn belligerent, lying on our uncomfortable couch typing with my housemate Simon‘s laptop, watching my other housemate Lee eat some Pizza Hut pizza, and listening to Beck’s “Lost Cause”. Lee just said “God, since I came here to, you know, ‘find myself’ I promised myself I wouldn’t party or eat Pizza Hut or anything.” Chomp.
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Fasting and Eating and Understanding

Today is Yom Kippur. It’s also Ramadan. Many are fasting today, and many who would not fast ordinarily are joining them. So if you see a bunch of people looking cranky and repentant, that’s what’s going on.

Yesterday was the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Worcester. I’d heard of “prayer breakfasts,” but I’d never been to one, so I did a little research and found the Prayer Breakfast Network. Their website does not feature symbols of religion (Christian cross, Jewish star, Muslim crescent, Buddhist wheel) or breakfast (Northern bagel, Southern grits, Western omelette), just a bunch of American flags. Their spiritual heritage page is entirely about Anglo-Saxon Protestantism.

Maybe some towns could have a monocultural prayer breakfast like that, but not Worcester. The breakfast emcee was a rabbi, the opening prayer was by a Catholic bishop, the opening speech was by a city employee identified as a Unitarian, the keynote speaker was Bernard Lafayette (Baptist minister, among other things), and the closing prayer was by representatives from Hillel and the Islamic Society.

Then an Indian man who’d known Gandhi read a poem!

Stuff like that, and the City Council’s choosing religious tolerance over mosque wiretapping, makes me happy to be in Worcester.

Here’s another story that makes me happy to be in Worcester. It’s about some folks who decided to meet their new neighbors instead of fearing them. As told in Worcester’s Catholic Free Press:
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Daniel Berrigan, Societas Iesu

All My Heroes Have FBI FilesFirst century Christians were seen as a threat to the powerful. Twenty-first century Christians are not. (First century Christian hipsters probably wore buttons reading: “All My Heroes Are Martyrs.”)

Last night, Father Dan Berrigan, Jesuit priest and FBI “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” laureate, read some of his poetry about war at Worcester’s College of the Holy Cross.

A noted anti-war activist, his most spectacular crimes are behind him, but his example continues to inspire others.
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