The unique WBEZ public affairs interview program, The Barber Shop Show, interviewed Tom as part of a special show looking at the impacts and politics of the Olympics. Listen to the program:
bss87.mp3 on Vocalo.org 89.5
I was on the soapbox (again), this time at the Newberry Library’s annual Bughouse Square Debates in Washington Square Park. Prepared for hecklers, I inveighed against the privatizing crooks and back-room deals that have ripped us off and threaten to do worse. But the crowd warmed to my reminders of the Monroe Street Parking Garage, Skyway Bridge and Parking Meter rip-offs and really appreciated my blasting of Mayor Emanuel’s Infrastructure Trust. Listen to the speech (9 minutes):
The 2012 Creative Chicago Expo is this Friday and Saturday at The Chicago Cultural Center. I will be conducting a round table discussion on how the creative community might organize for power. The discussions will be held in Preston Bradley Hall (on the second floor of the Cultural Center) near the Chicago Artists Resource table. Anyone is welcome to attend and join the conversation. My session will be on Saturday, March 24 at 11am.
Stand Up For Creativity 2012: Time To Advocate for Power & Resources – how to get serious resources for the arts and artists in Chicago and the U.S.
Will Guzzardi is the real deal. I’ve been urging cultural workers, nonprofit managers and social change agents to run for office for over 20 years. I tried it myself. Will is a grassroots journalist and has done investigative work on social change issues and has fully participated in the social change movements in his community of Logan Square. Now he is a candidate in the race for the Democratic nomination for State Representative of the 39th District. He has got the Democratic Machine on the run! Listen to this seven minute speech and you will know why the people of the 39th District are excited about the idea of having a real fighter for the 99% representing them – and not a mouth piece for large corporations, the tax evasion industry and big pharma – they ALREADY have enough paid reps shilling for them!
Join the push to take back our local government from the 1%!
Tom gave this ten minute talk at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute forum on the future of nonprofits. Bottom line – nonprofits have failed us. Solution? Click here.
With the demise of Hull House one of the issues that lingers over the disaster is how nonprofit leaders have strayed so far from Jane Addams fighting spirit. From The Chicago Tribune:
“Chicagoans know Addams as a leader of the social settlement movement and co-founder of Chicago’s famed Hull House, which abruptly closed Friday after 122 years. But she was so much more. She was a tireless and strident peace activist, an invaluable voice demanding the right of women to vote and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. She became one of the most famous women in America and one of the most famous and highly respected Americans of her time.
She strongly felt that social services meant more than just feeding mouths and clothing bodies. Addams created a community, living with and getting to know the people she helped. She respected immigrant cultures, and provided education, training, citizenship classes and child care for working parents. She fought to improve their employment and living conditions.
But the gentle Jane Addams, whose father had been a banker and state senator, also turned out to be a politically savvy, down-in-the-wards street fighter, who wasn’t so gentle when it came to public corruption.”
The story recalls how she took on local ward boss Alderman John Powers and challenged his corrupt reign over the 19th Ward.
If America’s nonprofit leaders and Illinois’ nonprofit leaders had the will to fight that Jane had, perhaps our country and our state would not be in the pitiful state they are in. If Chicago’s nonprofit leaders had been in the political arena as Jane had been – perhaps there would’ve been more interest and support for Hull House as it hit the skids.
Let Jane have the final word (from Twenty Years at Hull House)
“Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.”
So Hull House closed on Friday without a whimper. No one put up a fight. So maybe it deserved to die. Over 635 people have signed the online petition to save Hull House by the time of this writing but no one organization took the issue on.
I spoke to or reached out to leaders of organizations that had Jane Addams in their names. UIC’s Jane Addams College of Social Work (http://www
What about the professional associations of social workers around the world and the ones that represent Illinois social workers? Nothing.
What about schools of social work, schools of public policy, schools of public health and schools that teach about good government? Nothing.
Did the legislators of Illinois and Chicago who lavish hundreds of millions of PUBLIC dollars on greedy private companies raise a stink or offer solutions. Nothing.
Shame on them. Shame on all of us.
OK, that’s the past – what about the future?
What can we learn from this sad story?
Who will bring us together to discuss public priorities and public disasters such as this one?