by VideoNewsService, posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 10:57 pm
This event in Chicago, on January 11, 2011, marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo detention center. Prominent speakers share perspectives on the impact of these ten years on the nature and realities of our democracy. Prominent voices from the occupy movement, from social, humanitarian and immigrant rights movements as well as from a victim of torture bring to light of day information we all need. This demonstration is a ceremony of not forgetting. The NDAA makes all Americans vulnerable to the same treatment given the Guantanamo detainees.
by Downtowner, posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Hate to say I told you so, but Sue Klinkhamer is circulating petitions for the Kane County Board Chair Dem primary. She will have a primary opponent in former Carpentersville Mayor Bill Sarto. I’d give Klinkhamer, a former mayor of St Charles, the edge on that one. Between her regional transportation work, her work in DC lobbying for the City of Chicago, and her stint as Bill Foster’s in-district director, she’s got a lot of contacts and a lot of support throughout the county and beyond.
Either way, nice to see Dem interest in stopping either Chris Lauzen or Kevn Burns continuing the Republican stranglehold on Kane County government – with Elgin and Aurora in the mix, Kane is far from a solidly red county.
Klinkhamer tells me she plans to “test the system” and run an unconventional race…can’t wait to see how that plays out.
president of the Western United Gas and Electic Co., and director of the Rotary Meter Co., who represents in Congress what is said to be the banner Progressive district of the United States, is making a good campaign for re-election. Two years ago Mr. Copley got a plurality of more than 11,000 votes.
by orman west, posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 9:26 am
So I went to Occupy Chicago yesterday. My company has an office just about a few blocks from what Occupy Chicago is referring to as HQ (Outside the Chicago Board of Trade and the Fed on Jackson and LaSalle), so I worked there yesterday instead of in my standard office, making it easier for me to join them that evening. I could barely focus on work that day, I was so excited.
I spent the bulk of my work day squeezing work in between periods of checking the Occupy Wall St and Chicago Facebooks and websites. It was maddening to try to follow the very sporadic and uninformative updates from Occupy Chicago. There was no information on where they were, how many they were or what they were doing for most of the day. I saw in the comments a woman say there were only 4 people who were there when she drove past.
I was worried I was wasting my time.
Then I saw this on these very same interwebs.
I decided standing up to the 1 percent (those fuckers) would never be a waste of time. So I went (and left work an hour earlier than I honestly should have) and don’t regret a moment of it.
So here is my first hand perspective and play by play, including my account of the saboteur, pics, some helpful links, etc.
by Downtowner, posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at 11:09 am
I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street movement for only about the last two weeks or so. While that’s admittedly a long time in their brief history I have to admit I spent much of it shaking my head at their lack of organization or indeed any clear articulation of what it is exactly that they are protesting. I thought the generalized messiness of it meant it was doomed to end “not with a bang but a whimper.”
I’ve changed my mind.
To me, it’s starting to have the feel a movement that has staying power. And I don’t think that’s least because they managed to get 700 people arrested in one day on the Brooklyn Bridge – but I’ll get back to that, because I think it may hold a lesson for the organizers of Occupy Chicago and this post is dedicated to them.
But first I want to get back to the two main reasons I initially conciously discounted this movement: disorganization and lack of clearly stated mission. And I want to acknowledge and address what I am now beginning to suspect was an unconscious objection: the youth and inexperience of those involved in this movement.
