Thousands of Americans, including eight governors, have signed on to Food Independence Day, pledging to feature local, sustainable foods in their July 4th holiday meals.

The governor of Maine and his family will be eating lobster, potato salad, and blueberry pie, according to an AP story reposted at civileats.com.  In South Dakota the menu includes pheasant jerky; in Maryland, crab cakes.

Food Independence Day is the idea of Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International, a nonprofit that promotes food self-reliance through kitchen gardens and sustainable food systems.  Earlier this year Doiron initiated the successful campaign for a vegetable garden on the White House lawn.  

No one’s really explained what’s behind the sudden attack on CPS’s claims of progress by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, which is one of the major backers of Renaissance 2010.  (In fact the Commercial Club sponsors  the Renaissance Schools Fund, which funnels millions of private dollars into charter and contract schools.)

The Sun-Times does point out that the new report’s claims that charter schools outperform neighborhood schools are based on “flawed CPS research.”  Independent studies have found charter schools in fact perform no better.

What is clear is that the original argument on behalf of charters — that they would force all schools to improve by offering competition — is no longer operative.  (That rhetoric was rooted in the same gung-ho ideology that crashed with the financial system last fall.)

Now it’s all about “choice.”  The old warnings of privatization and a two-tier school system still pertain, however.

This week’s study comes on top of last week’s report on teacher turnover, which found that half of all teachers in high-poverty, predominantly black areas leave within three years. “I just see no way they can improve if they can’t maintain a stable work force,” the report’s author told the Sun Times.

No one’s explained what this might mean for “turnarounds,” the educational flavor-of-the-moment as dictated by Bill Gates.  How does it help to come in and fire the entire staff — and replace them with new teachers who are more likely to move on?

Opponents of a consent decree that would settle a lawsuit over the state’s failure to offer community services to people now in institutions “fear the proposed agreement would jeopardize the future of larger facilities,” the Tribune reports.

In fact “there’s huge pent-up demand” with “waiting lists everywhere,” said Tom Wilson of Access Living, one of the groups bringing the lawsuit, which charges the state’s failure to provide community-based options violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (see last month’s Newstip).  If 10 percent of an institution’s residents chose community placements, their places would be filled immediately, he said.

“If any institutions were to shut down, it would be the substandard ones, where people are dying, where everyone wants to get out,” he said.  And while opponents of the settlement cite the state’s “already inadequate budget,” proponents point out that community-based care is far less expensive than institutional treatment.

Today, Illinois ranks 51st out of U.S. states and the District of Columbia in serving people with developmental disabilities in small integrated settings, according to Equip for Equality. Most people with developmental disabilities seeking residential services are only offered placements in institutions — and disability rights advocates view that as a civil rights violation.  (So does the U.S. Supreme Court.)

An agreement between plaintiffs and the state was announced last November.  Two other lawsuits under the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision — covering the elderly and people with physicial disabilities in nursings homes — are pending.

While the City Council searches its soul, wondering whether it has the audacity to require an independent evaluation of Chicago 2016 Olympics budget claims, along comes this:  The two-block stretch of the downtown riverwalk just being completed seems to have ended up costing two times the original estimate, according to the Tribune.

CDOT points out that costs of fuel, steel, and construction went up.  Surprise!

On the bright side, it’s a lot better than Milennium Park, where costs more than tripled.  Maybe we’ll be lucky and the $1 billion Olympic Village will only end up costing $2 billion or so. 

Immigrant groups, human rights groups, community and religious groups will protest the military overthrow of the Honduran government today, July 1 at 5 p.m. at the Honduran consulate at 4439 W. Fullerton.

Calling the protest is La Voz de los de Abajo, an local organization of Hondurans and others which supports the campesino movement in Honduras. The country has the oldest campesino movement in Central America, dating to the early 1950s, said Victoria Cervantes of La Voz. 

The movement has supported land reform efforts by President Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested and sent into exile on Sunday. Cervantes said the coup reveals the “desperation” of Honduras’s right-wing landowners.

She welcomed the “strong position against the military overthrow of an elected government” taken by the United States, which contrasts historical support by the U.S. for military coups in the region.

In Honduras, mass protests against the coup have been attacked by the military, resulting in serious injuries [several deaths have been reported]. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, reporters have been detained, broadcasts have been blocked, and news outlets have been closed. 

One of La Voz’s ongoing projects is a community radio station operated by a campesino organization in La Paz, Honduras. For contact info see Newstips.  See NACLA for background.

Veteran organizer, rabble-rouser, and troublemaker Lew Kreinberg is back in town after an eight-year absence, and we ask him about lessons from the campaign to rein in proposals for a  Chicago World’s Fair 25 years ago — at Newstips.

Republic Windows workers and labor activists will protest Wells Fargo’s refusal to extend credit to a 60-year-old machine company in Moline (tomorrow, noon, at Wells Fargo Morgage, 511 W. North) — part of a national day of action by United Electrical Workers, with similar events in cities across the country. 

Last week a picket by Quad Cities Die and Casting workers in Chicago was joined by community groups denouncing the banks refusal to slow the pace of mortgage foreclosures.

UE is calling on Congress to investigate how Wells Fargo has used $25 billion in bailout funds.

Amid its recurring budget crisis, the State of Illinois has yet to comply with a ten-year-old Supreme Court ruling that would save money by giving nursing home residents the choice of moving out and obtaining less expensive community services.  And projected budget cuts could increase the cost of noncompliance.

Disability rights advocates will gather Monday (June 22, 11:30 a.m., State of Illinois Buildling, 100 W. Randolph) to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which found that denying people with disabilities alternatives to institutional care violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Among the speakers will be Roonie Bradford, who got out of a nursing home last year thanks to Access Living’s deinstitutionalization program.  “It feels like I got out of jail,” he said.

More at Newstips.