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LOCAL
HEROES
Heroism
takes many forms. It’s easy to recognize in its most dramatic
forms, when people sacrifice or risk their lives or safety
for a good cause. But it also involves the tireless everyday
work of people who sacrifice their time, energy, comfort,
and sometimes peace of mind to do good for others or for the
planet, to come face-to-face with hard truths, or to disrupt
an established way of doing things that is past due for some
shaking up. All of Metroland’s 2005 local heroes have
done this in one way or another, whether it was raising money
for distant victims of disaster, healing individual victims
of war, or working creatively to reduce the number of victims
of sex crimes. Our heroes have sacrified their free time to
save a historic landmark, give kids something to do other
than join gangs, and protect a unique and fragile ecosystem
from encroaching development. We salute their energy and their
vision.
Our annual tribute to Capital Region residents who make
a difference
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| photo:Teri
Currie |
Friends
of the Madison
“The
original idea was that we were going to call ourselves Friends
of the Madison Theatre,” laughs Lorenz Worden. “But we decided
to make it Friends of the Madison so we wouldn’t limit ourselves.”
Though they did get to keep the theater, they certainly haven’t
limited themselves. Whether getting together to review city
planning proposals or encouraging local businesses and other
agencies to think in a more community-minded fashion, FOTM
has seen its purpose blossom from a focused effort to preserve
a local landmark to broader community advocacy in less than
a year, without losing momentum.
But
FOTM members are quick to add that it all began with a little
vacant movie theater on Albany’s Madison Avenue that was in
danger of being knocked down for a CVS drive-through.
“Our
mission statement from the very beginning referred to the
theater as the cornerstone of economic development in the
neighborhood,” says Lorraine Weiss, who founded the group
along with Worden and Anne Savage. “And it really has been
a catalyst.”
After the neighbors met, realized the strengths they each
brought to the group (Weiss works for the Preservation League
of New York State) and researched their options, they began
wooing potential investors. When more than a hundred people
braved a treacherous blizzard last March to attend an FOTM
forum at the College of Saint Rose on alternative uses for
the theater, the group knew it had caught lightning in a bottle.
As it turns out, the man who eventually purchased the Madison
Theatre, Joseph Tesiero, was in the crowd that night. Seeing
the number of people FOTM had attracted to the event made
him a believer, said Tesiero upon announcing his purchase.
While the Madison Theatre still lies at the heart of their
efforts—the group was instrumental in arranging a recent,
sold-out independent film festival at the theater, among other
events—preservation of the neighborhood itself has become
the general theme of the group’s efforts. When the city announced
a development plan for the area, FOTM mobilized local residents
to comment on the plan. When it came time to fill the storefronts
in the front of the theater, the group encouraged local residents
to suggest what sort of businesses they’d like to see. (Among
the top suggestions was a coffeehouse, and one has since moved
in).
In the end, however, it all boils down to a group of motivated
neighbors and their favorite local theater.
“There’s
no guarantee that we could replicate this anywhere else,”
says Savage. “There was so much hard work and pure luck involved.”
“But
we love that everything has paid off for us,” she adds, “because
we all feel a sort of ownership when it comes to that theater.”
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| photo:Alicia
Solsman |
Richard
Hamill
“Sure,
I’m a little biased, but I think it’s quite amazing,” says
Richard Hamill, project director of the Capital District Coalition
for Sex Offender Management. “We’ve managed to achieve just
about all the goals we set up for this project.”
And the long list of accomplishments Hamill and the various
agencies involved with CDCSOM deserve a pat on the back for
are that much more impressive when one considers the environment
they operated within over recent years. While politicians
skewed offender statistics and the media salivated over sex
crimes, Hamill and the various probation officers, victims’
advocates, government officials and treatment providers of
CDCSOM made real progress improving the safety of local communities
instead of simply using the issue to generate tough-on-crime
votes or sweeps-week ratings.
Initially conceived in 1999, the coalition had a simple primary
goal, says Hamill: to pull the various local agencies involved
with sex-offender management together under a single banner
to share information, strategies and resources. By taking
an in-this-together approach, he explains, much of the confusion
between probation officers and treatment providers, prosecutors
and victims’ groups, or even between one county and another,
might be avoided.
Six years later, the little group that started out as an informal
lunchtime gathering of professionals has accomplished some
big things. Among them: the specialized training of many local
law-enforcement and government officials, the development
of new monitoring techniques to keep up with emerging technology,
and the increased availability of lie-detector tests for local
police and treatment agencies.
Despite the coalition’s low-profile status, the unique partnership
has earned CDCSOM some national attention, too. Hamill says
he recently heard from representatives of the A & E televisions
series Cold Case Files regarding a case in which the
coalition had become involved—and in doing so, helped put
a rapist-murderer behind bars.
“They
were really impressed with the way we worked collaboratively
on that,” he explains. “It’s not something they had seen much
of elsewhere, apparently.”
And even that, says Hamill, is something he hopes to change.
While the coalition had to tread lightly in its formative
years due to the unprecedented nature of the partnership,
he says the group’s achievements have been gaining some attention
at the state level—a situation that he hopes will translate
into changes that will make sex-offender management a more
effective system not just in the Capital Region, but throughout
the entire state.
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| photo:Joe
Putrock |
Decky
Lawson
“Sometimes
I walk by this thing and it gives me chills,” says Decky Lawson
as he gazes into a trophy case at Albany High. Lawson was
on the 1992 and ’93 Albany basketball teams and was a high-school
sports hero. He knows just how important sports were to him
as a kid, and since an article ran in Metroland about
his basketball tournaments and his work with kids in the South
End [“Bring It to the Kids,” Oct. 6], Lawson is finding out
from more kids than he thought he ever would exactly how important
sports are to them.
“The
kids that didn’t make it to the basketball team are all coming
to me saying, ‘Deck, we want to play!’” Lawson, who works
as a teacher’s assistant at Albany High, serves as a role
model for hundreds of Albany High students. But his influence
does not end there, as he also volunteer-coaches a makeshift
basketball team in the South End. Lawson is not paid for the
time he spends with these kids, for the gas he spends driving
them to tournaments in state or out, or for the work he does
trying to bridge the divide between the youth of uptown and
downtown Albany.
Although Lawson had help organizing basketball tournaments
from the Albany County district attorney’s office this summer,
Lawson was left hanging in September when the district attorney’s
office wanted to change a tournament date because of primary
elections. Instead of canceling the tournament, Lawson plowed
ahead with the resources he had.
“Some
people in that office were not happy with it,” reports Lawson,
referring to his openness about his frustration with that
situation. But, he adds, “We were speaking the truth, and
if the truth is what gets them moving, so be it.”
Lawson is still cautious of politics and politicians. He says
he keeps hearing from people involved in Albany politics that
he’ll get more help from the city once the new, potentially
more-sympathetic Common Council sits in January. However,
Lawson says he isn’t willing to simply wait for government
to pledge support or funding to help him find a home to host
his tournaments or to give his kids proper uniforms.
He’s had enough of waiting, and is already planning to have
four tournaments before spring. Come summer, he hopes to be
involved in a series of tournaments organized by groups all
over Albany, and he will do it all with whatever he has and
whatever community members are willing to pitch in.
Lawson’s notoriety has grown so much among Albany teens that
he has become a unifying force in a city whose youths tend
to form an uptown-downtown divide.
Lawson glances into the Albany High gym, and then at the basketball
he signed with his teammates a decade ago, now resting in
the trophy case. “Kids from uptown are hearing about how I
work with kids from downtown and they want to get involved,”
he says. “So it is bringing them together. It’s squashing
that rivalry.”
It’s up to the politicians to catch up to him.
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| photo:Joe
Putrock |
Ruth
Pelham
Ruth Pelham, who has been a part of the local music and arts
scene for more than two decades, consistently has been known
for furthering the principles of peace and understanding in
her work. This year, she brought these beliefs to a world
stage.
In
2002, she followed a celebration of 20 years of Music Mobile,
the arts-in-education summer program she operates in Albany,
with a musical tour of Sri Lanka. Pelham worked with local
musicians and children, forming a bond with the people of
this South Asian nation. When the Indian Ocean earthquake
hit on Dec. 26, 2004, causing a massive tsunami that took
the lives of at least 275,000 people across the region, Sri
Lanka was devastated. Pelham was prompted to action.
Working with Tuan Razik, a local Sri Lankan immigrant who
lost many close family members in the tsunami, and Sri Lanka-based
musician Lakshmi Danayanthi—and M&T Bank—Pelham founded
the Friends of Sri Lanka Fund. The purpose was simple: Find
a way to help people directly. Upon consulting with Razik,
Pelham found that the fishermen of his home village, Hambantot,
had lost their boats and had no way to make a living. So,
purchasing boats became the goal; later, this expanded to
include fishing nets and cooking stoves for the people of
the village. Pelham and Razik tirelessly raised awareness
and money; Danayanthi visited Hambantot to chronicle the direct
results of the effort.
And the results are impressive. The total money raised, from
the Capital Region and people in 14 states, is $72,000. One
hundred fishing boats, 150 fishing nets and 500 cooking stoves
were purchased and distributed. A “full-size” children’s playground
was purchased and erected in Hambantot. Two hundred fifty
student backpacks and 4,000 undergarments—that’s five pair
each for 800 children—were distributed, along with “assorted
band instruments for high school marching band” and a number
of “CD/DVD players for schools affected by the tsunami, [to
be] used for music therapy.”
What’s next for Pelham?
“I’m
planning to return to Sri Lanka in the spring of 2006 to visit
Hambantot. . . . I want to see with my own eyes how far the
people of Sri Lanka have come in their healing and rebuilding
since the tsunami, and be able to carry back my impressions
to the caring people of the Capital Region whose contributions
made such a huge difference.”
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| photo:Teri
Currie |
Ed
Tick
When Ed Tick started treating returning Vietnam vets with
post-traumatic stress disorder as a young therapist several
decades ago, he quickly realized that he, a war resister,
had a lot to learn about their experiences. He also learned
that the conventional treatments for PTSD—a mix of traditional
talk therapy and medications for depression, anxiety, and
sleep problems—wasn’t really getting at the core issues for
many of his patients [“Back From the Wasteland,” Jan. 20].
Modern warfare is tremendously more destructive and impersonal
than ancient warfare, Tick notes in his most recent book,
War and the Soul, and yet we don’t even have the level
of rites of passage that older societies used to initiate
warriors and help them move between the worlds of battle and
peacetime.
It took him many years, a long apprenticeship to a Native
American medicine man, studies of ancient mythology, and an
awful lot of listening to what his clients were actually saying
to develop his experiential healing approach, which, while
individual, often involves some combination of purification,
storytelling, restitution, and initiation.
Healing can be a long difficult process, but Tick has clients
who had been unable to sleep through the night for years who
say they are now symptom-free, without medication.
In 2000, he and Professor Steven Leibo of Sage Colleges of
Albany started leading reconciliation tours to Vietnam, which
have provided some powerful experiences for veterans whose
image of that country has remained frozen as they left it
in the midst of war [“Another Country,” June 26, 2003]. He
also has written several books, some of them scholarly works
on the effects of war on the psyche and soul, others books
of poetry [“Healing from War,” Books, Dec. 8].
Along with insisting that we as a culture need to listen to
what veterans have to say, Tick has also reached out to other
people of the Vietnam generation who didn’t fight in the war
as well as Holocaust and other war survivors and survivors
of other kids of trauma and involved them in his trips and
storytelling retreats.
Tick embodies the think-globally-act-locally ideal, dealing
intensely in one-on-one relationships, and then trying to
apply what he’s learned there to suggesting ways to move us
toward a less- warlike society.
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| photo:Joe
Putrock |
Jeff
Mirel and George Kansas of Rock2Rebuild
When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia at the end of last year,
the world was horrified. Millions of people rushed to donate
money and resources or to volunteer to help rebuild the land
and communities devastated by the disaster. Locally, entrepreneurs
George Kansas and Jeff Mirel found their means of helping
by founding an organization called Rock2Rebuild Charitable
Concert Events, an outfit that, since its inception, has staged
two major concert events, started a children’s acoustic music
series and raised money for charities like Habitat for Humanity,
Save the Children and the Ronald McDonald House Charities
of Albany.
The first Rock2Rebuild concert was a tsunami-relief benefit
held on Feb. 11 at the Palace Theatre. More than 2,000 people
turned out for the event, and nearly $30,000 was raised for
tsunami relief. Though the concert originally was intended
as a one-time-only event, the public response was so great
that the Mirel and Kansas formalized their organization as
a trademarked entity in March of this year.
An aspect of the tsunami benefit concert that the organization
is particularly proud of is that all of the musical talent
featured were local groups and performers, a concept that
has become the foundation of Rock2Rebuild’s mission, which,
according to their Web site, is to “unite regional music and
arts with local and regional, as well as national and global,
goodwill efforts through premium barn raising-type events,
educational programs and more.” The organization took action
again when Hurricane Katrina hit, staging a concert at the
Palace (again featuring only local acts) that raised more
than $14,000 for Habitat for Humanity.
Rock2Rebuild also started a Rock Lite Acoustic Concert Series
this past September, which takes place at the Ronald McDonald
House Charities Family Room in the Children’s Hospital at
Albany Medical. The series features area musicians doing stripped-down,
interactive performances for critically ill children.
Mirel and Kansas have made it their mission to help the Capital
Region rediscover community involvement and pride while involving,
supporting and encouraging local artists and musicians to
help foster and nurture their talent.
Cofounder Jeff Mirel’s next project (inspired by Rock2Rebuild)
is an initiative to build a not-for-profit community arts
center for the Albany area called the Barn. Mirel says that
the Barn facilities will include performance space and art
galleries, work studios and more.
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| photo:John
Whipple |
Lynne
Jackson
Lynne Jackson remembers when Save the Pine Bush was founded.
It was February 1978, and the Albany City Planning Board had
gone forward with a public hearing on four development proposals
in the Pine Bush, despite a snowstorm so bad the state workers
had been sent home early. Then the city planner closed the
hearing because of the weather before all the opponents who
had showed up anyway got to speak. Enraged, a group got together
and eventually decided to sue. It wouldn’t be the last time.
“In
the beginning it wasn’t very easy,” Jackson recalls. “You’re
not a popular person if you’re suing the city of Albany, and
we sued them a lot. It’s hard for me now to remember how afraid
I was.”
Though she wasn’t at the forefront in the early years, SPB
work took up a lot of Jackson’s time. “At times I think I
was a terrible employee,” she jokes (she is now self-employed),
because of the time she would take off to go to hearings and
meetings. Once, when SPB was being sued itself, she arranged
to work 1 to 9 PM on Thursdays in order to have one morning
a week to devote to the cause.
As with many dedicated activists who are part of sustained
group efforts, Jackson is uncomfortable with the spotlight
on herself. Save the Pine Bush “was made up of regular people
who care deeply about this ecosystem,” she says, noting that
many others, including Rezsin Adams and John Wolcott, had
been involved from the beginning as she was. But at the moment
Jackson is one of the most consistent public voices for the
group. “I’m just the one out there making all the noise,”
she says.
Many of the victories of SPB are well known—the creation of
the Pine Bush Preserve Commission, and the purchase and preservation
of large areas of the unique ecosystem. But the fight isn’t
over. Recently Jackson has found herself at a flurry of public
hearings and comment periods on development and rezoning proposals
for the Pine Bush.
They are small—4 and .69 acres. But that just means the Pine
Bush is being eaten away by degrees, Jackson frets, sounding
frustrated as she recalls trying to explain to the Albany
Common Council how these little projects still fragment the
habitat of the endangered Karner blue butterfly, which needs
to follow patches of lupine that grow in different spots each
year. “In some ways it’s even more difficult because we’re
fighting for very small pieces of land. No one comes in with
a 200-acre proposal any more.”
Jackson, as with many devoted Save the Pine Bush members,
has also learned to look at the bigger picture, which she
describes as: “making urban places really nice places to live,
so people will leave our wild places alone.” She’s therefore
proud of her long-term residence in Albany’s South End. “A
lot of people are very surprised that I live in South End.
They think I would live near the Pine Bush,” she says wryly.
And despite the difficulties, she knows that Save the Pine
Bush has had one overriding success over the years: “Everybody
knows about the Pine Bush.”
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