History for the Future: Jeff Biggers on Coal in the Heartland

Jeff Biggers on Coal in the Heartland
History for the Future



Jeff Biggers discusses the history of coal mining in Illinois, and the nation. Biggers is an award winning journalist and author of the book Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, just published this year by Nation Books. This study asks readers to consider the true cost of coal by exploring the toll its production has taken on people and the environment throughout American history. On the show, Biggers talks about his book, the myth of “clean coal,” and his hopes for a truly clean energy future.

To Listen to the Interview

Ed Yohnka: A "Near-Death Experience" for Death Penalty Abolition in Illinois

A "Near-Death Experience" for Death Penalty Abolition in Illinois
Blog of Rights (ACLU)
by Ed Yohnka

On Thursday afternoon, the Illinois House of Representatives was a raucous place — with talk of a deal on a tax increase, Medicaid reform and proposed budget cuts all sweeping around the chamber, members created a cacophony of sound that echoed around the huge chamber. But late in the afternoon, as the House began to consider Senate Bill 3539 — a measure to end Illinois' broken death penalty system — the chamber became hushed. Every member seemed to grasp the importance of the debate, coming after a decade in which the State of Illinois has operated under a death penalty moratorium because so many innocent men were released from death row.

Rep. Karen Yarbrough and other supporters made clear, concise points in favor of repeal. They noted that the state has spent more than $100 million over the past decade prosecuting death penalty cases, despite the fact that no one has been executed. They also made clear that the death penalty is not a deterrent and that supporting the death penalty means accepting the very real possibility that the state of Illinois will execute an innocent person. Perhaps most compelling were the voices of several previous supporters of the death penalty — including Reps. Susan Mendoza, Paul Froehlich and Mike Boland — who said that they no longer could support the risk of executing the innocent. It was compelling and moving.

Opponents of the bill trotted out two familiar but ultimately empty arguments. First they suggested that the only appropriate penalty for those who committed heinous crimes is the death penalty and relied repeatedly on gruesome references to murders in Illinois. These repeal opponents also pushed the notion that law enforcement needed the death penalty as a "tool" to coerce suspects to confess to particular acts. Yet one of the sad realities in Illinois is that we have seen a host of false confessions; confessions elicited by law enforcement using such "tools."

To Read the Rest of the Report

Democracy Now: Jury Convicts Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge of Lying About Torture

Jury Convicts Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge of Lying About Torture
Democracy Now

Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, a federal jury has found him guilty of lying about torturing prisoners into making confessions. Burge has long been accused of overseeing the systematic torture of more than 100 African American men. Two years ago federal prosecutors finally brought charges against Burge—not for torture, but for lying about it. On Monday afternoon, after a five-week trial, Jon Burge was found guilty on all counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the abuse. He could face up to forty-five years in prison.

To Watch/Listen/Read

Democracy Now: Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men

Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men
Democracy Now

A former police commander accused of overseeing the torture of more than 100 African American men goes on trial today in Chicago. Former Lieutenant Jon Burge is accused of lying when he denied in a civil lawsuit that he and other detectives had tortured anyone. He faces a maximum of forty-five years in prison if convicted of all charges. The accusations of torture date back forty years, but Burge has avoided prosecution until now. For nearly two decades, beginning in 1971, Burge was at the epicenter of what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of black men to coerce confessions. In total, more than 100 people in Chicago say they were subjected to abuse, including having guns forced into their mouths, suffocation with bags placed over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. We speak to attorney Flint Taylor and torture victim Darrell Cannon.

Guests:

Flint Taylor, attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago. He has represented many of the torture victims and was directly involved in spearheading the special prosecutor’s investigation.

Darrell Cannon, one of dozens of men to come forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police. Darrell says police tortured him in 1983 and forced him to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. He spent more than twenty years in prison, but after a hearing on his tortured confession, prosecutors dismissed his case in 2004. He was released three years later.

To Read/Listen/Watch

Amy Goodman: Alleged Chicago Police Torturer’s Overdue Day in Court

Alleged Chicago Torturer’s Overdue Day in Court
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now

Burge rose in the ranks to become a commander in Chicago’s South Side, called Area 2. Electric shocks to the genitals, mock executions, suffocation with bags over the head, beatings and painful stress positions are among the torture techniques that Burge and police officers under his command are accused of using to extract confessions in Chicago, mostly from African-American men.

To Listen to the Report

Democracy Now: The Assassination of Fred Hampton-- How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther

“The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther”
Democracy Now



Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment and shot and killed him in his bed. He was just twenty-one years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid. While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. We speak with attorney Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.

To Read/Listen/Watch

Julien Bell: Grad employees' strike victory at University of Illinois

Grad employees' strike victory at U of I
by Julien Ball
Socialist Worker

WITH THE chant "The workers united will never be defeated," some 500 jubilant members and supporters of Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), AFT/IFT Local 6300, held a rally November 17 in front of Foellinger Hall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as leaders of the local announced that the administration had agreed to contract language protecting tuition waivers.

Later that evening, a mass membership meeting of more than 450 members of the GEO voted unanimously to accept the contract proposal, and the strike committee met that night and decided to suspend the union's two-day-old strike.

Members of the GEO, which represents teaching assistants (TAs) and graduate assistants (GAs) on campus, had walked out over the university's refusal to agree to language protecting the union's right to bargain the impact of any changes to tuition waivers for out-of-state and international students.

"We knew that in this economic climate, we would have to strike to win anything at all at the bargaining table," Kerry Pimblott, a graduate student in history and member of the union's bargaining team, told the crowd at Foellinger Hall. "It was the pressure coming from all of you that made what we did possible."

Despite the fact that many graduate students depend on tuition waivers to be able to afford to attend the University of Illinois, administrators had refused to guarantee them in a contract, leading members to walk off the job.

TAs teach 23 percent of classes on campus yet receive poverty wages. Meanwhile, disgraced former Chancellor Richard Herman and former university President B. Joseph White--who were forced to resign this fall over a scandal involving the admission of under-qualified but politically connected applicants--still draw a salary of more than $600,000 between them, because of the golden parachutes they received from the university.

The GEO's contract had expired on August 11, and it was only months of rallies and pressure--and finally the strike authorization vote and two-day strike--that forced the university to drop its most regressive proposals.

The university initially proposed an across-the-board wage freeze, refused any contract language protecting employees against unlimited furloughs, and tried to impose a "scope of agreement" clause that would have prevented the GEO from re-opening bargaining in the event of a change in employment conditions.

Last week, after the strike authorization vote, and after hundreds of members packed the bargaining room over the weekend, the university withdrew almost all of these proposed attacks. However, the administration still refused to guarantee tuition waivers, the issue that led to the strike.

In the days leading up to the strike, interim Provost and Chancellor Robert Easter sent a number of misleading and threatening e-mail messages about the GEO. In a November 12 e-mail sent to a list that goes to the entire university community, he announced that "colleges and departments have been planning for the possibility of a strike and will ensure that teaching and learning continue."

Picketers stood strong, however, with more than 1,000 people braving to cold rain to take part in union actions. Meanwhile, an undergraduate solidarity committee formed in the weeks leading up to the strike and drew 35 to 40 people to planning meetings. Members of student groups like La Colectiva, MEcHA, Equality, Campus AntiWar Network, Amnesty International and the International Socialist Organization joined the picket lines. Many professors cancelled classes or moved them off campus, and the entire English department was shut down. Introductory psychology classes with hundreds of students were cancelled, and business generally did not go on as usual.

Meanwhile, the strikers enjoyed support from other union workers--UPS drivers refused to cross picket lines to make deliveries, and members of graduate student unions from the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois at Chicago drove for hours to support the strike.

As it became clear that the strike was having an impact, Easter began to change his tune.

To Read the Entire Article