Washington Heights Visioning Session - Red Line Extension Coalition

Red Line extension

This invited with an attached newsletter was sent to us via the West Chesterfield Community Association with regards to the red line extension.

• THE FOURTH AND FINAL WASHINGTON HEIGHTS VISIONING SESSION BY ENDELEO INSTITUTE.
  
  6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
  Thursday October 18th, 2018
  Woodson Library Auditorium
  9525 S Halsted, Chicago

 Red Line Extension Coalitio... by on Scribd

The Sixth Ward: Van Dyke - guilty! #laquanmcdonald

[VIDEO] Above I will share coverage from the CBS network which was live streamed on their YouTube channel yesterday. Below will be a tweet that shares the link to "The Sixth Ward" that attempted to compile various video stories about the reaction to the verdict of the Jason Van Dyke trial.

In late 2014, Officer Van Dyke shot LaQuan McDonald 16 times and McDonald died from his wounds. Yesterday among other charges, Van Dyke was convicted by a jury of second degree murder.

Van Dyke - guilty! https://t.co/6FPUQDZGsl pic.twitter.com/NnSidgglUe

— The Sixth Ward (@TheSixthWard) October 6, 2018

I'm relieved that there will be no rioting as the city was on high alert for any disturbances although there were protests around the city after the verdict was read.

#fbf 95/Dan Ryan - 1971

Wanted to share this ig post from CTA earlier this week. It shows trains departing and arriving at the 95th terminal in 1971 which was back when the line was brand new. I wrote a lot about the history of operations at 95th since the Dan Ryan branch of the CTA Red Line has been in operation over at The Sixth Ward.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chicago Transit Authority (@chicagocta) on Oct 1, 2018 at 1:00pm PDT

Tonight is the #Ward09 September community meeting

The next town hall/community meeting is coming up tomorrow night.

9th Ward September Community Meeting
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
6:30 PM to 7:30 PM

Pullman Presbyterian Church
550 E. 103rd Street

For more information call Ald. Beale's service office 773.785.1100

If you attend a Roseland Heights Community Association meeting (usually every last Tuesday of the month) which starts a tad earlier than the 9th Ward meeting you can leave that meeting and go see what Alderman Beale has going.

ward09.com

So who could win the mayoralty in 2011?

Block Club Chi on Tuesday told us about the eleven candidates who have already declared at least before the Mayor dropped out of the 2019 race. Even told us about how much money they have and Emanuel had the most by FAR! Problem is what good are those millions if he's not running for mayor again.

Anyway the Capitol Fax takes a look at who could jump in now that Emanuel is out of the running. And thankfully no Pat Quinn - I wasn't even aware he lived in Chicago - who was our former governor from 2009 to 2015. We know it's not attorney general Lisa Madigan who will leave her office next year as she's not running for re-election and she won't run for mayor either.

6th ward Ald. Roderick Sawyer is looking at it. And remember his father was mayor after the death of Harold Washington. Who knows whether or not he'd pull the trigger.

Finally Mayor Emanuel who was not only a former Congressman, but chief of staff to President Obama before becoming Mayor had this to say about who could be the new Mayor in 2019:

Emanuel told WGN radio host Steve Cochran he doesn’t think any of the 12 announced candidates for the fifth floor office at City Hall has the skill set to do the job, while getting in plugs for some of his own work.

“No,” Emanuel said when Cochran asked him whether the next mayor is in the race. “I don’t think so. And here’s the thing: The public knows that this is a very big job, and the mayor cannot be a one-trick pony. You can’t just speak on one issue. You got to do economic development, you got to do education policy, you got to be able to get money out of Springfield and Washington. You’ve got to have an ability to actually invest in our neighborhoods, transportation, libraries, schools and park system.”

“My view is … the list is not done,” he added. “It’s going to shake out for about a month, and then the voters will make a smart decision of who can fill that office. And what I mean by that is, you’re not going to shrink the mayoralty, and there’s got to be a mayor that actually fills this job.”

So the next mayor of Chicago isn't in the race yet. Just remember in 2011, Emanuel gets in the race and automatically he was the front runner and later the victor. Unfortunately the big names I'd like to see do it aren't jumping in...

Rahm Emanuel is out....

[VIDEO] Earlier in the day he was meeting students at a CPS school before announcing at a press conference that he won't seek a third term. He is out of the 2019 race, and this is something that I didn't see coming. I can only imagine what other political insiders think.

Here are two posts from The Sixth Ward about this development.

• Capitol Fax: Mayor Emanuel won’t seek reelection
•  2019 mayor's race without Rahm Emanuel...

Is there anyone running for mayor who would be great to replace Rahm Emanuel?

I also needed to share this CapFax post from yesterday. It shows a lot of speculation as to why he wouldn't pull the trigger.

Block Club Chi: Massive Indoor Track Facility Coming To South Side Will Be City’s First

There was a ground breaking for this facility this past Sunday and it will soon be at Gately Park. Via Block Club Chi:

For 35 years, Chicago activist, scholar and former track athlete Dr. Conrad Worrill has worked to bring an indoor track facility to Chicago.

On Sunday, during a groundbreaking ceremony at Gately Park, 744. E. 103rd St., he realized it’s actually happening.

“I’m ecstatic, happy, overjoyed, we’ve been fighting for this for over 35 years and I think it will give an option to Chicago Public Schools student athletes in having accessibility to an indoor track,” Worrill said. “I believe it will put Chicago on the map and it’s an opportunity to put Chicago track and field on the map.”
...
In a statement, Emanuel said the track and field facility will provide Chicago athletes of all ages a place to train year round.

“In partnership with After School Matters and Exelon, we are proud to make Harold Washington’s dream a reality on the South Side,” he said.

Harris, whose ward is home to Gately Park, said the project will cost $55 million and is scheduled to be completed by August 2019.

Report: Chicago Public Schools 'failed to recognize' extent of systemwide sexual abuse problem

We've seen a lot about this in the last few months or so. The allegations of sexual abuse and in some instances prosecution of them. This report well who knows if there is a lot of surprise over this:

Broad failures at all levels of Chicago Public Schools kept officials from preventing and responding to sexual abuse suffered by students in the nation’s third-largest school system, according to a prominent law firm’s early review of problems documented this summer in a Tribune investigation.

The report by the law firm Schiff Hardin identified repeated “systemic deficiencies” in training, incident reporting, data collection and trend tracking that pervaded city schools, the system’s downtown headquarters and a school board controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Employees were not consistently trained on district policies and procedures involving sexual misconduct, according to the report authored by Schiff Hardin partner Maggie Hickey and released Friday. CPS also did not ensure that those policies were being implemented or that they were effective, the report said.

The report describes how understaffed and underfunded CPS investigators struggled to process reports of potential sexual harassment, notifications sent to the Department of Children and Family Services, employee misconduct allegations and altercations between students and staff — thousands of reports during the 2016-17 school year alone.

Hickey noted that the district’s incident-reporting software, known as Verify, “is almost universally viewed by principals as cumbersome and inefficient.” CPS is moving to a new system next year, the report said.

While this blog is named for a now closed former public school, it just has to be said. Another reason for confidence in public education to go into a negative direction...

h/t Newsalert

#Ward09 Public notice

Who knew that Chicago did indeed have bats flying around in the city. And I never considered that they would fly south as this bat authorities have found. Check out this notice from Ald. Beale's ig page.

A post shared by Alderman Anthony A Beale (@aldbeale) on Aug 16, 2018 at 11:29am PDT

Pullman playground and gang truce....

I'm sorry to have not shared yesterday's playground building in Pullman - although I did note this over at The Sixth Ward earlier this past week. I also didn't know the story behind this though judging by the headline is more interesting than building this new playground.

I will share a tweet from the reporter of this story for the Tribune, Tessa Weinberg

On my last day at the Tribune, I went to the Far South Side where a truce between two rival gang factions has led to a neighborhood playground being built amid a newfound peace: https://t.co/2NePIfMM9Y

— Tessa Weinberg (@Tessa_Weinberg) August 11, 2018

But the playground’s foundation was really laid nearly a year ago when Sherman Scullark, a member of the Risky Road gang faction, rang Detective Vivian Williams’ doorbell.

Williams, who has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years — and has spent 23 of them working as a Chicago police officer — was shocked when Scullark came to her.

“I could see in his face that he needed to talk about something. And when I opened the door he said, 'Officer Williams, I'm just tired. I'm tired,’ ” Williams said.

Scullark was tired of the violence. The conflict between Risky Road and the Maniac Fours faction had been going on since Scullark was a young boy.

And it marred the community. Kids didn’t play outside. They knew not to go to the basketball courts or the gas station — both hotspots for shootings when rival gang members found each other across the 107th Street dividing line.

So Scullark asked Williams, who’s known as the neighborhood mom, to set up a meeting between the rival gangs. Williams agreed but needed approval from the district commander.

The next day, Williams got it. But Scullark beat her to it. He had already orchestrated a truce agreement.

He had approached his rivals on their block and let them know he wasn’t carrying a firearm. Then he told them how he felt. It turned out some of them felt the same.

They agreed to put down the guns, and the neighborhood has been more peaceful ever since.

“I said, 'You didn't even give me 24 hours?’ ” Williams said. “He said, ‘Now can you introduce me to Arne Duncan?’ ”

Duncan, the former education secretary under Barack Obama and former Chicago Public Schools CEO, is the driving force behind the organization Chicago Creating Real Economic Destiny, known as Chicago CRED.

Read the whole thing!

And here's a flyer for that recent event that I hadn't posted here.