PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/author/author-ryan-loew/)
Medicare and Medicaid are supposed to give us the care we need. Here, they limit options and rip away our ability to meet our basic needs. It's a specific kind of deprivation of services that is all too common, government-sanctioned neglect of one of its most vulnerable populations.
Throughout Appalachia, in rural and urban and communities alike, a cadre of individuals are addressing their neighbors’ health care needs in the setting in which the most transformative change can occur: the community, the home.
In Pittsburgh, gendered bathrooms are the literal law. While you might find an occasional all-gender restroom, these bathrooms exist either outside of Allegheny County’s plumbing code or are possible only after gender-assigned fixture counts have been met.
The Rust Belt, in particular, is slowly seeing more and more interest in models that enable worker power without traditional union representation, which is especially true in gig economy and service and frontline industry sectors that are disproportionately made up of Black and Brown workers.
Muffy Mendoza started Brown Mamas 9 years ago to find and give the support she needed as a young mother suffering from postpartum depression. Now she wants so much more for Black women across America. Her organization of more than 5,000 women in Pittsburgh is poised to deliver results through new levels of interaction and a growing national presence.
Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them. I fall into this thought experiment from time to time where I imagine what it would be like if I jumped ahead in my life by exactly a year to the date. I performed this thought experiment at the end of April 2019. I was about to exit one phase of my life and enter into an indefinite period of unemployment. However, I had some plans in store, ranging from grad school to teaching overseas.
Green Building Alliance has announced they are collaborating with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on a $24 million project to improve the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of the global building supply chain. The mission is to help create healthier, more sustainable buildings.
Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them. Editor’s note, trigger warning: The essay discusses suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know are struggling with suicidal ideation, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. The programs provide free, confidential support 24/7. The author's full name is being withheld to protect his privacy.
Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them. At the beginning of this year, I became obsessed with foraging for vintage objects. I spent hours perusing Facebook Marketplace. Unsatiated, I started following vintage Instagrammers in Pittsburgh; one bio described their account as selling “joyful and thoughtfully chosen thrifted home goods.” Local Pittsburghers sourced thrift stores, estate sales and their grandma’s attics, populating my Instagram feed. I found myself impulsively buying a Le Creuset Dutch oven shaped like a tomato, delicate beaded grapes and pears, and a mid-century modern wooden cheese plate.
Carla Rathway could hear her youngest son's frustration from the other room. She knew the clamor meant the internet was acting up again and keeping 12-year-old Preston from his school work. It happened all the time. "He's like, 'Oh my gosh,' when it's buffering or locking him out,” Rathway said, adding she also overhears him saying, "'I hate this internet.'"
Like scores of Pennsylvania students, Preston, a seventh grader at Belle Vernon Area School District in Westmoreland County, and his brother, 15-year-old tenth-grader Dylan, were in their second month of online learning this October. But the brothers were doing it all without a reliable high-speed internet connection at home, where they live across the county line in Fayette County.
