It’s especially exciting to see how the Downtown Renaissance has sparked a wave of community-driven initiatives, such as the Oneonta Storefront Project, which fills vacant storefronts with art, and downtown business owners collaborating on promotions like sidewalk sales. Organizers and artists already doing cool things like the second Saturday Nighttime Alley Market have been able to harness their efforts to something bigger with the Oneonta Downtown Renaissance, too.…
SUNY lecture looks at ‘The 57 Bus’ incident By MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com ONEONTA — At 18, Sasha Fleischman was lit on fire while riding the bus home from school in Oakland. Fleischmann is gender non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. They fell asleep, and another teen, Richard Thomas, lit their skirt as a prank. Thomas was arrested at school; Fleischmann was hospitalized for weeks with severe third-degree burns. Dashka Slater, a journalist who lives close to the bus route, began covering the story. She spent three years following both instigator and victim. Slater’s book “The 57 Bus”…