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Illinois

Threat Of Amazon Workers’ Strike Spreads During Peak Holiday Season

December 17, 2024 Michael Sainato, Portside. , , , , , , , ,
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. , , , , ,
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. , , , ,
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.

You’re Already On Strike; How to Turn Up the Heat

November 28, 2024 Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Teamsters at Marathon Petroleum in Detroit have been on the picket line since September 4, their first strike in 30 years. Tankers filled with gasoline regularly exit the massive, belching refinery on a main Detroit artery, as Marathon continues production with supervisors brought in from other facilities. Workers have handbilled gas stations, as well as sometimes following Marathon trucks and picketing them when they make deliveries. They’ve gotten support from the Detroit City Council and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, as well as other unions like the UAW who have joined their picket lines.

Students Who Protested Gaza Genocide Face Felony Mob Charges

November 26, 2024 Tara Goodarzi, Truthout. , , , , , ,
Pre-trial hearings for students who participated in a Gaza solidarity encampment in central Illinois last spring are being held on November 20 and December 4, 2024. The outcome of the four students’ trials will determine whether they will risk up to three years of incarceration on felony “mob action” charges for having exercised their free speech rights on campus. The students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) — one of the largest public universities in the country — constructed an encampment known as the Popular University for Gaza in April 2024, after months of Israel’s relentless slaughter of Palestinians, mirroring dozens of other student-led sites across the United States.

1800 Nurses Strike University Health In Chicago

November 15, 2024 Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
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. , , , , ,
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. , , , , ,
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.

The Nation’s First Commercial Carbon Sequestration Plant Is Leaking

October 23, 2024 Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, NPR Illinois. , , , ,
A row of executives from grain-processing behemoth Archer Daniels Midland watched as Verlyn Rosenberger, 88, took the podium at a Decatur city council meeting earlier this month. It was the first meeting since she and the rest of her central Illinois community learned of a second leak at ADM’s carbon dioxide sequestration well beneath Lake Decatur, their primary source of drinking water. “Just because CO2 sequestration can be done doesn’t mean it should be done,” the retired elementary school teacher told the city council. “Pipes eventually leak.” ADM’s facility in central Illinois was the first permitted commercial carbon sequestration operation in the country.

Mutual Aid And Mosh Pits

October 18, 2024 Briana L. Urena-Ravelo, In These Times. , , , ,
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.

A SWANA Space To Exist

October 6, 2024 Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel, In These Times. , , , , ,
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.

Illinois’ Elimination Of Cash Bail One Year Later

October 3, 2024 Lisel Petis, Portside. , , ,
A year ago, Illinois made headlines as the first state to eliminate cash bail. Like many, I feared such a sweeping change could compromise public safety. However, the anticipated chaos never materialized — crime rates have dropped. Now, fear should no longer prevent states from taking similar actions. The Pretrial Fairness Act introduced a system that more accurately detains those with genuine risks while allowing low-risk individuals to await trial outside of jail. No cash is required. The goal was to create a system that better balances public safety, accountability and individual liberties. The result? People can no longer buy their way out of pretrial detention.

Can A National Strike Save A Closed Plant?

September 12, 2024 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. , , , , ,
Dawn Simms has been out of work for a year and a half. The Stellantis auto plant where she, her father and grandfather worked most of their adult years now sits idle, ringed with tall grass and weeds. Almost all of the members of her union, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 1268, have been laid off, too, and the effects have rippled through the northern Illinois town of Belvidere, where restaurants have closed and business at others has slowed, as the need at food pantries has increased. It’s a familiar Rust Belt story, with a twist. Sitting in the union hall, a five minute drive from the shuttered plant, Simms does not talk like someone resigned to the loss of her livelihood or her home town’s vibrancy.

The Private Pilots Flying Abortion Seekers Across The Midwest

September 9, 2024 Lucas Frisancho, Next City. , , , , , , , , ,
In the fall of 2022, Mike climbed into the pilot’s seat with an idea. For the past few months, the private pilot had been volunteering with the Illinois-based Midwest Access Coalition, an abortion support fund that he’d come across in his post-George Floyd anti-racism journey. “I thought, there’s gotta be people out there helping people travel for abortions, because it’s not like every medical facility you go to provide abortion care,” says Mike. Next City has agreed to use Mike’s first name only to protect his safety and privacy as he engages in this sensitive work. “So I reached out to say, hey, I want to volunteer for anything you might need – driving, hosting, whatever.”

Detroit Marathon Refinery Workers Strike For Better Pay

September 8, 2024 Brian H. Silverstein, Left Voice. , , ,
On September 4, following a 95 percent strike authorization vote, Teamsters Local 283 in Detroit, representing over 250 Marathon refinery workers, walked off the job. The Teamsters have been in negotiations with plant management since November 2023 and workers have been on the job without a contract since January 1, 2024. After the company halted negotiations, workers at the refinery went on strike for the first time in 30 years. Their main demands include cost of living raises that recoup the spending power lost to inflation since the COVID pandemic began, better healthcare, a requirement that all refinery employees be union members, and an end to the use of non-union subcontractors.
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