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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 7, Issue 3 Editor-in-Chief Adam Przybyl Managing Editors Sam Joyce Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michelle Anderson Music Editor Atavia Reed Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor AV Benford Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Lucia Geng, Carly Graf, Robin Vaughan, Jocelyn Vega, Tammy Xu, Jade Yan Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Social Media Editors Grace Asiegbu, Arabella Breck, Maya Holt Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler Visuals Editor Lizzie Smith Deputy Visuals Editors Siena Fite, Mell Montezuma, Sofie Lie Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Siena Fite, Katherine Hill Interim Layout Editor J. Michael Eugenio Deputy Layout Editors Haley Tweedell, Nick Lyon Webmaster Managing Director
Pat Sier Jason Schumer
The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com
Cover Photo by Amelia Diehl
IN CHICAGO IN THIS A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors
Can You Trust a Burke? Anne and Ed Burke have always made a baffling Chicago power couple. What, exactly, does the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court—a generally well-respected jurist passionate about bond court reform—see in the alderman who has long been the face of old-school Chicago machine politics? And whatever the personal dynamics of their relationship may be, can we trust Anne’s independence as a judge, especially now that Ed is under federal investigation for using his Southwest Side aldermanic post to steer business to his private law firm? On that front, recent reporting by WBEZ suggests that Anne may not be as adept at avoiding conflicts of interest involving her husband’s law firm as she has pledged to be. While Anne has frequently recused herself from cases that might involve a conflict of interest, WBEZ found that she ruled in favor of utility company ComEd, a client of Ed’s former firm, in two cases over the past few years. While there’s no evidence that ComEd specifically hired the Klafter & Burke firm in order to benefit from Anne Burke’s role on the bench, it’s not a good look, especially in a state with a storied history of corruption. As legal experts quoted by WBEZ point out, the Burke conundrum is one reason why Illinois judges ought to be required to explain their reasons for recusing themselves from cases, so that the public can understand their recusal patterns and have confidence in their independence. (Currently, there is no such requirement.) The judges can’t just judge themselves.
ISSUE a bad law must be broken
“We are fed up with looking into our kids’ faces and knowing this city doesn’t give a damn about them.” dave stieber.......................................4 a small town’s last cruze
“ You enter into the space, it’s half holy, half assembly line.” helena duncan.................................5 death and rebirth at big marsh park
“This makes me feel like land is more possible to do things on.” amelia diehl.....................................7 the annual south side grape sale
The sale’s roots date back to Prohibition, when the grapes were advertised as simply produce. leo williams......................................9 patchwork portrait
Is Chicago just a patchwork of places where one does or doesn’t belong? max budovitch................................13 chicago nonprofits train south side youth as energy efficiency ‘ambassadors’
“Our hope was that the students would walk away feeling they were empowered.” david thill......................................14
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EDUCATION
LIZZIE SMITH
A Bad Law Must Be Broken Why the possible Chicago teachers’ strike is about so much more than pay and benefits BY DAVE STIEBER
M
y classroom is decorated with historical figures who inspire me. Every person on my wall worked to do what’s right, because they envisioned what a better future should be like for all people. These individuals cared so deeply about their country that they put themselves on the line to advocate for others, even if what was right was not popular, or even legal. I became a social studies teacher because of them. These individuals knew that those in power used legislation and laws to control, discriminate, harm, and dehumanize people. People like Dolores Huerta, who had the courage to fight against a system that made 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ OCTOBER 16, 2019
it difficult for agricultural workers to even imagine organizing a “strike” or a “boycott”. People like Sal Castro, a teacher who was arrested and detained for his role in the 1968 student walkouts that protested the East L.A. school system’s overcrowded and underfunded classrooms. When these activists came across a damaging and controlling law, they would examine it, understand it, and purposefully refuse to follow it. In Illinois, there currently exists a damaging and controlling policy toward teacher unionization, the result of a law rewritten in 1995. Known as the Chicago School Amendatory Reform Act, this policy
was passed to silence teachers’ voices calling for equity in public schools. It gives the mayor full control of the school system and school board. And in an effort to make us look greedy, it forbid teachers from striking over class sizes or teacher appointments, essentially reducing the terms of negotiation to pay and benefits. The law makes it impossible for educators to force the city to admit that having over thirty kids in class is unjust; that understaffing and underfunding libraries at majority Black schools is unjust; that a system-wide shortage of nurses, counselors, and social workers is unjust. This law continues to allow those in power to ignore the conditions and lack of resources in Chicago Public Schools. This law means that the teachers who are on the front lines are unable to get the city to negotiate over true improvements to our public schools. And the inequities students face are so devastating that many politicians and officials in Chicago don’t even send their own children to CPS schools. The Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, and even our own school system call us greedy, claiming that the Board of Education’s recent insufficient contract offer is a “sweet deal”— and otherwise ignore the problems. They want us to simply take a raise and ignore the fact that Chicago’s schools have been criminally underfunded for generations. Every student who has ever attended CPS knows this fact. Every parent of a CPS student knows this. Every teacher who has ever taught in CPS knows this, too. Our schools should have so much more than what they currently do or ever have. Ninety-four percent of Chicago’s educators just authorized our union to strike. In 2012, when CPS was trying to take pay away from teachers, ninety percent of teachers voted to strike. Now, CPS is willing to give us our cost-of-living increases without a fight. So why did more teachers vote to strike this time? We have reached our breaking point: we are so fed up with looking into our kids’ faces every day and knowing this city truly doesn’t give a damn about them. Mayor Lightfoot claims she’s not Rahm, but since she’s become Mayor, I hear a whole lot of Rahm in her statements. Rahm called us greedy and talked badly about us when we had our strike vote. In 2012, his administration drew upon the 1995 law to fight the Chicago Teachers Union in court—all because we had went on strike to negotiate over things besides pay and benefits. Mayor Lightfoot has done all
of these things, besides suing CTU. But if she continues the failing Rahm playbook, I am sure another lawsuit is coming to CTU if we strike on October 17. The city will sue us because, as educators, we dare to demand that our students have everything they deserve, in writing. Mayor Lightfoot said a strike would be “catastrophic” for the students. But in a series of posts on Twitter with the hashtag #PutItInWriting, educators and supporters detailed the real catastrophe (and decadelong catastrophic effects) the lack of funding and resources has had on our CPS schools and students.
Everything that our students, teachers and schools deserve, in writing, includes: 1. Full-time librarians, counselors, clinicians, psychologists, social workers and nurses in every school 2. The special education services students are entitled to by law 3. The hiring of special education teachers, case managers and paraprofessionals 4. Real class size limits
5. The freedom for teachers to plan, grade and be professionals during our teacher preps—the limited time during the day when we don’t have students in front of us 6. True restorative justice programs in schools
7. Taking police officers out of schools
8. Making all schools sanctuary schools
9. Providing mental health services for all students and staff Since the days of Mayor Daley, and continuing throughout the term of Mayor Emanuel, Chicago has fought against those on the front lines of education: the educators. If the city continues to refuse
these demands under Mayor Lightfoot, students will continue to lack the resources that they deserve. When Bernie Sanders was in Chicago recently, publicly supporting public school educators, he said, “…teaching is one of the most patriotic professions that you can do.” It is our patriotic duty to do whatever it takes to get our students what they deserve. The Chicago Teachers Union will strike over pay and benefits. But we will also be striking to disrupt the status quo. We will be striking against systemic racism and generational neglect in our public schools.
HELENA DUNCAN
We will be attempting to follow the lead of those people that I have on my classroom walls—the people that I’ve always aspired to emulate. There have always been bad laws used to harm, discriminate, and to silence people. It is once again time to ignore laws like that. ¬ Dave Stieber is a National Board Certified Social Studies teacher in his 13th year teaching in CPS. His partner teaches in CPS and his two children attend CPS.
A Small Town’s Last Cruze LaToya Frazier’s first Chicago solo exhibit puts labor struggles in context BY HELENA DUNCAN
Y
ou enter into the space, it’s half holy, half assembly line,” says LaToya Ruby Frazier of her photography exhibition “The Last Cruze,” on view at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. The exhibition illuminates the struggles of workers at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, who were told in 2018 that the Chevy Cruze line they built would
be discontinued and the plant “unallocated,” or closed down, part of a larger trend of GM plant closings across the country. Workers were laid off or forced to transfer to GM centers in other states—uprooting or in many cases leaving behind their families— if they wanted to keep their pensions and benefits. “The Last Cruze” is the first Chicago solo show by Frazier, an associate professor of photography at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) whose critically acclaimed work addresses social, racial and economic inequality in America. During this time of profound uncertainty and anxiety, Frazier collaborated with members of the two unions at the Lordstown plant—United Auto Workers Locals 1714 and 1112, which were recently consolidated into one union, Local 1112— who voted in a rare move to allow her access OCTOBER 16, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
VISUAL ARTS
"You enter into the space, it’s half holy, half assembly line."
to their offices and other spaces at the factory so that she could photograph their members and create a visual archive of their stories.
I
n the gallery, Frazier’s black and white photographs hang from a red-orange metal structure in a diagonal line through the center of the space, requiring viewers to weave in and out of the structure to make their way through from one end to the other. “By you activating that space that makes you a part of the assembly line, it makes you on the line as a worker. It also makes you on the line as part of the Cruze,” Frazier said, addressing the audience at a September 28 panel discussion. To take the photographs, Frazier would teach at SAIC Monday through Wednesday and then fly to Cleveland and drive an hour from there to Lordstown to shoot, she said in an interview with Chicago Magazine. The photographs, which were all taken in 2019, underscore that history is unfolding before our eyes: United Auto Workers’ fouryear contract with General Motors expired on September 14, the day the exhibition opened. More than 50,000 UAW members across the country have been on strike since then; the workers’ lives and the social fabric of their communities are unraveling at a dizzying pace. Frazier took many of the photographs in the workers’ living rooms, entire families posing for the camera in front of the fireplace or seated on the couch. In others, workers sit in their union offices or stand in groups outside of the GM complex. Some smile faintly, but others face the camera with apprehension, melancholy, or a resolute sense of pride. Frazier’s captions carefully denote the workers’ titles, union affiliations, how many years of service they’d put in at GM, and which part of the plant they worked in. The rest of the text is written in first-person, taken from interviews conducted by Frazier. In one of the simplest yet most arresting images, a woman embraces another with one hand while wiping a tear with the other, her eyes open and gaze fixed somewhere out of frame. The subject is Kesha Scales of UAW Local 1714, who worked for GM Lordstown’s press room for twenty-two years. She’s hugging her former coworker, Beverly Williams. We would make 3,000 to 4,000 parts per day in the press room, the text reads. You couldn’t hear anything. It was dirty. You smelled like oil, but you know what, you smelled like production. You smelled like you made some 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
money today. It was a little city. In another photograph, a sales and leasing agent named Keith Burke has crawled underneath a car—the last Chevy Cruze built at Lordstown—to look for hidden signatures scrawled by the workers who put chassis together. He takes a photograph with his phone and, in the next image, holds the screen up for Frazier, revealing the workers’ signatures etched into the metal part. Central to the exhibition is this simple theme: pride in one’s work.
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n September 28, Frazier was joined in conversation at UofC with Dave Green, UAW Local 1112’s president, and Rick Smith, its financial secretary, who are both currently participating in the ongoing strike. Sporting a dark blue blazer over a neon orange shirt—a nod to “General Motors blue” and the orange of the assembly line structure, also reflected in the exhibition’s color theme—Frazier asked Green and Smith about their lives as workers and union leaders, the social impact of the closing of the Lordstown plant, and what it was like being photographed in an intensely personal moment for their careers, unions, and families. The two men welcomed the opportunity to meet again at the panel discussion—Green has since been transferred to a General Motors plant in Michigan, and Smith to Indiana. “Every time we assemble for the exhibition and programming it’s also a reunion of the union,” Frazier explained. “Walking into the show when it opened was very powerful for me. I had to step away from it, I became very emotional, you know, this is my livelihood,” said Green, who began working at the Lordstown plant as a temporary summer helper in the summer of 1989, right after graduating from high school, and was hired full-time in 1995. Smith began working at the plant in 1999. Both men’s fathers also worked at the plant, but the union was a family affair in more than a literal sense: “It’s a brotherhood, it’s a sisterhood, it’s a tight-knit family that you know, no matter what you do the person next to you has your back. And that’s unionism. You protect each other.” The show’s opening image depicts Smith, Green, and UAW Local 112 Vice President Timothy O’Hara inside Green’s
office at the union hall. Smith is standing, turning around to face the camera at Frazier’s beckoning. The three men wear serious, almost confrontational expressions. By Smith’s recollection, the plant hadn’t completely shut down yet, and the men were likely discussing the chaos of the layoffs and transfers: “There was just a lot going on...it’s just so powerful that picture, just the setting and seriousness of all of our faces as we were in this discussion.” “And then there’s me,” Frazier said, “As this young woman, this outsider, this nonunion person, a Black woman, like, what does all of that mean?” She said that this dynamic “comes full circle in this arresting, disarming way in the portrait.” If pride is one theme of Frazier’s project, power is another. “For LaToya to come in and share our story, this is powerful for me now because I hope that people recognize that this isn’t going to stop happening until workers decide that they can stand up and they do have that power, there’s power in people,” Green said. “So when I see the artwork now I’m hoping that people understand and kind of grasp that, that these are human lives, we’re not numbers.” The Last Cruze is on view through December 1 at The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., Cobb Hall, Fourth Floor. On November 2 at 3pm, Frazier will speak with members of the UAW Women’s Committee at the UofC’s Swift Hall, 1025 E. 58th St., Third Floor. On November 9 at 3pm, Frazier will hold a walkthrough of the exhibition. The exhibition and companion programming are free and open to the public Helena Duncan is a writer based in Hyde Park. She last wrote for the Weekly in August about the opening of Inga Bookshop in Pilsen.
STAGE AND SCREEN
Death and Rebirth at Big Marsh Park
Dancers and musicians invite the audience to meditate on ecological restoration BY AMELIA DIEHL
C
ity parks on Chicago’s Southeast Side became an unusual stage this fall, when Chicago Dancemakers Forum teamed up with the Park District’s Night Out in the Parks initiative to bring dance outside. This past weekend saw the last of three performances in the Natural Encounters series, each inviting audience members to explore nature areas through dance. CYCLE, choreographed by Erin Kilmurray and performed by seven dancers and a seven-piece band, took audience members on a walk around Big Marsh Park on a rainy Saturday afternoon. About twenty minutes after the posted start time, a crowd gathered near the entrance of the park, braving a soft early autumn rain. Audience members ranged from young to old. Some were accompanied by several dogs, making it clear this would not be a traditional dance piece, but instead focus on participation and engagement with the surrounding landscape. Before the piece began, Kilmurray taught the audience a simple four-step move, which appeared several times in the choreography. First you put your right foot down then clap, left foot down and clap, step back with your right foot and clap, and then step back with your left foot and clap, repeating. It was accompanied by the call, “Move everybody, everybody get up,” borrowed from local group LowDown Brass Band’s song of the same name. John Cicora, band leader and bass drum player, would call this out periodically, leading a seven-piece band: Rajiv Halim on saxophone, Matt Kowalski on trombone, Melissa Neff and
Constantine Alexander on trumpet, Neil Hemphill on snare drum, and Akshat Jain on sousaphone. Choreographed as a kind of procession, the tone—of dance as well as the band— ranged from celebratory to mournful, telling the story of the land’s pollution and rehabilitation.
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ancing of any kind at Big Marsh Park would have been unthinkable just two decades ago. For most of the 1900s, the site was owned by Acme Steel and used as a dump site for the byproducts of the steelmaking process. Acme’s coking plant, one of the largest remaining monuments to the city’s steel industry, still towers over the park to the east. After steel moved on, the site was owned by Waste Management, before it was acquired by the City and passed off to the Park District in 2011. By the time CPD took over , the marsh had become overrun with invasive species, with the ponds choked by reeds and cattails. Debris had severed the connection to Lake Calumet, explained Dr. Lauren Umek, an urban ecologist and project manager for CPD. A plan to restore the habitat and build an eco-recreation park was developed in 2014, and two years ago, the park opened up to the public with a bike park, a new walking trail and a parking lot. While the ground has been capped with clay and the space is safe for visitors, visible remnants of the industry are still present, like an abandoned staircase and various deteriorated structures. About
forty-five of its 280 acres are available for hiking and off-road biking, with other space for birdwatching and walking. The Ford Calumet Environmental Center, an educational and programming hub for the Southeast Side’s natural areas, is expected to open in March 2020. The Park District hopes to restore parts of the park to a native prairie or savanna ecosystem. Umek said the area is now able to support a thriving ecosystem. “In one season, you might find bald eagles, egrets, great blue herons, pelicans, sora, red tailed hawks, softshelled turtles, red-eared sliders, painted turtles and a whole assortment of butterflies, bees, and other otherwise unnoticed species. One local birder has identified over 190 different species of birds on site thus far and we only expect that number to grow as we continue to manage the space and increase the plant diversity.”
T
he park’s history of destruction and rebirth inspired Kilmurray when designing the dance performance. “Walking around the pathways made me think about different pathways, cycles, and loops that we could take performers and [the] audience on,” she said. Kilmurray and Cicora developed the dance and music for the performance with New Orleans-style ritual mourning and celebration in mind. In this kind of procession, often called the second line, family members of the deceased and a hearse would make up the first line of a parade celebrating the life of the deceased, while a jazz band would follow closely behind. After the church service, “the band plays a funeral dirge on the way to the burial site, and then they immediately kick into high gear, as [the procession] takes to the streets to party and celebrate the life,” Kilmurray elaborated. All of the songs in the performance were covers of songs by LowDown Brass Band, Louis Armstrong, Kashmere Stage Band and traditional New Orleans music. Similarly, CYCLE audience members were handed triangles of golden fabric to wave around, which the dancers also used to lead the crowd down the winding path of the performance. Within an hour, the audience walked a loop, pausing to watch a solo or group choreographed moment from performers: Kilmurray, Josh Anderson, Kara Brody, Tia Greer, Alyssa Gregory, Breon Arzell Jackson, Sarah Ellen Miller, and Porscha Spells. While the movement began upbeat, the
ensemble brought the audience to a more reflective space in a secluded thicket along the marsh, where dancer Kara Brody danced along to Rajiv Halim’s slow saxophone solo. The foggy marsh and tall grasses provided a respite away from the crowded city. Audience members were rapt as the movements and sounds evoked the life that continued to thrive in the ecosystem of Big Marsh Park. The mournful moments continued on the shores of the marsh, where four dancers approached and then eventually departed from an abandoned cement structure, of which only three sides were left buried in the ground. From there, dancers continued to lead the audience down the path, pausing to dance in open parts of the park.
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his acknowledgement of the land’s history was an intentional part of the partnership between Night Out in the Parks and Chicago Dancemakers Forum. After Night out reached out to the Forum last spring, Big Marsh Park’s supervisor Stephen Bell provided a tour of each park, and the city asked the dancers to submit a proposal to receive grant funding. From there, leaders of Chicago Dancemakers Forum reached out to dance artists asking them to participate, and the performers created new works in the following months. Since its founding in 2003, Chicago Dancemakers Forum has supported dance artists in the city through “artistic research and development of new work,” executive director Ginger Farley explained, including previous partnerships with the Chicago Park District and Night Out in the Parks. The two earlier pieces in the Natural Encounter series included “Dances for this Land” directed by Nejla Yatkin and Ayako Kato in Indian Ridge Marsh, and “Birds, Bugs and Tap” from Nico Rubio in Hegewisch Marsh. Kilmurray toured Big Marsh in March and again in August, reaching out to dancers she had already worked with before, and taught them the piece just days before the show. While most sections were choreographed, some parts were intentionally left open for improvisation. Breon Arzell, one of the dancers, said he enjoyed the process, and the relaxed tone of the piece spoke to the familiarity the dancers had with each other, and that the dance hopes to spark between the audience and the surrounding environment. The dancers didn’t seem to be wearing any coordinated costumes, instead wearing more or less street clothes, and there was no strict OCTOBER 16, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
STAGE AND SCREEN
AMELIA DIEHL
line between audience and performer; at points they would laugh or hug audience members they knew. “A lot of times when you’re dancing with people it’s a lot about building trust, especially with things like lifts and assists,” Arzell explained. He knew Kilmurray from performing in her long-running Fly Honey Show, a feminist burlesque show that just closed out its tenth season at the Den Theatre. “But we’ve all danced together or known each other so we trust each other, so it was seamless. It was really easy to create because we all love dancing and we all love creating.” He had never come to Big Marsh before, but definitely hopes to explore it more. “We only cover a fraction of all of this place is, and I didn’t even know it existed.” Just like the title of the piece would suggest, the audience was led back to the same path where they started, this time invited to join in to a bigger, jovial celebration in the middle of the cement path. “We were a little disruptive, hope it’s okay. The silence will be all the more palpable,” Kilmurray said after the final, 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ OCTOBER 16, 2019
celebratory number, gesturing to the grasses sprawling behind her, getting polite chuckles from the audience. The themes of death and rebirth really spoke to audience member Rosey Puloka. A local dance and movement therapist who has danced with Kilmurray before, she had never been to the park, and was impressed by how Kilmurray creates a sense of place. “I appreciate that the people in the relationships that are on a land can change any land. This makes me feel like land is more possible to do things on,” she said. “Erin is bringing celebration into death. It felt more like a cycle.” Farley was particularly excited about this project, having directed her own sitespecific works in years past. She also says this partnership is indicative of the priorities that Chicago Dancemakers Forum try to spearhead. “We’ve been working to respond to the things we hear from dance making artists, in that they want to get their work into different kinds of spaces, to cross over into different kinds of audiences,” she explained. For this piece, the organization also reached out to the Nature Conservancy,
Experimental Station, and Blackstone Bicycle Works to engage a wider audience. Paul Fitzgerald, Executive Director of Friends of Big Marsh, was eager to involve the organization in the process of the piece, seeing it as another way to engage the surrounding community. Friends of Big Marsh had already been trying to encourage residents to see the area as a social as well as environmental opportunity, from hosting events like barbecues, DJs, movie nights and even choir concerts. “So much of the Lake Calumet area was built for heavy industry in the last hundred years. We want to make sure that we can build it for people as well,” he said. For their part, Gelasia Croom said the Nature Conservancy has also branched out to engage residents in different ways to get in contact with nature. “We used to be more about nature for nature’s sake,” she said, explaining how the organization now tries to focus on grassroots efforts to make natural areas more accessible for more people. The dancers shared that ethic, too. “I prefer thinking of it as a performance event rather than a dance, because there’s so
much more than just seeing the dance that it is. It’s still happening,” Kilmurray said, gesturing to the grill provided by Friends of Big Marsh. Though the rain eventually drove some people away, audience members stuck around to hug and congratulate the performers, and eat burgers. Some of them even took up Divvy bikes or walked the path again. Following the local organizations’ leads of broadening the experience of nature as universal, Arzell saw CYCLE as a depiction of the connection between life and dance. “We as humans, we are naturally movers and dancers,” Arzell said. “You can dance, everybody can dance, that’s why we’re on two legs. Everything we do is dance. This [piece] awakens that in people and makes them realize that dance doesn’t have to be [divided into audience, stage and performer]. It’s immersive.” ¬ Amelia Diehl is a writer and climate justice organizer originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She last wrote for the Weekly about the environmental justice mayoral forum.
FOOD
YOUNG LORDS NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, Y.L.O. VOL. 1 NO. 5. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
The Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and SDS join the Young Lords in a march from “People’s Park” to Humboldt Park. Published in Y.L.O., a publication of the Young Lords’s Ministry of Information.
The Annual South Side Grape Sale AV BENFORD
For one week every fall, the Santa Fe Grape Distributors provide the juice to keep alive a South Side home wine-making tradition BY LEO WILLIAMS
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very fall, on the fringes of the now largely-empty Central Manufacturing District that spans portions of Bridgeport and McKinley Park, our city’s vintners can find their one-stopshop. Along 35th Street’s wire fence, bold hues of color populate banners, highlighting and declaring Santa Fe Grape Distributors’ sales statement: “California Grape Juice
Sold Here.” On the morning of September 6th the lofty signs appear, crowning the fresh shipment of this year’s grapes. The signs arrive suddenly, so much so that one imagines the trucks and their fruit-bearing cargo arriving in the dewy, muffled stillness of the night, long before oncoming traffic is dense enough to notice. SFGD sets up shop from early September until they run out,
usually around the beginning of October. Each year traffic steers into the lot at 3500 S. Racine to stock up and rejoice in Santa Fe Grape Distributors’ beloved finest-quality grapes. The lot’s entrance sinks down into the yard, opening up wide to several trailers, a kiosk, a picnic table, and a row of shipping containers, all sitting atop cracked pavement.
Over at the kiosk ridden with wine-labels, awaiting the hum of the cars, is the owner of the operation, Dennis Karas. He’s draped in a midnight-blue lab coat and ready to maestro people, cars, trailers, grapes, and money. Alicante Bouschet, Barbera, Ruby Cabernet, Syrah, Muscat, and Chardonnay are a sampling of the varieties you can procure from Karas and his crew—use your OCTOBER 16, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
The change came as the organization wrapped up a yearlong reporting series on asylum seekers, called Asylum City. The series included a five feature stories, a poster campaign, and a mega feature centered on the voices of six asylum seekers living in the Chicago area. If you'd like to put up Asylum City posters in your neighborhood or office, please contact us at info@borderlessmag.org.
This fall, 90 Days, 90 Voices NFP changed its name to Borderless Magazine and launched a new standalone website at www.borderlessmag. org. The website and name will allow the news outlet to continue to grow in years to come and fulfill its mission of reimagining immigration journalism for a more just and equitable future.
The organization also expanded its media training program this year. Executive Director Nissa Rhee made the organization's first out-ofstate trip to speak at the University of Wisconsin at Madison about Borderless' unique ethical guide to reporting on immigration. Finally, the organization was honored to be finalists for two Peter Lisagor awards this year from the Chicago Headline Club for our reporting on Little Village, including the prize for Best In-depth Reporting in a Community Newspaper and Best In-depth Report or Series.
FOOD
legs to lift, because one box alone weighs thirty-six pounds. In total, you can find fifteen different boxes of grapes and nearly twenty different grape juice varieties at SFGD’s yearly vint market, shipped in from California, just as the street-side messages proclaim. When I went to scope the action at 35th and Racine one recent afternoon, a group of men was clustered around boxes of grapes—Dennis and his crew, negotiating a sale. Once what looked like an agreement was reached, the customer’s trailer backed up until it kissed the lip of the grape-filled shipping container. The suppliers loaded up stacks of compacted grapes and away the satisfied customer drove. The Santa Fe Grape Distributors have been running their market more or less like this since the 1930s, tossing pounds of future vino down from boxcars in or around the South Side of Chicago for nearly a century. The business has roved around a handful of trainyards and different empty lots over the years. Still, for generations, Chicago wine-making communities have flocked to SFGD. They can depend on the Californian grape-purveyors appearing every early fall to hawk their vitis vinifera grapes and assorted home-fermentation equipment. SFGD was born during the Prohibition years in Chicago, and as such their grapes were first advertised as simply produce. Early customers were primarily first and second generation Italians, Germans, and other European immigrants. From early on, SFGD cornered a homesick market crying for Old World customs, made possible in the States by the connected route from Chicago to Southern California that traveled along the Santa Fe Railway (from which the distributors adopted their name). During Prohibition, home winemaking boomed, thanks to a little-known loophole: each household was permitted to produce up to 200 gallons of their own wine. Today, Karas says his base is still mostly the European immigrant community, but newer buyers largely flow from a recent influx of Croatians, Lithuanians, and Serbians. It seems Old World habits are folding in their cards — the younger generation is disinterested in the fuss of juicing their own grapes, so they tend not to buy them in raw form. SFGD’s California juice pails are starting to become more popular than the grapes themselves. Karas explained that crates and labor costs are rising too. Customers may not see boxes of grapes at the lot forever, as juices and juice varieties 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ OCTOBER 16, 2019
The 61st Street Farmers Market is a program of the Experimental Station, with the support of:
Chapin May Foundation
start to dominate sales. Fermenting the juice is nearly effortless. Once you acquire a 5-gallon pail (ranging from $70-$80) of SFGD’s fresh-pressed California grape juice, all you’ll need is a quick upgrade from the pail to either a 5-gallon glass carboy ($40) or 15-gallon demijohns ($80) container, which Karas supplies as well. The juice SFGD sells is Regina-brand juice that waits for customers in a temperature-controlled trailer, ready for immediate fermentation. “The acid, the pH level, the color, the sugar content, and the natural yeasts have all been carefully balanced,” Karas said. So all you have to do is transfer the juice into your vessel, pop on an airlock, wait, and monitor the sugar levels to determine how dry or sweet you want the wine. For around $120 you can get about 30 standard size bottles of your own house wine, and from there you can start to build your portfolio. Those intimidated by vertical rows of vines, traditional walled terraces, or the pretension around wine-labels can find solace in the quick, no-nonsense, Chicago drawl of the experts orchestrating the lot. While I talked to Karas, several men gathered around the designated picnic table, brown bags enclosing long-necked bottles of wine. The grape distributor’s flyer asserts, “Chicago’s Largest Car-Lot Receivers and Distributors,” and they deliver on that proclamation (and deliver to your home, if you ask!). The SFGD is a viaduct for bringing full-bodied, sippable cultural heritage to our present day. Their trucks are filled with vineyard grapes from Lodi, Fresno, Delano, Sonoma, Modesto, Kingsburg, and Bakersfield, California, and they’ve given life to home wine-making in Chicago for more than eight decades. It’s possible to feel out of depth sitting in this busy lot surrounded by stacked-up truckloads of grape product, the grey industrial tones looming overhead, but you’re among tradition here, in the presence of the gatekeepers of a long South Side practice. ¬ Leo Williams is an artist and writer from Miami, FL currently living in Bridgeport. Leo's writing explores food justice and history, fermentation, and gender. Their favorite flavor this Fall is anything astringent. Follow (and connect) with them on Twitter & Instagram @kefir_daddy.
LIT
Patchwork Portrait
Does it still make sense to think of Chicago as a city of neighborhoods? BY MAX BUDOVITCH
I
n the 1960s, teenagers in Marquette Park spent time on 69th Street in smoky bars with “Members Only” signs. No one could say exactly what it took to be a member, because no proprietor ever asked for identification to prove age, a scapular from the church, or a membership card from the Nazi Party or KKK—neighborhood fixtures at the time. Those who entered into the swimming darkness behind the glass block facades only knew that, as the sons of Lithuanian refugees in Marquette Park, a neighborhood of Lithuanian refugees, they belonged. Is Chicago just a patchwork of places where one does or doesn’t belong? That’s the question that Gint Aras asks in “Marquette Park: Members Only.” It’s one among forty-five stories, photo essays, and poems in The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, a recent arrival from Belt Publishing, which takes a neighborhood-level look at the city through different lenses including a Garfield Park photo essay, a whimsical essay set in Humboldt Park, and a Gold Coast sketch. The geographic spiral that structures the book’s forty-five chapters deliberately lingers on the South Side and other parts of the city that fall outside a Loop-centric gaze (Lincoln Park does not even get a chapter). This patchwork portrait leans into the beloved trope that Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. In their varied voices, however, the Guidebook’s authors go deeper than reiterating the neighborhood notion by hitting at the power of place and describing how a neighborhood can shape us, often from a young age. In “Austin: Austin and Division,” Shaina Warfield recalls playing with a puzzle during her childhood as she slowly learns about the world beyond her living room—the yard, the sidewalk, and finally all of Austin—explaining how redlining shaped her life. While the first several childhood recollections in the volume are engaging, the next couple of rosy memories start to coalesce into a droning lament. Beyond the
work of just several of the contributors, this book about neighborhood change wagers no clear explanation of why nostalgia matters. Behind the memories of bygone pizza joints lurks the greatest nostalgia of all—a nostalgia for the days when Chicago was still identifiable as the famous Midwestern city of neighborhoods. Except for a couple of holdouts like the columnist John Kass— none of whom, mercifully, appear in The Guidebook—who still write about Chicago as if it were comprised of ethnic states, most writers have moved on. Robert Sampson’s 2012 research on Chicago social networks in Great American City reincarnated a neighborhood-scale analysis to revise the notion of what a neighborhood even is. Over the last several years, writers, some of whom appear in the Guidebook, have riffed on Sampson’s evidence that where you live can shape everything from your health to your professional opportunities. They’ve reflected on the function of nostalgia to help us rationalize forces beyond our control and explained how, today, some neighborhoods remain identifiable as geographic units not because of the shared resources and values that once bound people together, but rather because of a creeping neighborly suspicion between haves and have nots. In the Guidebook’s “River West: Counting Cranes,” author Jean Iversen’s nostalgia for her pre-housing bubble neighborhood insightfully suggests the impossibility of predicting how a place might change and how your own actions might shape its future. Leopold Froehlich’s “Gold Coast: The Alleys of the Gold Coast,” on the other hand, plays up a blustery nostalgia for the city’s corrupt history, to no clear end. Neighborhoods haven’t disappeared, they’ve just profoundly changed. A sentiment requiring them to have hardware shops, corned beef on the corner, a gambling racket, and a linguistic barrier between the Italians and the Irish is a disservice to any attempt at understanding what it
means to live in a city like Chicago today. Writing about that past won’t lead anyone astray so long as the author finds a way to suggest, in some way, the significance of the contemporary social reality that is cleaving along very different lines. Take a map and divide the city by income, by access to services, by children who have visited Lake Michigan. The patchwork might look like the city’s seventy-seven community areas, whose borders have remained unhelpfully static over the course of the last century since they were defined by sociologists at the University of Chicago based on the theory that a city could be broken down into “natural areas.” But more likely than not, there will be deviations. That’s why the Guidebook works best when it transcends the neighborhoods around which it is structured. When writing about how Lithuanian immigrants embraced racial animus in 1960s Marquette Park, Gint Aras is describing what it means to belong to a place and take responsibility for its past, no matter its geographic limits. There are moments in the Guidebook when an author reveals a human connection with the city by giving a curious breath of life to a detail usually hidden away. Lily Be imagines herself as “Queen of the Tunnels” running underneath Humboldt Park, where she says some people who are brown, female, or poor might have to hide if certain political trends continue. In “Ravenswood Gardens: Chicago River Life,” Rob Miller recounts finding misspelled graffiti, “Hail Satin,” under a bridge on the Chicago River, visible only to kayakers. Thanks to deliberate editing, some authors talk to each other across the pages, which gives the book a message greater than the din of a dozen voices packed back to back. Aras’s description of white supremacy in Marquette Park, for instance, is juxtaposed with Tamar Manasseh’s interview about violence and peace in Englewood. But then the chapter ends and it’s time for a new neighborhood, a new story, an old memory.
There are other ways to write about cities. One is to write big books about big things and big people, as Mike Royko does in Boss. Another, like Ben Austen’s HighRisers about Cabrini-Green, is to look at a particular place, even a particular block, in order to evoke an entire metropolis. A third is to write prose that mines a city’s heart, as Nelson Algren does in City on the Make. Unlike these traditional modes, anthologies and guidebooks look and sound like a city—cacophonous and filled with contrasting voices from up and down the block. It’s a genre that, when the torrent of authors has been channeled and structured, is more agile than big books about big things, more expansive than those about particular places, and more inclusive than the beauties about an urban heart. But the torrent of authors looks seductively similar to the layered, sprawling, million-person entity they’re describing, which doesn’t offer much in the way of guidance on order, sequence, or how to get the essays to say something beyond the sum of their parts. That’s why the neighborhood motif, with its geographic and social rationale, is so attractive to authors and editors alike. The Guidebook offers a buffet of places you might want to visit, interesting facts, and memorable moments. It leaves you on your own to piece the map together, which is a welcome challenge. ¬ Martha Bayne, ed., The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook. $20. Belt Publishing. 224 pages Max Budovitch is a contributor to the Weekly. He last wrote a review of the recently republished book The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History.
OCTOBER 16, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13
ENVIRONMENT
Chicago nonprofits train South Side youth as energy efficiency ‘ambassadors’
ILLINOIS GREEN ALLIANCE / CITY INCITE
BY DAVID THILL
A
nonprofit partnership that recently trained about two dozen Chicago youths to become energy efficiency “ambassadors” in their homes and communities is looking to expand its impact next year on the city’s South and West Sides. The Youth Energy Efficiency Ambassador program is a collaboration between the Illinois Green Alliance and the youth outreach group City Incite. The organizations partnered on youth programming last summer that included classroom training, an energy efficiency career panel, green home tours, and a trip to ComEd’s Chicago smart grid education center. The program culminated with block parties in three South Side neighborhoods, where youth participants distributed energyefficient devices and told residents about the benefits—especially when it comes to bill savings—of conserving energy. Participation varied in each part of the program, but administrators estimate the main cohort was about twenty-five young people. The work was funded by the Illinois Science and Energy Innovation Foundation (ISEIF), which also provides funding for 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
the Energy News Network’s Illinois smart grid reporting. This year, with new ISEIF funding, program leaders hope to broaden the scope, both in content and participation. “We’re hoping to be able to train students to become comfortable with energy and energy efficiency concepts” so they can act on those concepts outside the training, said Liz Wimmer, a program manager at the Illinois Green Alliance. Wimmer led last summer’s classroom programs with a colleague, explaining to participants how power is generated and distributed before focusing on how students could save electricity in their own homes. They also covered smart grid technology like the smart electric meters that almost all Chicago electric customers have, as well as bill savings programs like hourly pricing. Students received LED lightbulbs, advanced power strips and mechanical wall outlet timers to take home. They heard from members of the Illinois Green Alliance’s adult Energy Efficiency Ambassador program, several of whom also worked professionally in sustainability and clean energy and told the youth about their
¬ OCTOBER 16, 2019
careers. Aside from connecting participants with professionals in the industry, the block parties were a big piece of the experience, since that was where the students took on an ambassadorial role themselves. “Our hope was that the students would walk away feeling they were empowered,” Wimmer said. Through three block parties, the nonprofits recorded 400 community members engaged in discussions about efficiency, sixty-two of whom actually signed pledges to take actions in their homes— for example, using LEDs or setting their thermostats to at least seventy-five degrees in the summer. The youth ambassador program began after Wimmer and City Incite founder and president Aleta Garrett met at a 2017 gathering focused on youth and connected learning (in which educational programs give students access to mentors and professional opportunities). They wanted to figure out how to connect their organizations’ work. Illinois Green’s adult ambassador program was in its second year by then, and since many members of that program have an
interest in community work in addition to their sustainability work, partnering with City Incite seemed like a natural fit. After last year’s pilot, Wimmer and her colleagues want to bring the program to more students, especially on the South and West Sides, home to many of the city’s most underserved communities. They plan a semester-long program to begin in the new year in at least three city schools. It’s part of Illinois Green’s strategic plan, which aims for the organization to engage with partners and community groups in all of Chicago’s seventy-seven community areas. While the group’s members and volunteers are often professionally involved in sustainability work, administrators want to broaden its reach, especially to youth. “Energy efficiency and renewable energy are two really important careers for young people to be considering,” Wimmer said, adding that given legislation passed in recent years, there’s “a lot of really good opportunity” for jobs in Illinois. Wimmer and her colleagues are taking the fall to figure out how to improve the youth ambassador program. They’ve interviewed several Chicago teachers to
ENVIRONMENT
“Our hope was that the students would walk away feeling they were empowered.” narrow down how it would have to work to benefit students. Teachers will be able to apply, and it will be up to them whether they do in-class or after-school programs, Wimmer said. As the program expands, the Illinois Green team also wants to create a more substantial final activity. One possibility is that participating schools would propose efficiency projects for their school or community, and then receive small “mini grants” from the organization to complete it. City Incite is looking to improve the program for its own youth, too. The group’s programs serve young people sixteen to twenty-four years old from the South Side, many of whom have dropped out of high school. The programs assist them in getting jobs and apprenticeships, finishing high school and pursuing higher education opportunities. “Our ultimate goal is making sure our students are self-sufficient and rise above the poverty line,” Garrett said. In one program, B.U.I.L.D., participants rehab a home in the community. While projects haven’t focused on efficiency in the past, the ambassador program with Illinois Green could be a perfect opportunity for the
youth to get hands-on experience making homes energy efficient, Garrett said. The classroom lessons are valuable to help students learn about efficiency, she said. But she added that having a practical, real-life application—installing a smart thermostat, for example, or seeing how home sealing can lead to lower energy use and, with it, lower bills—is important to drive the message home. “I think it’s just always important having an end goal.” For Darrius Melton, who participated in the youth ambassador program, the green home visits were especially rewarding. Learning about rooftop solar panels, which the group discussed and which builders were planning to install, and seeing the way homeowners shaded their homes to keep heat out helped demonstrate to him alternative ways to save energy, he said. Now twenty, he finished his time in the B.U.I.L.D. program in August of 2018 and is currently in Ottumwa, Iowa, completing an associate’s degree in automotive technology at Indian Hills Community College. He said he’s learned about electricity in class there, and if he’d known more at the time of last year’s program, he might have asked more
questions about the concepts he saw on the home tours and at the ComEd center. For Melton’s family, just outside Chicago, the LEDs and power strips have helped them save money, he said. One of his main takeaways from the program that he could apply to his everyday life is “if it’s not in use, unplug it.” “I think it was a great opportunity for young people to see beyond where their communities are and maybe look into the professional community and corporate community, and see how they could fit into that,” said Ted Krasnesky, who spoke on the career panel about his former role as manager of sustainable construction at Chicagobased Pepper construction company. Students seemed most engaged when they were learning tangible actions to take to conserve energy and save money, said Tracy Murray, a former adult Energy Efficiency Ambassador with the Illinois Green Alliance. She spoke to the students about efficiency during the classroom workshop. Murray, who previously worked for 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale, said that in her experience, residents in that area often don’t know about efficiency and the measures they can take to save money on their bills. She’s planning to start her own outreach to local schools to help middle school students learn about energy efficiency. “I feel like if we reach them at that age, it’ll become a habit for them,” she said. ¬
LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED.
The Energy News Network is a nonprofit news service covering the transition to a clean energy economy. Foundations and other donors to the Energy News Network have no oversight or input into the editorial process and may not influence stories. More about its relationship with funders can be found in its code of ethics. Find it at energynews.us. Originally published online October 1. Reprinted with permission. David has written on health, science and the environment for various outlets, including World Wildlife Fund and the Windy City Times. He has reported on topics including the city’s opioid epidemic, bird research at the Field Museum, and LGBT youth in foster care. He covers Illinois’ smart grid for Midwest Energy News.
ILLINOIS GREEN ALLIANCE / CITY INCITE
OCTOBER 16, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15
EVENTS
BULLETIN Book Sale at Open Books Pilsen Warehouse Open Books, 905 W. 19th St. Friday, October 18, 10am–5pm. Free. bit.ly/OpenBookPil Open Books is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding literacy by offering community programs and making book grants to local schools and nonprofits. Its regular book sales are a chance to score some new reading material while supporting a valuable endeavor. Open Books Pilsen will be selling kids books for $1; all paperbacks for $2; and hardcovers for $3. There will also be special discount boxes available for teachers. ( Jim Daley)
Open House Chicago More than 350 locations across Chicago. Saturday, October 19–Sunday, October 20. Free. openhousechicago.org The Chicago Architecture Center’s annual architecture festival opens mansions, theaters, office buildings, and temples to the public for one weekend. No registration is needed for access to treasures all over the city, such as the Chicago Board of Trade, South Side Community Art Center in Bronzeville, the KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park, and the Farm on Ogden in North Lawndale. ( Jim Daley)
The Unsolved Murders of Barbara and Patricia Grimes West Lawn Library Auditorium, 4020 W. 63rd St. Monday, October 21, 6pm–7pm. Free. bit.ly/GrimesCase Lifelong Chicago area resident, former criminal investigator, and history buff Ray Johnson will discuss the details of the unsolved 1956 double-murder of two young sisters in Brighton Park. The infamous cold case was the subject of widespread speculation in the decades after it occurred. ( Jim Daley)
Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of the South Side Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St. Wednesday, October 23, 6pm–7:30pm. Free. (Event is sold out, but walk-ins will be admitted if space permits.) bit.ly/SouthExp 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
Still craving architecture after the weekend is over? Come see author Lee Bey discuss his latest book, Southern Exposure (2019, Northwestern University Press), which explores the often-unsung architecture south of the Loop. The book spotlights more than sixty places across the South Side, including works by luminaries such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel Burnhan, as well as designs by architects such as John Moutoussamy and W.T. Bailey, who are overlooked, Bey argues, because they were Black and their works are on the South Side. ( Jim Daley)
13A Anual Cumbre de Educación de Pilsen/Pilsen Education Summit Arturo Velasquez Institute, 2800 S. Western Ave. Friday, October 25, 9am–2pm. Free. pilsenneighbors.org/pes2019/ The Pilsen Education Task Force (PETF) and Pilsen Neighbors Community Council together organize the Pilsen Education Summit, which is designed to help participants “create a path of education from birth through college.” Workshops will be in Spanish and English, and breakfast and lunch will be provided. La PETF y PNCC juntos organizan el Cumbre de Educación de Pilsen, que está diseñada para ayudar a los participantes “crear un sendero de educación desde nacimiento hasta la universidad.” Los talleres son en espanol y ingles, y desayuno y almuerzo serán propocionados. ( Jim Daley)
Dismantling Hate: Peace Forum Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Saturday, October 26, 1:30pm–3:30pm. Free. bit.ly/PeaceForum Marie Newman, who is running a primary bid against Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-IL03) for the second time, and Robert Emmons Jr., who is challenging longtime Congressman Bobby Rush (D-IL01), will moderate a panel of faith leaders and community activists in a discussion about “hate and divisiveness that persists on Chicago’s South Side and within the southwest suburbs.” There will be a panel portion followed by audience questions and a meet-and-greet with the candidates. ( Jim Daley)
¬ OCTOBER 16, 2019
Eric Thurm: Board Games Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Sunday, October 27, 3pm–4pm. Free. bit.ly/ThurmGames Author, critic, and Weekly alum Eric Thurm will discuss his new book, Board Games (2019, New York University Press). In the book, Thurm trawls the depths of his own board game experiences to explore the social and emotional strictures games both create and reveal, exploring capitalist themes in Monopoly and gender conformity in Life. A question-and-answer and book signing will follow. ( Jim Daley)
VISUAL ARTS 14th Annual Folk Art Festival National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Open through Sunday, October 20, 10am–4pm. (312) 738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org At its annual Folk Art Festival, the NMMA welcomes welcomes Mexican artists to Pilsen for a showcase and celebration of arte popular, from ceramics and sugarskulls to alebrijes and rebozos. (Christopher Good)
17th Annual Pilsen Open Studios Various locations. Kick-off at Citalin Gallery Theater, 2005 S. Blue Island Ave., on Thursday, October 17, 6pm–10pm. $5 suggested donation. Open studios on 18th St., Saturday and Sunday October 19–20, noon–8pm. More information on events and shuttle busses at pilsenopenstudios.com Pilsen’s artist- and volunteer-driven open studio weekend is the perfect opportunity to check out that local gallery or get some food and drink. As if you needed another reason to wander around 18th St! (Christopher Good)
this behind-the-scenes tour, you can learn (and see) more of this Chicago Landmark. (Christopher Good)
Nancy Campbell Hays Exhibition Opening Hyde Park Historical Society, 5529 S. Lake Park Ave. October 27, 2pm. (773) 493-1893. nancyhays.org Before her death in 2007, longtime Hyde Park resident Nancy Hays left nearly 200 boxes of photographs to the Hyde Park Historical Society. With the opening of this exhibition, visitors can see neighborhood as Hays saw it: through the decades, through her viewfinder. (Christopher Good)
MUSIC An Evening of Soul with Patti LaBelle and Friends Wintrust Arena, 200 E. Cermak Rd. Saturday, October 19, 7:30pm, doors open 6:30pm. $45.50 and up. wintrustarena.com Songbird Patti LaBelle has hand picked a select group of her R&B soul legend friends for a not-to-miss live concert, where she will share the stage with: Stephanie Mills, Freddie Jackson and El DeBarge. (Nicole Bond)
Wordfetti Open Mic Pink Giraffe Art Studio, 2340 E. 75th Street. Every fourth Sunday, 6:30pm-9pm, write-in and mini-lesson at 5pm. Free. bit.ly/WordFetti This free open mic is a space for spoken word artists, musicians, and more to showcase their talents for an audience. Sign up to speak your piece or stop by to hear the poetic nature of local artists. (Atavia Reed)
The Architecture of Glessner House
Rob Warmowski Memorial: A Benefit for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
Glessner House, 1800 S. Prairie Ave. Saturday, October 19, 10am–12pm. $25. glessnerhouse.org
Metro, 3730 N Clark Street. Monday, October 21, 5pm-10 pm. Suggested donation is $20. bit.ly/BridgeportMemorial
The Glessner House Museum brings visitors face-to-face with the “Richardsonian Romanesque” architecture and design of the nineteenth century. At
Over 40 Chicago musicians from the punk, prog, noise, rock, and surf music scene will perform in honor of the late Rob Warmowksi, creator of the surf
EVENTS
punk band The Defoliants. All donations will go towards the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Stop by to hear tunes from musicians like Eric Spicer of Naked Raygun and Martin Atkins of PiL and Pigface, and a special performance from the Mather High School Jazz Band. (Atavia Reed)
Windy City Stories The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Avenue West. Tuesday, November 12, 8pm, doors open 7pm. Early bird $10, GA $15 in advance. bit.ly/WindyCityStories Local Chicago artists are coming together for a night of lyrical litness. Stop by to check out performances from rappers like ‘LGado, OG Stevo, and Preme or bop along to a few DJ sets. (Atavia Reed)
STAGE & SCREEN ABC Mixtape Vol. 2 Arts Bank Cinema Submissions airtable.com/shrDpsenmZUdIwUcT Due by Friday, October 18. 11pm. Here is a call for all local filmmakers to submit your short film for consideration to be included in the ABC Mixtape Volume Two. Winning submissions will be shown in an exclusive screening at the Arts Bank on November 9. Special consideration will be given to filmmakers based on the Southside of Chicago. (Nicole Bond)
see. what had happened was: memory maps Featuring avery r. young Chicago State University, 9501 S. King Dr., Gwendolyn Brooks Library Sun Room – 4th floor. Saturday, October 19, 11am-3pm. Free. Limited seating. Pre-registration required. Contact tjones41@csu.edu to register. Parking $5 Author and performance poet avery r. young will conduct a visual poetry workshop using techniques to guide participants through mapping a poem of witness. Participants will share work created, and young will perform. Refreshments. This workshop is sure to fill quickly, so register immediately. (Nicole Bond)
Ism, Ism, Ism: Bilingual Aesthetics Filmfront, 1740 W. 18thSt. Saturday, October 19, 7pm Free. filmfront.org/upcoming/ See a collection of short films (eightyone minutes total) ranging from explicit negotiations about land ownership in Mexico to an abstract religious celebration of change and new beginnings in Peru. Each film examines the cinematic use of different languages, communication, and translation, and each reveals how language is a will of power. (Nicole Bond)
Queer Film Series: Halloween Queer Horror Special FilmFront, 1740 W. 18thSt. Sunday, October 20, 7pm. Free. filmfront.org/upcoming/ Hiromi Ueyoshi curated this series, which presents a chronological exploration of LGBTQ representation in mainstream film, and Ueyoshi will host this third annual Halloween Queer Horror Special featuring the 1971 film Daughters of Darkness and the 1983 film The Hunger. A group discussion follows the screening. Last year’s conversation touched on how the horrific and queerness share space in being considered as other or not normal and therefore dangerous. (Nicole Bond)
FOOD & LAND Farmers Markets Wednesdays: Roseland City Market, 200 W. 109th St. Wednesdays, 2:30pm–5:30pm. Through October 30. Boxville, 320 E. 51st St. Wednesdays, 4pm–7pm. facebook.com/Boxville51 Thursdays: City Market at Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St. Thursdays, 7am–2pm. Through October 24. bit.ly/DaleyPlazaMarket Hyde Park Farmers Market, 5300 S. Harper Ct. Thursdays, 7am–1pm. Through October. downtownhydeparkchicago.com Fridays: Fresh Beats & Eats Farmers Market, 2744 W. 63rd St. Fridays, 2pm–6pm, through October 25. facebook.com/imancentral
Saturdays:
Climbing, Community, and Coco at Steelworkers
Printers Row City Market, 700 S. Dearborn St. Saturdays, 7am–1pm. Through October 26. 61st Street Farmers Market, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Saturdays, 9am–2pm. Through October 27. experimentalstation.org/ market Farmers Market at The Port Ministries, 5013 S. Hermitage Ave. The second Saturday of each month, noon–4pm. facebook.com/ theportministries
Steelworkers Park, E. 87th at Lake Michigan. Saturday, October 26th. 3pm – 8pm. Free. chicagoparkdistrict.com Fans of Steelworkers Park will agree that it is a place where anything seems possible. On October 26th, everything that is anything will happen in quick succession at our beloved ruin-by-the-lake: an afternoon climbing adventure, a storytelling session, a s’mores campfire, and a Disney movie screening. Truly an event not to be missed. (Sarah Fineman)
Sundays: 95th Street Farmers Market, 1835 W. 95th St. Sundays, 8am–1pm. Through November. 95thstreetba.org/farmers-market Maxwell Street Market, S. Desplaines St. & W. Taylor St. Sundays, 9am–3pm. bit.ly/ MaxwellStMarketChicago Pilsen Community Market, 1820 S. Blue Island Ave. Sundays, 9am–3pm. Through October. facebook.com/pilsenmarket Wood Street Urban Farm Stand, 1757 W. 51st St. Sundays, 9am–noon. Through November 24.
Pumpkin Patch and Fall Festival Rainey Park, 4350 W. 79th St. Saturday, October 19th. 11am – 3pm. Free admission, small fees per activity. chicagoparkdistrict.com For one day, Rainey Park will become a fall farm paradise, featuring a pumpkin patch, pony rides, and even face-painting. Source your perfect future Jack-O-Lantern and celebrate the season. (Sarah Fineman)
Multiple Days:
Genesis Homebuyer Workshop
UHSC Farm Stand, 1809 W. 51st St. Mondays–Fridays, 9am–1pm, through November 25. Gary Comer Youth Center Farmers Market, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave. Tuesdays & Fridays, 3pm–6pm. Through October 29. garycomeryouthcenter.org/produce Farm on Ogden Food Stand, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11am– 7pm; Wednesdays, Fridays, & Saturdays, 10am–6pm. chicagobotanic.org
Genesis Housing Development Corp., 7735 S Vernon Ave. Saturday, October 19th. 8:30am – 4:30pm. Free. bit.ly/2AQZFbV
Chicago Urban League First Time Homebuyer Education Class The Chicago Urban League, 4510 S Michigan Ave. Thursday, October 17th. 6pm – 9:30pm. bit.ly/2ATPKlZ
15th Annual Renters Rights Expo University of Chicago School of Social Administration, 969 E. 60th St. Saturday, October 19th. 10am – 2pm. Free. bit.ly/2MpLMqp. Renters, do you know your rights? If the answer is anything less than a resounding nod, consider checking out this upcoming renters’ rights bonanza, put on by the Department of Housing at the University of Chicago’s SSA building. Promised highlights will include a workshop on rental rights of immigrants and “multiple” raffles and giveaways. (Sarah Fineman)
No matter your level of formal education, it’s a safe bet that no classroom teacher ever walked you through the process of preparing to buy a home. Luckily, there are two educational workshops on the horizon to assist the prospective home purchaser who is new to the game, in over their head, or both. Spend a day with Genesis, or an evening with the Chicago Urban League, delving into the ins and outs of the oftenintimidating, always-over-complicated process of acquiring a place of your own. (Sarah Fineman)
OCTOBER 16, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17
EVENTS
Urban Ecology Experience with Sweet Water Foundation Sweet Water Foundation, Tuesday, October 15th. 1pm – 3pm. $15, tickets available at bit.ly/33j8iZ4 As part of the Chicago Ideas Festival, 2019 MacArthur Genius Emmanuel Pratt will lead participants in a lecture and active learning experience at his foundation’s headquarters, The Commons. The Sweet Water Foundation is an all-trades place offering facilities for everything from carpentry to farming. Hear about Pratt’s visionary plan for his foundation and the community, and engage in some good old-fashioned hands-on creation. (Sarah Fineman)
“The 78” Racial Equity Town Hall Benito Juarez High School, 2150 S Laflin St. Saturday, October 19th. 1pm–3pm. Free. bit.ly/2MnYru1 The Midwest branch of mega-megadeveloper Related last year broke ground on construction of “Chicago’s 78th neighborhood” in the undeveloped South Loop plots just below Roosevelt. Highrise buildings, three new roads, and a new Red Line stop are all in the works. Activist organization Chicago United For Equity is hosting a town hall as part of a Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) they’re conducting of the project. Citizens, residents, non-corporate entities, make your voices heard! (Sarah Fineman)
Food Fun(d)ing Fridays Harvest Pitch Fest The Woodlawn, 1200 E. 79th St., Friday, October 25, 2019, 6pm–9pm. Various. bit.ly/ chicagofoodpolicy The Chicago Food Policy Action Council and Urban Stewards Action Network invite you to join them at the Harvest Edition of Food Fun(d)ing Fridays. This event will highlight presenters who seek to advance the cannabis food scene and local farming in and around Chicago. Guests of the evening will have the opportunity to interact with the food justice community, enjoy locally created food and drinks, and most importantly the opportunity to vote on your top projects! The projects receiving the most votes will get the top grant award! (AV Benford) 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
Openings PILSEN—Paulette’s Public Market Paulette's Public Market is a new neighborhood market offering a robust grab-and-go grocery section, highlighting made-to-order deli sandwiches like the Muffuletta and Spinach & Artichoke Grilled Cheese. On the fly, and without the crazy of the after-work Whole Foods rush, customers can shop for packaged charcuterie and cheese, prepared salads, grab-n-go dinners, pastries from local bakeries, fresh floral arrangements, and more. 1221 W 18th St. (AV Benford) HYDE PARK—Ascione Bistro Referring to themselves as a “comfortably elevated restaurant and bar,” Ascione Bistro is a new Italian-focused restaurant that seeks to expand, explore, and influence. Located in the heart of Hyde Park, they want to present cuisines that are exuberant in flavor and style while offering a contemporary approach with exquisite attention to detail, from the food offerings, to the atmosphere, to the overall environment. They have brunch, lunch, dinner menus. Their website mentions a happy hour. 1500 E. 55th St. (AV Benford)
NATURE Stewardship Opportunities Hyde Park Tree Planting, location TBA. Wednesday, October 16, 9am–1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events Rainbow Beach Dunes, 2873 E. 75th St. Saturday, October 19, 9am–11am. rainbowbeachdunes.wordpress.com Big Marsh Park, 11599 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, October 19, 10am–1pm. bit.ly/2VJbNW6 63rd St. Beach, 6300 S. Lake Shore Dr. Saturday, October 19, 10am–noon. bit.ly/63rdStewardship Historic Pullman Visitor Center, 11141 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Saturday, October 19, 9am–1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events Ada Park, 11250 S. Ada St. Sunday, October 20, 10am–1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events Beaubien Woods, 950 E. 134th St. Tuesday, October 22, 9:30am–noon. bit.ly/BWStewardship Eli Whitney Elementary School, 2815 S. Komensky Ave. Friday, October 25, 9am– noon. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events
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Want to get your hands dirty? There’s plenty of opportunities to get involved in environmental stewardship. Depending on the park and the season, volunteers may be cleaning up the site, collecting native plant seeds, removing invasive species, or planting native plants. Make sure to dress for working outdoors: long pants, closed-toe shoes, and a hat if it’s sunny. (Sam Joyce)
Wooded Island Bird Walk Museum of Science and Industry East Parking Lot. Saturdays, 8am–11am. bit.ly/JPBirdWalk Contact Pat Durkin for more: pat.durkin@comcast.net. Free. Join the Chicago Audubon Society for a bird walk through Jackson Park. Learn how to identify birds, while observing birds as they build their nests and raise their chicks. You do not need to be a member of Chicago Audubon to participate. Walks are held weekly through December. (Sam Joyce)
Aquaponics with Plant Chicago West Englewood Library, 1745 W. 63rd St. Thursday, October 17, 4pm–5pm. chipublib.org Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. Wednesday, October 23, 2pm–3pm. Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil). At this workshop led by Plant Chicago, you’ll be able to learn more about the science behind aquaponics, as well as build your own aquaponics system. (Sam Joyce)
Natural History of the Loop Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. Friday, October 18, 3pm–4:15pm, and Sunday, October 20, 1:30pm–2:45pm. chipublib.org “Natural” and the Loop don’t usually go together; the Loop is mostly concrete and skyscrapers, and (outside of Grant Park) even a few trees is a rare site. This walk, led by author Max Grinnell, unwinds the history of the Loop, allowing visitors to explore how this land was slowly transformed from a swamp into the skyline we know today. (Sam Joyce)
Rainbow Beach Bird Walk Rainbow Beach Dunes, 3111 E. 77th St. Saturday, October 19, 7am–11am. chicagobirder.org Join the Chicago Ornithological Society to explore one of Chicago’s best—and least-visited—birding hotspots. This early morning walk will offer a chance to see some of the rare migratory species that stop at Rainbow Beach during their autumn journey south. After the walk, stick around and help the volunteer stewards of the dunes collect native plant seeds. Snacks and coffee included, RSVP requested but not required. (Sam Joyce)
Chinatown Environmental Justice: October General Meeting Chinatown Library, 2100 S. Wentworth Ave. Monday, October 21, 6pm–8pm. facebook.com/ChiAsianAmEnviroJustice Join Chicago Asian Americans for Environmental Justice for a general meeting of the Chinatown Environmental Justice Initiative. Meeting attendees will discuss creating educational materials, as well as making plans to act on environmental justice issues in the neighborhood this fall. (Sam Joyce)
Small Spaces Gardening Little Village Library, 2311 S. Kedzie Ave. Wednesday, October 23, 4pm–5:30pm. chipublib.org Want to start a garden, but not sure how to grow plants in a cramped apartment? At this workshop, presented by the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Windy City Harvest program, you’ll learn how to use containers, raised beds, and vertical gardening to get the most out of a small growing space. (Sam Joyce)
MWRD Road Show Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, 3857 W. 111th St. Saturday, October 26, 9am–12pm. mwrd.org Curious about how the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District manages wastewater and stormwater? At the MWRD Road Show, you’ll get a chance to meet your MWRD commissioners and hear about local projects underway. This is
EVENTS
also a chance to learn about applying for jobs and doing business with the MWRD. STEM activities will be provided for kids, and attendees will have a chance to win a free rain barrel. (Sam Joyce)
Zoning and Urban Agriculture Workshop
Festival of Owls
Hosted by Advocates for Urban Agriculture and the Community Law Project, this workshop delves into the legal issues of growing food in the city. If you’re interested in starting an urban farm, or just curious about the laws that govern growing vegetables in Chicago, this is the right place. RSVP requested, childcare and Spanish interpretation available if requested by October 21. (Sam Joyce)
Porter County Fairgrounds, 215 E. Division Road, Valparaiso. Saturday, October 26, 9am–5pm. Tickets $25 adults, $10 children, free for kids 7 and under. humaneindiana.org Join Humane Indiana Wildlife for the third annual Festival of Owls. This familyfriendly event promises to teach you more than you may have ever wanted to know about owls, with a full lineup of expert speakers from across the country. The main attraction, however, is the opportunity to meet some owls: short-eared, long-earned, screech, snowy, great horned and more. (Sam Joyce)
The Port Ministries, 5013 S. Hermitage Ave. Monday, October 28, 6pm–8pm. Free. auachicago.org/events
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