CARE

📑 In 2024, officials approved a project on contaminated land in Chicago’s South Shore, one of the last majority-Black neighborhoods along Lake Michigan. Supported by taxpayer dollars and the Pentagon’s research arm, it aims to establish the U.S.'s first large-scale quantum computer.

South Shore faces pressure from the Obama Presidential Center to the north and the quantum campus to the south, leading to rising property taxes and displacement threats against long-time Black and Hispanic residents.

🗳️ Residents proposed a binding ballot question to pause the project due to concerns about displacement and environmental impact, but the Chicago Board of Elections blocked it on a technicality.

"We deserve resources, and we deserve autonomy over our own communities," Jayna McGruder stated. "Instead of jobs, housing, and healthcare, they’re giving us a war computer."

⚖ In 2018, Congress passed the National Quantum Initiative Act, initiating a decade-long program to fund federal quantum research through the Department of Energy and defense agencies, with an emphasis on national security.

Over $1 billion has been invested in a South Side campus housing companies like PsiQuantum, Pasqal, and IBM. However, residents of this predominantly Black community are concerned about the environmental impacts and feel marginalized, viewing themselves as test subjects for military technology rather than partners in development.

📝 In late 2025, Southside Together gathered signatures for a referendum to pause campus work until their concerns about displacement and environmental effects were addressed. Despite meeting requirements, the Chicago Board of Elections excluded them from the March ballot due to a single-subject rule. Residents emphasized that their fight was about lack of engagement with Black communities in a multibillion-dollar project, not opposition to technology itself.

🔗 Read the full article on Capital B News using link below:
https://capitalbnews.org/chicago-quantum-campus-south-shore/

🍖 What your pet eats shapes how they live. Good nutrition supports everything from energy levels to immune health, helping pets live longer, more comfortable lives.

A balanced diet includes high-quality protein, essential vitamins and minerals, and digestible carbs and fiber along with constant access to fresh water. At the same time, avoiding harmful foods like chocolate, onions, grapes, and xylitol is just as important.

😻 Every pet is different. Before making any diet changes, talk with your veterinarian to build a plan that supports your pet’s health at every stage of life.

🧡 Community Animal CARE (CAC) includes sharing information so we can prevent, treat at home and know when to call a Vet. Sharing is CARING.

🛤️ In Hancock County, Georgia, the Smith family— descendants of enslaved people —have owned their land for over 100 years. Now, a railroad owned by the descendant of the man who enslaved their ancestors is using eminent domain to take it.

The Sandersville Railroad, owned by Benjamin Tarbutton III, has state approval to seize private property for a rail spur to transport gravel from a nearby quarry. This decision is being challenged in court by 92-year-old Ida Lowe Blocker and elderly couple Bennie and Eloise Clayton. Blocker's great-grandmother was enslaved in the area and later helped establish Granite Hill, a Black settlement destroyed by quarry blasting.

🚂 The railroad claimed $1.5 million in economic benefits, but Tarbutton admitted he wouldn't hire new employees. Quarry jobs pay $24 to $28 per hour, far below the suggested $90,000 salary. Among the five businesses needing the rail line, three, including one owned by the railroad, said they don’t need it.

The Tarbutton family has donated over $860,000 to Georgia politicians, and Tarbutton is the finance chair for Rep. Mike Collins' Senate campaign. Collins' PERMIT Act seeks to eliminate environmental oversight and expedite legal challenges for similar projects, impacting two protected waterways.

🗳️ In 2015, the primarily white Board of Elections in Hancock County challenged the registrations of 174 predominantly Black Sparta voters, leading to intimidation by sheriff's deputies. This caused many Black residents to skip the next election. Civil rights groups sued, resulting in a 2018 federal consent decree that restored eligible voters. However, lower Black turnout allowed white candidate Allen Haywood to win the mayoral race for the first time in 32 years, despite concerns about his ties to Tarbutton, as he fully supports the project.

The seizure would split eight farms. The railroad provided only one 25-foot crossing per property, inadequate for tractors, combines, or livestock.

🔗 Read the full article on Capital B News using the link below:
https://capitalbnews.org/georgia-railroad-eminent-domain-black-landowners/