Results tagged “federalplaza”

Governor Quinn and Treasurer Alexi Giannoulis were among the democratic leaders at Federal Plaza Tuesday pumping up organized labor and liberal advocacy groups in support of President Obama’s health care reform proposal. Hundreds attended to unite against the current insurance system and build momentum for the president’s proposal. As no good rally is without counter-protestors, conservative activists like Eric Odom also made a showing, he told Chicago Breaking News: “We basically feel the legislation being pushed through (is) very dangerous”, and “We are really pushing for everybody to take a deep breath and really look at what we’re getting into and not just jump into something…that’s going to cost us for years to come”.

              

"I've spent all my life in America," said Saman, 29. "But I feel connected to everything back there. And it's clear from what we're hearing that something is wrong with the elections [in Iran.]" Saman, who gave only his first name, said his mother was singing the Iranian national anthem along with the protesters via cell phone for most of Tuesday afternoon as a fraction of Chicago's Iranian community rallied in protest of the allegedly falsified elections. "She knows all the words, [to the song, Sorud-e Melli-ye Iran]" he said. "They left Iran before the [1979] Revolution." Saman said he had to read the Persian lyrics, supplied by organizers, to keep up with her.

In a speech at the "We Are One" concert at Lincoln Memorial Center on Sunday, President-Any-Minute-Now Barack Obama said, "I won't pretend that meeting any one of these challenges will be easy. It will take more than a month or a year, and it will likely take many." Well, a number of groups have responded, "Screw that, we want action NOW." On Obama's first full day in office, January 21st, a "Solidarity Rally" will take place in Federal Plaza at 5:00 p.m. Members from various organizations will be in attendance, including the Gay Liberation Network, the International Socialist Organization, and the Coalition of African, Asian, Arab, European, and Latino Immigrants of Illinois to "demand the change they voted for" -- mainly, immediately ending raids and deportations.

      

Yesterday, we shared reader photos of Friday's pro-Palestine rally downtown. Today, we have some photos to share from the pro-Israel rally held earlier Friday at the Federal Plaza, organized by the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. One reader said of the pro-Israel rally:

The message of the rally, I thought, was that Israel was out of options and they couldn't just let rockets rain down on their citizens. They're doing everything they can to preserve life while Hamas is doing everything they can to destroy it ... Foreign Minister Livini and all the speakers also made a point of saying that their enemy is not the Palestinian people, but Hamas and that all they want is an end to the rocket fire.

Chicago will join more than 80 cities across America this Saturday in a nationwide protest of Proposition 8, which revoked marriage rights from the gay and lesbian community in California. Despite its passing last week, Prop 8 has been met with immense opposition, particularly in its home state. Still, progressives in the rest of the country tend to look to California to set the tone, so the passing of Prop 8 sets a disappointing precedent for those who hoped its defeat would set a new standard.

A couple years back we had a Chicagoist alum who chronicled his attempts to grow his own tomatoes from seeds. If you click those links, you'll notice that he wasn't very successful. Now, we have something of a green thumb. Our apartment is full of various ficuses, cacti, African violets, rhododendron, split leaf philodendron and other plants we've been tending for a friend for so long, they now qualify as ours. Still, we were hesitant...

Saturday the sun and heat agreed with Chicagoist. So we saddled up on our seven-year-old Schwinn Mesa GS and beat a straight line north on Halsted to the Lincoln Park farmers market. We just had some chicken butchered for us at Chicago Live Poultry House in Little Village, and had some ideas of how we wanted to prepare the cuts.

This weekend the Chicagoist offices were in a tizzy, as The Nightwatchman Tom Morello announced his tour dates, including a stop on Chicago's Federal Plaza on April 14 to play the Immokalee Workers Rally. Part of the focus of this rally is to continue to shine a spotlight on the plight of migrant farmworkers that pick produce for some of the largest fast-food chains. One of those chains, McDonald's, calls Chicagoland (Oak Brook, to be...

On Saturday an immigration rally at Federal Plaza marked the anniversary of the huge march a year ago. Organizers are gearing up for a two month onslaught of rallies leading up to another large march on May 1 through the Loop. The Chicago area has become a hotbed on the issue of immigration, taking part in the driving force that may one day force Congress to provide coherent legislation that doesn't allow for so much...

Last month the March for Immigrant Rights brought around 100,000 people downtown to protest the unfair treatment of illegal immigrants. Officials are expecting at least three times as many people at this Monday's march due to growing support and the participation of a wider range of immigrant groups, which is making conservatives cringe.

This weekend, all over the world, people protested the 3rd anniversary of the war in Iraq. In Chicago, about 150 demonstrators gathered at Dearborn Federal Plaza to pass out leaflets and listen to speeches. But this downtown rally was just one of several throughout the city.

Just so you know, there's going to be a big rally in Chicago tomorrow—and it's not about the war. In a relatively under-reported effort for its expected size, people will be taking to the streets for the March for Immigrant Rights.

On Saturday about one thousand dedicated people marched from Oak and Michigan streets to Federal Plaza to protest the second anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. Chicagoist didn't attend the march, but from what we can tell from media reports, it was about half the size of last year's march on the same date, and significantly smaller than the march held when the Iraq invasion began two years ago.

You wouldn't know it by reading the papers, but it's likely that tomorrow a few thousand people will march downtown to Federal Plaza to protest the American military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places. The march, organized primarily by the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism has a number of starting points, Senn High School at 6:00 am for the "North Side Long March Against Empire", Michigan and Oak Streets at Noon for the...

Starting today and running through Saturday, Eyes Wide Open is on display at the Peace Museum (100 North Central Park Ave.). The exhibit was unveiled by the museum in January with 504 pairs of boots symbolizing the lost lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Each week the exhibit moves to a new city and more boots are added to represent more soldiers who haved died. Next to the boots is a wall of rememberence with with the names of more than 11,000 Iraqi civilians who have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion.

Federal agents arrested arrested a Chicago man who had been plotting to bomb the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.