 So in a effort to keep you in the know on various religions, I want to talk about my faith and one of our holiest of holy weeks, in fact we call it Holy Week and this year ir starts on March 24th and ends on March 31st this year. Why do I say this year. Well like Ramadan, Easter does travel through our secular calendar.
The reason is that it follows the lunar calendar. Holy Week ends with Easter Sunday and Easter Sunday is traditionally the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Now in twist due to the adoption of calendars, one of the major Christian denominations, Eastern Orthodox, actually will start their Holy Week as the others end it with Easter. So Holy Week is preceded by Lent. This is for many Christians a time of preparation. Lent is 40 days, not counting the Sundays before Easter. It starts with Ash Wednesday, where people make a commitment often to some kind of spiritual discipline for the whole of Lent. Most Catholics for instance don’t eat Meat on the Fridays of Lent, hence a whole bunch of parishes with fish fries. Now I can tell you I am lawyer, married to a pastor, who got about six years of good Catholic education to, so I know the Lent Loophole. You can take a break from your Lenten practices on the Sundays of Lent. By the way, if you don’t know, Mardis Gras or Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, hence the one last party before the preparations for Lent. On Sunday March 24th, Holy Week began with Palm Sunday. In the biblical story, Jesus who was known as a teacher to most, is at the peak of his popularity during his life. People were very much starting to follow his teachers in larger numbers, with growing enthusiasm. And when he went to Jerusalem, he was greeted by cheering crowds waiving palm fronds aka leaves. Some of those palms will be kept by the church if they can, as they are burned next year to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. Now in the biblical story, this didn’t do good things for Jesus health and safety. The religious and civilian leaders of the area were none to happy with his popularity and growing claims he was the Son of God, a promised savior or messiah, so they began scheming to end his threat. On Thursday we celebrate Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday. Jesus was Jewish, and he and his followers celebrated the Jewish holiday of Passover with a large meal. At the end of the meal, knowing his time was about up, he gathered them and created a ritual now called communion. A ritual where believers share bread and wine in memory of Jesus life and later sacrifice. This was the last meal for Jesus with his followers, hence the name the Last Supper. That night, in the middle of the night, aided by one of Jesus’ inner circle or disciples Judas, the authorities arrested Jesus. There is a great story of Jesus telling one of his followers to put away a sword they had used to try to defend him and even performing a miraculous healing of one of the people there to arrest him that had been injured. By Friday morning, Jesus had been paraded back and forth to the secular and religious leaders, found guilty of crimes, mocked and tortured the whole time. He was then force to carry the instrument of his death, a wooded cross of crucifix to the place of his execution. Crucifixion was a form of execution in the Roman Empire and it was not pretty. You get nailed by your wrists, not hands as in most depictions and feet to the large wooden cross and left to die there, slowly, due to blood loss and other causes. And by later in the day, Jesus had died. His body was placed in tomb, but wasn’t fully prepared as Sunset began the Sabbath and per the strict adherence of the Jewish faith, work was not to be done. So the body was there Friday night and Saturday Night. On Sunday morning, a group of women in his inner circle went to the tomb to finish the proper burial rituals of their faith. Per our faith, when the women arrived the large stone closing the tomb off had been moved, and the body of Jesus was gone. The women saw someone and asked where the body had been moved, not realizing they were talking to Jesus who had risen or resurrected from the dead, on the third day, as the Jewish scriptures said would be the case. In the past Easter has been used as a time to bring new followers into the faith. It is usually a time of great celebrations with large displays of flowers at churches, large family meals, people dressed up in new spring clothing, etc. So, for my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith, I wish you all a blessed and meaningful Holy Week as travel from the joy of Palm Sunday, to the reverence of the Last Supper and pain and sacrifice of Good Friday to the Resurrection, both for those of us who start the journey this coming Sunday or the Sunday after.
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TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE & MOURNING FOR THE DEAD AND FIGHTING LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING by Kurt Young3/15/2024 I have written on our Facebook page before about this tragedy, but it’s worth revisiting here. Why? Well it helped drive many of the workplace safety innovations and systems we have today. So I talk about it quite a bit. Also, many people have never heard of it. On March 25, 1911, in Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, many women, and several women were working in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Today we would call it a sweatshop. Most of the workers were recent Jewish and Italian immigrants, some a young as 14. The conditions were as bad as you would imagine. At 4;40 PM, there was a fire. Unfortunately there was no thoughts of how to get people out of such workshops, in fact often the doors were chained shut. The first itself spread rapidly. Some died from the fire, some from smoke inhalation, some accidentally fell trying to get out of the way, some jumped rather than be burned to death. When all was said and done 146 workers, 123 woman and 23 men were dead and another 71 were injured. It was a huge tragedy that made a nationwide splash. And thanks to that, several good things did happen. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union which had already formed, grew dramatically. It has merged with other unions and it became UNITE HERE. Also, the momentum to create OSHA was born from this tragedy. But most relevant to us was what it did to the possible formation of a new way to take care of injured workers and employers. In Ohio the debate about whether to create a workers’ compensation system was well under way. But this pretty much sealed the deal. It was only a matters of months before our system was born, as people discovered just how horrible protections for workers who were injured or died were. In the early 20th Century, the US economy had become one where factories and workshops were rapidly replacing farms as the way that most people earned a living. But this wasn’t without costs. There were few, if any laws designed to protect workers safety or give them much recourse if they were injured on the job. Under the old system, a worker would have to sue their employer, prove the employer was solely responsible, and then get a settlement or a judgement. If no one was at fault, or a co-worker without any means, or a the worker themselves made a mistake, then there was no recovery. Labor unions and other workers’ advocates fought hard for workplace safety laws and safety nets to protect workers, but like now, Government was more concerned with businesses being profitable than about workers. I have seen that creep back in my three decades fighting for workers. This tragedy was on March 25, 191, just under three months later, the Workers’ Compensation Act in Ohio was passed and became law, on June 11, 2011. The original law was voluntary. A year later, the State of Ohio held a constitutional convention and the workers’ compensation system became a part of that. Ensuring that both employers and workers would get protections from the compromise that is workers’ compensation. Sadly, over the last thirty years especially, with one party rule in Ohio, for a party who once again is about corporate profits above all else, many protections for workers have been chipped away by amendment after amendment and court decision after court decision. But still, even in this weakened state, it’s far better than the system from before that date. So today, as a firm that fights for working families, we at the Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC, celebrate the start of our great compromise, and the power it gave it’s advocates in 1911. It’s taken far too many hits over the three decades Kurt has worked in this system, but thanks to the hard work of labor, workers’ advocates and attorneys like Kurt, it’s still there today. Still, to use of our favorite quotes from Mother Jones, repeated every year at Workers Memorial Day services throughout Ohio and the United States, we “mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living”. Then again, that’s what we have done every day for our 20 years as a firm and Kurt’s 30 as an attorney. We are entering Ramadan, one of the most holy periods in Islam. For many, this is a little bit of a mystery. I believe that we, as good allies need to educate ourselves on things we don’t know about, and it shouldn’t fall to those in a group with different traditions and beliefs to explain it to us. So, I decided we should talk about this practice, as I have had the pleasure of participating in multiple events during and around this annual faith practice and decided I could try to help clear up some mysteries. Like my faith, Christianity and the one ours flows from, Judaism, the Islamic calendar is lunar. So this observance moves throughout our secular calendar. It is ing the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It’s observance is one of the five major pillars of the Islamic faith. It lasts about 29 days running from the sighting of a crescent moon to the next. So, for 2024 it begins on March 11th. For the time of this practice, adult Muslims who are not acutely or chronically ill, travailing, elderly, breast-feeding, diabetic, or the like, fast from Dawn to Dusk. There is a pre-dawn meal, the suhur, and a nightly feast that breaks the fast is called an iftar. I have had the honor of attending several of the later, and after appropriate prayers and meditation it truly is a chance for great community. During the hours of fasting Muslims refrain not only from food and drink, but also tobacco products, sexual relations, and other things they believe separate them from God. Typically, practitioners devote themselves instead to salat (prayer) and study of the Quran. Like Lent for Christians, it is a time of spiritual reflection, self-improvement, and heightened devotion and worship. The act of fasting is said to redirect the heart away from worldly activities, its purpose being to cleanse the soul. Muslims believe that Ramadan teaches them to practice self-discipline, self-control, sacrifice, and empathy for those who are less fortunate, thus encouraging actions of generosity and compulsory charity. Muslims also believe fasting helps instill compassion for the food-insecure poor. Having undertaken fasts and other ways of denying myself during Lent, I can tell you it really did focus me on my prayer life and it also reminded me when I would fast for a whole day in high school that there are people in this world, and not far from me in my country, who go to bed hungry every night. Having seen family and friends break the fast with women & men of the faith and having done it myself, I can tell you it is a great chance to get to know someone else’s beliefs. And for me, it has been a meaningful experience. I can tell you years ago, after the horrible events of September 11th, local Mosques and Islamic Schools were under threat. A group of churches, including mine helped out by sending women and men to the schools during lunch breaks to provide extra eyes and protection for the children and allow the faculty and staff a break to take care of themselves. The next Ramadan, after the threats had died down, we are all invited to break the fast at an iftar and we were welcomed into a community and truly had a great meal with friends. And I can tell you every chance since, has lived up to that. So, from one who has enjoyed the spiritual and physical benefits of fasting from time to time, we wish our brothers and sisters of the faith, a meaningful Ramadan, Ramadan Kareem.  In February of 2004 I had a difficult decision to make. I had joined a new firm a little over a year before, and it wasn’t a good fit. I had gone there after almost nine years at another firm that kind of came apart thanks to one partner not wanting to sell their controlling interest in the firm to the others. The choice was try out yet another firm or do something crazy, start my own firm. I had some serious roadblocks. First, I had a 30 day window of opportunity. In the move from the firm of nine years I lost six out of seven of my clients. Unbeknownst to me the partners at the new firm were deliberately tanking the transition as they wanted to get my former senior partner to join them, and bring ALL of the firm’s clients with her. And it’s pretty near impossible to create a 600% increase in your client base in a year. And my wife was trying to turn around an inner city church that was constantly resulting in her cutting her pay. Any new firm would have to be done on the most modest of shoestring budgets, I managed to borrow from my mother basically three months worth of expenses for what I designed. So, the race was on. I had 30 days to find an office, set it up, help transfer all of my files, which meant getting every client in to sign a gaggle of forms, and basically create something from nothing. And it was a race against the clock. But I found an office in a good location. Saved a few dollars by agreeing to paint the office and pay for it myself, thanks to everyone who helped do that. I found a place that resold used office furniture and between them and Sauder we were set on that. Bought three computers, two copier, scanner printers, three two line phones, hung a room partition that turned two rooms into three, and on the morning of March 11, 2004, I opened. Now the first month, it was me. That was it. I had reached out to a former colleague at the firm I was at for years. She was willing to work multiple jobs so long as part time with me was one of them. But due to cash flow, I did the first 30 days solo. But it took off from there. A key settlement check came in, clients started finding us, we were able to bump Lisa to full time, and things took off from there, in part thanks to a client’s wife calling me and asking me a favor. I remember even saying, OK, but don’t get your hopes up on what I can do. She was asking if her son could intern for us to get college credit and see if he wanted to be a lawyer. Well, he not only did his internship, we hired him and he worked through his graduation from both undergrad and law school. Speaking of employees, in our 20 years we’ve helped employ seventeen people with either full time or part time jobs. Two of those were of counsel attorneys, which means they also had their own practices outside of our office, and they helped employ four more people over that time. And we have consistently tried to help out our local paralegal programs at the University of Toledo and Stautzenberger College, the essentially pre-law program at Lourdes University and both Toledo School for the Arts and Toledo Public Schools. We’ve had the privilege to have eighteen interns over that time with three of them eventually joining us as employees. And thanks to those employees and staff we have made a difference. We have managed to guide thousands of people, over 5,600 to date, to some type of legal help. Along with our Workers’ Compensation practice, we have also, with the help of our of counsel partners, helped people in Personal Injury in two states, Social Security Disability, Probate, and more. In the Workers’ Compensation practice, that has meant approximately 9,000 hearings before the Industrial Commission at their offices in Toledo, Lima, Dayton, Cincinnati, Mansfield, Columbus, Cambridge, Youngstown, Cleveland and Akron. Including seven trips to the final or Commission level hearing. In case you’re wondering, that is about 450 per year or an average of 9 hearings per week. But we’ve not just been handling administrative Workers’ Compensation hearings during that time frame. There are two types of appeals to court on our Workers’ Compensation Cases. One involves a jury trial in the county in which you were injured and we have filed several hundred of these appeals, trying several of them. We have also taken cases up to the Tenth Appellate District Court of Appeals (for some fights go to the court of appeals in Columbus on Workers’ Compensation medical or money benefits issues), we also handled cases in the Sixth, Third and Eighth Appellate Districts. And we have fought three fights to the Ohio Supreme Court, winning two of three S tate of Ohio ex rel. Johns Manville v. Harold Housman; State ex. rel Daimler Chrysler v. Industrial Commission ; and State ex rel. Estate of Sziraki v. Administrator Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. During that time we have been busy trying to make our community a better place. Our employees worked with Toledo Area Jobs with Justice offering voters free rides to the polls for nearly a decade until I became to prominent in local politics to stay and be considered non-partisan. We also have worked the YWCA Hope Center helping out domestic violence victims. We have volunteer with the Seagate Food Bank, Mobile Meals and others try to help stamp out hunger and Promise House Project to end youth homelessness. And we have members serve in unpaid positions at four churches. We have also done our best to make the legal profession better with I have hadtwo articles on the practice of law published in that time frame. I have also been an instructor at Fifteen Continuing Legal Education Seminars for the Akron Bar Association, The Toledo Bar Association, and the Ohio Association for Justice. And that’s just Kurt. Our other of counsel attorney Russ Gerney has spoken to other ones. And during all this time, I have also held three other paid jobs at various times, including Toledo City Council Member at Large, Instructor Stautzenberger College, Board Member of the Lucas County Board of Elections and some pretty intense unpaid servant roles. How have we done? The firm and I have received thirteen different awards for practicing law, four political awards and two awards for his work in the community. So not bad if I say so myself. But none of that would be possible without the support of all of our families, our vendor partners, our incredible team members here and those who have left, and our clients. We all want to thank you for whatever way we’ve worked together to make this possible, an we look forward to our next big anniversary. |
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