CHICAGO - Windy City Times and Center on Halsted are launching a 9-month series of LGBTQ educational programs featuring prominent scholars known nationally for their innovative research and work.

Lavender University is modeled on a project of the same name that operated for several years in the 1970s and 1980s, providing a wide range of interesting educational and skills-building programs.

"While some high schools and colleges are doing a better job at including LGBTQ issues in their curriculum, there is still a vast amount of LGBTQ work and history that is not being taught to youth and adults," said Tracy Baim, publisher of Windy City Times. "I really liked the Lavender University model and approached the Center on Halsted about partnering on a 9-month series. If it is well received, we hope to expand these programs for 2014, including to other areas of the city and suburbs."

"We are excited to present a diverse set of education programs," said Lynnea Karlic, director of programming for Center on Halsted. "We think this will appeal to teenagers, college students, adults and seniors, with such an incredible lineup of LGBTQ experts from our community."

Following are the speakers and topics in the first 9-month series. All of the programs are the first Saturday of the month at 11 a.m., except for the November program, which is a Sunday. The bottom of this press release gives more details on each program.

The lectures are at Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted. Each lecture is $25; there are discounts available for multiple lectures, and a limited number of scholarships will also be available.

For reservations see: https://community.centeronhalsted.org/lavenderuniversity .

Questions can be directed to: publisher@windycitymediagroup.com or  lkarlic@centeronhalsted.org .

Sat., Sept. 7, 2013, 11am-1pm: John D'Emilio

No Race-Baiting, Red-Baiting, or Queer-Baiting:  The Marine Cooks and Stewards Union from Depression to Cold War

Sat. Oct 12, 2013, 11am-1pm: E. Patrick Johnson

Gathering Honey: Oral Histories of Black Southern Women Who Love Women

Sun. Nov. 3, 2013, 1pm-3pm, Golda Goldbloom

Working For Queer Acceptance: Finding Love Amongst the Religious Right

Sat., Dec. 7, 2013, 11am-1pm Owen Daniel-McCarter

Constitutional Law as it Applies to Transgender Prisoners

Sat., Jan. 4, 2014, 11am-1pm Hyacinth Piel

Ethical Problems in Gender Identity Construction

Sat., Feb. 1, 2014, 11am-1pm: Beth Richie

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America's Prison Nation

Sat., March 1, 2014, 11am-1pm Lourdes Torres

Making Familia from Scratch: Towards a History of Latina Lesbian Organizing in Chicago

Sat., April 5, 2014, 11am-1pm  Anne Balay

Steel Closets:  Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers

Sat., May 3, 2014 11am-1pm Timothy Stewart-Winter

From Civil Rights to Gay Rights in Chicago

PROGRAM AND SPEAKER DETAILS:

Sat., Sept. 7, 2013, 11am-1pm: John D'Emilio

No Race-Baiting, Red-Baiting, or Queer-Baiting:  The Marine Cooks and Stewards Union from Depression to Cold War

John D'Emilio teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago.  A pioneer in the field of the history of sexuality, he has written or edited more than half a dozen books, including a history of pre-Stonewall activism and a biography of Bayard Rustin.  A former Board chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, he was the founding director of its Policy Institute.

In the 1930s, the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union became a multi-racial, left-wing, and queer-friendly labor union.  How was this possible?  What happened to the union?  And why has this history not come down to us?  Based on the research of Allan Berube, who was working on a history of the MCSU when he passed away unexpectedly in 2007, this talk with visuals will attempt to recreate this little known and inspiring episode in radical queer history.

Sat. Oct 12, 2013, 11am-1pm: E. Patrick Johnson

Gathering Honey: Oral Histories of Black Southern Women Who Love Women

E. Patrick Johnson is the Carlos Montezuma Professor in the Department of Performance Studies and African American Studies, Northwestern University.

As a follow-up to Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South-An Oral History, E. Patrick Johnson has begun working on a new oral history on black lesbians of the South, tentatively entitled, Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women-An Oral History.       In his presentation, Johnson will discuss the challenges to conducting oral histories of black same gender loving women based not only on gender differences between his subjects and himself, but also the content of their stories. In addition, Johnson will share some of the women's stories through performance.

Sun. Nov. 3, 2013, 1pm-3pm, Golda Goldbloom

Working For Queer Acceptance: Finding Love Amongst the Religious Right

Goldie Goldbloom is a writer, a professor, a mother of 8, a trans mentor and a queer activist.

Goldbloom's award winning fiction has been published internationally. Her novel, The Paperbark Shoe, won the AWP Novel Award and was the Independent Publishers Literary Novel of the Year. She is a professor of creative writing at Northwestern University, and the mother of eight children. Goldie was a contributor to the groundbreaking anthology Keep Your Wives Away From Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires, and continues to work as an activist in the Orthodox Jewish community for queer inclusion. She is a mentor for transgender youth.

Sat., Dec. 7, 2013, 11am-1pm Owen Daniel-McCarter

Constitutional Law as it Applies to Transgender Prisoners

Owen Daniel-McCarter is a transgender activist and attorney. He is co-founder and collective member of the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois which provides free, holistic, and gender-affirming legal advocacy to criminalized transgender and gender non-conforming people in Chicago and throughout Illinois prisons.

Sat., Jan. 4, 2014, 11am-1pm Hyacinth Piel

Ethical Problems in Gender Identity Construction

Hyacinth Piel is a graduate student in philosophy at UIC.  Ze lives in Edgewater with hir corgi, Poggibonsi.

This lecture begins with the idea that as people who seek to lead good and authentic lives, we are repeatedly confronted with profound and difficult questions about how best to develop, identify, and express our genders.  For one thing, the existential challenge we face as people capable of freedom includes a challenge (which often goes unacknowledged)  to lead our gendered lives in freedom and truth.  However, this demand that we strive to develop and express genders which are authentically ours becomes still more complicated when we recognize that gender roles as we know them are deeply implicated in a politically unjust system of gender domination: patriarchy.  Although our genders are uniquely our own existential projects, they are never only that: the way we live our genders is bound to affect others too, and since our existing gender templates are deeply influenced by the oppressive gender hierarchy from which they are drawn, it looks like the building blocks we must use to develop genders in which we can be free may also tend to threaten the freedom and well-being of those around us-- even, and perhaps especially, those we love the most.

Sat., Feb. 1, 2014, 11am-1pm: Beth Richie

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America's Prison Nation

Beth E. Richie, PhD is an anti-violence activist and author working in several social justice movements.  She is a Professor and Director or the Institute For Research on Race and Public Policy at UIC.

This lecture will focus on the ways that the prison industrial complex has served to exacerbate violence against Black women.  The emphasis will be on intimate partner abuse as well as systematic violence and the role that race, class, gender, sexuality and other markers of social disadvantage put people in the path of the punishment industry.  It will include the redemptive possibility of prison abolition as philosophical and practical solution.

Sat., March 1, 2014, 11am-1pm Lourdes Torres

Making Familia from Scratch: Towards a History of Latina Lesbian Organizing in Chicago

Lourdes Torres is  Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University.

Since the scholarship that exists on lesbian organizing in the Midwest neglects to engage with the history of Latina lesbian organizing, this project constitutes an effort to name Latina lesbians as agents of change and active subjects of a multiracial history of grassroots organizing. Torres writes: "I explore the history of two organizations in Chicago-Amigas Latinas, a Latina lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization that was founded in 1995 and is still in existence, and LLENA, an activist organization that existed from 1988 to 1992. I discuss the founding of LLENA and Amigas Latinas, the efforts of the organizations to create Latina lesbian visibility in both the 'Latino' and 'lesbian' social and political cultures of Chicago, and their successful and unsuccessful efforts to negotiate divergent national and ethnic histories, class and linguistic differences, and the diverse political stances of their membership. I also look at the coalition-building politics that the groups established with other Latino and queer communities in Chicago and internationally, their strategies for sustainability and finally, I discuss the enduring contributions of the two organizations."

Sat., April 5, 2014, 11am-1pm  Anne Balay

Steel Closets:  Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers

Anne Balay is a scholar who has published work on fantasy fiction, children's time travel, and queer pedagogy.  She lives in Gary, Indiana.

Balay will summarize and discuss her new book, Steel Closets, which explores how sexuality and gender overlap in the sprawling steel mills of Northwest Indiana. Drawing from extensive, detailed oral histories taken of a previously silent and invisible population, it investigates how gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers interact with their co-workers, communities and families in the context of their physically demanding, risky work.  It explains how and why basic steel mills are inhospitable, even dangerous to queers, and demonstrate that we can't understand what it means to be GLBT without including working-class, blue-collar voices and stories.

Sat., May 3, 2014 11am-1pm Timothy Stewart-Winter

From Civil Rights to Gay Rights in Chicago

Timothy Stewart-Winter is an Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey

This talk is based on Stewart-Winter's forthcoming book on the rise of gay politics in Chicago since the 1950s. The talk will examine trace how black insurgency paved the way for Midwestern gay activists to challenge police brutality and job discrimination, and the complicated role of the emerging urban gay voting bloc in efforts to consolidate the civil rights revolution in a conservative era. At the same time, Stewart-Winter will examine how the gay movement's priorities changed in the course of a long struggle for a voice at city hall, and how African American queer activists confronted and challenged the increasing association between gay mobilization and the mostly white North Side lakefront gay enclaves.

Nearly 10 years after real-time package- and people-tracking went viral with the advent of GPS-enabled cell phones, small businesses face two big concerns.

"One is expense. Small businesses, especially those still recovering from the worst recession in modern history, can't always afford to provide their employees with GPS-equipped smart phones," notes location-based services specialist George Karonis, founder and CEO of LiveViewGPS, Inc., provider of Mobile Phone Locate tracking service,  (www.mobilephonelocate.com).

"The second issue is privacy. People generally don't want their employer to be a 'big brother' boss who can track their every move. It's not because they're doing something they shouldn't, but because it invades their space, and the information could be misinterpreted or misused."

But employee tracking has plenty of obvious benefits to small business owners:

• Provide baseline information. It gives businesses solid data to analyze for initiatives such as improving efficiency. Businesses with lots of workers in the field making deliveries or service calls can optimize routes and schedules.

• Improve customer service and satisfaction. Tracking helps a business tell people waiting somewhere for a delivery or service exactly where their package or service-person is and how long the wait will be.

• Improve response times. On-site coordinators can re-route workers in the field to respond to unscheduled calls in the most efficient way possible.

• Reduce costs. The greater efficiency provided by tracking helps lower costs by reducing both downtime and overtime.

So how can businesses circumvent affordability and employee privacy concerns?

One way is to accomplish both is to use a service that doesn't involve extra equipment, including software, or a contract, Karonis says.

"If you're not loading apps or software onto someone's personal phone, it's less intrusive for the employee and he or she will be more willing to allow use of their own phone. There's also no added drain on the battery, because there's no app constantly running in the background, and no hitch-hiking on their data plan or incurring a data charge," he says.

"If you make it non-intrusive employees won't tend to feel that you're invading their privacy."

Using a service that charges per location, with no requirement for a time-specific contract, is also more cost-efficient for the business, Karonis says.

"For the small business that's merely seeking to improve efficiency and customer service, constant tracking isn't necessary. That's more appropriate in a situation where employers have large number of people constantly in the field, for instance, UPS. Or, employers who feel the need to monitor unproductive employees," he says.

There's a growing backlash as the public is subjected to more and more stalking - from cameras mounted at traffic lights to social networking sites recording shopping habits and topics of conversation, Karonis notes.

"We've reached a crossroads where we need to find a balance between surveillance that provides legitimate business advantages and surveillance that invades people's privacy," he says.

"It really is possible to strike that balance and, in a small business that thrives on trust, mutual respect and fully invested employees, it's essential."

About George Karonis

George Karonis has a background in security and surveillance, and has specialized in location services since 2005. A self-professed computer geek, one of his chief concerns is balancing the usefulness of tracking with the protection of individuals' privacy. He is founder and CEO of LiveViewGPS, Inc.