Bernadette Williams, the tenants Local Advisory Council president, complaining to CHA Board members, on October 18, 2011, about increased shootings at the far south side public housing site. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

Tenants of public housing have said throughout the Plan for Transformation that they see very little police activity in their areas, except during drug raids.

In decades past, police officers used to walk the beat, but they are little seen these days, and the public housing tenants living in CHA developments and in areas where they relocated wonder where “Officer Friendly” is, especially in light of the fact that the Chicago Housing Authority has been paying the Chicago Police Department millions of dollars annually to provide foot and car patrols.
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The John H. Johnson Forever Postage Stamp. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

Pioneering entrepreneur and publisher John Harold Johnson received one of the U.S. Postal Service’s highest honors on Jan. 31 when he was commemorated with this year’s Black Heritage Forever Stamp.

Johnson, the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, which publishes Ebony and Jet magazine, now joins the 34 other honorees in the Postal Service’s Black Heritage Stamp series since 1978.

Johnson was born on Jan. 19, 1918, and died of heart failure on Aug. 8, 2005, at the age of 87.

Johnson made the decision to first publish the horrific details and photos of the open casket funeral of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till, a Chicago youth who was murdered in Mississippi by two white racists for whistling at one of their wives in August 1955.

You can see a video of Residents’ Journal’s coverage of the Johnson Publishing Company’s involvement in the memorial service on the 54th anniversary of Till’s death at: http://youtu.be/7CBfolmW1bM.

The Johnson “Forever Stamp” was designed by art director Howard E. Paine and is equal in value to the current First Class stamp, 45 cents each or $9 a sheet.
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CHA youth practicing their moves on the ice, during Chicago Blackhawks “Event to Inspire” Hockey Clinic sponsored by 1 World Sports, at Johnny’s Ice House on January 19, 2012. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

For the second year, the Chicago Blackhawks met and greeted 61 Chicago public housing youth during their “Event to Inspire” Hockey Clinic sponsored by 1 World Sports, at Johnny’s Ice House, 1350 W. Madison Street on January 19, 2012.

During the three-hour sports clinic, the girls and boys, ages 6 to 12 all from CHA family developments, laced up their ice skates and were instructed in the fundamentals of hockey.
Later, they applied the new skills they learned from Kevin Delahny, the Blackhawks skills coach, to score puck-shots on Blackhawks goalie Ray Emery.
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Marshawn Frencha reciting a Dr. Margeret Burroughs speech to his peers and their parents during the Dr. Martin Luther King event at Sixth Grace Presbyterian Church on Jan. 16, 2012. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

Listening to a radio show on WVON 1690 AM this past Monday, I was moved by the tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts to create change for Black people, as well as the diligent efforts of so many others who fought to honor him for his leadership in the civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement did so much more than win more rights for Black people; it defined basic community service towards our fellow human beings. As I contemplated this notion, I got off my rear end, left my comfort zone, and went out of the house to give some of my time to help others, keeping in tune with the ideology that Dr. King’s fought so hard for, and eventually died for.
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Protesters who want to avert cuts to the city’s mental health clinics tried a unique tactic this week.

As the City Council convened their first session since voting to close half of the city’s clinics and privatize all of its neighborhood health centers, members of the Mental Health Movement wore Santa Claus hats and formed a circle in the hallway outside the elected officials’ offices at City Hall, then sung altered classic holiday songs.

In their rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Jingle Bells,” and the “Twelve Days of Christmas,” they accused Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials of catering to “corporate greed,” and giving “tax breaks” to the wealthy while closing clinics in poor African American and Hispanic communities “without shame.”
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Officals at Chicago Defender Charities feed the homeless in 2010. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

Across the country, homeless people are finding that their activities are being considered criminal acts, according to a new report from a Washington D.C.-based advocacy organization.

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty discovered a “startling trend toward criminalizing basic acts necessary for homeless persons’ survival, including eating and sleeping in public.” An analysis in their report, “Criminalizing Crisis: The Criminalization of Homelessness in America,” shows that poverty is at “record levels,” with as many as 3.5 million people experiencing homelessness annually.

“Cities are continuing to penalize people forced to live on our streets and in public spaces,” the report’s authors concluded. The group surveyed local policies in 234 cities, and learned that 40 percent prohibit sleeping in public places; 33 percent prohibit sitting or lying in public places; 56 percent prohibit loitering in public places; and 53 percent prohibit begging in public places. In 188 cities surveyed for both this report and the Law Center’s 2009 report, there were major increases on prohibitions on homeless people begging or panhandling, sleeping and loitering.

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Walter H Dyett High School, 555 E. 51st St., which is slated to be closed under a new plan announced by the Chicago Public Schools. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte.

A South Side community group “fed up” with the Chicago Public Schools closing and turn-around process in low-income areas of color brought their protest to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office this week.

“CPS’ top-down school actions in North Kenwood and the Greater Bronzeville community have caused spikes in violence and destabilized schools, and not improved student outcomes,” reads a statement from the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, also known as KOCO.

KOCO members, along with parents from North Kenwood, Oakland and Bronzeville neighborhoods, rallied outside Emanuel’s office on December 1, and called on him to partner with them to implement “The Bronzeville Global Achievers Village,” an alternative school transformation plan they’ve developed over the past 18 months.

KOCO member Shannon Bennett told Residents’ Journal shortly after the protest that members from his organization and several community parents, along with representatives from the Centers for New Horizons and the Grand Boulevard Federation, first met with CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard at their office on November 21 regarding KOCO’s plan to counteract CPS policies concerning school closings, phase-outs and turnarounds. Brizard said he would get back to them but did not, according to Bennett. “So that’s why we have gone around him, and go to his boss,” Bennett explained.

Bennett said members from KOCO delivered a letter to Emanuel through one of his staff members, and added that members of his organization are particularly upset about the phasing out of Walter H. Dyett High School, 555 E. 51st St., which KOCO noted in their press release is the only neighborhood high school in Kenwood-Oakland. Sending students to Wendell Phillips Academy High School, 244 E. Pershing Road in the Bronzeville community, will result in increased violence, he argued. In 2005, Bennett said he personally experienced a spike in crime in Kenwood-Oakland after the closing of two schools, the Jackie Robinson and Price elementary schools.

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Pastor Corey Brooks, of New Beginnings Church, camping out on the rooftop of the vacant Super Motel, as a statment to crime in the area, on November 22, 2011. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

In an effort to bring attention to violence in Chicago’s Woodlawn and Englewood communities, a local pastor has decided to camp out on the roof of an abandoned motel for 21 days, or until enough funds are raised to buy the motel and transform it into a community and economic development center.

“We’re trying to raise the funds, $450,000 so that we can purchase this motel, tear it down and do something economically that will be a blessing to the community,” said Corey Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings Church, 6620 S. King Drive, during a Nov. 22 interview on top of the former Super Motel, located across the street from the church. During the rooftop interview, members of Brooks’ church – which has over 3,000 members – were using a lift to haul electric heaters and other items onto the roof to help the pastor while he lives in a tent they had set up on top of the motel.
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Tenants' Central Advisory Council President Myra King telling former CHA Chief Lewis Jordan that their proposal to drug test all public tenants was “unfair and cruel," during a public hearing on the subject, at the Charles A. Hayes Family Investment Center on June 2, 2011. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

After a huge public outcry this past June, the Chicago Housing Authority Board of Commissioners decided against drug testing all public housing tenants in the family and senior housing portfolio it oversees. See Residents’ Journal’s coverage here: http://wethepeoplemedia.org/homepage/board-squashes-cha-drug-testing-plan/
But CHA still approves of testing public housing tenants at their mixed-income properties managed by private developers as a condition for occupancy, which is not sitting right with the tenants’ Central Advisory Council.
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Illinois Senator Mattie Hunter talking about CPS practices, as Andrea Lee, (seated far right), Grand Blvd Federation’s Peer Parent Education Network organizer, along with other members Angelique Harris, and Josephine Norwood, looks on during the public forum on new mandates for Chicago Public Schools at the Illinois Institute of Technology on November 15, 2011. Photo by Mary C. Piemonte

Chicago residents now have a louder voice when it comes to the city’s schools under new legislation passed by the state, and a community organization recently brought together several elected officials and area residents to discuss how best to use their new power. On Nov. 15, the Grand Boulevard Federation’s Peer Parent Network and Illinois Sen. Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago) hosted “Know Your Rights,” a community forum at the Illinois Institute of Technology 2011.
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