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Downward Christian Soldiers

Father Charles Coughlin, 1930s

On January 14 1940, the FBI arrested 18 men in New York City accused of plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government. Fourteen were snatched up in their homes in Brooklyn, the others in The Bronx and Queens. Searches yielded more than a dozen Springfield rifles, a shotgun, some handguns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and the materials for homemade bombs. J. Edgar Hoover said they were plotting a terrorist campaign targeting transportation, power, and communications facilities; their goal was to rouse the military into staging a coup, placing a strong dictator like Hitler or Mussolini in power, and cleansing the country of Jews.  

The men were mostly of German or Irish descent, and ranged in age from 18 to 38. If employed (a few weren’t), they held low-end jobs, including an elevator mechanic, a telephone lineman, a chauffeur, a couple of salesmen, a couple of office clerks. The 18-year-old was a student. Most troubling was the fact that six of them were National Guardsmen.

They were all followers of a Father Coughlin-inspired movement called the Christian Front. In his mid-1930s heyday, Coughlin was arguably the most powerful pro-Fascist voice in America. An Irish Catholic originally from Canada, he had first turned to radio in the 1920s simply as a way to expand his ministry beyond his tiny congregation in Royal Oaks. He had a strong radio voice, and when CBS started syndicating his weekly sermons in 1929 it was an instant success. The crash and start of the Depression politicized him. His condemnations of Wall Street and President Hoover brought him tens of thousands of fan letters a week, and his high praises for Hoover’s opponent FDR surely had an impact on the 1932 elections. Then, when the invitation he craved to sit among President Roosevelt’s circle of advisors didn’t come, he turned bitter as a jilted lover. He began denouncing Roosevelt, his New Deal, his Jew York advisors, and his friends in the labor movement as all facets of an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy to destroy Christianity and democracy. He also praised Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler for defending their people against this spreading evil.

Coughlin’s call for a “Christian Front” to combat the Communists’ mid-1930s Popular Front coalition with other groups on the left resonated with the Depression-driven anger and paranoia of many Americans, especially in cities like Boston and New York with large communities of lower- and lower-middle class Irish Catholics, who tended to be shut out of other right-wing movements precisely because they were Irish and Catholic. At his peak, Coughlin had tens of millions of listeners to his Sunday radio sermons, a million readers of his weekly magazine Social Justice, and received millions of dollars in small donations.

By 1938, rabid anti-Semitism had become the centerpiece of Coughlin’s message. That year, at a Christian Front rally in The Bronx, he allegedly gave the Nazi salute and declared, “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” In Social Justice he reprinted the anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which also topped Henry Ford’s list of favorite reading. In the autumn of 1938, when Coughlin said the Jews had brought Kristallnacht on themselves, radio stations, including WMCA in New York, dropped him. Several thousand Fronters “picketed the station, its advertisers, and Jewish-owned stores throughout the city,” historian Robert A. Rosenbaum writes. “The pickets returned every Sunday afternoon for many months. In the meantime, gangs of Christian Fronters roamed the streets and subways, peddling copies of Social Justice, distributing anti-Semitic leaflets, and orating on street corners, while harassing and assaulting people they took to be Jewish.” The city’s police force, which was nearly two-thirds Irish, turned a blind eye; some number of them were Christian Frontiers themselves.

The Front thrived in parishes in all of New York City’s boroughs. Some of the first Front meetings took place in a church hall near Columbus Circle, and some of the most frequent and well-attended were in The Bronx. In Brooklyn, Father Francis Joseph Healy, the pastor of the St. Joseph’s parish in Prospect Heights, was also the editor of the Brooklyn diocese’s weekly paper, The Tablet, which he made a platform for extremely anti-Communist, pro-Fascist, and pro-Coughlin thought. After Father Healy’s death in 1940, his managing editor Patrick Scanlan continued the paper’s reactionary slant. Scanlan ran Coughlin’s rants on the front page. Healy’s successor at St. Joseph’s, Father Edward Curran, was also a major supporter of Father Coughlin and other pro-Fascist and isolationist groups. During the war in Spain Father Curran wrote dozens of pro-Franco columns for arch-conservative publications around the country.

By 1939 small cells of Fronters in Manhattan and Brooklyn were calling themselves “sports clubs,” though the only sport they practiced was target shooting at rifle ranges. The Guardsmen in the group evidently pilfered the rifles and ammo from their posts, and trained other Frontiers in how to use them. 


Along with the cops and Guardsmen, the Front cells were also peppered with spies. The FBI had informants keeping tabs on them. Two independent investigators would write very successful books in which they claimed to have infiltrated the Front as well, and dozens of other underground hate groups. Richard Rollins’ I Find Treason would be published by William Morrow in 1941; John Roy Carlson’s similar Under Cover would be a runaway bestseller for E. P. Dutton two years later, galloping through 16 printings in its first six months. Both writers used pseudonyms. Carlson was actually Arthur Derounian, an Armenian immigrant. Rollins was apparently Isidore Rothberg, an investigator for Congressman Samuel Dickstein of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Partly because the writers used pseudonyms while naming scores of individuals they claimed were pro-Hitler and pro-Fascist, both books were widely denounced on the right as fabrications and smear campaigns.


Derounian wrote that he was riding the subway one day in 1938 when he picked up a leaflet of “bitterly anti-Semitic quotations” published by something called the Nationalist Press Association on East 116th Street in Italian East Harlem. He decided to research, and found himself exploring a vast underground world of wannabe Hitlers and Mussolinis, society matron super-patriots, racists, Anglophobes, White Russians, and assorted conspiracy theorists and kooks.
 Born in 1909, Derounian had grown up in another world of hate. After struggling to stay alive as Armenians in Greece at a time of chaos and slaughter in the Balkans, his family fled to New York in 1921. Arthur learned English and earned a degree in journalism at NYU in 1926. In 1933 he learned that the turmoil in the Balkans had followed him across the ocean, when the archbishop of New York’s Armenian Orthodox Catholics, while serving Christmas Mass in his Washington Heights church, was stabbed to death by radical Armenian nationalists opposed to his politics.

So when Derounian read that hate sheet on the subway in 1938, he was primed to follow up. The 116th Street address was an old tenement with a barber shop on the ground floor. The Nationalist Press “office” was a dingy back room stacked to the stained ceiling with right-wing books, newspapers and pamphlets. Poking around in the gloom were a few Italian men and Peter Stahrenberg, a tall blond Aryan type “with blunt features and a coarse-lipped, brutal mouth,” who wore a khaki shirt and a black tie with a pearl-studded swastika tie tack. Stahrenberg was the publisher of the National American, a pro-Hitler newspaper whose striking logo was an American Indian giving the Nazi salute before a large swastika. He was also the head of the American National-Socialist Party. Derounian, calling himself George Pagnanelli and expressing interest in the “patriotic movement,” wormed his way into Stahrenberg’s confidence.

As he explored Stahrenberg’s twilight world, Derounian claimed, he found pro-Nazis and pro-Fascists all over New York City, holding meetings and rallies in every borough. It was a topsy-turvy world where street thugs from the city’s poorest neighborhoods mingled with wealthy Park Avenue crackpots, and Irish Catholic Fronters convinced that Communism was an international Jewish plot sat in the same meetings with Protestant zealots convinced that the Vatican was a Jewish front. He met rabidly anti-Communist D.A.R. socialites, and retired military officers who were certain that FDR and the Jew Dealers were leading the nation to ruin. He met the prominent conservative organizer Catherine Curtis, introducing himself as George Pagnanelli; she kept calling him Mr. Pagliacci. He even found black pro-Nazis in Harlem. Some were attracted by Hitler’s anti-Semitism; others simply cheered the idea of a white man making trouble for other whites.

When the Christian Front clique was arraigned in Brooklyn’s federal courthouse in February, they all pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and theft of government property. The lawyer for 12 of them was Leo Healy – Father Healy’s brother. A crowd jeered and booed as they were perp-walked into the courthouse. Winchell and La Guardia both derided them as “bums,” La Guardia adding that if they were the best the enemies of democracy could muster, no one need lose any sleep. But the defendants also had their sympathizers. Father Curran was the keynote speaker at a large rally in Prospect Hall to express support for them.  

Fourteen defendants were left when the trial began in April; one of the original 18 had committed suicide, and charges against three others were dropped. As the trial sputtered along through May, it began to appear that the FBI and prosecutors hadn’t built a very strong case. When the proceedings stumbled to a close on Monday June 24, the jury acquitted nine of the defendants and pronounced themselves hung on the other five.


It was a major embarrassment for Hoover. The Front and their supporters cheered it as a great victory, and would continue to spread hate and violence well into the war years. Through 1942 and 1943 there would be numerous reports in the press of roving gangs of young men, mostly identified as Irish and affiliated with the Front, beating and sometimes even knifing Jews in neighborhoods like Flatbush, Washington Heights and the South Bronx, where Irish and Jewish communities abutted. Many shops, synagogues and cemeteries were vandalized. Jewish leaders pleaded with Mayor La Guardia and Police Commissioner Valentine, but they took little action.

Coughlin would rant on into 1942, when the federal government shut down Social Justice as a seditious publication, and the Archbishop of Detroit finally ordered him to stop all political activity. Father Curran, however, continued undeterred, making anti-Semitic, anti-war speeches to Frontiers and others through the entire war.

by John Strausbaugh

Who is he.

Ben Bernanke

14th Chair of Federal Reserve

Ben Shalom Bernanke (/bərˈnæŋki/ bər-NANG-kee; born December 13, 1953) is an American economist at the Brookings Institution who served two terms as the 14th Chair of the Federal Reserve, from 2006 to 2014. During his tenure as chair, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis, for which he was named the 2009 Time Person of the Year. Before becoming Federal Reserve chair, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave.

Quick Facts 14th Chair of the Federal Reserve, President ...

From August 5, 2002, until June 21, 2005, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, proposed the Bernanke Doctrine, and first discussed "the Great Moderation" — the theory that traditional business cycles have declined in volatility in recent decades through structural changes that have occurred in the international economy, particularly increases in the economic stability of developing nations, diminishing the influence of macroeconomic (monetary and fiscal) policy.

Bernanke then served as chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers before President Bush nominated him to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the United States Federal Reserve. His first term began February 1, 2006. Bernanke was confirmed for a second term as chairman on January 28, 2010, after being renominated by President Barack Obama, who later referred to him as "the epitome of calm." His second term ended January 31, 2014, when he was succeeded by Janet Yellen on February 3, 2014.

Bernanke wrote about his time as chairman of the Federal Reserve in his 2015 book, The Courage to Act, in which he revealed that the world's economy came close to collapse in 2007 and 2008. Bernanke asserts that it was only the novel efforts of the Fed (cooperating with other agencies and agencies of foreign governments) that prevented an economic catastrophe greater than the Great Depression.

Family and childhood

Bernanke was born in Augusta, Georgia, and was raised on East Jefferson Street in Dillon, South Carolina. His father Philip was a pharmacist and part-time theater manager. His mother Edna was an elementary school teacher. Bernanke has two younger siblings. His brother, Seth, is a lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina. His sister, Sharon, is a longtime administrator at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The Bernankes were one of the few Jewish families in Dillon and attended Ohav Shalom, a local synagogue; Bernanke learned Hebrew as a child from his maternal grandfather, Harold Friedman, a professional hazzan (service leader), shochet, and Hebrew teacher. Bernanke's father and uncle owned and managed a drugstore they purchased from Bernanke's paternal grandfather, Jonas Bernanke.

Jonas Bernanke was born in Boryslav, Austria-Hungary (today part of Ukraine), on January 23, 1891. He immigrated to the United States from Przemyśl, Poland, and arrived at Ellis Island, aged 30, on June 30, 1921, with his wife Pauline, aged 25. On the ship's manifest, Jonas's occupation is listed as "clerk" and Pauline's as "doctor med".

The family moved to Dillon from New York in the 1940s. Bernanke's mother gave up her job as a schoolteacher when her son was born and worked at the family drugstore. Ben Bernanke also worked there sometimes.

Young adult

As a teenager, Bernanke worked construction on a hospital and waited tables at a restaurant at nearby South of the Border, a roadside attraction, amusement park and fireworks retailer, in his hometown of Dillon, before leaving for college. To support himself throughout college, he continued to work during the summers at South of the Border.

Religion

As a teenager in the 1960s, Bernanke would help roll the Torah scrolls in his local synagogue. Although he keeps his beliefs private, his friend Mark Gertler, chairman of New York University's economics department, says they are "embedded in who he (Bernanke) is." Once Bernanke was at Harvard for his freshman year, Fellow Dillon native Kenneth Manning took him to Brookline for Rosh Hashanah services.

Education

Bernanke was educated at East Elementary, J.V. Martin Junior High, and Dillon High School, where he was class valedictorian and played saxophone in the marching band. Since Dillon High School did not offer calculus at the time, Bernanke taught it to himself. Bernanke scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and was a National Merit Scholar. He also was a contestant in the 1965 National Spelling Bee.

Bernanke attended Harvard College in 1971, where he lived in Winthrop House, as did the future CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an A.B. degree, and later with an A.M. in economics summa cum laude in 1975. He received a Ph.D. degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 after completing and defending his dissertation, Long-Term Commitments, Dynamic Optimization, and the Business Cycle. Bernanke's thesis adviser was the future governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, and his readers included Irwin S. Bernstein, Rüdiger Dornbusch, Robert Solow, and Peter Diamond of MIT and Dale Jorgenson of Harvard.

Personal life

Ben and Anna Bernanke

Bernanke met his wife, Anna, a schoolteacher, on a blind date. She was a student at Wellesley College, and he was in graduate school at MIT.[citation needed] The Bernankes have two children, Joel and Alyssa. He is an ardent fan of the Washington Nationals baseball team, and frequently attends games at Nationals Park.

When Bernanke left Stanford to accept a position at Princeton, he and his family moved to Montgomery Township, New Jersey, in 1985, where Bernanke's children attended the local public schools. Bernanke served for six years as a member of the board of education of the Montgomery Township School District.

In 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bernanke was a victim of identity theft, a spreading crime the Federal Reserve has for years issued warnings about.

Academic and government career (1979–2006)

Bernanke meeting with United States President Barack Obama.

Bernanke taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 until 1985, was a visiting professor at New York University and went on to become a tenured professor at Princeton University in the Department of Economics. He chaired that department from 1996 until September 2002, when he went on public service leave. He resigned his position at Princeton July 1, 2005.

Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005. In one of his first speeches as a Governor, entitled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn't Happen Here", he outlined what has been referred to as the Bernanke Doctrine.

As a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System on February 20, 2004, Bernanke gave a speech in which he postulated that we are in a new era called the Great Moderation, where modern macroeconomic policy has decreased the volatility of the business cycle to the point that it should no longer be a central issue in economics.

In June 2005, Bernanke was named chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and resigned as Fed Governor. The appointment was largely viewed as a test run to ascertain if Bernanke could be Bush's pick to succeed Greenspan as Fed chairman the next year. He held the post until January 2006.

Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve

Bernanke testifying before the House Financial Services Committee responding to a question on February 10, 2009.

On February 1, 2006, Bernanke began a fourteen-year term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and a four-year term as chairman (after having been nominated by President Bush in late 2005). By virtue of the chairmanship, he sat on the Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He also served as chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policy making body.

His first months as chairman of the Federal Reserve System were marked by difficulties communicating with the media. An advocate of more transparent Fed policy and clearer statements than Greenspan had made, he had to back away from his initial idea of stating clearer inflation goals as such statements tended to affect the stock market. Maria Bartiromo disclosed on CNBC comments from their private conversation at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. She reported that Bernanke said investors had misinterpreted his comments as indicating that he was "dovish" on inflation. He was sharply criticized for making public statements about Fed direction, which he said was a "lapse in judgment."

Financial crisis of 2007–2008

Bernanke (left) in September 2008 as President Bush speaks about the economy

Further information: Financial crisis of 2007–08

As the Great Recession deepened, Bernanke oversaw some unorthodox measures. Under his guidance, the Fed lowered its funds interest rate from 5.25% to 0.0% within less than a year. When this was considered insufficient to abate the liquidity crisis, the Fed initiated quantitative easing, creating $1.3 trillion from November 2008 to June 2010 and using the created money to buy financial assets from banks and from the government.

Second term

Bernanke answers questions in 2013 at FOMC press conference

On August 25, 2009, President Obama announced he would nominate Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In a short statement on Martha's Vineyard, with Bernanke standing at his side, Obama said Bernanke's background, temperament, courage and creativity helped to prevent another Great Depression in 2008.

Monday, December 28, 2020

Trump signs massive measure funding government, COVID relief (AP) President Donald Trump signed a $900 billion pandemic relief package Sunday, ending days of drama over his refusal to accept the bipartisan deal that will deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and avert a federal government shutdown. The massive bill includes $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies through September and contains other end-of-session priorities such as an increase in food stamp benefits. The signing, at his private club in Florida, came amid escalating criticism over his eleventh-hour demands for larger, $2,000 relief checks and scaled-back spending even though the bill had already passed the House and Senate by wide margins. The bill was passed with what lawmakers had thought was Trump’s blessing, and after months of negotiations with his administration.

New Year’s Eve storm to move across US with heavy snow, winds, severe thunderstorms (ABC News) Cold Arctic air in the East Coast brought almost 2 feet of snow to western New York—from Hamburg to Buffalo—Saturday. Chilly weather has extended all the way to Florida, where freeze warnings have been issued. A new storm will cross the country, just like last week, from California to New York, with heavy rain, snow, ice and strong winds. By Tuesday and Wednesday, the storm will move into the central U.S. with heavy snow for Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Heavy rain is expected to fall along the Mississippi River Valley, and strong to severe thunderstorms are possible in Texas. By New Year’s Eve, rain and wind will hit all major cities in the Northeast, from Boston to Washington, D.C.

To stay or to go? (Washington Post) Kevin Euceda believed he was in imminent danger. Down the hall in the immigration detention center where he was being held, a man whose psychiatric visits had been suspended because of the pandemic was hallucinating and screaming. Others were shivering and sweating, scared they were going to die. Surrounded by so much sickness, Kevin was growing desperate to find a way out. A migrant who said he came to the United States when he was 17 years old to escape gang threats in Honduras, Kevin had been living for nearly three years in a place that was now being overrun by covid-19. [And so he asked to contact deportation officers.] In detention centers around the country, more and more people have been asking for the same thing, seeking their own deportation as the novel coronavirus has spread through facilities and sickened more than 8,000 detainees, according to government data. The virus has collided with the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” approach toward people looking for refuge and asylum in the United States. Those policies have led to a record number of immigrants being held in detention, including 7,000 people who had cleared the first steps of requesting asylum when the pandemic began and would normally have been released on bond while their cases were processed. Some immigrants have been withdrawing cases against their lawyers’ advice, saying they’re more afraid of being in detention during a coronavirus outbreak than of what might be waiting in the places they fled.

Millions face new UK virus restrictions (AP) Millions of people in the U.K. faced tough new coronavirus restrictions Saturday, with Scotland and Northern Ireland demanding tighter measures to try to halt a new variant of the virus that is believed to spread more quickly. Northern Ireland went into a six-week lockdown and in Wales, restrictions that were relaxed for Christmas Day were also re-imposed. The number of people under England’s top level of restrictions—Tier 4—increased by 6 million on Saturday to 24 million people overall, around 43% of England’s population. No indoor mixing of households is allowed, and only essential travel permitted. Gyms, pools, hairdressers and stores selling nonessential goods have been ordered to close and pubs and restaurants can only do takeout. Business groups say the restrictions will be economically devastating to their members.

Pope proclaims year of families, offers advice to keep peace (AP) Pope Francis on Sunday proclaimed an upcoming year dedicated to the family as he doubled down on one of his papal priorities and urged renewed attention to his controversial 2016 document on family life. Francis announced the upcoming year on the family would begin March 19, the fifth anniversary of his document “The Joy of Love.” Among other things, the document opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried couples receive Communion, sparking criticism and even claims of heresy from conservative Catholics. In making the announcement, Francis offered some friendly papal advice to bickering families, reminding them to say “pardon me, thank you and sorry” and never end the day without making peace. “Because the Cold War the day after is dangerous,” he quipped.

Hundreds of migrants freezing in heavy snow in Bosnia camp (AP) Hundreds of migrants were stranded Saturday in a squalid, burnt-out tent camp in Bosnia as heavy snow fell in the country and winter temperatures suddenly dropped. A fire earlier this week destroyed much of the camp near the town of Bihac that already was harshly criticized by international officials and aid groups as being inadequate for housing refugees and migrants. Despite the fire, Bosnian authorities have failed to find new accommodations for the migrants at Lipa, leaving around 1,000 people stuck in the cold, with no facilities or heat, eating only meager food parcels provided by aid groups. Bosnia has become a bottleneck for thousands of migrants hoping to reach Western Europe. Most are stuck in Bosnia’s northwest Krajina region as other areas in the ethnically divided nation have refused to accept them. The EU has warned Bosnia that thousands of migrants face a freezing winter without shelter, and it has urged the country’s bickering politicians to set aside their differences and take action.

China’s Economy Set to Overtake U.S. Earlier Due to Covid Fallout (Bloomberg) The Chinese economy is set to overtake the U.S. faster than previously anticipated after weathering the coronavirus pandemic better than the West, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. The world’s biggest and second-biggest economies are on course to trade places in dollar terms in 2028, five years earlier than expected a year ago, it said on Saturday. In its World Economic League Table, the consultancy also calculated that China could become a high-income economy as soon as 2023. Further cementing Asia’s growing might, India is set to move up the rankings to become the No. 3 economy at the end of the decade.

Near 1 million virus cases, South Africa weighs restrictions (AP) As South Africa’s COVID-19 spike has taken the country to nearly 1 million confirmed cases, President Cyril Ramaphosa called an emergency meeting on Sunday of the National Coronavirus Command Council. With South Africa’s hospitals reaching capacity and no sign of the new surge reaching a peak, Ramaphosa is expected to announce a return to restrictive measures designed to slow the spread of the disease. With a cumulative total of 994,911 confirmed cases of COVID-19, South Africa is expected to exceed 1 million cases when new figures are released late Sunday. That number includes 26,521 deaths.

How I became a permanent resident in Canada

What if the person you loved lived four hours away? Simple – you meet halfway or one person moves closer to the other. Four hours isn’t that far to move, right?

What if that four-hour drive included crossing two different rivers via a mile-plus long tunnel or bridge and crossing an international border? That makes the situation a bit more complicated and what I endured between 2011 and 2016.

The map between my hometown and Toronto.

The meeting

You’re probably wondering how I got myself into a long-distance relationship with someone in a different country. Blame my friend Jen. She and my now husband Lance used to work for the same logistics company. Jen worked in a Michigan office and Lance was in the Toronto office (neither are employed at the company anymore).

I had just moved back to Detroit from graduate school in Boston when I first learned about Lance’s existence. Jen looped me in on emails with Lance to entertain me during unemployment. At the end of October, Jen invited Lance to visit her office and stay for the weekend to attend a Michigan State football game. She told me about “the Canadians” visiting and said I should meet up with them in East Lansing for the game.

Two other friends and I drove to Michigan State to tailgate and hang out with our new friends from north of the border (or south since we are from Detroit?). Lance and I hit it off and exchanged numbers. We texted and emailed for about a month before I made the first of many trips to Toronto and Lance came to visit me (and my family) in Metro Detroit. On December 9, 2011, we made it official and decided we were dating.

A friend who was at the game framed the ticket from the day we met.

Love is a long (flat) road

For five years, Lance and I drove the four hours after work each Friday night and four hours back Sunday night. The Canadian highways 401 and402 became as familiar to us as our reflections. We got to know each other, our friends and our families. We traveled together and sacrificed time and events with our own friends and family to be together for the short weekend.

“Distance is not for the fearful, it’s for the bold. It’s for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It’s for those who know a good thing when they see it, even if they don’t see it nearly enough.” - Meghan Daum

One weekend a little over three years into our relationship at lunch on a patio after participating in a fundraiser volleyball tournament I said we either needed to get married or break up…Lance and I legally married on July 23, 2015 and had our “real” wedding a year later on August 13, 2016.

A picture from our “real” wedding in 2016. 

Landing in Canada

After working with an immigration lawyer for about a year, we finally filed all of the paperwork in June 2016. (Side note: if you are trying to immigrate to Canada, I recommend a lawyer. A form changed while we were in the process of applying and we would have never known if we did it on our own. She was also able to pull our passport records, which I think helped speed the approval process). By September, I was approved to move to Canada.

My Facebook post after I was approved to move to Canada.

I officially landed in Canada December 18, 2016.

First stop after landing in Canada – Tim Horton’s.

The happy ending

Since 2016, Lance and I have lived in a studio and two-bedroom apartment, started new jobs and changed jobs. We adopted a dog in December 2018 and in February 2020, Lance and I officially bought our first house in Toronto. All of these moments have made me forget about the many hours and miles driving back and forth at the beginning of the relationship and makes me excited for our future.

Our rescue dog, Lexie. 

Harvard student gets into US after entry denied over friends' social media posts

Ismail Ajjawi, the incoming Harvard student who was denied entry into the US, has made it to class after all.

On Aug. 23, Ajjawi was turned away at Boston’s Logan Airport after being questioned for hours and ultimately had his visa canceled after immigration officials searched his phone and laptop, according to The Harvard Crimson. He returned home to Lebanon that weekend.

That was apparently the result of the US government’s probing of visa applicants’ social media profiles. After the search, an officer questioned the 17-year-old, who got a scholarship to study in the US, about his friends’ social media activity and told him she’d found some “posting political points of view that oppose the US,” the student paper noted. Despite Ajjawi’s protests, the officer denied the student’s entry and let him call his parents.

Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Michael McCarthy said in an Aug. 28 emailed statement that he couldn’t offer specific details on Ajjawi’s case due to confidentiality restrictions. “This individual was deemed inadmissible to the United States based on information discovered during the CBP inspection,” he wrote.

The situation was ultimately resolved, and Ajjawi made it to Harvard on Monday, in time for the semester’s first classes the following day, the Crimson reported.

“US Customs and Border Protection can confirm that on Monday Sept. 2, Ismail Ajjawi overcame all grounds of inadmissibility and was admitted into the United States as a student on a F1 visa,” a CBP spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Speaking via their lawyer, Ajjawi’s family expressed their appreciation for the support they got over a 10-day period of uncertainty and highlighted in particular the efforts on Amideast, a nonprofit that fosters relations between the US and the Middle East and North Africa.

“We truly appreciate the efforts of so many individuals and officials in Lebanon, Washington, Massachusetts and at Harvard that have made it possible for our son Ismail Ajjawi to begin his studies at Harvard with his class,” the family said in a statement.

First published Aug. 28. Updated Sept. 6: Added that Ajjawi made it into the US in time for class and added a statement from his family.

https://growinsta.xyz/harvard-student-gets-into-us-after-entry-denied-over-friends-social-media-posts/

What can an immigration lawyer do for you?

Our immigration lawyers in Boston, Massachusetts are experienced in handling all types of immigration cases. We take great time and care to understand our client’s goals and situations, in order to craft the best immigration strategy to help them obtain the results they are looking for and to achieve their immigration goals. There can be different ways of approaching one situation and the best alternative may not be the same for everyone, as each alternative can have different risks, timing and potential outcomes. Our immigration attorneys will go above and beyond to make the process as stress-free as possible, by explaining what you can expect and need to do, walking you through the entire process and providing the best possible immigration legal services in the area. 

Immigration Legal Services

Our team of legal experts can help clients with a variety of immigration-related issues and cases: 

1. U.S. Permanent Residency / U.S. Green Card: A U.S. Green Card holder / legal permanent resident is an individual who has been granted permission to live and work in the United States permanently. While there are numerous ways in which a person may acquire a Green Card, two of the most common ways by being sponsored by an immediate family member or an employer. Other ways individuals can apply for permanent resident status include after being present in the US for at least 1 year with asylum status; after being present in the U.S. for 3 years with a U visa (for victims of crime); and being granted cancellation of removal, among others. 

2. Non-immigrant U.S. Visas: There are many ways to obtain a non-immigrant U.S. visa that may grant someone the right to live and work in the United States. Our legal team can offer help with E-1 & E-2 visas for investors and traders, L-1 visas for intra-company employee transfers, H-1B visas for professional employees, K-1 visas for alien finances, U visas for victims of crime, O visas for foreigners with outstanding ability, TN visas for certain professionals from Mexico and Canada, R visas for religious workers, and others. 

3. U.S. Citizenship Applications / Naturalization: A person is usually eligible to apply to become a U.S. citizen, after being a legal permanent resident for at least 5 years (or 3 years if you are married to a U.S. citizen). Read more about the eligibility requirements for US citizenship and the documents needed.

4. Cancellation of removal / deportation (also known as the 10 year law) is a process by which certain non-permanent residents who are in removal / deportation proceedings before an immigration judge, may be granted legal permanent residency, if they have been in the U.S. continuously for the last ten years, are of good moral character, and can demonstrate that their removal will cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. 

5. Renewal of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals): Individuals who came into the United States as young children (under the age of 16), and meet the eligibility criteria, may be granted Deferred Action or relief from removal / deportation from the US. And under certain circumstances be granted work authorization. Currently the government is not accepting new applications for DACA, but it is allowing renewals. 

6. Temporary Protected Status (TPS). A procedure by which Congress allows the Attorney General of the United States to provide TPS to foreigners in the United States who are temporarily unable to return to their countries because of armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. 

7. Asylum / Political Asylum: Asylum status may be granted to a person who has a reasonable fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, if forced to return to their country of last residence.

8. Writ of Mandamus / Law suits against the USCIS: A complaint, or Writ of Mandamus, may be filed in the U.S. District Court if the USCIS has failed to issue a decision after a “reasonable” period of time, on a properly filed immigration application.

9. I-601 Waivers: For certain immigrants who have committed an immigration violation such as overstaying their permission to remain in the US under their visa and providing false or misleading information; if they can show evidence that their US citizen or legal permanent resident spouse or parent will suffer an extreme hardship, if they are not allowed to remain in the U.S.

These are just some of the many immigration legal services we can provide clients. We have the experience, skills and resources to help individuals in a variety of different immigration situations. We also can represent immigrants facing criminal charges and deportation, as we are also experienced criminal defense lawyers.

Schedule a Legal Consultation with an Immigration Attorney Today

At FitzGerald Law Company, our legal team has years of experience representing those seeking to legalize their immigration status or facing complicated immigration situations in Massachusetts. We have a deep and thorough understanding of immigration law and can devise the best immigration strategy for our clients. We serve clients in Boston, Cambridge, Quincy, Malden, Somerville, Everett, Revere, Chelsea, East Boston, Waltham, Framingham, Jamaica Plain, Lowell, Lawrence, and surrounding communities. To schedule a legal consultation today to discuss immigrating to the United States, obtaining U.S. citizenship or legalizing your immigration status with one of our experienced immigration attorneys, call us at 617-303-2600. 

Boston’s Great Molasses Flood Is Getting the Off-Broadway Musical Treatment

Plus, stop stealing stuff from restaurants, look forward to more wine in Fenway, and more news

Welcome back to AM Intel, a round-up of mini news bites to kick off the day.

A Molasses Musical

Boston’s Great Molasses Flood of 1919, which killed 21 people and injured over 100 more when a molasses storage tank burst in the North End, is the backdrop for a musical called Molasses in January, set to debut off-Broadway this spring at New York’s Jerry Orbach Theatre, written and composed by Francine Pellegrino and directed by Whitney Stone. The musical is about “a single mother doing her best to raise her children [in the North End] in a world caught up in the turmoil of the first World War,” per Broadway.com, when news of the construction of a molasses tank brings hopes for prosperity to the neighborhood full of Italian immigrants.

“Though surrounded with worries of anarchy, the people of the North End prove that family (and good food) holds tight through thick and thin and remember that ‘life can change in a moment,’” writes BroadwayWorld.com.

Here’s a promo video from a 2016 workshop:

Stuff People Steal

It’s no secret that jerks steal stuff from restaurants — pretty much anything that’s not bolted down, and even some things that are: artwork, signage, more signage, dog lamps, giraffe statues, empty Tabasco bottles, soap dispensers, cool glassware, 20 shot glasses, ice trays, metal straws…the list goes on. Don’t do this. The Globe took a look at this problem, looping it into a discussion of restaurants getting increasingly creative with quirky design elements in the age of Instagram. Like something and want it for your own home? This should be obvious, but don’t steal it from the restaurant: Ask where it’s from, or even try taking a photo and loading it into a Google Images search, and then buy it for yourself like a normal, law-abiding citizen.

Crimewire

Speaking of law-breaking, there’s been a flurry of restaurant and nightlife crime stories popping up in the news over the past few days. Flames, a Caribbean restaurant in Mattapan, has been closed for a complete rebuild since a December fire. Turns out it was allegedly set by an employee of the restaurant; police made an arrest this week but didn’t reveal a potential motive.

Over in East Boston, fans of Donna’s Restaurant, a popular diner, were shocked to hear that the owner has been charged with sales tax evasion to the tune of $60,000 and will be arraigned in April.

In the Seaport District back in January, Empire was the site of an alleged glassware attack by a customer that left a bouncer with 100 stitches and potentially permanent loss of vision in one eye. The restaurant is going before the licensing board this week to see if it’ll be punished for not being able to foresee or prevent the incident.

And this is a weird one — head to Universal Hub for the full story on a local lawyer who admitted that he’s been a regular at one of Boston’s two remaining strip clubs, Centerfolds, for almost a decade, breaking strip club regulations about touching and allegedly witnessing drug use, all of which he’s now telling the board in order to get the club in trouble for drug and prostitution violations. But, a twist! He used to date one of the strippers and is apparently still in contact with her father, trying to force her into drug treatment — and he admitted to running background checks on friends and family of the woman and trying to obtain court records on her, as well as contacting her aunts, saying that it was because he was concerned about her well-being since, as he said, she had lied to him about her addiction. As UHub sums it up: “The Boston Licensing Board…has to decide whether his allegations of prostitution and heroin use at one of Boston’s two remaining strip clubs are valid or whether they’re the statements of a bitter, lovelorn man now barred from strip joints across the country.”

Fenway Wine

On a happier note, lots more wine is coming to Fenway. As previously reported, the team behind acclaimed downtown wine bar Haley.Henry is opening a wine bar called Nathálie this summer on the ground floor of the new Pierce Building. Here’s a little bit more info from a new interview with owner Haley Fortier and managing partner Kristie Weiss from the Pierce website. And that’s not all: The Wine Press, a Brookline liquor store that has been around for decades, is expanding to the Pierce building as well, slated for a summer opening, owners Aaron and Jyoti Mehta announced yesterday. They’ve owned the shop since 2011 and will continue to focus on wines as well as a selection of beer and spirits at their forthcoming second location. The Wine Press hosts frequent events and tastings and also has services including beverage catering, gift basket preparation, and a monthly wine club.

Got a news tip for the Eater Boston team? Email [email protected].

Family Immigration Lawyers In East Boston & Lynn, MA- Gonzalez Legal P.C.

When it comes to family immigration matters in East Boston and Lynn, MA. Gonzalez Legal P.C. is the law firm you can rely on. With their expertise in immigration law, they specialize in helping families navigate the complexities of the immigration system. Whether you need assistance with marriage-based visas, green cards, or family reunification, their dedicated immigration lawyers in East Boston & Lynn, MA provide personalized guidance and strong advocacy to help you achieve your immigration goals. Visit their website for more information.

BOSTON | Lawsuit: Boston schools cooperate with immigration officials

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/Trr3rD

BOSTON | Lawsuit: Boston schools cooperate with immigration officials

BOSTON (AP) — A coalition of civil rights and student advocacy groups sued the Boston Public Schools on Thursday to find out how much student information the system shares with federal immigration officials.

The groups, including the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, allege in the lawsuit that the school system and Superintendent Tommy Chang have a “disturbing practice” of giving student information to immigration authorities.

Chang told the Boston Globe on Friday that he’s agreed to step down as superintendent after three years, but declined to discuss the circumstances of his departure.

The lawsuit stems from the deportation of an East Boston High School student. The lawsuit says evidence used by federal officials in deportation proceedings included a school report about two students who tried unsuccessfully to start a fight.

The school’s incident report included unsubstantiated allegations of gang involvement, according to the lawsuit.

The school shared the report with the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, a collaboration of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The student was held in custody for more than 16 months before being deported, the lawsuit said.

East Boston is a hotbed of activity for the violent MS-13 gang, federal authorities have said.

“The issue of public schools’ cooperation with law enforcement — already of intense public importance — has taken on heightened urgency for immigrant families since 2017,” the lawsuit says. “As federal deportation efforts intensify, the question of how and under what circumstances public schools are providing information to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement has become even more crucial.”

Chang has previously said the schools don’t share student information.

A schools spokesman said he could not comment.

“Neither the city of Boston nor Boston Public Schools have been served with the lawsuit,” spokesman Dan O’Brien said. “Boston Public Schools will review the lawsuit once it is received.”

By Associated Press

Hey guys! 2018 has been such a crazy year. Sir George came into our lives unexpectedly, I’ll be getting married this year, and then one of the biggest honors of my life: I was asked to go give the Commencement Speech for my alma mater, Whittier College. AHHHHHHH!!!! WHAT!!???? I didn’t really think I’ve have the opportunity to do this maybe until much much later in my life, but when the President of Whittier College personally left me a message on my phone, I knew something was up. Anyway, before I share my transcript with you, I wanted to share a somewhat funny and highly stressful thing that happened the week of my speech writing. So, I’m writing my speech the Monday before I’m supposed to give the speech on Friday – giving me 4 solid days to prep. I finished the entire 20-minute speech that evening, sent it to Sam and my sister to look at, but inside, I didn’t really love it. Well let’s just say that over the course of the entire week, I kept writing and rewriting until I had made 21 different versions of my speech by Thursday night!!! I just didn’t like any of the versions! I hated all of them! I suddenly became the perfectionist student version of myself and simply could not accept anything I was doing as good enough! I did not intend for it to go on this long, but on 4 AM on Friday morning (morning of the speech) I was STILL writing and rewriting the intro and fixing the sections in between…AGAIN!! My the wee hours of the morning, my eyelids were so heavy and splashing water on my face no longer worked. So I went to sleep with version 22 on my laptop. Then when I woke up, I began to rewrite again. Are you stressed yet? Am I crazy? Yeah, maybe. Go time was 8:30 AM on the field. At 8:17 AM is when we printed out draft 23 with edits made that very morning from the hotel printer. And guess what? THEY RAN OUT OF PAPER. Hahahaha. But eventually it was restocked and I made it to the lineup almost right before everyone walked on the field. The papers in my hand were still warm from the printer. So anyway, that’s how speech prep went. As stressful as EVER. But, I am very happy with draft 23 of my speech. So here it is. The words that I shared with the Class of 2018 at Whittier College on May 18th, 2018. Enjoy. 5 Things I Wish I Could Tell my 22-Year Old Self By: Cassey Ho Thank you so much Dr. Van Osbree for the warm intro! And thank you President Herzberger! It truly is an honor to come back to Whittier and have the opportunity to speak you, the Class of 2018! Sharon, I don’t know if you planned this, but your timing is impeccable! Did you guys know that my 1st year at Whittier was Sharon’s 1st year as Whittier’s president? And now here I am coming back to give this year’s Commencement speech as we celebrate Sharon’s final year serving the college. Let’s give it up for President Herzberger! And for things coming full circle! Being back here on campus makes me so emotional. I mean, when I look at Stauffer, I can vividly see the moment my mom and dad left me as a little freshman crying my face off like an abandoned child as they drove away. When I look at the Science Building, I can see myself frantically walking up the stairs in a hoodie and top knot, trying to last minute memorize the 4 nitrogenous bases found in DNA. Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine. Right Dr. Bourgaize? And when I look at the CI, I remember all the food I stuffed myself with because I treated every meal like I was at Hometown Buffet. Let’s just say the Freshman 15 was very real. Seeing these buildings again and seeing my professors again makes me realize how much Whittier played a role in sculpting me into the person I am today. So many micro-decisions were made right here, that at the time, I thought were trivial. But they ended up changing the entire course of my career. Graduates, I am really excited to have the honor to speak to you today. From Poet to Poet and peer to peer, I really want to take this opportunity to have a real talk with you before you march across this stage into adulthood. If you’re feeling lost or unsure of what you’re meant to do, don’t worry. That’s normal. Your 20s are meant for figuring these things out. Actually, the rest of your life is meant for figuring things out, but hopefully you will have learned a few things by then. Look, I’m not going to stand here and pretend that I know everything, because I don’t! But I can tell you 5 things I wish I could have told my 22 year old self. #1. Love your parents. But know they’re not always right. As a child of strict Asian immigrant parents, I also grew up being falsely advertised that there were only 3 career options for me. For my Asian brothers and sisters out there, you know what I’m talking about, right?! And if you don’t, let me break it down for you. Us Asian kids only had the choice of becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. That’s it. Any other option was a disgrace to the family. My dad decided he wanted a doctor in the family, so that was my fate. The problem was, I didn’t want to have anything to do with being a doctor. I had been sketching gowns ever since I was 6 – sewing clothes for my Barbies and then designing my friends’ prom dresses. But when I told my dad that I wanted to be a fashion designer, he glared at me and said: “No. You will do no such thing.” “Why?” I asked. “If you become a fashion designer, you will be poor. You will be unsuccessful. So…you know what that means, right?” “What?” “It means you will have NO FRIENDS!” Looking back, I think it was the “no friends” part that really got to me. So I dutifully accepted my fate, tucked my dream away, and went off to major in Biology and minor in Business. But it wouldn’t be long before I realized how painful it was to be living out someone else’s dream while sacrificing my own. #2. Take responsibility for your own destiny. For the next couple years, I was really unhappy at school. I clearly saw that I was putting in all my time and energy into a career I did not want to have anything to do with! I felt trapped in between familial obligations and my own happiness. I called my parents hundreds of times, trying to explain to them how much I wanted to switch majors and pursue design. But each phone call ended in a screaming match – a war of them threatening I’d fail and me yelling that I wouldn’t. The calls always ended with me crying uncontrollably into my pillow every night. My spirit was breaking. I was so miserable. Until – I decided to take responsibility for my feelings. Was it really my parents standing in the way of my happiness? Or was it actually me? What I realized is that I was the one ultimately standing in my own way. So I chose not to be a victim of the situation and instead shifted the power from my parents’ hands into my hands, which gave me the permission to take control of my own destiny. So Junior year, I decided to sabotage my perfect academic record so that there could be no turning back. I dropped out of the very last class I needed in order to apply for Med School. That class was Organic Chemistry. Sorry Dr. Isovitch but I promise it wasn’t personal. I felt so free. So alive. I was finally living for me! With so much inspiration flooding my body, I started designing and sewing my first prototypes right up here in Turner. #3. Do more things that make you smile, and less things that don’t. Do you know what those things are that you would do all day even if you weren’t getting paid? Ok not watching Netflix – but everything else! The things you can’t stop thinking about. I want you to listen to little signals your body is giving you. Don’t ignore them. They mean something. You know that feeling when your heart tenses and your breathing becomes a little irregular. Probably a sign you shouldn’t be doing something. You know that feeling when you can’t stop smiling and your stomach turns into butterflies? That. Keep doing that. It all started with me leading some mini Pilates sessions with my floormates just for fun! The girls would gather in the common area and do some double leg lifts together after class. It was also here at Whittier that I fatefully answered a Craigslist ad for an open Pilates Instructor position at a gym in Uptown Whittier. Turns out all those years of doing Mari Winsor’s Pilates DVDs for 4 easy payments of $19.95 was finally paying off because – I somehow got the job! Pilates was a godsend for me. It was one of the only things really keeping me sane throughout college, especially with all the family/career drama that was happening at the time. When my parents found out I was teaching, they were FURIOUS. They told me to stop wasting my time. They told me to quit immediately and go back to studying. But I decided to stick with the things that made me smile instead. #4. Give, give, give and you shall receive. Graduating from Whittier meant leaving the life I knew so well here. This also meant leaving my Pilates students at the gym for a job on the East Coast. My students were devastated. “Who’s going to teach POP Pilates now?” they asked. “We’re going to miss you so much.” So I got to thinking. How could we still keep in touch? How could they still work out with me? Well, that was when I got the idea to upload a 10-minute workout video to a little website called YouTube. The year was 2009 and there was no money to be made and no fame to be had. It was simply a video sharing site. And that’s what I did. I simply shared. #5. If you’re willing to bet on anything, bet on yourself. As I was sitting in my cubicle in Boston, I got a text from an old student with a photo of their finger pointing to something in a magazine. The text said, “Is this your yoga bag?” My heart stopped. It was one of the bags I made in college. I ran to the elevator, sprinted to my car, and sped over to the nearest Target. I was shaking so hard when I got to the magazine section. I tried to flip open the pages, but I kept dropping it. Finally, when I was able to calm myself down, I turned the pages slowly one by one. And then there it was. SHAPE Magazine had named my yoga mat bag one of the hottest new products of the summer. It was now SO clear to me what I needed to do. I quit my job, I bought a ticket to China that same day and flew out to Guangzhou the next day. I was going to attend the biggest trade show in the world and find a manufacturer. I was going to go big. Because if I were going to invest in anything, I was going to invest in myself. When I got back to Boston, I had rent to pay, groceries to buy, no income and no money. I was poor. Just like my dad had predicted if I became a designer. But unlike my dad had predicted, being financially poor did not mean I would have no friends. I actually was beginning to make a lot of friends. Friends online, all over the world – thanks to YouTube. What started as a genuine intention to give the gift of Pilates to 40 people at the gym turned into what is now the #1 female fitness channel on YouTube, Blogilates, with over 4 Million Subscribers. What started as 1 class at a local gym right here in Whittier is now a real live format with over 4,000 POP Pilates classes being taught every single month all over the world. What started as 1 sketch in the sidelines of my bio notebook in that science building right there is now an international multimillion dollar activewear brand. And, bonus fact: What started as me asking the tutor “Will you help me get an A?” turned into that very same guy getting down on one knee asking me, “Cassey, will you marry me?” 10 years ago, Sam and I met at those fateful green tables in front of the Business Admin offices when I was a junior and he was a senior, and now we’re getting married this October! Poets, you and I are cut from the same purple and gold fabric. We were both bred on this very same campus, by these amazing professors, taught to think outside the box with our liberal arts education. When I was here I promised myself that somehow, some way, I was going to go out there and make Whittier proud. Class of 2018, after your caps are thrown and your selfies are taken, the next chapter of your life begins. As you write your story, give yourself the permission make mistakes, do those things you can’t stop thinking about, and most importantly, be a good human. Good luck! Now let’s do this. The post 5 things I wish I could tell my 22 year old self – my commencement speech! appeared first on Blogilates. from Blogilates https://ift.tt/2sDZb46 via IFTTT

http://www.fitnessclub.cf/2018/06/5-things-i-wish-i-could-tell-my-22-year.html

5 things I wish I could tell my 22 year old self – my commencement speech!

Hey guys!

2018 has been such a crazy year. Sir George came into our lives unexpectedly, I’ll be getting married this year, and then one of the biggest honors of my life: I was asked to go give the Commencement Speech for my alma mater, Whittier College.

AHHHHHHH!!!! WHAT!!????

I didn’t really think I’ve have the opportunity to do this maybe until much much later in my life, but when the President of Whittier College personally left me a message on my phone, I knew something was up.

Anyway, before I share my transcript with you, I wanted to share a somewhat funny and highly stressful thing that happened the week of my speech writing. So, I’m writing my speech the Monday before I’m supposed to give the speech on Friday – giving me 4 solid days to prep. I finished the entire 20-minute speech that evening, sent it to Sam and my sister to look at, but inside, I didn’t really love it. Well let’s just say that over the course of the entire week, I kept writing and rewriting until I had made 21 different versions of my speech by Thursday night!!! I just didn’t like any of the versions! I hated all of them! I suddenly became the perfectionist student version of myself and simply could not accept anything I was doing as good enough!

I did not intend for it to go on this long, but on 4 AM on Friday morning (morning of the speech) I was STILL writing and rewriting the intro and fixing the sections in between…AGAIN!! My the wee hours of the morning, my eyelids were so heavy and splashing water on my face no longer worked. So I went to sleep with version 22 on my laptop. Then when I woke up, I began to rewrite again. Are you stressed yet? Am I crazy? Yeah, maybe.

Go time was 8:30 AM on the field. At 8:17 AM is when we printed out draft 23 with edits made that very morning from the hotel printer. And guess what? THEY RAN OUT OF PAPER. Hahahaha. But eventually it was restocked and I made it to the lineup almost right before everyone walked on the field. The papers in my hand were still warm from the printer.

So anyway, that’s how speech prep went. As stressful as EVER.

But, I am very happy with draft 23 of my speech. So here it is. The words that I shared with the Class of 2018 at Whittier College on May 18th, 2018. Enjoy.

5 Things I Wish I Could Tell my 22-Year Old Self By: Cassey Ho

Thank you so much Dr. Van Osbree for the warm intro! And thank you President Herzberger! It truly is an honor to come back to Whittier and have the opportunity to speak you, the Class of 2018! Sharon, I don’t know if you planned this, but your timing is impeccable! Did you guys know that my 1st year at Whittier was Sharon’s 1st year as Whittier’s president? And now here I am coming back to give this year’s Commencement speech as we celebrate Sharon’s final year serving the college. Let’s give it up for President Herzberger! And for things coming full circle!

Being back here on campus makes me so emotional. I mean, when I look at Stauffer, I can vividly see the moment my mom and dad left me as a little freshman crying my face off like an abandoned child as they drove away.

When I look at the Science Building, I can see myself frantically walking up the stairs in a hoodie and top knot, trying to last minute memorize the 4 nitrogenous bases found in DNA. Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine. Right Dr. Bourgaize?

And when I look at the CI, I remember all the food I stuffed myself with because I treated every meal like I was at Hometown Buffet. Let’s just say the Freshman 15 was very real.

Seeing these buildings again and seeing my professors again makes me realize how much Whittier played a role in sculpting me into the person I am today. So many micro-decisions were made right here, that at the time, I thought were trivial. But they ended up changing the entire course of my career.

Graduates, I am really excited to have the honor to speak to you today. From Poet to Poet and peer to peer, I really want to take this opportunity to have a real talk with you before you march across this stage into adulthood. If you’re feeling lost or unsure of what you’re meant to do, don’t worry. That’s normal. Your 20s are meant for figuring these things out. Actually, the rest of your life is meant for figuring things out, but hopefully you will have learned a few things by then.

Look, I’m not going to stand here and pretend that I know everything, because I don’t! But I can tell you 5 things I wish I could have told my 22 year old self.

#1. Love your parents. But know they’re not always right.

As a child of strict Asian immigrant parents, I also grew up being falsely advertised that there were only 3 career options for me. For my Asian brothers and sisters out there, you know what I’m talking about, right?!

And if you don’t, let me break it down for you.

Us Asian kids only had the choice of becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. That’s it. Any other option was a disgrace to the family.

My dad decided he wanted a doctor in the family, so that was my fate. The problem was, I didn’t want to have anything to do with being a doctor. I had been sketching gowns ever since I was 6 – sewing clothes for my Barbies and then designing my friends’ prom dresses. But when I told my dad that I wanted to be a fashion designer, he glared at me and said:

“No. You will do no such thing.”

“Why?” I asked.

“If you become a fashion designer, you will be poor. You will be unsuccessful. So…you know what that means, right?”

“What?”

“It means you will have NO FRIENDS!”

Looking back, I think it was the “no friends” part that really got to me. So I dutifully accepted my fate, tucked my dream away, and went off to major in Biology and minor in Business.

But it wouldn’t be long before I realized how painful it was to be living out someone else’s dream while sacrificing my own.

#2. Take responsibility for your own destiny.

For the next couple years, I was really unhappy at school. I clearly saw that I was putting in all my time and energy into a career I did not want to have anything to do with! I felt trapped in between familial obligations and my own happiness.

I called my parents hundreds of times, trying to explain to them how much I wanted to switch majors and pursue design. But each phone call ended in a screaming match – a war of them threatening I’d fail and me yelling that I wouldn’t. The calls always ended with me crying uncontrollably into my pillow every night. My spirit was breaking. I was so miserable.

Until – I decided to take responsibility for my feelings. Was it really my parents standing in the way of my happiness? Or was it actually me?

What I realized is that I was the one ultimately standing in my own way. So I chose not to be a victim of the situation and instead shifted the power from my parents’ hands into my hands, which gave me the permission to take control of my own destiny.

So Junior year, I decided to sabotage my perfect academic record so that there could be no turning back. I dropped out of the very last class I needed in order to apply for Med School. That class was Organic Chemistry. Sorry Dr. Isovitch but I promise it wasn’t personal.

I felt so free. So alive. I was finally living for me! With so much inspiration flooding my body, I started designing and sewing my first prototypes right up here in Turner.

#3. Do more things that make you smile, and less things that don’t.

Do you know what those things are that you would do all day even if you weren’t getting paid? Ok not watching Netflix – but everything else! The things you can’t stop thinking about.

I want you to listen to little signals your body is giving you. Don’t ignore them. They mean something. You know that feeling when your heart tenses and your breathing becomes a little irregular. Probably a sign you shouldn’t be doing something. You know that feeling when you can’t stop smiling and your stomach turns into butterflies? That. Keep doing that.

It all started with me leading some mini Pilates sessions with my floormates just for fun! The girls would gather in the common area and do some double leg lifts together after class.

It was also here at Whittier that I fatefully answered a Craigslist ad for an open Pilates Instructor position at a gym in Uptown Whittier. Turns out all those years of doing Mari Winsor’s Pilates DVDs for 4 easy payments of $19.95 was finally paying off because – I somehow got the job!

Pilates was a godsend for me. It was one of the only things really keeping me sane throughout college, especially with all the family/career drama that was happening at the time. When my parents found out I was teaching, they were FURIOUS. They told me to stop wasting my time. They told me to quit immediately and go back to studying.

But I decided to stick with the things that made me smile instead.

#4. Give, give, give and you shall receive.

Graduating from Whittier meant leaving the life I knew so well here. This also meant leaving my Pilates students at the gym for a job on the East Coast. My students were devastated.

“Who’s going to teach POP Pilates now?” they asked. “We’re going to miss you so much.”

So I got to thinking. How could we still keep in touch? How could they still work out with me? Well, that was when I got the idea to upload a 10-minute workout video to a little website called YouTube. The year was 2009 and there was no money to be made and no fame to be had. It was simply a video sharing site. And that’s what I did. I simply shared.

#5. If you’re willing to bet on anything, bet on yourself.

As I was sitting in my cubicle in Boston, I got a text from an old student with a photo of their finger pointing to something in a magazine. The text said, “Is this your yoga bag?”

My heart stopped. It was one of the bags I made in college.

I ran to the elevator, sprinted to my car, and sped over to the nearest Target. I was shaking so hard when I got to the magazine section. I tried to flip open the pages, but I kept dropping it. Finally, when I was able to calm myself down, I turned the pages slowly one by one. And then there it was. SHAPE Magazine had named my yoga mat bag one of the hottest new products of the summer.

It was now SO clear to me what I needed to do. I quit my job, I bought a ticket to China that same day and flew out to Guangzhou the next day. I was going to attend the biggest trade show in the world and find a manufacturer. I was going to go big. Because if I were going to invest in anything, I was going to invest in myself.

When I got back to Boston, I had rent to pay, groceries to buy, no income and no money. I was poor. Just like my dad had predicted if I became a designer.

But unlike my dad had predicted, being financially poor did not mean I would have no friends. I actually was beginning to make a lot of friends. Friends online, all over the world – thanks to YouTube.

What started as a genuine intention to give the gift of Pilates to 40 people at the gym turned into what is now the #1 female fitness channel on YouTube, Blogilates, with over 4 Million Subscribers.

What started as 1 class at a local gym right here in Whittier is now a real live format with over 4,000 POP Pilates classes being taught every single month all over the world.

What started as 1 sketch in the sidelines of my bio notebook in that science building right there is now an international multimillion dollar activewear brand.

And, bonus fact: What started as me asking the tutor “Will you help me get an A?” turned into that very same guy getting down on one knee asking me, “Cassey, will you marry me?”

10 years ago, Sam and I met at those fateful green tables in front of the Business Admin offices when I was a junior and he was a senior, and now we’re getting married this October!

Poets, you and I are cut from the same purple and gold fabric. We were both bred on this very same campus, by these amazing professors, taught to think outside the box with our liberal arts education. When I was here I promised myself that somehow, some way, I was going to go out there and make Whittier proud.

Class of 2018, after your caps are thrown and your selfies are taken, the next chapter of your life begins. As you write your story, give yourself the permission make mistakes, do those things you can’t stop thinking about, and most importantly, be a good human.

Good luck! Now let’s do this.

The post 5 things I wish I could tell my 22 year old self – my commencement speech! appeared first on Blogilates.

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  10 rules for Sucess by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase

 1. Dare greatly He majored in psychology and economics at Tufts University. 2. Be a lifelong learner After graduating, he worked in management consulting for two years before enrolling at Harvard Business School. 3. Enjoy life During the summer at Harvard, he worked at Goldman Sachs. 4. Deal with failure He graduated in 1982, earning a Master of Business Administration degree as a Baker Scholar. 5. Earn it every day In 1998 Dimon and Weill were able to form the largest financial services conglomerate the world had ever seen, Citigroup. 6. Be prepared for tough times In March 2008 he was a Class A board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 7. Write your own book He was named to Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. 8. Live deliberately He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. 9. Take care of your family He was also named to Institutional Investor's Best CEOs list from 2008 through 2011. 10. Have humility He received a $23 million pay package for fiscal year 2011, more than any other bank CEO in the United States.

 Presentation of that guy :

Executive Summary

Dimon is a native of Queens and a third-generation broker who spent his summers working at his father’s and grandfather’s firm. A career defined by "big, showy deals" has made him a celebrity on Wall Street. His profile rose even higher during the 2008 financial crisis, thanks to his fire sale purchases of Bear Stearns and WaMu. In the wake of these deals, Dimon has emerged as one of the banking industry’s most powerful executives. And, although JP Morgan has also been hurt by the crisis, it has one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry. Dimon reportedly shuns the black tie circuit and the golf course, considering music his only hobby.

Biographical Highlights

·      Born March 13, 1956 in Queens, New York City to Theodore and Themis Dimon, of Greek descent.

·      Dimon is a third-generation broker; his grandfather, a Greek immigrant, and his father, Theodore Dimon, were both brokers and were business partners for nearly 20 years; Jamie worked summers in their New York office.

·      He earned a BA in psychology and economics from Tufts University in 1978 and an MBA from Harvard Business School Harvard in (1982)

·      Intern, Goldman Sachs (1978)

·      Consultant, Management Analysis Center (1978-1980)

·      VP and Assistant to the President, American Express Company (1982-1985)

·      EVP and CFO, Commercial Credit Group precursor to Citigroup (1986-1989)

·      President and CFO, Primerica Corporation (1991-1993)

·      President and COO, Travelers Group (1993-1998)

·      President, Citigroup, Inc, and Chairman and Co-CEO of Salomon Smith Barney Holdings, Inc. (1998)

·      Private investor (1998-2000)

·      Prior to Bank One’s merger with JPMorgan Chase, he was Bank One’s Chairman and CEO (2000-2004)

·      President and COO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (2004-2005)

·      President and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (2005-present)

·      Married to Judith Kent; they have three daughters, Julia, Laura, and Kara Leigh.

·      In 1994, he was inducted into the Browning School’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

·      Dimon was named to Time magazine’s 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world’s 100 most influential people.

·      In 2011, Dimon topped Institutional Investor’s third annual All-America Executive Team for second year in a row. He hailed as the best chief executive officer in the U.S., according to participants in the 2012 All-America Executive Team survey, Institutional Investor’s third annual ranking of the nation’s best CEOs, CFOs, investor-relations professionals and IR companies.

·      Named one of the top 25 Highest Rated CEOs by Glassdoor in 2012

·      In 2012, Dimon was named executive of the year by the University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business.

·      Dimon was one among Barron’s 30 Most Respected CEO’s in 2013.

·      Dimon was named one of the 500 most powerful people on the planet by Foreign Policy magazine in 2013.

·      He was named to Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful People list in 2015.

  Personal Attributes and Interests

·      He has a twin brother, Theodore. Dimon attended Browning School.

·      In 1983, Dimon married Judith Kent, whom he met at Harvard Business School. They were married by a rabbi, as Kent is Jewish. They have three daughters: Julia, Laura, and Kara Leigh, who Dimon once took on an RV vacation through several western states and national parks.

·      Dimon graduated from Harvard Business School along with classmates Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric. and Seth Klarman, founder and president of the Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership, and the author of a book on value investing.

·      Dimon was portrayed in the 2011 HBO film "Too Big to Fail" by Bill Pullman. He is also portrayed in the BBC TV film "The Last Days of Lehman Brothers" by Michael Brandon.

·      Theodore, Jamie’s twin, recalls a superconfident sibling who always wanted the ball when the game was on the line. He also "used to stand up to bullies who threatened his smaller twin."

·      Dimon reportedly installed extensive soundproofing for his apartment so the neighbors aren’t bothered by his habit of blasting Frank Sinatra tunes on his library’s sound system.

·      Dimon is a “Wall Street celebrity” whose career has been defined by “big, showy deals.” He is known as a master numbers cruncher and has been noted for his “lack of people skills,” though he is “tremendously respected.”

·      Dimon reportedly avoids the black-tie circuit and never sets foot on a golf course.

·      Dimon was "forced from the nest" at Citigroup by Sandy Weil over ten years ago but is resisting the temptation to gloat over the fact that his company, JPMorgan, has virtually supplanted Citigroup as the preeminent financial conglomerate.

·      Shortly after taking the reins at Bank One, Dimon bought two million shares of his new company. "Ownership is a critical thing,” he said at the time. “Even if you run a retail store, you think, ’Hey, it’s my store, my company,’ and you run it like it’s your own. And I learned that from Sandy.”

·      Dimon yanked Bank One’s sponsorship of the Masters golf tournament because the country club hosting the event didn’t allow women to have memberships.

·      "You know how Google’s motto is ’Don’t be evil’? Well, ours is ’make more money,’" Dimon quipped at an investor meeting. "But do it ethically - there are lawyers in the room.”

·      His favorite meal is a cheeseburger and fries; he also enjoys martinis and Chicken Parmesan.

·      Dimon has made a career of being a relentless cost-cutter, and has been known to slash perks such as employee gyms and company-provided cell phones. He once famously said to an executive, “You’re a businessman. Pay for your own Wall Street Journal.”

·      Dimon is listed as a “Builder and Titan” on the 2006 TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.

·      According to his wife, Dimon “loves misbehaving in places where he’s supposed to behave.”

·      Dimon co-chaired the 2008 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos,
Switzerland. His discussion at this international meeting of business leaders focused upon corporate social responsibility and financial risk.

·      Dimon served as an economic adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.

·      Back in June 2012, Dimon testified before a US Senate Banking Committee, reported Forbes. Dimon said he was "dead wrong" when he dismissed media reports over trading in the bank’s chief investment office as "a complete tempest in a teapot." He pointed the finger at the former chief investment office head Ina Drew, who Dimon said assured him that "this was an isolated small issue and that it wasn’t a big problem." Dimon has admitted that the bank took on too much risk, but maintained that the bank’s chief investment office designed the trades to diminish and manage risk. He said that the trades were put on as part of the bank’s effort to comply with new international banking regulations. Democratic senator from South Dakota, Tim Johnson asked Dimon if the JPMorgan traders in the bank’s chief investment office were incentivized through their compensation to take bigger risks that made the trading debacle worse. Dimon said he did not believe the compensation model made things worse and added "it’s likely there will be clawbacks," referring to the potential that the bank will reclaim some of the compensation given to the traders responsible for the losses. Dimon had previously argued that the trades that produced his bank’s recent losses would not have been barred had the
Volcker Rule been in effect, but some experts think those trades would not have been able to grow so large under the proposed rule. Dimon also admitted that the adoption of a new risk model in January 2012 may have contributed to the big trading losses, which he didn’t realize. "We were still unaware that the model might have contributed to the problem," Dimon said. "So when we found out later on, we went back to the old model."

·      Dimon currently resides in Upper East Side, Manhattan.

·      According to WSJ, in July 2014 Dimon disclosed that he was diagnosed with a curable throat cancer. He will receive radiation and chemotherapy treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York.

·      In December 2014, Dimon told employees that tests have shown no evidence of cancer just three months after he finished scheduled treatment, reported WSJ. Dimon delivered the update to employees after undergoing a “thorough round of tests and scans.” He said, “The good news is that the results came back completely clear, showing no evidence of cancer in my body...While the monitoring will continue for several years, the results are extremely positive and my prognosis remains excellent.”

Current Focus

·      Accept ‘higher cost of Brexit’: In July 2016, Dimon said JP Morgan will accept a higher cost of doing business in the European Union and the U.K. as long as it doesn’t harm the bank’s client relationships. “It would be nice if it doesn’t create huge turmoil,” Dimon
said. He said J.P. Morgan would “accept a higher cost [of doing business in Europe] as opposed to disrupting our clients.” CFO Marianne Lake said it was really too early to assess the affect of the U.K.’s decision to split with the European Union but the bank would aim to be prepared for a range of potential outcomes. “The truth of the matter is it is very, very early days...and we will continue to evaluate the landscape over the weeks and months and quarters [ahead] and plan accordingly,” Lake said. The company employs some 16,000 people in the U.K., which is considered among the world’s most important financial hubs. Due to changes in trade agreements that would end in the wake of Brexit, the bank has said thousands of those workers might be moved or cut. The company emphasized, however, it wanted to continue to do business in the EU despite the stresses of Brexit and as Italian banks are being battered by concerns that they’re drowning in souring loans.

·      Lift basic hourly pay: In July 2016, JP Morgan announced that it will boost pay for 18,000 of its lower-tier employees over the next three years, reported New York Times. The minimum salary for employees is $10.15 an hour now and over the next three years, the company will raise the minimum pay for employees to between $12 and $16.50 an hour for full-time, part-time and new employees, depending on geographic and market factors. Many employees who will receive this increase work as bank tellers and customer service representatives. “The increase will help the bank attract and retain “talented people in a competitive environment’’ and is the right thing to do,” said Dimon. Apart from the wages, the lower-compensated employees will receive a medical plan subsidized up to 90 percent by the company as well as dental, vision and other coverage. Many of these and other benefits, including a 401(k), pension, a special annual award, paid family leave, paid vacation and bereavement, have been increased in recent years. In total, the annualized value of all of the benefits for these employees is on average approximately $11,000 a year above their existing wages. In addition to the wage change, the company said it will invest over $200 million in 2016 on training for thousands of entry-level employees in our consumer banking business. The company is also investing $325 million in career-oriented education aligned to growing sectors.

·      Set up new branches in India: JP Morgan Chase is opening three branches in India, expanding in the world’s second-most populous nation even as global competitors pull back, WSJ reported in July 2016. “We have a great commitment to this country,” said Kalpana Morparia, Chief Executive for South & Southeast Asia, J.P. Morgan. The bank’s new branches will be in New Delhi, and near the south Indian cities of Bangalore and Chennai. “We’ve been very careful in selecting these locations,” given Chennai’s status as a manufacturing hub and Bengaluru’s standing as an information-technology center, Muhammad Aurangzeb, CEO of Asia-Pacific, said. “We have a number of clients in both locations.” Like other major banks, Morparia said that J.P. Morgan is looking to increasingly service clients digitally. “We’ve made significant investments in our tech platform to basically embed a virtual branch across [clients’] desktops,” said Morparia. She said that the new branches will enable the bank to better service its existing clientele, which includes multinational companies and Indian firms which have international trade links. Morparia said that J.P. Morgan’s focus in India will remain on companies with international trade links and other large firms, to whom it will provide commercial-banking services including cash management, trade finance and foreign-currency payments, and lending services, as needed.

·      Combat climate change: JPMorgan, in March 2016, said it will no longer finance new coal mines around the world and will end support for new coal-fired power plants being developed in “high income” countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, reported Bloomberg. Recognizing global challenges and risks emanating from climate change, the company, in its Environmental and Social Policy Framework, said that outside of rich countries, it will back only coal-fired power plants that employ “ultra- supercritical” technology that is more efficient than conventional systems. The bank will consider on a "case-by-case basis" coal plants that capture carbon-dioxide emissions and prevent their release into the atmosphere. Additionally, JPMorgan also plans to shrink its credit exposure in the “medium term” to companies that generate most of their revenue from coal mining and sales. The bank said it expects its business to reflect the “decline of coal as an energy source,” although it said it will maintain corporate lending relationships with big mining groups. “We believe the financial services sector has an important role to play as governments implement policies to combat climate change,” the company said.

·      Enter online loan boom: JP Morgan said it will partner with alternative lender OnDeck Capital to offer smaller dollar loans to small businesses, reported FierceFinanceIT in December 2015. The company said the partnership, which is expected to launch in 2016, will also enable the company to leverage OnDeck's technology to offer fast approvals and funding. Jennifer Piepszak, head of business banking said, "By combining Chase's relationships and lending experience with OnDeck's technology platform, we'll be able to offer almost real-time approvals and same or next day funding. It really originated with a need to remove pain points and just make the process easier.” she said, “We obviously have the lending experience; they have a disruptive customer experience that we’re very interested in.” Dimon said that the new ventures offer “the kind of stuff we don’t want to do or can’t do, but there’s somebody else who can do it and do it probably well.”

·      Thoughts on bank regulation and bitcoin: "Banks should be allowed to fail," Dimon told those attending the Fortune Global Forum, reported San Francisco Business Times in November 2015. But he clarified, "We're not going to fail." Dimon suggested a label for the government's efforts to resolve how to handle big banks when they run into trouble: "For the American public, it should be called 'bankruptcy for big, dumb banks.'" He was eager to distinguish his bank from the dumb ones, reiterating that his bank didn't need the billions it had to take under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. As for the bank's more recent financial performance, Dimon said, "We have actually earned good returns. We're not talking about earning great returns," Dimon said. "We bought Bear Stearns when we were asked to, and we've been punished pretty severely since then," Dimon said. Dimon, clearly unhappy with the fines tied to troubled financial institutions that the company acquired amid the crisis, said, "Regulators tell me, 'Get over it, Jamie,' and I say 'Yes, sir.'" On the prospects for bitcoin, Dimon said, you’re wasting your time. My belief is there won't be virtual currency," Dimon said, saying that governments are too eager to control currencies. "There's no government that will put up with it for long." He said technology supporting bitcoin may find successful applications. Dimon called the creation of the European Union "one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind ever." He said the creation of the euro was designed to make the European Union ties more permanent. "Breakup of the euro today, in my opinion, would cause a depression," Dimon said. He also said the Fed's low- rate environment is causing "unintended consequences".

·      Trim costs and become more efficient: According to an October 2015 WSJ article, JPMorgan, in its latest round of cost cuts, is hoping to save tens of millions of dollars by eliminating support for the BlackBerry wireless devices by 2016 and mandating that some employees pay for their own devices. The company also reduced the number of hotels it will approve for business trips, leaving some employees seeking manager approval to stay at five-star hotels. Some parts of the bank are also testing “ratio seating,” in which employees essentially share desks with others who work at different shifts or those working across multiple office locations. Spokesman Joe Evangelisti said, “Cutting wasteful expenses frees up resources" for J.P. Morgan to continue investing elsewhere. Earlier in May 2015 JPMorgan announced its plan to cut more than 5,000 jobs in an effort to trim costs and become more efficient, reported WSJ. The cuts already have begun and are part of a broader industry move toward Internet and mobile banking. The bank will cut at least 2% of its current workforce in 2016. Dimon said that the average JPMorgan Chase branch would lose one employee over the next two years, mostly through attrition. The layoffs are broader, however, affecting all four of the bank’s major business units: corporate and investment banking, consumer and community banking, asset management and commercial banking. Some employees in the “controls” part of the bank, such as those in legal or compliance, also will be affected as the bank trims departments that have grown markedly over the past few years. JPMorgan also is looking to more sophisticated technologies to automate work, such as new ATMs or faster trading capabilities. “It’s cheaper for us and good for clients,” he said. The bank said in February 2015 that it expects expenses to drop to about $57 billion in 2015 from $58.4 billion in 2014. “We won’t compromise investment dollars in order to improve short-term efficiency or performance,” CFO Marianne Lake said, adding that keeping strong controls also is a priority. There also is a focus on costs in the corporate and investment bank, with layoffs expected around technology and operations employees. According to Bloomberg JPMorgan is also eliminating voice mail for consumer-bank employees as part of its push to trim $2 billion in annual expenses. “We realized that hardly anyone uses voice mail anymore because we’re all carrying something in our pockets that’s going to get texts or e-mail or a phone call,” Gordon Smith, head of JPMorgan’s consumer and community bank, said. “So we started to cut those off.”

·      Form data company: According to an August 2015 WSJ article, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are working to create a company that will pull together and clean reams of reference data at a lower cost than what they would spend individually, according to people familiar with the matter. The new entity will create a stream of consistent data that banks use to help determine pricing and transaction costs.The initiative is currently dubbed “SPReD”, which stands for Securities Product Reference Data, and is likely to be launched in the next six to 12 months. Each founding bank is investing “seven figures” for the entity, they said. The company will work specifically with reference data on financial instruments, including identifiers like names, codes and symbols that each institution already buys. It will start with listed derivatives and equity data, with fixed income-related data added later. The project would consolidate efforts to clean and store the vast amount of data, centralizing a function that many banks have previously done individually, with some housing data in a variety of units within their organization. The banks selected SmartStream Technologies in 2014 after soliciting bids and ideas for the structure of the new entity from firms that provide outsourcing and other middle and back-office services. They plan to spin off a portion of SmartStream’s business, including some existing reference data clients, into the new entity, with the consortium of banks taking a stake. The new entity will create tailored data feeds for each client using existing sources of data that firms receive from a variety of vendors. Each bank or client will continue to negotiate those data vendor relationships themselves. Earlier in 2015 J.P. Morgan created a central system within the bank that pulled streams

·      reference data from all of its providers into one hub, a person familiar with the process said. The new entity will take over scrubbing reference data for the bank, ultimately feeding it back into J.P. Morgan’s system, as part of its cost savings initiative.

·      Curbing Growth: In February 2015, the New York Times reported that the Company is implementing changes to ensure that it does not grow any larger. Executives have outlined new plans to reduce the amount of customer deposits it holds by nearly $100 billion and cut nearly $3 billion in expenses from its investment bank. Dimon emphasized that the Company’s basic model of providing the full range of financial services around the globe was still working. “Our mix obviously works for the client. That is the best judge,” Dimon said.

·      Capitalizing on Data: In May 2015, Diana Farrell, CEO of the new JP Morgan Chase Institute, described how the Company is using big data to provide fresh economic insights. Farrell’s institute draws on internal information on 30 million U.S. bank account holders, often allowing for faster and more nimble conclusions, reported Fortune. “We have a window into 135 million daily transactions,” notes Farrell. The JPMorgan data keeps up with a fast-paced economy, giving us an ability to gauge the fallout from natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy or the economic impact of states raising the minimum wage. “We can zoom in and see the impact,” Farrell noted.

·      Chip Technology: The Company said it would convert 70% of its credit and debit cards to chip technology, an upgrade from the magnetic strips that currently dominate the U.S. market, by the end of 2015, reported The Street in May 2015. Chip cards have an added layer of encryption technology, which makes them less susceptible to hackers, but using them requires upgrades of point-of-sale swipe terminals and ATMs. "Fraud and security threats facing consumer payments today is a complex issue," Smith said in a statement. "We’re working to employ a variety of approaches to protect our customers -- adopting chip technology is a critical step on this journey."

·      Employee Surveillance: The Company is developing a new employee surveillance program that will track whether traders are attending their compliance classes and how well they adhere to "personal trading rules" and risk limits, reported Bloomberg in April 2015. The program is designed to predict behavioral patterns and “monitor for employees who may go off the reservation.” The program will roll out on the trading side first, and later in the investment banking and asset management departments. Spotting bad behavior before it takes place is becoming a priority for the Company, which has reportedly spent more than $36 billion in fines and legal battles in the aftermath of the financial crisis, stated Bloomberg. In a memo an executive reminded employees of the impacts of scandals on everyone’s bonuses. And for executives, reducing legal bills is crucial in order to balance the books going forward.

·      Focusing on the Customer Experience: On the Company’s April 2015 earnings call, CFO Marianne Lake said: “We remain focused on the customer experience and on our strong customer satisfaction rankings and we continue to grow households and see very low levels of attrition. And with deepening relationships, our average deposits are now over $0.5 trillion, up 9% year-on-year. We have record client investment assets up 12%. Our active mobile customer base is up 22%; part sales volume up 8% and our overall loan book grew for the third consecutive quarter with core loan growth of 15% year-on-year. And across CCB, we remain disciplined on expense management. Year-on-year expenses were lower by nearly $250 million and our headcount is down about 1,900 so far this year.”

·      Investment Bank Struggles: The investment bank led by Pinto has been improving its position relative to competitors, gaining market share in areas like stock trading and European banking, cementing its place as the largest investment bank in the world. But while profits at JPMorgan Chase rose to a record level in 2014, profits from the investment bank fell 16 percent from the previous year to the lowest level since 2011, reported the New York Times in March 2015. “When judged by the returns it provides to shareholders, though, the investment bank has become the worst performing major division in the Company... Moving forward, Mr. Pinto lowered his projected returns for future years to 13 percent from 15 percent, bringing it below even the struggling mortgage lending operation.” Additionally, the regulatory pressure on the investment bank remains strong as it faces potential fines over accusations that traders colluded to manipulate various financial benchmarks.

·      Doubling Down on Cybersecurity Spending: The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2015 that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. expects its cybersecurity spending to be around $500 million in 2016--this is double the $250 million it has been spending annually in recent years. "Cybersecurity attacks, like the one experienced by the firm, highlight the

need for continued and increased cooperation among businesses and the government,” said the company in an SEC filing. J.P. Morgan Chairman and Chief Executive James Dimon said back in October 2014 that the bank would double spending on cybersecurity over the next five years, his first public remarks following the data breach that hit the nation’s largest bank last summer. “We have to be vigilant,” he said, adding that issues around cybersecurity “will happen for a long time.” The bank said in its quarterly filing that it continues to work on strengthening its partnerships with government and law enforcement agencies in addition to third-party service providers.

 Key Challenges

 ·      Job cuts after Brexit vote: In June 2016, Dimon warned that between 1,000 to 4,000 UK jobs at the bank could move overseas in the wake of the country’s vote to leave the EU, reported The Guardian. The company said in an email to staff that changes in its “European legal entity structure” might be needed and in the location of some roles. However, the bank said it will maintain a large presence in London, Bournemouth and Scotland. Dimon said, “While these changes are not certain, we have to be prepared to comply with new laws as we serve our clients around the world. We will always do our best to take care of our people and do the right thing during times of change. We are hopeful that policymakers will recognise the immense value created through a continued open economic engagement between the UK and EU members. As negotiations offer more clarity over the coming months, we will communicate with you and with our clients regarding any relevant changes.”

·      Lessons Learned and Precautions Taken: Dimon acknowledged back in 2014 that a series of legal headaches in 2013 evolved into "the most painful, difficult and nerve- wracking experience I have ever dealt with professionally." According to WSJ the comments in Dimon’s annual shareholder letter offer the most revealing picture to date of how he reacted to a combination of government probes and lawsuits that culminated in payouts of more than $20 billion. The bank, he said, "was under constant and intense pressure." The "best option, perhaps the only sensible option," he added, was to "settle as much as we could all at once, albeit at a high price." In his 32-page letter, he also presented a more detailed view inside JMorgan’s scramble to adapt to heightened scrutiny from its federal overseers and a raft of new US regulations enacted since the financial crisis. A new "state-of-the-art control room" at JMorgan’s Park Avenue headquarters is now up and running. The Company, he added, also intends to deploy 8,000 employees across the firm to build a program designed to root out money laundering. Dimon in his letter to shareholders said the Company came through 2013 "scarred but strengthened" and hinted that he would have more reflections to offer in the future. "There is much to say and a lot to be learned in analyzing what happened, but I am not going to do so in this letter," Dimon added. "More distance and perspective are required."

·      Rivals of all Sorts: Dimon said that threats to its dominance may come from Beijing, Silicon Valley and a San Francisco-based rival with a stagecoach logo, reported The Columbus Dispatch back in 2014. “We know there are going to be attacks everywhere,” Dimon told investors at an annual meeting. About challengers he cited companies including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Google and Wells Fargo & Co. Wells Fargo will be “a major investment bank” within five years, he said. “My operating assumption has always been and always will be that we are going to have huge, tough competition from Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo to some new entrants. Wells Fargo will be in our business. I have enormous respect for them. The bank also said it would eliminate about 8,000 jobs in consumer and mortgage banking in 2014, while hiring in areas such as compliance and risk management, Dimon said. He added that he will stick with home lending, after calling mortgages “the most painful business ever.” Technology companies “all want to eat our lunch,” Dimon said. “I mean every single one of them, and they’re going to try.” The loans fill a key need for consumers. Dimon is selling or closing businesses he considers risky and dropping non-U.S. clients who might invite regulatory scrutiny. He’s fending off allegations of rigged markets and ignoring suspicious activity by clients.

 Sources : Boardroom Insiders

Tentative Lift of Trump’s Travel Ban Opens Window for Some Passengers

People protest outside of Terminal 4 at New York-JFK airport. Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Skift Take: Tourism to the U.S. is going to have challenges in 2017 unless its leaders begin to turn things around.

— Jason Clampet

Citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries banned from the United States by President Donald Trump can resume boarding U.S.-bound flights, major airlines said on Saturday, after a Seattle judge blocked the executive order.

The ruling gave hope to some Middle East travellers but left them unclear how long the new travel window might last. Trump denounced the judge on Twitter and said the decision would be quashed.

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” the president said.

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017

The travel ban, which Trump says is needed to protect the United States against Islamist militants, has sparked travel chaos around the world and condemnation by rights groups who have called it racist and discriminatory.

“Interesting that certain Middle-Eastern countries agree with the ban. They know if certain people are allowed in it’s death & destruction!” Trump tweeted. “When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot, come in & out, especially for reasons of safety & security – big trouble!”

In the wake of Friday’s ruling, Qatar Airways was the first to say it would allow passengers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to resume flying to U.S. cities if they had valid documents.

Fellow Gulf carriers Etihad and Emirates said they would do the same, as did Air France, Spain’s Iberia and Germany’s Lufthansa. Officials in Lebanon and Jordan said they had received no new instructions on the issue.

The White House said it planned to appeal as soon as possible.

Ibrahim Ghaith, a Syrian barber who fled Damascus in 2013, told Reuters in Jordan: “Today we heard that the measures may have been abolished but we are not sure if this is just talk. If they go back on the decision, people will be overjoyed.”

Iraqi refugee Nizar al-Qassab told Reuters in Lebanon: “If it really has been frozen, I thank God, because my wife and children should have been in America by now.”

The 52-year-old said his family had been due to travel to the United States for resettlement on Jan. 31. The trip was cancelled two days before that, and he was now waiting for a phone call from U.N. officials overseeing their case. “It’s in God’s hands,” he said.

“Race Against Time”

Two Sudanese travellers told Reuters they were trying to travel as soon as possible, fearing the ban might be reinstated.

“I’m in a race against time,” said a 31-year-old female academic who declined to be named for fear of any consequences.

“Today I face a real problem in Khartoum because the international airlines are refusing to sell me a ticket to travel for fear of contradicting the President’s decision. Now I am going from one airline company to another to convince them about the court’s decision,” she said.

A 34-year-old Sudanese engineer, who also did not want to be named, said: “After the court’s decision I am now trying to leave as fast as possible before the situation changes once more.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection told airlines they could board travelers affected within hours of Friday’s ruling, but budget airline Norwegian, which operates transatlantic flights including from London and Oslo, said many uncertainties remained about the legal position.

“It’s still very unclear,” spokeswoman Charlotte Holmbergh Jacobsson said. “We advise passengers to contact the U.S. embassy … We have to follow the U.S. rules.”

In Cairo, aviation sources said Egypt Air and other airlines had told their sales offices of Friday’s ruling and would allow people previously affected by the ban to book flights.

But for some who had changed their travel plans following the ban, the order was not enough reassurance.

Josephine Abu Assaleh, who was stopped from entering the United States last week with five members of her family, was hesitant to express any hope in the court ruling as she awaited word from her lawyers.

“I will not say if I have hope or not. I wait, watch, and then I build my hopes. We left the matter with the lawyers. When they tell us the decision has been cancelled, we will decide whether to go back or not,” she told Reuters in Damascus, speaking by telephone.

Abu Assaleh, 60, and her family only learnt of Trump’s order after landing at Philadelphia International Airport with U.S. visas that were granted in 2016, some 13 years after they initially made their applications.

Visa Suspensions

Trump’s order caused chaos at airports across the United States last week. Virtually all refugees were also barred, upending the lives of thousands of people who had spent years seeking asylum in the U.S.

The State Department said on Friday that almost 60,000 visas were suspended following Trump’s order. It was not clear whether that suspension was automatically revoked or what reception travelers with such visas might get at U.S. airports.

The Washington state lawsuit was the first to test the broad constitutionality of Trump’s executive order. Judge James Robart, a George W. Bush appointee, explicitly made his ruling apply across the country, while other judges in similar cases have so far issued orders concerning only specific individuals.

The challenge in Seattle was brought by the state of Washington and later joined by the state of Minnesota. The judge ruled that the states have legal standing to sue, which could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration.

Washington’s case was based on claims that the state had suffered harm from the travel ban, for example students and faculty at state-funded universities being stranded overseas. Amazon.com and Expedia, both based in Washington state, had supported the lawsuit, asserting that the travel restrictions harmed their businesses.

Tech companies, which rely on talent from around the world, have been increasingly outspoken in their opposition to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.

Judge Robart probed a Justice Department lawyer on what he called the “litany of harms” suffered by Washington state’s universities, and also questioned the use of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States as a justification for the ban.

Robart said no attacks had been carried out on U.S. soil by individuals from the seven countries affected by the travel ban since that assault. For Trump’s order to be constitutional, Robart said, it had to be “based in fact, as opposed to fiction.”

The White House said in a statement: “At the earliest possible time, the Department of Justice intends to file an emergency stay of this outrageous order and defend the executive order of the president, which we believe is lawful and appropriate.”

It added: “The president’s order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people.”

Washington Governor Jay Inslee celebrated the decision as a victory for the state, adding: “No person – not even the president – is above the law.”

(Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai, Tom Perry and Laila Bassam in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Khaled Abdelaziz in Khartoum, Alister Doyle in Oslo, Dan Levine in Seattle, Scott Malone in Boston, Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt, Laurence Frost in Paris, Asma Alsharif in Cairo, Jesus Aguado in Madrid, Mica Rosenberg in New York, Brian Snyder in Boston and Lawrence Hurley, Lesley Wroughton, Julia Edwards and Susan Heavey in Washington, Tom Arnold and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Boston’s Great Molasses Flood Is Getting the Off-Broadway Musical Treatment

Plus, stop stealing stuff from restaurants, look forward to more wine in Fenway, and more news

Welcome back to AM Intel, a round-up of mini news bites to kick off the day.

A Molasses Musical

Boston’s Great Molasses Flood of 1919, which killed 21 people and injured over 100 more when a molasses storage tank burst in the North End, is the backdrop for a musical called Molasses in January, set to debut off-Broadway this spring at New York’s Jerry Orbach Theatre, written and composed by Francine Pellegrino and directed by Whitney Stone. The musical is about “a single mother doing her best to raise her children [in the North End] in a world caught up in the turmoil of the first World War,” per Broadway.com, when news of the construction of a molasses tank brings hopes for prosperity to the neighborhood full of Italian immigrants.

“Though surrounded with worries of anarchy, the people of the North End prove that family (and good food) holds tight through thick and thin and remember that ‘life can change in a moment,’” writes BroadwayWorld.com.

Here’s a promo video from a 2016 workshop:

Stuff People Steal

It’s no secret that jerks steal stuff from restaurants — pretty much anything that’s not bolted down, and even some things that are: artwork, signage, more signage, dog lamps, giraffe statues, empty Tabasco bottles, soap dispensers, cool glassware, 20 shot glasses, ice trays, metal straws…the list goes on. Don’t do this. The Globe took a look at this problem, looping it into a discussion of restaurants getting increasingly creative with quirky design elements in the age of Instagram. Like something and want it for your own home? This should be obvious, but don’t steal it from the restaurant: Ask where it’s from, or even try taking a photo and loading it into a Google Images search, and then buy it for yourself like a normal, law-abiding citizen.

Crimewire

Speaking of law-breaking, there’s been a flurry of restaurant and nightlife crime stories popping up in the news over the past few days. Flames, a Caribbean restaurant in Mattapan, has been closed for a complete rebuild since a December fire. Turns out it was allegedly set by an employee of the restaurant; police made an arrest this week but didn’t reveal a potential motive.

Over in East Boston, fans of Donna’s Restaurant, a popular diner, were shocked to hear that the owner has been charged with sales tax evasion to the tune of $60,000 and will be arraigned in April.

In the Seaport District back in January, Empire was the site of an alleged glassware attack by a customer that left a bouncer with 100 stitches and potentially permanent loss of vision in one eye. The restaurant is going before the licensing board this week to see if it’ll be punished for not being able to foresee or prevent the incident.

And this is a weird one — head to Universal Hub for the full story on a local lawyer who admitted that he’s been a regular at one of Boston’s two remaining strip clubs, Centerfolds, for almost a decade, breaking strip club regulations about touching and allegedly witnessing drug use, all of which he’s now telling the board in order to get the club in trouble for drug and prostitution violations. But, a twist! He used to date one of the strippers and is apparently still in contact with her father, trying to force her into drug treatment — and he admitted to running background checks on friends and family of the woman and trying to obtain court records on her, as well as contacting her aunts, saying that it was because he was concerned about her well-being since, as he said, she had lied to him about her addiction. As UHub sums it up: “The Boston Licensing Board…has to decide whether his allegations of prostitution and heroin use at one of Boston’s two remaining strip clubs are valid or whether they’re the statements of a bitter, lovelorn man now barred from strip joints across the country.”

Fenway Wine

On a happier note, lots more wine is coming to Fenway. As previously reported, the team behind acclaimed downtown wine bar Haley.Henry is opening a wine bar called Nathálie this summer on the ground floor of the new Pierce Building. Here’s a little bit more info from a new interview with owner Haley Fortier and managing partner Kristie Weiss from the Pierce website. And that’s not all: The Wine Press, a Brookline liquor store that has been around for decades, is expanding to the Pierce building as well, slated for a summer opening, owners Aaron and Jyoti Mehta announced yesterday. They’ve owned the shop since 2011 and will continue to focus on wines as well as a selection of beer and spirits at their forthcoming second location. The Wine Press hosts frequent events and tastings and also has services including beverage catering, gift basket preparation, and a monthly wine club.

Got a news tip for the Eater Boston team? Email [email protected].

Why Choosing the Right Family Immigration Lawyer Matters

Introduction:

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At Gonzalez Legal, our team of dedicated attorneys brings years of experience and a deep understanding of family immigration laws. We stay abreast of the latest developments in immigration law to ensure that our clients receive the most up-to-date and accurate legal advice. Whether seeking to bring a loved one to the United States or facing deportation proceedings, you can trust Gonzalez Legal to provide expert guidance and representation at every step.

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Conclusion:

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Originally published at- https://gonzalezlegaloffice.com/why-choosing-the-right-family-immigration-lawyer-matters/