Blogging can be a liberating writing tool. So it is for a friend of mine. Take a look at her blog, "A Womyn's Ecdysis."
Wishing you a great weekend and (if applicable) a Shabbat shalom!
Update: I just spent some time reading through posts on A Womyn's Ecdysis and enjoyed every moment - you go womyn!!
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Dear All,
Seth Patinkin is a Jewish resident of Chicago, Illinois, whom completed his undergraduate studies at Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana) in 1998 then his PhD in mathematics, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, under the advisement of Nobel Prize Winner John Nash, at Princeton University in 2003.
Mr. Patinkin has been involved in a number of entrepreneurial activities, including the founding two software companies, CUTTR Inc.and Plasoft, Inc. followed by the forming, together with Prof. Leonid Koralov of Princeton
University, of a quantitative investment advisor, KPRG LLC, which specializes in short-term numeric predictions of stock price fluctuations. Mr. Patinkin, whom currently works in quantitative finance in Chicago, was recently named to the "30 under 30" list of his undergraduate alma mater, where he studied under a prestigious Wells Scholarship (http://www.bloomingpedia.org/wiki/Seth_Patinkin).
A small footnote to Patinkin's business career includes a small rental business,
consisting of a small number of rental houses in Bloomington, Indiana, which Mr. Patinkin has run since shortly after his college days there.
Starting in Fall 2005, Mr. Patinkin and certain of his Jewish tenants started to suffer an onslaught of overt anti-semitic threats, when it was discovered by City of Bloomington officials that Mr. Patinkin is a person of the Jewish faith. A housing inspector, Kevin Bowlen, uttered numerous epithets in the presence of Patinkin, his former tenant Moshe Berman and Patinkin's wife, Pamela Patinkin.
Subsequently, Mr. Patinkin was told by another housing inspector, Carol Jack, that "[The City of Bloomington] does not like your kind around here." The City of
Bloomington Legal Department, headed by Lisa Abbott, subsequently warned Patinkin's tenants that they would pursue fines and a lawsuit against them for alleged over-occupancy. Patinkin and his tenants responded in kind, producing numerous affidavits, attesting to their compliance with local ordinances.
Patinkin complained of the treatment he and his tenants had received from City of Bloomington officials to the office of Mayor Mark Kruzan in a meeting attended by Rabbi Sue Laikin Shifron in April 2006.
The harassment continued into the 2006-2007 school year, with the City of Bloomington Legal Department actively causing four (4) groups of Patinkin tenants to leave Patinkin's properties, despite full compliance with permit requirements and ordinances, under the guise of tens of thousands of dollars of fines for ordinance violations. The wife of Legal Department head Kevin Robling, Dorothye "Dot" Robling, also happens to be the head of the Student Legal Services department of Indiana University, which specializes in landlord-tenant disputes.
Once the move-outs materialized, Kevin and Dorothye then proceeded to advise Patinkin's former residents that they should seek refund of their security deposits from Patinkin, under the guise of phantom ordinance violations. As if
the vacant houses were not bad enough, Patinkin was soon dealing with the brunt of approximately twelve (12) lawsuits filed by the City of Bloomington and his former tenants in the Monroe Circuit Court.
In an effort to stop the bleeding, Patinkin filed a lawsuit on April 17, 2007, against the City of Bloomington in the Southern District of Indiana (07-cv-00482) for violating his right to equal protection of the law, and a number of other civil rights violations. Carl Lamb, of Indianapolis, is listed as Patinkin's attorney of record. Around the same time, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council started to investigate the problems
experienced by Patinkin.
It seems that Mr. Patinkin has become the object of the despotism of the local government officials.
Even more disturbing, Patinkin's lawsuit is not unique. Another former Bloomington landlord, Barbara Leonard, also has a case (06-cv-00021) pending in the same district, relating to the improper withholding of a building permit by
the City of Bloomington when it was discovered that a prospective buyer of one of Leonard's commercial properties was a Jewish investor from New York. In an opinion dated March 26, 2007, Hon. John Daniel Tinder overturned a motion to dismiss brought by the City of Bloomington, stating "... the bottom line here is that if [Leonard] was denied a permit because city officials had a specific "ill-intent" towards it, then it was denied the equal protection of the law ... or if the building permit were denied because city officials believed [Leonard]
was going to sell the property to a Jewish developer, then its civil rights were violated and [the City of Bloomington] would be liable."
We encourage you to investigate these facts for yourself. Below are some relevant
contacts:
United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana/Laura A.
Briggs, Clerk
TEL: 317-229-3700
FAX: 317-229-3959
City of Bloomington Housing Department/Lisa Abbott
TEL: 812-349-3420
FAX: 812-349-3421
City of Bloomington Legal Department/Kevin Robling
TEL: 812-349-3426
FAX: 812-349-3441
Student Legal Services/Dorothye Robling
TEL: 812-855-7867
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