Chicago - A message from the station manager

By Steve Rhodes

I could write that the the Chicago City Council passed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s draconian crackdown on free speech on Wednesday because they are still a collection of spineless twits, naifs and plain lousy persons, and that city government is still a boss and his tools, despite the malarkey emanating from aldermen being played in a kinder, gentler but more devious way, but then Ald. Joe Moore would accuse me of “overheated rhetoric and over-the-top hyperbole.”
What seems to be overheated and over-the-top to me, though, are the two ordinances Moore and his colleagues just passed despite the ink barely being dry on some of the provisions that just had to be rushed into law without due debate because the G8/NATO summits which have been scheduled for a year are now . . . four months away.
But there was Moore – and his so-called hip partner in progressive politics Joe Moreno – falling all over themselves to heap praise on Rahm Emanuel and his listening skills as if they would otherwise be carted off to jail themselves for violating the new rules that, as reported by Progress Illnois, include provisions requiring “paying parade insurance to the city, and registering for a protest permit 15 days prior to the event. The ordinance also says that protesters must provide the city with a list of all signs, banners, sound equipment, or ‘attention-getting devices’ that need more than one person to carry them.”

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Posted on January 19, 2012

Liar’s Poker: Rahm’s Minor Concessions Leave Gaping Holes In Our Civil Liberties

By The Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda

In response to a firestorm of protest, the Emanuel administration has dropped some of the more widely-publicized repressive measures of its proposed anti-protester ordinances, but has vastly misrepresented the magnitude of its concessions, say protest organizers.
Here’s why:
1. While the administration has made much of its dropping of increased penalties for resisting arrest, left unaddressed was Chicago’s unique interpretation of “resisting” which makes many forms of non-violent civil disobedience subject to punishment under the statute. This would be in addition to more conventional charges, like trespassing, that one would be likely to get for such non-violent protest.

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Posted on January 18, 2012

The Rest Of Chicago Fights For Its Rights

Whose City? Our City.

The essence of democracy is at stake.
1. The 99% vs. Rahm.
“A coalition of unions, religious leaders, community organizations and other concerned citizens is set to condemn a package of ordinances proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that amounts to an all-out assault on the civil liberties of Chicagoans,” Danny Postel writes in a statement for Stand Up! Chicago. (Links added.)
“The group will conduct a press conference on Tuesday at a.m. on the 2nd floor of City Hall (one hour before a budget committee hearing on the proposed ordinances).
“The new restrictions place onerous limits on the First Amendment right to free speech and assembly, including burdensome permit requirements for even small sidewalk protests, the threat of steep new fines and other provisions that are practically impossible to comply with. The upshot is that almost any organization or group of individuals that wishes to express dissent can quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the law and subject to arrest and fines.

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Posted on January 17, 2012

King Day Celebration

By The DuSable Museum

DuSable Museum will celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement with our annual King Day celebration. The day will be filled with live performances, storytelling, films, food and activities for the entire family.
IBLA Auditorium – Live Performances
11 a.m.: I’m Your Puppet Productions (60 min)
12:30 p.m.: Mighty Times: The Children’s March
1:30 p.m.: Alyo Children’s Theatre (45 min)
2:30 p.m.: Maggie Brown
4 p.m.: “A Legacy for America’s Children,” written by Joan Collaso, is a musical narrative play that touches on the life and contributions of Civil Rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
5 p.m.: Hip Hop Detoxx (60 min)

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Posted on January 16, 2012

The Week In Occupy Chicago

By The Beachwood Occupation Affairs Desk

This week, the president. Next spring, the world.
1. Occupying Obama.

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Posted on January 13, 2012

The Patisserie Protest

By Arise Chicago

Updated January 18, 2012.
Seventy former workers of Rolf’s Patisserie rallied with community and religious supporters outside their recently-shuttered factory Tuesday, announcing the filing of a class-action lawsuit for violations of the WARN Act, a federal worker protection law, and denouncing the theft of their final paychecks by their former employer.
“We just want justice,” said Karen Leyva, an assistant office manager at the company for six years, while standing in the shadow of her former employer. “We demand them to pay us what we worked so hard for.”
Workers, some of whom had devoted over a decade to the company, were shocked to discover via their company’s web site that the plant would be closing. Without warning, they were all terminated immediately, their lives unexpectedly thrown into turmoil just days before Christmas.

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Posted on January 11, 2012

A DIY Response To Poverty

Uploaded to YouTube by Rev. Megan Rohrer

“Pastor Erik, St Luke’s Lutheran of Chicago’s Logan Square. Describes how you and your congregation can get involved and start a food pantry that feeds 5,000.”

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Posted on January 10, 2012

The Weekend in Occupy Chicago

By The Beachwood Occupation Affairs Desk

You shoulda been there.
1. Rahmen noodles.
“The 2012 Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) national conference [was] held Jan. 6-8 in Chicago, with an agenda strongly influenced by the American Economic Association (AEA). For decades the AEA has fostered a narrow, free-market orthodoxy in the economics profession.
“Unlike other professional organization, the AEA has no code of ethics and its members no incentive to disclose the source of research funding or other conflicts of interest. Some members presenting at this year’s conference, including John Campbell, chairman of Harvard Economics Department, were featured defending the status quo even as the global economy went into a tailspin in the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job directed by Charles Ferguson.
“‘Members of the AEA who put their own self-interest and that of the 1% above a functioning economy for all are making the AEA morally, intellectually, and academically bankrupt,’ says David Orlikoff, film critic and Occupy Chicago organizer. ‘Profiteering AEA members of both parties move between academia and government, spinning failed free-market theory, and are essentially subsidized by the 1% and the politicians they fund. This corrupt system leads to failed ideas such as trickle-down theory, austerity and low capital gains tax rates. The data are in, and the results are disastrous for our country.'”

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Posted on January 9, 2012

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