Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

I first met Karen Block Johnese in the late 1990’s when she ran the now seemingly dormant Pittsburgh Post-Gazette philanthropic programs. She went on to work with the Pittsburgh Glass Center.

Fast forward to 2024 where she is chairwoman of Block Communications. Notably, the company that refuse to negotiate in good faith with the union and have almost destroyed our newspaper.

Young me was in awe of Karen. She was so regal and accessible. She took me to lunch, invited me to events, and introduced me to her future son-in-law, Francisco Escalante. I met her daughter Emily as well.

I moved on from that job, but I always carried a sense of Karen Block Johnese as one of the good folx in my mind. She helped people. She was a creator, a kind person. Karen was an heiress who built her own retaining wall garden project. My family loyalty to the Post-Gazette created a sense of kinship, loyalty-adjacent fondness.

I thought they were the “good” Block family members and could not understand why they didn’t put some family moves on John Robinson Block to salvage their family legacy.

Emily Escalante is local artist who also serves on the board of BCI where her mother is chairwoman. They are making money at the expense of the workers who built and maintain the Post-Gazette. I just googled them and discovered that Emily’s husband, my former colleague in Mon Valley organizing, was charged with animal abuse. Dear God. Poison pigeons, then kick journalists in the teeth, and lie to all of us. Who are these people?

Suddenly the relatability of the Block Johnese Escalante family zooms out of focus as I realize it was all a show – the community organizing, the charitable work, the rapport with artists – it was all a show. I wasn’t a recipient of beneficence as a young community organizer – I was a prop, a charity case myself.

As a result, those memories sicken me. These people have taken away my newspaper because they equate stock ownership with ownership of the soul (and heart) of our community news asset. It is the most egregious form of white economic privilege guised in a veneer of progressive distraction tactics.

I had been invited to the recent Art on Fire exhibit at the Pittsburgh Glass Center and didn’t attend. Emily and her husband were patrons of the event so I’m glad I skipped it. And I’ll be checking co-host/co-chair/donor/sponsor lists a lot more closely now. Non -profit organizations should not fundraise on the backs of working families.

The Pgh New Guild recently sent a billboard on a truck around to the neighborhoods where Emily Escalante and other Block family members live. Now they are asking us to write a letter to these plutocrats, to hold them accountable for their failure to protect workers rights and fair labor tactics.

Union busters don’t deserve peace. And they certainly shouldn’t have an easy time at work tomorrow. The more they hear from you, the less time they’ll have to manage repeated violations of federal labor law, lying to prospective scab hires, or pretending to believe in journalism or workers’ right In fact, we wouldn’t ask you to write them if they didn’t actually have the capacity to make a change.

They’ve had it both ways for two long years – collecting profits while moving in elite progressive circles.

Karen and Emily, you fooled me once. Being an heiress doesn’t absolve you of your moral obligation to be a decent human being. Every single penny that feeds your privileges comes at the expense of the workers who actually generated those pennies and dollars and profits.

You aren’t better than us because you are wealthy. You demonstrate that relying on the ‘good’ or ‘decent’ family members to reign in their profitmaker is foolish. Remember people hoping Melania, Ivanka, and Jared Kushner would control the worst excesses of the President of the US. Look how well that worked out for working families. And the nation.

Of course JR is a Trump fan after all. Does that make you all Trump enablers, too?

Anyway, here is the text the Guild has asked us to use as a starting point. You can click here to participate. The tool allows you to be firstname and state identified only. I sent one, but I also decided to put my name on this blog post.

There is one member of the Block dynasty for whom I have great compassion and empathy. Remember the incident in February 2019 when JR Block allegedly drunkenly dragged his young daughter into the newsroom and into his professional nightmare?

Karen and Emily, etc al. I also was raised by a family of alcoholics who definitely would have behaved like this. And like this young girl, the adults in my family looked away. They didn’t intervene, they didn’t help us, they protected the family reputation, not the family members victimized by the bullies. Maybe you did try, but you certainly didn’t address the trauma your family created around an innocent child. That’s absolutely part of your responsibilities with BCI.

Did you ever stop to think what that incident did to the hearts and souls of the parents, of anyone in that newsroom who cares about children? Watching your boss berate and traumatize their own young child is horrific, creating a terrible moral quandary. And you never stepped up, not then and not now, to support them.

As people who boast about parenting, I caution you that JRs daughter and your own children see you. They may not be able to articulate or process these traumas now. But one day, they will have a robust understanding of these events.

And perhaps wonder, like I do, why you failed so many other people’s kids.

It is hard when the scales fall away from your eyes. I want to believe good people will do good things, not just things in their own self-interest. I want to think creators and philanthropists have a sense of intent and impact. And I want that the pit in my stomach around a blog post about my local newspapers owners would not resemble the pit with my recent post about local fascists.

I also want my damn newspaper back.