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Activists rallying against mass surveillance in Federal Plaza. (Photo/Emily Brosious)
This past Friday October 26, organizers and activists with Restore the Fourth Chicago rallied for Fourth Amendment privacy rights in Chicago's Federal Plaza.
The rally was coordinated in solidarity with a national Rally Against Mass Surveillance organized by the Stop Watching Us Coalition.
"We're holding this rally on the twelfth anniversary of the signing of the Patriot Act," Billy Joe Mills, an organizer and spokesperson for Restore the Fourth Chicago, said in an interview.
A caucus of nine Bronzeville pastors wants Walmart to agree to pay living wages and hire from the community when the store opens its newest Chicago location at 47th and Cottage Grove Avenue.
Roderick Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center and a spokesman for the caucus of Bronzeville pastors, said the group's main concern is that the community be able to prosper from Walmart's expansion into their neighborhood.
This past Friday, over 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) in Chicago's Loop to protest hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Illinois.
An award from the American Institute of Architects is the latest bit of positive attention the new Focal Point Community Campus has received since the plan was announced December 2012.
Focal Point will serve the Little Village area as well as North Lawndale, Pilsen, Brighton Park, Back of the Yards and Archer Heights.
HDR Architecture, the firm behind the project, conceives the campus as "both an anchor and change agent" serving the neighborhoods surrounding the barren post-industrial area once occupied by Washburne Trade School.
The idea for a healthcare campus originated with Guy Medaglia, CEO of Saint Anthony Hospital and Chicago Southwest Development Corporation. According to Jacinda Adams, director of marketing and public relations at the hospital, Mayor Daley approached Medaglia wondering what Saint Anthony would do with the land once occupied by the Washburne. Rather than simply building a new hospital, Medaglia proposed the healthcare campus as a self-sustaining model in a time when state and federal resources are dwindling.
A new facility for Saint Anthony Hospital, which is currently located in a 118-year-old building at 2875 W. 19th St., will be one of many components of the project.
According to the American Institute of Architects, Focal Point stands out as a healthcare facility because of the multi-pronged approach to community health care it aims to accommodate -- the model includes retail space, an educational center, childcare facilities and areas for recreation. Adams said non-profit programs offered at Focal Point will be subsidized by the revenue generated from tenant spaces and other profit-making initiatives to ensure needed services will not falter due to a lack of funding.
This Tuesday, October 15, thousands of activists, residents and state and local officials will converge on UIC Forum for Take Back Chicago rally and town hall meeting.
Take Back Chicago is convened by Grassroots Collaborative, an alliance of 11 neighborhood and community organizations with the common goal of advancing the interests of working and middle class people in Chicago.
This meeting represents the "launch of a long-term, cross-movement progressive organizing campaign in Chicago," Amisha Patel, Executive Director of Grassroots Collaborative, said in an interview.
Dan Linn speaking at Chicago-Kent College of Law (Photo/Illinois NORML)
Dan Linn hadn't always planned on becoming the leader of a statewide movement to legalize marijuana. But at 31, as the Executive Director of the Illinois chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML), that's exactly what he has been doing for the better part of the last decade.
In the Fox Lake area of Illinois where he grew up, "drinking was huge," Linn said in an interview. From a young age, he could see the effects alcohol had on people. Then he saw the effects marijuana had on people and "it was like a night and day difference," he said.
Cook County Jail has drawn attention to itself lately for collecting large amounts of Chicago's mentally ill, so much so that it has become the largest mental health facility in Illinois.
The story is particularly inflammatory given Gov. Pat Quinn's corresponding funding cuts to Illinois mental health facilities, and the closing of six Chicago mental health clinics last year.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has been vocal in condemning the incarceration of Chicago's mentally ill, who he says are regularly falling through the cracks of an at-capacity (and underfunded) prison system despite his best efforts to provide therapy and medication to those in need.
"This is a population that people don't care about and so as a result of that there are not the resources out there to care for them," Dart said in an interview on CBS 60 Minutes Sunday night.
In saying this, Dart touches on an even larger issue with the U.S. criminal justice system -- it has become a place for unwanted members of society to collect. Of course, those suffering from mental illnesses are but one group who, as we regretfully phrase it, "fall through the cracks." One could easily add to this list the poor, those with drug or alcohol addictions and a heartily disproportionate number of African-Americans and Hispanics.
It's now been 11 days since the carbon monoxide leak which sent over 80 Prussing Elementary School students and staff to the hospital. While officials from Chicago Public Schools have partially answered some questions, and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has informed that he will be visiting the school to field more questions on Nov. 16, many parents remain irate at the CPS response to date. More...
It's not surprising that some of Mayor Emanuel's sympathizers and supporters are confusing people's substantive disputes with the mayor as the effect of poor marketing on his part. It's exactly this insular worldview that has gotten the mayor in hot... More...
