We are the world living here on this big lake with the large flat plains at our back.

We come from everywhere and we are Chicago.

Let me explain and let me ask your advice, also.

From May 19 to 21 and a few days close by the leaders of the G8 nations and the leaders of the 28 nation NATO organization will meet here in separate meetings.

This may bring 5,000 diplomats and others. Also as many as 3,000 foreign journalists and who knows how many journalists from the US, Canada and Mexico.

City officials have been planning events for months to show what a global city Chicago is.

But you’ve been doing this for a long time in every thing you do daily.

So, here’s where I need your help

How can the ethnic news media tell the story of this city and our legacies here – our languages, our roots,  our histories – in a way that unites us and shows respect for who we are?

Do we want to plan articles about our communities and file them in a place that the world’s media can learn about a city that speaks no less than 80 languages and has more immigrant communities – no more immigrants however – than any other US city?

Do we want to make sure the foreign media knows about our communities and our ethnic media outlets. We want to get them out of downtown to see where their relatives from Lvov and Mumbia and Warsaw and Shanghai are living, right?

So how do we do this? I’m thinking that we need to get together to think this over. Do you agree?

if you want more info about the gathering, go to http://www.chicagog8nato.org

I am writing to you about a very important change that has taken effect as a result of a new state law.

As of January, all public notices in Illinois must also be listed on a website. If you do not list your public notices on this website by December 2012 you will no longer be able to receive public notices after that date.

Again, this is important because you could lose the money that comes from these notices after December 2012. And as you know this can be important to your business.

But adjusting to this new system should be not be difficult. And I would not wait to make the change.

By now you should have received a letter from the Illinois Press Association explaining how you can post your public notices.

I am working with the Illinois Press Association to help make these changes easy for the ethnic news media. And so, we will hold a meeting soon to explain the changes and how you can make this change.

In meantime, you can contact me to learn more about this change.

Stephen Franklin, Community Media Workshop, 312 369 7782 or steve@chicagoistheworld.org

The contact at the Illinois Press Association is Lynne Lance, 217 241 1300 or Llance@illinoispress.org.   Please call me, or the Illinois Press Association if you have any questions or need more explanation.

In the meantime, I need your help.

I want to learn how many ethnic news outlets receive public notices.

Please write or call me to let me know if you are currently getting public notices from a community, county or state agency. They are also known as legal notices.

Also, please let me know if you have tried to get these ads and have been turned down and what was the reason.

This will help us see whether the ethnic news media is receiving its fair share of this revenue.

Best wishes

Steve, 312 369 7782

So, here are two workshops – sponsored by the Chicago Headline Club – next week that you don’t want to miss.

1. On Tuesday, Jan. 24th there will be a workshop looking at the latest software and online tools to improve your reporting for the Congressional elections in March

Here’s a chance to learn about the latest gadgets and tools, and how to search for data about who gives money to whom and yet more info.The Knight News Innovation Lab at Northwestern University is putting on this training.

www.ilcampaign.org

When: Jan 24, 6pm. Where: Wieboldt Hall, Ray Conley Lounge, room 540, Northwestern University

340 E. Superior St, Chicago

2.You Can’t Record This, Take a Picture of That, and What Else?

Today almost everyone has a video camera in their pocket and in many cities local government uses cameras to monitor our streets. In our technology centered world the rules that govern citizens’ and journalists’ right to film, photograph and record audio are being challenged and constantly changing. These changes underscore the need for journalism and how fragile the protection the 1st Amendment provides.

This panel will bring together journalists, lawyers and public officials in an engaging discussion of the current political climate and the ongoing fights for free speech. This issue has many ethical consequences for the future of journalism and the role of seasoned journalists and citizen journalists and promises to be a thought provoking event. This event is sponsored by The McCormick Foundation and The Chicago Headline Club.

Featured Panelists:

- Garry F. McCarthy, Superintendent, Chicago Police Department – Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of

the Press – Harry Grossman, Legal Director, ACLU Illinois

When:Wednesday, January 25, 2012 5-7 p.m. (includes post-reception)

Where:Loyola University Chicago (Water Tower Campus) Lewis Towers 111 East Pearson, Regents Hall, 16th Floor Chicago, IL 60611

Seating is limited. Please RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/shatteredlensloyola

If you have any questions, contact me – Steve@chicagoistheworld.org

Wading in the Water in a completely different context–Frances’ father and daughter in their waders volunteering to maintain the pond at Hawaii’s Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo, America’s only natural rainforest zoo. Frances Kai-Hwa Wang | Contributor

Two years ago, my father’s choir at the University of Hawaii was invited to sing at a big international diversity concert at Lincoln Center in New York for MLK Day. Choirs from around the world had been invited to sing together, and a Hawaiian choir adds instant diversity with its multicultural population of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, Caucasians and native Hawaiians. That summer, over a breakfast of Chinese pancakes and Portuguese sausage, my father told us about the difficulties he had had the night before at choir practice pronouncing the words in the spirituals that they were learning, “You have to say the words like a Negro,” he said.

Twelve-year-old Hao Hao gently corrected him: “African American. These days you should say African American.” (I bet Senator Reid wishes his grandchildren had told him this, too.)

My father did not know, “Oh, ok. You have to pronounce the words like an African American.” A seventy-year-old immigrant, he can barely get his mouth around the words.

My father continued to describe the scene at the previous night’s choir practice. Someone had asked, “Why are they wading in the water?” Not one person in this Hawaiian choir knew, not the professors or the mainlanders or even the choir director. They decided perhaps it is swampy in the South and there just is water everywhere.

Thirteen-year-old Mango explained, in shorthand, “To get away from the dogs.”

My father did not understand, “But dogs can swim.”

Mango continued, ever gently, “No, so the dogs can’t follow their scent.”

“Why don’t they want their dogs to go with them?”

“Not their dogs. They’re running away from slavery. The slaveowners’ dogs.”

“Oh!” a light went on in my father’s head, “Slavery!”

I was so impressed to watch my children gently, ever gently, patiently, without judgment or consternation, lean over the kitchen table with soft #2B pencils pouring over the music scores with my father. The girls explained to him that in spirituals, a lot of the songs are coded instructions on how to escape to freedom, for example, in “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” the drinking gourd refers to the Big Dipper and the North Star; in other songs, the River Jordan represents the Ohio River, the last river to cross before reaching freedom in Canada; and Canaan means Canada because once slaves made it to Canada, they could not be sent back, as they could from the northern states.

“One more question,” my father asked, “Why does it keep talking about ‘the children’? They took their children with them?”

“That’s the children of Israel. They are using the story of Exodus as code to talk about their own escape into freedom.”

I am moved to realize that what never occurred to an entire Hawaiian choir, with such a different population and history, is so straightforward and matter of fact for my children who have grown up an hour outside of Detroit; attended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary; who have friends of many different races, ethnicities, cultures, religions, and languages; and who have been taught this history in school and at various MLK Day/Black History Month/Diversity Day programs.

I told this story last year to the Rev. Robert B. Jones at the University of Michigan MLK Day Youth Program where we were both speakers, and it reminded us both how important it is to learn about other people’s cultures — to taste their food and sing their songs and dance their dances — but to also back up that cultural taste test with a solid grounding in history and politics so that we fully appreciate its meaning and significance.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Michigan and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is a contributor for New America Media’s Ethnoblog, Chicagoistheworld.org, PacificCitizen.org, and InCultureParent.com. She is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her Web site at franceskaihwawang.com, her blog at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com, and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.

This article was originally published at annarbor.com. This article is adapted from a chapter in Frances Kai-Hwa Wang’s upcoming book.

Taking action and standing up for what’s right – these were among the many messages left Rev. King

Speaking in Washington,D.C. in 1968, he envisioned a march of the poor on the nation’s capital to begin to collect the debt owed hungry and forgotten Americans. He said:

“In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and neglect. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring children and adults and old people, people who have never seen a doctor or a dentist in their lives.

We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.

Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.”

We still still in a country stained by poverty and if there is a message today for the news media on Rev. King’s birthday, it is the need to see the whole horizon and to describe it so clearly and powerfully that nobody can reject its truths and thereby ignore what needs to be done.

If write something, let me and let’s share it,

Steve@chicagoistheworld.org

On a cold, rainy night nearly 100 people from Chicago’s African-American community packed a room at Little Black Pearl in Hyde Park to talk with members of the African-American media about how to work together. Attendees represented nonprofits, businesses, youth groups, educators, and families from the South Side and West Side.

“The biggest thing that happened at Little Black Pearl was a visible showing of a tremendous hunger that the community has for helping build local black media that better reflects its issues and perspectives,” said Jeanette Foreman, an attorney and 35-year community activist involved in organizing the event. “It was a joy to see a standing-room-only crowd.”

The event was part of the larger We Are Not Alone/No Estamos Solos campaign launched by the Community Media Workshop in 2010 to bridge divides in Chicago’s African-American and Latino communities and to discuss successful strategies to fight violence.

“This event planted the seeds for substantial change,” said Glenn Reedus, editor of the Chicago Crusader and panelist at the event. “I think the We Are Not Alone campaign can change the dynamics in Chicago. By starting to work with other communities and organizations, it can start a dialogue that people never thought would happen.”

Panelists at the event, which included journalists from the Chicago Crusader, WBEZ radio, WVON radio, Blogging While Brown and The Final Call, told the audience that they are committed to representing the black community but need people to come to them with stories.

“The hands kept going up as people asked about the future of Chicago’s black media and whether it will survive, whether it will learn to talk to everyone – young and old and especially whether it will be the community’s voice now that the community needs it,” said Steve Franklin, manager of the Workshop’s ethnic media project and We Are Not Alone campaign.

According to Franklin, one question kept returning—what could the media do about the violence in their communities? Couldn’t the news media get together, plan ahead and take a week to tell the story of what black Chicago is doing about the violence?

The media on the panel thought it could happen. In fact, more trainings and meetings between the African-American media and community and a brainstorming sessions for the black news media are in the works to follow up to the packed meeting at Little Black Pearl.

“By learning to better support, use, and contribute to its own media, the community will realize great potential to define itself in more positive ways and grow its capacity to resolve many issues, including the root causes of violence,” said Foreman. “I’m excited, optimistic, and looking forward to the 2012 next steps.”

Let me explain. We walk forwards towards what’s coming up and backwards in our minds about from where we’ve come.

This the dance the ethnic news media does most of the time.

It talks about life here and glances over its shoulder at life back there, back when, back where it had roots now and will for a very long time.

In the last year we here made a step too in this direction. We partnered with the Global Press Institute to set up a year long effort by female bloggers to talk about life here, linking their work with women spread across the world.

We began helping to create an alliance of Latino news outlets, bringing together the words and voices of the community and their business potential as well.

We talked and meet and mulled the problems of youth violence and the linkages between the black and latino communities that can work to bring an end to a terrible waste of lives and hopes.

We have more coming up but we need to hear from you about you in the ethnic news media want.

What kind of training do you want? What kind of focus in our worik? What do you need to make your work more stable and more imporant?

While your thinking, here’s a link to scholarship for minority journalists to do overseas reporting. The deadline is Jan 6th, so get on it if you are interested.http://www.icfj.org/news/icfj-now-accepting-applications-2012-international-reporting-fellowship-program

http://www.icfj.org/news/icfj-now-accepting-applications-2012-international-reporting-fellowship-program

But meanwhile, talk to me. Steve@chicagoistheworld.org

The future seems full of change, we understand because of a wonderful series of articles and photos produced by Loyola University faculty and students and produced as a supplement to Hoy (with Hoy writers as well) recently.

Pilsen is a place, as the articles tell us, of social struggle.

Of struggling for a better school,a better job, a better way to live.

A place wondering what will come next, for sure.

It is place of involved parents who worry about pollution and the schools and about their children who belong to gangs. Indeed, read the story by Ade Emmanuel on the Life of  a Latin Bishop. I wish there were more that explored why people join gangs today and where they exist and how they exist.

I think the life of gangs, especially in Latino communities, is different than what they once were.

This is the kind of thoughtful, imaginative,well-illustrated community reporting that needs to be admired and rewarded. felicidades.

Here are the articles:

• Pilsen Project – DRAFT Schools – Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
• Pilsen Project – TIF – Jeff Kelly Lowenstein – 1238
• Pilsen Project – Economic Development 2 – John T. Slania – 1049
• Pilsen Project – Crime – John T. Slania – 968
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Intro
• Pilsen Project – Hector Duarte – Tahera Rahman – 2002
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Nuevo Leon – Anna Heling – 617
• Pilsen Project – Prelim Graphics List – Jeff/Rodolfo
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Gang Profile – Ade Emmanuel – 1428
• Pilsen Proyect Intro ESPAÑOL
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – TIF sidebar – Jeff Kelly Lowenstein – 162
• Pilsen Project – Economic Development 1 – John T. Slania – 1226
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Comercios – Jaime Reyes – 928
• Pilsen Project – Environment – John T. Slania – 1082
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Historia – Octavio López – 845
• Pilsen Project
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Schools – Jeff Kelly Lowenstein – 1351
• FINAL – Pilsen Project – Planeando Pilsen – Leticia Espinosa – 890

“I am thankful for the opportunity to hear the stories of such a diverse group of women and I applaud Community Media Workshop for sponsoring the workshop.” – Veeta Nowell, Blogging Workshop Participant

Recently, Community Media Workshop partnered with the Global Press Institute to launch a Global Chicago Women Blogger initiative. The goal was to train women from ethnic communities and strengthen their blogging skills. Women from different ethnic backgrounds including Polish, Mexican, African-American and Arabic came together to participate in the all day blogging workshop.

Participants learned storytelling techniques to help them tell compelling stories about issues impacting their communities in Chicago. From this group of bloggers, 10 women were selected to be part of a local Global Chicago blogging initiative and will receive additional mentorship, training and a stipend to support their blogs..

Congratulations to the following bloggers:

Sabina Ahmed

Ivonne Canellada

Anam El-Jabali

Izabela Gluszak

Saffiya Shillo

Kataryzna Olcon

Lola Dada-Olley

Madhu Uppal

Joy Valdez

Tara Weinberg

You will be able to read their blog posts on this website in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Read more about the Global Press Institute…

Many of the folks working there are black or Latino or immigrants. Many more, that is, than you would generally find in a private business.

There’s a reason for this. In Chicago and around the country, public jobs have been a doorway largely without exclusions for immigrants and minorities. A doorway that has let far many more enter than you would generally find in private industry.

This matters greatly today as cities like Chicago and counties like Cook are shedding public jobs.

And many of those leaving the relative protection of a public job are minorities who first got their footing in the middle class with their current job, and who now will have to scrape by to hang onto what they had.

The New York Times recently carried a story talking about this. It followed a recent workshop that we held with the Grassroots Collaborative and this was one issue brought up by folks from some of the unions that represent city schools, city and county workers.

here’s the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/us/as-public-sector-sheds-jobs-black-americans-are-hit-hard.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=chicago%20and%20minority%20and%20layoffs&st=cse

Keeping your eye on this kind of news is importantn. It’s a way to explain the shifts taking place in the economy and nowadays especially the economy as seen through public employees’ eyes.

Until recently this issue about the loss of jobs for minority workers seemed to slip by most of the news media. And that’s why it’s vital for the ethnic news media to figure out what matters for the folks who depend on it.

That’s also why it makes good sense to pay attention the release this Friday (Dec.9) to the release of the latest report on poverty in Chicago and Illinois by the Social Impact Research Center for the Heartland Alliance. http://www.heartlandalliance.org/research/

When you are on their website, check out also their figures for the growth in poverty in Chicago’s black and Latino communities during the last decade.

And if you’ve done any reporting on juvenile delinquency, especially with an eye towards solution, consider applying for this award. It is due by the end of the year.

CallforEntries2011

If you win the award, do a great reporting job, or just want to talk about your work, let’s talk

Steve@chicagoistheworld.org