Left In Lowell

Donations may be sent to:

Karen Muscovitz Memorial Fund
Jeanne D’ Arc Credit Union
658 Merrimack St
Lowell Ma. 01854

Please make checks payable to Karen Muscovitz Memorial Fund

The soup kitchen where veep nom Paul Ryan staged his faux cleanup photo op, against, it appears, the wishes and policy of said soup kitchen, is seeing backlash (it appears to be Republican in nature…for what, embarrassing Paul Ryan who used and abused the soup kitchen and got caught staging fake photos? ugh).

Generally, it appears this place has a policy against being a backdrop for ANY political event, and has said publicly that it was not authorized and even that the Ryan people “ramrodded their way” into the charity. Now they are facing abusive phone calls and FB messages:

Ryan supporters have now targeted Antal and his soup kitchen, Antal said, including making hundreds of angry phone calls. Some members of Antal’s volunteer staff have had to endure the barrage as well, he said. “The sad part is a lot of [the callers] want to hide behind anonymity,” he said, adding that if someone leaves their name and number he has tried to return their call. In addition to phone calls, people have posted a few choice words on the charity’s Facebook wall, including statements like “I hope you lose your tax [sic] emempt status,” Anyone who is thinking about donations to you should think twice” and “Shame on you Brian Antal!”

They are also stating that they are seeing a terrible drop off in donations, which affects how many people they can serve.

Look, this isn’t about politics. It’s about commonplace civility. These people, through no fault of their own, were used, apparently unauthorized, as a photo op for a candidate, and when they protested the misuse, are now suffering from backlash that will hurt only the very poor who rely on the soup kitchen. Personally, I wish we could do away with soup kitchens entirely and actually address poverty in this country. And to be clear, this is a faith-based organization, and normally I don’t give my money to such (my personal choice). However, in light of the effect this will have on extremely vulnerable people who are the clients of this soup kitchen, I’d ask that if you have a spare dollar or two (and only if you do), to please consider giving a small donation to this soup kitchen. You can do so by the following:

To make a donation to the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, money can be sent to P.O. Box 224, Youngstown, Ohio 44501. Donations also may be made online. Online donors should specify that their donations are for the Youngstown, Ohio, soup kitchen.

Let’s see if the internets can right a wrong being done in the name of politics.

Community Response Event: Reclaim Your CommUNITY. Stop Shooting.
When: Tuesday September 11, 2012, 5pm
Where: Meeting in front of Lowell City Hall

The United Teen Equality Center, in partnership with other city leaders and neighborhood groups, will be holding a community response event related to the recent acts of violence in Lowell. In less than four weeks, nine people were shot in three separate incidents. This gathering is to make a statement that this kind of violence should never be accepted as normal.

With the message of “Reclaim Your CommUNITY. Stop Shooting,” this event will be held on Tuesday, September 11th starting at 5PM in front of Lowell City Hall, 375 Merrimack Street. After meeting at City Hall, we will begin walking in silence down Dutton Street and concluding at the Lord Overpass where a banner will be hung that reflects the theme of this event.

We urge each and every community member to join us this Tuesday, starting at 5pm at Lowell City Hall. As we commemorate the tragic events of 9/11, we also recall the widespread unity that resulted from such violence. Evident in the many long-standing partnerships between the City of Lowell and community-based agencies such as UTEC, we hope to emphasize such unity and remind everyone that such acts of violence will never be accepted or seen as normal in Lowell.

Please show your support by joining the event on Facebook.

For questions or more info, please contact Melany Levesque at 978-856-3936 or email mlevesque@utec-lowell.org

Poverty is Big Business

Poverty is Big Business in Lowell

Today’s episode: State: LHA must release Sec. 8 list

LOWELL — The Secretary of State’s Public Records Division has determined the Lowell Housing Authority did not comply with the state’s public-records law when it denied The Sun’s request for a list of property owners with multiple Section 8 voucher tenants.

In an Aug. 8 letter to LHA Assistant Executive Director Mary Ann Maciejewski, the state’s supervisor of records, Shawn Williams, wrote that any responsive record identifying property owners with multiple Section 8 tenants is public record and must be provided to The Sun.

As of early April, there were nearly 1,250 tenants in the city with Section 8 housing vouchers from the LHA.
-snip

LHA provides tenant-based and project-based vouchers to those eligible for the Section 8 program.

Those with tenant-based vouchers can choose to live in any private housing unit that meets the requirement of the program. As of early April, the LHA provided 1,116 of those vouchers to participants.

Project-based Section 8 vouchers can only be used at designated properties. The LHA subsidized the rents of 120 project-based participants as of early April.

I’d like to see this list of landlords. How many live outside of Lowell? We spend a ton of energy griping about city officials that live outside of Lowell. Should we get a handle on “absentee landlords?” This list would help with that. Also, how often are the rental units inspected? By whom? Let’s protect those living in these units by ensuring that everything is on the up and up. Transparency will help. Disclose the list now.

We are not all created equal. So, when we argue in the public square, we should take care. It’s hard to promote small, efficient government without suggesting that government, itself, isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t. We are government! The folks in City Hall are our friends and loved ones. If they aren’t your’s, they are someone’s.

LOWELL — A 52-year-old Lowell woman is banned from Lowell City Manager Bernie Lynch’s office after she was accused of threatening to “shoot dead'’ a secretary in Lynch’s office.

I can’t in good conscience ask the “Bernie Bashers”, “Boo Birds” and other detractors of local, state, and federal government to STFU. Our Constitution compels us to guard against tyranny, large and small. (I hardly think despots reside in City Hall, btw) But, I can ask we keep things in context. Should you find yourself losing the arguement, especially in the outcomes of elections, please don’t ratchet up the rhetoric to the point where the weaker minds will start to put down pen and pickets; substituting a pistol in their place.

Some folks are broken. Hold their hands and talk them down. Otherwise, we risk the worst of outcomes.

Jen Myers has an exceptionally tidy write up on Dept. of Interior’s invitation to some of the interested parties to kibbutz, Re: Enel’s proposed bladder dam.

“The applicant’s new proposal attempts to respond to many of the expressed concerns of the NPS and indicates there may be more flexibility n the design than NPS had previously believed,” Tittler wrote. “We feel strongly, as we have stated in the past, that a meeting in person, among as many consulting parties as possible, is the only way in which to move toward any resolution.”

The goals of the meeting, Tittler states are: “To gain a full and shared understanding of the effects of the applicant’s new proposal on the Pawtucket Dam; to discuss methods to further reduce the impact of crest gate installation; to see whether some version of a crest gate system is acceptable to all parties can be arrived at.”

The Blog of Record is also kind enough to host the PDF version of the DOI letter on their server.

To me, this looks like “seconds” are being dispatched to define the terms prior to the duelists meeting on the “field of honour.” Without question, one rule is mutually agreed upon, the coming events will not be “a la outrance.”

.
Do what these folks did:

I’ve heard a few “important” Lowellians opine that the desecration of the Pawtucket Falls Dam is a done deal. Really? Well, for sure, if Lowellians roll over.
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Update: As Joe S. says, Conflicts of interest abound!

(Link to Monty Python Sketch)
DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead!
CART-MASTER: ‘Ere. He says he’s not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes he is.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not!
CART-MASTER: He isn’t? CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. He’s very ill.

DEAD PERSON: I’m getting better!

“The organization is essentially defunct,” City Manager Bernie Lynch said to the City Council Tuesday night. “It has been for a period of time.”

Lynch, who is an ex-officio member of the council’s board, made his comments during a discussion of a controversial letter the council sent in 2010 to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in support of the crest-gate system proposed for the Pawtucket Dam.
…

When told it was Lynch who called his group defunct, Tibbetts said: “It is appalling Bernie said that because Bernie should have got an email reminder this week for the annual meeting in May at UMass Lowell’s Inn and Conference.”

“I guess we will be reaching out to the city manager and letting him know we are not defunct.”

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And sends their THANKS, via e-mail. Thought I’d pass it along.

We came, We Saw, and We conquered….and conquered we did! 21,740 pounds of food and still counting, exceeding our goal of collecting 15,000 pounds!! We certainly couldn’t have done this without you, your families, students, and colleagues!

Thank you to everyone at Lowell City Hall, Mayor Murphy, City Manager Bernie Lynch, Councilor Marty Lorrey for getting the ball rolling on a press conference for us; Elizabeth Craveiro for coordinating the City Hall Food Bank Challenge – Genius Idea; and congratulations to The Department of Planning & Development – a.k.a. The Department of Canning and Food Elements for winning the challenge! Grand total of 2240 pounds of food collected at Lowell City Hall!

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It’s not an exaggeration to say that no web content maker on the internet should NOT be in total fear of SOPA. (Edit: I meant no web content maker should NOT be in fear…) I knew it was bad, but BoingBoing put it into real perspective:

Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we’d have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.

If we failed to take this precaution, our finances could be frozen, our ad broker forced to pull ads from our site, and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, our domains confiscated, and, because our server is in Canada, our IP address would be added to a US-wide blacklist that every ISP in the country would be required to censor.

So LeftinLowell is going to join the one-day blackout tomorrow, Jan 18th, from 8am to 8pm. Lest we go dark permanently under a SOPA world. If you have a website, you might want to consider the simple steps that the website gives you to do so - a simple javascript that goes into your head tag.