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Government & Elected Officials

Niagara Foundation Welcomes Kristine Cohn, Secretary's Regional Representative, Region V, U.S. Department of Education for a Luncheon Forum.

Theme: No Child Left Behind, and the Federal Role in the U.S. Education System

Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Reception: 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon: 12.15 p.m.

Venue: Niagara Foundation

203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60601

T- (312) 701-0086 F- (312) 701-0087 info@niagarafoundation.org

Niagara Foundation Welcomes Barbara Eason-Watkins, Chief Education Officer of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) for a Luncheon Forum.

Theme: Progress and New Directions

Date: Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Reception: 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon: 12.15 p.m.

Venue: Niagara Foundation

203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60601

T- (312) 701-0086 F- (312) 701-0087 info@niagarafoundation.org

Shots from the event:

Niagara Foundation Welcomes Arne Duncan, Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, for a Luncheon Forum.
http://www.cps.k12.il.us

Theme : “Chicago Renaissance Schools Initiative”

Date: Tuesday-Jan 15, 2008

Reception: 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon: 12.15 p.m.

Venue: Niagara Foundation

203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60601

T- (312) 701-0086 F- (312) 701-0087 info@niagarafoundation.org

Shots from the event:

Niagara Foundation Welcomes, Philip J. Cline, Chicago Police Superintendent, for a Luncheon Forum.

Theme : CAPS---Community policing via a partnership between police and the community

Date: Thursday-May 31, 2007

Reception: 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon: 12.30 p.m.

Venue: Niagara Foundation

203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60601

T- (312) 701-0086 F- (312) 701-0087 info@niagarafoundation.org

Shots from the event (click on image to enlarge it)

Niagara Foundation Welcomes Pat Quinn, Lt. Governor for the State of Illinois, for a Luncheon Forum.

http://www.standingupforillinois.org

Theme: Building an Environmentally Sustainable Future

Date: Thursday - April 5, 2007

Reception: 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon: 12.30 p.m.

Venue: Niagara Foundation

203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60601

T- (312) 701-0086 F- (312) 701-0087 info@niagarafoundation.org

Pat Quinn's Speech

Pat Quinn: Abraham Lincoln would be pretty proud with Niagara Foundation

Since its foundation, Niagara Foundation dedicated itself to establish peace and dialogue condition, to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue and to build ever-lasting and strong friendship and relationship among Chicago’s very diverse set of religious, ethnic and cultural communities. Having determined to non-stop work in this aspect, Niagara Foundation again hosted a very significant player in Chicago, Lt. Governor of Illinois, Mr. Pat Quinn. Niagara Foundation hosted Pat Quinn to discuss the opportunities and challenges of building an environmentally sustainable future. Quinn basically delivered the keynote address at Thursday’s forum, followed by a question and answer session as well as lunch and conversation with audience.

The Niagara Foundation Luncheon Forum series provides a regular venue for nonpartisan discussions designed to foster friendship and deepen inter-cultural awareness and understanding among the many diverse ethnic and civic communities in the Greater Chicago Area.

Protecting the environment is a top priority for Lt. Governor Quinn. As Chairman of the Illinois delegation to the bi-national Great Lakes Commission, Quinn understands the importance of working with other states and other countries to ensure a more sustainable future.

Quinn also serves as chairman of the Illinois Biofuels Investment and Infrastructure working group, the Illinois River Coordination Council, the Mississippi River Coordinating Council and the Illinois Green Government Coordinating Council.

Kemal Oksuz, the Executive Director of Niagara Foundation welcomed everybody and thanked the audience for joining us today for the luncheon forum. After watching a brief history of luncheon forum series at Niagara Foundation and reading Pat Quinn’s résumé, Kemal Oksuz, invited everyone to welcome Pat Quinn to the tribune.

Pat Quinn thanked everybody for being here today and expressed that he is looking forward to having very sincere and interesting discussions with the audience. “I really appreciate the invitation and it is very inspiring to see all of your previous guests at the Niagara Foundation’s Luncheon Forum series speaking on various important topics.” Pat Quinn had said that he was going to discuss energy issues today. He also paid a special attention to the Monday’s landmark decision of the Congress on carbon emissions. According to the law, carbon emissions should be regulated by environment agencies. “All of us, across the world should address all these environmental problems in 21st century”. He also contended that it was 37 years ago when we were re-drafting the constitution and trying to put a special article on environmental consciousness. “We wanted to put in our constitution an environmental article to show that we do care about environment.” The article claims that it is a fundamental right to have a healthful environment for citizens of the state of Illinois. “It is every person’s duty for future as well” emphasized Pat Quinn. He also told that we work with Canada closely in energy issues.

He told that representative body in Washington D.C. adopted a law on having more sewage systems for drinking water in Lake Michigan. “We ask you to protest and block IPA using internet democracy and e-mails. At the same time, there is also a new law about free fire zones on Lake Michigan. “We also need to protest this law, because government violated our agreement with Canada in 1812 by launching this initiative” said Pat Quinn.

“I prefer promoting good ideas like sustainability and we want to be the greenest state in America” said Pat Quinn. He also talked about green roofs and how all these roofs have been designed by Soya Bean. “We have green roof in Chicago and like to encourage in our state though it is expensive. Our state is number one is growing Soya beans and we are going to have sustainability and we are going to replace oil with Soya beans. And we can make it a white paint.” Shed aquarium has Soya bean roofs. The roof makes building hotter in non-Soya bean roof. Shed Aquarium, however, is cooler.

“It is all saving to us too. We can protect our state, city and economy. We need to have green way of thinking. Reducing use of energy and save on money and create new jobs. I was voted by the Soya bean as the man of the year for these initiatives” added Pat Quinn.

“Governor of Illinois appointed me to be the director of black-out-solutions environmental agency” last year. “This is important” he added. For example, there were problems in New York and Canada where 50 million people lost their electricity and this certainly affected the Illinois, too. There were people in bad situation. They couldn’t use anything in New York. Many other people were severely inconvenienced. He emphasized the electric infrastructure in Illinois. “The electric infrastructure is the most complicated machine in human history” said Pat Quinn. It is important to have energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. “More efficient, more workable. We try to come up with all kinds of projects regarding this issue” said Quinn.

Pat Quinn also said that they are working with universities like Benedictine University and Northwestern University. According to Pat Quinn, they signed a joint contract with Benedictine University on dealing with energy efficiency and sustainability. He also put that Northwestern University is the only one in the nation buying wind and solar power.

He also said that we have number of sights that is suitable for wind and solar power. He told that we have less cloudy days and we are less polluted that Los Angeles, for instance. Also we have to pay attention to CTA, Metra, and Amtrak. We want to have wireless in Amtrak wherever they go.

Pat Quinn also talked about museums about Abraham Lincoln and kindly invited everyone to Springfield to see all those museums. After addressing the questions, Kemal Oksuz gave a gift to Pat Quinn with the harmony of Pat Quinn’s name and Ottoman Sultan’s Seal. Kemal Oksuz explained the wonderful three lines representing peace, dialogue and love and the circle representing the world and the “Pat Quinn” within the world.

While having delicious Turkish food, in his interview to Niagara Foundation’s Media Department, Pat Quinn thanked Niagara for giving an opportunity to him to talk.

“What a great opportunity to have a dialogue with variety of different people from our state and elsewhere. The best way to work out problems everyday we face is to gather together and have lunch and have the good speaker and ask questions and I really enjoyed the whole process. I recommend luncheon series to anybody. If you have few minutes, you can learn a lot in these few minutes and I did a lot today. And on behalf of 13 million people of land of Lincoln, I want to thank the Niagara Foundation for hosting this, organizing it, bringing people together and I think would be pretty proud for this and this is the best government.”

Shots from the event (click on image to enlarge it)

Niagara Foundation Welcomes Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Chicago for a Luncheon Forum.

Theme: Service to Chicago’s Diverse Communities

Date: February 1, 2007

Reception: 12:00 p.m.

Luncheon: 12.30 p.m.

Venue: Niagara Foundation

203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60601

T- (312) 701-0086 F- (312) 701-0087 info@niagarafoundation.org

Robert D. Grant's Speech

Robert Grant: NF is an Excellent Platform for Different Communities to Share Their Cultures and Values

Niagara Foundation’s Luncheon Forum continues to honor itself by hosting a number of significant figures from Chicago area and beyond. The presidents of several universities, the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, The General Manager of ABC 7 Chicago TV channel along with many others are just a few examples.

Niagara Foundation hosted yet another important voice of Chicago, Robert Grant, the Special Agent in charge of FBI Chicago, on 1st of February, 2007 at the Niagara Foundation. Along with splendid and delicious home-made Turkish food and candies, Robert Grant delivered an eloquent speech to the audience filled by people from different communities in Chicago.

Kemal Oksuz, the Executive Director of Niagara Foundation declared the event open and thanked Elmhurst College representatives for the flowers kindly sent to Niagara Foundation as Niagara Foundation sent 30 professors and personnel from Elmhurst College to Turkey for friendship and intercultural dialogue purposes. Beautiful flowers showed the thankfulness and gratitude of Americans to Turkish hospitability in Turkey. Later on, Mr. Oksuz presented a short biography of Robert Grant and introduced him to the audience and left the podium for the speaker.

Robert Grant was addressing to high profile people and full audience. Some FBI workers in Chicago were also present at the forum. Robert Grant firstly introduced his life-time experience from his childhood and stressed the intercultural and interfaith issues and problems that he faced when he had lived in Virginia. He told that he was a strong protestant despite of his predominantly environment of Catholics and his parents shared 4 different ethnic and religious backgrounds. He went on pointing out that his lifetime experience with racism, religious, ethnic and civil rights strife and violations led him be determined on his way to where he currently is.

Then he emphasized how diverse city of Chicago is and how distinct ethnic and cultural communities live side by side with peace for almost a decade but not more. He said that currently Italians, Greeks, Asians, Middle Easterns, Hispanics, Polish, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Albanians, Russians, Czechs are living in the city of Chicago. “Although blacks were few in the turn of the 20th century, it increased during 70s” added Mr. Grant. “The city of Chicago is one of the most diverse cities in the US. It is ever changing and dynamic. Its geographic and strategic location makes it even more compatible to trade and economy” said Robert Grant. He told that there still do exist different cultures, values, religions and values so that FBI’s existence is of utmost importance. He also told that FBI consists of police forces and domestic spies or intelligence agencies. Also according to Robert Grant, it was important to alleviate fear that people have toward FBI. By stressing “When people fear to institutions that are responsible for the security of the people, then the services being provided diminish”, Mr. Grant defended his thesis of fear vs. police force/security institutions. It is supposed to be FBI’s job to protect all people regardless of their race and culture and/or ethnic background and give the justice to all.

He talked a little bit about FBI’s story of more than hundred years. He also confessed that FBI was a corrupt institution until 1970s. He listed down the decades and pointed out the priorities for FBI in particular decades. If in 1940s security of state borders, in 1950s, Cold war, espionage, in 1960s Vietnam War, Civil rights, organized crime were among priorities, it was 1970s and 1990s that FBI primarily focused on drugs, human trafficking, civil rights, Watergate scandal, and organized crimes. He told that 2001 was a turning point for FBI when two World Trade Center skyscrapers attacked by terrorists. It made FBI be more focused on homeland security and terrorist issues. FBI is a branch of Department of Justice. In the end of his formal presentation he talked about the main mission of FBI which is to protect all Americans, priorities as terrorist attacks, organized, high-tech and violent crimes, civil crimes and corruption. Core values are the respect to constitution and make sure that all executions and implementations are in line with the constitution of the Union. Then dignity, compassion, personal integrity, accountability for consequences is among FBI’s core values.

He briefly talked about the structure of FBI at the end of his speech. He told that FBI has 27,000 employees and divided into a number of divisions. Also it is very competitive to get into FBI.

As his topic was about Chicago’s diverse communities, he touched upon international and transnational criminal communities, too. According to Grant, in Chicago there are Bulgarian, Russian, Romanian, Korean, Albanian, Italian, Asian, Middle Eastern, Nigerians, and Polish Organized Crimes. It is mainly due to the friendship and relationships established among the members of those distinct communities so that they can act together and launch criminal groups.

Grant also complained about the civil rights issues and brutality of police to different ethnic communities in Chicago. But he also stressed that he experienced the decline of civil rights violation and racism cases throughout his career and it is primarily due to the professionalism in the work of FBI.

He concluded his speech by emphasizing the biggest problems that FBI is trying to solve which are human trafficking and slavery that is on significant rise in the country. He then responded to the questions posed to him by the audience. Executive Director of Niagara Foundation, Kemal Oksuz presented a very precious and meaningful gift to Robert Grant. The gift was a portrait of a single fascinating flower what we call as “Ebru” in Turkish. In Ebru kind of portraits, painters use many colors but none of them change their color during the decoration process. Every color keeps its original nature and it symbolizes friendship and intercultural communication attempts as many cultures, religions, communities live side by side peacefully without changing into another or assimilating into each other. Last half an hour of the event was a sweet picture of dialogue, getting to know each other, nice talks and constructive communications among different communities of Chicago while enjoying their food. Robert Grant thanked Niagara Foundation for its wonderful job and being an excellent platform for different communities to share their cultures and values in his interview to Niagara Foundation, Niagara Foundation Media Department reported. Also Mrs. Pascal, vice-consul of France to Chicago, sent her congratulations to Niagara Foundation as “it brings high profile speakers to stage so far” added Mrs. Pascal.

There were many leaders at the event from small communities in Chicago as well as representatives from FBI agency, vice-consul of France to Chicago, vice-president of Elmhurst College, representatives from many educational institutions, NGOs, governmental agencies along with representatives from Turkish community in Chicago.

The next luncheon forum is announced to be on 15th February, 2007 at Niagara Foundation. This time the speaker will be Professor Martin E. Marty from the University of Chicago.

Shots from the event (click on image to enlarge it)

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