From: ww%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (Workers World Service)
Subject: Campaign to Save Chicago's Homeless
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 08:21:11 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


Chicago Activists Call for Winter Emergency Plan

Special to Workers World

Chicago faces a double disaster, according to a statement
endorsed by a growing list of community organizations. In
addition to a natural disaster--an unusually severe winter,
predicted well in advance by weather forecasters, and caused by
volcanic ash from an eruption in the Philippines--there is the
artificial disaster of unemployment, record homelessness,
evictions and massive welfare cutbacks.

"If nothing is done, people may die from exposure, from
cold-related illness, from fire and suffocation in record
numbers. Others may face inflated heating bills which they will
be unable to pay," according to the Movement for a People's
Assembly, which circulated the statement. It calls for community
representatives to meet and create their own winter emergency
plan, which government would then be pressured to adopt.

"This would include providing adequate housing for all from the
vacant space that is available, plus a moratorium on evictions
and unaffordable fuel bills," says MPA organizer Jill Hill. "We
will hold government absolutely responsible for any deaths, and
all the hardship that takes place because they have not acted to
protect people's lives and welfare."

Endorsers of the call for action include the Coalition for
Justice, the Eighth Day Center for Justice, Homeless on the Move
for Equality, the National Assembly of Religious Women, Staying
in Touch Inc., the Woodlawn Organization, and Westtown Concerned
Citizens.

"The winter we face is likely to inflict hardship on everyone but
the very rich," Hill explains. "The homeless face a
life-threatening situation right now. This particularly applies to
people with AIDS and other medical conditions, for whom the
existing shelters are particularly inadequate.

"But even those who have homes face outrageous gas and oil bills,
jacked-up rents and artificial shortages as the monopolies try to
milk this winter for every dollar they can get out of it. And of
course in these economic times anyone can be laid off any time and
face disaster. So this is a situation that should bring everybody
together.

"One thing the city could do right now is to reverse its policy
of closing down and demolishing public housing. Instead, these
units should be rehabilitated and opened up to the homeless. The
residents themselves should be hired at union wages to do the
necessary work.

"Right now, the city's plan is to evict people from public
housing and turn them into virtual prison camps. It is a very
racist policy that has nothing to do with real concern for the
residents."

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)


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