This picture of a feisty dodo has nothing to do with this blog. – Image by Michael Kutsche
Dear reader, as part of a special report for Shelterforce I sat down with the heads of four of the largest community development intermediaries in the country and asked a simple question: Are you still relevant?
This six part series looks at the evolution of their role in the community development sector and their strategies for the future.
To binge-read the full report, click here. Continue reading
The Great Struggle for Cheap Meat (Downtown Art) – Photo R Gilliam
Just about 110 years ago, the price of kosher meat pretty much doubled overnight. If you were a Jewish homemaker who had to make every penny count in order to keep your family fed, this wasn’t just an inconvenience: it was a serious threat to your economic stability. What’s more, it smacked of racketeering by wholesalers who had a captive market of consumers for kosher foods, and recalled anti-Jewish oppression levied through taxes on Kosher foods in other countries.
Jewish women fought back. They organized a massive boycott of butchers and meat wholesalers that not only succeeded in bringing the prices back down, but became a seminal act of defiance in community organizing and paved the way for major rent and labor strikes to come (including the 1907 Rent Strike and the Uprising of the 20,000).
We’ve made it into a rock musical. And it opens tomorrow, so buy your tickets here. Continue reading
Man About Town Bares All
There’s something I have to tell you, Dear Reader. I have a secret life.
I’ve known this about myself since I was 14 years old. I experimented with this part of who I was a lot while I was in college, but eventually I moved on and settled into a more traditional lifestyle and quietly tucked this side of myself away. I lived like this for years.
But that’s been changing. It all started shortly after my first marriage ended, when I was looking for something to take me back out into the world. Suddenly, this other side of me seemed unavoidable – I felt so compelled to show who I really was, to do it again and again. I worked on Wall Street at the time, and suddenly it seemed people like me were everywhere and I had never noticed before: hanging out in seedy bars with late night open mics, or sneaking out during our lunch breaks to a quick session in a rented room nearby. We led a second life complete with different friends, different clothes, different mannerisms, but more fully ourselves.
And then I met my current partner, Ryan. Unlike me, Ryan had never hid behind another identity. Ryan is proud, fearless, open, visible. When, during one of our first dates, Ryan suggested we write a musical together, I knew I could no longer hide who I was.
I am, Dear Reader, a musician. Continue reading
Man About Town 