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Posts tagged ‘Pennsylvania’

Philly Schools Ordered To Pay $2.3 Million For Anti-WHITE Racism


waving flagWritten by Blake Neff, Reporter, 06/27/2016

Late Philadelphia schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman, the centerpiece of a wave of racial bias lawsuits against the school district. [YouTube screengrab/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIPmdejzJuE]

Philadelphia’s public school system was ordered to pay out $2.3 million in damages after a court found it deliberately discriminated against a white-owned business.

Security and Data Technologies, Inc. (SDT) was initially chosen by Philadelphia School District (PSD) and then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman back in 2010 to install surveillance cameras at 19 schools PSD classified as particularly dangerous. After the company began preliminary work, it was abruptly “deselected” and the $7.5 million no-bid contract was then awarded on an emergency basis to IBS Communications, a company not eligible for no-bid contracts.

The abrupt turn of events, it turns out, had a racial motivation. An investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer discovered Ackerman became fed up that the district kept giving contracts to white-owned companies. SDT is owned by two white men.

So, after telling other PSD administrators she would make sure “all these white boys didn’t get contracts,” Ackerman canceled SDT’s contract and diverted it over to IBS, which had black ownership.

After Ackerman’s stunt was publicized, SDT sued, and the six-year legal odyssey finally ended Monday with a victory for the plaintiffs. A jury ruled that the district, along with Ackerman’s estate (she died in 2013), must pay out $2.3 million in damages. The damages cover $2.1 million in lost profits along with a small sum of compensatory damages.

“It’s been a long, hard journey. Justice was served,” SDT attorney Michael Homans told the Inquirer.Happy Happy Joy Joy

PSD says it is exploring a possible appeal.

The case isn’t the only one that stemmed from Ackerman’s actions. Francis Dougherty, a member of the city’s School Reform Committee, was fired after he leaked Ackerman’s deeds to the press. He sued, claiming his free speech and whistleblower rights were violated. His case was settled for $725,000 earlier this year. Two more lawsuits are still pending.

Prior to her downfall, and almost simultaneously with her decision to cancel the SDT contract, Ackerman was praised by President Barack Obama.

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Union Goons Have License to Run Wild In Pennsylvania


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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372271/union-goons-have-license-run-wild-pennsylvania-alec-torres

‘Organizers’ Can’t Be Prosecuted for Terrorist Threats, Stalking, Harassment

Sarina Rose is commonly followed home. As she approaches work, she is taunted by protestors. Her children, eight and ten years old, have been photographed at their bus stop and followed at weekend sporting events. One time, a man cursed at her in public, formed a gun with his hands, pointed it at her, and said, “Bang, bang, bang.”

But Rose can’t take any legal action against her harassers, who are union members displeased by her company’s use of non-union labor.

Rose lives in Pennsylvania and is an executive at Post Bros., a construction company building apartments in Philadelphia. Under normal circumstances, she could file a lawsuit against her aggressors for stalking and harassment. Unfortunately for her, there is an exemption in Pennsylvania law that protects union members from being prosecuted for stalking, harassment, or even threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.

State representative Ron Miller is hoping to repeal the little know exemptions in the law with HB 1154, but the unions are fighting back.

“We think the law works,” Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Rick Bloomingdale said to reporters last week, explaining that the exemption is necessary to protect labor free speech rights.

Miller, however, compares the law to “a gateway drug.” “If we make certain people exempt, it will lead to other things,” he tells me. “If you allow intimidation, stalking, and harassment, . . . it will lead to the next step, to things that are truly illegal.”

In the three separate sections of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code that describe sanctions, ranging from “summary offense” to “felony of the second degree,” for the three categories of crime, an additional clause rules: “This section shall not apply to lawful conduct by a party to a labor dispute.”

Frank Snyder, secretary-treasurer of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, tells the Lehigh Valley Morning Call the exemptions protect free speech and claims National Labor Relations Board figures “show employers routinely, and with total disregard for the law, intimidate, harass, stalk and even fire people who try to form unions.”

Bloomingdale told the Pottsville Mercury that the three exemptions were put in place “with bipartisan support” in 1993, the year Democrats gained control of the state legislature for the first time in decades.

For Rose, the origins matter little. Because the union members never actually physically harmed her, and because the law specifically exempts union officials from prosecution for stalking and harassment, she did not have sufficient grounds for a lawsuit.

When Rose did file suit against Edward Sweeney, the long-time ironworker official who had been harassing her for months, Sweeney cited the labor exemptions and was found not guilty. Municipal Judge Charles Hayden reportedly chastised both parties for “wasting my time.”

Miller’s bill is currently in the Pennsylvania State House.

— Alec Torres is a William F. Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute.

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