Richard T. Crane Technical Preparatory High School (Crane High School), on the Near West Side, will become a high school focused on training students to enter the medical field, rather than being closed.
"I am pleased that the Crane Coalition, led by CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard and Illinois State Senator Annazette Collins, has come to an agreement with CPS and members of the local community," said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a press statement.
Continue reading this entry »
— Tyler Davis
Mr. Mayor, why won't you tell this woman what your staff was saying about her dead grandchild?
That's the devastating question Chicago Tribune reporter David Kidwell leaves unasked at the end of his forceful article on the Mayor's refusal to release his staff's internal communications regarding the city's plan to build a network of red-light cameras across the city. I'm not giving a blockquote to encourage you to read the article. Go ahead, then come back. Or, open it in a new tab and switch back and--you know what, you know what you're doing.
The full transcript of Kidwell's contentious interview with the Mayor, released by the Tribune as a companion piece to the article, is a winding, gruff dialog between approaches to transparency, accountability, and even democracy. At times frankly insulting ("I mean this insulting so get it right") and at times sounding like legal wrangling in a courtroom ("You said there is a disconnect. That's a conclusion. How do you know there's a disconnect?"), Kidwell and Emanuel argue about just what transparency means and just how voters are supposed to hold their elected leaders accountable.
Throughout the interview, the Mayor is frustrated that the Tribune seems to have decided what "transparency" means--e.g., full access to internal administration decisionmaking--and passes judgment on his commitment to his transparency pledge based on their interpretation. The Mayor repeatedly chides the Tribune for ignoring the will of the voters on the matter--diminishing the Tribune's concerns as out of step with the type of transparency people want. This is, at first glance, the "voters don't care about process, just results" philosophy.
But that's not all it is, and--I can't believe I'm writing this--I have to side, with some reservations, with the Mayor.
Continue reading this entry »
— Ramsin Canon /
Chicago Tue Feb 14 2012
Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. Depending on where one lives, Chicagoans take pride in the neighborhood they call home and judge others based on where they live. But how does Chicago being a city of neighborhoods effect us in areas such as with poverty and our persistent segregation?
Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect by Robert J. Sampson examines Chicago and how being a city of neighborhoods affects Chicago and the social problems in our city. The book is bound to be a selection for college classes on urban theory, particularly in Chicago, but it is only a good book for casual reading if one is an urban theory geek.
Continue reading this entry »
— Monica Reida /
Budget Mon Feb 13 2012
A list of city employee reimbursements was posted on the City's data portal over the weekend, accounting for more than $1 million that the city has spent on various employee expenses over the last 13 months.
Continue reading this entry »
— Tyler Davis
By Joycelene Fernandez
On Tuesday, Columbia College welcomed Gloria Steinem as the second guest in their "Conversations in the Arts" program. Steinem, a seasoned journalist, speaker, and feminist activist, started off the night with a light joke that the auditorium was in fact the "smallest biggest place on a campus" that she had ever lectured within. But regardless of how big or small the space, Steinem found herself facing a completely full house — just another aspect that sets Steinem apart from the average septuagenarian.
Not that Steinem is your "average" anything. A co-founder of Ms. magazine, a bestselling author and founder of several women's rights organizations, Steinem's long career has not only been prolific, but pivotal in the fight for human rights. For over half a century, she has contributed years of work in helping change the world, and all for the better.
Continue reading this entry »
— Mechanics
By Joe Macaré
There are a lot of fascinating sights to be seen at Occupy Chicago's new indoor space at 500 W. Cermak Ave., but perhaps the most striking is the painting of "King Rahm" and the Aldermanic puppet figures who hang from his fingers.
Four members of the City Council have been singled out for this dubious honor: Carrie Austin (Ward 34), Walter Burnett, Jr. (27), Joe Moore (49), and Joe Moreno (1).
Moreno's relationship with Occupy Chicago is complicated. Always active on Twitter, he expressed support there early on and has retweeted calls to donate coffee to Occupiers at LaSalle and Jackson — and in an email conversation, he told me he is still "absolutely sympathetic to Occupy."
Easy to say, but when I asked Moreno what the issues are on which he and the movement agree, he laid out a pretty spot-on diagnosis of the malaise to which Occupy is a response:
The priorities of our nation have been upside down for the last 30 years. Since Ronald Reagan, it seems we have somehow legitimized greed; somehow made this most negative of things seem patriotic.
Thankfully, since Occupy began, people have started to question these assumptions. The 2008 economic crisis was a much-needed slap in the face to our citizenry.
The people who caused this near-Depression are today back to doing the same things, which caused it. Occupy helps (and sometimes forces) people to recognize the economic injustice, which is now so metastasized within our system that no one seems to know how to kill it.
Continue reading this entry »
— Mechanics /
Op-Ed Thu Feb 09 2012
by Bob Quellos
City Clerk Susana Mendoza withdrew 15-year-old Herbie Pulgar's entry into the annual contest to design Chicago's city sticker yesterday after fears that the sticker design contained gang affiliated symbols and threats to the Chicago Police Department. This action and the controversy surrounding Pulgar's design leaves me with some questions and thoughts:
First, Jody Weis is still in Chicago? After a not so glamorous stint as head of the CPD, it seemed like Jody Weis had finally been run out of town. Apparently not. Perhaps Weis put himself forward as head interpreter of the city sticker as a way of letting us know he's still in Chicago where he's been working hard to put together a coloring book about Chicagoland gangs for the Chicago Crime Commission.
Continue reading this entry »
— Mechanics /
TIFs Wed Feb 08 2012
Protesters brought out the golden toilet once again in a rally aimed at Mayor Rahm Emanuel, demanding that he designate TIF funds towards jobs at schools, libraries and clinics.
The gilded john was marched to City Hall, where protesters associated with the Grassroots Collaborative were told it needed to stay outside.
Continue reading this entry »
— Tyler Davis
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has announced the construction of a facility in Crete, Illinois, about 35 miles outside the city, to detain about 750 people pending deportation. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has spoken out against the facility, which is another indicator of the federal government's continued deportation-heavy immigration policy. The facility will be run by Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison operator with over a billion dollars in revenue. Phil Kadner of the Southtown details the local opposition (and support) for the facility. The United Neighborhoods Organization (UNO), who've come in for some criticism in this space in the past, also released a statement against the building of this facility. All indicators are that it will be built, though, increasing ICE's local infrastructure, perhaps easing conflicts they've had with local law enforcement.
— Ramsin Canon /
Meetings were held in Chicago and Evanston this week to update the public on the process of renovating a portion of the Red and Purple train lines. This process has been titled the RPM project - Red and Purple Modernization.
This would only affect the section of trains between Belmont and Linden.
There are four proposals being discussed. One plan is to simply rehabilitate the train traces and stops. Another plan is to modernize the system and consolidate some of the stops, bringing the total count of stops on this stretch from 21 to 17. Stations that would be consolidated into others are Jarvis, Thorndale and Lawrence on the Red Line; Foster and South Boulevard on the Purple Line.
Continue reading this entry »
— Tyler Davis
Ameena Matthews, one of the "violence interrupters" featured in the documentary The Interrupters, was on "The Colbert Report" Wednesday night. No matter what you thought of the film or the effectiveness of CeaseFire's mission, it's clear that Matthews is a force to be reckoned with. The Interrupters will be broadcast on PBS's "Frontline" on Feb. 14.
— Andrew Huff
Op-Ed Wed Feb 01 2012
by Celeste Meiffren
This week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he will be immediately implementing some of the reforms proposed by his Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Reform Panel five months ago. All of the proposed reforms are necessary to fix TIF and need to become law before more of our tax dollars are wasted.
Every year, $500 million worth of property tax revenue collected from Chicago taxpayers flows into a funding pool that, up until very recently, has been completely off the books--allowing for an out-of-control spending spree to well-connected developers and other special interests.
Continue reading this entry »
— Mechanics
Chicago Wed Feb 01 2012
Why bother?
I vaguely remember being pugnacious about the direction our leadership was taking the city in, of having some degree of passion about what was wrong and what was right--or at least, what was wrong and what was potentially better. I filled notebooks--I'm flipping through one now--with ideas for articles and research projects that could contribute, in some way, to avoiding calamity, to exposing the material reality under the political rhetoric. Flipping through these notebooks now, scrolling through the myriad unpublished drafts, nothing stirs me. What I feel is more akin to a sad curiosity, how it must feel to look at optimistic battle plans scrawled on maps for some war that was lost long ago.
Our biggest enemy, I realized, is a lack of ideas for how to improve the human family. A complete lack of ambition to create a better world from yet another generation. Chicago, the laboratory neoliberal city, doesn't belong to us anymore. It's a "global" city belonging to people who don't even live here, and we have no ideas how to take it, or any other city, back from them.
When Rahm Emanuel announced his candidacy for the Mayor's office, it was taken as assumed that he'd win. The media never treated any of his opponents seriously--and perhaps they should not have. Though it is a bit of an observer interference problem; the media treatment of candidacy certainly has an impact on their chances of success. Emanuel won the neoliberal's way: he tapped his connections to international business, and particular finance, and drown his opponents in cash. A quirky twitter account got more coverage than his opponents. That was that.
He has since pursued a "business-friendly," or actually working class-hostile, agenda. Nevertheless, people who consider themselves "liberals" and "progressives" support those policies for the same reason they support Barack Obama's neoliberal policies: out of deference to party labels, personal careerism, and forest-for-trees interest in technocratic solutions that nibble at problems.
Politics in Chicago are wholly uninteresting. We've been reduced to sadly cheerleading the release of data as progressive victories for "the people." What else is there to cheerlead? In the neoliberal city, we have to pretend there's been a regime change--we have to play the pretend game Emanuel represents a substantive break from the Daley administration--he does not.
Continue reading this entry »
— Ramsin Canon /
NATO-G8 Wed Feb 01 2012
The White House has announced it will cover the cost of security for the G8 and NATO summits to be held in Chicago in May, as reported by Crain's.
It is likely that this will come in the form of federal grants after the summits are done and paid for, according to comments made by Office of Emergency Management and Communications Director Gary Schenkel at a City Council hearing a few weeks ago. So the city will be initially footing the bill, only to later get reimbursed by the federal government.
— Tyler Davis
