Seniors, people with disabilities and health care workers blocked the front entrance to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange(CME) on Wednesday May 23 at around 9:30 am, as well the adjacent Jackson and LaSalle Streets. Police moved in about half an hour later and ordered people to clear the streets or fac… Read full post »

"Caterpillar has work plans, processes, policies and people ready to be deployed in the event of any business interruption, whether it is a tornado, fire or a strike."---Caterpillar spokesperson Rusty Dunn: April 30, 2012

Thanks for nothing, Rusty Dunn. You just equated 780 striking Caterpillar worke… Read full post »

How does a person of faith live a purposeful life in a world gone wrong?  Where does a moral vision come from, a vision that can thrive despite the inevitable blows that fall upon it?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot since Addie Wyatt, the celebrated South Side Chicago labor… Read full post »

  “What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”---Ursula K. Le Guin”

While riding the Blue Line downtown to the April 16 Monday morning press conference by Chicago’s Mental Health Movement, I couldn’t help but reflect on Mayor Rahm’s Emanuel&… Read full post »

 My petty crime arrest story...

For George Corley Wallace, his 1972 Presidential campaign swing through Maryland was one seriously bad trip. He was met by riots in Hagerstown and Frederick, by loud counter demonstrations at Wheaton Plaza and Capital Plaza near DC and was seriously wounded by &nb… Read full post »

Calling mass transit “a genuine civil rights issue,” the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), which represents transit workers across the nation, joined with the Occupy Movement, community organizations and transit riders to demand a revitalization of our transit systems. Citing suc/… Read full post »

April 4 always brings back the same memories for me. They come for a while and they force me to reflect on what kind of country we live in: how much has changed and how little has changed. I wrote a version of this in 2008 but I edited and rewrote… Read full post »

May 30th 1937: Thirty-one year old Hull House social worker Guadalupe “Lupe” Marshall stood amongst the crowd  in front of Sam’s Place on a warm afternoon. Approximately 1500 people were there to rally support for Chicago steel workers. Marshall was researching Mexican workers… Read full post »

“In the hospital you’re on duty for 8 hours and if you get into trouble they’ll come and help you out. If you’re out in the district, you know, you sit there for 24 hours if they’re in labor and you really learn about labor. You learn all the physiology of… Read full post »

Aynalem Moba doesn’t want to kill anyone. He doesn’t want to injure anyone. He certainly doesn’t want to poison anyone. No, he is not a draftee in a horrible war he doesn’t believe in. He is an American truck driver who drives loads at the Port of Seattle.

“Every day, I… Read full post »

 “They’re telling workers they’ve got to step back and do with less. What does that mean? Not having a car? Not being able to make the payments on their house? Not being able to send their kids to college? Not having any money for recreation? I thought that what’s… Read full post »

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB---- from the song "Respect"-- by Otis Redding

If you drive down I-55 or I-80 out of Chicago toward Joliet, they are hard to miss. Sprawling boxy-looking buildings, often windowless, but with constant activity as semi's pull up to di… Read full post »

Please note: SheilaTGTG55 did a fine blog post about the closing of the Jane Addams centers HERE. Please visit hers as well for another point of view.

On January 19, 2012 a spokesperson for the Jane Addams Hull House Association announced the closing of the remaining 3 Hull… Read full post »

I was born in Washington DC and was a baby and toddler at 13th and Clifton NW in the Shaw community. We eventually moved out of inner city DC into the working class Glenmont area of suburban Maryland. I stayed there from 1951-1961. Not long ago, I walked through my old… Read full post »

Republicans are very good at confusing people about the economy. Our economic problems are variously blamed on immigrants, blacks, liberals, environmentalists, unions, China, Democrats, women, government regulation or whatever else is the GOP flavor of the week. Conspicuously abs… Read full post »

Coffee table books can only hint at how gorgeous the Scottish Highlands really are. To be enveloped on all sides by crags, lochs and mountain flowers while breathing in cool fresh summer air cannot be replicated in any media.… Read full post »

It’s humanity’s longest war. It’s the War Against Nature. Some say it began when the first plow broke the soil on humanity’s first farm. But however you reckon its beginnings, here in the 21st century, that war is reaching a critical stage.

You see, humanity is a… Read full post »

As a kid and well into my college years, going to YMCA Camp Letts near the Chesapeake Bay was one of my central life experiences. One of those experiences was confronting Dixie style segregation.

YMCA Camp Letts sits at the end of a peninsula jutting out into the Rhode River near… Read full post »