On Monday, December 3rd, activists began offering bread and soup to feed the lines that formed in Federal Plaza, and after three days of breadlines, we saw the erection of the shantytown called Durbinville. It is long past time for people to recognize the relationship between the suffering Americans endured under Herbert Hoover and what we suffer today. People are calling our leaders to make good on the trust of the people who voted for them and finally "reverse the policies of the previous administration", as FDR was able to boast in his pivotal 1934 State of the Union Address. The event and photos of the shantytown protest
CIMC Alerts Blog
|
Memorial service for Aaron Swartz to be held in Highland Park, Jan. 15 The funeral of Aaron Swartz, the Chicago-born internet activist and computer programmer, who killed himself on Friday facing overblown criminal charges, will take place in Highland Park, Illinois, on January 15th. (By the way, the government announced it will drop charges against Swartz.) |
|
Welcome back, WZRD WZRD (88.3 FM) radio in Chicago -- a longtime hub of progressive news, talk, and music -- returned back this weekend to its member DJs after a six-month-long lockout. |
Featured Stories
Posted: Wed, 2012-12-12 05:36
Locality: Local
Posted: Sat, 2012-11-24 20:30
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Chicago area Wal-Marts today as holiday shoppers crowded the stores for Black Friday sales. A group of Wal-Mart employees called the Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart (OUR Walmart) transported protesters around the city in buses. Protesters want the nation’s largest retailer to offer more dependable schedules, better health care and higher wages to employees.
PHOTO CREDIT: http://johngress.com/
http://www.wbez.org/news/labor-groups-employees-protest-during-black-fri...
Posted: Fri, 2012-09-21 19:31
Locality: Local
On Tuesday, September 18th, the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates voted 98 percent to 2 percent to end its nine-day-long strike, the first CTU strike in 25 years. The proposed deal includes a marked salary increase for teachers and the right for teachers to make their own lesson plans. The deal also excludes the threatened elimination of merit pay, lanes (achievement for advanced degrees) and steps (achievement for experience). When asked on Democracy Now! if the CTU won this strike, CTU president Karen Lewis responded: "Absolutely".
And yet, concerns remain over the public education in Chicago, over the detailed language in the deal will actually remain, over the corporatization and neoliberalization of public education in Chicago, and over attempts to break the union. Meanwhile, American schools remain largely segregated on racial and economic lines, and the Rahm "strike is over" television advertisement was paid for by an anti-teachers-union group.
Additional Links: Caucus of Rank and File Educators | Dean Baker: Chicago School Teachers Give Us All a Lesson | A Victory for Solidarity and Struggle | The War on Public Schools | Cartoon: Rahm's Replacement Teachers
Posted: Thu, 2012-09-13 09:34
Locality: Local
In a bold, inspiring, historic, widely-publicized, and risky move, the Chicago Teachers Union, has gone on strike over a host of issues, including compensation, job security, evaluation procedures, and sufficient classroom resources (including air conditioning in the summer).
The strike could be argued as inevitable, given the galvanizing forces on each side: a progressive leadership at the Chicago Teachers Union, and a neoliberal cookie-cutter Chicago Public Schools district which favors non-union charter schools. The strike is unquestionably a big gamble -- if the union wins, they provide a badly needed shot-in-the-arm for public education and for the labor movement. If the establishment wins, they hasten the decline of both public education and dissident labor, spurring further the underway dissolution of middle-class education. The strike has so far garnered support from the public and from union solidarity efforts.
More Chicago Indymedia Links: Chicago Teachers v. Rahm Emanuel | Chicago: America's Epicenter of Resistance | Facebook Photo Album: Rally to support CTU Strike | Rahm Emanuel's Privatize Chicago Plan | New poll: majority support of the strike is increasing
Additional Links: In These Times: Chicago Teachers Strike Headache for Democrats | Robbie Abed's Personal Blog - Chicago Teachers Union Strike: The Real Story | Reuters: Negotiators optimistic Chicago teachers' strike may end soon | Teachers' Leader in Chicago Strike Shows Her Edge | Think Progress: How Illinois' Flawed Funding System Shortchanges Chicago's Students | Democracy Now! - Thousands rally in Chicago teachers strike | Democracy Now- Chicago Teachers Stage Historic Strike | Why are the Chicago Public School Teachers on Strike? | ZNet Commentary: Striking Neoliberalism in Chicago | The Rude Pundit: The Chicago teachers' strike is for the children | Gawker: A guide to Chicago's ongoing teachers strike | Diatribe Media: Education is no cakewalk
Posted: Thu, 2012-05-24 19:04
Locality: Local
Stories fly by quick on our newswire. You many have missed a couple you want to check out – and join in the conversation.
Hundreds Protest I.C.E. and Call on Them to Stop Racist Practices
Claudia García-Rojas on one of Monday’s biggest, most diverse actions – and the ass-kicking that local immigration rights activists handed to a local congressman who had it coming for his cowardice.
IVAW and Afghans for Peace In Historic March On NATO
Every corporate outlet on the planet seems to think that misreporting calculated police violence is more important than military veterans flinging their medals back at the NATO generals and their paymasters. We disagree. Check out this short report from IVAW.
And speaking of police violence – something the vast majority of youth of color in the Windy City live with every single day of their lives – two stories on our newswire about the weekend’s NATO protests have been drawing passionate debate … and some very interesting factual accounts. Check ‘em out: Undercovers lead night march, arrest local | The two faces of NATO: PR spin versus video reality
Finally, from our friends at Occupied Stories and the Occupied Chicago Tribune, the story of one of the dozens of street medics who had our backs this month. Medics, you rock: The Accidental Medic: A Short Narrative From The NATO Protests
Photos: Sarah Jane Rhee/Chicago Indymedia. Check out her work here, here, here and here!
Posted: Wed, 2012-05-23 16:55
Locality: Local
The two faces of NATO: PR spin versus video reality
While the Obama and Emanuel administrations are congratulating themselves on a public relations coup, NATO protesters are documenting the wave of police violence unleashed on them in recent days -- particularly Sunday, when protesters sought to exercise a right they thought they had but didn't: to speak truth to power.
City and federal officials have doggedly stuck to the spin about a dangerous band of 'anarchists' who started trouble on Sunday. But it's clear from the videos below -- and dozens more that have begun to surface on the web -- that the only thugs in black on May 20 were the police. And the police unloaded, narrowly missing 75-year-old peace protester Nan Wigmore, who was caught in the crush at the front line of the police violence.
The harrowing scenes in the first two videos below, shot by Substance News contributor John Kugler, show police hammering on protesters with billy clubs and their hands, feet and bodies. Protesters clearly shout "There's nowhere to go!" as the police line wails on them to push them away from the intersection of Cermak and Michigan. The protesters' goal? To take their opposition to NATO to the summit itself -- a goal denied by the protest 'permit' which the City of Chicago and the Obama administration ultimately 'granted.' That permit failed to meet even the minimum request of some organizers to be within 'site and sound' of the government bureaucrats' deliberations.
Posted: Wed, 2012-05-23 16:47
Locality: Local
On 21 May 2012, the last day of protest action during the NATO summit, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Office (I.C.E.) to send I.C.E. a message: stop the construction of an immigration detention center in Crete, Illinois!
Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr.’s office had planned to facilitate a public town hall meeting on Monday to hear the concerns of Illinois constituents opposed to the building of a prison for undocumented people in Crete, Illinois. A Press Release from Representative Jackson Jr.’s office states that the public meeting was postponed due to “security concerns raised by NATO and outside protesters who are threatening to come to Crete.”
Moratorium for Deportations a Chicago-based group created to initiate dialogue, share information and coordinate efforts to get from President Obama an Executive Order for a Moratorium on Deportation, was one of a few organizations planning to attend the public town hall meeting. Rozalinda Borcila, a member of the group, says, “Representative Jackson and I.C.E. officials have stated this meeting represents their intentions to listen to people’s concerns and to hear public input. However, we don’t recognize the legitimacy of these claims, and I don’t think that this meeting would have represented an open public-dialogue about the issue of detention. So, we announced our intentions to participate in the meeting in the spirit of dissent and we are surprised by the postponement of the meeting, and we feel that Representative Jackson’s statement equate dissent with security threats.”
Posted: Tue, 2012-05-22 01:52
Locality: Local
NATO brings its war machine home
Thousands protest military arm of global elites in days of protest around annual warmongers' summit
Representatives of CANG8, Occupy Chicago and Chicago Action Medical have condemned systemic police violence at the CANG8/IVAW anti-NATO protest on Sunday -- and more broadly, condemned the military machine that has brought thousands of protesters together in Chicago for a week of actions and events to oppose the NATO meeting and its larger agenda. Luminaries who ranged from Noam Chomsky and Tom Morello to Greece's SYRIZA -- in English, the Coalition for the Radical Left -- encouraged people to protest the NATO summit. The confab of war criminals ended Monday, as activists rallied against war profiteer Boeing.
"The police have been preparing for this mentally, physically, emotionally -- preparing to beat us up for a year," said CANG8 organizer Joe Iosbaker. "This is the violence that NATO is, that NATO brings with them."
Sunday's police violence came on the heels of a peaceful anti-NATO march designed to draw attention to NATO's role as the military arm of global elites -- and to the enormous destruction that NATO military action brings to the people whose countries it bombs and occupies. Read more.
Posted: Mon, 2012-05-21 15:45
Locality: Local
The Chicago Independent Media Center organized the NATO Indymedia umbrella, including the convergence center, to provide grassroots coverage of the protests and actions against and leading up to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Chicago. What follows are highlights from our coverage.
Monday, May 21
Livestreaming from all the day's events including the March to shut down Boeing (10am), the press conference denouncing police brutality and restrictions on free speech and protest (2:00pm at Obama campaign headquarters), the 'Shut Down ICE' march (3:30pm at Union Park). Photos, copy and video to follow.
Sunday, May 20
Video of the CANG8/IVAW March.
Photos only IVAW/CANG8 protest by Chris Geovanis. Gallery 2 | Gallery 3.
Posted: Sun, 2012-05-20 01:33
Locality: Local
Thousand march to oppose police repression in run-up to NATO summit
Chicago saw thousands of people in the streets Saturday in the run-up to the beginning of the NATO summit. with the afternoon's boisterous but peaceful protest marches marred by sweeping police violence.
Protests began in the morning at the Irving Park Brown Line public transit stop, where protesters donned hospital gowns and canvassed the local neighborhood, then assembled at noon for the “Healthcare not Warfare!” actionto protest the closure of half of the city’s public mental health clinics in a ‘cost-saving’ measure protesters say is both unnecessary and part of the city’s push to privatize public services.
At the same time, supporters of three men arrested in a Wednesday night raid at the Bridgeport apartment of Occupy Chicago activists were gathering at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse for the arrestees’ noon bail hearing on state terrorism charges -- allegations their attorneys call ludicrous. All three men had earlier in the week released a video that documented their targeted harassment by Chicago police, a tape which is said to have enraged local cops.
Protesters called for a 3:30PM emergency protest in the heart of the city’s financial district -- where Occupy Chicago has staged several large marches seeking to create an encampment that has been repeatedly thwarted by police and produced hundreds of arrests last year.
That emergency protest eventually linked up with a planned evening anti-capitalist march staged out of the Haymarket memorial and subsequently swelled to thousands, turning into a rolling wave of opposition to the Chicago police department’s sustained effort to thwart anti-NATO protests.
The protesters’ goal this week? To ratchet up attention on NATO, the military arm of the 1% -- a cold war relic with a clearly overtly aggressive military mission. NATO missions have killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, bombed Libya back into the stone age and allowed its rich oil resources to be steered toward more direct control of western oil companies, and turned a blind eye to the repressive regimes of allies in Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries. Member states of NATO, let by the U.S., supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, leaving that nation in ruins -- and its petroleum resources in the hands of western elites and their allies. Read more.
Pages
Local News
-
2013-01-14 21:41
-
2013-01-14 21:40
-
2013-01-14 21:37
-
2013-01-14 21:35
-
2013-01-14 21:28
News beyond Chicago
-
2013-01-15 01:46
-
2013-01-14 02:03
-
2013-01-14 01:39
-
2013-01-13 02:12
-
2013-01-13 02:04
OtherPress
-
2013-01-14 11:32
-
2013-01-02 15:42
-
2013-01-01 05:05
-
2012-12-26 14:43
-
2012-12-14 15:41