Events

[FORUM] Let’s face it: If an executive, elected or otherwise, isn’t telling you that they’re doing an awesome job during their annual address, they aren’t doing their jobs. But absent from local annual “State of the City” or “State of the State” is the real critical analysis of the holes, cracks, and shortcomings of government services writ large. Thursday’s State of Our City aims to fill the void witth a variety of speakers that are being asked to focus on solutions to Buffalo’s most urgent problems at the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library- Central Library. To name a few: public education and public transit funding shortfalls, safety for undocumented immigrants, affordable housing and community control of vacant land, and economic development strategies. There have been some positive developments in Buffalo in the past ten years, but until Buffalo’s arch pitfalls of racial segregation and discrimination and economic disparity are bridged, any talk of renaissance is terminology that befits the public relations of a mayor, not the reality for a community. The Crossroads Collective and the Buffalo Parent Teacher Organization have both endorsed and enjoined the event, so come and hear what solutions folks are promoting. T sign up to talk beforehand, contact Harper at harper@openbuffalo.org. Youth are being encouraged to participate on both ends.