
PINJ has paid particular attention to the Allegheny County Jail throughout the pandemic, tracking the deaths of those in custody as well as the conditions incarcerated individuals have been forced to endure.
View all of our coverage on the Allegheny County Jail by clicking here.
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Advocating for accommodations has been a constant, but largely quiet, struggle for college students with disabilities since the Americans with Disabilities Act became law in 1990.
Read from our award-winning series, Leveling the Playing Field, here.
Books
Rushdie and Free Speech, from Tehran to Pittsburgh
by Jody DiPerna, Belt Magazine Literature isn’t just under attack in Iran, China, or El Salvador Since the attempted assassination of the Anglo-Indian author Salman Rushdie as he prepared to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, I’ve been thinking about the ways that writers threaten the status quo by forcing us to…
Keep readingDoralee Brooks Opens Up About Poetry, Education and Everyday Beauty
by Jody DiPerna Life-long educator and poet Doralee Brooks named new Poet Laureate for Allegheny County. Doralee Brooks, the new poet Laureate for Allegheny County, wants to highlight and spotlight poetry’s intersections with other art forms — with music and with the visual and performing arts. This convergence of the poetic with hard-lived life, everyday…
Keep readingA melange of history, lived experience and fable, Caitlyn Hunter’s first book is urgent, magical storytelling
With family stories leading the way, inherited photos sprinkled throughout, and cover art designed by her cousin, “Power in the Tongue” (Tolsun Books), really is a family affair. by Jody DiPerna Caitlyn Hunter is the repository and the spillway of her family’s intergenerational love, trauma and legend. In Hunter’s new book, she sets the tone…
Keep readingEducation

Education in Pittsburgh was upended in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly closed schools. Since then, as multiple virus waves have swept the nation, students have been in and out of physical classrooms, learning sometimes online, sometimes in person, sometimes not at all. How will they rebound?
Commentary
The feds make it too hard for formerly incarcerated persons to access Social Security benefits | Opinion
By Jeffrey Abramowitz and TJ von Oehsen, Pennsylvania Capital-Star In Pennsylvania, far more people with disabilities have been incarcerated than are receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI). This comes as no surprise to reentry advocates, who have been hearing about the issues that people with disabilities have in accessing and maintaining SSI for years. A recent…
Keep readingSharpsburg, PA – Past, Present, Future
The past, present, and future coexist simultaneously in Sharpsburg, and for the moment, one hasn’t pushed the other out. By Emma Riva- Belt Magazine If Paris had its salons where artists and writers gathered to bounce ideas off each other, then Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania has Red Hawk Coffee on Canal Street. On any given day, the…
Keep readingOur national pathology over guns is no longer insane. It’s inhuman.
by John L. Micek, Pennsylvania Capital-Star Want to know what rage feels like? It’s waking on a Wednesday morning on a school day as the cable news talking heads sift through the latest on the shooting at a Texas elementary school that left 21 people dead, most of them children, and looking at your daughter…
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Social Justice