Britain's Peter Kennaugh wins Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road cycle race
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Saturday, January 30, 2016
Britain's Peter Kennaugh wins Cadel Evans road race
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UCI probing mechanical doping case at cyclo-cross worlds
The UCI is investigating a possible case of mechanical fraud at the cyclo cross world championships
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Poll: Weak Clinton Lead over Trump in Illinois Should Worry State Dems
For those Illinois Democrats who have been trusting in Hillary Clinton's skirt tails as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee to help sweep Illinois House and Senate Democratic incumbents back into office and to perhaps topple some GOP lawmakers, uh, knock it off.
An Illinois juggernaut the Clinton campaign is not.
As a raft of new Iowa and New Hampshire polls reveal, Clinton is struggling against Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in those looming primary contests. In Iowa, A January 15-20 CNN-ORC poll CNN-ORC gave Sanders 51% to Clinton's 43%. In December, CNN-ORC had Clinton leading Sanders by 18 points.
Closer to home, a January 18-19 poll of 570 likely Democratic voters, conducted by KBUR-AM (Burlington, IA) and Monmouth College shows that Clinton leads Sanders 48% to 39%, but, like CNN-ORC, it is a steadily diminishing lead from a 63% to 20% advantage in June and 46% to 32% lead in October.
Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley - yes, he's still campaigning - has 7% of the vote, a slight increase from 5% support in both June and October.
"There's no question Sanders has gained momentum and has steadily gained on Clinton," KBUR-AM "Talking Politics" host Robin Johnson said.
Clinton's dismal standing in the polls has unleashed another round of hand-wringing among national Democrats over the durability and draw of her candidacy.
Additionally, a new Illinois poll from The Illinois Observer's subscription e-newsletter, The Insider, that pits Clinton against Donald Trump as the GOP nominee should also cause Illinois Democrats to wring their hands too over voter enthusiasm for the former First Lady who grew up in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois.
The January 9 survey of 502 likely 2016 Illinois voters finds that Clinton edges Trump 36.5-27.5% - or 9 lousy points - and with 36.1% undecided.
The poll had a +/- 4.46% margin of error.
If Clinton can't cross 50% in blue Illinois against Trump and can't scrape together at least a 10-point lead against the blow-hard billionaire, she - and House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton - have plenty to worry about.
Since Bruce Rauner's win in 2014, Democratic campaign operatives and lawmakers have invested much faith for 2016 in the "Democratic presidential turnout" theory as a fire-wall against Rauner's expected money tidal wave that will crash against them.
In 2012, Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney 57.6-40.7% in Illinois, a victory which helped hand Madigan and Cullerton supermajorities in both chambers.
At this point, Clinton, despite being from Illinois, is generating nowhere near Obama-level of enthusiasm. As the Democratic nominee, almost no credible observer would suggest that Clinton could lose Illinois, but a lackluster Clinton and Rauner's cash combined could easily whittle away Madigan and Cullerton's supermajorities.
For those top Democrats, a Democratic state representative and state senator are far more valuable to their political fortunes than a Democratic President of the United States.
Stay tuned.
davidormsby@davidormsby.com
David also edits The Illinois Observer: The Insider, in which this article first appeared.
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An Illinois juggernaut the Clinton campaign is not.
As a raft of new Iowa and New Hampshire polls reveal, Clinton is struggling against Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in those looming primary contests. In Iowa, A January 15-20 CNN-ORC poll CNN-ORC gave Sanders 51% to Clinton's 43%. In December, CNN-ORC had Clinton leading Sanders by 18 points.
Closer to home, a January 18-19 poll of 570 likely Democratic voters, conducted by KBUR-AM (Burlington, IA) and Monmouth College shows that Clinton leads Sanders 48% to 39%, but, like CNN-ORC, it is a steadily diminishing lead from a 63% to 20% advantage in June and 46% to 32% lead in October.
Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley - yes, he's still campaigning - has 7% of the vote, a slight increase from 5% support in both June and October.
"There's no question Sanders has gained momentum and has steadily gained on Clinton," KBUR-AM "Talking Politics" host Robin Johnson said.
Clinton's dismal standing in the polls has unleashed another round of hand-wringing among national Democrats over the durability and draw of her candidacy.
Additionally, a new Illinois poll from The Illinois Observer's subscription e-newsletter, The Insider, that pits Clinton against Donald Trump as the GOP nominee should also cause Illinois Democrats to wring their hands too over voter enthusiasm for the former First Lady who grew up in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois.
The January 9 survey of 502 likely 2016 Illinois voters finds that Clinton edges Trump 36.5-27.5% - or 9 lousy points - and with 36.1% undecided.
The poll had a +/- 4.46% margin of error.
If Clinton can't cross 50% in blue Illinois against Trump and can't scrape together at least a 10-point lead against the blow-hard billionaire, she - and House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton - have plenty to worry about.
Since Bruce Rauner's win in 2014, Democratic campaign operatives and lawmakers have invested much faith for 2016 in the "Democratic presidential turnout" theory as a fire-wall against Rauner's expected money tidal wave that will crash against them.
In 2012, Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney 57.6-40.7% in Illinois, a victory which helped hand Madigan and Cullerton supermajorities in both chambers.
At this point, Clinton, despite being from Illinois, is generating nowhere near Obama-level of enthusiasm. As the Democratic nominee, almost no credible observer would suggest that Clinton could lose Illinois, but a lackluster Clinton and Rauner's cash combined could easily whittle away Madigan and Cullerton's supermajorities.
For those top Democrats, a Democratic state representative and state senator are far more valuable to their political fortunes than a Democratic President of the United States.
Stay tuned.
davidormsby@davidormsby.com
David also edits The Illinois Observer: The Insider, in which this article first appeared.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
10 Notable DNC Members From Illinois Announce Support for Hillary Clinton
Ten prominent Illinoisans and members of the Democratic National Committee have announced their support for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
They include Senate President John Cullerton, Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts and former U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello..
"We're honored to have the support from these party leaders who know that Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who can stop Republicans from ripping away all of the progress we've made," said Marlon Marshall, Hillary for America director of state campaigns and political engagement. "These DNC members will only strengthen our grassroots-driven campaign and help us engage even more voters across Illinois in order to win the March 15th Primary."
The latest polls show Clinton as the front-runner in the Democratic primary race, holding a double-digit lead over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
Here are the 10 notable DNC members from Illinois who are throwing their support behind the Clinton camp.
NEXT ARTICLE: Bernie Sanders will be president, says Western Illinois University -- and it hasn't been wrong in 40 years
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They include Senate President John Cullerton, Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts and former U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello..
"We're honored to have the support from these party leaders who know that Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who can stop Republicans from ripping away all of the progress we've made," said Marlon Marshall, Hillary for America director of state campaigns and political engagement. "These DNC members will only strengthen our grassroots-driven campaign and help us engage even more voters across Illinois in order to win the March 15th Primary."
The latest polls show Clinton as the front-runner in the Democratic primary race, holding a double-digit lead over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
Here are the 10 notable DNC members from Illinois who are throwing their support behind the Clinton camp.
NEXT ARTICLE: Bernie Sanders will be president, says Western Illinois University -- and it hasn't been wrong in 40 years
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Illinois Meets Paul Newman: Is What We Have Here A Failure To Communicate?
The 1967 prison drama "Cool Hand Luke" is a classic, and contains one of the all-time classic American movie lines.
"What we've got here is failure to communicate," the prison's sadistic warden intones with mock regret after administering a beating to Luke (Paul Newman), newly recaptured after an escape.
The line comes to mind this week as Gov. Bruce Rauner delivered his second State of the State Address and his political nemesis, House Speaker Michael Madigan, delivered his response.
Rauner says (more nicely this year than in last year's address) that he will not discuss tax increases to balance a state budget until the Democrats who control the General Assembly pass at least some of his business and political reforms. Madigan says those reforms amount largely to lowering wages and the standard of living for the middle class.
Thus Illinois heads toward its eighth month without a state budget as public colleges struggle to keep their doors open, the state's largest social services provider imposes massive cutbacks and 125,000 college students go without financial aid that had been promised them before the current school year. The state is spending far more than it's bringing in, and it appears likely this could continue into the next budget year, which starts July 1.
We're not sure if this is a failure to communicate or an unwillingness to do so. Whatever the interpretation, it's pretty clear that each side sees the other as the Captain, the tormentor of Paul Newman.
We explore the communication gap that has Illinois' finances in shackles on this week's "Only in Illinois."
NEXT ARTICLE: House Democrats pass MAP grant funding bill, GOP calls it a hoax
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"What we've got here is failure to communicate," the prison's sadistic warden intones with mock regret after administering a beating to Luke (Paul Newman), newly recaptured after an escape.
The line comes to mind this week as Gov. Bruce Rauner delivered his second State of the State Address and his political nemesis, House Speaker Michael Madigan, delivered his response.
Rauner says (more nicely this year than in last year's address) that he will not discuss tax increases to balance a state budget until the Democrats who control the General Assembly pass at least some of his business and political reforms. Madigan says those reforms amount largely to lowering wages and the standard of living for the middle class.
Thus Illinois heads toward its eighth month without a state budget as public colleges struggle to keep their doors open, the state's largest social services provider imposes massive cutbacks and 125,000 college students go without financial aid that had been promised them before the current school year. The state is spending far more than it's bringing in, and it appears likely this could continue into the next budget year, which starts July 1.
We're not sure if this is a failure to communicate or an unwillingness to do so. Whatever the interpretation, it's pretty clear that each side sees the other as the Captain, the tormentor of Paul Newman.
We explore the communication gap that has Illinois' finances in shackles on this week's "Only in Illinois."
NEXT ARTICLE: House Democrats pass MAP grant funding bill, GOP calls it a hoax
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Chicago Announces New Police Training For Dealing With Mentally Ill
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, facing sharp criticism over police shootings of civilians, announced reforms on Friday to address how police and other emergency workers respond to the mentally ill, including new crisis training for officers.
Last month, a police officer responding to a call by a father who said his son was threatening him with a baseball bat fired into a home, killing both an emotionally-troubled college student and an innocent bystander.
Both the families of Quintonio LeGrier, 19, and Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five, have sued the city. Police later admitted that Jones was shot by accident.
Recently released 911 emergency calls revealed that LeGrier had called police three times asking for help before he was shot, but the dispatcher hung up on him when he would not give his name.
The reforms would increase the number of officers who receive a 40-hour "Crisis Intervention Team," training course, which teaches the best ways to de-escalate situations with people in crisis, especially the mentally ill, the mayor's office said.
The number of officers who receive this training would expand to 2,800 from 1,890 this year, so each district will have a CIT officer staffed on every watch.
In addition, all of the department's 12,000 police officers would receive eight hours of training on mental health awareness, and 911 dispatchers will be trained on identifying situations requiring crisis-intervention tactics.
The city also plans to find ways to improve access to mental health services. Emanuel has been criticized for closing six mental health clinics in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods.
Costs for the additional training were not immediately available.
The U.S. Justice Department is currently investigating the Chicago police's use of deadly force, among other issues.
High-profile killings of minorities by mainly white police officers have led to a national debate over the use of deadly force by the police. Both LeGrier and Jones were black and the officer who shot them was white.
Alexa James, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Chicago, praised the plan for more crisis training as "an important and necessary step."
But community activist Gregory Seal Livingston, who has been among those calling for Emanuel's resignation over police shootings, said he was "incredibly skeptical" that anything will get done.
"Whatever trust he had with the public has been eroded," Livingston said of the mayor.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski, editing by G Crosse)
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Chicago Fan's Obituary Takes Passing Shot At Jay Cutler
She just sacked Jay Cutler from the grave.
The recent obituary for Elizabeth Porter Bowman, who died Jan. 9 at age 78, extolled her virtues as a grandmother, mother and lover of Chicago sports teams.
But Cutler, the oft-maligned Bears quarterback, rated special mention in the Chicago Tribune's Legacy.com post:
Ouch. Cutler has gotten plenty of criticism in his career, but this diss is eternal.
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Better Data Equals Greater Pay Equality
Federal law has banned pay discrimination since 1963. But more than 50 years later, many in the American workplace -- because of their sex, race or ethnicity -- don't get equal pay for equal work. Unlawful pay discrimination shortchanges workers by thousands of dollars a year, affecting people's ability to support their families today and accumulate retirement savings and Social Security benefits for tomorrow.
Today, 57 percent of women work outside the home, but the typical woman working full-time full-year still makes 21 percent less than the typical man working full-time full-year. And the pay gap is significantly greater for women of color: the typical black non-Hispanic woman made only 60 percent of a typical white non-Hispanic man's earnings, while the typical Hispanic woman earned only 55 percent.
That is why today, as the nation commemorates the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is taking another important step toward combating pay discrimination. The EEOC is proposing to revise the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) to require employers with 100 or more workers to report pay data, and is seeking public comment on its approach.
For decades, the EEOC has collected annual workforce demographic data by race, ethnicity, sex and job category from certain private employers, including federal contractors. Now, for the first time, it would also collect certain pay data to help the EEOC and the Department of Labor identify potential pay discrimination and support employers' voluntary compliance with federal law. The new pay data would provide the EEOC and the Department of Labor with insight into pay disparities within industries and occupations. The agencies would use the pay data to encourage compliance with equal pay laws, assess discrimination complaints, better focus agency resources where there may be disparities, and reduce burdens on other employers.
This new pay data will allow the EEOC to compile and publish aggregated figures that will help employers in conducting their own analysis of their pay practices to assist in their compliance efforts. The Labor Department's Office of Federal Compliance Contract Programs, using other data sources, will also make pay data available to the public. These data will also provide job seekers and workers with information on the aggregate pay for job groups across industries, and by gender, race and ethnicity.
To increase efficiency and minimize the burden on employers, the EEOC and the Department of Labor have chosen to collaborate on the collection of compensation data rather than undertake separate collections. Both agencies recognize the need to streamline data collection and avoid duplicative reporting requirements.
Employers, including federal contractors, have submitted similar reports for many years, and this new pay data collection will build on established practices. Employers and contractors with 100 or more employees would supplement their existing reports with basic pay range information and hours worked data starting in September 2017. To protect worker privacy, employers will not be required to submit individual-level pay data; employers would report the number of employees within set pay bands.
The Obama administration has, from early on, placed a premium on combating pay discrimination. "We're going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws so that women get equal pay for an equal day's work," announced President Obama in his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010. He made good on that promise the following month by unveiling his National Equal Pay Task Force. The task force brought together the EEOC, Department of Labor, Department of Justice and Office of Personnel Management to address pay discrimination and has issued reports on its progress, including Fighting for Equal Pay in the Workforce, Keeping America's Women Moving Forward and Fifty Years After the Equal Pay Act.
In addition to these efforts, the president signed a presidential memorandum in May 2013 directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop a government-wide strategy to address the gender pay gap in the federal workforce, leading to a report in April 2014 and new guidance in July 2015 (which cautioned against required reliance on a candidate's existing salary to set pay, which can potentially adversely affect women who may have taken time off from their careers).
The president also issued an executive order in April 2014 prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees who choose to discuss their pay compensation. And today's proposal to collect compensation data is another step toward making equal pay a reality.
The collection of robust, reliable pay data is an important step toward reducing discrimination and finally closing unfair pay gaps. Close collaboration between the EEOC and the Department of Labor, combined with the agencies' significant enforcement experience, will lead to better information for workers, job seekers and employers; improved compliance with equal pay laws; and, ultimately, greater pay equality across the workforce.
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Today, 57 percent of women work outside the home, but the typical woman working full-time full-year still makes 21 percent less than the typical man working full-time full-year. And the pay gap is significantly greater for women of color: the typical black non-Hispanic woman made only 60 percent of a typical white non-Hispanic man's earnings, while the typical Hispanic woman earned only 55 percent.
That is why today, as the nation commemorates the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is taking another important step toward combating pay discrimination. The EEOC is proposing to revise the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) to require employers with 100 or more workers to report pay data, and is seeking public comment on its approach.
For decades, the EEOC has collected annual workforce demographic data by race, ethnicity, sex and job category from certain private employers, including federal contractors. Now, for the first time, it would also collect certain pay data to help the EEOC and the Department of Labor identify potential pay discrimination and support employers' voluntary compliance with federal law. The new pay data would provide the EEOC and the Department of Labor with insight into pay disparities within industries and occupations. The agencies would use the pay data to encourage compliance with equal pay laws, assess discrimination complaints, better focus agency resources where there may be disparities, and reduce burdens on other employers.
This new pay data will allow the EEOC to compile and publish aggregated figures that will help employers in conducting their own analysis of their pay practices to assist in their compliance efforts. The Labor Department's Office of Federal Compliance Contract Programs, using other data sources, will also make pay data available to the public. These data will also provide job seekers and workers with information on the aggregate pay for job groups across industries, and by gender, race and ethnicity.
To increase efficiency and minimize the burden on employers, the EEOC and the Department of Labor have chosen to collaborate on the collection of compensation data rather than undertake separate collections. Both agencies recognize the need to streamline data collection and avoid duplicative reporting requirements.
Employers, including federal contractors, have submitted similar reports for many years, and this new pay data collection will build on established practices. Employers and contractors with 100 or more employees would supplement their existing reports with basic pay range information and hours worked data starting in September 2017. To protect worker privacy, employers will not be required to submit individual-level pay data; employers would report the number of employees within set pay bands.
The Obama administration has, from early on, placed a premium on combating pay discrimination. "We're going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws so that women get equal pay for an equal day's work," announced President Obama in his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010. He made good on that promise the following month by unveiling his National Equal Pay Task Force. The task force brought together the EEOC, Department of Labor, Department of Justice and Office of Personnel Management to address pay discrimination and has issued reports on its progress, including Fighting for Equal Pay in the Workforce, Keeping America's Women Moving Forward and Fifty Years After the Equal Pay Act.
In addition to these efforts, the president signed a presidential memorandum in May 2013 directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop a government-wide strategy to address the gender pay gap in the federal workforce, leading to a report in April 2014 and new guidance in July 2015 (which cautioned against required reliance on a candidate's existing salary to set pay, which can potentially adversely affect women who may have taken time off from their careers).
The president also issued an executive order in April 2014 prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees who choose to discuss their pay compensation. And today's proposal to collect compensation data is another step toward making equal pay a reality.
The collection of robust, reliable pay data is an important step toward reducing discrimination and finally closing unfair pay gaps. Close collaboration between the EEOC and the Department of Labor, combined with the agencies' significant enforcement experience, will lead to better information for workers, job seekers and employers; improved compliance with equal pay laws; and, ultimately, greater pay equality across the workforce.
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There's a Reason Black Youth Call Chicago 'Chiraq' and It's Not Just Criminals Doing the Shooting
By Fredrick McKissack
There's a reason why young black people call Chicago "Chiraq." It's like a war zone in some neighborhoods. And it's not just gangsters doing the shooting.
A series of high profile shootings of young unarmed black men show the deadly impact of aggressive, sometimes callous and discriminatory police tactics. The latest killing by police involved a young man named Quintinio LeGrier, who called 911 three times asking for an officer to be sent to his address. Police fatally shot LeGrier and a neighbor, community activist Bettie Jones, who opened the door for police.
These deaths, along with the deaths of teenager Laquan McDonald, along with news last year that Chicago detectives kept a CIA-style secret interrogation center for decades, and one can see why thousands of protestors have taken to the streets.
And now a new report release Monday by the University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Initiative shows the extent of the crisis facing young black men in the Windy City.
Almost half - 47 percent - of young black men from the ages of 20 and 24 were out of school and unemployed in 2014.
For both men and women, age 20 to 24, 41 percent were unemployed and out of school.
Meanwhile, only 7 percent of white men and women in that age group were jobless and out of school. For Latinos, the rate was 19 percent.
The U.S. spent an estimated three trillion dollars on blowing up and then rebuilding Iraq. Does not fighting institutional racism and decades of neglect warrant an equal effort in order to save a generation of black youth?
The disparity and the high rates for African American youth is mind-bending, but not a total shock to DeAngelo Bester, co-executive director at the Workers Center for Racial Justice. The data confirmed what he has seen in a decade of organizing and activism in Chicago.
"What you're looking at is a multifaceted problem and a lack of will from City Hall, the county, and Springfield," Bester said. "You're seeing the de-industrialization of Chicago, like the rest of the Midwest, and there aren't the kind of well-paying union jobs that there were in the past. Those jobs are gone."
Chirag Mehta, a Chicago-based senior policy advisor at the Center for Community Change, said federal policies that led to trade blocs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have taken a heavy toll on manufacturing cities such as Chicago. NAFTA eliminated tariffs, customs duties and other barriers to make trade easier between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. But it also reinforced the globalization already happening in the American economy.
"Globalization decimated manufacturing in black neighborhoods," Mehta wrote in an email. "There have been great studies done by scholars at UIC that documented the impact of NAFTA on black employment. These neighborhoods have not recovered. There's also general public disinvestment that followed the loss of good jobs, such as closing schools in poor black neighborhoods, which stripped communities of important anchors for development, for example."
Add to it the large numbers of African Americans involved in the criminal justice system (67 percent of the men admitted daily to the Cook County prison are black), particularly the effects of the farcical, feckless war on drugs that even conservatives have turned against, and the findings cast Chicago's black community as living in a as a Dickensian dystopia.
"We are losing a generation of youth who have no opportunity to work in their neighborhoods," Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Cordova said in a news release in response to the report. "It is a tragedy for those youth and it is a tragedy for the communities they live in and the city as a whole."
The report's writers outlined the long-term effects of unemployment: "increased susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental illness, loss of self-esteem, leading to depression."
Again, it's not surprising that the report demonstrates that low rates of employment are "spatially concentrated in neighborhoods that are also racially segregated."
Indeed, the lowest unemployment rates are on the city's north and northwest side, which are predominately white; the highest unemployment rates are to the south and west, which are predominately black.
While Chicago's economic growth is lagging with slow employment growth in general, according to the Brookings Institute Metro Monitor, it is still one of the wealthiest in the world, ranking 36 out of 300 metropolitan areas for median Gross Domestic Product. And, according the Chicago Tribune , Chicago ranked "No. 8 among top cities worldwide in the amount of commercial real estate investment attracted by the region."
So there is money flowing in. And there is work. It's just not flowing to the black community. Take construction projects, particularly publicly funded works projects. The construction trades, Bester said, have long been known for their collective antipathy toward blacks and Latinos. When confronted, Bester said, the unions blame contractors; the contractors blame unions.
Even the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called out the obvious racist history of Chicago's construction trades after a protest in September 2012 called by legendary business owner Ed Gardner, the founder of Soft Sheen Products, drew 1,000 people and stopped an infrastructure project. Gardner demanded the action after noticing there were no blacks on a work crew fixing a sidewalk near a strip mall in South Chicago, which has a heavy concentration of African Americans.
"Now that we're investing, who's getting the work and who's working on it?" Emanuel said in a radio interview on WVON-AM in response to the protest. He said there needs to be better training to help young people prepare for these jobs.
But it's not as simple as training, Bester reiterated.
"It's an industry that has been highly exclusionary, with explicit racism and bias. How do we get these young men from the street corner on to a construction site?"
Bester said his organization is looking at a number of strategies for increasing employment, including offering tax credits to perspective employers--but those credits go with the worker. He also believes money saved in decriminalization ought to go directly to underserved communities.
Chicago's black 20 to 24 year olds fare worse than their racial peers in New York and Los Angeles, as well as nationwide. But that's not to say black youth outside of Chicago are living the dream. Nationally, almost three in 10 African Americans from 20 to 24 were unemployed and out of school in 2014, nearly twice as many as their white peers. The rate for Latinos was 20 percent.
There is no one solution. However, one would be hard-pressed to draw a conclusion that would place the blame on the unemployed rather than a country that is still wrecked by institutional racism, the grip of which gets tighter as globalization has extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of the economy.
Fred McKissack is a writing fellow for the Center for Community Change.
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There's a reason why young black people call Chicago "Chiraq." It's like a war zone in some neighborhoods. And it's not just gangsters doing the shooting.
A series of high profile shootings of young unarmed black men show the deadly impact of aggressive, sometimes callous and discriminatory police tactics. The latest killing by police involved a young man named Quintinio LeGrier, who called 911 three times asking for an officer to be sent to his address. Police fatally shot LeGrier and a neighbor, community activist Bettie Jones, who opened the door for police.
These deaths, along with the deaths of teenager Laquan McDonald, along with news last year that Chicago detectives kept a CIA-style secret interrogation center for decades, and one can see why thousands of protestors have taken to the streets.
And now a new report release Monday by the University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Initiative shows the extent of the crisis facing young black men in the Windy City.
Almost half - 47 percent - of young black men from the ages of 20 and 24 were out of school and unemployed in 2014.
For both men and women, age 20 to 24, 41 percent were unemployed and out of school.
Meanwhile, only 7 percent of white men and women in that age group were jobless and out of school. For Latinos, the rate was 19 percent.
The U.S. spent an estimated three trillion dollars on blowing up and then rebuilding Iraq. Does not fighting institutional racism and decades of neglect warrant an equal effort in order to save a generation of black youth?
The disparity and the high rates for African American youth is mind-bending, but not a total shock to DeAngelo Bester, co-executive director at the Workers Center for Racial Justice. The data confirmed what he has seen in a decade of organizing and activism in Chicago.
"What you're looking at is a multifaceted problem and a lack of will from City Hall, the county, and Springfield," Bester said. "You're seeing the de-industrialization of Chicago, like the rest of the Midwest, and there aren't the kind of well-paying union jobs that there were in the past. Those jobs are gone."
Chirag Mehta, a Chicago-based senior policy advisor at the Center for Community Change, said federal policies that led to trade blocs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have taken a heavy toll on manufacturing cities such as Chicago. NAFTA eliminated tariffs, customs duties and other barriers to make trade easier between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. But it also reinforced the globalization already happening in the American economy.
"Globalization decimated manufacturing in black neighborhoods," Mehta wrote in an email. "There have been great studies done by scholars at UIC that documented the impact of NAFTA on black employment. These neighborhoods have not recovered. There's also general public disinvestment that followed the loss of good jobs, such as closing schools in poor black neighborhoods, which stripped communities of important anchors for development, for example."
Add to it the large numbers of African Americans involved in the criminal justice system (67 percent of the men admitted daily to the Cook County prison are black), particularly the effects of the farcical, feckless war on drugs that even conservatives have turned against, and the findings cast Chicago's black community as living in a as a Dickensian dystopia.
"We are losing a generation of youth who have no opportunity to work in their neighborhoods," Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Cordova said in a news release in response to the report. "It is a tragedy for those youth and it is a tragedy for the communities they live in and the city as a whole."
The report's writers outlined the long-term effects of unemployment: "increased susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental illness, loss of self-esteem, leading to depression."
Again, it's not surprising that the report demonstrates that low rates of employment are "spatially concentrated in neighborhoods that are also racially segregated."
Indeed, the lowest unemployment rates are on the city's north and northwest side, which are predominately white; the highest unemployment rates are to the south and west, which are predominately black.
While Chicago's economic growth is lagging with slow employment growth in general, according to the Brookings Institute Metro Monitor, it is still one of the wealthiest in the world, ranking 36 out of 300 metropolitan areas for median Gross Domestic Product. And, according the Chicago Tribune , Chicago ranked "No. 8 among top cities worldwide in the amount of commercial real estate investment attracted by the region."
So there is money flowing in. And there is work. It's just not flowing to the black community. Take construction projects, particularly publicly funded works projects. The construction trades, Bester said, have long been known for their collective antipathy toward blacks and Latinos. When confronted, Bester said, the unions blame contractors; the contractors blame unions.
Even the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called out the obvious racist history of Chicago's construction trades after a protest in September 2012 called by legendary business owner Ed Gardner, the founder of Soft Sheen Products, drew 1,000 people and stopped an infrastructure project. Gardner demanded the action after noticing there were no blacks on a work crew fixing a sidewalk near a strip mall in South Chicago, which has a heavy concentration of African Americans.
"Now that we're investing, who's getting the work and who's working on it?" Emanuel said in a radio interview on WVON-AM in response to the protest. He said there needs to be better training to help young people prepare for these jobs.
But it's not as simple as training, Bester reiterated.
"It's an industry that has been highly exclusionary, with explicit racism and bias. How do we get these young men from the street corner on to a construction site?"
Bester said his organization is looking at a number of strategies for increasing employment, including offering tax credits to perspective employers--but those credits go with the worker. He also believes money saved in decriminalization ought to go directly to underserved communities.
Chicago's black 20 to 24 year olds fare worse than their racial peers in New York and Los Angeles, as well as nationwide. But that's not to say black youth outside of Chicago are living the dream. Nationally, almost three in 10 African Americans from 20 to 24 were unemployed and out of school in 2014, nearly twice as many as their white peers. The rate for Latinos was 20 percent.
There is no one solution. However, one would be hard-pressed to draw a conclusion that would place the blame on the unemployed rather than a country that is still wrecked by institutional racism, the grip of which gets tighter as globalization has extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of the economy.
Fred McKissack is a writing fellow for the Center for Community Change.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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I Support Bernie Sanders, And I'm Not Stupid or Unrealistic
Today, I read for maybe the 10,000th time an assertion that supporters of Bernie Sanders are unrealistic, that Bernie Sanders supporters will all be disappointed if they elect him because he won't be able to bring the change he's promising, that Bernie Sanders's policies will be "just another example of Democrats making promises they can't keep," and so on and so forth. And I'd like to briefly dispel a misconception about people who support Bernie Sanders as the next president of the United States:
We're not stupid.
I've got a college education and a good job, and I'm guessing I'm not the only Sanders supporter who does. Now, this doesn't necessarily make me smart, but it is at least an indicator of having achieved some level of learning that would indicate that I'm capable of coherent and independent thought.
And guess what? Neither many of the Bernie Sanders supporters I've encountered nor I expect any of Bernie Sanders' major proposals to take effect in the next 2, 3 or possibly even 4 years. I don't support Bernie Sanders simply because I think he'll magically overturn Citizens United, fix our indisputably broken campaign finance system, legalize marijuana, eliminate privately owned prisons, institute a single-payer healthcare system, crack down on Wall Street, or pass most of his other proposals within his first year of office.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I, like presumably most Americans who support Bernie Sanders, do not expect miracles.
What I do expect, by electing Bernie Sanders, is to have an honest president whom Americans can trust at all times to be completely sincere, and who will work as hard as he can to represent the interests of the American people. By electing Bernie Sanders, I expect that the leader of our country will actually represent me and not just major corporations who are cutting him big checks. And no, I don't get the sense that Hillary Clinton possesses any of those qualities. Decidedly.
And you know what? Maybe the "political revolution" Bernie Sanders keeps talking about won't happen. Maybe electing Bernie Sanders will put him in office for 4 years, nothing productive will happen, and once his term is over, we'll be back to "politics as usual" and huge corporations like Comcast and pharmaceutical and insurance companies and huge financial institutions will go right back to doing whatever they want because hey, they run things and they have money, so who's going to stop them, right?
But if Bernie Sanders is elected president, then maybe, just maybe, things will change. And that's worth a vote. That's worth trying.
(Not to mention: the Affordable Care Act was never "supposed" to make it, and remember what happened there? Also worth noting that Bernie Sanders helped write it. Implementation has been far from perfect, but he still got it passed.)
And if Bernie Sanders is elected president and this whole "political revolution" thing we all keep talking about actually does happen, then think of the possibilities. We are at a point in our history when we, as citizens this country, can legitimately make the United States of America the indisputable greatest country on earth. We have the rare opportunity to lead the world by example in showing what a government can do when it isn't corrupt and solely focused on making a handful of individuals disproportionately wealthy.
THAT is what I'm voting for. I'm voting for the hope, the possibility, that things will change--realistically, over time. And electing Bernie Sanders will send a clear message--to corporations, to the media, to our current elected officials, and to anyone progressive who's thinking about running for office but doesn't believe in getting support--that enough is enough, and that it's time to start listening to the public and not just to a board room full of campaign donors.
Electing Bernie Sanders is pushing a snowball off the top of a mountain and seeing how far it will roll.
So stop assuming that Bernie Sanders supports are unrealistic or stupid, because we're not. Call us hopeful, call us idealists, call us optimists, but don't call us unrealistic or stupid. And stop underestimating us.
As a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I fully recognize that this whole "political revolution" thing is not a guarantee. But right now, the opportunity to start one is a whole lot more appealing to me than the status quo.
Learn more about where Bernie Sanders stands on the issues at http://feelthebern.org.
This post originally appeared on CodyGough.com.
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We're not stupid.
I've got a college education and a good job, and I'm guessing I'm not the only Sanders supporter who does. Now, this doesn't necessarily make me smart, but it is at least an indicator of having achieved some level of learning that would indicate that I'm capable of coherent and independent thought.
And guess what? Neither many of the Bernie Sanders supporters I've encountered nor I expect any of Bernie Sanders' major proposals to take effect in the next 2, 3 or possibly even 4 years. I don't support Bernie Sanders simply because I think he'll magically overturn Citizens United, fix our indisputably broken campaign finance system, legalize marijuana, eliminate privately owned prisons, institute a single-payer healthcare system, crack down on Wall Street, or pass most of his other proposals within his first year of office.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I, like presumably most Americans who support Bernie Sanders, do not expect miracles.
What I do expect, by electing Bernie Sanders, is to have an honest president whom Americans can trust at all times to be completely sincere, and who will work as hard as he can to represent the interests of the American people. By electing Bernie Sanders, I expect that the leader of our country will actually represent me and not just major corporations who are cutting him big checks. And no, I don't get the sense that Hillary Clinton possesses any of those qualities. Decidedly.
And you know what? Maybe the "political revolution" Bernie Sanders keeps talking about won't happen. Maybe electing Bernie Sanders will put him in office for 4 years, nothing productive will happen, and once his term is over, we'll be back to "politics as usual" and huge corporations like Comcast and pharmaceutical and insurance companies and huge financial institutions will go right back to doing whatever they want because hey, they run things and they have money, so who's going to stop them, right?
But if Bernie Sanders is elected president, then maybe, just maybe, things will change. And that's worth a vote. That's worth trying.
(Not to mention: the Affordable Care Act was never "supposed" to make it, and remember what happened there? Also worth noting that Bernie Sanders helped write it. Implementation has been far from perfect, but he still got it passed.)
And if Bernie Sanders is elected president and this whole "political revolution" thing we all keep talking about actually does happen, then think of the possibilities. We are at a point in our history when we, as citizens this country, can legitimately make the United States of America the indisputable greatest country on earth. We have the rare opportunity to lead the world by example in showing what a government can do when it isn't corrupt and solely focused on making a handful of individuals disproportionately wealthy.
THAT is what I'm voting for. I'm voting for the hope, the possibility, that things will change--realistically, over time. And electing Bernie Sanders will send a clear message--to corporations, to the media, to our current elected officials, and to anyone progressive who's thinking about running for office but doesn't believe in getting support--that enough is enough, and that it's time to start listening to the public and not just to a board room full of campaign donors.
Electing Bernie Sanders is pushing a snowball off the top of a mountain and seeing how far it will roll.
So stop assuming that Bernie Sanders supports are unrealistic or stupid, because we're not. Call us hopeful, call us idealists, call us optimists, but don't call us unrealistic or stupid. And stop underestimating us.
As a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I fully recognize that this whole "political revolution" thing is not a guarantee. But right now, the opportunity to start one is a whole lot more appealing to me than the status quo.
Learn more about where Bernie Sanders stands on the issues at http://feelthebern.org.
This post originally appeared on CodyGough.com.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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There's a Reason Black Youth Call Chicago 'Chiraq' and It's Not Just Criminals Doing the Shooting
By Fredrick McKissack
There's a reason why young black people call Chicago "Chiraq." It's like a war zone in some neighborhoods. And it's not just gangsters doing the shooting.
A series of high profile shootings of young unarmed black men show the deadly impact of aggressive, sometimes callous and discriminatory police tactics. The latest killing by police involved a young man named Quintinio LeGrier, who called 911 three times asking for an officer to be sent to his address. Police fatally shot LeGrier and a neighbor, community activist Bettie Jones, who opened the door for police.
These deaths, along with the deaths of teenager Laquan McDonald, along with news last year that Chicago detectives kept a CIA-style secret interrogation center for decades, and one can see why thousands of protestors have taken to the streets.
And now a new report release Monday by the University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Initiative shows the extent of the crisis facing young black men in the Windy City.
Almost half - 47 percent - of young black men from the ages of 20 and 24 were out of school and unemployed in 2014.
For both men and women, age 20 to 24, 41 percent were unemployed and out of school.
Meanwhile, only 7 percent of white men and women in that age group were jobless and out of school. For Latinos, the rate was 19 percent.
The U.S. spent an estimated three trillion dollars on blowing up and then rebuilding Iraq. Does not fighting institutional racism and decades of neglect warrant an equal effort in order to save a generation of black youth?
The disparity and the high rates for African American youth is mind-bending, but not a total shock to DeAngelo Bester, co-executive director at the Workers Center for Racial Justice. The data confirmed what he has seen in a decade of organizing and activism in Chicago.
"What you're looking at is a multifaceted problem and a lack of will from City Hall, the county, and Springfield," Bester said. "You're seeing the de-industrialization of Chicago, like the rest of the Midwest, and there aren't the kind of well-paying union jobs that there were in the past. Those jobs are gone."
Chirag Mehta, a Chicago-based senior policy advisor at the Center for Community Change, said federal policies that led to trade blocs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have taken a heavy toll on manufacturing cities such as Chicago. NAFTA eliminated tariffs, customs duties and other barriers to make trade easier between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. But it also reinforced the globalization already happening in the American economy.
"Globalization decimated manufacturing in black neighborhoods," Mehta wrote in an email. "There have been great studies done by scholars at UIC that documented the impact of NAFTA on black employment. These neighborhoods have not recovered. There's also general public disinvestment that followed the loss of good jobs, such as closing schools in poor black neighborhoods, which stripped communities of important anchors for development, for example."
Add to it the large numbers of African Americans involved in the criminal justice system (67 percent of the men admitted daily to the Cook County prison are black), particularly the effects of the farcical, feckless war on drugs that even conservatives have turned against, and the findings cast Chicago's black community as living in a as a Dickensian dystopia.
"We are losing a generation of youth who have no opportunity to work in their neighborhoods," Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Cordova said in a news release in response to the report. "It is a tragedy for those youth and it is a tragedy for the communities they live in and the city as a whole."
The report's writers outlined the long-term effects of unemployment: "increased susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental illness, loss of self-esteem, leading to depression."
Again, it's not surprising that the report demonstrates that low rates of employment are "spatially concentrated in neighborhoods that are also racially segregated."
Indeed, the lowest unemployment rates are on the city's north and northwest side, which are predominately white; the highest unemployment rates are to the south and west, which are predominately black.
While Chicago's economic growth is lagging with slow employment growth in general, according to the Brookings Institute Metro Monitor, it is still one of the wealthiest in the world, ranking 36 out of 300 metropolitan areas for median Gross Domestic Product. And, according the Chicago Tribune , Chicago ranked "No. 8 among top cities worldwide in the amount of commercial real estate investment attracted by the region."
So there is money flowing in. And there is work. It's just not flowing to the black community. Take construction projects, particularly publicly funded works projects. The construction trades, Bester said, have long been known for their collective antipathy toward blacks and Latinos. When confronted, Bester said, the unions blame contractors; the contractors blame unions.
Even the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called out the obvious racist history of Chicago's construction trades after a protest in September 2012 called by legendary business owner Ed Gardner, the founder of Soft Sheen Products, drew 1,000 people and stopped an infrastructure project. Gardner demanded the action after noticing there were no blacks on a work crew fixing a sidewalk near a strip mall in South Chicago, which has a heavy concentration of African Americans.
"Now that we're investing, who's getting the work and who's working on it?" Emanuel said in a radio interview on WVON-AM in response to the protest. He said there needs to be better training to help young people prepare for these jobs.
But it's not as simple as training, Bester reiterated.
"It's an industry that has been highly exclusionary, with explicit racism and bias. How do we get these young men from the street corner on to a construction site?"
Bester said his organization is looking at a number of strategies for increasing employment, including offering tax credits to perspective employers--but those credits go with the worker. He also believes money saved in decriminalization ought to go directly to underserved communities.
Chicago's black 20 to 24 year olds fare worse than their racial peers in New York and Los Angeles, as well as nationwide. But that's not to say black youth outside of Chicago are living the dream. Nationally, almost three in 10 African Americans from 20 to 24 were unemployed and out of school in 2014, nearly twice as many as their white peers. The rate for Latinos was 20 percent.
There is no one solution. However, one would be hard-pressed to draw a conclusion that would place the blame on the unemployed rather than a country that is still wrecked by institutional racism, the grip of which gets tighter as globalization has extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of the economy.
Fred McKissack is a writing fellow for the Center for Community Change.
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There's a reason why young black people call Chicago "Chiraq." It's like a war zone in some neighborhoods. And it's not just gangsters doing the shooting.
A series of high profile shootings of young unarmed black men show the deadly impact of aggressive, sometimes callous and discriminatory police tactics. The latest killing by police involved a young man named Quintinio LeGrier, who called 911 three times asking for an officer to be sent to his address. Police fatally shot LeGrier and a neighbor, community activist Bettie Jones, who opened the door for police.
These deaths, along with the deaths of teenager Laquan McDonald, along with news last year that Chicago detectives kept a CIA-style secret interrogation center for decades, and one can see why thousands of protestors have taken to the streets.
And now a new report release Monday by the University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Initiative shows the extent of the crisis facing young black men in the Windy City.
Almost half - 47 percent - of young black men from the ages of 20 and 24 were out of school and unemployed in 2014.
For both men and women, age 20 to 24, 41 percent were unemployed and out of school.
Meanwhile, only 7 percent of white men and women in that age group were jobless and out of school. For Latinos, the rate was 19 percent.
The U.S. spent an estimated three trillion dollars on blowing up and then rebuilding Iraq. Does not fighting institutional racism and decades of neglect warrant an equal effort in order to save a generation of black youth?
The disparity and the high rates for African American youth is mind-bending, but not a total shock to DeAngelo Bester, co-executive director at the Workers Center for Racial Justice. The data confirmed what he has seen in a decade of organizing and activism in Chicago.
"What you're looking at is a multifaceted problem and a lack of will from City Hall, the county, and Springfield," Bester said. "You're seeing the de-industrialization of Chicago, like the rest of the Midwest, and there aren't the kind of well-paying union jobs that there were in the past. Those jobs are gone."
Chirag Mehta, a Chicago-based senior policy advisor at the Center for Community Change, said federal policies that led to trade blocs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have taken a heavy toll on manufacturing cities such as Chicago. NAFTA eliminated tariffs, customs duties and other barriers to make trade easier between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. But it also reinforced the globalization already happening in the American economy.
"Globalization decimated manufacturing in black neighborhoods," Mehta wrote in an email. "There have been great studies done by scholars at UIC that documented the impact of NAFTA on black employment. These neighborhoods have not recovered. There's also general public disinvestment that followed the loss of good jobs, such as closing schools in poor black neighborhoods, which stripped communities of important anchors for development, for example."
Add to it the large numbers of African Americans involved in the criminal justice system (67 percent of the men admitted daily to the Cook County prison are black), particularly the effects of the farcical, feckless war on drugs that even conservatives have turned against, and the findings cast Chicago's black community as living in a as a Dickensian dystopia.
"We are losing a generation of youth who have no opportunity to work in their neighborhoods," Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Cordova said in a news release in response to the report. "It is a tragedy for those youth and it is a tragedy for the communities they live in and the city as a whole."
The report's writers outlined the long-term effects of unemployment: "increased susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental illness, loss of self-esteem, leading to depression."
Again, it's not surprising that the report demonstrates that low rates of employment are "spatially concentrated in neighborhoods that are also racially segregated."
Indeed, the lowest unemployment rates are on the city's north and northwest side, which are predominately white; the highest unemployment rates are to the south and west, which are predominately black.
While Chicago's economic growth is lagging with slow employment growth in general, according to the Brookings Institute Metro Monitor, it is still one of the wealthiest in the world, ranking 36 out of 300 metropolitan areas for median Gross Domestic Product. And, according the Chicago Tribune , Chicago ranked "No. 8 among top cities worldwide in the amount of commercial real estate investment attracted by the region."
So there is money flowing in. And there is work. It's just not flowing to the black community. Take construction projects, particularly publicly funded works projects. The construction trades, Bester said, have long been known for their collective antipathy toward blacks and Latinos. When confronted, Bester said, the unions blame contractors; the contractors blame unions.
Even the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, called out the obvious racist history of Chicago's construction trades after a protest in September 2012 called by legendary business owner Ed Gardner, the founder of Soft Sheen Products, drew 1,000 people and stopped an infrastructure project. Gardner demanded the action after noticing there were no blacks on a work crew fixing a sidewalk near a strip mall in South Chicago, which has a heavy concentration of African Americans.
"Now that we're investing, who's getting the work and who's working on it?" Emanuel said in a radio interview on WVON-AM in response to the protest. He said there needs to be better training to help young people prepare for these jobs.
But it's not as simple as training, Bester reiterated.
"It's an industry that has been highly exclusionary, with explicit racism and bias. How do we get these young men from the street corner on to a construction site?"
Bester said his organization is looking at a number of strategies for increasing employment, including offering tax credits to perspective employers--but those credits go with the worker. He also believes money saved in decriminalization ought to go directly to underserved communities.
Chicago's black 20 to 24 year olds fare worse than their racial peers in New York and Los Angeles, as well as nationwide. But that's not to say black youth outside of Chicago are living the dream. Nationally, almost three in 10 African Americans from 20 to 24 were unemployed and out of school in 2014, nearly twice as many as their white peers. The rate for Latinos was 20 percent.
There is no one solution. However, one would be hard-pressed to draw a conclusion that would place the blame on the unemployed rather than a country that is still wrecked by institutional racism, the grip of which gets tighter as globalization has extracted a heavy toll on all sectors of the economy.
Fred McKissack is a writing fellow for the Center for Community Change.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Thursday, January 28, 2016
Presidential Politics and the American Soul
When I want to believe that America is a democracy -- indeed, to feel so deeply this is so that my soul trembles -- I turn to Martin Luther King, who gave his life for it.
He cried out for something so much more than a process: a game of winners and losers. He reached for humanity's deepest yearning, for the connectedness of all people, for the transcendence of hatred and the demonization of "the other." He spoke -- half a century ago -- the words that those in power couldn't bear to hear, because his truths cut too deep and disrupted too much business as usual.
But what else is a democracy than that?
"Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war..."
Uh oh. This ain't politics as usual. This is King standing in the oval office, staring directly into the eyes of LBJ, declaring that civil rights legislation isn't a political favor but merely the beginning of a nation's moral atonement.
"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."
These words were part of the stunning address King delivered -- on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before his assassination -- at Riverside Church in New York City. To read these words today, in the context of the 2016 presidential race and the mainstream media's inevitable focus on stats and trivia rather than big issues, is to realize how utterly relevant this man and the movement he helped awaken remain today. To read King's words in 2016 is to rip this man out of a sentimentalized sainthood and to bring him back to living relevance.
What he had to say to the political leaders of the time must not be reduced to a few phrases carved in granite; they must be heard anew, in all their disturbing fullness. I say this not because his "day" recently passed and I'm somewhat tardily "remembering" him, but because the 2016 presidential race needs King's presence -- his uncompromised wisdom -- standing tough against the media and political status quo that is now trying desperately to mute the unapproved voices spurting forth in this campaign and pulling the electorate's attention away from the approved, mainstream candidates they're supposed to choose between.
Paul Krugman, for instance, representing the liberal wing of the status quo, came out for compromise and Hillary the other day, dismissing Bernie Sanders not out of a specific disagreement with any of his positions but because of a contempt for the "contingent of idealistic voters eager to believe that a sufficiently high-minded leader can conjure up the better angels of America's nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions."
This is how to make sure that a self-proclaimed democracy is really a faux-democracy, flawed, perhaps, but plugging along in the right direction and basically healthy, with its biggest threat not unrestrained militarism or unregulated corporate capitalism but . . . oh, universal health care. See, that's radical.
I have yet to hear the status-quo media call the poisoning of the Flint, Mich., water supply, or the daily police shootings of young men or women of color -- or the multi-trillion-dollar failure known as the war on terror -- "radical," but a candidate who wants to give a serious push for policies of social betterment (and calls himself a socialist) is radical. He's purveying false hope, disrespecting the sacred act of political compromise and dangerously trying to establish, or re-establish, the precedent that the public should get what it needs, even if those needs override the quietly laid plans of the nation's military-industrial consensus.
Indeed, that consensus is never asked to compromise or, good God, subjected to public scrutiny -- except, of course, by radicals.
This brings me back to King's Riverside Church speech, which had the audacity to be visionary, to challenge the United States at its deepest levels of being -- which is something that ought to happen during a presidential race. King looked directly at the hell we were inflicting on Vietnam and called not simply for an end to that war but an examination of the national soul.
"This," he said, "I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."
The war King was crying out against ended eight years after that 1967 speech, but the poison did not disappear from the country's soul. There was no atonement, no real change, only, ultimately, a retrenching and regrouping of the military-industrial consensus. Thus, King's words remain as urgent and prescient today as when he first uttered them.
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. . . .
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."
Would that Bernie Sanders spoke with such radicalism -- or drew such a clear connection between social deprivation and militarism.
Beyond that, however, I must ask, in light of the words of Martin Luther King, what kind of democracy is too terrified, and too cowardly, to examine its own soul and reach toward values that are bigger than its short-term interests? And why do we not have a media rooted in these values and committed to holding politicians accountable to them?
- - -
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.
© 2016 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.
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He cried out for something so much more than a process: a game of winners and losers. He reached for humanity's deepest yearning, for the connectedness of all people, for the transcendence of hatred and the demonization of "the other." He spoke -- half a century ago -- the words that those in power couldn't bear to hear, because his truths cut too deep and disrupted too much business as usual.
But what else is a democracy than that?
"Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war..."
Uh oh. This ain't politics as usual. This is King standing in the oval office, staring directly into the eyes of LBJ, declaring that civil rights legislation isn't a political favor but merely the beginning of a nation's moral atonement.
"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."
These words were part of the stunning address King delivered -- on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before his assassination -- at Riverside Church in New York City. To read these words today, in the context of the 2016 presidential race and the mainstream media's inevitable focus on stats and trivia rather than big issues, is to realize how utterly relevant this man and the movement he helped awaken remain today. To read King's words in 2016 is to rip this man out of a sentimentalized sainthood and to bring him back to living relevance.
What he had to say to the political leaders of the time must not be reduced to a few phrases carved in granite; they must be heard anew, in all their disturbing fullness. I say this not because his "day" recently passed and I'm somewhat tardily "remembering" him, but because the 2016 presidential race needs King's presence -- his uncompromised wisdom -- standing tough against the media and political status quo that is now trying desperately to mute the unapproved voices spurting forth in this campaign and pulling the electorate's attention away from the approved, mainstream candidates they're supposed to choose between.
Paul Krugman, for instance, representing the liberal wing of the status quo, came out for compromise and Hillary the other day, dismissing Bernie Sanders not out of a specific disagreement with any of his positions but because of a contempt for the "contingent of idealistic voters eager to believe that a sufficiently high-minded leader can conjure up the better angels of America's nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions."
This is how to make sure that a self-proclaimed democracy is really a faux-democracy, flawed, perhaps, but plugging along in the right direction and basically healthy, with its biggest threat not unrestrained militarism or unregulated corporate capitalism but . . . oh, universal health care. See, that's radical.
I have yet to hear the status-quo media call the poisoning of the Flint, Mich., water supply, or the daily police shootings of young men or women of color -- or the multi-trillion-dollar failure known as the war on terror -- "radical," but a candidate who wants to give a serious push for policies of social betterment (and calls himself a socialist) is radical. He's purveying false hope, disrespecting the sacred act of political compromise and dangerously trying to establish, or re-establish, the precedent that the public should get what it needs, even if those needs override the quietly laid plans of the nation's military-industrial consensus.
Indeed, that consensus is never asked to compromise or, good God, subjected to public scrutiny -- except, of course, by radicals.
This brings me back to King's Riverside Church speech, which had the audacity to be visionary, to challenge the United States at its deepest levels of being -- which is something that ought to happen during a presidential race. King looked directly at the hell we were inflicting on Vietnam and called not simply for an end to that war but an examination of the national soul.
"This," he said, "I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."
The war King was crying out against ended eight years after that 1967 speech, but the poison did not disappear from the country's soul. There was no atonement, no real change, only, ultimately, a retrenching and regrouping of the military-industrial consensus. Thus, King's words remain as urgent and prescient today as when he first uttered them.
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. . . .
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."
Would that Bernie Sanders spoke with such radicalism -- or drew such a clear connection between social deprivation and militarism.
Beyond that, however, I must ask, in light of the words of Martin Luther King, what kind of democracy is too terrified, and too cowardly, to examine its own soul and reach toward values that are bigger than its short-term interests? And why do we not have a media rooted in these values and committed to holding politicians accountable to them?
- - -
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.
© 2016 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.
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States Crack Down On Police 'Stingray' Tech That Can Intercept Your Texts
You might not realize it, but your text messages and phone calls could be intercepted by local police on the hunt for a suspect. This is a practice widely used across the country, and a handful of states are trying to place limits on the controversial technology that makes it possible.
New legislation proposed last week in Illinois makes this state the most recent to attempt a crackdown on the use of so-called "stingray" devices, also known as "cell site simulators." While this tech is meant to capture cell phone data from suspected criminals, it's used to sweep up data from a large area and can pull in text and call content from innocent civilians. The devices mimic cell phone towers, tricking cell phones into connecting to them.
Illinois' bill, introduced by State Senator Daniel Biss, would require police to obtain a warrant before switching on the stingrays and would force police to delete civilians' text and call records accidentally collected during an investigation.
Police in 23 states are known to have stingray devices, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Four states have already passed laws requiring police to get a warrant before using stingrays, per ABC Chicago affiliate WLS.
Sponsors of the proposed Illinois law say the warrantless collection of civilian phone data, even if it’s accidental, could violate privacy rights. Civil liberties groups are also worried.
"We are concerned with assuring that the devices operate within our accepted constitutional framework," Edwin Yohnka, the public policy and communications director the American Civil Liberties Union told The Huffington Post in an email Wednesday.
Under the proposed law, he said, “If you or I were in an area where a stingray is being used, government won’t have a record of that fact -- we are therefore free to travel without that surveillance."
If passed, the proposed surveillance legislation would bring Illinois in line with federal law. In October, the Department of Justice announced new rules requiring federal investigators to obtain a warrant before using stingrays. But the rules don’t apply to local police.
Illinois's police practices came into the national spotlight last year after Chicago officer Jason Van Dyke was charged in the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
Law enforcement officials say that stingrays help them catch criminals. But federal investigators haven't disclosed much information about how and when such devices are used. In one case, feds seized stingray records from a local police department to keep them out of the hands of watchdog groups.
State Representative Ann Williams, who sponsored the bill in the Illinois House of Representatives, hopes the proposed legislation will help protect rights in an era of rapid technological change.
"Basic protections are no different because of advancing technology. The law has to keep up with it," Williams told the Chicago Tribune last week.
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Time to End the Illinois Hostage Stand-Off
Illinois’s former Governor Edgar had it right months ago. Edgar characterized current Governor Rauner’s refusal to negotiate a budget until he wins concessions on his ideological policy agenda as “hostage taking.”
Governor Rauner’s plan all along has been to force opponents to agree to his “Turnaround Agenda” before he will agree to engage in the budget process, including ensuring the revenues needed for a responsible budget. He set that situation up by asking the Democrats in the General Assembly to allow the temporary 5% income tax to expire a year ago, when it could have been extended prior to his being sworn in as governor. Governor Rauner wanted to propose his own budget solution. His own budget solution last February was to announce that he would not even consider or negotiate revenue until he had won the Turnaround Agenda.
In other words, as Governor Edgar disapprovingly noted, Governor Rauner announced that he had taken hostages. Infants, children, seniors, people with disabilities, students, victims of violence and many others in need of state services are all being held hostage to Governor Rauner’s no-revenue budget proposal.
Like most hostage-takers, Governor Rauner knew that if his demands were not met, at some point the hostages would have to begin to die, literally or figuratively. And, sure enough, the dying is underway.
For months now, thousands of service providers have been making layoffs and reducing services because of the state not paying them for services rendered. Last week the situation went to another level. Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (LSSI) announced late last week that, due solely to the state’s failure to pay over $6 million for services LSSI has rendered since last July, it is laying off 750 workers—43% of its workforce—and shutting down vital services for almost 5,000 people. The termination of these services—including residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health counseling, and help for homebound senior citizens—is not a consequence of a budget cut or a policy change; it is simply caused by the state’s failure to pay for services already rendered—one side keeping a contract, the other welching.
LSSI, by all accounts, is an exemplary, responsible, low-overhead, values-driven provider of essential services to people deeply in need. LSSI partners with the state to implement state policies. But LSSI’s “partner” turned it into a hostage and let LSSI and the people it serves be casualties of the hostage stand-off.
Another example: low-income students at the state’s public and private colleges and universities are dropping out of school by the thousands as the state fails to pay need-based student financial aid for which the students qualify and which they were promised. Many students cannot afford to start the second semester this month and are dropping out.Their schools “fronted” the grants in the first semester but cannot afford the millions of dollars it would cost to cover for the state again this semester.
All of these students are from low-income families, and virtually all of them are African American or Hispanic. They were following a dream of upward economic mobility through their own study and work—the American Dream. What kind of “Turnaround Agenda,” purportedly meant to strengthen Illinois’s economic picture, blocks the upward striving of low-income minority students and treats them as dispensable hostages?
In our form of government, the executive branch, led by the Governor, has the duty to “execute” state laws and policies—to govern. The Governor has decided instead that those laws and policies and the people they are meant to serve should be hostages.
Governor Rauner has every right to pursue a policy agenda, which he can do without abdicating his constitutional duty to govern. He can push his agenda through the legislative process. If he is forced to compromise because of political realities, then he can work to win more elections for people who agree with him. Through it all, however, he should have the sense of duty to govern. It is time to end the hostage stand-off and return to responsible governance.
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