The problem with the old-boy network is that they’re still boys. “Every really successful woman I know wants to become either an entrepreneur or a freelancer and go into business for herself,” says contributing editor Liz Mitchell in Today’s Chicago Woman (January 1990). “That’s because she doesn’t want to sit in the corporate lunchroom or executive dining room and talk about football pools. She wants to talk about important subjects.”
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“The vast majority of Guatemalans are living in the city in violation of U.S. immigration laws,” writes Lynda Gorov in the Chicago Reporter (January 1990). Perhaps 2,000 of the 35,000 to 80,000 Guatemalans now in Chicago were tortured by their own government, but now they are the victims of our government as well. “Since 1980, U.S. law has defined refugees as people with a ‘well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland.’ The burden of proof is on applicants, who must prove they have been persecuted because of their politics, race, religion, nationality or social group. To grant Guatemalans political asylum would be to concede that a government with ties to the United States persecutes its people….The approval rate for Guatemalans seeking political asylum is so low that some immigration specialists now counsel Guatemalans against even applying.”
The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, even when “they” are Illinois counties and not individuals. According to the Illinois Business Review (December 1989): The richest county in Illinois–Lake County–had a per capita income of $17,773 in 1984. That year the poorest Illinois county–Pope, in far southern Illinois–had $7,844. In 1987 Lake County was up to $21,432, while the poorest county–now Johnson–had risen only to $8,763. The gap between top and bottom had widened from $9,929 to $12,669. In fact, all ten of the poorest counties in the state were farther below Lake County than the single poorest one had been in 1984.
Things that, once upon a time, money could not buy: customized phone-answering-machine messages. “We think the days of home-made announcements are numbered,” says the owner of the Evanston-based Phone Tree Announcements. I mean, I called you up–what makes you think I want to listen to your voice?
