By The Uptown People’s Law Center

A federal court has ordered the State of Illinois to address its “failure to . . . meet the constitutional requirements with respect to the mental health needs of” its approximately 12,000 prisoners with mental illness. This case reached a settlement agreement in 2016, but the Illinois Department of Corrections failed to live up to the agreement, and constitutional violations continued, according to the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Harold Hirshman, senior counsel for Dentons.
In October, the court issued a 50-page decision finding that IDOC has been deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ mental health, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

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Posted on December 27, 2018

By Max Krochmal/TakeCare

Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is not now and has never been a democracy.
While some may dismiss such a claim as semantic hyperbole or ancient history, it’s worth remembering that the “Founding Fathers” (all men) created a patrician republic that constrained rather than encouraged popular participation.
Indeed, the U.S. Constitution of 1787 replaced a previous, more inclusive system of state governments organized under the Articles of Confederation.
The new supreme law of the land made its purpose clear: it extended slavery, banished indigenous peoples, ignored women, disfranchised workers, planned for conquest, and – intentionally – awarded disproportionate power to Southern white agricultural businessmen.
More than two centuries of fine-tuning have not confronted these traditions in a meaningful way.

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Posted on December 22, 2018

By Carly McCann and Donald T. Tomaskovic-Devey/The Conversation

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have brought renewed attention to workplace sexual harassment. However, the vast majority of allegations go unreported, and those who do report tend to face troubling outcomes.
Our new research, released last week, analyzed all sexual harassment complaints filed with the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and state Fair Employment Practices Agencies between 2012 and 2016.
We found that nearly all sexual harassment goes unreported, and those who do report tend to face severe retribution and limited redress.

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Posted on December 19, 2018

By ONE Northside

The residents of the Darlington Hotel and the Lorali, some of the few remaining affordable Single Room Occupancy buildings in Uptown, face eviction as the buildings go up for sale and are remodeled. These two SROs (single room occupancy buildings) are critical affordable housing in Uptown, as gentrification rapidly encroaches on the neighborhood.
The owners of the Darlington Hotel have been negotiating with developer Jim Sayegh of Elmdale Partners in the Darlington’s last few months on the open market. Sayegh says that the project will create 46 units, but plans to maintain only six units as affordable. Nineteen tenants currently live at the Darlington, many of whom have lived there for nearly two decades.

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Posted on December 14, 2018

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

“Charter schools can do more with less” is a common refrain of school choice advocates, who criticize traditional public schools for wasting money. The promise of greater efficiency has been an attractive argument for charters as states struggle to keep up with ever rising educational expenses. Many charter supporters go so far as to say poverty is a poor excuse for underachievement.
In fact, income and wealth consistently rank as the strongest predictors of academic success. But racism is the reason students in black neighborhoods don’t get the finances they need.
Racism creates systems that undervalue black schools, homes and lives, leading to fewer resources for the people who need every cent. If charter backers and other school reformers are really going to uplift black and brown students, they must recognize this and fight funding inequities created by that devaluation of black worth.

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Posted on December 11, 2018

By Liz Szabo/Kaiser Health News

In the run-up to the midterm elections, the soda industry poured millions of dollars into fighting taxes on sugary drinks, an increasingly popular approach to combating obesity, which affects 40 percent of American adults.
Soda makers have campaigned against sugary drink taxes in dozens of cities in recent years, mostly successfully. But after a string of recent defeats, the industry is now pushing statewide measures billed as grocery tax bans that strip cities and towns of their ability to tax soda. Two of these state initiatives were just on the ballot in Washington (passed) and Oregon (rejected).

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Posted on December 4, 2018

By Laura C. Morel and Patrick Michels/Reveal

TORNILLO, TEXAS – About 40 miles southeast of El Paso, past the rugged desert hills and billboards for fast food joints, residents of this small community sometimes can see the lights of the nearby detention camp glowing in the night.
Some of them have brought gifts for the roughly 2,300 children inside, only to be turned away by guards.
Months after the government erected a tent city in the desert, most of what happens inside the encampment remains hidden, even from curious neighbors in the nearby town of 1,600 residents. The only images of the minors in the camp, standing outside in an orderly line or playing soccer, have been released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Posted on November 29, 2018

By The Uptown People’s Law Center

A federal court has found that the State of Illinois continues to violate the constitutional rights of more than 12,000 prisoners with mental illness.
The finding comes even after the case had reached a settlement agreement in 2016; the plaintiffs had to return to court when the Illinois Department of Corrections failed to live up to its agreement and constitutional violations continued, according to the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Harold Hirshman, senior counsel for Dentons.
The court issued a 50-page decision finding that IDOC has been deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ mental health, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

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Posted on October 31, 2018

By Jill Barshay/The Hechinger Report

In September 2018, I wrote about the so-called “Trump effect” on bullying in schools, citing a study that found higher bullying rates in GOP districts after the 2016 presidential election. But that piece raised an important question: What should schools do to address and prevent bullying?
The scientific evidence on what works is complicated.
There’s a whole cottage industry of consultants selling anti-bullying programs to schools but academic researchers say there is no proof they work. There are some small studies with positive results. But when reputable researchers study efforts to expand these strategies across schools among many students and compare bullying rates with those at schools that didn’t receive the intervention, there tends not to be a difference. For example, this 2007 review of anti-bullying programs found “little discernible effect on youth participants.”

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Posted on October 31, 2018

By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams

What’s one similarity between the economic policy agendas of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump? All three made the Walton family – the wealthiest family in the world – even richer.
According to a new analysis by the union-led campaign Making Change at Walmart, the combination of Bush’s 2003 tax cuts for the rich, Obama’s extension of those tax cuts, and Trump’s passage of a $1.5 trillion giveaway to the wealthy last year has netted the owners of Walmart $1.1 million per day in dividend income tax savings for the past 16 years.

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Posted on October 26, 2018