Submitted by Harold L. Lucas, Aug 27, 2008 02:14

As on of the original community organizers who helped introduce the Empowerment Zone opportunity to the Bronzeville community in Chicago, it is disgraceful to realize 10 years later, how badly federal funds earmarked for the bottom-up empowerment of lower income residents were misappropreated from the top down by the Chicago EZ Coordinating Council and utilized for social service programs and political patronage payoffs system. Almost no funds from the Chicago Empowerment Zone was appropriated for economic empowerment projects. It is know wonder that vast stretches of the southlake front communities are underdeveloped and vancant lots are everywhere. Comercial revitalization efforts are controlled by local aldermen associated with the foundation community and the University of Chicago which is now moving agressively on a land grab purchasing plan west of Washington Park in Bronzeville where the 2016 Olympic stadium would be built if Chicago wins the bid for the 2016 Olympics. In short, Derel Hyra's book reveals the intimate details of the continuing University of Chicago conspiracy of "spacial deconcentration", the systematic disenfranchisement, displacement and removal of lower income African Americans from the historic Bronzeville community.

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