PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/tag/diversity/)
Heather Bradley is the executive director of Pittsburgh Bereavement Doulas. From the Source Host Jourdan Hicks speaks with Heather about her 20-plus-year career as a doula, how the prevalence of poor prenatal experiences for women make her work essential, and the need to reduce the stigma around death and grief.
Anthony Mock, owner of a Monroeville-based jewelry business, and employee Terri Hogan-Williams talk about the importance of relationships at work following the pandemic. Mock also lifts the curtain on how doing what you love matters and on his journey into the custom-made jewelry business. Jourdan: Welcome back. We are here with another episode of “From the Source” with another interesting source, another Pittsburgher, in this case, two people you should know. Their names are Terri and Anthony, and they are boss and employee.
Meet Morgan Ottley as she unpacks the lessons and challenges of remotely completing her senior year at the University of Pittsburgh following 2020’s summer of racial reckoning and protests. Morgan discusses the emotional, often invisible labor left to students when universities fall short of solidarity and the future of racial justice and accountability on college campuses. For more insights on the effects of the racial justice movement on higher ed from students, faculty, staff and administrations of Pittsburgh-area universities, check out the accompanying stories to this podcast by PublicSource higher education reporter Naomi Harris. What difference has a year made? Explore the project about calls for racial justice on campuses.
Meet Ali R. Abdullah as he explains the significance of being an African-American Muslim in the Pittsburgh region and what you should know about Pittsburgh’s role in Islamic history in the United States. For a deeper look into what Ali uncovered about his own family’s connection to religious history in the area, check out the story by PublicSource faith and religion reporter Chris Hedlin: “Pittsburgh was once a Black Muslim refuge.”
TRANSCRIPT
Jourdan: Hello, everyone, welcome back. It's me, your host, Jourdan Hicks, community correspondent for PublicSource. Welcome back to another episode of From the Source. Now, this week, we have yet another interesting Pittsburgher who you should meet and someone who you could learn a little something from to expand your worldview of our area and the people who bring our region to life.
Listen and learn how this business owner is helping clients find their perfect fit and style after trauma, illness and injury.
Eight women and one man sit on Pittsburgh’s City Planning Commission. Mayor Bill Peduto would like to adjust that ratio. “I would love to have Pittsburgh be the first city in America to have a planning commission that is 100% women,” the mayor said, in an interview this month. Asked whether men might look askance at that goal, he reasoned that a powerful, all-female board would send a signal that the city was addressing a historical imbalance. “All we have to do is look at the past five decades, when it was all men, [or] there may have been one woman appointed” to the commission.
Women hold nearly half of the seats on major boards and commissions that make many decisions in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, and Black residents hold more than one in every four, PublicSource has found as part of the year-long Board Explorer project. Both figures represent steps toward greater diversity in the region’s power structure. In 2005, women occupied fewer than ⅓ of seats on county and city boards, according to a study done then by Carnegie Mellon University students in partnership with the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania. Black residents held 23% of the seats for which the race of the member was known in 2005, but now hold 28%. Presented with PublicSource’s findings, diversity advocates were united in one sentiment: Progress is no cause for complacency.
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.
In 2012, 916 of the 1,941 children the Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange Council served were black, while only 6 percent of adoptive families were black, which means that sometimes, white families adopt black children, and, in doing so, begin building their families through transracial adoption.
