Shocking: Pittsburgh Neighborhoods Revealed: How I Left Them – PublicSource

Finding Common Ground

As the author of this piece, I’ve always felt Pittsburgh punches above its weight class. It’s more of a big town than a small city — about the same population as Gilbert, Arizona. But Pittsburgh has story, grit, and an absurd visual landscape. It can be a tough place to live, which brings an authenticity to the people. Nobody moves to Pittsburgh to “make it big” or ski 100 days of the year. Pittsburgh folk are, for the most part, grounded. Normal. Crusty. Hard working.

The city’s unique character is deeply ingrained in its neighborhoods, each with its own distinct flavor and history. For me, capturing these neighborhoods became the foundation of my little film career. I produced 21 episodes of my “Neighborhoods” web series, which has become a cornerstone of my work. The series has opened doors to numerous opportunities, but leaving Pittsburgh feels bittersweet. As the saying goes, “Sometimes you need to shoot yourself in the foot to make better YouTube videos,” … or something like that. I’m still too close to my time in Pittsburgh to have a clear perspective of what the past decade has meant to me, but this video is my first attempt at looking back. This video was made in collaboration with Unionjournalism.

The Importance of Understanding and Embracing Diversity

I might have been half joking when I told my family I wanted a genetic-spit test instead of a cake to celebrate my 46th birthday. But what better way to face a midlife crisis than to discover new mysteries lurking inside my DNA? Genetic introspection may be a key for us all, as a society, to come to terms with what we really are. I come from a city on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, and it was a winding journey that took me to my home now in Squirrel Hill. As a child, I would listen at bedtime to my French great-grandmother’s stories about World War I. She was a Red Cross nurse traveling with the French army; she fell in love with a Turkish soldier in the French-occupied territories of what was then the Ottoman Empire. She never returned to her home in France. My great-grandmother was whimsical, opinionated and just different from any grandmother I knew of. I inherited her weak spot for French macarons but wondered what else she might have left me.

With the privacy of a home-genetic testing kit, I decided to find out. My family obliged. My spit test came back. The results? Well, my reality was hardly shattered. I am 48 percent of what I was expecting, and the 10 percent Southern European suggests that my great-grandmother did come from Toulouse after all. On the afternoon of the shootings, raw with all kinds of emotions as I tried to come to terms with what just happened in our backyard, in our neighborhood, in our city, in our country, in our world, my genetic report gained a very different meaning. I looked at it again and cried. There at the very bottom of the listing of all the other things I am, it said I was also 1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. All I can think of since the attack is that if somehow we could make everyone spit in a paper cup, if we all discovered that none of us is one of anything, but are made out of all kinds of things, could we hate another person for being who we think they are? Müge Finkel, an assistant professor of international development at the University of Pittsburgh, asks, “What if that comfort and security is better found in our common diversity, hidden in a single spit at the bottom of a paper cup?”

The Potential for Genetic Testing to Bring People Together

I hear a lot about the ‘power of one’ these days. My students at the University of Pittsburgh are quick to note that the one Muslim roommate they had in college made them less fearful at airport security waiting behind a veiled woman. They speak of the fun they had at their first gay wedding, and it seems to them bananas that same-sex marriage became legal only in June 2015. One transgender person looking you in the eye is worth a hundred TED lectures earnestly explaining why no one should deny anyone the security of a public bathroom. But what if we each already have the power of one we need to understand the other? What if the 0.1 percent Chinese in me was enough to shatter all the stereotyping I see? What if the 7.6 percent East European in me gave me the strength to challenge prejudices against Roma? What if the 14 percent Russian in me felt the guilt by association some of my Russian neighbors must have been feeling since the election?

The Role of the 1% Ashkenazi Jewish in the Author’s Identity

I calculate that I was having my second cup of coffee when the first shots were fired on Oct. 27. As I was hassling my son about his homework, the gunman was running up to the third floor. By the time I put down the cup, 11 people had died. It still feels surreal. I look at my genetic composition. The 1 percent Ashkenazi Jew, which was going to be the talk of the Thanksgiving table with my Jewish mother-in-law, now burns like a brand. When our son was in second grade, clearly in the middle of his first identity crisis, he proudly came up with the word “Jewslim” to mark his impartial love for his Jewish father and Muslim mother. He quickly followed up with a question: “If I’m half-Jewish, why do I never get to eat pork?”

As a child, I would listen at bedtime to my French great-grandmother’s stories about World War I. She was a Red Cross nurse traveling with the French army; she fell in love with a Turkish soldier in the French-occupied territories of what was then the Ottoman Empire. She never returned to her home in France. My great-grandmother was whimsical, opinionated and just different from any grandmother I knew of. I inherited her weak spot for French macarons but wondered what else she might have left me. With the privacy of a home-genetic testing kit, I decided to find out. My family obliged. My spit test came back. The results? Well, my reality was hardly shattered. I am 48 percent of what I was expecting, and the 10 percent Southern European suggests that my great-grandmother did come from Toulouse after all. On the afternoon of the shootings, raw with all kinds of emotions as I tried to come to terms with what just happened in our backyard, in our neighborhood, in our city, in our country, in our world, my genetic report gained a very different meaning. I looked at it again and cried. There at the very bottom of the listing of all the other things I am, it said I was also 1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. All I can think of since the attack is that if somehow we could make everyone spit in a paper cup, if we all discovered that none of us is one of anything, but are made out of all kinds of things, could we hate another person for being who we think they are? Müge Finkel, an assistant professor of international development at the University of Pittsburgh, asks: “What if that comfort and security is better found in our common diversity, hidden in a single spit at the bottom of a paper cup?”

The Struggle for Environmental Justice

The Reality of Air Pollution

Pittsburgh is cheap, but it stinks. Or so says Dennis Towne, whose recent Unionjournalism essay laments the city’s noxious pollution problem and urges tech workers to stay away. So bad is the smell, Towne observes, that he and a number of his colleagues are “transferring” elsewhere, even if it means they can no longer afford to walk to work. My reaction to Towne’s essay was equal parts recognition and outrage. As a fellow newcomer to Pittsburgh, I, too, have struggled with the region’s air pollution. I moved here in 2017 to join the History Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where I teach classes on the politics of pollution, among other things. What I’ve learned since then is that this problem affects others far more than it affects me: a white, cisgender, able-bodied, upper-middle-class professional with an obscene degree of unearned privilege. Everyone breathes polluted air, but the distribution of resulting harms tracks inversely to that of wealth and power.

But that’s not the story I want to tell. Over the past two years, I have met a small but remarkable cross-section of the advocates, activists and community organizers who carry on the Pittsburgh area’s long-running struggle for environmental justice. I cannot speak for any of them, but I do try to listen. Here I’d like to share what they’ve taught me.

The Disproportionate Impact of Pollution on Marginalized Communities

Pittsburgh’s history of industrial pollution is news to virtually no one. What we often forget is the decades-long, grassroots struggle for better regulation that has unfolded here. The Group Against Smog and Pollution [GASP] has been advocating for cleaner air since 1969. When I called her to discuss Towne’s essay, executive director Rachel Filippini reminded me that we know much more now than we did then about how air pollution affects our minds and bodies — asthma, cancer, dementia, behavioral problems, etc. It’s no wonder then that some families choose to leave. But who does so and why is a much more fraught question than accounts like Towne’s acknowledge. For most of the communities GASP works with, especially those in the Mon Valley, relocation is simply not a realistic or desirable choice. Marginalized communities that bear the greatest burdens of toxic exposure face multiple barriers to mobility, to say nothing of the relationships and memories that attach people to their homes.

Filippini told me she hopes that residents of all backgrounds will continue to speak at public meetings, organize their peers and hold policymakers accountable to their promises of sustainable, inclusive development. Citizens have a stronger voice today than they did in 1969, but that’s only because they have shown up to demand and express it. GASP was certainly not the first group to take up this issue. Steel workers, and Black coke oven workers in particular, have also won reforms with wider environmental and health benefits. And, of course, this history goes deeper than the mid-20th century. A range of civic associations, especially women’s groups, have organized around environmental inequality since at least the late-19th century, when Pittsburgh had one of the nation’s highest rates of death from waterborne typhoid fever.

The Importance of Addressing Environmental Inequality

These grassroots efforts have helped the region achieve significant improvements in its environmental quality over the past half-century. But their work is far from finished. Allegheny County’s air quality remains among the worst in the nation, corporations continue to use the rivers as an illegal dumping ground and heavy metals like lead persist in the housing, water and soil. As a result, organizations like the Breathe Project, Pittsburgh United, FracTracker, the Environmental Health Project and Rail Pollution Protection Pittsburgh have promoted innovative technologies that monitor and report pollution, including, for example, the Smell Pittsburgh project that Towne mentions in his essay. If pollution is one legacy of Pittsburgh’s industrial past, environmental justice is the future.

A History of Struggle

Pittsburgh’s history of industrial pollution is news to virtually no one. What we often forget is the decades-long, grassroots struggle for better regulation that has unfolded here. The Group Against Smog and Pollution [GASP] has been advocating for cleaner air since 1969. When I called her to discuss Towne’s essay, executive director Rachel Filippini reminded me that we know much more now than we did then about how air pollution affects our minds and bodies — asthma, cancer, dementia, behavioral problems, etc. It’s no wonder then that some families choose to leave. But who does so and why is a much more fraught question than accounts like Towne’s acknowledge. For most of the communities GASP works with, especially those in the Mon Valley, relocation is simply not a realistic or desirable choice. Marginalized communities that bear the greatest burdens of toxic exposure face multiple barriers to mobility, to say nothing of the relationships and memories that attach people to their homes.

The Work of Organizations like GASP and the Breathe Project

Filippini told me she hopes that residents of all backgrounds will continue to speak at public meetings, organize their peers and hold policymakers accountable to their promises of sustainable, inclusive development. Citizens have a stronger voice today than they did in 1969, but that’s only because they have shown up to demand and express it. GASP was certainly not the first group to take up this issue. Steel workers, and Black coke oven workers in particular, have also won reforms with wider environmental and health benefits. And, of course, this history goes deeper than the mid-20th century. A range of civic associations, especially women’s groups, have organized around environmental inequality since at least the late-19th century, when Pittsburgh had one of the nation’s highest rates of death from waterborne typhoid fever. These grassroots efforts have helped the region achieve significant improvements in its environmental quality over the past half-century. But their work is far from finished. Allegheny County’s air quality remains among