News Reel

Read more about the Constitutional Convention at www.conconillinois.com.

The annual United Power leadership retreat is set for Saturday August 9 at St. Ignatius High School on Roosevelt Road about a half mile west of I-90-94. Registration will begin at 9:00 AM and we will end at 3:30 PM.

United Power and the Mosque Foundation, a founding member, have been working very hard on a local issue - introducing Arabic as a second language in public schools in the southwest suburbs. This article covers the issue, based on interviews with United Power leaders

http://www.southtownstar.com/news/961287,052108arabic.article

Read about what we've been doing this year on health care, housing, constitutional convention for Illinois and internal work in member institutions. Download here.

An issue we can't afford to lose sight of

Mary Schmich

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich_bd20apr20,1,20...

April 20, 2008

You may have missed some of the most interesting news in Chicago last week.

It wasn't as exciting as the cougar shot to death in an alley, or the earthquake that shook us out of bed, but in its way, it was as startling:

On Thursday, for the first time in more than a decade, the Chicago Housing Authority opened its waiting list for federally subsidized rental vouchers. By the end of the day, with a month left to apply, people had picked up more than 256,000 application forms.

More than a quarter-million. In a day.

To be clear—these aren't housing applications. The hope is more remote. Applicants are tossed into a lottery to win one of 40,000 places on the waiting list.

A lot of those quarter-million forms, of course, could wind up in the trash. Some people may have picked up one for all their neighbors, aunts and cousins. Even so, the run on these Section 8 voucher applications is a signal of a problem more important in Chicago than earthquakes.

By happenstance, just the day before, four people had come to the Tribune to talk to me about affordable housing. One was Nick Brunick, a real estate attorney who lives in Oak Park and wants his kids to grow up in a city filled with people of all kinds.

National Training Mundelein, IL July 15th-22nd
St. Mary of the Lake

Contact your local organizer for more information and to sign up.

Article Below

An Advocate Lends a Hand as Social Justice Goals Unify Faiths
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

CHICAGO

Lina Jamoul stood amid the London multitudes that day in February 2003, and in the masses of antiwar marchers in Hyde Park she imagined she saw her political future. There were Socialists and fashion models, dentists and nuns, the sort of coalition that an idealistic graduate student like Ms. Jamoul could envision not only stopping the impending invasion of Iraq, but also making social change at home.

Then the weeks passed and the throngs dissipated and the war began and the whole enterprise, at least in Ms. Jamoul’s eyes, dwindled to rote slogans and camp followers. Worse still, the sense of futility struck an intimate and familiar chord. Her own family had had to flee their native Syria because her father, a journalist, had fallen afoul of the government as a dissident.

On an unexpectedly brisk night two weeks ago, sitting in a Roman Catholic church on the periphery of downtown Chicago, Ms. Jamoul recognized that those frustrating experiences were not her destiny but more like an instructive counterpoint. She had not lost her desire to right wrongs. She had, however, followed it across the ocean and half a continent, to the working-class neighborhoods and suburbs that radiate outward from the Loop.

She was meeting on this evening with the leaders of a group audaciously called United Power for Action and Justice, and composed largely, though not exclusively, of congregations from across the religious spectrum.

A Muslim herself, Ms. Jamoul sat beside three women from the Mosque Foundation, a major Islamic center in suburban Chicago. Next to those women, each covering her hair with the hijab, a Reform rabbi removed his baseball cap to reveal a yarmulke.

The action and justice being discussed was a major piece of health-care legislation bogged down in the Illinois Legislature. The language of the session had none of the yearning, supplicating tone of do-gooders; it bristled with words like “target,” “polarize,” “enemy” and “vilify.” The people speaking it, Ms. Jamoul included, relished conflict and intended to win.

This kind of lexicon has for decades been a mainstay for the member groups of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the legacy of the legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s successor as head of the foundation, Ed Chambers, specifically directed its efforts toward religious congregations, and for much of the past quarter-century that especially meant black Protestants and Latino and white Roman Catholics.

SAVE THE DATE
United Power Leadership Retreat August 4th- 8:30am- 3:30pm
Chicago Theological Union at 5416 S. Cornell in Hyde Park

United Power Leader Greg Pierce had an article featured in Crain's. http://chicagobusiness.com
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4/23/07

By Gregory F. Augustine Pierce
Now is the time for universal health coverage in Illinois

Let's get a few things out of the way:

• It would be better for those of us who run businesses and provide workers with health insurance if all employers did so.

• The last thing business owners like me want to see is another tax.

Gilead Center in Chicago Tribune

More lack health policies
State efforts don't cure insurance gap, study finds

By Judith Graham
Tribune staff reporter

April 29, 2007

The ranks of people without health insurance are expanding in Illinois despite the state's efforts to provide medical coverage to more children and working families.

A new report published Friday found that 1.8 million residents were uninsured in Illinois in 2005, up about 2 percent from the year before. It's based on a detailed analysis of U.S. census data.

The findings are significant as Gov. Rod Blagojevich campaigns for far-reaching legislation to extend health-care coverage to everyone in Illinois, his top priority in the current session, and lawmakers question whether his plan is viable or affordable.

"What this tells us is even with everything Illinois is doing, this problem is getting worse," said Michael Taitel, board president at the Gilead Outreach and Referral Center, which published the study and focuses on the uninsured.

It's happening largely because of a well-documented, long-term trend: Fewer employers are offering medical coverage to employees and their families as insurance premiums and health-care costs soar.

Between 2001 and 2005, the portion of Illinois' population covered by employer-based insurance fell from 74.9 percent to 72.8 percent, the Gilead Center's analysis shows.