NAACP President and Staunch Conservative Norquist Promote Prison Reform(!)

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and fierce anti-tax and conservative advocate Grover Norquist have been doing a media tour recently to debate prison reform. The surprise? They’re on the same side of the debate. Jealous and Norquist, who leads the fiscally ultra-conservative group Americans for Tax...
April 15, 2011

What We Read, April 11-15, 2011

Each week, we round-up the links which were of interest to staff at Chicago Appleseed this week. Monica Youn’s (Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law)  testimony before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on “The Fair...
April 14, 2011

Payday Lenders Lose Initial Bid to Block Illinois Law

Payday Lenders won't submit to regulation without a fight. Last Friday, Payday Lender Illinois Lending Corp sued in Cook County Court for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Illinois’ new and modified payday loan laws, the Consumer Installment Loan Act and the Payday Loan Reform Act (CILA /...
March 24, 2011

An Introduction to Illinois Redistricting

The 2010 Census results are in, and the big news is that Illinois has grown a mere 3% in the last decade, while Chicago has shrunk by nearly 7%, or 200,000 people. The data indicates that black and Hispanic Chicagoans are migrating from the city to the suburbs, taking up residence in Chicago’s so-ca...
February 17, 2011