Narrated By Kim Holmes, Produced By Greg Boozell

“We Were Not Ladies. We Were Women tells the story of 1930s labor leader Agnes Burns Wieck and her role in the Illinois Mine War.
“The 1930’s was a tumultuous time for workers and Illinois was no exception. Illinois miners were deeply divided in a bloody conflict which lasted for years, later to be known as the Illinois Mine War. Instigated by John L. Lewis, the controversial president of the United Mine Workers of America, the mine war involved rival unions, coal companies, the state militia, and even former Governor Henry Horner.
“Through her leadership, Agnes Burns Wieck forged a new role for women in the labor movement and confronted John L. Lewis face-to-face to challenge the violence in the Illinois coal fields.
“The documentary features interviews with historians, first-person accounts, and reenacted performances to tell Agnes’ remarkable story.”

Read More

Posted on September 28, 2015

By The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Thursday launched the Offline project, a campaign devoted to digital heroes – coders, bloggers, and technologists – who have been imprisoned, tortured and even sentenced to death for raising their voices online or building tools that enable and protect free expression on the Internet.
The Offline project initially presents five cases of silenced pioneers, including the personal stories of technologists like Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian programmer who wrote software for uploading photos to the Web.
While visiting Iran, Malekpour was kidnapped, thrown in prison, beaten, tortured and given a death sentence by an Iranian court. His case, and other cases of coders and online journalists imprisoned by governments for their work in the digital world, have received little attention in the mainstream media and online community.

Read More

Posted on September 26, 2015

By Annie Waldman/ProPublica

A new report released Thursday provides a detailed look at the graduation rates of low-income college students. At many colleges, low-income students graduate at much lower rates than their high-income peers.
At the University of Missouri-Kansas City, only 35 percent of Pell Grant recipients graduate college, a rate that is more than 20 percentage points lower than that of their wealthier peers. And at St. Andrews, a liberal arts college in Laurinburg, North Carolina, only 13 percent of Pell Grant recipients graduate, more than 50 percentage points less than students who don’t receive the grants.
The study found 51 percent of Pell students graduate nationwide, compared to 65 percent of non-Pell students. The average gap between wealthy and poor students at the same schools is much smaller: an average of 5.7 percentage points. That’s because many Pell students attend schools with low graduation rates.

Read More

Posted on September 25, 2015

By Richard Valdmanis/Reuters

Casting the fight against climate change as an urgent moral duty, Pope Francis in June urged the world to phase out highly-polluting fossil fuels.
Yet in the heart of U.S. oil country several dioceses and other Catholic institutions are leasing out drilling rights to oil and gas companies to bolster their finances, Reuters has found.
And in one archdiocese – Oklahoma City – Church officials have signed three new oil and gas leases since Francis’s missive on the environment, leasing documents show.
On Francis’s first visit to the United States this week, the business dealings suggest that some leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church are practicing a different approach to the environment than the pontiff is preaching.

Read More

Posted on September 24, 2015

By Annie Waldman/ProPublica

Pope Francis has made serving the poor a central tenet of his papacy.
“Wealth makes us poor,” he told Cuban worshippers on Sunday, urging them not to forget “the smallest, the most abandoned.”
As the pope makes his first visit to the United States, he might want to reiterate that message to the nation’s Catholic colleges.

Read More

Posted on September 23, 2015

By Steve Rhodes

Anonymous sources, reckless rumors and uninformed speculation. Plus: My Only Japonais Story; United Airlines Has Finally Gone Too Far; Steve Reads The New York Post; and Steve Looks At Tinder.

Read More

Posted on September 22, 2015

By The Illinois Public Interest Research Group

Candidates in the 2016 presidential race would see a dramatic shift in their fundraising, and have a powerful incentive to focus more on small donors, under a proposed small donor public financing system, according to a study released on Tuesday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.
Using candidate filings with the Federal Election Commission through July, “Boosting the Impact of Small Donors: How Matching Funds Would Reshape the 2016 Presidential Election” examines the impact of a program that matches small contributions with limited public funds for candidates who agree not to accept large donations.
“Right now, the vast majority of funds raised in this election are coming from big donors writing checks exponentially larger than most Americans can afford,” said Abe Scarr, Illinois PIRG Education Fund Director. “It doesn’t have to be that way. A small donor matching system would put democracy back in the hands of ordinary Americans.”

Read More

Posted on September 22, 2015

From Champaign To Chicago

“It started with an offhand remark made by Bob Dylan during his performance at Live Aid, the massive fundraising concert held at Wembley Stadium, London, and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, in the early summer of 1985,” the History Channel notes.
“As television viewers around the world phoned in donations in support of African famine relief, Dylan said from the stage, ‘I hope that some of the money . . . maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe . . . one or two million, maybe . . . and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.’ Dylan would come under harsh criticism from Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof for his remarks (‘It was a crass, stupid and nationalistic thing to say,’ Geldof would later write), but he planted a seed with several fellow musicians who shared his concern over the state of the American family farm.
“Less than one month later, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp announced plans for ‘Farm Aid,’ a benefit concert for America’s farmers held in Champaign, Illinois, on this day in 1985.”
*
The History Of Farm Aid 30 Years After Its Founding In Illinois.

Read More

Posted on September 21, 2015

By Russia Today

With special appearances by David Axelrod.

Read More

Posted on September 18, 2015

By The Electronic Frontier Foundation w/The Beachwood Added Value Affairs Desk

Appeals Court Affirms That Copyright Owners Must Consider Fair Use in Online Takedowns
A federal appeals court in San Francisco today affirmed that copyright holders must consider whether a use of material is fair before sending a takedown notice. The ruling came in Lenz v. Universal, often called the “dancing baby” lawsuit.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents Stephanie Lenz, who – back in 2007 – posted a 29-second video to YouTube of her children dancing in her kitchen. The Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” was playing on a stereo in the background of the short clip. Universal Music Group sent YouTube a notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), claiming that the family video infringed the copyright in Prince’s song. EFF sued Universal on Lenz’s behalf, arguing that Universal abused the DMCA by improperly targeting a lawful fair use.

Read More

Posted on September 15, 2015