Words you will not hear uttered by any candidate for governor during the next seven months. Illinois Department of Corrections Director Kenneth McGinnis on the already grossly overcrowded state prisons (25,865 adults in space for 18,734 as of March 30, with a net increase of almost 100 a week): “Obviously, there are not enough construction dollars available to build our way out of the predicament . . . ”
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“As is obvious to anyone who looks below the surface, there is a direct correlation between the loss of industrial jobs in communities like South Chicago, Englewood, and Garfield Park and the growth of poverty,” writes Dan Swinney, executive director of the Midwest Center for Labor Research on West Diversey, in a recent fund-raising letter. “In those communities, there was a 35% to 50% loss of manufacturing jobs between 1979 and 1986 and a dramatic increase in applications for public aid.” MCLR has set up a for-profit subsidiary, Chicago Focus, to help keep firms in business here; it has a special commitment to working with employees and with women, African American, and Latino entrepreneurs.
U.S. representatives Charles Hayes and Cardiss Collins are the only Illinois representatives to cosponsor the Peace Tax Fund bill, which would allow taxpayers conscientiously opposed to war to direct the share of their tax dollars applied to current military expenditures (35.8 percent) to constructive uses.
Still more unaffirmative action. Women as a percentage of the total workforce: 47. Women as a percentage of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies’ board members: 6. Women as a percentage of S & P 500 companies’ executive officers: 3 (Investing for a Better World, February 15).
