Homewood Nation

It feels like Deja Vu: the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) is calling for a moratorium on the demolition of housing in low-income neighborhoods and Bill Peduto, the likely next mayor of the City of Pittsburgh, wants the city to have more arrows in its quiver, for urban development, than simply demolishing abandoned properties. Actually this question of whether to re-hab or demolish housing has been a point of controversy for at least 30 years.

From 1986 through ...

(UPDATE: May 22, 2013, 2:36 p.m.) 

In a press conference held this morning in Homewood, members of the Black Political Empowerment Project joined with residents to call for a moratorium on the demolition of homes in largely Black and low-income neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and in Allegheny County..

The press conferences follows a letter that B-PEP sent to government officials last week expressing its concern.

In that letter, sent to Mayor Luke Rav...

I cast my votes about half an hour ago at Bethesda Presbyterian Church. After voting, I told the poll workers that I was a reporter, and asked about the turnout so far. They declined to comment.

I had better luck with two other locations before that. When I stopped at at Baptist Temple Church around 6 pm, Purnell Gibson, who has worked the polls for some 40 years, said that 74 people had voted so far, out of 240 voters in the district.

"I was hoping we woul...

This is Homewood Nation's first editorial in support of a political candidate. I was reluctant to write it, because my background as a reporter trained me not to express support for political candidates. But I'm editor and publisher now, and endorsing candidates is a big part of what editors and publishers do.

I was also reluctant because I'm not politically astute, and not even politically inclined. Indeed, I am working through issues with the very word "politics" - which i...

Mayoral candidates (l-r) Bill Peduto, Jack Wagner and Jake Wheatley at Tuesday evening's forum hosted by WESA FM. Photo: Halden Kirsch, WESA FM

Your choice between candidates for mayor of the City of Pittsburgh is in large part a philosophical one. Tuesday night WESA 90.5 FM hosted a public forum for City of Pittsburgh mayoral candidates Bill Peduto, Jack W...

Late last night, I watched the video of Charles Ramsey, the man who rescued three women from their imprisonment in his next-door neighbor's house.

I had deliberately refrained from viewing it for a couple of reasons - 1) Homewood and Pittsburgh by themselves generally produce more news than I can handle; 2) I was waiting for The Virality Cycle (tm) to play itself out.

The Virality Cycle (tm) works like this:

1 - The event.

House of Manna pastor, Rev. Eugene "Free Dom " Blackwell, was among the volunteers at the Homewood Liquids Station in today's running of the Dick's Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon.

As I write this, thousands of runners are still passing through Homewood as they reach the 17.6 mile mark in the 2013 Dick's Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon

At that mark, the Ho...

It is understandable why Black Americans take pride in the historic milestone of participating in the election of the nation's first African American president 5 years ago, and his re-election last year.

Barack Obama's election was a serious blow to the ideology of "white supremacy", which used to be the conventional "wisdom" in American social and politica...

The community forum on gun violence convened by State Rep. Ed Gainey brought a full house to the auditorium of the Homewood Carnegie Library last night:

Speakers included Wilkinsburg Police Chief Ophelia "Cookie" Coleman, who had an entire career on the Pittsburgh force before going to Wilkinsburg; Zone 5 Commander Timothy O'Connor and Rob Conroy, Western Pennsylvan...

Mae Louise Allen Mays, wife of baseball legend Willie Mays, died Friday at the age of 74.

Before she became Mrs. Mays, she was Mae Louise Allen, of Homewood. This is from the obituary story at www.MLB.com:

Mae Louise Allen was born on May 26, 1938. She grew up in the racially segregated Homewood section of Pittsburgh, where sh...