The Paw Print

A news publication created by Baruch's College Now high school journalism class

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Old Eat, New Prominence

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A group of three teenagers walk down an upper east side street in search of food to  satisfy their cravings. The teenagers found their satisfaction not in the burger place up the block but in the recently opened Chop’t Salad Store.

    The craze has taken the upper east side by storm. The rising draw to salad spiked when two new Salad stores, within five blocks of each other, opened in the past 6 months. The Salad Chains Chop’t and Just Salad are both on the rise and decided to tap the Upper East Side as their most recent target.

Salad has become the new junk food to health conscience consumers. Teenagers off from school and businessmen after work all find haven in the salad bars scattered throughout the neighborhood.

    The reasoning may be more simple than most would think. Teenager Brad Hershenson explained, “The new salad places have made salad an actual option when I’m choosing what to eat.” His friend, Max Preston, built on the idea saying, “ I often get called out by my friends for being a picky eater, but with the many options I can always find something I’m okay with.”

Salad Bars may be on pricy side, making them ideal for the fat walleted upper-east siders, but the large quantities and fancy choices prove to be worth the money. The gluten free dressings and portion controlled servings at Chop’t, similar to Just Salad, allow customers to make the smart choice for lunch or diner. The customer can customize a salad at either of the new locations, as well as ordering a “chef-designed” salad. From a smokehouse steak salad, to a tandoori fire salad, or just a typical cobb salad, the franchises have put a new spin on the salad lifestyle.

America has become known for high rates of obesity but with new trends in eating previous images may change. According to Robert Jeffery, in the annual review of public health, “Obesity has increased dramatically over the past two decades and currently about 50% of US adults and 25% of US children are overweight. The current epidemic of obesity is caused largely by an environment that promotes excessive food intake and discourages physical activity.”

    New salad stores provide the opportunity for adults to get a healthy meal despite limited time to cook. According to Tahlia Weinstein, a full-time worker and mother of two, “sometimes I try to eat healthy but I don’t have the time too, so I find myself eating carb-chalked meals. Just Salad allows me to pick a healthy option and still have time to do all the things I need.”

The new trends in thinking surely point to new trends in health. After all, if teenagers can pick salad, anyone can pick salad.

Transit Cops Target Teens for Jumping Turnstiles

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“I swear, this was some 21 Jump Street s–t,” said high school sophomore Stephanie.

After watching a fight between some people from school, Stephanie and her friends went to a subway in Midtown to go home. The station was empty except what appeared to be a couple of teenagers. Without any money to pay their fares, Stephanie and her friends decided to jump the turnstile. Those other teenagers in the station turned out to be undercover transit cops. Unfortunately for Stephanie, the cops were about to let her and her friends go free but, according to Stephanie, one of her friends “decided to be a b—h and gave the cops a fake name and address” so the cops gave them tickets.

Stephanie and her friends aren’t the only teenagers to get stopped for jumping turnstiles. It turns out transit cops have been arresting and giving tickets to a lot of teenagers recently. In an interview, a transit cop stated they “target high school kids because they’re the ones who do this a lot and they’re easy arrests.” He then went on to say, “The majority of their arrests are theft of service and their primary goal isn’t to make the subway safer, it’s to show an increase in arrest activity.” Cops who make more arrests are given more days off, better assignments, and overtime.

Instead of looking for more serious crime, transit cops target teenagers for fare beating when the teens are either going to school or coming home from school. These transit cops will either dress up to blend in with teenagers or hide cameras and stay concealed in MTA rooms, waiting for their next target.

An MTA manager confirmed that “transit cops regularly use their (MTA) rooms… and the police are oftentimes observed playing games on their phones or just hanging out.” A police supervisor within the transit bureau stated, “It’s an occasional problem that creeps up every so often and when it gets too bad, management has to do something to get them to stop going in the MTA rooms.” Management is trying to get the transit cops out of the MTA rooms so that they will stop hanging out and start doing their job. The police supervisor further explained, “The problem, though, is when they try to keep the cops out of MTA rooms, the arrest activity goes down so they basically have a blind eye toward cops using the rooms because they want arrest activity to be up.”

Infestation in Flushing

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Bugs swarm Flushing

They’re conquering Queens, and subjugating its residents by forcing the people into their homes. Mosquitoes, wasps, and jumping spiders are some of the new bugs invading northern Flushing, agitating residents, and threatening the freedom of the people.

Starting in the summer of 2013, trucks have been periodically driving around the neighborhood, warning people to stay inside their houses as a pesticide is sprayed to prevent the population rate of bugs in the neighborhood from rising. Even so, this summer, there has been an influx of new and more aggressive bugs. Harder to kill and more annoying to the human residents of the area, these insects are scaring the people in the area and have them questioning the purpose of the pesticide sprayings in the neighborhood.

The Asian Tiger mosquito is among one of the many new bugs in the area the pesticide spray is targeted to kill. While it has been found that these new mosquitos do not carry the West Nile Virus, these pests are still annoying. Resistant to mosquito spray and citronella candles, the new mosquitos are a bother to both parents and children alike.

“My kids complained that the mosquitoes were biting them even when I sent them out in jeans! If they’re resistant to bug sprays and citronella and the pesticides aren’t working, how are my kids supposed to play outside?” Christine Lew, a mother of two in Flushing, argued.

Unable to play outside, Lew’s children now have to find new ways to entertain themselves while Lew is left to worry about the danger of these aggressive new bugs. According the NY Daily News, a larvicide was sprayed in the area to prevent population growth of the mosquitoes in a gradual change. The larvicide has been sprayed in the different neighborhoods in Queens since June and will continue to be sprayed throughout August according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website.

New to the neighborhood, but a relatively ordinary species, wasps have also migrated into the region. While bees are to be expected, these larger pests have come into Queens and can be considered a league of their own. They can sting a person multiple times, unlike a bee, and stings are quite painful.

Christina Young, a commuter from Flushing, complains, “When I go to leave my house, I have to run to my bus stop out of fear of these wasps.”

She explains that her cat has even been stung by the wasps and is afraid of leaving the house at times. Young explained that the wasps are difficult to exterminate using sprays and powders found in the stores, but hiring an exterminator is too expensive for her family to afford. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website, wasps and bees are to be taken care of by homeowners and not the city. So, unfortunately for Young, the only painless option is to stay indoors and hope they will go away on their own.

Jumping spiders are scaring people around the neighborhood as well. Hard to kill, as they are able to jump great distances, these small black spiders have begun to infest homes in Queens. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, the bugs jump to catch their prey, but these bugs also jump to avoid death.

Kevin Leung, a Flushing resident of 15 years, explained his annoyance of these eight-legged bugs, “My sisters always scream for me to kill these bugs since they can’t get them, it’s frustrating.”

 

Local Play Gives Birth to Social Change

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Performers in Theater for the New City’s “Emergency or the World Takes a Selfie” pose in character

“I loved giving birth,” fourteen-year-old Lily Fremaux says. Lily is a performer in “Emergency or the World Takes a Selfie,” a performance by Theater for the New City (TNC). Her main role is playing a pregnant woman.

Each summer, TNC performs a different play, each with a focus on current events. Although TNC is based in the East Village, the performances are conducted in thirteen locations across all five boroughs of New York City. The locations include parks, playgrounds, and closed-off streets.

The performances are written and directed for the stage by Crystal Field, who also performs in them, with music by Joseph-Vernon Banks. It features a cast of fifty performers of all ages. All performances are free.

The cast of performers are largely dedicated to their art. Many have been with the company for over four years and are very close and supportive of each other. “All the people are very funny and spontaneous and really add something to the show,” performer Holly Phillips says.

The cast is also very welcoming. After the final act, performers run to the audience and pull them out of their seats and onto the stage to dance. A cast member shouts, “We’re hosting a block party afterwards so whoever stays gets food!”

This year’s performance centers around an EMT who is suspended after he ignores protocol. While off the job, he meets an investigative reporter and they both land in the hospital after being shot at by members of the National Rifle Association. In recovery, they dream they have encountered many “emergencies” all over the world, including the power crisis in Ukraine and the unequal distribution of wealth in Brazil.

TNC’s performances address a wide range of issues with humor. For example, to draw attention to congress’s ineffectiveness, congressmen and women are portrayed as zombies which gained enthusiastic applause from the crowd. One audience member says, “I loved that part. It was really clever and it cracked me up.”

Even though the performance addresses many issues, it also provides solutions and advocates people to take action. The EMT worker shouts, “When the protocol is corrupt, break it!” And at the end of the performance all the actors gather together to sing a song with the lyrics, “You are the source. Spread the information. Post it. Tweet it. Even take a selfie.”

So it is no surprise that the theater’s Facebook page contains many posts about current issues with a left-wing bent. Their most recent posts include an excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s book, Hard Choices, about global women’s rights, and a quote, “I wish more people cared about Earth as much as they cared about who they believe created it.”

John Buckley, a TNC performer and manager of the theater’s Facebook page, writes, “TNC aims to raise social awareness in the communities it performs in, creating civic dialogue that inspires a better understanding of the world beyond the communities’ geographic boundaries.” TNC has gained national recognition as it has won the Pulitzer Prize for theater and 42 Off-Broadway Theater Awards, also known as Obie Awards.

“Street theater is very much about what is going on in the world and how we can change it,” Lily says. “I feel like not a lot of other plays accomplish that.”

Prices and Building Sizes Skyrocket as East Village Gentrifies

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Prices and Building Sizes Skyrocket as the East Village Gentrifies

by Anna London

It’s no secret that real estate in New York is a hot commodity, and that developers and affluent people have been buying properties in poorer neighborhoods, displacing residents and changing the face of communities. Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen (‘Clinton’), and the East Village have been subject to it for some time now.

However, gentrification reached new levels in the East Village this May, as the contractor commonly referred to by East Village locals as Ben “The Sledgehammer” Shaoul purchased an entire strip of buildings on Houston Street with the purpose of knocking them down and building high rises. Shaoul is known as the “Sledgehammer” following an incident where he was seen in a heated argument with East Village squatters while his employees stood beside him holding sledgehammers.

The “Sledgehammer” has made it his mission to gentrify the tight-knit Village ever since his first project in September of 2013, when he bought the building that housed the beloved coffee shop “The Bean,” and raised their rent so exorbitantly that it was priced-out from its location on First Avenue to make room for yet another Starbucks.

In June 2013, Shaoul bought the non-profit Cabrini Center which supplied health care to low-income elderly people, and renovated it into luxury apartments. Rent for a one-bedroom at the old Cabrini, now named BLOOM 62, begins at $3,450 a month and goes up to $7,600 a month for larger apartments.

    After six months, BLOOM 62 was 82 percent leased and received glowing reviews from Real Estate Weekly, which exclaimed, “The smell of barbecue coming from the built-in outdoor grills and the blooming hydrangea summed up the building’s message: Just because you’re in Manhattan, doesn’t mean you can’t live as if you’re out in the country”.  Rooftop barbecues are illegal in New York City. Neighbors, many of them long term residents, are infuriated and confused about this, as many of them recall being ticketed and harassed when they would have barbecues on their roofs.

Inspired by his success with BLOOM 62 and what is estimated to be around 40 other buildings that he owns in the East Village alone, Shaoul set his sights on the block of Houston Street between Ludlow Street and Orchard Street, a strip of restaurants sharing the block with the famous restaurant Katz’s Delicatessen.

His newest project on Houston Street has led to the closing of numerous old and loved businesses such as Bereket, a famous Turkish restaurant that opened in 1995. The only business remaining is Katz’s, which only remains because the owner of the deli also owns the building.

The block of buildings to be demolished on Houston Street, surrounded by high rises.

From The Ludlow on Ludlow Street to a massive 166-unit building on Avenue D, high rises have already begun to line Houston street, virtually blocking out the sky with their massive height. In response to the grumblings of numerous residents in the East Village, Shaoul told a reporter from the New York Times during a tour of some of his buildings, “Why is everyone so hung up on the East Village? How about saying to me, ‘Ben, wow, your building is really beautiful, let’s focus on how

well-built it is?'”

East Village resident Edward Arrocha, known affectionately to many East Villagers as “Eak”, disagrees strongly, exclaiming, “All this money they’re spending and they’re still getting tenements. These buildings are so badly built. I can’t fathom that they spend this much, when I moved here you could live on very little.”

The East Village was once protected by such New York zoning laws, which demanded that all buildings along avenues A, B and C be six stories high. In 2008, rezoning laws were approved, which stated that buildings on Avenue A could be up to 32 stories high. Buildings east of Essex Street on Houston could be up to 12. Elissa Sampson, an urban geographer in the East Village, holds out hope that the process is not irreversible, saying, “Gentrification is made by humans and can be prevented by zoning.”

Zoning did not prevent Community Board 3 from voting to approve the construction of a massive high rise on Houston Street and Avenue D, directly across from the NYCHA projects. and one of the most impoverished areas of the Lower East Side.  Affordable housing advocate, Joel Feingold of GOLES (the Good Old Lower East Side), said to the Lo-Down NY, “this will be viewed as an incredibly hostile imposition. This building fits the exact caricature in people’s minds of neighborhood loss and change. I think it’s ludicrous to consider putting a building on Avenue D that’s all glass and steel and costs $2800 for a studio. I think it’s outrageous.” In addition, the building replaced a community garden.

    Eak, who has lived in the East Village since the early 90’s, has seen a number of waves of gentrification. He states, “I feel that gentrification has become a victim of its own success. This isn’t gentrification that we’re facing now, it’s super-gentrification, gentrification-on-steroids. Suddenly, the people who originally gentrified (the East Village) got displaced by the people who look at is as an investment.”

As a resident in the East Village myself, I have witnessed this gentrification firsthand. When my family moved to the East Village twenty-five years ago, it was an entirely different place than it is today. My parents, both self-employed artists, were typical of the first waves of gentrifiers. According to Sampson, who moved to the Lower East Side in the 70’s, “We were early gentrifiers. We were what the French call “bobo”, basically meaning ‘bourgeois bohemians’. People who chose to live in poor areas but had more conventional backgrounds.”

The Lower East Side and East Village attracted those with low incomes, artists, ‘oddballs and outcasts’ who could not afford to live in affluent neighborhoods. Steve Weintraub, a choreographer and former East Village resident, describes the neighborhood in those days, “That was kind of the funkier village. The Alphabet Jungle was just where you didn’t go.” The “Alphabet Jungle”, also commonly known as “Alphabet City” and “Loisaida”, refers to the region east of Avenue A, where the avenues have letters instead of numbers.

The East Village wasn’t always referred to as the East Village. According to Sampson, it used to be called the Lower East Side (which now refers to the area below Houston Street). “They began calling it the East Village in the late 50’s early 60’s, [which was meant to show it was] a continuation of the West Village and bohemian, [but which] destroyed the continuities with the past and made people think of them [the Lower East Side and the East Village] as two separate areas with two separate futures.”

While parts of the Lower East Side were dangerous and rightfully feared, others had a flourishing art scene and a tight-knit community. Collectively, it was a community built on support and creativity, with little to no emphasis on luxury.

As someone who first began spending time in the Lower East Side in the late 80’s, Eak explains, “It was risky, but there was music, poetry readings, it was sad but beautiful. I fell in love with it. I came to the place where my heart felt it belonged. My heart led me here and suddenly I was home. I have nowhere else to go, my heart is here.”

Frank London, a musician (and my father), explains, “When I moved to the East Village in 1990, I got a six-floor walk up apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen. It was a small one-bedroom and it cost $650 a month – which felt quite expensive at the time. The building that it was in, on Fourteenth Street, has recently been torn down for new construction. Our next apartment was a larger one bedroom for which we paid about $770 in approximately 1993. Around 1995 or so we moved to another apartment in the same building, a 700 square foot, 2-bedroom apartment. It cost about $850 when we first moved in, but by the time we moved out in about 2007, it was almost $1100 a month. Each of those were rent-stabilized apartments.”

Rent stabilization is a system which tries to keep rents affordable for tenants, and rent stabilized apartments are apartments which increase in cost by small percentages yearly. Rent controlled apartments are much less expensive and only slightly increase in cost, but are nearly impossible to get ahold of. According to nakedapartments.com, only 2% of NYC apartments are rent controlled, and they’re passed down through family, making them unavailable to anybody whose family hasn’t lived in the apartment since 1971.

Today, the average one-bedroom East Village/Lower East Side apartment  is not covered by rent stabilization and rents for $3,611 a month.

Eak admits there are benefits to gentrification, but explains, “At first, a certain level of gentrification made it a more agreeable neighborhood to live in. I could go to a store and buy fresh vegetables, I could get edible stuff at a corner store. I suddenly had a better sense of safety. But these points drove it to such a point that they didn’t exist anymore. Now I can’t afford it. Once it ultra gentrifies it won’t even benefit the rest of us [the original pioneers]”

The severe disproportionality in the economy has created a social divide in the East Village. Sampson elaborates, “This neighborhood still relies on food and clothes pantries. There are people on the top end and bottom end of the economic ladder. When you have neighborhoods with extremes and no middle class, you see people who are really needy, and the people who buy mink coats for their dogs”.

    This latest demolition of buildings on Houston Street reflects the transformation of the beloved neighborhood from community gardens and small buildings with affordable apartments to glass high rises and overpriced wine shops (no less than twelve have opened in the East Village over the last two years). When he moved to the East Village, Eak explains, “It was all about individuality. We were all real oddballs looking for affordable rent and certain individuality. We didn’t have to like each other but we could live together”.  Now, he resigns, “The people moving here are tone deaf, they don’t hear anything. You could be lying dead in the street and they’d keep walking. Nobody exists to them, there’s nothing, everyone is invisible. To see this in my community, it breaks my heart.”

You Have The Right To Remain Black and Blue

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Protest_against_police_brutality“Freeze and put your hands where I can see them”. A phrase we’ve heard all too often in movies, shows and in real life. It’s understandable if a person has committed a crime worthy of punishment, but it’s another thing to wrongfully accuse, beat, manhandle and arrest someone with no substantial reasoning. Women, specifically, have come into grim encounters with brutality by police officers but the police’s actions have seemingly been bypassed and “swept under the rug”.

 

You may ask yourself, why hasn’t police brutality been combated? The simplest answer would be corruption. As much as we’d love to believe that the government protects us from unconstitutional law enforcement, police automatically have the upper hand in society.  Their word over an “alleged” criminal’s passes for the right to arrest any day! Corruption! The government, time and time again, has turned a blind eye to police abusing their powers.

 

Zeroing in on a particular group targeted by police brutality: The African American women. Women of all races and ages have been victims of abusive treatment by law enforcers throughout the country, but there seems to be an underlying trend of cruelty against black women in the states. But its stories like the Miriam Carey car chase make it hard to love America as your own.

 

On Oct. 3, 2013, Carey was at a checkpoint near the White House and refused to stop her vehicle. In the attempt to escape, she knocked over police officers in her way, speeding off into the busy and pedestrian-filled streets of Washington D.C.  After a lengthy chase, police cornered Carey and shot her dead.

 

The sad part of the story perhaps, is not that she died without a given reason, but police justified her death by blaming their actions on the risen tensions in Washington due to a Naval Yard shooting that happened a month prior. Or perhaps the saddest factor: her 1-year-old daughter was in the back seat of a car being shot at.

 

It’s unfortunate that media made it seem as though Carey was a possible terrorist. An unarmed, African American woman was thus labeled a threat and police were praised instead of reprimanded.

 

To boot, how about the instance when an Arizona State University professor Ersula Ore was attempting to cross the street and was stopped by police and asked for I.D. When she refused the request, the officer began to manhandle her in what looked like an attempt to handcuff her. She struggled with the officer, notifying him that she quote, “didn’t know what she was in violation of”. She told CNN that the officer had no valid reason to arrest her. He told her that resisting to show I.D. was against the law.

 

Ore was later charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. And of course, the ASU came out with a statement saying, “We have found no evidence of inappropriate actions by ASUPD officers”, when in a video, it was clear that the officer threw Ore to the ground.

 

Ben Max, journalist from Gotham Gazette told a journalist team that the NYPD has been making efforts to thoroughly monitor and supervise police activity in the city. “They are making changes to the administration”, Max says. “They have a new position called the Inspector General of the NYPD, whose main purpose is to do independent oversight of police officers… there’s even an office that looks closely into NYPD practices”.

 

Could this be a small but highly effective resolution that could gradually combat law enforcement abusing their power?

 

There’s no telling when police brutality against women will come to a halt. When government will take responsibility for injustices of their police. When they will realize that brutality exists solely because of the lack of discipline within the law enforcement bureau. Cases such as Carey’s and Ore’s go down in history with other cases like Rodney King, proving the corruption of police to be alive and well. Thus, I propose that police officers to be charged for brutality and that the government wouldn’t be bias in their decisions to reprimand these abusive officers. African Americans have been targeted by police for decades, adding to the statistic of cruelty against their women.

 

Renovation of the Lawrence and Eris Field Building

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Baruch College’s oldest building, The Lawrence and Eris Field Building, located on East 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue, is finally getting a makeover. This building has not been renovated since the day it opened in 1929.

The Lawrence and Eris Field Building, also known as 17 Lex, is used by almost 4,000 students, staff and faculty members per semester. The building is very outdated and is critically in need of renovation.

According to the Director of Government and Community Relations at Baruch, Eric Lugo, “It’s a very old building… The elevators break down often and the building’s electrical infrastructure isn’t equipped to handle all the technology that comes with a 21st-century education.”

The renovations would provide the building with Wi- Fi access, which it currently does not have. Also, the building’s electricity is maxed out, so new Con Edison vaults would be installed under the sidewalk on 23rd street. These renovations would bring the building fully up to speed electrically, which is essential in the 21st century.

The elevators in 17 Lex are very problematic. Baruch students have to wait in long lines in the lobby of the building in order to use the elevators because most of the time they are out of service. “The worst problem is the elevators. I’m happy they’re going to fix it since they’re always breaking down”, says Emily, a Baruch student.

Most students are glad that there will be renovations because most rooms in the building do not have air conditioners or the air conditioners do not work.  Therefore, the installation of new air conditioners will make both teaching and learning more comfortable on warmer days. “Summer classes are unbearable here. Every student wish classes are held at the Vertical Campus because you feel like you’re in a desert”, says another Baruch student.

17 Lex is not fully up to date with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, so the renovations would fix this problem by building a new entrance ramp.

According to an article on DNAinfo.com, Baruch has secured $90.4 million for the first phase of the renovation, including $30 million in state capital funds.

The first phase of the renovation includes bringing 17 Lex up to speed electrically, replacing archaic and poor lighting in main lobby and replacing old elevators that are often out of service.

As said on the Baruch College website, the building will remain open during construction. However, the building and the surrounding area will be separated from construction by partitions and fencing. Also, a pedestrian pathway with a scaffolding will be provided to allow safe passage for those passing by the site.

Although the renovation of the Lawrence and Eris Field Building will not be finished until around the fall or winter of 2015, most people that use the building are willing to wait.

Paving the Path to Unveil Injustices

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Michael Grabell

“You do not have to be a foreign correspondent and go to Africa and China to find these problems and violations. There is plenty to uncover here,” Michael Grabell said describing the aspects of his career.

Michael Grabell currently investigates and reports for ProPublica, a journalistic organization whose primary goal is to serve the public’s interest. His investigative work includes articles about temp agencies and temp workers, President Obama’s economic stimulus package, the Federal Air Marshall Service, the Lance Armstrong doping allegations, chemicals stored near schools and neighborhoods, and the TSA’s body scanning. His work for ProPublica has been published in the New York Times, PBS NewsHour, CBS Evening News, NPR, and USA Today. In January 2012, Grabell, published the book “Money Well Spent? The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History.”

On July 8 2014, Grabell shared some of his most influential experiences as a journalist writer with Baruch College Now students. “I start with a phone call to experts,” he stated, when asked to describe his working procedures.

In order to first select “the jaw dropping story-to-be”, Grabell creates a mental graph, qualifying the harmfulness of the incident, and quantifying its effect on citizens, such as how many are swept by the phenomenon.

Then Grabell proclaims, it is important to start with the most easily accessible data, look at the public records, lawsuits, social media and so on. Once the basics have been filled, it becomes easier to “be persistent in convincing officials to give up data,” he said.

In having decided on a good topic to research, Grabell explains, the duty of the author becomes to relate the story to the targeted audience. Simultaneously, he maintained that to reason with the intentions of the story is vital, because it forcibly teaches the reporter to be patient, to gain confidence, and to see a good horizon even if the path of uncovering a truth seems impossible to penetrate. Grabell persisted that these are some of the most important characteristics that will enable an investigative journalist to unveil those who attempt to “find a way to put the harm on somebody’s pockets,” the unparalleled way to serve the public’s interests, the people’s interests.

He also encouraged the students to ask as many questions as possible; stating that in fact, this precise fact led to his future success. During his internships Michael Grabell was not afraid to ask questions. “That is how I learned where all the documents were buried in town,” he confessed. Knowing where the information was and how to acquire it, was exactly the reason newspapers hired him – the reason he transformed himself, from a writer of the obituaries to an investigative journalist.

His passion to uncover injustices is apparent in his commitment to make reporting personal, while maintaining professionalism and accuracy. “If I am not interested, why would my reader be?,” he asks.

More than Cruelty

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wpid-dog-meat-381China is the second largest economy in the world. Producing almost all of the world’s products, materials and technology. But what is a country that makes its money off of brutality and cruelty? Off of bloody, ruthless and devastating violence against innocent and harmless animals.

Many celebrities, rich and wealthy people all have a fur coat or clothes made of animal fur in their wardrobes. However, many do not know the ugly truth about how their materials were made. A lot of imported fur comes from China because it is the largest export of animal fur. In fact, “China is the largest importer of fur pelts in the world, therefore making them the largest re-exporter of finished fur products,” according to Wikipedia research. A lot of animals such as sheep, raccoons, rabbits, foxes and most of all, dogs, are killed everyday just for their fur.

Many videos exposed by china’s very few activists or activists from the United Kingdom and the United states who have intervened with this issue, have either disguised themselves as workers or secretly captured footage on Chinese men and women workers hanging animals on sharp hooks. Once they are hung, the “workers” cut their fur viciously, trimming off their flesh. The animals’ bodies, some conscious and some unconscious, are then thrown onto piles of other furless and dead animals.

Moreover, many dogs that are scattered all over many places in China are not “welcome to their city.” In an article that talks of a mob of Chinese in a city called Shijiazhuang where “dogs aren’t allowed” throw bricks to two dogs who wandered off from an owner. They ended up in a hell hole where there was a “dog-hunt” to find them, shoot them six times and “chopped up by people hitting it with spades.”

In addition to such cruelty in China, there are flea markets that sell dog meat. Exposed pictures and videos show piles and piles of axed and chopped dogs. There is also dog meat trade, dogs slaughtered for human consumption.

The lack of strict protection of these helpless animals is beyond disbelief. There aren’t laws that ban a market from doing this. Recently, a group of activists wrote a letter to President Xi Jinping and urge him to put an end to the corrupt and horrific dog and cat meat and fur trades immediately. Over 4,000 signatures of support and bravery from people all around the world. Unluckily, with China’s 1.8 billion populations, it almost seems as if no one cares. True ignorance is truly unbelievable.

“I think animal cruelty in China takes it to a whole another level of brutality,” says high school student Ricardo Melendez. He says he has watched horrific clips and footage of the way animals “especially dogs” are treated. “A lot of my friends have shown me videos on like YouTube, and words cannot describe how I feel. I blame the government because they don’t force laws on animal cruelty as much as they should be and they are responsible for controlling injustice behavior.”

“Where else are we going to get fur from? I mean don’t get me wrong, I think it’s horrible of the way these animals are treated to get fur however, we can’t stop the use of trade. The world relies on money so it’s an issue that will remain because no one can actually stop the world,” says Dre Liason. He believes this issue has no solution.

“I hate people who use fur. It’s so wrong like even people in music videos use it and for what? They look ridiculous. No creature deserves to be treated this way at all,” says high school student Sky Pina who resents the usage of fur coats and “would do anything to stop it.”

Many argue that animal cruelty is a huge issue all of us should be against however; others may argue that it benefits trade and increases money. They may say you can’t change trade, you can’t stop animal testing because it’s been attempted to stop however very few companies have stopped it.  If many people from countries all around the world take a stand, it can help stop the way animals are treated. It’s a controversial issue and we must speak for the creatures that can’t.

 

 

 

The Man Behind the Movie

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“I think it’s fun to go see a bad movie” says Rafer Guzman.  Most people wouldn’t enjoy watching horrible films  intentionally, but for Rafer Guzman, it’s the best part of his job.

 A well-known film critic for Newsday, Rafer Guzman has had the pleasure (or in some cases the burden) of viewing many films.  Although most of us might grow bored of watching numerous movies consecutively, Rafer however, is able to sit through them happily.

 After graduating from Columbia, Rafer began career as a rock critic doing reviews of concerts.  He was able to get his name out through the work he did for small local papers and eventually applied for a job at Newsday.  At Newsday he started as a rock critic, but later went into reviewing movies also taking jobs other critics refused to escape having to listen to terrible music.  Unlike bad films, which he has a much greater tolerance for, Rafer said that to him, “music is really personal,” and that he couldn’t bear to endure anymore terrible performances.

 Since he is the only movie critic for Newsday, Guzman must watch about 3-5 films a week and write reviews of each one.  His favorite genre is action because he finds these films very cinematic and says it “looks good on screen.” This is why he enjoys the work of Bryan Singer and is a big fan of the X-Men and Batman series.  He says that these films were the first to combine real-life ideas and events with a fictional world.

 Despite his love of film, Rafer does hate some genres like most romantic comedies and kid’s films.  However, he doesn’t let this stop him from writing a fair review.  When reviewing films that may not necessarily appeal to a great audience, he tries to “sell” the movie to the reader.  He believes that a key factor in writing a credible review is not being 100% positive or negative about the film, but providing a mix of the two.

While he was with us, Rafer gave us some predictions on how some upcoming films will do in the box office.  The most memorable being Star Wars: Episode VII.  He thinks that the film will be a hit.  Although he is not a fan of the original series by George Lucas, he went  as far saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Disney production did better than James Cameron’s Avatar,  regarded by many as one of the biggest movies of all time.