After the revelations of the death of Daniel Prude in police custody, the protests for racial justice that swept the country have taken on a local meaning. How did you become involved?

I have been attending the weekly BLM protests and rallies here in Rochester since May 30, right after George Floyd’s death. I have been volunteering there almost every week. When I heard the organizers had been arrested just after the video was released to the public, I answered their call for help and went to the Public Safety Building. With everything that happened that first day and the way they blocked off the streets, I was unable to leave until around 10:00pm. After that, I felt compelled to be there fighting for the rights of every person in our community read more

Almost every article discussing the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg discusses her love of opera. I can’t remember when I read as much about opera in news articles. As a big opera fan myself, I have been somewhat unsure about the tone of some of these articles. At times, they read as if her opera fandom was something peculiar, a personal eccentricity, unlike, say, if Justice Ginsburg had been a huge Bruce Springsteen fan or never missed a Washington Nationals baseball game. Those are understandable obsessions. But opera is something else entirely. I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of Americans know absolutely nothing about opera, and don’t know how to respond to it. It remains, I believe, the only sort of music that it is still fair game to make fun of. There’s a commercial making the rounds this summer with the typical opera stereotype, a screeching heavy-set woman. You make fun of rap music, you’re a racist; you make fun of country music, you’re a coastal elite, you make fun of opera, and well, how else are you supposed to respond to opera? read more

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born to an immigrant family; her father came at age 13 her mother was the first of her siblings to have been born in the US. She grew up a proud Brooklynite and became an American icon in a lineage of Americans who shaped democracy as an innovative “experiment” of a tough, yet distinct promise of equality.

Our country was built on a haunting contradiction; a settler state of Britons who were part of the worst excesses of 18th century colonialism, the vanquishing of the native population; and the massive importation of enslaved Africans, and yet created a democracy, for white men, that was in many ways more egalitarian than any government in Europe. Oppression and equality lined the heart of American democracy; they were the contradictions that Alexis de Tocqueville wrestled with almost two centuries ago and we are still wrestling with them, as did, until a few days ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. read more

As we prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah tonight, we share with all our readers a prayer for our country. Rochester NY, an American city has become the center of the country’s attention when we learned of the details of the tragic death of Daniel Prude in police custody.

Every year is unique, but this year is more unique than most. This year we have seen grave dangers and terrifying disasters, a threatening Covid-19, fires ignited by climate change, soaring unemployment, racial injustice and attacks on the institutions of American democracy. read more

After the murder of George Floyd my brother asked if I thought that the same thing could happen in my town. I told him that Minneapolis could have been any city in America, yet a death so blatantly brutal in police custody had not happen in my city. I was wrong. It did happen here in Rochester NY.  I just did not know about it. It has been easy not to know because unlike in the George Floyd killing, which took place in broad daylight and was recorded by a brave witness using her cell phone, the only people who could have taken pictures of the death of Daniel Prude at 3:16am were the police. read more