"Jamiko Rose, executive director of ONE, called this afternoon to ask where stoplaborready.org obtained the mis-information that ONE supports Labor Ready opening a northside office. Jamiko re-iterated that ONE has taken NO position; its member organizations could not reach concensus on the matter. Some member organizations are individually supportive - while others are absolutely opposed. Therefore, ONE has taken no position.
I explained that Labor Ready, its attorneys and Alderman Shiller all told the ZBA that ONE was supportive of the proposal.
Jamiko requested that we make it clear that ONE has not provided a letter of support to Labor Ready on stoplaborready.org."
It appears that the Board of Zoning Appeals was told lies on Thursday. Who will correct the lies?
It appears that the Board of Zoning Appeals was told lies on Thursday. Who will correct the lies?
may i suggest a FOIA of all letters of support
ReplyDeleteHugh's right. Someone needs to do this right away. FIOA everything.
ReplyDeleteThat .. and maybe ONE should make an official statement, CC'ing the ZBA, stating exactly this point.
ReplyDeleteTelling UU there is no support is a lot different than telling the ZBA or Shiller.
Stop Labor Ready will not be taking any statements related to O.N.E. off of its website.
ReplyDeleteWe are not spreading "misinformation"---only what Alderman Shiller indicated to the ZBA. She stated she had letters of support from community organizations (Heartland Alliance, ONE and Inspiration Cafe) when the ZBA asked her if there were any community members in attendance in support of the special use permit.
We will request the court reporter transcript in order to investigate whether or not Alderman Shiller's statements were untruthful. All participants held up their right hand to "swear to tell the truth."
We have asked O.N.E. to write an open letter to the community explaining their position and the circumstances surrounding their involvement on this issue. If they send one, Stop Labor Ready will post it ASAP.
It is clear that such a letter is eagerly awaited by a community hungry for some more transparency.
This email was posted since it was from what we consider to be a reliable source AND believe it furthers the disconnect between the community and Alderman Shiller. If the support of organizations is exaggerated or even fabricated, it becomes an injustice to all community members.
ReplyDeleteWe look forward to an official statement from O.N.E. to clarify their position on this topic.
I disagree that ONE should MAYBE send an official letter and cc the ZBA, they MUST send a letter to the ZBA. ONE is a member of the community just like you or me, and if they want their voice heard, they should NOT ONLY tell it to the blog, they should tell it to those in power.
ReplyDeleteI would also encourage ONE to revoke any and all support for Shiller, as it's clear that she will distort the truth about ONE for her own political agenda.
I've had personal dealings with Ms. Rose. She's a tricky one. Her words aren't credible and have fooled even the best reporter.
ReplyDeleteAnd Just to make sure, we should send this information to the ZBA immediately.
ReplyDeleteIs this an ethics violation by the attorney?
ReplyDeleteAlthough Shiller's words at ZBA implied that the letter from O.N.E. was in support of the special use permit, it is likely that the actual document was merely the "good neighbor" agreement that O.N.E. was willing to enter into with Labor Ready. (Again, the real story needs to come from O.N.E.)
ReplyDeleteHowever, there were implications that stemmed from this misrepresentation that should have caused the ZBA to be more careful in how they listened to the community's opposition. Basically, when LR stated that they estimated that 2,400 people would benefit from their company and Shiller said that she had 3 letters from non-profits to support her, it is likely that the ZBA came to believe that this was just one of the usual cases where Shiller was trying to do something good for the poor and a bunch of angry NIMBY-ites were going nuts because of it.
It is our position, of course, that LR should have had to submit their demographic study to ZBA and to us because it was the basis of their "public convenience" claims. Likewise, if they had had any indication that there was dissent within other sectors of the community, ZBA would have been more likely to ask different questions to probe the nature of the conflict.
We will pursue this.
This is outrageous! Lawyers and elected officials faking community support in a government hearing? under oath. Good God.
ReplyDeleteAgreed - we must get a statement to that effect from ONE and cc'ing the ZBA.
ReplyDeleteGiven the number of misrepresentation, half truths and direct contradictions (to what was said at the 1/31 meeting at the Buys and Girls club)circulating at the ZBA meeting, it is par for the course from them all.
I woudl give anything to be able to go back to 1/31 and tape record the whole thing b/c their story changed significantly between then and the hearing.
There are extensive notes for the Boys & Girls Club meeting. I'll get www.stoplaborready.org to post them ASAP.
ReplyDeleteLies, half-truths, misrepresentations, obfuscation and marginalization of any opposing voices. The pattern is clear. But, don't take my word for it. Talk to those who attended the hearing, call the non-profits, read the media accounts from around the country and look closely at the appraisers report that doesn't even mention the McCutcheon School.
Has Labor Ready made any contributions to Shiller?
ReplyDeleteNo contributions but they will be forthcoming.
ReplyDeleteThe local social service agencies walked all over us and our alderman walked all over us. But, most people can't be bothered to fight back and they know it. Unless you are willing stand up and fight, why don't you just admit that you are willing to submit. If the community can't rally around keeping these scum-suckers out of here, then there really is no issue that regular citizens will fight for in Uptown. Everyone keeps getting distracted by the "candy" of a new development here or there like it is a sign from the heavens. But the fact of the matter is that you need to make the commitment to fight for the kind of community you want to live in when you are a resident of the 46th or 48th ward. No one is going to do it for you--- and that includes me. Get angry or just go watch TV.
Jamiko Rose, ONE executive director, you have some explaining to do. If your organization was not supporting Labor Ready, then why was your guy Cory Muldoon sitting with the Labor Ready people? Why didn't he correct the misinformation that Shiller and Labor Ready were dispensing?
ReplyDeleteCopied from an earlier Uptown Update post:
"You thought you were having a sincere dialogue with Cory Muldoon of ONE and instead you got burned. I hope you got a chance to talk to him on Friday as he was sitting in the council chambers with the Labor Ready folks"
How could ONE not have sanctioned this if their own "Senior Organizer" was with Labor Ready at the zoning hearing?
ReplyDeleteSee the Organization of the North East Website:
Staff:
Executive Director – Jamiko Rose
Senior Organizer – Cory Muldoon
ONE's Stated Goals:
ReplyDeleteJustice - Diversity - Solidarity
ONE's True Agenda:
Lies --Poverty Pimping---Cultural Hegemony via Manipulation
If anyone from ONE is reading this, I'll just send a public message because it seems that you prefer to work in the shadows and in back rooms rather than in the sunlight of open discussion.
ReplyDeleteONE--Please realize that there is a community here that shares your sentiments on social justice. But we are not in an epic battle of evil middle class forces against the poor. It is not local residents who you should be largely fighting against. Outside developers and state and city powers have done more to hurt the poor than a bunch of disorganized middle class residents. Uptown has a 30 year history of being the place where displaced people have come and there was a time for the kind of fight you were waging. However, now is the time for building balance. The more you "pull O.N.E. over" on us, the more you risk a bad outcome for the poor when the economic tide changes. The people who will be hurt are the low-income elderly, the poor, the homeless and the recent immigrants who make their home here now. This isn't a threat. It is just that Uptown isn't an island and external forces will continue to press in on it. People don't spend a lot of time learning about things that don't concern them in their everyday lives. The more you piss them off with tricks and dirty deals that can be challenged on legitimate grounds, the harder it will be to get people to stop and reflect.
"The more you piss them off with tricks and dirty deals that can be challenged on legitimate grounds, the harder it will be to get people to stop and reflect."
ReplyDeleteTrue, but it's too late for some of us. I was very sympathetic and all about balance until the first big Wilson Yard meeting at Truman about seven years ago. The class warfare rhetoric was so thick, my position completely changed within three hours. "Fuck it," I decided. "If they're going to treat me as an enemy, then fine. The forces of economics will crush them and I won't shed a tear." All these years, later, my postion hasn't changed. I'm still a card-carrying liberal, but I refuse to support any organization or social service that has any ties to the alderman or her projects. For the record, that's around $3,000 in annual charitable giving and a healthy chunk of volunteer hours that's going outside the Uptown community. Just saying...
seems like it is time to have a larger conversation about charity work in this town. outsiders want to descend on Uptown so that they can be do-gooders but their work may actually be more NIMBY than some of our complaints. how wrong is it that the folks who are willing to live and work in this community are painted as the bad guys but the forces that want to evermore concentrate the city's problems into this one area are blameless? it should be a huge warning sign when local residents give a vote of no confidence to these organizations but support other likeminded causes elsewhere.
ReplyDelete"it should be a huge warning sign when local residents give a vote of no confidence to these organizations but support other likeminded causes elsewhere."
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting idea in there.
Wonder if it would be worthwhile to set up a petition of some sort (internet based, paper based ... what have you) to poll the residents of Uptown for a confidence vote towards Shiller?
An out or down vote.
It'd be interesting to see the results and forward them along, regardless the outcome, to hizzoner, Shiller, the Council and our district reps in Springfield.
I'd wager/hope, as would everyone else, that the results would be "No Confidence".
I mean, if we're concerned that we're not being heard through normal channels, we should use whatever (legal and proper) tools are at our disposal to ensure that we are heard.
it was me who made the "no confidence" comment. the problem is that uptown is very big and diverse, and although a segment of people are against all that is going on, that doesn't really say that a high enough percentage of total residents disagree. supposedly, the election determined that the greater percentage of residents are pro-shiller. On the other hand, you could do a survey of everyone living in a market-rate household in 60640 (46-48 wards) and document what the sentiments are for this type of resident, knowing all along that you can't make the case that the findings hold for anyone beyond this subset of the community. doing this, however, might just feed into the class warfare politics that seems to get local activists so jazzed. the real point is that there are a lot of people living in subsidized housing (particularly low-income seniors and recent immigrants) who are in total agreement with the kinds of concerns your average middle class resident raises. we less divisions.
ReplyDeleteI could guess what might have happened here
ReplyDelete* speculation warning ON *
Shiller got help from a O.N.E. staffer and a letter of support from ONE
but part of the recent renewed political activism of the unions in Chicago is strategic alliances with jobs activists
the more mainstream pro-job activists in Chicago like Good Jobs First-Illinois and Chicago Jobs with Justice are sophisticated enough to recognize there is a difference between a REAL JOB and working for a corporate day labor agency
for another example, they tend to not buy into the pro-WalMart "we need jobs, any job is better than no job" rhetoric
these groups were as surprised as anyone else to see O.N.E. on the other side of the aisle or to read about O.N.E.'s support in the press or blogs
they contact O.N.E., what the heck are you doing? and asked for a retraction/back peddle
in other words O.N.E. got caught way out there to the left of the mainstream jobs movement in Chicago, O.N.E. was off the rez
O.N.E. and Jamiko Rose Do Support Dangerous Porches that can't pass city Inspection for poor people.
ReplyDelete(Source:Chicago Reporter Dec, 2007)
"In November, Jamiko Rose walked into Cook County housing court to try and convince a judge there that the porches attached to the building at 4431 N. Racine St. in West Town were sound. Inspectors were called to the property after a call through the city’s 311 line. Rose, executive director of the Organization of the Northeast, said Voice of the People, a nonprofit that manages the property, was ordered to fix the porch on the apartment building, which housed seniors and low-income residents.
Rose had been working with Voice of the People because the porch had already passed an inspection by an independent contractor, but the city indicated the porch was still out of compliance. If the court had not ruled in its favor, Rose said Voice of the People was probably prepared to sell the property because repairs, which could exceed $30,000, were not affordable.
“It’s just a clear [indication] of the lengths people will go to to move low-income people out of the neighborhood,” Rose said
(I wonder, did the Jesus People's Porch Builders subsidiary build that porch and claim it was safe?)
We know where you stand Rose - crap housing for poor people is fine by you so long as it concentrates them in one small area where you can politically control them. (Poverty Pimping)
4431 N. Racine is in West Town? Huh.
ReplyDeleteSo, safe housing is code for "the lengths people will go to to move low-income people out of the neighborhood."
Damn, girl, get off the cross; someone else needs the wood. The chip on her shoulder is big enough to rival the potholes around here, and that's saying something.
You will see this consistent patter of thinking from her, Helen, and any COURAJ member, which is society should have low standards for anything that involves poor people. They see it as rescuing the poor while the rest of the world sees it as insulting to the poor. When you treat a class of citizens as helpless victims, they become just that.
ReplyDeleteEven Malcom X would be furious with them if he were alive.
For those who asked, the proper reference to the Jimeko Rose comments in the Chicago Reporter is to the January 2008 issue. Jimeko's comments are found in an article called, "Disppearting Act" by author Kimbriell Kelly.
ReplyDeleteDoes Jimeko Rose represent herself or her ONE organization when she makes these disparaging comments?
ReplyDeleteFirst she presumes that a 311 city service request for a bad porch came from the community instead of a renter. Then she presumes that the request was filed to target and displace poor people. That's an unsubstantiated stretch.
Does the ONE organization let this woman use her office to comingle her personal biases with her organization's positions? Or is this just more evidence that ONE has a real agenda that differs from how they now try to portray themselves to their neighbors?
It's Poverty Pimping by the low income activists. Here is more from the Jan 8, 2008 Chicago Defender.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't think that there is an agenda to keep the poor concentrated in a few neighborhoods so that the the Poverty Pimps can control their votes, look at this. They even run studies and complain about the the fact that Chicago now has open communities instead of concentrated CHA ghettos with concentrations of low income voters. They want power, not what is best for the poor, eledrly and disabled.
From Concentrated to Diffuse
In 2000 about 94 percent of voters at the 22 developments analyzed by The Chicago Reporter were clustered in eight wards in November 2000. Public housing voters accounted for nearly 23 percent of all voters in the 3rd Ward, nearly 17 percent in the 2nd Ward and about 9 percent in both the 4th and 9th wards.
But by September 2007, those who still remained on the voting rolls were spread out among all 50 wards in the city and accounted for no more than 5.4 percent of the voters in any ward.
Source: Board of Election Commissioners for the City of Chicago, Cook County Clerk; analyzed by The Chicago Reporter
Link to January 2008 (not Dec 2007) Chicago Defender "Disappearing Act" Article in which ONE's Jamiko Rose defends unsafe porches on low income housing building in Uptown.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chicagoreporter.com/index.php/c/Cover_Stories/d/Disappearing_Act
They are much more dangerous than tnis article makes them seem.
Well that last link didn't work on this blog. Let's try the tiny url version:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/ypa9uc