By The DuSable Museum

DuSable Museum will celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement with our annual King Day celebration. The day will be filled with live performances, storytelling, films, food and activities for the entire family.
IBLA Auditorium – Live Performances
11 a.m.: I’m Your Puppet Productions (60 min)
12:30 p.m.: Mighty Times: The Children’s March
1:30 p.m.: Alyo Children’s Theatre (45 min)
2:30 p.m.: Maggie Brown
4 p.m.: “A Legacy for America’s Children,” written by Joan Collaso, is a musical narrative play that touches on the life and contributions of Civil Rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
5 p.m.: Hip Hop Detoxx (60 min)

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Posted on January 16, 2012

By The Beachwood Occupation Affairs Desk

This week, the president. Next spring, the world.
1. Occupying Obama.

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Posted on January 13, 2012

Rand, Race And Revolution

He heard the call.

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Posted on January 12, 2012

By Arise Chicago

Updated January 18, 2012.
Seventy former workers of Rolf’s Patisserie rallied with community and religious supporters outside their recently-shuttered factory Tuesday, announcing the filing of a class-action lawsuit for violations of the WARN Act, a federal worker protection law, and denouncing the theft of their final paychecks by their former employer.
“We just want justice,” said Karen Leyva, an assistant office manager at the company for six years, while standing in the shadow of her former employer. “We demand them to pay us what we worked so hard for.”
Workers, some of whom had devoted over a decade to the company, were shocked to discover via their company’s web site that the plant would be closing. Without warning, they were all terminated immediately, their lives unexpectedly thrown into turmoil just days before Christmas.

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Posted on January 11, 2012

Uploaded to YouTube by Rev. Megan Rohrer

“Pastor Erik, St Luke’s Lutheran of Chicago’s Logan Square. Describes how you and your congregation can get involved and start a food pantry that feeds 5,000.”

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Posted on January 10, 2012

By The Beachwood Occupation Affairs Desk

You shoulda been there.
1. Rahmen noodles.
“The 2012 Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) national conference [was] held Jan. 6-8 in Chicago, with an agenda strongly influenced by the American Economic Association (AEA). For decades the AEA has fostered a narrow, free-market orthodoxy in the economics profession.
“Unlike other professional organization, the AEA has no code of ethics and its members no incentive to disclose the source of research funding or other conflicts of interest. Some members presenting at this year’s conference, including John Campbell, chairman of Harvard Economics Department, were featured defending the status quo even as the global economy went into a tailspin in the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job directed by Charles Ferguson.
“‘Members of the AEA who put their own self-interest and that of the 1% above a functioning economy for all are making the AEA morally, intellectually, and academically bankrupt,’ says David Orlikoff, film critic and Occupy Chicago organizer. ‘Profiteering AEA members of both parties move between academia and government, spinning failed free-market theory, and are essentially subsidized by the 1% and the politicians they fund. This corrupt system leads to failed ideas such as trickle-down theory, austerity and low capital gains tax rates. The data are in, and the results are disastrous for our country.'”

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Posted on January 9, 2012

Just Like They Did Four Years Ago When They Chose Mike Huckabee For President

Iowa caucus observations from the Beachwood Political Affairs Desk.
Who Won?
According to the pundits:
Mitt Romney literally.
Rick Santorum figuratively.
Barack Obama politically.

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Posted on January 4, 2012

Whose Streets? Our Streets!

I am Chris Drew, the volunteer Executive Director of the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center for the past 24 years. I work for you without pay. Our groundbreaking lawsuit against the Chicago peddlers license is soon to be filed. The stakes are high. Your help is needed to make Chicago more friendly to artists.
Cindy is not her name but her story is common in Chicago. She is an artist facing poverty, out of a job, prolific, but unable to sell her art in public. Even with a peddlers license her opportunities are limited because there are no art scenes where she is able to sell her art. When she ventures out, she finds herself confused by the public with the homeless who they are used to seeing on the streets of Chicago. The homeless have won their First Amendment rights to meet the public in Chicago while artists have not. In the few marginalized areas of Chicago where the peddlers license allows her to sell, she is not joined by other artists in a vibrant street arts scene. The public sees her as a lone figure against a bleak cityscape and pass on by. She is unable to survive, as she should, by her art in Chicago because street art culture has been killed by unfriendly laws and prohibitive park policies.

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Posted on January 3, 2012

By The Beachwood Political Marketing Affairs Desk

“It’s Official: Obama Reelection Campaign Will Highlight His Defense Of The Middle Class,” the Blaze notes, relying on a McClatchy-Tribune report.
“[T]he Obama administration, up until this point, has relied mostly on the ‘It Could Be Worse’ tactic while defending its economic initiatives,” the Blaze’s Becket Adams writes. “However, for all the obvious reason, strategists in the Obama camp don’t think this message will go far with the average American.”
On the other hand, the New York Times reports that “Obama to Target Congress in 2012 Re-election Campaign,” suggesting the theme to replace Hope & Change is still in flux.
The Beachwood has learned, in fact, that the following themes are still under consideration:

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Posted on January 2, 2012