Free Republic

ITHACA, N.Y. — The Ithaca City School District and Tompkins County Office of Human Rights have sent out a joint statement reassuring the community that transgender students will be protected in schools. They issued a statement this week in objection to the decision by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to withdraw federal guidelines regarding transgender students in schools. "Please know that we remain committed to the vigorous support for a student’s right to be respectfully treated according to their gender identity and to be free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying. We encourage all school districts in Tompkins County...

<p>Gusts of wind howled through the Ithaca Commons on Wednesday, flapping banners and dragging a rattling tambourine along the ground. But Ithaca’s women were louder.</p> <p>Nearly 200 women and men stomped along a one-mile loop from City Hall to the Commons in a march that served to both celebrate International Women’s Day and protest proposals from President Donald Trump and other Republicans on issues including health care and immigration.</p>

The right to speak on Cornell’s campus is a “paramount value,” one upon which the University has an “essential dependence,” according to the Campus Code of Conduct... But some groups that have hosted conservative speakers on campus are not buying the administration’s rhetoric, citing the thousands of dollars they have been asked to pay the University for security at their events. And they say it is a cost that hosts of conservative speakers disproportionately have to bear. “The University, through its current policy — intentional or not — imposes additional financial and administrative costs on groups wishing to host conservative...

<p>You probably have seen viral videos of the disruption of town halls held by Congressman Tom Reed.</p> <p>The media narrative is that there was an organic, grassroots uprising by concerned citizens.</p> <p>Don’t believe it. As detailed below, there was a well-organized national and local campaign to get activists to Reed’s town halls for the specific purpose of creating a protest environment. Instructions how to protest and what questions to ask were circulated. Though the town halls were in the western part of the district, liberal groups in Ithaca and Tompkins county organized protests and got their members there. Other liberal groups like Planned Parenthood also got their people out.</p>

ITHACA, N.Y. -- After nearly two hours of public comment and at least 30 speakers in favor of a newly proposed ordinance, Ithaca's Common Council unanimously voted to add teeth to its Sanctuary City policy, which was first passed in 1985, for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees City officials, including police officers, are now specifically directed to not ask for a person's immigration status unless the person is actively committing a crime related to their status. The legal ordinance means that local law enforcement will not enforce federal immigration laws.

Two Ithaca sisters couldn’t believe their ears when they heard Donald Trump call Hillary Clinton “such a nasty woman” during the final presidential debate in October. “I was speechless,” Christina Constas, who has been an Ithaca resident for more than a decade, told The Sun. Nearly three months later, the sisters have turned the phrase into a rallying cry for Ithacans worried about what President-elect Trump’s words and policies will mean for women and women’s health services across the country.

5Saga Liberal Talk 1470 WNYY Ithaca NY will drop the format for Oldies on February 1. In an interview with the Ithaca Times, General Manager Chet Osadchey stated that the move is due to lack of programming to fill out a schedule as only Alan Colmes, Thom Hartmann, and Stephanie Miller remain as many others have left syndication. Osadchey made sure to emphasize that it wasn’t politically motivated decision. No word yet if Saga’s additional Liberal Talkers in Bellingham WA, Brattleboro VT, and Springfield MA will make similar moves away from the format.

A federal judge cut in half the amount to which he said an attorney was entitled for representing a police officer in a reverse discrimination suit against the city of Ithaca. Northern District Judge Gary Sharpe granted the defendants' motion to stay the award granted to Rome lawyer AJ Bosman pending an appeal. Sharpe said plaintiff Christopher Miller's judgment of $280,004 after three trials in the case between 2012 and 2016 qualified him as the prevailing party and made Bosman eligible for fees. Miller, a white male, argued throughout the case that he was given difficult job assignments in retaliation...

Once they’d dated a few years, Julia and Greg eventually got married in May 2013, fresh off a year of caring for Greg’s mother in Pennsylvania. Immediately after, counting four years together, the two decided they would try to start a family. They tried for a few months, thinking eventually it would happen, but one day the pair got to the point where they were going to local doctors, trying to figure out what the problem was. Sometime last year, they decided to see what the next step looked like. This, the couple said, led them into seeking professional, medical...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- In an unprecedented State of the City Address Wednesday night, Mayor Svante Myrick addressed President-Elect Donald Trump and his administration, calling it "openly hostile" and saying that the City of Ithaca will stand for the needs of its residents in the face of adversity.... "I believe the fight against fascism will be waged and be won at the local level," Myrick said. "We are the antidote to fascism. We are the antidote to the rage that encourages people to vote against anyone who seems just a bit different." He said fascist governance works because it allows people...

An Ithaca man accused of killing a UPS driver said in court Monday afternoon that not only did he believe he shot and killed Donald Trump, but that no evidence could be presented to him to suggest otherwise. Justin R. Barkley, 38, said during his arraignment and subsequent attempt to plead guilty, "I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly." Now obviously Barkley is out of his mind. But the murder of an innocent man is another example of how the media's climate of hate can backfire. Did the media's paranoid fantasies about Trump feed into Barkley's...

A New York man’s legal defense for murdering a UPS driver is apparently to claim he thought he was brutally killing president-elect Donald Trump instead. Justin Barkley, a 38-year-old Ithaca man, is charged with second-degree murder for the shooting death of William Schumacher in a Wal-Mart parking lot Dec. 8. But during Barkley’s arraignment hearing Monday, during which he attempted to enter a guilty plea, Barkley says the person he killed was Trump, not Schumacher. “I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly,” Barkley said at the hearing....When asked whether he could be convinced otherwise, Barkley replied...

<p>The president of the Cornell University College Republicans was shoved to the ground and called a “racist bitch” the night after the election, and campus officials are currently investigating the incident.</p> <p>“I was actually assaulted on campus for being a Republican,” Olivia Corn told The Tab. “I had someone throw me to the ground and say: ‘Fuck you, racist bitch, you support a racist party.”</p>

Cornell University is investigating a report that the president of Cornell Republicans was attacked just after Donald Trump's election. The evening after the election, sophomore Olivia Corn, president of Cornell University College Republicans, said she was shoved to the ground while leaving a meeting and heading to her dorm room. "Out of nowhere I was on my phone and looking at my email and out of nowhere I felt two hands grab my shoulders and just sort of threw me to the ground, and they were yelling 'Fuck you racist bitch, you support a racist party,'" Corn said. She said...

On Friday morning, September 18, 2015, the third grade classes at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, NY, heard a presentation on “human rights” by Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi and local anti-Israel activists, led by Ariel Gold....the Tamimi event was an anti-Israel propaganda event. At least one third-grade student suffered nightmares and a Letter of Reprimand was issued to the school principal for attempting to cover-up the nature of the event.... After over a year of investigation and litigation, including a court order under the NY Freedom of Information Law, Legal Insurrection has obtained a partial video of the...

On Friday morning, September 18, 2015, the third grade classes at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, NY, heard a presentation on “human rights” by Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi and local anti-Israel activists, led by Ariel Gold. In fact,...the Tamimi event was an anti-Israel propaganda event targeting young children, and as we just learned, caused at least one student to suffer nightmares.... Initially, the principal of the elementary school, Susan Eschbach, also attempted to downplay the significance of the Tamimi event. In a September 22, 2015, statement to the school community Eschbach denied there was anything improper... The statement...

Despair over Clinton's loss prompts ‘cry-in’ at Cornell; Play-Doh for the distraught Dozens of students at Cornell University gathered on a major campus thoroughfare for a “cry-in” to mourn the results of the 2016 presidential election Wednesday, with school staff providing tissues and hot chocolate. At Tufts University, arts and crafts were on offer. And the University of Kansas reminded students via social media of the therapy dogs available for comfort every other Wednesday. Colleges nationwide scrambled to help students process Republican Donald Trump’s stunning election victory. They’re acknowledging that many students were up late watching results and so may...

<p>ITHACA--Responding to Donald Trump’s shocking presidential victory, several Cornell professors across departments cancelled class Wednesday, citing personal distress and concern for students’ emotional well-being.</p> <p>Prof. Jane-Marie Law, Asian, Near Eastern and religious studies, said she cancelled her “Introduction to Japan and Religion” lecture, because she was “so upset and worried I would break down, thinking about how dangerous the move the American electorate — half of them — made last night is.”</p>

The Cornell Daily Sun reports that students hosted a “Cry In” on the quad Wednesday in the wake of the presidential election results. “I’m quite terrified, honestly,” one student told the campus newspaper as she took part in the event. “It’s saying that people are really given into fear-mongering. They are willing to put people down based on their identity just so that they would feel vindicated that they would be getting rid of ‘Crooked Hillary.'” Another participant told the Sun many are in “shock” as she sipped on a Starbucks coffee cup, sitting cross-legged in the institution’s Ho Plaza....

As midnight approached and a series of swing states turned red...Cornellians expressed horror that Donald Trump could actually become president. “How the **** is he winning? What the ****?” said a student early on in the night... as Trump took the state of Ohio. “We should’ve died in 2012 while we still had the chance,” added Mitch Laski, echoing several students who said they fear a Trump presidency will be the end of equal rights for minorities and free speech in the United States. Shayra Kamal said she is genuinely concerned about her future in the United States. “I’m looking...