October 30, 2019

Tickets On Sale Now Get Tickets: chicagohumanities.org A LIMITED NUMBER OF FREE TICKETS TO THESE PROGRAMS FOR SOUTH SIDE RESIDENTS ARE AVAILABLE WITH CODE NEIGHBORHOODS2019

11/1 | THE CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST NEIGHBORHOOD NIGHT: SOUTH SHORE 6:00PM

6:00PM

Celebrate and explore the South Side’s contributions to soul music with Ayana Contreras, Ruben Molina, Tone B. Nimble, and Mario Smith.

Carlo Rotella, a South Shore native, discusses the past, present, future of the neighborhood. Current residents are invited to come and share their own thoughts and memories.

7:00PM

8:00PM

Damon Locks and the Black Monument Ensemble perform songs from their album Where Future Unfolds, a celebration of Black history and activism.

All South Shore Night attendees are invited for an afterparty featuring DJ sets from the South Side Soul speakers.

SOUTH SIDE SOUL

DAMON LOCKS AND THE BLACK MONUMENT ENSEMBLE

CARLO ROTELLA ON SOUTH SHORE

SOUTH SIDE SOUL AFTERPARTY

11/2 | HYDE PARK DAY HYDE PARK DAY IS MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF BANK OF AMERICA.

11:00AM

3:00PM

Caitlin Zaloom on how student debt has radically changed the lives of students, their families, and the economy as a whole.

Tanisha C. Ford on Black style and fashion, from its influence on global culture to its political and personal meanings.

5:00PM

5:00PM

Liz Ogbu and Maria Gaspar on how design and architecture can be used to create a socially just world.

Suketu Mehta, an immigrant himself, on why people immigrate, the challenges immigrants face, and the invaluable contributions they make to their new homes.

CAITLIN ZALOOM ON STUDENT DEBT

SPATIAL JUSTICE

TANISHA C. FORD: DRESSED IN DREAMS

SUKETU MEHTA: AN IMMIGRANT’S MANIFESTO

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 4 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 Shane Tolentino 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 Nick Lyon, Haley Tweedell 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 Jason Schumer

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

Conway, lose the con Earlier this month, Bill Conway—a DePaul adjunct, former prosecutor, and son of a billionaire investor—released the first ad of his campaign to unseat Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Its main feature is a brief clip of Foxx answering a WGN interview question about whether she shares embattled CPD superintendent Eddie Johnson’s frustration with “gun offenders getting out the very next day.” Foxx pauses briefly in thought, a seconds-long interim before answering—but apparently, this is proof enough for Conway that Foxx is unfit for office. The ad, enthusiastically shared by the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge, declines to show the rest of Foxx’s answer—that, despite Johnson and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s rhetoric around “gun offenders,” the State’s Attorney’s office has a multitude of legal factors to consider when seeking bail, not just whether or not the person is a “gun offender.” That the term “gun offender itself ” is an obfuscating term—one that lumps murderers together with those who are found carrying guns, illegally, for their own protection—is apparently lost on Conway).

Like much criticism of Foxx, the ad refuses to acknowledge that the office—for its entire existence before Foxx was elected, and still, in many ways, to this day—has incarcerated hundreds unnecessarily, abused its discretion, and prosecuted dozens of cases in which the defendant was tortured,coerced, or marred by other law enforcement or prosecutorial misconduct. However, a new analysis of case-level data by the Chicago Reporter, the Marshall Project, and data journalism collective The Pudding finds the actual results of Foxx’s policies: some 5,000 low-level cases were not pursued that Anita Alvarez, whom Foxx ousted in 2016, likely would have prosecuted. Another recent report from the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice found that the county incarceration rate has dropped some twenty percent.

All the while, the violent crime rate has continued to decline—and despite Johnson, Lightfoot, and the FOP’s insistence otherwise, Foxx’s policies and new county rules around bond have not resulted in a revolving door of “gun offenders” wreaking havoc on the streets of the county.According to the Chief Judge’s office, a small fraction of those arrested on a gun charge in the last year and a half or so have committed a new gun offense.

Foxx has other issues as a State’s Attorney, and plenty that deserve legitimate criticism. But her diversion of low-level cases, and more nuanced approach for seeking bail for non-violent “gun offenders,” are not among them—at least, not with the lines of attack currently being used. If nothing else, it should be demanded that candidates for the chief law enforcement position in the county not distort facts. They should be campaigning to continue the court system's move towards decarceration, rather than rolling back real progress made in the last four years. (Sam Stecklow)

ISSUE reframing the narrative

It would have been a normal day at 71st and Jeffery, if the police hadn’t been there. kiran misra........................................4 how to make wine on the south side

Following up on last issue’s coverage of the Santa Fe Grape Distributors, we introduce the process associated with wine fermentation and several local equipment sellers leo williams......................................7 green jobs

There I was, at a major university, attending a Cannabis Industry Expo—a Black Cannabis Industry Expo. av benford.......................................10 serving the pets of 60621

Pet food pantries and the services of the “Gus Bus” are just some of what the center has to offer. nikki roberts...................................13 illinois loosened ankle-monitor restrictions, but advocates say it’s too soon to celebrate

“Ankle monitors is like a dog house.” kira lerner, the appeal.................14

The Stars Aligned Last Monday, the city’s twenty-six theatres that maintain union Equity contracts gathered for its Chicago night of recognition for theater excellence. This was the Joseph Jefferson Awards, best known as The Jeffs and named in honor of the nineteenth-century American theater actor and child star.

Of these twenty-six eligible theatres, Hyde Park’s Court Theatre garnered fifteen nominations and five wins for its 2018/2019 season.

Three wins were awarded to Photograph 51, a retelling of the life of Rosalind Franklin, who provided major scientific breakthroughs in the discovery of the double helix. Chaon Cross was awarded one of two Outstanding Performer in a Principal awards, while the play earned awards for Scenic Design and Direction (Vanessa Stalling).

An award for Outstanding Ensemble was given to For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf, whose production season began shortly before the death of esteemed playwright Ntozake Shange, and was directed by Seret Scot, an original cast member of the choreopoem’s first Broadway production in 1976.

Finally, Manuel Cinema and Court’s collaborative production of Frankenstein was recognized for Outstanding Achievement in Artistic Specialization for Kristy Leigh Hall’s interdisciplinary costume design. The Court’s production of Frankenstein was one of three retellings of the classic story that received nominations this season. (Anna Aguiar Kosicki)

JUSTICE

Reframing the Narrative

JASON SCHUMER

Invisible Institute and Forensic Architecture reconstruct the police shooting of Harith Augustus—and contest the city’s story

BY KIRAN MISRA

T

he decision to use lethal force is made in a split second, and is based on the safety of the officer and of the surrounding community, according to Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson. That’s the way he justified the police killing of Harith Augustus, known as “Snoop” by friends and family, in a 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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public statement on July 15, 2018.

But that’s not true, not really. The milliseconds that cushion the one split second an officer pulls a trigger are bookended by thousands of other milliseconds, which are cushioned by the expansive moments that lead up to—and follow—a fatal shot.

“It’s like this indivisible unit of time,”

explains Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute, a journalism organization on the South Side specializing in investigating public institutions and holding them accountable. “Once you can put that frame [of a split second] around an act of state violence, it almost represents impunity... For people living in South Shore and Woodlawn,

those split seconds add up over time—over years, decades, and generations—and are experienced as oppression,” Kalven says.

“So we wanted to interrogate that, and eventually came up with this idea of telling the same story in six different time scales.”

The culmination of that idea is an exhibit developed in collaboration between

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the Invisible Institute and Forensic Architecture, a research agency that uses architectural techniques to examine human rights violations around the world. The exhibit, installed at the Experimental Station as a part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, consists of six videos that delve into the organizations’ yearlong investigation of Augustus’s killing. In the videos, 3-D renderings of Augustus’s and the officers’ actions are interspersed with analysis and narration by Trina Reynolds-Tyler, an organizer and fellow with the Invisible Institute. The videos take viewers into the milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years that led to police fatally shooting and killing Augustus—and the narrative that was constructed after the fact.

“For people living in South Shore and Woodlawn, those split seconds add up over time—over years, decades, and generations—and are experienced as oppression... we wanted to interrogate that and eventually came up with this idea of telling the same story in six different time scales.”

t would have been a normal day at 71st and Jeffery, if the police hadn’t been there. Identically clad in light blue shirts with CPDshields and armored with bulletproof vests, five officers paced up and down the street. An elderly man with a cane shuffled by. A man in a floppy blue hat and a fluorescent orange t-shirt biked down the sidewalk, weaving around pedestrians and lampposts.

“These younger officers are moving as if they are in a war zone. They look anxious. They look like they are waiting for something to happen. But when you go to 71st and Jeffery, nothing needs to happen,” said Maira Khwaja of the Invisible Institute, one of the exhibition’s curators, describing the video footage featured in the exhibit.

“Why were there so many officers standing outside of this grocery store when there was nothing else going on, looking for someone to escalate a situation with? [...] When you wait for something to happen anxiously, you can make that happen.”

Augustus, a barber who worked in South Shore, appears in the video making one of his many daily walks from his barber shop down 71st Street. About 40 seconds would pass from when Chicago police officer Dillan Halley first laid eyes on Augustus to when he would kill him.

At 5:30 and forty seconds, Halley fired the first of four shots that would kill Augustus.

But at 5:30 and thirty-five seconds, Officers Megan Fleming, Halley, and Danny Tan surrounded Augustus as he reached for his wallet, trapping him between their bodies and the wall behind him. At 5:30 and thirtyfour seconds, Fleming lunged for Augustus from behind, escalating a previously calm situation. She would later claim to have been

attempting unsuccessfully to handcuff him without a prior verbal warning. At 5:30 and twenty-eight seconds, Augustus stopped on the sidewalk to show his Firearm Owners Identification card to Officer Quincy Jones.

Twenty-four hours after the shooting, Superintendent Eddie Johnson released a video of the shooting from Halley’s body camera. He made a public statement claiming that he had released all pertinent footage and that the released video—a short, silent clip edited to emphasize Augustus’s holstered gun—“speaks for itself.”

But, as the chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), Sydney Roberts, would describe it in an email to Johnson a few days later: the video release was “piecemeal and arguably narrative-driven.”

Even before then, as the first shot was fired, a narrative had already started forming, one that painted Augustus as the perpetrator of the day’s events, the one ultimately responsible for the violence and chaos that ensued. In the footage, Halley shouts about “shots fired at police,” despite the fact that he is the only person on the scene shooting. “Or… police officer…” he trails off.

The Invisible Institute and Forensic Architecture exhibition directly responds to that narrative. “By means of new forensic techniques and on-the-ground reporting, our counterinvestigation contests the official police narrative and examines the process by which that narrative was constructed,” as Kalven and Eyal Weizman of Forensic Architecture wrote in an article exploring their investigation.

I

The construction of CPD’s narrative began immediately: with a police report that labeled the shooter the victim, Kalven said. This “includes things like the use of the passive voice in police statements: so policemen did not shoot Harith Augustus, Harith Augustus caused his own death at the hands of the police through his actions.

It includes performative things like putting handcuffs on a corpse. It includes the narrative gaze of the body camera, which takes in the focus of its attention and sort of defines the person as a suspect, offender, criminal just as a matter of narrative perspective.”

In their investigation, Invisible Institute and Forensic Architecture researchers tried to flip the narrative perspective to see this situation from Augustus's perspective and examine how the officers may have escalated the situation. “[Through body-camera footage], you are encouraged to see only what the officer saw,” Khwaja explained.

The investigative team utilized information such as shadow analysis, Shotspotter data, gunpowder emissions, responses of passersby, CCTV footage from nearby businesses, interviews with witnesses and community members, and conversations with organizers to try to create as unbiased a model as possible of what happened that day at 71st and Jeffery. 3-D visualizations show each officer’s individual actions and the scene they likely would have been confronted with, as well as how Harith likely experienced the moments leading up to the shooting.

These reconstructions allow viewers to notice movements and patterns that are

invisible in a simple cell phone or body camera video. For example, looking at the 3-D renderings from a bird's-eye perspective allows viewers to notice clear parallels between the officers’ tactics and those seen in the hunting habits of species around the globe.

The complexity of the encounter is a large part of what drew Forensic Architecture and the Invisible Institute to select Augustus’s case as their investigation for the Biennial.

“We recognized from the start that it was in some ways a threshold case... He did have a gun; he did touch the gun. In terms of the law, the expectation was that this would be found a justified shooting,” Kalven said.

“I remember talking with a really aggressive civil rights lawyer, and he said the family had come to him with the case and he declined to take it, because he thought it was a long shot to challenge the finding of a justified shooting.”

However, Augustus was licensed to own the gun and was living in a state where concealed carry is legal. He had shown the officers his Firearm Owners Identification card, and the officers had no evidence of any illegal activity. It is clear that Augustus never removed his gun from his holster—surveillance footage included in the “Seconds” video shows that after he was killed, an officer took the gun from Augustus’s holster, where it was still resting, and brought it away. It is unclear whether Augustus was steadying his gun, pulling down his shirt, or reaching for his gun as he ran from the officers that day.

Currently, two legal cases are pending regarding the officer’s conduct and the city’s response, respectively. The first is a wrongful death suit brought by Augustus’s family. The second is a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Matt Topic and Will Calloway.

On August 16, 2018, the city indicated that it had provided through COPA all relevant video in response to Calloway’s FOIA request. However, in August 2019, an additional dashcam video surfaced. Both CPD and COPA state that the delayed release of this video was the result of a clerical error, not a deliberate attempt to withhold information, and that they had just become aware of the video’s existence.

In response, Topic filed a motion to hold the city in contempt of the judge's order to produce all relevant files as a part of the ongoing FOIA lawsuit. In September 2019, two additional surveillance videos surfaced, OCTOBER 30, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

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that we can do that truly brings him justice,” Khwaja said. “But this [investigation] can... become a part of the public memory and public history of Chicago.”

Kalven hopes that the exhibit will also lead to more scrutiny of the law around police officers making “split second” decisions. He believes these laws should take into account who is responsible for escalating encounters to the point of a shooting.

“Imagine if I am a police officer, and I taunt you and throw a knife at your feet, and you pick up the knife. I define that as a split second, and I shoot you. The police manufacture that split second,” Kalven said. “That’s why I’ve felt so strongly about contesting the almost inevitable framing of a coverup. What we’re looking at is actually something that is way much more disturbing, and we’d better diagnose it right if we’re going to fix it.

“Nothing bad would have happened that day on 71st Street if you just subtract the police from that picture,” Kalven said.

“They brought the mayhem. They brought the chaos… The source of disorder here, and ultimately of fatal violence, were three white officers.” ¬

JASON SCHUMER

which COPA attributes in part to the Invisible Institute’s investigative efforts. The delayed release of these videos appears to be due to an administrative error as well.

These lawsuits and the Biennial exhibition are all part of a multifaceted effort to hold the city and police responsible not only for Augustus’s unnecessary killing, but for the nearly nonexistent investigation that followed.

According to Kalven, the Invisible Institute and and Forensic Architecture are “[trying] to set a standard for what can be done in these kinds of investigations—not just from journalists, but by investigative agencies.” The team also hopes to educate viewers on how to critically and skeptically assess state and media narratives, demanding other perspectives in addition to police statements and body camera footage.

“We want the police to know that people are watching,” Christina Varvia of Forensic Architecture said. “I hope people get inspired by this process and demand more.”

For the researchers, positioning a police violence investigation at the center 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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of an architecture festival is not entirely unexpected. “Architecture is more expansive than just buildings,” explained Varvia. “The way that we exist and interact with space is through cities, which depends not only on the way cities are built, but also things like segregation and gentrification and the way that those spaces are policed. We want to figure out, what character does this space have? [Here, the officers] feel uncomfortable within this space, and that made them violent.”

The videos that comprise the exhibit, which can also be found online on Forensic Architecture’s website, take about 40 minutes to watch in their totality. This considerable length of engagement is intentional, as was the curators’ decision to pull the video display from the Chicago Cultural Center, where they were initially slated to be exhibited. In their place is a short statement from Kalven and a note prompting interested viewers to engage with the videos at the Experimental Station.

In Khwaja’s words, moving the installation is “more than a content warning.

It is an expectation or an invitation that

people need to choose to discuss and look and think about this. We want to encourage people to sit with this and not be passersby.”

And at a time when videos of police shootings often go viral on social media, “We wanted to center the concept of consent,” added Varvia. “You don’t just stumble upon this type of event in a public space.”

The exhibit is already leading to changes in the way that cases like Augustus’s are handled. In addition to the two most recently released pieces of surveillance footage, in the last few weeks both CPD and COPA have made statements highlighting their awareness of the public’s renewed scrutiny of the case and the pressure to take action.

Additionally, the mayor's office vowed to take steps to ensure that no more errors like the one that resulted in the delayed release of the dashcam video occur in the future.

The organizers want to make it clear that while these outcomes are welcome and necessary, they don’t constitute justice. “I think we often talk about these aftermath investigations and reforms as seeking justice for Harith, but the truth is that Harith will never get justice. He's killed. There's nothing

Disclosure: Several people who worked on this project, including Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Maira Khwaja, and Sam Stecklow, have contributed to the Weekly.

“Six Durations of a Split Second: The Killing of Harith Augustus,” at the Chicago Architecture Biennial Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. (second floor; enter through Build Coffee).

Through January 5, 2020. Thursday–Friday, 12pm–5pm; Saturday, 10am–3pm. Free.

Exhibition space is not wheelchair accessible, but exhibit curators plan to bring a reel of the videos to various accessible locations across the city. forensic-architecture.org/investigation/ the-killing-of-harith-augustus Kiran Misra is a journalist and policy researcher. She last wrote for the Weekly about a report monitoring the progress of bail reform in Cook County.

CULTURE

How to Make Wine on the South Side Introducing the process associated with wine fermentation, several equipment sellers, and their history

OLAN MIJANA

BY LEO WILLIAMS Following up on their coverage of the Santa Fe Grape Distributors in the October 14th issue, here Leo Williams introduces the wine fermentation process and several local equipment sellers who can get you started.

L

ittle Italy is bounded by I-90/94 and Ashland Avenue to the east and west, and the Eisenhower Expressway and 16th Street to the north and south, roads that draw out the shape of a trim square. Within that square, much of the neighborhood has changed over the years.

The development of the Illinois Medical District and the University of Illinois at

Chicago, aided by the city, pushed out and displaced thousands of resident families, many of them the original Italian-American inhabitants whose businesses once lined Taylor Street. Outlasting the shuffle, though, is one storefront that has remained open for almost a hundred years: Chiarugi Hardware.

Chiarugi’s presence and purpose is made clear by the catalog of services outlined under its bright scarlet awning: Glass, Keys Made, Plumbing & Electrical, Wine Making Supplies. There’s no queue here, nor are minutes spent wandering aimlessly through aisles—Paul and Carole Rinaldi, the longstanding owners, are

those rare, look-your-customers-in-theeyes shopkeepers with an unwavering commitment to keeping their clients happy.

The business’s testimonies from Google Reviews are united in their praise: at this mom-and-pop shop guided by the gracious, your keys will get cut right away, orders made over the phone will be ready on the same day, and brewing supplies will be dependably available.

Chiarugi’s current storefront has a homestyle feel, and is possibly the decluttered, post-Marie Kondo equivalent of their previous two locations. Their first location (on 1014 West Taylor Street)

satisfied the hardware store hunger and more, with a robust range of items from motorcycle tires to rows of the family’s trademarked grape presses. The grape crushers have a story: one day, Harold Rinaldi, Paul’s father, noticed a photo of the Italian-American bodybuilder Charles Atlas’s bent legs holding up the world.

A bright bulb of inspiration sent him to tinker with the legs of the grape press and experiment with tilting the legs to an angle until the mechanism worked even better than before. Among the rows of grape crushers were also wooden barrels for the super thirsty or those with basements big OCTOBER 30, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

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enough for wine cellars. The Rinaldis have calculated reasons for stocking products.

They once sold malt for beer brewing, but stopped because the malt was almost literally a time-bomb: if they didn’t sell the cans before summer temperatures rose, they would explode.

Thes days, the hardware store, especially that big-box-orange-one-that-shall-notbe-named, is no longer where vintners search for fermentation supplies. Chiarugi still has its loyalists, though: repeat customers visit the shop to acquire certified oenological dry yeast, bottle cappers, sodium metabisulphite, and yeast nutrient from the Rinaldis. When visitors inquire about where to obtain grapes for their own small-scale production, Paul will direct the inquisitive toward Santa Fe Grape Distributors on 35th and Racine since, after all, he grew up with the owners.

Just as Santa Fe Grape Distributors is the go-between for homemade wine, South Siders in search of equipment, counsel, and an atypical taproom experience can visit the one-stop-shop Bev-Art Brewer & Winemaker Supply and Wild Blossom

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“If you know how to make wine at home, and a good one at that, you’ve produced something with a soul.”

Meadery & Winery located on the Far South Side, in Beverly. Open since 1992, Bev-Art Brewer has grown to become owner Greg Fischer’s dream—a supply shop able to expand into meadery and winery. Fischer originally set his sights on the Pacific Northwest vineyard business.

Eventually, though, he decided to open up shop in Chicago, his home since 1985 and a desirable location, since Illinois’s wine market is one of the largest in the country.

Beverly is a curious place for wine.

Dry laws, remnants of Prohibition, are still upheld in the neighborhood, restricting the sale of liquor. This ruling is visible all along Beverly’s stretch of South Western Avenue, where the west side of the street has remained wet and the east side has remained dry. After years of navigating tricky alcohol bureaucracy, Fischer’s shop moved from Western in 2017 to a new location along Hermitage Avenue, in a lessrestricted area of Beverly. The move allowed Fischer to finally serve his own product in a new tasting room. All the Wild Blossom beverages are available for visitors to try, including both their wine and mead. Inside the tasting room, you can purchase sample flights and beverages by the glass, all at very reasonable prices, leaving little surprise why people come to this outpost from all over the Midwest.

Mead is an ancient fermented beverage in a class entirely of its own, made from honey, water, and yeast. Yeast is perhaps the most vital ingredient, responsible for converting all that golden sugar into alcohol. Wild Blossom is Chicago’s very localized version of mead, produced with purified Lake Michigan water and honey from Fischer’s own beekeeping operation.

These bees live among the city buildings, some hives scattered atop the Marriott Magnificent Mile, while others are over on the Ogden Dunes and Kankakee Trail within Indiana Dunes National Park. The rest are hidden among the ruins of the former U.S. Steel Works, currently called Steelworkers Park.

When I asked Fischer how he was

first exposed to the world of beveragemaking, and wine in particular, he told me his grandfather used to produce their home’s supply when they lived in New York.

He and his grandfather would go to the Bronx Fruit Market to pick out grapes to take back to their home to crush and store in the basement for safekeeping. Greg still picks out grapes, but they’re usually sourced from the Sierra Foothills and Sonoma wine regions in California, or Washington. He approaches wine with a generous vision, aiming to educate people on how to make good wine correctly from start to finish.

You’ll have no reason to distrust his creed: there is a crystalline confidence in his voice, assurance from years of teaching. Tied into his dedication to teaching his trade is a powerful belief, which he sums up in a single sentence: “If you know how to make wine at home, and a good one at that, you’ve produced something with a soul.” Those who adopt his self-sustaining practice will instantly taste, know, and feel the difference.

In his experience, customers on a mission to make wine have often had relatives with a background in vinification. The trend, he says, looks like this: the grandfather makes wine, and then over time the family stops vinting. The children grow up, and they start their own families. The grandchildren find grandpa’s press and a new generation of winemakers resurges, often aiming for higher quality and more complex wines.

Part of the Bev-Art Brewer model includes winemaking classes offered weekly where people can make small batches of wine, typically five gallons. In these classes, Fischer guides curious students through the wine fermentation process and presents instructions on how to properly bottle their wine. Together, the class transfers the juice to a vessel, bottles it, and eventually picks it up once the liquid has fully matured.

Some customers have taken their newfound knowledge and skill and run far, such as Tim McEnery, Bev-Art Brewer alum and founder of the Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant group. Twice a year, Greg hosts a “Barrel Club,” a meet-up designed

for winemaking enthusiasts who are more advanced in their oenology skills and want to experiment with the quantity of production.

The club explores tastes together and compares notes as a group about aging their wines in barrels (a barrel can produce two hundred and fifty to three hundred bottles of wine).

However you consume your wine, and regardless of how you acquire it, consider this read a gentle push towards exploring homemade wine if and when the opportunity presents itself. If you want to know more, we recommend visiting Chiarugi Hardware for the equipment, BevArt Brew & Wild Blossom Meadery for the expertise and tastings, and Santa Fe Grape Distributors for the fruit. Just keep in mind that the do-it-yourself taste is a reward and joy you cannot commodify.

Chiarugi Hardware, 1412 W. Taylor St. Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm; Saturday, 9am– 4pm; Sunday, 10am–2pm. (312) 666-2235.

Bev-Art Brewer & Winemaker Supply, Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery, 9030 S Hermitage Ave. Tuesday–Friday, 9:30am– 7pm; Saturday, 9am–6pm; open Sunday and Monday by appointment only. (773) 2337579. shop.bev-art.com/main.sc

Becoming a DIY Vintner

V

isually, the process of making wine looks like this: pound your grapes in a tub and let them sit in the juice with all the skin and seeds for up to ten days. Your grapes in their new tub form have become “must,” the juice vintners rely on to get the fermentation started, until they transfer the combination into a grape crusher to be pressed. I asked one of our experts about the process; Rinaldi advised me you have between seven to ten days for your grapes to ferment. Any issues with your wine start with the crush, and the inevitable result is a bad ferment. If all goes well, the grapes rise to the top of the tub after the seventh day of fermentation, but only once the grapes recede back down will you know your ferment is ready to be juiced and then transferred via a siphon into a glass carboy (or demijohn, depending on the quantity). One more tip, courtesy of Delta Packing’s website, before you roll up your pants to crush your berries in their tub: all non-organic grapes are known as the dirty

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dozen, a name given to them for their high concentration of pesticides— take the time to soak them in water with salt and vinegar for ten to fifteen minutes.

Grapes in general are a cluster of potential: nearly every part of the berry has a use. Pomace is the mound of pulp left after all the juice has been squeezed out from the grape press; it’s a viable heap of grape residue that can be transformed into yet another product by way of fermentation. With pomace, you can produce vinegar, grappa, cognac, or other versions of brandy liquor.

(For the alcohol, you will need a distiller.)

Fermentation is full of wonder, and so are the combined methods for preservation.

Take sulfites, which prevent your wine from oxidizing and spoiling within a year.

Adding potassium or sodium metabisulfite to the must kills or stuns stray yeast strains that could interfere with the wine-making process. This allows for wine maturity and deeper flavors. Far back in history, antimicrobial sulfites were used by ancient societies as an intervention to prevent wine from turning into vinegar. In fact, the ancient Romans would burn candles made of sulfur in empty wine containers—sulfur also has the added benefit of disinfecting barrels. Too much sulfur will result in a rotten-egg aroma, not typically a desirable characteristic to most wine aficionados.

Fischer explained to me how yeast is used in the winemaking process and how different yeasts achieve and complement the flavors of different wines. Yeast’s scientific name, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, translates as “sugar-eating fungus.” Its favorite food is sugar in any form, whether that be sucrose, glucose, fructose, and so on. There is a wide array of yeast strains available that allow vintners to craft their wine to match specific tastes and satisfy palates. Bev-Art Brewer

provides ten to fifteen different commercial yeasts at any given time, but hundreds of yeast strains exist on the market for those interested in the art of winemaking. For example, there’s a yeast that brings out specific characteristics of a Syrah, uncurling earthy tones or floral and spicy notes such as violet, cassis, or even black pepper. In fact, depending on the commercial yeast you choose, you can control how fruity, bold, or tannic your flavors are. Yeast is highly important, and the lifeline of ferments. The yeast used in mead is often identical to the yeast used in wine, but not all yeasts can be used to make wine. Fischer says most wine makers do not use wild yeast, as it is harder to control and will prevent consistency between batches. The world of wine is one of convictions, with some arguing commercial yeast takes away from the individuality of a wine, and lean in more on wild fermented wines. Naturally occurring yeasts intervene in nature all the time: if the skin of a berry splits open, yeast organisms will insert themselves and dig into their sugar feast and convert it into alcohol. Wild yeasts are popular and have a fervent following, but no doubt there is great trust in commercialized yeasts.

You can be taught the whole process of crushing grapes, incorporating additives, bottling and aging, or you can also purchase the juice itself. Paul Rinaldi has firsthand experience bottling with the Californian Regina-brand juice that Santa Fe Grape Distributors distributes. Both Rinaldi and Fischer offered a few tips for homemade wine, such as keeping wine in the basement where temperatures are optimal for storing and aging. They also attest to the ease of using the juice method, which is both cleaner and more of a guarantee. You may wonder about authenticity, and romanticize

the labor of crushing your own grapes, but Fischer assures home vintners that going the juice-to-bottle route is not cheating and can be just as rewarding. You may find the juice a little more economical too, Rinaldi explained, since you never know how long the boxes of grapes have been in transit, and therefore how much juice they’ve lost along the way.

Next fall, interested parties can grab a four-page misty-blue pamphlet from Santa Fe Grape Distributors for home brew guidance. The Regina-brand juice that SFGD sells is never made from concentrate and contains zero additives (especially appealing to those who would like to avoid preservatives). When you buy your product you will simply be acquiring quality juice kept fresh by a temperature-controlled storage container at an even thirty degrees— otherwise fermentation begins. Before beginning to ferment your Regina grape juice you’ll need to maintain the juice at a precise seventy degrees Fahrenheit for reds, or sixty degrees for whites. You’ll be grateful for a funnel, and need a stopper and airlock, a pail, two Carboys, a corker, a siphon, and several vessels for bottling. If you want to impress friends, or even yourself, consider obtaining a spigot to keep your homemade libation on tap. Make sure your equipment is sterile and then you’re ready to begin. Stir your Regina juice pail and then fill up a Carboy, using a funnel—place an airlock on the bottle mouth and wait (full fermentation will be achieved eighteen to twenty-four days later).

A hydrometer is a more advanced step, and allows for monitoring the sugar levels of your beverage, helping you decide and control the sweetness or dryness of your wine. The next step is a process known as “racking,” a practice which involves moving wine from one container to another for aeration, and

for filtering out Lees, the noticeable dead yeast cells that will collect at the bottom of your vessel. Using a four-page leaflet and the accompanying photographs provided by SFGD, the most novice of hopeful vintners can guide themselves through adopting a home viticulture practice from the comfort of their own homes. 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.

LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED.

LIZZIE SMITH

OCTOBER 30, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

BUSINESS

GABY FEBLAND

Green Jobs

At Chicago State’s Cannabis Expo, worries about who will benefit from legalization

BY AV BENFORD

M

ost cannabis-focused events in Chicago seem to be one of two things: incredibly expensive, or not even in Chicago at all. This made the Cannabis Industry Expo, hosted at Chicago State University in September, all the more exceptional: a free event located not in the Loop or out in Rosemont, but in the heart 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

of the South Side.

It wasn’t until I stepped off the bus, staring at the beautiful glass enclosure of the Gwendolyn Brooks Library, that the full reality of the day hit me. I was standing on the campus of what I lovingly call “Chicago’s HBCU”, because of its pro-Black naming of buildings and its largely African American

¬ OCTOBER 30, 2019

student population. This university is located just south of Chatham, near Roseland, an economically-underserved community in one of the most segregated cities in the country. The populations of the South and West Sides of this city have disproportionately been arrested and convicted of drug-related crimes, and yet

there I was, at a major university, attending a Cannabis Industry Expo—a Black Cannabis Industry Expo. These are the first public conversations that I have ever had about “weed” without fear of arrest or persecution.

I was particularly excited to see a panel on careers in the cannabis industry, focusing on educational opportunities and cannabis

BUSINESS

“I have a twinkle in my eye because there is finally a way to do this, the right way.” career certifications. I was immediately struck by the panel’s diversity: in an industry where barely ten percent of businesses are Black and Latinx-owned, the panel was moderated by a Black woman, Dr. Joni Jackson, a marketing professor in CSU’s College of Business. She was joined by two other Black women: Britteny Soto, a senior recruiter with Green Thumb Industries, and Edie Moore, executive director of the Chicago branch of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML). They sat on either side of Dr. Devi Potluri, a South Asian man and a professor of plant biology at Chicago State.

Bookending the panel were Scott Wells,

a white man and Vice President of Talent and Acquisition for Cresco Labs, a major cannabis company with retail operations in seven states, and Danielle Schumacher, a white woman and the cofounder and CEO of THC Staffing.

From the beginning, the panel saw passionate disagreement. The most frequent disputes were between Wells, the panel’s representative of “Big Marijuana,” and Schumacher, a small business owner.

Wells, with a well-trimmed graying beard, certainly looked the part of the typical cannabis “pharma bro,” but when he spoke his language focused on diversity and inclusion. This was most obvious in

his response to a question about equity applicant hiring, which establishes benefits for companies who set up in and hire folks from communities that were historically disadvantaged. This practice is enshrined in the new Illinois cannabis law, which folks associated with Cresco helped write. Wells truly believes that, through what he called “the most regulated program in the country,” Cresco will be able to help communities not only in Chicago but also in smaller cities like Joliet, where they have production facilities.

“It is not an opportunity for one,” said Wells, “It can truly be an opportunity for many.”

In response to the same question, Schumacher had a very different opinion

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about the new legislation. “It was written for business,” Schumacher said, “in a lot of cases by the lobbyists of the big business.

We have to be really careful about how this law gets implemented.” She highlighted the plight of immigrants who, she said, could risk deportation by working in the cannabis industry because of a lack of federal regulation. While Wells spoke in glowing terms about the effects of so many new enterprises and the loyalty of his current workforce, Schumacher continued to mention the role the lobbyists had in the crafting of the legislation, which she saw as tilted toward “Big Marijuana.”

Britteny Soto, of Green Thumb

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BUSINESS

Blackstone Bicycle Works

Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 12pm Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)

follow us at @blackstonebikes blackstonebikes.org

Blackstone Bicycle Works is a bustling community bike shop that each year empowers over 200 boys and girls from Chicago’s south side—teaching them mechanical skills, job skills, business literacy and how to become responsible community members. In our year-round ‘earn and learn’ youth program, participants earn bicycles and accessories for their work in the shop. In addition, our youths receive after-school tutoring, mentoring, internships and externships, college and career advising, and scholarships.

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12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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¬ OCTOBER 30, 2019

A PROGRAM OF

Industries, was all warm smiles when highlighting her company’s new offerings.

Green Thumb’s new Social Equity License Application Assistance Program (LEAP) is designed to “help educate applicants about the adult-use cannabis business application process and prepare them to apply for the available categories of licenses.” According to an August press release, “GTI application experts will provide start-up guidance to applicants regarding real estate selection and the required application content. They will also advise on accessing the Cannabis Business Development Fund’s lowinterest loans and grants for Social Equity Applicants and on obtaining application fee waivers.” Soto said “the satisfaction of what we do far outpaces the income. But, the money is there and that’s nice. I have a twinkle in my eye because there is finally a way to do this, the right way.”

Soto was graceful even when receiving some pushback in the form of an audience question. A middle-aged black man who described himself as a seasoned grower stepped up to a mic in one of the aisles and asked about another unique aspect of Illinois’s marijuana legislation: the craft grow. Under Illinois law, with a special license, craft growers (akin to craft brewers) are permitted to initially operate a facility of up to 5,000 feet, with the possibility of later expansion up to 14,000 feet. To those of us who are not cultivators, this may seem like a lot of space, but this gentleman argued that even with expansion, that amount of canopy space is not enough to develop the proprietary strains that would allow his brand to develop a secure market position.

He was worried that this essentially would push out the little guy. Soto responded, “There will always be a space for that craft grow,” but the man shook his head, sighed, and muttered, obviously believing otherwise.

The quote of the morning, though, belonged to Dr. Potluri. Sitting in the middle of the stage, in response to a question about the negative effect of the marijuana business on minority communities, he asked in response: “Do you think communities of color are dumb, that they can’t make up their own mind?”

Because the panel was essentially about job hunting in the industry, the moderator asked the panelists to make themselves available for attendees with longer or more personal questions. After the session wrapped, each took a position close to the stage and let themselves be mobbed by hopeful job seekers, fielding questions and

handing out business cards. I saw all of the panelists speaking with conference goers but one. Flanked by an assistant, Wells walked briskly toward the exit of the exhibition hall, with no stop to answer questions or network with the waiting crowd. In contrast with the friendliness of the other panelists, who took time to give the job seekers and wouldbe entrepreneurs a kind word, his lack of interaction stood out. To be fair, Cresco was tabling at the event and their lead recruiter was extremely affable to those who stopped by the table, but there was a disconnect between the passionate man on stage and the executive who didn’t take the time that day to stop and make personal connections.

This expo also served to launch Chicago State’s Cannabis Certificate Program. Doing its part to aid cannabis job seekers and cultivators through its Continuing Education Program, Chicago State is the first institution within the city limits to offer a comprehensive cannabis certificate. (Oakton Community College in the northern suburbs is the next closest.)

For a total of $445, CSU is offering a fiveclass certificate, with courses ranging from Production in a Greenhouse Environment to the Pharmacology of Cannabis-derived Compounds. These classes started on October 12, but CSU is promising that there will be future sessions, possibly as early as January. As a part of Illinois’s cannabis legislation, budtenders, the bartenders of weed, will have to be certified (just as their whiskey-slinging counterparts have to be licensed.) Chicago State is still determining if their offerings will satisfy the state’s training requirements. AV Benford is one of the Weekly’s Food & Land editors and last wrote for the Weekly about the Poetry Foundation Block Party.

NEIGBORHOOD

Serving the Pets of 60621 A new center fills a gap in one of Chicago’s “pet deserts”

BY NIKKI ROBERTS

Y

ou can’t miss St. Stephen’s,” laughs Nancy Brown, the manager of community outreach for PAWS Chicago, the city’s largest no-kill animal shelter.

She’s referencing St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Englewood—a massive, red brick building that rises far above the surrounding residences and the P.E.A.C.E. Community Center across the street. Standing at the top of the church's narrow concrete steps at the corner of 65th and Peoria, one can see nearly two blocks in either direction. The church is impossible to miss, just part of the reason its basement was chosen as the headquarters for the PAWS Englewood Outreach Center, which held its grand opening on Thursday, October 10.

The “synergistic relationship” that PAWS built with the church’s community is another reason it decided to operate its Outreach Center there, according to Brown.

“We wanted to talk to the people who went to this church and offer them our [PAWS For Life] package and talk to them about what their needs are,” said Brown. “We were always here, showing up and coming to some of the services. We got involved in their programs. They have a back to school program that a lot of our volunteers donate backpacks to, and they have a prom and people donated dresses and clothes.”

Brown ushers me through the expansive, dimly-lit basement of St. Stephen's, leading us into a much smaller and brighter office space equipped with computers, scales for large and small pets, and an assortment of medicine and veterinary fluids. In the office, Brown tells me about the impact PAWS has already made in Englewood and Back of the Yards over the past five years, and how this permanent outreach center will be able to further serve both the residents and pets of both neighborhoods.

That outreach begins with understanding the needs of the community that PAWS serves. “We meet people where they are,” said Brown. “We understand that

a lot of the people we want to reach don’t go to our outdoor events, even though that’s there for them. They don’t have internet, so we door knock, and that’s how we started in 2014.”

That year, the PAWS For Life program began as a way to offer free veterinary services to people and their pets in Englewood and Back of the Yards, while also building relationships within those communities. PAWS conducted research that found that seventy-five percent of pets in these neighborhoods had never seen a veterinarian, and ninety-five percent were not spayed or neutered. Additionally, these communities are a “pet desert,” with pet care all but inaccessible for residents who face financial and transportation barriers.

There are no veterinarians in Englewood or Back of the Yards, and the closest pet store—which specializes in tropical fish—is nearly four miles away from St. Stephen’s, on 86th and Ashland. The closest store that carries products for all pets is a Petco, nearly six miles away on 95th and Western in Evergreen Park.

The free PAWS For Life package attempts to address that inequity. It includes a spay or neuter surgery, vaccines, microchipping, ear cleaning, and nail trimming for cats and dogs. Access to additional services, such as vet check-ups and a pet food pantry, only require that the owner and their pet are registered with PAWS, they reside within the 60621 ZIP code, and, if medically possible, their pet is spayed or neutered.

“People can’t just walk up from any part of Chicago with an unaltered [pet] and get services. Our mission is to extend the ‘no kill’ mission of PAWS Chicago,” said Brown.

Over the past five years, PAWS For Life has served the pets of 60621 with their mobile spay & neuter clinic—which Brown affectionately refers to as the “Gus Bus”—and veterinary house visits. Of the more than 16,000 cats and dogs that PAWS spayed or neutered across the city last year,

the outreach team in Englewood brought in twenty percent of those pets; that’s more than 3,000 cats and dogs. In 2018, PAWS also donated 25,307 pounds of food to 3,529 Chicago pets through its Pet Food Pantry.

“We’re strength based; what does the community have and what does the community need in order to be successful in terms of resources?” asked Brown.

Now, with a permanent outreach clinic at St. Stephen’s, PAWS will now be able to widen the accessibility of their services and bring community pet care to Englewood and Back of the Yards.

Community medicine involves both veterinary medicine and wellness checks.

When PAWS was only doing house visits, their veterinarians weren’t always equipped to fully treat every pet; it was impossible for them to carry all the necessary medicine, fluids, and equipment they could possibly need with them at all times. Pets in serious condition often had to be transported to the Lurie Clinic in Little Village, and pets whose illnesses were not as dire would have to wait a day or two for the vet to come back with the necessary supplies.

Now, pet owners registered with PAWS can make appointments to receive veterinary services and bring their pets in for wellness checks, in addition to receiving the free PAWS For Life package of services.

A physical center also allows the community to congregate and build relationships at events hosted by PAWS, such as regular pet food pantries and outdoor cat shelter builds.

At the pet food pantries, registered pet owners wait outside while volunteers look them up in the PAWS database. Owners receive a slip of paper with the number and type of pets they own (e.g. one dog, two cats) and then can receive food and select toys, bowls, and even clothes for their pets.

Other events, like a recent shelter build held on October 26th, engage the community by gathering volunteers who build shelters for outdoor and feral cats. For Brown, whose two goals as manager of the outreach team are

to build relationships with pet owners and share information, being able to host events is the perfect way to spread information and engage the community, even if some pet owners aren’t necessarily interested in the services PAWS offers.

“We want to build a relationship,” said Brown. “ We meet [pet owners] where they are. I’ve had some really good conversations with neighborhood breeders, people who swear they’ll never neuter their pet. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to them; they’ve still valuable and part of the community. That context is the most effective. I’m trying to build a relationship with you and if you never neuter your animal, I will always speak with you and if I have some information to share, I will always do it … If you change your mind, this offer is still good. We’re still here for you.” Nikki Roberts is a senior journalism student at DePaul University. She writes about underground Chicago music and feminist pop culture, and enjoys reading hyper-local reporting on Chicago and its neighborhoods.

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Dias serian de lunes a sabado.

Para mas informacion, favor de llamar a Sra. Elena 773-676-0210

OCTOBER 30, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

JUSTICE

Illinois Loosened Ankle Monitor Restrictions, But Advocates Say It's Too Soon To Celebrate A Prisoner Review Board memo released in July requires a minimum of twelve hours of movement with ankle monitors, but some people say they’re still being given far less

BY KIRA LERNER, THE APPEAL

LIZZIE SMITH

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ OCTOBER 30, 2019

JUSTICE

This story originally appeared on The Appeal, a nonprofit criminal justice news site.

W

hen fifty-three-year-old Isaac Young was released from an Illinois prison on May 31 after more than twenty-five years, he was eager to start his life over. He had already lined up a place to live and had plans to start job hunting while reconnecting with his Chicago community.

Before he was released, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board (PRB) considered his file and ordered him to spend 120 days on electronic monitoring. When he got home, his parole agent told him he could leave home for only six hours each weekday and less than that on Saturdays. Later, that was increased to eight when he started an HVAC training class.

“It was like I was still behind a wall,” he told The Appeal. “I had movement, but it was limited movement.”

Young said he didn’t have time to go to job interviews and he constantly worried about whether he would make it home by 6pm to check in for the night. He also missed family gatherings and church events on Sundays, when he wasn’t allowed movement at all. For four months, Young lived in this restricted manner until his ankle monitor was removed on October 1.

What Young didn’t realize was that starting on July 15, he should have been allowed far more movement outside his home. That day, in response to a series of state legislative hearings earlier in the year on electronic monitoring, the PRB issued a memorandum that, among other things, altered the conditions of release. The reforms, effective immediately, included a rule that every person released on parole or mandatory supervised release with an ankle monitor have at least twelve hours of authorized movement each day. Any restrictions beyond that have to be approved by the PRB. But Young’s agent didn’t inform him of the change, he said. A spokesperson for the Parole Review Board said he couldn’t comment on a specific case.

Young said that had he been allowed twelve hours of movement, his experience on his ankle monitor wouldn’t have been as difficult. It would have been easier to find a job, he said, and it would have lessened his daily anxieties about missing check-in.

James Kilgore, an expert on electronic monitoring who leads MediaJustice’s Challenging E-carceration project, said

the change gave Illinois the most liberal electronic monitoring regulations for people on post-prison release anywhere in the country.

Yet they still require proper execution, he said. Both parole agents and people on electronic monitoring need to know the new regulations. “If implemented, this rule could make a huge difference for people on EM,” he told The Appeal, but it’s not clear that the Prisoner Review Board can enforce it. “Ultimately, the decisions about people’s movement get made by individual parole agents on the ground.”

T

he change addressed concerns that electronic monitoring was overly restrictive. During the state legislative hearings this year, lawmakers were confronted with the challenge, for instance, that medical issues pose for people with ankle monitors. Nicole Davis testified that her uncle was diagnosed with late-stage cancer while on electronic monitoring and missed necessary doctor’s appointments before he died because he was unable to get permission from his parole agent to leave his home.

“Those parole officers would not return my call, they had no sympathy for my uncle,” she told the Illinois House Judiciary Committee in February. The state Department of Corrections did not respond to questions on the case.

Sarah Staudt, senior policy analyst and staff attorney at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, commended the PRB for hearing out the concerns raised during the hearings and addressing some of them in its memo.

“I’m very happy to hear that they listened to those concerns,” Staudt said.

“They did hear what our advocates were saying and what the people who told their stories were saying and provided a pretty major fix.”

“This is a major step forward for the program and if it gets implemented on the ground, it will reduce suffering,” she added.

But community advocates and others who work with people on post-sentence electronic monitoring say compliance is spotty at best. Parole agents continue to restrict people like Young to fewer hours of movement, advocates said, and many individuals with ankle monitors are unaware of the new policy.

Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, told The Appeal that he has heard many

complaints about denial of movement and that people his organization works with have not heard of the rule change. One of the reasons the memo seemingly isn’t being followed, he said, is confusion over who sets the rules on electronic monitoring.

“The PRB has authority over what conditions of parole they impose,” Mills said.

“But parole agents work for the Department of Corrections.”

Jason Sweat, a spokesperson for the PRB, said the board sent the memo to the head of the Department of Corrections and expected the new directive to be communicated to parole agents. Because parole agents work for a separate state agency, he said the PRB has no way to force them to comply.

Representatives for the Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.

a Lipman Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The Appeal is a nonprofit media organization that produces original journalism about criminal justice that is focused on the most significant drivers of mass incarceration, which occur at the state and local level. Originally published online October 18. Reprinted with permission.

I

f the memo is implemented, Staudt said, it would be a step in the right direction.

Although twelve-hour movement doesn’t lessen the stigma around electronic monitoring or the privacy concerns it raises, the change begins to address some of the damage that ankle monitors have on people’s lives, she said.

“This is the kind of big step that we should be looking for as EM programs try to improve,” she said. “We don’t want electronic monitoring to impose a substantial impediment to the things that people need to do in their lives—take care of their families, getting a job, getting enrolled in school. Having to specifically request movement for those types of things is just not workable.”

Ultimately, Staudt and other advocates would like to see the use of ankle monitors reduced or ended in Illinois.

There’s little evidence they improve public safety, she said, and people on electronic monitoring often say it makes them feel like they are still incarcerated.

Shawn Manuel, forty-six, spent six months with an ankle monitor and now gets health and other re-entry services from the Inner-City Muslim Action Network alongside Young. He described the feeling of being home but not being allowed to live his life.

“It’s like a leash,” Manuel said. “It’s worse than a leash. Parole is a leash. Ankle monitors is like a dog house.” Kira Lerner is a staff reporter at The Appeal based in Washington, D.C. She is currently OCTOBER 30, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

EVENTS

BULLETIN Proposed Chicago Casino: How Can We Do This Right?

(Chinatown) Chicago Public Library, Chinatown Branch, 2100 S. Wentworth Ave. Wednesday, October 30, 3pm–5pm. Free. bit.ly/Casino_ Chinatown

Proposed Chicago Casino: How Can We Do This Right? (South Side) Chicago Public Library, King Branch, 3436 S. King Dr. Thursday, November 7, 3pm–5pm.

Free. bit.ly/Casino_Southside In June, Governor Jay Pritzker signed the Illinois Gambling Act, which includes provisions for a “mega-casino” in Chicago.

Whether or not that’s a good bet is still up for debate, though. The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community will host two panel discussions about the potential impact of a Chicago casino near two of the four locations proposed for it (three potential sites are on the South Side, and one is in the South Loop). Elizabeth Thielen of Nicasa Behavioral Health Services, Harold Lucas of Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council, and Rudy Asuncion Pamintuan of Diversity Gaming Solutions are panelists. CBAC encourages attendees to “make their voices heard” at these community roundtables. ( Jim Daley)

“No More Shackles” Report Launch Grace Place Episcopal Church, 637 S. Dearborn St. Wednesday, October 30, 5:30pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/Report_Launch Media Justice and the Chicago Community Bond Fund teamed up to research how electronic ankle monitors impact the people subjected to the practice. The monitors, which MJ and CCBF refer to as “ankle shackles,” include new models rolled out earlier this year that allow juvenile court officials to track and even listen in on children awaiting trial in Cook County.

Lavette Mayes of CCBF emcees, and James Kilgore of MJ and Robert Agnew of Just Leadership USA (Milwaukee) will give presentations, followed by testimony from people who have personally experienced electronic monitoring and activists in the movement to end the practice. ( Jim Daley) 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

We Are Witnesses: Chicago

Pumpkin Smash

Chicago Public Library, Chinatown Branch, 2100 S. Wentworth Ave. Wednesday, November 6, 5pm–7pm. Free. bit.ly/Witness_ Screening

Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, 3857 W. 111th St. Saturday, November 2, 9am–noon. Free. Contact sbatka@illinois.edu with questions.

The Marshall Project, Kartemquin Films, and Illinois Humanities partnered to create this short video series that explores criminal justice from the perspectives of crime victims, alleged perpetrators, police and prison guards, and families of incarcerated persons. The series deliberately includes voices from diverse Chicago communities in a conversation about the criminal justice system. Discussion to follow the screening.

Some parts of the film may not be suitable for all audiences due to subject matter. ( Jim Daley)

Once Halloween is over, you may be wondering what to do with your jack-o’lantern. This one-day-only event provides an answer: drop off your pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks, straw bales, and other natural Halloween decor, and it will be composted instead of sent to a landfill. Please make sure to remove any yarn, stickers, candles, and other non-natural materials beforehand. Drop off your pumpkins in the back parking lot, using the driveway east of the school. (Sam Joyce)

Novel Writing Master Class featuring Tony Lindsay Gwendolyn Brooks Library at Chicago State University (room 301), 9501 S. King Dr. Saturday, November 9, 10am–4pm. Free.

Register at bit.ly/CSUTonyLindsayClass The Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing welcomes Tony Lindsay, the author of eight novels and five short story collections, as he returns to his alma mater to present a fullday workshop designed to assist writers in the creation of a new work. At the end of the day writers will finish with a novel outline, a complete first chapter, and the start of a second chapter. A notebook and a dictionary are required; a laptop is suggested. Refreshments provided. (Nicole Bond)

NATURE El Paseo Haunted Garden El Paseo Community Garden, 944 W. 21st St. Thursday, October 31, 6pm–10pm. elpaseogarden.org Join El Paseo Garden for their annual haunted garden! This event will feature some of El Paseo’s classic favorites, including the Witches Corner, Jack-o’Lantern Pumpkin Patch, and a Glow-inthe-Dark Bone Collection, as well as some new sections for this year. The garden will be decorated for one night only, so make sure to stop by. (Sam Joyce)

¬ OCTOBER 30, 2019

Before the Skyscrapers: Chicago’s Natural History West Loop Library, 122 N. Aberdeen St. Saturday, November 2, 3pm–4:15pm. chipublib.org

different types of seeds, preparing mixes of native seeds that will be ready to plant next spring. All ages and levels of experience are welcome, and complimentary snacks and apple cider will be provided. (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)

FOOD & LAND Farmer's Markets

This talk, presented by urbanologist and author Max Grinnell, will explore how the landscape that underlies Chicago has changed over the past centuries. Or, more succinctly: what happens when you reverse a river, raise the Loop, and dig a Deep Tunnel? And what does all that history matter to us today? (Sam Joyce)

Wednesdays

Artecito Esqueletos

Hyde Park Farmers Market, 5300 S. Harper Ct. Thursdays, 7am–1pm. Through October. downtownhydeparkchicago.com

OPEN Center for the Arts, 2214 S. Sacramento Ave. Saturday, November 2, 11am–2pm. Free. bit.ly/2PcF2iz This afternoon of art gives kids an opportunity to learn about the natural world by painting and creating. Co-hosted by the Lincoln Park Zoo and OPEN Center for the Arts, this event will teach children about skeletons while also offering a chance to make art. (Sam Joyce)

Southeast Side Seed Processing Trumbull Park Community Center, 2400 E. 105th St. Saturday, November 9, 9am–noon.

Free (includes free parking). gl.audubon.org Join Audubon Great Lakes and the Chicago Park District for some native seed processing! Now that the growing season is winding down, it’s time to sort the seeds that volunteers have diligently collected. Volunteers at this event will sort

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

Saturdays Farmers Market at The Port Ministries, 5013 S. Hermitage Ave. The second Saturday of each month, noon–4pm. facebook.com/ theportministries

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.

EVENTS

Multiple Days 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

Halloween-y Park Events Happy Halloween! If you’re tired of the same old trick-or-treating, head out to the bounty of events from spooky to groovy happening around South Side parks this Thursday and weekend. Here’s a list of what’s going on:

Halloween Party at Rainey Park 4350 W. 79th St. Thursday, October 31, 4:30pm–6pm, costume contest at 5:15pm.

Free. bit.ly/RaineyHalloweenParty2019

We Bring You Bronzeville Halloween at Ellis Park 3520 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Thursday, October 31, 3pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ BluesBronzevilleHalloween

Bootiful Party at Lindblom Park 6054 S. Damen Ave. Thursday, October 31, 7pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/BootifulLindblom2019

Halloween Nightmare at Columbus Park 500 S. Central Ave. Thursday, October 31, 4pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ ColumbusNightmare2019

Dia de los Muertos at Dvorak Park 1119 W. Cullerton St. Saturday, November 2, 2pm–6:30pm. Free. bit.ly/DvorakDia2019

First Friday Astro Club at Northerly Island Northerly Island Park, 1521 S. Linn White Drive. Friday, November 1, 6:30pm–8:30pm.

Free. bit.ly/AstroClubNortherlyIsland Yes, we all mourn summer, watching the sun set earlier and earlier every day as winter approaches. But the upside? You

can find stars in the dark skies of early evening—and this Friday, the Chicago Astronomer, an organization of urbanites passionate about the sky, are leading a workshop and stargazing session. Learn how to identify constellations, create a star map, and look through their provided telescopes to a world beyond. (Sarah Fineman)

A New Blueprint: Discussing Diversity in Preservation Augustana Lutheran Church, 5500 S. Woodlawn Ave. Saturday, November 2, 2pm–4pm. Free. hydeparkhistory.org Photographer Lee Bey just published his newest book, titled Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago's South Side and centering buildings of note from the St. Gabriel Church in Canaryville to Pride Cleaners in Chatham.

This weekend, Bey stops by the Augustana Lutheran Church, itself a photo-worthy structure, to discuss the importance of preserving buildings and spaces that hold meaning for diverse communities. (Sarah Fineman)

Villapalooza! 2019 Little Village, Chicago. Saturday, August 24 & Sunday, August 25, 12pm­–1am. Free. bit.ly/Villapalooza2019 Since 2011, Villapallooza has provided a safe space for members of the Little Village community to join for a daylong event of music, art, food, and culture. Local and international artists all unite for an event that spans over five city blocks, beginning with 26th street, and boasts over 30,000 attendees. Stop by this year’s event for a taste of the community’s local cuisine and sounds from DJs and bands. (Atavia Reed)

Bridgeport Community Development Forum Taylor Lauridsen Park, 704 W 42nd St. Wednesday, October 30, 6:30pm–8:30pm.

Free. bit.ly/BportCommDevForum Change is in the air these days in Bridgeport—and the grassroots organizations Bridgeport Alliance and Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community are hosting a neighborhood forum about it this Wednesday. They’re trying to hear from community members

and help community members hear from each other, so come out to listen and learn. Childcare and Spanish/Cantonese translations will be provided. (Sarah Fineman)

Openings GAGE PARK – Hogar Cafe Hogar Cafe is an interesting new specialty coffee shop and cafe in Gage Park. This spot is certainly inventive: it features caffeinated specialties like the Hogar Latte (espresso and steamed milk mixed with horchata concentrate), the Gage Park Latte (espresso and steamed milk mixed with chocolate peanut butter mousse), and the Cali Shot (an espresso shot poured over your choice of chocolate or vanilla ice cream). Their food offerings include the PB&B, a creamy peanut butter and banana open-faced sandwich topped with light dulce de leche on a wheat toast for breakfast, and the Western Blvd., which is a combo of pastrami, swiss cheese, grilled onions, pickles, garlic mayo, and dijon mustard on tomato focaccia for lunch. hogar-cafe.com 2753 W. 55th St. (AV Benford)

South Side Pie Challenge 2019 Hyde Park Neighborhood Club, 5480 S. Kenwood Ave. Saturday, November 2, 2pm–5pm. Free admission, $4/slice of pie. southsidepie.com Inspired by a trip to the Bucktown Apple Pie Contest in 2011, the South Side Pie Challenge invites you to join them for their annual juried amateur pie baking competition. According to their website this event will highlight “the best amateur bakers of the South Side, bringing together chefs who share their pastry expertise as judges, local youth who volunteer to serve pie, talented home bakers young and old, south side businesses who support our event, and hundreds of neighbors who join us each year to celebrate pie.” This event will raise money for the Hyde Park/ Kenwood Interfaith Council Hunger Programs. Any resident of Chicago’s South Side is welcome to enter their pies in the challenge. Whether it’s Pilsen or Chatham or Back of the Yards—they want you to join them. (AV Benford)

HYDE PARK – Trader Joe's Let’s face it, after the departure of Treasure Island, a Trader Joe’s in Hyde Park is a blessing. With Target and other businesses closing multiple stores on the South Side in the last year that had large footprints, leaving large blank buildings dotting the strip mall landscape, it is good to see a “big store” go in. Someone has to give overpriced Whole Foods with its newly under-benefited employees some competition. That said, I am very disappointed by the size of the store and the fact that it’ll be closing at 9pm, an hour earlier than other locations. 1528 E. 55th St. (AV Benford)

Kitchen Toke: Cooking with Cannabis Peach’s Restaurant, 4652 S. King Dr. Friday, November 8, 6pm–7pm. SOLD OUT. To be added to the waitlist, call the box office at (312) 605-8444. bit.ly/kitchentoke The Chicago Humanities Festival and the Reader present Kitchen Toke: Cooking with Cannabis. With the help of Kitchen Toke, the first media company devoted to culinary cannabis, this event is for “home cooks, patients, chefs, and the otherwise health-conscious individuals” to have a place to go where they can find credible information on preparing and enjoying culinary cannabis. Featuring Joline Rivera, Kitchen Toke’s founder; Mike Sula, editor of Kitchen Toke and food critic for the Reader, and David Yusefzadeh, a prominent cannabis chef, this event promises a wideranging discussion on the past, present, and future of culinary cannabis. A CBDinfused snack will be served. (AV Benford)

Closings BRIDGEPORT – Bridgeport Bakery The Tribune says Bridgeport Bakery, a legendary South Side institution, has been open for seventy-eight years. According to the ownership and Block Club, it has been open for forty-seven years. Either way, that’s a very long haul. Known for their paczki, maple bacon doughnuts, and wedding cakes, the beloved bakery will close on October 31, according to a Facebook post. 2907 S. Archer Ave. (AV Benford)

OCTOBER 30, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

EVENTS

STAGE & SCREEN Get Out Chicago Public Library Greater Grand Crossing Branch, 1000 E. 73rd St. Wednesday, October 30, 5pm. CPL South Chicago Branch, 9055 S. Houston Ave. Wednesday, October 30, 5:30pm. Free. chipublib.org If you held off on seeing the 2017 Jordan Peele R-rated thriller Get Out because you thought it would be too scary, here is one more chance. Think more Stepford Wives and less blood and guts. You can handle it. I promise. Plus, the next time someone refers to the sunken place you will finally know what the in the heck they are talking about.

(Nicole Bond)

Blaxploitation Horror Double Feature Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Screening Room 201. Friday, November 1, 7pm. Free. filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu In the spirit of the Halloween season, the UofC Film Studies Center will screen two of the Blaxploitation genre’s spookiest films, both directed by William Crain.

First up is Blacula, the 1972 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring William Marshall, Vonetta McGee, and Denise Nicholas. (FYI, for anyone not clear on the term Blaxploitation, think of it this way: William Marshall (1924–2003) was a talented Shakespearean actor, director, and opera singer, yet it is for this role he is most credited.) Then stay to see Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, a 1976 R-rated film starring Bernie Casey and Rosalind Cash and inspired by the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story.

The films will be introduced by UofC cinema and media studies professor Allyson Nadia Field. (Nicole Bond)

Bank and the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party includes facilitated community discussions to unpack the topics outlined in the films. This month’s films are: Power to the People, the 1989 film where activists share how the Panther Party and its chairman Fred Hampton influenced their work and galvanized a movement that elected Chicago’s first Black mayor Harold Washington, some twenty years after Hampton’s murder, and Eyes On The Prize: A Nation of Law? (Part 12), a film chronicling the leadership of Fred Hampton, with coverage of the Attica Prison rebellion. (Nicole Bond)

First Nations Film and Video Festival Harold Washington Library (Pritzker Auditorium), 400 S. State St. Tuesday, November 5, 6pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ CPLFirstNationsFilm Since 1990, the First Nations Film and Video Festival has been celebrating the work of Native American filmmakers each year in Chicago. The festival’s mission is to debunk stereotypes and promote awareness of Native American issues. The Harold Washington Library is proud to present three short films: Yakonnhhehkwen (It Sustains Her) directed by Candace Maracle (Mohawk), explores healing, the presence of the ancestors, and the rare traditional Iroquoian art form of black ash basketry.

The Game of Hockey: A Mi’kmaw Story, directed by April Maloney (Mi’kmaq), asks and answers questions about the origins of ice hockey. And in Huahua, directed by Joshi Espinosa (Kichwa, from Ecuador), a young aboriginal couple questions their identity upon news of a new baby’s arrival.

(Nicole Bond)

BACinema Film Series

Automobiles on November 20, Die Hard on December 4, and Happy Christmas on December 18, with a Q&A to follow with Happy Christmas writer/director Joe Swanberg. (Nicole Bond)

VISUAL ARTS Corey Hagelberg: Roots, Woodcut Prints Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Opening reception Friday, November 8, 6pm–10pm. Open by appointment through December 6, call (312) 852-7717. Free. urieichen.com Whether he’s developing creative spaces or etching black-and-white woodcuts, Gary-raised artist Corey Hagleberg reckons with the idea of social change across the Calumet region. This exhibition at Pilsen’s Uri-Eichen Gallery will showcase work informed by the “environmental injustice” taking place in his hometown. (Christopher Good)

Glessner House and the Arts & Crafts Movement Glessner House, 1800 S. Prairie Ave. Saturday, November 2, 10am–12pm. $25. glessnerhouse.org At the Glessner House Museum, visitors come face-to-face with the “Richardsonian Romanesque” architecture and design of the nineteenth century. In this behind-thescenes tour, curator William Tyre will cast a spotlight on the furnishings and filigrees Frances Glessner commissioned for her home. (Christopher Good)

Día de los Muertos at Maxwell Street Market

Power to the People: Black Panther Party 10 Point Film Program

Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St., Wednesdays 7:30pm. $6, $5 for BAC members.

(773) 455-3838. beverlyartcenter.org

Maxwell Street Market, 800 S. Desplaines St. Sunday, November 3, 10am–2pm; live music 12:30pm–1:45pm. (312) 745-4676. maxwellstreetmarket.us

Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, November 2, 4pm–7pm. Free registration at bit.ly/BPPTenPointNov. First-come, first-serve. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org

Since 2003 the Beverly Art Center has provided an outlet for community to escape from the everyday into the silver screen. Each week features a different story curated by BAC film coordinator and local filmmaker Damon Griffin. Up next are films to help usher in the holiday spirit of the next couple months: the Rocky Horror Picture Show on October 30, Coco on November 13, Planes, Trains and

In partnership with Yollocalli and the National Museum of Mexican Art, Maxwell Street Market will celebrate la Día de los Muertos with arts and crafts programs for creative children. Festivities include calavera (sugar skull) decoration, a papel picado workshop, and a performance by the cumbia-meets-samba ensemble Son Monarcas. (Christopher Good)

The first Saturday of each month, Arts Bank Cinema screens films as part of the Black Panther Party Ten Point film series. This partnership between the Arts 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ OCTOBER 30, 2019

Tessellate at Spudnik Press Cooperative Spudnik Press Cooperative, 1821 W. Hubbard St., ste. 302. Event on Friday, November 8, 6pm–10pm; installation on view through November 10. Free. (312) 563-0302. spudnikpress.org/event/tessellate Whether you could print a risograph in your sleep or don’t know recto from verso, all are welcome at Spudnik’s evening of “collective artmaking and installationbuilding.” The event, part of Hubbard Street Lofts’ extensive Open House night, will encourage self-expression through all forms of print media, from screen printing to paper embossing. (Christopher Good)

MUSIC New Approaches to Music Journalism Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Saturday, November 2, 1pm–3pm. Free. bit.ly/music-journalism-2019 Learn some of the basics of being a music journalist—like dealing with PR people, artists, and angry stans—and how to approach different types of music writing.

In addition to discussing traditional forms like profiles and reviews, we’ll talk about new, creative ways of writing about music and equip you to think broadly about structuring your music writing in unconventional ways. (Mari Cohen)

AACM Great Black Music Ensemble Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Sunday, November 3, 5pm–7pm. Free, no RSVP required. (312) 856-5561. bit.ly/aacm-live As the heart of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Chicago’s Great Black Music Ensemble performs and explores everything from bebop to calypso. Catch them live in concert with an unannounced guest this Sunday. (Christopher Good)

EVENTS

Kumbiaholics — Cumbia Night at Simone’s Simone’s, 960 W. 18th St. Saturday, November 9, 9pm–3am. Free before 10pm, $5 after that. 21+. (312) 666-8601. bit.ly/kumbiaholics-2019 There will be two rooms to choose from at this night dedicated to cumbia, a Colombian music and dance tradition combining Indigenous flute, African rhythms, and European melodies, choreographies, and costumes. The front room, otherwise known as ‘The Cage,’ will feature the Future Rootz, a collective of Chicago DJ’s, and include Sandra A. Trevino, Slo-Mo, and David Chavez.

Meanwhile, the back room (‘The Lab’) will star Kombi DJ’s and include Severo Nava, DJ Gonzo, and Pablo Serrano. (Adam Przybyl)

Halloween NIGHT Concert Pilsen Art House, 1756 W. 19th St. Thursday, October 31, 6pm–10pm. $5 cover. bit.ly/offdays

ABUSED by CLERGY in CHICAGO?

Four local bands team up for an evening of spooky-themed music, where guests are welcomed to “dress up like false gods, and pray to the Lord of Darkness.” Featured artists include indie-rock band The Off Days and Crystal Killers, a musical group hailing from the south side with alternative, Latin, and indie influences. (Christopher Good)

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