Editorial

We, at the Chatham Avalon Park Community Council, feel it is time for residents in the community to form a non-profit group to be called Friends of the Whitney Young Branch of the Chicago Public Library, for the sole purpose of garnering private funds for the building of a 100-seat amphitheater for lectures and symposiums in the newly constructed branch library, due for opening in January, 2011. So it is time for the Oprah Winfreys, Bill Cosbys, Spike Lees, Michael Jordans, Magic Johnsons, and Tiger Woods of the world to pull out those hefty checkbooks and invest like any municipal bond venture and create a private fund to make this project a reality with real money coming from real places in a bank account by the end of August so that it will ready and railing to go for the Public Building Commission of Chicago's public hearings on the new library construction in November. Especially for a place with no greater need for jobs for their people, most definitely, for their young people, than Chatham, that the new construction alone would create. The support of President Barack Obama with the release of federal economic stimulus funds with the conduit to Chatham by U.S. Senator Roland W. Burris will be most appropriate in funding the elevator, amphitheater, and plant maintenance contracts on a sustainable basis.