Chicago

Threat Of Amazon Workers’ Strike Spreads During Peak Holiday Season

December 17, 2024 Michael Sainato, Portside. Resist! Amazon, Atlanta, Chicago, Georgia, Illinois, Jeff Bezos, New York City (NYC), Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Thousands of workers at Amazon are threatening to strike at the company after giving the company a deadline of 15 December to agree to begin negotiating a first contract with the union representing employees. The strike threats, which started in New York, have now spread to Chicago and Atlanta. They come during Amazon’s peak holiday season and after the company experienced record sales during its 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. The workers at the company’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island became the first Amazon warehouse in the US to win a union election in March 2022.

How Chicago Organizers Managed To Rid The City Of ShotSpotter

December 9, 2024 Noah Berlatsky, Next City. Organize! Chicago, Gun violence, Illinois, Police, ShotSpotter, Surveillance

In September, the city of Chicago stopped using ShotSpotter, a sensor system designed to detect gunshots and alert police and first responders. During his 2023 campaign for Mayor, Brandon Johnson promised to end the use of the expensive technology, which he has referred to as “walkie-talkies on a stick.” Johnson’s decision to end ShotSpotter was not popular with the Chicago City Council. Alderman Silvana Tabares issued an inflammatory statement declaring that “every gunshot victim left bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worthy sacrifice in the eyes of the mayor for his radical agenda.”

Chicago Rally Demands State’s Attorney Free Torture Survivors

December 3, 2024 Gabe Miller, Fight Back! News. Resist! Chicago, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Illinois, Torture, Wrongful Imprisonment

Chicago, IL – On the morning of Monday, December 2, about 30 demonstrators, led by survivors of wrongful convictions and their loved ones, gathered in below-freezing temperatures outside the downtown Chicago office of incoming Cook County State's Attorney Eileen Burke to demand she free torture survivors and the wrongfully convicted. Speakers gave testimony, chanted, and held signs that reinforced their demands. Burke has a lot of work to do to keep up with her predecessor Kim Foxx, who freed over 300 survivors of wrongful conviction and police torture during her eight years in office.

1800 Nurses Strike University Health In Chicago

November 15, 2024 Fight Back! News. Resist! Chicago, Health Care, Illinois, Nurses, Strikes, Unions

Chicago, IL - On November 13, 1800 members of the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) went on strike against University of Illinois Health for continuing to refuse to negotiate a decent contract. Since June, the union has had 47 bargaining sessions with UI Health, to no avail. In August, a week-long strike was held, but this did not stop management’s greed. The union was left with no choice but to go on an open-ended strike. The workers are striking for higher wages, safety for nurses (and by extension, their patients), as well as family leave that lasts at least 12 weeks. UI Health has offered a measly 2% pay increase.

Plan For Aging Gas Pipelines Runs Up Against Energy Transition

November 1, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. Educate! Chicago, Energy, Energy Transformation, Gas, Illinois, Pipelines

If you ask Chicago’s gas pipeline utility, Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company, or PGL, the best way to fix the problem of leaks from underground gas pipelines, their answer is the most ambitious option — running new, upgraded plastic pipelines throughout the city, leaving their old network of leak-prone iron pipes behind. Consumer watchdogs, however, are calling foul. A newly published report by the Illinois Citizens Utility Board (CUB), a nonprofit utility watchdog established by the state legislature, finds PGL’s cost projections underestimate how expensive and time-consuming those upgrades would be, while massively overestimating how costly other options might be.

Chicago Teachers Are Fighting For A Historic Contract

October 26, 2024 Kari Lydersen, In These Times. Strategize! Chicago, Education, Illinois, Teachers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), along with thousands of supporters, took to the streets in a historic battle with then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel over his corporate education reform and austerity plans for the city’s public school system. That strike helped define the increasingly popular concept of “bargaining for the common good,” an approach “where unions make demands that would benefit not just members but the larger communities,” as CTU Vice President Jackson Potter explained two years ago on the tenth anniversary of the walk out. Today, the union is in the midst of another struggle over the future of the country’s third-largest public education system.

Mutual Aid And Mosh Pits

October 18, 2024 Briana L. Urena-Ravelo, In These Times. Organize! Chicago, Illinois, Immigrant Rights, Music, Mutual Aid

Chicago — On the Fourth of July, a group of punks and appreciators gather around the canal on the South Side for a mutual aid benefit show. They’re raising funds for Comedor Comunitario (“Community Dining Room”), a weekly Tuesday dinner run by Venezuelan migrants at a community church. With keffiyehs and Palestinian flags throughout the space, curious holiday revelers watched from their passing boats as folks slammed to the bands Hide and Stress Positions, their lyrics decrying American settler-colonialism and nationalism in a defiant take on the holiday. All told, we raised over $3,000to support the comedor.

In The Shadow Of The Obama Center, Residents Fight Displacement

October 11, 2024 Fran Quigley, In These Times. Resist! Barack Obama, Chicago, Displacememt, Displacement, Gentrification

When Barack Obama met with Chicago residents about his proposed presidential center in 2018, the former president downplayed the threat that gentrification might pose to their communities. “We’ve got such a long way to go in terms of economic development before you’re even going to start seeing the prospect of significant gentrification,” Obama said at a community forum where one attendee asked about the possibility of existing residents being pushed out. “Malia’s kids might have to worry about that.” But now, six years later, residents of Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood are fighting fears of displacement amidst looming real-estate speculation in the area surrounding the $830 million project, set to open in nearby Jackson Park in 2026.

A SWANA Space To Exist

October 6, 2024 Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel, In These Times. Organize! Chicago, community building, Illinois, LGBTQ, MENA, SWANA

In August 2022, I received an Instagram message that radically changed my life: “Hey cutie, I’m gonna try to organize a queer SWANA comedy night in October [and] wanted to see if you would be interested in this since you are hilarious.” We met organizing jail support for a comrade who was arrested protesting a Zionist speaker, and I soon found myself in a group chat with dozens of others in Chicago’s Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) diaspora. (SWANA is a decolonial term for what’s often called the Middle East and North Africa region, or MENA.) In this bustling WhatsApp group of personalities I would come to know, I was met with warmth. I shared my amateur cooking photos and was invited for dinners.

Fighting Privatization Is Good For Mental Health

September 19, 2024 Elena Gormley, In These Times. Organize! Chicago, Health Care, mental health, Privatization

This spring, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a dramatic change in the city’s mental health policy, promising to reopen public clinics shuttered for more than a decade. Today, my administration is taking extraordinary steps to reverse the course and expand our city’s systems of mental health,” Johnson said May 30, outside the Roseland Mental Health Center. “We are standing here on the Far South Side to make it clear that we are prioritizing those who have been left behind and discarded by previous administrations.” In addition to Roseland, the city plans to reopen two more public clinics, in the Pilsen and West Garfield Park neighborhoods.

Chicago Students Start Strong With ‘Hands Off Lebanon’ Demonstration

September 5, 2024 Fight Back News!. Resist! Chicago, Higher Education, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Student Activi

Chicago, IL – On Thursday, August 29, New Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) started the week strong with a demonstration on campus, with about 90 students, demanding U.S. hands off Lebanon, an end of U.S. aid to Israel and to stand strong with Palestine. Speakers from other progressive student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UIC, and Anakbayan at UIC, also spoke. The rally strengthened the students’ message of funding for education – such as cultural centers and student resources – not for genocide, war and occupation in Palestine.

Nurses End Seven-Day Strike In Chicago

August 27, 2024 Richard Berg, Fight Back! News. Resist! Chicago, Health Care, Illinois, Nurses, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Chicago, Illinois – Working as a nurse in a large university hospital is a hard job. Large numbers of patients roll through. Vulnerable people look for hope, remedy and help. Despite this persistent pressure, hospital administrators ask for quick patient turnover. Supervisors ask overstressed nurses to do the work of housekeepers, food service, technical staff and others, who are often in short supply. Some doctors are nice, while others boss nurses around. This is the case at the University of Illinois Health (UIH) as well as healthcare facilities across the country. One difference is that the nurses at UIH have a labor union and decided to take a stand.

11,000 March For Palestine On Final Day Of Democratic National Convention

August 24, 2024 Fight Back! News. Resist! Chicago, DNC, Illinois, Mass Action

Chicago, IL – More than 11,000 people marched for Palestine on the final evening of the Democratic National Convention, August 22. While Kamala Harris was giving her presidential nominee acceptance speech inside, the protesters outside chanted against the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. Delegates inside the convention report hearing demonstrators on the streets inside the convention hall. Despite pressure from police (hundreds of them clad in riot gear), demonstrators remained in the streets after the 8 p.m. permit deadline expired. The protest was organized by the Coalition to March on the DNC, which includes more than 270 organizations.

Palestinian Rights Advocates Hold Sit-In After DNC Refuses Speaking Slot

August 23, 2024 Jake Johnson, Scheer Post. Resist! Chicago, Democrats, DNC, Palestine, Sit-In

Delegates from the “uncommitted” movement led a sit-in outside of the Democratic National Convention and refused to accept no for an answer late Wednesday after the party reportedly declined their request to provide a mere five minutes of onstage speaking time for a Palestinian American to speak to the horrors unfolding in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has been bombing relentlessly with U.S. support for more than 10 months. DNC organizers did not say publicly why they are refusing to allow a Palestinian American to speak at the event at Chicago’s United Center, which is located in the county with the largest Palestinian American population in the U.S.

Final Day Of Chicago DNC Convention Protests

August 23, 2024 Unicorn Riot. Resist! Chicago, Democrats, DNC, Palestine

Chicago, IL — On the last day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, protests are continuing at Union Park to oppose the DNC and shed light on the U.S.-funded ongoing violent occupation of Palestine by Israel.

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