Free Speech Zone
Re “Permission to Speak Freely: Locked doors and a lawsuit over First Amendment rights at Northeastern Illinois University” by Deanna Isaacs, the Business, December 18
Hello, my name is Kenneth Barrios and I am one of the students that Loretta Capeheart [of the Justice Studies department] had the courage to speak up for after our arrests at NEIU.
I wanted to add to your information that the administration has proposed to add the ROTC to the physical campus.
It is my assumption that this abrupt push to ram through a few new rules about “free speech zones” is a preventative maneuver to keep students from organizing against the upcoming presence of the ROTC on the campus.
This being a working-class campus, with a student body of predominantly ethnic/racial minorities (many being immigrants or children of immigrants), it is disgusting that the administration should try to also push through militarization of the campus.
Kenneth Barrios
I was a student present during the supposedly peaceful CIA demonstration. The students knocked an administrator down in their haste to disrupt an event attended by 30 other students and injured her.
Is that peaceful? I don’t think so.
There are some of us that want to work for agencies like the CIA. Don’t free speech rights also extend to students like us who want to hear what organizations like this have to say?
Christine
I am writing with a request for everyone that reads the article and is disgusted with the DDS policy:
If you could send e-mails of disapproval to cdpoulos@gmail.com with your name and who you are, we (political organizers at NEIU) can use them as a form of written protest against the policy from the Chicagoland community.
Chris Poulos
I Smell Union-Busting
Re “Out the Window: Republic Windows & Doors will make good on what it owes workers. Now what about our $10 million?” by Ben Joravsky, the Works, December 18
After 30 years of working in unionized industry, I can smell union-busting many miles away, Ben. Thanks for confirming for me that Republic is going to continue production in a nonunion shop. I can’t believe that the UE let this part go while they were still in control of the factory. The 1930s sit-ins weren’t just about severance pay, etc, but to keep nonunion scabs out. The sit-ins of the 21st century will be about blocking them from moving production equipment out to scab plants.
Ypsibob
Or perhaps they’ll be about the ultimate form of union-busting: worker control of production. The ultimate limit on our victories is the end of imagination.
wob
Is This a Mind Boggle Which I See Before Me?
Re “Fitzgerald’s Timing: Did he compromise his own investigation to sound the alarm on Blago? Or did the Tribune do it for him?” by Michael Miner, Hot Type, December 18
“Screw your courage to the sticking place” not “sticking point.” Brush up your Shakespeare, as they say in Kiss Me Kate.
yosephus
“‘Mind-boggling,’ wrote Scott Turow, author and former prosecutor, the morning after the Blago eruption. Turow is Chicago’s own but his forum was the Times, and his unboggled mind was narrowly focused on Fitzgerald’s case...”
Why does no one mention Turow is the Blagoof appointee to the state ethics commission??????
The biggest mind boggle is his failure to stop this guy years ago.
George Tagge