LeAlan Jones | |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | May 8, 1979 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Green Party |
| Residence(s) | Bronzeville, Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Journalist, Football Coach/Trainer |
LeAlan Marvin Jones (born May 8, 1979) is an American journalist who lives in Chicago's South Shore. His radio documentaries have received critical acclaim and numerous awards. Jones was the Green Party's 2010 nominee for United States Senate from Illinois.
Jones grew up on the South Side of Chicago, a block from the Ida B. Wells housing project. He was raised by his grandparents, Gus and June Jones, in the same house his family had lived in since the 1930s. He was a junior spokesperson for the No Dope Express Foundation, a youth education and anti-drug organization. [1]
At the age of 13, Jones and his friend Lloyd Newman created a radio documentary for NPR titled Ghetto Life 101 . [2] Jones was contacted by David Isay, who was producing a piece on poverty for Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ. The documentary illustrated life in the South Side of Chicago in 1993. The recordings made by the duo centered around interviews with the boys' families, friends, and members of the community. [3] The broadcast was well received, and praised for its raw portrayal of life in the projects in Chicago. It won several awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Awards for Excellence in Documentary Radio and Special Achievement in Radio Programming. [3]
Jones and Newman made a second documentary in 1994, The 14 Stories of Eric Morse, which explored the backgrounds of the people involved with Eric Morse, a five-year-old boy who was tragically thrown from a fourteenth-story window in the Chicago projects by two older boys. [4] The documentary premiered on NPR's All Things Considered in 1996. It won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Peabody Award. [5]
| External videos | |
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 Booknotes interview with Jones on Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago, August 3, 1997, C-SPAN |
The two documentaries and further footage from when Jones and Newman were nearing high school graduation were condensed into a book published in 1997 titled Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago.
Jones graduated from Chicago's Dr. Martin Luther King High School in 1997. [5] He studied criminology at Florida State University where he became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi in the Spring of 1998 before transferring to Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois in 2001. [6] He received a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Science.
Jones is the visionary for the Aspiring Youth Take A Student To your Employment (TASTE) Program. The Take A Student To your Employment Program was created after Jones spoke to Aspiring Youth students in Chicago. He thought that while it is helpful for students to hear from inspiring speakers, the students would benefit even more if they could visit workplaces to see why school is important and what they need to do with their education to get a good job someday. The TASTE Program has brought more than 13,500 students to workplaces nationwide.
At the height of the Rod Blagojevich scandal, Jones made the decision to run for United States Senate. [7] In 2009, he announced his candidacy in the 2010 election for the seat currently held by Roland Burris. Burris, who was appointed by Governor Blagojevich to fill the seat vacated by Barack Obama following Obama's election as President of the United States, chose not to seek re-election.
Jones ran unopposed in the Green Party primary and gained the nomination. He ran against Republican Mark Kirk, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, and Libertarian Mike Labno in the general election in November 2010.
An early May poll saw Jones taking 5% of the vote. [8] Following the controversy over Mark Kirk embellishing his military record, Jones saw a spike in his poll numbers. [9] A June survey made by Public Policy Polling saw Jones picking up 14% of the vote [10] behind Mark Kirk's 30% and Alexi Giannoulias with 31%. [11] Jones finished with 3.18% of the vote. [12]
Due to the November 21, 2012 resignation of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. from the U.S. House of Representatives, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn was obligated to set a date for a special election for the citizens of Illinois's 2nd congressional district. [13]
On December 4, 2012, the Illinois Green Party nominated Jones as its candidate to represent the 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House. On December 17, 2012, the Illinois Green Party filed a lawsuit regarding the ballot access requirements necessary to be on the ballot in this election. [14]
Jones has called for the immediate ratification of UNICEF's Convention on the Rights of the Child, a ban on land mines and complete nuclear disarmament. [15] He supported troop withdrawal from, and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. [16]
He has been critical of credit default swaps, derivatives trading and the financial industry as a whole, saying "a bunch of guys on Wall Street have done more to devastate the white community than any black man ever could." [17] He is in favor of the decriminalization and taxation of marijuana and the creation of cooperatives and credit unions as measures to bolster the economy. [18]
Mark Steven Kirk is an American retired politician and attorney who served as a United States senator for Illinois from 2010 to 2017, and as the United States representative for Illinois's 10th congressional district from 2001 to 2010. A member of the Republican Party, Kirk describes himself as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. To date, he is currently the last Republican to serve Illinois in the U.S. Senate.
Roland Wallace Burris is an American retired Democratic politician and attorney who served as Attorney General of Illinois from 1991 to 1995. In January 2009, he was appointed a United States Senator, succeeding Barack Obama, who resigned to become president of the United States. Burris held this position until November 2010, retiring from front-line politics shortly after.
Alexander Giannoulias is an American financier and politician who is the Secretary of State of Illinois. He previously served as the 72nd Illinois Treasurer from 2007 to 2011.
The 2006 Illinois elections were held on November 7, 2006. On that date, registered voters in the State of Illinois elected officeholders for U.S. Congress, to six statewide offices, as well as to the Illinois Senate and Illinois House.
The Illinois Green Party is a statewide political party in Illinois. The party is state affiliate of the Green Party of the United States.
Ghetto Life 101 is a 30-minute radio broadcast documentary exploring the lives of residents of the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was created by teenagers LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman and produced by David Isay for National Public Radio. The broadcast garnered international acclaim and won several awards.
Cheryle Robinson-Jackson is an American who was appointed in October 2006 to be the first female president and CEO in the 90-year history of the Chicago Urban League.
Tom Cross is an American lawyer and former Republican member of the Illinois House of Representatives where he served from 1993 to 2015. He served as House Minority Leader from January 2002 to August 2013, when he resigned to run for Illinois Treasurer.
Illinois is a Democratic stronghold in presidential elections and one of the "Big Three" Democratic strongholds alongside California and New York. It is one of the most Democratic states in the nation with all state executive offices and both state legislative branches held by Democrats. For most of its history, Illinois was widely considered to be a swing state, voting for the winner of all but two presidential elections in the 20th century. Political party strength in Illinois is highly dependent upon Cook County, and the state's reputation as a blue state rests upon the fact that over 40% of its population and political power is concentrated in Chicago, Cook County, and the Chicago metropolitan area. Outside of Chicago, the suburban collar counties continue trending Democratic while downstate Illinois can be considered more conservative with several Democratic leaning regions including Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Rockford, Peoria, the Quad Cities, and suburban St. Louis.
Our America is a film based on the book Our America: Life And Death on the South Side of Chicago.
The 2010 United States Senate elections in Illinois took place on November 2, 2010. There were two ballot items for the same seat: a general election, to fill the Class 3 seat beginning with the 112th United States Congress beginning on January 3, 2011, and a special election, to fill that seat for the final weeks of the 111th Congress. Roland Burris, who was appointed to fill the vacancy created by fellow Democrat Barack Obama's election to the presidency, did not run in either election.
David H. Hoffman is a former federal prosecutor and was Chicago's inspector general. Hoffman ran for the Illinois seat of the U.S. Senate in 2010 but lost to Alexi Giannoulias in the Democratic primary.
David Avram "Dave" Isay is an American radio producer and founder of Sound Portraits Productions. He is also the founder of StoryCorps, an ongoing oral history project. He is the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including six Peabody Awards and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. He is the author/editor of numerous books that grew out of his public radio documentary work.
Broadway Bank was a Chicago bank that existed from 1979 to 2010, and was owned by the Giannoulias family.
Elections were held in Illinois on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. Primary elections were held on February 2, 2010.
The Ida B. Wells Homes, which also comprised the Clarence Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes, was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project located in the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was bordered by 35th Street to the north, Pershing Road to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the east, and Martin Luther King Drive to the west. The Ida B. Wells Homes consisted of rowhouses, mid-rises, and high-rise apartment buildings, first constructed 1939 to 1941 to house African American tenants. They were closed and demolished beginning in 2002 and ending in 2011.
The 2014 Illinois gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of Illinois, concurrently with the election to Illinois's Class II U.S. Senate seat, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
A special election for Illinois' 2nd congressional district was held on April 9, 2013, to fill a seat in the United States House of Representatives for Illinois's 2nd congressional district, after Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned on November 21, 2012. The special election was required to be held within 115 days of Jackson's resignation. It was won by Democratic candidate Robin Kelly, formerly the Chief Administrative Officer of Cook County.
The 2016 United States Senate election in Illinois was held on November 8, 2016, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Illinois, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
The 2022 Illinois Secretary of State election was held on November 8, 2022, to elect the next Illinois Secretary of State. Incumbent Democrat Jesse White did not seek re-election to a seventh term. Alexi Giannoulias, a former state treasurer, won the open seat.
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| National | |
