Vol. VII No. 39 Cook County raises new flag, PAGE 8
SEPTEMBER 28, 2022
vfpress.news
Sterling Brown has a cool new gig, PAGE 4
‘We need you’
Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough calling on veterans to be election workers on Nov. 8 By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough, whose office runs elections in suburban Cook County, is calling on military veterans to sign up as election judges and poll workers in the Nov. 8 Gubernatorial Election. “We have a serious shortage of judges and poll workers,” Clerk Yarbrough said during a press conference on Sept. 20. “We’ve seen our number of election judges shrink significantly in recent years.” Yarbrough said the number of poll workers has fallen by 40% over the last eight years. She said she currently has about 4,000 people who have indicated their availability to work on Election Day but she needs at least 7,000 to cover every open position. Polling place technicians make $365 and election judges make $200 for their day-long service. Anyone interested in working the polls can apply at: cookcountyclerk.com/work. Yarbrough explained that the pandemic and age are contributing to the reduction in polling workers in suburban Cook County. She said the average election judge is between 65 and 70 years old. The clerk said 4,500 election judges showed up for service on Election Day in June compared to more than 7,100 judges who worked on Election Day in the 2018 midterm election — the last midterm before the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the dearth of election workers is a problem across the nation, before pointing out that “an estimated 130,000 poll workers have stopped serving over the past three midterm elections across the nation.” Yarbrough said the northwest suburbs, including those in Proviso Township, are where See CLERK on page 8
SHANEL ROMAIN/Staff Photographer
Misha Jenkins holds a sign notifying drivers traveling on Washington Boulevard on Sept. 24 that she and her fellow Beyond Center Church congregants are offering “Free Prayer” to anyone who wants it at the nearby Stevenson center in Bellwood. See more photos on page 2.
Jeri Stenson, Maywood museum curator, dies at 90 Stenson helped establish the West Town Museum of Cultural History, was pivotal in discovering Maywood’s connection to the Underground Railroad By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Laurietta Jeri Stenson, the longtime curator of the West Town Museum of Cultural History, 104 S. 5th Ave.
in Maywood, died Sept. 20. Stenson, who was better known by her middle name, was 90 years old. Multiple people affiliated with Operation Uplift Inc., the museum’s nonprofit parent organization, confirmed her death. Stenson helped establish the West Town Museum with Northica H. Stone in 1995. Stone’s late husband, George E. Stone II, was a union organizer who founded Operation Uplift in 1968 to train Blacks for white-collar careers. The nonprofit provided job training, job counseling, pre-employment skills, and GED assistance, among other services. When Stone II died in 1988, Operation Uplift’s board of directors sought a
way to sustain his spirit and perpetuate the organization that he founded. His wife realized that a museum was a two-tiered solution to both Uplift’s and Maywood’s problems. “We saw that Maywood was underserved and the history that Maywood had was being lost,” Northica Stone told Village Free Press in 2013. When the museum opened, Stone and Stenson said they were was inundated with the attic and basement things of people who hope to preserve something of the past. “Once we put the word out, they See STENSON on page 3