Following a free public screening of “The First Rainbow Coalition”  Jan. 16 at Illinois Central College Peoria campus, panelists spoke and answered questions from the audience. Seated from left are Susan O’Neal, Indivisible/Peoria Area and the National Organization for Women; Michael James, Chicago’s Rising Up Angry (a participant in the original Rainbow Coalition); Chris Wade, NAACP Peoria Chapter; and Sonny Garcia, Illinois People’s Action. The screening was co-sponsored by Community Word, ICC’s Department of Diversity & Community Impact, WTVP-TV 47 and the West Central Illinois Labor Council.

Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs, foreground, stands facing inmates at the Peoria County Jail as they cheer and wave their diplomas in the air at a graduation ceremony Tuesday.

BY CLARE HOWARD

Twenty-eight inmates in the Peoria County Jail stood and cheered Sheriff Brian Asbell Tuesday afternoon. They stood, cheered and waved their diplomas in the air at Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs.

The occasion was graduation for the Jobs Partnership Re-Entry program. Asbell congratulated the new graduates and told them he’d write a reference for them to help secure jobs upon their release.

Volunteer Ron Budzinski said 100 men signed up for the program, 38 were accepted and 28 made it through seven-weeks of classes. In the past four years, 243 inmates graduated from the program.

During a speech, one of the graduates, Sam Jones, said he did not know people on the outside cared. He used to tell his family “it was us against the world.” This program showed him he was wrong, he said.

Frerichs had awarded the program a $25,000 grant in 2018 through the Charitable Trust Stabilization Program that is funded entirely by the fees paid by not-for-profit organizations. The Charitable Trust Stabilization Program had been dormant for a decade until Frerichs restarted it.

As the chief financial officer in Illinois, Frerichs said investing in people to make the most of themselves is what this jobs re-entry program is all about, plus the program reduces the rate of recidivism.

The Charitable Trust Stabilization Program is currently accepting applications up until Sept. 30 by not-for-profits with annual budgets of $1 million or less. For more information and to complete an application online, visit www.illinoistreasurer.gov.

Other staff and volunteers speaking at the program included Cheryl Parks, executive director of the Jobs Partnership Re-Entry Program, and the Rev. Cliff Parks.

“How unusual is it to have inmates cheering for their sheriff!” Cheryl Parks said.

The Jobs Partnership Re-Entry Program is sponsored by Heaven’s View Christian Fellowship.

Thousands lined Main Street Monday in Peoria for the annual Labor Day Parade.

With ever-increasing wage inequality in this country, more labor unions realize the road to recovery is political reform. Congress is inordinately influenced by massive donations from ultra-wealthy conservatives and corporations that are unfriendly to unions.

Even with low union membership, most Americans still endorse the proclamation of union organizer Samuel Gompers more than a century ago: “What does labor want? . . . We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime, more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”

For an excellent assessment of labor unions, see the new book “Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor” by Steven Greenhouse, Knopf 2019.

NEWS ANALYSIS

BY CLARE HOWARD

The corporate owner of the Journal Star has agreed to a $1.5 billion acquisition of Gannett, owner of USA Today as well as 100 dailies and over 1,000 weeklies. The merger is financed with a five-year loan at 11.5 percent, and means one mega-corporation controls the journalism reaching eight million newspaper subscribers. That makes it the largest newspaper conglomerate in the nation.

The new corporation will operate under the Gannett name, probably because GateHouse has a worse reputation than Gannett.

In announcing the acquisition, officials stated an expected $300 million in “efficiencies” are planned.

Here is what Penny Abernathy, journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, told The New York Times: Layoffs are all but guaranteed. The business model is to further consolidate operations away from newsrooms. There is no way local coverage can thrive when operations are remote.

Both Gannett and GateHouse are diverting focus away from journalism to online marketing. Just look at the pages of the Journal Star.

The merger accelerates the demise of local newspapers, a trend that’s having a devastating effect on democracy. According to Steven Waldman and Charles Sennott, the co-founders of Report for America, “The disintegration of community journalism leads to greater polarization, lower voter turnout, more pollution, less government accountability and less trust.”

Here is a link to Bernie Sanders’ OpEd in the Columbia Journalism Review about the state of journalism in this country:

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/bernie-sanders-media-silicon-valley.php?fbclid=IwAR0eYR4ynAk_156jf3puaquToC-4BPqAcRqh3SsRr0gvpMPDElh0k8tEDK4

Sanders writes: Gannett’s proposed merger with Gatehouse Media, for instance, will consolidate hundreds of publications under one mega-corporation’s control and slash $300 million worth of “synergies”—which is often corporate-speak for layoffs. Matt Pearce, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, notes that “the new Gannett/Gatehouse CEO is getting $4.5 million in bonuses and stock just for walking in the door.”

And in Peoria, a newsroom that once buzzed with more than 60 journalists now is down to fewer than a dozen, and the likely prospect of even more layoffs hangs in the air.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 1, 2019

Media contact: Mandar Pattekar pattekar@hotmail.com. 309-868-0591

A SACRED MORAL STORY, A SACRED DANCE-DRAMA OFFERING, AND A SACRED CAUSE

We are pleased to announce the musical dance drama, Mohini Bhasmasura Nritya Samhaar, at the Hindu Temple of Central Illinois, on Saturday, August 3, 2019 from 5 pm to 7 pm.

The Hindu Temple has recently undergone major structural changes to better serve the needs of spiritual seekers of Peoria. These changes include the construction of a half-mile road from the Kickapoo Creek road, an expansion of the parking lot, and extensive infrastructural improvements which benefit the temple, as well as the surrounding community. In order to support this project, the students and friends of Mudra School of Dance Ltd. have organized a bharatanatyam dance drama based on a classic story of victory of good over evil. The drama is directed and choreographed by Meena Thota who has been teaching classical dance for more than twenty five years. The performers have put their extensive efforts as an offering to the Divine. Some of the dancers have been performing since they had just started walking, and now as young adults, their dedication manifests as intricate skills. Many younger performers demonstrate such a degree of discipline, that truly will shock the audience. Elaborate costumes will augment the dance and music performance.

After the performance, tasty dinner will be served sponsored by multiple Indian restaurants and grocery stores.  For more information on tickets, please contact pattekar@hotmail.com.

We look forward to seeing you at 4210 Temple Hill Road, Peoria, IL, 61604, on Saturday, August 3^rd, 2019.

The Romain Arts & Culture Community Center opened Friday before a crowd of hundreds including local and state politicians, educators, artists, school children and members of the public.

PHOTO TO RIGHT: Nikki Romain uses ceremonial scissors to cut the ribbon, opening the community center after more than three years of work. Her husband Jonathon holds his arms high as city councilwoman Beth Jensen, councilman Tim Riggenbach and councilman Sid Ruckriegel applaud.

PHOTO TO LEFT: State Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth speaks at the opening of the Romain Arts & Culture Community Center after Jonathon Romain recognized her work securing a $500,000 grant for the facility.

With the help from several owners of this newspaper, Community Word has funded a scholarship for the summer program at the Romain Arts & Culture Community Center.

The Civil War bitterly divided the United States along regional and racial lines. A stronger, unifying force calling for healing and unity was recognized at a ceremony in late June in Springdale Cemetery. The occasion was a restoration project moving and repairing Peoria’s 153-year-old Civil War memorial.

Unlike memorials to “The Lost Cause” celebrating the Confederacy, Peoria’s monument honors the dead and calls on the living to work to bring people together.

The Rev. Marvin Hightower, senior pastor at Liberty Church and president of the Peoria branch of the NAACP, gave the invocation:

“Heavenly Father, as we gather today for this historic groundbreaking, we humbly ask you to fill our hearts and spirits with thoughts and commitment to COMMUNITY. Let COMMUNITY spread, today, from each one of us, to all those who gather here, and let COMMUNITY spread from this ceremony, and engulf Central Illinois just as it did 153 years ago, when this 1866 monument was dedicated.

Heavenly Father, make us today, ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ … radiating outward to others, and radiating inward to each other, that we may all gather strength and a Community of Commitment, from each other, to each other, to surround Central Illinois and beyond.

Bring us together.

Light our path, Father … show us the way.

Let our community bond again, with 657 Peoria County Union soldiers who sacrificed their lives for Union and Community.

Let their service and sacrifice be our own.

Let this restoration project rise above stones, Father … Let our bond with their service and sacrifice cause us to ‘take up wings, as in eagles’.

Take us, today, Heavenly Father, to the mountaintop.

Let us see what has been lost and forgotten, be found, and come home to us again.

In your name, Father, we gather today.

In your service, Father, we begin to raise again, a monument to Union, Service, Sacrifice, and Community.

In your honor, Father… we join hands, we join spirits, we join In community.”

In an ongoing investigation of an accident at the Journal Star, OSHA has identified four serious violations and imposed fines of $35,802.

The investigation is continuing, and more fines could be issued.

The accident occurred Dec. 21 and resulted in the amputation of a man’s leg. The 60-year-old man was pinned by a fork lift operated by a 47-year-old man who fled the premises.

The accident scene was described as grisly. A colleagues in the press room used his belt to make a tourniquet to stem blood loss.

The victim was transported to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center and immediately underwent surgery in an attempt to save the leg. Circulation to the leg was weak after surgery, but the leg later had to be amputated.

After weeks at OSF, the victim spent weeks at Kindred Care Hospital and was than released to a nursing home, according to someone close to the victim.

To date, the Journal Star has not reported on the accident.