“Eighth-grade graduation is such a big, huge deal in Chicago,” complains Heidi Luebs, who teaches science at Burley Elementary (Catalyst, September). “I think [the ceremony] should be eliminated, because it just highlights our low expectations for these kids. We have to throw a big party for these kids because they might not make it through high school graduation.”
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“The harshest penalties [for drugs] followed rather than preceded the decline in drug abuse,” says University of Chicago law professor Norval Morris in the “Compiler” (Summer). “In our era, self-reported use of marijuana, heroin, and amphetamines peaked for every age group in 1979-1980 (for cocaine in 1984-1985) and fell steadily thereafter. But the harshest federal anti-drug laws were not enacted until 1986 and 1988, and the first federal drug czar was not appointed until 1989. If reduced use of drugs was its aim, the ‘war on drugs’ was won a decade before it was declared.”
“Why is it that tourists are given free trolley access from downtown to lakefront attractions, while patients of Alivio Medical Center [in Pilsen, Little Village, and Lawndale] can not get to Alivio on weekends?” asks Carmen Velasquez, Alivio’s executive director and a member of the Blue Line Transit Task Force. “Why is it the world can see Sue at the Field Museum, but the residents of Pilsen cannot?…It is an outrage that with all the money being talked about to restore the line (over $350 million), they cannot come up with the $800,000 it would take to re-open owl and weekend services of the line.”
