Count me in
crease play
Group of seniors compiles wish list of things they want to do before graduation, page 19
Thursday M ay 6 , 2 0 1 0
Cross it off
Junior leads attack with passion and intensity, page 27
Seniors should celebrate last weeks safely, page 14
The Ithacan
I t h a c a , N . Y.
Volum e 7 7 , I s s u e 2 8
Southside center seeks neighborhood revival
From left, junior Samantha Wolfe, Pete Meyers and Jessica Yoon hold a meeting at the Tompkins County Workers’ Center on Tuesday. Wolfe and Yoon work as interns for the center, advocating for workers’ rights.
Allison Usavage/The Ithacan
Empowering the People Tompkins County Workers’ Center strives to give local employees a voice in the community by Briana Kerensky staff writer
No one knows what Neil does here every day. Every day the man, who looks kind of like Benjamin Franklin, ambles into the Tompkins County Workers’ Center. He’s always wearing big glasses tied to his face with a piece of twine and a faded green padded vest covering a gray T-shirt, but on St. Patrick’s Day he wears a violently green shirt with a tuxedo pattern printed on it. Neil used to test the milk at Dairy One, a local co-op, until he was injured on the job. Nowadays he spends his time at the center, collecting disability with one of the four computers he claims to own, chilling out in a lime green armchair that looks like it was attacked by a litter of psychotic kittens. People stop by to grab a cup of coffee with Neil and chat, and he gathers the center’s mail sometimes. He also offers tech support for the group’s computers. Neil calls it working. Everyone else at the center is equally amused and confused by his presence. The Tompkins County Work-
ers’ Center is actually just a corner. Tucked away on the third floor of Autumn Leaves Used Books on The Commons, the center sits in the back corner of a large room full of little “offices” of other organizations. Along the walls are booths for groups that aren’t anything more than “purely Ithaca.” It’s a city dedicated to the local, the liberal and the alternative. There are booths for local veterans’ rights, a peace and justice gift shop, the ever-optimistic newspaper Positive News and others that try to bring the world together with peace, love and locally grown vegetarian food. The Workers’ Center’s corner looks like it was decorated during an argument between a political activist, a dumpster diver and a kindergartner. There are three desks in the office but none of them match. One of the chairs is so worn out that whenever you move in the seat it makes a loud, rippling farting sound. The bookshelves are packed with binders with titles like “Winning Wages: A Media Kit for Successful Living Wage Strategies.” The windowsill has a plastic
From left, a student sits with “Ms. Evelyn” Pontes at the front desk of the Southside Community Center, built in 1937 as a place for the black community to gather. Allison Usavage/the Ithacan
by Archana Menon Opinion editor
In those days
Leslie “Floyd” Carrington first stepped into the Southside Community Center in 1958. He was 8 years old, and the candy store in the secretary’s Appaloosa pony running across office was his favorite place to be. He it, a heart-shaped glass bottle of would be there when it opened and sand art and certificates from lowhen it closed. cal organizations thanking the “You got candy for a penny then,” center for its support. he laughs, and when Floyd laughs, it’s Every space is covered in not just a grin: His entire frame shakes. paper. Giant stacks of it are on Today Floyd sits at the front desk every desk with of that same center. boxes of more paSlightly overweight per spread across with his black hair In our final edition for the floor. Dozslicked back with the 2009-10 academic ens of papers are specks of gray showyear, The Ithacan presents taped to the two ing, he usually wears two magazine-length narwalls of the little an extra-large gray rative journalism pieces office. Papers with T-shirt or another exploring a pair of vibrant phone numbers, low-toned color with organizations within the drawings, phohis jeans. He has a Ithaca community. tos, a “Cat Lovdiamond stud in his ers Against the left ear and wears Bomb” calendar and posters prolong gold chains, one with a huge F for moting workers’ rights. Floyd and one with a large dollar sign. And in the midst of this litHe joined the center through Experieral Siberian forest of paper and ence Works, a program that helps emcraft projects and Neil are Pete ploy low-income seniors. Meyers and Linda Holzbaur. The The Southside Community Centwo, along with some volunteer ter is located on South Plain Street, members and two interns are a fairly narrow street that would’ve the fighting arm for the maligned functioned better as a one-way street, employees of the community. especially with cars parked on both With no legal team, the small sides of the road. Tall and majestic, the group provides information, rebuilding still has the same red bricks with white framing along the sides as it had in 1937, the year it was built. See work, page 5
The glass is half full. Check out Year in Review, The Ithacan’s year-end magazine. Free on campus. find more. online. www.theithacan.org
The secretary’s office is where it was then, but the front desk is not. Floyd rolls his chair around the lobby as he tries to recount the center’s structure when he first came, placing himself near the door to note how the front steps weren’t there. He swivels slowly back inside saying the kitchen hasn’t moved but that the outdoor park, which could benefit from some landscaping, is a new addition. Instead of his front desk, there was a winding flight of stairs leading to the second floor. That’s where there used to be a balcony overlooking the gym, Floyd’s favorite spot after the candy store. He would go to the gym after school and play on the court; the center was known for its basketball clinics. “First thing we’d do is go to the locker room, change into practice uniforms. The basketball coach would have us run around a few times, do some calisthenics and stuff. Then we would line up on one side of the gym.” He plays out the scene in his head with casual concentration. “[The coach] would stand underneath the basket, and he would rebound and pass the ball. [We’d] go around to the end of the line, make a left, then we’d line up like five men on the court and we’d practice plays and stuff: 2-1-2, 3-2 … .” Often the Southside kids would hop on a bus and go away on a ball game to Elmira, Binghamton or Rochester. Rochester wasn’t a popular opponent because the Southside kids would leave with embarrassing numbers on the final scoreboard. There usually was
See community, page 7