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Pittsburgh Leadership Conference designed for Zogby’s new generation

September 24, 2012

By Justin Karter

Published on Point Park News Service


A conference, scheduled for late September in Pittsburgh, hopes to reach a new generation of politically independent and internationally connected leaders, termed “globals” by well-known pollster John Zogby.

The second annual Student Empowership Conference, held at Carlow University, is designed for young, engaged leaders, described by Zogby in his new book, “The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream.”

Global Solutions Pittsburgh, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of international issues, and “Get Involved!”, a local civic engagement organization, have worked together to create a conference that appeals to a generation who feel a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the increasingly polarized political environment.

In his book, Zogby describes globals as “far more likely than voters age 30 and over to identify themselves as politically “strictly independent,” saying that they are “determined to find a middle ground on the hot-button issues of the day and to decide each one on a case by case basis, not because their party leaders are urging them in one direction or the other.”

During a phone interview, Zogby, founder of polling firm Zogby International and best-selling author, discussed the unique leadership style of the globals generation.

“What impresses me the most is the horizontal orientation of globals decision making,” he said.

“Traditionally, we have been schooled to move issues up a chain of command and, fundamentally, that system doesn’t work for a variety of reasons,” Zogby said. “(The program is) based on a vertical system where every layer involves people trying to sustain themselves; trying to solve problems in a way that protects their job, which leads to disconnect and gridlock.”

Zogby praised the Globals’ ability to “use networking in problem solving, saying, “If there is an issue, they crowd source it. It’s egalitarian and it’s pure” because it “gets right at the source of a resolution.”

As an employer, college, or organization “it’s important not to try to teach [globals] how to function within an existing institution but instead to adjust your institution to a world of people who have no self-interest except to get the job done,” he said.

Tom Baker, president of Baker Leadership and founder and chief program officer of Get Involved!, agreed with Zogby on the non-partisan nature of young leaders.

“It appears to me that getting things done is the top priority for college students and young professionals, more so than party politics or rhetoric.”

The Empowership Conference will be “a terrific mixture of members of different parties coming together and leaving partisan bickering behind in the best interest of worthwhile causes and organizations.”

Dan Giovannelli, executive director of Global Solutions Pittsburgh recognizes that the young people they are hoping to reach have “grown up with nasty politics.” The Empowership Conference aims to give young people “the tools they need to engage the issues they’re passionate about. We want them to make informed decisions but do not tell them what decisions to make. I think young people appreciate that there is not an agenda.”

A major tool in the globals toolkit is social media. Giovannelli hopes that the conference will teach young people “already savvy on Facebook and Twitter” how to use their skills to engage others in the issues, from international issues such as Syria to local issues such as urban education.
Giovanelli said he admits that sometimes those in the non-profit industry do a “lousy job of expressing why the issue is important,” often finding themselves at one of two extremes— “the guilt inducing emotional appeal or statistics and facts with no emotion.”

The keynote speaker, Ali McMutrie, has a story that evinces the characteristics of the globals generation. McMutrie, a Pittsburgh native, spent years working in an orphanage in Haiti and, following the 2010 earthquake, started her own non-profit Haitian Families First. Both the speaker and the workshops are meant to help young people effectively spread their passion across their already well-developed international networks by teaching them how to tell their stories effectively.

The stories that they create and spread are likely to find a receptive audience. Zogby describes this new generation of leaders as possessing a “global empathy,” saying, “While First Globals might not be more able than other age cohorts to point to Darfur on a map, they at least know there is a Darfur, and they care what’s happening there … this is a group that has been trained by its own segment of popular culture to look outward, beyond America’s borders.”

Anyone interested in attending the Sept. 29 conference can find more information and register online at globalsolutionspgh.org.

‘The Marriage Plot’ author to speak in Pittsburgh

October 22, 2012
By Justin Karter



Published on Point Park News Service

In his latest book The Marriage Plot, Pulitzer-prize winning author Jeffrey Eugenides delved into the lives and minds of college students as they navigated literature and semiotics, anxieties about graduation, sexual desires, and romantic relationships.

On Monday Oct. 22 Eugenides will speak in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland to an audience expected to be largely composed of students from local universities. Eugenides will be the third in a series of ten lectures in the 2012-13 season of Literary Evenings, Monday Night Lecture Series, presented by Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures and sponsored by the Drue Heinz Trust.

“Jeffrey Eugenides is one of America’s finest contemporary novelists. Young protagonists like Madeleine Hanna and Calliope Stephanides and their stories of searching for love in an imperfect world have resonated with younger adult readers. This will be Jeff’s first appearance in Pittsburgh and we are expecting a big turn-out of students from local universities,” said Jayne Adair, Executive Director of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures.

His latest release, a New York Times best-seller, The Marriage Plot, tells the story of three college students graduating from Brown University- Eugenides’ alma mater- into the recession of mid-80’s. The novel examines the psychology of all three characters and demonstrates how the books they read and the classes they take shape not only their relationships with one another but also their understanding of the world.

In the novel, the privileged, pretty and literary Madeleine, who loves the traditional romantic narratives of Eliot, Austen and Bronte, opts to take a trendy new course in semiotics. The class deconstructs the novel (and reality) as she knows it. Madeleine meets her eventual boyfriend, the intellectually curious but manic depressive Leonard, a gifted biology student with a troubled past. As her roller-coaster relationship with Leonard rises and falls, Madeleine continuously moves the frustrated, religio-philosophical Mitchell in and out of the friend-zone, while he quests across Europe and India for spiritual truth. The book’s title fittingly plays on the relationship between fiction and reality, referring to Madeleine’s senior thesis, which mourns the decreased sense of permanence in contemporary western novels due to changing societal norms concerning marriage.

“As somebody who studied literature in college, the novel appealed to me,” said Gabrielle Langmann, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and a current Medical Student at UPMC. “I think it captured how we all felt in college– trying to figure out what we are doing with our lives and coming up with a worldview that is uniquely our own.”

Eugenides is expected to speak to the Pittsburgh crowd about his career as a writer and his previous works but the majority of the lecture will be focused on on The Marriage Plot, explained Eryn Morgan, Marketing Manager of Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures. “We brought him in the talk about The Marriage Plot, so that will be the topic of the lecture,” she said. She added that she expects to see a large number of students in the audience on Monday night.

Eugenides found continued success when his first novel, 1993’s The Virgin Suicides, was adapted for film by director Sofia Coppola. In 2003 Eugenides won the Pulitzer Prize with his second novel: Middlesex, a multi-generational story of a family of Greek immigrants centered on the experience of Calliope, a hermaphrodite growing up in Detroit.

Eugenides grew up in Detroit and is of Greek-American ancestry. He studied at Brown University and received his M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University.

Student tickets are $10 with an ID and are available by phone at 412-622-8866 or at the Carnegie Music Hall Box Office on the night of the program.

Shadyside bar, Buffalo Blues a finalist in ESPN poll

October 15, 2012
By Justin Karter

Point Park News Service




Buffalo Blues, a local Shadyside bar, has been named one of the best sports bars in North America by ESPN.

The well regarded bar, located at 216 S. Highland, was the only Pennsylvania bar in the competition this year, following the 2011 win by Chickie’s & Pete’s Bar in Philadelphia.

In this year’s competition of over 5,000 nominees, Walk-On’s Bistreaux in New Orleans was named the winner, but Michael DiFiore, owner of the B2 Restaurant group which runs Shadyside bars Buffalo Blues, Bites and Brews, 1947 Tavern and Elbow Room, was still excited about the nomination.

“We were the smallest place among the finalists and [we] are really a local, neighborhood bar while others are centered in major sports campuses,” DiFiore said.

DiFore went on to explain the competition in terms of sports metaphors.

“We talked about it around here in terms of Hickory versus South bend from Hoosiers,” he said.

Buffalo Blues originally opened as a live music venue for blues acts in 1996. The menu featured southern comfort food, and in its second year in business, won a Pittsburgh wing cook off. A year later, Buffalo Blues was selected to host the first season of “The Jerome Bettis Show” live every week.

“’The Jerome Bettis Show’ brought the whole Pittsburgh sports community right into our bar,” DiFiore said. “We had guys like Franco Harris and Hines Ward in here, so after that we kept converting spaces to accommodate our growing sports crowd.”

While Buffalo Blues prides itself on showing every single game each week, it has also been home to a large group of Buffalo Bills fans from the very beginning. The bar originally received its name from the blues music it played and the Buffalo wings it served, but some took it as “Buffalo’s Blues,” referring to the Buffalo Bills string of four consecutive Super Bowl losses in the early nineties. The bar began to attract Bill’s backers, a growing group of expats from upstate New York, explained manager Jennifer Carter.

“We have 34 TVs and we show every single NFL game, but when Bills backers fill the bar we are happy to accommodate them,” Carter said.

Joe Fellows, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh from Little Valley, N.Y., sat surrounded by blue and white jerseys at one corner of the bar.

“I saw this bar listed on the Bills website and came as soon as I moved here. It has tons of TVs, it’s packed with football fans and I plan on coming for every game,” Fellows said. “It’s great that this bar is getting some recognition.”

On Sundays the bar fills to standing room only with the jerseys of different NFL teams, a large contingent of which don black and gold for the hometown team. However, the stories of most of the fans are similar, regardless of the team they support. Most sports buffs start coming to the bar when they move to Pittsburgh for school or work, and it’s the kind of place where one can find fellow fans from everywhere, according to DiFiore. Many enthusiasts befriend a group of likeminded fans huddled around the game they want to watch and then come back every week.

“So far, most of the people I know [are people] I’ve met at this bar on Sundays,” said Pitt graduate student Hilary Scherer, a Washington, D.C. native.

Rochester born Dave O’Brien moved to Pittsburgh in 2004 to start school at Duquesne, and after he heard about Buffalo Blues from a friend, he began watching football there every week.

“I heard there was a great football bar in Shadyside so I came and there were 100 other fans – it seemed – so I’ve come every time since,” O’Brien said.

Carter added that she already noted a bump in attendance after the ESPN poll.

“We are hoping that next year we will drum up even more support,” DiFiore said.

Legal Services saves families and local economy, studies show

October 10, 2012
By Justin Karter

Published on Point Park News Service

A 62-year-old widow, in danger of losing her home of 36 years after the loss of her husband, avoided moving to a shelter because of free legal aid.

After a child went missing in a custody dispute during the Christmas holidays, Neighborhood Legal Services Association, Pittsburgh’s largest provider of free civil legal aid, returned the child to the mother.

Despite these successes, cuts from both state and federal sources reduced funding for free civil legal aid by 20% in just the past year, forcing agencies to let go of staff attorneys and cut back on their services.

“Legal Services operates with the understanding that when everyone is given access to justice it truly benefits the whole community. When we all have a fair chance to succeed then Pittsburgh succeeds,” said Robert V. Racunas Esq., executive director of Neighborhood Legal Services Association of Pittsburgh (NLSA).

In a September newsletter to their clients, NLSA explained, “Budget cuts at both the federal and state level have further reduced NLSA’s funding by $800,000 – significantly impacting NLSA’s ability to sustain services.”

The recent cutbacks have forced NLSA to let go 6 staff attorneys, which influences the number and type of cases they can handle.

“Even before the cuts, legal aid services did not have adequate funding to meet the needs of every client,” said Carol McCarthy Esq., a Pittsburgh family attorney and president of NLSA’s Board of Directors.

When free legal aid organizations cannot help their clients, it actually affects the entire economy, according to a study by Pennsylvania’s Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (PA IOLTA), a non-profit program that provides funding for civil legal aid.

“This is the type of funding that not only rights wrongs but makes clear economic sense,” Executive Director of PA IOLTA Al Azen said.

A new study by PA IOLTA, shows that over the last fiscal year the work of poverty legal services created $594 million for the local economy, an unheard-of eleven fold economic return on their funding.

Much of the economic benefit of free legal aid comes from saved resources.

“When individuals are unrepresented and unable to assert their right to obtain federal benefits, stay in their home, or keep their jobs, many times the communities must step in to fill the gap, spending taxpayer funds on countless other programs,” McCarthy said.

For example, when an elderly woman, who recently lost her husband, came to NLSA, her home had already been sold at a tax auction. The lawyers at NLSA took her case to bankruptcy court and got her back into her home, rather than a shelter.

In 2011 alone, over 1,700 families avoided the need for an emergency shelter due the legal aid services. Over a five-year period, this amounts to a savings of $111 million for the state of Pennsylvania in emergency shelter costs, according to a report issued by IOLTA.

Housing studies show that vacant properties created by foreclosures can cost neighbors over $6,000 each, according to Joanna Deming, director of education and outreach for the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. A new publication by Housing Alliance, “A New Vision for Housing Market Recovery” reports that in two-thirds of the cases handled by free legal aid services the clients avoided a pending foreclosure.

When free legal aid can protect innocent people from financially crippling circumstances, their clients can continue to live their lives without continued public assistance, and can spend their money at the local restaurants, shops and businesses that support Pittsburgh’s economy.

“Every dollar that you put into the hands of people in poverty goes right back into the economy. That dollar gets spent right away on groceries and necessities, resulting in an economic benefit to the entire community,” Azen said.

Free legal aid also saves the local economy by intervening and preventing domestic disputes. The single working mother from Lawrence County came to the lawyers at NLSA after her child disappeared right before Christmas. NLSA obtained an order giving the mother primary custody, however the father still refused to return the child. To make matters worse, the child showed signs of abuse, evinced by some bruises. NLSA then obtained a motion for the immediate return of the child with the help of the police and reunited the mother with her son.

The same study by IOLTA reports that legal aid protected over 6,000 families in Pennsylvania from domestic abuse issues in 2011. Without legal aid, the community would incur the costs of “medical care for injured victims, education and counseling services for affected children, and law enforcement resources.” This all adds up to a savings of $23 million in costs related to domestic disputes, according to IOLTA.

“In a democracy everyone’s voice needs an opportunity to be head, or you’ll have complete chaos. People have to have to the ability to assert their voice and their rights, or they’ll be forced to resort to other means,” said Azen.

The NLSA reports that it will continue to seek new sources of funding in order to keep their doors open to those who need representation but the cuts will severely affect how much attention they will be able to give each case.

“The cuts have come as a result of economic pressures,” Azen explained. “It’s not a philosophical issue.”