EMIL P. TOTONCHI AWARDED A PEGGY BROWNING FELLOWSHIP

For more information, please contact:

Gwen Osborne, director of public affairs, (312) 906-5251

EMIL P. TOTONCHI AWARDED A PEGGY BROWNING FELLOWSHIP 

Second-year Chicago-Kent student will spend 22-weeks at the Chicago Newspaper Guild

CHICAGO–May 11, 2010–Emil P. Totonchi, a second-year student at Chicago-Kent College of Law, has been awarded a Peggy Browning Fellowship for the 2010-11 school year. Totonchi will spend 22 weeks working at  the Chicago Newspaper Guild, a labor union that has represented reporters, editors, photographers and other newspaper industry employees in the Chicago metropolitan area for more than six decades. The union also represents staffers at the Illinois Federation of Teachers and court interpreters of the Cook County Court System. Totonchi will work with the Chicago Newspaper Guild’s general counsel on negotiations and litigation over collective bargaining agreements the union administers.

The Peggy Browning Fellowship program was established in memory of Margaret A. “Peggy” Browning, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Labor Relations Board in 1994. Ms. Browning, the first union-side labor attorney appointed to the NLRB, served until her death in 1997. 

A native of Nashville, Tenn., Peggy Browning earned her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and worked as a social worker with Philadelphia’s civil rights commission. She received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she served as editor of the law review. Ms. Browning spent 15 years representing labor organizations in private, public and federal sectors. In 1985, she was a founding partner of Spear, Wilderman, Borish, Endy, Browning and Spear in Philadelphia.

“Peggy Browning fellows are distinguished students who have not only excelled in law school but have already demonstrated a commitment to workers’ rights through their previous educational, volunteer, personal and work experiences,” said Mary Anne Moffa, executive director of the Peggy Browning Fund, which administers the fellowship program.  “Our fellowships provide law students with unique, diverse and challenging work experiences fighting for social and economic justice in the workplace. These experiences encourage and inspire students to pursue careers in public interest labor law.”

Chicago-Kent student Emil P. Totonchi is a candidate for a J.D. with a certificate in labor and employment law. The son of immigrant parents from Iraq and Ireland, Totonchi grew up in Glenview, Ill. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, with a major in international politics. Totonchi was a member of the Jewish-Arab Peace Band and the executive board of the Young Arab Leadership Alliance.

As an undergraduate, Totonchi also served four years as a student representative to the Licensing Oversight Committee that protects the rights of workers who make products licensed by Georgetown University. He also served as treasurer of the Worker Rights Consortium Governing Board and as a representative to the United Students Against Sweatshops.  

Before entering law school, Totonchi worked for the Service Employees International Union, for the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center in Jordan, and for the Land Center for Human Rights in Egypt.

At Chicago-Kent, Totonchi is the editor of the Employee and Employment Policy Journal and serves on the Labor and Employment Law Society’s executive board. He currently is clerking at Asher, Giggler, Greenfield & D’Alba, Ltd., a Chicago law firm that specializes in labor and employment law. As a summer legal extern at Burgess Law Offices in Chicago, Totonchi provided legal assistance to taxi drivers and day laborers.

Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,700 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law

Hanania wins two journalism awards for stories and columns on alleged anti-Arab discrimination case

Columnist and radio host Ray Hanania was honored last month with two major journalism awards, both dealing with the allegations of discrimination in Oak Lawn against a store owner there, Naim Massad.

Last August 2009, Massad alleged that he was being harassed by the village for nearly two years. That month, village officials had closed his store pending code violation reviews when police and inspectors were called by a neighbor who said that Massad placed a sign in Arabic that told his customers to go to the back of the store to purchase food while the store was closed. Massad was arrested when police claim that they saw Massad had stored some canned foods in a vacant store next to his own, food that had just been delivered but could not be placed in his own store because of the village inspectors order to keep his store closed.

Inspectors who arrived immediately ordered police to handcuff the store owner. When his wife Susan and son Abed protested, they were handcuffed and arrested and all were taken to jail where they spent the night pending the posting of bond.

As it turns out, the sign did not read what inspectors and police, who could not read Arabic said. The sign merely said that the store was temporarily closed but would soon be opened. Police had confiscated the sign from the door as evidence, but it mysteriously disappeared from the police evidence room.

Hanania, writing for the Southwest News-Herald Newspapers, obtained a copy of the police 911 emergency calls made just before they arrived at Massad’s store to see or confirm the evidence and a police officer was quoted as telling a dispatcher who asked him to respond to another emergency, that he would respond to the emergency but only after going to Massad’s store. In the 911 call, the officer told dispatch that he was on his way to “close an Arab store”.

Hanania wrote several news reports and columns on the incident, and was continually harassed by readers who attacked him because of his Arab heritage. Hanania is Palestinian and Christian from Jerusalem. Several of the owners of nearby stores refused to speak with him about the Massad case and there seemed to be great animosity with Massad.

In reviewing police records, Hanania also discovered that Massad’s store, located in the center of Oak Lawn, was also one of two Arab owned grocery stores attacked in the weeks before the incident with windows broken by large rocks. The other store was located on Oak Lawn’s eastern border.

Hanania received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Lisagor Award for In-Depth Reporting” from the Chicago Headline Club, the nation’s largest SPJ Chapter. He also receive the Sigma Delta Chi National Award for column writing from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Hanania has been a journalist and columnist since 1975. Today he also writes for PalestineNote.com and also for the Jerusalem Post.

He hosts the only American Arab weekday morning radio show “Radio Chicagoland” on WJJG 1530 AM Radio Monday through Thursday from 8 to 9:30 am and Friday from 7 until 9 am. On Fridays, Hanania co-hosts Radio Baladi which is simulcast in Chicago and Detroit from 7 until 8 am. His web site is www.RadioChicagoland.com.

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Won two awards this month for journalism

In addition to the Society of Professional Journalism Lisagor Award I received last month (my 4th Award) from the Chicago Headlline Club, the SPJ's largest chapter, I also received the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for columns writing.

Here's the press release.

Announcing winners of the 2009 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for journalism


5/3/2010

For immediate release

Contact:
Lauren Rochester, Awards Coordinator, (317) 927-8000 ext. 210,
lrochester@spj.org
Karen Grabowski, Communications Coordinator, (317) 927-8000 ext. 215,
kgrabowski@spj.org

INDIANAPOLIS – The Society of Professional Journalists is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2009 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism.

Judges chose the winners from over 1,300 entries in categories covering print, radio, television and online. The awards recognize outstanding work published or broadcast in 2009.

Dating back to 1932, the awards originally honored six individuals for contributions to journalism. The current program began in 1939, when the Society granted the first Distinguished Service Awards. The honors later became the Sigma Delta Chi Awards.

The awards will be presented Oct. 2 during the 2010 SPJ Convention and National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas.

For more information contact Lauren Rochester at (317) 927-8000 ext. 210 or at lrochester@spj.org.

Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, SPJ promotes the free flow of information vital to a well- informed citizenry; works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists; and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press. For more information about SPJ, please visit www.spj.org.

2009 Sigma Delta Chi Winners:

General Column Writing (Daily Circulation 1-50,000)
“Sunday Reflections,” Tracey O'Shaughnessy, Republican American

General Column Writing (Daily Circulation 50,001-100,000)
Sean Kirst, The Post-Standard

General Column Writing (Daily Circulation 100,000+)
Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times

General Column Writing (Non-Daily Publication)
Ray Hanania, Southwest News-Herald

Click HERE to read the entire list of winners.

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com