September Signals the end of Summer and start of fall Actions at NWSOFA
September is back to school and signals the end of summer. Vacations for the most part are over, football is back and the Cubbies are in the HUNT… At NWSOFA the best way to describe our NWSOFA Teams is Continuing ACTION, although a bit dialed back due to so many of our members becoming active in the political campaigns of their choice.
When you RSVP, you will receive an acknowledgement and location for the meeting upon our receiving your RSVP.
If you are interested in great coffee and lively conversation and want to learn how you can take action now – to honor all victims of gun violence and make our communities safer – then come to our monthly Gun Violence Prevention Planning Meeting. The GVP Issues Team has been working for over 3 years to keep conversation going about gun violence prevention and to take action to change our laws with the goal of creating safer communities for everyone in our state and our nation. SINCE SEATING IS LIMITED, REGISTRATION IN ADVANCE IN REQUESTED. Come and join us in building safe communities here in the northwest suburbs and all across America!.
It’s time to get involved .. as a nation we have been to silent .. for too long.
Join Us .. Learn what you can do.
Agenda:
Last Month’s Shooting of Duane Wade’s Cousin
Status of the IL Gun Dealer Licensing Bill
What’s In the Future for “Gun Violence Prevention”
Note: This is an invitation only event… You will need to have an RSVP Acknowledgment to enter.
We are back in Arlington Heights in September to discuss the Illinois and US economies and their respective fiscal situations.
Economic growth continues to be pretty good on the national level with 2.4 million jobs added in the last 12 months (through July). The fiscal situation is relatively stable with overall spending levels set through FY 2017. We will update job growth through August so we can discuss at the meeting.
On the other hand, Illinois is not doing as well. We operated without a budget in FY 2016 and have been operating with only a partial budget since the beginning of the fiscal year in July .
This situation does not look like it will be resolved soon. Please bring your ideas for how we can help move this impasse to resolution.
The good news is that Illinois’ economy appears to be growing again, with 51,400 jobs added in 2015 (vs. 88,000 in 2014). Illinois now has more jobs than before the Great Recession. However, the number of jobs added has slowed down in the last 12 months.
While we won’t be arguing for particular presidential candidates, we can discuss the potential fiscal and economic impact of their various policy proposals. I will be updating my links to articles and get them out to everyone before the meeting. I encourage others to bring articles reviewing the candidates policy positions to the meeting as well.
We have the library until about 9:30 pm. After the “official” meeting we will be heading over to Eddie’s on NW Highway to continue informal discussions. There the discussions can be more political re particular candidates. We encourage these political discussions outside of official OFA events.
Look forward to a good group and some interesting discussions .
For your planning purposes, our October meeting will be at the Schaumburg Library. Date TBD
We discussed issues in the news, glass ceiling elements and the biggest one yet shattered at the DNC Identified coalition partners that rate candidates and will check further with OFA regarding handling of this info in non-partison manner.
Worked on further planning for film presentation 8/13/16 including passing out flyers to post, getting volunteers to sign up for duties, defining mission for film , speaker/question answering by expert, food, and resource materials to provide day of. Kathy will tag documents for upload rather than paper over usage.
Renna Diamond Was introduced as the new co-lead and shared info on Title IX and relevance to film planned. We welcomed a new member Lynne Kelley.
NWSOFA Partnered with the Sierra Club
for a Downtown RALLY on Clean Energy
The Stand With Women group presented the CNN. award winning film “The Hunting Ground” , exposing the epidemic problem of sexual assaults on college campuses. The purpose of showing the film was to increase awareness of the problem, put the issue in everyday conversation, to ultimately find solutions and END SEXUAL ASSAULTS on campuses.
The brave women and men in the movie shared heart-breaking stories and refused to be silenced. Overtime they filed a Title IX gender discrimination action with the Dept of Education leading to universities, in order to receive Federal funding, will need to properly follow up with sexual assault cases as the violent crimes they are. NWCASA- the Northwest Center Against Sexual Assault volunteer- Stacy Ahlman joined us to share about their victim/survivor/th river services.
The group shared a word or two to add their voice to a Word Cloud created by Kathy Carter for upload to the SWW website. Pizza, brownies and cookies were enjoyed by all. We started and ended our event by inviting our new participants to join NWSOFA to help us find lasting solutions to the multiple problems our snowflake of teams is working on.
Click image above for Photos
NWSOFA’s Fiscal & Economic Issues Discussion Group
The NWSOFA Fiscal and Economic Issues Group had a good discussion on Tuesday including:
If you weren’t there you missed:
How is the Economy doing?
. upward pressures on cost and labor
. Hospital takeovers
. Work allowing folks to leave and not replacing (attrition)
. US economy is the best…In the World
. Lower paid jobs will disappear ” POTUS”
. Driver-less taxi’s, trucks, Rail is at capacity
Survey comparisons: Perception of the Economy.
Labor market Status:
Good jobs in Healthcare, engineering, computer sciences, or trades, electricians, Welders, .. But menial jobs will be replaced by robotics..
GDP… Same growth curve prior to 2008 as after 2010
Job Growth…
personal situation satisfaction survey:
National Debt / Yearly US Deficit ..
Corporate Welfare … Vs repatriation of income offshore , Exit Tax.. Transfer Pricing.US Corporation, Ireland man, subside ration in Brazil and channeled through Cayman Island..
Discussion on what the workforce of tomorrow will look like..
Gun Violence Prevention Monthly Meeting
Click on the Above Image for Additional Photos
Thursday, August 18th
6:30 pm – 8:30 PM
Lively discussions at the monthly planning meeting.
Topics covered:
Recent news related to gun violence prevention,
Legislative update,
Participation in a local community festival handing out GVP information,
Guns and child safety report, and
October screening of Under the Gun.
Annual NWSOFA Picnic
Click Here to view photos
Sunday,
August 21st
“Thanks to everyone who stopped by, enjoyed the wonderful day, had some of the great food that everyone brought. We hope you enjoyed our back yard setting and the lake, paddle-boating, kayaking, etc or just sitting by it having wonderful conversations.
About 85 folks (unofficial count) stopped by and stayed for a few hours or the whole day for the picnic BBQ and enjoyed the Presidents Birthday Cake and rendition of Happy Birthday Mr. President.
The youngest attendee was Bill’s grand daughter Charlie at 8 months old .. and the oldest was not me .. my one thought about the day .. Splendiferous.. what was yours?
Bill & Sara, NWSOFA Chapter Co-Leads
A great Video created by:
Khirsti Garnett &
Ameer Muhammad
Check out Ameer and Khirsti’s video at youtube for nwsofa college
NWSOFA Diversity Outreach Working on CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
Last year, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed bipartisan legislation to address much-needed sentencing and prison reform bill. S. 2123 is a bipartisan bill that represents an important first step toward addressing some of the causes of the racially disparate, unsustainable growth in the federal criminal justice system. It has been five months since the bill was put forward and it is long past time for the full Senate to vote on this important bill. Senate Republicans still have not moved forward on the bill, which has widespread, bipartisan support.
ACTION you can take:
Call your senators and tell them the time is now to support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (S. 2123) and to urge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it to the floor for a vote.
Over the years the American Citizens have lost their voices, believing that we can not make a difference. We have been beat down by the constant droning noise of the conservative right. This onslaught has made us like sheep .. afraid to express our views. Not anymore! OFA gives us back our voices and by working together we are making change one issue at a time. Together we can and will make a difference.
Just Click on the Photo to link the NWSOFA e-magazines daily & archived articles
Thank You to our NWSOFA Issue Leads in 2015
Click on the abo ve Image to see each lead and the issues they work on ..
SEPTEMBER 6TH 
