PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/category/uncategorized/)
Students left school and turned out in droves to honor Antwon Rose II on the first school day after the verdict that sparked a weekend of protests in Pittsburgh.
Local residents and elected officials held a press conference Wednesday to sharply criticize U.S. Steel and Allegheny County for their responses to a Christmas Eve fire at the Clairton Coke Works.
In an era when education funding is limited and the gap between well-resourced districts and their less fortunate neighbors widens, sharing emerges as one of the few options for opening up high-quality academic and extracurricular programs to all students.
Pittsburgh officials are urging local governments across the country to join them on instituting new gun control laws after the October mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue.
Voters across Allegheny County narrowly rejected a ballot initiative on Tuesday that would have raised property taxes by a quarter mill to funnel $18 million annually to children’s programs.
There is a strong belief in the Jewish tradition that every life is sacred, which makes some Jews leery of using the death penalty in most cases. But this shooting could put their principles to the test. Jewish scholars say there is Biblical support for implementing the death penalty in principle but there is a wide variety of opinions about how or whether it can be fairly applied.
It was a weekend of coming together, reflection and collective healing in Pittsburgh. A week after the tragedy in the Tree of Life synagogue last Saturday, Shabbat services took place all over Squirrel Hill.
The sisters grew up in Squirrel Hill and said it was their “stomping ground.” Neither were born into Judaism, but Snyder converted in 2003 after studying the religion for six years.
City Councilman Corey O’Connor said now is the time for Pittsburgh to take bold action on gun control, even if it means confronting lawsuits and the ire of a Republican-controlled state Legislature and powerful gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association. “We will fight this. Pittsburgh will take a stand,” O'Connor said, holding back tears at a council meeting three days after a heavily armed man killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue. “And we will get sued... You want to fight?
East Pittsburgh is grappling with the fate of its police force, leaning on solutions like consolidation that have long-been discussed in the fragmented region, largely without success.
Will crisis force change? In East Pittsburgh, officials hope so. But interviews with numerous chiefs and leaders in the region reveal a persistent status quo, where funding drastically differs across a patchwork of boroughs and some communities struggle to recruit officers to work breakneck hours for dismal pay.
