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A full list of 2017 Proviso grads, PAGES 4-6
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Not buying it Bellwood, Broadview, Maywood and Melrose Park have all opted out of Cook County’s minimum wage ordinance By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
The villages of Bellwood, Broadview, Maywood and Melrose Park have all opted out of ordinances passed last October by the Cook County Board of Commissioners seeking to increase the minimum wage and establish earned sick leave for employees in the county. That means that private employers located in those villages will be exempt from the county’s ordinance, which starting July 1 will require businesses in Cook County to pay employees at least $10 an hour — a $1.75 increase above the current state minimum wage of $8.25 an hour. The county’s minimum wage would then increase by $1 each year through 2020. On July 1, 2021 and each July afterwards, the minimum wage will increase by the rate of inflation up to 2.5 percent. If unemployment is over 8.5 percent, however, there will be no increase. The ordinance does not apply to public employers like villages and school districts. According to a June 13 Chicago Sun-Times article by columnist Mark Brown, more than 50 of the 132 municipalities in Cook County have opted out of either, or both, of the county’s ordinances. Those municipalities include nearby villages like Forest Park, River Forest and Elmwood Park. Many officials in those villages argue that the local legislation creates an uneven playing field for businesses and workers within and outside of the county. “We’re all about the minimum wage, but we don’t want some of our businesses to be See MINIMUM WAGE on page 7
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Jesse Howard paints from his home studio in Maywood, but his mind often wanders to the West Side of Chicago, where he was born and raised.
A Maywood artist lights up the void Jesse Howard adds depth to what is often ignored or caricatured–the struggles of poor blacks By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Jesse Howard has a story to paint. “I grew up in Chicago on the West Side, on 16th Street in K Town, around Pulaski,” said the artist and Maywood resident during a 2015 interview with Village Free Press. After two years, he’s still painting the contours and crevices of life lived in
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struggle. His art is informed by pained memories. He was among the first group of blacks to attend Austin High School on Chicago’s West Side. He played on the school’s football team, which meant that he got chased and softly tormented by whites both late in the day (he had to walk home from practice), as well as in the mornings like his other black friends who walked to the school.
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“We’d all have to gather together on the corner,” he recalled. “They’d get us. We’d have to walk on Pine Avenue and Madison. White folk would get up on the roof and throw eggs at us.” The experience, though, made him who he is today, he said. It breathes on the canvasses that hold his work — much of it comprising the grotesque faces and forms See JESSE HOWARD on page 7 Managed by
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