Sunday, December 29, 2019

Amy Fisher - The Long Island Lolita

Amy Elizabeth Fisher was born on August 21, 1974. In her book, Amy Fisher: My Story, co-written with Sheila Weller, Amy wrote that she suffered early childhood trauma after a family member, repeatedly, sexually abused her. Then, at age 13, a man hired to work at her home raped her. In her very early teens, she was sexually active, eventually resulting in an unwanted pregnancy and abortion. The abuse she suffered as a child seemed to spur her promiscuous behavior, later in life. The Beginnings of the Sexual Affair: Amy met Joey Buttafuoco in May 1991, when she took her car to his auto shop for repairs. She began visiting the shop and hanging around Joey on a regular basis. Her attraction toward him grew. On July 2, with her car in repair, Joey offered to drive her home. While at her home, the two had their first sexual encounter in her bedroom. Joey was 35, married, with two children. Amy Fisher was 16 and in high school. For the next several months, the two solidified their love affair at local motels. Amys Total Focus Was On Joey: According to Amy, Joey often talked about his unhappiness in his marriage. Amy, in return, shared intimate details of her life to him. The relationship was going strong, but other areas of Amy’s life were beginning to unravel. She was doing badly in school and she lost interest in her friends and family. Her focus was on Joey. By August 1991, Amy was out of work and in need of money. Allegedly, Joey suggested she become an escort at a local escort service. Amy took his suggestion. The Ultimatum: Within a month, Amy was making good money as a prostitute. By November, her thoughts about Joey and his wife had become obsessive. She was jealous of Mary Jo and wanted her out of the picture. In frustration, she decided to give Joey an ultimatum - her or his wife. Joey picked his wife. Amy, stunned and hurt, ended the relationship. Unable to cope with the break-up, she cut her wrists, but the cuts were superficial. After the suicide attempt, Amy decided to try to get back to her normal life. Amy Dwells on Getting Rid of Mary Jo: Amy began dating Paul Makely, a co-owner of a local gym. But in January, Joey and Amy resumed their affair. Allegedly, Joey wasnt bothered by her being a prostitute, but he did get upset when he found out she was having a relationship with Makely. Not wanting to risk the refound relationship, Amy led Joey to believe that Makely was unimportant to her. She also began dwelling on how to get rid of Mary Jo, who she viewed as the biggest risk to her relationship with Joey. The Decision to Kill Mary Jo: On May 13, 1992, almost a year from the first time she met Joey, Amy decided, once and for all, to get rid of Mary Jo. She heard that Peter Guagenti could help her get a gun. Amy said that on that same evening, she shared her plan with Joey and that he supplied her with tips on how to shoot his wife. On May 15, Amy has stated that Joey contacted her to find out if she had a gun, which at that point she did not. Joey has always denied knowing anything about Amy’s plans to kill Mary Jo. Amy Shoots Mary Jo Buttafuoco: Amy contacted Guagenti, and the plan to kill Mary Jo was arranged. On May 17, she and Guagenti replaced his license plates with two that Amy had stolen. At 11:30 a.m., with Guagenti driving, the two went to the Buttafuoco home. Armed with a Titan .25 semi-automatic gun, Amy confronted Mary Jo on her front porch. After a short conversation, Amy hit Mary Jo with the gun, causing her to fall to the ground. While still on the ground, Amy shot her in the head. Mary Jo Struggles to Stay Alive: Neighbors quickly came to Mary Jo’s aid. Her chances for survival were bad. After several hours in surgery, Mary Jos condition stabilized, but the bullet remained lodged in her head. Joey told the police that Paul Makely and Pauls girlfriend, Amy, may have been involved in the shooting. He said he had given advice to Amy about not paying her boyfriends drug debt, and Makely, when finding out, sought vengeance. The police doubted his story and suspected he was hiding something. Mary Jo Identifies Amy as Her Attacker: On May 20, Mary Jo was conscious and giving police the details of the shooting. Joey, knowing the police were getting close to the truth about his love affair, told the police the shooter might have been Amy Fisher. Mary Jo identified Amy as the shooter from a picture she was shown. The police, unable to locate Amy, asked Joey to contact her and find out where she was. He reluctantly obliged. On May 21, the police arrested Amy Fisher, at her home, for the shooting of Mary Jo Buttafuoco. The Long Island Lolita: Amy told the police that the shooting was a mistake - that the gun discharged when she hit Mary Jo on the head. Knowing Joey had turned against her, she also told them that Joey had given her the gun and that the two were lovers - a charge Joey denied. On May 29, Amy pled not guilty to the charges of attempted murder in the second degree, armed felony, assault, and criminal use of a firearm. The national press dubbed Amy the Long Island Lolita. Friends and former clients obliterated what was left of her credibility by selling the press videos that had been secretly filmed of her, and agreeing to interviews in which they would bash her character. Amys bail was set at $2 million, the highest in the history of Nassau County, Long Island. After two months in jail, Amys bail was secured, but only after she agreed to give up the rights of her story to KLM Productions. Her lawyer then arranged a plea agreement in which Amy would spend up to fifteen years in prison in exchange for testimony against Joey. Amy Fisher accepted the plea agreement and was sentenced accordingly. Guagenti spent six months in prison for giving Amy the gun. In 1993, the DA charged Joey with statutory rape. Amy testified about their sexual affair. Joey was indicted on felony charges of rape, sodomy, and endangering the welfare of a minor. With the evidence against him mounting, Joey pled guilty to one count of statutory rape. He served six months in prison. Amy was released from prison after seven years. In 2003, she married a man she met online, who is 24-years older than her, and the father of her son. Now a columnist for the Long Island Press, she won a Media Award for Column-News from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2004. Her new book, If I Knew Then... is out, and she hopes it will help others. Source: Long Island Press and Amy Fisher: My Story

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Did Jazz Start A New Orleans Or Chicago - 1451 Words

Did Jazz Start in New Orleans or Chicago? It documented that New Orleans is the city that gave birth to Jazz. The deeper one dives into this there are more arguments that can claim one or the other city of its jazz origin. New Orleans traditions keep many of the early customs thriving and as a novice it would be hard to challenge this without being open minded to see what each city has own historical references. The city of New Orleans has a wide culture of all races and was a natural setting for the music of West Africa and Europe to converge. Storyville was a part of New Orleans where early jazz developed and continued to thrive until 1917. Depending on the point of view or where ones allegiance falls based on the style of music is preferred others say jazz came directly to Chicago’s 12th Street station from the Illinois Central Railroad with the slaves. Part of the mass movement of African Americans from South to North is what came to be called â€Å"The Great Migration† and musicians came north for the same others did the demand for factory jobs and decent money to support the craft. Chicago had major musical talent as well before Storyville closed and sheet music featuring the Pekin Theater dates from 1904. According to the Chicago defender, Erskine Tate played his violin in Chicago in 1910 and Wilbur Sweatman was in Chicago playing clarinet in 1906. From a musical position, there is less of an argument because the characteristics are different. 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Thursday, December 12, 2019

Participative management Essay Example For Students

Participative management Essay Participative management is a new approach in the work force today. Job enrichment, quality circles, and self-managing work teams are just some of the approaches. Companies share a common goal of increasing employee involvement. They want to raise the quality, performance, and productivity of their workers. The questions that follow will be answered in this paper. What is participative management? What are the advantages of participative management? How does it raise quality, productivity, and performance? How can it be successfully started, implemented, and sustained? What are the results of experiments done in the work force?Participative management is a process by which a company attempts to increase the potential of its employees by involving them in decisions affecting their work lives. A distinguishing characteristic of the process is that its goals are not simply acquired, they focus on the improvement of productivity and efficiency, but they are also fulfilling and self-enhan cing in themselves. The key goals of employee involvement programs is to enhance the quality of the employees’ working life, management must be responsive to the requests of the employees. The best way to ascertain those requests is to ask employees. If workers can be motivated and given the opportunity to participate in the search for improved methods of job performance, and if this motivation and participation can be maintained over time, job performance should improve. Productivity is higher in companies with an organized program of worker participation. Employee participation can and does raise productivity. The most appropriate form will vary from company to company but participation works only when both parties want it to work. The solution to America’s pathetic productivity growth isn’t necessarily more capital spending (Lewis Renn, 1992). People tend to accomplish what they decide they want to accomplish. Ideas, changes, suggestions and recommendations that are generated by the people who implement them stand a much greater chance of being successfully implemented. In theory, people who have a hand in making a decision are better motivated to execute it. Participation can improve the quality of decision making. Participative management appears to offer tremendous advantages. It can create organizations where people at all levels think for themselves and manage their own work, then far fewer employees will be needed and those who remain will have more rewarding and satisfying jobs. This in turn could help make the higher labor costs in the United States competitive because lower-level employees would be contributing more by using both their hands and their minds. It could lead to higher-quality products that are internationally competitive. If our companies were able to effectively utilize participative management, the advantages could be tremendous. We could be a more productive society in which work contributes to the quality of people’s lives. We could again be competitive in international markets, be admired for our management skills, and be a society whose workplaces are a source of pride and power. We might also come much closer to matching the reality of how people are treated: with respect; dignity; democratic rights; individual rights; and the right to share in the fruits of their labor (Lawler, 1990). These values have made our society for over two centuries but they have not provided much power for our work environment. There are ten steps stated by Jerre Lewis and Leslie Renn to implementing a successful participative management program. Step one: Support of top management and union leadership. Top management must sanction and be supportive of any participative management and employee involvement program. It is very important that once top management has made the decision in favor of participative management, all supervisory personnel be properly trained on how to change their management style from the old traditional hard line approach to the participatory style. Union leadership must also be prepared for embarking on a participative management program. Many union leaders have feared that participative management and employee involvement programs wo uld undermine the role of the local union and the collective bargaining agreements. Without the support of the union leadership, the program will fail. Step two: Employees must be ready to accept a participative management program. In order for employees to be receptive to such a program, a culture change must occur. Implementing a participative management program in an adversarial work climate will not work and be successful. Employees must be willing to change and desire to start working together as a team. This culture change does not happen overnight. Everyone in the organization must have the same equal opportunity to become involved in decision making relative to his or her own job. Step three: Establish trust amongst all employees. Trust is the glue that binds employees together in an organization. An employee involvement program will not be successful without trust. Management must initiate trust among its employees. In order for trust to occur, honesty and integrity must prevail. Management should not make any promises to its employees that it can not deliver on and back up. Trust is an extremely important element in any participative management program and must be established as such or the program will not be a success. Step four: Any participative management program should be initiated on a voluntary basis. Employees should not be forced to participate in decision making against their own will. Once an employee decides not to become involved in such a program, he or she should not be singled out as refusing to be a team player and viewed in a negative manner. It is very important that the attitudes of these employees continue to be respected. Dumpster Diving EssayThe key to sustaining a successful participative management program is in the relations between unions and management. It lies in the philosophy of, and the commitment to, cooperation. A cooperative labor/management stance will lead to improved quality and increased productivity; an adversarial stance will lead only to discord (Lewis Renn, 1992). If participation in workplace problem solving dispersed across a sufficiently large portion of the workforce, then organizational effectiveness should also improve. High levels of trust, commitment, and participation can be maintained over time and across large numbers of workers, however, only if they are reinforced by higher level business and collective bargaining strategies. There have been many successful implementations of the participative management program. One company that tried was General Motors. They have an old plant in Fremont, California that began producing cars again. The plant was completely renovat ed and the only things left was the shell of the old main building and some of the old employees. Just about everything else was new such as corporate sponsorship, operating philosophy, and the manufacturing system. The new United Motor Manufacturing Inc. is a joint venture of General Motors and Toyota. It was set up as a means through which General Motors could learn the Japanese Manufacturing system, and the Japanese could learn how to operate in an American context. An open environment was established at Nummi in which joint problem solving by labor and management, seeking options for mutual gain while developing good faith and trust, prevailed. The quality of life at work in turn resulted in better performance and higher productivity on the job (Lewis Renn, 1992). Motorola is another success. Their participative management program is operating for more than ninety-five percent of their manufacturing employees and has been dramatically successful (Lawler, 1986). Honeywell, Proct or Gamble, and dozens of other companies have built new-design plants that minimize the distance between workers and managers. The plants involve employees in many decisions and are structured on the basis of work teams. In some plants employees make pay, hiring, scheduling, and quality decisions. Honeywell, Xerox, Motorola, Ford, General Motors (GM), and Westinghouse have all publicly committed themselves to using a more participative approach to organizing and managing people. Their change programs are even more significant than the increased use of such practices as quality circles, gainsharing, and self-managing teams because they are trying to change the entire organization, not just a few plants or a few practices (Lawler, 1986). The work place of the future will require greater emphasis on such key human resource factors as participative management, training programs, and teamwork. Employee involvement and participative initiatives are likely to expand considerably over the next several years in United States businesses. If they are to remain competitive in the marketplace and survive with the intense overseas challenges awaiting them, worker involvement and these initiatives must be present. BibliographyLawler III, E. (1986). High-Involvement Management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. Lewis, J. Renn, L. (1992). How To Start A Participative Management Program: Ten Easy Steps. Interlochen: Lewis Renn Associates, Inc. Schuller, T. (1985). Democracy at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sirianni, C. (1987). Worker Participation and the Politics of Reform. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Warner, M. (1984). Organizations and Experiments: Designing New Ways of Managing Work. New York: John Wiley Sons.