text:
"Are riots a war of the poor against the poor?" The question puts one in mind of a Thunderdome circa a post-apocalyptic 2014, or even a Superdome circa a post-hurricane 2005. Both were and are fictions.
The answer is no. US riots since World War II have typically been black and Latino proletarian responses to racial oppression, and far from these riots indicating anything like a war of proletarians versus proletarians, or even the poor against the poor, these riots are actually brief moments of respite from the otherwise constant and brutal war of the ruling class, in all its entrepreneurial embodiments, upon them.
But the narrative that gives rise to the question usually starts with "they're burning down their own neighborhoods," or turning over neighbors' cars, or destroying neighborhood businesses, or even, like I heard around the rather tame Occupy LA protests, "they're hurting the people they want to help! What about the small business owners in the area, whose foot traffic is interrupted?"
You can even find people close to riots saying such things. Rodney "Why Can't We Be Friends?" King, for example.[1] Or one black man from Baltimore recently, who, out in the streets, surrounded by rioters, yelled:
It be "fuck the police," but that's on our block though, brah! Now, we're destroying our homes! Now, we're destroying our community! For what!?… For what? If you wanna protest, if you wanna make a voice, if you wanna stand up, do it the right way! Get your local legislator, get your religious leaders, and let's sit down and talk about this![2]
I doubt he owns any of the homes he is worried about. I doubt he owns a business nearby. I wager that he rents an apartment and holds a precarious job. If he went to college to learn this line, he has student debt as well.
So, we can laugh at this guy asserting ownership of the "community," but what else is he going to say? What is the authentic voice of a riot? Some passersby, perhaps on their way to riot, responded simply, "Fuck the police!" True. But is that it? Where is the authentic defense of a riot to be read? Because it certainly won't be heard, because rioters don't stop for interviews.[3] I don't think rioters write essays, either, for that matter. And the reigning ideology is such that there's not many concepts ready to hand for the cogent expression of the situation that results in a riot. The riot, for all its expressiveness, is actually discursively mute. It doesn't say anything.
For this reason, it is not hard to imagine even an active rioter in Ferguson or Baltimore, while taking a breather, saying something similar, perhaps not in the same words, but still, expressing something like this sort of apology for the outburst of anger, and perhaps even a sadness that things had to come to this pass, as they struggle and reach for a way to place the events in some positive, pro-community light. What they find close to hand is the above narrative of legal reform and redress, and then, not much further, the well-worn bag of black-nationalist tricks, which easily frames the events, the anger, the sadness and the frustration, and even accounts for the feeling that nothing has changed, the fear that nothing will change, and the dawning realization that business will, sooner rather than later, go back to normal.
But not before the Nation of Islam shows up to get the street gangs to hold hands and cordon off black-owned small businesses, shielding them from the righteous albeit misguided anger of the crowd, because that's the real way to strengthen the community. In the United States, these gangs are the only social force remotely capable producing anything like "war of the poor against the poor," but we see that in Baltimore, instead of exploiting the mayhem to go to war with one another, or with ethnic rivals, or on other ethnic populations, or on the populace in general, there are reports of newly-truced Bloods, Crips, and Black Geurilla Family gang members protecting black-owned businesses and directing rioters to Chinese and Arab-owned businesses instead.[4]
Next the mainline preachers and elected officials come in and start talking about healings and feelings. The "peaceful" everyday life they and the gangs seek to restore is the real war, and that peace is enforced with threats, not just of unemployment, homelessness, or police attention, but extra-legal violence as well.
I'd like to outline a little history of how this peace is imposed and managed, and of what it consists where riots and street gangs—the likeliest vectors of such a bellum pauperum contra pauperes—are concerned.
Los Angeles, 1992
I was born in South Central, Los Angeles, at 56th and Main, three blocks north of Slauson, but moved away to Houston, Texas, in 1982 at the age of eight. My little brother and I spent two summers here (I moved back in 2009 after 11 years in New York City) in Los Angeles with my grandmother and uncle, in 1987 and 1988. There wasn't much notable about 1987, but two things jump out about 1988: NWA's first album and the evening news.
Forgive me if this sounds silly 27 years later, but Straight Outta Compton sounded exactly, precisely, like street thugs on wax. Exactly like the guys who, when my teenaged uncle saw a group of them up the block, would make us walk up another block to avoid them, to take the next street to where we were going. We had done this before I moved away, and we did it many times in 1987 and 1988. These were guys who would "sweat" you for no good reason, maybe rob you just for kicks, maybe hit you, maybe not. Stop you, block your passage, and interrogate you merely for walking around your neighborhood. That should sound familiar. Straight Outta Compton was both frightening—as in producing a sense of unease and fear—and exciting, but it was tolerable only in small doses. The evening news, on the other hand, was just plain frightening. I started counting: every night there were at least two dead young black men, victims of gang shootings. The news always chose terrible pictures of these guys, too. Never their yearbook photos, but always their worst mug shots. I stopped counting, and my brother and I took the Greyhound bus back to Houston.
Huey Newton was killed in Oakland, California, in August 1989 while buying cocaine from a member of the Black Guerilla Family, a onetime black-power organization founded by George Jackson, W.L. Nolen, and James Carr, in Soledad State Prison about 20 miles southeast of Monterey, California. In 1989, Louis Farrakhan, head of the black nationalist Nation of Islam, began a series of "Stop the Killing" lectures in Washington, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles, among other places, as a result of the violence accompanying the crack epidemic. Farrakhan made it to Los Angeles in October 1989.[5] Several Watts gang leaders, themselves already eager for a change on the streets, went to see him. After the talk, Jim Brown, the great former Cleveland Browns running back, actor, and activist, invited some of these leaders back to his home to discuss peace options. He founded the Amer-I-Can gang-intervention organization shortly thereafter, and continued holding such meetings.
It took 3 more years for them to come to terms. On April 29, 1992, the day before the outbreak of the Rodney King riots, Jim Brown held the final set of peace talks between those Watts Crips and Bloods factions, and they sealed the deal.[6] The truce movement started there, and there were gang summits across the country, in Cleveland, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Chicago, and Kansas City. The rest of Los Angeles's gangs were declaring truces before a year had passed.
Los Angeles has never been the same, for better and for worse. The outrageous levels of street violence have ceased, even though the treaty has been torn and tattered for years now, and is supposedly entirely defunct. From what I understand, the Mexican cartels supply everyone these days, and the street gangs are mostly retailers. In Los Angeles, the turf is already divided, so there's no need for competition.
The LA riots were hardly a race war, either, neither among blacks and Latinos nor them against whites or Asians. The notorious black-Korean conflict was much more about the way petit-bourgeois shopkeepers treat their customers, who often have no other choices, given slum geography and all that.[7]
Besides that, the riot didn't extend north past Koreatown into areas where whites would have felt themselves under attack. Just more than half of all arrests made during the riots were Latinos,[8] and eyewitnesses say that everyone, blacks, Latinos, and whites, was rioting together.[9] That only makes sense, because blacks and Latinos live literally next door to one another throughout South Central, and now South Central has more Latinos than blacks.[10]
During those 1992 riots, my family's former pastor, Reverend Cecil "Chip" Murray of the First African Methodist Episcopal (FAME) Church north of Leimert Park, near Western and Adams, took the lead among community leaders, including first black Mayor Tom Bradley, in spinning the 1992 riots in the manner I spoke of above. The first night of the riots, more than 100 men of the church, led by Murray, formed a blockade against rioters trying to prevent firemen from putting out fires. His church was a charity center, providing temporary shelter and food aid, and he quickly established the "Renaissance Center"—a picture-perfect model of a particular type of black church organization that has spread across the country—with a $1,000,000 donation from the Disney Corporation, after a meeting with Michael Eisner.[11]
The Renaissance Center functions mostly as an informational center, pointing people in the direction they need to go for help with job training, public assistance, education, and the like. It is a nexus of NGO, non-profit, and private charity efforts.
In the meantime, the healing on offer that May and June of 1992 was a $500M House bill for loans and FEMA assistance to small businesses and homeowners damaged in the riots and in Chicago (a tunnel collapsed in Chicago, letting the river into downtown). The Senate (!) added another $1.5B in social spending nationwide, namely $700M for summer jobs and $250M for Head Start early-childhood education, $250M for summer school, and $250M for Bush's pre-existing and ill-named "weed and seed" youth-intervention crime-prevention programs, neither specific to LA or Chicago, but nationwide,[12] because "there's no sentiment in rural and suburban America in sending more money to inner-city mayors."[13] One House Republican blamed Chicago for the flood, because the local government didn't fix the wall between the tunnel and the river when they should have, and therefore they didn't deserve help. Bush started talking about vetoing the $2B bill,[14] and Blue Dog House Democrats opposed it, too, because a balanced-budget amendment to the United States Constitution was under discussion and they wanted to look austere and punishing, so other House Democrats put together a $1B compromise that removed the Head Start and youth-intervention money, and reduced the summer jobs money.[15]
At the end of the day, in June 1992, the Congress and president finally approved the additional $170M in Small Business Administration loans for disaster recovery, $70M in new normal SBA loan money, $300M in additional general FEMA funds, and $500M in summer job money, of which only $100M was earmarked for the 75 largest cities, and the remaining $400M was for nationwide disbursal, because the Blue Dog Democrats wanted summer jobs for rural areas instead of the initially targeted city areas. The Senate also agreed that any applications for aid should be delayed anywhere from 90 to 180 days, because 90 days is the speedy-trial deadline in California, and sometimes judges give prosecutors 180 days to bring a case to trial, and it shouldn't be possible for any rioter to receive assistance.[16]
That was the only federal aid to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots, and none of it was for Los Angeles per se. Dan Quayle told Tom Bradley to sell LAX if he needed more money.[17]
The June aid package was understood to be a compromise, with the understanding that Congress would go back to the drawing board to come up with a comprehensive urban aid plan, the centerpiece of which would be George Bush's initiative to establish 50 enterprise zones—half rural, half urban—with capital-gains tax writeoffs and other such benefits. Jack Kemp also wanted to allow public-housing residents to buy their apartments, and Bush wanted school-choice vouchers.
The single bit of aid that went to Los Angeles per se was given through another channel, in October 1992: $3M in weed-and-seed money from the Justice Department, which went to pay LAPD overtime and to fund a special anti-gang and anti-riot law-enforcement task force.[18] Meanwhile, the enterprise-zone bill that Congress had been working on all summer had been expanded to include tax cuts for real estate speculation and IRA deductions, and for boats, planes, furs, and jewelry. It also increased taxes by eliminating deductions for club membership dues.[19] The cost of this "urban reform" bill had increased to $37B, most of which had nothing to do with alleviating urban poverty, and most of which would only increase it. Bush vetoed this Tax Fairness and Economic Growth Act on November 4, 1992, the day after he lost the election to Clinton.[20]
That's not the end of the story. In May 1993, Clinton ran with Bush's enterprise-zone idea, and sent his Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio, to Los Angeles to promote this plan, in which LA would be the largest of 10 urban "empowerment zones," receiving up to $100M. Cisneros held a press conference at, of course, First AME church, with Reverend Cecil "Chip" Murray at his side.[21] It took Clinton until August to get this through Congress, and it finally created 9 "empowerment zones," three of which were rural, and 95 "enterprise communities," of which 30 were rural. And LA didn't even get an empowerment zone.[22] Among the six cities that did—New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit, and Camden/Philadelphia[23]—the results these 21 years later speak for themselves.
In an interview after the George Zimmerman verdict, Reverend "Chip" Murray was wistful, saying that we've been here before, and that healing will take "crucial systemic changes." When asked what sort of systemic changes, the reverend replied:
Black America is a consumer economy… It isn't enough any longer for any Americans, particularly African Americans, to say, "Give them a fish." It isn't enough to say, "Teach them how to fish." Now it's enough to say, "They must learn how to own the pond."[24]
So we see that 23 years ago, at the beginning of the mild recovery from the S&L recession, at the beginning of the "Third Way" "neoliberal" consolidation, before the "new economy," urban reform policy consisted of little more than charity, police and tax cuts for small business. But the gang truce held, and the murder rate decreased, because the Bloods and Crips themselves decided to do that, for their own reasons. They seem to have been sincere. I have left out mention thus far of the Mexican Mafia and Mara Salvatrucha 13, and the other "Sureños 13"[25]/"Eme"[26] gangs, but I should mention that the 1992 truce extended to these Latino gangs as well.
In 1992, Peter "Sana" Ojeda, the imprisoned leader of the Orange County Mexican Mafia, began promoting a truce among the warring factions of the Eme gangs. The upshot of the public peace talks held in Elysian Park in downtown Los Angeles in September 1993, which were attended by police and media, was a new tax on drug dealers operating in Latino neighborhoods, and a ban on drive-by shootings. A ban on drive-by shootings. In this manner, the Eme in fact consolidated Latino narcotics traffic in Southern California, increasing the revenues of everyone involved, and ceased bringing heat down upon their heads with "senseless" violence.[27] In the intervening "peaceful" years, as they have grown more powerful as a result of their control of the drug trade, and as the demographic balance of blacks to Latinos has changed, only now have the allied Eme gangs become explicitly racist, sometimes attempting something like ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods they consider their own.[28] I don't want to exaggerate this, but it is a real phenomenon, and it began after the riots, under the truce, during normal business operation.
Chicago, 1967
Things played out a little differently under the New Deal/Great Society regime. But the differences only highlight the similarities.
The Woodlawn, Chicago, Blackstone Rangers were formed by Jeff Fort and Eugene Hairston in the early 1960s. After two years of riots, the Johnson Administration wanted to get to the bottom of things by the summer of 1967. The Kerner Commission was established to do so. Keep in mind, this administration had founded the Office of Economic Opportunity way back in 1964, before any of this wave of riots. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale used an OEO grant to found the Black Panther Party in 1967. Meanwhile, the Blackstone Rangers allied with the East Side Devil's Disciples to keep order in Chicago that summer, during which 159 riots burned throughout the country. So, although they were a street gang, they were often praised, and their legitimacy was based on this riot suppression on the South Side of Chicago in 1967.
The Woodlawn Organization, an organization close to the Blackstone Rangers, was very similar to the FAME Renaissance Center, and many church organizations like it. It was a community organization founded by liberal clergy, black and white, from the white First Presbyterian Church and the black Apostolic Church of God in Woodlawn, Chicago, with input from the nonprofit Chicago Urban League, and the altruistic Xerox and Arthur Andersen corporations. There was also a police liason. This organization was on the frontlines of Johnson's War on Poverty, and that June 1967, it received a $1M Office of Economic Opportunity grant meant to "utilize the existing gang structure…as a means of encouraging youth…to become involved in pre-employment orientation."[29] One of the conditions was that the Rangers and the Devil's Disciples maintain the truce for 8 months.[30] Fort and Hairston were put on the payroll as the leaders of the project. Rangers leadership also broke up a black power rally that September, further cementing their public image.[31]
While the Rangers were in talks with the Woodlawn Organization over the future of the organization and the projects it should undertake, they were engaged in their own business as well. Fort and Hairston seemed to be using money from the organization to finance their entry into the local narcotics trade, which required that they buy lots of weapons to kill their competitors, weapons which they seemed to have hid in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church. Job training money for youth appeared to be diverted instead to hiring youth for this other type of summer job, and three youths were arrested for the murder of a local drug dealer, allegedly on Hairston's orders.
Hairston and Fort went to jail on two separate murder charges: Hairston for the drug dealer, and Fort for killing a rival Devil's Disciple, thus breaking the truce. There were Senate committee hearings on the Woodlawn Organization in June 1968.[32] The president of the organization, Reverend Arthur Brazier of the Apostolic Church, vehemently denied the weapons and embezzlement story. Jeff Fort refused to testify, was charged with contempt, and didn't get out of jail until December 1968.
A former Ranger, meanwhile, testified to the truth of the guns, embezzlement, and murder charges, and explained that the money had enabled the Rangers to forcibly draft local youth, because they could afford more weapons to back up their threats. This former Ranger also testified that the gang had formed a volunteer police auxiliary, which of course offered up rival gang members to the Chicago PD, while clearing the neighborhoods of non-Ranger criminal elements. The influx of money allowed the Rangers to increase their taxation of local businesses, and during the riots of 1968, after quickly re-establishing their truce with the Devil's Disciples, they joined forces with the Disciples to sell these same exploited businesses Ranger-backed protection signs for $50.[33] They ran these operations from their riot-control center in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church, the one with the arsenal.
Sometime in 1968, the Rangers changed their name to the Black P. Stone Nation, and opened a community center from which they ran an FM station and hosted a University of Chicago student-radio show. They put on music events covered in the local press (the "Blackstone Singers"), and they opened a restaurant with a grant from another community organization. In 1971, the Rangers sent several members to an entrepreneurship training program run by the local Chicago Small Businessmen's Association, and rented a building from the Humble Oil Company for $1 a year, which would serve as the headquarters of P Stone enterprises. The Westinghouse Corporation donated a laundromat's worth of washing and drying equipment for them to open a business with. They received two car washes, and a piece of a liquor store Sammy Davis, Jr. owned. Jeff Fort was invited to Nixon's inaugural ball in 1969, but he sent Mickey Cogwell and another of the "Main 21" leadership instead.[34]
Cogwell and Fort went to prison in 1972 for charges stemming from the original OEO/Woodlawn fiasco, and when Fort got out in 1976, he had converted to Islam. He changed the name of the Black P. Stone Nation to the El Rukn Tribe of the Moorish Science Temple. Cogwell got out in 1976 and started organizing McDonald's fast-food workers, attempting to give the former P Stone Nation a political orientation. In this, he was interfering with the profits of Chicago organized crime, and Fort either couldn't protect him, or decided to kill Cogwell himself in 1977.[35]
Fort was heavily involved in those years with Jesse Jackson's brother, Noah Robinson, a front-man for white-owned businesses bidding for affirmative-action contracts in Chicago,[36] and he was convicted in the late 1980s of connecting Fort and the Rukns to cocaine and heroin wholesalers, and a host of other horrible crimes.[37]
In 1983, Fort was convicted again on narcotics charges, and sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan, a Chicago resident, had hired some of the El Rukn tribe as bodyguards—he called them his "Angels of Death," and invited them on stage with him in his 1985 Savior's Day address, to introduce them to Muammar Qaddafi, telecast live on screen from Libya.[38] Qaddafi had loaned the original Nation of Islam $3M in 1971 to buy the Greek Orthodox church that became Mosque Maryam, its national headquarters,[39] and he had recently made Farrakhan another $5M loan to start a line of black beauty products called Clean 'n' Fresh. Qaddafi, in his telecast, asked Farrakhan and his Angels of Death to go to war for him against the United States government. Farrakhan meekly refused, but thanked him for his generosity. Fort heard all about this in prison, and began talking to his lieutenants about getting in on this Qaddafi thing. The FBI was monitoring his phone calls, of course, and they set up a sting operation in which they enticed several Rukns with the promise of selling the Rukns a set of anti-tank missiles with which to attack US government facilities.[40] Fort and others were convicted on these terrorism charges. The US state has not forgotten the lessons it learned there, and it goes around today entrapping gullible and misguided black youth into harebained jihadist schemes.
So, in the heyday of the American Dream, one urban reform policy was to finance community organizations, some of which were criminal outfits with retrograde politics, in the hope that they would foster legitimate business organizations, and thereby create "jobs in the community." This policy required, sought out, and legitimized the "poverty pimp": a caricature, to be sure, but a real character—in the case of this Chicago story, the cast includes the Reverend Arthur Brazier, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and his Wharton grad brother Noah Robinson. The "poverty pimp" is one particularly corruptible instance of the "black leadership class," ye olde talented tenth, always ready to collect their tithe, and I think Jesse Jackson is the most infamous of these. There should be no doubt about how rioters feel about these folks today, after Ferguson, where they chased Jackson away.
Chicago Today
Today, there is no urban reform policy on offer. We may have another "conversation" about "race," but there's really just the re-imposition of daily life and its "peace." The content of this peace can be seen on the blood-soaked streets of the South Side of Chicago, where Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel supplies the Gangster Disciples with narcotics. The Gangster Disciples are part of the Disciple Nation, of which the Devil's Disciples, mentioned above, were a part. The founders were Larry Hoover and David Barksdale, both from Mississippi, David Barksdale hailing from around Meridian, from which my father's family comes, which indicates that we share ancestral slaveowners.
The Sinaloa Cartel has worked for years, since the mid-2000s, to establish monopoly control over the narcotics trade in the Midwest.[41] Guzman never would have had the opportunity to enter this market without the help of Bill Clinton, whose Housing and Urban Development Department set in motion the demolition of public housing nationwide, under its HOPE VI plan,[42] a gentrification/privatization scheme whose rationale was that distributed poverty is better than concentrated poverty.[43] One of Barack Obama's senior advisers, Valerie Jarret, was a Chicago developer who benefited from these "reforms": her company, Habitat, had managed several public-housing projects, and received contracts to build and manage the replacement low-income housing.[44] The company was appointed to oversee the desegregation of the projects in 1987[45]— "desegregation" being a codeword for dispersal, e.g., urban renewal, i.e., Negro removal.
By 1993, with subsidies from the Clinton Administration's HOPE VI program, the public housing units began to be destroyed. And by 2000 he'd put in place something called The Plan for Transformation. It targeted tens of thousands of remaining units. With this proviso: That African Americans had to get 50 percent of the action—white developers had to have black partners; there had to be black contractors. And Daley chose African Americans—as his top administrators and planners for the clearances, demolition and re-settlement. African Americans were prominent in developing and rehabbing the new housing for the refugees from the demolished projects—who were re-settled in communities to the south like Englewood, Roseland and Harvey. Altogether the Plan for Transformation involved the largest demolition of public housing in American history, affecting about 45,000 people—in neighborhoods where eight of the 20 poorest census tracts in the United States were located.
But what does this all have to do with Obama? Just this: the area demolished included the communities that Obama represented as a state senator; and the top black administrators, developers and planners were people like Valerie Jarrett—who served as a member of the Chicago Planning Commission. And Martin Nesbitt who became head of the CHA. Nesbitt serves as Obama campaign finance treasurer; Jarrett as co-chair of the Transition Team. The other co-chair is William Daley, the Mayor's brother and the Midwest chair of JP Morgan Chase—an institution deeply involved in the transformation of inner-city neighborhoods through its support for—what financial institutions call "neighborhood revitalization" and neighborhood activists call gentrification.[46]
The destruction of the projects did indeed distribute the misery, as intended, flinging far and wide the drug-dealing gangs, who had focused their activities within certain projects. The Mickey Cobras (named, yes, for the slain Mickey Cogwell) and the Gangster Disciples used to share the Robert Taylor Homes, for instance. These reforms threw the gangs into disarray, giving Guzman the opening he needed to establish wholesale monopoly over Chicago narcotics wholesaling, blasting his route clear from Juarez/El Paso straight up through the Midwest to Chicago.[47] Having done so, he increased the prices. Which means that the gangs are forced to fight one another for territory, because the price is taking more of their profit margin, and the gangs can buy from no one else. The level of violence is not as bad as during the crack epidemic, but it is more concentrated geographically.[48] The austerity politics of Clinton/Obama-style Democrat Rahm Emanuel concentrate the violence further by closing schools, thereby forcing students from rival territories to walk through foreign gang territories.[49]
This peacetime activity is the real war on the poor. And it's not the poor prosecuting it. Far from being Mad Max–style wild warriors, gangs form truces during riots for the same reason the state sends the National Guard: To defend themselves and protect their situation, and to reimpose normal everyday competition and exploitation. Whether the competition is that of atomized workaday folks against "illegal" immigrants or blacks or foreigners "taking jobs" and other social resources, or that of armed competitors in the drug trade, this is the social peace from which riots break, and which they seek, noisily, destructively, yet non-discursively, to abolish.
- [1]I know that's not what he said. It's the name of a 1975 War album, which I thought more thematic!↩
- [2]Michael Morris, "Concerned Local Blasts Violent Protesters in Baltimore: 'This Is Not How You Stage a Protest,' " CNS News, April 28, 2015.↩
- [3]That's not entirely true. Watch some of the YouTube videos from Ferguson. But you will note that these are expressions of anger and hostility, and not about the riot per se, which proceeds as a fact.↩
- [4]Ron Nixon, "Rival Gang Members Unite," New York Times, April 28, 2015.↩
- [5]Charisse Jones, "Farrakhan to Speak to 900 Gang Leaders to 'Stop the Killing,' " LA Times, October 6, 1989.↩
- [6]Frank Stoltze, "Forget the LA Riots—historic 1992 Watts gang truce was the big news," KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, April 28, 2012.↩
- [7]After the riots, Von's supermarkets, for instance, promised and failed to build twelve new grocery stores in South Central. See Josh Sides, "20 Years Later: Legacies of the Los Angeles Riots," Places Journal, April 2012.↩
- [8]Paul Lieberman, "51 percent of Riot Arrests Were Latino, Study Says: Unrest: RAND analysis of court cases finds they were mostly young men. The figures are open to many interpretations, experts note," LA Times, June 18, 1992.↩
- [9]" 'It was rich versus poor,' Brown [a white man] says. 'They came right up La Brea, and every race was looting. It was poor people, poor people who needed things, taking furniture and electronics. It started out about police brutality, and then it turned into a free-for-all,' " quoted in Ted Soqui, LA Riots, an LA Weekly microsite.↩
- [10]The ratio is about 60:40 Latino to black: see Josh Sides, Places Journal.↩
- [11]Varun Soni, "The Los Angeles Riots 20 Years Later: An Interview with the Rev. Dr. Cecil 'Chip' Murray Of F.A.M.E.," Huffington Post, April 16, 2012.↩
- [12]James Gerstenzang and Art Pine, "Panel Adds $1.45 Billion for Urban Aid: Riots: Senators give bipartisan support to more funds for social programs nationwide. They also back disaster assistance for Los Angeles," LA Times, May 20, 1992.↩
- [13]Newt Gingrich as quoted in "Emergency Aid for Cities Tops $1 Billion," CQ Almanac, 1992.↩
- [14]Art Pine, "Senate takes up $1.4 billion urban aid bill that Bush calls 'not acceptable,' " Baltimore Sun, May 21, 1992.↩
- [15]William J. Eaton, "House Readies Compromise $1-Billion Urban Aid Bill: Congress: Bush is expected to sign the measure assisting L.A. riot victims, creating 360,000 summer jobs for youth," LA Times, June 18, 1992. The title of this article implied that there would be 360,000 summer jobs in Los Angeles, which was not true.↩
- [16]CQ Almanac, 1992.↩
- [17]Jim McGee, "Kemp Rejects the Idea of LA Airport Sale," Washington Post, May 25, 1992.↩
- [18]Somini Sengupta, "$3-Million Grant to Help Authorities in Gang Crackdown: Crime: Funds will go to multi-agency task force and LAPD. Critics say government should emphasize education and jobs instead of law enforcement," LA Times, October 10, 1992.↩
- [19]Art Pine, "Bush to Veto Urban Aid, Tax Bill, White House Says," LA Times, October 24, 1992.↩
- [20]"Bush Vetoes Year's Second Tax Bill," CQ Almanac, 1992.↩
- [21]Carla Rivera, "$100-Million Riot Recovery Aid Studied: Rebuilding: HUD Secretary Cisneros says L.A. could become Clinton Administration's testing ground for many of its urban programs. City might be largest of 10 'empowerment zones,' " LA Times, May 27, 1993.↩
- [22]Ronald Brownstein and John Schwada, "Clinton Seeks Larger Aid Program to Include L.A.: Grants: City is left off list of 'empowerment zone' recipients. Valley had requested $700,000 for six projects," LA Times, December 21, 1994.↩
- [23]"Clinton… $3.5 Billion for Empowerment Zones," Time, December 21, 1994.↩
- [24]Catherine Green, "L.A. Riots: Rev. Cecil Murray Sees Progress In Inclusive Society," Neon Tommy, Annenberg Ditigal News, April 24, 2012.↩
- [25]Sureños means "southern," and the southern means Southern California. It's an umbrella term, and is applied to and claimed by all the gangs that are now affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, many of which had their origin back with the Mexican Mafia in the California prison system in the 1960s and 1970s. The 13 is for the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, "M," for Mafia, e.g., the Mexican Mafia.↩
- [26]"Eme" is shorthand for the Mexican Mafia.↩
- [27]Sam Quinones and H.G. Reza, "O.C. Mob Suspect Seen as a Pioneer: The Mexican Mafia defendant allegedly prompted prison group to move to the streets," LA Times, June 20, 2005.↩
- [28]Brentin Mock, "Ethnic Cleansing in L.A.: Acting on orders from the Mexican Mafia, Latino gang members in Southern California are terrorizing and killing blacks," from a Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, Alternet, January 19, 2007. Yes, the SPLC is alarmist, but facts are facts.↩
- [29]James Alan McPherson, "Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, Part 1," Atlantic, May 1969.↩
- [30]"Congress Investigates Civil Disorders, Gangs," CQ Almanac, 1968.↩
- [31]"A leader of the Four Corner Rangers, whose members described themselves as a 'brotherhood' of the Blackstone Rangers, was credited by police with breaking up a potentially dangerous crowd that pressed toward Langley avenue from an easterly direction in 43d street last night," from "South Side Crowd Stones Police as Protest Rally Sets Off Uproar," Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1967.↩
- [32]CQ Almanac, 1968.↩
- [33]McPherson, Part 1, Atlantic, May 1969.↩
- [34]McPherson, "Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, Part 2," Atlantic, June 1969.↩
- [35]It's not clear what happened, and while most people believe Fort had Cogwell killed, some think that Chicago mafia killed him to squash his union organizing.↩
- [36]Maurice Possley and Ray Gibson, "Noah Robinson Enigma Grows," Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1988.↩
- [37]Matt O'Connor, "Noah Robinson Is Found Guilty Again in Retrial," Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1996.↩
- [38]The Youtube video of this Savior's Day address, "Power, At Last… Forever!" has been edited so that it begins with Farrakhan's speech, and not the preliminary addresses by Algeria's Ahmed Ben Bella, Ghana's Jerry Rawlings, and Libya's Qadaffi. However, if you fast-forward to around 4:08, you can see Qadaffi on a TV monitor. See Natalie Y. Moore and Lance Williams, The Almighty Black P Stone Nation (2011), p. 156.↩
- [39]Louis Farrakhan, "The Nation of Islam Welcomes Muammar Gadhafi," Final Call, September 29, 2009.↩
- [40]Natalie Moore, "Muammar Qaddafi's Chicago Connection," The Root, March 16, 2011.↩
- [41]NPR interview with John Lippert, the author of the definitive investigative piece about Chicago and the Sinaloa cartel, on February 14, 2014.↩
- [42]Housing and Urban Development.↩
- [43]"Tenants receive relocation assistance and a portable Section 8 voucher to subsidize their rent in the private market while their public housing developments are demolished—entirely or in part—and reconstructed as mixed-income housing complexes in an attempt to deconcentrate pockets of intense poverty," James Tracy, "Hope VI Mixed-Income Housing Projects Displace Poor People," Race, Poverty, and the Environment, "Who Owns Our Cities?" Spring 2008.↩
- [44]Please, please, please see the rest of this article "The Change They Believe In" by the late Bob Fitch on Obama's real-estate cronies. It was transcribed for Chairman Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party newspaper, Revolution, from a speech Fitch delivered to the Harlem Tenant's Association on November 14, 2008.↩
- [45]Andre F. Shashaty, "Valerie Jarrett's Struggle: Chicago developer fights a familiar battle to realize her grandfather's dream," Affordable Housing Finance, November 1, 2008.↩
- [46]Fitch, "The Change They Believe In."↩
- [47]John Lippert, Nacha Cattan, and Mario Parker, "Heroin Pushed on Chicago by Cartel Fueling Gang Murders," Bloomberg Business, September 16, 2013. This is the definitive article on Chicago and the cartel.↩
- [48]William J. Bratton, "The Real Story of Chicago's Bloody Summer: The city has seen nearly 300 killings this year, but over two decades its rate of violent crime has dropped 50 percent," Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2012.↩
- [49]Lippert et al., "Heroin Pushed on Chicago by Cartel Fueling Gang Murders."↩


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Anthony Marra is the author of A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena.
Ditie, the narrator of Bohumil Hrabal's transcendent novel, I Served the King of England, is described in the jacket copy as "a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel." I first crossed paths with him when I, myself, was working as a night porter in a deluxe Edinburgh hotel.
It was the kind of place you'd stay at if you came to Scotland to, say, buy a castle. I carried a guitar for The Strokes, fetched golf clubs for Ron Howard, and once found myself in the suite of a half-dressed, tumescent millionaire who needed help renting adult films on the hotel television. But from two to four in the morning, I escaped into Hrabal's gorgeous and dizzying fiction. I Served the King of England is a strange, beguiling, at times trying novel that is unlike anything I've ever read.
Flipping through the book, you'll find little white space. Paragraph breaks occur so infrequently you might mistake them for typographical errors. But fear not, dear reader! Hrabal's prose appears to possess black-hole densities, but if you allow yourself to be sucked in, you'll enter a story so ethereal you'll practically float.
Trying to summarize Served's plot is a bit like trying to stuff a sleeping bag into a coin purse. It spans decades, beginning in the interwar adolescence of its Czech narrator, a scampish hotel waiter perpetually short on the money, prestige, and vertical height he desperately wants.
In the opening pages, it becomes clear that Ditie's world is angled away from our own by a few degrees of whimsy. Here, salami scale salesmen are the personification of material power. Tailors make suits based on balloon replicas of their clients's torsos, and then release the balloon torsos to join on the ceiling the multitude of their headless brethren. Poets measures print runs by the length of road their books could pave.
Ditie is hapless in all the right ways, naive, sincere, and a consummate raconteur. If readerly sympathy is born from the marriage of a character's vulnerabilities and desires, than Ditie just might be the most sympathetic narrator you'll ever meet. Hrabal nails the upstairs-downstairs dynamic found at high-end hotels, where some trace of a celebrated guest's renown rubs off on the waiters, or porters, who serve him. Ditie doesn't serve the king of England, but he does serve the Emperor of Ethiopia, for which he receives a blue sash and an experience that comes to define him.
However, halfway through the novel, the major catastrophes of the mid-century loom on the Central European horizon. Ditie falls in love with a German gym teacher who hails from a town in the recently annexed Sudetenland. A fool in love, and a fool in general, he becomes a willing collaborator when the Germans occupy Czechoslovakia.
Despite having blond hair and blue eyes, he is required to undergo fertility tests to ensure that his genetic material is pure enough to inseminate a Teutonic womb. As he stands with his pants around his ankles in the office of a German eugenicist, Ditie finds himself unable to, well, cooperate because he can only summon the image of his executed countrymen.
When he is finally cleared to have sex with his wife, she plays Wagner operas for mood music. The child conceived to the trumpets of Valhalla is born with cognitive impairments and becomes obsessed with hammering nails, turning the wooden floors of Ditie's home into studded metal sheets in a bizarre prophesy of the Allied bombs that will soon destroy the home entirely.
The fate of Ditie's wife and child are the dark star around which the major pieces in the second half of the novel — a suitcase of invaluable stamps stolen from Polish Jews, a hotel ownership that fulfills all of Ditie's ambitions, the communist takeover, and Ditie's ceaseless search for atonement — orbit, and eventually, irrevocably converge.
If that sounds dire, let me say that I Served the King of England is more magical than harrowing. It may not be for everyone — but it is a novel that proves true the words proffered to Ditie by a sagacious salami scale salesman: "Just remember, my boy, if life works out just a tiny bit in your favor it can be beautiful, just beautiful."
For a few hours in an Edinburgh hotel, after I polished leather shoes and luggage carts, I could always count on this novel to work out in my favor, beautifully.
You Must Read This is produced and edited by the team at NPR Books.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

subset: commoncrawl


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Green Economy Assessment Report - Kenya
Posted on April, 23 2014
This study is the result of national stakeholder consultations held in February 2012 and September 2012, as well as regional stakeholder consultations held in April 2012 for communities in the coastal region, with funding from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Kenya has one of the most dynamic economies in Africa, yet it is facing a number of pressing economic, environmental and social challenges. From climate change and natural resource depletion to high poverty rates and rising unemployment, the country is addressing these concerns through its commitment to a low-carbon and resource-efficient development pathway.In recent years, Kenya has adopted several green economy-related approaches and policies, which include implementing renewable energy feed-in tariffs in 2008, embedding sustainable natural resource utilization into its 2010 Constitution and mainstreaming green economy in its Second Medium Term Plan (2013-2017).
Kenya is already moving towards a green economy. However, there is still untapped potential to pursue a development pathway that will create green jobs, accelerate poverty reduction, support sustainable growth and restore environmental health and quality. With targeted policy interventions and financing, the country can continue to generate new opportunities from this transition.
In this context, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, in partnership with UNEP, commissioned a study to assess the economic benefits and challenges of investing in priority economic sectors in support of Kenya's transition to a green economy. Conducted in collaboration with the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) and the Millennium Institute, the study examines investments under "business-as-usual" (BAU) compared to green economy scenarios in four key sectors that are critical for the country's green growth, namely: agriculture, energy, manufacturing and transport.
The results of this assessment will contribute not only to the realization of Kenya's Vision 2030, but also to the ongoing debate on how the transition to a green economy can serve as an enabler of sustainable development, poverty alleviation and green job creation.
This study is the result of national stakeholder consultations held in February 2012 and September 2012, as well as regional stakeholder consultations held in April 2012 for communities in the coastal region, with funding from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
UNEP. (2014). Green Economy Assessment Report – Kenya


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How to Invest in Gold
Welcome to HowtoBuyGold.com - the Internet's leading guide to buying both physical and "paper" gold investments. Feel free to browse around our website to learn about various types of gold investments, as well as where you can buy physical gold offline or online. If you would like to purchase gold online now, visit JMBullion.com who offers gold bullion coins and bars at low prices over spot.


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In the wake of Amazon's acquisition of Goodreads, we've had some blow-back on the fact that LibraryThing charges for a membership to add more than 200 books. In fact, when you go to pay, it's pay-what-you-want. The money helps pay for the site, and keeps us advertisement-free for members. Also, we believe customers should be customers, with the loyalty and rights of customers, not the thing we sell to our real customers.
However, some people don't like it. And we want everyone. So, as a test and a welcome, we're giving out free year's accounts to everyone who signs up through the end of Sunday. We've also upgraded everyone who signed up since 4pm yesterday.
Here's what the profile comment looks like. You should get it pretty quickly:
Photo by flickr member chamisa flower.


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Leaf Charm | Pebble Charm
Hand stamped, then oxidized and polished to a brilliant shine, this listing is for one pewter pendant with our leaf design. Each pebble is beautifully unique, measuring approximately 3/8" with a soft, organic shape, and some subtle surface variations.
Please note: This does not include a chain and is for the charm only.
Your charm will come in our signature gift box.
Personalization details, birthstones and special instructions can be added in the box provided in your shopping cart.


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U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration https://www.onetonline.org 9m 2,374 #insights
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Sample of reported job titles:
City Clerk, City Recorder, City Secretary, Clerk, Deputy City Clerk, Deputy Clerk, Municipal Clerk, Recorder, Town Clerk, Township Clerk
- Record and edit the minutes of meetings and distribute to appropriate officials or staff members.
- Issue public notification of all official activities or meetings.
- Record and maintain all vital and fiscal records and accounts.
- Prepare meeting agendas or packets of related information.
- Prepare ordinances, resolutions, or proclamations so that they can be executed, recorded, archived, or distributed.
- Maintain and update documents, such as municipal codes or city charters.
- Plan and direct the maintenance, filing, safekeeping, and computerization of all municipal documents.
- Perform budgeting duties, such as assisting in budget preparation, expenditure review, or budget administration.
- Perform general office duties, such as taking or transcribing dictation, typing or proofreading correspondence, distributing or filing official forms, or scheduling appointments.
- Respond to requests for information from the public, other municipalities, state officials, or state and federal legislative offices.
- Coordinate or maintain office tracking systems for correspondence or follow-up actions.
- Issue various permits and licenses, such as marriage, fishing, hunting, or dog licenses, and collect appropriate fees.
- Research information in the municipal archives upon request of public officials or private citizens.
- Perform contract administration duties, assisting with bid openings or the awarding of contracts.
- Collaborate with other staff to assist in the development and implementation of goals, objectives, policies, or priorities.
- Participate in the administration of municipal elections, such as preparation or distribution of ballots, appointment or training of election officers, or tabulation or certification of results.
- Provide assistance to persons with disabilities in reaching less accessible areas of municipal facilities.
- Process claims against the municipality, maintaining files and log of claims, and coordinate claim response and handling with municipal claims administrators.
- Develop or conduct orientation programs for candidates for political office.
- Serve as a notary of the public.
- Provide assistance with events, such as police department auctions of abandoned automobiles.
- Prepare reports on civic needs.
Technology Skills
- Clerical — Knowledge of administrative and clerical procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and other office procedures and terminology.
- English Language — Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
- Customer and Personal Service — Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- Law and Government — Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
- Administration and Management — Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
- Economics and Accounting — Knowledge of economic and accounting principles and practices, the financial markets, banking and the analysis and reporting of financial data.
- Mathematics — Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
- Personnel and Human Resources — Knowledge of principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.
- Public Safety and Security — Knowledge of relevant equipment, policies, procedures, and strategies to promote effective local, state, or national security operations for the protection of people, data, property, and institutions.
- Computers and Electronics — Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
- Reading Comprehension — Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
- Active Listening — Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
- Speaking — Talking to others to convey information effectively.
- Writing — Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.
- Coordination — Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions.
- Critical Thinking — Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
- Active Learning — Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
- Judgment and Decision Making — Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
- Monitoring — Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
- Social Perceptiveness — Being aware of others' reactions and understanding why they react as they do.
- Oral Comprehension — The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Oral Expression — The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Written Comprehension — The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Written Expression — The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Near Vision — The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Speech Recognition — The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Speech Clarity — The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Deductive Reasoning — The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Information Ordering — The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Inductive Reasoning — The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
Work Activities
- Interacting With Computers — Using computers and computer systems (including hardware and software) to program, write software, set up functions, enter data, or process information.
- Getting Information — Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
- Performing for or Working Directly with the Public — Performing for people or dealing directly with the public. This includes serving customers in restaurants and stores, and receiving clients or guests.
- Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates — Providing information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates by telephone, in written form, e-mail, or in person.
- Performing Administrative Activities — Performing day-to-day administrative tasks such as maintaining information files and processing paperwork.
- Documenting/Recording Information — Entering, transcribing, recording, storing, or maintaining information in written or electronic/magnetic form.
- Processing Information — Compiling, coding, categorizing, calculating, tabulating, auditing, or verifying information or data.
- Communicating with Persons Outside Organization — Communicating with people outside the organization, representing the organization to customers, the public, government, and other external sources. This information can be exchanged in person, in writing, or by telephone or e-mail.
- Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards — Using relevant information and individual judgment to determine whether events or processes comply with laws, regulations, or standards.
- Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships — Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others, and maintaining them over time.
- Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge — Keeping up-to-date technically and applying new knowledge to your job.
- Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events — Identifying information by categorizing, estimating, recognizing differences or similarities, and detecting changes in circumstances or events.
- Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work — Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish your work.
- Analyzing Data or Information — Identifying the underlying principles, reasons, or facts of information by breaking down information or data into separate parts.
- Making Decisions and Solving Problems — Analyzing information and evaluating results to choose the best solution and solve problems.
- Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others — Handling complaints, settling disputes, and resolving grievances and conflicts, or otherwise negotiating with others.
- Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others — Getting members of a group to work together to accomplish tasks.
- Monitor Processes, Materials, or Surroundings — Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment, to detect or assess problems.
- Training and Teaching Others — Identifying the educational needs of others, developing formal educational or training programs or classes, and teaching or instructing others.
- Monitoring and Controlling Resources — Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.
Detailed Work Activities
- Distribute materials to employees or customers.
- Prepare documentation for contracts, transactions, or regulatory compliance.
- Record information from meetings or other formal proceedings.
- Maintain financial or account records.
- Prepare informational or reference materials.
- Coordinate operational activities.
- Prepare legal documents.
- Analyze financial information.
- Manage clerical or administrative activities.
- Issue documentation or identification to customers or employees.
- Proofread documents, records, or other files to ensure accuracy.
- Schedule appointments.
- Assist disabled or incapacitated individuals.
- Maintain operational records.
- Collect deposits, payments or fees.
- Search files, databases or reference materials to obtain needed information.
- Confer with coworkers to coordinate work activities.
- Prepare research or technical reports.
Find occupations related to multiple detailed work activities
Work Context
- Face-to-Face Discussions — 92% responded "Every day."
- Telephone — 84% responded "Every day."
- Contact With Others — 80% responded "Constant contact with others."
- Electronic Mail — 76% responded "Every day."
- Structured versus Unstructured Work — 62% responded "A lot of freedom."
- Letters and Memos — 51% responded "Once a week or more but not every day."
- Deal With External Customers — 46% responded "Extremely important."
- Importance of Being Exact or Accurate — 58% responded "Extremely important."
- Spend Time Sitting — 43% responded "Continually or almost continually."
- Work With Work Group or Team — 43% responded "Very important."
- Indoors, Environmentally Controlled — 75% responded "Every day."
- Importance of Repeating Same Tasks — 41% responded "Extremely important."
- Freedom to Make Decisions — 49% responded "Some freedom."
- Time Pressure — 37% responded "Once a month or more but not every week."
- Coordinate or Lead Others — 37% responded "Important."
- Deal With Unpleasant or Angry People — 42% responded "Once a month or more but not every week."
- Impact of Decisions on Co-workers or Company Results — 40% responded "Important results."
- Frequency of Conflict Situations — 48% responded "Once a month or more but not every week."
- Spend Time Making Repetitive Motions — 31% responded "More than half the time."
- Duration of Typical Work Week — 44% responded "40 hours."
- Spend Time Using Your Hands to Handle, Control, or Feel Objects, Tools, or Controls — 28% responded "Never."
- Frequency of Decision Making — 32% responded "Once a week or more but not every day."
Job Zone
Title | Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed |
Education | Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree. |
Related Experience | Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is required for these occupations. For example, an electrician must have completed three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training, and often must have passed a licensing exam, in order to perform the job. |
Job Training | Employees in these occupations usually need one or two years of training involving both on-the-job experience and informal training with experienced workers. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations. |
Job Zone Examples | These occupations usually involve using communication and organizational skills to coordinate, supervise, manage, or train others to accomplish goals. Examples include hydroelectric production managers, travel guides, electricians, agricultural technicians, barbers, court reporters, and medical assistants. |
SVP Range | (6.0 to < 7.0) |
Interest code: CE
Want to discover your interests? Take the O*NET Interest Profiler at My Next Move.
- Conventional — Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.
- Enterprising — Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
Work Styles
- Integrity — Job requires being honest and ethical.
- Attention to Detail — Job requires being careful about detail and thorough in completing work tasks.
- Dependability — Job requires being reliable, responsible, and dependable, and fulfilling obligations.
- Cooperation — Job requires being pleasant with others on the job and displaying a good-natured, cooperative attitude.
- Initiative — Job requires a willingness to take on responsibilities and challenges.
- Independence — Job requires developing one's own ways of doing things, guiding oneself with little or no supervision, and depending on oneself to get things done.
- Achievement/Effort — Job requires establishing and maintaining personally challenging achievement goals and exerting effort toward mastering tasks.
- Self Control — Job requires maintaining composure, keeping emotions in check, controlling anger, and avoiding aggressive behavior, even in very difficult situations.
- Concern for Others — Job requires being sensitive to others' needs and feelings and being understanding and helpful on the job.
- Stress Tolerance — Job requires accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high stress situations.
- Adaptability/Flexibility — Job requires being open to change (positive or negative) and to considerable variety in the workplace.
- Leadership — Job requires a willingness to lead, take charge, and offer opinions and direction.
- Persistence — Job requires persistence in the face of obstacles.
- Analytical Thinking — Job requires analyzing information and using logic to address work-related issues and problems.
- Innovation — Job requires creativity and alternative thinking to develop new ideas for and answers to work-related problems.
- Social Orientation — Job requires preferring to work with others rather than alone, and being personally connected with others on the job.
Work Values
- Relationships — Occupations that satisfy this work value allow employees to provide service to others and work with co-workers in a friendly non-competitive environment. Corresponding needs are Co-workers, Moral Values and Social Service.
- Independence — Occupations that satisfy this work value allow employees to work on their own and make decisions. Corresponding needs are Creativity, Responsibility and Autonomy.
- Working Conditions — Occupations that satisfy this work value offer job security and good working conditions. Corresponding needs are Activity, Compensation, Independence, Security, Variety and Working Conditions.
Wages & Employment Trends
Median wages data collected from Court, Municipal, and License Clerks.
Employment data collected from Court, Municipal, and License Clerks.
Industry data collected from Court, Municipal, and License Clerks.
Median wages (2018) | $18.48 hourly, $38,450 annual |
State wages | |
Employment (2018) | 151,000 employees |
Projected growth (2018-2028) | Average (4% to 6%) |
Projected job openings (2018-2028) | 14,900 |
State trends | |
Top industries (2018) | Government |
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 wage data
and 2018-2028 employment projections
"Projected growth" represents the estimated change in total employment over the projections period (2018-2028). "Projected job openings" represent openings due to growth and replacement.
Sources of Additional Information
Sources are listed to provide additional information on related jobs, specialties, and/or industries.
Links to non-DOL Internet sites are provided for your convenience and do not constitute an endorsement.
Source: https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/43-4031.02


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An exceptionally large number of artifacts have been discovered in the wreck of a ship that went down in the Finnish archipelago sometime in the late 1200s or early 1300s.
The Engelskär wreck in Nauvo, as it's called, was first discovered in 1996 by marine biologists working in the area. This summer, the site is the most important field operation for archeologists from the National Board of Antiquities.
Over the past four weeks, divers have found an unusually large number of artifacts including many well-preserved ceramics, such as medieval beer mugs, rare in being nearly complete 800 year old specimens.
"For us researchers, these are unique and valuable. Archeological digs on land usually only turn up fragments. At sea, some of these are preserved well and whole," says team member Riikka Tevali. Earlier finds also include a bronze church bell.
Scientists say that their work will shed new light on the role of medieval maritime trade in the Baltic.
"We have some wrong pre-conceptions about maritime history. In the Middle Ages, the sea was the superhighway along which people and a lot of goods travelled," points out Research Director Stefan Wessman.
Luckily for scientists the wreck was untouched even though it lies under only 10 meters of water. It is expected to keep archeologists busy for many more years.
The archaeological finds in the wreck in Nauvo have a lot to offer to the medieval research also for the reason that medieval archive information about e.g. cargoes is very scattered and nearly non-existent. When it comes to the Baltic countries, there are very few archive notes from the times before the middle of the 14th century. For example, the oldest Hanseatic customs lists and other catalogues that would tell us about sea trade are from the end of the 14th century.
What is also noteworthy in the wreck in Nauvo is the fact that many of the dishes in the cargo are either unbroken or in big pieces. Dishes found on dry land are usually thrown away intentionally and they are thus in very many small pieces, which have then grinded in the ground in the course of time. Because archaeological finds preserve very well in the Baltic Sea, the ceramics and other artefacts in the wreck in Nauvo are unique research material for those who study the Middle Ages in Finland and in all Europe.
Click here to go to website for the National Board of Antiquities' section on the Medieval site in Nauvo.


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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Google Maps for the iPhone
The poor old iPhone has been feeling a bit neglected this week with the launch of the gPhone (see Top 10 Location Aware Android Applications). Luckily Alistair James has come to the iPhone's rescue with a proof of concept 'lite' version of the javascript maps API for the iPhone. You can have a look at the basic test version of the map here.
The map can be dragged with the finger and zoomed with the double finger pinch action! You can read more about Alistair concept's on his blog One Wheeled Bicycle.
Google Maps for Mobile
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Welcome to Central European Ltd. web site!
At Central European Trading Ltd. we have assembled a team of specialist and support personnel with more than 10 years experience, dedicated to providing solutions to our growing customer base. If you have any questions about the products and services we distribute, you want to request an offer, please do not hesitate to contact us!
Central European Ltd


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Eco-friendly alternative to plastic packaging wins the Green Alley Award 2017
Sulapac from Finland wins circular economy prize
Finnish start-up Sulapac is the winner of the 2017 Green Alley Award, Europe's first founder's prize for start-ups in the circular economy.
With their packaging solution made of wood and natural adhesives, the two Finnish natives Suvi Haimi and Laura Kyllönen offer a stylish, but eco-friendly alternative to plastic packaging. In total, six finalists from Germany, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France presented themselves in live pitches to an international jury and audience.
"The decision was not an easy one, but we agreed on Sulapac in the end because of its huge impact on one of the biggest problems of our times – plastic waste. Sulapac has developed a high-quality material that meets the diverse challenges of today's market. Just one year old, the start-up demonstrates how an idea can be successfully implemented and accelerated in a very short time. In Finland, for example, the cosmetics line Niki Newd is already using jars by Sulapac for its products. We see great potential in this packaging solution and look forward to seeing Sulapac on the shelves of local drugstores." explains Jan Patrick Schulz, CEO of Landbell Group.
Other finalists included Mimergy and its technology to reduce waste of tyres worldwide, Solmove and its solar streets, Newcy and its reusable cup system, Sulfotools and its green alternative for peptide production and Sustonable and their composite stone for kitchens and bathrooms. Before the final pitch, all finalists attended workshops with experts from the waste industry and start-up world, where they discussed the potentials, risks, strengths, and weaknesses of the start-ups. The prize for the winner, Sulapac, consists of cash and non-cash items valued at 30,000 euros.
Since 2014, the Landbell Group has been honouring ideas relating to waste and resource management with the annual Green Alley Award. The award partners are as follows: crowdfunding platform Seedmatch, London accelerator programme Bethnal Green Ventures, ERP Finland, and the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project, R2Pi.
The fourth Green Alley Award received a total of more than 200 applications from over 40 countries.
Further information about the Green Alley Award and all finalists, along with images for download, can be found at the Green Alley website (see Related Links below).
About the Green Alley Award
The Green Alley Award is given annually to European founders and start-ups from the circular economy. The award is organised by the Landbell Group with the support of a network of international partners from the circular economy and European start-up scene. Germany's crowdfunding pioneer Seedmatch has been involved from the start in 2014; other partners include Bethnal Green Ventures, the British accelerator program for tech-oriented start-ups in the environmental and social sectors, and R2Pi, a Horizon 2020 project and a Landbell Group company.


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Hi Knitters!
Here is my Halloween costume for 2006! I really went all out with my disquise.
Yesterday I had an interview with Jennifer of Craftsanity. I am going to be on an upcoming podcast. It was very fun talking with her. When I was on tour for Itty-Bitty in Grand Rapids, Michigan she came to my event. We had lunch the next day and had a good time chatting about knitting and crafting. For the interview we talked for almost 2 hours, but it went so fast that I didn't even realize it was that long until I glanced at the clock at the end. That is a good sign, I hope!
On Thursday, November 2nd I am giving a talk and having a book signing event at The Knitting Tree here in Madison from 6:30-8:30pm. I hope to see lots of Madison knitters there. It is on Monroe Street and the new owner Jackie Shanahan is just wonderful. I am going to sneak down to take some pictures of the cute window display we set up last week to show the hats from the book. I will post that later.
All is well on this chilly, but sunny Halloween day. My kids are so excited to trick or treat tonight. Our neighborhood really does it up big, so it is extra fun! My sweet Noro skinny rib will keep me toasty I am sure.
best, susie


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The MIX is a general-purpose model for scratch and back-cueing
• Provides great performance and durability. It has a good quality spherical stylus, a solid cantilever, and serves general purposes well.
• It offers both reasonable output, high sound quality and a good tracking ability for virtually any style of music.
• With transparent sound across the spectrum and excellent handling ability, the MIX represents one of the longest running values in DJ cartridges.
Excellent price-to-performance ratio.
Technical Data:
Stylus Type: Spherical
Tracking Force: 3.0 g
Frequency Range: 20–20.000 Hz
Output Voltage: 6 mV


text:
Contact us on 01179 354900
Our range of marker refill tapes are suitable for use our CA0-9 dispenser.
The self adhesive markers are suitable for identification of cables regardless of diameter.
Once inserted into the dispenser, just pull out to the required length and use the built in blade to cut the marker tape to length.
Letter: X
Marks per roll: 600 (approx)
Colour: Black text on White tape.


text:
domenica 26 febbraio 2017
Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
i manage it-
a sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
a paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do i terrify? -
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And i a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat i have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, i am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened i was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time i meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Is an art, like everything else,
i do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say i've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'a miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart-
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
i am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think i underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash -
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-
a cake of soap,
a wedding ring,
a gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Out of the ash
i rise with my red hair
And i eat men like air.
- Sylvia Plathda PensieriParole <http://www.pensieriparole.it/poesie/poesie-d-autore/poesia-79087?f=a:3701>
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"Bara e alcova vi offrono, come buone sorelle, piaceri terribili e paurose dolcezze." - Charles Pierre Baudelaire


text:
Made of grains of resins and other materials that burn with a fragrant odour, even nowadays incense is widely used as an oblation and in religious ceremonies.
Image source:
https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/aed7cacb-34ae-4e85-b92a-d064478c7ca7 by simonallardice
Composition and Burning Methods
Different cultures manufactured incense in a variety of materials, depending on locally available ingredients. Incense must be distinguished in two burning methods: indirect-burning, which does not contain combustible material, therefore it requires a separate heat source; direct-burning incense, lit directly by a flame which burns the rest of the incense without additional applications. The base sustains the burning of the material, and it can be done in charcoal or wood powder, combined with fragrant materials, or alternatively in botanical material or resins (such as Gum Arabic) mixed with natural fragrances.
Image source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IncenseWikiVers.jpg Author: Sjschen
Sacred and Profane Usage
Thanks to its versatility, incense has been used on different occasions, both sacred and profane. The fragrance can be of such great strength that obscures other less desirable odors and this explains the usage of incense in funerary ceremonies. Anyway, people who appreciate the fragrance use this material for aesthetic reasons. Incense made from citronella can repel mosquitoes and other insects. This modern usage was actually discovered a long time ago by Zen Buddhists, in order to avoid the distraction during their meditative practices due to bothersome insects. Moreover, the regular burning of incense has been used sometimes for chronological measurement. Many people burn incense to appreciate its smell, without assigning any other specific significance to it. An example is the traditional Japanese art of appreciating incense, known as Kōdō, following established practices on how to prepare and enjoy this fragrance.
Image source:
https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/e7c928fe-488d-48f5-97df-3a4700987d19 by acameronhuff
Religious use of incense is prevalent in many cultures, from East to West, and may have roots in practical and aesthetic uses. One common, ancient motif is the usage as a form of oblation or ceremonial offer to a deity. Such use was common in Judaic religion and remains in use in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches, and also in Taoist and Buddhist cults. Sometimes it has been used as an aphrodisiac in some cultures: ancient Greek and Egyptians linked incense with sexual desires. Another worth mentioning use is related to alternative and folk medicines. Someone believes that incense is capable of cleansing and restoring energy in healing crystals, also eliminating negative energy.
Since the Dawn of Times
In ancient history, incense has been widely traded. Incense-bearing trees were imported from other African regions and the Middle East into ancient Egypt, where incense was prominent in religious and mortuary rites. The Babylonians used it while divining oracles, or as an offer for deities. Israelites were assigned to its miraculous powers, setting altars with incense. We do know that Hindus were in the habit of using incense for domestic and public rituals, and so do Buddhists, who burn it also at festivals and initiations. In China, incense was burned to honor ancestors and household gods, and in Japan, it was incorporated into the Shintō ritual.
Image source:
Ancient Greeks used to burn woods and resins as an oblation and for protection against evil, but the use of incense was not that common. In Rome, imported incense became important, especially in sacrifices and in the public cult of the emperor. Lastly, even the early Christian church began to use incense around the 4th century AD during the eucharistic ceremonial, and its usage has come to this day.
Info source:


text:
Leveled Books • Guided Reading Books • Books for Kids
Check out our leveled book sets selected according to various leveled reading programs. Purchase from LeveledReader.com to enhance your child's reading program and Grow Independent Readers®.
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Simrishamn is a sleepy fishing town in a decaying region off the coast of the Baltic Sea. EcoLogicStudio's master plan to redesign the area with algae farms, research labs and activity spaces aims to reinvigorate the town's economy by involving local farmers, builders, and fishermen in the plans. With a number of interactive sites including a spa and a museum, the studio hopes to inject wealth and even tourism back to the coast.
EcoLogicStudio plans to incorporate the harvesting and use of algae in a number of areas around the town. "Crane Greenhouses" that resemble upside-down trees are planned for unused ports around the coast. Canopies of ETFE pedals will hold small bags that act as tiny greenhouses for algae production.
Algae will also be grown specifically for food and oil in "Migro Towers" near other lakes and bodies of water. The towers double as relaxing social areas for tourists on hikes and safe nesting areas for birds. Old barns around the region are imagined to become state of the art algae farming facilities while the natural springs will serve as water filtering gardens that will not only monitor water pollution but even offer spa treatments. Visitors can navigate through algae sites by a connected bike path that doubles as a cross-country ski course in the winter months.
Not only is the Algae Farm plan meant to boost the economy of Simrishamn, but it will also put the town on the map as a one of a kind research destination. A floating farm attached to the new Marine Science Museum will be an above an underwater interactive real-time research center for marine life and ecology.
A map of EcoLogicStudio's design is currently on view at the Simrishamn Marine Center complete with a small, hands-on exhibition of some of the technology involved. An interactive hanging garden contains 7 of the most common algae species in the region and can be cultivated by visitors blowing Co2 into photo-bioreactor bags. LED lights sense the interaction and light up and record it for further research. The exhibition is an example of the participatory nature of Simrishamn's new algae industry and how easy it is to get involved.
+ EcoLogicStudio
Via domusweb