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WoMag interviews Corey Dolgon
Corey DolgonAllen Fletcher interviews Worcester State sociology prof Corey Dolgon on the socio-economic vibe of the city. If you like this, you might want to listen to an interview I did with him last year.

I had a little bit over-romanticized some of this post- industrialism in that it really wasn’t a post World War II de-industrialization, as much as it was like other New England towns, a kind of post World War I de-industrialization, and that Worcester has been struggling with these issues for a much longer time.

Plenty interviews OKC Catholic Worker Bob Waldrop
A nice article about Bob (who sometimes contributes to Pie and Coffee). Food co-op people take note:

Waldrop is the founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (OFC), a monthly buying club that connects Oklahoma customers with Oklahoma farmers. The first month it existed, the cooperative generated $3,500 from 60 members. Fewer than four years later the April 2007 order stood at nearly $36,500. That’s a lot of local food and a lot of money in farmers’ pockets, and OFC board members expect that number to nearly double by the end of the year.

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Scott Schaeffer-Duffy: Darfur and the necessity defense

Today I talked with Catholic Worker Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, who’s been appealing the conviction of seven protestors who in 2005 blocked the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC, to protest the Darfur genocide.

All of the briefs and motions have been filed, and with luck there will be “oral argument” of the appeal this summer. Scott talks about why he thinks his group is not guilty, and how he’ll convince the judges of that.

For more info, see Darfur Genocide on Trial.

You can download the mp3 (3MB) or see other formats. You can also subscribe (RSS) to the podcast.

defendants rejoice at being free to go
May 25, 2005: Tom Lewis, Harry Duchesne, Brian Kavanagh, Liz Fallon, Brenna Cussen, Ken Hannaford-Ricardi, and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy are happy to be outside after a day in D.C. Superior Court.

Support your local junk shoppe

digipog-hbmleyes.gifHBML, Worcester’s best visionary junk shoppe, is running low on cash. If you live in Worcester, perhaps you would like to visit them at 420 Pleasant St. If you live elsewhere, perhaps you would like to PayPal them $30 in exchange for a bunch of posters.

You know what they say about your neighborhood junk shoppe: use it or lose it.

Pie and Coffee accepts no advertising or donations, but at this point our daily readership is high enough that I feel like we should be using that untapped commercial potential for something.

Worcester Wal-Mart opposition gains traction

Holy cow, Shannon! Good job!

T&G: Appeal stalls planned Wal-Mart: Quinsigamond Village abutters fault officials:

A group of abutters has temporarily put the brakes on the planned Wal-Mart Supercenter in Quinsigamond Village.

Three abutters to the “Worcester Crossing” shopping center development, to be built on 44 acres along the Blackstone River, have filed an administrative appeal with the Zoning Board of Appeals, claiming the Planning Board did not adhere to the city’s site plan review standards when it approved the first phase of the project in March.

Maybe this will buy some time. That’s just what the opposition needs. The fact that any effort has “put the brakes” on this thing at this point is a big surprise.

Video: Shannon Senior and John Harvey talk Wal-Mart.

Response: part 2 of 3

A Good War Is Hard to FindSorry it’s taken so long to come up with part 2 of my response. Many forces have conspired against me to ensure that I didn’t finish, among them the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech.

To pick up on point I made in part 1, it takes putting ourselves in the picture (in much the same way that as Christians we must remind ourselves that we are complicit in Jesus’ suffering and death) in order for the violence in the Abu Ghraib photos to strike us as worth our regard (which, for those of who have suggested that I either naively or willfully snubbed postmodernity in my book, is exactly the problem I’m trying to warn against, considering we live in an image-based culture—call it postmodern, if you like—wherein the tendency is for images to serve only as references to other images, not to any actual event).

But to suggest, as Mike Ciul does, that I am on a quest for shame illustrates, to me, the truly troubling (postmodern?) predicament we find ourselves in. This is where I actually think using the term Postmodern is useful, as a pejorative, an ignominious label. It now seems fitting to evoke the set of larger social/cultural/economic/political circumstances that have brought us to this moment, because it surely takes a combination of powerful systemic forces ordering our lives and perceptions to bring us to the point where we distrust our conscience.
Continue reading “Response: part 2 of 3”

Monks win! and other items

An e-mail exchange:

Mike: I love this city, I gotta say.

Adam: I gotta say it does not surprise me that you’ve settled in a city that is years from a gentrification bubble. Any chump can talk about how much they love, say, Savannah or Santa Fe, but it takes a Mike Benedetti to love Worcester.

Teresian Carmelites win land battle!
This story has everything I love—Roman Catholicism, contemplative prayer, a $15 billion corporate villain, renewable energy, the works of mercy, and cable access TV. WCCA has the scoop.
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Olympia CW closing?
Maybe so. When I visited them in 2003, the people doing the day-to-day work were short-time volunteers, with a non-profit corporation providing continuity. Most Catholic Worker communities don’t start that way, but several of them have ended up like that. If I get my act together, I’ll phone Olympia and find out what the story is.

Ukes at the Ship Room
This Saturday night: cheap beer and tiny guitars.

Hundreds rally for immigrants in Worcester

A couple hundred people gathered in front of City Hall this evening to support immigrants. Speakers included Bishop McManus.

Via the T&G webcam, here’s the rally from about 3:30pm to 5pm.


Click To Play

My gut feeling is that the T&G webcam isn’t as responsive as the Worcester Common webcam.

Much more coverage should be appearing at Indymedia, among other places.

Clergy at the Immigrant Rally
Kevin Ksen photo of Catholic clergy at the rally. Many more pix at Flickr.

DSCF2231
I am trying for an action stance, like we’re a team of superheroes, but nobody else has the same idea.

Immigrant rally preparations

Just playing around with webcams . . . looks like they’re setting stuff up at City Hall:
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Related stories:

  • New York Times: “The events are expected to be much smaller than a year ago, organizers said, as stepped-up enforcement by the authorities has made illegal immigrants wary of protesting in public and more doubtful that Congress will soon act to give them a chance at legalization.”
  • Human Rights Watch: “Wal-Mart Denies Workers Basic Rights”

Newspapers down 2%; T&G down 11%

Nationally:

For the six months ended March 31, average daily paid circulation fell 5.2 percent in Massachusetts from the same period a year earlier, and 2.1 percent nationally, according to data reported yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an independent monitor of newspaper circulation.

Holy cow:

At the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, daily circulation fell 11.6 percent, to 84,754, based on a six-day average.

Update (April 2, 2009): Just now became aware of this “clarification” published in the T&G after these numbers were released: A major portion of the Telegram & Gazette’s circulation decline for the six month period ending March 31 was attributable to switching the company’s website from a paid subscription to a free site and to a reduction in the “other” circulation categories outside of traditional home delivery and single copy sales. Because of a reporting error, a story published Sunday in the Telegram & Gazette did not completely identify those reasons for the decline. They say this accounts for about half their losses, which still means they are doing terribly, but closer to average for Massachusetts. In subsequent reports they consistently did worst than the national average, as it turned out.

Pigeon
Telegram & Gazette webcam, with pigeon in foreground

Speaking of news gathering, Larry Cirignano was back at the Worcester courthouse this morning with his lawyer. I ran into an old friend on Main Street, and got to the courthouse just as reporter Ethan Jacobs, who’s been following the case closely, was emerging. So no news from me, but Ethan should be posting something at Bay Windows soon.