Chicago 6 Corners

Local Teens Fight Violence with C.R.I.M.E.

Story by Scarlett Stoppa, Photos by Adam Christopher Snow - September 14, 2010

  There are many schools of thought on what needs to change in Chicago to transform the cultures of violence that are recklessly killing our African American and Hispanic youth. Barack Obama, before he was elected president, called absent fathers to step up to their familial responsibilities.

Mayor Daley, believing part of the solution rests in gun control, took his handgun ban all the way to the Supreme Court, lost, and fired back with an ordinance that will also see its day in court.

Even Mike Tyson, a complicated example of the ways a violent childhood and a teen mentorship can come together to shape a man, has weighed in on the debate, sharing his view that the youth energy wasted on drugs and killing should be redirected to “something positive.”

High profile figures speaking up and taking (well-researched) action on the issues certainly helps matters, but the youth themselves, when empowered to brainstorm, strategize, create, and articulate, are an incredibly powerful vehicle for change. The Illinois Violence Prevention Authority likely believed in this power when they offered a mini-grant for a violence prevention program in which the youth led all aspects of the program, from grant-writing to implementation to evaluation.

Enter: The C.R.I.M.E. Teens.

C is for Compassion. Desiree Tellis, in her poem “Trailing Behind,” inspires her readers to see the potential in those that we find most difficult to help, bear, or forgive. “In the front of the tracks I envision someone succeeding / Someone leaving those tracks left behind / Taking a new path, takin’ a new way.” Desiree is 17, a high school senior with people skills and a “good work ethic.” And she is one of several talented teens that Dr. Jeffery Bulanda recruited to create the winning violence prevention program.

“Without any adult prompting,” said Dr. Bulanda, Program Director for the Empowering Counseling Center (ECC) serving the Bronzeville community, “[the teens] saw that to prevent violence, they had to work to develop pro-social skills and values among youth at risk for being violent.” It didn’t take them long to identify the right values to both form the deliciously ironic acronym C.R.I.M.E. and a foundation upon which to build their program for peace.

Call to Action: Write Your Alderman to Increase Citizen Participation in Decisions Concerning Public Assets

By Adam Snow, May 6, 2009

Seven months ago I started an anthropological documentary about democracy in Chicago. This has led me to discover many things about the city (and the state) that have surprised me. The privatization of the city's parking meters to a corporation that hither-to-for was not in the parking business is just the latest in a series of deals that were rubber stamped by the city council with little or no public debate. (See How Much of Our City Is for Sale?)

Last week the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial announcing that undisclosed aldermen were considering an ordinance requiring a 30-day period of review for any proposed privatization of city assets, works, and so on. Since this editorial, I have contacted the office of the city clerk (the office that sets the city council's agenda on these matters) to find out where this proposal is in committee, who the sponsor is, and when it may come for a vote. So far, i have been told 'I will look into it and get back to you'.

A Calling to Justice: An Interdisciplinary Academic Conference Exploring Social Justice in the Professions and Disciplines

Saturday, February 23, 2008
Loyola University Water Tower Campus
Registration Deadline is February 11th

Keynote: Lisa Wagner of Still Point Theatre Collective

"A Calling to Justice" is a one-day conference open to the public. Hosted by Loyola University Chicago, the conference includes speakers, presentations on research related to social justice, lunch, Keynote address and a reading from Lisa Wagner, and opportunities to network with others interested in social justice issues.

Microfinance Is the Future

By Mary Kuhn, January 27, 2008

Mohammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank gave a lecture last week at the Fairmount Hotel to a sell-out crowd at an event sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Yunus is credited with starting the Microfinance movement with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Yunus started the bank in 1976 while visiting the poorest households in the village of Jobra near Chittagong University where he worked as an economics professor. He discovered that the Jobra women who made bamboo furniture were taking out loans with very high interest rates from loan sharks. He made his first loan of USD $27.00 total from his own pocket to 42 women in the village and the success of that first loan sparked the creation of the Grameen Bank.

Today the bank provides financial services in the form of small loans to 7.3 million people. The bank focuses on lending to women; 97 percent of the borrowers are female. The loan recovery rate for Grameen is very high at 98.35 percent, proving that the poor are credit-worthy. Yunus and Grameen Bank shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for their work as "Banker to the Poor" (also the title of Yunus's book). You can read about Yunus on the PBS site in the "New Heroes" series.

To get involved with the international Microfinance movement, you can make small loans to people in developing countries over the web through Kiva.org

Microfinance is also flourishing in Chicago. ACCION Chicago has been operating locally since 1994 as a microfinance organization lending nearly 14 million dollars to over 1,000 local businesses.

Bring Someone New: New Strategy for the Anti-War Movement

By Megan Chapman, photo collage by Adeline Sides, October 25, 2007

Didn't someone say that the Iraq War would be over in September 2007? Apparently, we were misinformed. The endless pool that is the Iraq War is pushing activists across the country to stage mid-year rallies organized by United for Peace and Justice. For anyone who would rather not get to the fifth anniversary in March 2008, this would be a good chance to say so. Oh, and bring someone new.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2007

Rally at Union Park (Ashland and Lake) at 1:30 PM
March to Downtown at 2:30 PM
Rally at Federal Plaza (Adams and Dearborn) at 4:00 PM
More information at: OCT 27 - MOBILIZATION CHICAGO

For Chicagoans' responses to the fourth anniversary in March 2007, check out Third Coast Press. Send your photos and coverage of the October 27 march and rallies to [email protected].

DARFUR/DARFUR: Photo Exhibit at Field Museum

What: DARFUR/DARFUR: A photo exhibition about Darfur
When: October 7 - October 12, every night between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Where: Northern walls of the Field Museum on Lake Shore Drive and Roosevelt Road

What: Darfur - Imagery & Reality: A free panel on Darfur
When: Monday, October 8, 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Where: James Simpson Theatre, The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lakeshore Drive

Quick Fact: Over 300,000 people have been killed or injured in the Darfur region between 2003 and 2006. Find out more about the crisis here.

Sticking with Burma

By Laura Kay, October 5, 2007

On Sunday, September 31, demonstrators gathered at Michigan and Wacker for a vigil in support of the “saffron” uprising in Burma. This coming Saturday, October 6, 12:00 PM, you can join the global day of demonstrations organized by the U.S. Campaign for Burma at the same location in Chicago.

I've spent a lot of time talking and writing about my incredible experiences this past year on the Thai-Burmese border. What is more difficult to convey is the longing that I experience upon leaving such a place. As in many aspects of our lives, when we open ourselves up to a place or a thing or a person, we can let ourselves fall hard – just like I did for Burma.

Friday.Global_Warming_Rally@Bloomingdale/luv-your-planet

Friday, October 5, 2007, 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Old Town Park, 111 3rd St, Bloomingdale, IL
8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.: Meet & Greet. Say "hi" and get to know fellow environmentalists in the community. 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.: Peter Roskam's office. Meeting with staff to present postcards and letters from the community to show support for global warming solutions.

More info: Eric Quamme, field organizer (773-619-3957, [email protected] or MySpace page: Greenpeace / Project Hot Seat / IL / District 6). If you can't make it, take action here.

Road to Guantanamo Actor Interrogated on Worldview, Detained at Sonotheque

By David Shuey, September 5, 2007

"That's awesome," chimes in Jerome McDonnell on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview after hearing actor/rapper Riz Ahmed drop an intense poem on his post-9/11 experiences. Always a solid noon-hour show, today's is worth catching. Riz is the show's highlight, offering comical and hard-hitting first-hand views on xenophobia, especially since he acted as one of the Tipton Three in Road to Guantanamo, Michael Winterbottom's slap at U.S. detention centers. It seems that London airports haven't been too kind on him. Riz appears in Marc Falkoff's book, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, and will also be appearing this week at Sonotheque. More on that in a second.

Chicago Activists Protest Texas Execution of Murder Accomplice

By Mary Kuhn, August 30, 2007

Local activists met at Federal Plaza yesterday to speak out against the execution of Kenneth Foster scheduled for today.

Under the "law of parties" in Texas, an accomplice to a murder can be sentenced to death.  In 1996 at the age of 19, Kenneth Foster drove the car in a series of thefts leading up to the murder of Michael LaHood,  age 25.  The shooter in the murder, Mauriceo Brown, was convicted and executed in July 2006.  Foster is the third death row inmate scheduled to be executed in Texas this week and the 403rd since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1982.  His story was chronicled on the front page of the yesterday's New York Times.

To write a letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry, visit freekenneth.com for information.  You can join like-minded Chicagoans in the movement to abolish the death penalty with the local Amnesty International group.