Workforce development center built in shuttered Austin school redefines community investment

As the Aspire Center opens on Juneteenth, Austin will begin a new chapter, reclaiming what was lost when Emmet Elementary was closed in 2013 and replacing it with something the community built for itself.

Housed in the same building, the Aspire Center serves a new purpose the community has yearned for: to help people gain employment, long-term stability and economic mobility. From the start, we worked to provide residents with the wraparound resources they need to move from workforce development to building wealth.

Leading up to opening day, we launched the Mobilize Project, a $3 million effort to build a strong operational foundation. Austin Coming Together joined Westside Health Authority, BMO Bank and Jane Addams Resource Corp. to design coordinated services, align operations and prepare staff.

This preparation made way for a holistic model that connects residents to job training, financial coaching, legal help and access to mental health, housing and family services. Whether someone is opening a bank account, enrolling in training or meeting with a support worker, they can find multiple forms of assistance in one place.

This model only works when communities are trusted to lead. Our partner organizations moved into a shared space and built relationships with one another, taking time to understand each other's values. That collaboration established a unique, shared commitment to Austin.

Located at Madison and Central, along two main commercial corridors, the Aspire Center is part of a broader effort to revitalize our local economy and increase home ownership. When residents walk past the building, we want them to feel pride, and when they walk in, we want them to feel supported.

For decades, communities like Austin have been told to wait for solutions or go elsewhere to find them. The Aspire Center changes that narrative by offering a best-in-class facility right in the neighborhood. It says we deserve state-of-the-art spaces in our community, too. It tells our youth their future matters. It tells our elders we haven’t given up and their sacrifices were not in vain.

The Aspire Center is only the start of what’s possible when a community refuses to settle and decides to build something better.

Darnell Shields, executive director, Austin Coming Together

Destruction of Gaza’s hospitals is a war on humanity

Hospitals are privileged sites of care that are, by international law, afforded special protections. Bombing them is a crime. But this has not stopped Israel from doing so, nor the U.S. government from enabling the murder of patients in their beds, dismemberment of children and brazen executions of health workers.

In October 2023, the claim that Israel had bombed a single hospital led to months of controversy. The Israeli and U.S. governments denied Israel would attack hospitals. Simultaneously, senior U.S. and Israeli physicians, bioethicists, and journals like the Chicago-based Journal of the American Medical Association began providing preemptive justifications for such war crimes.

A year and a half later, Israel has used U.S.-supplied weapons to repeatedly attack not just one but all 36 hospitals in Gaza. Neither government denies this any longer. In fact, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have openly declared their intent to ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians.

Israel’s bombing of hospitals reflects a strategy that Jean-Paul Sartre, then describing the U.S. bombing of Vietnam, called "total war." Colonial armies attempting to dominate an occupied people seeking their freedom cannot accomplish their goals if they abide by the rules of war. "Victory" is only possible when they put law and conscience to the side.

In this paradigm, bombing hospitals is no longer avoided; it becomes a strategic necessity. "Total genocide reveals itself as the foundation of anti-guerilla strategy," Sartre observed.

This "genocidal blackmail" was not just a threat to Vietnamese people. It turned all who did not denounce it into accomplices such that "the group that the Americans are trying to destroy by means of the Vietnamese nation is the whole of humanity."

This same scenario is playing out in Gaza, turning millions of us into accomplices in one of history’s greatest crimes. This is especially damning for American medicine and global health.

As a U.S.-based physician, I have joined colleagues in repeatedly calling on our profession to protect our Palestinian counterparts by demanding an end to the U.S. supply of weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel. Instead, the overwhelming majority of doctors and medical institutions have refused to say or do anything at all, except retaliate against those who refuse to go along.

For the sake of both Palestinians and our own dissolving humanity, we must insist on an immediate end to violence against Palestinians; their right to rebuild and return to their homes; an end to the illegal Israeli seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank; and reparations to enable the reconstruction of Gaza.

To begin this work, we must first find the basic courage to accurately name the crime the U.S. and Israel are jointly perpetrating: genocide.

Eric Reinhart, political anthropologist, social psychiatrist and psychoanalytic clinician, East Garfield Park

1840 N Marcey project will provide jobs, move city forward

Chicago is at a crossroads. Cranes have disappeared from the skyline. Our construction sites sit idle.

Projects are stalled due to market uncertainty, interest rates and the challenge of securing financing. But amid the hesitation, there’s one proposal that stands out for its readiness, scale and impact: 1840 N Marcey.

This $340 million investment is more than just another development — it’s a commitment to Chicago’s future and to good-paying union jobs for Chicagoans.

At a time when our city’s tradespeople are struggling for consistent work, 1840 N Marcey will generate thousands of union construction jobs. That’s thousands of Chicagoans — carpenters, laborers, electricians, operating engineers, stationary engineers, ironworkers, janitors and more — ready to get back to doing what they do best: building the city we love.

We talk often about the need to support working families. Here is a chance to put those values into action. Supporting this project means supporting tradespeople who have spent decades building and maintaining our homes, roads, schools and hospitals.

At uncertain times like these, Chicago needs momentum. We need proof our city is open for business, we still believe in growth and we still invest in our workers.

Our city’s leaders should understand this more than anyone. They should be urged to resist pressure from self-interested local neighborhood organizations whose political influence is neither legitimate nor representative of the overwhelming support from others both in the neighborhood and among other stakeholder organizations.

It’s time for economic growth and saying yes to projects that turn vacant lots into opportunities for Chicagoans. Every underutilized space in our city is a chance to create something meaningful — housing for families, storefronts for local entrepreneurs and much needed jobs.

Projects like 1840 N Marcey do just that, transforming empty land into engines of economic activity, community investment and long-term progress. 1840 N Marcey is ready. So are Chicago’s tradespeople. Let’s get to work.

Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and
Micheal Macellaio, president, Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades

Straight talk

But why do we have Pride Month? When’s Straight Pride Month?

I can’t believe I still hear this tired, old argument.

We have a Pride Month to celebrate and support the LGBTQ+ community, because they are a marginalized group. For centuries, being straight has been the "default" expectation. Those outside of that "default" have faced the implied message from society that they don’t belong, that their true selves aren’t acceptable.

We have a Pride Month because same-sex marriage has been legal in this country for only 10 years. Gay people have been around forever, but it wasn’t until 2015 that we decided it was OK nationally to honor their relationships in a legal, public marriage with all the same rights.

We have a Pride Month because people are still bullied, harassed and even killed for not fitting the "default" setting. According to GLAAD, 2024 averaged 2.5 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents every day, including bomb threats, vandalism and assaults, which doesn’t even include the hate spread every day in memes, comment sections and private messages.

We have a Pride Month because we’ve made young people feel that being gay is so wrong, so unnatural and evil they would be better off dead than embrace that part of who they are. According to the Trevor Project, 39% of LGBTQ+ youth considered suicide in 2024, and more than one in 10 attempted suicide.

That is why the LGBTQ+ community and its allies celebrate Pride Month. That is why there are rainbows and parades everywhere, why organizations share Pride posts, why we see a prism of colors across skylines.

We have no societal subtext implying that being straight is weird. Straight relationships dominate movies, shows and children's books. Straight marriage has been around for millennia. And I’ve never heard of someone being assaulted or pushed to the point of contemplating suicide because they were straight.

We don’t have Straight Pride Month because being straight is not and has never been a social crime, as should be the case with anyone’s sexual and gender orientation.

I hope for even more celebration of Pride Month and less anger about lifting up those who have been historically pushed away. After all, love is love, which we all should embrace.

Alice Froemling South Elgin

Allergic to Harvey Milk and acceptance

The U.S. Defense Department recently announced it was scrubbing the name Harvey Milk from one of it's Navy vessels. Mr. Milk was a Navy veteran who served during the Korean war, but he also — in the eyes of the current administration — committed the crime of being gay. The Defense Department is working on coming up with a new name that is, in its words, "reflective of the Commander-in-Chief's priorities." In that spirit, here's a suggestion for the new name: USS Bone Spurs.

Jim Bruton, Avondale

Trump’s only unleashes wrath on protesters who call him out

When protests over immigration turned violent, the National Guard was federalized and the Marines were deployed. When protests over the 2020 election loss of Donald Trump turned violent — after he told his supporters "if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore" — Trump did not call out the National Guard nor talk about law and order. Law and order is only important to President Trump when protests are against his policies. Rioters following Trump’s call to fight like hell get pardons.

Alan Rhine, Glenview

Athletes make mistakes

I was happy to read the Sun-Times story “Bears giving Tyrique Stevenson a ‘clean slate’ — and a scheme that suits him — after Fail Mary gaffe” that all directly concerned parties are putting last season's Washington gaffe behind them. And that's great. You move on. That's sports. Heck, that's life.

In a sense, anyhow, Ty was lucky. Finding another way to lose yet another game in a total washout of a season, what was the difference? As opposed to some athletes who suffered more noteworthy embarrassments.

Who can forget Jackie Smith or Leon Lett messing up in their respective 1979 and 1993 Super Bowls? Or ex-Cub Bill Buckner's muff in the '86 World Series? Or the Bulls' Scottie Pippen's breather at the most critical point in an NBA Eastern Conference finals game in '94? Or center fielder Don Young misplaying two balls in the ninth inning of a close game for the contending Cubs in '69?

Those moments are more difficult to let go of, for principals and fans alike.

Tom Gregg, Niles