Citizen Week of April 18, 2018
| Vol. 1 | No. 36 | www.thechicagocitizen.com
UPCOMING FUNDRAISER FOR HOMELESS IN SOUTH SUBURBS
South Suburban PADS is organizing throughout the South Suburbs for their annual spring fundraising initiative, TAG Days. TAG Days are used to raise money to support the organizations programs that work to prevent homelessness in the area. The next TAG Day will be held on April 20 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Walt’s Food Center in Homewood. See more on Page 3
Politiscope: Trump National Security Staff Merry-Go-Round - Page 3 Food: Party-Planning Tips - Page 4 |
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Photo: South Suburban PADS
SUBURBAN TIMES WEEKLY
2 | CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
ART SCENE
Artists With Developmental Disabilities Leave Lasting Imprint Through Art on Display at Annual SAIC ARTBASH
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he West Town-based nonprofit Esperanza Community Services serves people with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities. For the artists that Esperanza serves, opportunities to paint, sketch and sculpt provide social interaction and self-expression. “Many artists we serve are limited in their ability to communicate verbally,” Executive Director Joy Decker said. “Picking up a paint brush and putting an image on a canvas is a way for them to say, ‘This is who I am.’” Esperanza’s recent initiative Dynamic Duos pairs Esperanza artists with local volunteers to collaborate on art. Jim Elniski, faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and former Esperanza board member, thought Dynamic Duos would be a unique opportunity for SAIC students to collaborate with Esperanza artists. “Collaborating is a way for two artists to find common ground,” Elniski said. “The creative process provides equal footing for people to learn from one another and to push
one another.” During Dynamic Duo sessions, SAIC students from Elniski’s Contemporary Practices class paired up with Esperanza artists to create art. Five Dynamic Duo works have been selected to appear in ARTBASH, an annual student-produced event that highlights the SAIC Contemporary Practices program. Selected Esperanza/SAIC duos include: Clarence Simmons and Zoe Strand; Anthony Grant and Line Kuzniar; Joseph Cobb and Mayra Vences-Maldonado; Edwin Mendez and Mayra Sanchez; and Jaime Ortega and Clara Fischer. ARTBASH opened on April 6th, and runs through April 20th at SAIC LeRoy Neiman Center and Student Union Galleries, 37 S. Wabash. More information is at Esperanza Community Services and SAIC. ABOUT ESPERANZA COMMUNITY SERVICES: Esperanza Community Services is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization providing
Joy Decker (pictured) has been committed to serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to help improve their quality of life for over 24 years. Now Executive Director of Esperanza Community Services, Joy joined the non-profit in 2014 from Orchard Village, where she had held roles such as case manager, residential director, Senior Director of Programs, President and CEO. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Drake University and a M.A. in Nonprofit Administration with distinction from North Park University.
educational, residential, and in-home care programs. Esperanza makes a daily impact with their robust arts program encourages students to express themselves through painting, drawing, printmaking and other visual media. About 100 students attend
Esperanza’s main campus in West Town for therapeutic daytime school that aims to increase students’ life skills, independence and happiness. The state-funded school provides programs for over 50 Chicago Public School (CPS) students and over 50 adults to hone daily living and community integration skills, an arts studio, supported housing and more.
TRAVEL
Club 1 Hotels Launches Worldwide Private Membership Club CHICAGO – “Club 1 Hotels is set to
take the travel space by storm, in an extraordinary way for every travel consumer,” announced spokeswoman Jill Morgenthaler. “After a year of building, testing, refining, and with already over 40 thousand members, Club 1 Hotels is ready to launch to the world.” This new level of private travel club offers members over 870,000 hotels (not hotel rooms) in 203 countries in 15,000 destinations in addition to discounted rates on major airlines, car rentals, golf courses, 1100 airport clubs and, with Priority Pass, VIP lounges. Much like other membership clubs, but unique in the depth and breadth of offerings as well as their best rate guarantee, Club 1 Hotels is able to secure members access to some of the world’s finest hotels and airlines and other travel opportunities at significant savings, according to a press release. A few of the hotel brands include the Ritz-Carlton, Hilton, Hyatt,
Park Hyatt, The Venetian, W Hotels, Mandarin Oriental, Fairmont, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Conrad, Kimpton among others. Airline partners include Alaska Airlines, Royal Brunei, Air Arabia, United Airlines, Etihad Guest, Jet Privilege, Philippine Airlines and more. Car rental partners include all of the major ones including Hertz, Avis, Dollar and others. There is an offering with luxury limousine company Carey Limousines. The company plans to announce partnerships with major luxury cruise lines next month, offering again best rate guarantees in this growing and popular travel field. Club 1 Hotels is “poised to become #1 in the traveling public’s mind whether for business or leisure travel,” according to Morgenthaler. “It simply makes sense; everyone wants and needs to save on travel expenditures whether it’s for family, solo or corporate travel.” For more information, visit www. Club1Hotels.com.
Booking.com Reaches Milestone of 5 Million Reported Listings
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ooking.com recently announced it has reached a milestone of five million reported listings in homes, apartments and other unique places to stay. With more than five million reported listings in this category, Booking.com remains the global leader in providing consumers access to more accommodations - from traditional hotels to homes, villas, apartments and ryokans - than any other digital travel platform. In fact, the number of reported listings within this category on Booking.com has grown 27% compared to the previous year, growing faster than traditional options, such as hotels, motels and resorts. According to recent research that Booking. com conducted in 2017 with more than 57,000 travelers across 30 markets, 30% said they want to stay in an apartment, aparthotel or condo in 2018, further evidence that consumer demand for accommodation beyond the hotel remains strong. In fact, in other research conducted by Booking.com in 2017 with 19,000 travelers in 26 countries, one in five (21%) said that they would
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consider listing their own home on a travel accommodation site over the coming year. “We know that travelers are passionate about exploring a huge variety of different stay experiences, including everything from apartments to houseboats,” said Olivier Grémillon, Vice President at Booking.com, leading the business’ strategy in homes and apartments. “We’ve been pushing hard to add as many amazing homes and apartments to our platform as possible in order to guarantee that we’re providing the choice and diversity our customers crave. We’re definitely proud of this milestone and will continue to strengthen our leadership position in this space. No matter what type of experience our customers want, we aim to connect them with the unique stay that’s just right for them.” All of the more than five million reported listings in homes, apartments and other unique places to stay on Booking.com, whether it’s an apartment in Chicago, a B&B in Tuscany or a villa in Bali, are instantly bookable, with no booking fees for customers.
CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
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COMMUNITY
Upcoming Fundraiser for Homeless in South Suburbs Continued from page 1 BY KATHERINE NEWMAN
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outh Suburban PADS is organizing throughout the South Suburbs for their annual spring fundraising initiative, TAG Days. TAG Days are used to raise money to support the organization’s programs that work to prevent homelessness in the area. The next TAG Day will be held on April 20 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Walt’s Food Center in Homewood. South Suburban PADS is an interfaith movement that has been operating for 27 years to prevent and end homelessness in the South Suburbs. So far, the organization has provided shelter and meals to enable over 17,000 people to survive homelessness.
South Suburban PADS currently helps over 500 people to preserve or access affordable rental homes every year, according to a press release from South Suburban PADS. “We do everything from outreach, all the way through finding housing for our clients. We do out outreach in libraries, under bridges, and in train stations. We really go anywhere that homeless individuals are identified and known to congregate,” said Rohit D’Souza, philanthropy manager for South Suburban PADS. Former South Suburban PADS board member, Lucy Kokal, is still an active volunteer and has been instrumental in organizing the TAG Days. “Lucy is very involved with PADS and what she does is call on a number of these places to see if we can collect funds there. If they allow
us to do so, we line up volunteers for two hour periods of time where they stand and collect funds,” said D’Souza. Volunteers are normally placed in front of grocery stores and along with accepting donations, they are also equipped with information about the organization. “They hand out TAGS which are essentially little flyers about opportunities for volunteering, the services that we offer, and a brief history about what PADS is and what we’ve been doing for the past year,” said D’Souza. While doing thesis public fundraising events, D’Souza said they often encounter previous clients and community members who already know and appreciate the work of South Suburban PADS. “We have gotten a very positive response to
the work that we are doing, it’s clearly needed in this area. There are many people in the area who definitely support us and when we go out to these locations and collect there because of the longevity and the work that PADS has been doing in such volume, many people know about us or have heard of us somehow, so we are received very well,” said D’Souza. South Suburban PADS is still accepting volunteers for the several upcoming TAG Days along with providing other volunteer opportunities. “We do TAG Days twice a year, we do a number of days in the spring and we do it again in the fall. We also have other opportunities to volunteer throughout the year at our shelters where people can volunteer with groups,” said D’Souza. For more information visit www.sspads.org.
POLITISCOPE
Trump National Security Staff Merry-Go-Round Reflects Decades of Policy Competition and Conflict for now, that could change, as it has many times since the middle of the last century. In fact, ever since the National Security Council and Department of Defense were created in 1947, the question of who runs U.S. national security policy has been contested and marked by conflict. BY GORDON ADAMS
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ho is in charge of the national security policy of the United States? That question is reasonable, given the turmoil in the Trump administration’s national security team. That core team is made up of the national security adviser, the National Security Council and the secretaries of Defense and State – and many of those team members have been ousted and replaced over the last year. I am a scholar who has both worked in and studied U.S. national security. And while the Department of Defense is largely in charge of the country’s national security policy
SIMPLER TIMES The current – and fluid – structure of the president’s national security team has its roots in challenges that emerged during and after World War II. Prior to the war, the secretary of state was clearly in charge of U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. had two military departments – War (Army) and Navy (including the Marines). The overseas presence of the U.S. military was minimal. The White House was only intermittently engaged in foreign policy and had little capacity to plan or coordinate these departments. The war had revealed flaws in military coordination and civilian control. And after the war, new
global U.S. responsibilities for recovery and security, particularly the Cold War with the Soviet Union, required continuous presidential and White House engagement and interagency coordination. The National Security Act of 1947 changed everything. It created the National Security Council, or NSC, which was formed to answer the one problem of White House coordination. The membership of the NSC was intentionally kept small. Its members were the president, vice president and the secretaries of State and Defense, assisted by a presidential special assistant and a small staff. To avoid interagency conflict and to keep the NSC flexible, its structure and responsibilities were left up to the president. PRESIDENT TAKES CHARGE Along with the establishment of the NSC as a central player in foreign policy, the post-war period saw the emergence of the president as a world leader and spokesperson, www.thechicagocitizen.com
the principal foreign policy decider in virtually all administrations. Some presidents entered office with significant foreign policy and national security experience - Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon and and George H. W. Bush. But a surprisingly large number have had to learn on the job, including the first Cold War president, Harry Truman, who never graduated from college. Each president, in his unique way, has relied on White House staff and the departments for information, policy views, deliberations and advice. Each president also had a unique view of what he wanted in terms of the NSC’s structure and role. This unpredictability has allowed the NSC and particularly its staff to adapt to changing administrations and priorities. But it also opened the door to uncertainty about its relationship with the departments of Defense and State. Some presidents wanted organized, systematic NSC planning and coordination. Eisenhower created a formal planning board
and an operations coordinating board to develop policy options and oversee policy implementation. Other presidents have preferred to use an informal and changing group of advisers with very little staff structure. Some have had national security advisers that were close partners, while others have been less intimately connected. The personality of the national security adviser has also mattered greatly. Some have subordinated themselves and their view and interpreted their job as being an honest broker between the departments and the president, gathering views and neutrally setting out options for the president. The most classic example of that approach is Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for George Bush, who saw his job as clarifying agency options, but studiously avoided intruding with his own views. Some saw Scowcroft as the exemplary adviser: “Brent’s concept of the national security advisor… Continued on page 4
4 | CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
FOOD
Party-Planning Tips Y
(StatePoint) Nothing beats barbecues, block parties and al fresco dining. For your family’s safety and for the sake of your grill, here are some pointers on keeping that grill well-maintained all season.
ou and your guests can create some great treats when you set up a make-your-own drinks, dessert or dinner bar.
VISUAL CHECK
DO-IT-YOURSELF DELIGHTS
Ensure your grill is still in good working order after the off-season by giving it a onceover. Remember to turn off the gas and tank valves before getting started. Check whether all of its components are intact, including gas hoses. Also, determine whether the tank is full. Keep in mind that many grills come with a warranty, and you may be able to replace worn out parts without needing to buy a brand-new grill entirely.
(NAPSI)—Often, a casual laid-back gathering is way more fun than a formal one. So ask your guests to roll up their sleeves and put them to work with a create-your-own bar. Whether it’s pizza, tacos or ice cream sundaes, you simply set up a bunch of delicious ingredients and invite guests to develop their own creations. Bloody (and Virgin) Marys are all the craze these days. They’ve become much more than a drink, and if you do it right, they wind up being a meal. Here are a few fun ideas to get your Bloody Mary bar on: • Start with the base—pitchers of SuckerPunch Gourmet Bloody Mary Mix and a bottle of good vodka. Let your guests mix the two as some folks may want to skip the alcohol but they certainly won’t want to skip on the fun. • Tall glasses and plenty of ice are a must. • A salted rim is almost mandatory on each and every glass. A selection of different flavored salts—garlic, onion, paprika, chili—and some lime wedges are all it takes. Simply moisten the glass by running the lime around the rim, then dip it in the flavored salt. • The real fun begins with the garnishes. Just about anything savory goes with a Bloody or Virgin Mary. Stalks of celery (of course), chilled
SMART TIPS TO KEEP YOUR GRILL CLEAN AND SAFE
QUICK CLEAN-UP
shrimp, bacon, mini meatballs, SuckerPunch Gourmet pickles, olives, pickled peppers, mini hot dogs, baby sliders, cherry tomatoes, bocconcini, sardines, smoked oysters, smoked salmon, mini sushi, mini dim sum, buffalo wings, hard-cooked eggs, the list goes on. • Forget about small toothpicks and go for long skewers so guests can load up on the garnishes. Tip: Use two skewers side by side to ensure the goodies don’t fall off.
When it comes to the grates, experts recommend using tools that allow you to skip the brush and the elbow grease to save some time and energy. “Spray a concentrated multipurpose cleanser over your grill’s grates evenly, wait a few seconds to give the grease time to break down, then gently wipe the area down with a sponge,” says TV contractor, Jeff Devlin, who uses Mean Green on his grill. The spray, which was recently named by Real Simple Magazine as the Best Multipurpose Spray, is available at Walmart and other retailers. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
A deep clean is important once or twice a season. However, after each use, you can keep debris and build-up from becoming a bigger problem with a quick spot clean. One important area you don’t want to neglect is the bottom of the grill, where ash and grease build-up is likely to occur. Scrape out this section regularly.
POLITISCOPE Continued from page 3 was to never let us forget that the last name of the NSC is ‘staff,’” as one senior Bush official put it. Others, such as Henry Kissinger, who was Nixon’s national security adviser, have had dominant personalities and clear policy views, which they discussed directly with the president. IMBALANCE IN INFLUENCE The other principal players in the foreign policy arena are the departments of Defense and State. As I have documented, the influence of Defense has grown and it has taken on greater and broader responsibility for U.S. global engagement. The agency has the discipline and resources to do continuous contingency planning and policy analysis, which are essential tools for conducting foreign policy. With its $700 billion annual budget, Defense employs 1.4 million in uniform and nearly 700,000 civil servants. There is a military command for every
major geographic region in the world. More than 200,000 military personnel are deployed to more than 700 overseas installations. By contrast, State’s budget is roughly $50 billion. Around 70,000 people work for the State Department, including a mere 13,000 foreign service officers and 11,000 civil servants. Most of this staff works in 250 embassies and consulates overseas, and roughly 65 percent are nonAmericans in embassy support positions. There are no diplomatic regional commands and the State Department has few resources for, or tradition of, doing contingency planning or policy analysis. This “imbalance” in the toolkit of American statecraft may have been inevitable, given the military focus of the Cold War confrontation, Defense’s large global presence and regional commanders and the sustained systematic interaction between the U.S. military and the armed forces of other countries. TRADITION OF TENSION Since the 1947 Act, the State
and Defense departments have had uneasy relationships with the national security adviser and the NSC staff. Kissinger, for example, generally ignored Secretary of State William Rogers, keeping him in the dark about major policies such as the opening to China. Cyrus Vance resigned as secretary of state to Jimmy Carter in large part because the national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, shut him out of major decisions. Clinton’s National Security Adviser Sandy Berger sought to ease this tension by holding a weekly luncheon with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Secretary of Defense William Cohen. From my perch at the time as the national security budget official at the Office of Management and Budget, these “ABC” lunches appeared to “pre-cook” NSC decisions ahead of larger, formal meetings, which seemed pro forma, occasionally frustrating other participants in the process. Under President Obama, the Department of Defense frequently complained www.thechicagocitizen.com
that the National Security Council micromanaged Pentagon decisions. PAST IS PROLOGUE The relationship between these two departments, Defense and State, also has a complex history. 1947 saw the creation of the new NSC, with an adviser and staff, and a unified Pentagon, both of which diminished the policy supremacy of the secretary of state. The imbalance was noticeable in the George W. Bush administration, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld systematically sidelined Secretary of State Colin Powell. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to insiders, was so determined to avoid such tensions that she was willing to share State Department authority over State Department programs that foster cooperation with the security forces of other countries (“security assistance and cooperation”). State’s weaknesses were a source of concern to then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (Bush 43 and Obama), who voiced his worries publicly. The imbalance has grown
in the past year, due in part to decisions made by Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. Tillerson sought to cut State’s budget by 30 percent, shrink the Foreign Service by one-third, and delay the appointment of senior policy officials (many of the senior positions remain without appointees well into 2018). While Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has urged support for State, Defense is clearly the more influential department in setting and implementing national security policy priorities in the Trump administration. As the State Department loses financial and personnel resources, this imbalance is likely to grow. The interactions among the major national security agencies may now be more explosive and chaotic than in the past, but they mirror trends already underway for some decades in the management of U.S. national security policy. Gordon Adams is a Professor Emeritus, at American University School of International Service.
CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
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6 | CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
NEWS
Emotional Wellness Workshops Held in South Suburbs BY: KATHERINE NEWMAN
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he Blue Island/Robbins Neighborhood Network has been holding emotional wellness workshops on Tuesday nights throughout the month of April. The final workshop of this series will provide information on understanding alcohol and substance use and abuse. It will begin at 5:30 p.m. on April 24th at the Hudson Academy Foundation in Robbins. The Blue Island/Robbins Neighborhood Network is part of the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago and brings together community members and stakeholders, like schools, businesses, churches, and hospitals, to develop a strategic plan that addresses community issues and how to solve them.
“What we wanted to do was create this series of workshops to deal with emotional wellness. We created them to focus on some of the obstacles that our residents see at home, at school, and in the community and it’s focused on things that can help the family,” said Kentrick Benson, Blue Island/Robbins Neighborhood Network Project Coordinator for Metropolitan Family Service. The workshops are being led by various health service providers who make up the healthy lifestyle committee for the Blue Island/ Robbins Neighborhood Network. The workshops help to connect residents of Robbins and Blue Island with the health care resources that are available to them. “One thing that we found as we began to create the network was that there are lots of resources in
Photo: Blue Island/Robbins Neighborhood Network
our community but not many of the residents know how to access them. Quite frankly, not a lot of them know that these resources exist especially when it comes to mental health. People knew about the hospitals, but in our communities, with health care being the way that it is, lots of times they only go to the hospital in the case of an emergency,” said Benson. The Blue Island/Robbins Neighborhood Network used their community cafe’s and other opportunities of engagement to find out what residents are struggling www.thechicagocitizen.com
with at home and what some of their concerns and issues are within the community. Based on this feedback the broad theme of emotion wellness was chosen along with the detailed topics for each of the four workshops. “We wanted to put some resources out there for our community to access. We’re not really focusing on these as mental health workshops but mores as workshops that deal with emotional issues. We wanted to make sure they were inviting and open to the community so people would want to take advantage of it,”
The Blue Island/ Robbins Neighborhood Network has been holding emotional wellness workshops on Tuesday nights throughout the month of April. The final workshop of this series will provide information on understanding alcohol and substance use and abuse. It will begin at 5:30 p.m. on April 24th at the Hudson Academy Foundation in Robbins.
said Benson. The final workshop focuses on drug and alcohol abuse which Benson said is something that has become more prevalent in the community. It became important to address when Benson realized that there are a good amount of people in the community who can’t pass a drug test which limits their employment opportunities. To learn more about the blue Island/Robbins Neighborhood Network and for more information on attending the final workshop visit www.servebir.org.
CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
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NEWS
Former Golden Apple winner to Lead Roosevelt Schools in Dolton A
former Golden Apple award winner will join the Dolton West School District 148 administrative team in the coming months. Dr. Kim Brasfield-Carpenter, also known as “Dr. BC,” has been chosen from a field of more than 30 applicants as the new principal of Roosevelt Elementary and Roosevelt Junior High Schools in Dolton, effective July 1, 2018. The District 148 School Board approved her hiring at its February 27, 2018 Board meeting. She will succeed departing Principal Steven J. Chambers IV. Chambers is stepping down after the 2017-2018 school year ends, nearly three years after being at the helm of the Roosevelt Schools. “Success for all stakeholders is important to me,” Dr. BrasfieldCarpenter said. “As the lead administrator (at Roosevelt) I will take responsibility for implementing and developing learning skills, values and attitudes necessary for academic, social and emotional growth. I will take responsibility for initiating changes to make this happen.” She received the prestigious Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2005 while serving as an educator at Carver Elementary School in Chicago.
“Dr. Brasfield-Carpenter’s extensive experience and her pursuit of educational excellence will greatly benefit students, staff and the entire Roosevelt Elementary and Junior High Schools community. Her accomplishments are impressive. Her energy and creativity are invigorating and her desire to help children is palpable. She is a perfect fit for District 148,” said District 148 Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kevin J. Nohelty. What is most important to Dr. Brasfield-Carpenter is creating learning environments that are engaging, inviting and enriching. “Nothing in my life is more rewarding than being an educational leader. It is my passion, I take educating children personally. Children are the most valuable assets in the world,” she said. For the past seven years, Dr. Brasfield-Carpenter served as principal of Beasley Academic Center in Chicago. Before that, she was an assistant principal for two years at Edgar Allan Poe Classical School in Chicago. Her previous job experience includes teaching sixth and eighth grade at Carver Elementary School from 2005 until 2009. She was a fourth, sixth, and seventh grade teacher at McCorkle
Dr. Kim Brasfield-Carpenter, also known as “Dr. BC,” has been chosen from a field of more than 30 applicants as the new principal of Roosevelt Elementary and Roosevelt Junior High Schools in Dolton, effective July 1, 2018.
Fine Arts Academy from 1997 until 2005. She also spent one year as a fifth through eighth grade math teacher at Bret Harte Elementary School. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Roosevelt University, a Master’s
degree in Elementary Education from Roosevelt University and a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Roosevelt University. She also has a Doctorate degree in School Leadership from Roosevelt University. Roosevelt Elementary and Junior
$100,500 Worth 0f Unclaimed Property Items Available at Upcoming Auction BY LISETTE GUSHINIERE
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hree Lee Godie drawings, a gold national Bicentennial medal and Columbian Half Dollars to commemorate the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 held in Chicago, are among the 921 unclaimed property items which will be auctioned off live at 10 a.m. on May 12 at the Chicago Plumbers Local 130 Union Hall in Chicago. In total, the unclaimed property items to be auctioned off are worth $100,500. An auction preview will be held on April 19 at the James R. Thompson Center from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. to allow the public to view items before the live auction.
Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs who’s hosting the auction preview said since taking office in 2015, his office has held seven unclaimed property auctions, adding auctions occur as necessary. He also revitalized the live unclaimed property auction at the Illinois State Fair in 2016, which had taken a ten-year hiatus. “The treasurer’s office is the custodian of more than $2 billion in unclaimed property,” said Frerichs, “including lost bank accounts, insurance policy proceeds and forgotten safe deposit boxes. Items are surrendered to the treasurer’s office after private entities have tried for at least three years to locate the owner,” he added. “The treasurer’s office works hard to return
Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs (pictured) will host an auction preview from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. on April 19 at the James R. Thompson Center. The preview will allow the public to view items before the live auction, which is scheduled for 10 a.m. on May 12 at the Chicago Plumbers Local 130 Union Hall in Chicago.
valuables to their rightful owners,” Frerichs said. “After ten years of private and public attempts to locate the owners of unclaimed
www.thechicagocitizen.com
High Schools are two of District 148’s 10 schools. The District has an early childhood center, six elementary schools, and three junior high schools serving approximately 2,140 students from the communities of Dolton, Riverdale, Harvey and South Holland.
property, the unclaimed items are put up for auction in order to make room for incoming unclaimed property. Just as these items do not belong to us, the auction proceeds for these items also do not belong to us. Should the rightful owners or heirs come forward to claim their property, they will receive the auction proceeds attributed to their property,” he explained. To check for unclaimed property, people can search the I-Cash database by visiting www.illinoistreasurer.gov/ICASH The treasurer’s office never charges money to reclaim cash or property. Moreover, unclaimed property can be owed to individuals, businesses, non-profits, and units of local government, but because thousands of items are surrendered each year, Frerichs said residents should check I-Cash every six months. The live auction will include 175 lots and auction items have been appraised by an outside vendor. Other items that will be available include five Bicentennial coin sets, a yellow gold Rolex and currency from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
8 | CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of April 18, 2018
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