My chapter “Chicago Is Not Broke – Moving from Scarcity to Abundance” appears in Prof. Dick Simpson’s newly released “Twenty-First Century Chicago” from Cognella Press. Guess who has the next chapter in the book? Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Pretty cool, no?
I gave these short remarks at the April 2019 NewFounders Conference in Chicago. If you agree, please follow me @tomstee!
I’m proud to be a member of the inaugural National Advisory Board for the Public Banking Institute.
They are the premiere organization in America explaining, organizing, and making public banking happen.
Read the full article…
Continue reading
Seven years after No Games Chicago did our work (with no support from any major civic organization, university or community group) the 2016 Olympics have begun. Some reporters have contacted us to get our perspective on the “Battle for the Bid” and the Olympic Games. Here is an interview from Chicago News.
What a night at Malcolm X College. About 300 people showed up for the first 2016 Budget Town Hall presided over by Mayor Emanuel and attended by all his department heads. Dozens of folks got one minute to ask a question or make a statement. The room was filled with supporters of the Dyett High School hunger strikers. People young and old expressed their anger and aspirations, stepping up to the mike and demanding that the mayor first meet with the hunger strikers and accept the community-development proposal to transform Dyett into a global leadership and green technology academy.
There were also calls for coming clean on TIFs and releasing TIF funds into the general stream of local government agencies – especially our beleaguered public schools. I asked the mayor to release all documents proving his claim that most of the $1.4 billion sitting in TIFs on January 1, 2015 are NOT available for distribution. The mayor and his budget director actually responded. Budget Director Alex Holt promised Tom a meeting in the near future to answer all our questions on where the money is. Stay tuned.
Watch the exchange here:
Listen to the full exchange here.
