Page 2 - Developing Communities Project News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Cities Barack Obama has exploited his youthful stint as a Chicago community organizer at every stage of his political career. As someone who had worked for grassroots “change,” he said, he was a different kind of politician, one who could translate people’s hopes into reality. The media lapped up this conceit, presenting Obama’s organizing experience as a meaningful qualification for the Oval Office. This past September, a cell-phone video of Chicago students beating a fellow teen to death coursed over the airwaves and across the Internet. None of the news outlets that had admiringly ...

Hazel Johnson (1935-2011) is considered by many to be the mother of environmental justice. For more than 30 years, she pressed local officials and corporations to clean up toxic waste and pollution in her southeast Chicago community of Altgeld Gardens. (Courtesy of People for Community Recovery) She was a community activist. She was an ambassador of Altgeld Gardens. She was an early mentor to Barack Obama. She was a "thorn in the side" of the Chicago waste industry. She was a wife and mother of seven children. She is the mother of the environmental justice movement. For more...