Suburban Guerrilla

They’d announced last week that they would close in the spring, but instead shut down Friday. Of course, I’m sure Mayor Rahm would have done something to help if he’d known! (Not.) The settlement house model was a successful one, but a lot of people are invested in the idea that spending money on poor people is a waste:

CHICAGO (AP) — Hull House, the Chicago social services organization founded more than 120 years ago by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, closed Friday after running out of money.
The agency said the poor economy resulted in more demand for its services but also made it harder to raise money to cover its costs. Hull House has been providing child care, job training, housing assistance and other services for 60,000 people a year in the Chicago area.

The agency had announced plans to close in the spring, but Friday’s shutdown was unexpected, striking some 300 employees with a devastating and unexpected blow. They received layoff notices and final paychecks and then spent the day packing their belongings and saying tearful good-byes. Many said they were startled to learn their insurance ended almost two weeks ago.

“It’s been my life,” said Dianne Turner, who spent 25 years teaching families in Chicago housing projects how to break the cycle of poverty. “It wasn’t about the pay. It was about seeing a family go from feeling hopeless to being hopeful and feeling like they can do things.”

Turner said she knows what it’s like to live in the projects and dream of something better. She got her first job as a teenager through Hull House and said the organization helped teach her the value of education, how to save money and how to be a leader.

Founded in 1889, Hull House was the best known of the 400 settlement houses in the United States in the early 1900s. The settlements were designed to provide services to immigrants and the poor while uplifting them through culture, education and recreation. At its peak, Hull House served more than 9,000 people a week, offering medical help, an art gallery, citizenship classes, a gardening club and a gym with sports programs.

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

You’ll like it, honest. Our commenter K wrote it.

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Todd Farally is a Philadelphia progressive and a member of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 who I had the pleasure of talking to in Minneapolis last year at Netroots Nation. Todd gets really ticked when people start talking down unions, accusing them of being corrupt and not doing anything to help their members, so he wrote a piece over at Daily Kos explaining exactly what his union does:

The Local I want to focus on is my own Union (SMWIA Local 19), not because of bias or because it and the membership is very near and dear to my heart, but because Local 19, its leadership and members have truly given an example that all others can and should strive to follow.

First and foremost I want to mention that since the economic downturn began in 2008 unemployed members of the Local have held on to their health insurance for themselves and their families. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been laid off two days or two years, members won’t be left without insurance. You won’t get that with a corporation that holds profits above people every day of the week.

Now, to really hit home to some out there that may think this isn’t a big deal, I have a little story. One of my brothers in Local 19 who we’ll call Jim (not his real name) told me his wife went in for a checkup and ended up needing heart surgery. His wife made it through and is currently recuperating; they caught it just in time and thank goodness for that. But what if they didn’t have that insurance? When this all happened, Jim had been laid off for over a year and a half. Anywhere else he and his wife would have been left out in the cold and things could have gone down a much different path. She may have received care, but in no way, shape or form could it have compared to the care she did receive through the Union’s plan.

That’s just one story of many I’m sure that exist. This wouldn’t have been possible without the forethought of past leaders within the Local and the membership itself voting to properly fund our healthcare.

I recently had a chance to sit and talk with Sheet Metal Workers Local 19’s President/Business Manager Gary Masino and we discussed the various good Local 19 has done for members that have been unemployed long term. It doesn’t stop at healthcare; the Local has a fund set up that supplements unemployment benefits for one full year when a member is laid off, this is known as the SUB Fund, which really is a great thing if you’ve ever had to live off a UC check.

In past years when unemployment was low, members would receive a portion of the money back that they paid into this fund. But in recent times with unemployment being as high as it has been, members have waived that reimbursement to facilitate SUB Fund extensions for members that have exhausted their SUB. Each extension gives those members six weeks of SUB checks for that quarter of the year. These extensions have been approved for the past seven quarters since 2009. Mr. Masino put it best, “This is a brother supplementing another brother.” And to me that is the essence of what a Union should be.
[...]

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Imagine if someone at the ipod factory could afford to own an ipod…

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Patty Griffin:

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech:

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

I love it when people do things like this:

It all started two years ago at Corner Perk, a small, locally owned coffee shop, when a customer paid her bill and left $100 extra, saying she wanted to pay for everyone who ordered after her until the money ran out. The staff fulfilled her request, and the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has returned to leave other large donations every two to three months.

“People will come in and say, ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand. Are you trying to buy me a coffee today?’” the shop’s owner, Josh Cooke, told the local news. “And I say, ‘No, somebody came in 30 minutes ago and left money to pay for drinks until it runs out.’”

It took a while, but word has started to spread around the tiny coastal town, home to about 12,000 people. Now, more and more customers have been leaving money to pay for others’ food and drink. Cooke says some people don’t even buy anything when they come in; they just stop to donate and head right back out.

A medium cup of coffee at Corner Perk costs $1.95. That may not seem like a lot, but for a family struggling to save money in these tense and difficult economic times, two bucks saved at the right moment probably feels like a million. And a jolt of generosity is a better pick-me-up than caffeine any day of the week.

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Despite recent setbacks, I’m so much better off than I was this time last year, I think. I have good friends and interesting things to do, so it’s not my personal life that makes me so happy to see 2011 go. I’ve been working hard to get mentally and physically healthy and making real progress. I’ve really gotten into forgiveness lately, too. It helps.

And this year, we also had thrill of watching the Occupy Movement begin and grow, offering us the first real hope in a long time. Inspiring!

With so many people everywhere who are out of work and hanging by a thread, it’s hard to feel really good for long. The planet seems to be angry at how much abuse we’ve heaped on it, while people in power ignore all the the signs. It’s so damned frustrating.

But we do still have each other. We gather in this place every day to read and converse with each other, and maybe we all feel less lonely and scared as a result. I hope so.

Anyway, I’m grateful for everyone’s support. Quite literally, I wouldn’t have made it this far without the help of my readers. (What always stands out is how – back in 2003, I think, when I had pneumonia, no health insurance and no sick days, you guys paid my bills and bought my food for that month so I could stay in bed for two weeks until I got better. Until then, I didn’t know I could be quite that sick and scared.)

So for all your help, emotional and otherwise, thank you for seeing me through another year. Here’s hoping for many more!

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Yeah, it’s a re-run. But it’s a good one!

This is my very favorite Anne Lamott essay of all time, because it was me at my worst, although maybe not so much anymore (although I could be kidding myself):

Say you have a problem, something that is driving you crazy, something you need and want an answer to. Maybe the problem is romantic in nature, or has to do with your career. Maybe a decision needs to be reached that involves one of your kids, or your spouse, or an aged parent or pet. You feel like you really need to go left or right but you have no idea which way to turn. Maybe you feel just a little scared, maybe profoundly anxious; maybe you’ve even developed facial tics and early-stage Tourette’s.

If you’re at all like me, you’re torn between really wanting to know what God’s will is for you, and just desperately wanting this one thing to happen, this one thing to turn out this one particular way. And you keep feeling this, even though you remember the amazing scene at the end of “The Mission,” where the warrior, played by Robert DeNiro, comes to see the priest, Jeremy Irons, to seek his blessing in the battle ahead, and the priest says, “If what you are about to do is God’s will, then you don’t need my blessing. And if it’s not, then my blessing isn’t going to help.”

You remember that and still: You frantically want the guy to call; you want the project to be a huge success; you want the authorities to let your brother off the hook. Whatever. A small part of you, a crescent moon-shaped part of you, wants to be in alignment with God’s will, because you have reason to believe that you are fucked unto the Lord if you somehow get your own will to prevail. But a louder part of you secretly believes that you alone know what the best possible outcome would be, for all parties concerned, even with a lifetime of evidence to the contrary. And you are prepared to use the sheer force of your personality and character to get it to happen.

It’s a terrible feeling, isn’t it — the self-will run riot? Here you long to inwardly resemble the Dalai Lama humming to himself, or Therese of Liseux at dawn Christmas morning in prayer. And instead, on the inside, you’re feeling like Roy Cohn with the flu and bad coffee nerves. Or a dog with a chew toy. A crazy little dog.

A crazy, bad little dog with issues: That’s where the self-will takes me. First there’s all this terrible Jurassic roaring and posturing, the wrestling to the ground, the snapping and gnawing, the growling. And then there’s an unearthly quiet, the isometric moment of silence just before the electrical storm. And then suddenly the toy is flung, tossed up and over the body, and great excitement pours forth like lava as the toy is searched for and captured again; and then dominated, chewed, ripped at, drooled over.

But eventually I am too tired to continue and my head has become too uninhabitable, and I realize I’ve been driving this rickety temperamental old bus of my mind around for too long. I’ve lost all sense of direction and am feeling confused and pissed off and bitter and resentful and nuts; but then finally, finally just tired. I begin to worry that I have had or am having a complete nervous breakdown, and that I am about to start weeping or barking and won’t be able to stop. Sometimes I still look more or less okay on the outside  except for the tics, which can actually be pretty unsightly  but inside I’m feeling a little bit more like Ted Kaczynski than I like to. And I realize I’m just crazier than a shithouse rat; and that it’s all hopeless. And that the sun is burning out.
[...]

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Link:

Two days after Texas teenager Ben Breedlove posted a YouTube video talking about the dangerous heart condition from which he suffered, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, he died from a heart attack. It was Christmas night.

He’ll be buried today.

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

I’m really glad to see this — but also ashamed and infuriated that here in America, we have so many neighborhoods not much different from war-torn countries. This LA Times story is still inspiring, though [via Cabdrollery]:

Earl Johnson’s boots crunch broken glass from liquor bottles as he walks down an alley in East Baltimore’s Oliver neighborhood.

He is just blocks from the site of the firebombing of a family who called the police on drug dealers and were killed for it, and just yards from some of the most memorable scenes of urban decay in television’s “The Wire.”

At his side are Rich Blake, 32, a Marine Corps veteran; and Jeremy Johnson, 34, a Navy veteran. Like Earl (no relation to Jeremy), they are on a different kind of mission.

They’ve come to this neighborhood once synonymous with the worst of Baltimore to help it become something better. They call this mission Operation Oliver.

As the men walk, they pick up empty Seagram’s gin and Bacardi rum bottles. They point to progress — refurbished homes, a painted playground — and to vacant houses and trash-filled alleys that still need work.

“A lot of the conditions from places we’re deployed to, Iraq and Afghanistan, are not that much different from the conditions here in Oliver,” says Blake, executive director of the 6th Branch, one of several nonprofit groups involved in Operation Oliver.

“We’re not afraid to dig in and make a difference in a community that’s got a bad reputation in the city,” Blake says. “The discipline, the go-get-’em, let’s-do-this-now, aggressive attitude — it really lends itself to community service in a way traditional organizations haven’t been able to do.”

Operation Oliver, which began in July, is a one-year commitment to the neighborhood, the veterans say. It involves cleaning up alleys, rehabilitating homes, organizing volunteers and notifying police about illegal dumping sites and drug dealing.

To say the idea has caught on would be an understatement. Word of the intensive yearlong service project has spread throughout Maryland — and the nation.

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

Some time ago, MIT began to offer much of its course material online, for free. Now they’re going to offer MIT certifications, also for free:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has announced a new program that will expand the university’s free online courses and allow would-be students to earn official certificates from a program called MITx.

The Internet courses will not only present course materials but will also offer student-to-student communication, interactive features, and online laboratories. Perhaps most interesting is that this program will not be limited to the United States. Anyone on the planet with an Internet connection will be able to take the courses, which are slated to begin in the spring of 2012.

“MIT has long believed that anyone in the world with the motivation and ability to engage MIT coursework should have the opportunity to attain the best MIT-based educational experience that Internet technology enables,” MIT president Susan Hockfield said in a statement. ” OpenCourseWare’s great success signals high demand for MIT’s course content and propels us to advance beyond making content available. MIT now aspires to develop new approaches to online teaching.”

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

I hope Athenae (who’s one of my very favorite writers) doesn’t mind that I stole her entire post, because it’s all of a piece and I really want people to read it:

The days are dim and cold and short. I think that’s what it is.

I think that’s why we drape our homes in strings of stars and light the fire and invite people in: Gather close, because your warmth keeps out the wind. Our traditions date from times when winter meant death, when winter meant the very old and very young and very ill were felled sooner than expected, and a community could expect to lose its weakest members and, if they weren’t careful, its strongest as well.

As we still can, in many places. As we still do, so very close to home.

Every year, I complain about the cold, about the inconvenience of travel in the snow, about the seeming endlessness of the overcast sky, but winter speaks to me like a muscle-memory, knit into some deep German part of me that knows that cold outside is imperative for warmth within.

It’s an instinct I obey: Prepare. Stock up. Reinforce the window frames, unroll the rugs, take the thickest blankets out of storage. Bake bread and make stew and chili and fill the freezer, just in case. The pantry is full of seasonings and supplies. Is this all those Little House books I read? There are two grocery stores within walking distance and we live on the second floor; we’re in no danger of being snowed in. Our traditions are about interdependence: Share what you have, because that way everyone has enough. Maybe I just want to have enough to share, so that if you come to the door I can feed you.

(If the Detroit Lions came to the door, I could feed them. We won’t have to grocery shop until June.)

I want to gather everyone in. We’ve had a steady parade of houseguests since Thanksgiving: The only point to having more than one room is to fill the others with people you love. I feel that way about this place, too. Why have this room unless it’s full of people? The Secret Santa thing made me so happy, because it showed me and the rest of the Internet how much you care about each other. I’ve always wanted to have a house full of people like that.

Especially now, when it’s dark, and the wind is howling outside the door.

A.

Bookmark It

Continue Reading

But as far as I’m concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman – sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby. And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers, bearing ham. When we came out of the church that night it was cold and clear, with crunchy snow underfoot and bright, bright stars overhead. And I thought about the Angel of the Lord – Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us everywhere: ‘Hey! Unto you a child is born!’

“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” – Barbara Robinson

Here is how this book begins: “The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.” These truly nasty kids bully their way into the lead roles in a church Christmas pageant to get free hot chocolate and cookies, but by the end of the book, their unexpected Christmas spirit has us in tears.

What can I say? I’m such a sucker for a redemption story. Whether it’s Scrooge, the Herdmans, George Bailey, the Grinch, little Susan Walker – or me, I just can’t resist the story of someone who once was blind, but now they see.

This is what I wish for all of you this Christmas: To see, to fly above the despair. To understand why Christmas resonates throughout the world, even in places where they don’t especially care (or even believe) that Jesus was born in a stable.
[...]

Bookmark It

Continue Reading