Senior citizens and their supporters will protest the appearance of the leading proponent of Social Security privatization at a Chicago fundraiser today.  The action is part of a growing effort to defend the nation’s retirement insurance program.

The Illinois Alliance of Retired Americans, the Main Street Alliance, Citizens Action Illinois and Chicago Jobs With Justice are among the groups calling a rally at 12 p.m. (noon) today, Wednesday, Sept. 1, outside  the Four Seasons Hotel, 120 E. Delaware in Chicago. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc) will be one of the speakers at the fundraising luncheon for Joel Pollak, Republican House candidate in the 9th district.

Ryan’s controversial Roadmap for Recovery proposes privatizing Social Security and Medicare as part of a deficit reduction plan. According to Media Matters, the deficit reductions claimed by Ryan depend on budget tricks.

For John Gaudette of Citizen Action, the bigger trick is the notion that Social Security is a component of the federal deficit – or that the program faces any kind of imminent financial crisis.

“There is no crisis,” Gaudette said. “It’s one of the healthiest programs we’ve got.”

Social Security is fully funded for the next 25 years, and with no changes could pay 80 percent of promised benefits after that, he said.

To continue reading click here to be directed to Curtis Black’s Newstips Blog at the Community Media Workshop.

Hyatt Regency Chicago. Photo/Google Images

Hyatt workers locked in tough contract negotiations – and hit by job cuts and reduced hours leading to chronic understaffing and increased injuries – will announce a boycott of one or more Chicago-area Hyatt properties tomorrow.

They’ll be joined by leaders of the Central Conference of American Rabbis announcing support from 200 Jewish leaders nationwide, at a 12:30 p.m. press conference in front of Hyatt Global Headquarters, 71 S. Wacker on Tuesday, Aug. 24.

The rabbis will call on Hyatt to meet biblical obligations to treat workers fairly, and will pledge to honor worker-led boycotts and strikes of Hyatt properties.

To continue reading click here to be directed to Newstips Blog, Community Media Workshop.

Meanwhile community groups will demand action on banking issues on two fronts tomorrow – picketing US Bank and Bank of America on LaSalle Street, and testifying at a Federal Reserve hearing on modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act.

Something is wrong with policies that bail out big banks after they’ve torpedoed the economy with high-risk investments in toxic subprime loans, while “community banks which have been meeting the needs of low-income neighborhoods for decades” are allowed to fail, said Karen Harris of the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. (See her post at the Shriver Brief.)

To continue reading click here to be directed to Curtis Black’s Newstips Blog.

In a victory for two youth organizations, Chicago Public Schools has agreed to establish a grievance procedure for students experiencing violence, harassment or discrimination, and to pilot a program training security guards to use principles of restorative justice in their work.

Both organizations had campaigns that promoted the restorative justice approach – emphasizing accountability as an alternative to zero tolerance and punitive discipline – as a more effective approach to reducing violence, said Sam Finkelstein of GenderJust, an LGTB student group that protested at CPS headquarters and at CPS chief Ron Huberman’s home to demand a grievance procedure.

To continue reading click here to be directed to Curtis Black’s Newstips Blog.

Image via Wikipedia

A news report from Curtis Black, Community Media Workshop

Bank of America has objected that a new lawsuit by the Illinois attorney general – charging that the bank’s subsidiary, Countrywide Financial Corp., discriminated by steering minority homebuyers into risky subprime loans – covers practices prior to BoA’s takeover of Countrywide in 2008.

But those same borrowers could be facing foreclosure at BoA’s hands today, according to a new report from National People’s Action.

The network of community organizations found that Bank of America is “Chicago’s biggest forecloser and among the top owners of foreclosed properties” which lead to declining property values and increased debt for struggling homeowners.

Bank of America was responsible for 4,000 home foreclosure filings in Chicago in 2009, representing 17 percent of total filings in the city, according to the report.  The bank is on track to issue over 3,000 additional home foreclosures this year, NPA says.

According to the report, BoA, the largest service of loans in foreclosure in the nation, had over 1 million loans eligible for modification in the Home Affordable Modification Program, but offered permanent loan mods to less than 70,000 of those lenders – a mere 5.2 percent.

“Bank of America is bad for American neighborhoods,” said Theresa Welch of the South Austin Coalition in a release.  The Bank “controls the fate of more mortgages and homeowners than any other single company in America” and “therefore has a unique responsibility to deal aggressively with the foreclosure crisis.

“Bank of America must do a better job stemming foreclosures and help put an end to the devastation foreclosures are causing in local communities and on the nation’s economy.”

In Chicago, under pressure from community groups, Bank of America agreed to a pilot program with the Southwest Organizing Project and the Greater Southwest Development Corporation last year. The bank is cooperating on outreach to troubled homeowners and assistance with filling loan modification requests.

Though community groups are still awaiting results, the effort represents the kind of engagement BoA needs to undertake around the country, said Gordon Mayer of NPA. [Mayer is the former vice president of Community Media Workshop.]

SWOP is still waiting to see if the bank will make permanent the loan modifications that have resulted from the pilot, said David McDowell.  “It’s still moving forward, but it’s a long process,” he said.

“Our goal has been for Bank of America and other banks to become more proactive” in addressing the foreclosure crisis, he said.  He noted that Bank of America is the bank with the most foreclosures in SWOP’s area.

Related Articles:

Foreclosure Crisis: Report Criticizes for not Assisting Residents on the West Side

Community activists, residents protested outside Wrigley Field last month as Arizona Diamondbacks took on Chicago Cubs. Photo By: Kelsey Duckett

In These Times interviews Chicago activist Tania Unzueta, saying she “may be America’s most visible undocumented activist.”

Unzueta directs Radio Arte’s youth training program and helped found the Immigrant Youth Justice League. She was one of five undocumented students who sat in at Senator John McCain’s Tucson office last month to protest new anti-immigrant laws in Arizona, and demanded passage of the DREAM Act.  (She talked with Newstips about it the next day.)

Unzueta talks about drawing inspiration from SNCC’s youth-led civil disobedience, and from Harvey Milk about the importance of “coming out.” Asked about the DREAM Act, she cites her work with undocumented students at Radio Arte:

“I have students who sit in my office and talk about how they can’t go to school, how they’re scared their mom might get deported, how they can’t get a drivers license, how they wish they could study abroad, how their grandmother is dying in Mexico and they can’t visit her – because they’re undocumented.”

About immigration reform:  “It’s important to have a system that acknowledges that there’s a need in the United States for the labor immigrant workers provide, that provides  a way for people who are pulled into the economy to do so legally, and that acknowledges that those workers are people who have families and their families need access to education.

“There needs to be a way for people who are already here to become legal, and for those who come because they’re pulled by the economy to have a pathway to citizenship.”

In the same issue, ITT also looks at ties between Arizona politicians and the private prison industry, which supports efforts to replicate Arizona’s SB 1070 in other states.

“The immigration dragnet created at SB 1070 [and similar bills] will greatly increase the numbers of undocumented residents who are arrested and jailed.  And that bodes well for the bottom lines of private detention corporations such as [the Corrections Corporation of America] and Geo Group.

ITT reports that a vast majority of CCA’s federal lobbying disclosure reports dealt with immigration policy and Homeland Security and ICE appropriations.

In the Arizona Republic, Dennis Wagner offers a detailed reality check for those who argue that securing borders must precede comprehensive immigration reform.

“Anyone with a minimal knowledge or understanding about the nearly 2,000-mile swath of land between Mexico and the United States realizes that requiring a secure border establishes an impossible standard.”

And perhaps an excuse to avoid dealing with real solutions for what advocates call a broken immigration system.

A report from the Newstips Blog:

As new and old reports at Catalyst and Gapers Block indicate, CORE’s victory in the recent teachers union election reflected the group’s activist orientation and commitment to grassroots organizing, in schools and with communities.

“We energized the grassroots,” said one CORE member.

CORE came on the scene two years ago and immediately provided a citywide organizational structure for a movement against Renaissance 2010 that had yet to gain much traction.

Before CORE, small community and education groups committed to the  original school reform agenda of parent empowerment and improving neighborhood schools – along with parents at separate schools scrambling desperately to oppose closings in a very short window of time – had been limited to school-by-school struggles.

CORE was crucial in forming the Grassroots Education Movement, which gave the movement against Renaissance 2010 a citywide scope and strategic vision.

Arne Duncan left for Washington and Ron Huberman took over at CPS last year as CORE and GEM’s first drive against closings crested, and in response to protests and the exposure of faulty CPS data, Huberman decided to take six schools off the closing list.  It was the first time anything like that had ever happened.

This year, another anti-closings campaign — which won the support of several aldermen — forced Huberman to admit “the process is flawed” and to take six of fourteen school closings and turnarounds off the table.

On its website CORE attributes these victories to an approach which “built partnerships with our natural allies and empowered members to stand up for their profession, their jobs and their schools.”  Activism, organizing, coalition-building.

In remarks Saturday morning at King College Prep, CTU president-elect Karen Lewis made it clear that defending against the attacks on teachers and on public education which underlie much of the current “reform” agenda is high on her agenda.

“Today marks the beginning of the end of scapegoating educators,” she said.

She railed against “corporate heads and politicians” who “have never sat one minute on this side of the teacher’s desk” and “do not have a clue about teaching and learning.”  But “they’re the ones calling the shots, and we’re supposed to accept it as ‘reform.’”

Asked if she had a message for Mayor Daley and schools chief Ron Huberman, she said, “I want them to appreciate what educators do.”

(CORE has posted Lewis’s remarks, and WBEZ has audio.)

First, though, comes discussions over Huberman’s proposals to lay off teachers and raise class size, and Lewis called on CPS to disclose “all the financial details” of how it spends its money — including vendor and consulting contracts– including how charter schools spend the taxpayer money they get, “because to date, we have not seen charter schools’ financials” – and including an estimated $250 million a year in TIF money that would otherwise be going to schools.

She called on Daley to put his political weight behind an effort to end the state’s overreliance on property tax funding for schools and the drastic inequities that result from it.  And she rejected the notion “that access to high quality education for all children is a luxury that we simply can’t afford.”

Karen Lewis\’ comments at a June 12 press conference

The Organization of the North East expects a thousand members to attend its annual convention Monday night – and after the rally they’ll head over to a local apartment building for a vigil protesting slumlord neglect.

ONE’s annual convention takes place Monday, June 7 at 7 p.m. at St. Augustine College, 1333 W. Argyle; the vigil will be outside the Lawrence Apartments located at 1020 W. Lawrence.

At the convention, ONE will celebrate a series of victories over the past year – including funding for affordable housing, commitments for local jobs, and organizing wins at local schools – and they’ll launch a voter registration and mobilization drive in response to the “vicious ineptitude” of state lawmakers, said organizer Cory Muldoon.

At Lawrence Apartments they’ll support a tenants association that has been working with ONE over the past year to raise concerns about building code violations and security issues.  The affordable rental building has over 300 units, and tenants include people with disabilities and others on fixed incomes.

According to Muldoon, landlords Don and Sam Menetti have refused to meet with tenants or with community and religious groups.  He said court records show the owners are currently responding to complaints over numerous violations including fire code issues.

In a tense confrontation last month, ONE and other community groups picketed the Wicker Park Tavern, owned by the Menettis, and tried to give them a letter asking for a meeting with the tenants association and its allies.  Sam Menetti “crumpled it up and threw it at me,” Muldoon said.  He added that Menetti yelled a threat at him.

In a Medill report on the event, ONE executive director Jamiko Rose said she “definitely fear(s) for my staff’s safety,” and the Menetti’s did not respond to requests for comment.

ONE members have held scores of house and block meetings – dubbed “CommuniTea Parties” – leading up to the annual convention, discussing problems in the community and ideas for addressing them under a framework of “community values in action.”

Chicago Public Radio’s WBEZ reports on Advocacy Grop Alleging Property Developer Intimidates Tenants from Organizing

Fifteen students, most of them from Orr High School, sat around a storefront in Humboldt Park last Wednesday night, taking turns role-playing situations encountered by security guards in their school – and discussing better and worse ways of handling them.

One student, portraying a guard, watched an argument between two students escalate into a fight and then roughly subdued one of the contenders, who ends up in a choke hold.

How often does this kind of thing happen, the students are asked.  ”Every day” is the response from several of them.

The students, members of the Blocks Together Youth Council, say they routinely witness or experience inappropriate behavior by school security guards. In a survey of Chicago Public School students across the city, they gathered reports of guards cursing and insulting students; sexually harassing them; failing to prevent fights, and even instigating and initiating them; and using excessive force, including beating and paddling students.

Too often security guard misconduct “contributes to an unsafe learning environment,” said Blocks Together Youth Council youth organizer Ana Mercado.

“Their approach leads to more conflict and tension,” she said.

And while she said there are guards who focus on problem-solving over punishment, “it’s not just a few bad apples who are unprofessional, it’s a natural extension of the zero-tolerance mentality.

“If you think kids only learn if you are harsh on them, if that’s the only recourse you have, then if it doesn’t work there’s nothing for you to do but go harder, and you end up beating kids up.”

Blocks Together Youth Council maintains that one of the most direct ways to promote a “culture of calm” in CPS high schools is to revamp security guard training to include an introduction to restorative justice principles. They say an interactive workshop format could help guards think through ways of reacting to immature and disruptive behavior in a professional manner.

And they’ve been pushing, with limited success, for a seat at the table as CPS revises its security guard training, arguing that young people’s perspective is crucial.

As participants worked through different scenarios – a student who shows up without a shirt, another who refuses to remove a hat – they talked about how to apply restorative justice principles, which were posted on hand-written signs around the room, the importance of listening, of relationships, of taking into account individuals’ needs, of problem solving, of considering the larger community, and of modeling the behavior you want to see.

The group had expected Michael Shields, chief of security for CPS, at the meeting.  At a previous meeting, he’d asked for a demonstration of how restorative justice principles could be applied to training for school security guards, and this date was subsequently set, they say.

But when Blocks Together Youth Council called to confirm the meeting, they were told it wasn’t on Shields’ schedule, said Orr student Edward Ward.  When they inquired at the school board meeting earlier that day, Shields spoke with them briefly and said something personal had come up that morning.

Ward noted the discrepancy – if it had come up that morning, why wasn’t it on his schedule days earlier?

“We’re angry about that,” Ward said.

On one wall of the office hangs a sheet with a list of agreements including Blocks Together Youth Council’s involvement in revising security guard training, and in monitoring and evaluating trainings, and ensuring that training includes an introduction to restorative justice, discussions of the developmental needs of youth and the proper role of adult professionals, and an interactive format.  At the bottom is Shields’ signature.

Shields has since backtracked on several promises, Mercado said, including allowing group members to observe trainings.  At the meeting last October where that agreement was signed, Shields also agreed to provide a copy of the current curriculum for guard training, said Blocks Together Youth Council, organizer Ana Mercado; to date, that promise hasn’t been kept, she said.

CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond couldn’t address specifics of discussions between Shields and the group but said a comprehensive review of security guard training is underway as part of the district’s anti-violence plan.

Misconduct by guards should be reported to teachers, principals or the district’s inspector general, she said.

“These are very serious allegations, and the only way to address them is to file a formal complaint,” she said.

“For young people there’s a lot of fear of backlash from security guards if they hear about a complaint,” said Mercado.  “We’re trying to deal with the problem preventively.”

Blocks Together Youth Council has been supporting an effort to establish a confidential grievance process for students to report incidents of violence and harassment in school, a campaign being spearheaded by GenderJust, which has carried out a series of direct actions.

“Right now there’s not really a process,” said Sam Finkelstein, an organizer for the LGBT group.  “You complain somehow, maybe you tell the principal and if you’re lucky, it gets acted on.  There’s no followup, no oversight.”

Blocks Together Youth Council has worked on this issue for years (Newstips first covered their efforts in 2002), organizing high school youth, working to bring restorative justice to local elementary schools, helping to establish a peer jury at Orr High School. With limited administrative support and resources, school-by-school efforts have had limited success, Mercado said.

Now she wonders whether the call by  CPS chief Ron Huberman for guards to act as mentors to students will be anything more than “lip service.”

“It’s my job to clean up our water and keep pollution out of Lake Michigan,” says MWRD president Terrence O’Brien in the first TV ad of his campaign for County Board president (watch it on youtube). “It’s time to clean up Cook County.”

In fact, as Newstips reported last April, under O’Brien the MWRD (Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago) has resisted calls to disinfect wastewater for nearly a decade. In a letter to the Tribune last February, O’Brien claimed it would cost $2 billion; Newstips reported the US EPA’s estimate that it would cost at most $650 million, and perhaps as little as $250 million, over 20 years.

“Environmental groups believe MWRD is exaggerating the cost of disinfection as part of a strategy of delaying action,” we wrote, citing John Quail of Friends of the Chicago River.

Ann Alexander of the Natural Resources Defense Council pointed out that MWRD is spending millions of dollars on lawyers and experts in its effort to prevent the Illinois Pollution Control Board from implementing a recommendation by the Illinois EPA (endorsed by the city) to require MWRD to disinfect.

As far as “keeping pollution out of Lake Michigan,” here’s what we reported in August of 2003:

“During ‘extreme storm events,’ locks are opened and river system water is released into Lake Michigan. ‘There is undoubtedly bacteria from the waterways system getting into the lake,’ said [Laurel] O’Sullivan [of the Lake Michigan Federation].

“‘The overall quality of the water sent out to the lake would be much higher if they disinfected.’”

UPDATE: Last year we reported a ruling was expected by the end of the year. Alexander now says she has no idea when a ruling will occur, noting this “has set the record for the length of a rulemaking proceeding.”

The delay results from MWRD’s effort “to contest the obvious,” she said.

“They’ve presented multiple purported experts before the pollution control board to defend the proposition that pathogens in the water aren’t really bad for you.” That’s forced NRDC to spend time and resources “to prove that in fact they are.”

It’s a remarkable story that to date has gone virtually untold. Will O’Brien’s candidacy give it any currency?

With neighborhood economic development groups objecting to a major reduction in city funding at a time of growing job loss, 22 aldermen have submitted a resolution ordering the Mayor’s Office of Budget and Management to restore the funds in the city’s proposed 2010 budget.

The resolution is on the agenda for the City Council’s budget committee hearing on Monday. If approved, it could be considered at Wednesday’s council meeting.

The proposed budget for the Department of Community Development cuts spending by 21.5 percent for delegate agencies – about 120 neighborhood chambers of commerce and other groups that support commercial and industrial districts.

It’s a huge cut for a small budget item – a $1.5 million reduction from last year’s appropriation of $6.4 million. It’s a far greater reduction than other programs in the department. And it comes on top of cuts ranging from 3 to 7.5 percent each of the past six years, while the city’s budget has steadily grown.

With pressure on neighborhood businesses ratcheting up, other funding sources for the groups – especially local banks and real estate agencies, who know the value of a thriving business district — have been squeezed particularly hard, said Kimberly Bares of the Rogers Park Business Alliance.

Because the city provides only partial funding, its spending on delegate agencies seeds a tremendous amount of economic development effort, she said.

“We’re providing tremendous value to the city’s efforts, for minimal funding,” said Roger Romanelli of the Randolph Fulton Market Assocation. “We’re out on the streets every day, working directly with hundreds of businesses” in ways that would be impossible for the city.

“Most delegate agencies have staffs of one or two people doing the work of ten,” said Luis Alva of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce. LVCC’s activities include workshops for businesses on a range of topics as well as a highly successful 13-session workshop on starting a business. “These are people who go on to open businesses, invest in the community, and hire people,” he said.

The group also features festivals and sales to attract shoppers from outside the community to the 26th Street retail district, which is second only the Michigan Avenue in business activity and sales tax revenue. Local dress shops are clamoring for a repeat of LVCC’s recent bridal expo, Alva said.

Delegate agencies include groups funded under the Local Industrial Retention Initiative (LIRI), which are also facing 21.5 percent cuts, said Mike Holzer of the Local Economic and Employment Development Council. LIRI is the city’s primary delivery vehicle for direct economic development services to small manufacturers, and LEED Council manages the North River Industrial Corridor.

LEED Council has leveraged over half a billion dollars in private investment for the corridor, which includes four planned manufacturing districts, Holzer said. The Goose Island district, which was a marginal industrial area in the early 1990s, when 25 firms employed fewer than 1,000 workers, is thriving today, with over 65 firms and a workforce of 5,000, he said.

Those are jobs that allow workers to buy homes and send children to college. And they’ve been attracted during a period when the U.S. has lost millions of manufacturing jobs; Chicago lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs from 1995 to 2005, according to the Brookings Institute.

Small and mid-size firms generate the vast majority of new jobs, said Ellen Shepard of the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce, and since local businesses use local suppliers and support charities in their own communities, they generate far more local economic activity.

“With national and international markets faltering, and many residents being laid off…we are more reliant than ever on our neighborhood businesses,” she said. The city should be “significantly” boosting funding for neighborhood development groups, not cutting it, she said.

Bares said the cuts are likely to force some neighborhood groups to close down – and adds that there are local business support groups on the South and West Sides that have yet to be included in the city’s delegate agency program.

With major corporations getting city subsidies of tens of millions of dollars, while over a hundred local groups – which serve thousands of small businesses — must share a $5 million program, it’s clear the city could focus more on locally-owned businesses. The other program supporting neighborhood businesses, the Small Business Improvement Funds provided by selected TIF districts, is being cut this year from $3 million to $2.25 million.

That means less than half of 1 percent of TIF funds go to support small business, Shepard said. Romanelli said he had 38 applicants for small SBIF grants in the Kinzie Industrial TIF last year; funds were only available for eight grantees.

With aldermen now responding, cuts may be headed off this year – but it’s a bit of a fluke. Bares learned of the cuts ahead of time only because she serves on the city’s Community Development Advisory Committee; she went on to alert her colleagues. In previous years, delegate agencies learned their allocations were being cut only after the budget had been approved.

“This has certainly illustrated to us the difficulties everyday citizens have negotiating the city’s budget labyrinth,” she said.

With some saying violence at Fenger High School has increased sharply since Derrion Albert’s killing on September 24, Far South Side residents are collecting signatures for a referendum to open the old Carver High School building to students from Altgeld Gardens, and high school students from Altgeld are bringing a federal lawsuit charging CPS with violating their constitutional rights.

Meanwhile, anti-violence groups are planning to bring students from Altgeld and Roseland together for a peace summit – and for Thanksgiving dinner.

Ceasefire is planning to bus 60 kids from Roseland and Altgeld downtown for a Ceasefire Peace Summit this Saturday, November 14; a press conference to give young people an opportunity to voice their opinions will be held mid-afternoon, following the summit, said Tio Hardiman.

Kids Off the Block is planning its annual Thanksigiving Dinner for area teens, and Diane Latiker says they plan to have Fenger High School students from Altgeld and from the area around Fenger known as the Ville – who were fighting when Albert was killed – “to sit together, take their prayers together, and eat together.” KOB involves youth from both areas and from other far south high schools where there’s been violence, she said.

Starting today, the Developing Communities Project is collecting signatures to place a referendum on the February 2 ballot in the 9th and 34th Wards calling for restoring the original name of George Washington Carver High School, in order “to ensure greater access and academic/vocational options” for Altgeld and other area students.

DCP envisions additional academic and vocational schools that would be open to neighborhood students sharing the building that now houses the Carver Military Academy. Enrollment in the military academy has declined dramatically since it was made selective enrollment in 2006, and the building could house three or four times as many students as it does now, said John Paul Jones of DCP.

The proposal grows out of a DCP task force examining the loss of vocational education in far south high schools in recent years. Another goal of the referendum is to honor Carver himself, a former slave who whose legacy — defying myths of racial inferiority and promoting education and sustainable agriculture — remains relevant, Jones says.

“There’s huge opportunity in green technology and other industries,” he said. “Bring on a science and technology academy, a botany program, an urban agriculture program.” One option in the building should be a general high school, he said.

Asking for Trouble

“I’m all for it,” said Lattiker of the referendum. “When they made the decision to move young people out of their community and put them in another community…nobody asked the youth what they thought.”

Opened in 2000, Carver Military Academy originally had a student body drawn largely from Altgeld, said Colonel Tony Dagget, who served as the academy’s first commandant. The school was open to any student (the only requirement was an interview with a parent), focused on a college preparatory curriculum, and required parental involvement, he said.

There were “no fights – they weren’t tolerated,” and dropout rates declined dramatically, he said. “The Altgeld students were doing extremely well.”

In 2006 Dagget “chose to be terminated” rather than support then-CPS chief Arne Duncan’s proposal to institute selective enrollment. He says “the school had become a bargaining chip” to offset demands for a new high school in Hegewish, to the east; students there are now bused to Carver Military.

“The school belonged to the community,” he says. “It was clear to me it was an attempt to take it away from the community.”

He adds: “When Arne Duncan was pushing to go to selective enrollment [and send Altgeld students to Fenger], I told them you can’t just throw two high school cultures together without surveys, interviews and a process for dealing with cultural differences — otherwise you’re asking for trouble.”

Violence up, transfers stalled

While CPS said in October that Altgeld students at Fenger could get help transferring to Carver Military or other high schools, civil rights attorney Christopher Cooper says that isn’t happening.

“Parents go to Fenger for transfer papers, and they’re told to go to Carver; at Carver they say they don’t have the papers, and they should ask at Fenger,” he said. “Other high schools in the city that have space to take these kids have said no, they don’t want kids from Fenger.”

Cooper is representing students who live at Altgeld Gardens and attend Fenger – and who say the school is failing to create a safe environment for them. That violates the right to equal access to public education, Cooper says.

“If every day somebody’s beating you up and every day you are detained by security and made to sit in a [detention] room with your bruises, you’re not getting an education,” he said. “And if you’re not going because you’re terrified, you’re not getting an education.”

A number of Cooper’s clients have stopped attending school, some saying they fear for their lives; those who are going “are reporting that the school is more violent than ever,” he said.

One of his clients is a 14-year-old who “was beaten unconscious and throwing up blood,” Cooper said. He predicts CPS lawyers will seek to avoid an injunction hearing in which his clients would testify about continuing violence at the school.

“What’s needed is a clearly articulated transfer program” for students who want to go elsewhere, he said. And it needs to be implemented immediately, not next year, he said.

“Some kids from Roseland want a death from Altgeld for Derrion, and they’re not going to stop until it happens,” said Cheryl Johnson at People for Community Recovery, an organization based in Altgeld Gardens. “We’re trying to stop that.”

One Altgeld mother says her sons have been repeatedly beaten up by large groups at Fenger. “They need to be able to go to our own school,” she says, noting the 45-minute bus ride to Fenger. “I feel they should be closer to home.”

The bill, known as H.B. 363, passed the House and Senate unanimously this spring.

“I was shocked and appalled” by the veto, Soto said. “I am really upset.” She said neither Quinn nor CPS raised the concerns highlighted in the governor’s veto during extensive negotiations over the legislation this spring.

Quinn reduced the number of state legislators and community representatives appointed by legislative leaders to a Chicago School Facilities Task Force and gave several task force slots to Mayor Daley and himself to fill. The task force is to consider school facilities policies, possibly proposing legislation to the General Assembly.

Soto vowed to work hard to override Quinn’s veto when the General Assembly reconvenes. Legislators could confirm or override Quinn’s changes — or take no action, allowing the bill to die.

Quinn’s changes “fundamentally undermine the likelihood that any meaningful changes will result from this process,” said Don Moore of Designs for Change. “It’s the policies of the Mayor and his board of education that are at the root of the inequities” which the task force is to address, he said.

“The Governor has hijacked a year-long Chicago school facility improvement campaign at the last minute, by stacking the task force and watering down its ability to come up with a strong fair policy,” said Valencia Rias of Designs. “He has disappointed many who thought he was different from the typical Illinois politician.”

Quinn’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Soto said good neighborhood schools were being closed and their buildings given over to outside entities to run schools which aren’t open to local residents. “It’s segregation by gentrification,” she said.

“It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to the taxpayers of the city of Chicago. It isn’t fair to the families whose children are being shifted around where they could be at risk. It isn’t fair to the principals and the teachers who work so hard. It isn’t fair to the parents who volunteer, who give so much of their time to make the schools better. They deserve a voice.”

The Pilsen Alliance, which works with parents in neighborhood schools, is mobilizing residents for the Aug. 26 school board meeting, where a decision is expected.

The board will consider an “emergency request” from the Octavio Paz campus of the United Neighborhood Organization Charter School to move temporarily into the building of the De La Cruz Middle School, which closed in June, according to a letter from board president Michael Scott provided by Alliance director Alejandra Ibanez.

De La Cruz was closed after being tagged “underutilized” although it had the largest special education student population in the neighborhood, Ibanez said. (Special education classes are limited in size by state law.) Last year De La Cruz won a Spotlight Award from the Illinois State Board of Education for educational success with low-income students.

“That’s the kind of school that should be a model for neighborhood schools,” particularly with its success with low-income, English-learning, and special needs students, Ibanez said.

Scott’s letter notes that De La Cruz was closed partly due to extensive repairs needed there, and says “some minor construction work” will be needed to accommodate the UNO charter school.

Ibanez asks why CPS would invest in the building if it’s really slated for demolition — and whether it will end up being a permanent home to the UNO charter. She also cites reports from former De La Cruz teachers that work was being done on the building as early as last June.

The repair of the De La Cruz building has another dimension. With the closing of the middle school in June, its feeder school, nearby Whittier Elementary, added grades 7 and 8. That’s the school where Pilsen Alliance has worked on a parent leadership project for several years, winning lead and asbestos abatement as well as community school designation and programming.

But the parents’ main focus for seven years has been an expansion of the school building in order to make the 100-year-old buildling ADA compliant and add a library, cafeteria, gymnasium, and parent meeting room — and now 7th and 8th grade classrooms. At Whittier, kids eat lunch on folding tables in the hallway, Ibanez said.

In contrast, when UNO opened the Bartolome de las Casas charter campus on West 16th in 2006, they got a new roof and ADA upgrades within weeks, she said.

De La Cruz and Whittier “are neighborhood schools that could be models” for mobilizing parents and communities to support schools that succeed in teaching inner-city kids, “but they don’t get the investment,” Ibanez said. “UNO gets the red carpet and a blank check.”

A new law passed this year over CPS opposition could end up limiting the district’s ability to make arbitrary facilities decisions, said Don Moore of Designs for Change.

“Decisions about where schools get built and which schools get repairs and which are closed” are “extemely inconsistent,” he said. A general school facilities plan — the goal of Rep. Cynthia Soto’s Chicago School Facilities bill — could “set procedures and standards for these kinds of decisions,” he said.

In selling the games to Chicago’s residents, meanwhile, promises of park enhancements and sports programs for kids, as well as affordable housing, have been featured alongside visions of jobs and boom times.

But current plans put great burdens on parks, and they involve the imminent demolition of a major respository of the city’s historic architecture (see part two).

In many cases promised “legacy” facilities seem designed not to meet actual needs of current park users but to accommodate the requirements of Olympic planners. In many cases they involve taking away existing resources while promising residual benefits sometime in the future.

In some cases they involve taking away facilities that have been only recently built.

In Jackson Park, an Olympic field hockey venue is planned — on the site of a world-class track and football field next to Hyde Park Academy. It’s one of only three regulation tracks at Chicago schools.

The track and field opened just eight years ago, funded by a community-led drive which raised well over half a million dollars, including support from the National Football League.

“It’s eight years into a minimum 35-year lifespan,” said Ross Petersen, president of the Jackson Park Advisory Council.

Under the current plan, the new track will be bulldozed, along with an adjacent baseball diamond, he said. Chicago 2016 has promised to rebuild it after the games, he said, although a permanent field hockey field facility has also been touted as a possible “legacy.”

The field hockey was moved to the school after the original proposal, using popular soccer fields near a lakefront nature sanctuary, led JPAC to vote against using the park for the Olympics. Petersen said the council is grateful for the site change, but when he asked at a recent meeting whether members wanted to pass a new resolution updating their stance, no one offered a motion.

In Douglas Park, recently rebuilt gymnasiums and a pool serving the Collins Highcampus — reportedly updated at a cost of $30 million — will be demolished to make way for a $37 million velodrome for bicycle racing. Afterwards a pool “may” be moved to the park from the South Side aquatics center, and Chicago 2016 promises to convert the highly specialized, elite outdoor venue into a year-round “multisport facility.”

In Lincoln Park, Chicago 2016 is touting a legacy of 20 new tennis courts after the Olympic tennis venue is taken down. They will replace 20 existing tennis courts.

Washington Park has attracted the most attention. There a $400 million temporary stadium for opening ceremonies and track events, along with a $100 million aquatic center featuring four pools, will be sited on the open meadow that dates to Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1870 design.

The thousand-acre park, listed on the National Registery of Historic Places, comprises one-seventh of the Chicago’s parkland and features 14 baseball diamonds, football and soccer fields, and cricket pitches. Under current plans, it will be closed for at least four years to accomodate the two-week 2016 extravaganza.

The Washington Park Advisory Council has endorsed the siting, although only a few of the 26 conditions it issued two years ago as requirements for its support have been addressed. But a number of community, citywide and national groups have opposed the use of the meadow for the stadium, including the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference, Friends of the Parks, Preservation Chicago and the National Association for Olmsted Parks.

NAOP objects that Chicago 2016 plans “threaten the park’s signature public open spaces and sweeping vistas, jeopardizing [the] integrity, significance and public use” of “a masterpiece of America’s preeminent landscape architect.” According to NAOP, “plans to tear down the stadium following the Olympics are unrealistic” — and even if they are carried out, the new ampitheater and aquatic center would “take a major open space and restrict its use to specific activities, and a much more limited user population.”

The group urges Chicago 2016 to use the Chicago Park District’s South Lakefront Framework Master Plan as a basis for restoring the park” and cites London’s plan for its Olympics, “taking brownfields and adding new parks” instead of “damaging existing historic park resources.”

NAOP executive director Iris Gestram said Chicago 2016 president Lori Healey has not responded to their letter, which was sent in April. Chicago 2016 did not respond to inquiries for this article.

At a recent community meeting at the Washington Park refectory, Chicago 2016 legacy director Arnold Randall was asked if the Olympics planners would consider an alternative site for the stadium. He said that while planning is “a work in progress,” siting the stadium in Washington Park “is part of the bid. That’s the plan and that’s the policy and that’s not going to change.”

Some think that means it won’t be addressed before the host city is chosen in October, however.

“Nothing is hard and fast,” said Erma Tranter of Friends of the Parks, pointing out that London made dramatic changes in its venue siting after winning the 2012 bid. She said Olympic planners have told her “we have some flexibility…we can change some sites.”

The money spent burying stadium infrastructure in the ground — millions of dollars spent on water, sewer and electrical lines — will be wasted in Washington Park and could spur development at other sites, she said.

“They’re spending millions of dollars on things nobody is ever going to use” after the Olympics, said Jonathan Fine of Preservation Chicago. “It’s a complete and total waste of money.”

Advocates point to the USX site on the south lakefront, where a large residential and commercial development has stalled for lack of financing; or the 92-acre, 15-block site where CHA’s Robert Taylor Homes were demolished — 1800 units of mixed-income housing are planned for the site, and so far 181 have been built; or the former site of Comiskey Park.

Tranter points out that the city owns about a third of the extensive vacant tracts to the west of Washington Park. “They have options,” she said.

Other U.S. cities that have hosted Olympics have added parkland, but Chicago’s plan doesn’t, she said. “A $5 billion budget and not a square inch of new parkland,” comments Fine. Tranter adds that Chicago is last among the nation’s largest 20 cities in park acreage per person.

Chicago 2016 plans to leave 5,000 or so of the stadium’s 80,000 seats to serve as a neighborhood concert and sport facility which “can be expanded to host major international athletic events” and “will be the centerpiece for the revitalization of the Washington Park area,” according to the bid book. The ampitheatre will be four feet deep and surrounded by six-foot berms.

For some years, some residents have wanted a festival site in the park to handle summer events (others fear the noise levels that will result). The park’s playing fields were not the location envisioned, however. At the recent community meeting, residents discussed the best location for the festival site — though no one from Chicago 2016 or the park district suggested the question was open for discussion.

Olmsted’s original plan had a concert and parade ground in front of the parks’ Refectory, which is now a parking lot across Garfield Boulevard from the meadow. That’s the best place for a festival site, Tranter said.

Fine argues that the ampitheater is just the concrete foundation of the stadium, and it’s main function is to lessen the enormous cost of removing concrete. Indeed, the temporary stadium will require many tens of thousands of tons of concrete to be poured into — and removed from — the historic park.

London’s 2012 Olympic stadium (which is now projected to cost twice as much as estimated in the city’s 2005 bid) features permanent and temporary seating, as does Chicago’s. Its foundation consists of 4,000 concrete columns, with permanent seating attached to 12,000 concrete terrace units weighing as much as ten metric tons each. Over that goes a concrete upper tier and a hundred 3,500-ton steel terracing supports for the temporary seating.

George Rumsey of HPKCC worries that “when it’s over they’re going to look at it and say, why should we tear it down? It would be perfect for the Bears.” (The team has the smallest stadium in the NFL, and Soldier Field could be downsized to the concert venue long desired by the powers-that-be. Or the Washington Park facility could be turned over to the University of Chicago, which already administers Midway park and which has been buying land west of King Drive.)

“They say they’re going to downsize it, but what if they change their mind? What guarantees are there? None,” he said. “It’s a land grab, taking over our park with no accountability — and there’s no accountability on what’s going to happen afterwards.”

Chicago 2016 did not respond to repeated requests for information regarding the source of funding for restoring Washington Park, relocating pools from the aquatic center to other parks, restoring Jackson Park’s $500,000 track, or converting the open-air velodrome in Douglas Park into a year-round recreation center. Those costs don’t seem to be included in projected construction costs; $400 million for the stadium is obviously a low-ball figure.

“It’s very unclear” where the money is supposed to come from, Tranter commented. FOTP’s principles for Washington Park state: “Funds must be budgeted to dismantle the stadium.”

As far as track: A serious commitment to providing track and field opportunities for Chicago youth would require better facilties, most crucially an indoor facility; a commitment by the schools and the park district in order to reach all ages; and a significant increase in the hours for which school track coaches are compensated, currently far less than for other sports, said Bill Gerstein, an educator who spearheaded the fundraising drive for the Jackson Park track.

Chicago 2016 has dangled the possibility of turning the National Guard Armory near Washington Park into the city’s first public indoor track facility — a longstanding proposal of sports advocates. But no commitment has been made.

Chicago 2016′s “legacy” group World Sports Chicago touted a summer track and field program in May which they said would serve 3,500 kids; in July the Tribune reported that 300 had participated. (Most WSC events appear to be Olympics-boosting rallies for children who are already attending park district camp or public school.) Inquiries yielded no response.

Continued: Architectural Legacy

Meanwhile, a protest by South Chicago residents against the installation of new parking meters entered its sixth week Monday, with an around-the-clock vigil now under way.

Led by Centro Communitario Juan Diego, the vigil so far has succeeded in blocking new meters on the 8800 block of South Commercial. The new meters were announced earlier this year, in the wake of the deal privatizing the city’s parking meters.

The 24-hour vigil began after holes were drilled in the sidewalk outside the center on July 19, while supporters were attempting unsuccessfully to meet with Ald. John Pope (10th).

Once or twice a day a private contractor’s truck, accompanied by an IDOT vehicle, approaches the block, said Guadelupe Ramirez. Residents on lookout form picket lines around the holes, and the trucks move on, she said.

CCJD isn’t opposed to all parking meters, just new ones on the half-block outside the group’s office, Ramirez said. (Previous meters on the block were taken out two decades ago, she said.)

“Many of our clients are poor,” she said. “They come in for the food pantry, for light and gas assistance [the center also offers help with housing, health, and literacy], and in many cases it can take a long time, sometimes several hours. We have elderly people carrying large boxes of food.”

The center has afterschool and summer programs where parents are expected to volunteer. “They would have to pay the meter for several hours every time they volunteer,” Ramirez said. “It isn’t practical.”

CCJD wasn’t invited to an April meeting of the South Chicago Chamber of Commerce where the new meters were approved, Ramirez said. After the decision was announced, residents collected 1600 signatures against the new meters and staged protests at the offices of Pope (on a meter-free street) and the SSCC.

When the chamber said businesses prefered meters in order to increase turnover of parking spots, CCJD surveyed area business owers and found that over 90 percent opposed new meters, voicing worries that shoppers would take their business elsewhere, Ramirez said. After rumors of new parking meters in the nearby East Side neighborhood, the chamber of commerce there passed a resolution opposing more meters, she said.

For other neighborhood stories by Curtis Black, go to Community Media Workshop at newstips.org.

Why did it take Attorney General Lisa Madigan six years to free them?

How long will it take, and how many procedural battles must be fought, for other men who are in prison based on tortured confessions to have their claims heard?

And is it possible that some of them could be denied hearings altogether?

Ronald Kitchen and Marvin Reeves were freed Tuesday after the attorney general’s office decided to drop all charges against them. That decision came six years after Madigan was given responsibility for representing the state in convictions linked to a torture ring led by Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.

The case for dismissal was not complicated, lawyers say. There was evidence supporting Kitchen’s claim that he was beaten by a Chicago detective (Kitchen says he confessed after 30 hours of physical abuse; he was originally sentenced to death). And it was known that a jailhouse informant against Kitchen and Reeves lied on the stand — about phone calls in which they supposedly confessed to him, and about inducements he received for his testimony — and that prosecutors committed misconduct by covering up for him.

“It could have been done six years ago,” but Madigan’s office has “dragged their feet,” said Flint Taylor of the People’s Law Office, who has represented Burge victims.

The problem was that Madigan decided to reinvestigate each Burge case individually and exhaustively — and in the meantime, to continue litigating them, he said.

“Why aren’t these cases being dealt with as a whole?” he asks. “That’s how they should have been treated from the beginning.”

In other cases where whole classes of convictions were tainted by police misconduct, wholesale reviews have allowed for much quicker determinations, he said. The Los Angeles district attorney took just two years to review 1500 cases tainted by the Ramparts District police scandal in the late 1990s; over a hundred convictions were overturned.

“Lisa Madigan has delayed and delayed,” said Julien Ball of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, which has protested regularly outside her office. The group has called on Madigan to initiate new evidenciary hearings in all the Burge-related cases, Ball said.

In April, several of Madigan’s cases were handed off to a new special prosecutor, former Judge Stuart Nudelman, and a few more are working their way through the courts. Action on a couple more Burge-related cases is expected in July.

But in many of the cases, individuals now in prison have exhausted their appeals — many in the years before the Burge torture ring was documented, when claims of coerced confessions were routinely dismissed, Ball said. Without new hearings initiated by Madigan, their torture claims — and the convictions based on them — may never be aired, he said.

Rob Warden, of the Center on Wrongful Convctions at Northwestern, which provided attorneys for Kitchen and Reeves, agreed. “We think the attorney general should confess error and agree to a new trial in every case in which a confession extracted by the Burge crew was admitted in court,” he said. “We think all these men are entitled to new trials.”

The veteran organizer, rabble-rouser, and troublemaker is still irrepressible and reflexively provocative. Eight years ago he retired from the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, the organization he co-founded in 1964, and moved to Mississippi.

“Katrina blew us out,” he says, and health problems followed, but now he and his wife are living in the South Loop, “the best address I’ve ever had,” and he’s back at JCUA as a volunteer.

At the moment what he’s exercised about is the upcoming reunion of Chicago riot cops sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Police, celebrating the “thin blue line” that saved the city from “anarchy.”

“I was there,” he says. “It was cops hitting citizens in the head, smashing their heads like watermelons.

“You know what Governor Kerner’s commission called it? A police riot. You can’t spin a police riot. That’s not a proud moment in Chicago’s history. That was people’s heads getting smashed. It’s shameful.”

Chicago Copwatch and other police accountability groups have called a counterprotest of the FOP event for 6 p.m. Friday at Ashland and Lake, and Kreinberg will be there.

The Fair and the Olympics

We asked about the current controversy over the Olympics — and what insights there might be gained from the successful campaign by community activists led by Kreinberg 25 years ago to stop a planned 1992 Chicago World’s Fair.

The fair was stopped “because of the transparency that was forced by the [Chicago] 1992 Committee,” he said, referring to the grassroots watchdog coalition he helped put together.

The World’s Fair Corporation “came in saying trust us,” he recalls. “They said they had it covered” — no public funds would be needed.

The first analysis showing the world’s fair could actually (indeed, easily) lose money was presented in The Neighborhood Works, the magazine of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, by editor Thom Clark based on Kreinberg’s research.

Subsequently, local foundations backed 1992 Committee research projects exploring the dangers of displacement and diversion of infrastructure spending and poking big holes in Fair Corporation projections of attendance and job creation.

When the fair planners rejected any discussion of alternative sites, it was clear that their real agenda was greasing the skids of development for their “new town in town.”

Cotton Candy

“It’s a hard thing, taking cotton candy out of the mouths of citizens,” Kreinberg said. “Nobody is against the Olympics, nobody is against a Worlds Fair, unless it’s some kind of nut like me who thinks the city is already overbuilt, who talks about limited growth.

“We made it clear that the money being spent on the world’s fair was money that would not be available for the needs of the neighborhoods. There’s only so much money. It’s a game of subtraction.”

They also made it clear that the fair was likely to lose money; after that, the debate was over who would pick up the tab. Mayor Harold Washington, a skeptic who replaced fair booster Jane Byrne, finally said that he was wildly enthusiastic about the idea — but the city could provide no financing, and would even have to charge the Fair Authority for the cost of police and other public services. When House Speaker Mike Madigan came out against state funding on June 20, 1985, the fair was declared dead.

While the world’s fair was the project of a group of business leaders who had to then enlist the support of elected officials, the Olympics seem to be the intiative of Mayor Richard Daley himself, who has marshalled business and civic support for his dream.

Back then there was a far more free-wheeling political environment — a City Council briefly freed from its role as rubber stamp and a feisty movement of community organizations, fresh from the principled confrontations of the civil rights movement and subsequent struggles.

Back then a broad grassroots coalition — nearly 50 groups joined the Chicago 1992 Committee — united around broad accountability concerns, and local foundations supported them; even major nonprofits on the official Fair Review Council began asking serious questions.

Today a small group, No Games Chicago, is organizing in explicit opposition to the Olympics, while groups in affected communities press separately for better benefit packages.

Back then there was also a deficit in the city’s budget — though nothing like the financial tsunami facing local government right now, with the state and city, schools, parks and transit all facing “doomsday” projections with big service cuts and layoffs, at the very moment the Mayor breaks his promise to limit public financial exposure to Olympic debt.

Kreinberg suggests paying particular attention to the Olympics budget. “Cost overruns are where these people make their money,” he points out.

“‘Trust me’ is a phrase that is always used in Chicago. Trust me, you’ll get affordable housing on Maxwell Street — but it will be for our relatives who don’t need it, so they can sell it and make money. Trust me on parking meters….This child of the Boss has not given us any reason to trust him at all.

“Trust — you have to earn it, you don’t proclaim it.”

To read more stories by Curtis Black, go to Community Media Workshop.

“In all cases where they have a legacy project, we find it troubling and inappropriate, not needed in the neighborhood, and unsustainable by the park district,” she said.

Tranter will join Randy Neufeld of the Active Transportation Alliance and Arnold Randall and Robert Accarino of Chicago 2016 at the monthly Creative Living In The City lecture on Thursday, April 9 at 12:15 p.m. in the Claudia Cassidy Theater of the Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington.

Noting the Chicago Park District has been steadily cutting back on staff and programs for several years, Tranter said, “There’s a big question whether the park district will be able to maintain anything” left as “legacy.”

In Washington Park an outdoor swimming facility is planned — along with a permanent 10,000-seat amphitheater in the historic South Open Green, which is now heavily used for softball, baseball, soccer and cricket. But Washington Park already has indoor and outdoor swimming facilities, and the park district has had trouble maintaining public access to the indoor pool, she said.

“There are places on the south and west side that no pools,” Tranter said. “Why not build it where it’s needed?”

At Douglas Park, a proposed velodrome will be turned into a community center. But it’s right next to a spacious historic field house which houses a cultural and community center — where the park district has cut staff and programming.

At Northerly Island a “legacy” white water rafting facility would undercut ten years of planning the create a nature area there, Tranter said.

Other concerns include a tennis facility near the bird sanctuary in Lincoln Park and a hockey field in Jackson Park.

Plans to close Monroe Harbor for four years of construction prior to the Olympics will cost the park district $20 million in docking fees, Tranter said. “How can they operate the park district?” she asked. “Where’s the money supposed to come from?”

Venue planning was “all done behind closed doors,” she said — and existing park space was used because it doesn’t involve acquisition costs. “They’re not taking unused land and leaving new facilities,” she said. “They’re cutting into the limited park space we have.”

FOTP was not consulted by Chicago 2016 until after plans were announced, Tranter said. Then they were told that community meetings will be held after the Olympic evaluation committee visit — and that it will still be possible to relocate venue sites.

Neufeld will present ATA’s vision of what the Olympics could mean for biking and transit, said Margo O’Hara. ATA is working on a comparison of transportation benefits of previous Olympics with Chicago 2016′s proposal.

The group was completely surprised to learn that a large portion of the lakefront bike path would be closed, she said.

Feb. 16, 2009 – A legislative effort to require CPS to develop a comprehensive facilities plan addresses a longstanding concern of advocates for neighborhood schools: without public oversight and accountability, they say, the district's decisions on building, repairing, closing and privatizing school facilities are arbitrary, opaque, and unfair.

State Representative Cynthia Soto — whose bill would enact a one-year moratorium on closings and initiate an open facilities planning process for CPS — said she's responding to the concerns of her constituents. The CPS proposal to shut two successful neighborhood schools in her district due to "underenrollment" reveals some of the contradictions in the district's facilities planning.

A Million-Dollar Location

CPS calculates space utilization by dividing the number of students by the number of classrooms. That doesn't take into account the fact that Carpenter, 1250 W. Erie, has 90 special education students who require breakout sessions or smaller classes, said parent Maria Hernandez. Carpenter serves children with severe cognitive disabilities and is one of a small number of schools with facilities to accommodate children with hearing impairments.

One classroom is fully carpeted with low ceilings to help children with sensitive hearing, Hernandez said. Over the last decade, CPS has spent over $6 million on the Carpenter building, including $1 million in 2003 on ADA upgrades, an assisted listening system, and an expensive fire alarm system with lights throughout the building.

Carpenter — a neighborhood school with a fine and performing arts magnet program — also offers ESL and computer instruction for parents, and one floor is used for 6th through 8th graders from Ogden Elementary on the Gold Coast. Hernandez said parents believe Ogden wants the entire building; Ogden (which was built in 1953) was picked for a $30 million replacement under Mayor Daley's Modern Schools program in 2006, and last October it was chosen to open a "performance" high school under Renaissance 2010 at a to-be-determined location. The selective high school will be open to any graduate of Ogden's elementary school.

According to Ogden's website: "The Board of Education is expected to officially approve all school closings, consolidations, turnarounds, and phase-outs at the February 25th board meeting. Potential sites for new schools, including [Otis International High School], will be announced shortly thereafter with final approval expected at the March 25th board meeting. In addition, as soon as available spaces are identified and approved, then the Central Office can determine the relocation site for our elementary and/or middle grades until our new building on Walton Street is ready for occupancy (expected to be September 2011)."

Carpenter "is near the expressway, the el, bus routes — it's a ten minute ride from the Loop," Hernandez said. "It's a million-dollar location."

Enrollment at Carpenter began declining several years ago after CPS made its boundaries smaller, she said. She knows children who would have attended Carpenter but now walk past the school to go to Otis Elementary. Enrollment is down to 324 from 437 in 2005.

If the CPS proposal is approved as expected, kindergarten-age children in the Carpenter will start attending Otis Elementary next year, and new enrollment will be closed at Carpenter, which will lose a grade each year. Hernandez fears enrollment will be further drained as families split between the two schools shift older children to Otis, and CPS won't keep its promise to let current Carpenter students finish there. "They're setting up the school to close before [the promised phase-out period of] seven years," she said.

Meanwhile, the Otis building (parts of which date to 1879) has over $6 million in unfunded capital needs, including over a million for renovations to temporary units, according to a 2008 CPS assessment.

Classes in Coatrooms

At Peabody, CPS says the building should hold 750 children; it has 258. Principal Federico Flores says attendance was 700 when he first came there. "They were holding classes in coat rooms," he recalls.

Now the school has two computer labs that teachers use throughout the day; parents can use them after school. It has an art room, a tutoring room, and a parent room. The building has no gym, and one classroom is used for physical education. There is space for four Americorps volunteers who provide small group instruction during school hours, as well as a guitar club, art club and dance club after school.

It has three programs for volunteers from Working In The Schools — an early childhood reading program, a power lunch program, where volunteers from Northern Trust read to children during lunch, and a Workplace Mentoring program with Smith Barney and the Baird investment company.

The school also offers ESL and computer classes — and a sewing circle — for parents.

"There's nothing that says a small school can't have a wide variety of programs," said Flores. "But it takes space."

It's also meant steady achievement gains at the school, where 99 percent of students are low-income, and 63 percent are at or above standards, up from 30 percent in 2002.

Supporters of Carpenter and Peabody point out that with over 60 percent of student at or above standards, both schools are far out-performing Sherman and Harvard, two "turnaround" schools operated by the Academy of Urban School Leadership teacher training group. The two AUSL schools have only 40 percent achieving at that level, despite Gates Foundation funding and other additional resources not available to neighborhood schools.

"When they started Renaissance 2010 they said they were going to close the worst schools" (replacing the 60 lowest-performing schools with 100 new schools), said Don Moore of Designs For Change. "Now they're closing schools that are doing better than the turnaround schools that are supposed to be a model for the future."

A community hearing on Peabody's closing took place Feb. 9 at Lozano School, and the board won't act on the proposal until its Feb. 28 meeting. But Soto says she was contacted last month by Noble Charter School about taking over the building (1444 W. Augusta), which is next door to Noble's sponsor, Northwestern Settlement House. Last fall Noble was awarded three new charter school sites, with locations to be determined.

Former Peabody students will have to walk an extra eight or ten blocks to school, Flores has pointed out, speaking in the middle of a bitter winter. A CPS spokesman told Medill News that crossing guards would be provided at major intersections.

Capital mess

The two schools demonstrate longstanding complaints about arbitrary enrollment standards and facilities decisions guided by favoritism rather than need, often in the service of other agendas, and with no input and poor communication.

Before it closed shop in 2007, the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group led the charge for a comprehensive school facilities plan that would rank projects by need, ensure resources are distributed equitably, and provide oversight and accountability.

The group pointed to research showing that school closings set children back educationally, and that smaller schools and small class sizes are particularly helpful for students who are struggling academically. They warned of a two-tier school system, with capital and educational resources showered on a relatively small number of "schools of choice" while neighborhood schools are stiffed. And they pointed out that local school councils are not informed or consulted when their schools are being shut down — and that schools with LSCs are being closed and replaced by schools without LSCs. [Most also lack union representation for teachers.]

"We keep saying we need fair notification and CPS needs to think more strategically," said Smyth School LSC member Adorthous McDowell at a 2004 NCBG press conference. "CPS is not accountable to the taxpayers for how it's spending capital dollars."

The situation has grown more confused with Renaissance 2010 forming new schools that need space, while capital funds have not been forthcoming from the state for several years — and especially with Mayor Daley instituting his own $1 billion Modern Schools program, outside the CPS capital budget, to build new facilities with TIF and bond money.

Two former education staffers at NCBG, Andrea Lee and Dion Miller Perez, recall the days when CPS would publish a weighty volume detailing capital needs throughout the system. Today they release two or three pages listing only which schools are getting their projects funded.

"They don't show what repairs are needed, how much money is in the works for capital programs or how it's being prioritized," said Miller Perez. "There's no plan," said Lee.

The CPS measure of space utilization doesn't account for "program capacity," said Miller Perez. It disregards federal requirements for smaller class sizes for special education and bilingual students. It doesn't take into consideration art and music programs, computer and science labs, all of which reduce CPS utilization rates.

Lee points to the Washington, D.C. schools facilities plan, which uses square feet-per-student ratios and includes considerations for things like auditoriums and gymnasiums. NCBG found that using that measure, a number of CPS schools listed as "below capacity" were significantly overcrowded.

The lack of a comprehensive plan means that the motives for decisions about construction, repairs, and closings are often suspect.

In 2004 NCBG showed that eight schools being closed for underenrollment had higher occupancy rates than 50 other CPS schools. All eight were predominantly African American; six schools with significant white populations had lower occupancy but remained open, raising concerns about disproportionate racial impacts — which would violate the Desegregation Consent Decree. The closing schools were all in the path of the CHA Plan for Transformation.

The group noted another disturbing phenomenon, which was concentrated on the Mid-South Side: nearly half of all schools that received students from closed schools had ended up on the closing list themselves within a year. (That problem continues, as the Chicago Journal reported last week.)

As CHA developments closed, especially in the Mid-South Side, families that liked their schools but had moved away continued to send their children there, said Don Moore. Those schools were closed, and the families' last connection to the old neighborhood — to which many thought CHA had promised they could return — was severed.

Last year UIC researchers looked at data on housing and school closings and found evidence of "a connection between school closings and gentrification."

In with the new

There's also a clear connection with Renaissance 2010. Last year then-CPS chief Arne Duncan proposed 20 new Renaissance schools, most of them charters. The vast majority were to be sited in locations "to be determined." Of the subsequent announcement of shutdowns, Julie Woestehoff of Parents United for Responsible Education said: "These schools are just being closed so they can provide buildings for Renaissance 2010."

CPS has also heavily favored Renaissance 2010 schools for repairs. In 2007 Catalyst reported that Renaissance and charter schools serving less than 4 percent of CPS students were getting nearly 20 percent of funds for renovations. (CPS currently has 576 neighborhood schools, 67 charter school sites, and 24 other Renaissance 2010 schools.)

Not surprisingly, the repair backlog for neighborhood schools was much greater than for charter and Renaissance schools.

Catalyst told of schools receiving long-deferred repairs — at Calumet High, nearly $12 million worth — only to learn their building was being handed over to charter schools. Advocates say the pattern of schools getting repairs just before or after closing is all too common.

In Bronzeville, CPS closed Raymond Elementary in 2004, saying ADA renovations required there were too expensive. Then it spent $6 million upgrading the building and leased it to Perspectives Math and Science Charter School, according to Lee.

Raymond students had been sent to Attucks Elementary, which also received students from Hartigan when it closed. Last summer CPS suddenly shut down Attucks, saying boiler repairs needed there would cost too much.

In 2006, when Daley announced 24 new schools to be built under his Modern Schools program, 15 were Renaissance schools — and nine schools that had been promised new buildings weren't on the list, according to NCBG at the time.

"People get excited when they're told they're on the list for a new building," said Miller Perez. "You could be on the list for years and years."

Miller Perez is now executive director of the Telpochcalli Community Education Project, the community partner for the Telpochcalli Community Elementary School, a small, fully bilingual community school in Little Village. The school is awkwardly housed in the industrial arts wing of the former Harrison High School at 24th and Marshall Bvd.

With an estimated $23 million in needed repairs, the old Harrison building (shared with Saucedo Elementary Scholastic Academy) is near the top of the list of CPS schools for deferred repairs. Telpochcalli serves 300 children, as well as 300 parents and community members who take ESL, literacy, computer classes and GED tutoring. They hold additional classes at two other schools and at Assumption Church across the street. "We maxed out this space a long time ago."

Telpochcalli has discussed sharing a new building with nearby Community Link High School and brought in urban planning interns from UIC to help develop plans. They've given presentations to CPS annually for several years, Miller Perez said. He said CPS officials "have been receptive," but no funding is available.

A community school utilization plan

Andrea Lee, now education organizer for the Grand Boulevard Federation, has brought her NCBG work to the grassroots in Bronzeville, working with residents to form a community task force on school utilization. Since the rash of school closings in the wake of CHA demolitions, there are now no neighborhood schools between 26th and 43rd Street east of the Dan Ryan; but there are four within a one-mile radius at the south end of the neighborhood. And several of those buildings are nearing the end of their lifespan, she said, which will mean "some tough decisions."

"We need to establish criteria for high-quality schools — and support neighborhood schools instead of shutting them down and giving them over to schools that don't even take our kids," she said.

Right now Lee is working with parents to save Abbott Elementary, 3630 S. Wells near Wentworth Gardens, where CHA's redevelopment is nearing completion. Abbott was slated for closing last year but survived, when the hearing officer was outraged that CPS officials neglected to inform her that the school shared a building with two other programs. (That's the only time in 62 closings that a hearing officer has not endorsed a closing recommended by CPS, and the only time the Board of Education has voted against a closing.) Now one of the building's occupants, the Choir Charter Academy, is closing.

But Abbott parents are conducting an enrollment drive and have signed up 140 parents — including many Choir Academy parents — who want to send their children to Abbott. And Lee said Wentworth Gardens has 120 vacant units that are expected to be occupied by June. That could provide 50 to 150 children, she said.

Lee points out that when Attucks — at 38th and Dearborn, about four blocks from Abbott — was closed last year, students weren't given an option of attending Abbott but were bused to Farren at 50th and State. CPS now proposes busing Abbott students to Hendricks Elementary at 43rd and Princeton.

According to Lee, CPS officials testified that an Easter Seals pre-school housed at Abbott was planning to move, while GBF understands the pre-school would stay if Abbott remains open.

Abbott has a large number of students with severe educational needs, including 20 with autism, Lee said.

Broken promises

Soto's bill would block any school closings, "turnarounds," consolidations or phaseouts for a year, even if the Board of Education approves them later this month. Then a legislative commission would hold a series of hearings in Chicago and "develop a new set of fair requirements" for planning school repairs, construction, closings, "turnarounds," consolidations, phase-outs, and boundary changes.

Soto says she acted in part because CPS did not follow through on promises made two years ago, when Duncan asked her to withdraw a bill that would have mandated six months notice for school closings, guarantees for community involvement, and protections for students.

That bill had passed the House unanimously. CPS promised to implement its protections as policy, Soto said. "That has not happened," she said. "They do not keep their word."

This bill seems to have broad support, too. In four days it has attracted 17 cosponsors including 10 Chicago Democrats, among them legislators where schools are closing. Legislators outside Chicago – where school districts often have facilities plans, and always undertake extensive public debate before any school is built or closed – are very supportive, Soto said.

"Chicago gets away with murder," she said. "Enough is enough. You have to listen to the people who live here."

For Soto, the bottom line is that closing schools in black and Latino low-income neighborhoods is part of gentrification. "That's what this is about," she said. "And this community and these voters are not going to stand for gentrification and racism."

But it's also about education. "We want to focus on learning from the good schools that we already have and improving the rest, not this constant, annual harm to students that's created by the Board of Education," she said.

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Feb. 2, 2009 – Homeless shelters around the state are facing increased demand, according to a new report from Housing Action Illinois (pdf), and new figures from the Chicago Community Trust show calls for homelessness prevention assistance are up sharply.

The findings add to evidence cited recently by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (pdf) that homelessness is rising nationally. And they make the case for more housing spending in the recovery package now being considered by Congress, said Bob Palmer of Housing Action Illinois.

"Our numbers are incredibly high," said Mike Wasserberg of South Suburban PADS. A year ago the group's shelters were serving an average of 140 men, women, and children each night; now the figure is regularly reaching 200.

Sites that were sheltering 25 people a night are now getting 40 or 45, he said.

They're seeing many more families with children who don't have housing, he said. He cited rising foreclosures and unemployment along with "jobs that don't provide enough income."

And where before two or three families might be living together due to economic circumstances — a situation that advocates argue should be counted as homelessness — "now we're seeing four or five families inhabiting a single residential unit," Wasserberg said. "Under those kinds of stress…at a certain point it becomes time to depart."

Increased demand means the group needs more supplies and volunteers. And it comes at a time when individual donors are also struggling, he said. "Our annual appeal was off by almost 30 percent."

At the San Jose Obrero Mission in Pilsen, Israel Vargas says clients are having a harder time finding employment. He sees people leaving for other cities in hopes of finding work — as well as people arriving from other cities where job searches were unavailing.

Along with interim housing with the goal of getting men jobs and housing, the mission serves as an emergency shelter when temperatures go below freezing. And the winter has been harsh. "The weather has been a major factor," Vargas said.

A summary of the economy recovery proposal released by the House Appropriations Committee last week (pdf) includes $1.5 billion for homelessness prevention assistance – three-fourths the amount requested by housing advocates — but no additional funds for Housing Choice Vouchers.

Housing Action Illinois and other advocates are calling for 200,000 new vouchers in order to help people stay in their homes in the growing recession. New vouchers "are really needed to create more stable housing options for vulnerable households," Palmer said.

At the state level, housing advocates are hoping Illinois will pass a budget and replace recent funding fixes with more sustainable solutions. The state's emergency food and shelter fund was reduced in last year's budget crisis.

The homeless prevention fund, which provides families with short-term help with rent and utilities, has remained steady at $11 million a year. But in 2006 its funding was shifted from the state's general revenue fund to a portion of the Illinois Affordable Housing Trust Fund – a net loss for housing resources. And since the trust fund gets money from the real estate transfer fee, and home sales are down dramatically, this year funding from other human services was diverted to homelessness prevention.

According to the Chicago Community Trust's Metro Chicago Vital Signs report, calls for homelessness prevention assistance in the Chicago area were 50 percent higher last month than in December 2007.

With homelessness growing, "Illinois needs to find a way to pass a fiscal year 2010 budget that provides an adequate safety net for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness," Palmer said.

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Jan. 21, 2009 – One day after President Obama's inauguration, immigrants are stepping right up to ensure that their issues get attention from the new administration, holding actions in Washington D.C., Chicago, and elsewhere.

Today in Washington, the Fair Immigrant Reform Movement and groups from across the country, including members of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, will march to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

There 200 religious leaders will perform traditional cleaning ceremonies from various faiths, intended "to mark the end of enforcement-only immigration policies and celebrate the new momentum for just and humane immigration reform and worker justice," according to a statement. A rally at Westminster Presbyterian Church follows.

"We want to transform our society so that workers don't have to fear raids, families stay together, and no one lives in the shadows," according to the FIRM statement. "We want workers to have the freedom to organize and demand fundamental change. Everyone in this country must be entitled to dignity and due process. Our country must welcome the contributions and cultures of immigrants from all over the world, and celebrate the vitality they bring to our country."

In Chicago, local members of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. at Casa Michoacan, 1638 S. Blue Island, to urge the new president to "launch a long-overdue transformation of the nation's immigration policies," said Claudia Lucero of Durango Unido, a Mexican-American hometown association.

They'll call on the administration to stop workplace raids which leave "a lot of families…scared to go to work" and "worried when they drop their kids at school whether they can pick them up," Lucero said. They'll call for action on a backlog of many years for applications for residency and citizenship which puts immigrants in jeapordy. And they'll call for a "just and humane immigration reform that leads to legalization for families working and paying taxes in the United States," she said.

Lucero said NALACC members have already joined other groups in meeting with the immigration committee of the presidential transition team, and were told "immigration issues are still a priority for Mr. Obama," Lucero said.

At noon on the 21st, ICIRR and the Ya Basta Coalition will rally at the local office of ICE, 55 E. Monroe, to demand a moratorium on raids and deportations. Then they'll march to the Federal Plaza and hold an interfaith service at Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington.

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Jan. 14, 2009 – With the still-growing housing crisis at the core of the sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression, advocates called for affordable housing to be a key component of stimulus and recovery plans.

"Housing is infrastructure," said Jack Markowski of the Chicago-based Community Investment Corporation, alluding to massive infrastructure investments planned in the forthcoming stimulus program. "It employs people. It provides the foundation to allow people to be part of the workforce." And with a growing need for energy conservation, "it's part of the green economy.

"We have proposals that are shovel-ready," he added, speaking at a gathering of over 200 community housing practitioners convened by the Chicago Rehab Network at Roosevelt University Monday.

Markowski called for tripling expenditures for the federal HOME Investment Partnership Program, which finances affordable housing production — at $2 billion a year, its budget has not been increased since 1990, he said — as well as for the $4 billion Community Development Block Grant Program.

U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) described efforts by congressional leadership to include $23 billion for affordable housing development in the stimulus package, including $10 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund to build or save 100,000 low-income rental homes over two years, as well as funds for more low-income rental subsidies, upgrading public housing units to green standards, and helping cities redevelop foreclosed properties.

Together the proposed spending would assist 800,000 hard-hit households and create 200,000 new jobs, she said.

Schakowsky also discussed efforts to require any further spending under the TARP financial bailout program to include at least $40 billion for foreclosure mitigation.

Participants in two panels expressed high hopes for the incoming Obama administration. "We need a HUD that wants to do housing," said Andrew Geer of Heartland Housing.

Community Media Workshop president Thom Clark moderated the panel discussions.

Joy Aruguete of Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation emphasized the connection between affordable housing and a green jobs program, and Ted Wysocki of the LEED Council stressed the need for immediate training for green jobs.

Housing consultant Teresa Prim discussed the economic recovery plan proposed by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Steven McCullough of Bethel New Life called for "holding financial institutions accountable and making sure capital is flowing to the people who really need it…. We're at the point where a large number of multifamily buildings are in trouble because of [lack of] capital flow."

McCullough said the worker sit-in at Republic Windows last month could be replicated in multifamily rental buildings, with families refusing to move when buildings go into foreclosure.

"In Chicago we've seen overinvestment in high-end housing causing displacement, and in Washington we've seen that a top-down housing policy allows the bottom to fall out," said Pat Abrams of The Renaissance Collaborative. "But we who work at the community level have an alternative to the top-down approach.

"Affordable housing is a community anchor," Abrams said. "We must ensure that affordable housing, and especially rental housing, is the centerpiece of any economy recovery."

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Jan. 9, 2009 – In response to complaints by animal rights activists, one horse carriage company is no longer operating on North Michigan Avenue as of January 1 for violations of city code.

Kerri Stojack of Ald. Scott Waguespack's 32nd Ward office said the Department of Consumer Services has not renewed the business license of JC Cutters Ltd.

The company houses its horses in an unpermitted tent on the Chicago River which lacks electricity and running water, and it has racked up numerous complaints from the city's Animal Care and Control Commission for inadequate shelter and unsanitary conditions, with horse's hay mixed with manure and urine. It was the subject of a WMAQ-TV investigation in October (video).

A network of animal rights activists from a number of groups, gathered around the open web forum Ban The Carriage, has been holding weekly protests at North Michigan Avenue carriage stands since December 6, calling for a complete ban on the industry. JC Cutters is one of four carriage companies with stands on North Michigan.

Activist Marcos Alcozer said that when temperatures dipped below 13 degrees last month, protestors called police repeatedly. When they arrived they were unfamiliar with the ordinance, "but they verified it and checked the weather conditions and ordered the carriages to go home," he said. It was the first time a city ordinance banning carriage operations when temperatures drop below 15 degrees has been enforced.

When more frigid temperatures followed, activists emailed police and the Department of Consumer Services, and when they checked that evening, a Consumer Services inspector was on site to enforce the ordinance, Alcozer said.

"It's a big victory," said Alcozer, "but it was an easy target."

His group maintains that the horse carriage industry is inhumane, exposing horses to exhaustion, oversized loads, extreme temperatures, and leg and hoof ailments, as well as the dangers of city traffic. And the city doesn't have the resources to ensure that horses are well kept and not overworked.

"We've met a lot of police officers in the 18th District, and they're all great guys, but they have a lot on their hands," Alcozer said. "Hopefully we can take this off their plate."

This month, both planned and unannounced protests will continue to be held, said Alcozer. The protestors also talk with prospective carriage customers, and many end up deciding not to hire a carriage and sign a petition to ban the industry, he said.

"It's impossible to make horse-drawn carriages humane," Alcozer said. "The only solution is a permanent ban." Until that's in place, he said, protestors intend to be out there.

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Dec. 31, 2008 – Peace groups from around the region will hold a daily vigil throughout January in Hyde Park, blocks from the home of President-elect Barack Obama, to show support for the progressive agenda on which Obama ran.

"We are trying to remain hopeful, but we understand that there is tremendous pressure on Obama to step away from the positions he took during the campaign," said Dan Pearson, an organizer for Camp Hope 2009. "We want to show that there is support for him to implement all the changes that he campaigned for."

Spearheaded by Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly and joined by groups advocating immigrant rights and action on climate change, Camp Hope will maintain a daily presence at Drexel Square Park, 51st and Drexel, from Jan. 1 to Jan. 19, the day before Obama's inauguration.

Talks and discussions are scheduled throughout the month (see calendar) on topics including health care, torture, immigration reform, climate change, and economic justice, with speakers including Quentin Young, Ali Abunimah, Colonel Ann Wright, and Stephen Kinzer, as well as screenings of "Dr. Strangelove" and "Taxi to the Dark Side" and a performance by political satirist Dave Lippman.

Camp Hope sponsors are calling on Obama to take immediate action on eight issues: begin withdrawing 6,000 troops a month from Iraq, cease combat operations there, and launch a diplomatic effort with Afghanistan and Pakistan; take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert and work to eliminate them altogether; shut down Guantanamo and the military tribunal system; suspend deportations of immigrants and workplace raids; submit the Kyoto Protocol to Congress for ratification; issue a moratorium on home foreclosures; and launch efforts for full employment and universal health care.

The transition period has raised concerns for the peace community, Pearson said. "It seems like a lot of folks being pulled into the Obama administration are definitely part of the old guard — folks who are very much used to using military aggression to solve problems."

He's also concerned about prospects for a military escalation in Afghanistan. "No good can come from putting more weapons into that situation and definitely no good can come from launching attacks on Pakistan," he said.

"It's not good for anybody — it's pushing Pakistan into a pretty tight corner, and it's definitely not good for civilians being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan — and it's not good for us."

A program opening Camp Hope will take place Jan. 1, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The encampment will conclude Jan. 19 with a day-long vigil at the Federal Plaza to mark Martin Luther King Day.

For more information, contact Dan Pearson at Camp Hope, 773-878-3815.

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Nov. 25, 2008 – Bob Jackson has kept CeaseFire's Roseland office open since August of 2007, when he and his staff of 15 outreach workers were laid off after Gov. Rod Blagojevich vetoed $6.5 million in state funds for the violence prevention program.

He's paid rent and utilities, mainly out of his pocket, running a one-person office on West 111th Street, with assistance from some former CeaseFire workers and community members who volunteer when they can. But it's a far cry from working with a full staff — and he's watched with frustration as violence rates go back up.

Now he says the office is too far in debt, the landlord has given his final extension and they're going to have to close down.

Meanwhile, state funding was restored in July — it just hasn't been released to the organization yet, said Tio Hardiman, CeaseFire's director of mediation services. He said he couldn't account for the four-month holdup, but hopes the funding will be forthcoming soon.

In 2004 a new state appropriation allowed CeaseFire to triple the number of communities it served with public education campaigns, intensive work with the most at-risk youth and street workers intervening to prevent violence.

A Northwestern University study found decreases in shootings and homicides as great as 24 percent in areas served by CeaseFire compared to comparable communities without the group's presence. Blagojevich's 2007 veto forced the closing of 16 CeaseFire sites in the city, as well as others from East St. Louis to Waukegan.

But Jackson wouldn't quit. The Roseland office was one of the most successful, he said. Home to the two police beats with the highest rates of shootings and homicides in the city, the staff started bringing those numbers down in the nine months they operated before the layoffs, Jackson said. Since the loss of full-scale operations, the number of shootings has gone up by 68 percent in those two beats, he said.

Jackson's work hasn't gone unnoticed at CeaseFire.

"They were able to get [violence] down when nobody else could," Hardiman said of the Roseland office. There are other agencies, but while they go home at night, Hardiman said CeaseFire Roseland might be open until 2 a.m.

"We were working with a hundred high-risk youth in that community regularly — I mean every day," he said. "That's how you get shootings and homicides down."

Jackson still gets calls from community members and relatives of victims of violence.

"How can you tell them no?" he said. He keeps the office open and talks to kids on the street and in schools. Family members asked him to help mobilize an anti-violence rally this Wednesday at 63rd and Laflin, where the shooting death of two teens on November 6 pushed the city's homicide rate over last year's total.

"It's very frustrating because we were making a difference," Jackson said. "This is bigger than politics. Lives are more important than politics."

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Nov. 14, 2008 – Student writers and supporters of Youth Communication Chicago (YCC) will rally at noon on Saturday, November 15, in front of the group's Columbia College office at 619 S. Wabash, to call attention to the organization's financial crisis.

After 32 years of publishing New Expressions as a vehicle for young Chicago writers, YCC suspended operations early this month, said executive director Phil Costello.

"It's the economy, and the squeeze on nonprofits, and the crisis in the newspaper industry — it's a perfect storm," Costello said.

Board member Johnathon Briggs said YCC has been "living hand-to-mouth for years," with Costello sometimes forgoing his salary. A loss of a major funding source precipitated the crisis. The group faces a $160,000 budget shortfall, he said. The board is exploring options for the future, which could entail merging with a similar organization or closing its doors.

Over the years, YCC has provided nearly 4,000 Chicago teens with mass media vehicles — as well as journalism training and mentoring by industry professionals — principally through the bimonthly New Expressions. They also produce a weekly call-in show on CAN-TV produced by teens, as well as Teens Mean Business, a publication that promotes financial literacy. A new Journalism in the Community program sponsors newsletters produced at 32 schools and youth centers around the city, many in communities where young people lack opportunities.

"I don't care what they write about, whether it's what jeans are in style or social justice issues, as long as they use journalism principles," Costello said.

He estimates that only a third of Chicago high schools have school newspapers. New Expressions is distributed in nearly 300 schools and youth centers.

YCC also helps students obtain scholarships and internships.

The organization started similar groups in New York City in 1976 and in Los Angeles in 1984. Board member Briggs, a former Chicago Tribune education reporter, credits LA Youth with inspiring him to become a journalist. "I'd never met a professional journalist. I'd never met anyone who made a living writing," he said. "A whole world opened up for me."

"I don't know what there is like New Expressions in Chicago, a vehicle for young people's voices and a place where they can learn journalism," Briggs said.

The Saturday rally is being held at the initiative of teens involved in YCC. "If they want to speak, I want to listen," Costello said.

Along with Costello, New Expressions editor-in-chief Elizabeth Lopez, a junior at Walter Payton College Prep, will discuss the situation and give a tour of the offices.

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Nov. 13, 2008 – When the Chicago City Council considered an ordinance banning chickens from the city late last year, the folks at the Angelic Organics Learning Center in Woodlawn e-mailed fellow urban agriculture supporters. The ordinance was tabled, but the center heard back from several Chicago chicken owners and many others who were interested in learning more.

It's illegal to slaughter chickens (or any animal) at your home in Chicago, but it's legal to raise them for pets — or for eggs, said Martha Boyd of Angelic Organic's urban initiative.

People are interested not just to save on the rising cost of eggs, she said. It's also knowing the eggs you eat didn't come from chickens fed antibiotics or kept in closely confined factory farms.

Depending on the breed, most hens lay an egg a day or so during the couple of years when they are laying, Boyd said. "And chickens make great pets," she said, "and their waste makes great fertilizer for your garden."

Last Saturday, Angelic Organics offered its first workshop on basic backyard chicken care for Chicago residents at Wellington Avenue Church, 615 W. Wellington, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Chicken farmers from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm in Ottawa, Ill., and Chicago chicken owners discussed chicken raising basics, as well as relevant city regulations. "The idea is to teach good practices so you avoid problems with your neighbors or with the city," Boyd said.

In-town chicken keepers were invited to bring photos, coop designs, stories and perhaps a favorite bird.

Registration for the workshop was full, and a waiting list is growing for the next workshop, which Boyd expects will be held next spring. She says that in Portland and Madison, city chicken boosters hold tours of coops (in Portland it's actually called "Tour de Coop"). "I can see that happening here in no time at all," she said.

The urban outreach project of a 10-year-old community-supported organic farm near Rockford, Angelic Organics Learning Center works with community partners on urban gardens in areas where fresh food is hard to find.

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Oct. 24, 2008 – Lathrop Homes residents and supporters held a rally this Thursday, Oct. 23, in support of a new proposal to lease vacant apartments at the CHA development. Lathrop Homes Local Advisory Council president Juanita Stevenson was scheduled to present the proposal to the CHA board earlier this week.

Two-thirds of Lathrop Homes’ 900 units are vacant. Recent residents report that many are in “pretty good shape,” and some have been rehabbed within the past 15 years, said Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) organizer John McDermott. The groups are proposing that 300 vacant units be leased, and has identified a variety of possible funding sources.

“Leaving units vacant leaves them at risk of break-in, vandalism and arson,” he said. And it costs CHA in lost rent revenues.

CHA stopped filling vacancies at Lathrop Homes in 1999, when it announced its Plan For Transformation aimed at mixed-income redevelopment. In 2006, the agency said it intended to demolish the development and rebuild 1200 new units, including market rate, affordable, and public housing. Shortly thereafter the working group discussing plans for Lathrop Homes was disbanded, and its future is still listed as “to be determined” by the CHA — the last development with that designation.

“Ms. Stevenson keeps asking when will the meetings resume and we get different answers,” said Tami Love, an LSNA organizer at Lathrop. “They say the working group will resume when [CHA] figure[s] out what they’re going to do with Lathrop; or they say they’re out of money and they’re not going to move forward with anything.”

Meanwhile the CHA’s Plan For Transformation is now ten years or more behind schedule, and the housing downturn has further slowed plans that hinge on the sale of market-rate housing. The plan “seems to be falling apart,” Love said. At the same time, “the homeless problem is getting worse and worse.”

“Keeping these units empty in the midst of a housing crisis is a terrible waste,” said resident Cynthia Scott, a member of the Lathrop Leadership Team. “Leasing 300 units would help families avoid homelessness and reduce the crime and maintenance problems that come with vacancies.”

Unlike other public housing developments which were often isolated, Lathrop Homes are close to transit, manufacturing and retail jobs, social services and good schools, Love said.

Ultimately, residents and supporters are calling for 100 percent affordable redevelopment of the Homes — mixing public housing with affordable rentals and home ownership, with no market-rate component, McDermott said. “It’s in a neighborhood surrounded by market-rate housing, a neighborhood that has lost thousands of units of affordable housing,” he said.

First Ward Ald. Manny Flores has backed their plan.

Preservation groups have called for saving the 70-year-old buildings, built by the New Deal’s Public Works Administration, as one of the last examples of the city’s early public housing. Last year, Preservation Chicago listed Lathrop Homes as one of Chicago’s most threatened buildings. The group’s designation noted:

“Julia Lathrop Homes is the best public housing development Chicago ever built, representing a racially mixed, remarkably stable community for generations of Chicagoans. Beautifully sited along the Chicago River with a magnificent and mature landscape, the buildings are low-rise and gently ornamented, creating an intimate, humane atmosphere. The development is small scale, low-density and well integrated with the surrounding neighborhood.”

Using the existing structures would minimize disruption for current residents and allow the Cotter Boys and Girls Club and the Mary Crane Center, which offers preschool and a child care center, both currently located in Lathrop Homes, to continue operating. Founded by Jane Addams in 1907, the Crane Center moved to Lathrop in 1963, the same year the Boys and Girls Club opened there. This past April, Cotter Club member Krystal Lewis, a Lathrop resident who was a senior at Prosser Career Academy at the time, was named Youth of the Year for Illinois by Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

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