Photo: Paul Natkin/Photo Reserve, Inc.
September 2005 | Choice News
Farm Aid Comes Home
After 19 years of helping small family farmers, Farm Aid is finally coming home. This September, Farm Aid’s 20th anniversary concert will be held where it all began — in Illinois.
The annual concert has raised more than $27 million since the first one was organized in 1985 by musicians Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp in the Central Illinois town of Champaign.
Help can’t seem to come fast enough for Illinois’ family farmers this year because of the drought. With more 90-degree days and dramatically less rainfall than average, the outlook for some Illinois crops is looking grim. The National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that due to the drought in Illinois 52 percent of its corn, 45 percent of its sorghum, and 41 percent of its soybeans are reported in poor or very poor condition. For the 18 primary corn-producing states as a whole, more than twice as much of the crop is in poor or very poor condition this year compared to the same time last year.
“As for crops, corn might be past saving. Beans need more rain so they will gain some height but without rain the blooms will fall off and not set many seeds,” said Paul Gebhard, an Edinburg, Ill., livestock farmer and chair of the board of directors for Illinois Stewardship Alliance. “Yields will really be down without rain.”
In response to the drought Farm Aid activated its Family Farm Disaster Fund, channeling assistance to distressed areas with an immediate pledge of $10,000 in relief funds. Individuals are encouraged to contribute to the disaster fund online at the link listed below.
Farm Aid’s celebration starts with a week of food and music events in Chicago, culminating with this year’s concert presented by Silk Soymilk on Sept. 18th at the Tweeter Center in Tinley Park.
This year’s concert again features Farm Aid Board of Directors Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, along with Dave Matthews, who joined the board in 2001. Other scheduled performers include Kenny Chesney, Wilco, Los Lonely Boys, Buddy Guy, Susan Tedeschi, Widespread Panic, Emmylou Harris, John Mayer and Arlo Guthrie.
Ticket prices begin at $30 for lawn seats and $65 for pavilion seats. They can be purchased through Ticketmaster or 312-559-1212. Concertgoers are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items to support local food banks.
Farm Aid Event Highlights
“The Real Dirt...” Movie Night
Monday, Sept. 12, 6 p.m., Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., Chicago. Award-winning documentary “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” chronicles farmer John Peterson’s fight to save his family farm and his founding of Angelic Organics, Rockford, Ill. Filmmakers will talk about their work.
Tractor Parade and County Fair
Saturday, Sept. 17, 9:30 a.m. Parade steps off from the James R. Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph Street and ends at a County Fair set up at Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central Park Ave. The fair runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Music, food, children’s events, tractor display, and forum on the good food movement at 2 p.m. For more information: garfieldconservatory.org.
Farmers Markets
Tuesday-Thursday, Sept.13-15. Chefs, local musicians and food activists gather to promote fresh food from local family farmers. Win free tickets to Farm Aid’s 20th Anniversary Concert Sept. 18 at Tweeter Center, Tinley Park.
Tuesday, Sept. 13
Lincoln Square, Lincoln, Leland and Western Avenues, 8:30 to 10 a.m.; Prudential Building, Lake Street and Beaubien Court, Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Sept. 14
Lincoln Park, 1750 N. Clark St., 8:30 to 10 a.m.; South Shore Farmers Market; 70th Street and Jeffery Boulevard, Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Thursday, Sept. 15
Hyde Park; 52nd Place and Harper Court, 8:30 to 10 a.m.; Dunning Market, Montrose and Forest Preserve Avenues, Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Visit Farm Aid for more information, or to contribute.
— James Faber
Dishing Up Diversity
FIRST, ROLL OUT the food. Next, add some art. Sprinkle in some gardening, add kids, and mix. What do you get? Common Threads! Art Smith, personal chef to Oprah Winfrey, helped found the Chicago-based nonprofit organization that offers underprivileged children after-school classes on cultural diversity, nutrition, and health. Each week the students learn about the food and music of a single culture. Every month they practice a different culture’s dance.
“We’ve done Mexican and African dance, and tai chi,” said executive director Linda Novick. And there is a garden where kids can learn about organic planting. Classes are held in three locations: St. Paul the Redeemer Church in Hyde Park, Gallery 37 on Randolph Street, and Kendall College on North Branch Street. Children, ages 8 to 12, are accepted and scholarships are available. Visit ourcommonthreads.org or call 312-876-1289.
— Darcy Garrett
Slow Going for WiFi In Poorer Neighborhoods
“THE LAST MILE” is what tech folks call the distance between the telephone pole in the alley and your dwelling or business. It is “the longest mile” in getting high-speed broadband to some end-users. “Wireless Fidelity” networking, or WiFi, is a cheap and easy way to connect users to high-speed Internet.
WiFi is a list of standards for wireless local networks that the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers, an international body of experts, has set to make sure devices are compatible when they are connected or networked.
Cable and telecom companies build WiFi networks, but they haven’t been reaching into older and poorer neighborhoods with the same eagerness they show for connecting users in more affluent areas. Nationally, 38 percent of American households with incomes below $30,000 annually are wired, versus 75 percent of those earning $50,000, according to a 2002 Pew and American Life study, cited in a press release from the City of Chicago Finance Committee.
So Chicago Aldermen Ed Burke (14) and Marge Laurino (39) convened a Wireless Task Force to explore the issue and hear what citizens are saying about a citywide open-air, high-speed Internet access system.
One way for cities to meet private and business needs is to raise bonds to build WiFi networks. Another possibility is to create a collaboration between a municipality and a service provider. But there’s a movement to stop this by state and national legislators allied with cable and telecommunications companies who are pushing legislation that would make it illegal for municipalities to build their own WiFi networks.
After Philadelphia began its exploration of municipal WiFi, Pennsylvania legislators responded by passing a law barring any other cities from “competing unfairly” with corporate service providers. In Illinois, Republican State Senator Steve Rauschenberger introduced a bill forbidding Illinois municipalities from brokering high-speed wireless Internet. The bill was referred to committee. Fourteen states have passed such bills.
Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) introduced federal legislation to outlaw municipalities from setting up wireless. Bipartisan opposition in the House and Senate has kept his legislation in committee so far.
Broadband access is a basic tool for economic development. Harold Lucas of Bronzevilleonline.com said, “Our concern is for building capacity among the truly disadvantaged, low-income people, not for business.” Andrew Klutz of the Albany Park Community Center echoed his concern.
In Philadelphia, about 90 percent of homes in affluent neighborhoods are wired for high-speed Internet but in poor neighborhoods it’s 10 to 25 percent, according to Diana Neff, that city’s Chief Information Officer. Locally, a project headed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the Neighborhood Technology Resource Center (773-722-5653) is using WiFi “mesh networks” to bring high-speed Internet to the underserved North Lawndale community. Smaller towers installed on rooftops pick up a “line of sight” WiFi signal transmitted from the Old Sears Tower on South Homan Avenue. Initially access is free, but eventually users will be charged fees on a sliding scale, based on income.
Currently, South Korea, China, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, Switzerland, and Israel have higher penetration of broadband than the U.S., which has dropped from 13th in 2004 to 16th in 2005 in terms of high-speed Internet access among nations.
— Barbara Iverson
Examining Social Justice in Sports
Most Chicago Bulls fans remember 1991 as the year their team beat the Lakers to win the first of six NBA championships in the ’90s. The championship team won an invitation to the White House, where Bulls guard Craig Hodges slipped a letter to President George H.W. Bush Sr. Later Hodges said he found himself blacklisted.
There’s some controversy as to exactly what the letter said. Online resources say the letter was mostly about the NBA’s poor record of hiring African American coaches. In any event, Hodges said that after he took a stand, his career was soon over.
“You talk to players today about the perils of speaking out. It hangs over their head like a cyst,” said sportswriter Dave Zirin.
Patriotism plays a large role in sports. “God Bless America” is played during some games, the U.S. military’s Blue Angels fly jets fly over stadiums, and presidents are invited to throw out first pitches. But watch out when an athlete speaks out about social ills. “Sports and left-wing politics don’t mix,” Zirin said.
During the Gulf War, Zirin attended a pro basketball game where he witnessed his team’s mascot attack a person dressed in an Arab suit. “It disgusted me so much that I walked out of the arena,” he said. The unsettling event did not destroy his love of sports, but it did make him pay attention to the role of culture and politics in sports.
Years later, he became a sportswriter and frequently wrote about racism and other social issues in his sports column for the Prince George’s Post in Maryland. Eventually he won the attention of Haymarket Books, who approached him about writing a book.
Released this year, the book, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, traces the history of social issues in sports. It includes chapters on Jackie Robinson and racial segregation in Major League Baseball and the 1968 Olympics protest by black U.S. athletes. In the second half of the book, Zirin focuses on the present including examples of sexism, racism, homophobia, and corrupt profit-hungry owners.
In addition to his sports column, Zirin is a monthly sports commentator for Air America Radio’s “So What Else is News?” He lives in Washington D.C. with his partner, Michele, and their daughter Sasha.
Catch Zirin in Chicago when he makes two stops here on his book tour. You can meet him at 7 p.m. Sept. 8 at 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St., 773-684-1300; or at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 9, at Left of Center Books, 1043 W. Granville Ave., 773-338-1513.
— Darcy Garrett
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