Protesters against racism and police brutality march down P.J. McArdle Roadway from Mount Washington on June 7, 2020. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)

By Matt Petras
Public Source

Jan 19, 2021 – When Jasiri X moved from the south side of Chicago to Monroeville as a teen in the 1980s, he discovered “inyourface racism” for the first time. On his first trip to Monroeville Mall, someone called him a racial slur.

“People refer to Pittsburgh as the Mississippi of the North,” said Jasiri X, founder of the prominent social justice activist group 1Hood in Pittsburgh. “I would tell people that would come here that Pittsburgh is an overtly racist place. It’s not subtly racist. It’s not like, ‘We’re gonna hide it.’ It’s pretty overtly racist.”

Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, plans for farright demonstrations and the possibility of violence have been identified across the country. The antidisinformation group Alethea Group identified Pittsburgh as a possible site of farright activity, according to the Washington Post, though the FBI released a statement Jan. 12 explaining it has not identified any threats directed at Pittsburgh.

Still, given initial reports like this and the Pittsburgh area’s existing relationship with white supremacy, it seems intuitive to Jasiri X that more of this violence could be coming to Pittsburgh.

“If we’re a hotbed of white supremacist activity,” he said, “we should be expecting violence, shouldn’t we?”

FBI analysts declared Pittsburgh a “hub” for white supremacy in November 2020. Several white supremacist and other farright hate groups operate across Pennsylvania, including groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan. In October 2018, a gunman attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill in the deadliest antiSemitic attack in the history of the United States. The attack was also motivated by hatred toward immigrants.

A man in Toledo, Ohio, who planned another attack on a synagogue, said the Tree of Life shooting inspired him, and the man who shot and killed 49 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand wrote a manifesto outlining a white supremacist ideology strikingly similar to that of the Tree of Life shooter.

“The Pittsburgh attack was itself worldwide, not just in Pittsburgh and not just nationally,” said Brad Orsini, senior national security advisor for the national group Secure Community Network and former FBI special agent.

Orsini said that since the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville in 2017, there has been a significant increase in hate crime across the country. Orsini, who managed security for the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh before taking his national position, has witnessed a slew of farright hate group activity in Western Pennsylvania.

“We’ve seen the Ku Klux Klan in Pittsburgh, we’ve seen Patriot Front, we’ve seen Identity Europa,” Orsini said. “We have seen visible signs of those groups throughout Western Pennsylvania and in Pittsburgh over the past four years, absolutely.”

Shawn Brokos, who replaced Orsini as Jewish community security director for the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh in early 2020 and is also a former FBI agent, noted that white supremacist incidents in the Pittsburgh area have increased in the past few years, though it’s unclear whether this reflects newfound hate or better vigilance in discovering it.

“This really could be twofold,” Brokos said. “Is there actually an increase in this white supremacy ideology, or are we, as a Jewish community, being more proactive in reporting it? I think it’s really hard to measure.”

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Hate groups helped storm the Capitol. These groups have been active in Pennsylvania.

As the country braces for unrest, here’s what you should know about staying safe in Pittsburgh
The sort of white supremacist activity seen in recent years across the country and in Pittsburgh has a lot of crosspollination with the farright extremists who participated in the storming of the Capitol Building, according to Brokos. In the media footage of the incident, some can be seen brandishing antiSemitic messages.

“If you look at the antigovernment, antiauthority organizations, many of those have their extremistbased beliefs and within them contain a degree of antiSemitism,” Brokos said.

In recent years, hate groups have started to collaborate and gotten better at organizing than before, according to Kathleen M. Carley, director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University.

“You’re now getting links between, for example, between QAnon and Proud Boys. You’re getting links to many other vocal homegrown groups,” Carley said. “What you want to watch out for is those groups forming coalitions, forming groups, because that allows them to mobilize.”

QAnon, a movement surrounding discredited conspiracy theories with hateful elements, “is not an organized group with defined leadership,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Still, the FBI declared it a “domestic terrorism threat” and individuals affiliated with QAnon participated in the Jan 6. Capitol attack. The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, has emerged as one of the most prominent violent, white supremacist hate groups in the country in recent years.

Continue reading The Capitol Riot Exposed U.S. Extremism On A Broad Scale. Pittsburgh Is No Stranger To White Supremacist Activity →

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‘White privilege’ seen in riot’s aftermath

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith, Adria R. Walker, Peter D. Kramer, Geoffrey Wilson and Jeff Neiburg
Beaver County Times via USA TODAY NETWORK

Jan 9, 2020 – Reenah Golden remembers people taking shelter in a church after hours of marching and protesting the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man suffocated while being restrained by Rochester police officers last year.

That night, officers followed protesters to the church, barraging the holy site with pepper balls.

Months later, Golden said the chemical dispersants and other tactics come to mind when she saw law enforcement’s response to President Donald Trump supporters marauding the U.S. Capitol, one of American democracy’s most hollowed spaces.

Egged on by Trump, the mob broke through police lines at the Capitol. Rioters were then seen waving flags in the building, sitting in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and storming the floor of the Senate.

Black activists say their largely peaceful marches following the death of Prude and George Floyd this summer were quickly met with police in riot gear and chemical dispersants, while law enforcement was lethargic in halting largely white marauders from storming the Capitol.

They say that racism is at the root of the disparate reaction from police officials.

The night the Prude protesters sought refuge in the Rochester church last September, Golden remained outside the church. She recalls police firing tear gas at her car while she sought to drive away with protesters for whom she was seeking medical attention.

“At the Capitol, I see just the opposite,” Golden said. “I see care, attention, thoughtfulness in the approach. Regard for human life to an extent — I saw a lot of that watching the footage and that definitely was deeply painful to watch.”

She added: “We didn’t get that same regard, that same care even though we were fighting for injustice.”

‘White privilege’ seen in riot’s aftermath

Mahkieb Booker, a Black Lives Matter organizer, chants as Wilmington police block protesters from moving up Market Street from Fourth Street after they gathered in early September at police headquarters to call for the firing of an officer they say is abusive to the public.

Seeing law enforcement’s slow response, Black protesters and leaders saw race as the determining factor in the difference between the police response on America’s streets this summer and what they saw on Wednesday.

Mahkieb Booker, 50, has long been active on the social justice scene in Wilmington, the largest city in Delaware. He can be found at almost every protest for Black rights, whether there are six people there or 600.

Continue reading ‘I’m Not Surprised’: Black Protesters, Clergy Decry Double Standard In Capitol Riot →

Beaver County’s ‘Little Blue’ waste problem back in the news.

By Daniel Moore
PostGazette Washington Bureau

DEC 31, 2020 WASHINGTON — As President-elect Joe Biden eyes a major federal plan to tackle climate change when he enters the White House next month, his policy team could hit roadblocks as they contend with the breadth of environmental measures rolled back by the Trump administration — and differences within his own party on how to address them.

President Donald Trump has consistently worked through his term to weaken rules put into place by his predecessor — and Mr. Biden’s former boss — former President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump’s penchant for regulatory rollbacks won him support from the energy industry in the Pittsburgh region, headlining natural gas drilling industry conferences and dispatching his environmental chief to Pittsburgh to finalize the repeal of an Obama-era rule limiting the industry’s methane emissions.

Now, Mr. Biden’s climate team, introduced at an event in Delaware this month, will be “ready on day one,” he said, to assess how to wholly address a complex global problem falling under the jurisdiction of a slew of federal agencies.

Mr. Biden, facing a divided Congress with an entrenched political opposition, could face hurdles in translating his much-debated climate change platform into action. As he did during the campaign, Mr. Biden framed environmental protection as an economic driver that will lift up regions like Pittsburgh — and a key part of any plan that helps the nation heal from the COVID19 pandemic.

Trump administration relaxes deadlines on power companies for coal ash cleanup

“Folks, we’re in a crisis,” Mr. Biden said during the Dec. 19 event. “Just like we need to be a unified nation to respond to COVID19, we need a unified national response to climate change.”

As the incoming administration works to build a climate strategy, it will balance demands for stricter rules from the progressive wing of the party with his pledges to invest in jobs in regions dependent on fossil fuels. Fracking was one of the most politically explosive issues on the campaign trail, with Mr. Biden pledging to reach a carbonfree power sector by 2035 and netzero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

On the surface, some climate moves could be simple.

Mr. Biden has said he will put the United States back into the Paris climate accord, which Mr. Trump exited in 2017 by declaring he “was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Mr. Biden also could use executive powers to quickly reinstate an array of Obamaera regulations relaxed by Mr. Trump that affect the energy industry, auto manufacturers, construction companies and farmers. He could order federal agencies to consider climate change in their practices and procurement strategies.

Whether Mr. Biden can hit his most ambitious targets, however, will hinge on finding consensus on a comprehensive plan that can pass muster on Capitol Hill.

The president-elect’s plan for a “clean energy revolution” and environmental justice pledges a federal investment of $1.7 trillion over the next decade, leveraging other funding sources to reach more than $5 trillion. Cities like Pittsburgh are hoping that includes money for Ohio River Valley communities to launch a largescale transition to clean energy, as Mayor Bill Peduto called for this month.

Biden’s oil comments fuel long-burning debate over Pa. energy jobs
“The list of things that need to be corrected are daunting,” said Lisa Evans, an attorney specializing in hazardous waste law for Earthjustice, an environmental group.

Ms. Evans, who has advocated for stronger protections around coal ash disposal, criticized the Trump administration when it moved back deadlines for companies to stop dumping the waste in unlined ponds and landfills. She said she wants Mr. Biden to not only reverse those changes but put in place a stronger federal standard than the one Mr. Obama enacted in 2015.

In Pennsylvania, there are 103 coal ash storage and disposal sites, including 20 unlined coal ash ponds and 13 unlined landfills, according to the Center for Coalfield Justice. Coal ash, which contains heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury, creates vast sources of potential contamination, as well as huge costs for utility companies that must either retrofit the sites or find alternative storage facilities.

Continue reading PITTSBURGH’S Climate Challenge Awaits Biden as Trump Pushes Through Environmental Policy in Final Days →