PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/category/first-person/)
Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them. My 5-year-old son was angry and shouting and clingy all last week. Every night from Monday onward, he called me to come into his bed to sleep or asked to come into ours. It’s not his typical behavior. But nothing was typical about last week in Pittsburgh.
I was 23 years old when I learned about my family’s history with anti-Semitic violence. Before last year, I had thought there was no significant family history of experiencing anti-Semitic violence. There is, but no one in my family ever talks about it.
Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them. I might have been half joking when I told my family I wanted a genetic-spit test instead of a cake to celebrate my 46th birthday. But what better way to face a midlife crisis than to discover new mysteries lurking inside my DNA? Then 11 people died a spitting distance from my living room at the Tree of Life synagogue, and I now believe genetic introspection may be a key for us all, as a society, to come to terms with what we really are. I come from a city on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, and it was a winding journey that took me to my home now in Squirrel Hill.
What happened this weekend is an abomination. A sacred space, a sanctuary, desecrated.
Edoukou Aka-Ezoua reflects on her experience meeting other young black women at the 3rd Annual Equity Summit.
Despite the fact that the #MeToo campaign was founded by Tarana Burke, a Black woman activist, this anti-sexual violence campaign has largely overlooked the sexual harassment of Black girls in K-12 schools.
Consistent with historical evidence, the most recent set of Pittsburgh policing data provides a small scope of the reality of existing while Black in Pittsburgh.
We believe Dr. Blasey because when women bravely come forward, they are often blamed. They are accused of wearing the wrong thing, of being in the wrong place, of asking for it. Victims are also accused of lying. Yet evidence shows that only 2 to 10 percent of rape reports are false accusations, a rate that matches reporting of other types of crimes.
We never had a break in this constantly changing landscape. The realization that he was dying, piece by piece, was horrible, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
