To call attention to its "Stay & Play Fridays" promotion for Market Square merchants, PUMP wants as many people as possible -- "you and everyone you know," according to its publicist -- to show up at the Market Square stage at 6 p.m. today for a dry run of a mass freeze-in-place stunt. (P-G, Diana Nelson Jones)Now you know. However, we've got to go to this:
Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt on Monday is expected to recommend whether the district should permanently close Schenley High School or spend millions of dollars to renovate the historic building. (Trib, Bill Zlatos)
The suspense is just killing us, you see.
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Emily Nordquist describes her work as "a found interest." She didn't start her internship at East Liberty Development Inc. burning to be a neighborhood organizer.
Dustin Stiver expected "to get a job in corporate America" after school, he said, but a series of internships turned his head, including one with Neighbors in the Strip.
The Strip District and East Liberty nonprofit groups are community development corporations, or CDCs, a genre that, traditionally, has not inspired people in their 20s. (P-G, Diana Nelson Jones)
Just bear in mind that UPMC also calls itself a nonprofit, and it's a good read. Rob Stephany, our Acting Executive Director of the URA, was on sort of the leading edge of this trend.
Will Smith sez:
ReplyDeleteTake it from me - bloggers just don't understand.
1) Community development corporations leverage investment in risky neighborhoods that for-profit developers won't touch. That's why they're nonprofits - they work where the market won't so that eventually the market comes back. East Liberty may be hot now, but it took nearly 30 years of hard work on the part of ELDI to make it that way.
It is incredibly short-sighted and misinformed to criticize a young woman - native to the area she serves - who fell into the uncommon and ideals-driven career path of organizing residents to participate in a community-centered and resident-driven redevelopment process.
2) Regarding Mr. Stiver - the Sprout Fund (located in a very sexy neighborhood - I hear they're turning the old Garfield Heights housing project into a Whole Foods!) makes grants to community organizations to catalyze change. Sprout stands nothing to gain. It's funded grassroots efforts to empower low-income communities - including the League of Young Voters. How exactly is Sprout (or Mr. Stiver) as egregiously offensive to the idea of a nonprofit as UPMC? Am I missing something, or are promoting public art and organizing minorities to vote the same as windfall profits?