Students Rally on Day of the Dead

by Paul Kim, First Year, Student for a Just and Stable Future

On Monday, November 1st the Day of the Dead, a group of about 75 individuals, marched from the UIC quad to Alivio Medical Center in Pilsen in support of the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance. Among the activists were students from UChicago, Loyola, and UIC. The ordinance, which has the support of 17 out of 50 aldermen as of November 5th, would ‘clean up’ or shut down the Fisk and Crawford Coal Plants in Chicago. The plants cause 66 premature deaths, 104 heart attacks, and thousands of asthma attacks per year, all while making a very small monetary profit.

The rally began at 4:30 at UIC with speeches from a number of organizations including Greenpeace, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), and Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (PERRO), which emphasized the threats that the coal plants pose both to the health of the neighborhood and the climate stability of the world. From there, demonstrators in skeleton-masks and holding signs marched through the chilly evening, chanting and distributing fliers, past the still-smoking coal plant to the Alivio Medical Center. The medical center had been the site of a previous rally against the coal plants on the Global Day of Climate Action 10/10/10. Here, members of various groups represented at the march took the time to get to know each other to strengthen the inter-organizational network throughout Chicago. At 8:00, “Mountain Top Removal” was screened at the Decima Musa theater, sponsored by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, or LVEJO.