Greetings, salutations and peace. Peace be unto you and us all as the threat of war looms on the horizon becoming more apparent with each sunrise and sunset.

The “One World” concept has come full circle from economics, where it started, to warfare, where it may likely end. Historically, there has never been an action by a single government that has the possibility of encompassing every people and culture on earth. But man has never had the capability of destruction that he has today.

This image depicts a mural which was painted on the walls of a building owned by the Tranquility Marksman Association, founded by the late Marion Stamps, a tireless crusader for the rights of Cabrini-Green tenants. The building stood at Clybourn Avenue and Division Street until it was demolished several years ago. Photo by Patricia Johnson-Gordon

Pray for peace as you go about your daily routine, despite the threat of war. In the month of February, part of our daily routine is the celebration of Black History Month.
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Dear Crystal:

All I can say is that it had to happen. Finally, one of our local aldermen came forth to do something positive about affordable housing. It also looks like we are going in a positive direction statewide with the establishment of a body to which activists will finally be able to address directly their concerns about affordable housing. In the last RJ, I tried to direct your attention towards some of the problems we’re up against regarding the zoning code re-write.

What we are expecting now is that the new re-write will appear for a vote before the Chicago City Council this summer, around June 2003. Pete Skosey from the Metropolitan Planning Council chimed into the process with these words, “What we have to understand is that zoning cannot be the solution for everything. Zoning cannot affect the economics of the property. Read more »

In this article, I’ll continue to describe the deplorable conditions we live in at Ogden Courts. There are two buildings in Ogden Courts at 2610 and 2710 W. Ogden Ave. Our buildings are only seven stories high. This means they won’t be torn down in the transformation of the CHA complexes I learned this at the last meeting we had to meet our new manager. They finally fixed the second opening to the lobby. They fixed up many empty apartments but they rented them to new tenants. Read more »

The new Cook County Hospital, named after Cook County Board President John H. Stroger Jr. and located at 1901 W. Harrison St., opened its doors for service in December 2002. The new hospital covers 1.2 million square feet, or one-and-one-half city blocks in length, and replaces the old Cook County Hospital. The new hospital cost $551 million and was designed and built to be a more modern facility that would be better equipped to use up-to-date technology and equipment, according to Cook County officials.
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