Free At-Home Covid Tests Being Handed Out at McKinley Park Branch Library

Tutoring session schedules, personal finance events, job brochures-- the beautiful, light filled lobby of the McKinley Park Branch Library always hosts plenty of valuable public information. Now you can add Covid tests to the catalog. Every Tuesday from 1:30 to 3:30 pm, a team of Vaccine Ambassadors from the Resurrection Project hand out free take-home Covid tests, N95 masks and information about Covid vaccines.

“We’re here to give information about the vaccines and empower people, because this is our community,” said Cecilia Arellano.

Angelica Uribe, who has lived in McKinley Park for 22 years, echoed her colleague’s sentiment. She has three sons who have all gone to neighborhood schools, a fact that reinforced the importance of the program’s message to her. “It is very important that everyone get the vaccine and wear a mask, because of how contagious Covid is,” Uribe said.

The team of Cecilia and Luis Arellano, Angelica Uribe, and Maria Mercado have been setting up shop at the McKinley Park Branch Library since February of this year. Mercado said that around 30 or 40 people engage with the team at the library every Tuesday and Arellano estimates that they hand out about 100 tests or PPE items. Mercado also thinks the program has been successful at spreading word of mouth. “All the people that come every Tuesday refer other people to the program,” Mercado said.

The team’s work at McKinley Park Branch is supported by The Resurrection Project as part of the Chicago Department of Public Health’s citywide Healthy Chicago Equity Zones (HCEZ) initiative, launched in 2021. The Resurrection Project itself is part of a larger coalition of organizations serving the Southwest side for the citywide (HCEZ) health equity initiative.

“This is a collaboration with other Southwest side organizations,” said Araceli Lucio, Health Organizer at the Resurrection Project, “we are one of the sub-grantees.”

The citywide program is divided into six regions, each with its own “regional lead” in order to promote a “hyperlocal” strategy “to confront the social and environmental factors that contribute to health and racial inequity – with the ultimate goal of closing Chicago’s racial life expectancy gap”, according to the city’s Healthy Chicago Equity Zone webpage. For the southwest side area that McKinley Park is a part of, the regional lead is the Southwest Side Organizing Project (SWOP). Lucio said that each partner organization in the southwest side region is tasked with serving a specific neighborhood. The Resurrection Project is serving McKinley Park.

According to Lucio, SWOP convenes monthly meetings with all the partner institutions in the southwest side coalition to improve the quality of life for southwest side residents. “Our goal is to increase the amount of people getting the vaccine and to educate the community about Covid-19,” Lucio said. “We want to inform McKinley Park residents of the resources in their community.”

The Resurrection project has a total of 10 vaccine ambassadors currently working in McKinley park, working with neighborhood organizations like the library. The other McKinley Park locations for the vaccine ambassador tables are Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Horizon Academy, Namaste Elementary School, Nathaniel Greene school, and McKinley Park itself. Lucio says the program sometimes has events at businesses in the community. In addition to tests, PPE and information about the vaccine, these ambassadors can help direct residents on where to get vaccinated in their community.

According to Lucio the ambassadors choose the neighborhood organizations they work with. “All of them reach out to find places, they are empowered to make connections themselves,” Lucio said. This hopefully increases the connections between community members and organizations. Mercado also believes that the program helps provide the community with information that helps to empower its people.

Every Vaccine Ambassador in the Healthy Chicago Equity Zones initiative is required to go through a free, two-hour online training course through Malcolm X College. The course provides its participants tools to approach challenging conversations about Covid vaccines with the goal of persuading Chicago residents who may have reservations about the vaccines to get vaccinated. The course has been available since spring 2021 and is open to all Chicagoans. Both Maria Mercado and Cecelia Arellano said the course through Malcolm X was helpful.

Arellano said that the vaccine ambassador team at McKinley park offers a box of 2 at-home Covid-19 tests and information about the vaccine to anyone who comes into the library. “We have flyers, we have PPE including gloves, face-masks, hand sanitizer and wipes,” she said. They only ask for a resident’s address so that they can make sure they are serving local residents.

Arellano says that people who engage with the vaccine ambassador team are happy when they leave the library. And Mercado said that she and her partners have been thanked by many of the people who have walked away with masks, or tests, or information about the vaccine. “Thank you for the mask. Thank you for the test. Thank you for the information.”

There is no set end date for the program and Cecelia Arellano said she wasn’t sure how many more Tuesdays she and her colleagues would be at the McKinley Park Branch. She said they hope for at least three more months.

The continuation of the program at the library will ultimately depend on the management of the Healthy Chicago Equity Zones initiative. The citywide program was funded with $9.6 million in federal Covid-19 relief money through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to promote vaccine equity throughout Chicago, particularly in Black and Latinx communities. According to its website, the CDPH anticipates future money to keep the program going. The CDPH hopes it can then apply “the same targeted, community-driven approaches to other local priorities.”

Special thanks to Jose Negrete of the McKinley Park Branch Library for translation help.

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McKinley Park Branch Library is located at 1915 W. 35th Street and is open every day. You can see more information, including the hours it's open, here.

The Resurrection Project is located in Pilsen at 1805 South Paulina Street. (312) 666-1323

All Chicago residents can take the two-hour, online vaccine ambassador course offered through Malcolm X College for free. For more information on the course and to sign up, go to the website here, or email at vaccine-ambassador@ccc.edu.

For much more on Vaccine Ambassadors, see this thorough article by Alice Yin in the Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-vaccine-ambassadors-covid-chicago-response-20220203-ghubdvgv5jfqhntvzoxrokocx4-story.html

Weyes Blood; Front Row Seat to Earth

Today’s bookstore listen: Front Row Seat to Earth. A touched session of paradoxical folk: earthy ‘n ethereal, forward-looking and revivalist, haunted and light, this 2016 album from Weyes Blood can supply the necessary emotional depth to your dawdling and sing you ahead through the repeated browsings of your eternal present. Whether you’re looking through a book or an interweb, WB will navigate the ole ‘peruse ‘n cruise’ with rich timbres and figlike grace.

Photo: Katie Miller (accessed 8.13.2020 from Weyes Blood bandcamp page)

August 13, 2020: The Day of Long Odds

On a day when the unemployment rate is at 10.2%, 25% of 18-24 year olds said they contemplated suicide, and the U.S. has reported at least 1470 deaths from COVID the previous day, the US Congress is no closer to passing legislation to restart the UBI or help anyone who isn’t rich. Joe Biden has made it official, selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate. Non-donors have to wonder what they will get out of any plausible next presidential administration- More Trump or Less Trump seem to be the only clear offerings. Speaking of the Big Orange Turd, he has admitted to starving the US Postal Service in order to further interfere with the election in November.

Locally, the unemployment rate is estimated at 16% in Chicago, rents are going up, polluting manufacturers are heading to less white and affluent areas, and the Lightfoot Administration is still treating the Loop and River north as moated castles.

About 4,000 UIC workers are planning to strike for a $15 minimum wage and PPE, reports Claire Procter in the Sun-Times.

#55, one of the best loved Harold’s Chicken shops in the city has closed permanently after its landlord raised the rent by 40% in a recession. As Jamie Nesbitt Golden writes for Block Club Chicago, Percy Billings, the owner of the Harold’s, moved his store into 100 W 87th street at the Chatham Ridge Shopping Center in 1992. From the Tribune “They went up on my rent,” said Percy Billings, 78, owner of Harold’s #55. “They wanted me to pay $10,000 plus a percentage and sign a five year lease.” The rent was $7,000 per month, he said. “We tried to work with them, but they didn’t give me no notice so I moved out.” As of posting, this writer’s best guess at the landlord: Transwestern Real Estate Services, whose motto is “Better is Bigger”.

Sarah Vowell has an opinion piece in the New York Times that is ostensibly about a group of current political leaders who all went to public universities. But the article’s great merit is its implicit critique of American elitism and inequality and praise of public education. Vowell presents the public university as a great leveler, a hothouse of democracy, and an increasingly rare thing in the USA, a provider of “a fair chance at a decent life”.

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On August 13, 1792, the French Royal family was officially imprisoned by the Legislative Assembly. Just over a month later on September 21, the monarchy would be abolished in France .

May 4 2020: Links

May 4th is the day of the Haymarket Affair, that has been memorialized on May 1st since the late 19th century. You can find more posts on the history of labor movements at The Voices of Labor website and twitter. They give daily missives. 

Is it possible that a worker rebellion is brewing in the wake of COVID19 and the economic fallout?

In lieu of an in-person discussion that had ben scheduled for their store, Pilsen Community Books posted a great interview on its youtube: “Translator as Doppelgänger: Isabel Fargo Cole in conversation with Alta L. Price” They talk about translation theories, practices and Alta Price’s translations of german language writers like Wolfgang Hilbig.

South Side Silver Maple

I have given myself a modest project of finding out about trees. The places they inhabit. The names people give them. The ways of dendrology and common classification. In my first searches, I’ve found some very useful resources, like this Virginia Tech website that gives you a compendium of trees along with the materials of dendrology 101. There is a companion phone app you can use, but I am trying to de-appify my consciousness…I’m sure I’ll soon be addicted to it.

Tree identification is a process that truly embeds me in my amateur status. When I look at a tree, I don’t approach as the scientist, with the devices of measurement and the skills of observational categorization. Most often, I see a tree in its forms and relations to our shared landscape-mine and the trees. How it shades or doesn’t shade a building. How it stands alone in a field. How it spreads against the side of a home. How its branches finger and weave against the sky.

Recently, I have spent time in the yard and on walks looking more intently at trees and have felt the desire to connect them with their natural and human histories. During a yardwork day last weekend I asked our housemate, what kind of tree is that? And she responded, “Silver Maple. And its a pain! It spreads its seeds everywhere and everywhere new saplings sprout up. Especially along the buildings. If you see any of them, pull them up!” I took her word as gospel and have been thinking of it as a Silver Maple ever since, only today verifying its identity with the Virginia Tech website.

I don’t recall a strong memory of the first time I saw this Silver Maple, but it has held my attention, as I suppose the trees in one’s yard would. It is no special thing to you that I should have such an attachment. As I’ve watched its leaves come in and its sprouts come up all over the yard, my admiration for it has non botany related metaphorically increased. I think of calling it a name and the first convention I think of is pseudoscientific numerical: Silver Maple 001. This isn’t the first Silver Maple I’ve seen, but its the first I’ve known. And I won’t here expound a technical definition of knowledge. This isn’t science. 

A bird flies up into the maple, resting on one of its high branches above the neighbor’s roof. Just as I attempt to identify it, it darts back off, over the roof, beyond my sightlines. The maple’s branches sway now from a breeze, first the thin ends and eventually the thicker, reaching arms of the trunks. Trunks, yes, to my eyes, this tree has three, splitting off from the base maybe a foot off the ground, holding a close formation that gradually spreads as it reaches its height, maybe 40 feet up. More structural arms split from the trunks, 6, 8, 13, until I struggle to count, not for number, but for the classification of the numbers. As the sizes and throws are so gradually differing, the distinction of units become impossible. Which to count as which? 

I now see a robin from behind, hopping gently on the floor of our sunken yard and a small greybrown finch, a few yards behind it, pecking at the grass. I see more birds swoop and glide into the maple, up and down its arcing, horizontal branches, and out onto the telecom cables and gutters of our building.

Again, before I can make sustained observations, my eyes must follow their darting motions to some other contour, a fence, some brush, another yard.  What can be taken from such, but the boundaries of my observation and the limitless forces of motion and change?

A magnolia shrub sits proudly in the center of the yard.  Many of its petals are strewn on the soil and in the grass. The heavy winds of the last few days having pushed it around. Its blossoms are almost fully open. From recent walks I gather that it could grow 2, 3 or more times its current size, a size that would dominate its environs from wall to wall. I imagine this great burst of pink, fuschia space, totally encompassing my sensations as a psychedelic experience with its manifold associations. All things metaphorical in its swaying, breathing pink,  luminous and shifting curtains of flower, the silk of organic matter as the dewy clothing of outwit and insight. The association chain neverending in a gift ecology, trading like flushing proteins, up and down roots and in and out of the green, cellular inertias blissing forward, the galvanic force of figures, playing in their swelters.

But the Silver Maple. It and its progeny will have things to say, as they spread their many trunks of grey and green bark, the branches pushing out wildly from ground or treeside itself. These bastards are prolific and they may soon colonize not just the yard but the block beyond.

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[Trees of Chicago 001]

The Haymarket Martyrs: May Day 2020

““Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!” -Slogan of the Eight Hour Day Movement”

CHICAGO May 1, 2020- Workers at Amazon, Target and other major retailers are striking today, to demand better care and pay. They have been asked —rather, coerced— into working during this pandemic, by a corporate and state elite who say some people are more expendable than others. These workers are acting in the long tradition of American and international solidarity that has brought us the rights we have in our working lives and waking lives.

Surely it is no mistake that these actions are taking place today, May 1st... May Day. As Peter Linebaugh details in his work of history and imagination, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, May 1st has a rich history of spring renewal rites, celebrations of nature and festivals of working people and their movements.

In the era of monopoly domination of the late 19th century, workers fought back against the same kind of forces we all face today: domination of bodies, resources and time. It was the last of these in particular that held special organizing power in the form of the Eight Hour Work Day movement.

According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, “ On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day.”  From April 25 to May 4 workers held demonstrations in Chicago and across the country, responded to by monopolists, states, and the police by repressive violence and a reign of misinformation, show trials and terror. On May 4th, after Cyrus McCormick’s reaper company and the police bloodily repressed a strike, there was a gathering of people in Haymarket Square, Chicago, to hear speakers on the Eight Hour Day, Socialism, Anarchism and workers rights. 

The following travesty was precipitated by the police ordering the crowd to disperse and an unknown person throwing a pipe bomb into the crowd. Scores of people, demonstrators and police alike, were killed or injured. And in the wake of this violent melee, the state, corporations and the press made a campaign of propaganda and terror, reaching without evidence or civil procedure for a scapegoat and a menace.  Eventually eight men were rounded up and charged with conspiracy for the bombing. With outlets like the Chicago Tribune explicitly publishing calls for guilty verdicts, 7 of the accused were convicted, with 2 sentences commuted and 5 dying: 4 by hanging and 1 by suicide in his cell. The trial and executions have long been characterized by scholars as gross miscarriages of justice and have inspired millions to fight for the universal application of the rights that are so officially cherished by the United States.

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The names of the Haymarket Scapegoats, the Haymarket Accused, the Haymarket Martyrs are:

George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Oscar Neebe, Albert Parsons, Michael Schwab, August Spies.

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Further Reading

Haymarket Revisited, By William Adelman

The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, By Peter Linebaugh

http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/the-haymarket-affair

Some Commenters More Equal Than Others at Public Hearing on 2020 Chicago Budget

By Tim Hogan

CITY HALL- At the end of Wednesday’s city council meeting, tensions were exposed at the public hearing on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposed 2020 city budget. Current reporting from the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, The Daily Line and elsewhere claim that the proposed budget faces a $50 million dollar shortfall after the mayor came back from her meetings in Springfield on Monday without securing any deals that would increase city revenue. It will not come as much of a surprise to most Chicagoans that the public hearing seemed structured to give the sense of public backing for the mayor's budget proposal. This was underscored by the hugely disproportionate amount of time given to the final public commenter, Lawrence Msall of the business-oriented Civic Federation. 

Msall and the Civic Federation have long given budget analyses to the city council and they have released a 103 page analysis of the current budget proposal. Though he described the mayor’s plan as “creative and reasonable”, Msall criticized the plan as leaving “little room for error." Msall highlighted $163 million the city expects from the federal government for ambulance reimbursements and $50 million from a revised Real Estate Transfer Tax as not reasonable to include in revenue projections.

Mayor Lightfoot is trying to get the Illinois legislature to allow Chicago to increase its Real Estate Transfer Tax to close the gap in the 2020 budget, but has not been able to get the necessary votes in Springfield. According to Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times, Mayor Lightfoot’s top aides agree that the real estate transfer tax is dead for now.  Until now, Lightfoot had insisted that property tax hikes were a ‘last resort’, but without deals on RETT and the Chicago Casino, that last resort may come. The ‘plan b’ budget proposal that was bandied about online also includes a hiring freeze at 2019 levels and the unspecified cutting of city services.

The Civic Federation also pushed for other revenue streams. First up, was a tax on retirees at the state level that, in their plan, would flow to municipalities. In Msall’s opinion, the tax on retirement income would be an appropriate balance of tax and revenue obligations in a state that had such a large proportion of aging residents. Upon hearing this proposal, Ald. Jason Ervin remarked “good luck with that” to hearty laughs from council members. After the chuckles had cleared, Msall asked mayor Lightfoot and the council to work with governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly on pension consolidation, a topic that has been obscured by our municipal and state governments for years.

For all Msall’s talk of creativity and flexibility, the Civic Federation’s proposals didn’t seem to bring much of either to the fact of the municipal debt and the pension obligations. During what became an extended back and forth between Msall and the council (an exercise the council did not undertake with the advocates of mental health and affordable housing), Ald. Brendan Reilly cued up Msall to say that a ‘head tax’ on large businesses is a bad idea. The head tax would be levied on big businesses in Chicago based on how many employees they have and is proposed as a way to get revenues from corporations and commuters who don’t pay their fair share. Ald. Leslie Hairston disagreed with the exchange Msall and Ald. Brendan Reilly held on the head tax. Hairston is among those who support the measure that is vehemently opposed by mayor Lightfoot and most of her allies.  And there was no mention of negotiating with the city’s creditors and debts on behalf of its pensioners and citizens.

The role the Civic Federation has played as “neutral” budget analyzer has given it a large amount of influence with many city council members. Budget Committee chair Ald. Pat Dowell, along with Alds. Jason Ervin, and Patrick Daley-Thompson all thanked Msall and the Civic Federation for the information and analysis they have provided to the council on the mayor’s budget. They were among a larger group of Alds. who lobbied the mayor to allow Msall extra time to give the Civic Federations case. But not everyone on the council was so sanguine.  Ald. Andre Vazquez passionately pressed Msall on what Vazquez said was the preference of big business interests embedded in the Civic Federation’s recommendations. Vazquez went as far as saying these business interests would benefit at the expense of taxpayers under the Civic Federation proposals. After some back and forth, Mayor Lightfoot reprimanded Ald. Vazquez for not letting the ‘guest’ answer his questions uninterrupted. Courtesy, it seems, is selectively the mayor’s chief value.

Even as a tightly-managed affair, the public hearing exposed problems that many Chicago citizens and groups have with the proposed 2020 budget . The first public speaker, Dri Xander from AFSCME 31 (a union advocating for working families and public service workers among others), urged the council and the mayor to add more money to mental health services. “Only 10% of the new funding is going to public clinics”. This sentiment was echoed in earlier public comments by Estella Diaz, a self-described survivor of abuse. Diaz asked Mayor Lightfoot and the city council to reopen mental health clinics for her sake and the sake of others who are struggling with lack of services. “I am 40 years old now, it is hard for me. I am asking you to reopen the mental health clinics. We are human beings. We are not a number, we are persons.”

Diaz continued, describing herself as a mother of 5, working hard to raise her kids with her husband. “But how can I do that if I am unwell? It’s very sad standing here right now asking for help for mental illness. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be at home, taking care of my kids.”

In another echo of earlier public comments, Sandra Schneller, speaking at the beginning of the council meeting, used her ‘citizens 3 minutes’ to talk about the “ exodus of poor folks here from Chicago”: hours later, at the end of his privileged presentation, Lawrence Msall warned "We have a population challenge here in Chicago."  

In a town of tame expectations, it was nice to see some shared sentiment: ‘we have problems in Chicago.’ But as ever, only a narrow band of solutions are being considered in the halls and the chambers and the boardrooms of power.

Members of the public must fill out and hand in witness cards to speak. Photo: Tim Hogan

Highlights of the City Council meeting

Before the public hearing on the 2020 budget, the Chicago City Council convened its regular meeting this morning to hear public comments and to vote on ordinances, mayoral proposals and committee recommendations.

• An affordable senior veterans living development was approved by the council with Ald. Carrie Austin the lone ‘no’ vote. This resonated late when during his comments at the public hearing, Kevin Jackson from the Chicago Rehab Network asked for more funding to be allocated for affordable housing from the city’s general fund. The issue of affordable housing looks to be an increasingly contentious issue in Chicago as it is in many cities in America.

• Aviation Committee Chair Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th Ward) and Ethics Committee Chair Ald. Michele Smith (43rd) introduced an ordinance banning city council persons from lobbying at the city or state. This is in the wake of the ongoing corruption issues regarding Joe Berrios, Ed Burke, Danny Solis and the ballooning ComEd scandals. 

• According to Fran Spielman, “Chicago aldermen would be prohibited from lobbying state and local government — and their counterparts at those other levels would be barred from doing the same at City Hall”

• Alds. Pat Dowell and Gilbert Villegas objected to the proposal to award the city’s audit contract to Deloitte & Touche because of low minority participation in the process. Ald. Villegas, who is Lightfoot’s floor leader also pointed out that minorities are tired of getting “crumbs” and that Deloitte has had the contract for 20 years. Mayor Lightfoot agreed with the Alds. assessment and said that next year the audit contract would be up for the bid process, opening it to other firms.

• Fran Spielman tweeted that the “Same complaints about minority participation have been raised every year. This time, it's different because @chicagosmayor [Lightfoot] is promising to do something about it. She agrees that nobody should have a contract for 20 years, let alone the same auditor.” 

• As the Illinois Environmental Council tweets here, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the Clean Energy Jobs Act at today’s meeting. The Illinois state bill aims for 100% renewable energy in Illinois by 2050. The bill seems unlikely to pass in the current veto session of the state legislature but activists are still pushing. 

• Mayor Lightfoot proposed a boost to restaurant workers making the subminimum wage before tips from its current minimum of $6.40 to $8.40 next year. The subminimum wage for tipped workers is the lowest amount in guaranteed wages an employee can legally make before their tips bring them up to the $13/hr minimum of the City of Chicago. 

• During the public hearing on the budget, restaurant server Matt Jones spoke against this proposal, saying that it would cost him money in tips. He seemed to think that the proposal would mandate that all restaurant workers be paid a minimum of $15 per hour, to “even the level” at his expense. “I worked hard to get a high-end restaurant where the prices are high and I can make good tips.” Mr. Jones testimony inspired impassioned responses from multiple council members before Mayor Lightfoot had to cut them short, reminding them “this is time for public comment, not alderman.”

• "No one is trying to take your tips away. You've been given misinformation,” Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza told Jones. 

  1. Ald. Tom Tunney, a restaurant owner,  reacted strongly to this "We could argue this until the cows come home." Tunney claimed that under this proposal, restaurants would add a service charge and would "destroy" the tipped system.

     Ald. Sophia King defended her proposal to end the tipped wage, which is supported by the progressive caucus and different than the mayor’s. King said the tipping system is built on "sexism and racism

  2. Lightfoot’s proposal also would push to a $15 per hour minimum wage in Chicago faster than the Illinois state’s current law.

• The council passed an ordinance allowing for marijuana related businesses to open in Chicago starting January 1, 2020.

• The council and the mayor honored Richard Pfeiffer, longtime Chicago Pride Parade coordinator by standing for a moment of silence. Ald. Tunney was among those who spoke in his honor and mayor Lightfoot added "He fought for what was right. Let's continue Richard's work." 

• According to Fran Spielman, Alderman Ed Burke left city hall after the meeting, refusing to answer questions on calls for his resignation.

“

Indicted Ald. Edward Burke leaves City Council meeting and refuses to respond to questions about demands for his resignation as 14th Ward committeeman. pic.twitter.com/HSt8bgExQ4

— Fran Spielman (@fspielman) November 13, 2019

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Background

The City Council has regularly scheduled meetings on the 2nd and 4th wednesday of every month, per the city’s municipal code, to address mayoral proposals, aldermanic proposals, public comments, and the recommendations of the councils many subcommittees. It can often be brisk affair, with the machinery of city government quickly churning out resolutions, ordinances, and staff appointments. 

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Further Reading:

https://chicago.councilmatic.org/search/ Councilmatic Legislation Tool

The Civic Federation’s 2020 Budget Analysis Civic Federation

Ben Joravsky Show on the Council Meeting Block Club Chicago

Lightfoot Picks Fight With Rideshare Apps Chicago Tribune

Chicago Area News Links

How Can Data Inform Violence Prevention Efforts in Chicago? Quinn Myers

Andrew Papachristos, Sociologist at Northwestern says that Chicago’s pattern of violence is “decidedly not random”. Papachristos talks more in his Firsthand talk on wttw’s website, and in the WTTW news segment above with Franklin Cosey-Gay, executive director of the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention at the University of Chicago. 

The Firsthand talks are a part of WTTW’s documentary project Firsthand which covers Chicago’s violence from multiple perspectives and interests.

Growing up in Beverly, we were always warned about the propensity for neighboring township Oak Lawn’s police to ticket heavily. Turns out, not much has changed. This is a local instance in what has become a well-known bit of corporate and government nickle and diming in America.

For Chicago Magazine, Mari Cohen reports on the Cook County Plan To better integrate Metra, CTA am Pace Transit and some of its challenges.

The Chicago Teachers Union has begun voting on the contract it negotiated during its strike.

Last week, I covered the Metropolitan Water Reclamation Districts budget session last week for City Bureau and produced this twitter thread. It was, to me, a dizzying experience just trying to stay focused on the myriad presentations of every department of this huge agency, let alone the persistent and sandgrain level of detail questions from commissioners like Debra Shore. 

-Tim Hogan

Green Shoots at the Chicago Public Library

Yet another city service primed to get more love now that Rahm is gone, is the Chicago Public Library. With new Mayor Lori Lightfoot the top position at the library system is changing. Per the Sun-Times, Lightfoot has chosen ‘career librarian’ Andrea Telli as the system’s new commissioner.

From the beginning of his tenure, Emanuel antagonized the library with the proposal of draconian cuts to hours, funding and staffing. Former Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey resigned in protest of these cuts and the city council bargained for a lessening of the cuts. Outgoing library commissioner Brian Bannon, appointed by Emanuel, leaves just after a critical report of library services by Chicago inspector General Joe Ferguson.

Even though Emanuel’s administration presided over some branch library successes, such as the Chinatown Branch and mixed-development Roosevelt Branch, the library system as a whole has the opportunity to thrive if Lightfoot, whose partner is a librarian herself, follows up the signal of her new appointment, with the resources the library system needs and deserves.

Schools, affordable housing, equitable neighborhoods, and thriving libraries: these are the services that help the vast majority of citizens, the ones Rahm Emanuel and the corporate democrats he represents have ignored for too long.

At the Beginning of a New Administration in Chicago

Lori Lightfoot was sworn in today as Mayor of Chicago in a historic ceremony. Mayor Lightfoot has a lot of issues to tackle immediately, including managing the city’s continued budget and pension fund woes, the reform of police, education and housing/development systems and the new constellation of political power factions in the city driven by a crumbled political machine and terrible inequality.

Chicago also inaugurated a new class of aldermen today. Of the 50 aldermen on the city council, 12 are new members, having won their elections this year. Lightfoot has already mixed up the council’s leadership structure and signed an executive order that aims to limit the power of individual aldermen. The relationship between the mayor and the council will be very interesting.