*** SUPPORT HILLARY CLINTON ***
For more coverage of Hillary Clinton at Daily Kos, visit the Hillary Writers Circle.
For breaking news, follow First Amendment.
Today’s Hillary News & Views begins with Clinton’s visit to Chicago.
ABC 7 reports:
The Illinois primary is Tuesday, March 15, and presidential candidates are in town working to win over Illinois voters. The polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton attended several events in Chicago Monday, while Bernie Sanders has a late-night rally planned at Roosevelt University.
A week ago, the Clinton campaign had Illinois - the candidate's home state - safely in its win column. But after Sanders' big win in Michigan last week, Clinton is taking nothing for granted."I am very excited about being back in Chicago,"Clinton said this morning, where she was cheered by hundreds at the Plumbers Union Hall on the Near West Side - her second visit to the area since last Thursday.
Earlier, the former Secretary of State appeared at a Pilsen not-for-profit where she promised to work for immigration reform. On the South Side, she made a 20-minute stop at the Kids Off the Block memorial to children killed in gun violence in the Roseland neighborhood.
"Every mother you see here works so hard to protect her child, and yet we allow this epidemic of gun violence to stalk our streets, our playgrounds," Clinton said.
The former first lady's final stop was at the bakery workers' union hall at 79th and Kedzie, opposite the Nabisco plant. Worker Hilda Munoz said she hopes a President Hillary Clinton could help do something to stop her employer from moving 600 jobs to Mexico.
"I just asked her if she could help us out, if she could help us keep our jobs in Chicago. And she said she was with the union in there, and she said 'Absolutely, I'm here to help you guys out.' Let's hope it's true," Munoz said.
Fox 32 Chicagoreports:
Determined to make the plague of gun violence and poverty in urban America a top priority in the 2016 Presidential campaign, Rev. Jesse Jackson on Monday took Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, to “a wall of death”– a memorial to murdered children fashioned out of paving stones and sorrow on Chicago’s far South Side.
Joined by nearly a dozen mothers who have lost children to gun violence, Rev. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said he asked Mrs. Clinton to visit the memorial at 117th Street and South Michigan Avenue because “we thought it would be fitting for [her] to put real focus on the zone of crisis in Chicago.”
he memorial – 501 paving stones, each with the name of a murdered child printed in black – was built by a neighborhood peace and child advocate, Diane Latiker, and her family nine years ago. Since then, the memorial has been rebuild a dozen times.
“We’re 531 stones behind,” Ms. Latiker said, as Mrs. Clinton, the former Secretary of State, stood at her side, clutching a dozen white roses in tribute to the murdered children and their parents.
“If you take nothing else from being here,” Ms. Latiker said, looking directly at Mrs. Clinton, “this is not America. And nobody wants to talk about it because it’s sticky. But blood is sticky.”
Visibly moved by the memorial, Mrs. Clinton said, “We have to do many things. But the first and most important of any nation is to protect and keep safe our children”yet despite the heroic efforts of the mothers gathered around her “we allow this epidemic of gun violence to stalk our streets, our playgrounds, our buses, our churches.”
“It is profoundly wrong,” Mrs. Clinton said “to see how many children’s lives are ended by senseless, brutal gun violence.”
She said she had spent much of her professional life speaking out and standing up to the gun lobby and vowed, if elected president, to increase her efforts. She added that “Rev. Jackson is also right: we need things to say yes to.”
“We need opportunities,”she said. “We need more jobs. We need good teachers and schools for every child regardless of what zip code that child lives in.”
Her voice catching, Mrs. Clinton looked from mother to mother, the sisters of sorrow. “I pledge to you in front of this heartbreaking memorial that as a mother and a grandmother and as a president, if I’m so fortunate to be president, I will work every day to save and protect the lives of our children. I will work every day to provide more opportunities and tear down the barriers that stand in the way of people having the chance to fulfill their potential.”