By Suzanne Hanney

Streetwise 

"Austin has one of the highest levels of lead in the city," said Patrick MacRoy, program director at the Chicago Department of Public Health Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.  The toxic effects of lead poisoning are well-established but there is help for area residents to combat the problem.    

Greater Harvest Missionary Baptist Church was founded in 1912 and for the last 56 years has called 5121 S. State St. home. Now, after nearly 10 years, members are preparing to move into their new sanctuary. Columbia College's Damon Maloney spent time talking to members about the memories they're leaving behind.

Walgreens and True Star Magazine invite area teens to participate in the Expression Against AIDS Art & Literacy Contest for a chance to win a $1,000 scholarship. True Star works with Chicago teens interested in magazine writing and publishing.

Contestants submit an essay, poem, photograph or other artwork that represents respect, sexual responsibility and/or awareness of HIV/AIDS. A single winner will be chosen from each category and winners will be featured in True Star Magazine

Please find the details below:

- Contest is open to all high school students (grades 9 - 12)
- Contestants may enter only one of the 4 categories
- Entry MUST focus on respect, sexual responsibility, and/or awareness of HIV/AIDS.
- Deadline: December 15, 2007

To enter, log on to
www.TrueStarMagazine.com/Walgreens/ and download the contest details & entry form.

By Community Media Workshop

The Jackson Park Advisory Council, which voted earlier in the summer against siting Olympic venues in the park, will hold a public meeting with the Chicago 2016 Olympic committee's new community representative Sept. 10.

The advisory council has never been consulted about Chicago 2016 plans to site field hockey competitions in heavily-used soccer fields south of the Jackson Park lagoon, said Ross Petersen of the council.

Award-winning writer Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and Never A City So Real, will join Residents Journal staffers Mary C. Johns and Beauty Turner to co-host a We The People Media/Residents Journal bus tour of the inner city Saturday, Sep. 29.

The trips, sometimes called Beauty's Ghetto Bus Tours, have been covered by the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and the Associated Press, among others.

This news tip edited by Curtis Black
Contact: 312-344-7783 | fax 312-344-6404 | curtis@newstips.org

Not everyone around Washington Park supports building a 90,000-seat temporary stadium there to accommodate the 2016 Olympics if it comes to Chicago, says Cecelia Butler, president of the Washington Park Advisory Council.

But there is a broad community consensus on what Washington Park and the surrounding community need - "with or without the Olympics," she said.

Residents of the communities surrounding the park -- Washington Park, Grand Boulevard, Kenwood, Hyde Park and Woodlawn -- have been meeting since last fall to discuss prospects for the Olympics, and the advisory council created a separate Washington Park Olympic Committee because of heightened interest, Butler said.

The committee has come up with a 26-point plan to articulate community goals regarding the Olympics. "We asked each other, what would it take for you to support the Olympics?" Butler said.

Some items are long-standing requests as simple as a pedestrian crosswalk across 55th Street, and improved lighting, safety and sewers in and around the park.

The meat of the plan has to do with economic and community development -- "jobs, jobs, and more jobs" as well as greater access to job training and apprenticeships through city colleges; business development; and support for cooperative housing so current residents can afford to stay in the neighborhood.

Indeed, that's one reason Butler herself is supporting the stadium proposal; she sees it as an opportunity to bring badly needed resources to the community, especially its young people.

Another reason is civic pride: "This is Washington Park's opportunity to showcase itself to the world," she said. "Should we say we don't want to share our park?"

But residents and park users are also calling for guarantees that the park, its history and its current users are respected.

They want assurances that all programs within the park will be maintained, along with the park's historic landmark status and the Bud Billiken Day Parade. Soccer, cricket and ballplayers who now use the fields of the park's Harold Washington Common Ground should have their fees reduced or eliminated if they are required to move, they say.

And the committee wants assurances that the Olympic stadium will be immediately dismantled after the games, the park's green space restored and control of the remaining 5,000-seat ampitheater shared, with profits supporting programs in Washington Park.

The committee is calling for a community benefits agreement with the Chicago Olympic Committee, and they want a seat on the Olympic Committee as well.

The plan is a "work in progress," Butler said. The group has dropped proposals for underground parking and for moving the stadium site to another part of the park. More recently, learning that the city has no indoor fieldhouses, the committee has been discussing a proposal to use the National Guard's General Jones Armory at 52nd and Cottage for an indoor track facility.

The plan is being shared with the mayor's office and the Olympic Committee, Butler said, "to help them understand that this is what the community needs" in order to "make us feel like we're part of the process." A long-time organizer, she notes with some relish that "we've got years and years to work on this."

Join us for a bicycling celebration!

Gather with the movers and shakers behind the bicycling movement at the 2007 Bike Town Bash. The annual fundraising soiree hosted by the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation is 6 to 10 p.m. July 21 at the Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave.

Experience the synergy of green-technology and innovative culture while bidding on silent auction items and sampling food and drink. Enjoy local DJs and great prizes at this unique, green-building gem located blocks from the Museum of Science and Industry.

Admission is $40 for Chicagoland Bicycle Federation members and $45 for non-members. RSVP today at www.biketraffic.org/bash or call 312-427-3325, ext. 241.

The Community Renewal Society Future Summit is a set of intergenerational conversations that focus on the critical role that younger leaders can, must and do play in shaping the region’s future.

What: Community Renewal Future Summit

When: June 21, 1:30 - 5:30 p.m.

Where: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, 5807 S. Woodlawn, Chicago

Fees: $15 General Admission/ $7 student, senior and low-income admission

By Silvana Tabares

Students at Peck Elementary School on the city's Southwest Side must eat lunch in their classrooms because there's no room for a cafeteria. They don't go to the library because it's being used as a food preparation area.

The lack of a lunchroom and library are just two of many signs this elementary school, located at 3826 W. 58th St. in Chicago’s West Elsdon neighborhood, is overcrowded. Student enrollment at the K-8 school tops nearly 1,500 students. Yet the 81-year-old school's capacity is 500 students.

Frances Gordon, the school's who assistant principal, said the students aren’t getting the education they deserve.

“They enter the building at 9 in the morning. They are in that classroom all day long,” Gordon said. “They don’t have recess. They have library in the classroom. They have gym, and the gym teacher must come to the classroom.”

Gordon said the administration and faculty are working hard to educate all the students at Peck school, despite the overcrowding, believe to be among the worst in the Chicago Public School district.

“We are bursting at the seams. Every little corner at Peck school is being used,” Gordon said. “We need help in order to keep Peck the school that it is and to educate the whole child.”

The overcrowding at the school creates a litany of problems. For instance, the electrical sockets and outlets are in such poor condition that classroom computers and window air-conditioners cannot run simultaneously. The school needs more custodial assistance to meet proper cleaning standards, given that students eat in their classrooms.

The auditorium and gymnasium, which were originally designed in 1926 to accommodate 500 students, is only suitable for one-third of the student population, so the entire student body can never gather together.

Esperanza Zavala, president of Peck's Local School Council and mother of four students, is pushing for more space now.

“What we need is more space to accommodate these students, and there is space available,” Zavala said.

Additional annexes were built in 1996; the three annexes outside the main building accommodate kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Even with that extra space, the school's eight kindergarten classes each contain 25 to 35 students.