"The Bloomington Alternative - 2015 Mayoral Edition Interviews" will play back-to-back-to back at the following times on The Library Channel (Comcast Channel 3). Each candidate for the Democratic nomination for Mayor in the May 5 Primary -- Darryl Neher, John Hamilton and John Linnemeir -- participated.

Linnemeier has dropped out of the race, throwing his support to City Councilman Darryl Neher. His name will still appear on the ballot.

The interviews feature each candidate's responses to the same questions about homelessness/housing, downtown development, police and deer. They run between 50 minutes and an hour, more or less.

Each candidate was also asked to define the term progressive.

The interviews will run in their entirety.

• Thursday, April 30: 7:35 p.m.  (Neher, Hamilton, Linnemeier)
• Friday, May 1: 7:30 p.m. (Hamilton, Neher, Linnemeier)
• Saturday, May 2: 12:30 p.m. (Neher, Hamilton, Linnemeier)
• Sunday, May 3: 6 p.m. (Linnemeier, Hamilton, Neher)

Post-production work was provided by Bloomington's Community Access Television Services.

The interviews will be posted to YouTube and The Bloomington Alternative website.

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Dear friends and readers,

I have decided to briefly revive The Bloomington Alternative to take advantage of a second-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lifelong political junkie – the chance to cover a contested election for Bloomington mayor. Since I moved off campus and into the Bryan Park neighborhood in 1971 (the first of three such moves), the only close race I recall was John Fernandez versus Charlotte Zietlow in the 1995 Democratic Primary.

My aging memory’s dependability aside, it is a fact that this may be the last race in which the outcome isn't a forgone conclusion for a decade or more, so I’m jumping back in, even though I really don’t have the time. The Bloomington Alternative – 2015 Mayoral Edition will be a work in progress, but here’s how I see it going.

The centerpiece will be on-camera interviews with the three Democratic candidates on the May 5 ballot: Darryl Neher, John Hamilton and John Linnemeier. The interviews are being scheduled between April 16 and 19. They will be taped and later rebroadcast on Community Access Television Services (CATS) as part of their lead up to the election. Linnemeier and Neher have scheduled theirs. I am waiting to hear from Hamilton.

Because I have been outside the inside political scene for many years, the interviews will focus on four issues I have come face to face with while walking, biking and driving through the slice of Bloomington I travel most, a triangular-shaped path between Bryan Park, Downtown and Ernie Pyle Hall:

• Homelessness/housing,
• Downtown development,
• Police/crime, and
• Urban deer.

There are dozens of other issues I'd like to explore, but we won’t have time to discuss them all. And I have multiple, competing deadlines between now and Primary Day anyway. I'll do what I can.

As I try to get up to speed, I will, at a minimum, be sharing what I learn on the Alternative and, for now, on my Facebook Page, where I reported that almost $900,000 sits untapped in a city fund that is supposed to be helping combat unaffordable housing.

Friend me on Facebook to follow this and other discussions.

Steve

Though the U.S. contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it confines nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Furthermore, as of 2008 it had 2.3 million in jails and prisons, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College, London.

Reducing the population in the Monroe County jail is the goal of a local, grassroots organization, Decarcerate Monroe County (DMC). In its own words, DMC “is a local coalition challenging the belief that cages, coercion and confinement keep our community safe. DMC believes people are safe when they have their basic needs met and when they feel empowered and free.”

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Global education strike planned for the fall
• Surveillance of citizens with automatic license plate recognition cameras
• Drone use inside the United States
• Feminist punk band Pussy Riot on trial in Russia
• Pfizer bribing foreign physicians to hike sales
• Cutting funding for nuclear weapons
• Cuba lifts ban on anti-Castro musicians on the radio
• Women farm workers win sexual harassment case
• British workers in solidarity with trade unionists in Turkey
• Expulsion from school for pregnancy

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Indiana’s Camp Atterbury one of 64 U.S. drone bases
• Vote for Hyatt as the country’s worst hotel employer
• Congressional opponents of women’s health attacking again
• Happy 50^th to Walmart
• Global elite evades taxes to the tune of $21 trillion
• Most minimum-wage workers at large, profitable companies
• New Israeli ship operates without people on board
• Petition demanding troop withdrawal from Afghanistan now
• Judge prevents closure of Mississippi’s last abortion clinic
• Activist arrested near White House for protesting hemp ban

Monroe County social service agencies are seeking alternative ways to raise revenues as private and public support for their missions decreases and the need for assistance increases. As bleak economic times cripple the impoverished community, agencies are turning to collaboration and merger to increase efficiency.

Local agencies receive public funding from two City of Bloomington sources – Jack Hopkins Social Service Program grants and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG).

“The Hopkins fund is named after a city council member named Jack Hopkins who had this vision that this fund, completely independent of any state or federal influences, would be started locally, from our local tax base,” City Council and Hopkins Committee Member Andy Ruff said in an interview in his office in Sycamore Hall on July 22.

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• 2012 likely to be journalists’ deadliest year so far
• Protestors charged with third-degree riot for defending house from foreclosure
• Aid for Haitian earthquake victims goes to build hotels
• Facts about inequality in the U.S.
• Community-labor alliance spurs unionization effort
• War Resister confined to sanctuary of Canadian church
• Military recruiting troops through motorsports marketing
• Texas Wal-Mart becomes nation’s largest single-story library
• Chinese Apple workers undergoing superexploitation
• Torture in CIA 'black site' secret prison in Poland

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Policing U.S. Schools and Criminalizing Childhood
• Thai workers in near-slavery supplying Walmart with food
• Women’s benefits from the Affordable Care Act
• Abuse of youth in for-profit prisons
• National Nurses United wins Florida contract
• Female immigrant farm workers facing sexual violence and harassment
• Support grows for Wilmington 10 pardons
• Traveler forced to miss her flight because of her t-shirt
• Secret Services attempts to hide prostitution-related expenses
• Attack on women’s health organization in New Orleans

Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Sham Violence Against Women Act guts protections
• U.S. trade representative receives Corporate Power Tool Award
• Voter sues Pennsylvania over voter ID law
• Counting and naming all drone strike victims
• Lockout at Sotheby’s enters its 10th month
• House votes to slash food aid but fund the Pentagon more
• Former Citigroup executive receives honorary doctorate
• Feds designate “martial law red zone” around Chicago’s Loop
• Lawsuit targets NYPD stop-and-frisk practices
• Florida’s color- and gender-coded justice system

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Peace & Justice News is a collection of news items collected by Bloomington Alternative contributor Linda Greene. Today's edition includes:

• Living well without God
• Animal rights activist plaintiff in First Amendment case
• Military spending, taxes unending
• Help end 21 years of solitary confinement for prisoner
• Single-payer health care can save $570 billion
• Mali union activist Tiecoura Traore visits the U.S.
• If you have a large student loan debt, it’s your fault
• 43rd Venceremos Brigade to leave for Cuba
• Corporations profiteering on women’s health
• Rio Tinto supports Olympic Summer Games, locks out workers