Ameena Matthews, one of the "violence interrupters" featured in the documentary The Interrupters, was on "The Colbert Report" Wednesday night. No matter what you thought of the film or the effectiveness of CeaseFire's mission, it's clear that Matthews is a force to be reckoned with. The Interrupters will be broadcast on PBS's "Frontline" on Feb. 14.
— Andrew Huff / Comments (0)
by Celeste Meiffren
This week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he will be immediately implementing some of the reforms proposed by his Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Reform Panel five months ago. All of the proposed reforms are necessary to fix TIF and need to become law before more of our tax dollars are wasted.
Every year, $500 million worth of property tax revenue collected from Chicago taxpayers flows into a funding pool that, up until very recently, has been completely off the books--allowing for an out-of-control spending spree to well-connected developers and other special interests.
— Mechanics / Comments (0)
Why bother?
I vaguely remember being pugnacious about the direction our leadership was taking the city in, of having some degree of passion about what was wrong and what was right--or at least, what was wrong and what was potentially better. I filled notebooks--I'm flipping through one now--with ideas for articles and research projects that could contribute, in some way, to avoiding calamity, to exposing the material reality under the political rhetoric. Flipping through these notebooks now, scrolling through the myriad unpublished drafts, nothing stirs me. What I feel is more akin to a sad curiosity, how it must feel to look at optimistic battle plans scrawled on maps for some war that was lost long ago.
Our biggest enemy, I realized, is a lack of ideas for how to improve the human family. A complete lack of ambition to create a better world from yet another generation. Chicago, the laboratory neoliberal city, doesn't belong to us anymore. It's a "global" city belonging to people who don't even live here, and we have no ideas how to take it, or any other city, back from them.
When Rahm Emanuel announced his candidacy for the Mayor's office, it was taken as assumed that he'd win. The media never treated any of his opponents seriously--and perhaps they should not have. Though it is a bit of an observer interference problem; the media treatment of candidacy certainly has an impact on their chances of success. Emanuel won the neoliberal's way: he tapped his connections to international business, and particular finance, and drown his opponents in cash. A quirky twitter account got more coverage than his opponents. That was that.
He has since pursued a "business-friendly," or actually working class-hostile, agenda. Nevertheless, people who consider themselves "liberals" and "progressives" support those policies for the same reason they support Barack Obama's neoliberal policies: out of deference to party labels, personal careerism, and forest-for-trees interest in technocratic solutions that nibble at problems.
Politics in Chicago are wholly uninteresting. We've been reduced to sadly cheerleading the release of data as progressive victories for "the people." What else is there to cheerlead? In the neoliberal city, we have to pretend there's been a regime change--we have to play the pretend game Emanuel represents a substantive break from the Daley administration--he does not.
— Ramsin Canon / Comments (2)
The White House has announced it will cover the cost of security for the G8 and NATO summits to be held in Chicago in May, as reported by Crain's.
It is likely that this will come in the form of federal grants after the summits are done and paid for, according to comments made by Office of Emergency Management and Communications Director Gary Schenkel at a City Council hearing a few weeks ago. So the city will be initially footing the bill, only to later get reimbursed by the federal government.
— Tyler Davis / Comments (0)
Adbusters jumped onboard the NATO/G8 protest bandwagon last week, and in the process pushed Occupy Chicago further into the national (and international) spotlight.
Unfortunately, they did this without contacting Occupy Chicago beforehand, and in a manner that invoked the police violence of the 1968 Democratic Convention protests.
That Adbusters were acting unilaterally is evident from reading their January 25 announcement with even a vague working knowledge of Occupy Chicago and the existing plans for protest around the NATO/G8 summits -- the kind of knowledge you could get easily from the mainstream media. Aside from the incendiary rhetoric and imagery, and the fact that it doesn't once mention the existing Occupy movement in Chicago or link to their site, "Tactical Briefing #25" also includes a list of demands that were neither drafted nor endorsed by any Occupy movement.
There's no doubt that the Adbusters announcement got a lot of people excited: Mostly those from outside of Chicago who relished the chance to grab a tent and head on down for May 1 (a date that itself is problematic, given how far ahead of the summits it is and the fact that Chicago activism's own May Day traditions tend to focus on labor and immigration). On local Twitter accounts and the OccupyChi.org forums, however, the excitement was tempered with confusion that rapidly turned into annoyance and even anger as it became clear that AdBusters had done this on their own.
— Mechanics / Comments (0)
[This article has been taken down for review.]
— Megan E. Doherty
Wednesday it was announced that Chicago Public Library (CPL) commissioner Mary Dempsey is resigning.
Dempsey was appointed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and served for 18 years. Under Dempsey, the CPL built 44 new libraries and created programs such as One Book, One Chicago. Her resignation comes after a contentious situation this month due to the branches closing on Mondays due to budget and staff cuts.
Brian Bannon, chief information officer for the San Francisco Public Library, has been named as Dempsey's successor.
— Monica Reida / Comments (4)
City Council may have voted in favor of a new ward map, but the highly political battle over ward boundaries may not be over.
Alderman Bob Fioretti (2nd Ward), one of eight alderman to vote no on the map, stated in his email newsletter on Thursday that he has no intentions of dropping the issue.
"I believe that new map breaks up communities of interest and includes deviations in population from ward to ward, which may subject it to future legal challenge. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether it will ever go into effect."
The new ward map won't go into effect until the 2015 city elections. Fioretti wrote in the newsletter that he has begun a "listening tour" on the issue.
Other alderman who voted no on the map are Roderick Sawyer, Michael Zalewski, Michael Chandler, Scott Waguespack, Nick Sposato, Rey Colon and John Arena.
— Tyler Davis / Comments (0)
Stand Up Chicago held an interesting protest at the Merc on Tuesday:
— Ramsin Canon / Comments (0)
by Katie Osgood
There was quite the hullabaloo this week surrounding a Facebook town hall meeting Mayor Emanuel put on Monday. Late Sunday night I received an email from a teacher at a neighborhood CPS high school saying that the event was happening at that school and they needed enough teachers, parents, and community members to show up. Any interested teachers were told to RSVP immediately. Here's what was in the original e-mail:
A spokesman in the department of communications at CPS contacted me to request hosting Mayor Emanuel's Town Hall Meeting Monday, January 23rd at 5:30 PM at [Name of High School]. A condition and concern however is that there must be a minimum of 15 or 20 people in the audience. The audience should include teachers, parents, students and members of the community. This email serves as a poll to determine how many of you might commit to attending this event. I also need your support to communicate this event to students who might be interested in participating. I am copying the LSC and PAC officers to soli cit parental attendance.I ask that everyone receiving this email who can commit to attending this event email a confirmation back to me ASAP. You do not need to email me if you cannot attend.
Many concerned teachers jumped at the chance to join in a conversation in a relatively small venue where we could question our city's leader about his controversial education policy. People began mobilizing immediately. It seemed like a fantastic opportunity, almost too good to be true.
It was. Very early Sunday morning, a follow-up email was sent saying:
There has been a huge misunderstanding. Mayor Emanuel WILL NOT be physically present at [Name of High School] for his town hall meeting today. The event will be streamed over the internet. Individuals interested in attending this view only event are welcome to view the event in one of our computer labs. Please see the message below from the CPS department of communications spokesperson.
— Mechanics / Comments (0)
By Joe Macaré
January has been something of a resurgent month for Occupy Chicago, with a new indoor space secured just in time for a late-arriving winter, and the beginning of preparations for the "Chicago Spring," a mass rally and day of action scheduled for April 7.
But the last month has also seen something of a shift in focus, with a great deal of energy being spent protesting the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's protest and parade ordinance. This hasn't just been in evidence just at protests and actions specifically organized around these issues: When Occupy Chicago made a conscious effort to get people back out to LaSalle and Jackson for a "Return to HQ" on Jan. 13, two of the first people there were young women handing out fliers about SOPA.
In some ways this is simply the result of timing and circumstance: President Obama signed the NDAA to mark the New Year, and the past week saw both the culmination of protests around SOPA (and its Senate equivalent, the acronym-within-an-acronym PROTECT IP Act, aka PIPA) and the passage of Emanuel's ordinance by the subservient City Council.
— Mechanics / Comments (1)
Two demonstrations occurred downtown on Saturday. A group of demonstrators gathered in support for the people of Egypt, while another unrelated group marched through the streets in support of sustainable seafood.
About 30 people gathered in front of the Egyptian Consulate, located at 500 N. Michigan Ave., and shouted, in Arabic, in support of the people of Egypt and against the military council currently in control.
— Tyler Davis / Comments (0)
by Ronnie Reese
Shelly Friede, a single mother of three, looked a high-ranking member of the conservative Vice Lords street gang in the eye and asked a question.
"Are you trying to shoot my children?"
That was seven years ago, when Friede first moved into subsidized housing in the 4400 block of North Magnolia in Uptown. Her 24-unit courtyard building stood in Black P Stone Ranger territory and had been riddled with bullets from a drive-by shooting by the rival Vice Lords.
Two years later, Friede was pregnant with her youngest child, Sebastian, when her family came under fire again. This time, it was an internal dispute among the P Stones as "they shot down the gangway, then shot over my head," she recalled.
The physical landscape of Uptown has changed a great deal since Friede's first run-in with violence there. Wilson Yard, a former CTA rail storage and maintenance facility destroyed by fire in 1996, has been redeveloped to include residential apartments, a Target and an Aldi supermarket. Nearby, a mid-rise residential condominium sits on the former site of the 46th Ward office in the 1000 block of West Montrose Avenue.
— Mechanics / Comments (9)
It started in 1980, when historian Howard Zinn (who died in 2010) published A People's History of the United States, in response to what he saw as a skewed view of how the nation's life unfolded. That book inspired the award-winning documentary The People Speak, which featured Matt Damon reading John Steinbeck; Bob Dylan performing Woody Guthrie; Marisa Tomei describing the 1937 Flint sit-down strike; Morgan Freeman and Don Cheadle performing the words of Frederick Douglass; and John Legend reading Muhammad Ali.
Chicago poet Kevin Coval remembers finding Zinn's book in his high school library. "I was looking for anything counter to the stories in history classes," he said, having gotten the impression that there is truth to the saying that history is written by the winners — or those with deep pockets.
Damon will be coming to Chicago's Metro on January 31 to headline the Chicago premiere of "The People Speak, Live!", a benefit performance which will also include members of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble; local poets Angela Jackson, Kevin Coval, Idris Goodwin; journalist Rick Kogan; civic leader Rami Nashashibi of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network; the Luna Blues Machine band; playwright Lani Montreal; and actor Brian Quijada — among others.
— Megan E. Doherty / Comments (0)
After discussion and presentation of multiple new ward maps for Chicago, the City Council came to a compromise and passed a new map today.
— Monica Reida / Comments (0)
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[This article has been taken down for review.]... More...
By Micah Uetricht / 1 Comments
Annie appears born to teach. A third grade teacher near Bucktown, she bursts with enthusiasm, gesticulating excitedly when talking about her students or a math curriculum she thinks highly of. The majority of her students are Latino; she is white.... More...America Blog
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