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Randi Weingarten

Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten (born December 18, 1957) is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator. She is president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and a member of the AFL-CIO. She is the former president of the United Federation of Teachers.

Early life
Weingarten was born in 1957 in New York City, to a Jewish family, Gabriel and Edith (Appelbaum) Weingarten. Her father was an electrical engineer and her mother a teacher. Weingarten grew up in Rockland County, New York, and attended Clarkstown High School North in New City, New York. A congregant of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, she considers herself a deeply religious Jew.

Weingarten's interest in trade unions and political advocacy was formed during childhood. Her mother's union went on a seven-week strike when Weingarten was in the eleventh grade. Under New York state's Taylor Law, her mother could have been fired for taking part in a strike. Instead, she was fined two days' pay for every day she was on strike. Later that year, the school board cut $2 million from the budget. Weingarten and several other students convinced the school board to let them conduct a survey regarding the impact of the cuts. The survey led several school board members to change their minds and rescind the cuts.

From 1979 to 1980, Weingarten was a legislative assistant for the Labor Committee of the New York State Senate. She received a B.S. degree in labor relations from the ILR School at Cornell University in 1980 and a J.D. degree from the Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law in 1983.

Legal career
Weingarten worked as a lawyer for the firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986, where she handled several acrimonious arbitration cases on behalf of the UFT. She was appointed an adjunct instructor at the Cardozo School of Law in 1986. She also worked as an attorney in the real estate department of Wien Malkin and Bettex.

In 1986, Weingarten became counsel to Sandra Feldman, then-president of the UFT. Weingarten handled high-level grievances for the union. She was also lead counsel for the union in a number of lawsuits against New York City and the state of New York over school funding and school safety. By the early 1990s, she was the union's primary negotiator in UFT contract negotiations.

Teaching career
From 1991 to 1997 she taught at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The classes she taught included Law, Ethical Issues in Medicine, AP Political Science, and US History and Government. Weingarten was one of two coaches for the school's team for the 1995 We the People civics competition. The team won the New York State championship and moved on to the national championship where they finished in 4th place.

UFT career
Elected the UFT's treasurer in 1997, Weingarten succeeded Sandra Feldman as president of the union a year later when Feldman was elected president of the national American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten was elected a Vice President of the AFT the same year.

Weingarten was reelected by consistently wide margins after her initial appointment in 1998. The local union's constitution required her to run for the UFT presidency within a year of her appointment. She received 74 percent of the vote against two opponents in 1999 and served the final two years of Feldman's term. She ran in 2001 for a full term and was re-elected. She won her third full three-year term with more than 88 percent of the vote, despite having two opposing candidates. On March 30, 2007, Weingarten won reelection to a fourth term as UFT President, garnering 87 percent of the vote.

Weingarten stepped down from her post as president of the United Federation of Teachers on July 31, 2009. An opinion piece in the New York Post on January 16, 2011, characterized Weingarten's final paycheck from the UFT—which included payments for unused vacation days and sick time—as a $194,188 "golden parachute."

Collective bargaining
Weingarten began negotiating her first contract as UFT president in 2000. Talks with the Giuliani administration began in early September 2000, but the contract expired on November 15, 2000, without a new agreement. By March 2001, the talks deadlocked, and a state mediator was called in. Talks collapsed again on June 5, and Weingarten asked for state arbitration.

To pressure Giuliani, Weingarten endorsed Alan Hevesi in the Democratic primary. In the run-off between Green and Ferrer, Weingarten endorsed Ferrer, who lost to Green. Michael Bloomberg defeated Green in the November 2001 election. Weingarten demanded a 22 percent wage hike; Giuliani offered 8 percent. Talks collapsed on March 9, and Weingarten began preparing the UFT for its first strike since the early 1970s. In the state arbitration panel's mid-April report, it advocated a major salary boost and a longer work week. Both sides agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in June, raising wages 16 to 22 percent and lengthening the work week by 100 minutes.

The UFT's contract expired on May 31, 2003. Once again, negotiations proved contentious. In January 2004, New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein proposed a merit-pay deal; in February, Mayor Bloomberg proposed replacing the union's 200-page contract with an 8-page set of guidelines. Weingarten rejected these proposals and asked for state mediation in late March 2004. In May, Weingarten agreed to discuss merit pay. The union began a public-relations campaign featuring subway and television ads demanding a contract and held protests and marches. On June 1, 2005, nearly 20,000 teachers—about a quarter of the UFT membership—packed Madison Square Garden for a rally at which Weingarten denounced Bloomberg and Klein, asked for a strike vote, and requested state arbitration. Contract talks resumed in August and September. A tentative contract was reached on October 3, 2005. The union won a wage increase of 14.25 percent over 52 months, retroactive to June 1, 2003. Other changes include a slightly longer workday (with the extra time devoted to tutoring) and the elimination of union control over some staffing decisions. The contract, ratified on November 3, 2005, passed with just 63 percent of UFT members in favor.

Weingarten concluded her third collective bargaining agreement on November 6, 2006, when the union and city reached a tentative deal to increase pay by 7.1 percent over two years. The agreement raised base pay for senior teachers above $100,000 a year, bringing city salaries in line with those in New York City's suburbs for the first time. The city did not seek any increases in the workday or workload or any other concessions, as it had with other unions. Negotiations over health benefits were to be conducted separately in talks with the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group for municipal unions which Weingarten chairs.

Observers said Bloomberg sought an early contract in order to win UFT support in his struggle with Governor Eliot Spitzer over school funding. In October 2007, Weingarten assented to two agreements whereby the city and the UFT would jointly seek legislative approval for a new pension deal allowing teachers with 25 years of service to retire at age 55 and providing bonuses to all teachers in schools that showed a certain level of improvement in student achievement. In June 2009, Weingarten negotiated some pension modifications for new teachers in exchange for maintaining the age 55 pension and for allowing teachers to return to their traditional post-Labor Day start date.

New union headquarters
In 2003, Weingarten sold the UFT's headquarters at 260 Park Avenue South and two other buildings at 48 and 49 East 21st Street for $63.6 million and moved the union's offices to Lower Manhattan, purchasing a building at 50 Broadway for $53.75 million and leasing the building next to it, 52 Broadway, for 32 years. The UFT also financed a $40 million renovation of both buildings.

Organizing
The UFT represents all teachers, paraprofessional school employees, and professionals (such as school nurses, school psychologists, and others) in the New York City schools. The UFT saw some membership growth under Weingarten among these workers.

The UFT also has a registered nurse division which represents roughly 2,800 registered nurses at Lutheran Medical Center, Staten Island University Hospital-South, Jewish Home and Hospital Home Health Agency, and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. The UFT saw more growth in this division, as the Visiting Nurse Service expanded, and the union organized non-RN units at the non-profit company.

Weingarten's largest organizing victory came when the UFT organized childcare providers in New York City. The campaign began in 2005 and concluded in 2007. The organizing drive—the largest successful union campaign in the city since 1960, when the United Federation of Teachers itself was formed—added 28,000 workers to the union's 113,000 active and 56,000 retired members.

AFT presidency
On February 12, 2008, AFT President Edward J. McElroy announced he would retire at the union's regularly scheduled biennial convention in July. On July 14, Weingarten was elected to succeed him. She is the first openly gay individual to be elected president of a national American labor union. In her first year, she fought for resources to keep schools and other public institutions afloat during the ongoing fiscal crises, and started an AFT Innovation Fund to promote and disseminate innovative educational reforms by teachers and their union.

School reform
Weingarten advocates what she describes as a "bottom up" approach to education reform, and says that public officials should welcome the views—and account for the needs—of teachers when working to help schools better serve their students. She has, as AFT president, criticized state and federal reforms proposed by her opponents.

The AFT, during Weingarten's presidency, has focused scrutiny on well-funded third parties that have attempted to influence education policy  —with the Walton Foundation, the largest philanthropic donor in the United States, drawing particular scrutiny. In a 2015 report co-authored with In the Public Interest, the AFT decried the Walton Foundation's pursuit of what the report termed a "market-based model [that] will lead to ... the eventual elimination of public education altogether, in favor of an across-the-board system of privately operated schools."

Weingarten was among nineteen arrested in March 2013 while protesting a Philadelphia School Reform Commission meeting on school closures.

Neighborhood public schools, according to Weingarten, can coexist with charter schools—but she opposes initiatives that work to supplant the former with the latter. Weingarten sees the role of charters as complementary to, rather than competing with, other schools.

"Charter schools should be laboratories for innovation and creative ideas that can be scaled up so they can enrich communities," she has said.

In a 2013 debate in New Haven, Weingarten argued that charter schools pull money from regular school districts.

Standardized testing
Weingarten condemns a "fixation on testing and data over everything else" as "a fundamental flaw in how our nation approaches public education," but accepts the use of standardized tests as one tool among several to evaluate student achievement and teacher performance. As AFT president, she has criticized the No Child Left Behind Act for "allow[ing] high-stakes testing to eclipse all else, including the children themselves." In a 2015 op-ed for The New York Times, she wrote:

"Tests should be used to get teachers, parents and school communities the information they need to help students make progress — not to sanction or scapegoat, as they do now with high-stakes tests driving federal education policy. Instead, we need investments to level the playing field for kids, boost innovation, elevate the teaching profession and support educators."

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) passed into law with the AFT's support. The law eliminates the federal requirement that states evaluate teachers according to their students' standardized test scores, and allows states to weigh factors in addition to test scores when judging the performance of school systems. Weingarten has applauded the ESSA for "relegating the era of test-and-punish strategies to the trash heap" and for offering "teachers ... flexibility to try new ways to teach, to meet the needs of their students, and to help their students think critically and analytically instead of focusing on what might be on a high-stakes test." As AFT president, Weingarten favored the act particularly because of provisions that stripped the United States Secretary of Education's role in influencing teacher-evaluation systems and maintained federal funding Title I for schools with high proportions of students from low-income households.

Teacher training and retention
An overemphasis on standardized testing and a shortage of resources, according to Weingarten, has harmed efforts to recruit and retain well-prepared teachers at public schools. "A haphazard approach to the complex and crucial enterprise of educating children," she has written, "[is] unfair to both students and teachers, who want and need to be well-prepared to teach from their first day on the job." In response to a New York Times story about public school systems short of teaching staff, she said that "teachers are used to the pressure cooker but are stressed out because they aren't getting the support, resources, time and respect they need to do their jobs."

Weingarten has proposed—as a means of improving the quality of teachers in American classrooms—the creation of a professional licensing exam, akin to the bar exam taken by lawyers, for new teachers. "Better preparing teachers for entry into the profession," Weingarten says, "will dramatically reduce the loss of new teachers—nearly half of whom leave after fewer than five years—and the loss of knowledge that goes with it."

Poverty and community schools
The AFT, under Weingarten's leadership, has worked to draw attention to economic inequalities within cities and regions that can hobble public schools. With school systems in the United States heavily reliant on local property taxes,  systems that rely on depressed or depleted tax bases can find themselves without the financial resources available to comparatively wealthier districts.

Philanthropic efforts in public schools, in Weingarten's view, have incorrectly focused on the educator's role in student performance—"what we now know is 10% of student achievement," she remarked in one interview—to the exclusion of underlying problems, such as poverty, that undermine student progress. "We need to ... treat kids that have the least, give them the most," says Weingarten—"not with a blank check, but actually figure out the supports they need so that they can climb up the ladder of opportunity."

During Weingarten's presidency, the AFT has pushed for creating what the union calls "community schools": schools that serve as hubs for non-academic programs addressed to whole communities. Undergirding that concept is the understanding—as described by former Boston Public Schools superintendent Thomas Payzant, who implemented a community-school model in the city, in a 2005 book—that "students' noneducational realities, such as nutritional deficiencies, medical problems, safety concerns, even daily hunger, are daunting barriers that can obstruct even the most flexible educational program."

To address those perceived needs, community schools offer 'wraparound services' that target identified social issues: job banks to help parents secure employment, for example, or housing counseling for families that lack permanent homes. In a 2008 address given during her first run for the AFT presidency, Weingarten said, in the course of promoting the community-school paradigm:

"Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance. Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics ... Imagine if schools had the educational resources children need to thrive, like smaller classes and individualized instruction, plentiful, up-to-date materials and technology anchored to that rich curriculum, decent facilities, an early start for toddlers and a nurturing atmosphere."

The AFT has extolled community schools that operate in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Paul, Minn., Austin, Texas, Providence, R.I., and other cities where the union represents public schoolteachers. The union has itself sponsored community school efforts in Chicago, and in West Virginia, the AFT has launched a public-private partnership—called Reconnecting McDowell—that aims to "enhance educational opportunity for children in the McDowell County public schools in Central Appalachia, while addressing the underlying problems caused by severe and chronic poverty and economic decline." Efforts through the program have included the building of a "teacher village" for educators, setup of an internship program for high-school students, and mentoring of students from families in which they would be the first to attend college.

Teacher tenure
Weingarten has resisted attempts to curtail or eliminate tenure protections for public-school teachers, arguing that the outright removal of tenure protection would hurt the quality of classroom instruction. "We know that the states with the highest academic performance have the strongest due process protections for teachers," Weingarten wrote to Time magazine in 2014. "Research shows that our most at-risk kids need more-experienced teachers. But why would these teachers stay at schools with few tools, little support and no ability to voice their concerns?"

Education policy proposals built around eliminating tenure have drawn derision from Weingarten as "faddish reforms" at the expense of what she terms "the most critical issues confronting American education": teacher training, education funding, school safety, and educational reinforcement at home. She downplays the idea of worker protections as obstacles to improving schools, describing tenure "not a job for life, [but] ensuring fairness and due process before someone can be fired, plain and simple."

When United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a statement siding with a California superior court judge who ruled the state's teacher tenure protections unconstitutional, Weingarten responded that Duncan had "added to the polarization" in debates over education policy, and charged that focusing on "quick fixes, blame games or silver bullets" such as ending tenure had "set us back in our effort to help all kids succeed." The AFT has worked, however, to reshape tenure in some states. In 2011 Weingarten offered a plan that would rely on a teacher-evaluation system with multiple parts—including assessment of student improvement on tests—to give tenured teachers rated unsatisfactory one year to improve, and allow the firing of teachers who fail to meet that deadline within the next 100 days. The proposal followed a 2008 agreement between Weingarten and District of Columbia public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee that allowed the termination of Washington Teachers' Union members evaluated as ineffective, after a one-year period —and in public remarks, Weingarten has discussed her role in efforts to modernize tenure elsewhere.

Pensions and retirement
Under Weingarten, the AFT has combatted efforts to shift responsibility for retirement investing to teachers—with Weingarten herself drawing notoriety, according to Institutional Investor magazine, as "the most public face in the battle for defined benefit pension funds." In a 2014 op-ed, Weingarten attacked "people who press ... to convert defined benefit pensions to 401(k) plans," asserting that advocates of 401(k) plans "never talk about the benefits retirees are likely to get under these new plans — because it's likely to be a lot less than retirees need to get by."

In its campaign against moving teachers into defined-contribution pensions, AFT has argued that shifting investment risks to individuals has led to deleterious results for retirees. Hedge funds that manage teacher pension investments have drawn heavy criticism from AFT; the union, in 2015, prepared a report that concluded such investments "exacted a high cost, had laggard returns and generally moved in tandem with the overall stock market." The report came in the wake of a 2013 AFT study that charged some hedge-fund managers with a conflict of interest—according to BuzzFeed, the 2013 report said that while managing teachers' defined benefit pensions, some fund managers had "support[ed] groups like the Manhattan Institute, which has recommended replacing pensions with 401(k)-type plans, and Students First, whose national branch advocates eliminating defined-benefit plans."

Israel
Weingarten is a longtime critic of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Despite her opposition to BDS, she has said that she and the AFT should not intervene against pro-BDS actions taken at the local level. Identifying as a "progressive Zionist" and a "Ramahnik", Weingarten has frequently criticized the Israel government in the belief that Israeli society should be more "inclusive and democratic."

Political activities
Weingarten and the UFT endorsed Republican George Pataki for re-election as Governor of New York in 2002. Julia Levy reported in the New York Sun on February 1, 2005, that candidates for mayor of New York were meeting with Weingarten, and "political experts" were saying that "Weingarten has become something of a kingmaker." The UFT's endorsement, wrote Levy, meant "votes, campaign volunteers, and information."

A lifelong Democrat, Weingarten is a member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). She was an early and critically important supporter of Howard Dean as Chairman of the DNC. She is a superdelegate who was pledged to Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential primary. In January 2009, she was mentioned as a possible candidate in the appointment process to replace Clinton's U.S. Senate seat.

In one of the Wikileaks emails from John Podesta, chair of the Hillary Clinton campaign, Weingarten states her desire to "go after" the National Nurses United union after their endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States.

In 2020, Weingarten was named a candidate for Secretary of Education in the Biden administration. She was an elector for the State of New York in the 2020 United States presidential election.

Weingarten serves on the board of directors of Voters of Tomorrow, an advocacy organization that promotes political engagement among Generation Z.

Public school governance and oversight
In spring 1998 in the City Journal, the quarterly magazine of the Manhattan Institute think tank, Sol Stern dismissed Weingarten's claim to support school reform as "pure union propaganda."

Carl Campanile reported in the January 21, 2004, New York Post that Weingarten had called for union members to voice concerns by sending e-mails to the school chancellor, Joel Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg "about the micromanagement and mismanagement issues that make your job more difficult this year."

Pundit John Stossel wrote, in an opinion piece in the New York Sun, about a rally held by Weingarten at Madison Square Garden at which teachers demanded "a new contract and more money." Stossel said that the teachers' unions "can pay for expensive rallies at 'the world's most famous arena' because every teacher in a unionized district like New York must give up some of his salary to the union. Even teachers who don't like the union, teachers who believe in school choice, and teachers who could make more on the open market must fork over their money to support the unions that fight against school choice and merit pay." Calling the present situation in New York schools a nightmare, Stossel wrote that "the unions fight to protect the nightmare" and mocked Weingarten's promise that the UFT would "police our own profession" with "I'd like to police my own job, too. And I'll bet some students would just love to police their own homework!" He accused Weingarten of "protect[ing] incompetents" and "reward[ing] mediocrity." He said that he had "confronted Weingarten," telling her, "Unionized monopolies like yours fail. In this case, it is the children who - who you are failing." She replied by rejecting the label "unionized monopoly" and by saying that her critics "don't really care about kids."

The editorial board of the New York Post wrote, on February 28, 2007, about a planned gathering of opponents of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's public-school reform efforts, describing some of the participants as "a bought-and-paid-for chorus of false reformers" who "dance to the tunes of Randi Weingarten ... who has been trying to derail real reform since Mayor Mike wrested control of the schools from the educrats some five years ago." Calling the UFT "one of the richest special interests in America", the editorial board maintained that Weingarten does not care "about New York's schoolchildren" but is loyal "to her members."

In an opinion piece in the New York Sun, Andrew Wolf wrote that Mayor Bloomberg had called the UFT the "number one" obstacle to education reform but had reached a compromise with a coalition including the UFT, ACORN, and the Working Families Party. Wolf said that Weingarten, speaking to parent groups in a conference call, had called Department of Education officials "absolute and complete assholes" who "can't be trusted."

On September 30, 2009, in the City Journal, Sol Stern asserted that "the UFT and the Bloomberg administration [had] increasingly developed a cartel-like working relationship, with New York taxpayers paying the price." The editorial board of The New York Post said on June 2, 2009, that Weingarten, "who'd previously vowed to gut City Hall's control over the schools," had now "delivered a nearly full-throated endorsement of it," reflecting her recognition of the "sweeping, and undeniable" progress in test scores of elementary-school pupils,

Reacting on July 7, 2009, to Weingarten's statement, upon taking control of the AFT, that New York City is "the best laboratory in the world for trying new things," The Wall Street Journal'' asserted this could be true "if it weren't for Ms. Weingarten's union," and wrote that the UFT under her direction had done everything possible "to block significant reforms to New York's public schools."

In a 2009 essay by Steven Brill in The New Yorker, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was quoted as calling the teacher tenure policies defended by the UFT "ridiculous"—with Klein asserting that "the three principles that govern our system are lockstep compensation, seniority, and tenure. All three are not right for our children." Brill attributed to "many education reformers" the belief "that the U.F.T. and its political allies had gained so much clout" over the years "that it had become impossible for the city's Board of Education, which already shared a lot of power with local boards, to maintain effective school oversight." However, Brill later reversed his view of Weingarten, and proposed that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appoint her chancellor of the school system.

Raising salaries and merit pay
During her tenure as UFT president, Weingarten pushed for higher salaries and improved training for teachers, often agreeing to longer workdays and more tutoring time in order to win better pay. Between 2002 and 2007, salaries for New York City teachers rose 42 percent. Weingarten has endorsed merit pay for city teachers, and in 2007 negotiated a controversial contract which paid teachers bonuses if their students' test scores rose.

Nicole Gelinas wrote in the conservative City Journal on June 16, 2005, that "Weingarten declared that merit-pay plans 'pit teachers against each other instead of encouraging a collaborative school culture.' What Weingarten and the union do not see ... is that competition is healthy." Gelinas went on to assert that "until Weingarten budges ... virtue will have to be its own reward for New York's teachers."

In an opinion column on June 14, 1999, Bob McManus asserted that "67 percent of New York City's fourth-graders" had "turned up functionally illiterate in state tests in May," and that the response from the UFT was to call for "more 'classroom resources' (i.e., Big League raises)." McManus argued that "there's more to this crisis than money—or the lack of it," and called on Weingarten to "get out of the way of folks who believe they can get the job done for less."

Andrew Wolf, in an October 19, 2007, op-ed in the New York Sun entitled "Socialism for Schools," argued that despite some observers' perception that "Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein [had] won a victory over the teachers' union by gaining approval of a merit pay scheme," the real winner was Weingarten, who had gained power for the UFT. The new plan, Wolf asserted, did not reward individual performance but treated each school as a collective, with union committees dividing bonuses among all union members, including school secretaries and others.

In October 2012, after what the New York Times called "months of intense and late-night negotiations," Weingarten and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie reached a "landmark compromise," agreeing on a new contract for teachers in the Newark school system. Although, as the Times noted, Weingarten "had criticized what she calls 'merit pay schemes,'" she "agreed to embrace the concept in exchange for a promise that teachers would have a rare role in evaluating performance." After this agreement was reached, supporters of merit pay for New York City public-school teachers expressed hope that the UFT, which had "always opposed individual merit pay initiatives," would now follow Weingarten's example.

Also in 2012, Weingarten criticized what she calls "merit pay schemes".

Teacher tenure
In 2009, when New York state Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan said that she had been prevented by a hip injury from introducing a measure to form a commission to study teacher-tenure reform—which the UFT had agreed to as a compromise measure—the New York Post editorialized that the legislative inaction which resulted "ha[d] the United Federation of Teachers chief's fingerprints all over it." The Post argued that Nolan had managed to pass "77 other education bills ... while she was out for surgery," and called it likely that Weingarten had influenced Nolan's decision.

In a February 2011 interview, Weingarten acknowledged that "tenure needs to be reformed," noting that the AFT had adopted recommendations for tenure reform. Observing that the issue of teacher tenure had "erupted recently, with many districts anticipating layoffs because of slashed budgets" and with mayors such as Michael R. Bloomberg in New York City and Cory A. Booker in Newark "attack[ing] seniority laws," the New York Times reported that Weingarten had agreed to support some kind of tenure reform.

Teacher pension plans
Weingarten has strongly supported defined-benefit pension plans for teachers. Sol Stern argued in the conservative City Journal on June 25, 2009, that an agreement reached between Weingarten and the Bloomberg administration on teacher pensions would "probably wind up harming Gotham's students." Under the agreement, Stern asserted, teachers would "make no sacrifices to help ease the city's economic and fiscal crisis" and would even get "a shorter work year," with a ten-and-a-half-week summer vacation.

In April 2013, Weingarten organized an action to confront Dan Loeb—a New York investment manager and board member of the New York chapter of lobbying organization StudentsFirst—over his opposition to defined-benefit pension plans for public employees. In the same month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board painted Weingarten as "trying to strong-arm pension trustees not to invest in hedge funds or private-equity funds that support education reform." Weingarten had, according to the editorial board, "tried to sandbag hedge fund investor Dan Loeb at a conference sponsored by the Council of Institutional Investors," describing her as troubled by the fact "that Mr. Loeb puts his own money behind school reform and charter schools."

Weingarten had, according to the Journal editorial, demanded a meeting with Loeb at the conference, but the editorial board wrote that he had "wisely declined the honor of showing up for this political mugging." This "attempted ambush," continued the Journal editorial, "coincide[d] with a new report that her union sent to pension trustees this week called 'Ranking Asset Managers,'" with the rankings based not on "return on investment" but on such matters "as a manager's position on collective bargaining, privatization [read: vouchers] or proposals to discontinue providing benefits through defined benefit plans." The editorial board imputed "Ms. Weingarten's union fury" to her "know[ing that] unions are losing the moral and political debate over reform, as more Americans conclude that her policies are consigning millions of children to a life of diminished opportunity." Weingarten had "bull[ied] pension trustees to bully hedge funds," the editorial board charged, "to cut off funding for poor kids in Harlem. Every time we wonder if we're too cynical about unions, they remind us that we're not nearly cynical enough."

School choice and charter schools
Weingarten has opposed charter schools and school choice. In a City Journal essay in 1999, Sol Stern contrasted "Milwaukee's healthy approach to school choice" with what he termed Weingarten's promise to "fight with every resource at [her] disposal any attempt by the mayor to create a voucher system" in New York. Given what Stern described as the UFT's "impressive" resources, he deemed Mayor Giuliani courageous to take on "what promises to be," Stern opined, "a long fight for the beleaguered parents of New York's schoolchildren."

Writing about a 1999 Emergency Coalition Against Vouchers "teach-in" attended by Weingarten, Stern asserted that "calling the rally ... a teach-in was almost Orwellian. Despite the nostalgic references to the Sixties," Stern continued, "this event was the antithesis of insurgency." Weingarten, he alleged, had made it clear that whatever the wishes of parents and the public, she "had the political clout to block even a tiny experimental voucher plan."

In a February 6, 2007, op-ed in the New York Post, Thomas W. Carroll of an advocacy organization called the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability charged that Weingarten sought to unionize charter schools against the will of the teachers at those schools. To this end, Carroll wrote, Weingarten had tried to pursue a unionization process known as card check, which involves the gathering signatures from pro-union teachers in lieu of a unionization vote by secret ballot. According to Carroll's op-ed, Weingarten had claimed that teachers had been fired from charter schools for wanting a union but lacked the evidence to prove "these wild allegations."

In an April 10, 2009, article, The New York Post asserted that UFT activists had "sought to push City Council members into grilling Department of Education officials during a hearing on charter schools ... while taking it easy on union officials." When those efforts—described by the article as "puppeteering"— became public, Weingarten told WNYW that she would "make some changes at the union to make sure that that never happens again" and said that former City Council Education Committee Chairwoman Eva Moskowitz, who had criticized the UFT's actions, "used to ask us all the time, when she was education chair, for questions to prep the City Council about what's really going on in schools." Moskowitz, who after leaving the council had become founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, called Weingarten's charge "utterly false" and "defamatory."

The editorial board of the New York Post wrote, on August 6, 2011, about a PowerPoint presentation by an AFT lobbyist that "underscore[d] the sharp disparity between the union's public posture and its actual policies." The presentation, according to the editorial's retelling, had "detailed how the union successfully rebuffed efforts" in Connecticut to enact a parent trigger law designed to let parents to "reconstitute a consistently failing school into a charter school." After the presentation was made public, the editorial observed, an AFT statement said that the presentation did "not represent AFT's position." The editorial quoted Gwen Samuel of the Connecticut Parents Union, a pro-parent trigger advocacy organization, saying: "I'm concerned that they [AFT] were so bold. This screams, 'I'm untouchable.'"

The editorial board of the New York Post wrote on October 8, 2012, that the film Won't Back Down—a fictionalized account of a parent-trigger takeover at a neighborhood public school—had drawn what the editorial termed "the acid-laced enmity" of Weingarten, who had accused the film of employing "the most blatant stereotypes and caricatures I have ever seen" and of placing blame for failing schools "on the wrong culprit: America's teachers unions." AFT members protested outside the film's premiere, the editorial noted. Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, opined in the Post that Weingarten objected to the film not because its characters were, as she described them, stereotypes, but because "they are revelations."

During an interview posted on September 12, 2023, with Seth D. Harris, senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, Ms. Weingarten compared advocates for "school choice" and "parental rights" to segregationists. This led to calls of outrage from prominent conservatives including U.S. Senator Tim Scott who accused Weingarten of racism saying he could not "think of anything more racist than teachers' unions trapping poor black kids in failing schools in blue cities." In the same interview Weingarten went on to comment on religion, specifically Christians, saying “They want to have basically a Christian ideology, their particular Christian ideology, dominate the country, as opposed to a country that was born on the freedom of the exercise of religion.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded, first noting that "the subject under discussion had nothing to do with religion so it tells us volumes about Weingarten that she would indict Christians, without cause." He went on to say, “The hatred that she has for millions of school choice and parental rights advocates especially those who are Christian disqualifies her from serving in any public role."

Teacher accountability
Weingarten has been frequently criticized over the years for resisting attempts to address the problem of teacher incompetence. When New York schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced a new peer-review process in 2007 to identify bad teachers, Weingarten called the plan "a stake in the heart of every teacher."

The editors of the New York Sun noted on September 17, 2007, that Weingarten, when asked on a talk show about teacher accountability, replied: "When people say to me, you know, well, why shouldn't teachers be, you know, judged on the test scores of their kids? I say to them ... would you want your oncologist, or your mom or dad's oncologist to be graded on the survival rates of his or her patients?" The Sun's editors noted that doctors are, in fact, "held accountable for performance. ... Would that teachers were held to such standards as exist in the oncology ward."

The New York Post noted on January 22, 2008, that "Weingarten promised a full-arsenal fight if the Department of Education attempts to judge individual teachers based on their students' test scores."

Regarding a new pilot program to determine teacher effectiveness, Weingarten commented in 2008: "There are so many educational and technical flaws in this concept that I find it shocking that the school system is even considering it."

Editorializing about Weingarten's acceptance speech at the 2008 AFT convention, the New York Post commented that she had "laid out her vision for 'community schools' that do everything but, well, teach." The Post described her as envisioning a "one-stop nanny state ... owned and operated by Randi Weingarten & Co." and suggested that her "push for all-purpose schools" was a way of "dodg[ing] teacher accountability in the one area schools are built for – teaching kids how to read, write and do numbers."

Writing in the New Yorker on August 31, 2009, Steven Brill quoted a school principal as saying that Weingarten "would protect a dead body in the classroom." He quoted a teacher who had been suspended for incompetence, and who still earned over a hundred thousand dollars a year, as complaining that "Before Bloomberg and Klein took over, there was no such thing as incompetence."

United States Education Secretary Arne Duncan was scheduled to hold a press conference at PS 65 in Brooklyn on May 18, 2010, but after Weingarten made a call to Duncan complaining about the school's principal, Daysi Garcia, Duncan changed the press-conference venue. The New York Post editorialized that it was "no surprise that Garcia is the sort of principal Weingarten can't abide," given that Garcia "makes her teachers work — and she demands results." The Post cited a New Yorker article which had reported that Garcia had dared to identify and remove incompetent teachers, and consequently turned the school around, improving reading and math scores dramatically. The Post suggested that the lessons here were that "It's not just charter schools that get the union's goat — it's any school that gives kids a decent education by holding teachers accountable" and that "The union will fight to the very end."

Writing on May 30, 2013, about efforts to get "New York state's teachers unions to accept personal accountability as a bedrock principle of public-education reform," Bob McManus of the New York Post commented that Weingarten "once seemed to have a conscience on such matters — but no more," adhering to the principle that "No tenured teacher, under any circumstances, is to be held to account for any failing of any sort."

New York City schools chancellor Dennis M. Walcott wrote on September 6, 2013, that the Board of Education had managed, despite resistance by the UFT, to establish "an accountability system that included qualitative reviews and Progress Reports," to end "the absurd practice of promoting students to higher grades if they lacked the skills to succeed," and to institute "the first genuine teacher-evaluation system in the history of the school system."

Private-school tax credits
Weingarten has been a severe critic of proposals to allow parents to use tax credits to help pay to send their children to private school. The editors of the New York Sun on November 21, 2006, quoted Weingarten's statement that allowing parents to apply tax credits to private-school tuition was "like saying government should reimburse people who drink bottled water instead of tap water — or those who park in a garage even when there is space on the street," the editors of the New York Sun argued on November 21, 2006, that "bottled water and garage parking are luxuries, more expensive than tap water or street parking," while educating a child in a New York Catholic school, for example, costs one-quarter as much as educating a public-school student.

Class size
Smaller class sizes have also been a major initiative of the UFT under Weingarten. She attempted to tie smaller class sizes to salaries in each of the three collective bargaining agreements she has negotiated, and linked class size to school repair and rebuilding issues. In 2003, Weingarten and the UFT pushed for a change to the New York City Charter which would force the city to reduce class sizes. The charter revision became caught in lawsuits and was eventually dropped, although Weingarten continued to advocate for smaller class sizes. Herszenhorn, David M. "Group Wants the City Charter To Set Limits on Class Sizes", The New York Times, August 19, 2003; Gootman, Elissa "Class-Size Measure Rejected" , The New York Times, September 18, 2003; Gootman, Elissa "Judge Allows Referendum On Class Size" , The New York Times, October 3, 2003; Cooper, Michael "Appeals Court Blocks Vote On Lowering City Class Sizes" , The New York Times, October 21, 2003; Saulny, Susan "Teachers' Union Tries to Gain Support for Smaller Class Sizes" , The New York Times, May 14, 2006.

A New York Sun editorial on May 20, 2003, questioned Weingarten's focus on this issue and challenged her argument that class size is a critical factor in learning, noting that "America has been reducing class sizes steadily for the last half century, with little to show in results."

Teacher seniority
Weingarten has been a staunch supporter of the LIFO policy ("last in, first out"), otherwise known as teacher seniority. When Education Secretary Arne Duncan changed a February 2011 speech at the last minute to remove a negative reference to the LIFO policy, under which the last teacher to be hired must be the first one fired, the New York Post editorialized that the action "has the fingerprints of Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers all over it." Asked in a 2011 Wall Street Journal interview about LIFO, Weingarten defended it, saying: "It's not the perfect mechanism but it's the best mechanism we have. You have cronyism and corruption and discrimination issues. We're saying let's do things the right way. We don't want to see people getting laid off based on who they know instead of what they know. We don't want to see people get laid off based on how much they cost."

School building conditions
Poor schooling conditions, namely run-down public schools, have also drawn Weingarten's attention. The city of New York has neglected building conditions for many years.

Subsidized housing for teachers
In an October 5, 2007, New York Sun article, Eliot Brown wrote that a new Bronx apartment complex would be open only to UFT members: "Our members have said we want to live in the city and raise our families in the city, but we can't afford it, so this is something we've been looking at for a while," Weingarten said.

In December 2007, Weingarten cancelled the subsidized-housing deal after discovering that the developer would not be using unionized construction workers. Unions, she said, "should be standing up for each other." The New York Post commented that "it clearly doesn't occur to Weingarten that using non-union labor is a major reason developers can build 'affordable' apartments" and that "she is imperilling a project that is beneficial to her teacher constituency for the 'greater good' of the broader labor movement." The Post noted that Weingarten, in addition to running the UFT, "also chairs the Municipal Labor Committee – an umbrella group of more than 100 city unions." Observing that because of her solidarity, "200 or so teachers may lose out on inexpensive apartments and – if the project falls through – several jobs won't be created at all," the Post alluded to the "biblical adage ... that a man can't serve two masters."

Teacher dress codes
Sol Stern wrote in the Summer 1998 issue of City Journal about Weingarten's opposition to a proposed dress code for teachers, calling it "a diversion from the real job at hand."

Union solidarity
The New York Post criticized Weingarten in a February 6, 2013, editorial for signing on to a report by a coalition of unions and other groups calling for a range of new regulations to govern foreign workers. "We're not surprised the AFT is on board," the Post commented. "If you think of our public schools primarily as a jobs program, it makes perfect sense."

Plagiarized speech
A speech that Weingarten gave in 2011 turned out to have been plagiarized from a NY 1 series on a flawed Board of Education computer system. NY 1 responded, saying "When a journalist, politician or student uses someone else's words without attribution in a speech or a paper, it's called plagiarism – and it's often enough to get a journalist fired, a politician embarrassed or a student kicked out of school".

WTU conflict
In 2010, the AFT and Weingarten specifically were charged with interfering in the local elections of the Washington Teachers Union (WTU). The elections had been scheduled for May but postponed because of a dispute over procedural questions. In August of that year, Weingarten imposed a deadline on WTU President George Parker to comply with an order "to hold a mid-September election for new officers and delegates, or the contest will be taken out of his hands and conducted by the national parent organization." Parker objected that Weingarten had no authority to interfere in this manner. Weingarten ultimately took over the election.

Allegation by Mike Pompeo
In November 2022, Mike Pompeo called Weingarten the most dangerous person in the world.

Personal life
On October 11, 2007, Weingarten publicly announced she is a lesbian. Weingarten introduced Liz Margolies, a psychotherapist and health care activist, as her partner while accepting the Empire State Pride Agenda's 2007 Community Service Award from Christine Quinn. By December 2012, she was in a relationship with Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. They married March 25, 2018.

In December 2014, Weingarten wrote in Jezebel that she had almost been raped just after her junior year in college. In 2023 she was questioned by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and asked if she was a mother to which she responded that she was a stepmother to her wife's child.

title: Randi Weingarten


text:
User talk:Alex Law

 * 2005 2005 Archived messages

Nomination of Protein poisoning for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Protein poisoning is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Protein poisoning until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. To join the discussion go here. Lunarfantom (talk) 15:47, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Urgent Messages
alex, do you still have thomas penberthy fry on your should be doing list???? Or is it done? Tom Fry was my Grandfather and I have a fair bit of background on him, his writings, where he studied both in Aust and overseas but I am also looking for more info as my mother is compiling an extensive family history. If this is of any use or interest to you would you please contact me? Also anyone else with info on him is welcome to do so too. Blythe.s 07:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC) my email drumgavney@westmet.com.au

Queensland MLA / MP
It was resolved at a meeting (19/10/2000) of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (Qld branch) that Members of the Legislative Assembly should be known as MP rather than MLA..

Thanks to Sue C at the Queensland Parliamentary Library

Bacon and egg pie
hi -- thanks for the note. That's fine, a little more research shows me it's pretty well used and significant enough. Sorry if I was too quick on the deletion tag -- fortunately, lends itself to an easy removal. I would ask you to add a sentence or two about the cultural significance, if you can -- even a statement of where it is popular would give it some context. thanks! bikeable (talk) 03:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately as a first generation Australian of UK extraction, I can't give much info on the regional/cultural importance of Bacon and egg pie, that would have to come from someone in the UK. I do know that it is a UK derived dish, and, like Corned beef pie is a common picnic food for expat Brits in Oz. There's been quite a lot of angst over pies lately, one user wanted to pull the savoury ones all under Pot pie, which wasn't very useful. How did you find the CBP article?Alex Law 03:16, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Toowoomba Prison
Hi Alex Law. To be honest, I've never been to Toowoomba. The creation of the Toowoomba Prison article was created during my editing spree completing articles on prisons Australia-wide. The article was created some time ago, but I'm sure I remember sourcing most of the information from government related websites such as this one, which doesn't show Toowoomba as having a prison. Weird! The information came from somewhere verifiable (although excuse my lack of references for the article, it was created back in my more niave days and when Wikipedia was a little less strict with sources). Feel free to correct the article in any way you see fit. It's been clearly neglected since creation. I'll see what else I can find on where the information came from. -- Longhair 11:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, the original Toowoomba Prison site (closed c.1900), later that of the Austral Hall now has the de Molay Hall and a block of mediterranean look townhouses on it (at the end on my street). There is a youth detention centre about 15km out of town (Westbrook, Queensland). Not sure what the new cells (if any) are like in the police station/ magistrates court complex, I think they closed the old watchhouse when they built the new Hume St station. Corrective Services do have a community service program in town, but I don't even think there is a halfway house here. I really can't see anywhere to go with the article. Alex Law 11:29, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Proxies
Once again the proxy for my ISP tpg.com.au has been blocked. For 48 hours... Please, I'm not the only tpg user who is getting blocked because of one idiot piddling in the Rove article. Alex Law 15:01, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the 220.* users on Felonius Monk's talk page: not all users with that IP edit wikipedia. What we are seeing in the contribs is more like 2 or 3 editors. The contribs of the editor I was referring to can easily be determined based on the time of day they edit and their interests.

The person who is vandalising the Rove article and getting us all blocked is someone else I think. I'm definitely not in favour of blocking them as I'm getting blocked too. User:Longhair is doing the blocking. Maybe we can make a deal with Longhair to watch the Rove page and revert vandalism in return for him not blocking the user except in the most extreme circumstances? Regards, Ashmoo 06:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Check the Rove talk page, it has been resolved. TPG's proxy structure is quite complex, and blocks are usually only 24 hours, so only a small number of casual editors are caught. I just edit/write most days so tend to see them. Latest problem is blocking a TPG primary server for 24 hours because a banned user attempted to edit from there. Anyway, glad to see another user from TPG. Feel free to add yourself to the user pages for the TPG Proxy IP numebers to reduce the chance of admins server blocking. 220.245.180. 130/131/133/133/134 Alex Law 19:54, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Queensland state elections
I moved them for the sake of consistency, as the Australian federal elections have used "legislative", and the other states have followed suit. I can't see why it's much different from the federal arena, as they are still elections to a legislative body. Ambi 01:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

That might make sense if Queensland had a system of govenrment structured the same way as the otehr states, but being unicameral, we don't have senate/upper house elections, so elections are, by defaulr elections for the Parliament... Alex Law 14:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyright images help needed
I'm a USQ student (well, was in 2005, will be in 2007). I can upload fresh images to replace these two, but I may need the copyright tag thing checked when I do. Alex Law 21:08, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Alex, thanks for planning on contributing free replacements. There are several acceptable licensing options available for content creators.  See WP:ICT for details.  Let me know if I can help.  --ChrisRuvolo (t) 22:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, Library pic replaced with one with a huamn readable name, so the current one can be killed freely, not sure how to put it up for deletion (see USQ page). Japanese Garden pic will have to wait while I dig one out of my files, as the lake has been drained this week for cleaning and repairs (autumn, probably hoping for some cyclone related rain to refill it). I should do a small article on the Japanese Garden. Alex Law 02:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

 * If you leave the no license template on the page, it will evenutally be deleted. Otherwise, you can list the image on Copyright problems or Images for deletion.  Follow the instructions on those pages if you want to list it there.  --ChrisRuvolo (t) 12:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

you're welcome
No problem. Yeah, some people don't need a reason to vandalize. It's like those kids that put "I love poop!!!" in various articles... Ya just gotta laugh sometimes. ;) --F a ng Aili 說嗎? 19:15, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Addicted to Anime
In case you hadn't noticed, Addicted to Anime has been proposed for deletion. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, was away briefly. Not sure what to do to challenge the idea that it isn't notable. Toowoomba is the second largest inland city in Austyralia, and I keep getting flak about the fact that it is being documented in reasonable depth. At least it is a reasonable article, unlike (say) Brisbane Anime Society. Any guidelines on what is and is not notable? Alex Law 11:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Meetup - Brisbane Invite
-- Ch e  z  ( Discuss  /  Email  ) 04:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

recognition
for your personal glorification: Image:UpsidedownBarnstar.png --popefauvexxiii 09:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Image:Os2logo.png
Hello Alex Law, an automated process has found an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, such as fair use. The image (Image:Os2logo.png) was found at the following location: User:Alex Law. This image or media will be removed per statement number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg, so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. The image that was replaced will not be automatically deleted, but it could be deleted at a later date. Articles using the same image should not be affected by my edits. I ask you to please not readd the image to your userpage and could consider finding a replacement image licensed under either the Creative Commons or GFDL license or released to the public domain. Thanks for your attention and cooperation. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 03:44, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Brisbane meetup
Delivered on behalf of Dihydrogen Monoxide. Giggabot (talk) 13:41, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Sociopolitical Ramifications MUCK
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Sociopolitical Ramifications MUCK, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add  to the top of Sociopolitical Ramifications MUCK. Jfire (talk) 17:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Brisbane meetup invitation
Hey there, you're invited to the second Brisbane Meetup. Please see the page at Meetup/Brisbane/2 for more details. Hope to see you there!

Automated message delivered by Giggabot (stop!) to Wikipedians in Queensland and known Brisbaneites, at 03:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC).

Speedy deletion of Queensland August 2005 by-elections
A tag has been placed on Queensland August 2005 by-elections, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

it is a stub article of little value. The topic is covered more thoroughly at Chatsworth state by-election, 2005 and Redcliffe state by-election, 2005. All links to this article have been altered to point to one of those two articles.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as an appropriate article, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is appropriate, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add  on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Digestible (talk) 23:03, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:32, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:Alex Law


text:
User talk:A h p

First of all, welcome to Wikipedia! About Sir Butts, I'm sorry if I interrupted your editing. It is common for multiple users to be working on a single article at the same time. --User:Merovingian (t) (c) 22:36, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:A h p


text:
Tri-State Zoological Park

The Tri-State Zoological Park was a 16 acre zoo located in Cumberland, Maryland, United States. The nonprofit zoo opened in 2003, and contains mainly exotic animals rescued or in need of homes, including lions, tigers, primates, various exotics, birds and reptiles.

The zoo was privately owned by Bob Candy of Cumberland and has no paid employees, run only by volunteers.

In February, 2020, four years after beginning a legal battle, PETA forcibly removed three big cats from Tri-State Zoological Park to a facility in Colorado.

The zoo was not accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

March 2006 fire
On the morning of March 29, 2006, the main building was destroyed by fire, with the loss of approximately 100 animals. The only animals inside the building that survived were two alligators. All of the animals housed away from the main building were not harmed. The cause of the fire was ruled accidental due to older electrical wiring beneath the building, and the zoo and animal rescue has remained open.

2019 legal action
In December 2019, a federal judge ruled that the park must relinquish possession of its large cats (two lions and a tiger) after the court found violations of the Endangered Species Act. The judge's ruling described the deaths of two tigers in 2019, and cited "fetid and dystopic conditions" where "filth and feces dominate." The park is planning on appealing the ruling.

title: Tri-State Zoological Park


text:
Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/Portuguese Inquisition

Portuguese Inquisition

 * Nominated on 22:37, July 20, 2005 (UTC); needs 5 votes by July 27.

This affected 4 continents and millions of people, but only rates as a stub.

Support:
 * 1) D AVODD  22:37, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) The Ogre 15:55, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


text:
Hot Pockets

Hot Pockets is an American brand of microwaveable turnovers generally containing one or more types of cheese, meat, or vegetables. Hot Pockets was founded by Chef America Inc. Since April 20, 2002, they have been produced by Nestlé.

History
Hot Pockets were developed by Paul Merage and his brother David through their company Chef America Inc. Chef America invented a packaging sleeve and dough formula to keep its calzone-like sandwiches crispy when cooked in a microwave. In 1980, Chef America introduced its first stuffed sandwich, the Tastywich, the predecessor of the Hot Pocket. Hot Pockets supplanted Tastywiches in 1983, first sold to restaurants because they were easier to break into than retail stores. On May 22, 2002, Chef America was sold to Nestlé. Hot Pocket products were "a $2 billion category of frozen sandwiches and snacks". Breakfast-style Hot Pockets were introduced in 2001.

Product
There are 50 varieties of the traditional Hot Pocket, including breakfast, lunch and dinner varieties. Nestlé also offers Pretzel Bread Hot Pockets, Hot Pockets Croissant Crust (formerly called Croissant Pockets), Hot Pockets Breakfast items, Hot Pockets Breakfast/Snack Bites and Hot Pockets Side shots. Nestlé formerly produced Lean Pockets, Hot Pie Express, Hot Pocket Pizza Minis (originally called Hot Pockets Pizza Snacks), Hot Pockets Subs, Hot Pockets Calzones, Hot Pockets Panini and Hot Pockets Breakfast fruit pastries. Hot Pockets are viewed as "an after school staple". Individual Hot Pockets contain about 350 calories.

Sales
Citing reduced sales, Nestlé announced in 2011 that it would cut employee numbers at its California factory. U.S. sales were about $610 million in 2010 (down $44 million from the previous year), according to Euromonitor International data.

Paul Grimwood took over Nestlé SA's struggling U.S operations in 2011. In an attempt to bolster the failing brand by improving supply chain, Grimwood made the decision to drop the calzone version of Hot Pockets and the quesadillas Lean Pockets, reducing the number of doughs needed. Nestlé executive Chris Johnson points to an end of extended SNAP benefits in 2013 as the cause of the fallen sales, stating SNAP benefit recipients are "a big part of the consumption of this particular product."

Comedic references

 * Comedian Jim Gaffigan is well known for his material poking fun at Hot Pockets. This material is so popular among fans that he is regularly offered Hot Pockets while on tour. Nestlé confirms that they had no influence with this stand-up comedy.
 * In a 2015 installment of the comic strip Wizard of Id, the Huns employed a trojan Hot Pocket in their perpetual war against the Kingdom of Id, with the intention of causing them to kill themselves slowly.
 * Actor DJ Qualls plays a hacker in the 2003 science fiction film The Core who subsists solely on the microwaveable snack.

2014: contaminated meat
In 2014, Nestle USA recalled 238,000 cases of its Hot Pockets because they may have contained meat from a massive recall of about 8.7 e6lb of meat from "diseased and unsound" animals. Nestle stated that "a small quantity of meat" from the Rancho Feeding Corp was used to make Hot Pockets. The USDA described the food as "unfit for humans". This Rancho Feeding Corp meat recall was based out of a production facility in California, but the recalled Hot Pockets were distributed nationwide. The two types of Hot Pockets involved in the recall were the Philly Steak and Cheese and the Croissant Crust Philly Steak and Cheese. A full federal inspection was not performed, and there were no illnesses reported in connection to this recall. Customers who bought the recalled products were refunded by contacting Nestle Consumer Service.

2020–2021: glass and plastic fragments
In January 2021, some batches of Hot Pockets produced during November 13–16, 2020, were found to contain pieces of glass or hard plastic, posing a choking and laceration risk. The USDA issued a Class I recall, because "use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death." Affected products include Premium Pepperoni Made With Pork, and Chicken & Beef Pizza with a Garlic Buttery Crust.

title: Hot Pockets


text:
Burney Lamar

Burney Lamar (born August 21, 1980) is an American stock car racing driver. He has driven in both the NASCAR Xfinity Series and Camping World Truck Series.

Racing career
Lamar began racing go-karts at the age of 5 and won a total of 25 track championships and three International Karting Federation Regional titles. At the age of 16, Lamar started racing stock cars at Stockton 99 Speedway and finished eleventh in points. Over the next three years, he raced on many West Coast short tracks and won the Shell Oil Tri-Track championship.

In the year 2000, Lamar began racing in the USAC Western States Sprint Car Series. He posted seven top-fives and finished third in points, winning Rookie of the Year. The following year, he joined the NASCAR AutoZone Elite Division Southwest Series, and would win Rookie of the Year that year as well. He would go on to win two races and finish second in points in 2002.

Lamar signed with Kevin Harvick Incorporated in 2005, competing in a limited number of NASCAR Busch Series, Craftsman Truck Series and NASCAR Grand National Division, West Series races. In addition to two victories in the West Series, Lamar also won the Copper World Classic at Phoenix International Raceway that season. In the Truck Series, he raced the No. 92 Chevrolet Silverado twice, with a best finish of 21st. He qualified 8th in his Busch Series debut in the No. 33 Chevrolet but wrecked early in that race and finished 41st. He would begin racing in the Busch Series full time in 2006 in the No. 77 Chevrolet and began the season with a second-place finish at Daytona International Speedway. After two additional top-tens in the first third of the season, Lamar's results began to fall off, and he was removed from the ride late in the season at the request of Dollar General, who wanted NEXTEL Cup drivers in the car.

Lamar attempted to make his Nextel Cup Series debut at the October race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and at the November race at Texas Motor Speedway in the Carter Simo Racing No. 08 Dodge but failed to qualify for both races. After failing to qualify for several attempts with E&M in the Cup Series, he returned to the Nationwide Series to drive the No. 37 Ford Fusion for Gary Baker. Later in the season, he signed to drive the No. 05 Ford for Day Enterprises. On October 10, 2008, it was announced that Lamar would share the Braun Racing No. 32 Toyota in 2009 with Brian Vickers. He was again released after one top-10 in his first few races of 2009.

Personal life
In the fall of 2006, he was engaged to model Niki Taylor after just three dates. Taylor is five years older. They wed on December 27, 2006 at the Grande Colonial Hotel in La Jolla, California. Instead of gifts, the couple asked for donations to be sent to Victory Junction Gang Camp, a camp for terminally ill children in North Carolina.

His first child, daughter was born on March 4, 2009, one day before his wife's 34th birthday. On November 16, 2011, Taylor gave birth to her second child with Lamar, a son. He appeared in a March 2009 magazine advertisement for Skechers Footwear with his pregnant wife and her twin sons from her marriage to Miami Hooters linebacker Matt Martinez.

Until recently, Lamar worked as a flight instructor for Airline Transport Professionals in Nashville, Tennessee. He was hired by Mesa Airlines in November 2013 (Mesa contractually flies as US Airways Express as well as United Express). During his time at ATP he was known by the nickname "Blue Falcon."

NASCAR
(key) ( Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led. )

ARCA Re/Max Series
(key) ( Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led. )

title: Burney Lamar


text:
User talk:MeEvIl

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Meelar (talk) 03:37, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:MeEvIl


text:
Talk:Viper

[Untitled]
The term poisonous snake is somehow inaccurate, it's more proper to use the term venomous snake since:

Venom describes inoculable toxic substances while the word Poison describes swallowable ones.

The reference is taken fron Dr. Mara's "Venomous Snakes of the World" 22:39, 20 July 2005 User:Elbetolaija

Proteolytic enzymes
Proteolytic enzymes do not degrade lipids or DNA--just proteins. --209.180.218.156 05:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Etymology
The etymology vivo pario is very suspect. In ancient Roman times the animal was already known as vipera.

 * It's possible. But, as you can see, we have a reasonable reference for the current explanation and it sounds plausible to me. If you have a better one -- with a reference -- then you're welcome to add it. --Jwinius (talk) 01:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Horned snakes
Can some indication be put, as to which species have horns? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.34.190.26 (talk) 09:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Viperidae. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060523055642/http://www.calacademy.org:80/calwild/2000spring/stories/venoms.html to http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/2000spring/stories/venoms.html

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 15:01, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Viper=Viper
'The name "viper" is derived from the Latin word, vipera, -ae, which means "viper".'

I can't help but feel like this needs to be revised, as it is very redundant.Nighthawk418 (talk) 04:56, 26 October 2016 (UTC).

Yes please. Do we just cut off the part from "-ae" onward? Or are those three characters necessary. My Latin is extremely rusty. BlackVegetable (talk) 16:26, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 24 June 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved per request. Favonian (talk) 10:42, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Viperidae → Viper – Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NCFAUNA. Viper is much more common even in google scholar. Almost 16k results vs 7k for the current name. Even when I search for "viper venom" to exclude the false positives, I get 11k results. Vpab15 (talk) 10:20, 24 June 2024 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 12:47, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment: Note that the Viperinae are called the "true vipers". There are also the Vipera. Does that indicate ambiguity for "Viper"? — BarrelProof (talk) 14:17, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. "True" would the disambiguating qualifier in this case, the same way "pit" is for pit vipers. See also true parrot and parrot. Vpab15 (talk) 14:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:59, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per nomination. The Morrison Man (talk) 22:30, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Viper


text:
The Unquiet Grave

"The Unquiet Grave" is an Irish / English folk song in which a young man's grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal sleep. It was collected in 1868 by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 78. One of the more common tunes used for the ballad is the same as that used for the English ballad "Dives and Lazarus" and the Irish pub favorite "Star of the County Down".

Synopsis
A man mourns his true love for "a twelve month and a day". At the end of that time, the dead woman complains that his weeping is keeping her from peaceful rest. He begs a kiss. She tells him it would kill him. When he persists, wanting to join her in death, she explains that once they are both dead their hearts will simply decay, so he should enjoy life while he has it.

Variants
The version noted by Cecil Sharp ends with "When will we meet again? / When the autumn leaves that fall from the trees / Are green and spring up again."

Many verses in this ballad have parallels in other ballads: Bonny Bee Hom, Sweet William's Ghost and some variants of The Twa Brothers.

Return of the dead
The motif that excessive grief can disturb the dead is found also in German and Scandinavian ballads, as well as Greek and Roman traditions.

In 1941 the "Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society" Vol 4 no 2 included a long essay by Ruth Harvey. She compares motifs from "The Unquiet Grave" with other European ballads, including "Es ging ein Knab spazieren (Der tote Freier)" from Germany, and "Faestemanden I Graven" from Denmark. She writes: "It is only inevitable that a song which certainly goes back to pre-Christian traditions should have suffered modification during the centuries."

The Danish ballad "Faestemanden I Graven" was made into a short film, "Aage og Else" (1983). Though not recorded till the nineteenth century, “The Unquiet Grave,” as a folk work, may date to the same period as those two seventeenth-century ballads. On the Fresno State University website, Robert B Waltz compares "The Unquiet Grave" with an older carol, "There blows a cold wind today," in the Bodleian Library MS 7683 (dated ca. 1500), but adds: "I must say that I find this a stretch; the similarities are slight indeed."

Recordings

 * The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote several arrangements for "How Cold the Wind doth Blow (or The Unquiet Grave)". The best known, from 1912, is for piano, violin and voice. It was recorded in 1976 by Sir Philip Ledger, Hugh Bean and Robert Tear. Catalogue It also appears on the 1989 recording Songs of Britten and Vaughan Williams by Canadian baritone Kevin McMillan.
 * Kate Rusby, Rebsie Fairholm, Carol Noonan, Joan Baez, the Dubliners, Solas, Barbara Dickson, Shirley Collins, Circulus, David Pajo, Fire + Ice and Sarah Calderwood have recorded versions of this song.
 * A single-movement viola concerto by Australian composer Andrew Ford used the melody of the ballad as its foundation. Written in 1997, the concerto is pieced together from melodic fragments of the ballad and it is only in the final few minutes that the full theme emerges.
 * The Pennsylvania-based alternative rock band Ween recorded a version of the song (retitled "Cold Blows the Wind") on their 1997 album, The Mollusk. The liner notes jokingly describe the song as a traditional Chinese spiritual.
 * The gothic/darkwave band Faith and the Muse recorded a version on their debut Elyria in 1994.
 * It was recorded and released as a duet between Ian Read and Ysanne Spevack in 2000, distributed by Tesco in Germany, and pressed up on blue vinyl with a letterpress gatefold cover under the band name Fire + Ice.
 * The folk-rock group Steeleye Span recorded a version on their 2009 album Cogs, Wheels and Lovers.
 * Electro noir artist Alien Skin, formerly with Real Life (of '80s "Send Me An Angel" fame), recorded a version on his 2010 album The Unquiet Grave.
 * Orcadian singer Kris Drever recorded a version of this song to music of his own on Lau's album Lightweights and Gentlemen in 2009.
 * The eleven-piece folk band Bellowhead recorded a cover of Ween's version ("Cold Blows the Wind") for their 2010 album Hedonism.
 * An electronic arrangement by Vladislav Korolev was sung by Lori Joachim Fredrics and premiered on April 13, 2013.
 * The German electronica/darkwave band Helium Vola included a rendition on their 2013 album, Wohin?.
 * British folk singer/songwriter Elliott Morris included an arrangement of "Unquiet Grave" on his 2013 EP, Shadows and Whispers.
 * British medieval folk-rock band Gryphon recorded their interpretation of the ballad using the Dives and Lazarus melody on their 1973 debut album, Gryphon.
 * English progressive rock musician Steven Wilson recorded an arrangement of the song. It was the B-Side to "Cover version IV", one of a series of six singles, each consisting of a cover of a song written by another artist as the A-side, with the B-sides consisting of original songs (with the exception of "The Unquiet Grave"). The six cover versions and corresponding B-sides were released together on a compilation album, Cover Version, in 2014.
 * Part of the song was performed by Helen McCrory in the Penny Dreadful episode "Fresh Hell", and again by Sarah Greene in "And They Were Enemies".
 * The Ghosts of Johnson City recorded a version of the song for their 2015 album Am I Born To Die?
 * Daoirí Farrell recorded a version of the song on his 2016 album "True Born Irishman"
 * Joan Baez sings it on three albums:
 * Joan Baez/5 (1964)
 * the compilation album The Joan Baez Lovesong Album (1976)
 * the live album Live at Newport (1996)
 * House and Land interpret the song as their final track on their self-titled 2017 album.
 * The English folk duo The Askew Sisters recorded the ballad on their 2014 album In the Air or the Earth.
 * The Spanish dark pagan folk band Trobar de Morte recorded a version of the song on their eighth studio album The Book of Shadows in 2020.
 * Irish singers Pauline Scanlon and Damien Dempsey performed a six and a half minute duet on Scanlon's 2022 album, The Unquiet.
 * Canadian Celtic/Polka Punk Band The Dreadnoughts released a version of the song on March 14, 2023.

title: The Unquiet Grave


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Traitorgate

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete. Woohookitty 07:39, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Traitorgate
Dicdef, and POV-inherent. smoddy 22:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * We could always redirect it to Traitor's Gate, if such an article exists (or to Tower of London if it doesn't). Grutness...  wha?  01:17, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. POV neologism manufacture. It can be rewritten if it catches on, but it's not Wikipedia's job to help it do so. -- BD2412 talk 03:32, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete neologism. JamesBurns 08:36, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete When used in Valerie Plame article, it's redudant, along with Rovegate and Nadagate. If the articles aren't gotten rid of quickly, there's going to be even more duplication of Plame affair and Valerie Plame articles, which is where the stuff belongs.  --rob 19:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. An article that labels someone that hasn't even been indicted yet in the title is certainly POV. -- OldRight 19:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. The article is definitely POV and redundant. -- Mister Man 20:21, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.


text:
John A. Allison IV

John A. Allison IV (born August 14, 1948) is an American businessman and the former CEO and president of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Allison held a number of leadership positions in BB&T Corp. from 1987 until 2010 when he retired. He now serves as a director at Moelis & Company.

Early life and education
John Allison grew up outside Charlotte, North Carolina. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in business administration in 1971. He received a Master of Business Administration from the Fuqua School of Business in 1974.

Career
Allison began his career with BB&T in 1971. While CEO of BB&T (Branch Banking & Trust) in 2008, Allison earned a total compensation of $4,690,974, which included a base salary of $993,675, a cash bonus of $1,504,303, stocks granted of $995,089, and options granted of $973,800. He retired at the end of 2008 as CEO of BB&T, handing over day to day control of operations to former COO, Kelly King, who assumed the CEO role on January 1, 2009. In 2008, Allison was nominated by Morningstar as one of the best CEOs of 2008.

Ideological activism
Allison is a major contributor to the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) and assigned Rand's Atlas Shrugged to all of his senior executives. Calling Atlas Shrugged "the best defense of capitalism ever written", Allison has seen to it that "the BB&T Charitable Foundation has given 25 colleges and universities several million dollars to start programs devoted to the study of Rand's books and economic philosophy".

In June 2012, he was designated to replace Ed Crane as CEO and president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. He retired from Cato at the end of March 2015. He currently serves on the board of directors at Cato Institute.

Allison is a staunch opponent of the Federal Reserve, and emphasizes its role in business cycles.

Allison penned the introduction to Why Businessmen Need Philosophy: The Capitalist's Guide to the Ideas Behind Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, published in 2011. In September 2012, Allison released his own book, The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy's Only Hope. Reviews of the book were strong, albeit not by ideological opponents. In October 2014, his second book, The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, was published.

Awards
He received an honorary doctorate from East Carolina University, Mercer University, and an honorary doctorate from Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, Guatemala.

Positions served
He serves on the board of visitors of the Fuqua School of Business, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Korkkuss-Neggins Business School, and the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

title: John A. Allison IV


text:
User talk:Barneye

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Proposed deletion of Michigan Law Review

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text:
Harrison Hot Springs

Harrison Hot Springs is a village located at the southern end of Harrison Lake in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. It is a member of the Fraser Valley Regional District; its immediate neighbour is the District of Kent, which includes the town of Agassiz. It is a resort community known for its hot springs and has a population of just over 1500 people. It is named after Benjamin Harrison, a former deputy governor for the Hudson's Bay Company.

History
The Village of Harrison Hot Springs has been a small resort community since 1886 when the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway brought the lakeside springs within a short carriage ride of the transcontinental mainline. In its first promotion as a resort it was known as St. Alice's Well, although Europeans had discovered it (not new to indigenous communities) decades earlier when a party of goldfield-bound travelers on Harrison Lake capsized into what they thought was their doom, only to discover the lake at that spot was not freezing, but warm.

Although the resort flourished in a low-key fashion for years after this discovery was exploited by hoteliers, the Village of Harrison Hot Springs was not incorporated until 1949. Its namesake hot springs are a major attraction for tourists who come to stay at the village's spa resort.

The hot springs themselves were originally used and revered by the Sts'Ailes (Chehalis) First Nations people who live along the Harrison River nearby and the Stʼatʼimc people living around the lake. There are two hot springs, the "Potash", with a temperature of 40 °C, and the "Sulphur", with a temperature of 65 °C. According to Harrison Hot Springs Resort, the waters average 1300 ppm of dissolved mineral solids, one of the highest concentrations of any mineral spring. This hot spring is one of several lining the valley of the Lillooet River and Harrison Lake. The northernmost of the Lillooet River hot springs is at Meager Creek, north of Whistler, with another well-known one to the east of Whistler at Skookumchuck Hot Springs, midway between Pemberton and Port Douglas. One feature of this chain of hot springs is that the Harrison Hot Springs vent is the most sulfuric, and there is consistently less sulfur content as one goes northwards, with the springs at Meager Creek having almost no scent at all.

Megatsunami risk
Some geologists consider that an unstable rock face at Mount Breakenridge above the north end of the giant fresh-water fjord of Harrison Lake in the Lower Mainland of southwestern British Columbia, Canada, could collapse into the lake, generating a large wave that might destroy the town of Harrison Hot Springs (located at its south end).

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Harrison Hot Springs had a population of 1,905 living in 885 of its 1,045 total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of 1,468. With a land area of 5.49 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

The population of Harrison Hot Springs grew from 1996 to 2006, when the Canadian Census reported 655 people in 1991, 898 in 1996, 1,343 in 2001, and 1,573 in 2006. It has since receded slightly to 1,468 in 2011 and 2016.

Religion
According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Harrison Hot Springs included:
 * Irreligion (1,075 persons or 57.6%)
 * Christianity (735 persons or 39.4%)
 * Sikhism (30 persons or 1.6%)
 * Islam (10 persons or 0.5%)
 * Other (15 persons or 0.8%)

Economy
Harrison Hot Springs' major economy is tourism in relation to the hot springs, with over half of employment found in service industries, with much of the rest found split through retail, government, construction and manufacturing are represented, as well as minor activity in other areas.

The hospitality industry employs a large majority of the jobs in Harrison Hot Springs, with much of the jobs coming from hotels and motels, and an growing economy stemming from the vacation rentals in the area.

Attractions
Harrison Hot Springs' greatest attraction is its titular springs, of course, but it also has the Ranger Station Public Art Gallery, a marina with jet boat tours of the lake available, a nine-hole golf course, and is the closest access to Sasquatch Provincial Park. In July, Harrison Hot Springs hosts the Harrison Festival of the Arts, a ten-day celebration of world music and art. The annual Festival features free outdoor beach concerts, ticketed evening performances, a children's day, visual art exhibits, various workshops, and two weekend art markets. The Harrison Festival also presents ten to twelve professional performing arts events between September and May each year.

Bigfoot
Due to the fact that there have been many sightings of Bigfoot in the Fraser Valley near Harrison Hot Springs, the village has embraced the image of the creature. The official town mascot, appearing on signs and plush toys, is "Hot Springs Harry", a sasquatch; there are also several bigfoot sculptures throughout the village. The village has several gift shops that sell sasquatch-themed souvenirs, as well as a sasquatch museum.

Government
The Corporation of the Village of Harrison Hot Springs was incorporated as a municipality in 1949 under the initiative of Colonel Andy Naismith (ret). It has a mayor and four councillors.

Harrison Hot Springs is part of the Chilliwack-Hope provincial electoral district. Federally, Harrison Hot Springs is in the Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon riding, represented in the House of Commons of Canada.

title: Harrison Hot Springs


text: Category:Danish essayists

title: Category:Danish essayists


text: Category:Norwegian essayists

title: Category:Norwegian essayists


text:
User talk:Loaded

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Phroziac (talk) 22:41, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
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title: User talk:Loaded