Me and Some Guy Running Chi-town at the Time

GTOP (Going Thru Old Photos): Me and some guy running Chi-town at the time.

Mayor Daley Speaking at the UIC Forum

Mayor Daley speaking at UIC's Daley Urban Forum named after his father Richard J.

The Forum featured a number of Mayors from Arab countries. Many of them have troubles that are common to countries in the 3rd World (lack of funding, infrastructure, etc.)

Particularly moving however was the account by the Mayor of Mosul, Iraq.

He talked about the challenges the Municipal government faces there. These include setting up a "prostheses factory" to deal with all the people, including children, who've had limbs blown off due to bombs. The Mayor reported with pride that a number of Healthcare Centers had been set up despite the fact that many of Iraq's original medical workers had fled the country.

Even here, success was not complete however, since one or two of these Centers had subsequently been bombed.

Despite this hell, the Mayor was optimistic. He would have shown us pictures only they stopped him from bringing them at Baghdad Airport.

Mayor Daley at UIC

 

Chicago's Mayor Daley came to speak at UIC today. While some of his talk seemed to ramble on and was, to be honest, less than inspiring, it was clear that Education is a big deal for him. He literally said it came after God and Family.

A funny moment came (at least for me) when he was talking about how even prison inmates needed vocational training and then as an aside, said something along the lines of:

"The unions used to be against it [work done by inmates] but that's when we made everything here. Now you've got things made in China so why not in our jails?"

I'm sure the mayor wasn't advocating prison labor and maybe China wasn't the best example to pick for comparison but it sure had me tittering in the back row.