PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/author/matt-petras/)
As bouts of extreme weather show the urgent threat of climate change, the Port Authority of Allegheny County looks to a future without fossil fuels. But so far, out of a fleet of 714 buses, only two are electric.
The Pittsburgh region's labor market shrunk to levels not seen since the early 1990s. And its rebound has been slower than the national average and other similar metro areas. While jobs continued to grow over the last month, the region has a long way to go, even as the Delta variant prolongs the pandemic.
Fully vaccinated residents, who represent about half of the Allegheny County population, are reevaluating how they navigate the world outside their homes. For many, it means enjoying favorite hobbies like they had before the shutdown, while others are maintaining much of their pandemic-era vigilance out of concern for themselves or vulnerable loved ones.
While the CARES Act has provisions intended to remove costs for individuals seeking COVID tests, anyone with insurance can still be charged if the test is not recommended by their doctor. People without insurance can be charged, even with a doctor’s recommendation.
The full-time, annual salary of a worker making $7.25 an hour is $14,500, about $1,700 above the poverty line for a single-person household and about $2,700 below the poverty line for a family of two. Because of racial and gender pay gaps, a $15 minimum wage increase would most benefit women and people of color.
Editor’s note: This guide includes hate group symbols and related information that are disturbing and offensive. On Jan. 6, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to interfere with the presidential election won by Joe Biden. The attack on democracy was striking for countless reasons — chief among them the presence of white supremacist imagery, such as bigoted references to the Holocaust. Several members of hate groups participated in the riot, including the Proud Boys, a violent white supremacist group that has gained traction in the last few years.
When Jasiri X moved from the south side of Chicago to Monroeville as a teen in the 1980s, he discovered “in-your-face 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.
Sewickley resident Libby Powers relies on Port Authority transit because of a disability that prevents her from driving. Typically, she takes public transit to her research job at the University of Pittsburgh five days a week, but, in March, she and her coworkers switched to telework due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, she uses transit to get around and certainly noticed the reduction in service the Port Authority implemented toward the beginning of the pandemic. “Being a person with a disability, public transit has become a way of life for me,” said 33-year-old Powers. “It helps me to get from point A to B; it takes me to places I want to go explore, like in the city; and it helps me be as social and as involved in my own community as I want to be.”
About three months ago, her employer started having staff come to work once a week and telework the rest of the week.
PublicSource spoke with four mental health experts to get a sense of how election stress can impact your mental health and ways you can lessen its impact, while still staying informed and having a say in the outcome.
Many Mon Valley business owners and community leaders believe the pandemic won’t squander the progress that’s been made in recent years. Still, with no end to the pandemic and a shortage of aid money, small business owners are hurting and the Mon Valley area is left with yet another daunting economic challenge.
