Sleep out for homelessness. As part of Americorps we all have to do 80 hours of community service. This Friday a group of us participated in the PACT (Public Action for Change Today) national sleep out. The idea was to get mayor Daley to listen to PACT's requests for youth homelessness funding. Then when he refuses to listen to the requests sleep out in Daley Plaza in front of his offices. Our group of Americorps was in charge of security, emergency planning and general safety of the participants.

sleep out

IMG_1173, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

night time view in Daleyville

burr sleep out

IMG_1178, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

yes thats rain on the lens. it was cold and rained a little during the night.

sleeping out

IMG_1180, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Take to the streets. The final tax push is on until the IRS deadline of April 15th. For the last couple days 3 team members and myself have been driving the van around Chicago. We are delivering information about the Tax Assistance Program to non-profits like libraries and career training centers.

Getting fitted for fire boots tomorrow. Check out this cool (I should say HOT) article.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4520560,00.html

3 year anniversary of the Iraq war.





-Flag dancers.



-Some random people gave us some cool signs.

More save Americorps NCCC articles:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11824180/site/newsweek/from/ET/

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/opinion/14tue3.html?ex=1143003600&en=acdf82e529cc3268&ei=5070&emc=eta1

This is an office email I received that explains one reason we are doing taxes for low income people.

I ran across this article concerning H&R Block and a fraud case currently against them. I know that many of the clients you serve have used tax prep agencies like this before finding out about the Tax Assistance Programs, so I thought that I would send you the link. Your teams may want to read over it and discuss the implications of for-profit agencies like H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt in terms of how these agencies relate to the working poor who need instant tax refunds.

Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11839807/

Chicago Board of Trade. We took a tour of the CBOT today. A trader was kind enough to show us around the floor and explain the process of trading commodities.



Traditional trading floor - that means hands flying around and traders yelling at each other.



Electronic trading floor - much more subdued

St. Patrick's Day! The city of Chicago celebrates for a full week and kicked off the festivities with a parade and dying the river green. We walk around Navy Pier and checked out the view from the top of the John Hancock building. The Wrigleyville area where I live has been a sea of drunken green t-shirts.



Playing with the sculptures at Navy Pier



The river dyed with fluorescein



This thing is cool

Day off. Used this time to explore the Chicago L train stop. It dropped us off near Michigan Ave in a area known as the Magnificent Mile. It wasn't too magnificent today since it was 20 degrees and snowing with a nice westward wind. However, we enjoyed a brisk walk in Tiffany's, Saks and Armani country.

Taxes. That’s what the cool kids do at 6:30 Saturday morning. Spent the day helping to run a TAP satellite site. I made sure the assembly line style service we provide ran smoothly. Made a record for client with the most W-2 forms, totaled at 11 for one year. Also saw a couple 3 thousand dollar returns.

In the evening a couple of us went to a show at the Metro. It is a local venue about a 1/2 block from our apartment. The band Aqualung was headlining an 11:30pm show. In case anyone hasn't heard of Aqualung (I hadn't either) they have a Coldplay type sound. To read all the great things I have to say about the show read below:

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Americorps in the news. The Washington Post had an article about Americorps and the NCCC program. When I looked at it today it was in the top ten most viewed articles.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701190.html?referrer=emailarticle

Check out the Alumni created save americorps NCCC site:

http://web.mac.com/thomashowardjr/iWeb/Site%203/SAVE*NCCC%20Info.html