A cacophony of young voices competed with the low whistle of a cold wind on a gray Chicago spring day as children skipped down the sidewalk in front of Pope Elementary. The school is located across from Douglas Park on Chicago’s West Side in the North Lawndale community. It is also… Read full post »

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” Rachel

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“Closing 50 of our neighborhood schools is outrageous and no society that claims to care anything about its children can sit back and allow this to happen to them. There is no way people of conscience will stand by and allow these people to shut down

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There are no barbed wire adorned border walls. You won’t see unsmiling heavily armed solders toting automatic weapons as you wait nervously in a long line for clearance to cross over. You won’t have to show a passport or have your car torn apart during a search for weapons… Read full post »

The old neighborhood is the one people moved away from long ago, some with a firm grasp on its bygone realities, but for others their warmed over memories are coated with a gooey nostalgia. Not that there is any thing wrong with an occasional indulgence in mental cotton candy,… Read full post »

“Listening to person after person eloquently, yet desperately, plead for their schools not to be closed during the Austin-North Lawndale Network school utilization hearing on Jan. 31 brought forth, to my mind, heart-wrenching images of our enslaved African-American ancestors pleading for their

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It was a cold clear Saturday morning on a late December day when I got off the CTA Green Line and walked toward the St. James Cathedral to join with members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC). WOCC was planning march and sit-in to demand a living wage of… Read full post »

What is not often talked about in regards to the 2nd Amendment and its "well regulated militia" is that one of its original purposes was to enforce tyranny. In order to maintain the vast slave empire, the slave states organized "slave patrols", creating what amounted to a vast totalitarian police… Read full post »

 “Don Moore was the most persistent, thoughtful, smart advocate I know,” said Anne Hallett, director of the Grow Your Own teacher preparation program. “He would get his teeth into something and not let go.”

“We have lost a giant. We have lost a lion.”&mdas… Read full post »

There  has been very little of the old fashioned voter fraud in recent history, even in Chicago, a city I am very familiar with. I was a poll watcher in some bitterly contested Chicago elections.

My first Chicago election as a campaign volunteer was an aldermanic race in the 46th… Read full post »

Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) organizer Brandon Johnson, who is a black man, recently spoke about a conversation he had with veteran black educator Dr. Grady Jordan about racism in the schools today. Jordan told him, “Black teachers fought hard. This is a direct retaliation to what we built in… Read full post »

"The CTU is teaching the USA a lesson in working class love and solidarity. It’s a transformational moment for the membership of the CTU and its allies. How can they transform the horn honks, the raised fists, the friendly waves and the kind words of encouragement… Read full post »

The free exchange of ideas is critical to representative government and was one of the reasons why the US Postal Service(USPS) was created. At its founding the Postal Service had a deliberate policy of subsidizing the mailing of newspapers and other periodicals, precisely to encourage the communicati… Read full post »

"When America’s great crisis is a story in the pages of history, there will be a significant chapter devoted to the unfailing sacrifice of the Chicago teachers, who are now carrying on under inconceivable difficulties, far beyond the point which might be fairly considered the limit of human en… Read full post »

It's true! The big money people want to put the rookie squad into our classrooms. Corporate funded attacks on public education and teachers’ unions have portrayed higher paid, more experienced teachers as the villains of the current financial crisis. It’s good-bye, Mr. Chips and sayonar… Read full post »

State governments across the USA have been cutting Medicaid and health care-related funding faster than Smithfield butchers hogs. These programs were supposed to help low income people, many of whom already suffer from the poor health that often comes with poverty. 

When care is restricte… Read full post »

“The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they… Read full post »

National Nurses United(NNU) took up the cause of Robin Hood at Chicago’s downtown J.P. Morgan Chase building on June 19. With its merry band of tax reforming nurses, the NNU held a lunch hour rally to press for a financial transactions tax (FTT) or as it is more commonly called, a “R… Read full post »

Dale Burnett stood in the lobby of a Chase bank in downtown Chicago the morning of June 7 and explained why Chase and other big banks need to stop gouging millions from the city’s public transit system. A home care worker who cannot afford a car, Burnett’s job… Read full post »

He fell 120 feet to the ground while dismantling an unused communications tower in Lincoln, Illinois on June 8, 2005. Although identified only as employee #1 in the official OSHA report, he was 43 year old Toby Wheale of Glendale, AZ.

Wheale’s employer, Wireless Horizon Inc. of Lincoln… Read full post »

They became a Chicago media sensation after they streamed into Chicago’s Daley Plaza on the morning of May 18, wearing the now familiar National Nurses United (NNU) red scrubs. Many of them had the green caps and masks you've seen in nearly every Robin Hood movie ever made. The NNU is… Read full post »