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DCFS: Inside View

by  , Youth Reporter

My father Jimmy Cain works for DCFS (the Department of Children and Family Services). I asked him and a student involved with the DCFS system for an inside look at the system.
Jimmy Cain started working for DCFS in 1976 at the Lawrence Hall School for Boys.

“I was 22 when I discovered working with kids was for me,” he said. “At that time of my life I had a lot of energy and I also saw many situations that kids were in. I saw their faces light up when I participated in activities with them and though their ages weren’t that far from mine, I learned that I needed to bee firm and consistent but fair. This also helped me in my household.”

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Both Sides of Police Brutality

by  , Youth Reporter

Police brutality in our neighborhood is rising day by day. Everyday you look on the news and in the community you see that people are being beaten and even killed by police.

The police are the people who are supposed to be protecting us.
I interviewed my uncle who’s been on the force for eight years and a county deputy for three years. He said that there have been a lot of people he worked with who were there to do good but there have been those who didn’t help people but hurt them.

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Phased Out

by  , Youth Reporter

In the 2005-2006 school year, Collins High School students, staff, and faculty heard the tragic news that we were no longer going to be in existence.

We were being phased out.

Faculty members who had been here for over 15 years were saddened to hear this news. They knew it would result in longtime teachers being laid-off who would eventually have to search for new jobs.

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The Times They Are A’Changing

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The indictment and arrest of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge on October 21 is yet another indication that a complete transformation of American life is underway. Along with the presidential election, the indictment of Burge, who has long been suspected of torturing and abusing suspects in the 1980s, shows that the way politics have been conducted in this country for the past 30 years is over. Or to put it in other words, a new generation is stepping up, kicking tail and taking names.

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (at podium) speaks about the indictment of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge on Oct. 21 while Robert Brent (from left), special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago office; Mark Templehof, chief of the criminal section of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice; and Jeffery Cramer, assistant US attorney, look on.
Photo by Anjuli Maniam

Saying that Burge “shamed his uniform and his badge,” Fitzgerald explained that he was charging Burge for lying in court in a 2003 civil case:
“For his lies about torture and abuse, we intend to hold him accountable.”
“Police are sworn to uphold the law when others break it,” Fitzgerald added. “Burge broke the law when he was supposed to uphold it.”
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‘Train Wreck’ Expected for TV Transition

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Time is running out for millions of the nation’s consumers who are unaware and unprepared for the television switch from analog to digital on February 17, 2009.

FCC Comissioner Jonathan Adelstein said during the National Convention on Media Reform in Minneapolis in June 2008 that the FCC’s lack of a technical assistance plan for America’s DTV transition is “an opportunity for a train wreck.”
Photo by Mary C. Johns

With just a few months before the digital television transition, a large number of Americans, especially in the West and Midwest, major metropolitan and rural areas, don’t know how to make sure they continue receiving the over-the-air signals, according to several academic researchers, two members of the Federal Communication Commission and some U.S. Congressmen.
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CHA Seniors Keep Waiting to Return Home

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A Residents’ Journal investigation has found that renovation of three public housing buildings for senior citizens is years overdue, despite previous proclamations from the Chicago Housing Authority that all of its senior buildings have been rehabbed.

Former CHA Bud Britton senior residents Josef Plagov (from left), Wanda Marshall and Judy Backstrom.
Photo by Mary C. Johns

Elderly public housing residents who were relocated from the CHA senior buildings are eagerly waiting to return to their former homes.
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U.S. Reps Call For Moratorium On Public Housing Demolitions

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U.S. Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) want the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to “immediately cease approval of all demolition and disposition applications” currently pending from all public housing authorities across the nation.

Ida B. Wells Homes demolition in December, 2007.
Photo by Mary C. Johns

“We believe that the loss of public housing units has now reached epic proportions and further loss of units must be averted immediately for the sake of the nation’s low-income families,” they proclaimed in a joint letter to HUD Secretary Steven Preston dated Aug. 13.
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Harold L. Ickes Homes News

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The lives of Harold Ickes’ residents were disrupted when three buildings out of the remaining 11 were ordered to be vacated of their tenants.

The remaining residents of a building in the Harold L. Ickes Homes move, leaving the three buildings of the 2400 South State St block vacant.
Photo by Jacqueline Thompson

Families moved daily for three months. In the final days, pressure was put on the few remaining families to go, and eventually, no one lived in the three buildings in the 2400 block of South State Street.
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CHA Goes on the Defensive about Child’s Death

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The Chicago Housing Authority recently went on the defensive after a toddler was killed in the Cabrini-Green row houses in June.

Stuffed animals mark the spot where 3-year-old Curtis Cooper’s body was found after being crushed to death by a rod-iron gate at the CHA Cabrini-Green Rowhouses on June 27, 2008.
Photo by Mary C. Johns

The housing authority reacted to media reports stating that the agency was warned by federal housing inspectors about the potential threat of physical harm posed by some rod iron gates and fencing at the North Side public housing development.
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Congress Accuses HUD of Mismanagement

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Section 8 tenants from around the city rallied downtown recently to protest what they described as “deliberate miscalculations” by the federal government which are threatening the housing of thousands of families and seniors in communities across Illinois.

Project-based Section 8 tenants from around the city, including members of the Lakeview Action Coaltion, gather outside Federal Plaza on Oct. 6, 2008.
Photo by Mary C. Johns

Led by the Lakeview Action Coalition (LAC), the protestors alleged mismanagement of Project Based Voucher Program by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development at a press conference and briefing outside HUD’s local headquarters in downtown Chicago on October 6, 2008 – International Housing Rights Day.
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