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Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
12:58pm
Mon Jun 18, 2012
1 comment

Mental Health Movement Protesters Use 'Necessity Defense' At Cook County Trial

Foes of Chicago closing six of its 12 mental health clinics in April will air their grievances today in a new venue – the Cook County Criminal Court.

Five protesters charged with trespassing at the since closed Woodlawn mental health clinic will use the “necessity defense” according to their attorney James Fennerty, who spoke at a press conference this morning outside the courthouse. Defendants invoke the necessity defense when they claim to have committed a crime so as to benefit the public good.

“These people don’t deny that they trespassed,” Fennerty said. “But they were doing it to prevent a greater evil — meaning the closing down of the clinics and people not getting their mental health care, and not getting their drugs or seeing their therapist.” Read more »

Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
7:07pm
Fri Jun 15, 2012
3 comments

State Budget Puts Children's Services In Limbo

The state budget passed by the Illinois General Assembly cuts many services for low-income children. For example, cuts in early childhood education could keep thousands of kids from getting a pre-kindergarten education.

Gov. Pat Quinn has yet to sign these cuts into law. The only budget legislation the governor has signed so far is a package of Medicaid bills that cuts the health care program and raises the cigarette tax. This gives social service providers hope that cuts will be averted, but also makes it confusing what money they will have to work with. Read more »

Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
5:16pm
Fri Jun 1, 2012
1 comment

State Budget Keeps Facilities Open

Amid the focus in Springfield yesterday on pensions, the General Assembly passed its entire budget for fiscal year 2013, which begins July 1. The package delivered an expected rebuke of Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close multiple state facilities.

The Tamms supermax prison, a women’s prison in Dwight, the mental health center in Tinley Park, and developmentally disabled centers in Jacksonville and Centralia all received funding to stay open, along with smaller state facilities Quinn wants closed.

However, the governor may opt to close the mental health and developmentally disabled centers, and Tamms will no longer be a supermax facility. Read more »

Quick Hit
by Steven Ross Johnson
4:27pm
Thu May 31, 2012

UIC Medical Center Workers Continue Striking For Fair Wages

Day two in a three-day strike being held by employees at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago continued Thursday as close to 200 demonstrators demanding a new contract held a rally outside the building where a meeting of the institution’s Board of Trustees was taking place.

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Quick Hit
by Matthew Blake
4:22pm
Wed May 30, 2012

Quinn's Proposed State Facility Closures In Jeopardy

A proposal by Gov. Pat Quinn to close multiple state facilities – including prisons and also centers for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled – could unravel.

“In Springfield, proposed facility closures are not infrequent, but enacting the closures are,” acknowledged John Maki, director of the John Howard Association, a prison reform group lobbying to close the supermax prison in Tamms, but lobbying to keep open the women’s prison in Dwight.

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