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Lawsuits
Last week, City Paper published a story about Harriett Spencer, an African-American woman and a Philadelphia Prisons System employee who claims that she has been a victim of gender discrimination under Commissioner Louis Giorla.
Now, CP has found, another African-American woman in the Prisons System alleges that she, too, has been a victim of gender discrimination under Giorla.
Her name is Joyce Brown Adams, and her claims are remarkably similar to Spencer's. In 2009, the Prisons System was on the hunt for a new deputy commissioner, the second-highest ranking official in that department, and Adams thought she was the woman for the job: She has a bachelor's and a master's degree, she says, and had nearly 30 years of experience in the city's prisons, moving from social worker to employment counselor to her current job as warden.
But Adams, who spoke through her lawyer Nancy Ezold, didn't get the job. Instead, a man named Clyde Gainey did — who, according to Adams, does not have a degree. (A Prisons System spokeswoman and Gainey declined to confirm or deny this.) Adams sees this as the city flouting its own rules: According to the Prisons System's documents, the "minimum acceptable training and experience" for a deputy commissioner is a graduate degree in a relevant field, or a bachelor's degree accompanied by workplace experience.
Adams says the city also didn't formally announce the opening of the deputy commissioner position, even though she expressed interest to Giorla.
So in 2009, Adams filed a charge with both the Pa. Human Relations Commission and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (By state law, you must do this before filing suit.) Adams and the Prisons System are still in negotiations, but Ezold says it is possible she will file a lawsuit soon.
Prison spokeswoman Shawn Hawes declined to comment for this article.
Spencer, the Prisons exmployee who City Paper wrote about last week, filed suit against the city in February for gender discrimination — and she also alleges that she was never able to apply for the deputy commissioner position. And she claims that Gainey doesn't have a degree — whereas she has a bachelor's, master's and law degree, as well as more than 30 years of experience in the Prisons System.
"It's amazing to me that these highly qualified women that are also highly experienced are not getting the position, and are not even getting considered," says Ezold. "It makes no sense."
Ezold also notes that, until a few weeks ago, Adams was a warden at the Philadelphia Detention Center — but then, "without asking her opinion," was reassigned to Riverside Correctional Facility, an all-women's jail. Though this was not a demotion and wasn't accompanied by a pay cut, Ezold argues that it could be construed as retribution for her charge.
In a press release last month, the Prisons System announced that two other women were being promoted to the position of warden, and that Adams, "who has led the Detention Center for the past two years, will take over at the women's jail." In the release, Girola says, "We were fortunate to promote these experienced and talented women to warden."
From the Dept. of Actually Interesting Press Releases ... the Public Interest Law Center announced today that it will file a lawsuit against the Philadelphia School District in federal court.
Why?
The press release reads, "The lawsuit, naming the School Reform Commission and Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, alleges that the District is violating the rights of children with autism through the continued implementation of a District-wide transfer policy that moves children who experience autism from school to school when children without disabilities are not required to change schools."
We'll post more as it comes.
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| Courtesy of Eric Ascalon | |
| BEFORE (left) and AFTER (right) | |
This August, we told you about the artist David Ascalon and what he called the "bastardization" of his public sculpture in Harrisburg:
In a lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Ascalon says that the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg commissioned him to create a Holocaust memorial on public property (which is maintained by the Parks Dept.) that did not âprettify the landscapeâ but instead was âcommitted to developing a truth-telling monument.â
In other words, the death of 6 million Jews was horrifying, so let's make sure the memorial isn't all puppies and rainbows, eh?
â¦
Fast-forward to 2007, when Ascalon says he found that his name had âbeen completely excised and grinded off of the memorialâ without his permission and replaced with this: âRestored by David Grindle 2006.â
Additionally, Ascalon claims that Grindle switched out the serpent's Cor-ten material for stainless steel, which doesn't sound like that big of a deal, until you consider that stainless steel was supposed to represent the Jews' tenacity, not the er ⦠Nazis'.
âThe modification of the sculpture has changed it so that now the same shiny stainless steel that represents the enduring Jewish people is also used to depict the Nazi regime and atrocities of the Holocaust,â reads the lawsuit. âThis alteration is abhorrent.â
Eric Ascalon, David's son, called the Clog to update us on the case. He says that while his father and the Jewish Federation are nearing a satisfactory settlement, someone is holding them up: Grindle, who Ascalon sued as well. Apparently, Grindle's attorney filed a motion for sanctions under Rule 11, which is usually reserved for frivolous cases or instances in which the attorney harasses a defendant, against Ascalon's attorney himself.
"We think he's just trying to bully and intimindate us into dropping the case against his client," says Eric. âFrom an artists' rights perspective, this is fairly important because if the judge were to grant it, it would set a precedent that would essentially intimidate artists' attorneys from filing [Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA)] claims, because it puts them on the hook. And there haven't been many VARA cases out there. ⦠We don't want money for this. We just want the sculpture to go back to the way it was."
The Clog put a call out to Grindle. We'll keep you posted as learn more.
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| Courtesy of Google Cached |
| This is a screen grab of Marc Hummel's former website, which prompted the Hussian School of Art to sue the ex-student for $150,000. |
Last week, I wrote a piece about Marc Hummel, an ex-student at Old City's Hussian School of Art who made a website negatively reviewing the school, which prompted Hussian to sue him for $150,000 (over defamation and trademark infringement charges), but which Hummel claimed was simply fair critique:
The Hussian School of Art sued Hummel, a current Rutgers student and coffee shop employee, for $150,000. On the surface, this looks to be what's known as a SLAPP suit, or a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, in which large companies hush critics by threatening them with defense costs and court battles. Twenty-seven states, including Pennsylvania, have enacted some sort of anti-SLAPP legislation.
Hussian emphatically denies that it's a SLAPP suit, but it doesn't matter, anyway. In Pennsylvania, the anti-SLAPP law applies only to environmental cases.
(If you go to his site now, you'll see that he took down the review, and it's home to only his résumé and artistic endeavors.)
As of press time, Hummel and Hussian were still negotiating the terms of a settlement, and nothing had been signed yet. The Clog just got word from Hussian director Bruce Wartman, however, that the school and Hummel have officially reached a settlement outside of court. Though he won't go into details about it, we do know for certain, at least, that Hummel won't be owing anyone $150K.
It's probably safe to say he won't be putting his review back up anytime soon, either.
down with for profit higher education, this is just another way to shut the truth up about this school and others. ridiculous
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