“For years this kind of collaboration between school and city officials has been needed,” added Brigid D’Souza, a parent leader from Jersey City Together, a local advocacy group.
"We still have much further to go, but we look forward to seeing working water fountains in all these schools in the coming weeks and months.”
Story here
500 leaders, from close to 30 institutions around the Denver Metro area, gathered last night for the Founding Assembly of Coloradans for the Common Good.
Candidates from Denver, JeffCo and Aurora showed up and committed their support to the organization's agenda. 
... Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to start an impeachment inquiry is the first step toward a possible congressional indictment of the president. It can also be seen as an attempt to diagnose whether or not the country needs constitutional chemotherapy.
Braving the threat of rain and a thunderstorm, 120 Fox River Valley Initiative leaders, allies and neighbors gathered under a tent at 1212 Larkin in Elgin, Illinois on the afternoon of Friday, September 27, to celebrate groundbreaking for an affordable housing development.
The development will have 10 dedicated units for people with mental or physical disabilities with onsite case management. The other 38 units will be 2-3 bedroom apartments for people living between 30 and 60 percent of the area’s medium income. Elgin’s Mayor Dave Kaptain expressed his appreciation to the Fox River Valley Initiative for organizing and bringing the vision of 1212 Larkin to Elgin. He observed, “My vision is to bring quality housing for every citizen of Elgin.” Under his leadership, the city council had voted 8-0 in support of the project. 
Twenty years after the first living-wage law was passed in Baltimore, the campaign’s lead organizer warns that the model has been watered down. This prescient piece written by Jonathan Lange in 2014 for the Nation is an even more urgent read NOW.
The World’s Oceans Are in Danger, Major Climate Change Report Warns
Climate change is heating the oceans and altering their chemistry so dramatically that it is threatening seafood supplies, fueling cyclones and floods and posing profound risks to the hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts, according to a sweeping United Nations report issued Wednesday. MORE
Hundreds of people gathered on Chicago's West Side to talk with Mayor Lori Lightfoot about the city's most pressing problems, from gun violence to housing concerns. Community members and leaders representing a coalition of nearly 100 religious and civic groups gathered at DRW College Prep in Homan Square Sunday afternoon.
United Power for Action and Justice is the coalition behind Sunday's meeting. The group emphasizes offering pragmatic solutions rather than "pie in the sky" ideals. While the coalition said they appreciated Lightfoot's words Sunday, the group said it's time to translate those remarks into results. MORE 
Honda is among a growing number of big companies turning to renewables as wind and solar become two of the cheapest sources of power available and as customers and investors push them to fight global warming. Corporate clean-energy purchases hit an all-time high of 13.4 gigawatts in 2018, according to BloombergNEF. They’re on track to break that record this year. MORE
Saul Alinsky launched the Campaign Against Pollution (CAP) in 1969 with a column written by Mike Royko in the Chicago Daily News. Included was a tear out form seeking names, addresses and phone numbers of individuals interested in combatting air pollution generated by the electric company, Commonwealth Edison.
Several hundred individuals responded. They were contacted by representatives of Alinsky’s non-profit the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and invited to a public meeting. That meeting happened on January 15, 1970. It was attended by 400 (as reported in the Chicago Tribune). Taking off from there, a full blown IAF organizing project of a distinctly different character from past efforts emerged. The other IAF inspired organizations had either foundered after making major impacts (Rochester; Buffalo), split away from IAF connections (CSO in California) or lost a citizen organizing focus (The Woodlawn Organization; Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council). In the absence of live exemplars, invention was the order of the day. Alinsky believed CAP embodied a turn towards the middle class where a wealth of opportunities for building and exercising citizen power resided. Something called Earth Day was in the works for April 25, 1970. It was an idea dreamed up by Senator Gaylord Nelson to highlight environmental issues. CAP’s plan was to capitalize on the energy provoked by those concerns. |
