Residents of an apartment building at 7263 S. Coles Ave., along with their advocates from the Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO), rallied outside JP Morgan Chase’s downtown headquarters on July 15 to demand that the bank maintain their homes.

The tenants claimed that Chase, which received $25 billion in federal funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) last year, let their foreclosed building “waste away.” Many of the families said they feared becoming homeless.

For the past two years, they claimed that Chase, who has been responsible for maintaining the property since 2008, hadn’t honored its responsibility, resulting in deterioration of the building to such a degree that the City stepped in and ordered residents to vacate the property.

Crystal Richards, a tenant of the building who has six children ages 14 to several months old, told Residents’ Journal after the rally that she was worried about finding a place to live with her family.

“We’re being evicted Saturday. And as of right now, I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said. Richards said that she had been paying her rent faithfully to the manager of the building, and added that she was rallying with the others at the bank headquarters to get some remedy for her plight.

Richards said she wanted Chase “to get me some funds and place me and my children in a home or apartment somewhere,” she said.

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Hundreds of concerned citizens from across the country converged on the Northwestern University Law School in downtown Chicago on July 13 to tell a Federal Communications Commissioner about the problems they predict will occur if cable giant Comcast, media company NBC and GE are allowed to merge.

The effects of the merger would be particularly pronounced in Chicago. Comcast is the city’s dominant cable and Internet provider, and if it acquires NBC, it will also own local TV station WMAQ Channel 5 and Telemundo Chicago.

A coalition of grassroots activists came to the hearing with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Many of those who supported the merger had received support from Comcast, but opponents of the merger also included those who had received help from the cable giant.

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Residents’ Journal coverage on the public hearing on Comcast’s planned merger with NBCU/GE, at the Northwestern University Law School in downtown Chicago on July 13, 2010.

Residents’ Journal’s coverage of low-income tenants and their advocates, rally at Chase Towers in downtown Chicago on July 15, seeking financial support from the bank for their upcoming eviction, due to the foreclosure of their buildings.

Click on the image to view the first episode of this season’s “RJ TV,” on July 12, 2010.

Watch Residents’ Journal Publisher Ethan Michaeli and Editor-in-Chief Mary C. Johns discuss Mary’s article (available just below this post) about the opening of the Chicago Housing Authority’s waiting list.

Listen to the comments from viewers about CHA’s history and the roles of tenant leaders in the Chicago’s political life.

A great percentage of Chicagoans have limited or no access to the Internet, according to a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago published last year. The lack of access was worst among low-income people, researchers found.

But at least 210,000 low-income people found ways to apply online for the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Family Housing Wait List, mostly without the CHA’s or its affiliates’ assistance.

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Even as he declared in a statement that “The Jon Burge trial has ended with a verdict of guilty to the charge of perjury and obstruction of justice, which to me and countless others is simply not enough,” U.S. Cong. Danny Davis (D-IL) has submitted proposed legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations for the crime of torture.

He describes the legislation as “designed to provide a criminal penalty for torture committed by law enforcement officers and others acting under color of law.”

You can read his full statement on the introduction of his Anti-Torture Bill at: http://davis.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=192&Itemid=56

Davis is a board member of We The People Media.

Former death-roll inmate Mark Clements and his attorneys are filing a civil suit next Tuesday against the city of Chicago in the aftermath of the guilty verdict of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.

Mark Clements consoles the mother of incarcerated allege torture victim Marcus Wiggins, during a rally to jail former Chicago Police chief Jon Burge outside City Hall on May 24. Wiggins was allegedly tortured while in police custody at the age of 13. Photo by Mary C. Johns

“We are currently suing [for] an unspecified amount. We will most likely be filing a civil lawsuit in the federal U.S. District Court this Tuesday,” Clements told Residents’ Journal on June 29, the day after a federal jury found Burge guilty of all three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying in a civil lawsuit about the torture of murder and robbery suspects in his custody in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

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