Categories for DailyPost

May 31

2022

Gains by the right in school board elections

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Michael Wooten interviewed Layne Dowdall on her recent story about candidates elected to local school boards who were endorsed by right wing organizations. In the interview, which aired on Tuesday on WGRZ’s Town Hall, Dowdall reported that the candidates pledged to oppose the teaching of Critical Race Theory, sex education and Covid vaccine and mask mandates. Twenty-two of these candidates won election in western and central New York, half of them in Erie and Niagara counties. Two of them won seats on the Williamsville School Board, the second largest district in the region.

Posted 3 years ago

May 30

2022

Monday Morning Read (Tuesday edition)

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This week’s post includes stories of interest from Sunday and Monday, to cover the  holiday weekend. You can receive the entire WeeklyPost newsletter, which also includes a summary of our best reporting from the previous week, by subscribing here. The Buffalo News tackled the subject of racism in Western New York. A very good companion piece to the story we published a couple of weeks ago. The New York Times profiled the pain of the killings on one Buffalo family. Margaret Sullivan laments that the toll that media fragmentation means we’ll probably never see a lawless president brought to heel[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 26

2022

City Hall’s paper thin fair housing report

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Last week Buffalo’s Fair Housing Office filed its first activity report with the Common Council since April 2019.  The new report is five pages long. Given its lack of content, it probably could have been shorter.  It was just the third report the office has filed in the 16 years since the city adopted its fair housing ordinance, which created the office and requires it to report annually on its efforts to protect renters from discrimination. Buffalo’s law is a local affirmation of the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices that contributed to racial segregation.  Segregation is[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 25

2022

Heaney talks segregation on ‘Pressroom

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Jim Heaney discusses his story last week on segregation in Western New York with David Lombardo on The Capitol Pressroom. Heaney recounted how Erie and Niagara counties are the sixth-most segregated metropolitan region in the nation and Buffalo the 17th most-segregated city, in which 85 percent of Blacks live east of Main Street.   In case you missed it, here’s our other reporting related to the supermarket massacre that left 10 people dead. The rise of the radical right in Western New York. Right wing coalition elects 22 school board candidates in WNY. East Side residents are hopeful, yet skeptical,[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 24

2022

East Side residents “exhausted” by inequities

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Boarded-up buildings. Vacant lots. Gun violence. Lack of economic investment and jobs. A single grocery store where residents can buy quality food at affordable prices.  These are issues East Side residents have dealt with for years.  In the wake of the mass shooting that claimed 10 lives at the community’s lone supermarket — the Tops store on Jefferson Avenue — residents who spoke with Investigative Post last week said they’re hopeful some good can come from the tragedy. Hopeful, but not optimistic. Several residents said they’ve heard the rhetoric about real change coming to the East Side before. They’re still[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 23

2022

Easing the path to graduation

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The New York State Education Department has lowered the academic bar for graduating students again this year.  Last week, the Board of Regents approved a temporary policy that broadens the scope in which students are able to appeal and graduate despite failing scores on required Regents exams.  This is the third consecutive year the Board has made changes involving Regents exam requirements for graduation, citing the ongoing impacts and “varied teaching and learning conditions” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, students were required to earn a score of 65 or higher on at least four Regents exams in[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 22

2022

Monday Morning Read

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If you subscribe to WeeklyPost, our newsletter delivered via email Sunday mornings,  you could have read this post – and more – yesterday. Just saying. Subscribe here. Byron Brown told CNN last week that the federal government needs to do more to help cities like Buffalo. Strange words coming from a mayor who has turned his back on the East Side during his 16 years in office, as documented by a study released last fall that detailed how Black neighborhoods have suffered in part because of the neglect of city government. It looks like people in the Black community want to end the neglect,[...]

Posted 3 years ago

May 22

2022

Scenes from a tragedy

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Last Friday, Layne Dowdall, camera in hand, visited the neighborhood around the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue that was the scene of the horrific shooting of 10 people by a white supremacist on May 14. She captured scenes of a community grieving and coping, and the landscape of the neighborhood which is anchored by the  supermarket. Memorials honor the victims: Volunteers hand out food and supplies: Community shows support: Undeveloped lots surround the Tops Market:

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post