Jan Lorenc immigrated from a small town in southern Poland to Chicago's south side in 1962. Despite his young age--8 years old--he remembers living behind the Iron Curtain and suddenly finding himself in a new place where his first memory is riding in a pink Cadillac convertible.
Lorenc is now a successful designer in Atlanta, running a 31-year-old business that he founded in Chicago in 1978. He's also my dad.
As the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this week, I spoke to my dad about his memories of living in a country with one-party rule, moving to the United States, and watching Soviet tyranny dissolve.
Danny Davis will announce this morning that he would seek reelection for his 7th District Congressional seat. Davis' announcement didn't come with any endorsement, but he did say that at least part of his reasoning was not wanting to split the black vote among four black challengers.
NBC5 and the Chicago Sun-Times have learned the city Inspector General's Office is taking the Daley administration to court after issuing a subpoena last month.
The IGO is demanding the city Law Department and its boss, Mara Georges, turn over documents and records concerning an unspecified no-bid contract awarded in 2006.
I came across this bit on a blog about transport project finance:
In separate news reports, Daley indicated that his administration is prepared to fast-track the Chicago Midway long-term lease without another auction process. The mayor would, instead, negotiation [sic] directly with the pool of potential bidders attracted to the airport in the previous process. Since the first quarter, traffic at Chicago Midway has rebounded with sequential gains in each month since March and positive year-over-year results from July. The improving passenger volume and newfound cargo flows bode well for the bidding process.
We own Midway Airport. The process should be open, with citizen review and real deliberation. After the parking meter debacle, that this type of "fast-tracking" could be discussed among these finance professionals in regards to Chicago's municipal assets is appalling.
The Parking Ticket Geek makes an excellent case for ending residential permit parking in Chicago. I tend to agree--this falls into the general area of "commonly owned infrastructure" that I'm very fond of.
The creation of residential permit parking districts ends up exacerbating parking problems because the more of them you have, the more competition you get for the fewer and fewer free parking spots--making convenient targets for the city to squeeze more money out of people. While permit parking makes sense immediately around certain institutions--particularly big schools and hospitals--just creating permit parking because developers are over-building on density is silly and counter-productive. If your street parking can't handle it, there's no gun to your head saying you have to up-zone a piece of property to allow those extra five condo units.
I don't know if this means repealing all the districts (goodbye, every incumbent alderman) or restricting them to distances from certain classes of land use (hospitals, schools, stadiums).
There's one thing for certain, though: with better buses and trains, you wouldn't need them at all.
The city's Chief Environment Officer, Sadhu Johnston, was interviewed by the American Society of Landscape Architects. Some interesting stuff that reminds you of just how hard it is to get anything done in a democracy:
Chicago is now famous for installing millions of square feet of green roof across the city. How critical are these green roofs to the city's program for a sustainable stormwater management?
They play an important role. However, we couldn't give credit to a new development for installing a green roof until we passed our storm water ordinance a couple of years ago. Now, every new development is required to calculate stormwater runoff and figure out how they can keep at least a half-inch of that first rain onsite for utilization and bioswales, green roofs, or other green infrastructure, like permeable pavements. Green roofs can play a significant role in stormwater plans for each site.
You hear that, hippies? You wanna save the earth, you better start brushing up on those 200-page stormwater ordinances.
As the issue of tax increment financing (TIF) districts and the non-appropriated "shadow budget" they generate moves into mainstream media coverage, it's important to remember a couple two tree things about TIF funds, the main one being that the money in TIF accounts is not interchangeable with the money that is missing (the deficit) in the city budget.
Second, TIF funds are property tax funds, and they can't just be spent however. The state statute limits what the money can be spent on. So although the Mayor controls some $1 billion in TIF funds, that money can't just be spent the same as the corporation funds the City spends on most of its budget; by state law it has to be spent inside the TIF district (or an adjacent district) and on statute-defined things.
Third, and related to that, is that the money in TIF funds is not the city's money per se. So if the TIF districts had not existed, the subsequent money raised would not be "freed up" for the city to use; it would return to the following taxing bodies (via the now-defunct NCBG):
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was submitted by journalist Christopher Gray.
The roof leaks and large, brown circles mar the ceiling where the panels aren't missing entirely. People for Community Recovery is used to shabby quarters in the Altgeld Gardens housing project at the southern end of Chicago.
The environmental justice group's small office is crammed with desks and cluttered with papers. People for Community Recovery shares a mostly vacant commercial strip with a liquor store and a fried chicken outlet, set in the middle of a labyrinth of the identical barracks-style row houses of the Chicago Housing Authority project.
But lately, the office has a new feature: electric space heaters — after People's Gas turned off the organization's heat for non-payment.
People for Community Recovery, along with other South Side non-profit organizations, is fighting for its survival as the recession continues to bear down.
We got an email from Jonathan Goldman about his candidacy for state rep in the Democratic primary for the 10th district.
I suspect when the email was sent they didn't figure it would be the suburban Republican who would do the item on it. But he makes some points I would like to take a closer look at. You can find what was in the email here.
Work to put Illinois' fiscal house in order. "We need to get serious once and for all about fixing the State budget, rather than lurching from one fiscal crisis to another. We need to restructure our tax policies based on ability to pay and address our structural deficit so that we can pay our bills on time and fully fund our pension obligations," said Goldman.
So bottom line, who is going to pay more? Who is going to pay less? As for the pension system, do you think the current state pension system should be available to folks who go to work for the state three years from now?
Aldermen criticize Daley for his use of financial reserves. In this Sun-Times piece, Aldermen Tom Allen, Anthony Beale, and Joe Moore are all quoted essentially accusing the Mayor of being financially irresponsible--and politically cowardly. The Mayor has designed much of his administration around the premise that as long as you don't yourself raise taxes and provide the basic services Chicagoans demand (snow plowing, garbage) you can reign forever. I don't know if these budget hearings will necessarily lead to some sort of Aldermanic revolt (not likely) but exposing the fiscal house of cards the Mayor has designed to avoid a tax outrage will harm his image as a shrewd "city manager," the image he's spent now two decades cultivating.
The existence of food deserts in Chicago is very real, and has a very nasty effect. The lack of any availability of affordable, healthy food in poor communities is probably directly related to the dangerously high rates of obesity among the poor, and the correlative high rates of heart disease and diabetes among the poor.
But the option of Big Blue is not the only option to solve this problem. There are more constructive solutions, ones that don't involve decimating the ability for small businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive, or exist; and ones that don't undercut the working conditions of the thousands of grocery and retail workers who have hard-fought benefits through their unions at unionized groceries.
Mayor Daley will be dipping into the city's reserves, specifically the $1bn+ fund created by the leasing of the city's parking meters to a private operator, to cover the enormous budget deficit of half a billion dollars that the city projects for next year.
The Mayor is holding to his pledge not to raise taxes and fees, saying that it isn't the time to ask families to pay more.
"I think this is what reserve are made for," said Ald. Howard Brookins Jr., 21st. "Clearly, it's raining. While we don't know when this economic recovery will come, it's not going to be for a couple of years."
But Ald. Manuel Flores, 1st, said he was "very concerned" about dipping into the reserve fund. "That was intended for us to generate additional revenue through interest," Flores said. "You are selling off that asset. You are throwing that asset away."
"If the parking meter money is depleted within five years, then what happens for the next 70 years of that contract?" asked Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, one of five aldermen who voted against the meter lease.
Josh Kalven of Progress Illinois digs into the business-luring TIF deal--a program the Mayor once referred to as the only game in town for economic development--and points out just one of the many problems with it: it puts the public on the hook without making any real demands on the corporations who receive our largess. It's harder to reduce your student loan payments than it is to get tens of millions of dollars of public money.
Indeed, when the ink dries on the each of these deals, the debate in the press inevitably surrounds the cost-per-job estimates and the various long-term revenue projections stemming from the agreement. But what's missing is any method for examining the previous contracts. No one digs into the earlier relocations to see whether they fulfilled expectations and were ultimately worth the public investment. Instead, we're greeted with a perpetual refrain: "Trust us." "We know what we're doing." "Trust us."
The Chicago Journal on the impending demolition of the Gropius-style Michael Reese hospital campus:
Barring a sudden policy reversal by the city, the Michael Reese Hospital campus in Bronzeville appears set to be cleared of its buildings, despite the results of Chicago's Olympic bid.
The Reese site, bound by 29th, 31st, Cottage Grove and Metra tracks, was slated to host the Olympic Village. Twenty-one 12-story new structures were planned for the parcel.
With the Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation in full swing, it's hard to keep track of the location of new mixed income developments -- not to mention which of the old family developments haven't been demolished. Because the CHA website doesn't have the entire listings, I submitted a request for the full data and mapped it.
The family developments are indicated by blue markers, while the mixed income developments are indicated by targets. Additional information listed on the mixed income development tabs state which public housing project was the original development. Approximate addresses have been substituted where the exact addresses of developments were not listed by the CHA.
It's the oldest story in city politics. Tom Wolfe probably has about nine or ten 100 page short story sketches about it. Young firebrand activist organizes the neighborhood to fight city hall. Eventually professional activist gets to the point where his organization is powerful enough to challenge City Hall. City Hall grants community activist his/her demands; lures them in with job security and speeches about how being a grown up means learning that you have to work with the powerful to get anything done, and everything else is just naive youthful idealism.
Kevin Robinson of Chicagoist and Don Rose of the batshit crazy Chicago Daily Observer Chicago Daily Observer think Sheriff Tom Dart could run for mayor and win. Since Dart turned down the possibility to run for senate (and probably win) I doubt he'd go for the mayoral job. It's not as prestigious as the senate ,rife with corruption --as we all know-- and just much murkier. If I had to bet money I'd say he's happy being sheriff and plans to stay sheriff for quite a while.
A vid by Marc Sims talking to Randy Evans discussing the Olympic bid. Of course this video had to have been filmed not too long after we found out that Chicago won't be hosting the games in 2016. Basically the discussion revolves around the impact of the games in a given city, especially the possible impact in the areas surrounding Washington Park. In other words they're arguing that the Olympics would cause a negative impact.
The "Corona" or head of the Chicago Chapter of the Latin Kings has been arrested in a massive FBI sweep of the enormous and sinisterly sophisticated gang.
The Latin Kings keep minutes of their meetings and are organized into block-level cells that have members pay dues and hand out discipline. They rent guns out and organize street level control.
I Kato becomes A Latin King: he is on preliminary probation until March 13, 1990
II New counsel:
Since 2 members of the present counsel have been incarserated and I cannot attend the meting regularly, we picked 3 new counsel members. The new counsel is as follows: Chairman - Stony; members - Hitman, Wedo, Shy, and Shorty. Slick and Sir Lover have the chance to gain their rank back when they get out.
III (Marked in large letters OVERRULED FEB. 11, 1990)
It was decided today by a majority vote that Baby Slick will have to pay $50.00 for the .32 pistol because he told the police where to find the gun during the interrogation. Baby Slick will have a chance to defend himself as soon as possible.
IV Violations:
Today Flaco got a 15 second violation because he let his lady thrown down the crown to his face.
Stony got a 30 second violation for disrespecting Flaco by telling him "I wish you weren't a King so I could smash you".
This summer has not been easy for many people who reside in Chicago. As the city entered into the final leg of competition for the 2016 Summer Olympics, Chicago citizens witnessed cuts in services, and city employees were forced to take furlough days to balance the budget. At the same time, many state programs and jobs were slashed.
While funds were nowhere to be found for basic services, the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid committee, the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois lined up nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds for the 2016 Olympics.
A recent WGN/Chicago Tribune poll found that less than half of Chicagoans support the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid, and that 84 percent were opposed to using tax revenue to cover any losses incurred. Only recently did the Chicago 2016 bid committee make any effort to engage the community in citywide meetings where it was evident that many in Chicago had deep concerns about hosting the Olympics, including the potential for cost overruns and resident displacement.
As a longtime resident of Chicago, you are well aware that in this city, cost overruns and delays of large civic construction projects go hand in hand.
Today the Illinois Policy Institute is releasing a new short film about charter schools and their success in Chicago.
Entitled 'Charter Schools: Changing Lives,' the documentary profiles students, teachers and administrators in three Chicago charter schools: Chicago International Charter School's Ralph Ellison campus, Noble Street Charter School's Pritzker College Prep, and the Urban Prep Academy for Young Men.
It's been over a decade since parishioners at St. Francis of Assisi church broke into the historic cathedral to halt its demolition in 1996. It was neither the first nor the last time that Gerardo Reyes felt that his church was threatened by its neighbor - the University of Illinois at Chicago.
As UIC has developed and expanded its south campus, Reyes and others feel there has been a pattern of deception and unfriendliness that is designed to chase out the St. Francis community. These machinations are surfacing once again, say members of The St. Francis of Assisi Preservation Committee, this time in the form of parking fees.
"UIC says they are a good neighbor," said Reyes, head of the preservation committee, "but if they are a good neighbor, why did they close and narrow the roads? And why are they taking away the parking that they promised us?"
The parking in question was allotted by UIC for the St. Francis Community before south campus construction began. Parking was free in designated university parking lots on Sundays for parishioners attending mass.
The promise that Reyes cites is documented in the Jan. 24 edition of The Chicago Journal, in which UIC spokesman Bill Burton is indirectly quoted as having said that "university officials plan to make room there for parishioners indefinitely."
There was never any written agreement, however. The lack of such documentation made Reyes and other preservation committee members nervous from the get-go. Now their worries have come to fruition.
Mark Rosati, a spokesperson for the university, says that parking was provided to the parish to minimize disruption to the community during the construction phase.
"But now that the construction is over, we cannot continue to allow free use of public property to an outside party, under state law," Rosati said.
Rosati describes the fee, two dollars for two hours, as being "very reasonable."
But a press release issued by the St. Francis Preservation Committee states that it will be two dollars for parking permit-holders, and eight dollars for those without permits. This worries Reyes, who says that, as The Mother Church of Mexican Immigrants, St. Francis attracts people passing through town; people without permits who may now attend mass elsewhere.
"I don't know anything about that," Rosati said of eight dollar parking ticket.
Admittedly, it can be hard to see what the big deal about a parking fee could possibly be.
"[The parking fees] eventually will drastically reduce church attendance and lead to its shut down," said Steve Balkin, a professor of economics at Roosevelt University, in a recent letter.
Balkin's argument goes like this. The St. Francis community is largely blue collar, with little money to spare. Put that money toward parking, it comes out of the collections plates. Less money in the collection plates means less money for the church, which may mean that the Catholic Archdiocese might try to close the church again, like they did in 1995 and 1996.
"A supposed need for parking space is the pretext for getting rid of poor and working class immigrants whose presence does not fit into UIC's vision for a homogeneous campus and gentrifying condo development," wrote Balkin.
The parking fees were first implemented during mass last weekend, and it has yet to be determined what effect they will have on the parish in the end. Reyes remains hopeful.
"This is our home. We've defended it before, and we can do it again," Reyes said.
Caleb Melby is a journalism student at the Medill School.
UPDATE: Mechanics received the following reply from Mark Rosati, associate Chancellor for Public Affairs at UIC.
Dear [Mechanics]:
Regarding the recent Gaper's Block item about parking at UIC, the Chicago Journal article which reported that the campus would provide free parking to St. Francis Church parishioners "indefinitely" was from January of 2002, not 2009.
As for the quote in your story from an individual alleging that UIC has a vision of a "homogeneous campus," it is unfortunate that your reporter didn't ask me for a response. If he had, he would have learned that UIC has for many years been among the most diverse university campuses in the country (check the annual US News & World Report rankings) and that many of our 26,000 students come from families of limited financial means, recent immigrants or their children, and are the first generation in their families to attend college. To give just two examples of the diversity of our campus, UIC educates more Latinos at the undergraduate and graduate level combined than any university in Illinois, and we are No. 1 in the Midwest in baccalaureate degrees earned by Latino students.
In education, healthcare, economic development and community engagement UIC is a good neighbor - and that will continue to be the case.
WBEZ has a great report from inside the Cook County Democratic Party Slating Committee meeting this week. The full meeting happens today.
Here are some interesting facts* that WBEZ didn't report on:
Alderman Dick Mell asked candidate for County Board Terry O'Brien, "I'm interested to know, in terms of the veto override provisions that are ultimately determined by the state legislature, Irishdingussayswhat?" To which O'Brien responded, "What?"
County Recorder of Deeds Eugene "Gene" Moore actually introduces himself by saying, "Hello, I'm Eugene 'Gene' Moore" while making air quotes.
Karen Yarborough, Commiteeman for Proviso Township, travels around with an aide who announces, "Proviso Township, Entering!" when she enters a room, and "Proviso Township, Retiring!" when she leaves.
Ald. Toni Preckwinkle yawned loudly during one of Committeeman Ira Silverstein's questions, and then interrupted him and said, "Man, Silverstein, you're so boring you make P.J. Cullerton (38th) sound like Randy Barnette (39th)!" She actually said the parentheticals.
Committeeman John Fritchey head-butted Steve Landek, but it was a "friend head butt".
When hotel staff wheeled in refreshments, Secretary of State Jesse White asked for a "tumbler" of Diet Pepsi. Nobody laughed.
Mike Madigan peeled an entire apple without breaking the skin, then revealed that it was actually a human heart.
In a spirit of unity, Secretary of State Jesse White pledged that the Party would unite behind any candidate it endorsed. "We'll tumble for you," he added. Some people laughed.
Committeeman Bob Rita took Committeeman Wilbert Crowley's hand and slapped him across the face with it, then asked him why he was hitting himself.
Howard Brookins asked John Daley if he liked Harry Potter more than Twilight. Daley rolled his eyes and said, "Is John A. Pope (10th) Catholic?"
*None of these are actually facts. Although I do think John A. Pope is Catholic.
As we said over and over again during the budget fight, politics eventually ends up on the streets. The activists, professionals, and politicians who duke it out in the halls of power are usually fairly insulated from the actual effects of their policies. We feel those out on the streets. We, the public.
So when Mayor Daley makes a move to close down mental health centers, some will celebrate "cutting waste", where waste = any social spending. Others will attack the Mayor's callousness, in the abstract. The local media will pick one of those tunes, typically, and sing in that chord. Meanwhile, the Chicago Justice Projectmakes the connection between the streets and politics that we rarely see anywhere else:
Anyone who pays even a minimal amount of attention to the Chicago media is constantly bombarded with evidence of our society's failures. This week is different in that we have proof of the fallout of a past failure (the shooting of a mentally disturbed homeless man in the loop) mixed with a forecast of what is to come based on decisions currently made by our political leaders (the closing of numerous area mental health clinics). Confused? Allow me to explain with examples drawn from the last seven days of Chicago's history.
To the speculator, "saturation" is the filthiest word. When a market is robust and investments see steady and steep returns, all is good. When too many of his cohort are vying for the same investments, the rate of return diminishes.This situation forces these investors to get creative.
The "edupreneur"- a creature that is one part philanthropist and a thousand parts venture capitalist- is the paving the way for the newest, untapped market; our schools.
The Chi-Town Daily News' Adrian Uribarri reports on the expiration of the city-wide hotel contract between members of UNITE HERE's Local 1 and the city's downtown hotels. The negotiations have not gone well:
"The hotels are using the economy as an excuse to slow everything down," Strassel said. "We're willing to continue to negotiate, but at a certain point, we're going to hit a breaking point. Tomorrow's about putting the hotels on notice."
Strassel said the hotels are not only trying to cut medical benefits, but also overworking some employees as they lay off others.
That former Inspector General David Hoffman is working with AKPD Media, the political consulting shop of David Axelrod, which counts the Mayor as a client, in his bid for the Democratic Senate nomination raised questions about just why he chose now to leave the IG's office and run for the US Senate. Such speculation is going to happen--"promote him out of here" is a perceived modus operandi of the Cook County Democrats. The last thing the Daleys and Madigans and Strogers of the world want is a local politician with a wide base outside of party auspices. There is rarely much evidence to prove that such "promote them out" schemes were intended or orchestrated.
Let's wish him well and appreciate the fact that he raised the stature and importance of a critical government office. And look to the future.
The sensitivity many may feel to Hoffman's departure is that, given his public disputes with powerful City Council factions and the Mayor himself, attacks on his budget or independence would have been politically risky. Hoffman seemed uniquely positioned to take on the powerful precisely because he had so publicly taken them on. This makes accusations of limelight-seeking easy, though perhaps paradoxical. High-level criticisms are what was needed, and would earn high-level attention. That very attention is what would have protected his office. Undermining his office would have been seen, quite rightly, as political retribution and would have outed those undermining him as being opposed to good and ethical government.
That is why it's up to "us"--the media, new and old, and the activists, left and right, and the people--to make sure that the Office of Inspector General, which clearly has enormous potential to be a force for local democracy and transparency, doesn't lose its increasing relevance simply because it lost its temporary caretaker.
So let's take a look at some of the potential replacements:
The Sun-Times and the Chicago Teachers Union conducted a joint survey of Chicago Public School teachers that revealed that a shocking percentage--among High School teachers, more than half--have felt pressure to change a student's grade. Given the high stakes of the "percent graduating" statistics as a metric of public schools, it makes sense that the heaviest percentage would be among High School teachers. Still, more than a quarter of middle school teachers also reported feeling pressured to change a student's grade.
Of seven thousand teachers in CPS, fourteen hundred responded to the survey; while that provides more than enough for a statistically valid survey, it should also be considered or understood that the fact that it was self-selected to some degree could have altered the results.
With that in mind, this is still absolutely shocking, and adds yet another piece of evidence to the (well, my) on-going case that Arne Duncan was hardly qualified to be named Secretary of Education.
Obviously it was not Duncan pressuring teachers. According to the survey, the pressure came primarily from principals. But as the "CEO" of the schools, the buck must stop with him. And if principals felt the need to put the arm on teachers, that did not come from nowhere. There must have been in-turn pressure on them to meet statistical standards no matter what the cost.
While that pressure may have gotten Mr. Duncan the press needed to ascend in his career, it has done nothing for students.
Of course, this is not Duncan's school district. Many of these teachers had been teaching well before Duncan came on the scene--but the vast majority (64%) of teachers reporting have been teaching less than ten years, which puts them under either Duncan or Vallas, and certainly inside the Amendatory Act, Daley-control era.
Have our schools made progress since William Bennett described them as the worst in the nation in 1987? Perhaps; but with each new revelation and report, we seem to be getting further away from being able to actually answer that question.
De La Cruz, in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, was a small middle school, taking kids mainly from Whittier Elementary and sending them on to Juarez HS. Small--a few hundred students. To the Chicago Public Schools, under the auspices of the Renaissance 2010 program, that is a bad thing.
Because the school was small, the class sizes were, relatively speaking, small. But the teachers, being unionized, tenured, and with in many cases decades of experience teaching in that neighborhood, were expensive. That, according to Ren2010, is "under-utilization". Too few kids, too much school. Yet, of course, small school size is touted as among the benefits of charter schools--more personalized instruction and care from teachers.
De La Cruz, in a neighborhood with a high number of Spanish-speaking families, in a neighborhood periodically plagued with gang problems, is an award-winning school. It won the Spotlight Award from the state Board of Education. Not a decade ago. Not five years ago. In 2009.
So here was a public school where the kids were learning. The school was making progress. The school was small and the class sizes manageable. And it had to be closed.
Why? Why close a successful, small school in a working class neighborhood?
The residents, teachers, and students surely didn't understand. A heart-wrenching "hearing" last year in February featured parents and students astounded at the callousness of a Board of Education indifferent to local control, so sure were they in the magical wizardry of the "market" to fix education. Given what happened to De La Cruz, is Ren2010 about fixing public schools? Or destroying them?
The neighborhood, the Board argues, simply doesn't need a school.
City Inspector-General David Hoffman, hired away from the US Attorney's office in the wake of the Hired Truck scandal, has tendered his resignation and will be entering the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate race.
During the Homero Tristan affair, IG Hoffman earned the scorn of Juan Rangel, CEO of a public education privatizing outfit called UNO, and Mayor Daley for being a political aspirant more concerned with making headlines to advance his career than being a fair dealer. Now the Mayor is saying he's not not sad (ie, glad) to see Hoffman go:
"No, I'm not," Daley said. "You want a headline that 'Daley's happy, smiling,' and all that. The sanctity of taxpayers' money -- people work hard, they want their money protected."
Hoffman's June report on the handling of the parking meter fiasco and his recommendations for how such asset sales/leases should be handled in the future helped keep the issue alive in the press and in voters mind and kept Mayor Daley on the ropes, just as the "transition" was beginning to infuriate residents. Hoffman's decision may come from the fact that with his current record of fighting the Mayor, and with the issues that are currently on the table, he'll never have a better chance. I have to wonder who was whispering in his ear, as well, goading him to get into a primary where he stands a considerably less than good chance of winning. He's going to have to raise a lot of money from lawyers, because the party apparatus, I imagine, will put the word out on him.
We could have used him at the city; hopefully his replacement is as independent and committed as he is (though hopefully a bit less ambitious).
Inhabitat posts on the Mayor's initiative to "green" our 1,900 miles (over 3,500 acres) of alleyways, thus improving storm water run off and retention issues, remove impermeably services and urban heat island effects, among other potential advantages.
The inititative is a refinement of Chicago DOT's existing alley program which focused on creating more permeable surfaces. Chicago alleyways, which outnumber those of any other city in the world, are lacking in proper sewer connections causing serious flooding issues. Rather than simply opting for expensive sewer hookups, the city started retrofitting alleys with permeable pavements and pavers.
Our alleyways are one of my favorite things about Chicago. I have some very fond memories of running through and playing in alleys as a very little kid, and partying and otherwise escaping through alleyways as a man-child. Our alleys are a great asset and a great urban space; it's good to not just take them for granted, but always be thinking about what all that space--3,500 acres is a lot of acres--can be used for.
Watch Mick Dumke of the Chicago Reader take on Berny Stone (50th) over the Parking Meter Privatization deal. By "take on" I mean "throw confetti from a bucket on," or "pretend to throw a basketball to with a string attached to the ball and the hand". (Via Whet Moser at the Reader.)
The following is a repost from Mike Fourcher's blog, Vouchification.
The increasingly desperate straits of Chicago's news outlets is already having an impact on what - and how much - news gets covered. More cuts are coming. In the next year we should expect a significant decrease in community and political news coverage in the Chicago area. Small start-up are trying to fill the gaps, but they lack resources and readership to make up the difference.
Last week I reviewed the financial states of Creative Loafing, Inc. and the Sun Times Media Group. Although CLI is suffering, friends from the Chicago Reader assure me their paper remains profitable - despite CLI's debt. But STMG regulatory and bankruptcy filings seem to show that the Chicago Sun Times is the major money loser among STMG properties. It seems possible - even likely - that the Sun Times may not exist in 2010.
Earlier this year the Chicago Tribune's parent company, the Tribune Company, went into bankruptcy, burdened by $12 billion in debt created by Sam Zell's leveraged buyout of the company. Although recent news suggests Zell will be muscled out and the company will become the property of creditors - especially Deutche Bank - it seems likely that the new owners will be looking for ways to increase cash, reduce expenses, prepare the company for sale, or dismember it into parts for individual sales.
Former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski (once the chairman of the US House's Ways & Means Committee) back in 1989 was chased down by some senior citizens protesting legislation, Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act. They complained that they had to pay more taxes for the additional benefits. Rostenkowski seemed more rattled by the citizens than some of the Senators facing their own angry mobs in the current health care debate.
If only we had those types of contentious townhalls here. I can't argue about the people putting their politicians to the fire!
Things are finally looking up for ol' Dan Seals. Chris Cilizza has the scoop:
Seals Far Ahead in IL-10 Survey: Dan Seals, the Democratic nominee against Rep. Mark Kirk (R) in 2006 and 2008, holds a wide lead in the 2010 Democratic primary, according to a survey done for his campaign and obtained by the Fix. Seals takes 63 percent of the vote compared to to just eight percent for state Rep. Julie Hamos and two percent for attorney Elliot Richardson in a hypothetical Democratic primary matchup. The survey, which was conducted by Anzalone-Liszt Research for Seals campaign, also showed Seals -- not surprisingly -- as by far the best known candidate in the Democratic race with 83 percent name identification. Hamos, who won the endorsement of Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) last Friday, has a meager 18 percent name identification. And, roughly two-thirds of voters agreed with the statement that Seals had earned the right to a third run for the seat while 23 percent said it was time to give someone new a chance. With Kirk leaving the 10th to run for Senate, Democrats have a very good chance of taking over this North Shore district.
The New York Times published an article Tuesday regarding the upcoming auction of the 2.7 million square feet Post Office building that rests on top of the Congress Expressway. The auction price of $300,000 comes along with $2.5 million in annual operating expenses, even as the building sits unoccupied. However, the city has previously pledged $51 million dollars in TIF financing to assist the developer with the puzzling property. It is unclear if there will be any takers, given the condition of the downtown real estate market. As the ubiquitous John Buck states, "There's nothing developable downtown for the foreseeable future in any category. There's no retail market, no office market and no residential market." Given that rosy outlook, I'd like to propose an alternative to selling the building to a private developer; the city should buy it and lease it for free to start-up companies and small businesses.
You know I can't believe that I missed Thursday's CapFax question of the day (or our own in Fuel), asking about whether or not Wal-Mart should be allowed to open more stores in the city. I could go further, should Wal-Mart be allowed to open a supercenter or a store in the West Chatham neighborhood.
I've basically been saying let Wal-Mart in, but I will say that as a person who may not find myself in there every chance I got. Even though there are Wal-Marts ringing the city in addition to one in the Austin neighborhood, I can't say I'm a regular customer. I can say I have no problem with any employer coming in looking to set up shop and bringing in new products and services as well as jobs for the community.
I noticed at the CapFax an image that lists all the location near 83rd & Stewart (the likely location for the West Chatham Wal-Mart). In addition to maps such as this...
Now, to analyze the map and the list of stores that sell food or produce, I would throw out those convenience stores or those stores that merely trade in junk food or whatnot instead of much healthier foods.
As the article states, cops were formerly only able to shoot at a moving vehicle if it were coming towards the officer or an innocent bystander. Now, they would be able to put a few slugs through your car (and, by proxy, you) for such crimes as: murder, rape, assault & battery, grand theft, arson, illegal drug usage or sales, burglary and robbery. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure I want Chicago cops turning any more incidents deadlier or more violent than usual. Just because someone was smoking dope and broke into a garage doesn't mean that a cop should be able to end their life (if for no other reason than to imagine someone getting shot while carrying a Huffy out of some poor guy's garage - what a way to go).
However, this provision may be tempered or snuffed out all together by a Supreme Court precedent - Tennessee v. Garner. Garner states that "deadly force...may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others".
Surely, our officers put their lives on the line every day. But granting the use of deadly force should only be reserved for circumstances where all other avenues are unavailable or have been exhausted. Maybe this will finally be the push that Chicago needs to finally install an independent civilian review board.
An article in the San Francicso Chronicledetails a plan to relieve parking congestion by allowing neighborhoods to decide how much to charge for parking, and adding "perks" that would come along with the privilege:
They suggest replacing the 1970s-era lettered parking sticker program with "parking benefit districts," a boutique approach to parking in which residents decide how much to charge for parking in their neighborhoods, the boundaries for paid parking and what perks should come to those who pay premiums to park.
The idea is to raise money for the city, make it easier for people to park in front of their house, and also reduce pollution by encouraging transit use, said San Francisco County Transit Authority planner Jesse Koehler, who presented his three-year report Tuesday to the authority's plans and programs committee.
At first glance, applying this to Chicago, this just struck me as a terrible idea that would further segregate the city. But...
Parking is scarce in part because residential parking permits are so cheap, Koehler said. For $76 a year - pennies a day - people can park all day on their streets, in some cases using their garages for workshops or storage.
Good point. Seems the problem starts at the level of demand--we need to discourage car ownership by making transportation not only in Chicago but in the region swift and simple. Will fees discourage car ownership without matching it to better public transport?
...not a project for preservationists or some sort of symbol of the Archdiocese's spite.
Two years ago (almost exactly) I wrote this about Saint Boniface church:
Saint Boniface -- the saint, not the long-abandoned church at the northeast corner of Noble and Chestnut on the city's near northwest side -- was a German saint. He was a high-ranking official in the Church who had converted and grown Catholicism throughout much of Germany before a group of as-yet unconverted heathens fell upon him and 52 of his fellow travelers on the banks of the River Borne.
Well, good for him, but seriously, can we do something about this church? For those of us who live in its very near vicinity, Saint Boniface causes no little consternation. For years, crackheads and meth addicts lived in the rectory north of the church. Local hoods use the church as a staging ground for breaking into cars and homes, since it constitutes nearly an entire city block without prying eyes. The convent which once stood east of the building, on Chestnut, is now a pile of bricks, recalling something more like Beirut in 1986 than Chicago in 2007.
The need to preserve this beautiful and historical building needs to be balanced with the economic and physical safety of local residents. This morning, we woke up to a scary surprise. This:
Clearly, if somebody had been in the car, or walking by, they could have been seriously injured or just as likely killed. Killed by the neglect of the Archdiocese and inaction by the city. This is unacceptable. A buildings department official was on the scene to make a report. Let's see what the city does.
Cheney Obama refuses to release visitor logs showing which energy health care company executives visited the White House.
Late Update: It's an especially painful continuation of Bush policies since candidate Obama promised to let CSPAN in to cover the creation of a health care bill and his campaign website still promises transparency in meetings between White House staff and outside interests.
This is what the gay community wants from President Obama. Leadership on our issues, leadership on his campaign promises. Not a simple reiteration that he will support the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the repeal of DOMA, and the passage of ENDA should Congress decide to ever get to it, but rather, as the president has now recognized with the health care reform debate, America wants him to lead the debate over these issues. America wants him to recognize that he has the ability, and the imperative, to lead.
An important new report (.pdf) was released today by Human Rights First regarding the overwhelming success of the U.S. Government in obtaining convictions in federal court against accused Terrorists. The Report squarely contradicts the central claim of the Obama administration as to why preventive detention is needed: namely, that certain Terrorist suspects who are "too dangerous to release" -- whether those already at Guantanamo or those we might detain in the future -- cannot be tried in federal courts. This new data-intensive analysis -- written by two independent former federal prosecutors and current partners with Akin, Gump: Richard B. Zabel and James J. Benjamin, Jr. -- documents that "federal courts are continuing to build on their proven track records of serving as an effective and fair tool for incapacitating terrorists."
The Chi-Town Daily News reports on mixed reactions from the Edgewater community over homeless "sweeps" of neighborhood parks.
While understandably wanting to keep neighborhood parks clean and free of crime, it's frustrating to hear residents talk about homeless people as if they should be rats targeted for extermination by city crews. Instead of helping to address the problems underlying homelessness (substance abuse, mental health issues, lack of sustainable employment), many seem to miss the point that with a few false steps and a lack of family support, it could be them sleeping on a park bench.
Aldermanic privilege dictates that the local alderman should be deferred to on all matters impacting his or her ward directly. The tradition is so deeply entrenched that we notice when it fails to prevail: most notably in the Wal-Mart zoning fights in 2005 and the Chicago Children's Museum vote (aka, the Grant Park Privatization vote) in 2008.
Chicago Journal editor Micah Maidenburg hasbeencovering a generally ignored federal court case challenging the constitutionality of this privilege. The case was brought by the owners of the infamous Congress Hotel, which tried to get a permit for a sidewalk cafe. The Congress' workers have been on strike for years as the Congress management refuses to bargain a contract, and the union rightfully feared that a sidewalk cafe would interfere with their right to picket, and generally opposed the plan. Newly elected Alderman Bob Fioretti also opposed the sidewalk cafe, and urged their petition be rejected. A land use decision with wide-ranging political ramifications, as now the privilege seems to be in jeopardy.
Aldermanic privilege and its alleged application at a strike-embattled South Loop hotel were at the heart of a trial that ended Monday in federal court. [Former Alderman and current UIC Poli Sci professor Dick] Simpson said the case "could well be" the first time a plaintiff has challenged the constitutionality of the tradition.
After three days of testimony from 11 witnesses, attorneys representing the Congress Plaza Hotel and Convention Center and the City of Chicago rested their cases and agreed to submit briefs outlining their respective arguments to the court within 10 days.
The trial stems out of a 2007 lawsuit brought by the Congress. The hotel alleged in the suit that Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes the hotel, used his aldermanic privilege to condition issuance of various permits, including those for a rooftop expansion and a sidewalk cafe, on resolution of what's now a six-year-old strike at the hotel.
Seriously though, crime in Chicago is on the rise. Entire neighborhoods are turning into killing fields, and no part of the city is inured to this. Crime moves. Danger moves. The Daleys of the world tend to think the solution is just to privatize security--in other words, make sure just the well off are protected. Privatizing public space is his thing, after all. But the best crime fighting program is secure, well-paying entry level jobs.
Three men were fatally shot. One man was fatally stabbed. Police shot one man and at least seven other people were wounded by gunfire -- including an 8-year-old boy sitting in his bedroom -- during an especially violent six hours late Wednesday and early Thursday mainly on the South and West Sides.
....
About 12:30 a.m. Thursday, a man in his 20s was shot in the head at 1109 N. Wood St. -- less than a block from numerous busy Division Street bars and restaurants, police said.
At 12:37 a.m., a 24-year-old man was shot at 7935 S. Cottage Grove Ave, according to police, who said the shooting appears to have been over a $15 debt.
About 12:50 a.m. Thursday, a male was shot in the leg during an argument with a person he knew in the 3500 block of South Western Avenue, police said.
Near northwest side, southwest side, south side--this violence is everywhere and spreading. I don't know what the answer is--but I do know that the Earned Income Tax Credit and community college are not it. This is a class problem and requires a class solution.
A well-reasoned (and researched) post by EveryBlock (and Chicago City Payments) co-founder Daniel X. O'Neil plunges into the Homero Tristan affair, separating fact from narrative and going to the heart of exactly why we should care about things like this, even when we're all scandal fatigued. If you've read James Merriner's great book Grafters and Goo Goos, you know that the modern era's reform efforts have become institutionalized and prone to make-workism. This has the dual effect of boring the general population, and eliciting backlash from the political class who see "reform" as just a cover for political ambition by outsiders. O'Neil's exploration of what the actual ethical lapses were in the Tristan "scandal" is instructive: it was a failure of protocol as a symptom but not an example of power politics, and our reaction to it should be calibrated as such (and, we should also think about why we have these protocols in the first place).
On June 26th, the city's inspector general, David Hoffman, put out a report criticizing the behavior of Human Resources Commissioner Homero Tristan, and calling for him to be sacked. Tristan subsequently resigned. The news reports focused on the fact that a "former top aide" to Mayor Daley has resigned in a "hiring scandal". But, as always, it's important to know exactly what happened, before a scandal turns into A Scandal, where everybody knows the personalities but not the facts. Tristan's resignation and reporters' questions about it caused much Mayoral huffing and puffing, with the Mayor claiming Tristan had done nothing seriously wrong, and insinuating that the IG was running wild.
The Mayor sounding a note like that means something, and there has been a subsequent pushback against Hoffman from several quarters. Tristan's lawyer, Bill Coulson (husband to state Representative Elizabeth Coulson) wrote a publicized letter to the Mayor defending Tristan's conduct in the matter and accusing the IG of being irresponsible in making his report public and playing fast and loose with the facts (Hoffman didn't respond). Rumors of Hoffman's political aspirations, always the best way to cast doubt on a civil servant ("He just wants to be one of the cool kids, like us!") have begun to leak.
it seems Chicago's inspector general, David Hoffman, is intent on turning everyday networking into guilt-by-association, as well as casting clouds of suspicion on those engaged in the civic arena as if it were a criminal act. My intention here is not to defend the commissioner, but to sound the alarm on the death of civic participation.
Hoffman's most recent report is the latest example of an investigator run amok. Never mind him tarnishing the career and damaging the reputation of Tristan, his newest target. Hoffman is a reformer's reformer. Democracy be damned!
Well thank god. Roland Burris isn't going to run for reelection. It's not such big news since his polling indicated he had a steep climb to retain the senate seat. That leaves Mark Kirk as the probably Republican contender and who knows for the Democrats. Maybe Chris Kennedy? We'll see.
I actually had a crazy thought today: What about Illinois Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart? You may recall Dart as that Sheriff from around Chicago who got fed up with evicting people from their houses. Yup, that's the guy I'm talking about. In the process he also stood up to banks who had been critical of him for not enforcing the law. In short, Dart disagreed.
So basically, this sheriff stands up to banks, he's a Democrat, he's popular, and he's a law abiding citizen. That's a pretty rare combination in Chicago and Illinois and a pretty appealing resume these days.
I know it's generally bad to start a blog post with a bunch of caveats, but I'm going to do it anyway. I deeply respect Mike Doyle of Chicago Carless and the folks at Second City Cop blog. Mike especially has been a role model for me in the use of social networking to get out progressive messages and stories. I am a little worried about Mike's current mission, which is to dig out claims of more violence than reported at the Taste of Chicago/July 3rd fireworks.
I am fully prepared to accept the premise that Chicago authorities ever fearful of the Mayor's wrath, knowing that any snafus at the Taste this year could reflect negatively on the Olympic bid covered up violence at the Taste. I know also that violence is up across the city. To the extent that Mike and others are able to uncover official malfeasance and potentially sink the city's misguided Olympic bid, I'm all for it. To the extent that his reporting leads to individual and collective accountability, he's doing the Lord's work.
I'm also a bit nervous about what is more likely to happen whether or not any smoking gun is discovered by Mike, commenters on Chicago Now or other anyone else. Comments like "Gangster Disciples took over Buckingham Fountain" or "Latin Kings coming 50 deep up Congress" make me worry that the good work of uncovering official deception will be overwhelmed by the negative effects of the knee jerk "solutions" the city will come up with. How can we be sure that the large groups of young African-American or Latino men were gang members and not just, well groups of young men enjoying the Taste and fireworks? I have little faith in those who claim to have see gang signs being thrown, given the large number of NBA commentators who periodically go through conniptions of gang sightings every time a player throws up three fingers after making a three pointer.
I hope the majority of people who are banging this drum in the blogosphere are concerned with transparency in city government, using city funds to support public safety rather than developer subsidies and not reacting to a perceived invasion of downtown by young, boisterous, brown and black residents of the South and West sides. There's already enough criminalization of youth in Chicago without suspecting every group of black and Latino kids of being gang members.
As I said before, I know Mike pretty well and know that he would be strongly opposed to any sort of racial profiling or a city response to his work that negatively affects innocent young men from the South and West Sides. Sometimes, though, concern over neighborhood quality of life, safety, and comfort bring out the worst of even the most progressive minded, good-hearted people. All residents of the city of Chicago have a right to inhabit the city and enjoy its public spaces and events. That requires a strong, transparent, and accountable public safety presence by the city. It also requires that a lot of different people are able to occupy the same spaces without suspicion.
In late June, I questioned the possibility of making recycling easier for pedestrians in the Loop, and also posted on the few BigBelly solar trash compactors around the city. At that time, I couldn't get a response from the Department of Streets & Sanitation, but shortly after I posted, spokesperson Matt Smith sent me an e-mail. (He couldn't get back to me right away because the department was bombarded with calls regarding floods as the city was in the midst of a strong storm, he said).
In an e-mail, Smith noted that in and near the Loop, there are currently three solar trash compactors, which besides being cool to look at, help reduce garbage overflow. They are located at: the southwest corner of State and Randolph, the northwest corner of Madison and Canal and the northwest corner of Michigan and Pearson. There's also one on Devon Avenue, which was funded by the Devon Avenue Special Service Area.
As he pauses at the corner of 31st Street and Central Park in Little Village, Rafael Hurtado can only think about factories. Turn any way, and they're all he sees, and on the worst days, they're all he smells. On a drizzly April morning, the smell isn't nearly as repugnant as it is on unbearably hot summer days, but Hurtado still has a message for anyone listening. Hurtado, an 18-year-old Little Village resident, volunteers as a tour guide for Toxic Tours, which guide people around the load of manufacturing plants and chemical sites that have been polluting the community for years.
The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) started the tours about seven years ago as a way to educate the community and others about the looming toxic presence of several industries right in their backyards.
On this April morning, in the midst of the murmuring steady rainfall, the noise of sirens, trains and cars passing through puddles briefly disturbs his message, but Hurtado continues with his story. He became involved with LVEJO in 2002 after noticing a rally outside his home protesting for more parks in the area.
"We only have one park in Little Village, and it's only accessible to one-third of the community because it's all the way on the west side," he says. "For you to go over there, you don't have to be part of a gang... they'll harass you."
It's good to know that despite our impressions that our City Council has been completely absent from governing the city (see: TIFs, Parking meters, etc.), that at least Ed Burke, 14th Ward Alderman, silken-tongued financial expert, and Council War veteran has been hard at work. Well, to be fair, he's been hard at work enriching connected constituents and reworking zoning laws to his own benefit. Not only that, but he's been busy developing his own political dynasty, with his wife working as a state supreme court justice and his brother, "Quiet Dan," working the levers of power in Springfield as a state representative whose office is apparently not located in the 23rd district he "represents."
It's hard to find the words to describe the level of disgust that one should feel about the fact that the man who leveraged his considerable oratorical and parliamentary skill to support the unabashedly racist opposition to Harold Washington has now accumulated power at the state and city level to do nothing more than enrich himself and his friends and have a big house with special parking permits required to park in front of it. For far too long, the Burkes, both Ed and Silent Dan, have flown under the radar of Chicago politics, winning elections with developer money and the support of the precinct captains at whom they throw the crumbs of soon-to-be-cut city jobs. Both Burkes represent neighborhoods that have significantly changed over the long time that Ed and Disappearing Dan have used them for their personal enrichment. Not like either of the Burke boys care much.
It could be argued at earlier points in Chicago history that the machine served to incorporate immigrants in political and economic leadership in the urban jungle of the United States. Now the vestiges of the machine hold on like a lamprey to the body politic, providing little to nothing for the working class Latinos, Poles, and others they represent while acquiescing to the looting of the City by the Mayor and his obsession with short-term privatization schemes. As Steve Rhodes puts it:
Ed Burke gets what he wants because he's Ed Burke.
And his wife is a state supreme court justice. She lives there too.
They don't have to play by the rules.
It's time for us as voters to stop letting the Burkes, the Popes, fly under the radar. Our future as a city depends on it.
I visited my favorite (slightly overpriced) bakery in Hyde Park yesterday. The bakery had a white 8.5"x11" sign on the door that usually portends some sort of neighborhood crime alert, which it did. Surprisingly, the sign was not about a rash of burglaries or strong-arm robberies, but rather to alert us to the fact that panhandling is a crime and that we should call 911 if we witness it happening.
I left the bakery quite conflicted as I chewed on some flaky, buttery, chocolaty goodness. On the one hand, that stretch of 57th Street, while nowhere near the panhandling obstacle course other stretches of real estate in Chicago can be (I love working downtown during the Taste of Chicago, don't you?), it is still, or at least was, home to a couple of pretty aggressive men scamming for change. They were generally less annoying or vaguely threatening as the gentlemen who pull you aside and tell you their life story, but still it was always important to not make eye contact or at least whip out your cell phone while walking that block, a strategy which doesn't seem to work with the Environment Illinois folks, incidentally. There is something to be said for just being able to walk down the street on a nice summer day and not have to be made to feel guilty for not having some spare change.
On the other hand, is annoying people on the street really a crime? At some point, yes, some professional panhandlers can get aggressive and down right scary, but if we make panhandling a crime in general, then what other options do those folks have? Should they just "get a job," should we foist them off on an already overburdened social welfare system, should we lock them up in some sort of modern-day debtors-prison? I suspect that part of the annoyance that panhandlers bring for a lot of us is the ambiguous moral and ethical position they put us in every time we walk by them. I know I am privileged to live in a nice neighborhood and suckle at the teat of the social welfare system of the university. I know that families, men and women live all around me who can't say the same, who have to bust their humps and hustle just for a Polish and a pop, I just wish they wouldn't intrude on my world to do so. And so I am left with, much like I imagine most of us are, no overwhelming set of principles to guide every action, just the ambiguity of every individual experience with panhandling demanding a different reaction.
Maybe I should just see it as a character-building exercise. The persistence of the urban poverty and inequality that leaves so many with no (perceived or real) option other than to beg for charity outside bakeries in the bright light districts is only matched by our efforts to put that poverty and inequality on reservations as far away from our imagined communities of prosperity as possible. Maybe it's an advantage of city living to have to deal with it. Or maybe I should just not carry cash and always have an excuse.
I'm sure this question has been posed a lot, but after spending a few days in Ann Arbor, it was on my mind even more. Granted Ann Arbor (population: 114,024) is miniscule compared to Chicago's standards, but in A2's modest and pedestrian-friendly downtown, there are these recycling bins for anyone strolling around town. It'd sure be great to have these around Chicago.
On the Mag Mile, I've seen some improvement with the one BigBelly Solar trash compactor I spotted (there may be more). Though trash isn't recycled in these things, a solar-powered compactor helps reduce nasty garbage overflow. I couldn't get a response from a spokesperson from the Department of Streets and Sanitation on how many of these are installed on city streets, but Zvez Kubat, a spokesperson for the Park District, told me the district has 25 of these trash cans along the lakefront, in addition to the separate blue containers for recycling. Kubat says she hopes people this summer pay more attention to what bin they're throwing garbage into. If a recycling bin has too much trash inside, it can't be recycled. "In some cases, I don't know if people aren't paying attention, but there's been some unfortunate instances of not being able to recycle because it's contaminated," she says.
I may be missing something - or just haven't seen anything like this predominately around the city - but doesn't it seem reasonable Chicago could have something like this, at least in the Loop?
Three members of the No Games Chicago Coalition have been in Lausanne, Switzerland since Monday morning! Martin Macias, Tom Tresser and Rhoda Whitehorse have traveled to the headquarters city of the International Olympic Committee to tell them NOT to award the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
As far as we know, this is the first time a citizen's delegation has made such a journey to make such a demand in the one hundred year plus history of the modern Olympics.
Disclosure: I was a co-founder of No Games Chicago
One of my very first posts on Gapers Block (awwww) was about the Congress Hotel workers going on strike ("The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (Local 1) is still on strike, dragging out a fight with the Congress Hotel (Congress and Michigan) that started in early June."). Gapers Block is celebrating our 6th year anniversary this year. That's right--the Congress Hotel strike has become the longest hotel strike in the history of the United States, with even the President making an appearance on the picket line (when he was a US Senator). Today is the anniversary picket.
Because I'm a worldly man, I have a subscription to the "number one Jewish newspaper" in the country, The Forward. They had a fascinating piece last week about how the Hotel strike has split the Jewish faith community in Chicago:
This fight, though, has taken on its fiercest and most unusual form within the city's Jewish community. The hotel is controlled by Albert Nasser, a wealthy Jewish philanthropist with residences in Geneva and New York. To run the day-to-day operations at the Congress, Nasser brought in Shlomo Nahmias, an Israeli-born businessman who has put up mezuzas on the hotel's doors and won public support from his Orthodox rabbi for the hotel's battle with its striking workers.
"You do not find in Chicago one hotel that has mezuzas on every door," Nahmias told the Forward proudly in a short interview in his office, just upstairs from the lobby.
Nahmias's foe -- the local branch of the hotel union Unite Here -- is itself led by a longtime Jewish labor leader who put a young Jewish organizer in charge of the strike when it first began. Since then, the workers -- most of them immigrants from Latin America -- have received growing support from Jewish communal organizations and rabbis around the city, who have criticized the conduct of the hotel's management. Just this spring, a high school student who had learned about the strike through his synagogue convinced his school to move the senior prom from the controversial hotel. The strike has become the clearest available case study in the conflicting ways in which Jews approach labor issues today. It is enough to leave some of the workers in the middle of it thoroughly confused.
Will you join the Congress Hotel workers on the picket today, and show your support for Chicago's service workers?
You guys ready for bus stations made out of gummi and the tearing up of roads to install 13,000 miles of bumper car track? Because if you leave it to me, that's what our region will look like.
Unfortunately for me, but lucky for you, CMAP isn't ONLY asking me to help plan the region. They're asking all of us to contribute in a project called GO TO 2040. The site has unbelievably cool tools that allow you to fiddle with different planning factors--land consumption, infrastructure spending and priorities--and develop a plan for the region.
In 2040, I'll be 60 years old and preparing to be supported by young whippersnappers of different varieties. Hopefully the unfocused growth and haphazzard development of the Chicagoland area over the last forty years will not continue--we pay a huge price in inefficiency and redundancy. Head on over to CMAP and have your say.
The Caucus of Rank and File Educators has filed charges against the Chicago Board of Education under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, claiming that the "turnaround" policy of the Renaissance 2010 initiative has amounted to discrimination against African-American teachers in the Chicago Public Schools. According to a CORE release, there are 2,000 fewer African-American teachers in CPS today than there were at the beginning of the Renaissance/Turnaround process in 2002.
Title VII prohibits formal or practical discrimination in hiring and firing practices--so even where a system is formally fair, if the practice or operations are discriminatory, legal action is possible.
In a statement, CORE co-chair Karen GJ Lewis said, "Since the beginning of the year, I've met black teachers who are working as substitutes. They are in tears, not just about the loss of their jobs but also about the loss of their status in the community. These school and position closings are insidious and Draconian. They are based on only one measurement -- test scores -- which say more about socio-economic status than they do about teaching and learning."
Copies of the complaint were not immediately available. A spokesperson for the Board of Education declined to comment.
The big widely-known secret about the city's financial situation is that revenues are down and there are budget shortfalls, but the Mayor does have access to reserves built up through privatization over the last few years.
The Mayor has made efforts to balance the budget by cutting services--although this is couched as asking for givebacks from city workers--with disastrous results (e.g., the unplowed side streets). I think its important to always remind people that when you ask workers to take unpaid days off, or cut their pay, you are cutting the services that we often take for granted, and that make our city work efficiently, and better. The Reagan-era stereotype of the lazy public employee needs to die, because it's inaccurate. The reality is that your average public employee works in understaffed situations and is overworked. The reason your DMV lines are long is not because the DMV workers are moving in slow motion but because there aren't enough of them.
Here's AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Henry Bayer talking about city workers' negotiations with the Mayor.
The City of Chicago, led by Mayor Daley and a vast and tumorous army of aldermen and bagmen and yesmen and opportunists and spineless, parasitic political-machine halfwits of forms never seen outside the roiling cesspool of governmental slop-trough greed, has proven itself unworthy of something as potentially delicious and fulfilling as the 2016 Olympic Games.
I'd quibble that the modern Olympics aren't something we want anyway, but damn.
Telander goes on:
Alderman Isaac Carothers, a longtime West Side Daley hack and political operations insider, is allegedly so corrupt that even wearing a wire for the feds (which he did) didn't prevent him from being indicted the other day for fraud and bribery.
Michael Jordan and even Barack Obama himself are going to speak out for the Chicago Olympic bid.
Who cares?
Do you know how much money Chicago stands to lose in this deal? Are you a wheeler-dealer? A connected guy? A Daley relative hooked up to pension-fund investments?
You'll pay, if you're not.
I guarantee you.
I promise you.
The Chicago bid folks have a massive public-relations war chest.
All we citizens have is common sense, and the knowledge of what goes on here.
In Louisiana, they have governmental corruption that is so over-the-top it's funny.
Ours is just dumb as snot.
Bad kids should be punished.
To bed. No food. The end.
Damn. Holy shit. Telander gives the Mayor the business.
I was probably a little hard on John Kass my last time out on KassWatch, but I couldn't help it; he can be incredibly annoying (many of you would say the same about me I'm sure; see? Circle of life). What can I say? He gets under my skin. That's what he's trying to do, so I guess that means he's good at his job.
Anyway, I avoided touching on Kass' frustrating piece on the Sotomayor nomination because I think it deserves a longer consideration and it's an issue that I know will gin up a lot of emotion, so it deserves to be addressed seriously, instead of just me poking fun at a guy who loves the smell of his own ink.
So how about a lighter topic?
I am completely at a loss to figure out what the point of Kass' latest column was. It's about...uh...Patti Blagojevich being more manly than Eminem? Or a better washed up celebrity? I'm not sure that Eminem is washed up though; and I'm certain Patti Blagojevich is not a washed up celebrity because she was never a celebrity, and certainly wasn't one long enough to be considered "washed up". Eminem went out at the top of his game and has been producing records and making zillions of dollars. He just released a record that will definitely go zintuple SpacePlatinum. I realize that he's just trying to have a spot of fun and the piece isn't really meant to be taken too seriously--after all, it's about Eminem getting a face full of Sasha Baron Cohen's hairy ass, and Kass subsequently being put off his raisin bran--but there's an equivalence problem here.
There's no relationship between the Eminem incident/stunt, which happened at an awards show, and Patti's appearance on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here (which the Tribune's Jeff Coen abbreviated on his twitter feed as IAC...GMOOH, which I think would be pronounced Yak Gmooh, which we can all agree is a much cooler name). I think Kass is trying to call out the Blagojeviches for trying to "taint the federal jury pool" (yet he failed to make the obvious pun there) but couldn't get to his word count, so he thought he'd comment on how gross it would be to get touched by a hairy dude ass.
Ultimately, Kass decides that Blagojevich achieved her objective of tainting the jury pool while the Eminem stunt succeeded only in making him, Kass, nauseous (funny that an ass in the face for ten seconds would make him nauseous, but seeing a woman eat a tarantula for money wouldn't).
Kass:
"All I can say, it's a good thing Borat didn't try it with 50 Cent," said my friend Big Paul. "If Borat came flying out of the sky with little white wings and touched his [you know] on 50 Cent's forehead, you know what would happen?"
So I think I figured it out. This column is one of Kass' lifestyle pieces where he gets to talk to his imaginary friends.
"Imagine if he tried it with Joe Walsh?" a guy named Tony asked. "What if he tried it with Ted Nugent?" another guy said.
We imagined Borat stumbling, pincushioned by Ted's flaming arrows. Or Ted stringing Borat's dried tendons on his guitar, as a haunch of salted Borat turns nicely on a spit over hot coals, Ted whetting his bowie knife, humming "Cat Scratch Fever."
Nice creepy revenge fantasy by proxy you had there fellas. But really--it was just a dude's ass. When I'm sitting on the bench at the gym tying my shoes, I get about five dude-ass walk-bys. It doesn't make me want to flay them and make jerky out of them. It makes me want to move my face.
Maybe Kass wanted to accomplish two things: taunt Patti for appearing on YakGmooh, and remind everybody that he has friends (and as an added bonus that he, Big Paul, and A Guy Named Tony think dudes' asses are gross). All in all, a successful outing.
Volpe* was supposed to appear at 2:45. But he didn't show up until 3:18. Hey, what's the fun of being the mayor's right-hand man if you can't make reporters sit around?
But let me tell you, it was worth the wait. What a performance! Volpe deserved a standing ovation when it was over, and it was all I could do not to stand up and cheer. He kind of reminded me of Jimmy Cagney, with his spunky, pugnacious defense of his man (the mayor) and their parking-meter deal. Lips quivering, voice occasionally cracking, he expressed outrage bordering on disgust that Hoffman--or anyone for that matter--could even remotely suggest that things didn't work as well as they should in Chicago.
As for defending the deal, it's pretty clear that the mayor's central argument is that $1 billion in the bank today is worth more than anything 75 years down the road. He and his aides may need a new one--fewer and fewer people seem to be buying that line.
*Former CFO, Daley Chief-of-Staff Paul Volpe
As I stated earlier, we shouldn't let this become an issue of whether the amount of money was exactly right. The lack of a reasonable process--and the bidders' rational expectation that there would be no meaningful public scrutiny, given our Mayor's reputation as the CEO Mayor--means that there was no way we got the best possible price. There's no one magic number that is exactly what we could have sold ("leased") our publicly-built-and-maintained-for-generations parking meters for. That negotiations happened behind closed doors and a final product produced for an up-and-down vote means that the bidder was dealing with a handful of negotiators rather than contending with an inquisitive if not hostile City Council and the large constituency organizations and stakeholders who would have participated in a review process.
Here's what I wrote in December '07:
The mixed reaction to the auctioning of the Skyway has emboldened the mayor, who seems to think that selling things you and I own is the best way to guarantee a city that works for you and me. Who knows how much the mayor is willing to prostitute the public trust? Who knows when our legislators will realize that the myth of privatization efficiency is just that, and stand up for us when the mayor tries to auction off our property?
It's not that we left $1bn on the table; it's that we never had a shot.
UPDATE: Whet Moser at the Reader is following the debate on the numbers--what a luxury now. Whatever valuations the former city CFO, Paul Volpe, can throw out now are residing comfortably next to meaningless. This is a debate to be had before the decision is final. In most Public Private Partnership frameworks--believe it or not, most parts of the country have statutes that lay out exactly how PPPs can be entered into--there is a stage for negotiation after the best offer is accepted. Having this public debate about valuation THEN almost certainly would have gotten the city a better deal. Instead the bidder knew there was going to be a railroaded process because Chicago has the "CEO Mayor" who "gets things done". It misses the point to debate what the valuation "honestly" is because that number doesn't exist. The value is whatever we the public could have gotten out of the bidder for the deal, and without a period of debate and discussion, we'll never know. A request goes out; bids come in; agencies, committees, and panels review the proposals and make recommendations to legislative bodies; legislative bodies hold hearings and solicit public comment; then bids are accepted but opened for negotiation based on the aforementioned process. That's what a reasonable PPP process looks like.
So the Inspector-General's office has released their report on the parking meter deal, and guess what? Mayor Daley's incompetence may have cost us $1bn.
That's one billion dollars. If you want to wrap your mind around what that means, it could pay the salary of 1,000 cops for a decade; or 3,000 teachers for ten years. If the city had gotten a one-time shot of $2bn, we could have added an additional 500 hybrid buses to the city's fleet for 10 years and paid their drivers. Oh, the things we could do. Because of the Mayor's action, we don't have that money.
Maybe it isn't fair to call it incompetence; but the other option would be stupidity, so it would be better to go with that.
And of course it wasn't just Mayor Daley's incompetence, it was the City Council's cowardice, too, their maddeningly comical terror of the Fifth Floor.
And this has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans--in this instance we have Democrats rubberstamping an essentially conservative policy. It has to do with a lack of democracy. People who argue for more transparency, more democracy, deliberation, public participation, are shrugged off by the professional political class as being unrealistic, idealistic, wild-eyed haters who are just sore because they aren't in the cool kids club.
But the policies democracy creates are almost always better--particularly over the long term--than the policies dictated by elites. Why? Because the policies dictated by elites will, over time, trend towards favoring those elites over everybody else.
So what a surprise, that the parking meter deal has proven to benefit Morgan Stanley and the Mayor over the people of Chicago.
The Inspector-General's report (via wbez.org) takes no position on Public Private Partnerships per se, but includes this:
Because the deal was presented to the City Council with very limited information and because the Council scheduled its vote a very short time later, there was no meaningful public review of the decision to lease the parking-meter system. What is standard in the PPP "best practices" model - informed deliberation, transparency, and full analysis of the public interest considerations - was not present here.
Of course not! Our aldermen are so scawed of da big scawy mayor. They tremble in fear that he'll send his scattered and demoralized "army" of geriatric precinct workers after them. Who knows; if they stand on principle, maybe they'll lose reelection and have to get a job. I can't believe its come to taunting our elected officials for being scaredy cats, but what else is left? What else do we have to do? They obviously don't respond to reason. So maybe taunts will work better.
I understand it's scary to have your job be threatened, but its not like the Mayor is going to kill you if you vote against his public private partnership proposal. He'll just get comically red-faced and blustery and call you a coward in a way that makes everybody in the city laugh at him.
(comme ca:
)
Mayor Daley the efficient city manager is an apparition; his years of consolidating control gave the appearance of an efficient bureaucrat making things run smoothly; but all things now controlled, we find that the "efficiency" of amalgamation is just a shift of decision making from a slow public process to a quick private one. Democracy maybe chaotic, scary, and sometimes even ugly, but besides being theoretically right, it is often practically right, too.
Richard Daley has a mixed record in office. He has a right to defend that record, and we shouldn't give in to the temptation to turn him into an always-bad caricature. But this is a fantastic blunder, and one that is a direct result of the lack of leadership in Chicago.
These types of things are destined to happen again and again if we don't soon form a real, on-going effort to identify and encourage new leadership in the city.
Chicago doesn't always have the best record with the environment, so when I spotted this lonely city pot ripe for flowers, I found the message someone scrawled with chalk somewhat interesting. One side says "Save the Planet" while the other side asks, "Can u look out the window without your shadow getting in the way?" It's a nice warning on vanity, and it oddly references an old Sarah McLachlan song. These pics were taken on East Randolph Street, in between North Michigan Avenue and North State Street. Looks like those ubiquitous Greenpeace solicitors might be getting their message across afterall.
Much has been made of the Rasmussen Poll indicating that among young people especially, socialism and capitalism enjoy about equal popularity. If this poll is to be trusted, something like 110,000,000 adult Americans would prefer something else--for about 40,000,000 of them, socialism--to capitalism.
This may disappoint some of my socialist friends, but I honestly think that those results reflect the tendency of conservatives to call every public activity not performed for the purpose of further enriching the wealthy "socialism"; to call all social or public activity "socialism" and to decry all secularist tendencies as "socialist"; to call raising the top marginal tax rate on the plutocrats by 3% "socialism"; to refer to efforts to cut defense spending "socialism"; to make Medicare available to all "socialism"; to give workers the right to organize a union without fear "socialism", etc. As a result, I think, people, particularly younger people who have no real world experience with socialism, think "socialism" just means a mixed economy.
If you're one of the 47% of Americans who are seeking an alternative to capitalism, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) will be holding its annual conference here from June 18th to 21st (and in San Francisco from July 2nd to 5th; just like a buncha socialists to ignore the 4th of July!). You can register to attend and be dialectic-ed into believing that social relations structure all human institutions and that the contradictions of capitalism are inherent and will necessarily lead to its destruction. Also, refreshments.
Socialism2009's slogan is "Building a New Left for a New Era". Speakers will include Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Sportswriter Dave Zirin of The Nation, and journalist Jeremy Scahill, among others. Seeing Goodman and Zirin speak is worth the price of admission. Also, Heather Rogers (author of Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage) will be giving a talk on the difficulties of having a truly green economy in a capitalist system that will be interesting for those of you who not only have socialist tendencies, but also may be hippies.
I don't know how else to express this but Holy Shit.
Alderman Isaac "Ike" Carothers, who was indicted yesterday for mail and wire fraud in a corruption case where he allegedly accepted $40,000 worth of home renovations in exchange for lucrative zoning relief, was reportedly wearing a wire for the G the last year or so.
Drip, drip, drip. An alderman wearing a wire is--really astounding. The fact that the government felt the need to "flip" a member of our City Council, as though it is an on-going criminal conspiracy, is unbelievable, shameful, really--holy shit.
The document identifies Carothers as "Public Official A" -- with clear identifiers pointing to him, including a reference to one of his family members running for Congress in 2004.
The government filing says Carothers, 54, had been "consensually recording conversations with individuals suspected of engaging in ongoing criminal conduct."
"These recorded conversations include meetings Public Official A has had with other public officials and real estate developers. The government expects Public Official A to continue his cooperation into late May 2009."
Detailing the corruption scandals that have rocked Chicago in the last twenty years--Phocus, Haunted Hall, Greylord, Silver Shovel, Gambat, Incubator, Lantern, and of course the Hired Truck Scandal--often turns into rank raconteurism; Chicago definitely has a loose tooth love for its colorful public figures. And scandal fatigue likely has taken the edge off of new revelations. But Ike Carothers is a West Side institution, a power broker who dominates the politics there, particularly at the street level.
Carothers is also a critical pillar in Mayor Daley's political establishment that effectively coopted enough black and Latino political organizations and institutions to keep the ground unsteady under any potential challenger. The Mayor views this as critical to governing the city; his critics as a cynical way to squash dissent.
If Ike Carothers' purpose was to ferret out corruption among his colleagues in the Council, the Mayor's governing majority could begin to crumble. And all those organizations and "leaders" that for years have cozied up to the Mayor and establishment in the name of "pragmatism" will suddenly find themselves tied to a coalition that can't guarantee them anything. Council leaders will begin to fight for the scraps. It could get ugly.
It is important to remember that Carothers was critical to the Mayor's ruling coalition; he was always a counterbalance to the established black political institutions on the city's South Side, represented by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his son Junior, among others.
At an unrelated news conference, Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) let loose on [Congressman Jesse] Jackson, [Jr].
Carothers, who defeated a Jackson-backed aldermanic challenger in 2003, accused Jackson of being a do-nothing congressman with "an ego as big as this building" and aspiring to be "king of the world."
The vitriolic broadside unnerved Daley, who was nearby. The mayor turned to Carothers and said, "Ike, give it a rest."
What kind of Fitzmas present will Fitzgerald be delivering to the public, brilliantly wrapped in indictment paper? We'll find out if it's something we wanted, or just another boring old sweater.
UPDATE: Wrong federal building. Oops. And as I'm sure you've heard by now, it is West Side political boss Ike Carothers (29th-Austin) who was indicted today by the feds, for allegedly accepting cash for a zoning change. Nice, old school Chicago corruption. Here's the indictment. I'll work on pulling out the juicy bits for ya.
UPDATE 2: I'm not an attorney, so I'll stick to the facts; these are the violations cited as the grounds for the indictment: (i) "theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds"; (ii) perpetrating a "fraud or swindle" using an interstate mail service; (iii) perpetrating a "fraud or swindle" using the phone; (v) obstruction of justice by "Influencing or injuring officer or juror generally"; (vi) entering a fraudulent or false statement to the IRS; (vii) and violating congressional campaign contributions in three different ways (including entering a contribution under a different name). These are the things that made the case federal, but the indictment lists a number of state and local laws that were violated, too. The "fraud or swindle" was literally of the citizens of the city; under Section 1346 of the US Code, this definition is provided: "For the purposes of this chapter, the term 'scheme or artifice to defraud' includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services." This was used in the Blagojevich indictment as well. The argument is that we were defrauded of our intangible right of honest service by this scheming. At least that's my understanding of it. Lawyers?
I recently had the opportunity to go to a town hall meeting hosted by the Independent Film Channel (IFC) and listen to a panel of prominent journalists (pictured left, photo from IFC) discuss why media matters. The town hall meeting is part of IFC's pro-social initiative "Make Media Matter" which raises awareness about the vital role media plays in our lives, society and world.
In the wake of the economic crisis and political unraveling in Chicago, media is more important than ever. As Attorney General Lisa Madigan boldly stated in her introduction to the panel, "media makes democracy work; without it, who would hold the government accountable for their actions?"
Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, for many reasons, are distasteful to the left as well as the right. Not the least of which was their role in destroying the class-based coalition on the left in the 1960s and introducing the era of rich white kids competing for radical chic points in academia. Now they're trying to waste our time with their views on race, with a book annoyingly titled Race Course: Against White Supremacy. Don't get me wrong; being brown, I also am "against white supremacy." I'd just rather not attend any "race course" taught by a guy whose daddy was the CEO of Commonwealth Edison, and sat on the boards of Northwestern University and the Tribune Company, and who never spent a day in the clink for something anybody not benefitting from "white supremacy" would have done decades for.
"Fifty-seven percent of white voters did not vote for Obama....That was the impetus for writing this book. We've got a big job to do to change those numbers."
I tried to figure out how to take those words out of context--that maybe she wasn't being fairly quoted. The ellipsis is only to exclude exposition from the reporter--that's the quote. Seems pretty clear. My follow-up questions for Bernardine Dohrn would have been along the lines of, what percentage of white people voting for Mr. Obama would have been acceptable to them? Forty-nine percent? Fifty percent plus one? Seventy five percent? What percentage of white people voted against John Kerry? What percentage of white people voted against Bob Dole in 1996? Didn't Mr Obama win the election? Do she and Mr Ayers believe that only white supremacy kept him from winning 400 electoral votes?
Obviously his race was a factor for lots of voters, including a lot of racist voters. But it was obviously not a major factor, given his lopsided victory over possibly the whitest guy in America, the Arizonan Scotch-Irish husband of a liquor magnate heiress. But radical chic has nothing to do with material reality, it has to do with impressing your friends at cocktail and cheese parties in Hyde Park.
I walk along West Randolph and North State Streets quite often, so it's interesting to see several of these flyers surrounding the construction for the debacle that is Block 37. I spotted about three of them posted on police barricades. The flyers have some strong words for former CPD detective Joseph Frugoli, who is accused of a drunken-driving crash on the Dan Ryan in April that killed two men. In early May, Frugoli was charged with a DUI, reckless homicide and leaving the scene of an accident, according to CBS. He will be arraigned on May 28. Frugoli reportedly has a long history of being involved in other crashes as well.
Below a picture of Frugoli, the flyers on State and Randolph state: "I killed 2 young men because I don't follow the laws, I just enforce them."
CORE, the movement of rank-and-file teachers to democratize their union, is tweeting (twittering? I'm only 27 years old, and I'm not sure) the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates Meeting. Follow 'em.
Yalda Afshar sent us an upddate on the UIC Healthcare Students Against Disparities fight against the university's decision to close The Center for Women and Families at Pilsen. Afshar, a fourth year medical student and MD/PhD candidate in the Medical Scientist Training Program, wrote in an e-mail to Mechanics that:
In response to the outcry, John DeNardo, CEO of the UIC Healthcare System, has promised future ties with an existing Pilsen community clinic, the Alivio Medical Center. As of our May 1st meeting, DeNardo is discussing the provision of specialty services to the Pilsen community through Alivio, as an alternative to the primary care that the UIC clinic provided.
I was fortunate to be able to spend a little time at Windpower 2009, the just-concluded 4-day expo at McCormick Place. There was surprisingly scant local coverage of the world's largest windpower conference being held here in the Windy City, of all places, so I'm posting these notes, because it was an amazing event. From a gathering that, longtime attendees told me, had about 200 people here 10 years ago, and only 1,000 attendees as late as 2001, this has grown into a massive conference, sprawling across the entire South Hall of the expo center. According to The American Wind Energy Association, the conference had 23,200 attendees, close to double the size of last year's gathering, and over 1,200 exhibiting companies.
In keeping with the green theme of the conference, I took a multimodal route to get there: I biked to the Metra, took the train downtown, walked to a bus stop, then took the CTA to McCormick Place. I was glad I made the effort. Any policymaker, activist, reporter, or general member of the public who stopped by this show would have come away convinced that wind is no longer, in any fashion, an "alternative" energy source or science fiction. Rather this is a burgeoning industry with tremendous growth ahead.
In addition to the five governors who came by the conference, speakers included Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, financier T. Boone Pickens, FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu (via video). Illinois Governor Pat Quinn used the conference to announce an agreement by which the Illinois Department of Central Management Services (CMS) will purchase all of its energy for facilities in the capitol from wind-generated sources, through the city of Springfield.
Editor's Note: This article was submitted by Chris Gray, an independent journalist in Chicago.
They're calling it a telephone blitz. The Altgeld Gardens Housing Project has been without its public library for almost two months and lifelong resident and activist Cheryl Johnson has had enough.
Her environmental justice group, People for Community Recovery, is trying to set up a day when the whole neighborhood calls up the city of Chicago's complaint hotline, 311, as well as Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), demanding that someone reopen the library at 132nd Place and Ellis Avenue in the Far South Side housing project.
"We're going to flood his office, interrupt his day, because we need to have our library reopened," Johnson said.
Last week, we posted on a rally that members of the University of Illinois at Chicago Healthcare Students Against Discrimination were holding to protest the university's decision to close The Center for Women and Families at Pilsen.
We checked in with Yalda Afshar, a fourth year medical student who helped organize the protest, to talk to her about the group's hopes and plans for the future.
"The events were incredible," said Afshar, a MD/PhD candidate in the Medical Scientist Training Program. "Both events were really well attended...[and] it was a very, very mixed group in terms of professional background, which brought a lot of power to it."
Afshar estimates that between 75 to 100 UIC students attended the rally, which was held in front of the Outpatient Care Clinic, along with 20 to 30 physicians and staff. About 150 adults and 50 children attended the vigil, which was held in front of the Center later in the evening on Thursday.
Meetings, summits, conferences. These are where catastrophic problems are discussed and noble solutions are alluded to. That tradition was upheld on Monday at the UIC-hosted and city-sponsored Fifth Annual Richard J. Daley Urban Forum cautiously entitled "Global Economic Recovery: Cities Lead the Way."
The three-hour event boasted 30 mayors from cities around the world contributing their hard-knocks experiences amidst the global recession. Much of the dialogue revolved around such big ideas as bureaucratic reform, infrastructure investment, and educational improvement -- all with very little specificity attached.
While Mayor Richard M. Daley, who Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution affectionately referred to as the "dean of American mayors," may have presided over markedly higher budgets each year, he confidently assured the forum that urban success will be rooted in "cutting government spending," and "looking at outsourcing." Yet it was Mayor Hanna Birna Kristjansdottir of Reykjavik, Iceland, who described how she and the city council agreed to a pay cut as a measure of demonstrating what needed to be done across the board. From the back of the room, it was hard to see if the 50 aldermen in the front row were stroking their chins in a eureka moment.
Vice President Joe Biden topped off the chorus of international voices in support of significant federal reinvestment in the urban landscape by using stimulus spending items as bullet points. After rattling off a stump speech of spending measures (all of which could be reviewed at recovery.gov), he expressed his belief that American cities will soon gain a technological edge in the global economy by trading in "smokestacks for stethoscopes."
From the bowels of the predictable rhetoric and the guaranteed applause lines about wanting Chicago to host the Olympics in 2016, a few general themes did emerge. Tourism dollars wind up finding their ways to places that spend money on beautification projects and big box infrastructure improvements, making it clear that such expenditures go beyond short-term patronage.
Secondly, business partnerships must guide the educational development in this country through secondary school grants and product development in the universities. Norbert Riedel, a spokesperson for the Baxter International, discussed how partnering with several Chicago universities allowed it to make headway in adult stem cell research, anti-counterfeiting, and product safety. These relationships went onto to produce high-paying jobs in which companies groomed the work force to suit its needs. Gone are the days about worrying how corporate influence in the educational marketplace could corrupt the schooling process. As the Beatles once said, "All the money's gone, nowhere to go."
I can't believe I missed this column. I normally like Mary Mitchell, but I don't always think to check out her columns anymore. Not sure why, but this column from last month was pretty good.
BTW, I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but I see on her blog that she's suffering from cancer and was successfully treated for that. That's great news and I expect nothing less than to be able to read her columns for the foreseeable future.
Anyway back to her column:
Obviously, President Obama can't read the tons of mail he receives. But there's one letter floating around the White House that I hope he reads.
That letter is from Edward G. Gardner, a prominent Chicago businessman and the founder of Black on Black Love, the city's pioneering anti-violence campaign.
Gardner is asking Obama to send federal troops to urban areas that are now under siege by domestic terrorists fighting gang wars.
Our children are dying in the streets.
Yet so far more attention has been paid to the violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On June 19, 1973 I was brought into the world in a delivery room at Michael Reese Hospital. Eight years later my little sister did the same. In between those years my mother, Barbara, conductedresearch on infant development at the hospital's Child Development Center.
From my childhood I remember an enormous campus, dozens of buildings, underground tunnels, bustling with activity and life. My mother and her colleagues lectured me on how Reese had the first neonatal ICU, developed the first preemie delivery methods, had the first real cancer treatment centers and was a light of hope and medical greatness for the world -- not just Chicago's South Side.
Northwestern University students are planning a rally on Thursday in support of Roxana Saberi, a U.S.-Iranian journalist who was recently sentenced to eight years in prison and convicted of espionage. Saberi has been held in Tehran's Evin prison since January.
Saberi received a master's degree in Journalism from Medill in 1999 and has been working in Iran for six years, covering stories for the BBC, NPR and ABC News, among other outlets.
According to an e-mail and press release sent today, students will gather in front of Fisk Hall, 1845 Sheridan Rd., at 5:15 p.m. and will begin marching at 5:30 p.m. Students will march through campus and end at The Rock, a center meeting point on NU's campus, where supporters will express their concern for Saberi's release. On the same day colleagues will be gathering to support her, Saberi will begin a hunger strike, according to ABC News. Follow her story at the Free Roxana Saberi blog.
Members of the University of Illinois at Chicago Healthcare Students Against Discrimination are planning a rally on Thursday to protest the university's decision to shut down The Center for Women and Families at Pilsen, a UIC community clinic that serves several low-income Latina women and children, within two months.
The group, along with physicians and community members, will gather in front of the Outpatient Care Clinic (OCC), 1801 W. Taylor St, at noon, and will hand over a petition with more than 1,000 signatures from UIC students, staff and community members who are against the closure.
Anyone who's unsure of how politics and literature/art relate to one another effectively should consider reading Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, which is this spring's One Book, One Chicago choice.
The book follows the life of Esperanza, a young Mexican-American girl growing up in Humboldt Park, through tiny vignettes about the little things in her life that add up to a whole lot more -- hair, her age, her name, school lunches, hips.
As she matures, Esperanza witnesses the lingering effects of gangs, binding domesticity and poverty in her community and among her friends. She vows to get ahead with education and to leave Mango Street, but "to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out." Though Cisneros, a Chicago native, has a deceptively simple writing style, she gives a complex human face to the struggles of working-class families everywhere in Chicago, especially Latino families. Many of the stories, Cisneros has said, were influenced from her days teaching at Latino Youth High School.
It's hard not to guffaw like a frat boy every time I come across news or analysis of yesterday's "Tea Parties" (Rachel Maddow=genius). It is particularly hard to hear clips of protestors talking about how "it's time for us to wake up those folks in Washington to what people really think," as I heard over and over again on NPR last night, as if Obama wasn't just elected by fairly comfortable margins and doesn't enjoy 60% approval rating. (or even that a large percentage of Americans think the tax system is fair). Those of us who lived through the Clinton years had very few illusions about the ability of the "extra-chromosome right" as Al Gore called them to exist in loyal opposition. So we're now subjected to debates over Obama's role in promoting piracy, governors advocating secession, and whatever other outrages emerge from the miasma of the right-wing politics of victimhood.
Stepping away from the hypocrisy and potential danger of the inflamed rhetoric on the right, one can't help but be impressed with the fearlessness of conservative politicians, pundits, and activists. It doesn't matter that the last eight years are widely viewed as a series of exhibits on the failure of their essential ideology or that they were roundly repudiated at the polls in November. Even if their grievances are fuzzy and inchoate and their way out of the current situation is to apply the same medicine that got us here, only in higher does, they are so convinced of the dire consequences of not opposing the current president that they will engage in pretty ridiculous behavior to see him stopped.
It's becoming pretty obvious from the reporting of Ben Jovarsky, budget woes, and the three tires I've had to change in the last month that calling Chicago the city that works is a rhetorical stretch, to say the very least. A broke, pock-marked city that attempts to replace front line police officers with cameras, sell off all its assets to the highest bidder in return for slush funds for Mayoral fantasies of grandeur is not one headed down the right road. But yet we have a more or less completely compliant City Council that marches in lock-step with the flailing failing policies of our mayor while the media focuses on Todd Stroger's foibles while letting Daley's slide by. It's probably also true that the Mayor has done a great job of making himself, and not the tenant farmers of the City Council represent government in this city, so that voters and non-voters alike rarely hold alderman accountable. The situation is especially disappointing to those of us who worked hard to elect a slate of independent alderman, only for them to come back and say "you don't understand how scary the Mayor can be." Our city is crumbling and the most those who are charged with fixing it can say is that they can't speak out because of the hypothetical fear of losing city services in their wards
Maybe Chicago needs some disloyal opposition, some crazy "tea-baggers" who will throw caution to the wind and not be afraid of the retributive consequences, real or imagined. If right wing Republicans aren't scared of the President and Democratic Congress who just thumped them in elections, then why are we still electing alderman who defeat the machine candidate in their wards and remain afraid of the mayor?
The following op-ed is by Tammy Terwelp, traffic director at Chicago Public Radio and a graduate student studying geography at Northeastern Illinois University. Lately she's been wondering how Chicago would handle an emergency evacuation. Take her survey and let her know what you think.
If 9/11 or worse happened in the City of Chicago, what do our leaders have planned to help citizens evacuate and where can I get that information? If you are like most Chicagoans, you don't have a clue. Being a grad student at NEIU gives a person a great excuse to try and unearth some answers. My spring semester research paper is on our city's plan and why it doesn't seem to be accessible. The policy appears to be "You'll know when you need to know." I don't know about you, but given our city and state's reputation, I am not so confident in trusting officials with my life. There isa public document [PDF] outlining some response tactics for the Central Business District (CBD), which is a good start. I understand it better than I did when I first read it a few months ago because I have been neck deep in acronyms of city and county departments, learning what they do. They seem to have a workable plan for disseminating instructions in an emergency -- but what are those instructions so they can be in my head before the freak out happens? And what about us schlepps outside of the CBD but still in the city?
Philadelphia has a lot of information available online. Maps, instructions and routes are all viewable. Yes, they do have a "private" plan for officials only, but the public plan at least allows people to have an idea of what to do and where to go and a chance to convey that to their families. Even Cleveland has a brochure [PDF] that outlines the obvious questions with more relevance than Chicago's version.
There may be more detailed Chicago information out there that I can't seem to find, but if I can't find it in two months of researching, how are you going to find it to potentially save your life? I certainly don't know how to get everyone out of here, but do you believe anyone has an idea? Take my survey -- maybe I am wrong in assuming Chicagoans are in the dark. I certainly hope I am.
Aaron Renn from The Urbanophile writes at New Geography on Chicago's population loss. For instance on Chicago losing population to Indianapolis:
One key to this lies in affordability. For years Indianapolis has been ranked as the least expensive major housing market in America. Blessed with few natural barriers and pro-private sector governments, housing supply in these cities has grown along with population. Yet at the same time the negative impacts of sprawl have been mitigated by their modest - compared say to Dallas, Phoenix or Houston - growth rates and relatively small size. This leaves them attractive, affordable, and offering a very high quality of life to people without elite professional incomes.
On why Chicago is losing population:
Indeed what we can see is that there are different forms of urban success. In an ever more diverse America, people define the good life differently. Too much urban policy is focused on one size fits all solutions that assume cities should look and function something like Chicago. But America's cities are very diverse and require tailored policies to suit the local landscape, and the unique local geography, demography, history, culture, and values that our cities bring to the table. Great cities, like great wines, have to express their terroir.
So who are those condos being built for?
If you told someone 15 years ago you lived in the South Loop, they would have said, "Huh?" If you had told them you lived by the old Chicago Stadium, they would have thought you had lost your mind. These and other neighborhoods that were once derelict or dangerous, as well as some that were low key ethnic enclaves, have been transformed into bustling yuppie playgrounds for the new "creative class".
But there has been a downside to this for Chicago as well. The influx of the educated elite into the city has significantly raised housing prices in large parts of the city, rendering it unaffordable to others. Supporting the amenities demanded by the city's new residents costs money, so taxes have gone up, doubling the squeeze on the city's traditional residents, forcing many of them out.
...
Chicago is an incredible urban success story, but only for some. International immigrants and the creative class are flocking, but everyone else is leaving.
One thought crossed my mind in reading this story in The New York Times about Chicago's bid at the 2016 Olympics: Chicago has one thing that sets us apart from other cities security wise. We've guarded the first black president of the United States. Considering the amount of nutjobs and racists there are out there, even in a cultured and metropolis like Chicago, this is no small feat and although it's one man versus the various dangers that come with protecting large crowds, this should mean something to the IOC.
Ben Jovarsky and Mick Dumke's dogged reporting has produced a fascinating, if predictable tale of Mayor Daley ramrodding questionable billion dollar privitization schemes through the City Council. It's no surprise that the Mayor and the pliant council are loath to engage in any sort of real public debate, but other news stories this week make the details Jovarsky and Dumke unearth much more troubling. Over and over again, the Mayor and his staff justify the quick and unexamined sell off of the city's assets for more funds for things like social services or neighborhood parks. But other stories this week seem to indicate that the Mayor has no intention of creating robust, quality city services. In other words, the Mayor and his staff are selling off revenue-generating city assets for no clear purpose.
I would like to take a moment from my current leave-of-absence to comment on Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke's extraordinary piece from this week's Chicago Reader. Joravsky and Dumke's piece is in fact a perfect case study of much larger issues, namely, the utter failure of neoliberal public policy and the accelerating erosion of Mayor Daley's precarious political order. Both are implicated in an exhaustive piece that demonstrates how and why decisions that affect millions of human begins are made.
And I would like to direct this piece not just to our wonderfully loyal Mechanics readers, but also to the current under-class of political professionals, legislative and district staffers, public policy Masters students, and the rest of the "next generation" of leadership that think leadership means gripping the pant legs of today's elected officials and auctioning the public good off to private interests. And also to elements of the city's so-called "progressive leadership", which are, like Dorian Gray's portrait, at risk of transmogrifying themselves into the shakedown artists the hard-core right always accuses us of being.
400 jobs will be created through repairing the Dearborn CTA slow zones. According to CTA Tattler:
About 400 people will find jobs fixing slow zones in the Dearborn subway this month. Those jobs are being paid for by $56.6 million in federal stimulus funds under a contract approved at the March CTA board meeting.
This is the best part of the stimulus and it's good to see it's being used semi wisely --to repair existing infrastructure that can be done efficiently and quickly create jobs.
That said, this is also an opportunity to expand public transportation in the city with the stimulus money by expanding the CTA's trains and buses. By expansion I mean creating more routes, increasing frequency, and lowering wait times, all of which would create jobs and improve the city's transportation system. It may not be a Bean or the Olympics but a good transportation system does have a strong appeal to people who are trying to decide where to live.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all you Mechanics readers! In honor of St. Paddy's Day, we're posting this pic from Sunday's South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade. This photo was taken at West 107th Street and South Bell Avenue in Beverly, and we think directing traffic just before the parade has got to be one of the more interesting city jobs in this town. According to the SouthtownStar, police arrested 54 people during the parade, mainly for disorderly conduct.
My former boss, Ben Greenman, is set to release his first novel in May called "Please Step Back." How does this relate to Chicago and politics? I'm glad you asked! Greenman is a Chicago native who attended Northwestern for journalism graduate school and very recently wrote for this year's fiction issue of the Reader. Concerning politics, he's also the masterful mind behind these hilarious musicals about recent political scandals. Read them here under the humor circle. The press release for Greenman's book is below:
Coming Soon: Ben Greenman's new funk-rock novel, "Please Step Back," due in May from Melville House.
--What is it?
Ben Greenman's novel "Please Step Back" is a swirling Sixties saga of a true
American icon, the funk star Rock Foxx. In Greenman's imagined (but very
real) world, Foxx is one of the genre-busting stars of the era who created a
new kind of music amid a new kind of culture, like Sly Stone or James Brown
or Curtis Mayfield.
--Will people like it?
Greenman's novel, which tracks Foxx's rise and fall, is already being hailed
as "light-stepping and hard-hitting...Greenman gets it right" (by Walter
Mosley) and "a literary funk-rock novel with weight and power" (by George
Pelecanos).
--Is it true that there is a theme song for the book?
The last movement of the book turns on the title song, which Greenman's main
character wrote but was never able to record. Greenman has enlisted the help
of the funk legend Swamp Dogg, one of the many real-life inspirations for
the character, who wrote music for the lyrics and, in an unprecedented
collaboration, recorded a theme song for the novel.
--How can I find out more?
To interview the author or write about this book, please contact Clara
Heyworth at Melville House (718.722.9204; ch@mhpbooks.com).
___________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker and the author of a number of
acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, A Circle is A Balloon and
Compass Both, and Correspondences. His short fiction and journalism has
appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post,
McSweeney's, Zoetrope: All Story, OneStory, and the Paris Review. He lives
in Brooklyn.
Oh, the difficult politics of running an arts building in Chicago. I don't walk along Belmont Avenue too often, so I don't know how long this sign has been up. But when I spotted this Monday afternoon, I thought it was one of the saddest signs I've ever seen. This from Bailiwick Repertory Theatre's Web site:
Beginning in 2009, Bailiwick again is on the road. Realizing the demands of our former building for repair and upkeep had become too taxing, we have chosen to take projects to rental houses, focusing our energies and funds on artistic projects.
While our schedule is yet to be announced, we will be producing our Pride Series at the brand new 160 seat theater Hoover-Leppen Theater in the Center on Halsted. Discussions are underway for a musical festival in winter.
Please keep checking this website to get updates on all that is happening at Bailiwick in 2009 and beyond.
A U.S. journalist with ties to the Chicago-area is being held in Tehran's Evin prison under unspecified charges.
Roxana Saberi, 31, a freelance journalist, has reported from Iran for BBC, NPR and ABC News, among other news outlets, for six years. According to reports, she called her father on February 10 and told him she had been arrested for buying alcohol, but her family has not heard from her since then. A spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Saberi filed stories illegally from Iran after her press credentials were withdrawn.
Oh, and folks, you never have seen the intrusion of security and all its muscle until you have been to an Olympics. Hidden cameras, patrol boats, armed guards and blockades will be your summer pals.
Remember, you can watch the Olympics on TV like billions of other global viewers, wherever the competition is held. But when the stuff occurs in your backyard, you are but pawns in the drama.
London, which has the Games in 2012, already has hinted it wished it didn't.
And Vancouver, which hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics, has been forced to borrow $350 million -- taxpayer-backed -- to guarantee shaky event financing.
Last March there was a Chicago Olympics fund-raising dinner at which tables sold for as much as $100,000. Were you there? Were you paying up?
Somebody was.
Which leads me to the key question: Who owns the Chicago 2016 Olympics, if they happen?
Can you hear the snorting and grunting of the porcine-snouted wheeler-dealers as they jockey for position for when the five-ringed money -- let's face it, your money -- comes roaring down the chute?
Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, candidate for Rahm Emanuel's House seat, is a Chief Co-Sponsor. The bill has a Republican co-sponsor, Roger Eddy of Hutsonville.
The Board of Education has no standards for its school closures. It views our city as a "market" and is merely trying to increase the "market share" of the privatized schools so favored by the Mayor and the myopic mopes who purr in his lap on the Fifth Floor.
The Sun-Times has some great local reporters, but I have to say, it has a severe "second paper" complex. That's the only explanation for today's cover, which provides photographic evidence--complete with an arrow--that they broke an earlier story related to a current story they did not break. I still prefer the Sun-Times as the scrappy underdog (also, they did break the Hired Truck Scandal, which in future years will be described as a watershed event for Mayor Daley's mayoralty), but somebody needs to sit them down and playfully jab them on the chin and call them slugger and tell them that everybody likes 'em just the way they are.
Chicago is America's third most miserable city, beating out bleak towns like Flint, Mich. and Buffalo, NY, according to a recently released Forbes magazine list.
Chicago's dubious ranking comes just six months after the magazine dubbed Chicago the most stressed-out city in America.
The magazine said Chicago's weather, long commute times, rising unemployment and the country's highest sales tax earned it the number three spot on the list, below Stockton, Calif. and Memphis.
For the first time this year, Forbes used "corruption" as a factor when ranking America's 150 largest metropolitan areas in order of misery, according to Forbes.com.
They even talk about the long baseball World Series drought of the Chicago Cubs. That makes Chicago miserable! Yeah, corruption isn't bad enough -- or weather or commutes or even business or economic reasons -- but the Cubs' long championship drought is!
Sorry, that's a little harsh, and not very reasonable, but I'll admit it was my first reaction when reading this Crain's Chicago piece about the likely "targets" of new union organizing drives if the Employee Free Choice Act (or EFCA) is passed and made law.
I understand that by opening a new restaurant, Glen Keefer would be creating jobs. But the way the free marketeers and their conservative enablers talk about "job creation" they make it seem like a charitable act. "I guess I'll create some jobs for the little people, rather than make gold coin angels on the marble floor of my portico."
But, of course, the reason people "create jobs" is because they generate profits for themselves with every job they create. They don't create jobs as some kind of favor; they ask people to come work for them in order to profit off those people's work. There's no getting around that; there's no way to "spin it" or "narrative it." That's a stone-cold, irrefutable fact. In the private sector, you create jobs to make a profit off the person's labor, not because you are a Dickensian aristocrat with a heart of gold.
Keefer goes on to quote directly from Cliched Management Union-Busting Arguments:
"We don't need a third party in between us and our employees who is extracting money from our employees for services that, frankly, they don't need," says Mr. Keefer, who says his workers get health care benefits and paid vacation time. "A third party could disrupt our working relationship and would raise costs for our employees and for us."
First of all, who cares what you need? This isn't about you. This is about the employees who are motivated enough by your mistreatment of them to undertake an organizing drive, an invariably painful and difficult (but highly rewarding) process.
Second, the union is not a "third party." The union is the employees themselves, who now, protected by a contract, can't be cuffed around, be forced to work off the clock, or cloy for the boss' favor to avoid being mistreated. Of course, this argument would be easier to make if some of the biggest unions in the country had more democratic control by rank-and-file membership. But there is more democracy in almost every union in this country than there is any workplace.
Finally, union contracts generally don't raise costs over the long term, and for many industries they actually stabilize or lower costs, due to lower burnout, lower turnover, and higher productivity (yes, union workers are more productive, whatever the zombie corpse of Reaganomics wants to tell you). It's never been about higher costs or third parties or whatever -- its about employers wanting always to be able to treat their employees arbitrarily. Without the constant threat of a loss of job, with the evaporation of systems of favoritism, employers lose their control over employees.
The Crain's story also mention Shirley Brown, a support staffer at suburban Westlake Hospital who has been working to organize a union at her hospital and across Resurrection Health Care for 6 years.
"Give us a choice and a voice....You should not be subjected to fear, harassment and intimidation because we want a voice," says Ms. Brown, 50, who's worked at Westlake for 13 years.
Why is the city closing down mental health clinics on the South Side?
Displacement? Gentrification? Making parts of the city superficially pretty for the International Olympic Committee?
My tendency is to think "all of the above" or, maybe, "six of one, half dozen of the other."
Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that does just what its name implies, came to that same conclusion when they began fighting the closures last year. Closing mental health clinics is a common way to attack a community's social safety net. Having grown up in and around Chicago, I remember the stories of the closures of mental health facilities in Uptown that led to an increase in homelessness for the most at-risk.
But more than that, it's just cruel. Providing this kind of health care benefits communities; it doesn't drain them. STOP intends to take that message directly to the Mayor on Tuesday, at 10am, at his City Hall office.
I read this at the time and meant to post on it, but I wanted to think of something grandiloquently clever. But then I realized that would just be annoying and distract from the fact that our mayor, a supposed big-city politics tough-guy, is, in fact, just a hothouse flower, ready to wilt at the first hint of scandal.
"Yes, we do, we have our list, we've been talking to people. We did not put that out publicly because once you start putting it out publicly, you know, the newspapers, the media is going to be ripping it apart," Daley said.
In other words, because the city's media is mean to him (which means, I guess, they only agree with him 70% of the time or so, unlike "his" -- our -- legislature, which agrees with him 100% of the time), he is not going to release to the public, the list of public works programs that are going to be funded by public money.
Our money, our programs, our city, but we don't get details because our mayor is taking our ball and going home.
Besides revealing the Mayor to be unbelievably thin-skinned, this is a profoundly anti-democratic act. This isn't your money, or your developer friends' money, or President Obama's money, or Dan Lipinski's money, or Ed Burke's money, or Rahm Emanuel's money, or Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s money, or anybody's money but ours, our money. And our programs, and our city.
It's amazing that even in these stiff economic times the amount of money candidates raise is nothing short of huge. According to Greg Hinz:
In the latest news among the Dems, County Commissioner Mike Quigley reported raising $250,000 so far and signed up mega-Clinton fundraiser Bill Brandt as his finance co-chair. Mr. Quigley also led narrowly over state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz in a new poll, but she reported having pulled in more money, about $325,000, though others say the real figure is $500,000.
Of course, Quigley and Fiegenholtz are the projected political heavyweights of this race, but still...
The area's largest health care provider, Advocate Health Care, has received a steady stream of bad publicity over the last few years, as revelations about their charity care, staffing rations, and treatment of workers have been brought under public scrutiny.
This week legendary Chicago labor and employment attorney Tom Geoghegan settled a suit with Advocate on behalf of low-income uninsured patients who were being forced to pay higher rates than insured patients (presumably because they weren't being represented by a large firm that could bargain for cheaper rates).
Geoghegan is also a candidate for the Democratic nominaton for Rahm Emanuel's seat in the Fifth Congressional District.
So the story about the fourteen-year-old kid who impersonated a cop for five hours was real cute -- a bored kid who was able to fool all the grown ups -- except who knows what the purpose of this was?
Now the kid seems like just some troubled kid, but suppose he was doing it on behalf of someone else -- to test the CPD's response, or a particular station's security?
Suppose this is happening in other stations around the city in slighter ways? It should be alarming that this type of thing is possible. Infiltrating law enforcement like this is how Mumbai-style attacks can be planned. In fact, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre relied on a similar type of planning.
Our police department is underfunded and our cops are demoralized, and the buck stops at the Fifth Floor for that, no question.
Second City Cop points out that just "rolling heads" will not address the issue. Amen.
After making Ron Huberman's first day on the job at CPS quite unpleasant (h/t to Progress Illinois), a large demonstration of hundreds -- inching into thousands -- of teachers, parents, and students will be demonstrating in front of the Chicago Public Schools building at 125 S. Clark Street, beginning at 3:30pm today. If you work downtown, you may want to head over there and check it out -- and send us pictures, while you're at it. We'll post 'em!
Mayor Daley's Board of Education is run by the business community and himself. It's enough already. How much longer are the people of Chicago just going to accept that "The Mayor gets his way?" Do you really think forever?
NPR's Chip Mitchell looks at the potential impact of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would finally protect American workers' right to organize -- a right defined as protected by the United Nations, but which is practically lacking in this country.
Ask a union organizer named Dave Webster what he thinks of the Employee Free Choice Act, and he'll take you here to Chicago's South Side.
WEBSTER: Right now we're standing in front of the Comcast location in the historic Pullman district. We're at the East Gate, where the majority of the workers pull out in the morning after coming in to get their trucks and tools and stuff.
Webster works for Local 21 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Last year the union targeted the building's 200 technicians, warehouse workers and payment agents.
WEBSTER: We spent many hours here, handing out leaflets, talking to workers...
...and convincing many of them to sign cards saying they wanted the union to negotiate their wages, benefits and work conditions.
Comcast didn't recognize the union. That led the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election to see what the workers wanted. The balloting didn't happen for almost six weeks. Webster says the company took advantage of that lag.
WEBSTER: Comcast would plant supervisors to stand out here and watch which workers were taking the flyers, which workers were talking to organizers and basically scare them with their job so that they wouldn't talk to union organizers.
The union lost the election by 20 votes. Comcast declined to speak with WBEZ about the union's accusations.
The Chicago Federation of Labor and the Illinois AFL-CIO are hosting a rally in support of this basic human right.
This Saturday evening, Chris Shaw, author of the book Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, will be taking part in a panel discussion at UIC entitled "Why we should say 'NO' to the Chicago 2016 Olympics Bid." A professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia, Chris Shaw is also a founding member/lead spokesperson for the No Games 2010 Coalition and 2010 Watch. He recently discussed his book Five Ring Circus with Mechanics contributor Bob Quellos.
BQ: Your book is subtitled "Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games," but Five Ring Circus is not about Greek mythology, correct?
CS: No, sadly it's not ancient Greek myths that are the problem with the modern Olympics; rather, it's the corruption at all levels and the massive debt that cities incur holding the Games that are the problems.
BQ: How did you become interested in this subject?
CS: My interest began when I heard Vancouver was likely to be short-listed and about to submit their detailed bid. It was the period in 2002, very much where Chicago is now in its bid process. We tried our best to prevent Vancouver from getting the bid. Sadly, we failed and all the negative consequences that we predicted came to pass. Chicagoans have the opportunity to prevent the same mess from occurring in their city, but the time to stop the bid is short.
Teachers are planning a sit-in picket at Oliver Wendell Holmes Elementary at 955 W. Garfield (55th St.) beginning tonight tomorrow night (1/22) at 7:30p.m. 5pm to 7pm, when the school must be evacuated.
Holmes Elementary was slated to be a "turnaround" school, the Board of Education's method for liquidating public schools.
Come out and show your support for the parents, teachers, and students of Wendell Elementary.
A letter from the teachers, faculty, and LSC after the jump.
UPDATE: Sit-in details have been changed to a picket after a community meeting.
I'm happy to run an editorial submitted to us by local activist and author Anne Elizabeth Moore.
I have the same problem with marketers as I do rapists: that it is impossible to convince them that some things don't mean "yes." Turns out, the Chicago 2016 Committee (C2016) has much the same tendency.
When speaking last Wednesday at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum to the Lincoln Park Advisory Council, for example, Patrick G. Ryan Sandusky described the purpose of C2016: "to bring the Games to Chicago." He provided a quick calendar of events including the bid's due date (February 12), the bid's publication date (February 13), the International Olympic Committee visit (April), a presentation to the IOC in June, and the receipt of the final decision on October 2, 2009.
Sandusky implored those present to ignore the lessons of other Olympic cities, who've drastically gone over budget, created needless buildings requiring upkeep, and mismanaged resources from day one. Chicago, he claims, will benefit from the Olympics largely because C2016 has reduced the need for new structures and focused on rehabbing existing structures.
The Chicago Community Trust has released some disturbing numbers today, indicating homelessness continues to rise in the city. And across the board, all of the indicators of economic collapse are on the rise over 2007 -- homes dependent on food stamps, the explosion in foreclosures, unemployment, everything.
gulp.
The work of the Trust in distributing these "vital signs" of our city's economic health are critical to understanding what "hard times" means in real terms. In 2008, nearly 40,000 more households -- somewhere over 100,000 people -- came to be dependent on food assistance to make sure they had enough to eat. The type of social and political instability that kind of economic insecurity causes is hard to comprehend unless you've lived in the middle of it. To have tens or hundreds of thousands of people plunged into economic insecurity creates the atmosphere of desperation that, often, only radical change can address.
Jump the jump for the January reports from the Chicago Community Trust.
I attended the Rockford School Board's meeting on Tuesday and witnessed their unanimous approval for the first charter school in the city. The Legacy Academy of Excellence will be a K-5 school for "at-risk" students.
Charter schools are public schools open to any families who wish to apply. Charters design their own curricula, hire their own teachers and need to meet certain student achievement standards set forth in their agreements with state and local officials. If they don't meet these standards, the school must close, and students return to their local traditional public school.
In other words, Legacy will have freedoms that other public schools lack. From flexible work rules that allow charters to hire and retain the best teachers, to their independence to design curricula without mandates from Springfield or Washington, charters are fundamentally different than traditional public schools, and results in Chicago and elsewhere prove their high worth.
The set-up bagman gets charged. Reporting by Dan Mihalopolous and Jeff Coen.
Federal prosecutors have quietly brought charges against a City Hall permit "expediter" who became a government mole at the center of a wide-ranging bribery probe.
Catherine Romasanta wore a wire and acted as a "bagman," carrying bribes from developers and contractors to corrupt building and zoning officials in Mayor Richard Daley's administration, according to court records and sources.
Romasanta was a key undercover operative in the Operation Crooked Code investigation, providing federal agents with information about bribery involving more than 30 people, records show. The probe is a joint operation by federal authorities and city Inspector General David Hoffman's office.
IT'S OFFICIAL. If Chicago gets the 2016 Summer Olympics, portions of the project will be paid for with Tax Increment Finance (TIF) money, of an unspecified amount. Dedicated to covering infrastructure improvements, the TIF will come out of the City's revenue -- on top of a $500 million guarantee to the International Olympic Committee for potential cost overruns.
Chicagoans will also be footing the bill for an estimated $45 million in extra police patrols, street cleaning and other municipal services. However, one would have to conclude that this is a cruel underestimation given that the city of London has projected $2 billion for just the security at their 2012 Summer Olympics.
And all of this passed unanimously -- without any debate or discussion. Judging by the silence in the room it seems that this deal was put to bed a long time ago. Certainly, Daley and Chicago 2016 knew all along that a portion of the Olympics would be funded with a TIF. They just chose to be tightlipped about the deal because it would have looked bad to put forward the $87 million Michael Reese deal or the TIF this past fall -- when the city was facing a budget gap of over $600 million.
Disclosure: I am a founding member of No Games: Chicago -- yes, our site is currently undergoing a redesign.
Below is a press release from the Lincoln Park Advisory Council for a discussion between a representative from the bid committee and an academic from the University of Chicago, a pro-and-con discussion.
The Lincoln Park Advisory Council (LPAC) will sponsor a forum on the Olympic Games and their impact on our park.
*
The forum will take place on Wednesday, January 14 at 6:45pm at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. *
There will be two speakers, Gyata Kimmons, Director of Community Relations for the Chicago 2016 Committee and Dr. Allen Sanderson, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.
If I didn't know for a fact she existed, I would suspect that the Sun-Times' Fran Spielman was a reporting robot. Seriously how does she file so many stories?
On Tuesday, the mayor's snow commanders did an about-face on a controversial cost-cutting policy that saw City Hall use less salt, plow side-streets during normal working hours to reduce overtime and skip side-streets altogether after minor snowstorms.
During the "dead of winter," Chicago side-streets will be plowed and salted after every snowfall whether or not it requires overtime.
No more waiting until normal working hours, only to have the temperatures drop and side streets -- along with major intersections around schools -- turn into sheets of ice.
...and another on Mayor Daley making a pretty good argument about the need for direct municipal access to federal funds. In 1984, Jesse Jackson said that Nixon took the power from the cities and gave it to the suburbs, and that Reagan took it from the suburbs and gave it to the states. Not entirely sure what he meant about Nixon, but Reagan's ending of revenue-sharing was probably what he meant by the states. In any case, I don't know why exactly direct management of federal funds by the city is such a wild-eyed idea (and yes, of course we know that the city administration may not have the best record on spending waste, but we are comparing it to Springfield in this instance):
"Mayors are going directly to the federal government. They have to. We can't wait. You can't allow Springfield to take your money, hold the interest, then eventually give it to you in the middle of winter. You'll never get the job done in the middle of winter," Daley told reporters.
The Sun-Times editorial board argues that explaining away Chicago's exploding violence as "gang-related" makes it too easy to forget that the gang members are themselves Chicagoans, born, raised, and hardened by Chicago's streets. Kudos to the Sun-Times; stuff like this reminds me of why losing local reporters year after year is not only sad but dangerous. We need journalists to keep pursuing these stories, relentlessly..
...But, we say, understand how killers are made.....Main told the story of James Hampton, who admitted to police that he had killed his girlfriend's former boyfriend. The former boyfriend had beat up the girl, had smashed a window of Hampton's car, and -- perhaps his greatest offense -- had dared to stare Hampton down...."I'm not fitting to be running and hide from dude," Hampton said in a taped confession. "Then I seen him, and he look at me, and I look at him. I just shake my head."...Normal people -- that is to say people with a modicum of education, a decent job, a belief in their future and a sense of belonging to the larger society -- don't kill people over stuff like that. They've got too much to lose. They shrug off the disrespect and move on. If necessary, they call the cops....But Chicago's most violent neighborhoods are full of men like James Hampton, their fragile sense of manhood at the mercy of the next show of disrespect. They kill to keep it....Poke beneath the surface of any shooting on that weekend of April 18, our reporters learned, and you will likely uncover a tangle of social woes that only an entire city, as a whole, can do much about. The police can clean up mess after mess, but more messes will come along.
The Chicago Community Trust has released the first in a regular set of metrics designed to measure the "human toll" on the city during these economic hard times. As you could probably guess, the results are not particularly heartening. Below are six of Chicago's "vital signs." Follow the jump for the rest.
Reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan talks about the long history of corruption in Chicago politics and the current troubles of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich with Terry Michael, former press spokesman for the Illinois House Democrats and former press secretary for Sen. Paul Simon, and Mike Flynn, Director of Government Affairs at the Reason Foundation.
Perhaps while watching yesterday's breaking news regarding the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich you said to yourself, "Surely Chicago politics couldn't get more absurd." Well, try this one on for size.
As the U.S. housing market leads the global economy into its greatest crisis since the Great Depression, that whip-smart team over at the Mayor's Office has decided to bet our futures on yet another condo development. But this isn't just any condo development — this is an Olympic Village.
That's right. The deal to obtain the land underneath Michael Reese Hospital for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid is back on. And the City of Chicago is about to take out an $86 million loan to acquire the land that is currently occupied by the functioning hospital.
Once they acquire that land, they plan to demolish the hospital and build housing for athletes who will participate in a two-week sporting event that may occur in Chicago eight years from now. How's that for absurd?
With the rubber stamp, Chicago aldermen approved the sale of the parking meter system to a private entity. The floor discussion was absent any real debate and without drama, although Alderman Richard Mell's claim to ignore the "small print" was somewhat discouraging. Instead of taking the time to legitimately debate the issue, aldermen generally made ancillary arguments that demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the pertinent issues regarding the lease of a public asset.
Though drivers will most assuredly bemoan the increased cost of parking curbside, the one-time installment of 1.2 billion dollars is worth the inconvenience. It is not difficult to see the benefit to the city. Given the dire condition of municipal finances and the need for a source of capital spending, private ownership of public assets is a great money-generating tool for Chicago. It is only the municipality that has the legal framework to build parking meters (or an airport or tollway, for that matter); however, the capitalistic efficiency displayed by private ownership eludes them as it devolves into waste.
Last month I posted a blog that spring-boarded off an article from this website I like to read, LewRockwell.com. The main thesis of this article is that the government by its nature isn't "liberal" and it doesn't do what it is supposed to do.
Well, needless to say, LewRockwell is a libertarian website that would say that there are some functions that government assumes but these functions are better served by the market. Well, the reason why I write this post isn't at this moment to argue about what offers the best services: private entities or the government.
I wanted to somehow relate that article with the state of government -- well, mostly in the city, since city government is delivering most of the services we rely on. We could expand this topic to talk about county government or state government. But let's focus on city government for now.
It has often been said that the residents of the city of Chicago will tolerate a certain amount of corruption as long as city services are delivered and government is well run. Never mind what the U.S. attorneys or anyone else might discover as far as something illegal in city government.
But perhaps someone should ask the question: What does good government entail to those of you who live in the city? Or indeed I could ask about any aspect of government in Illinois. What is good government?
A better question: What do you expect from your government?
As he pauses at the corner of 
