Joel Handley, a former assistant editor at In These Times, is a Chicago-based independent journalist and freelance editor.
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Feature
Who Do You Protect, Who Do You Surveil?
The Chicago Police Department has spent millions on high-tech spying equipment, including cell-phone tracking technology, but is extremely secretive about its use.
Joel Handley
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Feature
Under ACLU-Drafted Bill, Illinois Police Must Forget Where You’ve Been
A new Illinois State Senate bill could end the mass collection and indefinite storage of license plate tracking data by police.
Joel Handley
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Feature
Chicago Police Tight-lipped About Use of License Plate Scanners, Despite $500,000 New Contract
A secretive contracting process—and limited responses to information requests—leave Chicagoans in the dark about how their license plate data is being collected and used.
Joel Handley
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Feature
EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Show FBI Targeted NATO Protesters
In the lead-up to the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago, federal agents teamed with local police to find and interrogate suspected anarchists.
Joel Handley
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Feature
Slip of an Officer’s Tongue Suggests Police Are Monitoring #BlackLivesMatter Protesters’ Cell Phones
Are Chicago police using 'stingrays' against activists?
Joel Handley
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Feature
Introducing ‘We Surveil and Protect’: An In These Times Investigation
A brief history of surveillance by the Chicago Police Department.
Joel Handley
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Feature
A Budget by the People, for the People
Participatory budgeting is on the menu in Chicago.
Joel Handley
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Why I Followed Rahm Emanuel to the Bathroom
Joel Handley
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Feature
Whose Budget? Their Budget.
At their first participatory budgeting vote, 5th ward residents take $1 million in municipal funds into their own hands.
Joel Handley
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Feature
A Crash Course in Citizen Budgeting
What Chicago can learn from participatory budgeting projects around the world.
Joel Handley
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Feature
Budgetary Power to the People
An experiment with direct democracy on Chicago's South Side.
Joel Handley
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Feature
Out of Order Comes Chaos
Chicago's black gangs aren't the criminal enterprises they once were, but the police won't change their story.
Joel Handley
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Feature
Illinois’ Injustice System
Budget cuts are hard on ex-cons trying to make good.
Joel Handley
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Feature
The Poverty of School Reform
In Chicago's African-American neighborhoods, schools change quickly—regardless of what families want.
Joel Handley
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Dispatch
Donald Rumsfeld’s Ugly Suits
U.S. citizens suing the former defense secretary for torture may finally get a day in court.
Joel Handley
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Dispatch
Divesting From Private Prisons
A new coalition of immigrant and labor groups tries to shame the nation's largest investment firms.
Joel Handley
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Labor
After Valentine’s Day Firing, Ill. Workers Protest for Better Severance Pay
Joel Handley
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Dispatch
‘Zee’ End of Blackwater?
The troubled security firm gets a makeover.
Joel Handley