“Of all the obstacles facing Chicago’s poor, probably the most dire and insurmountable is the lack of available basic health care,” according to In Transition (Winter), published by Travelers & Immigrants Aid of Chicago. What does “available” mean? “At the Englewood [public-health] Clinic the waiting time for an appointment (except in cases of pregnancy) is now six months.”
“FOR SALE: 585 acres on Chicago’s lakefront. Complete infrastructure and utilities. Two barge slips, one off Lake Michigan and the other off the Calumet River. Full rail access. Only 20 minutes south of the Loop. Will subdivide. Excellent labor force lives nearby. Make no little plans for this one-of-a-kind location.” That’s the other big development news on the far south side, as described by David Roeder in Chicago Enterprise (March): what will become of the property that used to be U.S. Steel’s South Works?
Male bonding by proxy. From Today’s Chicago Woman’s (March) interview with U.S. District Court Judge Ilana Rovner and husband Richard: “Did Ilana’s relationship with the [Governor James] Thompson ‘rat-pack’ ever bother you? Dick: No, I was part of it. We still are. Ilana: For instance, every year the whole group of fellows go on a fishing trip way up into Canada. Of course, I can’t go along with them, but Dick goes.”
Keep the circulator off the streets! urges the Streeterville Chamber of Commerce (Newsletter, February): “We suggest a new installation that would interface with present transit systems and operate [on] ‘transit only’ streets, special right-of-ways with unused railbeds, underground tunnels or elevated tracks.”
How PC cripples the left. “For years I have used Clayborne Carson’s book, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, in my course on social movements,” writes history professor Barbara Epstein in In These Times (February 26-March 10). “It is increasingly difficult for me to induce what are always predominantly white classes to discuss this book, which asks how SNCC moved from a non-violent politics with a broad appeal to a more sectarian politics with a much narrower base. Discussion is halting at best. The last time this happened, students acknowledged–under my prodding–that they could not talk about the book without entertaining criticisms of a black movement, which would raise the possibility of racism. I have also had a hard time with discussions of Alice Echols’ Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975, an account of radical feminism in the late ’60s and early ’70s that includes accounts of the ideological rigidities and personal attacks that took place under the slogan of ‘the personal is political.’ Echols’ book is dedicated to the goals of radical feminism, just as Carson’s is to the goals of the civil rights movement. But both books include candid accounts of problems. My class, which was predominantly female and strongly feminist, was not silenced by this book, but the tone of the discussion was disapproving. Students’ comments implied that an account that placed women, especially feminists, in a bad light was sexist. Some students argued that even if early feminists had made some mistakes, to write about them was to give ammunition to the enemy.”
Average monthly payment of Chicago home buyers last year, according to a Chicago Title and Trust survey: $1,029–32.6 percent of income.
Recycling and incineration don’t mix, according to a study by U. of I. civil engineers reported in Solid Waste Management Newsletter (March): “The reason is recycling programs remove materials with high heating values from the waste stream.ÉRemoving all paper, plastic, glass, and metals from the waste reduced the heating value of the waste by 10 percent. Such a loss can be devastating for economically marginal incineration programs, especially waste-to-energy incinerators…. Another hitch with combining recycling and incineration is that toxic emissions [such as sulfur dioxide and hydrogen chloride] increase when recyclable materials are removed from the waste stream.”
Yeah, but it’s OK if we do it to ourselves. Michael Eric Dyson of Chicago Theological Seminary, on Afrocentrism as preached by New York City College professor Leonard Jeffries (The Chicago Reporter, February, quoting Emerge): “Jeffries is arguing for the same sort of unanimity of vision and experience that racism has artificially imposed upon African-American life.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Carl Kock.