Rally at Pitt campus tomorrow
A “Oakland Unites for First Amendment Rights” rally has been scheduled tomorrow on the corner of Forbes and Bigelow. This is the approximate location of where the Battle of Oakland began on Friday night. You can see the flyer for yourself here, but it’s scheduled to kick off at 5:30 p.m., and activities will include…
Pittsburgh newspaper union issues statement on Oakland arrests
Last night, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh — the union for newsroom employees at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — sent out a statement saying it was “deeply disturbed” by police actions in Oakland last Friday night. It calls for a “full independent investigation” into the night’s events, and asks for charges to be dropped against those…
(gravity + grace)
Lots of arts events were derailed by last week’s G-20 summit. Among the smaller-scale independent productions that by necessity went head-to-head with road closures, protests and general discombobulation, one that deserves a broader audience is this original new opera by Frank Ferraro and Steve Pellegrino. Not that this evocation of a man’s experiences with early-onset…
Sustainable farmers blossom AFTER G-20
Some visiting activists who kept a low profile during the G-20 will have their say publicly after all. The Permaculture Demonstration Bus is a Montana-based outfit whose Skills for the New Millenium Tour (www.permibus.org) has been circling the nation since February 2008. Organizers Delyla Wilson and Stan Wilson demonstrate sustainable-living skills, including on-board gardening and…
Let the G-20 political opportunism begin! (updated)
I note that in an earlier blog post here, someone posted a link to this Youtube video last night. It’s a 30-second spot — with fairly polished production values — that accuses mayoral candidate Dok Harris of spending the G-20 at a high-end spa in Bedford. It ends with a faux campaign logo that reads…
Mayoral candidates respond to G-20 concerns
Let’s see if I can post this before Bram does. It’s a statement from mayoral candidate Kevin Acklin about how the city handled security during the G-20 summit … and after. Among other things it reflects, I think, the politically dicey nature of this stuff. Those in the blogosphere who are predicting this will be…
MP3 Monday returns! The band is called Drugdealer.
An apology for last week; the G-20 ate our homework here in the CP music department and we did not provide you with an MP3 Monday. We’re back on track now, though, and what better way to start the week than with a song called “Animals” by a band called Drugdealer, from an EP called…
Never mind civil liberties — did police squander a PR opportunity?
Going into the G-20, there was a lot of concern that anarchists might ruin a once-in-a-lifetime photo op. The “Black Bloc,” civic leaders feared, might give the city a black eye while global leaders looked on. It didn’t turn out that way. But it’s still possible the POLICE might smudge the city’s G-20 halo ……
Pitt students hold march; world doesn’t end
Despite dire warnings and hype from the hysterical mainstream media, tonight’s “Go Pitt! Fuck the Police” rally proceeded with little incident. More than 75 students showed up at Schenley Plaza, site of a confrontation with police in which more than 100 were arrested last night. Tonight, however, the students played with a hackeysack and talked…
The view from the OTHER side of the face shield
Earlier today, I posted the demonstrators’ account of last night’s altercation with police in Oakland. What follows is the Bureau of Police account, released a short time ago. But before I paste it , I’ll just draw your attention to the release’s assertion that university police sent out a warning message “informing [students] of a…
Well, no doubt THIS will turn out well …
Another confrontation with police seems almost inevitable tonight in Oakland. A “Go Pitt! Fuck the Police!” rally against brutality is scheduled for tonight at 10 p.m. in Schenley Plaza. A rally last night — scheduled for the same time and location — resulted in more than 100 arrests, including that of a perfectly pleasant Post-Gazette…
Bright Lights, Small City
Looking back on it, Pittsburgh’s G-20 summit may be most noticeable for what didn’t happen. Inside the convention center, of course, what didn’t happen was any meaningful progress on environmental causes. As Time magazine put it, while G-20 leaders made some noise about climate change, “greens said little of substance was actually achieved.” Outside, in…
This is what PR catastrophes look like
Since Obama’s election, some of us have waited impatiently for a chance to bring opposition to global capitalism back into the public eye. On September 24 and 25, the G20 [is] convening in Pittsburgh … This opportunity to connect the dots is being handed to anarchists on a platter– the question is whether we have…
G-20 Thoughts at Bricolage
If you find yourself wandering our depopulated Downtown today (and possibly into early this evening), swing by Bricolage Theatre’s storefront, at 937 Liberty Ave. Just a few blocks from the Convention Center, Bricolage’s Tami Dixon has opened one of the few unshuttered spots on that stretch of Liberty for anyone to write what the G-20…
Sept. 24 Protest in Pictures
I’m going to be posting video and images on this page intermittently throughout the day, so check back and hit “refresh.” Our first video was shot by Chris Young near the intersection of Baum and Liberty. This was the altercation in which protesters began throwing rocks at police — over the clearly-heard objections of others…
Sept. 24 protests: Public Safety rundown
Here’s the rundown of yesterday’s events, courtesy of the city’s Department of Public Safety. Highlights only are included: I removed some boilerplate at the beginning about how great the police training has been. I also removed names of arrestees, since the formatting is sort of tricky for me to work out in html. I can…
Demonstrating futility
Well, so much for my hopes that Pittsburgh might be the “anti-Seattle.” Given the confrontations between police and protesters during yesterday’s unpermitted march, and the scattered acts of vandalism in the East End, a couple local professors might be having second thoughts this morning too. But we’re not alone. In the build-up to the G-20,…
For Patrick Dowd, protest was a civics lesson
[Editor’s note: This will be our last post today. Thanks for reading … and very special thanks to Charlie Deitch, Marty Levine, Bill O’Driscoll and Chris Young. While I spent most of the day up here in the office, tweeting and eating bon-bons, these guys were dashing through clouds of tear gas today.] For some,…
Fall Arts Preview
Even after the street theater of the G-20 has ended, Pittsburgh will still offer plenty of drama … not to mention dance, music and art. On the pages that follow, you’ll find plenty of reason to take to the streets all season long.
Protests underway
It’s on. As I type this, police are squaring off with protesters taking part in an unpermitted march in Lawrenceville. Hundreds of protesters at least are marching along Liberty: Police are waiting at 34th street, with riot shields. Protesters are being warned by PA that if they do not disperse, they will be subjected to…
Short List: Week of September 24 – October 1
So the G-20 has caused postponement of a couple days of shows Downtown, and even temporarily shut venues including the National Aviary. Don’t sweat it — use the open days on your A&E calendar to pencil in all the free stuff coming up during ’09 RADical Days. The Allegheny Regional Asset District’s annual cornucopia of…
G-20 Activism
A list of events occurring during the summit
Café J
A comfortable setting for good Italian food — and a couple of really great appetizers.
Global Therapy
People’s Summit brings dialogue about world’s problems
And they’re off
A student feeder march — numbering roughly two dozen people — is headed from Friendship Park in Bloomfield to Arsenal Park, where they will meet up with a larger contingent of demonstrators planning an unpermitted march. Currently, though, “There are more media here [at Arsenal] than marchers,” says Marty Levine. (Though he notes that with…
High Anxiety
Approaching the G-20 summit is an uphill climb for police and protesters
I Write to the G-20 Leaders in Advance of Their Pittsburgh Summit
A poem by Richard St. John
Love Happens
If you’re not put off by the utterly generic title of this reputed romantic comedy from Brandon Camp, you may be undone by the dreary maudlin filler. This contrived tale of a professional grief counselor (Aaron Eckhart) still devastated by his own loss, who meets an agreeably quirky florist (Jennifer Aniston) is just a feeble…
Liverpool
In this lean, slow-paced drama from Lisandro Alonso, a merchant marine named Farrel (Nieves Cabrera) returns to his home after many years at sea. Home is a remote spot deep in the mountains of Tierra del Fuego; it’s not even a village, but a cluster of houses near a sawmill. There is virtually no dialogue…
Cold Souls
Our guide in Sophie Barthes’ feature is a broody New York actor named Paul Giamatti (played by Paul Giamatti), who has is soul removed and stored, in order to feel better. Unbeknownst to him, there is a more troubling side of the soul-removal biz: a lively trade in the selling and illegal transporting of souls,…
Pittsburgh: The Anti-Seattle? (part 2)
Charlie Deitch reports in from Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville, where an unpermitted march is set to kick off in roughly 90 minutes. Here’s the scene: Deitch says that the crowd at Arsenal currently numbers about 100 “with a couple new people coming in every minute or so.” The first contingent of police — about a…
Lorna’s Silence
Lorna, an Albania in Belgium, has married a junkie, hoping to get citizenship papers. She is also plotting to intentionally overdose him, so a further chain of payoffs and citizenship can occur. Most things happen to the characters in the second half of the film, and that’s the problem: For about an hour, we watch…
Your intelligence agencies are no match for our fucked up street grid
Sure, the Secret Service guys LOOK all bad-ass. And obviously Pittsburgh is crawling with Homeland Security agencies, shadowy figures who know more about us than we know about ourselves. But apparently, even THEY are no match for Pittsburgh’s streets, reports our Bill O’Driscoll. O’Driscoll is credentialed to attend the G-20 proceedings at the Covention Center,…
Pittsburgh: the Anti-Seattle?
This afternoon’s unpermitted march is still hours away, but early indications suggest that police may not need all those pairs of disposable handcuffs after all. Our Chris Young is at Friendship Park in Bloomfield, the starting point for a student “feeder march,” which will later hook up with the main event. People were supposed to…
More Fall Arts Highlights
RADical Days Free performances and admissions to cultural venues city-wide. Sept. 27-Oct. 11 412-227-1900 or www.radworkshere.org Tough Art — Ready for Anything Four interactive artworks for kids to crawl through, manipulate and pound upon. Oct. 10-Jan. 31 Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, North Side 412-322-5059 David Cross The comic and Arrested Development star tours behind his book…
Writers are talking nonstop this fall.
It won Canada’s Griffin Prize for poetry, proving that honest assessments of U.S. policy are always appreciated — in other countries.
This season in Pittsburgh, there’s little reason to settle for just watching dance on TV.
Why not trade your remote viewing experience for a firsthand one?
Stage companies lean toward the classics this fall.
Even troupes known for taking risks are connecting with tradition.
G-20 and beyond, there’s plenty of art to go around this fall.
Artists with local ties provide many of fall’s highlights.
The calm before the storm?
So here we are. The general consensus is that if there’s going to be chaos in the streets during G-20, it’s going to happen today, thanks to an unpermitted march kicking off from Arsenal Park this afternoon. Lots of people are expecting the worst, but I gotta tell you: Right now, I feel like there’s…
Fall Film Guide
Now that summer’s marauding robots, badly behaving groomsmen and ill-tempered aliens are heading into the megaplex sunset, it’s time to buckle down for fall. This season generally offers more substantial fare — from festivals packed with meatier, less-seen features to the release of early Oscar contenders. However, if you’re among those who can’t get enough…
Fall Arts Preview: Music
Lately, it’s become poor form to snub a couple of the celebrity musicians that are coming through Pittsburgh this concert season. So we’ll acknowledge them first to avoid any such accusation: Taylor Swift plays Mellon Arena on Oct. 1, and Michael Jackson* plays the Hard Rock Café on Nov. 6. OK, now we can get…
This Just In: September 24 – October 1
Highlights from the local TV news: Jail Break!
Tim Kaulen readies his giant scrap-metal toys for his Artist of the Year show.
“As much as I try to manage [the material], it manages you,” he says.
Over the River and Through the Woods
The Little Lake production is as every bit as big-hearted as the script … maybe even more so.
Dorothy in Oz
The show is lumpy, but it’s mostly lumps of fun.
The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century
The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first CenturyBy Brian O’Neill Carnegie Mellon University Press, 151 pages, $16.95 Brian O’Neill started work on The Paris of Appalachia four years ago. But actually, it reflects two decades of work at the Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where O’Neill has been writing stories that are…
Pittburgh n’@
Dispatches from the blogosphere: G-20 angst
Early Day Miners play Thunderbird Café, supporting new album The Treatment
Even on a pop record, Daniel Burton can’t resist the call of nuance, in songwriting and production.
Jessica Lea Mayfield speaks her mind With Blasphemy So Heartfelt
“If people like it, they like it. And if they don’t, they can suck it.”
New audio blog offers documentation of live music at Howlers Coyote Café
“Remember when you were at a show, and there weren’t that many people in the room, but the band was really good?”
Philadanco marks its 40th anniversary with a new work that brings the funk.
“By Way of the Funk” celebrates funk music by recounting its roots and paying homage to its heyday in the 1970s.
Summit Talk
Greetings, global overlords. I think I speak for many of my neighbors when I say … Welcome to Pittsburgh! How soon will you be leaving? Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate your dropping by. Feel free to patronize our fine advertisers. But honestly, many Pittsburghers won’t exactly be sorry when you’re gone. Part of the…
Savage Love
You are known as an arbiter of definitions of sex, so we are hoping that you can give your opinion on an interesting conundrum. My wife and I were recently regaling each other with anecdotes from our past, and she easily had the most interesting story: It seems that when she was a young woman…
Marching Order
[Editor’s note: Last night, I filed a brief dispatch about an impromptu marching-band demonstration, which took place as the Green Jobs rally in Point State Park was breaking up. Here’s a fuller account by our Bill O’Driscoll. Reading it over, I’m reminded of all the media fearmongering that has surrounded the G-20. Based on the…
