Beyond Today: Green Neighborhood

Ann Breen-Greco Recieves "Woman with Vision" Award from the Women's Bar Association of Illinois read more..

1. Invitation to attend short meeting Sunday Nov 12 to plan additional West Nile and pesticide research. All are welcome. No experience necessary. We will need help to do a really great job bringing the best information to the city for the West Nile Summit. Email julie@beyondtoday if you'll like to join us or would like to otherwise help.

2. Invitation to the first Alternative Energy Committee meeting.
Join this group if you are interested in Global Warming, Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Car use reduction Bicycling, and Energy Efficiency
This group is also meeting this Sunday, Nov 12th
email beyondtoday@beyondtoday to let us know if you are interested in these topics, even if you can't make the first meeting.
read more here about what is going on so far...

3 Report back from the Native Seed Workshop Thank you Rinda, good turnout: Christianne, Jerry J. and Michael S of Pensacola, Kevin A., David S., and Laura P. of Cullom, Jill H., Jo K., Julie P. Several people requested we do another soon, so we will. Who will organize it? Volunteers?

4.Request for help with the creation of a Green Gift Guide. Send your suggestions to beyondtoday@beyondToday.com with the subject line "gift guide" so it doesn't get lost. Let us know if you are interested in this project. It could be a very small or large project depending on who volunteers. (we already have recycled bike trailers for sale-exciting!)

This Fall, we launched our Environmental Neighborhood Project with a series of dinner conversations to create a 3 year plan to become the most environmental neighborhood possible. We called them "Green Dinners" Over 70 people have attended these dinners including Alderman Schulter and many more wonderful residents and community leaders of many different stripes. We gathered all of your ideas and have grouped them to form working committees to bring your ideas to a reality.

Click on any of the committee links to see what they're working on. Now is the very beginning and the momentum is high. It's a great time to get involved. You don't have to be an expert or even commit to a certain level of involvement, just helping us to keep the momentum going by contributing to decentralizing and spreading out the labor and leadership into these new working groups will really help us to be successful as we move into November. We're hoping to have all the committees meeting every other week and then coming together for a monthly hootenanny to share their information with the group.

Getting involved: If anyone is wondering what is going on, the answer is "lots!" Many of you are already in motion. Rinda West is hosting a workshop and green dinner. Nancy Benjamin is organizing an organic gardening workshop and the gardening committee first meeting. April is coordinating the nonprofit application papers. Martha is organizing a solar panel workshop. Amongst those interested in solar panels are Alison and Greg, Patrick and Lisa, Lori and John (who will also host a dinner), Julie and Bobby, and Missy Kunze. Many of you are looking for ways to work this environmental neighborhood project into your schedule without going into overload. : ) Many of you are signed up for committees, many of you have sent information to communicate to the group. I'm working on the newsletter. In essence, if anyone is waiting to get involved, no need to wait. Email if you need something to be scheduled in a way that works for you. We aim to please!

Give me a ring or email to coordinate with others.. I'm here to help you find out who else is working on your issue, put you in touch with resources and opportunities, and to help enable your efforts and projects. The website and emails are here to help the community to communicate amongst members as we figure out how it's possible to be a wonderful Chicago community living in harmony with the rate of resource renewal in nature.

And thanks again to those who have contributed funds to keep this effort going.. including Laurene von Klan and the Nature Museum, Rachel Collins, Ann Breen-Greco, Pete Leki, Debbie Albano, Bobby Garro Sutton, April Jean-Baptiste, and Patrick Jean-Baptiste. Others have offered to help once we get nonprofit status. We'll let you know when that happens. We'll need to continue to seek financial support, so please contact us if you can help us to apply for funding or have those types of resources to share. We keep careful records which any of you can review. And thanks to all of you for doing all this wonderful work, especially Kevin and Pete who have been coordinating environmental and river issues for years.

Neighborhood Sharing project info: In order to help us to make use of half cans of paint, left over tile, and other still useful items, we have a Neighborhood Sharing Project. We'll have a secure page on the website to let each other know what we have to share. We need people to start bringing materials to help this project get started. Any extra bikes or bike parts should go to Kevin's, any extra roofing material should go to Pete, I'll keep tile and associated materials, and Jerry is taking paint. Email if you have stuff or want to volunteer to host a resource sharing site.

Keep warm!
Julie Peterson

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The Sun-Times's story on alleged rapist Alan Wyman has readers up in arms.
By Michael Miner

AT A TABLOID newspaper, vivid writing rules. Stefano Esposito's knack for it landed the Sun-Times in hot water recently, but editor in chief Michael Cooke stands by his criminal courts reporter. "He has his own wonderful style of writing the most obvious court cases," says Cooke, "and putting some energy and life and drama -- in the best sense -- into the reporting of those cases."

Esposito wouldn't talk to me about the recent troubles, but as a onetime Sun-Times reporter myself, I sympathize with him. As they say, he was doing his job.

On October 3 the Tribune offered a prosaic account of a ghastly crime story. The headline announced, "Handyman charged in kidnapping and assault," and the story began this way: "A Chicago handyman was ordered held on $325,000 bail Monday as Cook County prosecutors detailed how he repeatedly sexually assaulted a woman whom he bound to a specially designed bed and soundproof closet."

In the Sun-Times, under the headline "'Cute Blonde. Runs in Park at 7:30': Artist allegedly holds woman hostage in chamber, rapes her, while keeping notes on others," Esposito's story began:

"Her kidnapper has already raped her, choked her and threatened to kill her if she struggles.

"Then Alan Donald Wyman removes the steel cables he's used to pin her to his bed. He leads the woman, who still cannot see, along a narrow hallway to a wooden trap door at the base of a specially built closet, Cook County prosecutors say. . . . He opens the trap door and forces the woman to crawl into a tiny, soundless black chamber. The woman loses all sense of time. And then the 53-year-old Wyman rapes her again, prosecutors say.

"Wyman's occasional acts of mercy: spoonfuls of brown sugar and glasses of water."

Esposito concluded: "Wyman drinks at June's bar across from his apartment, neighbors said. He collects books. He is the handyman in his apartment building. He writes poems. . . . Last Friday, while the victim was allegedly trapped in his apartment, Wyman went down to water his lawn, pick up litter and then stop off at June's for a double shot of Jameson, no ice."

Esposito, helped considerably by the street reporting of his colleague Annie Sweeney, wrote such an upsetting story that a delegation of furious readers showed up at the Sun-Times offices to protest.

For a technical critique of Esposito's effort, I offer the comments of a Reader colleague who once lived near Wyman's apartment, which was on the 4300 block of North Western. "The lead sets up the piece like it's going to be from the victim's point of view," Tori Marlan observed. "And it's not from her point of view. It's not even a feature, where point of view is important. It's just a news story. I think that narrative technique is being abused here. I'm not sure what the point of it was. Did the writers want their readers to identify with the victim? Experience the kidnapping and rape vicariously? Feel sympathy for her? No need to punch it up -- the details are startling enough on their own."

And here's a more visceral response from the neighborhood. "When I showed the article to my neighbors they were floored -- this man had been in their homes as a handyman," Julie Peterson told me. She said somebody else had invited him over to help put Wyman's art up for sale on eBay. "Everybody knew who he was."

Peterson believes the story began going wrong with its headline. "They called him an 'artist.' 'Alleged rapist' is the correct term. Many people felt the Sun-Times was giving him some kind of mystique, as some dark James Bond. He was a sick, sick person who kidnapped and tortured a person. It's so important not to give him this Silence of the Lambs treatment as if he was some kind of intellectual. Let's focus on the crime. I can't imagine him being more thrilled with the article the way it was written. He came off as the coolest rapist -- if there can be such a thing. It was really nauseating."

Peterson maintains the Web site of the community organization Beyond Today. She posted the article on the site and provided a link that would allow visitors to e-mail letters of protest simultaneously to the Sun-Times, Alderman Eugene Schulter, and Beyond Today. "This article shows absolutely no concern for the victim, and reports facts as if they were clues in a trash novella," wrote Lori Erickson-Cueva of Lincoln Square. "Four years ago, here in Chicago, the daughter of a friend of mine was kidnapped, held for months in a basement, tortured, raped repeatedly, and pumped so full of cocaine she is now a vegetable in an institution. My friend is now raising the toddler, now 8 years old, that her daughter left behind. This hits close to home." Melissa McNeal of Uptown wrote, "I cannot imagine that the intent of the writers was to celebrate such a heinous act, but that is honestly how it felt reading it: a hands-rubbing-together sense of gaping with mouth wide open. It felt awful."

On October 11 Esposito wrote a second story, this one straightforward. Wyman had been charged with a second, earlier, sexual assault, the repeated rape of a woman he'd held in his apartment for three days in August, and he was now being held without bond. By coincidence, October 11 was the day Peterson visited the Sun-Times and met with Cooke. She was joined by Ann Breen-Greco, an administrative law judge from the neighborhood, and representatives of Chicago NOW and the Chicago Foundation for Women. With Cooke were managing editor Don Hayner and reporter Sweeney. Esposito wasn't available.

Breen-Greco tells me Sweeney listened "very intently." She says Sweeney explained that the two reporters had met "with a number of women who have been survivors and feel very much in tune with them and aware of what a traumatic experience this is, and the story was meant to highlight their terror." That might have been the intent, says Breen-Greco, but the result was simple "sensationalism."

She goes on, "The big problem is that the Sun-Times wants very much to distinguish itself from the Chicago Tribune." When she and Peterson remarked that the Tribune had written a different kind of story, Cooke replied that the Sun-Times wasn't the Tribune. Later he told me, "The Tribune didn't cover it this way -- so what?" Esposito's story, he said, "was an attempt -- somewhat successful -- to portray the crime realistically and help readers understand the absolute horror of what allegedly had taken place. We're not the Congressional Record."

At Cooke's invitation, Peterson and Breen-Greco submitted a statement criticizing the Sun-Times story. It ran on October 20 as a letter to the editor, and it wasn't even the lead letter. Peterson had hoped for more. She showed me an op-ed column on recycling the Sun-Times published on October 7 that had nothing in particular to do with Chicago and had been written by an economics professor in Virginia. "I sort of question why they thought that was more important than our letter," Peterson said.

Sweeney told me the meeting at the Sun-Times was a good one. "We needed to listen," she said. "I'm glad that it didn't get confrontational and mean." Cooke added, "They pleaded their case with some eloquence and passion." Was he persuaded? "Not entirely. But there were some things to take away, for sure. It's hard to talk to people whose friends and sisters have been raped. You don't have the moral high ground there."

A quick update on the West Nile Virus/Anvil Spray issue. For more background, read here.

We are currently preparing for the West Nile Summit which will be held this winter. Our hope is that the convening of experts will lead to Chicago adopting the same successful no-spray methods of mosquito reduction that are used in other cities.

4. Machine guns on great lakes- Hearing Wed Nov. 1 (forwarded by Sarah Simmons. Please forgive the formatting issues)

Illinois residents to testify against Coast Guard Plans

for Great Lakes Shooting Range

The United States Coast Guard has announced plans to turn the Great Lakes, the world's largest body of fresh water, into the world's largest freshwater shooting range. Since 1817, a treaty between the U.S. and Canada prohibited this kind of activity on the Great Lakes.

The Coast Guard has installed machine guns, capable of firing 600 rounds per minute, on its Great Lakes vessels and has begun target practice on the lakes. Now the Coast Guard wants to designate 34 areas in the lakes as permanent target ranges for practice with live ammunition. The areas they have mapped out come within five miles of the shore and can be seen with the naked eye from the water's edge. They are strung around the perimeter of all five Great Lakes (Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron). In keeping with the Bush administration's practice of giving misleading names to its initiatives, the Coast Guard is calling the target ranges “safety zones.'

The so called "safety zones" cut through areas routinely used by commercial and recreational fishing vessels, power boats, sailboats, kayaks and other marine craft throughout the Great Lakes.

Environmentalists dispute of the Coast Guard's claims that dumping an estimated 430,000 lead bullets into the lakes each year will have no adverse environmental impact on fish, birds, mammals, plants, or humans. Consistent with the military's view that they should be exempt from environmental regulations, the Coast Guard has not prepared a complete environmental impact statement.

What: Chicago/Milwaukee Hearing on Coast Guard Plan to do live-fire machine gun target practice on Great Lakes using ordnance containing lead and other toxic substances.

Who: Citizens of Illinois and Wisconsin, environmental groups, groups opposed to militarization of the lakes, local government representatives.

Iraq isn't the only war being fought right now.
Our environment and
specifically the Great Lakes are under attack by
the Department of
Homeland Security. Sign the petition:

http://www.citizensforlakesafety.org/petition.html.

The United States Coast Guard (now under the
Department of Homeland
Security) has announced plans to turn the Great
Lakes, the world's
largest body of fresh water, into the
world E2 80 99s largest freshwater
shooting range which will break a treaty the US
has had with Canada
since 1817 which prohibits the use of guns on the
Great Lakes.

The Coast Guard has installed machine guns,
capable of firing 600 rounds
per minute, on its Great Lakes vessels and has
begun target practice on
the lakes. Now the Coast Guard wants to designate
34 areas in the lakes
as permanent target ranges(Live Fire Zones) for
practice with live
ammunition. The areas they have mapped out come
within five miles of the
shore and can be seen with the naked eye from the
water's edge.

Environmentalists are dubious of the Coast Guard's
claims that dumping
an estimated 43,000 lead bullets into the lakes
each year will have no
adverse environmental impact.

Please proceed to
http://www.citizensforlakesafety.org/petition.html
to
get more information and to sign the online
petition. The site has been
put together by people who have an interest in
both the potential
environment consequences and peace and justice.
The communities along
the Lakefront work too hard to protect this vital
international treasure
to allow it to be compromised in such a cavalier
way. Please sign the
petition AND discuss this issue with your local
city council as well as
your state and federal elected representatives.

If you feel as passionately about this issue as we do, please consider signing up to receive updates on the issue.

Please also forward this email/information to your friends, co-workers and relatives.

**more information from Mercia B.: I’m sending this note out a little early because there is an event coming up on November 1st that I’d love you all to support. - For full information go to http://citizensforlakesafety.org

The United States Coast Guard has announced plans to turn the Great Lakes, the world’s largest body of fresh water, into the world’s largest freshwater shooting range. Since 1817, a treaty between the U.S. and Canada prohibited this kind of activity on the Great Lakes. But when President Bush made the Coast Guard part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004, he reinterpreted the agreement with Canada.

At the very least, please go the the site http://www.citizensforlakesafety.org/petition.html and sign the petition if you haven’t already. We’re shooting for a minimum of 1000 signatures by Wednesday afternoon - so please spread the word.

The only public hearing on this plan is this Wednesday, November 1, 2006 in Waukegan Illinois at the Genessee Theater, 203 North Genessee St., Waukegan, IL.
Schedule of events for all meetings is:
4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Open house. The public can receive information on the proposed zones and ask Coast Guard officials questions.
5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Public meetings. After a brief statement by Coast Guard officials, the public can comment. Comments will be recorded and entered into the docket for this rulemaking.

The Genessee Theater is very close to the train station. Here are the links for the Metra North Line Schedule:
Chicago to Waukegan - http://www.metrarail.com/Sched/cnw_n/cnwn_wko.shtml
Waukegan to Chicago - http://www.metrarail.com/Sched/cnw_n/cnwn_wki.shtml.

If you want to come and need a ride contact me and I’ll see if we can arrange a carpool option. 847.912.0739 cell

NOW IS A GOOD TIME. Uncle Sam will help pay for certified storm doors installed this year and next. U.S. consumers are eligible for a one-time tax credit of up to $500 for installing qualifying storm doors and other energy-efficiency home improvements on their primary home. The tax credit will pay for 10 percent of the storm-door cost, but not installation. You will need to keep a receipt and file the appropriate tax form to receive the credit.

Granted, the credit is likely to be worth only $10 to $30, but it's worth filing a form.

Raquel, one of our student intern lets us know about a "new store call Sunflower Market. Everything sold there is organic, homegrown, 100% ingredients in their food and juices. If you want you can sign up for a newsletter (www.sunflowermarket.com) "

Email us and let us know what you think. Good? Who owns this place? Do they have local produce?

Thanks for being part of the Chicago Fair Trade’s network, growing the fair trade movement!

We’ve just come off a great week of Black Gold Screening and Events with Tadesse Meskela. Now on to the work of building fair trade in Chicago!

With as many as 15 million Ethiopians dependent on coffee, Ethiopia has decided to get its farmers more of what they deserve. The country's government has asked Starbucks to sign a licensing agreement that will allow Ethiopia to get legal ownership of the names of its coffees, Sidamo, Yirgacheffe and Harar . That way, Ethiopia can help determine an export price that makes sure farmers see a larger share of the profits enabling them to feed their children, send them to school and get them better healthcare. Oxfam and a coalition of allies are asking Starbucks to sign this agreement and so far they have refused. Go to www.oxfamamerica.org/starbucks to support this effort.

Our quarterly information meeting will take up some of the questions within the fair trade movement:

Jobs With Justice, a member organization of Chicago Fair Trade, is supporting the workers at Blue Diamond Growers with an informational leaflet-ting. The Blue Diamond workers have been organizing for the past two years to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). They have faced anti-union tactics in what a company spokesperson called “an aggressive union avoidance campaign.” The company has been found guilty of more than 20 violations of labor law, including the firing of union supporters.

Blue Diamond runs the world's largest almond process plant. Hershey’s is one of Blue Diamond’s biggest industrial customers, using the company’s almonds in its Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s Almond Bars, and other products. Hershey's consumers can ask the candy maker to look into how workers are treated at its supplier, Blue Diamond.

Join the informational leaflet-ting of Hershey's Chicago office and let customers know about the labor dispute at Blue Diamond. JWJ is not calling for a boycott of Blue Diamond’s products, Hershey's products, or other products that use Blue Diamond almonds. They are asking that Blue Diamond workers have the chance to decide for themselves if they want union representation at the plant without facing harassment, intimidation and firings.

Use the Chicago Fair Trade website to find the calendar of local holiday shopping events in the metro area as well as many website shopping opportunities that offer producers and artisans a chance for a better life.

NOTE NEW CONTACT INFORMATION FOR CHICAGO FAIR TRADE: As CFT moves from a project of Oxfam America November 1st, please use a new email to contact Nancy Jones, office staff: njones@chicagofairtrade.org

According to a recent article from the Associated Press, California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work (set up vermicomposting bins) so that the worms can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost. Employees are then invited to take the compost home and use the all-natural fertilizer in their gardens and on their houseplants. For example, at the California EPA complex in Sacramento, hundreds of thousands of worms process some five tons of food scraps per year. Over 60 bins are in offices, halls, even the daycare center. In fact, there is a waiting list for bins among employees, and some have been known to compete over whose office has the more productive worms.

9. Andersonville may put reins on retail chains-
summary of Chicago Tribune article

Some local business leaders and politicians are considering locking in the neighborhood's charm-defined by quirky, hip, one-of-a-kind shops and eateries-and introducing the city's first ban on chain retailers. The ordinance has not yet been introduced, but if it were to make its way through the City Council successfully, qualifying neighborhoods could decide whether to opt in to the ban.

The proposal's backers point to a 2004 study that found that for every $100 spent at an Andersonville business, $68 remains in Chicago, compared with $43 at a chain store.

But building owners faced with rising real estate taxes are opposed to the proposal, because they wouldn't be able to rent to chain-store merchants, who often can pay more. They argue that the best defense against chain stores is to create an environment for independent retailers to thrive.

What both sides agree to is this: Andersonville has a "sense of place" worth preserving.

The full story was published October 10, 2006 in the Chicago Tribune. www.chicagotribune.com

It was chilly and windy, but we had a very nice trip to see the Sandhill Cranes.

Here's a video link. with photos! We'll have more video available on our website soon. It's a big file. Next time we'll work on that.