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We The People Media Executive Director and Residents’ Journal Publisher Ethan Michaeli was featured in a story from CLTV Correspondent Carlos Hernandez Gomez about the redevelopment of the Stateway Gardens public housing development. The U.S. department of Housing and Urban Development recently awarded a $20 million HOPE VI grant to the Stateway redevelopment. Residents who left Stateway’s high-rises had been promised the opportunity to return to a low-rise, mixed-income community, but few units have been built because the construction of affordable rentals and for-sale town homes depends on the housing market, which has turned dramatically down as a result of the national mortgage crisis.

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
The Chicago Housing Authority recently went on the defensive in response to media reports stating that the public housing agency was warned by the federal housing inspectors about the potential threat of harm some rod iron gates and fencing "in need of repair" posed at the Cabrini Green Rowhouses, which eventually fell and killed a toddler living there.
On June 27 this year, 3-year-old Curtis Cooper was crushed to death by a 7 foot tall black steel metal rod-iron gate, while playing nearby. Click here to read more...

Breaking News: U. S. Reps. Call for Moratorium of Public Housing Demolition Applications

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
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.
"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 August 13, 2008. Click here to read more...

Demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes in 1999

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
A woman in her 20s with an onset of illness in late July 2008 was found to have obtained the West Nile virus, making her the first human case of the deadly infectious disease in the State of Illinois this year, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health on August 11, 2008. Click here to read more...

On August 6, 2008, Residents' Journal's Editor-in-Chief, Mary C. Johns attended the Association for Education on Journalism and Mass Communications Convention and spoke as a guest on a panel entitled "Beyond Geographic Community: Culturally Defined Community Newspapers in the Chicago Area. Click here to read more...

Mary C. Johns speaking about the strengths of community
publication at the AEJMC convention

by Ethan Michaeli, Publisher
On Wednesday, July 23, We The People Media staff helped lead reporters from around the nation on a tour of environmental discrimination sites on Chicago's South Side. The tour was part of UNITY, the quadrennial convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, National Association of Native American Journalists and National Association of Asian American Journalists.Click here to read more...

UNITY Journalists with Cheryl Johnson (far right), an Altgeld Gardens resident who heads People for Community Recovery, an environmental justice organization.

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
On July 10, U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, along with Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) and John F. Kerry (D-MA), introduced new legislation "designed to increase public confidence in the justice system and address any unwarranted racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal process." Click here to read more...

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
"The number of homeless people over 50 is increasing at an alarming rate and they have limited resources for support," according to a first-ever reported issued on June 26, 2008 by the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness and Loyola University Chicago's Center for Urban Research and Learning.
"The groundbreaking report, which for the first time tracks homeless individuals aged 50 - 64, found that a majority of people in this age group became homeless for the first time in middle age," according to their press release on the subject. Click here to read more...

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
"Our nation needs to guarantee the Human Right to Housing for all of its citizens, regardless of income and race, and to ensure that the people affected by policies are active participants in creating them," according to the Grove Parc Tenants Association.
In a recent press release responding to a June 27, 2008 Boston Globe feature article which reported on the housing policies of U. S. Senator Barack Obama, and as an example highlighting Grove Parc Plaza Apartments - a subsidized housing complex in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. Click here to read more...

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
The Illinois PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) reported on June 25, 2008 that "since President Bush signed the tax rebates into law on February 13th, the average household spent over $1500 filling their tanks" and "the average cost per household for gasoline has gone from just over $60 weekly to almost $100 per week."
Illinois PIRG stated in a press release titled "Squandering the Stimulus: Average American Households Spent Economic Stimulus on Gas," that without sufficient alternatives to driving, American families spent their entire economic stimulus check on high-priced gas. Click here to read more...

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
The U. S. Supreme Courts decision not to hear the case on the controversial Illinois Department of Children and Family Services policy was made and announced yesterday. The U. S. Supreme Court declined to review the practice that permits state authorities “to threaten to take children into foster care based on nothing more than anonymous phone tips accusing their parents of abuse or neglect,” according to attorneys for the families affected by the policy.
The court’s decision not to review the controversial Ill. DCFS policy, upset the families who were split apart by the state’s policy and their lawyers, who “vowed to continue their fight to get the policy changed.” Click here to read more...

In the final days of Collins High School, the students of Collin's Urban Youth International Journalism Program came together to document and commemorate the high school in which they spent their senior years. Articles featured in the published Collins High School Newsletter: "News & Views" cover the social, the political and just the plain bogus obstacles that students face in everyday life at school. Click here to read more...

Collins High School

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
African American men aged 50 and up, who haven't had a checkup for Prostate Cancer should do so as quickly as possible, according to Dr. Courtney Hollowell, a urologist from Provident Hospital who spoke at the "Men's Health Day" sponsored by the Chicago Housing Authority in conjunction with the hospital on June 13, 2008. Click here to read more...

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger taking
a blood pressure test after the "Mens Health Day"
at the CHA Patrick Sullivan Senior Apartments on
June 13, 2008.

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
"For the first time, four million Americans without bank accounts will have a safer, more convenient alternative to paper checks," to receive their Social Security benefits according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury press release on June 10, 2008 detailing their new "Direct Express" Debit Card for Social Security Payments. Click here to read more...

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
Hey! Have you heard? Have you read about one of our congressional leaders trying to get the President of the United States impeached?
Well it's true. Former democratic presidential candidate U. S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio wants our President out of office as soon as possible. Click here to read more...

Residents' Jounal Editor-in-Chief Mary C. Johns with
U.S. Sen. Dennis Kuchinich after the AFLCIO Chicago
Democratic Presidential Debate on August 7, 2007
at Soldiers Field.

Mary C. Johns, Residents' Journal's Editor-in-Chief, attended the National Conference for Media Reform held on June 6-8, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN, with the financial assistance of a partial scholarship from Free Press. Click here to read more...

Stop the Violence: A Successful Effort to Save our Youth
by Cenabeth Cross
Diane Latiker, young mother and founder of Kids Off the Block (KOB), decided that the kids in the Roseland area needed a way to fulfill their dreams without resorting to the violence that has been spreading citywide. Click here to read more...

Ida B. Wells Demolition
Photo by Mary C. Johns

Chicagoland Rental Subsidies
by Michael Ibrahem
Approximately 1,500 additional households will be assisted with new funding from the Low Income Housing Trust Fund, according to Ted Dygus, a media liaison for the Chicago Department of Housing in March 2008. Click here to read more...

A Tribute to Captain Walter H. Dyett
by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
It is written that long before Jazz was an accepted study within the music education curriculum at public schools there was a African American band director named William Henri Dyett who “...was busy preparing his students for professional careers in this music call Jazz,” according to data courtesy of the Chicago Jazz Institute. Click here to read more...

by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief
The U. S. Supreme Court recently upheld a Chicago plaintiff’s claim for retaliation under a longstanding civil rights law, which sets a national precedence.
In a landmark 7 to 2 decision issued on May 27, 2008, the U. S. Supreme Court upheld Hedrick G. Humphries, A Chicago-area African-American man, rights “to sue his former employer for firing him in violation of one of the nation’s oldest civil rights laws, 42 U.S.C Section 1981.” Click here to read more...

NEWS BRIEFS

All news briefs compliled and written by Mary C. Johns, Editor-in-Chief unless otherwise noted.

Fall 2008