Here’s what you need to know about participatory budgeting

Data from the People’s Budget Chicago. Image: Chicago Reader

A Chicago Reader article explaining the participatory budgeting process highlights the UIC Great Cities Institute’s work in this area and its role in PB Chicago, a partnership of public officials, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and others who collaborate to guide citizen involvement in participatory budgeting in the city. Comments from Thea Crum, associate director of the neighborhoods initiative at the institute, are also included in the story.

“It does change the way that money is spent. [Researchers] have found that citizens select policy priorities that are different from how governments traditionally allocate resources,” said Thea Crum, the associate director of the neighborhoods initiative at UIC’s Great Cities Institute. “Allocations do really reflect the interests of participating citizens, usually poor and more low-income citizens, and so having a sense of what the needs are on the ground, and being able to align them to create more effective policy and program spending, is I think something that most governments are really interested in.”

Full Story from the Chicago Reader »

Our Chicago: Town hall on keeping Latino youth safe, demands for investment in wake of Adam Toledo shooting

A recent ABC 7 Chicago news story and virtual town hall covering the fatal police shooting of Adam Toledo includes perspective from Alex Linares, an economic development planner for the Great Cities Institute at UIC, who addresses the need for investment in Chicago communities such as Little Village.

It’s a system and a community Alexander Linares knows well. He was born and raised in Little Village and works for the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute, which is a research hub helping to improve communities.

“If you would allocate resources to help these communities then you could prevent future incidences like this to occur,” Linares said. “Everyone wants to figure out how this happened, right. The issue is just complex. We have different dynamics – education, economics, poverty.”

ABC 7 Chicago Town Hall »

News Story from ABC 7 Chicago »

2020 Census Results: Illinois loses population, but not from where you’d think

ABC 7 Chicago interviewed Teresa Córdova, director of UIC’s Great Cities Institute and professor of urban planning and policy, in a segment on Illinois’ population loss, including reasons behind the decline, why and where it’s happening, and what can be done to address the issue.

“Before we ask why, we want to ask where. It is not the same throughout the state,” said Teresa Cordova, director of UIC’s Great Cities Institute.

Cordova said while whites and Blacks are leaving Chicago, the same number of Asians and Latinos are moving in. She said Illinois’ population loss is being driven by downstate declines.

“The decline is occurring in the smaller areas, smaller towns, primarily places that are rural,” she said.

Full Story from ABC 7 Chicago

 

Findings From Great Cities Institute Cited in New York Times Magazine

Findings from a UIC Great Cities Institute report on Black population loss in Chicago are cited a story from The New York Times Magazine that details the author’s Chicago connections and the life expectancy racial gap in the city.

Around the time we left, many other Black working- and middle-class families left Chicago, too. Englewood hemorrhaged Black people: According to data gathered by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois, Chicago, between 1970 and 2019, almost 65,000 Black residents relocated, a decrease of 75 percent, even though the neighborhood remains almost all Black. Between 1980 and 2019, the overall Black population of Chicago fell by more than 33 percent, a loss of some 400,000 residents.

Full Story from New York Times Magazine

 

Amazon unionization vote was a referendum on automation — and it’s not over yet

New digital technologies evoke futuristic images of warehouses with few workers and where machines do all the heavy lifting, write Beth Gutelius and Nik Theodore.alashi / Getty Images

In an op-ed published by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Beth Gutelius, research director for the Center for Urban Economic Development at UIC and senior researcher with the Great Cities Institute at UIC, and Nik Theodore, UIC professor and head of urban planning and policy, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development and fellow at the Great Cities Institute, write that the unionization effort at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama won’t be the last as automation continues to reshape and intensify the warehouse experience for workers.

One of the more striking images of the last few years was that of workers outside an Amazon warehouse in Shakopee, Minn., holding signs that read: “We are not robots.” That the primary demand of the workers was to be treated not as machines, but as humans, is a symbol of the problems of the technology-enabled workplace.

The Shakopee protest, led by courageous Somali immigrants, focused on concerns at issue in Bessemer, Ala., and throughout Amazon’s empire: the pace of work and invasive monitoring and surveillance. The Bessemer unionization campaign, led by Black women, sought to give workers a greater say in how automation affects their working lives.

Full Story from the Philadelphia Inquirer

 

Op-ed: We are Adam: For many youth across Chicago’s South and West sides, Adam Toledo’s life trajectory is too familiar

Relatives, supporters, and members of the community march on April 18, 2021, during a peace walk for 13-year-old Adam Toledo who was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer during a foot pursuit. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Data on youth joblessness from the Latino Neighborhoods Report is cited in a story on youth in Chicago in the wake of the police killing of Adam Toledo.

In 2014, Little Village Youth Safety Network and Enlace published research that identified Little Village as the neighborhood with the highest number of “disconnected youth,” defined as young residents ages 16-19 at the intersection of being unemployed and out of school. In 2017, the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Greater Cities Institute found that 71% of Little Village residents between the ages of 16 and 24 were jobless.

Full Story from Chicago Tribune »

Militarizing Rivers

The UIC Freshwater Lab presents: “Militarizing Rivers,” a digital panel on Thursday, April 6pm CST.

As part of #TheBackwardRiver project, team members Kathleen Blackburn and Citlalli Trujillo talk water, oil and how water bodies have been straightened and subdued by armed forces with eco-feminist Banu Subramaniam; river policy expert Jeremy Cherson; and historian Robin McDowell.

Why do we call a river, a waterbody known for turns and bends, a pipeline? We think of rivers coursing in a natural path, but pipelines direct flows according to human will. The Chicago River is only one example of how a waterway can be harnessed, straightened into a canal and pressed into the service of conveying coal, oil and petroleum coke. Join our conversation about engineered waterways and the crumbling infrastructure that transforms rivers into pipelines under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers. We will ask who benefits from the river-turned-pipeline and who bears the burden. As we look into what flows within the pipelines, we will consider how a militarized river and “invasive species” could be reimagined as public goods.

Watch the live stream on Freshwater Lab’s YouTube channel or Facebook page.

This panel is the second in the 2021 Backward River series. “The Backward River” is a digital storytelling project about the Chicago River. The series extends the conversation by lending a voice to the river and amplifying the response by surrounding communities. Watch the first event with Gen Z Environmental Justice Leaders on Facebook and YouTube.

Event co-sponsors:
Deep Time Chicago
Great Cities Institute
Institute for the Humanities, UIC
Latin American and Latino Studies
UIC Latino Cultural Center
UIC Museum and Exhibition Studies
Prairie Rivers Network

Speaker Bios

Banu Subramaniam
Professor Subramaniam’s work explores the philosophy, history, and culture of the natural sciences and medicine as they relate to gender, race, ethnicity, and caste. Her latest research rethinks the field and practice of botany in relation to histories of colonialism and xenophobia and explores the wide travels of scientific theories, ideas, and concepts as they relate to migration and invasive species. Subramaniam’s newest book, Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), focuses on how science and religion have become interwoven in emergent nationalist politics and novel conceptions of modernity in India. Her previous book, Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014), was winner of the Ludwik Fleck Prize 2016 for an outstanding book across the breadth of science and technology studies. She is co-editor of Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation (Routledge, 2001) that put Feminist Science Studies on the map.

Jeremy Cherson
Jeremy earned his MS in Environmental Policy at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy in Annandale-on-Hudson in New York’s Hudson Valley. Jeremy started his career as an undergraduate at American University in Washington, D.C., organizing support for the McCain-Lieberman climate bill for Environment America in 2007. He has since been an AmeriCorps member in central California, monitored conservation easements in Alabama and Georgia, and served as the camp supervisor at an environmental summer camp in Atlanta. Jeremy now serves as the Advocacy Coordinator working on campaigns across Riverkeeper’s portfolio including fossil fuels and clean energy, Hudson River PCBs, Plastic-Pollution, and government relations.

Robin McDowell
Robin is completing her doctorate in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Her interdisciplinary research combines methodologies of history, environmental studies, and visual culture with her years of experience in community-centered design and grassroots community organizing in the Greater New Orleans area. She holds an A.M in History from Harvard University, an M.F.A. in Design from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. in Fine Arts from The University of Pennsylvania. Robin is a co-convener of History Design Studio, a workshop for new ideas in multimedia history. In fall 2021, she will join the faculty of the African and African American Studies Department at Washington University in St. Louis as an Assistant Professor.

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Chicago’s next ward map can change a neighborhood’s fate. Let the people draw the lines.

The Chicago skyline is seen from Ping Tom Park in Chinatown in 2019. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Tribune published an op-ed from Chris Kanich, UIC professor of computer science; Dick Simpson, UIC professor of political science; and Kathleen Yang-Clayton, UIC clinical assistant professor of public administration and research fellow at the Great Cities Institute, who write about the process of the redistricting Chicago’s 50 wards and the need for it to reach a voter referendum to select a fair map that serves all communities.

In the upcoming months, the figures from the 2020 U.S. census will be released. Besides giving us a clear view of population trends in the neighborhoods of our city, this new census data will be used in the redistricting of Chicago into 50 wards of nearly equal population. This redistricting process is the most important political event of the decade, as it shapes the political fates of every alderman and also every community. Usually, the maps are made in the backrooms of the City Council and the state legislature with no public input. This year will be different.

Full Story from Chicago Tribune »

Report of the Native Americans at UIC Task Force

Task Force Members
-Dr. Teresa Córdova (Co-Chair) (Genízara/Chicana), Director of the Great Cities Institute and Professor of Urban Planning and Policy, UIC
-Dr. Josh Radinsky (Co-Chair), Associate Professor of Education and Learning Sciences, UIC
-Dr. Megan Bang (Ojibwe), Professor, Northwestern University
-Kevin Browne, Vice Provost of Academic and Enrollment Services, UIC
-Lori Faber (Oneida), UIC Alumna
-Dr. Rachel Havrelock, Director of Freshwater Lab and Associate Professor of English, UIC
-Dr. Michelle Manno, Director of Diversity Initiatives, Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity, UIC
-Cynthia M. Soto (Sicangu Lakota/Puerto Rican), Director of Native American Support Program, UIC
-Roniciel Vergara, Executive Director, Center for Student Involvement, UIC
-Josephine Volpe, Assistant Vice Provost for Advising Development, UIC
-Dr. Angela L. Walden (Cherokee Nation), Director of Inclusion Initiatives, Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity, UIC

Abstract
The UIC Native American Task Force was formed in 2019 to address the question: What is the status of Native Americans on the UIC campus? Charged with making recommendations in four key areas – access, achievement, inclusion, and engagement – the Task Force was asked to identify strengths, challenges, and areas for improvement, with the goal of building an optimal learning environment for Indigenous students. It became clear that answering this question would necessitate attending to issues of recruitment, Native faculty presence, data collection and representation, academic programming, and the production of Indigenous knowledge.

This report culminates a year of work in 2019-2020 that marked the 50th anniversary of UIC’s Native American Support Program (NASP). This year also marked our perseverance through a global pandemic with overlapping medical, societal, economic and political crises that are having disproportionate impacts on Native communities, and thus are reshaping the realities documented in this report. We see this as a critical time to contribute the findings of this Task Force to the efforts to strengthen and deepen the relationship between Native communities and the University, and to chart a course toward UIC becoming a leader in the advancement of Native visibility and voice.

Full Text (PDF) »

Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States – Sylvester Turner

The Honorable Sylvester Turner, Mayor of Houston

Diversity & Inclusion

Tuesday, March 16, 2021 | 12-1:30 Pacific Time (2-3:30 Central Time)

“To be an African-American mayor leading a city in the 21st century is not about ‘power’ but about ‘possibilities.’”

Zoom Webinar | Register here (free) for March 16 event

Introduction by: Ula Y. Taylor, Professor & H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair, Department of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley

Panel discussion moderated by Natasha Korecki, Politico National Correspondent

Panelists:

Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

Kathleen Yang-Clayton, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Gail C. Christopher, Executive Director, National Collaborative for Health Equity & Former Senior Advisor & Vice President , W K Kellogg Foundation

These events are free and open to the public. If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) in order to fully participate in this virtual event, please contact issi@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible.

The series is sponsored by: the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues and the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, as well as the Great Cities Institute at the University of Chicago at Illinois.
The series is co-sponsored by: African American Mayors Association, National Urban League, California Association of Black Lawyers, Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Equal Justice Society, City Club of Chicago, Metropolitan Family Services, The Chicago Community Trust, Metropolitan Family Services of Chicago, Communities Partnering for Peace, Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, and Strides for Peace.

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