Flashpoint Magazine

Here are the facts that won't be published in our local media.

"The abandonment of properties by landlords like Charles Finnell is not somehow the opposite of the gentrification underway in the North Limestone and Jefferson Street corridors; these processes are instead intimately interconnected and dependent upon one another. The lack of both public and private investment in these neighborhoods over long periods of time has set the stage for a class of landlords — absentee or otherwise — to gobble up bunches of real estate on the cheap, reshaping surrounding neighborhoods in such a way as to maximize their private gain at the expense of the community and common good. For these individuals and the associated financiers, developers and real estate agents, it makes little difference whether one refurbishes a historic building into an upscale bar or leaves a shotgun house to fall into disrepair while continuing to collect rent, so long as the profit margins are high enough. [...] So even if the actions and approaches of individual landlords or developers can range from the more-to-less benign, the concentration of property ownership in a smaller and smaller number of hands, many of which tend to be from outside the neighborhood, means that the future of the East End continues to be shaped largely by a select few individuals with little personal stake in the area. Whether the news of the day is the collapse of an abandoned building or the construction of an upscale mixed-use development meant to lure ‘the right kind of people’ into long-neglected areas of the city, it’s of the utmost importance that we treat these processes and places not as separate or isolated, but rather fundamentally interconnected and mutually-constituted."

Connecting the dots of vacancy and abandonment in Lexington’s East End At approximately 6:30pm on Saturday, August 8th, the building standing at 500–502 East Third Street on the corner of Rac…

Lexington youth's (SCAPA Students) wins C-SPAN national competition for minimum wage documentary. The youth are our future and we should listen to them. The Artificial Wage

StudentCam 2015 Grand Prize Winner [The Artifical Wage] is the grand prize winner in C-SPAN Classroom's StudentCam contest, produced by Anna Gilligan Katie Demos, and Michael Lozovoy, eighth graders at the School for the Creative and…

Lexington Fayette County Government has a projected fiscal surplus of $10 million... but "The council removed $600,000 for body cameras for police officers after police staff said that video storage is costly."

How progressive is Lexington when the president and the country propose a tangible step towards reducing police brutality by requiring officers to wear body cams and we do this?

Lexington council approves $323 million budget that includes money for raises, courthouse The Lexington Urban County Council approved a $323 million budget Thursday that includes 4 percent raises for most city employees, nearly $58 million in borrowing and $3 million for social service programs.

Peace Walk Planned In Response To Lexington Shootings LEX18.com, your continuous news source for breaking news, local news, Kentucky news, StormTracker weather and True Blue sports coverage for Lexington, South Central Kentucky and Southeastern Kentucky.