LGBT prayer breakfast speakers call for greater equality, civil rights; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/17/15

Peter Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; LGBT prayer breakfast speakers call for greater equality, civil rights:

"Dozens of clergy and lay people gathered Monday morning for a prayer breakfast to call for greater civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.

Speakers at the event, held at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Hampton, focused attention on efforts to pass a statewide ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Currently some local governments have such legal protections — which apply to work, housing and accommodations — but not the state as a whole, even while same-sex marriage is legal in Pennsylvania under a 2014 federal court order..."

Rabbi Aaron Bisno of Rodef Shalom Congregation told the gathering of the “cost of silence,” comparing the effort for LGBT rights with the civil rights movement. Rabbi Bisno quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as saying he would remember the “silence of our friends” more than the “words of our enemies.”

The Long Good Fight: Libraries at the heart of intellectual freedoms | Editorial; Library Journal, 2/17/15

Rebecca T. Miller, Library Journal; The Long Good Fight: Libraries at the heart of intellectual freedoms | Editorial:

"Librarians and libraries are essential to discourse about intellectual freedoms. Now we have more work to do in light of violent efforts to curtail such rights, perhaps most notably the January 7 attack on the offices of Paris’s weekly Charlie Hebdo. For me, these events brought our work to date into high relief but also intensified a sense of urgency about what librarians can do to defend a richer understanding of the value of freedom of inquiry and expression.

American Library Association (ALA) president Courtney Young’s statement on the attacks framed the library ethos: “Such attacks are counter to the values of access to information with diversity of views—and to the values of civic engagement, which encourages people to read and discuss these views without fear.”

Libraries, in an important sense, exist to help remove fear from our culture: fear of the other, fear of the unknown, and fear of the differences of opinion that make us human. They do not exist to remove those differences. Our libraries hold and foster access to countervailing opinions, information about worlds beyond our own, and insight into cultures we have never experienced, as well as awareness of people living right next door. They are full of words answered by words—sometimes divisive ones—that together shape our evolving way of life.

Librarians are often out front in this freedom fight, perhaps most noticeably when it comes to book challenges. I think of acts of censorship as existing on a continuum of sorts. Acts of terror sit at one extreme but are still related to nonviolent attempts to use leverage of some kind to force a limitation on what others can say or read. Libraries have a mandate to exercise the muscles that counter the censor’s impulse early and often."

Generational shift: Gen X-ers embracing their roles as a transitional group; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/4/15

Teresa F. Lindeman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Generational shift: Gen X-ers embracing their roles as a transitional group:

"Mr. McCoy spends a good amount of time talking about how different life experiences explain some of the disparate views the various age groups hold. In 2011, his office at Pitt began offering a workshop titled “Please Respect My Generation” to faculty and staff, in addition to others on harassment and safety...

Developed with information provided by ATS Media, the materials used in the workshop divide the workforce into five generations.

Mr. McCoy’s list shows the “traditionals” as being born between 1930 and 1945; boomers arriving between 1946 and 1964; Gen X children between 1965 and 1976; millennials between 1977 and 1990; and a group bearing the early name Generation 9/11 — because the World Trade Center tragedy was a defining moment — as those born after 1991.

Those dates don’t necessarily sync up with guidelines that others use to define the generations."

How an oil boom brought diversity to North Dakota; CNN, 2/2/15

Steve Hargreaves, CNN; How an oil boom brought diversity to North Dakota:

"Ten years ago there were three black people working in North Dakota's oil fields. Not three percent, just three people.

Now there are over 600.

Many of them came for jobs working in the Bakken oil fields, and settled in towns like Williston, N.D.

Like the state itself, most people in this oil boomtown are white. But it's impossible not to notice the number of minorities -- particularly blacks -- among the huge influx of oil workers that's descended upon the region over the last few years. And while the recent fall in oil prices has called the longevity of the boom into question, at least some of these workers are here to stay."