A Long Island native, Weinstock transferred to Fordham as a junior and quickly set out to make the most of her time at the University. She worked at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, and interned at the national TV show Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee. After graduating in 1995, she built a career in marketing and publicity at major film studios, including Paramount. She took a hiatus to raise her three sons—now 9, 12, and 13 years old—and a schnoodle named Charlie. But that “break” is over now, thanks to what the Los Angeles resident calls “the Lego incident.”

Fordham Magazine caught up with Weinstock to find out how she went from being a media exec to an entrepreneur pitching her invention on national TV.

How did your Fordham education help prepare you for entrepreneurship?
I wasn’t exactly on an entrepreneurial path from the start, but Fordham gave me a solid foundation on which I built a successful first career—and the overwhelming desire to be a lifelong learner who leans into curiosity and loves the challenge of figuring things out is persistent. Ideas are easy; I’m probably not the first person to think of something like this, but the difference is having the will and courage to jump in and figure out how to execute it.

How did you get the idea for Pick-Up Bricks?
I have three active boys with tons of Lego bricks, which is a family favorite, but it was also everywhere, all the time, and seemingly always underfoot. Any parent can tell you the pain is real! I’m not just talking about the pain of stepping on Lego bricks or other little toys, but the pain of trying to get kids to pick up their stuff. That’s why we made Pick-Up Bricks a toy. We wanted to empower kids to want to do it themselves by making cleanup fun.

Walk me through the creation process.
I had had enough and ended up vacuuming [my kids’ Lego] pieces up with my Dyson—maybe not my best parenting moment, but it was oddly satisfying and kind of fun to suck them up. The incident sent me and my brother-in-law Steve, who has entrepreneurial experience and an advanced business degree, on a four-year quest to save feet everywhere. We started sketching on a scrap piece of paper, and that was the launching pad. Fast forward, we launched domestically in late 2022 and had a successful year last year, which we capped off with the Shark Tank appearance.

How did you end up on Shark Tank?
One of the show’s casting team came across Pick-Up Bricks on social media. On one hand, we were just blown away to have drawn Shark Tank’s attention. At the same time, we were very apprehensive about doing the show and putting ourselves out there. But I’m always encouraging my children to do hard things and to stretch themselves by going outside their comfort zones—this was my opportunity to walk the walk.

You ended up accepting a joint offer from Lori Greiner and Mark Cuban. Tell me more about your experience on the show.
I am so grateful for the opportunity! We had two excellent producers who were our biggest cheerleaders and skillfully guided us through the monthslong process.

The best part for me was the Sharks’ reactions. They totally got it—and they loved it! It was a lot of fun to see them sucking up the Lego bricks, racing to finish first. Even the notoriously spicy personalities responded so positively to us and our invention—it was truly gratifying.

What’s next?
We are in talks to go beyond the direct-to-consumer space into national chain retail placement. Looking forward, we are focused on getting Pick-Up Bricks out to more of the world and capitalizing off that swell [in attention from appearing on Shark Tank].

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Sierra McCleary-Harris.

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“Racial and social justice is our number one priority across the board,” Rosario said in a press release announcing his appointment. “As the go-to organization for the Latinx community serving Black and brown residents, we must take diversity and inclusion to the next level. We’re trying to create an ecosystem of care for our community—focusing on wealth building, not just social services.”

A New York City native, Rosario grew up in the South Bronx and began volunteering in the Boy Scouts of America’s Scoutreach program while majoring in communications at Fordham College at Rose Hill. Since graduating in 1995, he has held leadership positions at several regional YMCAs and the Boy Scouts of America’s Greater New York Councils. Most recently, he was president and CEO of the Ocean County YMCA in Toms River, New Jersey, where he established a summer meals program that served 700 to 900 meals a day to community members experiencing food insecurity. He also served two terms as president of the Passaic (New Jersey) Board of Education.

La Casa de Don Pedro was formed in 1972 by Newark residents of Puerto Rican descent and is named in honor of Puerto Rican nationalist Don Pedro Albizu Campos. According to the organization’s website, its mission is “to foster self-sufficiency, empowerment and neighborhood revitalization through advocacy, education, and support,” and it aims “to reverse the trajectory of social, racial, political, and economic dislocations and marginalization of children and families.” Its youth, health services, and workforce development programs reach approximately 50,000 people per year.

She took an unconventional approach to her admission essay—she wrote a fictional story about how Dionne Warwick and the Psychic Friends Network predicted she would go to a school that bears her last name. “This was a time when that show was big, and when there really wasn’t a Fordham presence in California,” the San Francisco-area native explains.

Her risk paid off, and she continued to hone her writing as a communications major at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, where she wrote for The Observer. She graduated in 2001.

“At Fordham I learned to tell really good stories,” she says, “about all sorts of topics, including things out of my comfort zone.” And though she didn’t end up pursuing a journalism career, her undergraduate experience helped get her a role as a grant writer for The Salvation Army in San Francisco. “I found a career I didn’t know existed, where I am able to help nonprofits and my community,” she says. “And that’s all from a journalism standpoint, which I owe to Fordham.”

It was also at the Salvation Army that Eva first thought about getting involved with a local Fordham alumni chapter. “My boss was very involved in his college’s alumni association, and it had just never occurred to me,” she says. So she contacted the head for the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Northern California, Mark Di Giorgio, and asked how she could help.

“Mark was a tremendous mentor who really kept Fordham grads in the area connected,” she says. When a job opportunity arose in Los Angeles, she promised she would get involved with the chapter in her new hometown.

Since her arrival in the city three years ago, she has done much more than that. With the help of a few fellow Fordham grads, she has revitalized the chapter, introducing two signature events.

She first connected with Caroline Valvardi, FCRH ’10, a “powerhouse behind group,” she says, who has since moved to Washington, D.C. Together, they brought on David Martel, FCLC ’00, and Kevin Carter, FCRH ’12. More recently, Lori Schaffhauser, LAW ’00, joined them. “It’s one of the most well-rounded teams I’ve ever worked with,” Eva says of her fellow Fordham Alumni Chapter of Los Angeles leaders. “It’s all ages, all different industries, all different types of talent. … It’s a great crowd, and they’re just happy to help. If this were corporate America, I would be really excited. And, of course, we’d love to have more.”

The group also reflects the diversity of the local Fordham audience. “LA is so vast; it’s just a different market,” she says. “But being here, we also have unique opportunities to leverage alumni in fields like entertainment. This is the entertainment town, and you don’t quite realize how many different aspects there are within that until you’re here.”

That’s why one of the chapter’s new signature events is a summer Entertainment Panel featuring Fordham grads who range from TV actors to Marvel writers. “It’s sold out both times we’ve held it,” Eva says, as has the new Malibu Wine Hike in the spring. Along with the annual LA Presidential Reception in January, these events have come to form the core of the chapter’s offerings for alumni.

“We’ve also tried baseball games, basketball games, holiday happy hours, all of that. We’re trying different locations and frequencies. It’s all trial and error to see what people here want,” Eva explains.

“This city is a bit fragmented, so I just look forward to linking this community together a bit more, to bringing more Fordham people together.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
I’m passionate about connecting people with organizations or communities or causes they care about that provide wellness for others, and about giving everyone access to opportunities they might not normally get. In my work, a lot of times that’s through philanthropy, like raising funds for after-school programs for children from low-income backgrounds. They provide more than education—they also provide health and wellness support. Nobody operates at their full capacity without having access to basic needs like nutrition, education, and mental health. So I’m passionate about providing access to that, but I’m also passionate about giving donors an opportunity to see how their contributions really make a difference by hosting community events.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
A former CEO I worked with, who was such an inspirational man, once shared a definition of disillusionment that has stuck with me. He said that disillusionment is what happens when you walk into a situation with an illusion of how it should be. Since then, I have made an effort to address most things in life with an open mind and not with preconceived notions that can lead to disappointment. It’s hard, but it works.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
My favorite places in New York City are the Lower East Side, West Village, or anywhere south of 14th Street, places like the original Five Points neighborhood, where real old New York is and where New York came into being. When I lived in New York right after college, I had a book that listed all these historic spots. And I would take the train with this book and wander around and just start marking off places. Lower Manhattan is just rich with history.

In the world, I would say Paris. I just went for my birthday earlier this year, and I hadn’t been since I was 11 or 12. There’s a ton of history there too, of course, which is perfect for me. Renoir is my favorite artist, and his studio there is now a museum, which I got to see on this last trip. I just loved tripping around the cobblestone streets and the old shops in that hilly area near the basilica, finding the oldest restaurant and the oldest bar and the oldest of everything.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
There’s a book I read a few months ago that I think will stay with me for a long time. It’s called The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, and it’s by Stephen Cope. It’s a little self-help, in a way, but what I really enjoyed is how he tells a lot of tremendous stories about people who really followed their passion. I especially loved the stories about Jane Goodall and Gandhi, those two stuck out to me. There was so much I didn’t know about their lives or why they chose to do what they did. Understanding why they made these conscious decisions was inspiring.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
I would say Elizabeth Stone, who founded and ran The Observer at Lincoln Center for a long time. She was a big supporter. She encouraged me to push the envelope a few times, to take difficult articles even if they might not get published, and even though it sometimes frustrated me at the time, I am so grateful for that opportunity that helped me learn so much. I took writing classes with her too, but it’s one thing when you’re in a class and you’re writing papers—working on a newspaper is a totally different thing. You’re on a team with everybody. You’ve got co-writers, you have an editor … it’s real life. And that was an opportunity that I wouldn’t have taken advantage of if she hadn’t pushed me in that direction.

Oniffe White, a student in Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies, wrote and directed “Echoes of a Winter Sunshine,” his first narrative film, about a pair of homeless siblings who struggle to survive in Harlem, New York. It began airing on the streaming platform on June 8. 

The movie scenes are almost all nonverbal. The main characters—16-year-old Ashwood and 10-year-old Leon—never speak. But White’s film, which began as a final project for a Fordham film class in the fall of 2018, attracted the attention of Welcome Table Press, a nonprofit media group based in Washington, D.C., that recently awarded him its Discovery Award. 

The 14-minute film, created by his production company Abeng Studios, is also currently being considered for several film festivals, including the New York Film Festival, he said. 

“Visual storytelling allows you to feel,” said White, a communications senior who will resume his studies this fall. (He took last semester off to finish his short film.) “My thing is to try to allow people to feel the experiences that individuals are going through so they can now help enact change.” 

Your film is titled “Echoes of a Winter Sunshine.” What does that mean? 

I thought, what’s it like being a black person in America? I remember Malcolm X telling a story about when he was young. He lived in a youth detention home with white folks. He remembered the owner looking out the window one day, and he was like, I don’t know what’s up with these n——. They don’t have anything in the world, but they’re so damn happy. 

When you look at Harlem and other black neighborhoods, there’s always that dark winter within that experience of blackness in America. But you always find the happiness. You find culture like hip-hop, dance. Think about the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. That’s the winter sunshine. But then the problem is that things were supposed to get better. If you look at these kids [in the film], they’re echoes of that winter sunshine. 

Before 16-year-old Ashwood and her brother fall asleep outside a building, she slips a razor blade over her tongue. What does that scene signify? 

For the audience, it adds tension. For the character, it’s fundamental protection of herself and her brother. What else is she going to use as a 16-year-old? Now the idea for that scene, I knew about the razor blades as a kid [in America]. But I was watching an interview between Jimmy Kimmel and Cardi B, and she was talking about having to walk around and have a razor blade in her mouth [for safety], and he just couldn’t believe it. When I was writing the film script, that interview just popped in my mind. I went, yeah. Ashwood would definitely do that to protect herself because that’s someone’s reality in the streets. 

You’ve been living in Harlem for almost four years. What is your relationship with the residents who are experiencing homelessness? 

I have this one homeless friend. Anytime you’d give him a dollar or two, he’d stop and say, “Hold this bill.” The two of us hold it, one end and the other. He does a prayer out loud: “Dear God, thank you for this man, because he didn’t have to do this. I truly appreciate it. Watch over him. Protect him, guide him, and don’t let anybody f— with him.” Each day, I make sure I have like five dollars. I don’t care if I’m being hustled or not. It doesn’t matter, because one out of five of them need that dollar. 

What was the most emotional part of the filmmaking process for you? 

I called my sister and read the script out loud to her. I could hear her crying on the phone. I was just like, oh, OK, I have something here. Someone is actually feeling the emotions that I intended them to feel. 

What does it mean to be a male, black filmmaker in America? 

I can take a plot—the most general one you can possibly find in a story—but add characters that no one’s seen, and tell a story about those experiences. I can show the world stories about people that they don’t know about or themes that they didn’t think they knew about or understand, and give them something they weren’t aware of.

You were born in Jamaica and moved to Long Island when you were 10 years old. What was that like? 

When I moved to America in 1989 or 1990, I lived in Levittown, an all-white town. Let’s just say the racism informs you that you are no longer a child. You’re an adult. I’ll give you an example. I was 10, and I just came back from the arcade. I was walking along this street, and there was this yellow station wagon with wood paneling on the side. This big white guy with a mustache, red-faced, rolled down the window, stuck his head out—he’s got his little daughter with him—and yelled, “N—–!” Then he wound up his window and drove off. I’m from Jamaica. We don’t know this word. It just didn’t … process in my head at the time. But I could feel the venom coming off of him. 

How did your dream of being a filmmaker begin? 

Some people grow up with books or video games. My world was movies. My father would go to a video store and rent movies. We always had stacks and stacks of movies to watch. He was also a wedding photographer for the big hotels, like Sandals [Resorts]. When I was 12 or 13, I would sometimes go with him and help set up lighting and all those things.

Where do you see yourself in five to ten years? 

Hopefully, my studio is bigger, I have more short films under my belt, and I have at least two to three full-length, 90-minute films. The next subject I’m trying to tackle is immigration and identity. 

How has Fordham helped you become a better filmmaker? 

Fordham has afforded me the ability to write stories. I can go to YouTube and learn the technical aspects of things. The technical stuff is easy. But how to make a movie … how to tell a story, how to get those emotions across, how to harness that ability? Fordham [taught me]. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Behind the Scenes of “Echoes of A Winter Sunshine” from Leeanna Hariprashad on Vimeo.

Video by White’s production assistant Leeanna Hariprashad, FCLC ’21

A business manager brings the genius of Albert Einstein to social media

Albert Einstein died in 1955, but the theoretical physicist is riding—dare we say it?—a gravitational wave of popularity that’s been rippling through the fabric of space, time, and social media.

Case in point: On February 11, 2016, after scientists recorded the “sound” of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, confirming one of Einstein’s century-old theories, @AlbertEinstein tweeted a picture of the scientist smiling at his desk. A microphone, obviously photoshopped, hung in mid-air near his raised left hand. If Einstein were alive, the tweet said, “he’d totally do a mic drop.”

If Einstein were alive, he'd totally do a mic drop after today's #LIGO conference on #gravitationalwaves. #NSFLigo pic.twitter.com/0vaAxVXxvt

— Albert Einstein (@AlbertEinstein) February 11, 2016

That tweet is one of thousands crafted by Anthony Iliakostas, a Queens native who majored in communications at Fordham and, since 2015, has been handling the verified social media accounts for “the World’s Favorite Genius.” It’s part of his job as a business affairs manager in the New York office of Greenlight, a rights-clearance agency that represents the Einstein estate.

In addition to promoting the Einstein brand on social media, Iliakostas helps make commercial licensing deals on behalf of the estate. That’s how depictions of Einstein end up on apparel, on TV shows, and as smartphone emoji. It’s big business: Last October, Forbes listed the Einstein estate at No. 9 on its list of “The Highest-Paid Dead Celebrities of 2016,” with earnings of $11.5 million.

Before joining Greenlight, Iliakostas created Law and Batting Order, a web show on sports law that he still hosts; earned a J.D. at New York Law School; and worked briefly in the rights department at ABC News. He says Einstein’s enduring popularity, particularly among millennials, has much to do with his playful, rebellious personality and his passionate sense of social justice.

“People see Einstein as a man for our times,” Iliakostas says. “I try to tell that story on social media by humanizing him. I try to go beyond his scientific theories to highlight Einstein the humanitarian, Einstein the civil rights activist, with insightful quotes from him on love and art and topics that make it clear that he was not just a brain, and that he had flaws and passions just like the rest of us.”

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

For Lauren Duca, FCRH ’13, simply being a member of the media industry has become a form of political activism.

Duca, a contributing editor at Teen Vogue, came into the spotlight after one of her articles, “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America,” went viral last December. Since then, she’s been praised on Chelsea Handler’s Netflix show, berated on Tucker Carlson Tonight, trolled on Twitter, and profiled in The New York Times. So, many of the almost 50 students who gathered to hear her speak on the Rose Hill campus on March 6 nodded in agreement when she made the connection between their intended field and political engagement.

Natalie Zisa, a Fordham senior and the outreach coordinator for Fordham’s branch of the communications honor society Lambda Pi Eta, said the way Duca has handled both her sudden fame and her responsibility as a journalist has sparked a fire in her.

“I see her as a role model for myself and for a lot of other young female writers,” she said. After Zisa discovered that Duca is a Fordham grad, she and a communications professor decided to invite her to campus to speak to students about the role of young people in politics and the future of journalism.

During her talk, Duca encouraged students to be dedicated to both the truth and their own voice, which she said she first started developing at the paper, a student publication at Fordham.

“The conversation online is often just about asserting things,” she said. “People do things like take each other’s anonymous sources. It spreads a contagion of unreliability. You have to remember that things are taken and distorted much quicker online, so think about your journalistic responsibility there. You want to be empowering the public with truthful information—especially now, when there’s so little trust in the media.”

But she reminded the students not to forget themselves in the process. “Be aware of the power in passionate idealism. As long as you’re informed, don’t let people tell you that you’re less than or separate from because of your youth. Just make sure your analysis is driven by the truth.”

Duca said that critics who assume that she and other young women can’t write about politics because they also write about celebrity culture are “denying me access to a political conversation and participating in this stealthy condescension that many women feel is familiar. You’re going to be taken less seriously because of your age as it is, free of gender. So insist on being taken seriously.”

That’s why Duca’s new Teen Vogue column is called “Thigh-High Politics.” She said she’s proud to work for a magazine that covers everything from shampoo commercials to the Pulse nightclub shooting, and that acknowledges that all of these are “just another piece of your world.”

“There’s this idea that women’s journalism isn’t serious journalism,” said Zisa, who admires the way Duca pushes against that misperception.

Throughout the talk, Duca offered a wide range of practical advice to students interested in the media field—on everything from the benefits of finding a first job that allows for movement to the advantages and disadvantages of freelancing.

She also urged students to start approaching contentious conversations differently and to develop a more nuanced view of both the media and the world.

“Call-out culture is unproductive. Everything is complex. Checking structures of power is important, but think about what the full story is. It’s easy to just be mad,” Duca said. “Nobody is unbiased. Only the facts are unbiased.”

GOREY: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey portrays the enigmatic writer and illustrator who shunned publicity and lived his final days in solitude amidst 25,000 books and seven cats. The play marks the debut production by the Life Jacket Theatre Company, of which Russ is founding artistic director. The play opens this Saturday, April 30 at HERE Arts Center.

“I’m fascinated by people who live out their lives on the fringes, and who might be considered outcasts,” said Russ, an associate professor of communications and media management at the Gabelli School of Business. “Gorey was certainly a unique person.”

An eccentric with a taste for the macabre, Gorey authored and illustrated more than 100 works during his life, many of which were children’s stories that dealt with adult subjects, such as death, love, strangeness, and loss. He is renowned for the sinister pen-and-ink drawings that accompany his stories, and which serve in GOREY as backdrops for the stage.

The play features three actors who depict Gorey at different points during his life. One represents Gorey at the age of 25, before he published his first book. The next is 35-year-old Gorey, who has by then published several works. The final character is Gorey shortly before he died at the age of 75. The three Goreys exist simultaneously in the play, and at times speak to one another and to the audience.

“It’s a tapestry of different moments from his life,” Russ said.

Russ first encountered Gorey when he stumbled on the Edward Gorey House on Cape Cod, where the artist died in 2000. Not much is known about his life, which meant that Russ had to be imaginative in his portrayal. Part of the play is based on interview transcripts and Gorey’s notes and journals, and other parts are fictionalized.

“As I was diving into the archives, I realized he was very inconsistent in what he told reporters. He would change what he said from one interview to the next. Sometimes he’d admit that, and sometimes he’d be very evasive,” Russ said. “At first that was frustrating, but then I figured I’d have to embrace it. Gorey had many different personas, and we simply don’t know a lot about him.

“Some of the most extreme moments in GOREY, the ones that people think I made up, are the ones based in reality,” Russ said. “That kind of work is really exciting to me—the stuff you can’t make up.”

To Russ, Gorey was the perfect inaugural subject for Life Jacket, an innovative company that marries the academic and the theatrical. Productions are born of extensive research, interviews, and textual analysis, which then come together as a play and are brought to life on stage.

Life Jacket embodies the objectives that Russ, whose scholarly background is in communications and theater, brings to his research and teaching at the Gabelli School of Business. Many of his classes—such as his popular course, The Storytelling Project—help business students learn to communicate effectively and compellingly.

“You get hired in business if you have an interpersonal savvy—if you can frame a message effectively, spin it to make it relevant to a variety of stakeholders,” Russ said.

“There’s a craft to communications. Being successful in a business environment isn’t just about balancing budgets or understanding operations. Business happens in a person-to-person sphere. My job is to help business students excel when it comes to communicating with other human beings.”

Previews of GOREY begin at the HERE Arts Center on April 30 and May 1, and the play premieres on May 3. The show will run through May 22. Find a full schedule and more details here.

That disparity is important as a matter of equity, if technology is going to be a tool for helping all people improve their lives, according to an expert at Fordham.

Social media, such as Tinder and Instagram, are well suited for mobile phones, as are certain games, said Olivier Sylvain, an associate professor of law who specializes in communications law and policy.

“But you can’t really write an essay on your smartphone, and you certainly can’t program [on it],” he said.

Such access issues are of particular interest to Sylvain. As a member of the law school’s new Center on Race, Law and Justice, he’s focused on making communications infrastructure part of the discussion about race and class disparities.

Some of the reasons for this disparity lie in the reality that certain wealthier neighborhoods are better served by Internet service providers (ISPs). Some of it is a facet of equipment cost: Internet-enabled mobile devices are simply more affordable than laptops or desktops. Cost issues explain differences in class, but not race, which Sylvain said could also be part of the sociological phenomenon: Your buddy gets a phone, so you get one too, and it’s just what you do.

The embrace of mobile technology, Sylvain pointed out, also opens up people—in this case more minorities—to greater surveillance by law enforcement. (Note the tussle being waged between Apple and the FBI over the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.)

“People of color are as susceptible as anyone to surveillance,” he said, but greater reliance on mobile “exacerbates existing forms of surveillance and discrimination.”

Sylvain tackles issues of unequal access by critiquing both government policies and the underlying assumptions that drive those policies. He says he supports the federal government’s policy of promoting network neutrality, which keeps ISPs from charging more for faster connectivity.

But he challenges the pro-neutrality principle that champions “innovation” as the reason for network neutrality.

Advocates claim that net neutrality led to the successes of Apple and Google, and tech companies used the “innovation” argument when they lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to uphold net neutrality in 2014. They claim it creates a level playing field that helps new companies thrive, therefore bringing more connectivity to all.

But with what is essentially a trickle-down theory of Internet expansion, says Sylvain, “the FCC has chosen to celebrate the norm of innovation at the expense of equality and access.”

“Their argument was, when you have an open network, more people will innovate, and if more people will innovate, then more people will come to the Internet, and if more people come to the Internet, then more ISPs will invest in infrastructure, and will bring more service to more people. It’s a classic syllogism, and it makes sense,” Sylvain said.

“It’s a reasonable argument, and I support it, but it is an odd kind of exploitation of what is a far clearer mandate under the communications act—and that is to ensure that all people should have comparable access to services.”

In “Network Equality,” published last month in the Hastings Law Journal, Sylvain argues for relying instead on the principle of distributing access equally, and said the FCC has to encourage deployment of broadband Internet because it is so-bound by the Federal Communications Act of 1934.

Sylvain also says that making the Internet and other communications tools to everyone is eminently doable if the will exists. New York City recently signed an agreement with CityBridge, a consortium of private companies, to convert 7,500 old pay phones into free public Wi-Fi hot spots.

And in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy knocked out power and flooded large swaths of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the Red Hook Initiative community group deployed a wireless mesh network. It is a technology that spreads network connections among dozens of nodes that “talk” to each other and share network access across a large area, such as a neighborhood.

“[This example] underscores something important: The Internet exists,” Sylvain said. “You don’t necessarily need Time Warner or Verizon for the Internet, and if there are local communities that are empowered to do that everywhere, you speak to the issues that the FCC purports to be interested in, which is access and deployment.”

“There’s been a sort of fetishization of innovation for its own sake,” Sylvain said. “But for me, it depends on what you’re innovating for. In my mind, you should [innovate for]important core public norms of universal access and equality.”

Fordham’s Garrett Broad, an assistant professor of communications and media studies, penned a new piece for The Huffington Post about the importance of the Black Panther Party’s anti-hunger initiatives during its heyday. His piece critiques the absence of this story from mainstream history and the mainstream food movement, and describes the role it plays in shaping the actions of food justice activists.

Broad, the author of the recently released More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change (University of California Press, 2016), says the food justice aspect of the Black Panthers Party is a “story that often goes untold, both in media narratives about the Panthers and throughout the food movement itself.

“Setting the BPP’s flaws aside – the truth is that at a moment when Black Americans were suffering from widespread hunger, sickness, unemployment, and police violence, the Black Panther Party was there to try to fill the gaps that institutional racism and government negligence had created. The late 1960s saw the Panthers develop a host of community-based initiatives, with chapters across the country shifting their focus away from armed militancy and toward the development of “survival programs” — survival pending revolution, of course,” he writes.

Read his entire piece here, and then read our story on Broad’s new book.

(Top photo: Charles Bursey hands a plate of food to a child seated at a Free Breakfast Program. Photograph via Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch/National Geographic)

A memorial service for Parker will be held on Saturday, Oct. 3rd at 11 a.m. at the Church of the Highlands in White Plains.

A minister and director of communications for the United Church of Christ in the 1960s, Parker petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to deny the renewal of a broadcast license to a TV station in 1964 for its failure to serve the public interest, as required by law.

He argued that although blacks made up 43 percent of the viewing audience, the station, WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi, did not cover civil rights news or the black community, and often referred to blacks pejoratively on the air. In 1969, future Supreme Court chief justice Warren E. Burger, then a federal appellate judge, agreed.

It was the first time that a license was lifted for a broadcast station’s failure to serve the public interest, and it ushered in an era in which activists, such as Parker and Ralph Nader, monitored and challenged broadcasters both on content and discriminatory hiring practices.

Parker joined the Fordham University communications and media studies faculty as an adjunct professor in 1983. He taught well into his 90s.

He co-founded the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center in 1986 with colleague Jack Phelan, professor emeritus of media and politics. The center is dedicated to furthering understanding of the ethical and social justice dimensions of media and communication technologies, particularly how such technologies affect the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society.

“All we’ve ever wanted to do is make it possible for people to express themselves through the system of broadcasting,” he told The New York Times in 1983.

“If broadcasters are to serve the public interest, they need to be reminded that they serve all the publics.”

Former WFUV Manager Ralph Jennings joined Parker’s team at the United Church of Christ shortly after the initial challenge to FCC and worked for him for 12 years. He based his doctoral dissertation in part on Parker’s work.

“Right out of graduate school Everett offered me a job. It was a chance to take all that idealism and do something with it,” he said.

“Because of the things that he let the staff do, because he trusted them, and he knew they would do things his way, it was great thing to work for him. He was tough, but he was a compassionate person as well.”

Gwenyth Jackaway, PhD, associate chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies, also met Parker when she was a graduate student and was becoming “disillusioned” with the slow pace of change in the industry. She recalled asking him how he managed to keep cynicism at bay as he fought the FCC and corporate media.

“The spirit of his response has stayed with me to this day. ‘We keep working towards reform,’ he told me, because there is no other choice.  Giving up the fight is not an option. Working to bring about change gives purpose to our professional lives,” she said.

“There is no question that Everett Parker saw his media reform activism as doing God’s work in the world.  He was an incredible inspiration, and was a staunch defender of the true spirit of what was originally intended by those who envisioned the broadcast media as servants of the public interest.”

Paul Levinson, PhD, professor of communication and media studies and former chair of the department, recalled that students regularly asked him how they could get into “Ev’s” course.

“He was in his 90s then, and had more energy than many faculty half his age. Fordham was fortunate indeed to have him in our midst,” he said.

Parker is survived by his daughters, Ruth Weiss and Eunice Kolczun; a son, the Rev. Truman E. Parker; seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the Emma L. Bowen Foundation, 300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001, or to the UCC’s Office of Communication, Inc.