We’re honoring our nearly 100-year history by including nameplates from our past. This one is from 1960-61. See page 2.
Volume #103
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Issue #26
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May 20, 2019
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depauliaonline.com
Pilsen proposes historic landmark to slow gentrification By Gianfranco Ocampo Contributing Writer
Gentrification across Chicago could potentially slow down in the Pilsen neighborhood. On Thursday, May 16, the Chicago Landmarks Commissioners voted unanimously to recommend a proposal to turn a 1.5-mile stretch on 18th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood into a historic landmark. The plan will now go to City Council’s Zoning Committee.
The yearslong activism to slow down gentrification in the Pilsen community has been aided by both DePaul’s Chair of the Geography Department Winifred Curran and Professor of the Geography department Euan Hague. “Gentrification has long faced community backlash. One critical element is that there is a lack of respect by developers, investors and new residents from finding a hot new neighborhood,” Hague said. “It’s a disregard of the lives that previous residents have made in the
neighborhood previously. People feel a loss of control over their neighborhood.” Both professors have been part of this activist movement since the early 2000s by helping the Pilsen Alliance, a social justice organization that fights for public education, affordable housing and government accountability. Curran mentioned that after doing some research in their academic studies on Pilsen, they had discovered useful policy tools that could slow down gentrification. They felt a responsibility to do something about it.
To help the organization, both professors research and provide relevant information to either figure out which buildings are being considered for either renovation or razing or how to combat any movements made to further gentrify the neighborhood. “I think some of the technical aspects such as zoning laws, historic preservation policy, city ordinances that control urban development were not necessarily
See GENTRIFICATION, page 3
Chicago will remember Emanuel as he was, not as he wants By Benjamin Conboy Editor-in-Chief
COMMENTARY
MAERIED KAHN | THE DEPAULIA
Sydney Johnson, a freshman criminology major, takes a head-first dive down a bouncy slide at DePaul’s Spring Carnival on the Linocoln Park campus. Chicago’s weather has been flirting with signs of spring over the last month, but the sun broke through just in time for Spring Carnival.
Bouncing into spring
States chart own path on protecting immigrants By Richie Requena Contributing Writer
While President Trump has made a hard-line immigration stance a central focus of his presidency — from threatening to shut the U.S. border with Mexico, to cutting aid to Central American countries to his 2016 campaign comments that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, bringing crime” into the country — on the state level, it’s a more uneven picture. While some states like Alabama enacted tough immigration measures long before Trump came into office, other states like Minnesota, Florida and Illinois have ignored the rhetoric in Washington in favor of bills that enshrine the rights of undocumented immigrants. Some of the recent legislation has focused on the issue of giving state driver’s licenses to such individuals. Section 12 of Alabama House Bill 56, which was signed back in 2011,
SOURCE: NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER
states that an officer of the law can check the immigration status of a person if they have “reasonable suspicion” that a person is “an alien or unlawfully present” during an arrest, detention or lawful stop. The Southern Poverty Law Center and other advocacy groups sued Alabama in federal court over the bill, seeking to have it blocked in 2013. Certain provisions still
MARLEE CHLYSTEK | THE DEPAULIA
apply, including Section 12, but officers are no longer supposed to arrest someone if it’s only to check their status. A section of the bill also bans undocumented students from enrolling in public colleges. Before 2005, each state was allowed
See IMMIGRATION, page 11
Rahm Emanuel walked out of his City Hall for the final time as mayor of Chicago on Friday. The paintings depicting an industrial Chicago that hung on the walls of his fifth-floor office were gone. The room he had occupied for eight years looked barren, cold and empty. A political heavyweight who ruled the White House as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, who loomed large in the halls of the House of Representatives as a congressman, Emanuel left office clutching his damaged, but mostly intact legacy. Throngs of people cheered in the lobby of City Hall as he shook what might be the final hands of his political career (he equivocates when reporters have asked him if he will ever seek elected office again). Even George Blakemore, the City Hall gadfly who launches into antimachine tirades at board meetings, gave Emanuel a hug and a high-five as a send-off. Emanuel spent the final weeks of his time as mayor trying to cement his legacy — or at least, his version of it. Reporters questioned him on the most controversial moments of his tenure, like the withholding of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, the decision to close 50 schools in mostly low-income neighborhoods and the spotty use of TIF money. Emanuel, ever the politician, had a rehearsed, three-part answer for everything. He knew that if he didn’t speak up, his name would always be mentioned in the same breath as his missteps. I led the charge on police reform, not resisted it, he’d say. The decision to close schools helped communities, not hurt them. To be fair to Emanuel, he was dealt a pretty bad hand. His predecessor, Mayor Richard M. Daley, left the city with a financial mess that forced Emanuel to raise
See EMANUEL, page 7