Contractors involved in the state’s Interstate 81 viaduct project denied allegations of racial discrimination levied in a lawsuit by the owner of a Syracuse-based trucking company. 

Larry Stackhouse, the owner of L Stacks Construction Co. LLC, in January accused Salt City Constructors of sidelining his company in favor of non-minority contractors. His lawyers wrote in the complaint that Salt City Constructors used his bid numbers, status as a minority contractor, certifications and local-hire compliance information to win state contracts but did not assign him enough work. 

Salt City Constructors LLC responded to Stackhouse’s allegations on March 4, labeling his allegations a “fraud claim.” They argued that none of the prime contractor’s actions were discriminatory or retaliatory and that actions taken against Stackhouse were made for “good cause.”

In their response to Stackhouse’s complaint, Salt City wrote that Stackhouse was hired for three contracts on the project and paid Stackhouse $490,791. They denied using Stackhouse’s status as a minority-owned business to win bids and denied allegations of wrongdoing. Salt City Constructors’ lawyers did not respond to several calls and emails.

Stackhouse said that he was hired by the contractors in 2024 when the first phase of the project began. His recruitment was part of the mandatory local-hire and minority-owned business participation in the project, he wrote in his lawsuit. 

He anticipated earning a million dollars in revenue after investing $450,000 into his business to buy dump trucks and hire new employees. 

However, he ended up being shunned by Salt City, his lawsuit alleged. Stackhouse’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment on the filings made by the prime contractor.

The workload he anticipated never came. The contractors only hired one of his three trucks, he wrote in the lawsuit. 

While non-minority contractors operated up to six trucks a day, Stackhouse waited “for extended periods” waiting for work to be assigned to him, the lawsuit stated. He also accused Salt City of hiring non-minority contractors from outside Syracuse to do the work he believed he could have been assigned. 

When he confronted the contractors, they were hostile and retaliatory, he said in the lawsuit.

“I felt depressed. I felt that they turned on my company and to see all the [non-minority] contractors working up there, it hurt me,” Stackhouse told Central Current during a sit-down interview in January. 

The state Department of Transportation started a local hire initiative, which was meant to incentivize the recruitment and employment of local residents for the $2.25 billion project that would see the replacement of the viaduct and a reimagining of Almond Street. 

The initiative encouraged the hiring of 15% of the overall workforce from certain zip codes in the city, including areas near the viaduct.  

Stackhouse wrote that the contractors “misrepresented” their hiring practices to federal, state and local officials. 

Stackhouse named several defendants in his lawsuit, including Salt City Constructors LLC, Lancaster Development and Tully Construction Co. LLC, D/B/A L&T Construction, D.A. Collins Construction Co. Inc. and Cold Spring Construction Co. Inc. 

Salt City’s attorneys claimed that Stackhouse “lacks standing to sue” in their defense, asking the court to dismiss his complaint and ask Stackhouse to pay fees to those he sued.

The post I-81 contractor denies allegations of discrimination in lawsuit by Black-owned Syracuse trucking company appeared first on Central Current.

Wayne Grevelding, a stalwart of the American Legion Dunbar Post 1642, couldn’t make it to last week’s lecture by Natasha Alford, who returned to the city where she grew up as part of the Friends of the Central Library author series at the John H. Mulroy Civic Center.

While Grevelding, 77, dearly wanted to attend, he told me he’s been having some problems with his legs.

Still, he did have one request.

If I had a chance to talk with Alford, he wondered if I could ask if she remembered the pin.

And she did. Of course she did.

In a larger sense, that kind of connection explains why she came home.

Alford is a senior vice president and chief content officer with TheGrio, where she runs a national digital newsroom focused on matters of particular imperative to the Black American community. She also makes regular appearances on CNN, and she received the invitation to the FOCL author series because of her memoir, published by HarperCollins in 2024:

“American Negra” – at its core – is a Syracuse story. In the book, Alford describes her childhood odyssey toward full identity, straddling cultures as the daughter of an African-American dad and a Puerto Rican mom. Raised a few houses away from Interstate 81, that journey would take her from Nottingham High School to degrees from Harvard, Northwestern and Princeton.

She quit a straight-out-of-college job making big money with a hedge fund to instead enter a classroom with Teach for America. She returned to journalism, hit some roadblocks that could have made her quit — and instead pushed on to eventually achieve this national profile on CNN.

The statement provided by her presence in Syracuse — offered both specifically and through conversations with the young people she took the time to see — was put beautifully by Theresa Harper, a retired city schools administrator who introduced Alford at the Civic Center:

The soul and talents and love of so many caring people in this community, as Harper put it, “poured into her.”

That was certainly a major part of Alford’s address to a downtown crowd that included many students from the city schools. Their tickets were covered through a community fundraising campaign led by Nottingham graduate Brenna Richardson, a member of FOCL’s marketing committee — an effort FOCL officials say they’d love to see become a larger template.

Alford also paid a visit to Nottingham on the same day as her talk, speaking with dozens of students in the school library. After catching a ride from Elana Van Patten, a FOCL officer, she climbed out of the car near the school entrance on an unusually mild March afternoon.

For a moment, the emotion of it all drew her hands to her chest, almost as if she had been struck by a gust of wind.

“Like a dream,” Alford said, of being back.

Forgive me, for a moment, as all of this leads me somewhere else: While Alford is not quite 40, I’ve known her since she was maybe 14. My own kids, a few years younger than Alford, also took part in the Syracuse city school district’s longtime oratorical competition, a celebration often steeped in the power and cadence of the great African-American oratorical tradition.

In the 2000s — a time when the city schools had some memorable teenage oratorical heavyweights — those showdowns were an extraordinarily moving thing to witness.

On my way to Civic Center the other night, all those memories were already going through my mind when — by sheer chance — I encountered Debra McClendon-Bodie, a longtime Syracuse educator and mentor and one of the founders of that oratorical program. I bumped into her as she worked with some young children at the Salt City Market, where she recalled how she met Alford at the absolute beginning of the events that launched Alford, like a rocket.

Alford, a young teen nervous about being alone on stage, was at her first oratorical practice. McClendon-Bodie said veteran teacher Ronnie Bell — a co-founder of Syracuse Shakespeare in the Park — helped her relax by suggesting she try singing a few words, before she spoke.

In the following weeks, months and years, McClendon-Bodie watched as Alford became a commanding and masterful orator.

Alford describes the life-altering impact of that program in her book, and she mentioned it again on the Civic Center stage. She joined “the oratorical” almost as an afterthought, as a means of preparing for a separate speaking contest. The program turned out to be intense and demanding, allowing little room for error: Intertwined with a national American Legion competition, it required a lengthy, original and fully memorized address, followed by specific questions on stage about the U.S. Constitution.

I vividly remember Alford and many other students doing that work at regular practices on quiet weeknights, always attended by white-haired mainstays from the Dunbar Post. Alford still describes those Syracuse elders as her “grandfathers” — guys like Tommy Seals, Al Stokes, Billy Moore, Keith Colston, and Grevelding.

They were intensely proud of Alford, devotion that only grew as she began discovering she had a powerful and compelling stage presence. She won two consecutive state championships and went on both times to the national finals in Indianapolis.

Still, she often faced some of her toughest opponents in the earliest rounds in Syracuse, which had an extraordinary lineup of student speakers.

Her victories put her in the Central New York media spotlight and “affected my entire trajectory,” as she wrote in her memoir. She was startled when people began to recognize her on the street for her oratorical wins. That “took me from being invisible to being seen, a higher standard rising before me,” she wrote.

Flipping that switch — the realization that she had specific and unique meaning and value — changed everything.

Seals, Colston, Moore and Stokes were all deeply accomplished members of the local Black community. They were warm, passionate and profoundly funny guys, and they are all gone now – and eternally missed. Watching Alford Wednesday, all I could think about is how elated they would be.

Grevelding, their old friend, spoke with affection of them all, and he recalled handing the young Alford a pin — commemorating those lost in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — as a powerful talisman of meaning.

Alford wore it on stage, as she competed. Years later, when the legion guys attended her high school graduation party, she insisted that Grevelding take it back. But he showed up again when she had a book signing in 2024, and this time he told her it was hers, to keep.

When I relayed that story to her at the civic center, a burst of emotion again swept across her face.

In the school library, she told the students that Syracuse is an extraordinary place, a crossroads of compelling family stories, and that every teen in that library inherits a distinct and important role. She handed a microphone back and forth with Anab Ali, a teenage moderator fielding questions from her peers. Alford stuck around to listen to such students as Kiely Cooper, who sought advice about her own dream of a career as a therapist.

Alford was introduced at Nottingham by Don Little, a longtime history teacher who summarized her talents as “spectacular.” He was the guy, years ago, who passionately told her Harvard was absolutely the place she ought to go when she defied the staggering odds against being admitted to the school.

Several times, she mentioned the symmetry of coming home during Women’s History Month. She spoke to the teens about her knowledge of the heavy scholastic realities so many city students carry silently, the way “elements of the streets … worked their way into the halls.” She asked them to address that emotional turmoil, to express it, to seek out the help of adults who understand — and to not be drowned by circumstance that, faced alone, can be devastating.

Harper, for Alford, was one of those adults, a key figure at several points in Alford’s education. She joined with old friend Carol Charles in bringing many children to the Civic Center from the Delta Academy — an initiative to build educational and leadership skills coordinated by Delta Sigma Theta, an historically Black sorority, dedicated to service.

In her book and again in this journey home, Alford mentioned many educators and mentors who impacted her life. Harper sees her as a fierce and burning reminder of potential not only for the children of Syracuse, but for the grownups who interact every day with those kids.

“Teachers don’t realize the impact they have,” Harper said.

Alford, time and again, emphasized her journey is not simply a “feel-good story” about success in the city. She broke out because of her parents and her teachers and mentors like her “grandfathers” from the Dunbar Post, the people “who didn’t let me let go of the dream.”

In part, she came back to say she is grateful for every second of time and faith provided in Syracuse by so many people who saw the what-could-be in one uncertain child.

Her larger message, a harder one, is meant for all of us. Alford is proof of the staggering youthful treasure in our own city, every day, that is all too often lost — and the only way to truly honor her is by bringing a similarly collective love, belief and energy to so many children out there now, capable of the same heights.

The post Sean Kirst: Natasha Alford comes home with gratitude, and a collective message for all of us appeared first on Central Current.

Onondaga County’s 911 center recently began using artificial intelligence technology to assist with calls. The technology allows for live transcription, location, and call summarization, and will in the future provide live translation, according to county executive spokesperson Justin Sayles. 

The county will spend $350,000 this year on the technology, said Sayles, and the county will consider annual renewals of the product. The funding was approved as part of the Onondaga County Department of Emergency Communications’ 2026 budget. 

The technology was developed by Prepared, a company that makes AI products. 

The county’s 911 center has a significant staffing shortage, according to Sayles and Emergency Communications Commissioner Julie Corn. County officials hope AI will help prevent burnout. 

“911 call-takers take call after call, day after day with the stress that there is zero room for error,” said Sayles. “Having tools that aid in their success and support them to be their best is one way we can limit burnout.”

While the county expects the technology to help with burnout, some experts are more skeptical about AI’s utility for 911 call takers. Concerns range from AI’s ability to triage emergency calls to its ability to effectively translate for non-English speaking callers. 

In an October presentation to the public safety committee, Corn said that the use of the technology “falls right in line with the county executive’s initiative to have AI programs in his vision.” 

The AI 911 system works like this: Non-emergency phone calls — those that come into the 911 center on ten-digit numbers — will be transferred directly to an AI bot. If “key emergency words or scenarios” are mentioned, the AI bot is trained to transfer the call back to a human, said Sayles. He added that other calls would be determined to be non-emergencies “in the same way they are now” and transferred to the bot.

Prepared will provide a live transcription of emergency 911 calls, but a human will write the messages sent to emergency responders. Call takers will still be expected to take notes on their calls. The call recordings, notes and AI-drafted transcript will all be saved separately and will be able to be compared, Sayles said. Only the notes will be able to be edited, he said. 

Ben Winters, the director of AI and data privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, said he would be “very worried” about the potential for false negatives if a bot were to triage emergency calls. 

Winters also said AI is not equally good at all forms of transcription. When people are rushed, crying, using headphones or on speaker, it is more likely to miss what is being said. He added that 911 callers might not feel comfortable sharing exactly what is going on, and that call-takers are trained to try to get needed information from callers. 

Winters said the redundancy in record keeping was good but questioned when the AI transcription might actually be used. 

“What is the record that they go with?” he asked. “What are the ones they report and act on?”

Onondaga County is also linguistically diverse. As of 2024, the most commonly spoken languages among people with low English proficiency include Ukrainian, Nepali and Burmese. Sayles said that the technology would be able to translate all these languages. 

But the AI tools powering translation are not always representative of how native speakers speak, said Aliya Bhatia, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology who researches multilingual AI. The AI powering translation services may have fewer natively-created digitized examples of some languages to train on, she said, which could mean that translations might feature overly complicated or outdated words that people do not use regularly and might not understand. 

Bhatia gave an example: If AI translates the English word “vaccine” to an equivalent of the older ‘innoculation,’ the listener might not understand those words. She added that translation tools sometimes even make up new words when they don’t know the correct one. 

Translation tools should be developed and evaluated with local language speakers and community-based organizations, Bhatia said. 

“AI-based translation tools may come in handy when we need legible translations in a pinch but we shouldn’t confuse them as capable of the fluent, nuanced, and accurate translations people need when they are seeking emergency and life-saving services,” said Bhatia. 

The county currently translates calls using Voiance. The program uses live interpreters. The county will still contract with Voiance, said Sayles. In the future, a bot will likely translate live, but in the meantime, the county will work to ensure the change in translation methods doesn’t leave service gaps. 

Prepared is used in other 911 departments across the county, including in Baltimore. Sayles said Onondaga County had “solid working relationships” with other counties using Prepared. So far, those counties have raised no concerns, he said. 

Prepared was recently purchased by Axon Enterprise, a company that develops technology for the military and police. 

In a press release shortly after the acquisition, Axon boosted Prepared as a means of “owning the first 120 seconds” of an emergency call. Axon believes the technology could help supervisors to see “risk patterns and coaching opportunities” in their callers, the press release said. 

One of Axon’s other AI products, the controversial Draft One generative AI police report writer, has been accused of being “designed to defy transparency” by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. 

Sayles did not directly say whether it would integrate other Axon AI programs — like Draft One — into county operations but said the county is “constantly evaluating opportunities to integrate AI” into county operations.

“The AI technology continues to improve,” said Sayles. “At the end of the day, the call-taker is still fully trained in listening to calls and capturing and translating information for dispatch.”

The post Onondaga County begins using AI to translate, transcribe and summarize 911 calls appeared first on Central Current.

Safety equipment manufacturer Evolv Technology’s marketing claims have earned it a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit, international scrutiny — and potentially a new contract with the City of Syracuse.

City of Syracuse officials are considering contracting with Evolv to provide AI-powered metal detectors to make entry to City Hall “both more sound and effective,” said mayor’s office spokesperson Sol Muñoz.

Currently, City Hall visitors have to remove small metallic items from their pockets before stepping through a metal detector. Small items often trigger false alarms, Muñoz said. Evolv’s products are capable of measuring the density of metallic objects, eliminating the need for individuals to remove small items or send their bags through a separate machine, she added.

“The goal is to reduce congestion at building entrances and streamline the process while at the same time enhancing the ability to identify weapons and allow visitors to pass through sensors without needing to remove personal items from their pockets,” Muñoz said.

However, Evolv has been the subject of much scrutiny. Independent evaluators and experts for years have sounded the alarm on the company and its lofty assurances. Its track record has earned news reports, investigations and lawsuits. Evolv has been sued by the FTC for making “misleading marketing claims” and investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Evolv’s weapons detectors enhanced by artificial intelligence can be found at the entrances of hundreds of schools, sports stadiums, and events centers across the country, including in Central New York. The company claims that its products leverage AI to streamline security checks and reduce entry lines. 

Evolv did not respond to emails from Central Current to respond to its reporting.

On Monday, members of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Syracuse Peace Council and others again are holding a press conference at City Hall to draw attention to “Melt the Contracts” legislation. The proposal would block the city from entering, renewing or extending contracts with companies connected to the White House’s federal immigration crackdown. 

Evolv’s products have been designated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as an anti-terrorism technology.

Syracuse DSA member Genevieve Garcia Kendrick in a statement to Central Current said that DSA opposes the city contracting with Evolv, whose products “are squarely within the federal homeland security and counter-terrorism framework.”

“Syracuse should not adopt technology that deepens federal surveillance pipelines,” said Garcia Kendrick.

‘Stupid devices’

Evolv’s scanners use sensors and AI to determine whether a metallic item is a weapon, just as the city described. The systems allow customers to adjust the scanners’ sensitivity, so that users can determine how reactive they want the detectors to be.

But critics say there’s more nuance to weapons screening than Evolv lets on.

Nikita Ermolaev, a research engineer at the independent tech evaluation firm Internet Protocol Video Market, said Evolv’s technology comes at a cost. 

Ermolaev and his colleagues at IPVM have for years attempted to acquire and audit Evolv’s products, but the company has resisted that independent testing. The American Civil Liberties Union has equated Evolv’s resistance to independent auditing to Flock Safety’s own stonewalling of IPVM’s testing.

Evolv on its website has denied dodging independent testing, citing approval granted by DHS and testing against the United Kingdom’s National Protective Security Authority standards. 

Much of Evolv’s growth occurred during surging mass shooting incidents in schools across the United States, capitalizing on local communities’ appetites for enhanced security at school entrances, Ermolaev said. Evolv was able to portray conventional metal detectors as “stupid devices,” Ermolaev said. 

Evolv appears to have helped generate the perception of a problem with ordinary metal detectors, in order to present their tools as the necessary solution, Ermolaev said. However, minor adjustments to common metal detectors can emulate Evolv’s products at a fraction of the price, Ermolaev said, which IPVM has previously demonstrated.

The Nashville Banner in 2025 reported that, at their lowest sensitivity settings, Evolv detectors’ sensors can flag large items like assault rifles, but may miss small weapons like knives and pistols. At their highest settings, Evolv’s equipment can pick up small weaponry, but would likely flag all other metallic items passing through.

“If… this device false alarms on metallic objects such as cell phones, what exactly is the difference between this and a metal detector?” said Ermolaev. “Except for, you know, a substantial price difference.”

‘No red flags’

The city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group, which vets proposed surveillance technology, briefly discussed the weapons detectors in January and February. The group ultimately determined Evolv’s weapons detectors didn’t meet the group’s criteria for surveillance technology, exempting the proposed tool from undergoing further review.

On Feb. 10, an Evolv representative virtually presented to the group the company’s “concealed weapons detection” system. 

Before Evolv’s presentation, City Facilities Manager Tony Williams, Deputy Mayor Corey Driscoll Dunham, and SPD Lieutenant Brian Williams visited a school in the Baldwinsville City School District to “see the technology in person,” according to minutes from the technology group’s meeting.

Williams called the detectors “promising compared to similar systems,” though it’s unclear which, if any, similar systems the city or the working group have considered.

While a Syracuse police spokesperson has not responded to a list of questions from Central Current about Evolv, the meeting minutes show the department weighed in on the technology: 

“[SPD] has done their own research into the system, no red flags,” the minutes state.

But a long list of controversies have followed Evolv. 

The Utica City School District removed Evolv’s weapons detection systems from Thomas R. Proctor High School after the company’s AI-powered tool failed to detect a seven-inch knife that a student brought into the school. That student later used that knife to stab another student multiple times. The victim later sued the school.

Utica schools had paid $370,000 toward a $4 million contract to place Evolv scanners in 13 of its schools, with New York state grants subsidizing the rest of the agreement.

Before the stabbing, Evolv’s weapon detection system failed to detect an off-duty law enforcement officer’s service weapon, according to reporting from The Intercept.

When district leadership contacted Evolv about the incidents, the company instructed the school to increase the sensitivity settings of the weapons detection system — resulting in the system errantly flagging a seven-year-old’s lunch box as a bomb.

The school district eventually opted to replace Evolv’s systems in its high schools with metal detectors and x-ray bag scanners akin to the current security system at the entrance of Syracuse’s City Hall. 

Following the Utica stabbing, and the company’s chronic resistance to independent vetting from groups like IPVM, the Federal Trade Commission in 2024 sued Evolv for “knowingly” and “repeatedly” engaging in “unlawful acts” through “misleading marketing claims.” 

Evolv settled the suit, agreeing to stop “making unsupported claims about its products’ ability to detect weapons by using artificial intelligence,” according to an FTC press release. The suit also compelled Evolv to give certain K-12 school customers the option to cancel their contracts, which the FTC said typically lock customers into multi-year deals.

The company was later also subjected to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into Evolv’s claims about its products. 

“If both the FTC and SEC are investigating you, you’re doing something wrong,” Ermolaev said. “I don’t think you can spin it in any other way.” 

When Evolv’s detectors were subjected to independent testing, the detectors failed to detect large knives 42% of the time. Those results, found by the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, were not made public until the BBC made a public records request to the NCS4 for records related to the testing. 

The surveillance technology group did not discuss those results or other controversies because those discussions are reserved for technologies that the group has determined it will be reviewing, Muñoz said. 

Syracuse police, city staff and the Common Council are responsible for vetting the technology, Muñoz said. 

Working group member Daniel Schwarz, a senior privacy & technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that he flagged Evolv’s litany of incidents to his colleagues before their January meeting. Schwarz was unable to attend the group’s February meeting, when the group voted 7-1 to exempt Evolv’s technology from a review.

Though the working group won’t be vetting Evolv, Schwarz said “the efficiency issues, the potential for errors, the misleading practices, the FTC actions” warrant the mayor’s office’s scrutiny. 

“I think that should be plenty of red flags that should caution the city from entering into an overpriced contract with the vendor, and question what security practice they should utilize instead, and technologies like regular metal scanners,” Schwarz said.

City officials did not answer questions about whether they were aware of IPVM’s video that claims to show how the settings on a common metal detector can be adjusted to emulate the purported advantages of Evolv’s systems at a “90% lower price.” 

Nor did the city directly answer questions about whether it was comfortable contracting with a company found by the FTC to have knowingly and repeatedly engaged in “unlawful acts.”

“The review process is ongoing,” Muñoz said, “and no final determination has been made.” 

The post City considering ‘weapons detection’ tech from company connected to Utica stabbing, FTC lawsuit appeared first on Central Current.

Not long ago, Mike Walsh was assigned the potentially delicate duty of taking the Tipperary Hill Neighborhood Association’s counter-proposal back to the William G. Pomeroy Foundation. That Syracuse-based organization had just agreed to finance Walsh’s longtime dream:

A new interpretative marker that’ll explain the emotional significance of the famed green-over-red traffic signal at Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue.

There was one problem, to which association board members reacted with disbelief.

The marker would be part of Pomeroy’s nationwide “legends and lore” roadside program, and those markers always come in, well, there’s no other way to say it.

Red.

The very mention of that particular color at that particular corner drew “hisses” and incredulous groans when the possibility was presented to a roomful of neighbors, said Janice McKenna, president of the Tipp Hill association. Walsh, a retiree who served as both a Syracuse police captain and chief of the Geddes police, totally understood the pushback, even though he was the original champion of the idea of a marker.

Walsh tried to put it as diplomatically as he could to Pomeroy leadership:

Certainly, the folks on Tipp Hill were grateful for the support. “But let me tell you this,” he offered to the Pomeroy administrators, as a means of counsel. “Put a red sign up at that spot, and it just might turn green.”

No need to say more.

Steve Bodnar, Pomeroy’s associate director of strategic marketing, said that conversation was an opportunity, not a problem. Pomeroy officials understood the contradictory nature of giving a red marker priority at a spot where the whole point is that red is eternally relegated to the bottom, and they listened to an alternative suggested by Tipp Hill loyalists — a notion described by Bodnar as “a wonderful, wonderful idea.”

Pomeroy has put up roughly 200 legends and lore markers around the nation, always in red, celebrating such tales as the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow or the fabled and relentless steel-driving railroad worker, John Henry.

This new one in Syracuse just needed a special touch.

“Every Pomeroy marker is reviewed by the Pomeroy historical marker team,” Bodnar said. The concept and wording go through an historical review process that eventually reaches the Pomeroy board of trustees, final arbiters before a grant for each marker — typically around $2,000 — is awarded.

In this case, the board had the perfect answer for Tipperary Hill.

At 11 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day, during the annual flag-raising ceremony at Milton and Tompkins, a new marker will go up near the traffic signal …

In what Bodnar called distinctive, one-of-its-kind green.

“That marker,” Walsh said Sunday, “will be as unique as the light itself.”

Sunday, joined by photographer Mike Greenlar, I went over to Tipperary Hill to interview the principals. Mike Walsh and McKenna were joined at “the light” — Tipp Hill shorthand for the traffic signal — by Walsh’s sister-in-law, Mary Shortt Walsh. Her husband was the late police Capt. Richie Walsh, another Tipp Hill legend, and she emphasized that she showed up for our interview because she wanted the chance to say how proud she is of Mike’s persistence and hard work in lining up the marker.

Mary also has another powerful connection to the light: Her dad, Francis “Stubbs” Shortt, was one of the “stone throwers” — the group of Tipp Hill young men and boys who allegedly … and allegedly is a well-loved Tipp Hill word in this tale … became infuriated in the late 1920s when civic leaders decided the traffic signal must have the standard red on top.

That is a color a neighborhood of Irish immigrants associated with the despised British. The story goes they responded with a persistent hail of stones, shattering the red light again and again, until the city grudgingly gave in and the Irish green again was awarded the top spot.

That was just about a century ago. Since the traffic signal is believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation, the “stone thrower” tale has grown into a piece of beloved Irish-American lore, known far beyond Syracuse. In 2005, then-Irish Prime Minister Bernie Ahern even made a pilgrimage to see it, with U.S. Rep. James T. Walsh — a Tipp Hill native but no relation to Mike — as his guide.

Mike Walsh, a Tipp Hill native, has childhood memories of the Milton-Tompkins corner as a commercial hub, where Hewitt’s fish fry was a hot spot, every Lent. He originally hoped Pomeroy would erect a formal historical marker at that crossroads, detailing the exact chronology, but Mike ran into the same problem many of us have encountered while trying to research the history of the light.

Under Pomeroy guidelines, a straight-up historical marker demands exact documentation of events. Yet outside of one wink-wink article written in 1928 by columnist Jim Colligan for the old Syracuse Herald, there is no written evidence — not even a single Common Council resolution — that verifies civic officials made some legislative decision, based on stone-throwing, to put the green on top.

That’s led some Tipp Hill historians — including the great photographer and folklorist John Francis McCarthy — to wonder if the story of “The Stonethrowers” might be more of an epic and lovingly embroidered legend than the factual truth.

The solution, for the Pomeroy Foundation, was suggesting that Walsh shift his focus away from markers based on documented history and toward the markers that recall “legends and lore.” Bodnar said that category meshes rich elements of historical truth with undying and inspired storytelling, which — when you get right down to it — is a pretty good definition of the fundamental nature of Tipp Hill.

So Mike Walsh carefully chose his wording for the new marker: “Green on top,” it begins. “Stone throwers demanded Irish green on top of street light over British red. Threw stones until city officials gave in and did so in 1924.”

All of that appears beneath these three bedrock words: “Legends and lore.”

No one from the 1920s collection of boys identified as the original “stone throwers” is still alive. But the group served collectively as St. Patrick’s Parade grand marshals in 1987, and the oft-told account goes they only appeared publicly because then-Mayor Tom Young, of deep Tipp Hill lineage, gave those white-haired legends legal clemency for any teenage stone throwing misdemeanors — meaning they were finally safe to tell the tale.

Young, when asked the other day about that account, answered in the way of a guy who sees no reason to pour rain on a good story:

“If I had been asked to do so,” he said of providing that mayoral mercy, “I would have.”

What he knows for certain is that his late father, John “Bocko” Young — who served as Onondaga County Democratic chairman — told him the city did indeed make a switch at the corner from green to red on top, and that “Bocko” and Young’s uncle, Bob Young, both remembered one thing about the community response to a red light receiving primacy:

“There was no way that would be tolerated on Tipperary Hill.”

The uppermost light, Tom Young said, soon switched back to green. It’s important to remember, he said, that green was seen as a statement of hope and faith and this-is-us identity by a people fresh from living beneath the harsh boot of oppression. Whether that change was made because of relentless teen rock-hurling or hardnosed neighborhood politics — or both — well, I can only tell you this for sure:

McKenna and Mike Walsh said descendants of every known alleged stone-thrower will be at the unveiling on St. Patrick’s Day, including Mary Walsh. She said her dad, “Stubbs” Shortt, was christened with his lifetime nickname, Tipp Hill-style, after he accidentally blew off a few fingers as a child with a blasting cap he discovered at a construction site.

Years later, as a husband and a dad, he drove an ice truck for a living on Tipperary Hill. Once, when the rattling engine of that truck burst into flames, he hurried to drive the flaming vehicle home so his family had the chance to watch it burn.

It’s hardly a leap, she said, to imagine a guy of that world view – as a teen — joining his buddies in hurling a few street corner stones. She grew up hearing his tales of breaking the red light, stories she remembered her dad sharing with particular gusto around St. Patrick’s Day, and he was buried wearing a Wells & Coverly necktie emblazoned with the green-over-red light.

His daughter has absolute belief the stone throwing tale is not myth, but history.

Her reflections caused me to remember an interview I did years ago with the late Gene Thompson, an alleged stone thrower who was well into his 80s. He told me a lengthy and extremely detailed tale for The Post-Standard in 1996 about how a group of other boys he happened to know were the ones who did the actual stone throwing, with Gene describing himself as only an astounded witness.

His bemused wife Loretta interrupted our conversation to note that Gene and his brother Ed routinely got together and shared vivid accounts of how they’d strategize, as they threw those stones, about making sure they didn’t get caught.

Gene, aghast at such an implication, responded to his wife: “No! That can’t be!”

What certainly is true is this: While no one is sure of the precise chronology, it’s basically 100 years since the red atop a Tipp Hill crossroads made way for the green. You’re welcome to see the tale of stone throwers igniting that transformation as being fact or legend or in any way you want — I admit that I will always be a true believer — but no matter what you think, the time is right for one grand centennial remembrance.

On our impending St. Patrick’s Day, the one-of-a-kind green-over-red traffic signal will also have its own one-of-a-kind green marker, because – and here is one thing I can guarantee as absolute fact – it would have turned that shade no matter what, sooner than later, on Tipperary Hill.

The post Sean Kirst: On Tipp Hill, St. Patrick’s Day unveiling of marker will be ‘as unique as the light itself’ appeared first on Central Current.

As industrial developers look to bring semiconductors and artificial intelligence data centers near Indigenous communities across the state, two nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy are organizing in resistance. 

The Onondaga and Tonawanda Seneca nations in Central and Western New York face different efforts against potential environmental harm to ancestral territories and sacred sites. Those struggles against reindustrialization may require the Haudenosaunee nations to take the fight to the courts — action they rarely resort to. 

On the ancestral lands of the Onondaga Nation, Micron Technology — a leader in memory chip manufacturing that has promised to bring thousands of jobs to CNY — recently took its first tangible steps toward building its facility in Clay. 

The Nation is bracing for the development’s environmental effects on natural life throughout the region as environmental reviews on Micron’s impact remain opaque. 

In Western New York, the Tonawanda Seneca Nation is preparing for the next chapter in what has become a prolonged fight to stop the development of a new artificial intelligence data center at an industrial site that has haunted the Nation for two decades.

For representatives of both nations and their allies, these struggles call to mind past chapters in their shared history of resisting the defiling of sacred land, they said.

“We are defending ourselves as a nation, as a people that are fairly recognized, have treaties with the U.S.,” said Tonawanda Seneca Nation Administrator Christine Abrams. “We’re fighting for our way of life.”

The Tonawanda Seneca Nation has since 2005 resisted industrial development at the site in the Town of Alabama in Genesee County known as the Science Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park, or STAMP. The 1,250-acre sprawling site is located near the Big Woods, a natural area of cultural and practical significance for the Nation. 

Central Current contacted every member of the professional staff of the county’s industrial development agency — the Genesee County Economic Development Center — for months, but received no response to six emails and several phone calls. The GCEDC’s Board of Directors also did not reply to Central Current’s request for comment.

Developers and government officials supporting both industrial efforts downplay the impact the projects will have on surrounding environments, local waterways, and energy rates, legal representatives of the Onondaga Nation and members of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation said. 

After centuries of bad-faith dealings and industrial harm on ancestral lands, the Haudenosaunee remain wary of lofty assurances from non-Native companies and governments.

Joe Heath, the lead counsel for the Onondaga Nation, said that the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency are presenting the arrival of Micron as a “great service to the community.”

“Well, the service to the community would be to get those jobs in a responsible, environmentally conscious way,” Heath said. “Whenever there’s a choice, Indigenous concerns and Indigenous environmental stewardship is pushed aside.”

For the Tonawanda Seneca, who are resisting the imminent expansion of STAMP, defending the species that call the Big Woods home is paramount. Preserving the old-growth forest is important to all six nations within the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Tonawanda Seneca oppose development at STAMP altogether, and data centers like the one proposed at the site by Stream Data Centers — bringing noise, light, and water consumption — are particularly onerous.

“We are here, ready to fight whatever we need to for as long as we need to, to ensure that our environment remains clean and our customs and usage remains intact,” said Grandell “Bird” Logan, a spokesperson for the Nation.

Two representatives for Stream Data Centers did not reply to specific questions regarding the Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s environmental concerns relating to Stream’s data center proposal.

As members of the confederacy prepare to ensure their ancestral land is protected, they worry that the allure of job creation will prove irresistible for environmental regulators and elected leaders who want to spur economic development.

Despite failing to build up STAMP, Genesee County’s industrial development agency proposed a deal to give $801 million in tax breaks to Stream to create 125 permanent jobs at the data center. Micron, which has not yet ramped up hiring, is also slated to receive hefty subsidies to create thousands of jobs.  

STAMP has idled for almost two decades, hung up in bureaucratic gridlock and resistance from the Tonawanda Senecas who have appealed to the state with environmental concerns.

Though the state initially appeared to initially listen, the prospect of job creation soon took precedence, Heath said. 

“Tonawanda and the Haudenosaunee have been talking to the state about why STAMP is just completely unacceptable and irresponsible for many years,” Heath said.

‘The dominant paradigm’

STAMP has seen several proposals for development come and go over the past two decades. The most recent focus of Genesee County is a data center proposed by Stream U.S.

Data centers are particularly objectionable to the Tonawanda Seneca due to the toll they take on the environment, Logan said. Increased water usage, wastewater pollution, high electricity demand and ratepayer costs have all been levied as concerns by communities and environmentalists across the country who oppose data centers despite companies’ promises of economic development. 

The Tonawanda Senecas ultimately filed a joint lawsuit with environmental organizations Sierra Club and Earthjustice to oppose Stream’s original plans for a 900,000 square foot facility.

Stream in November scrapped that proposal — but the company returned with an even bigger proposal, over twice the size of the original data center plan. 

Last week, Stream announced a plan to purchase property at STAMP from Plug Power, a former tenant which tried and failed to construct a clean hydrogen facility.

Plug Power’s stalled project — which received hundreds of millions in subsidies but produced no hydrogen power or permanent jobs — embodied Genesee County’s struggles to make good on the promise of STAMP development.

The Tonawanda Seneca are preparing to meet that new proposal with the same resistance as the first. The Tonawanda Seneca Nation Council of Chiefs made clear in a November statement commemorating the Treaty of Canandaigua that they are prepared to pursue litigation to oppose the new data center proposal.

“George Washington made a commitment to my ancestors that the Treaty would protect our territory forever, and told us that the courts would be open to us if we needed to enforce the treaty’s terms,” Chief Roger Hill said in the Nation’s statement. “Unfortunately, that is what we have had to do to protect our homelands, and we will do it again if need be.”

The Tonawanda Seneca say data centers emit significant light and sound, that could disturb the local ecosystem of the Big Woods and scare off critical native species.

In Central New York, the Onondagas are preparing their efforts of resistance to projects surrounded by uncertainty on their plans for environmental protection. Clearcutting in preparation for Micron has already felled hundreds of trees, a process that will continue to destroy the habitats of multiple endangered bat species.

Parts of Micron’s proposal, which has been touted as a generational economic boon to the region’s residents, have not been filed with state environmental regulators for review or are still in the review process. 

That has prompted a lawsuit from environmental advocates as local labor groups advance their own lawsuit hoping to compel Micron to issue legally binding commitments on environmental protections and local job growth.

Heath said that prior broken promises of conservation efforts from industrial developers worry the Nation.

Heath recounted the fate of the Seneca Nation, a separate sovereign nation from the Seneca Tonawanda Nation, who still live the fallout from nuclear development half a century ago as an example of the harms of the past haunting the Nations’ present. 

“Micron is just as problematic — as though we never learned anything from Onondaga Lake — where the mantra of ‘jobs’ seems to be sacred, and environmental issues are being brushed aside,” Heath said. 

Heath said that Micron and the county’s plan to mitigate potential PFAS pollution is inadequate. PFAS are also known as forever chemicals. It simultaneously disparages Haudenosaunee history and poses harm to present Indigenous communities, he said. 

“We’re going to dump all of that into the Seneca River, an incredibly important historic location in waterway for the Onondaga and Haudenosaunee, because it’s part of the Three River System where the Grand Council used to meet,” Heath said.

Micron and the county have said an expanded Oak Orchard Wastewater Treatment Plant will mitigate those problems.  

Heath also compared the Tonawanda Seneca’s fight against STAMP’s expansion to the Onondagas’ own effort to push back against the growth of a gravel mining operation in Tully.

The continued expansion of the Cranesville Block gravel mine, Heath said, jeopardizes the Onondagas’ environmental remediation goals for the 1,000 acres of land it reclaimed in 2024.

Heath said the decision to industrialize “goes back to the fundamental cultural differences between the Haudenosaunee and the dominant paradigm: extraction, commodification, exploitation.”

‘The time of the land grab…’

As both nations continue to sharpen their plans to resist the titans of new American industry, they may have to resort to the courts for help. The Haudenosaunee nations prefer settling conflicts through diplomacy and dialogue, Heath said. 

In his 40 years representing the Onondagas, he believes he has only been authorized to advance one lawsuit in an effort to reclaim stolen land. 

“These are small communities without large financial resources,” Heath noted.

The Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s fight against STAMP reminds Abrams and Logan of their ancestors’ efforts two centuries ago to defend their land from developers. 

Logan said that the continued efforts to industrialize the land surrounding the Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s territory build on the injustice of centuries of land theft. At one point those injustices erased the Nation’s reservation altogether. 

The Tonawanda Senecas’ history is marred by spurious land development.

Through the federal 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, the Tonawanda Seneca retain a claim to thousands of acres of land spanning much of Western New York and beyond. Subsequent bad-faith treaties with New York state have eaten away at their territory. 

The Nation at one point lost its reservation altogether through invalid treaties with a land development company, and resorted to lawsuits to win back its land. Victories in state court and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed the Nation to purchase back a portion of its land.

Abrams wants anyone opposing development at STAMP to resist with the same tenacity as those who fought back against the Ogden Land Company nearly two centuries ago. Doing so, Abrams said, is essential to preserve the world for the next seven generations of humanity.

“They saved this land for us,” Abrams said. “We were their future generation, and now we have to do the same for our future generations.”

With developers continuing to pitch Genesee County on projects at STAMP, in spite of environmental concerns raised to the state by Indigenous people, Logan likened today to what he labeled “the time of the land grab” and westward expansion.

The victories against Stream and past developers should signal to officials with the Genesee County Economic Development Corporation that building out STAMP is not a good idea, Logan said. 

“But I guess we’ll see if they really do read these signs and take these messages,” he said. 

Abrams hopes that sustained resistance can compel Stream to locate its data center elsewhere.

Local resistance to data centers and other AI-related projects appears to be growing around the country, sometimes resulting in companies delaying or cancelling proposed development. 

Now that Stream is advancing plans for a larger data center, Abrams said it is even more important for the coalition opposing that project to flex its might to Stream and the state. She hopes to see more in-person demonstrations to supplement petitions, letters to elected officials, and potential lawsuits. 

Abrams and the Tonawanda Seneca Nation see commonality in their struggle and in the concerns of local residents dreading industrial encroachment near their homes. If more community members join efforts to resist Stream, that mass display of sustained opposition could stave off the data center while avoiding another legal battle, she noted.

“It’s not just affecting us, but we’re fighting this for the whole area,” Abrams said. “That’s going to impact everything surrounding us, especially on our lands, our wildlife, our plant life, those that we use for our ceremonies and customs and traditions.”

The post What Haudenosaunee resistance to reindustrialization means for ancestral lands in the AI age appeared first on Central Current.

Shortly after 9 p.m. on Feb. 12, Geordan Sanchez Rodriguez and Mayeley Ruiz Torres walked into the West Onondaga offices of lawyer Jose Perez. She wore a soft cream sweater and a delicate necklace. Under grey sweatpants, he wore an ankle monitor. 

The couple were exhausted but relieved. 

Sanchez Rodriguez had been released hours before, after a month and six days in a federal immigration detention facility in Batavia.

As Ruiz Torres described how her husband shared one toilet with about 50 people during his first 10 days in detention, Perez swept in to see them. “Libertad!” he bellowed, and then returned to the work that has absorbed more and more of his life over the past year. 

Perez has been a decorated lawyer in Syracuse for nearly two decades, handling workers’ compensation and immigration cases. But since President Donald J. Trump began cracking down on immigration, fighting a more brazen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has consumed Perez’s life. 

The lawyer’s clients have been picked up at regularly scheduled ICE appointments, detained with their infant children, disappeared from the ICE locator, and been denied access to Perez, their lawyer. One client asked for Perez twenty-five times, he said. The man was deported without ever talking to Perez. Another, a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico, was detained for three days, unable to convince ICE of his citizenship. 

Perez has had to match ICE’s vigor. His 20-hour days begin at 7 a.m. and end at 3 a.m. He flies from Syracuse to Texas, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Colorado — all places where his clients have been transferred after their detentions.

The past year has probably taken ten off his lifespan, he joked. 

“Humanity and legality are gone from ICE,” he told Central Current.

Since ICE has cracked down in Central New York, Perez has had about 150 clients detained, he said. Twenty to 30 have been deported and another 70 to 80 have voluntarily agreed to be deported, he said. About 15 to 20 of his clients were being held by ICE in Batavia, he said. Another 40 or 50 of his clients are in detention, spread across multiple states. Many have been moved from detention facility to detention facility. 

Even as he guides his own family through the country’s immigration system, Perez manages a full caseload. He’s had to navigate what he calls “traps” from the federal government. 

He wakes up around 7 a.m. to eat breakfast before his daughter goes to school. He attends hearings virtually and in-person, beginning at about 8 a.m. Court runs through 4 p.m. Once the hearings end, he works at his office until 9 p.m., eating dinner at 9:30 and answering messages from clients and others through midnight or 1 a.m. Emails follow, until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m.

Those long days are full, and they require him to be relentless. 

American by chance

Chance has left Perez navigating the immigration system for his family. 

He was born in Ithaca, when his father was a graduate student at Cornell. Even though he spent his entire childhood and much of his early adulthood in Venezuela, he has always had birthright citizenship. His sister, Jennifer Perez, who was born in Venezuela, does not.

In 2002, Perez returned to Ithaca for what he thought would be a short-term stay. He wanted his son, Jose, to be born in the same place he was. He only planned to stay a few months — he was already a successful lawyer in Venezuela. 

But while he was in Ithaca, a coup d’etat saw President Hugo Chavez temporarily ousted from power. Perez decided it was too dangerous to return to Venezuela. As a citizen, he was able to remain in the United States. He worked as a delivery driver while he learned English and eventually attended law school at Syracuse University. Today, dozens of legal awards hang on two walls of his office.

Meanwhile, his sister is going through the asylum process. 

With former president Nicolás Maduro gone from Venezuela, it has become harder to argue cases for people from the country. One judge told Perez in early February that everything is fine now in Venezuela, Perez said. 

Perez disagrees strongly. 

“The worst of the revolution, of the dictatorship, is still in power,” he said. 

His niece is ten years into her own application. 

In mid-February, his niece was notified that her asylum hearing would be in early March, giving her just three weeks to prepare the case. 

“Who can prepare a case in three weeks? It’s impossible,” said Perez. “They are doing all these traps so that people are not able to get relief.”

She called Perez, crying. In Houston, where she lives, people have been taken straight from asylum interviews to detention, Perez said. She wondered whether she should go to the interview. If she didn’t go, her asylum case – ten years in the making – would be denied. If she did go, she could be taken and threatened with deportation. 

Perez told her to go. He would fly to Texas to be there with her. 

Results from the interview are still pending, as there is a nationwide asylum pause and Venezuela is on the list of no decisions. 

“We don’t have human rights”

Perez’s clients in Syracuse have the same fears as his niece in Texas. 

When clients ask if they should go to their biometrics appointments or ICE check-ins, Perez doesn’t know what to tell them, he said. 

“In eighteen years of practice, I have never had to tell a client don’t go to an appointment,” said Perez. “But how can I tell a client, ‘Go to this appointment where you’re going to go and you’re going to get arrested and probably deported after 48 hours?’” 

Not appearing at an appointment can also lead to an arrest and deportation. 

Sanchez Rodriguez is one of the clients who was taken directly from a regularly scheduled ICE appointment. He and his wife, Ruiz Torres, are Cuban immigrants. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 2019, and met Sanchez Rodriguez on a trip to Cuba to visit her mother that year. They got engaged at the end of 2021, and married shortly after. 

On one of her trips to visit him in Cuba, they noticed they were being followed. They believed it was because of political persecution and decided he should come to the U.S. 

They pursued multiple immigration paths, including the green card and asylum routes. Perez represented Sanchez Rodriguez throughout the years-long immigration process. But the process became more complicated over time, as paths to citizenship for Cubans were closed. In 2025, Trump ended the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans Parole Program. 

Ruiz Torres was a teacher in Cuba and Mexico before coming to the United States. 

“I made my American dream here,” she said.

“This is not the America that I dreamed to live [in],” she said a few minutes later. 

ICE often requires asylum seekers to attend regular check ins at ICE offices while awaiting the government’s decision on their asylum application. 

When Sanchez Rodriguez went to his Jan. 6 appointment, they told him Ruiz Torres couldn’t come in with him. In the past, she had always been allowed to. She sat in the car and waited, increasingly anxious. More than thirty minutes ticked away. She went inside and found the custodian and asked if he knew anything. He didn’t. 

Ten minutes later, she got a call from Sanchez Rodriguez. He was being detained.

Sanchez Rodriguez didn’t know where they were taking him — just that it was two hours away — but he told Ruiz Torres to go to Perez’s office. Perez was in court but he texted her back immediately. He connected her to Matthew Borowski, an immigration lawyer in Buffalo, and told her they needed to file a habeas corpus petition. 

Ruiz Torres was sobbing. She hadn’t thought this was possible — she was a naturalized citizen, and she and Sanchez Rodriguez are married. He has no criminal record and she believes he has a solid case for asylum. 

They filed the habeas petition shortly after Sanchez Rodriguez was detained, but it took more than a month before he was released. Perez represented Sanchez Rodriguez twice on Feb. 10, once for his asylum case and once for a bond hearing. 

For the first ten days in Batavia, he was not allowed to call Ruiz Torres. 

During visits, Ruiz Torres talked to Sanchez Rodriguez over a phone through a glass window. 

“It’s like a movie,” said Ruiz Torres. 

Late last year, a Bureau of Immigration Appeals ruling made it much harder to get people out of detention, ruling an immigration judge could not consider a bond request made by a noncitizen who entered the country without inspection. In the last months of 2025, Perez was only able to get two people out of detention, he said. 

Immigration lawyers have recently found detainees a path out of detention through habeas corpus petitions. Federal judges are allowed to review whether someone’s detention is legal and justified. Habeas corpus filings have hit historic highs in 2026, according to reporting by ProPublica. 

There was a snag for Perez, however: He can’t argue habeas corpus petitions because he is not admitted to practice federal law. But he can argue his client’s bond cases. The bonds have ranged from just ankle monitoring and no cost to $10,000. 

Since January, Perez has helped at least 20 clients return home. 

Between hiring an extra lawyer and paying bond, the process is expensive. Many families can’t afford it.

Every morning while Sanchez Rodriguez was detained, someone came around with a paper the detainees could sign to volunteer to self-deport, Sanchez Rodriguez said. 

When people can’t afford the legal costs to get out of detention, they end up “just signing, signing, signing,” said Perez. 

On Feb. 12, Sanchez Rodriguez was released. Ruiz Torres drove to Batavia and hugged her husband. She later brought him to Perez’s office. 

Sitting in Perez’s office, the couple said they still don’t feel safe.

“It’s a lot of fear that we feel in the community, in the country even,” she said. “Everywhere.”

Perez echoed that fear. Citizens and green card holders have called him to ask if they may lose their status. 

Ruiz Torres works in the Syracuse School District. Last year, she had students who had recently arrived from Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia and Venezuela, she said. Now, most of those families are gone. 

Last year, a student’s mother was detained, leaving her second grade daughter alone in Syracuse. Ruiz Torres went with the young girl to the Ecuadorian Embassy, she said.

“What is the human right?” Ruiz Torres asked. “We don’t have human rights.”

More work to do

Perez still has clients detained all over the country. 

One of Perez’s clients was driving with her roughly twenty-day old child when she was stopped and picked up by ICE. First, they took her and her infant to Niagara County jail. But that facility couldn’t hold children. They sent her to Louisiana and eventually to Texas. As of Feb. 12, the two were still detained. Her child was about two months old.

Perez wasn’t sure where she was until she called him ten days after she had been detained. 

Many of Perez’s clients are people he first represented in worker’s compensation cases. 

After law school, he worked for an insurance defense firm. He hated working for the employers. “I was more of the little guy attorney in Venezuela, and I wanted to be the same thing here,” Perez said. 

He argued many pro bono immigration cases while working at the insurance defense firm. Immigration clients started calling him because of injuries at work. He had to tell them he couldn’t represent them because he already represented their employers. 

That pushed Perez to open his own firm in 2012.

Over a decade later, he now often sees the opposite: worker’s compensation clients turning into immigration clients. 

At the end of the night on Feb. 12, Ruiz Torres and Sanchez sat opposite Perez in two large chairs facing his desk. They were surrounded by stacks of papers spread on every surface and nearly life-size statues of Lady Justice and Archangel Michael. Thirty-seven evil eye amulets stared at them from a wall.  

Perez told them what to expect next.

The couple filmed a short video for Perez’s Facebook page. They left at about 10:30 p.m. 

Perez turned to speak with his legal assistant. There was more work to do. 

The post One Syracuse lawyer’s relentless battle against ICE appeared first on Central Current.

Ron Gersbacher was maybe 15 when his Northside Wildcats of the old Kiwanis League qualified in 1962 to play for a local junior baseball championship. Syracuse city recreation director Nicoletta Urciuoli told the players she could offer them some special jerseys, which Gersbacher remembers were stored in an old trunk:

They were the “away” jerseys for the famous Montreal Royals.

Gersbacher was a teenager. It was long before he became a well-known historian of baseball heritage in Syracuse. Yet those jerseys were evidence of an extraordinary connection between this city and baseball history, a little-known fact tying our community to events that changed not only the game but rippled into every aspect of this nation.

Eighty years ago this April, Jackie Robinson became the first Black player since the 19th century to compete in the International League, one of baseball’s top minor leagues. It was his stepping stone toward the groundbreaking moment a year later when Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, shattering long-established racial barriers in Major League Baseball.

The legendary International League team he joined in 1946 was Montreal.

That franchise survives in 2026 — as the Syracuse Mets.

Those extra jerseys were available roughly 64 years ago to Gersbacher’s team because the Royals had brought along some of their old gear when they relocated to this city’s North Side, only a year or two earlier.

In that sense, when the Mets celebrate baseball’s annual Jackie Robinson Day on April 15 at NBT Bank Stadium – not so far away now, with spring training well underway – Syracuse will hold a particularly intimate spot in a profound anniversary.

“You don’t have 1947 if there’s no 1946,” said baseball author and historian Chris Lamb, who wrote a book based on what Robinson faced and overcame during his spring training with the Royals in a then-legally segregated Florida, just before his landmark season 80 years ago in the International League.

A decade later, Robinson retired from the game when the Dodgers tried to trade him to the then-crosstown New York Giants, after the 1956 season. The dwindling number of Americans who can actually remember the era when Robinson played baseball are now well into their 80s or their late 70s — meaning they represent less than 5 percent of the nation’s population.

For some elders in the Syracuse Black community — understanding what Robinson endured, and what he helped transform — the April remembrance demands particular attention because of what they lived and witnessed…

And what they fear, more than ever, is too easily forgotten.

“He means everything to me,” said Al Gunn, 85, founder of the Inner City Little League in Syracuse, speaking of why he makes a point of thinking of Robinson, every day.

“He gave us a break so we could get somewhere,” said Al Hayden, 90, who helped out for years while a close friend who also revered Robinson — the late Avery Brooks — developed the Syracuse Youth Outreach Enrichment Program. Brooks created it behind a dream of bringing baseball to city children, who he believed were all too often shut out of existing baseball leagues or travel ball.

Gunn, Brooks and Hayden all grew up in the American South under suffocating Jim Crow laws. Gunn said Black children were not allowed to set foot in the public parks of his Alabama hometown. If you wanted to play baseball, Gunn said, you did it in a “cow pasture” on the outskirts.

In late 1945, when Gunn was 4, Robinson signed a contract with the Royals. In the following spring, he became the first Black player in the IL or its earlier incarnations since Moses Fleetwood Walker competed for the Syracuse Stars in 1889 — a last glimmer of 19th century hope before the highest professional executives in “white” baseball finalized a “gentleman’s agreement” banning all Black players from their ranks.

“He made the way for us,” Gunn said of Robinson, with deep emotion. Gunn keeps Robinson’s image on his computer screen. He sees it multiple times every day, and he wants his young players to understand: That portrait is intended as both an expression of gratitude and a means of inspiration.

What Robinson did “helped change the world” and must be remembered, said Geneva Hayden, Al Hayden’s wife and a legendary champion of childhood literacy in Syracuse. She and her peers all witnessed the kind of cruelty Robinson withstood, illustrated specifically through a harsher side of baseball heritage in this city.

By Robinson’s own testimony and the recollections of others close to his journey, the old Syracuse Chiefs — the franchise that left town six years before the Royals relocated here, in 1961 — responded to Robinson with as much poison and hatred as any team in the International League.

In 1946, the Montreal Gazette reported that Royals general manager Mel Jones angrily confronted Syracuse baseball president Leo Miller with these words: “(Robinson) had to take a worse ride from your club than any other. Somebody in your dugout has been yelling at your pitchers to throw at him almost every time he comes up.”

The late Garton Del Savio, a Chiefs player in 1946 who knew and respected Robinson, told me years ago how his teammates routinely hurled vicious insults at Robinson, which Del Savio described as the “worst things” you can scream at another man. He remembered how some of those Chiefs wanted to take the field in “black face” to harass Robinson, and had to be talked down.

Robinson himself recalled how someone from the Chiefs once threw a black cat onto the field, as a taunt. Local sportswriters expressed crude hostility. Robinson pushed through it. Despite the wear on his own health and nerves, his overall response illustrates why he ended up with a plaque in Cooperstown, years later: Robinson hit .349 for the season and won the IL batting title. The Royals defeated Syracuse in the championship series, before going on to win the “Little World Series.”

The soon-to-be International League Most Valuable Player made his first Royals visit to Syracuse in April 1946. He consistently played well all season long, against the Chiefs — including a stunning-and-emblematically-Robinson-at-bat when he put down a bunt at such an unexpected moment that the panicked Chiefs threw the ball away, and he ended up coming all the way around to score.

His major league breakthrough in 1947, with the Dodgers, is a matter of global renown. Robinson shouldered intense abuse to shatter racist myths and emerge as one of the finest players in the game. As Lamb said, his courage and example were among the igniting factors in the postwar civil rights movement that finally helped topple countless hateful barriers in America.

The time in Montreal — a city that in many ways shielded Robinson and his wife Rachel from the racial animus they so often encountered — was of pivotal importance, said Jack Jedwab, a writer, historian and president of the Association for Canadian Studies and Metropolis Canada who wrote a book about that 1946 season.

Put simply, if Robinson had elected to step away from the threats and utter hatred, the integration of professional baseball might have been set back for years.

All of that history, next month, meets a 2026 crossroads in Syracuse.

The old franchise known as the Chiefs departed for Miami, after the 1955 season. As Gersbacher relates, Syracuse was without International League baseball in the late 1950s, even as the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, leaving Montreal without a major league parent club.

The direct result: The club that used to be the Royals moved to Syracuse and was renamed as the Chiefs, the same team that has evolved over the years into the Syracuse Mets, whose National League parent club in Queens designed its stadium rotunda in Robinson’s honor.

Syracuse, then, is now home to the International League squad on which Robinson began his extraordinary journey – yet was also home 80 years ago to another squad of contradictory history that tried its hardest to break his resolve and drive him from the game.

All of this will wrap together at NBT Bank Stadium on April 15, when the Mets host Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and both clubs take part in the baseball-wide celebration of Jackie Robinson Day, held on the date of his 1947 regular-season debut with the Dodgers. Mets General Manager Jason Smorol said the team, as it does each year, will offer a program that includes invitations to many civic groups, youth leagues and other organizations.

He said the Mets also participate in “The Nine,” a minor league initiative named in honor of Robinson’s number with the Royals. The intention is honoring the game’s Black pioneers while building links to communities of color that are too often severed — as Al Gunn and Al Hayden both can testify — from the deeper baseball connections to which Robinson dedicated his life.

Bob Searing, curator of history for the Onondaga Historical Association, said the remembrance provides an extraordinary opportunity for Central New York educators and historians to discuss all elements of the Robinson story. While Searing said accounts of Robinson being harassed in Syracuse make him “sick and sad,” he finds meaning in the idea that today’s Syracuse Mets are the baseball descendant of the revered Montreal team that served as Robinson’s launching pad.

Searing spoke of how Fleet Walker, whose 1884 big-league appearance would be the last by a Black American until Robinson broke through, was acquitted of a racially charged 1891 murder accusation in Syracuse — a verdict that left the community so overjoyed that a frantic judge could not quell the celebration in the courtroom.

To Searing, both tales offer a chance to teach schoolchildren about the long and continuing struggle for racial justice, played out in such a prominent role in our own city — and “the ability of sport to move American culture forward.”

The late Francis McMillan Parks understood that point first-hand. She was a beloved Syracuse University educator, adviser and civic advocate who died 14 months ago, at 87.

She also spent a lifetime admiring and emulating Jackie Robinson.

Her daughter, Stephanie Ellen Parks, said this week that her mother never stopped being intensely appreciative of everything that Robinson sacrificed. As a child, amid hard Jim Crow restrictions in Texas, Francis listened with her grandmother Ellen to radio broadcasts of Robinson’s games with the Dodgers.

For Francis and countless other African-Americans of that era, Stephanie said Robinson offered “permission and hope.” They finally had a living example of someone who could bring down the walls that had meant suffering for countless generations, and Francis Parks lived out that gratitude for the rest of her life.

Mother and daughter often showed up on cold April days in Syracuse for the annual Jackie Robinson celebration at the stadium — an event that will coincide so perfectly this year with the 80th anniversary of Robinson’s International League heroics and struggles.

Jimmy Oliver, a standout baseball player who is now director of community engagement for the Syracuse Police Department, said Robinson’s most enduring qualities went far beyond celestial baseball skills. For girls and boys of the city facing 21^st century “adversity and challenges” that can be both daunting and smothering, Oliver said success often equates to one monumentally difficult passage:

Finding a way through it, when everything tells you to stop.

For those children, Oliver said, once they know the full story: “Jackie Robinson’s name still rings the bell.”

The post Sean Kirst: Eighty years after Jackie Robinson’s minor league heroics, a spotlight on his courage and pain in Syracuse appeared first on Central Current.

The Onondaga County Legislature took the first step in allowing the county to build an industrial wastewater treatment plant that could treat wastewater from Micron. 

Legislators voted Tuesday to approve the creation of the Oak Orchard industrial sewer district by a 15-2 margin.

County Executive Ryan McMahon has in the past said that Micron will pay the full cost of building the treatment plant. But the county does not yet have a final cost estimate for the project, and has not yet determined how it will be financed, said Justin Sayles, a spokesperson for the county executive. 

“That’s how these things work,” said Sayles when asked how the county could say Micron would pay before the final costs or financing plans were established. “Micron has said the same – that they’ll be paying for the wastewater.” 

The creation of the sewer district in itself will not require any taxpayer money. 

In comments before they voted, Republican legislators were enthusiastic about moving forward the vote on the treatment plant. Democratic legislators expressed skepticism about what they deemed a lack of information and transparency provided by the county on the final Oak Orchard project. All but two Democratic legislators voted in favor of the project to maintain a seat at the table, they said. 

“The least bad choice here is one where we get to keep our seat at the table, to have continued oversight over this project as it develops,” said Gregg Eriksen, the chair of the Environmental Protection Committee and the sponsor of the resolution. 

Creating the district makes possible municipal bonding, Eriksen said. The county may choose to use municipal bonds to pay the initial cost of building the treatment plant, said a spokesperson for McMahon. Bonding would require a legislature vote, which would allow them to ask further questions during the process of building the plant, Eriksen said. 

The treatment plant has been controversial. In a public hearing held in February on the question of creating the sewer district, most public comments focused on concerns about the treatment plant itself, not the district. 

Some constituents are concerned about Micron polluting local waterways. They worry that current plans for the treatment plant won’t sufficiently find and eliminate forever chemicals and other pollutants before releasing the water into the Oneida River. 

Others are concerned that if there is pollution, the county could be held liable if the plant were a county facility. 

Asked about liability, Sayles responded that all state and federal rules would be complied with. 

“There’s no way that I want any industrial public corporation dealing with their own wastewater,” said Legislator Tim Burtis. 

Two legislators voted against the project. Ellen Block said her constituents had reached out with concerns about liability, adding that legislators were “not elected to be a rubber stamp on the county executive’s agenda.” 

Elaine Denton said that she was “a no until someone makes me a yes,” and voted against the project as she did not feel that there had been enough time to understand it. 

“Micron is not a fairy creature who flitters through the air who can be intimidated away from here by a little bit of scrutiny from us,” said Legislator Jeremiah Thompson. “It is a multinational, multibillion dollar corporation. It can withstand a little bit of scrutiny.” 

He said that despite his dissatisfaction with the answers so far, he would vote in favor of the resolution in order to “keep the project in the light where we can see it,” and looked forward to monthly updates from WEP, input from the community, and open lines of communication from the county executive and Micron. 

The post Onondaga County legislators approve industrial wastewater district for Micron appeared first on Central Current.

A 2025 investigation found that complaints against City Clerk Patricia McBride’s alleged workplace violations were more credible than previously reported, according to recently obtained public documents reviewed by Central Current. 

During the investigation into McBride — who the council in January unanimously re-appointed to another term as city clerk — a leader of the council cast aspersions on the complaints and their motives. Later, council leadership appears to have obscured evidence supporting allegations of misconduct in an article published on Syracuse.com.

The city clerk is an appointed position that maintains public records and performs other administrative and procedural duties on behalf of the city council. McBride served as deputy clerk from 2014 to 2022 under longtime City Clerk John Copanas. The council in 2022 first appointed McBride, who then became the city’s first Black woman to serve as city clerk.

McBride also serves on the Syracuse Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.

Central Current’s review of previously unreported documents confirming McBride’s workplace misconduct follows SHA Board Chair Ryan Benz’s recent call for McBride to resign. She seemed to accuse Benz of a conflict of interest.

Multiple Common Council staffers in January 2025 submitted complaints to the City of Syracuse’s Department of Human Resources, accusing McBride of multiple different instances of workplace harassment by McBride.

The city commissioned Bond, Schoeneck & King to perform an independent investigation into the complaints. Colin Leonard, a management side labor and employment lawyer, performed the investigation. McBride was last year placed on paid leave for about a month during the investigation.

“The complainants assert they work in an environment in which the city clerk has used profanities, yells, and threatens them,” Leonard wrote.

Working in the council office under those conditions made them uncomfortable, caused stress, and created uncertainty about their future, complainants told an investigator. 

The investigation, completed by the firm on Feb. 26, 2025, determined the city clerk’s conduct had not resulted in a hostile work environment on the basis of discrimination. McBride’s actions nonetheless violated multiple city workplace policies, Leonard wrote. Leonard also wrote McBride “helped to create an unprofessional work environment.”

“This misconduct must be addressed and corrected by the Common Council,” wrote Leonard.

Leonard’s report also delineated four corrective actions for the council to take in response to McBride’s conduct:

• Discipline McBride with either a written warning or short unpaid suspension for violation of city rules
• Enroll McBride in a leadership training program to be selected and paid for by the city that focuses on employee management
• Require McBride to immediately improve the professionalism of the Common Council office by eliminating any use of profanity and any yelling at employees
• Have the Common Council more clearly articulate in writing the role of the McBride viz a viz Common Council employees.

When the city itself reviewed the written complaints against McBride, the HR department also determined that McBride’s conduct violated some of the city’s workplace policies. 

HR Director Richard Alsever in a March 4, 2025 letter to McBride explained that her conduct specifically violated city rules regarding the use of inappropriate language in the workplace, interactions with coworkers that may have been perceived as unprofessional or disruptive and the importance of maintaining a professional and businesslike work environment.

“This letter serves as a written warning and a reminder of the city’s expectations for all employees to maintain a respectful and professional workplace,” Alsever wrote. “To support you in this, you will be participating in a workplace training program focused on effective employee management and professional communication.”

Alsever told McBride that, in addition to the mandated training, the Common Council would soon be providing further clarification regarding the clerk’s role as it relates to council employees.

Central Current could not independently verify whether the above recommendations were followed.

The city did discipline McBride with a written warning through Alsever’s letter. The city did enroll McBride in a leadership training program, according to multiple sources. 

Mayor Sharon Owens’ office declined to comment on the allegations against McBride.

“The Clerk is hired and managed by the Common Council,” a city spokesperson said. “She does not report to the administration. Any allegations surrounding misconduct, an investigation or any resulting action should be addressed to the Common Council.”

It is unclear what actions McBride took to “immediately improve the professionalism of the Common Council office” as instructed. Likewise, it remains unclear if the council ever provided further clarification on the clerk’s role, and that position’s professional relation to council staffers.

The city’s website does not appear to detail the clerk’s role at all, let alone explain how the clerk is supposed to interface with council staffers in their daily work. Leonard in his report on the investigation opined that the “unsettled nature” in the council’s office may have partially resulted from “a lack of clarity regarding the supervisory structure.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever had a clear understanding of who I report to for this, for that. The councilors are our direct bosses. But I also heard the city clerk is a supervisor of us. Or is in charge of HR matters,” one complainant told Leonard.

Another complainant echoed those concerns about structural opacity in the council’s office.

“My understanding of my supervisor is [that] my boss is the councilors. My supervisor on a day-to-day basis is the city clerk. Sometimes it feels like the city clerk goes above the city council. We have to run what we are doing by the city clerk for the council,” the complainant said.

‘You gotta just get it done’

The Bond, Schoeneck, and King investigation focused on specific incidents that occurred between Jan. 22, 2025 and Jan. 24, 2025, which complainants reported in written statements that the city received on Jan. 29, 2025 and Jan. 31, 2025.

Leonard, the attorney, began in early February 2025 interviewing subjects with information on the allegations and familiarity with McBride and the complainants. Interviewees included the complainants, McBride, other council office staffers and former Council President Helen Hudson.

Central Current contacted seven of the eight interview subjects that participated in the firm’s investigation and every member of the 2025 iteration of the Common Council.

Councilors Marty Nave, Chol Majok, current Council President Rita Paniagua, Pat Hogan and Hudson did not respond to calls from Central Current reporters. Councilors Jimmy Monto, Rasheada Caldwell, Corey Williams and Patrona Jones-Rowser declined to comment on the story.

Caldwell told a Central Current reporter, “you should’ve known better to call me on that,” because the investigation took place a year ago.

“What’s this got to do with today?” Caldwell said.

Multiple members of the council, present and past, contended that if there were any workplace tensions undergirding the investigation into the city clerk’s conduct, McBride was the one being treated unfairly.

Hudson, who was the final person interviewed for the investigation, appears to have pushed back on the allegations and criticized the complainants themselves, Leonard wrote.

According to Leonard’s report on the investigation, Hudson argued that one complainant had filed the allegations against McBride in order to insulate themselves from discipline for poor work performance. Hudson also appears to have made a point of alleging that one of the complainants had used inappropriate language in the past.

“Ms. Hudson also communicated her opinion that the City Clerk is a ‘great supervisor and good at her job,’” Leonard’s report stated. “However, she was not present during the at-issue incidents at City Hall which are central to this investigation.”

At the time of her interview, Hudson was not the leader of the council. She was contending with a prolonged medical issue, and in April 2024 abdicated her role as council president. 

It is unclear if she was interviewing as the acting council president, or as a character witness who had familiarity with both the complainants and McBride, given Hudson’s decade of prior experience on the council. Hudson began serving on the council in 2012, later ascended to council president in 2018, and therefore had years of experience working with McBride and the complainants.

Hudson’s absence in 2024 made then-President Pro Tempore Pat Hogan the council’s leader in her absence.

It is unclear if Hogan was present during the at-issue incidents at City Hall which were central to the investigation. 

A subsequent report from syracuse.com | The Post Standard declared that Hogan had characterized the investigation as having found the allegations to be “unsubstantiated”. That word does not appear anywhere in Leonard’s report in Bond, Schoeneck, and King’s investigation, and Hogan is not quoted in the story as having used that word.

An editor from the Post-Standard later clarified that the organization had obtained a letter sent to McBride dated March 6 that the hostile workplace allegations against her were found “unsubstantiated.” The letter closely follows Bond, Schoeneck & King’s findings that the original hostile workplace allegations against McBride were unsubstantiated, however both the report and the HR department’s return to work letter outline that McBride’s behavior in the office did not align with city policy.

The city’s own investigation and the outside investigation the city commissioned both concluded that McBride had violated workplace policies. 

Hogan did not return two calls before the story’s publication.

One year later, two members of the council at the time of the complaints maintain that the investigation was a targeted attack resulting from personal disdain for McBride, rather than McBride’s approach to her work. 

Former Councilor Amir Gethers praised McBride’s work ethic and leadership. Though Gethers believes the investigation into McBride’s workplace conduct was unmerited, he said it resulted in McBride making further improvements to ensure “the highest level of professionalism” in the council’s office.

“She just wants things to be done correctly and make sure that everything is done legally, correctly and professionally the way that we normally would do things,” Gethers said. “She’s old school as well. It’s just like, you gotta just get it done.”

Reporting contributed by reporter Debadrita Sur.

Editor’s note: This story was updated with information provided by a syracuse.com | The Post-Standard editor that provided additional context to comments made by Councilor Patrick Hogan to the Post-Standard. The Post-Standard obtained a letter that deemed the original claims that McBride created a hostile work environment unsubstantiated, however the Bond, Schoeneck & King investigation and a return to work notice to McBride outlined that her conduct was not in alignment with city policy.

The post Syracuse city clerk helped create ‘unprofessional work environment,’ according to previously unreported documents appeared first on Central Current.