Who Gets Food Stamps? White People, Mostly

WASHINGTON -- Gene Alday, a Republican member of the Mississippi state legislature, apologized last week for telling a reporter that all the African-Americans in his hometown of Walls, Mississippi, are unemployed and on food stamps.



"I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks,'" Alday said to a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper, earlier this month. "They don't work."



Nationally, most of the people who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are white. According to 2013 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, 40.2 percent of SNAP recipients are white, 25.7 percent are black, 10.3 percent are Hispanic, 2.1 percent are Asian and 1.2 percent are Native American.







In the two congressional districts that overlap Alday's state legislature district, more African-Americans than whites receive food stamps, according to USDA data.



Twenty-three million households and 47 million Americans received benefits on an average month in 2013; enrollment declined slightly to 22 million households and 46 million individuals in 2014. Three-quarters of those households included a child, an elderly person or someone with a disability. The average monthly benefit per household was $274 in 2013 and $256 last year.











Republicans are conducting a review of nutrition assistance with an eye toward figuring out how to nudge more people into the workforce. In recent years Republicans have lamented that a growing share of recipients are able-bodied adults without children -- a group that made up 10.2 percent of beneficiaries in 2011, up from 6.6 percent before the onset of the Great Recession in 2007. (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 1 million people will be kicked off the rolls by next year as states reimpose time limits on childless, non-disabled adults.)



Nearly one-third of food stamp beneficiaries lived in a household where at least one member had some earned income in 2013. Different states have different eligibility rules for the program, but federal law puts the upper income limit at 200 percent of the poverty line, currently $20,090 for a family of three. Many SNAP recipients qualify based on their participation in another means-tested program, such as Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.







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Chicago 'Black Site' 'Not First Time' Anti-Terror Tactics Allegedly Used On Americans

The Guardian's bombshell about a secretive "black site" holding facility in Chicago where suspects are allegedly shackled, beaten and held for long periods of time without access to their lawyers, immediately sparked cries of alarm.



The practices reportedly taking place at the Chicago Police Department's Homan Square could be another sign that some of the same techniques used overseas in the War on Terror have crept into domestic policing practices.

The Guardian's investigation uncovered evidence of:



Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.



Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.



Shackling for prolonged periods.



Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.



Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was pronounced dead after he was found unresponsive inside an interview room at Homan Square.



NATO protester Brian Jacob Church told the Guardian that the facility was like a "domestic black site," referencing the CIA's network of secret prisons used to interrogate terror suspects overseas.



That's overselling it, according to Ezekiel Edwards, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project. But, Edwards told The Huffington Post, there are similarities between what the Guardian reported and practices used in the War on Terror.



"I am not certain that this terminology is appropriate, but I am certain that, if true, the practice of detaining people incommunicado before processing them for the purpose of interrogating them – whatever one wants to call Homan Square – is illegal," Edwards said in an email to HuffPost. "More broadly, this is not the first time that local policing may have taken a page from the War on Terror, or vice versa."



Edwards said, "The use of widespread electronic surveillance, militarized tactical policing and weaponry, sneak and peek searches to rummage through our homes, racial profiling, entrapment schemes using large sums of money to lure participants and where the government is the sole creator of the crime, and the unchecked power of prosecutors to use harsh sentencing laws to coerce cooperation and guilty pleas, are as familiar in the War on Drugs as in the War on Terror."



The Chicago Police Department released a statement to multiple media outlets strongly denying any wrongdoing.



"CPD abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility," the statement said. "If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them. It also houses CPD’s Evidence Recovered Property Section, where the public is able to claim inventoried property."



Reporter Spencer Ackerman, who authored the original Guardian story, fired back at CPD on Democracy Now.



"Notice all the things they don’t say. They don’t say when attorneys have the right to talk to their clients there," Ackerman said. "They never address at all the central question of someone being booked at Homan Square, of records being made available to the public, available to their lawyers and available to their families there."



CPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.



Edwards said if the allegations made in the Guardian's report are true, they are unjustifiable.



"It appears that these are calculated efforts to hold people outside of the system – away from judges and lawyers – in order to interrogate and intimidate them," Edwards said. "There is no justification for such constitutionally offensive practices."







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People Power Beat Big Money in Chicago

Rahm Emanuel, with his $30 million war chest, may have been the headline in the build-up to Chicago's municipal election, but the real story in Chicago on Tuesday happened in neighborhoods. Here are the top lessons for populist progressives across the country.



Lesson 1: People power can beat big money.



Big-monied interests spent $8,168,898 to try and re-elect the Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the aldermen that routinely rubber stamp his agenda. Even flush with all that cash to spend on mailers and TV ads, they failed to defeat a single sitting progressive alderman.



Meanwhile, Reclaim Chicago, a partnership between National Nurses United and The People's Lobby (an affiliate organization of National People's Action Campaign), endorsed a slate of 17 Aldermanic candidates. They successfully defended five sitting progressive aldermen, won two new seats outright and pushed three incumbent corporate Democrats into the runoff election on April 7.



Lesson 2: Organizing works.



When neighbors talk to neighbors, progressives win. Reclaim Chicago volunteers put in more than 4,980 hours and reached out to 58,773 voters over the last four months. These volunteers didn't just give voters a canned pitch on the candidates. They started by asking voters what issues they cared about. This led to thousands of in-depth conversations about shared values and the ways in which corporate power and racial injustice are destroying the great city of Chicago.



Lesson 3: Progressives with a bold platform can win.



On a cold Martin Luther King Day, 650 Reclaim Chicago activists gathered on the south side. They shared their vision for a Chicago where the public controls the economy and corporations serve the public good. Where City Hall advanced racial equality, rather than furthering structural racism in our education and criminal justice systems. Each and every Reclaim Chicago candidate pledged: "With your support and agitation, I will fight for our shared vision." Then they ran on that vision, and won.



Lesson 4: A new candidate pipeline is in motion.



Coming out of the 2014 midterms, progressive populists bemoaned the tepid and unambitious agenda of many Democratic candidates. The good news is that a new pipeline of candidates is being built -- candidates who will stand up to abusive corporations and fight for racial and gender justice. While the big news (rightly) is that Mayor Emanuel will face a runoff on April 7th, the night's biggest upset may well have occurred in the 35th Ward.



On Tuesday night, 26-year-old Carlos Rosa won with 67 percent of the vote over a Rahm-backed old-guard alderman who had been in office for over a decade. Reclaim Chicago contributed roughly half of his door-to-door operation. Carlos is the first openly gay Latino elected official in the state of Illinois and he ran his campaign on standing up to big corporations and the wealthy.



A new movement to put everyday people first is rising across the country. Cynics said Rahm and his cronies on the City Council could not be beat. Plutocrats spent millions trying to make sure they were right. A group of dedicated grassroots activists just proved that they were wrong. The next test for an emerging political movement is the April 4 runoff. Look for organizations like Reclaim Chicago and candidates like Chuy Garcia and Carlos Rosa to beat the odds again.



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What I Thought and How I Lied: Coming Out to New Friends

I had just moved back to Chicago when I decided to come out, and despite being at the center of a volcanic emotional eruption, I was determined to begin building a life for myself, determined to take a deep breath every once in a while, leave my apartment, and make some new friends.



The problem was I had no idea what I was supposed to tell these new friends. I was still working on my comfort level with saying I was gay to any people, let alone new people whose reactions I could not predict.



I made one very good new friend in particular, and when we met, everything about being gay was still so new to me that I had no idea how to approach saying anything to her. It almost didn't feel fair to impose all that I was going through on her so soon.



So for about two months, I faked it. I never quite lied to her, but I certainly did a lot of pretending. I pretended I wasn't crying myself to sleep at night pining for a girl who didn't want me, and I pretended that the only thing I was trying to figure out was how to find a job. When she asked me dating questions using "him" and "guy" I simply did not correct her, and the few times my recently broken heart came up, I avoided all pronouns and changed the subject as quickly as I could.



But I knew the longer I didn't tell her, the bigger of a deal it became, the more it felt like a secret I was harboring out of shame.



With her and others, too, I was afraid of all the things no one should ever have to be afraid of --afraid I'd make her uncomfortable or that she'd automatically start to fear I had feelings for her. Nothing she ever did made me think she'd react that way, but I had concocted all the worst case scenarios in my head. And even though I wanted to have the "well if she reacts poorly I don't want her in my life anyway" attitude, I knew it would bother me if it bothered her.



Mostly, though, I just felt guilty putting so much on her when she hadn't known me all that long. Telling her I'm gay wouldn't just be telling her I'm gay like it would be if I'd been out for years. It would mean inviting her smack dab into the middle of my coming out process. It would be telling her I was currently in the midst of the most transformative period of my life, that I was on the frontier of everything, simultaneously battling how to get over my first love while trying to start some sort of new life. It'd be telling her I was still trying to discern just how to be, that I was constantly breaking down, convincing myself I had no idea what I was doing and would never figure it out.



When my article, The Brain on 23, went viral, I realized something. She, and every other person around my age, was feeling these things too, regardless of their sexuality or anything else. We are right on the cusp of adulthood, and we are all experiencing the most transformative periods of our lives thus far. We are all on the frontier of everything and trying to figure out how to be, whether that means how to pay the bills, how to cook ourselves dinner, or how to fall in love. We are all trying to start some sort of new life, and we all break down and convince ourselves we have no idea what we are doing. Everyone is uncertain, and if I was going to wait to be honest with people until I felt like I had everything figured out, I was going to be waiting a very long time.



Everyone is going through something, and nobody is looking for perfect friends. We are just looking for people with whom we can bond over a mutual lack of clarity.



When I finally told her, she said without even pausing, "I just want you to feel like you can be yourself around me." I almost cried. I had built it up into something so terrifying, and it was so easy. Nothing changed about our friendship except that I could now actually talk about my life. That day, I vowed to never leave pronouns out of a conversation again. Meeting new people has since become a far less stressful thing to do.



Read the original post and more thoughts on coming out on Molly's blog, Now What? Join her as she navigates love, Tinder, adulthood, and identity.



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When Public Officials Threaten The Reporters Just Trying To Keep Them Honest

You'd think that Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who holds a master's degree in broadcast journalism, would appreciate a good investigative story. Last week, Mother Jones published a piece with accusations that O'Reilly had embellished key details about his reporting on the Falklands War. When a New York Times journalist started poking around the scandal, O'Reilly let him know how he felt about reporters who dig up less-than-flattering stories and, you know, report on them. (Hint: He wasn't happy.)



"I am coming after you with everything I have. You can take it as a threat.”



With that, O'Reilly joined the long tradition of threatening journalists trying to do their jobs. Journalists are often responsible for keeping a skeptical eye on those in the public sphere -- particularly anyone with influence -- and we all benefit from their diligent work. Public officials should especially be able to stand up to questioning. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.



Below, some of the most memorable incidents when officials let a question or two get the better of them:







"Let me be clear to you. If you ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this f--king balcony. You're not man enough. You're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy."



Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) to a NY1 reporter, following a question about campaign finance reform after the 2015 State of the Union address.







"Use my name again unauthorized and you'll be paying for an attorney. Your rights stop where mine start."



Woefully uninformed Maryland city council member Kirby Delauter to a Frederick News-Post reporter who had written an article about him, and called for comment.







"You send another goon to my daughter's house and I'll take you out, buddy!"



Tea Party gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino to a New York Post editor in 2010, accusing him of sending a man to photograph Paladino's formerly secret daughter. The editor had asked Paladino for evidence of his claim that opponent Andrew Cuomo had been unfaithful in a previous marriage.







“If I put this up your -- ha! -- your butt -- ha ha! -- you’ll find out how effective this is!”



Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley to a Chicago Reader reporter in 2010, picking up a rifle after a question on the effectiveness of the city's gun ban.







"All that crap, you're putting it in the paper? It's all been denied. Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published. Good Christ! That's the most sickening thing I ever heard."



U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein and publisher Katherine Graham, responding in 1972 to a front-page story detailing Mitchell's potential involvement in the Watergate scandal.







"If you guys keep interfering with my business, I'm going to have you arrested."



Duval County, Texas, Sheriff Santiago Barrera Jr. to a Alice Echo-News Journal reporter in an interview after the reporter had published a story on the sheriff's adult son being charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest.







"It's hard to take you seriously. I just have a feeling I've, like, stepped into a Monty Python bit."



New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Wiener to a British ITV reporter who had asked him about his decreasing poll ratings.







“Look, if you don’t want me to take this to you, gentlemen, leave.”



Rep. Artis McCampbell (D-Ala.), holding a golf club, to an ABC news crew in 2010 as they questioned him about "sordid or illegal behavior" by state officials.







"I’m not going to let you do to me what you did to Stanley McChrystal."



Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings, after allegedly "grabbing" Hastings during an interview.







"[Knocks microphone out of reporter's hand]"



Detroit's Deputy Fire Commissioner Fred Wheeler to a FOX 2 reporter who was investigating conditions inside some of the city's firehouses.









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What Happened When Detroit Youth Had Honest Conversations With Police

As activists across the country question police tactics and the number of black men and boys killed by cops, a group in Detroit is hoping conversations with officers can begin to heal the mistrust some youth have toward authorities.



More than 50 teenagers, along with their parents and grandparents, came to Triumph Church on Feb. 21 for Honor the Line, an event conducted by the BALL Foundation (Bridging Athletic, Learning and Life-Skills) to “bridge the gap between young men and law enforcement."



BALL founder and president Randy Henry came up with the local program (similar efforts exist elsewhere) and partnered with Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who spoke about how he’d met the challenge of strained community relations while working in departments from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine.



“How do we build that trust, how do we build respect? With our dialogue, with our communication,” Henry said. “That’s the main reason I put this together.”



Beyond building trust, he wanted youth to leave with real-life skills for interacting with police safely.



The teens in attendance, mostly black and male, separated into small groups. Local and state law enforcement officers then spoke informally and conducted role-playing exercises to show how to act when stopped by an officer.




Students act out a police stop at the Honor the Line event. Courtesy the Ball Foundation.






Students were also given the chance to air grievances and ask questions. In one room, 16-year-old Adam Harris had something he wanted to get off his chest.



“With all the stuff that’s been going on in the world ... I look at police officers iffy,” Harris said, later referencing the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Missouri last year. “How do you expect for young people just to be cool with authority and all that when we really don’t understand it, and the things that we see?”



Sentiments similar to Harris' have been echoed constantly in recent months. In an earlier Q&A with Craig, one of the few teens to talk voiced his suspicion, saying police are “crooks” who “come for their own thing.”



But Harris' comment seemed different; it was spoken directly to an officer in a mutual attempt to understand each other, and he was really trying to find an answer.



Better Detroit Youth Movement co-director Harlan Bivens didn't have a simple answer for Harris, but he advised him to worry less about other people, like friends' negative attitudes about police or how an officer might mistreat him, and instead concentrate on what he could control, like the reaction he wants to have if he's stopped by police.



Throughout the afternoon, speakers repeated the importance of respecting officers. Henry said in police interactions, both sides are accountable for the outcome. He added that youth “have to honor people in authority positions,” not just cops, but parents, teachers and coaches.




A student asks Detroit Police Chief James Craig a question at the Honor the Line event. Courtesy the Ball Foundation.




As it emphasized respect, the event seemed to gloss over the reasons why young black men feel distrustful of police, as well as how wide of a gap organizers are trying to bridge. Teaching kids that they’re responsible for behaving properly if they want to guarantee their own safety might also strike some as an incomplete strategy for dealing with police-community discord, particularly in light of cases like 12-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland, Ohio, who was holding a toy gun at a park last year when a responding police officer shot the boy within seconds.



Bill Larkin, who attended Honor the Line with his grandson, said he has a good relationship with Detroit officers but pressed Craig to acknowledge the different realities for black and white individuals.



“Why should a young black child have to act different than a white child with police?” Larkin asked Craig after his speech. “We’ve seen it over and over again, there’s always some justification for [use of force incidents]. My concern is, why should my babies have to act differently?”



Craig responded that almost all officers are good cops.



“Do not paint the entire police department with a broad brush because of the acts of one or two,” he said.



BALL Foundation vice president Carmen Henry acknowledged racial disparities but said that to create change, people should focus on constructive solutions, instead of dwelling on the negative.



Since Craig took over the struggling department in 2013, he's made demonstrative efforts to reduce crime and be more responsive to residents. Detroiters have generally approved of Craig -- including many at the Honor the Line event -- though the Detroit Police Department has recently come under scrutiny for several controversial drug raids and is now facing a lawsuit.



While the lack of trust between communities and cops is often addressed in the context of police overstepping their authority, in Detroit, ongoing public safety issues mean residents are just as likely to complain that police aren't doing enough.



Harris’ mother, Banita, moved her family from Detroit to a neighboring suburb a couple years ago after her home was broken into eight times in seven years.



“I don’t feel comfortable laying my head in Detroit right now,” Harris told The Huffington Post over the phone. “Until you can call the police and they actually come…”



Harris, who did not attend BALL's event, wants her son to have a good relationship with police.



“I teach him to stay respectful, but you also have to know your rights,” she said. “If the police can come into the neighborhoods and show they are people too, and not every police officer is a bad police officer, I think that would help.”




Adam Harris, first teen from the left in gray, and other students listen in a workshop at the Honor the Line event. Courtesy the Ball Foundation.






It’s difficult to gauge the impact of one afternoon of discussion, but Henry sees it as a first step. A follow-up event is in the works for April, and Craig said he would continue working with the program.



Some students seemed unmoved by the workshops and left early. Others talked about what they learned; one said she enjoyed telling officers her feelings about police.



Participants were given pamphlets that explained their rights, as well as what they should do if a police officer stops them when they're walking, driving, at their home, or if they're detained.



Adam Harris, who came to the three-hour event with “a negative vibe” about police officers, left with a more nuanced perspective.



“[They] should take their time to put themselves in a citizen’s shoes rather than hiding behind their badges,” he said, but “people should just look at it different too … just stay calm, cool and collected.”



“The best thing I brought out of it is not to look down on police officers,” he added.




Organizers and attendees of the BALL Foundation event to bridge the gap between police and youth in Detroit. Courtesy the Ball Foundation.






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DAPA-Eligible Immigrants Face Threat Of Deportation, Advocates Say

Brenda Castro, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, has two U.S.-born children, lives in New Orleans and has been in the country since 2008. Though she has a misdemeanor for attempted theft and a prior deportation, immigrant rights advocates are confident she would qualify for the deportation relief program announced last year by the Obama administration.



The courts have blocked the implementation of that program, however, while a lawsuit against Obama's executive actions proceeds. When Castro went to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement this past Monday, as she has done regularly in the four years since her deportation case began, they told her she would have to wear an ankle monitor -- which advocates say could signal that authorities are thinking about removing her from the country.



“It makes no sense that after four years of checking in they would put me in the ISAP program,” Castro said, referring to the Intensive Supervision and Appearance Program, an alternative to detention through which ankle monitors are administered. “For me, this is a humiliation.”



Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for information about Castro’s case.



Castro would appear to be the kind of person President Barack Obama had in mind when he said in November that his new policy would make it a priority to keep law-abiding families together. One part of that policy, a program called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA, offers work authorization and deportation relief to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens who have lived in the country for five years and who pass a background check. Roughly 4.1 million people are believed to be eligible for DAPA.



Castro, a 39-year-old mother of three, works cleaning homes in New Orleans, where she says she has lived since 2008. She says she moved there to join her husband, who went there shortly after Hurricane Katrina to work in construction. She has joined civic efforts to advocate for immigration reform, and appeared on MSNBC earlier this month to show her support for deportation relief.



But with 26 states suing to overturn Obama’s executive actions on immigration, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction earlier this month to keep the Obama administration from implementing the executive actions announced in November.



With DAPA blocked, people like Castro continue to face the risk of deportation, advocates say.



“We know she’s not a priority and she would qualify for DAPA,” Fernando Lopez, an organizer with the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, told The Huffington Post. “This is a pattern we’ve been seeing with our members -- even though these people qualify [for DAPA] and ICE should be reviewing these cases, it’s not something that is actually happening... They’re being asked to bring their plane tickets or another stay of removal.”



Despite getting slapped with an ankle monitor, Castro says she’s confident DAPA will eventually triumph in the courts and she will win relief from deportation.



“I qualify for DAPA,” Castro said. “I’m not afraid.”



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Michael Madigan's resurrected millionaire's tax faces opposition

It has been months since the idea of an Illinois millionaire's tax seemed to be off the table in the General Assembly, but House Speaker Michael Madigan has revived talks of the surtax again. Now, many Illinois teachers unions and education organizations are coming out in favor of the added three percent income tax. But at least one member of Madigan's super-majority Democratic Party isn't on board. Reboot Illinois' Madeleine Doubek has more:

Madigan, union officials and two prominent school advocacy groups issued statements supporting the millionaires' tax push. They said it was part of a solution to the state's severe fiscal crisis, even though it would require a supermajority vote among lawmakers and then would have to go to voters, which could not happen now until 2016. Therefore, even if approved, it wouldn't help solve the immediate $6 billion budget hole Gov. Bruce Rauner, Madigan and lawmakers face.



"With the rollback of the temporary income tax increase on January 1, we are facing new budget-making obstacles," Madigan said in a rare statement released by his office. "According to the bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, the rollback is expected to result in a loss of nearly $5 billion in state revenue each year. With lower revenues, many state services will be in very precarious financial positions.



"Schools in Illinois need greater financial support to ensure our children can compete in a global economy," he continued. "This is why I am renewing my call for a constitutional amendment requiring a 3 percent surcharge on income over $1 million, with the extra revenue devoted to schools across the state on a per-pupil basis. This change, filed as House Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 26, would result in about $1 billion in additional funding for Illinois students, or about $530 in additional funding per student, per year."



Support for the amendment, not surprisingly, came from Illinois Education Association President Cinda Klickna, Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery and Large Unit District Association Executive Director Diane Rutledge. They were joined in supporting a resolution calling for an amendment by Stand for Children and Advance Illinois, two education advocacy groups.



"While not a complete solution to our education funding concerns, this proposal can start to move our students and schools toward and adequate base level of funding," said Advance Illinois Executive Director Robin Steans. "Money alone will not improve education or close achievement gaps, however, money matters. ... A more equitable funding formula, in tandem with the proposal in HJRCA 26 for increased revenue, would begin to open the doors of opportunity for all Illinois students."



"We commend this proposal's focus on increasing investment in education," said Jessica Handy of Stand for Children Illinois. "Schools have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the last five years, which hurts the education that our children receive and the professionals in the classroom."

Read the rest of Doubek's explanation of Madigan's support for a millionaire's tax at Reboot Illinois.



Speaking of millions of dollars, exactly how much money do Illinois colleges rake in in a year? We took a look at which colleges made the most in private donations in 2014 in Illinois, broken down along the top 10 private schools and top 10 public schools. The answers might surprise you.



NEXT ARTICLE: Devils Advocate: When will legal marijuana come to Illinois?








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Hot Chocolate With The Perfect Zing To Beat A Cold Winter's Day (VIDEO)

On a cold, blustery day, nothing helps soothe your soul quite like a mug of silky hot chocolate. Spice up this winter staple by adding a touch of ginger to the recipe, and you'll be feeling warmer in no time.





Ginger Hot Chocolate







Serves 2





Ingredients

• 
  


• 2 c. milk


• 
  


• 2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder


• 
  


• 3 Tbsp. sugar


• 
  


• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger


• 
  


• Candied ginger, julienned


• 
  


• Whipped cream (optional)


• 
  

Directions



Whisk together milk, cocoa powder and sugar in a small pot on the stove.



Gently warm the mixture (do not boil). Then, whisk in the ground ginger.



Pour the hot chocolate into a mug; top with whipped cream and a few strips of crystallized ginger.



Bonus: Layering the dry ingredients into a small glass jar makes Ginger Hot Chocolate the perfect just-because gift.







Perfect pairing: Balance out the rich taste of chocolate with this recipe for salty-and-sweet Candied Praline Pecans.



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How One Community Is Kicking The Koch Brothers' Harmful Black Dust Out Of Their Neighborhood

It’s not easy to take on a wealthy, multi-national corporation and win. Especially for residents of Chicago’s struggling southeast side.



But that’s exactly what's happening on the banks of the Calumet River, where the steel plants that used to give residents of a mostly Hispanic neighborhood access to a middle-class lifestyle were replaced, nearly two years ago, with black dust called petroleum coke (“petcoke”) piled five or six stories tall.



The piles of petcoke -- a byproduct of the oil refining process -- belong to KCBX Terminals, owned by the conservative billionaire Koch Brothers. The piles have been roiling area residents ever since the black dust of mostly carbon and sulfur began blowing into the backyards, playgrounds and neighborhood parks. It blackens skies and leaves behind a sticky residue, raising concerns about aggravated asthma and other health issues.





This Aug. 30, 2013 cell phone image provided by Anthony Martinez, shows a dust cloud rising from piles of petroleum coke during a storm near residences on the southeast side of Chicago. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Anthony Martinez)




A small but energetic coalition of residents have stepped up to fight the blight, holding protests and marches, educating their neighbors about the issue and pressuring elected officials. They've made incredible progress in a relatively short time.



Last week, as the Chicago Tribune reported, BP, one of KCBX’s largest customers, abruptly announced it would discontinue sending its petcoke to the site beginning this summer. In addition, the city of Chicago announced it had denied KCBX’s request for a deadline extension to enclose its petcoke piles via multi-million dollar structure. Shortly thereafter, KCBX announced it would “consolidate” its two petcoke storage and handling sites into one, removing the piles but continuing to operate as a site where petcoke would be transferred between trains and barges.



The third petcoke site in the area, owned by Beemsterboer, shuttered its facility and removed all of its petcoke last year.



Still, area residents believe their battle against some of the most influential players in one of the nation’s most powerful industries, is very much ongoing -- and they are digging in for more.





In this Oct. 25, 2013 photo, a large mound of petroleum coke, or petcoke, is seen in the background near a residential neighborhood on Chicago's southeast side. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)




Tom Shepherd, president of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, one of the organizations on the front lines of the petcoke battle in Chicago, said his group is “waiting for the next shoe to drop.”



“It remains to be seen whether it will be a foolproof operation over there [at the consolidated south terminal],” Shepherd said. “We’re in a wait-and-see pattern right now.”



Shepherd and others have been have been working to get petcoke out of the neighborhood ever since the piles started to appear in the summer of 2013.



It is Shepherd who spearheaded a bus tour for individuals interested in getting a closer look at the petcoke facilities and the communities surrounding them. His organization, as well as the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have also led demonstrations calling for petcoke to be banned from their community. In addition, they’ve gone door to door in the neighborhood, talking to the community about the facilities and collecting information about how the petcoke has impacted residents' day-to-day lives.



The groups’ efforts have also attracted the attention of political leaders, including U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, former Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel — all of whom have made appearances in the neighborhood to address the issue. Legislation has also followed at the federal, state and city level. However, only the city’s efforts — Emanuel reportedly told KCBX to “clean up or shut down” — have gained traction to date.



Petcoke also became the leading campaign issue in the ward's aldermanic election Tuesday. Alderman John Pope, the neighborhood’s City Council representative and an Emanuel loyalist, faced criticism from a crowded field of challengers that he was too slow to address the issue. (Pope will be heading to a runoff election against Susan Sadlowski Garza on April 7.) In a non-binding referendum, 85 percent of voters in the ward voted to support banning petcoke from the district altogether.



But Olga Bautista, an activist with the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke, believes there is good reason for the neighborhood to remain skeptical despite the recent progress.



Of particular concern is the possibility that transferring petcoke at the KCBX site will simply pose a different environmental issue.





A group of area residents and activists poses with the weather balloon rig they are using to monitor petcoke operations in their neighborhood.




She says she and other activists will continue to collect data on the sites using a balloon mapping technique they learned through a partnership with Public Lab, an organization that works to democratize environmental monitoring and assessments. Using a 5-foot weather balloon with a camera attached to it, as well as an open-source software program called MapKnitter, they can document what is happening at the sites and ensure the company is obeying regulations concerning the height of the petcoke piles (nothing higher than 30 feet is now allowed).



Bautista's group is also working to develop curriculum to teach students at schools in the area how petcoke connects to larger climate change issues.



She remains focused on getting the city to give KCBX the boot, despite company officials saying last week they "remain committed to Chicago" and plan to work within the city's regulations.



“We don’t know of any community who’s been able to successfully kick out the Koch brothers and that’s what we’re calling for,” Bautista said. “We’re not going to back down from our original demand to ban the stuff. It’s going to be us, moms and dads like me, who hold them accountable. We’re not going to stand by and watch these companies make millions and billions of dollars and at the same time they make us sick.”





An aerial image of the petcoke piles attained using the balloon mapping technique.




Another lingering question is where BP will send its petcoke now that it's no longer shipping it to Chicago.



“A final decision has not yet been made on where this material will be stored in the future,” BP spokesman Scott Dean told HuffPost in a statement.



That answer is not a comfort to activists, like Josh Mogerman, who fear the dangerous material could be heading just across the border to Indiana.



“Just shifting this blight to another community or down the river is good for folks on the southeast side, but not a win,” Mogerman, spokesman for the NRDC, said. “They produce a lot of this stuff, and it has to go somewhere.”



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Academy Award Winners You Didn't Know Were From Illinois

Hollywood awarded its greatest honors Feb. 22, doling out prizes for excellence in movies at the 87th Academy Awards. It was also a big night for Illinois -- at least three of the award winners come from the Prairie State.



Patricia Arquette-Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Boyhood







Arquette was born in Chicago in 1968 before moving to Virginia with her family as a child.



Graham Moore-Best Adapted Screenplay, The Imitation Game







Moore was born in Chicago in 1981.



Common-Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song, Selma







Common was born as Lonnie Lynn in Chicago in 1972.



Check out Reboot Illinois to see which Illinoisans have received Oscars for Best Actor or Best Actress in a Leading Role since the 1930s, including the stars of iconic movies such as "It Happened One Night" and "The Godfather."



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7 Ways Chicago Ended Up with an Emanuel-Garcia Runoff

Chicagoans spoke at the ballot boxes while voting for mayor Feb. 24 -- and their choice for the next leader of the city was not for Mayor Rahm Emanuel or Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia or for any of the three other candidates. The decision made by Chicago voters was "We're not sure yet." With Emanuel not winning more than 50 percent of the vote, he and Garcia will face each other in an April 7 runoff election.



How did we get here, after so many predicted that Emanuel had re-election in the bag? Reboot Illinois' Madeleine Doubek takes a look:



1. Emanuel, a powerful, nationally known and well-connected Democratic strategist in a previous life, collected millions from wealthy Chicago business titans and other elite.



2. He collected $16 million and ran a downpour of 4,600 ads. Each one sought to portray him as a man of the people, as someone who fought for the little guy.



3. His ads and his spending far, far, far outpaced his competition.



4. He was elected four years ago on the promise of making the tough calls it would take to turn the city around.



5. He made those tough calls, seemingly without looking back or building a sense of compromise, buy-in or collaboration with his opponents or his constituents.



6. He always has been cocksure, not one to suffer fools.



7. He made the tough calls, sparking union unrest that led to a strike he lost that left him permanently scarred.



See eight more reasons why Emanuel will face Garcia in a runoff election at Reboot Illinois, including the impact on the election had by Emanuel's relationship with Chicago schools and the media.



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Aaron Schock Didn't Report Gifts On London Trip: Report

Rep. Aaron Schock attended dinner and drinks in 2011 at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and at a swank nightclub London — and never disclosed receiving a single gift on his financial disclosure form.



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Meet The Man Who Might Make Chicago Mayoral History

On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was dealt a surprising result in his reelection bid: Despite a massive campaign war-chest and the backing of President Barack Obama, he fell short of the number of votes he needed to avoid a runoff election against his closest rival.



As a result, Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia has been thrust into the national spotlight. But who is this man, responsible for forcing an incumbent Chicago mayor into an runoff election for the first time since the city implemented its current election structure in 1995?



The 58-year-old was born in a small village in the Durango state of Mexico. His father worked in the states as part of the “braceros” program, and his mother stayed behind to raise him and his three older siblings, the Chicago Reader reported in its lengthy profile of Garcia. In 1965, at the age of 10, Garcia and his family moved to the west side of Chicago, where his father was working at a plant. He's been there ever since.



He first ran for elected office as ward committeeman at the age of 27, after graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and won by 59 votes.



He was an underdog then, and many pundits considered him an underdog now, Garcia explained to HuffPost in a January interview, in which he accurately predicted Rahm would not avoid a runoff.



“I’m used to adversarial conditions and coming out a winner,” Garcia said at the time. “I like the idea of a fight. We’re matched against big money but remember, he’s already spent $5 million trying to inch up to the threshold he needs to get re-elected without a runoff. He’s not going to achieve it.”



Garcia later went on to serve on the Chicago City Council and the Illinois State Senate. When he was defeated in the Democratic primary election by a candidate backed by former Mayor Richard M. Daley, he worked as executive director of the Little Village Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit now known as Enlace, which he helped found. He was then elected to the Cook County Board in 2010 and served as the floor leader.



On the issues, Garcia has criticized Emanuel on violent crime, education policy — specifically the mayor’s continued backing of the city’s school board being appointed rather than elected — and privatization.



“I think people want a mayor who is going to be a real listener and who cares,” Garcia told HuffPost in January. “People feel alienated from Mayor Emanuel. They feel that he thinks he knows all the answers to all things and that there is a sense about him that they don’t share, a quality, and that is the aloofness and the arrogance about knowing more than what Chicagoans know. I think that strikes them very negatively because they’re the Chicagoans.”



Garcia has vowed to hire 1,000 new police officers, reopen schools and push the Illinois state legislature to change Chicago's school board into an elected body -- a move favored by almost 90 percent of the voters who considered the matter Tuesday. He's offered little in the way of detailed plans on how he'd approach the cash-strapped city's budget, however.



If Garcia is going win in April’s runoff election, pundits say he needs to build support in the city’s African-American neighborhoods, where he was outperformed by Emanuel. He also needs to up his fundraising, having raised only $1.4 million to Emanuel’s almost $15 million in the race to date.



If elected, Garcia would become the city’s first-ever Latino mayor. The runoff election will take place April 7.



Read HuffPost’s full interview with Garcia here.



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Obama Foundation Hints At Library's Likely Site

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The foundation developing Barack Obama's future presidential library has commissioned polling in Chicago to determine whether residents support building it on the South Side, people close to the foundation said, in the clearest sign to date that the library likely will go to the University of Chicago.



Two Chicago schools and one each in New York and Honolulu are in the running for the library and presidential museum, and Obama is set to pick a winner within weeks. But recently, the focus has shifted decidedly to the University of Chicago's bid - and a public spat with a conservation group over the elite school's proposal to build on city park property.



Aiming to counter the vocal opposition from park advocates, the Barack Obama Foundation earlier this month enlisted a prominent Democratic pollster who worked on both of Obama's presidential campaigns. Cornell Belcher of the polling firm Brilliant Corners surveyed more than 600 Chicagoans on the South Side to gauge their opinion on the library and the use of park land, said the individuals, who weren't authorized to discuss the poll publicly and requested anonymity.



There were no indications the Obama foundation polled in the other three communities being considered, driving further speculation that the competition is a done deal for the University of Chicago, where the first lady worked and the president once taught law.



In late December, the Obama foundation let it be known publicly that it had serious concerns about the University of Chicago's bid - in particular, the school's failure to prove it could secure the Chicago Park District land on which it was proposing to build. That set off a scramble by university officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and earlier this month, the park district's board voted unanimously to transfer 20 acres to the city, to be leased to the foundation if the University of Chicago gets the library.



Obama's foundation said the move had improved Chicago's bid, in yet another indication that the University of Chicago was on track to win the library.



Yet a small but outspoken group of opponents, led by the nonprofit Friends of the Parks, has continued to argue that officials have yet to prove the Obama legacy project is worth the land-grab from city park-goers.



"This is setting a precedent for this city and for the nation for the transfer of public park land into private hands," the group's president, Cassandra Francis, said at a panel discussion about the library Thursday. Casting doubt on the poll's veracity, Francis said her group was considering a lawsuit to stop the library from being built on park land.



The Obama foundation's poll appeared to be laying the groundwork for the foundation and the University of Chicago's supporters to rebut opponents like Friends of the Park as the Obamas narrow in on a decision.



For example, Belcher's survey found that roughly 9 in 10 South Side residents favor building the library in their community. When residents were told the project would require park land, support dropped to just 7 in 10. Yet that number rose again to about 9 in 10 once people were told more about the use of park land, such as the shortage of contiguous, vacant, city-owned land on the South Side.



The poll was also designed to test specific arguments in support of the library and identify which are most effective. Individuals familiar with the survey said it showed that appeals to Chicago's pride for Obama and desire to be a part of his legacy were particularly compelling. Arguing that the library would improve young people's quality of life by driving economic growth was also effective, the poll found.



While in town last week, Obama stopped by his family home near the University of Chicago's campus for an update on the selection process by the foundation's chairman, but the White House said no decision was made at that time. The University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Hawaii and New York's Columbia University are also in the competition.



---



Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.



---



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The Desk Chair Of The Future Is Not A Chair At All

Just when you thought you've seen every alternative, muscle-engaging desk chair possible, one more enters the mix that will have you surfing through your work day.



The Level, created by former brand president for Teva Footwear Joel Heath, is technically a chair substitute. The ultra-modern, sleekly-designed balance board forces you to engage your core and move your body while you stand for phone calls or meetings.







The product's IndieGogo crowdfunding page raised nearly $200,000 more than its original goal with weeks still to go, suggesting that people are eager to change the sedentary and unhealthy office lifestyle.



Marketed as a "tool" for your workspace, the board doesn't just get you out of your chair, it gets you to move your hips and increases your heart rate by 15 percent, compared to merely sitting at your desk.



Using The Level is pretty straight forward. You place both feet on the wooden platform like a surfer and use your core muscles to keep the board balanced. This movement, Heath says in the above video, will give you "just enough motion to get your heart rate up a bit" and is "simple enough that you can multitask while on board."





FluidStance IndieGogo funding page.




While the balance board makes the most sense with a standing desk, Kent Hatcher, ergonomics director at ergonomics consulting firm HumanTech Inc., told TIME.com that he thought the product, "would take a period of acclimatization to get good at using the mouse and keyboard while wobbling around."



The company's promo photos suggest that you can also use it during phone calls or brainstorming sessions.







We still have to wait until May to judge the product for ourselves (the IndieGogo campaign ends on March 13 and products begin shipping in the spring), but we do love the fact that these sleek, muscle-engaging boards may eclipse those bulky and distracting treadmill desks of yesteryear.



At $300 or more per board, however, we may opt for a traditional balance board -- you know, like the ones you see at the gym that cost less than $20.



Sure, we'll miss out on the sleek, wooden look, but our computer-hunched spines might not mind.







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Put This Flowchart On Your Office Fridge And Your Food Will Never Be Stolen Again

Now you have no excuses, office food thieves.



It's something that every workplace deals with: food theft. You put your delicious edibles in the office fridge, and when you come back to eat that sandwich/salad/pasta/etc. ... GONE.



So to help assist, here's a flowchart to let you and everyone else in your workplace know whether or not it's okay to take the food from the office fridge.







You're welcome.



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HuffPost Love And Sex Podcast: The Power Of The Clitoris

Whether it's Freud telling the world that "real" women orgasm through vaginal penetration or a trashy magazine suggesting sex positions that even the most skilled Cirque Du Soleil performers wouldn't be able to master, bad sex advice isn't hard to come by.



Instead it's the frank, real, anatomically correct conversations about sex and pleasure that have trouble seeing the light of day. And when it comes to any conversation about women's sexuality, the clitoris -- the only organ on the human body whose sole purpose is pleasure -- is often the elephant in the room.



Frequently referred to as a "nub" or a "button," the true anatomy of the clitoris was just discovered in 1998 -- three decades after humans landed on the moon! -- and is still rarely discussed. In this episode of The HuffPost Love+Sex Podcast, we wanted to know: What would happen if we brought the clitoris out of the shadows and its true function and capabilities were finally known? The answer is nothing short of revolutionary.



To help us better understand the clitoris, the cultural ignorance surrounding this incredible and incredibly ignored part of the human anatomy and how truly damaging that ignorance is -- not just for those with clits but for anyone who knows a person who has a clit -- Love+Sex hosts Carina Kolodny and Noah Michelson talked with Sophia Wallace, the artistic force behind the emerging 'Cliteracy' movement, Jenny Block, author of the upcoming book O Wow: Discovering Your Ultimate Orgasm and Ian Kerner, sex therapist and author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide To Pleasuring A Woman :







So tune in and listen up! Because you don't know what you don't know about the clitoris.



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New Miracle Commodity: None Other Than Bamboo

In a time of new materials, a very old one is sneaking into our lives. You may have noticed that bamboo is making an appearance everywhere. There are bamboo floors -- I hear there is one in the Holman Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. -- cutting boards and walking sticks.



But Troy Wiseman, a Chicago entrepreneur, sees future growth for bamboo in clothing, paper and activated charcoal -- which has hundreds of industrial and medical uses. And he sees it as the next big, green forest products industry.



Bamboo is a grass whose fiber is similar to timber. After a six-year, initial growing period, it can be harvested yearly. It can be cultivated on land abused by clear-cutting, poor crop rotation and over-grazing. For the soil, bamboo is a healing grass.



The Chinese have known of the wonders of bamboo for centuries. They construct houses from it, eat it (Giant Pandas will eat nothing else), make baskets, chopsticks, hats and weapons from it. In Hong Kong, bamboo scaffolding is used to erect skyscrapers; in Mainland China, this practice has been limited to five stories.



Yet in the West, bamboo has traditionally been thought of as a curiosity, not a valuable agricultural commodity. Wiseman, who is chief executive officer of EcoPlanet Bamboo Group, aims to change that with large-scale bamboo production, which also has positive environmental and social impacts.



There are around 1,200 species of bamboo, and some have given it a bad name. Gardeners have reason to be wary of bamboo which, if they plant the wrong variety, can grow like kudzu and is a virulent invasive species.



Wiseman's company plants better-behaved "clump" bamboo that is native to and approved by the country he is operating in. EcoPlanet Bamboo has established two plantations in Ghana, and one each in South Africa and Nicaragua. He is negotiating to make a big land purchase in Asia that will produce bamboo for clothing, paper and activated charcoal, and will convert the plant remains into fuel for electric generation.



Wiseman describes himself as a "capitalist with a conscience," and has the enthusiasm of a tent preacher when it comes to the business opportunities and the social and environmental benefits of bamboo farming. For bamboo plantations, you ideally need hot, wet weather -- the very areas where old-growth forests are most under threat.



He describes the financial rewards, the jobs for third-world laborers, and the saving of forests as "my three bottom lines." But he is quick to emphasize, "Don't get me wrong, we're a capitalist company. We're about profit, but there's a right way to do it."



As a businessman, Wiseman can claim a record. He told me in an interview that he had co-founded the global B.U.M. clothing line which went public, a private equity-based financial services firm, which financed, among other things, a company that made "turducken," which is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken, stuffed into a deboned duck, which is stuffed into a deboned turkey.



A competitive wrestler in his youth, Wiseman says he is more excited about grappling with the challenges of bamboo than anything else. He says he has interest from a large number of Fortune 500 companies, including retailer Costco and paper giant Kimberly Clark. Bamboo has natural anti-bacterial properties, which is why bamboo cutting boards are desirable in the kitchen -- my wife has one. But these properties, it is believed, will make bamboo fiber popular for bandages, diapers, tissues, sanitary napkins and underwear.



I have not knowingly worn bamboo-fiber clothes, but bamboo and I have a history. As a boy, before the days of hobby shops, I made kites using bamboo slats for the frames. Bamboo was light, strong and available. Little did I know that I was continuing a fine Chinese tradition of kite making and flying. My kites were rather primitive -- bamboo frame, brown paper sail, and glue made with egg white or flour paste -- but they flew.



Now I am captivated not by kites, but whether the world has overlooked a valuable and beneficial source of wood and fiber substitute. Incidentally, my bamboo walking stick (which cost $24 at Walgreens) is light, good-looking and maybe a trendsetter.



Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle" on PBS. His e-mail is lking@kingpublishing.com.




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Peace Behind Barbed Wire

As media ownership converges and technology "unites" us, the concept of national identity grows ever easier to exploit -- and therefore, I fear, increasingly, and dangerously, simplistic.



This is the war on terror. This is the war on crime. They march on, despite the magnitude of their failures. They march on . . . because America is tough. America is exceptional.



If our news and mass-entertainment outlets valued complexity and expansion of the national IQ, we wouldn't go to war. We'd be building our lives on the far side of fear and the far side of cynicism, which is the only place where peace is possible.



It's not like we aren't doing that anyway, to a certain extent. But it only becomes news when visionary journalists -- peace journalists -- declare that it is, which is why, every year for the last seven years now, I have written about and celebrated Chicago's Peace on Earth Film Festival, which showcases extraordinary films that step beyond the simplistic myth of good vs. evil, us vs. them. This year the festival is scheduled for March 19-22 at the Chicago Cultural Center; as always, it's free of charge.



"I was a thief, I was a manipulator, I was a con. I had lost all contact with my heart."



So it is in this context that I reflect on the words of Lisandro Martinez, quoted above, and the words of a dozen other prisoners and ex-prisoners at Dominguez State Jail in San Antonio, Texas, who were among the participants in a class at the prison run by volunteers and called, of all things, Inner Peace. It almost doesn't sound possible -- a class like this at a place where we corral bad guys, "offenders," criminals -- much less that it could be effective.



But one of the 40 films at this year's festival, a feature-length documentary called Inside Peace , makes the point that the class, based on the teachings of Prem Rawat, reaches hard, desperate men and helps them begin, my God, to love themselves -- to see the value of their lives, to grasp that the gift of existence is theirs to make the most of, or not. This is not the normal lesson of prison; mostly the millions of Americans who get stuck in the criminal-justice system never leave it. Inside Peace is about a few who do.



A year ago, writing about a film at last year's festival called Hear Our Voices , about young people struggling with mental illness, I noted: "The film doesn't present quick fixes, but it conveys a sense of awe about what's possible." This is a hallmark of the films at the festival: Much more is possible than we publicly concede, and learning about these possibilities opens up big hope.



Early in the film, one of the men shrugs off the class, describing his motivation for attending it: "They'll give you a pen and some paper. You can bring it back, sell it for a soup, try to make a little hustle."



This was the size of their hope, to maybe trade a pen and some paper for extra food. The size of their lives was "nothing much."



"My parents were heroin addicts," Jake Alvarado says, noting that he's been locked up for 17 of the last 20 years. "My dad started going to prison when I was very young. I was in fourth grade."



He went to trade school and studied airplane mechanics, even graduating with honors. But he lacked the inner resources to stay in charge of his life. "I started hanging with the wrong crowd," he said. "They introduced me to the needle. That's what really messed me up. That's when everything started going downhill. That's when I started breaking into buildings."



"We moved around a lot. I had to grow up fast," David Sigee says. "When I was 18 I had to find a way to take care of myself." He started working at a hospital, washing pots for minimum wage, taking three or four buses to get to work. Then someone asked if he had any drugs for sale. He became a dealer.



"The neighborhood was very, very raw. I was only at the bottom of the food chain," he said. But he expanded operations, started finding success in the business. "Because I wanted a better future, I didn't believe I was born into the stereotype (of failure). In my mind, I was finally moving up -- until I was caught. And you're going to get caught."



These stories bleed through Inside Peace, and they are crucial to it, but they're only part of what the film is about. The men manage to take the message to heart that they have value as people -- no simple lesson, especially when it comes so late in life. This is where, for the viewer, the awe comes in. You mean inner peace is . . . always possible?



"To see everyone at peace in prison would shock the world." says Trinidad Martinez. "If you can find peace in prison, then surely it would motivate the world to find peace out there."



The film follows some of the men after their release, when, if anything, life gets harder -- far more complicated and also, very often, cruelly unwelcoming. This is the way we treat "ex-felons" -- as America's permanent underclass, unemployable, ineligible for basic help.



David Sigee, one of the released, talks about the panic and despair he's had to cope with, the ever-present criminal record to which he's chained. "When things go hard, you gotta find the peace," he said. "You're not gonna make it without your peace. You gotta dig for it. You gotta fight for it."



Three of the former prisoners -- Martinez, Sigee and Chase Cowan -- will join Inside Peace director Cynthia Fitzpatrick at the film festival on Sunday, March 22, to talk about the film and about the peace it's possible to build from the inside out.



- - -

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.



© 2015 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.



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My Q and A With W. Chris Winter, Sleep Whisperer to Some of the World's Top Athletes

Perhaps more than any other group, athletes have fully embraced sleep as a performance enhancement tool. Top athletes are, of course, all about results. So there's no better place than the world of sports to see the tangible effects of sleep (including pre-game naps) on performance.



As medical director of the Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine in Virginia, and one of the country's leading sleep researchers, W. Chris Winter has worked extensively with athletes eager to learn from him. He also works with teams to teach them about sleep's importance. In fact, when we exchanged emails, he was in Florida, and shortly bound for Arizona, working with Major League Baseball teams. Here are his answers to my questions about why athletes are putting sleep at the forefront of their lives -- and what the rest of us can learn from them.



You don't always publish your research on how sleep affects athletic performance. Why is that?



The reasons for this are many, but generally boil down to two things.



First, teams view what I do as a way to gain an advantage and do not want to give that advantage away. Second, I have been involved with sleep research for about 21 years now, including my involvement while I was in medical school, neurology residency, and my sleep fellowship. There are individuals and groups out there with no real sleep background who sell sleep services to businesses, teams, etc. that do little more than borrow other's research ideas and sell it as if it were their own. Given these facts, I see little upside to publishing.



You've researched the effect of time zone travel and jetlag on the performance of pro baseball players. What did you find?



The convention in sleep medicine is that for every time zone you cross when you travel, it takes about 24 hours to acclimate. So, with that in mind, we looked at every team, every day of the season for ten seasons and assigned them a value as to how adjusted they were, and used it to predict game outcome. Basically, we proved what hardcore gamblers have probably known for years...travel impairs performance!



Since then, we have studied how a player's chronotype (are you a morning lark or a night owl) affects performance at different times of the day. For instance, does a night owl pitcher pitch better at night versus in the day? Our data suggests so. It also suggests batters hit better if their game matches up with their chronotype too. We have unpublished data on this as well.



We have also looked at the incidence of sleepiness in college football players and compared the number to that seen in professional football. College players blow the pros out of the water. Just under half of the players we studied were excessively sleepy, and usually not because of lack of sleep!



Beyond day-to-day performance, how can inadequate sleep affect an athlete's career?



We have looked recently at measures of sleepiness in professional athletes and have seen that players with high levels of sleepiness tend to exit their sport earlier than those who are not sleepy. For players who want to have long, lucrative careers, ignoring healthy sleep is not the way to go about it!



My work in the past has looked at the active athlete and shown how poor sleep can affect multiple aspects of his/her performance. Currently, we are working on using sleep-specific parameters to predict future performance, injury risk, and potentially whether or not an organization should invest in a player. If two equally talented writers want to work for you and one is much sleepier than the other, who would you hire? Initially that was our directive. Taken a step further, what if you had a really good sleep doctor on your staff who said he could diagnose and fix the sleep problems we discovered on your staff during the sleep screening process (what I am often doing for teams). Now who would you hire? Perhaps the sleepy writer, who is already amazing prior to the intervention, will be a superstar once I figure out and treat her sleep issues. Now you can see how a team could find treasure in other team's trash... if they know what to look for.



How are professional sport teams leveraging sleep consultants to enhance performance, and what tangible benefits are players receiving?



The short answer is in many different ways. I think the most important way is through better education about sleep and its impact on our health, recovery, and performance. Players learn that the hours spent in the bedroom lay the foundation for their physical improvement, and nutritional goals.



I love to talk about sleep. Despite this tendency, I don't like to talk a lot about the specifics of what I do for teams. I think it is something my teams value -- I keep my mouth shut. Strangely, the San Francisco Giants spoke to the media about me this season in the midst of their third World Series win. I'll let this article, which was the result of their comments to the media, answer your question.



What's the big takeaway for those of us who aren't pro athletes?



The funny thing about all of this was that my research started as a way to get ordinary people to pay attention to sleep. I thought, if I can get a pro athlete to really value sleep, his or her fans might do the same.



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Chicago Mayoral Challenger: 'Working Class' To Power Bid To Unseat Rahm Emanuel

CHICAGO (AP) -- If Jesus "Chuy" Garcia is going to have a shot at upsetting Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in an April runoff, he'll need to quickly solidify a coalition of minorities, union members and progressives reminiscent of one that buoyed his mentor, Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor.



Emanuel enjoys big advantages in money and experience, having raised millions more than Garcia, a Cook County commissioner who jumped into the race just three months ago. The ex-congressman and White House chief of staff also has the backing of his former boss, President Barack Obama, who recorded ads for Emanuel and stumped for him during a stop in Chicago last week.



But a beaming Garcia remained optimistic Wednesday, a day after voters not only denied Emanuel an easy second term but put several established Chicago politicians on the ropes, including a grandson of former Mayor Richard J. Daley. He said the election was a message from working people who believe Emanuel puts the interests of business and the wealthy before them.



"It's very clear there's something going on in Chicago that says that we need to go in a different direction," said Garcia, who spent the morning thanking voters at a downtown commuter train stop and doing a flurry of interviews from the campaign office.



One countertop displayed a caricature of Garcia in a Superman costume and the caption, "Si se puede." The expression is commonly used by pro-labor and immigrant rights groups, and an English translation, "Yes we can," was the slogan of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.



"Working class folk who stepped up in this campaign feel that Chicago needs to be responsive to the neighborhoods and toward ordinary people and we delivered. It may be the retooling of a Democratic coalition, maybe with a small `d.'"



Garcia, born in Mexico and largely raised in Chicago, billed himself as the "neighborhood guy."



While the city's minority populations have grown and changed, Garcia's approach harkened comparisons to Washington's three decades ago, which relied on coalescing black and Latino support. The difference now is that voters, particularly younger ones, are more willing to cross racial boundaries to support a candidate.



"There is a much more diverse multicultural youth base ... this is what their life experience is," said Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum. "They resonate with the candidate."



Emanuel needed to win a majority of the vote in the five-candidate field to avoid an April 7 runoff, but fell far short, getting only about 45 percent.



His support was strongest in the city's downtown and on its North Side, home to some of Chicago's more affluent neighborhoods. Garcia, the second-highest vote getter with about 34 percent, did well on the West Side, particularly in heavily Hispanic areas.



The mayor lost support in the city's largely African American wards on the South Side, compared to his first election in 2011. He headed there first thing Wednesday morning, shaking hands with commuters at a train station before addressing voters at a senior center.



Emanuel said the spring runoff will be about which candidate has the "plans and the perseverance" to make progress in the city.



"It's no longer a multiple choice," he said. "It's a clear choice between two different visions of the future and how to get there. One way is about the old politics of deferral. And one is about confronting our challenges head-on by being clear about what they are, being honest and forthright about the choices we have to make."



He did not address questions about why he thought he wasn't able to win outright, opting to point out the wards where he captured a majority. And though he's often been criticized for his tough style and controversial decisions such as pushing to close dozens of schools in 2013, Emanuel said he had no plans to change his approach because voters don't want someone who's not true to themselves.



Garcia drew on his contacts with community organizers and support from the Chicago Teachers Unions, whose leader, Karen Lewis, considered a mayoral bid before being diagnosed with a brain tumor. He also had the backing of national progressive groups such as MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, a political action committee started by former Gov. Howard Dean.



Puente said Garcia's grassroots connections were effective from the beginning, gathering roughly 60,000 signatures in a matter of days to help him get on the ballot.



Political consultant Delmarie Cobb, who opposed Emanuel's re-election, said Garcia will now get national attention from media and outside groups which will help counteract Emanuel's millions of dollars.



"The mayor is weakened and it's anybody's ball game," Cobb said.



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Off to the ER: Will I Be Treated With Dignity?

Recently I found myself in a situation that many transgender people dread: I was in an accident and required emergency medical care.



On a beautiful snowy Saturday, I went skiing in Southern Vermont and took a bad tumble on a run down the mountain. As I lay in the snow in a tremendous amount of pain and waiting for the ski patrol to come help me, I couldn't stop worrying. I worried about how I would be treated once my transgender status was revealed. I knew I may need to "come out" as a transgender man on my own in order to ensure appropriate medical care. Alternatively, I knew I may be "outed" by the fact that my transgender body is not the same as a cisgender man's body.



I worried. Would I be respected and treated with compassion? Would I be addressed appropriately? Would I even get appropriate medical care?



The ski patrol arrived, assessed me, and bundled me into a basket to ski me down the mountain to the onsite emergency clinic. X-rays were taken before a stitch of clothing was removed and it was determined that I had multiple fractures in my lower leg that would require transfer to a hospital and surgery.



My gender expression, particularly my ski clothing and gear, aligned with my gender identity, and was what we consider traditionally masculine. The gender marker on my state issued ID is "male." It's important to note that at this point, the ski patrol, nurses, x-ray techs and doctors all referred to me as male. I was "passing," which means no one knew I was a trans man.



My lower clothing was partially removed in order to splint my leg and prepare me for the 1.5 hour trip to the hospital. I had been given IV morphine for pain but even then I began to hear the shift in the way I was being referred to. To my face, it was still "Beck" but in the background, some of the caregivers began using feminine pronouns -- "she" or "her" -- to refer to me. Each time I heard them, I'd yell "it's he" as a way to claim my space and dignity in what was truly a frightening situation.



The ER:

When I reached the hospital Emergency Room I was immediately assessed by the ER doctor on duty. I began our conversation with: "Doctor, I am a transgender man. Do you know what that means?" When he answered in the affirmative, I said "I expect to be treated with dignity and respect -- do you understand?" Again he answered in the affirmative and began to treat my injury.



I'll never forget the nurse assigned to monitor my condition during my time in the ER. She began by saying she admired how I had advocated for myself in the situation. She said she didn't know much about transgender people and had never had training in transgender patient care. She clearly expressed a desire to be supportive as well as her uncertainty in knowing what respectful and appropriate care should look like. I thanked her for her support, told her it would help me a lot if everyone referred to me as "Beck" and used the pronouns "he, him and his" to refer to me. I thanked her for her concern and said I would let her know how else she could help.



The Hospital:

The severity of the break meant I had one surgery that very night and a second surgery nine days later. I was in the hospital for a total of 15 days.



My orthopedic surgeon ended up being a woman who, like my ER nurse, deeply desired to be supportive but lacked any direct training in LGBT patient-centered care. One issue that arose was whether or not I could continue hormone replacement therapy (HRT) during the treatment for my leg. The hospital pharmacist and endocrinologist were deeply against it. Again advocating for myself, I encouraged my orthopedic surgeon to speak directly to transgender health care experts at Fenway Health in Boston. Because my doctor took the time to speak with Fenway, I was allowed to continue my HRT and avoid the possible complications of stopping treatment.



As a non-ambulatory patient for 15 days I interacted with a massive team of nurses, certified nursing assistants and physical therapists working with me every day. There were also people who cleaned my room and brought my food as well as various administrative staff.



I came out to almost all of my direct care staff -- nurses and nursing assistants -- and acted as an educator throughout my stay. Once it seemed I had everyone on-board and acclimated, the staffing shift schedule would change and I would have whole new teams of caregivers to educate. And, even with all this work and advocacy, I would still be mis-gendered either to my face or within earshot on an almost daily basis.



Why It's Important for caregivers to be LGBT culturally & medically competent:

Wellness is a holistic endeavor. As a transgender man, when a caregiver mis-genders me by referring to me with the wrong pronoun, several issues come up. One, I don't feel seen or heard for who I am. Our trust is disrupted and in that situation I am less likely to be forthcoming with my needs medically. Additionally, being "erased" and feeling invisible has a depressive quality that is not conducive to the best healing.



Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals face discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity when seeking health care. Fear of discrimination causes many LGBT people to avoid seeking health care, and, when they do enter care, studies indicate that LGBT people are not consistently treated with the respect that all patients deserve. Beyond cultural competency issues, there are also specific medical concerns and needs for members the LGBT community. Doctors and other caregivers require training and education in those issues -- or at least should have access to LGBT medical experts for when questions arise.



What Went Right:

• Overall, I had compassionate and engaged caregivers who had the desire to treat LGBT patients with dignity and respect.


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• Because my caregivers had the desire to learn, I could advocate for myself and educate. It's important to note, though, that I am an LGBT awareness trainer for a living -- so I am in a unique and privileged position to advocate for myself.


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What Needs to Improve:

• None of the hospitals in the vicinity of the ski area where I was injured, including the one I was admitted to, participate in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Healthcare Equality Index (HEI). The HEI is the national LGBT benchmarking tool that evaluates health care facilities' policies and practices related to the equity and inclusion of their LGBT patients, visitors and employees. To earn the designation as a "Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality," a facility must meet all four of the HEI's core criteria, one of which is required training for key staff As part of participating in the HEI, facilities have access to free training in LGBT patient-centered care.


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• Medical and nursing schools as well as technical schools that certify EMTs and Paramedics need to incorporate LGBT healthcare and cultural competency into their curriculum


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How You Can Help:

• If you work in the health care field, use your insider position to advocate for training and education at your facility/employer. Encourage them to participate in HRC's HEI if they don't already do so.


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• If your LGBT friend or loved one is in a medical emergency, note that they may need help advocating for themselves. Be prepared to help advocate for appropriate and respectful treatment. Caregivers may also need referrals to resources for expert medical input (see below).


• 
  

Resources for Caregivers:




HRC offers free training through the Healthcare Equality Index



See the report from HRC and Lambda Legal, Creating Equal Access to Quality Health Care for Transgender Patients: Transgender-Affirming Hospital Policies that offers best practices in hospital policies to reduce health disparities for transgender patients.



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