New Jersey 7

From Free Speech Radio News.

What happens when our country's preoccupations with race, gender, and sexuality combine in one legal case? This holiday, we bring you an in-depth look at the New Jersey Seven, a group of women who went out for a night on the town, and wound up spending months in jail.

On August 18, 2006, seven young, Black, queer women went to the Christopher Street pier, a place known for being queer-friendly. That may be why 20-year-old Patreese Johnson didn't blink when a male stranger asked her, "Can I get some of that?"

Patreese handed him her coffee cup. Then she realized he was pointing at her crotch.

The man, Dwayne Buckle, shouted homophobic remarks. He made violent threats. And then he followed the women as they walked away.

Then there was a scuffle.

The women say that Buckle punched three of them in the face, threw a lit cigarette, and yanked out one woman's hair extension. During the fray, Buckle also got stabbed.

Initially, Buckle claimed that he was stabbed by two men – onlookers who got involved in the fight. But Patreece Johnson had a small steak knife on her, and police didn't investigate Buckle's claim.

The media reports that followed said "savage lesbian gangs" were "attacking men" on the street. Buckle himself was never charged with any crime, but Patreece Johnson is serving an 8-year prison sentence, and her companions have all spent at least six months in jail. Today, Puck Lo brings us the story of the New Jersey 7.

Listen to the audio by clicking this link.

Lesbian's brutal gang rape investigated in Calif.

From Yahoo News.

SAN FRANCISCO – A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.

Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.

"It just pushes it beyond fathomable," he said. "The level of trauma — physical and emotional — this victim has suffered is extreme."

Authorities are characterizing the attack as a hate crime but declined to reveal why they think the woman was singled out because of her sexual orientation. Gagan would say only that the victim lived openly with a female partner and had a rainbow flag sticker on her car.

The 45-minute attack began when one of the men approached the woman as she crossed the street, struck her with a blunt object, ordered her to disrobe and sexually assaulted her with the help of the other men.

When the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building, where she was raped again inside and outside the vehicle. The assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car. Officers found the car abandoned two days later.

The woman sought help from a nearby resident, and she was examined at a hospital. Although the victim said she did not know her attackers, detectives hope someone in the community knows them. One of the men went by the nickname "Blue" and another was called "Pato," according to authorities.

Richmond police are offering a $10,000 award for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.

Gay rights advocates note that hate crimes based on sexual orientation have increased nationwide as of late. There were 1,415 such crimes in 2006 and 1,460 in 2007, both times making up about 16 percent of the total, according to the FBI.

Avy Skolnik, a coordinator with the New York-based National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, noted that gay, lesbian and transgender crime victims may be more reluctant than heterosexual victims to contact police.

"Assailants target LGBT people of all gender identities with sexual assault," he said. "Such targeting is one of the most cruel, dehumanizing and violent forms of hate violence that our communities experience."

Skolnik said the group plans to analyze hate crime data to see whether fluctuations may be related to the gay marriage bans that appeared on ballots this year in California, Arizona and Florida.

"Anytime there is an anti-LGBT initiative, we tend to see spikes both in the numbers and the severity of attacks," he said. "People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice."

Take Back The Land!

Democracy Now! interviewing Max Rameau, author of the book, Take Back The Land, and organizer of the group by the same name, which rehouses homeless people in foreclosed houses.



TBtL's website.

Happy Solstice!

Katrina's Hidden Race War, part 2

Katrina's Hidden Race War, part 1

F/U about Republic Windows

A friend sent this out on a mailing list, noting:

This adds another layer to the Republic story that supporters of the strike would be wise to consider. It fleshes out a broader local power structure that needs to be understood.

From the Reader

Out the Window
Republic Windows & Doors will make good on what it owes workers. Now what about our $10 million?

By Ben Joravsky

December 18, 2008

When their six-day sit-in at Republic Windows & Doors ended last week, a crowd of jubilant workers and union activists cheered in triumph.

Yes, they had lost their jobs when Republic closed its north-side factory on December 5, but at least they had forced Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase to lend the company $1.75 million so it could make good on its obligation to cover their vacation and severance pay.

But there was some unfinished business lost in the workers' celebration—the little matter of nearly $10 million in public money Republic received from the city in 1996 and 2000 in exchange for promising to keep 610 workers on the payroll through 2019.

In recent years it's become commonplace for cities across the country to offer tax breaks or subsidies to private, for-profit businesses that agree to set up shop in town. But it's not always apparent whether they get a return on their investment—or even whether they try to hold these firms to their end of the bargain. As the nation prepares to shell out hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts, it might be a good idea to make sure that someone—anyone—is checking the fine print.

Based on what city officials tell me, it's very unlikely the city of Chicago will ever recoup any of its money from Republic because under its contract the company has been exempt from potential penalties since June 2006. "I'm not sure there's much that we can do," says Pete Scales, spokesman for the city's Department of Planning.

But alderman Manny Flores, whose First Ward borders Goose Island, told me at press time Tuesday that he was planning to introduce an order to the City Council on Wednesday that would require the city to look into whether it can recover any of the money given to Republic. (See our blog Clout City for an update after the meeting.) "I'm not necessarily convinced we can't go after some of that money," Flores says. "I also believe that this may result in further analysis and review of how we undertake to use TIF money as incentives, and making sure we have mechanisms in place to see that it's used appropriately. These subsidies are not meant to be freebies—they're meant to keep jobs in the city of Chicago."

Yes, the Republic subsidy, like most such handouts in Chicago, came out of a tax increment financing account. As you may already know, TIF districts take property tax dollars that would have gone to the schools, parks, county, and other taxing bodies and set them aside, theoretically to fund development in communities too blighted to attract it on their own.

Goose Island, where Republic was located, actually fits this profile—unlike many areas that are part of TIF districts in the Loop or on the near south and west sides. For years the island, in the Chicago River from about Chicago to North avenues, was dominated by heavy industry, but by the late 1980s it was largely a wasteland drawing almost no interest from manufacturers, who were moving to the suburbs, the south, or overseas when they weren't closing shop. The future of the island became a subject of intense debate. Some developers argued that the city should try to extend River North and Lincoln Park and turn the island into a residential area. There was even talk of a casino.

None of that came to pass, partly due to the efforts of the Local Economic and Employment Development Council, a Chicago nonprofit whose mission is to create and preserve industrial development. Working with the city—even while acting as something of a watchdog over it—LEED helped bring in an impressive infusion of state, local, and federal monies to tear down a stretch of Ogden Avenue, rebuild the Division Street Bridge, and fortify the Chicago River seawall, among other projects. And that all took place even before TIF money really started flowing anywhere in the mid 1990s.

"There is a lot of capital investment that needs to happen," says Mike Holzer, director of economic development for the LEED Council. "I'm totally with you on the abuse of TIFs. But I think in industrial areas, where you're dealing with complicated sites, dealing with old bridges, crappy streets, viaducts that are so low they prevent trucks from going under them, TIF is an important tool."

The Goose Island TIF was created in 1996, and since then funding from it has been used to help develop facilities for about a dozen different industrial operations on Goose Island—including Republic. In 1996 the City Council, at Mayor Daley's urging, approved $6,525,000 in TIF money to help Republic build a $20 million factory on the island. Four years later Republic returned to the council asking it to increase the subsidy by more than $3 million.

"Among other things, the developer [Republic] constructed a larger manufacturing facility than originally planned," according to the TIF agreement approved by the council in 2000. Also, the actual cost of public infrastructure rose from $1.5 million to $3.070 million. In other words—big surprise—there were cost overruns on the project, which eventually totaled about $39 million, nearly double the initial estimate.

Republic got the extra public money it asked for. As it does with most TIF-funded deals, the city paid for the subsidy to Republic by borrowing the money, then repaying the loan with the property taxes collected in the TIF account. The city is still making payments on the Republic loan today. Including interest, the city has spent $10.4 million on the deal to date, according to Scales.

Has it been worth the money? Absolutely, says LEED's Mike Holzer. "I want to hammer this point. To develop a groundswell of change in this area, you have to take extraordinary steps. People say industrial will never come back—industrial is dead. People said Goose Island will be the next River North—put a casino there. Instead it has become a valuable industrial site. Republic was an important part of that. It's an example of what TIFs can be doing. It's not a misuse."

But it didn't work exactly the way it was supposed to, either. The city handed over the TIF money so Republic could build a factory that would actually employ somebody. In fact, the TIF deal between the city and Republic is quite specific on this point: "The developer [Republic] shall use commercially reasonable best efforts to insure that not less than . . . a total of 610 full-time equivalent, permanent jobs to be retained by the developer [Republic] at the Facility through the Term of the Agreement." And that term, documents show, ends July 10, 2019.

Ah, but what a TIF deal gives in one paragraph it can take away in another. In this case, the contract goes on to specify that Republic will have to pay a penalty only if it falls below its job commitment before or on June 5, 2006. In other words, the clause that protects Republic's interests takes precedence over the clause intended to protect the workers and the taxpayers.

According to Leah Fried of the United Electrical Workers Local 1100, which organized the sit-in, Republic employed 500 people when the union first started organizing there in 2004. When the plant closed earlier this month, it employed fewer than 300. So clearly no one at the city was holding Republic accountable for meeting its job obligations, even though the agreement guarantees that "the number of jobs at the facility will be certified to the city on an annual basis."

But it's all moot anyway, according to the city. The company president at the time of the agreement left Republic in 2006. The company doesn't even own the factory building anymore—also in 2006, it was sold for $31 million to the William Wrigley Jr. Company, which also owns another large factory on Goose Island. Meanwhile Republic's owners have purchased a window and door factory in Red Oak, Iowa, which, according to a recent article in the New York Times, employed 102 nonunionized workers.

Well, at least the factory was built, Holzer says, even if it doesn't employ anyone at the moment. He figures it eventually will again. "It's a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility," he says. "I think it has reuse potential. Whether it will be expanded for Wrigley or a new company, I don't know. But I don't think it will sit vacant."

Whoever moves there, you can bet they'll leverage some more TIF money out of the deal.