Volume 1 Issue 7

Chicago: Yet another unhospitable place to be poor

The Chicago Housing Authority’s Year 7 Plan for Transformation will cost several billion dollars from both public and private funding sources. It promises to bring 25,000 units to the city by 2009 and relocate former public housing residents into more prosperous and diverse neighborhoods.

Yet a recent study by Dr. Paul Fisher shows over 90 % of families who left public housing were re-segregated into high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods. This is a direct contradiction of the stated goals of the CHA’s Plan.

So far 14,320 units have been completed. But this number is misleading as nearly half of are rehabbed and should not count towards the promise of new housing units.

The city has waiting lists of nearly 150,000 people. 20% of Chicagoans live in poverty and the average cost of a 2 bedroom unit requiring 3.5 minimum wage jobs to pay for rent. How can HUD allow buildings to continue to be razed when CHA is clearly falling behind on promises to replace them?

-James Pfluecke, CHOKE Chicago Bureau Chief

Wring His Neck



Here at CHOKE we try to refrain from potty humor as much as possible, but its difficut when you gotta CHOKE a Dick. Dick Cheney, you need your neck wrung. Pure and simply you're a greedy treasonous prick. Some poor sucker is going to take the fall for you, but we know you. We know you Dick, how many kids did Haliburton kill today. There is a special spot in hell for you and the CHOKE staff won't hide the fact that we hope you take it soon.

Letter from the Editor:

Why don’t bad bosses get beat downs? See if you can follow me. Say that a manager supervises 25 people. Out of those 25 people only two are full time with benefits. Fifteen of them are full time without benefits – the manager keeps it this way to save money. The rest of the employees are part time with no benefits and no set schedule – the manager changes it to suit his needs. The manager doesn’t pay overtime. He doesn’t give holidays. He just cut the hours for the full timers without benefits and he purposely treats people like dirt. This manager needs a beat down! There is twenty two employees who would like to do it. They dream about doing it every night. Take that fucker out into the parking lot after the shift and beat his ass. Don’t kill him, don’t maim him, don't cause any kind of permanent injury, but make sure he knows how often this is going to happen if he doesn’t clean his act up.

Work is personal – don’t let people treat you wrong because you think you need the money. They got us all tripped out saying, “ yes I’ll take a pay cut, yes I’ll take less hours, yes you can treat me like a shit milkshake. It’s personal and he knows it –but he doesn’t care because he’s still making his money. Bad bosses need to get beat downs.

Peace,
CHOKE