Home >  Business

A "young people problem"? That's so 20th century. This group sees a different Pittsburgh emerging where the young are taking it upon themselves to create the kind of city they want.

Sunday, February 02, 2003

By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

While Pittsburgh may have a national reputation as being inhospitable to young singles and lacking in edgy culture, 30-year-old Traci Jackson is not buying it.

That argument is "so 20th century," said Jackson, who lives in Highland Park.

"I think we have done a lot of work to disprove that."

	Ray Obenza, center: "Institutions and culture take time to change." (Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette photos)

Such was the overriding message of a 90-minute discussion with six Pittsburgh-area people ranging in age from 26 to 39. The Post-Gazette assembled the group to find out what progress the region was making on the oft-repeated problem of attracting and retaining young people. While some on the panel did have concerns about the amount of diversity in Pittsburgh, the slow speed at which things change and the level of resistance offered by some of the city's older, more established institutions, all agreed that southwestern Pennsylvania is a more interesting and vibrant place than it was just a few years ago.

Why?

They said because people in their 20s and 30s, without a lot of political power or money, are doing something about it.

Take the panelists:

Jackson founded "FLUX" in 2000 as a forum for local bands and began staging concerts at buildings around town, starting with a Friendship space that is now the Pittsburgh Glass Center. It now attracts an average of 800 people per event. In 2000, Jackson also was present at the founding of Ground Zero Action Network, an art-minded group that wants a hand in shaping the future of the city. To Jackson, FLUX "is about getting people connected to what is here and what there is here to do. There are things here and people don't even know about them."

Matt Burger, 34, is one of the founding members of the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project, or PUMP, which in seven years has attracted 700 members devoted to the needs of Pittsburgh's young and "young-thinking." It also has shed its early social-club reputation by organizing sports leagues for 4,000 area people, putting together a statewide young people's convention and lobbying in Harrisburg and Washington, D.C. Burger, also a shareholder with Buchanan Ingersoll, said, "All of the doors, from the county executive to the mayor's office, have been wide open for us in going and pushing an agenda that I don't think is a particularly conservative or mainstream agenda in Pittsburgh."

	Traci Jackson: "We have been focusing on what's wrong and not on what's right. If for the next year every single person in Pittsburgh picked one thing to focus on that's right about Pittsburgh and how they could strengthen that, I bet you a year from now we would be looking at a different city."

Abe Naparstek, 26, came to Pittsburgh in 1999 and already has a job as assistant county manager under Allegheny County Manger Bob Webb. He was one of several people who created and then raised money for the "Ultraviolet Loop," a bus that takes people to the city's hot spots until late in the evening. When he first arrived, he said, people were "really down on Pittsburgh at the time. There is really a different feeling now, four years later. I think we have come a long way in that time."

Tereneh Mosley, 33, is a native Pittsburgher who came back last April to work for the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, where she helps companies market Pittsburgh as a place for prospective employees. She has lived in New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Seattle and Chicago. But, "the energy and types of things being created by young people in this community far exceed anything else I've seen."

Ray Obenza, 39, co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Neighborhood Development Association, hoping to break down stereotypes and misconceptions about gays and lesbians. Also a senior member of the technical staff at the Oakland-based Software Engineering Institute, Obenza said "it has taken me actually a few years to go from the phrase of 'What are you doing in Pittsburgh?' to, you know, 'Pittsburgh is really cool.' It really is a great place."

Darcy Trunzo, 26, is a musician who performs with the band "New Pussycats." Citing several grass-roots efforts such as FLUX and The Mr. Roboto Project -- which is an art gallery, concert space and "zine" library in Wilkinsburg -- Trunzo said one should "never underestimate [young] people's ability to do for themselves. That is the overwhelming thing that blows my gasket every time this question comes up." Too often, she said, young people in Pittsburgh are treated as consumers, and "not active citizens capable of creating change for themselves."

	Abe Naparstek: "You see more young people becoming involved in politics. We are realizing that we have to be part of the process in order to affect it."

Plenty of young people in Pittsburgh are trying to do just that. There are now at least 20 nonprofit organizations devoted to Pittsburgh's youth, and each group has its own audience. PUMP, Pittsburgh's Next and Pittsburgh Young Professionals comprise young professionals largely. Ground Zero is more liberal in its political outlook, drawing from an artistic membership base. Onyx Alliance and First Fridays are for African-Americans, Pittsburgh Asian American Young Professional Alliance is for Asians, Pittsburgh Geeks is for the technology workers, and TIE-Pittsburgh and Network of Indian Professionals are for the area's young Indian workers.

While attracting "young people" has always been a hot topic in post-industrial Pittsburgh, the groups devoted to the young benefited from increased attention to their cause over the last year. First Carnegie Mellon University Richard Florida published a national bestseller, "The Rise of the Creative Class," that pointed out how the country's truly diverse, tolerant and authentic cities are luring the young, mobile, creative workers that can help an area achieve economic success. In his book, Pittsburgh looks like a city weighed down by "cultural inertia," a lack of diversity and a blind eye to the needs of the "creative class."

Forbes magazine, drawing from some of Florida's research, ranked Pittsburgh last on a list of the best U.S. cities in which to be young and unmarried, tagging it as a "pit for singles" and "the worst place in America to be stuck with a lonely heart."

Then, late in 2002, the normally youth-deficient Allegheny Conference on Community Development weighed in with an annual meeting that emphasized the agenda of the region's young and presented the results of a "task force on young people" led by Chatham College President Esther Barazzone.

She argued that, if the young continue to leave the area as they did during the last decade and if the region does not make itself more attractive to immigrants and minorities, southwestern Pennsylvania could face a shortage of 125,000 workers by the year 2010. Despite all the attention paid to young people and their issues, some who participated in this week's Post-Gazette discussion said they sensed some resistance to their cause.

But the source and strength of that resistance were issues that divided the panel. Obenza, who spoke at the Allegheny Conference's meeting in November, admitted that more young people need to be involved in "the thinking and the movement of Pittsburgh." Jackson countered that by saying, "I would go farther than even this notion of getting young people involved in the thinking. ... Let them do it."

"Let us do it."

	Tereneh Mosley: "I have three or four things on a weekend in one night I can do. It is not that we are London, New York or Los Angeles, but I have always been able to have a wide variety of experiences."

Jackson can claim a firsthand connection to an incident that some cite as an example of an institutional tin ear when it comes to the problems of young people. Last year, Flux, the community-based arts and music event, had problems pulling off a show in East Liberty because the city rejected the show's occupancy permit, citing safety concerns. At the time, some people criticized the city as being out of touch with the city's youth culture.

"This particular situation," Jackson said, "just felt like, rather than the city being willing to aid or help in moving through the process, it was, 'You haven't met the process. You are shut off.' There wasn't this sense of 'Gosh, we really believe in what you are doing and we will help you make this happen.' "

"In no way do we want to sound like the whiny, young kids," said Jackson, who noted that her relationship with the city improved afterward. But what upset her, she said, was that her group's "professionalism" was not taken "seriously."

Trunzo agreed with Jackson, citing another case last year where a Mr. Roboto Project event ended after "fire marshals" interrupted the concert by "pulling the plug" and telling the kids at the concert to "get out." The people involved, she said, "didn't know they were violating any codes, and, granted, the onus is on them to do that ... You can't be in violation of codes." But "You don't go in and pull the plug and say 'Get out of here, you stupid kids.' "

Burger and Mosley challenged Jackson and Trunzo on that issue, however.

"When I hear young people say there is some institutional aversion, I think in some ways it is really a cop- out," Burger said. He added: "The minute Ground Zero comes to PUMP and says we are getting hell from the city with respect to this particular arts event, I guarantee you a majority of our members" would find a way to help. As for any larger institutional resistance, "I think generally those decision makers and those folks in power may not know exactly how it is they want to help some of these young people organizations, but I think they truly do want to be on the right side and they do want to be helpful."

Mosley, when talking about the resistance to the FLUX event and The Mr. Roboto Project, said "if you are going to have an event, find out what the codes are, find out what the rules are. Use that passion and that energy and that spirit, but also make sure everything is taken care of. That's being responsible." Resistance to new efforts "happens everywhere . . . I am an African American woman. How many people want me to be around? I don't care."

"I am going to do what I have to do."

	Darcy Trunzo: "Pittsburgh is gaining this reputation for a city where really strange bedfellows occur."

The topic of diversity, once raised, became an important one for the Post-Gazette panel. But Mosley expressed concern that the definition of diversity is no longer along racial lines, "so that it is OK to have a roomful of people that all look alike," she said. Jackson argued for a wider definition. Looking around the Post-Gazette table, she said, "My world is this table and my world is fairly diverse."

Trunzo interrupted by asking, "Is this diverse?"

Jackson then said, "No, no time out. You can't just look at diversity racially. It is socio-economics. It is religion, it is sexual orientation and experience and background and all of those things. That is the thing that frustrates me about diversity in this town -- how do we make sure there is young black guy at the table and how do we make sure there is a gay person at the table? It feels to me those are the only things being considered right now and it is not a holistic view of diversity."

Mosley countered by saying, "I totally agree that diversity is more than race and sexual orientation, but what I am seeing is that because we aren't doing the race thing well, they totally dismiss it and say, OK, we are diverse in other areas, if not race."

"I totally agree," Jackson said. "It is not one or the other."

The panelists did find several areas of agreement during the 1 1/2-hour discussion. They argued that Oakland needs to be improved, with better transportation connections and a better way to reach the minds of thousands of college students moving through that neighborhood each year. They also agreed that while some of the city's institutions are slow to move on issues important to them, the relationships between old and young are improving. Also, they said there was no one issue above others that will solve the needs of the young. Everything, they said, is important: jobs, culture and diversity.

But when asked what they would change, if they could only change one thing about Pittsburgh, each had a different answer.

Burger would mobilize more young people politically.

Obenza would devote large amounts of money to one industry, such as Internet security, and make Pittsburgh a leader in that industry.

Trunzo would get people "who aren't at the table" involved in local debates and forums about young people.

Jackson wants to export culture from Pittsburgh and make it a creative home base for artists, so people don't have to leave for New York or elsewhere to "make it."

Naparstek wants Pittsburgh to devote its energy to environmentally friendly "green" buildings, energy-efficient electric buses and better, cleaner riverfronts.

Mosley would improve the connections between young people and the "establishment." As she put it, "I would love to see a FLUX meeting at the Duquesne Club, and I would love to see an Allegheny Conference meeting at the Shadow Lounge. We don't have the luxury of being separate. We have to work together across age ranges in order to move Pittsburgh forward."