The Chicago Reader’s Mick Dumke went to the CAPS meeting for beat 234 in Washington Park last Thursday night, and it sounds like the locals weren’t happy. From sinkholes in the streets to prostitutes in the park to an alley drug market disguised as an impromptu auto shop, Washington Park residents have a lot to complain about. Alderman Willie Cochran (20th), who didn’t attend the meeting, took a share of the blame for not being responsive.
Our former Editor-in-Chief Sam Feldman has written an excellent feature for this week’s Newcity on the aftermath of Chicago’s failed 2016 bid, some six months after losing to Rio de Janeiro. The remants of Chicago’s plans, plans it hoped would “stir the blood of men,” in the (alleged) words of Daniel Burnham, can especially be seen near the Michael Reese Hospital campus in Bronzeville, site of the proposed Olympic Village, and Washington Park, the site of the proposed 80,000 seat Olympic Stadium. Sam discovers what community developers, students, government officials, preservationists, and others have planned for these places now.
Gapers Block recently published an article and video about Chicago’s street vendors, many of whom can be found on the sidewalks of Little Village selling elotes (corn with mayo, cheese, and chili powder), chicharrones (pork rinds), and other cheap, delicious snacks. It’s currently illegal to sell food that’s been prepared at a street cart in Chicago, and the Little Village-based Asociación de Vendedores Ambulantes (AVA) is lobbying the city to create a new license that would allow them to do so. You can read more about the issue in an In These Times article by CW writer Robin Peterson.
Toni Preckwinkle, the Hyde Park alderman who Clare Fentress profiled in our pages earlier this winter, has handily won the Democratic primary for the highest office in Cook County government, and with it, probably, the office itself. More at the Tribune.
(photo by Sam Bowman)
Toni Preckwinkle, the 4th Ward alderman we profiled in this week’s feature, may not be ahead in the polls, but she’s winning the hearts of newspapers right and left in her campaign for the Democratic nomination for Cook County Board President. The Tribune and the Sun-Times both enthusiastically endorsed her earlier this week, and the Austin Weekly News, a West Side community newspaper, added its voice to the Preckwinkle chorus last night. The Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club also endorsed her last week. Add in the endorsement from Daley fan Phil Krone at the Chicago Daily Observer and the fact that Mayor Daley’s brother’s law firm donated $1,500 to Preckwinkle’s campaign, and it looks like everyone’s lining up behind the Hyde Park alderman. We’ll see if the voters follow suit on February 2.
South Shore Train (amtrak_russ/Flickr)
State Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Hyde Park) introduced legislation that would require all commuter trains to provide service to all stations, according to an article in the Tribune. Sen. Raoul aims this bill at the South Shore Line, which shares a portion of its route from downtown Chicago to South Bend, Indiana with the Metra Electric Line. He hopes to address the concerns of groups like SOUL (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation) who take issue with the South Shore Line’s policy of not allowing passengers to board inbound trains or disembark from outbound trains at stops within Chicago—stops in areas which many believe are underserved by transportation.
Sen. Raoul admits the bill is flawed and would basically put an end to any kind of express train. Even if it’s unlikely to pass, he thinks it succeeded in “stimulating the discussion.” Additionally, the RTA has approved the $450,000 South Lakefront Corridor Transit Study to find ways to improve transportation and stimulate economic growth on the South Side.
Our indicted former governor Rod Blagojevich will be speaking and signing his new memoir, “The Governor,” at the University of Chicago Bookstore (Barnes & Noble) this week.
The signing will take place Tuesday, December 8, at 2pm.
From the Times’s review:
His publicist has described the book, published by Phoenix Books, as a “six-figure deal.” But in his writing, Mr. Blagojevich seems to have a specific message for the public, and perhaps more precisely, for those who might sit on his jury in a federal trial next year: He did nothing corrupt, though others have. He then lays out what he portrays as Chicago’s gritty, crass political rules, established long before him, in which power is traded for favors.
…
Ms. Aimen suggested that Mr. Blagojevich might struggle to keep his own legal team because of his desire to talk openly about the charges. “I think he must be a hard guy to handle,” she said.
For those who don’t remember his term, this quote from a press conference about sums it up: “It’s like the little boy with a pile of horse manure, I kept digging cheerfully in that and found a pony in there — the pony is free public transportation for all seniors in the state of Illinois.”
The local branch of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty will be hosting a study break tomorrow at the University of Chicago with Mark Clements, a recently-freed victim of police torture. According to promotional materials by the group, Clements was wrongly imprisoned for 28 years (beginning when he was 16) and brutalized while in police custody, experiences which he will speak about at the event. This will all take place from noon to 2 pm at the Community Lounge at 5710 Woodlawn Ave.
The Chicago Police have a checkered history with regard to torture; former CPD detective Jon Burge’s 1993 conviction on charges of having, among other things, used a cattle-prod to elicit confessions from suspects in police custody led to a general scandal a few years back. The talk will address these and other issues in local criminal justice, including juvenile sentencing, along with its main issue of ending capital punishment. Check it out.
Maoist polemicist Raymond Lotta issued a reply to Keith Jamieson’s recent essay, Everything You Know About Communism is Right, and had it passed out in front of the University’s Cobb Hall today.
The reply argues that the atrocities carried out in the last century by Communist revolutionary governments are part of the “learning curve” of the revolutionary project, and corrects the claim that Stalin killed millions of people to reflect the mere 700,000 or so death sentences carried out between 1937 and 1938. He asserts that regardless of the atrocities of communism, people have been lied to about it, and that the record needs to be corrected. His rebuttal also corrects some factual errors from his recent speech.
One of Lotta’s fellow Revolutionary Communist Party members and polemicists (who is curiously unnamed on the flier) will be on campus to informally “take on all comers” next Tuesday, Dec 1, 11am to 3pm in Hutchinson Commons at the University of Chicago.
Observing the lecture delivered by Communist grand panjandrum Raymond Lotta, I couldn’t help but feel as though I should share my thoughts on his scintillating exegesis of two or three mid-1960s Mao Zedong speeches. Enjoy. Stay tuned for a blurb on this talk in next week’s issue.
7:13: Lotta begins with a parable about Christian fundamentalists seizing control of America and suppressing the theory of evolution. This is, according to Lotta, “an analogy for the situation that exists in intellectual discourse today with regard to Communism,” which is true insofar as Robert Conquest bases his entire opposition to Communist doctrine on a fervent belief in Jesus. Meaning it is not true.
7:15: Lotta can’t seem to find a comfortable distance from the microphone.
7:16: Lotta claims that the U.S. women’s movement was sparked by the Cultural Revolution. This explains that weird three-year period in which Betty Friedan was such a vocal supporter of the Red Guards.
7:18: Environmentalism is also Communist! Huzzah.
7:20: Lotta asserts that it is the capitalists who are living in the utopian Jesus Cloud Heaven Land, while the ultrarealistic governments of Laos and Cuba continue with their hard-nosed pen-pushing.
7:23: The greatest weapon in the capitalist arsenal appears to be PowerPoint, which Lotta still struggles to use.
7:24: “Socialism is a new form of political power in which the formerly oppressed and exploited, in alliance with the middle classes and professionals and great majority of society, rule over society with the leadership of a visionary, vanguard party.” Guess who thinks they’re in the vanguard party?
7:28: Lotta attempts to imitate the voice of a Japanese imperialist and winds up sounding like Mickey Mouse. Read the rest of this entry »
Of all the pampleteers and signature-gatherers on the University of Chicago campus, one type stands out in particular for its smoldering eyes and overall inscrutability. No, I don’t mean the anti-circumcision activist by the Hospital, I’m talking about the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Avakianist entity that dispatches a mix of balding, shabbily-dressed weirdos and weirdo-ettes to hand out socialist newspapers and try to persuade students that the Cultural Revolution was a net plus, and that Stalin wasn’t bad, really, honest, check out our website.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER COMMUNISM COMES TO THE SAHARA?
NOTHING AT FIRST, THEN A SAND SHORTAGE
A bonfire on Saturday, October 24 shows support for the 61st Street Community Garden. (Sam Feldman)
The 61st Street Community Garden was founded about a decade ago as a shared garden for families. Each family or individual pays about $40/year for a 10′ x 10′ plot of land with few restrictions to grow. The Garden, however, is owned by the University of Chicago and was built on top of a vacant lot. Earlier this year, the University announced its intentions to demolish the garden so it could use the land as a staging ground for the construction of the new Chicago Theological Seminary campus. The individuals and community involved with the garden have had various conversations with the University about relocating or preserving the garden, but the University still plans to demolish it next month. There are a few events coming up to celebrate the garden and raise awareness about its closing. Both of them will be held at the garden.
For years, Walmart has sought permission to build in Chicago, and for months their proposal to build at 83rd and Stewart in Chatham was tied up in the City Council. As of yesterday’s meeting, it remains tied up, under the watch of decidedly anti-Walmart Ald. Ed Burke’s Finance Committee. The background for the union-driven fight was our print version’s cover story; you can pick up copies on stands right now. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next. During the meeting, Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) told Burke he would “hound him” on the issue and gave him a plush dog.
The received wisdom in my NPR-listening milieu seems to be that Walmart is vulgar at best, so I was intrigued to discover a community organization called Jobs or Else is trying to bring them to Chatham. Among its members: Rhymefest, Kanye’s Grammy-winning cowriter for “Jesus Walks,” and Dr. Leon Finney, veteran community organizer and pastor of Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church. A citywide poll the Tribune took a few weeks back found 68% of respondents supported the store.
Truly fascinating: GMU economist (and University of Chicago PhD) Russ Roberts interviews journalist Charles Platt on the experience of being hired and working at Walmart.