Status In America Research Articles

“James Baldwin, Return of the Prophet”: An Interview

Cornel West was interviewed by Christopher Lydon for Radio Open Source; the interview was originally broadcast in September of 2017. They discuss the works of Baldwin, the condition of America, and Baldwin’s relevance to that condition today. The interview is reprinted here by permission of the interviewee.

Sweet dreams are made of this: The need for narrowly tailored statutory protection for documented dreamers

AbstractThe growing backlog of immigrant visa petitions and legal permanent resident adjustment applications is a harsh reality of the American dream. Dependent children of immigrants can wait decades for their parents' visas to become current, only to age out of dependent status before stepping foot on American soil. Dependent children of nonimmigrants seeking to become legal permanent residents age out before their parents' adjustment application is approved – leaving them at risk of removal. This Note proposes a temporary visa status for these dependents, allowing them to maintain legal status in America and remain with their parents.

The Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Perceived Stress and Coping Strategies among Filipino Immigrants in America

The Filipinos in America are an at-risk group during the pandemic not only because of their exposure as health care workers but also due to the intersections of various factors like economic insecurity, pre-existing health conditions, a lack of health insurance, and the fact that tens of thousands of undocumented Filipinos. Also, Filipinos faced Asian hate during the pandemic. All the circumstances Filipinos in America faced amid the pandemic can contribute to perceived stress. Filipinos are also known to have good coping skills despite the adversities in life. However, not many studies specifically represent Filipino-Americans but rather Asian Americans collectively. This study sought to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Filipinos' perceived stress and coping strategies in America. Using a descriptive inferential research design, this study revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the level of perceived stress and the coping strategies of the respondents. Also, it showed that there was a significant relationship between the respondents' profile and their level of perceived stress and coping strategies. The findings of this study can contribute to the development of Filipinos' knowledge-based mental health status in America. Also, this can be used for delivering effective treatment programs for Filipinos in America by different healthcare professionals.

Patricia Silver, Sunbelt Diaspora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando

Reviewed by: Sunbelt Diaspora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando by Patricia Silver Guillermo Rebollo Gil (bio) Patricia Silver, Sunbelt Diaspora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando. University of Texas Press, 2020. Pp. 299. Patricia Silver's Sunbelt Diaspora: Race, Class, and Latino Politics in Puerto Rican Orlando offers a critical history of Puerto Ricans' decades-long struggle to form a community in this southern US city, where the legacy of Jim Crow sustains the dominant ideology as to who belongs and who gets to represent, and be represented, in local politics. Silver guides readers, in deft and engaging prose, across the shifting and combated sociopolitical terrain of Orange County, where Puerto Ricans, and Latinx peoples in general, have been subjected to discriminatory policies and regulations, which look to curtail their viability and vibrancy as a political force. [End Page 115] The triumph of this book, however, is that while, yes, Sunbelt Diaspora is very much a study into the intricacies of community building and political mobilization, the author has made the astute decision to focus on the ideological fault lines among Puerto Ricans in Orlando. Specifically, Silver examines how birthplace, race, and class function as criteria of belonging. Since the region has become the primary destination for Puerto Ricans from the island and the diaspora, the matter of perceived national or cultural authenticity garners special significance. While Puerto Ricans from New York tend to be perceived as less authentic, darker and/or more unruly, arrivals from the island—especially those who identify as white and are part of the "professional class"—look to distinguish themselves from the former, even if it means surrendering the possibility to organize around a shared Puerto Rican identity. Silver explains: "Puerto Ricans who have spent much or all of their lives as a US minority in diaspora bring to their relations in Orlando a nonwhite race consciousness that is often at odds with racial perspectives of those who have only ever lived in Puerto Rico and identify as white" (10). Aspirations toward whiteness thus become salient as barriers toward greater and more impactful political mobilization: Some Puerto Ricans in Orlando will strive toward achieving an honorary white status in America, generating social and geographical distance from their fellow Puerto Ricans. Others—the more precarious—will look to organize within the confines of a shared Puerto Rican identity but will remain wary of the more combative positions and actions of "immature Puerto Ricans from New York" (115). Then there are the ones who will be willing to engage the complexity and contradictions of living and building together. Reading Silver's book, it's hard not to be reminded of how Orlando figures in the island imagination of today as the place to which the supposed "best of who and what we are" leave in times of growing economic and political crisis in Puerto Rico; in a time where the tone of the public discourse about the sustainability of life in Puerto Rico becomes heavy with the fear of an impending substitution of population, with foreign investors buying up the land, driving people out. The solution, according to Puerto Rico's elected representatives, is to sit tight until "the best of us" decide to come back. Silver's book, in a way, offers an alternative: to commit to the seemingly obvious, but no less radical, proposition that who Puerto Ricans are in the island is also who they are in Orlando—a people subjected to a history of colonization and displacements, struggling to claim any space they inhabit as rightly theirs, all the while besieged by a pernicious ideology regarding the one true type of Puerto Rican. This book makes clear that for Puerto Rican life to be dignified and just, and sustainable anywhere, this ideology must continuously be discredited and defeated. [End Page 116] Guillermo Rebollo Gil Universidad Ana G. Méndez Guillermo Rebollo Gil Guillermo Rebollo Gil is a writer, sociologist, translator, and attorney. Recent publications include poetry in Pacifica Literary Review, Trampset, and HAD; prose in Sleet and Jellyfish Review; scholarly articles in Journal of Autoethnography and Liminalities. His book-length essay Writing Puerto Rico: Our Decolonial...

Intrinsic Elements and Sociological Criticism of Green Book Movie

The aims of the study were to find out the content of intrinsic elements of the Green Book movie and criticize the movie from sociological perspective. The study used qualitative method. It applied the theory of literature specfically intrinsic elements of drama proposed by Diniejko (2010) and sociological criticism proposed by Rapaport (2011). The results of the study were, firstly, the intrinsic elements found in the Green Book movie are plots, character, dialogue, setting, conflict, theme and motif which support the deeper understanding of the internal part of the movie. Secondly, by conducting a sociological criticism, it is found that the movie is related to the social condition of America in 1962 and it has correlation with the situation faced by American white and black nowadays.

Race and Worrying About Police Brutality: The Hidden Injuries of Minority Status in America

ABSTRACT Given the historically contentious relationship – including most notably the use of excessive and lethal force – between the police and African Americans, the current project examines the extent to which Blacks in the United States fear police brutality. The study is based on a national-level survey (N = 1,000), and measures fear by how much respondents “worry” about experiencing police force. The data support the racial divide hypothesis, showing that Blacks’ worry about such violence is over five times that of Whites. Guided by the racial/ethnic gradient hypothesis, the analyses also assess Hispanic respondents’ level of worry. Rather than forming a gradient by falling midway between Blacks and Whites, Hispanics’ worry about police brutality more closely reflects those of Blacks at more than four times that of Whites, suggesting a racial/ethnic divide. These findings thus assert that worrying about police brutality is an emotional injury that minorities disproportionately experience and whose pervasiveness remains largely hidden from view.

Martin Luther King Jr. And Pretext Stops (and Arrests): Reflections on How Far We Have Not Come Fifty Years Later

By January, 1956, the Montgomery Bus boycott was in full-swing. Black citizens in Montgomery, Alabama were refusing to ride the city’s private buses to protest racially segregated seating. On the afternoon of January 26, 1956, twenty-seven-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. had finished his day of work at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. On his drive home, King stopped his vehicle to offer a ride to a group of bus boycotters standing at a downtown car-pool location. After the boycotters entered King’s car, two motorcycle policemen pulled-in behind King’s vehicle. While everyone in King’s car tried to remain calm, the police continued to follow King’s car. At the next car-pool location, when some of King’s passengers began to exit, one of the policemen pulled next to King’s window, stating: “‘Get out, King. You’re under arrest for speeding thirty miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile zone.’” While stunned by the police action, King did not protest. He was arrested and taken to the Montgomery City Jail, where he was processed, fingerprinted and jailed with other black prisoners. It has been nearly sixty years since Martin Luther King, Jr. was subjected to this arbitrary and discriminatory police practice. Surely, things have changed in America. After the demise of the Jim Crow system, the enactment of federal and civil rights legislation protecting blacks from discriminatory application of state and local laws, and several decades of Supreme Court rulings enforcing the rights of black citizens, it would seem that law enforcement officials can no longer perform this type of arbitrary and bigoted policing. Although much has changed in America, investigatory or pretext stops unfortunately remain ubiquitous. As in King’s case, these stops are not aimed at enforcing the traffic code. Rather, police who conduct investigatory stops are a fishing expedition to look for evidence of criminal conduct. Various types of law enforcement agencies utilize pretext stops; and high-ranking police officials endorse pretext stops as a crime control measure. Indeed, two decades ago, investigatory stops were given a major boost when the federal government actively encouraged state and local police departments to use traffic laws as a basis for stopping cars suspected of drug smuggling. From one perspective, the use of pretext stops in the War on Drugs specifically, and to fight crime generally, raises no legal alarm. For most white Americans, modern application of this practice may seem annoying, but it is worth the cost in the fight against crime. A motorist is stopped by the police. The officer then questions the motorist about his or her travel plans (and if there are passengers, they are also questioned). Finally, a traffic summons or ticket may be issued. While bothersome, this practice, viewed in the aggregate, does not amount to a constitutional crisis. Moreover, on a rare occasion, criminality is exposed as a result of the stop. Black Americans, however, have a distinctly different perception of the situation. For King, the pretext stop was much more than a “stop.” The upshot was a frightening ride to jail; at one point during the ride, King believed the police were going to lynch him. Today, the modern pretext stop is on display when a black motorist is seen standing on the side of a highway or city street while police (typically white officers) search his vehicle. Study after study has demonstrated that African-Americans are targeted for pretext stops at a rate greater than white Americans. For blacks, particularly black men, a pretext stop is unequivocal notice of their inferior status in America. As Don Jackson, a former police officer, put it not too long ago: “The black American finds that the most prominent reminder of his second-class citizenship are the police.” The authors in this symposium were asked to consider how far America has come in the fifty years after the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, America has made substantial progress on several fronts that would have pleased Dr. King had he lived to see them. Many aspects of our criminal justice system, however, would have deeply disappointed King. We are confident that the continued and widespread use of pretext stops and their attended consequences would have offended King. Looking forward, America can honor Dr. King by ending pretext stops. This article was presented at “MLK 50: Where Do We Go From Here?,” a symposium co-sponsored by the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and the National Civil Rights Museum, on April 2-4, 2018. It will be published in the forthcoming Volume 49 of the University Memphis Law Review.

Symbolism of “Quilts” in Alice Walker’s Fictions

This article uses Alice Walker’s Everyday Use and The Color Purple to demonstrate how African-American women have redefined religion to empower themselves beyond their double minority status in America. With Alice walker's two representative fictions as examples, the article analyzes the quilts, this ordinary household, the symbolic significance of which in her works. On one hand, quilt acts as the carrier of black family history and tradition; on the other hand, quilt contains black women's enormous creativity, their mutual unity, and the fate of the strength and courage. In Walker’s opinion, during the process of reassembling the old cloth to sew a beautiful quilt; black women can vent anger, gain confidence and survival.

Rich’s Essential Essays

Rich’s <i>Essential Essays</i>

Black Disembodiment in the Age of Ferguson

One of the more striking features of the Black Lives Matter movement against racialized police brutality has been the focus on violence inflicted on “black bodies.” On one hand, the language of “black bodies,” as opposed to simply “black people” or “black personhood,” makes the issue of racial violence more visceral and immediate to white audiences otherwise indisposed to perceive black pain as a moral problem. On the other hand, it represents a theoretical challenge to dominant understandings of pain, suffering, and individuality based on liberal subjectivity. Exemplifying both of these aspects, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent work, Between the World and Me, provides a deep philosophical reflection on the moral and political problem of “black disembodiment.” This article tracks the theme of disembodiment in Coates’s book by foregrounding the role that feminist theories of embodiment play in his exploration of the contemporary black condition in America.

Identification of global shoring effects on a laboratory steel frame

With the current decaying condition of America’s infrastructure, more efficient inspection is essential. The combination of structural health monitoring data and data analysis tools could be a solution. In this study, laboratory data were captured for both a baseline bare-frame and a wooden wall reinforced steel structure. In-house software accomplishes an array of tasks, including signal processing and modal decomposition, in order to compare damage detection metrics in three dimensions. Both sequential and cumulative reinforcement detection was performed on the cases of a baseline configuration, a single reinforcing wall case, and a double reinforcing wall case. The coupled translational, twisting, and bending modes were employed by nine damage detection indices in three directions. Flexibility Percentage Difference performed relatively well, most often indicating both severity and location. While some metrics proved more effective than others, none were able to practically detect and locate change for an inspector of this structure.

Reply to Robert Neville

Reply to Robert Neville Brian Bruya (bio) Many thanks to Robert Neville for commenting on my article. Because the comments were brief and largely ampliative, my response will also be brief and take off from his points. First, a clarification. Professor Neville says that "the point is not to bring in more Chinese (and other ethnic groups with minority status in America) philosophers." This is stated correctly in the sense that my main point is not about identity diversity, but the statement could be misconstrued as an opposition on my part to increasing identity diversity in philosophy programs. I want to prevent such a misconstrual by stating plainly that I think the demographic makeup of American philosophy departments should more or less reflect the demographic makeup of American society. Because this is currently not the case, initiatives for increasing identify diversity are necessary. My main point is that cultural diversity of subject matter is another necessary kind of diversity and should be kept distinct from ethnic diversity of faculty. Second, Professor Neville extends my problem solving definition of philosophy to include visions for how to live. This makes sense to me. In fact, it underpins my view of the value of comparative philosophy. In my edited volume The Philosophical Challenge from China (2015), contributors explain detailed ways in which resources from the Chinese tradition can help address problems in current mainstream philosophy. As I make clear in my introduction to that book, one way of addressing a problem is to demonstrate its inadequacy and to broaden the perspective to aspects that may have been neglected or even gone unnoticed. Scott Page convincingly demonstrates that more diversity of perspectives allows for different approaches to solving a [End Page 1021] problem, but in philosophy we have to consider revising the problem itself, and different perspectives are required for that as well. The reason another tradition, such as the Chinese tradition, is able to open our eyes to neglected or unnoticed aspects of our own philosophy is that other traditions, while addressing more or less the same broad issues faced by humanity, have developed different conceptual centers of gravity, different ways of slicing up the world with discrete terminology, and different notions of final ends. In other words, they have different visions of how to live. Bringing them into our current conversations will inevitably shift the conversations in new directions, not only helping to address problems but prompting us to reconceive the problems themselves. Brian Bruya Reference Bruya, Brian, ed. The Philosophical Challenge from China. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. [End Page 1022] Google Scholar Copyright © 2017 University of Hawai'i Press

Federation Men: The Masculine World of New York Jewish Philanthropy, 1880–1945

Federation Men:The Masculine World of New York Jewish Philanthropy, 1880–1945 Beth S. Wenger (bio) Philanthropy, which one early twentieth-century social worker identified as a reflection of the Jewish “group will to live,” has served as a cornerstone of Jewish communal life since its inception.1 At least through the mid-twentieth century, the impetus to care for Jews in need bound the American Jewish community together in ways that nothing else could. Philanthropy did not erase intra-ethnic tensions, but it transcended class and religious divisions to a greater extent than any other communal enterprise. As historian Oscar Handlin once remarked, “philanthropy was important not only for what it actually accomplished,” but for how “it engaged [Jews] in communal endeavors.”2 Because charitable efforts stood at the center of Jewish communal life and because the giving of money reflects a dynamic process of social relations, philanthropy provides a critical vantage point for understanding the changing gendered norms and practices within American Jewish culture.3 From the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, far-reaching changes in the scope and function of Jewish philanthropy along with alterations in gendered norms and expectations reconfigured Jewish philanthropic organizations in ways that markedly transformed the roles of men and women. Because the responsibilities and ascribed gender characteristics associated with charity and philanthropy shifted over the course of these years—and then not even so simply or in any sort of linear fashion—it is possible to identify in the arena of philanthropy a space where ideal norms of behavior for Jewish men and Jewish women were in constant flux. This essay focuses primarily on the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City and traces [End Page 377] its particular evolution as rooted fundamentally in a male-centered and highly masculinized model of charitable distribution that came to characterize organized Jewish philanthropy in the first half of the twentieth century. More broadly, an examination of the changing landscape of Jewish charitable associations reveals the ways that philanthropy enabled Jewish women and men to fulfill the expectations of an ever-changing gendered order in distinct ways. For Jewish women, the increasingly scientific and bureaucratic organization of Jewish philanthropy robbed them of some autonomy and required a renegotiation though not an eradication of their roles as benevolent nurturers in Jewish communal life. For an emerging generation of middle-class Jewish men, philanthropy provided an opportunity to demonstrate social respectability and communal dedication that enhanced their reputation and status in America’s growing business and market economy. The organization and practice of Jewish philanthropy at the turn of the twentieth century reflected not only the shifting expectations and behaviors of men and women but also the highly gendered modes of rhetoric and power within the Jewish community. Masculinizing Jewish philanthropy extended beyond realignments in the roles of women and men and involved new rationales, structures, and priorities for fund-raising and disbursement of monies that were deeply embedded in the idioms of American manhood. The emerging gendered order of Jewish philanthropy transcended the binaries of public vs. private and men vs. women. In an era that witnessed growing charitable needs and greater revenue requirements as well as the rise of corporate culture, Jews, like other Americans, designed and articulated their philanthropic efforts in increasingly masculine terms. Jewish charity in the United States has a long history that predates the creation of Jewish federations. Until the mid-nineteenth century, synagogues—and the organizations and benevolent societies associated with them—took responsibility for meeting the charitable needs of the Jewish community. Only as immigration increased in the mid-to-late nineteenth century did congregations realize that they could not handle the demands of the poor by themselves, and began reaching across congregational lines to form everything from Jewish hospitals to orphan asylums to organizations that gave matzah to the poor on Passover.4 Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing furiously into the twentieth, American Jewish philanthropy underwent sweeping [End Page 378] changes. Men had always participated in charitable endeavors, and indeed they led many of the most important organizations such as B’nai B’rith. But by the nineteenth...

Percutaneous Minimally Invasive Techniques in the Treatment of Spinal Metastases.

Spinal metastases are a common and morbid condition in America. Of the 1.6 million new cases of cancer estimated to be diagnosed in the USA in 2015, approximately 5-10% will develop spinal metastases. This number is expected to increase as the life expectancy of cancer patients increases. Patients with osteolytic spinal metastases experience severe and often debilitating pain, which significantly reduces quality of life. Due to the morbidity of open surgery, particularly in oncologic patients, the treatment paradigm has shifted towards minimally invasive therapy. The advent and evolution of percutaneous treatments of spinal metastases has shown progressive success in reducing pain, improving function, and providing mechanical stability. There are various currently available interventions including vertebroplasty, vertebral augmentation, and coblation and radiofrequency ablation systems. For more complex spinal metastases, combined treatments including vertebral augmentation in conjunction with radiofrequency ablation, external beam radiation, and the novel treatment of intraoperative radiotherapy are also available. Ultimately, the goal of treatment in this patient population is palliative with the intention of improving the remaining quality of life. There is no established algorithm or specific technique that has proved best for the many variations of vertebral compression fractures (VCFs), so treatment tends to be dependent on the operator and/or based on institution preference or bias. Each technique provides its own unique value in the various types of metastatic VCFs encountered, and understanding the uses, advantages, and safety profile of each specific treatment is imperative in providing the best patient care. Percutaneous treatment of metastatic spinal disease is an excellent alternative to medical and surgical management in carefully selected patients. We believe that a multidisciplinary approach and combination therapy allows for optimal pain reduction and improvement of function.

Exposure to traffic pollution and increased risk of depressive and anxiety symptoms in older adults

Background: Mental health disorders are the third most costly non-fatal condition in America, and account for &gt;140 million disability-adjusted life years worldwide. While the genetic profile is been major risk factor of mental disorders, recent evidence has suggested a role of traffic-related air pollution in the pathogenesis of mental disorders. Methods: We examined the association of distance to road, a marker of traffic pollution exposure, with depression and anxiety in 4,854 community-dwelling adults (aged ≥57) of the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, a nationally representative, longitudinal sample of older adults in the US. Depression and anxiety were evaluated using standardized questionnaires, with cases identified by dichotomizing questionnaire scores using well-established cutoffs. As a proxy for traffic exposure, we calculated distance from each residential address to the closest A1–A3 road segments. Generalized linear mixed models were used to assess the association with adjustment of confounders (e.g., socioeconomic status), and to explore effect modification (e.g., by season). Results: In models adjusted for age, gender, race, calendar year, season, day of week, region and individual- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic status, we found 1.38 times the odds of adverse depressive symptoms (95%CI: 1.07, 1.78), and 1.51 times the odds of adverse anxiety symptoms (95%CI: 1.16, 1.96) in individuals living within 50m of a road, compared with those living 200m or farther away. We saw no elevations in odds for adults living 50–200 m from the road. The association remains robust upon adjustment of fine particular matter (PM2.5). Association with other neighborhood characteristics (e.g., crime/foreclosure rate, greenness) will be examined. Conclusions: Distance to road was associated with depression and anxiety, suggesting that pollution from traffic may be a newly identified environmental risk factor for mental health.

Intratextuality, Trauma, and the Posthuman in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge

ABSTRACTIn Bleeding Edge Pynchon uses again a female unconventional detective, as he did in The Crying of Lot 49, with the ultimate aim of evaluating the condition of America. However, whereas Oedipa had to deal with an understanding of American society in terms of science and religion, in Bleeding Edge Maxine is at pains to understand a society ruled by the new paradigms of posthumanity and trauma. By focusing on the binary life/death, the article evaluates Pynchon’s portrayal of current society as posthuman and disrupted by a new type of social stagnation related to the control of information flow, a situation that demands the role of an active protagonist, in line with later theories in the field of trauma studies. The textual analysis points to information, terrorism, and web addiction as the new dangers that Maxine has to cope with if she wants to pull society back to motion.

APPRAISAL DEVICES REALIZING ATTITUDES IN BARACK OBAMA’S INAUGURAL SPEECH

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze Obama’s Attitudes towards phenomenon happened in America and the world realized in the speech using the Appraisal System Analysis. The speech analysis was done by breaking down the speech into several clauses and analyzing them to find out the Appraisal Devices and the types of Attitudes used. Analyzing the data, it could be inferred that the speech employed three kinds of Attitudes; Affect, Judgement, Appreciation. There were 323 clauses consist of 51 Af- fects, 155 Judgements, and 117 Appreciations. Positive Attitudes in the speech were used more than Negative Attitudes. Obama gave priorities to Positive Attitudes in presenting his speech because he was optimistic that the obstacles in his country would be solved and the condition of America would be better. The study revealed that Obama was a good orator with high capability and wonderful way of thinking.

Abstract No. 676 - Percutaneous minimally invasive techniques in the treatment of spinal metastases

Spinal metastases are a common and morbid condition in America. Of the 1.6 million new cases of cancer estimated to be diagnosed in the USA in 2015, approximately 5–10 % will develop spinal metastases. This number is expected to increase as the life expectancy of cancer patients increases. Patients with osteolytic spinal metastases experience severe and often debilitating pain, which significantly reduces quality of life. Due to the morbidity of open surgery, particularly in oncologic patients, the treatment paradigm has shifted towards minimally invasive therapy. The advent and evolution of percutaneous treatments of spinal metastases has shown progressive success in reducing pain, improving function, and providing mechanical stability. There are various currently available interventions including vertebroplasty, vertebral augmentation, and coblation and radiofrequency ablation systems. For more complex spinal metastases, combined treatments including vertebral augmentation in conjunction with radiofrequency ablation, external beam radiation, and the novel treatment of intraoperative radiotherapy are also available. Ultimately, the goal of treatment in this patient population is palliative with the intention of improving the remaining quality of life. There is no established algorithm or specific technique that has proved best for the many variations of vertebral compression fractures (VCFs), so treatment tends to be dependent on the operator and/or based on institution preference or bias. Each technique provides its own unique value in the various types of metastatic VCFs encountered, and understanding the uses, advantages, and safety profile of each specific treatment is imperative in providing the best patient care. Percutaneous treatment of metastatic spinal disease is an excellent alternative to medical and surgical management in carefully selected patients. We believe that a multidisciplinary approach and combination therapy allows for optimal pain reduction and improvement of function.

Risk-based Maintenance Management of U.S. Public School Facilities

According to the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) 1999 report, Condition of America's Public School Facilities, approximately one-quarter of the nation's schools, housing 11 million children, require extensive repair. According to the 2013 ASCE American Infrastructure Report Card, major knowledge gaps exist regarding the current state of our school infrastructure. Funding for school facilities has dropped by 50% since the start of the 2007 recession. The ASCE report emphasizes a need for the development of comprehensive preventive maintenance programs. This paper reviews the literature on risk-based maintenance management and compares this approach to condition-based management systems. The paper further describes an ongoing study to develop and validate a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) system for maintenance management risk analysis for public school facilities.

Judah David Eisenstein on East European Jews in America in 1901: A First for the PAJHS

Judah David Eisenstein on East European Jews in America in 1901: A First for the PAJHS Jeffrey S. Gurock (bio) The early writers of American Jewish history whose works appeared in the inaugural issues of the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (PAJHS) were ill-disposed and ill-equipped to examine the ongoing saga of East European immigrants to the United States. These amateur chroniclers were committed to evidencing the long association of Jews with America from the very discovery of the New World, and to extolling the “considerable numbers [who] saw service in the Colonial and Revolutionary wars, some of them with distinction.” They also were sure to elaborate on the “active role [Jews] have played in the political affairs of the country” and on the fact that “they have been called upon to hold important public positions.”1 A crucial target audience for their heartfelt expositions was made up of the gentiles around them who were then being told by nativists and antisemites that Jews and other minorities were, at best, late-arriving interlopers who had done little to build their great country. This was an era that witnessed the rise of so-called “patriotic” organizations, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, which argued forcefully that their ancestors alone were the real Americans. Stung by this criticism, frequent contributors—for example, Leon Hühner, Max J. Kohler, Samuel Oppenheim and Albert Friedenberg—set out, year in and year out, to put into the record sources and discussions on such themes as the “Naturalization of Jews in New York under the Act of 1740” and “Phases in the History of Religious Liberty in America with Particular Reference to the Jews.”2 [End Page 315] Essentially, these voices of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) were “cautious defenders” of Jewish status in America. Without taking on their opponents directly, writers emphasized the loyalty and contribution of Jews, such as those from their own families, who had been in the land of freedom for several or more generations. Filiopietistic to a fault, they were also anxious to note their ancestors’ stories of integration and acceptance within the majority society. It also helped their cause, and added luster to their saga, when sympathetic Christians were recruited to attest that there were no blemishes on the Jewish group’s record. Thus, for example, when he documented the “temper and conduct “of the first Jews in Georgia, Charles C. Jones Jr.—a Presbyterian, who in the late nineteenth century, earned a reputation as the “historian of Georgia”—concluded, “[In] the record there are no stains. To the present day, the Jews of Georgia have been industrious, thrifty, law abiding and substantial citizens.”3 Given the defensive posture of their writings, the East European Jewish newcomers around them did not fit their apologetic and forebear-worshiping narratives. Although Jews from Poland and Lithuania, in fact, had been among the very first settlers in America—for example, the most famous Jew of the mid-1660s, Asser Levy, who struggled against Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam, hailed from Vilna—the sagas of the hundreds of thousands who were arriving at the very moment that the society came into existence in 1892 were not deemed worthy or appropriate for publication. Arguably, those who were populating the Lower East Side with all of their problems of adjustment fed into the nefarious story lines that the nativists were projecting. So, perhaps, their part of American Jewish history might be best left untold.4 Additionally, even if a Hühner or a Kohler desired to broaden the scope of the journal’s interest, they lacked the language tools and cultural connections to write about groups of Jews with whom they had little or no personal association. Axiomatically, to study the so-called “downtown” East European community required then—as it does today—a facility with Yiddish and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew, to read the immigrants’ newspapers, to examine synagogue minute books, and to understand rabbinic religious disputes, etc. Moreover, the earliest writers—primarily those of Central European extraction—did not have ongoing relationships [End Page 316] with their potential subjects that would have afforded them the chance...