Brody's was the only store to get those Catholic schools painter pants, which wall the rage, upon getting to high school, ditching the wool, pleated skirts and vests,
Brody's was also the only store that carried husky sized pants and shirts for boys.
(FOX 2) - A metro Detroit couple married more than 70 years passed away within just hours of each other, something their son calls a blessing.
The two were never apart until this pandemic hit and, sadly, were not able to spend their final days together.
Mich. couple in their 90s die the same morning, though separated by COVID-19
A couple from West Bloomfield, Mich., separated after 70 years of marriage due to the pandemic, died within hours of each other.
"They never saw it in each other's eyes, the pain of dying," their son Marc Shindler said of his 92- and 91-year-old parents, Lester and Lillian Shindler. "They went together."
The couple met in high school and Lester bought Brody's Camp Supplies and custom printing in 1969.
"My father was a legend. Everyone stands up and says, 'Mr. Brody! Mr. Brody!' People knew him."
Lester built up the business and opened up a second store in West Bloomfield 10 years later. Marc worked closely with his father and describes it as a bit of a circus.
"It's an old-time run business. We sold everything from tube socks to underwear to bar mitzvah suits to camping supplies. If you needed it, we had it; if we didn't have it you didn't need it."
Although, if they didn't have it, Marc says his father would order it and hand-deliver.
Business was booming and Lester and Lillian fell deeper in love each day.
"The reason they got married July 4 is because the store was closed," Marc said. "They worked together. They lived together. They traveled together; they did everything together."
As the years passed, Lillian was later diagnosed with dementia. But while she was in the nursing home she would still see her husband regularly. But once the pandemic hit that just wasn't possible anymore.
"Everything was, 'Where is Lester? Where's Lester?' With her dementia, she wanted to know where Lester was."
Last month, Marc says his father broke his leg and had to have surgery. Lester was sent for rehab at another nursing home and that's where, just a few days ago, Lester contracted COVID-19. Lester was taken to the hospital but decided he did not want to be put on a ventilator.
When Lillian heard the news she refused to eat or take her medicine.
Marc says his father died from the virus just a few days later. But, within hours, Lillian, let go as well.
"My father always said to my mother, 'Come on, Lil, let's go. We gotta get going. We gotta go to the movies; we gotta go to dinner.' So he died at 2:30 in the morning, I feel that when he died he came here and he said to my mother, 'Let's go, Lil!' - and they went together."
The community is now rallying around the Shindler family.
Marc is, of course, grief-stricken but overwhelmed by the kindness and the thought that his parents are finally back together.
"We love you, we miss you and we're going to continue to be like you were."
I am going to present my two cents and say Ann Marie LaFlamme was asked to leave WXYZ because she was trafficking tiny humans, and she was using the resources, which includes the trademark and copyright, of the station, which has a federal license under the FCC, which also has a license of the State of Michigan, which is probably why.
WXYZ corporate counsel is probably not in a happy place right now.
Liabilities, you know.
I also know about what Children's Villages was doing when she was engaging in seriously questionable fundraising activities.
I remember when they moved out to West Bloomfiled.
Everyone moved out Detroit, but always kept in touch.
Detroit has many beautiful temples, many faded away to blight., but I bet there are lots of unknown land patents and creative bond schemes, but hey, what do I know?
I do not know what is going on, but, considering that the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search (TEOS) is still.......down......., I am going to go with the possibility that Temple Israel of Detroit no longer possesses grant to bear the arms of the U.S. because it seems it had its 501c3 tax exempt status snatched, but, hey, what do I know?
I know the League of Jewish Women may not know about this because they are the parent corporation of Orchard Children's Services.
Ann Marie LaFlamme is leaving WXYZ on Friday after five years as a reporter. And she's apparently not happy, suggesting on social media that it's a management decision.
Full-time TV reporters normally work under contract, which stations can opt not to renew.
"I may not understand their business decision but I trust and respect it and I know this will truly be for the best," she said in a Facebook post that draws over 1,200 comments in half a day.
"While I’m sad to be leaving a job I worked so hard for, more than anything I want to thank all of you.
"I grew up watching WXYZ and it was my dream to someday be part of the station that inspired me to become a journalist. It has been a tremendous honor and privilege to be welcomed into your homes every morning on TV and for that, I am incredibly grateful.
"I can’t even begin to describe the appreciation I have for my amazing coworkers, family and friends who have been by my side with unwavering love. The relationships I have been fortunate enough to build are priceless and irreplaceable.
"Thank you all for your loyalty, for seeing who I truly am, for accepting me and allowing me to become a part of your families. I can’t wait to share with you what’s next, God is faithful and his plan is always perfect."
The Detroit News hadn't heard back yet after requesting a comment from the station.
A WXYZ bio said earlier:
Ann Marie LaFlamme is back home! Born and raised in Rochester Hills, Ann Marie is incredibly excited to be part of the 7 Action News morning team, joining the station in March 2015.
She comes to Detroit from Grand Rapids, where Ann Marie was a reporter and anchor at FOX 17. During her time there she launched "West Michigan's Most Wanted" -- a series helping local and national law enforcement track down and apprehend dangerous criminals. Ann Marie will continue this work with 7 Action News through “Detroit’s Most Wanted.”
Her career started at 9&10 News in Cadillac, where she was a general assignment reporter before being promoted to anchor.
Ann Marie is a graduate of Central Michigan University, where she high jumped for the women’s track team. She was recently awarded Orchards Children’s Services Champions for Children Advocate Award for her work helping recruit foster parents and finding loving families for foster children in Michigan. She is also a passionate volunteer with Special Olympics Michigan, The Miracle League, Humane Society and is a loving dog mom to her rescue, Jacob
They know everything about making Black people vote in Detroit!
Upon request by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), New
Knowledge reviewed an expansive data set of social media posts and metadata provided to
SSCI by Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, plus a set of related data from additional platforms.
The data sets were provided by the three primary platforms to serve as evidence for an
investigation into the Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations. (your tax dollars at work).
Cyber-evidence of Russian mind control
supporting the "Cybersecurity Gurus"
findings of 2016 election interference
targeting Blacks
Hillary Clinton lost the election because these "Cybersecurity Gurus" (a.k.a. Super Smarty Pants) figured out all by themselves how Trump won the election because "The Poors of the darker persuasion"" (always said with clinched teeth) got all mezmerized and stuff with all that fancy psyops crap on social media to vote for Trump.
Yup.
All Blacks changed their votes to Trump because Boris & Natasia made some really, intensely, philosophically deep memes.
"Cybersecurity Gurus" (a.k.a. Super Smarty Pants) know everything about Blacks because they live in the Sequestered Ivory Tower up there in Uber Rich Man's Land and came down to hand out to "The Elected Ones" these sheep dipped talking points for the upcoming legal actions under the Office of Special Counsel.
Yup.
Just listen to Michigan State Senator Marty Knollengerg because he knows everything about how "The Poors of the darker persuasion"" (always said with clinched teeth) cannot learn stuff.
The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day.
“Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report, produced by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Tex., along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there.
The New Knowledge report is one of two commissioned by the Senate committee on a bipartisan
This report on how Blacks voted for Trump
was funded by the
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
basis. They are based largely on data about the Russian operations provided to the Senate by Facebook, Twitter and the other companies whose platforms were used.
The Russian influence campaign in 2016 was run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, owned by a businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who is a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Prigozhin and a dozen of the company’s employees were indicted last February as part of the investigation of Russian interference by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
Both reports stress that the Internet Research Agency created social media accounts under fake names on virtually every available platform. A major goal was to support Donald J. Trump, first against his Republican rivals in the presidential race, then in the general election, and as president since his inauguration.
Among the services the Russians have provided Mr. Trump is to join in and amplify his regular attacks on Mr. Mueller. Posing as fed-up Americans, the Internet Research Agency trolls have denounced the investigation of Russian election interference as a “weird conspiracy” pushed only by “liberal crybabies,” the New Knowledge report says.
One Facebook page, called “‘Merican Fury,” declared falsely that Mr. Mueller “worked with radical Islamic groups.” Another, “Back the Badge,” called James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director fired by Mr. Trump, “a dirty cop.”
"Russia made Blacks vote for Trump and you better believe me or else." said the Super Smarty Pants.
Creating accounts designed to pass as belonging to Americans, the Internet Research Agency spread its messages not only via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which have drawn the most attention, but also on YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and Google+, among other platforms. Its attack on the United States used almost exclusively high-tech tools created by American companies.
The New Knowledge researchers discovered many examples of the Russian operators building an audience with one theme and then shifting to another, often more provocative, set of messages. For instance, an Instagram account called @army_of_jesus_ first posted in January 2015 images from “The Muppet Show,” then shifted to “The Simpsons” and by early 2016 became Jesus-focused. Multiple memes associated Jesus with Mr. Trump’s campaign and Satan with that of his rival, Hillary Clinton.
The Russian campaign was the subject of Senate hearings last year and has been widely scrutinized by academic experts. The new reports largely confirm earlier findings: that the campaign was designed to attack Mrs. Clinton, boost Mr. Trump and exacerbate existing divisions in American society.
"Vote Trump 2016 in Detroit" (more proof from the Super Smarty Pants that Russian memes made Blacks in Detroit vote for Trump in 2016.)
Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines
“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.
The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.
Renee DiResta, one of the report’s authors and director of research at New Knowledge, said the Internet Research Agency “leveraged pre-existing, legitimate grievances wherever they could.” As the election effort geared up, the Black Lives Matter movement was at the center of national attention in the United States, so the Russian operation took advantage of it, she said — and added “Blue Lives Matter” material when a pro-police pushback emerged.
“Very real racial tensions and feelings of alienation exist in America, and have for decades,” Ms. DiResta said. “The I.R.A. didn’t create them. It exploits them.”
"Vote Trump 2016 in Detroit "
Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency in the Senate’s data, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers. Just seven pages focused on the political left, drawing 689,045 followers.
In response, the N.A.A.C.P. said it would not use Facebook or Instagram for a week and urged its social media followers and partners to do the same.
While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.
Whether such efforts had a significant effect is difficult to judge. Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.
The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram has
been underestimated and may have been as effective or more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared with 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.
In 2017, as the American news media focused on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter, the Russian effort shifted strongly to Instagram, the report says.
The New Knowledge report criticizes social media companies for misleading the public.
“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.
“Regrettably, it appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress,” the report says, noting what it calls one false claim that specific population groups were not targeted by the influence operation and another that the campaign did not seek to discourage voting.
“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.
The report suggests a grudging respect for the scale and creativity of Russian influence operations.
But the Russians were not eager to take credit for their own efforts.
After the election, the report says, the Internet Research Agency put up some 70 posts on Facebook and Instagram that mocked the claims that Russia had interfered in the election.
If Bill was speaking with his Attorney General hat on, he could, if he wanted to, take legal action to remove Garlin from his state certified candidacy through a Writ of Mandamus in the Court of Claims.
Or, he could do a Quo Warranto, but he is not very good at those, besides, it would make for such a messy legal conflation when it comes to the Detroit Land Bank Authority.
Bill may have to subpoena me in support of his claim.
I wonder if Perkins Coie would represent Gretch and Garlin?
Here, we have two gubernatorial candidates who have, both, participated in allowing foreign insurgencies through the Grand Fraud of Detroit, which has resulted in multiple federal investigations into the activities of both Bill and Gretch, who both refuse to speak upon anything related to the outlandish culture of public corruption which led to the fake bankruptcies (yes, the plural is intentional), resulting in stealin' the children, the land and the votes.
Garlin Gilchrist, unfortunately, was groomed to be used as another spokestoken, being one who will spew whatever talking points are handed to him, in order to secure that surreptitiously elected title of nobility because he does not know any better and is politically expendable.
Have no fear, there are many, many other property owners who have acquired properties from the Detroit Land Bank Authority that remain in the same, blighted condition, with nothing done about it.
Let us just sit back and watch to see what happens next.
Gretchen Whitmer should forget about the damn roads for a minute. She's got problems with the damn house.
When Whit tapped Garlin Gilchrist II as her running mate for governor in August, she thought she'd solved a few problems for herself and the Democrats, who are fielding an all white, all female slate for statewide offices.
Gilchrist II is black. He's got a penis. He's a millennial. And he's from Detroit where she's not popular.
When Gretch introduced the relatively unknown Deuce, she downplayed his utter lack of political experience, the least experience in Michigan history of the lieutenant governor: "I wanted someone who's got my back," she crowed.
The duplex at 253 Marston.
But Detroiters in the North End neighborhood don't care about her back. It's his backyard that's got them pissed. They call him a slum speculator.
Absentee Owner
As it happens, Gilchrist is an absentee owner of a blighted duplex at 253 Marston. The rotting building hulks next to another occupied duplex. Mattresses molder in the Deuce's back yard. The sewage trench in the back is a yawning gape. It has no back door.
Some windows are boarded up.
Bricks and plywood litter the front yard. The grass is unmowed. The walls inside are stripped to the studs.
Children live next door to this.
"He's holding, waiting for the price to go up," said Tommy McCray, 55, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood. "There's a school boy in that apartment right there next to it. Some homeless lights the place on fire, the boy's the first to go. It's disgusting." (See McCray in video below).
Gilchrist came to own the property, in the red-hot and rapidly gentrifying neighborhood north of Grand Boulevard, more than two years ago. He bought the property from the troubled Detroit Land Bank as part of Mayor Mike Duggan's 50% discount plan for city employees to encourage them to move back into Detroit.
Gilchrist II paid just $13,500.
One caveat of the deal is that the owner must hold the property for three years, or turn over a piece of the profit to the city. Another caveat is that buyers like Gilchrist II must rehabilitate the property within six months. If not, the city can take it back. Not only has the city not done so, Deuce has never been issued a blight ticket.
"He got power," McCray said. "The rest of us get tickets for having our trash cans out too long. The city takes your property if you don't fix it up. Not him."
Profiteering Hipster
Gretch and the Dems are promoting Gilchrist II as a socially conscious black man from the city, who once worked for Obama and is an expert at Twitter. Black, notwithstanding, the neighbors here view him as another profiteering hipster from the suburbs. A guy with connections, a guy who used to work for the mayor, a guy who's out for himself.
"They wouldn't let something like that go on in Farmington," McCray said.
(Gilchrist II moved to Detroit four years ago from Washington DC and lives in a half-million dollar loft in Corktown. As a child, he lived and attended elementary, middle and high school in the toney suburb of Farmington.)
When reached by telephone, Gilchrist II admitted he was the owner of 235 Marston and said he was trying to come up with financing to fix the joint up.
"No, I'm not a speculator," he insisted. "I'm trying to fix it up. I'm trying to find the money right now."
When asked if his political connections were helping him to keep a building he was no longer entitled to own, Deuce said: "Thank you for calling me."
He is polite, if nothing else.
Managing Finances
It gives one little confidence to know that a man asking to hold the second highest position in a state with a $57 billion budget can't manage finances on a rental property that endangers the lives of children and adults alike.
Then again, what's really expected out of a lieutenant governor but a few cheap votes? The job doesn't seem all that taxing. Brian Calley, was able to do it while earning an M.B.A from Harvard, as Flint was being poisoned.
If you think it's Whitmer's Republican opponent Bill Schuette who tipped me off, you'd be wrong. It was the citizens of the North End.
"They all the same," McCray said, inspecting Deuce's open sewer trench. "None of them really gives a damn. Man, somebody's gonna get hurt in that."
Updated: Monday, 07 Nov 2011, 11:00 PM EST
Published : Monday, 07 Nov 2011, 10:49 PM EST
By CHARLIE LEDUFF
WJBK | myFOXDetroit.com
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WJBK) - In the midst of a growing scandal, Wayne County is trying to cut costs. It appears some of the county's most vulnerable residents are paying the price. As FOX 2's Charlie LeDuff shows you, many are at risk of going to bed hungry.
If you think this is bad, wait until you find out what they are feeding kids in residential institutions and juvenile detention facilities. Seriously, it is not fit for humans.
