Illinois has struck its first deal with a state workers union to go along with Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s vaccine mandate for employees who work in state-run residential facilities.

The deal is small in scale. It ensures vaccines will go in the arms of only 260 workers who hold supervisory roles in the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice. The workers are represented by Laborers International Union of North America-Illinois State Employees Association, Local 2002.

The deal could be used as a blueprint in negotiations with other unions who represent thousands of additional workers at the two state agencies, as well as the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

“Negotiations between the unions representing the rest of the workforce impacted by this mandate are ongoing,” according to an announcement from Pritzker’s office.

Under the deal, which was announced Monday, vaccinated employees will be granted “COVID time,” so that if a vaccinated employee gets COVID-19 or must quarantine, they will receive a period of paid time off without using their benefit time. Each employee will also receive an additional personal day. And if the vaccine is not available during an employee’s regularly scheduled shift, he or she may be compensated at their regular pay for time taken to receive the vaccine.

Employees must receive their first shot by Oct. 14, 2021. And should an employee elect a two-dose vaccine, they must receive the second shot by Nov. 18.

Employees who do not receive the vaccine or an exemption for medical or religious reasons will be subject to progressive disciplinary measures that could result in being fired.

Pritzker announced the vaccination mandate last month and set an Oct. 4 deadline with the understanding that details would be hashed out with various unions.

Last week, facing union pushback, Pritzker extended the deadline for workers to be fully vaccinated to Nov. 18.

“Vaccination is the key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and returning to normal life,” Pritzker’s office said.

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The Sun-Times reported last week that there are few to no hospital ICU beds available in the 20-county area of Southern Illinois. People requiring critical care, experts said, could be “looking at a 5-hour ambulance ride” to find an open ICU bed.

But perhaps the Sun-Times report’s most unnerving fact was the revelation that an area with more than 400,000 residents has a mere 88 beds devoted to critical-care patients. Simple math indicates that — among the area’s 22 hospitals — there is an alarming average of just four critical-care beds per hospital. Why has this small number of ICU beds never been addressed? Is a lower pay scale offered in this part of Illinois? Do hospital workers simply prefer urban areas?

Whatever the reasons, it is unnerving to wonder what would happen if an even more dire emergency were to occur.

Christine Craven, Evergreen Park

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A COVID perspective

Something I saw on Facebook that really says it all:

Imagine being a firefighter while the rest of society starts thousands of fires every day. You ask them to practice fire safety, but they refuse. They tell you that all the fires you’ve been exhaustingly fighting every day are just a hoax, and that they have the freedom to start fires if they want to.

That’s what it’s like to be a healthcare worker these days.

Bob Chimis, Elmwood Park

Taliban actions shouldn’t surprise

For all those who are complaining — or, worse, are actually surpised — that the Taliban has not included women in its government and closed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, I have questions:

Are you surprised by snow in February? Shocked by rats in alleys? Amazed by Chicago Bears quarterback controversies? Wondering whether gravity is still just a theory?

Joking and sarcasm aside, anyone disappointed in the Taliban’s actions is as naive as an adult waiting for Santa Claus.

Make no mistake: these are deadly, tyrannical terrorists. To think otherwise gives them more power. Shame on our naivete.

William Choslovsky, Lincoln Park

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced her support for an another anti-violence initiative predicated upon the idea of “taking the profit out of drugs” to be implemented by suing gangs to recover drug-dealing profits.

It’s another idea that belongs on the junk pile like so many failed drug-prohibition ideas before it.

Aside from legitimate concerns regarding the validity of the gang-member computer base and the constitutional right to freedom of association, it won’t work.

Figuratively speaking, ambition puts water and drugs into the tea kettle, prohibition flames under the kettle turn the water into steam and drug profits. Capturing some steaming profits by suing gangs might capture some accumulated profits, but so long as prohibition flames continue to roar under the tea kettle, the violence associated with profitable, illegal and unlicensed drug markets will continue.

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Like catching a criminal after the killing, recovering drug profits after accumulation comes too late. The prevention solution, endlessly avoided by politicians, is to take the profit out of the illicit drug business by legalizing all drugs, reducing drug prices, and enabling the power of government to license, inspect, tax and require labels. That solution removes significant profit, reduces violence and prevents accidental overdose.

James E. Gierach, Palos Park

Pedro Martinez and ethnicity

In the wake of the selection of Pedro Martinez to head the Chicago Public Schools, politicians and others who opine for a living go immediately to Martinez’s ethnicity, pondering whether it is a good thing for CPS, and/or for the mayor’s political fortunes, for a Latino to be in charge of the city’s schools.

What serious people think would be a more relevant question — whether it is a good thing for a man who does not have an education degree and has never held a teaching position to head the CPS — pales to the point of insignificance when compared to the only trait that seems to matter about anybody nowadays, his or her race or ethnicity.

The debate regarding Martinez’s qualifications is yet another instance of the ironic failure of those who most piously profess to oppose racism to see anything beyond race.

Mark M. Quinn, Naperville

As a doctor, I know: Vaccines work

I eagerly got in line to receive my COVID-19 vaccination. As hospital faculty, I was fortunate to be among the first to receive an inoculation that I, and the vast majority of doctors, see as the best way to end this global coronavirus pandemic. I will also gladly get the booster shot if the scientific experts decide it’s necessary and when it’s my turn.

This virus is not going away without more people getting vaccinated to stop the spread. Widespread vaccination is key to the eradication of COVID-19. By getting vaccinated, I’m not only protecting myself, but also my family and my patients. I would encourage each and every person to talk to their doctor about the vaccine.

Let me tell you why I did not hesitate to get my shot: Vaccines work.

We have proven vaccine success stories for combating deadly diseases such as polio, measles and smallpox. And now we have one FDA-approved vaccine for fighting the current deadly disease and two others with emergency use authorization that are likely to gain full approval soon. All three have gone through rigorous scientific testing, including safety evaluations and regulatory processes before public release.

There is a light at the end of tunnel. If you are unvaccinated, talk to a doctor. We are ready to answer your questions and help you understand the importance of vaccination.

Regan Thomas, MD, president of the Illinois State Medical Society

Aldermanic automatic pay raise

The Sun-Times Editorial Board wrote recently that it’s a bad time for an automatic aldermanic pay raise. I say anytime is a lousy time for an automatic pay raise. Our fearless aldermen don’t have enough backbone to face the music in voting for a pay raise, that is, if they really even deserve one.

Likewise, the city seems to be making a habit of raising fees annually based on inflation, notably the city sticker and the even more egregious property tax. Nothing like a good gimmick to avoid taking controversial votes and decisions.

Mario Caruso, Lincoln Square

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Congo Square Theatre Company has named Ericka Ratcliff as its new artistic director, it was announced Monday.

A longtime member of the African American theater company, Ratcliff becomes only the fourth artistic director in the history of the troupe, and the first female to hold the post. Ratcliff joins executive director Charlique Rolle and board chairwoman Gertrude Wooten as the first all-female leadership team at Congo Square. “I’m very excited to be a part of this historic shift,” Ratcliff told the Sun-Times via email. “It’s rare, yes, but shouldn’t be. What is happening in Chicago is happening everywhere and the blessing is that the scope of what high art is amplified because of it. More so, I am eager to work alongside Charlique to bolster Congo Square in the changing arts community.”

Ratcliff’s Congo Square credits include “Stickfly,” “African Company Presents Richard III,” “Bulrusher” and “365 Plays/365 Days,” among others. Local/regional credits include Second City, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Milwaukee Rep, among many others. She is an artistic associate at Lookingglass Theatre.

“From the first time I encountered Congo Square through its production of Chadwick Boseman’s “Deep Azure,” I became immediately enthralled by the company because of the beauty of the work, the authenticity of Black culture being represented on stage, and the celebration of Black artists as a family through the ensemble,” Ratcliff said in a statement.

Congo Square’s 22nd season is now underway with “The Clinic,” part of the company’s new Audio Series celebrating old school ration drama and streaming through Oct. 10 exclusively at www.congosquaretheatre.org/audio-series.

“The voices of Congo Square reflect the voices of our communities,” Ratcliff told the Sun-Times. “What experiences Black people deal with everyday; our dreams, our goals, our struggles. We represent it all and we take that responsibility very seriously.”

Tamberla Perry as Vera (left) and Ericka Ratcliff as the title character in “Bulrusher” at Congo Square Theatre in 2012.Congo Square Theatre

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NAIROBI, Kenya — In parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, there are people who go for days with nothing to eath but green leaves.

At a health center recently, a mother and her newborn, weighing just 1.7 pounds, died from hunger. In each of the more than 20 districts in which one aid group works, people have starved to death.

For months, the United Nations has warned of famine in this embattled corner of northern Ethiopia, calling it the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Now, internal documents and witness accounts reveal the first starvation deaths since Ethiopia’s government in June imposed what the U.N. calls “a de facto humanitarian aid blockade.”

Forced starvation is the latest chapter in a conflict where ethnic Tigrayans have been massacred, gang-raped and expelled.

Months after crops were burned and communities stripped bare, a new kind of death has set in.

“You are killing people,” Hayelom Kebede, former director of Tigray’s flagship Ayder Referral Hospital, recalled telling Ethiopia’s health ministry in a call earlier this month. “They said, ‘Yeah, OK, we’ll forward it to the prime minister.’ What can I do? I just cry.”

He provided The Associated Press with photos of some of the 50 children receiving “very intensive care” because of malnutrition — the first such images to emerge from Tigray in months.

In one, a small child stares into the camera, a feeding tube in his nose, a protective amulet in the pronounced hollow of his throat.

Medicines have nearly run out, and hospital staffers haven’t been paid since June, Hayelom said. Conditions elsewhere for Tigray’s six million people are often worse.

The blockade and the starvation that comes with it mark a new phase in the 10-month war between Tigray forces and the Ethiopian government and its allies.

Now, the United States has issued an ultimatum: Take steps to stop the fighting and let aid flow freely, or a new wave of sanctions could be imposed within weeks.

STARVATION WORSENS AMID ETHIOPIA BLOCKADE OF TIGRAY

Phil Holm, Cara Anna / AP

The war began as a political dispute between the prime minister, 2019 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigrayans who had long dominated Ethiopia’s repressive national government. Since November, witnesses say, Ethiopian forces and those from neighboring Eritrea looted food sources and destroyed health centers.

In June, the Tigray fighters retook the region, and Ethiopia’s government publicly declared a ceasefire, citing humanitarian grounds. In reality, though, the government has sealed off the region tighter than ever, fearing aid will reach the Tigray forces.

More than 350,000 metric tons of food aid are positioned in Ethiopia. But very little can reach Tigray. The government is so wary that humanitarian workers boarding rare flights to the region have been given an unusual list of items they cannot bring: dental flossers, can openers, multivitamins, medicines.

The list also banned means of documenting the crisis, including hard drives and flash drives. Photos and video from Tigray have disappeared from social media since June as aid workers and others, facing intense searches by authorities, fear being caught with them.

Ethiopia’s prime minister and other senior officials have denied there is hunger in Tigray. The government has blamed Tigray forces and insecurity for troubles with aid delivery. It also has accused humanitarian groups of supporting, even arming, the Tigray fighters.

The prime minister’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum would not say when the government would allow basic services to the region, saying that the government “has opened access to aid routes by cutting the number of checkpoints from seven to two and creating air bridges for humanitarian flights.”

But medical supplies on the first European Union air bridge flight were removed during government inspection, and such flights can’t even carry the large-scale food aid needed.

In the most extensive account yet of the blockade’s toll, a humanitarian worker, speaking on the condition of not being named out of fear of retaliation, told the AP that deaths from starvation are being reported in “every single” district of the more than 20 in Tigray in which one aid group operates. The group had run out of food aid and fuel.

“There are devastating reports coming from every corner,” the aid group wrote to a donor in August. “If no urgent solution is found, we will lose many people due to hunger.”

In April, even before the current blockade was imposed, the same group wrote to the donor that “reports of malnourishment are rampant” and that 22 people in one sub-district had starved to death.

“People’s skin color was beginning to change due to hunger; they looked emaciated with protruding skeletal bones,” the aid group wrote.

In August, another staffer visited a community in central Tigray and wrote that the number of people at risk of starvation was “exponentially increasing” in rural and urban areas. In some cases, “People are eating only green leaves for days.”

The staffer described speaking with one mother who said that, since June, her family had been living on borrowed food and, for the past month, had eaten only bread with salt. She worried they would die.

“The administrator of the [sub-district] has also told us that there are many families who are living in similar conditions,” the staffer wrote.

Some toilets in the crowded camps are overflowing because there’s no cash to pay for their cleaning, leaving thousands vulnerable to outbreaks of disease, a visiting aid worker said. People who ate three meals a day now eat only one. Camp residents rely on the charity of host communities who often struggle to feed themselves.

“People have been able to get by but barely,” the aid worker said. “It’s worse than subsistence, let’s put it that way.”

At least 150 people starved to death in August, including in camps for displaced people, the Tigray External Affairs Office has said. The International Organization for Migration, the U.N. agency which supports the camps, could not confirm that number.

Food security experts estimated months ago that 400,000 people in Tigray face famine conditions — more than the rest of the world combined. But the blockade means experts can’t collect the needed data to make a formal declaration of famine.

Such a declaration would be deeply embarrassing for Ethiopia, which in the 1980s seized the world’s attention with a famine so severe, also driven by conflict and government neglect, that one million people died.

Since then, Africa’s second-most populous country had become a success story by pulling millions from extreme poverty and developing one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Now, amid the war, malnutrition rates are near 30% for children under 5, according to the U.N. World Food Program, and near 80% for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Tigray forces have entered the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar in recent weeks, and some accuse them of carrying out acts of retaliation, including closing off supply routes. The Tigray forces deny that, saying they aim to pressure Ethiopia’s government to lift the blockade.

The U.N. human rights office says abuses have been committed by all sides, though witness accounts indicate the most widespread atrocities have been against Tigrayan civilians.

There’s little help coming. The U.N. says at least 100 trucks with food and other supplies must reach Tigray every day to meet people’s needs. As of Sept. 8, fewer than 500 had arrived since July on the only accessible road into the region. No medical supplies or fuel have been delivered to Tigray in more than a month, the United States says, blaming “government harassment” and decisions, not the fighting.

Major international aid groups like Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council have had their operations suspended, accused of spreading “misinformation” about the war. Nearly two dozen aid workers have been killed, some while distributing food.

“It is a day-to-day reality to see human sufferings, starvation,” Abune Tesfaselassie Medhin, the Catholic bishop of Adigrat, wrote Sept. 3, appealing for help from overseas and warning of catastrophe.

The need for food will continue well into next year, the U.N. says, because the limited crops planted amid the fighting are likely to produce only between a quarter and at most half of the usual harvest.

Grim as they are, the reports of starvation deaths reflect only areas in Tigray that can be reached. One Tigrayan humanitarian worker pointed out that most people live or shelter in remote places such as rugged mountains. Others are in inaccessible areas bordering hostile Eritrea or in western Tigray, now controlled by authorities from the Amhara region who bar the way to neighboring Sudan, a potential route for delivering aid.

As food and the means to find it run out, the humanitarian worker said, “I am sure the people that are dying out of this man-made hunger are way more than this.”

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Bears quarterback Andy Dalton did not tear his ACL, coach Matt Nagy said Monday morning. The team is awaiting further testing before being able to decide whether he or rookie Justin Fields will start, he said.

For the second-straight day, Nagy declined to say whether Dalton would start were he healthy. Nagy claimed that was a scheme-related question; his policy is that he typically does not engage on such questions.

Dalton hurt his left knee early in the second quarter Sunday when he stepped awkwardly along the Bears sideline after running out of bounds. He tumbled to the ground and then pointed at Fields to get into the game.

Nagy said after the game that the Bears believed he avoided the worst-case scenario of a torn anterior cruciate ligament. He confirmed it Monday.

NFL Network said that testing didn’t show ligament damage and speculated that he could have a bone bruise, the result of his femur and tibia banging together. That would likely cost Dalton a couple weeks.

Dalton had looked sharp in the home opener, completing 9-of-11 passes for 56 yards and an 11-yard touchdown pass to Allen Robinson on the game’s first drive.

The Bears limited the playbook with the rookie on the field after he spent the week running the scout team.

“I just try to have the mentality of, ‘Play like practice,'” he said. “When I’m out on the practice field with my teammates, I try to play every play like a game. And I just try to keep that calm mindset and calm mentality to not make the moment bigger than it is and just go out there and play football. Because that’s all it is, at the end of the day.”

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Benet Academy’s administration has come under fire following its decision to rescind an employment offer to the new girls lacrosse coach after learning that she was gay.

The Lisle Catholic school reportedly hired Amanda Kammes, a Benet alum and head girls varsity lacrosse coach at Montini Catholic High School in Lombard, but rescinded the offer when her paperwork included her wife’s name as her emergency contact.

A rally in protest of the decision was scheduled for this morning at school.

“Benet Academy respects the dignity of all human beings to follow their conscience and live lives of their choosing,” the school said in a statement. “Likewise, as a Catholic school, we employ individuals whose lives manifest the essential teachings of the Church in order to provide the education and faith formation of the young people entrusted to our care.”

Opposition to the decision gained significant momentum over the weekend with more than 1,100 Benet alumni, parents and students signing an online letter condemning the decision addressed to members of the school’s leadership.

Read more at dailyherald.com.

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