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3 days ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
State Senator Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton, believes that the time has come for Pennsylvania to take a stand. The 18th Senate District lawmaker, whose constituency includes the Lehigh Valley, has signaled that she wants to introduce legislation to controversially recognize a distinctive representative of the state’s perseverance — something we can all rally around with pride. We are, after all, the state of the Constitutional Conventions, the Whiskey Rebellion and the Liberty Bell.
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5 days ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
Less than an hour after he set a fire in Governor Josh Shapiro’s home last week, the alleged arsonist called police dispatchers, asking them to inform Gov. Shapiro that he “will not take part in [Gov. Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”The timing of the attack, on the first weekend of Pesach, or Passover, immediately evoked questions regarding antisemitism.
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1 week ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
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1 week ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
With the Democratic Party primary for mayor of Pittsburgh only a few weeks away, incumbent Mayor Ed Gainey seems to be stumbling against his challenger, County Controller Corey O’Connor. One would imagine that, like most incumbents, he would be running on his achievements. Violent crime is lower in Pittsburgh, many neighborhoods are safer than they’ve ever been, he’s done his best to stand up for immigrants, and the city’s job growth is outpacing the region.
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2 weeks ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
My neighbor Mary asked me on Saturday morning if I was going to the protest Downtown. I told her I was exhausted, having stayed up rather late the night before working on the final draft of my book, which is a family memoir that begins with the last Colombian civil war in 1948.
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2 weeks ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
For a glorious 24-hours, after reading a doctored press release on social media, I believed the World’s Largest Rubber Duck would be returning to Pittsburgh. It was nice — a full day in which I thought most of Pittsburgh could hang out together on some bridge and delight in an art installation intended to evoke whimsy. The 40-foot waterfowl, a creation of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, had its U.S. debut here in Pittsburgh back in September 2013.
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3 weeks ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
Senator Dave McCormick appeared on Fox News on Monday morning, promoting a book, “Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World,” which he co-authored with his spouse, the highly-intimidating Dina Powell McCormick. “Mentorship is about trust, common values, it’s about a commitment to one another, and about giving people the confidence,” he told Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt.
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3 weeks ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
When a foreign person applies for an immigrant visa to enter the United States, they usually have to fill out form DS-260. Deep into the application, after disclosing demographic, family and employment information, in the “Security and Background Information” section, there is a simple question: “Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?”Believe it or not, the answer “yes” is not disqualifying.
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1 month ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
I didn’t buy my first stock until I was 30. Before I discovered the eTrade app, I had no idea how one even did such a thing. I assumed that all stock-buyers had some person in a crowded Wall Street-ballroom yelling “Buy shares of orange juice!” with ticker-tape erupting from every surface. Stock-buying felt electrifying — one of my first tastes of rich-people behavior.
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1 month ago | 
post-gazette.com | Adriana Ramirez |Adriana E. Ramírez
A friend, who is getting a PhD in education, recently shared the 2023 reading proficiency scores from her child’s Pittsburgh charter school. She sorted the list by race, and the results were shocking. The gap between reading and math proficiency rates between white and Black students was huge, like 30-points huge. Then my friend found another tab and sorted that list by income levels. And lo and behold, the differences remained just as massive.
