Posted inNews & Politics

Power plays: the public relations battle between community organizers and Commonwealth Edison

The fight over Chicago’s electricity franchise has sunk pretty low. It’s almost as though the hick pitching radio ads for Commonwealth Edison scripted the whole show. The situation used to be pretty clear. Commonwealth Edison’s contract to provide electricity to the city expires in 1992, and it was assumed it would be renewed. But then […]

Posted inNews & Politics

The last farmers in Cook County

On this morning in late July, in a far-south-side corner of Chicago, there’s a funny smell in the air. You’re passing Reds II, advertising “burgers-fries-chili,” but that’s not the source. Neither is it the Mount Greenwood Auto Body Shop, the Ford dealership, or the Saint Casimir Lithuanian Cemetery along the road to the north and […]