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AUSTIN WEEKLY news ■
Douglass High looks to become performing arts school,
Vol. 31 No. 9
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February 22, 2017
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austinweeklynews.com
@AustinWeeklyChi
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PAGE 8
Also serving Garfield Park
Meet George Bady, page 3
How work on the W. Side was lost Two reports, decades apart, shed light on massive jobs decline By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
A report released last month by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute puts the West Side’s steep private sector job loss over the last several decades in stark, harrowing perspective. The report was produced for the Alternative Schools Network and is designed to supplement the Jan. 30 hearing on youth unemployment held at the Chicago Urban League and co-sponsored by numerous nonprofits and institutions, including the Westside Health Authority and Mount Sinai Medical Center, among others. A year ago, the Great Cities Institute released a report showing that Chicago had the “highest total percent, and highest percentage of Black (non-Hispanic or Latino) 16 to 19 and 20 to 24-year-olds who were out of work and out of school.” According to 2014 U.S. Census data, nearly half of Chicago’s black men, ages 20 to 24, “were neither working nor in school.” This year’s report shows that in 2015, 39 percent of black 20- to 24-year-olds in Chicago were out of work and out of school, compared to nearly 21 percent of Hispanics, and around 7 percent of See MISSING JOBS on page 6
WILLIAM CAMARGO/Staff Photographer
BROOMS OVER GUNS: Last Saturday, a mass cleanup of the 4400 block of West Monroe, organized on Facebook by West Side resident Marseil Jackson, brought out the residents and the police in a show of community solidarity.
A Facebook SOS turns into mass cleanup West Side resident Marseil Jackson said he’s tired of talk unaccompanied by action By LEE EDWARDS Contributing reporter
Within 48 hours of writing a Facebook post calling for at least 50 men to take over the block of 4400 W. Madison, community activist Marseil Jackson stood surrounded by a crowd of excited volunteers and police officers in the middle of that block
— considered to be the most dangerous in Chicago last year (“the site of eight separate shootings in which someone was wounded,” according to a 2016 DNAinfo report). In the post, Jackson implored people to lend a hand in improving their communities while calling the Feb. 18 clean-up just the beginning of real change. The orchestration of the clean-up was stressful but when you’re passionate about
something it will happen, said Jackson. Several community organizations donated food, bottled water, gift bags, gardening tools, work gloves, and more. Over 50 men attended within the first 45 minutes. Representatives from the Chicago Police Department, Austin African American Business Networking Association Inc.,
Austin Chamber of Commerce on the move... 773.854.5848 • www.austinchicagochamber.com
See CLEANUP on page 7