November 20, 2019 by South Side Weekly

Blackstone Bicycle Works

Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 12pm

Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)

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. Hours Tuesday - Friday 1pm - 6pm 12pm - 5pm Saturday

773 241 5458 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637

A PROGRAM OF

December 6

6:30-10pm

Warming Station

Night Market & Open Mic Experimental Station

6100 S Blackstone

Ft. live music from Ifeyani Elswith and Wheatpaste, an open mic hosted by J Bambii, AQ & Binky, adult beverages, snacks, and supper

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 6 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, Maria Maynez, 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 Pat Nabong / Belt Magazine

IN CHICAGO

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

A Sign of Things to Come? Last week, residents attempting to visit the South Shore Nature Sanctuary were greeted by a chain-link fence that blocked off access to the park. As Block Club Chicago reported, the barriers were a misunderstanding—the crew tearing down the adjacent beach house seems to have hired some overeager fence-builders—but it was an unwelcome sight at a space with a precarious future. “It was a shock to see the fencing go up, with no warning or accommodation for the people who use the sanctuary, and worrisome given all of the discussions about the future of that space lately,” one member of the South Shore Cultural Center Advisory Council told Block Club. The planned Tiger Woods golf course would break up the sanctuary, currently a stop-over point for monarch butterflies and migrating birds, into a series of smaller green patches. And 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston told the Sun-Times in August that the space has “been dead for some years,” a remark that led to harsh criticism from South Shore residents and environmentalists. There’s hope for anyone concerned about the sanctuary, however: plans for the golf course are stalled, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said she’s skeptical about the project’s finances. But unless something changes, expect to see fences and construction crews back at the sanctuary for real, though perhaps later rather than sooner.

IN THIS ISSUE present and past

“I’m happy that a bunch of white people want to hear me talk about race.” marin scott.......................................4 witness to history

“I saw my uncle say these words: ‘Here they come!’” elise schmike, belt magazine.........5 local agencies get failing grade for transparency

The average score for city and county government public agency meetings is sixty percent. sarah conway and pat sier, city bureau................................................7

The South Side Isn’t Your Monopoly Board commemorating chicago's red summer of 1919 Farpoint Development and Golub & Co., two development firms, have purchased for $180 million the 1,675-unit Prairie Shores apartment complex that runs along King Drive The rock at 29th Street near the lakefront is the only memorial in Chicago that from 26th to 31st. The sale makes Prairie Shores the largest apartment complex sold since commemorates the Red Summer. 2007, but the transaction is notable for reasons other than its size: Farpoint is already heading the charge on developing 100 acres of lakefront land at 29th St adjacent to Prairie pat nabong, belt magazine............10 Shores, at the site formerly occupied by the old Michael Reese hospital. Directly south of scenes from history 31st, Prairie Shores’ former owner, Draper and Kramer, still owns Lake Meadows, another The students aimed to use the photos and apartment complex. But it’s easily conceivable that Lake Meadows is next-in-line to be vignettes to create chances for discussion on sold; Draper and Kramer are the original developers of the property and haven’t invested much in it in recent years. In total, Farpoint now has a controlling hand in about 120 acres race and racism. sydney lawrence and antoinette of lakefront, with potential for more acquisition soon. raggs................................................16 Farpoint’s presence along this 1-mile stretch of lakefront reads like a live-action remake of Monopoly. They didn’t purchase Boardwalk and Park Place all in one fell swoop like Related Midwest did with “The 78” nearby, but, parcel by parcel, the company is on track to own a huge chunk of South Side lakefront property. Before these recent movements, Farpoint was solidly focused on classic Loop-area office buildings, save for the odd self-storage facility or suburban office. When the Michael Reese project began in 2017, it started thinking bigger. “We have a lot of interest in what goes on there,” said Farpoint founding principal Scott Goodman of the purchase. “We wanted to control the next-door neighbor.” In the remainder of an interview with the Sun-Times, Goodman offers some typical promises about rents not rising too much, the community “ecosystem” being protected, and so forth. The extent to which these platitudes will be fulfilled remains to be seen. But Farpoint’s deeper intentions couldn’t be phrased any clearer—a company that in previous years has been about building office space to make money is becoming more and more about “control” of whole swaths of city space and the communities contained within them. Soon, Farpoint’s leadership seems to be dreaming, city residents can live in a Farpoint-owned building, take the Metra to work in Farpointdeveloped office buildings, and then return home to shop at a Farpoint-conceived retail hub. Maurice Cox, the new development chief of Lori Lightfoot’s administration, has styled himself as a planner of the people and released exciting new plans for focused neighborhood support of small businesses and residential life. Good on Cox for supporting neighborhoods on the South and West Sides, but city leadership has to fight for communities by attacking developer arrogance directly too. Venture into that big-money, hyper-corporate, over-marketed world and break up the Monopoly board coalescing around Chicago. Corporations shouldn’t be able to own neighborhoods, plain and simple.

1919

LIZZIE SMITH

Present and Past

How we commemorate the race riots of 1919 BY MARIN SCOTT

“A

riot is the language of the unheard.”

These are the words inscribed into bronze along the lakefront at 29th Street. The plaque, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., is embedded in a large stone about thirty feet from Lake Michigan. It is the only memorial the city has to remember the victims of the 1919 Chicago race riots. The plaque marks the area where the riots first began. It commemorates the first victim, Eugene Williams, who was seventeen years old when he died. Williams drowned after white beachgoers repeatedly threw rocks at him after he had drifted into the whites-only section of the beach. His death and the building resentment of a segregated city resulted in a week of riots where thirty-eight people were killed and hundreds were injured. The riots lasted eight days, and laid the foundation for many of the issues that 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

would dominate Chicago life, especially for its Black residents, for the next hundred years: police brutality, housing segregation, a lack of public resources. The plaque at 29th Street is the only reminder of this event—but that might change soon, thanks to Peter Cole, professor of history at Western Illinois University. Cole founded the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) to create a lasting tribute to the events of a hundred years ago. The central idea behind the project is installing thirty-eight plaques throughout the city, one at every site where a victim of the riot lost their life. Cole’s project was inspired by the powerful Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones” with names of Holocaust victims inscribed in each bronze brick incorporated into the sidewalks throughout Germany and other European countries. It shares some of the “never again” narrative as well.

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“Commemorating…absolutely is vital, most definitely in regards to Chicago's, and the country's, long history of racism and racial violence,” said Cole. “If ‘forgetting’ the past was effective, we wouldn't still be suffering, as a city and country, from persistent racial inequalities nor would racism and racial violence continue.” Cole felt that without something to pay tribute to those who suffered before, history was more likely to repeat itself. “Public art happens to be a particularly good way to remember, or be educated...of atrocities like the Chicago Race Riot of 1919,” Cole continued. “The genius of a dispersed public art project, like the one we are working to create, is that it ‘finds’ people who aren't looking to remember.” The plaques, much like the stumbling stones in Europe, can do that by starting conversations. At another commemoration of the riots—organized by University of Chicago professors Eve Ewing and John Clegg—Franklin Cosey-Gay, executive director of the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention and current co-director of CRR19, related a story in which a parent and their child ran into a stumbling stone outside of an apartment they were touring. Neighbors congregated and started a conversation, and the parent told the child, for the first time, about the Holocaust. “We hope [the plaques] will start a conversation,” Cosey-Gay said. That may have also been the larger goal of the other commemorations that took place throughout the city this year. Starting as early as February 23, fourteen Chicago organizations, including the Newberry Library, DuSable Museum, Chicago History Museum, and Young Chicago Authors, hosted, organized, and ran eleven events commemorating the riots.

the beginning about the riots’ legacy. Later, WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore and Medill Dean and Professor Charles Whitaker discussed the riots as well. They also opened it up to questions from the crowd of people sitting, standing, and lounging on the grass of Washington Square. During the event, people asked about the role of the stockyard unions and if former mayor Richard J. Daley took part in the riots. Daley was known to be a member of an “athletic club” that was likely involved in committing violence against Black Chicagoans, but his specific involvement has never been officially confirmed. At one point, someone asked “With all due respect, what are your thoughts on the racial makeup of the crowd?” Moore looked around at the crowd gathered in front of the Newberry on a Saturday afternoon on the Near North Side and said, “I’m happy that a bunch of white people want to hear me talk about race.” Afterward people took to several stages scattered around Washington Square to speak on mental health, immigration, water rights, and police torture in Chicago, with dozens of people listening at each soapbox. The event was one of several held on that day, including a procession, concerts, and a public art piece in the form of a group floating on the lake at 31st Street Beach, close to where Eugene Williams was killed a hundred years ago. Nearly seventy swimmers went out on flotation rings, meant to symbolize unity as they held hands and offered a space for silence and reflection. The commemoration of the riots has also inspired and provided relevant platforms for academic, artistic, and journalistic work. At CRR19, Cosey-Gay worked with students from One Summer Chicago, to use interviewing and photography to examine

There is a messiness that comes with commemorating the dead. Who died as the perpetrator and who died as the victim, and who played both roles? On July 27, the exact anniversary of the beginning of the riots, the Newberry hosted the Bughouse Square Debates, an annual event in which anyone can sign up to speak to the crowd for a few minutes. This year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke at

the race riots and explore intergenerational trauma and collective memory. (Some of their work is included in this issue.) Meanwhile, at the UofC event, Adrienne Brown, a professor of English at the university, presented her research findings

1919

on language that real estate agents used in the decades before and after the riots and the way it contributed to segregation. But it’s not enough to simply start a conversation. For an event as violent and racist as the riots, organizers had to take care with how they commemorated. For the Newberry, hosting a series of events in collaboration with various Chicago institutions and organizations was the best way to have an open and diverse conversation about the destruction that occurred primarily against Black Chicagoans, and how the pain of said events is still felt in those communities to this day. “In engaging with the difficult history of the race riots, we needed to make sure

we were approaching the subject with the sensitivity that it deserved, understanding that for some folks it would be deeply personal,” said Alex Teller, director of communications at the Newberry Library. “We also needed to make sure we weren't the only voice in the room.” At the UofC event, Ewing clearly described the problems that can arise when honoring the victims of any historical event. “How do you think about commemoration? It’s remembering but also honoring, and how does that work when some of the people who died likely died because they were attempting to commit racist violence and others acted in self-defense and killed them? Where their

identity as pure victims is questionable?” There is a messiness that comes with commemorating the dead. Who died as the perpetrator and who died as the victim, and who played both roles? These are the questions posed to projects like Cole’s that work to remember those who died during the week of riots. While this is not lost on Cole or his team working on making CRR19 a reality, the power of a physical and interactive memorial remains because they serve as reminders for people who were not necessarily looking for them but were impacted by their existence anyways. “Someone walking down the street, thinking about what's for dinner, just

happens upon this painful, perhaps shocking reminder, that someone was killed at that very spot,” Cole said. “In that moment, past and present collapse.” ¬ Marin Scott is a Chicago-based journalist who has covered everything from TIF funding to Indigenous rights in the city to social justice movements. She has been featured in Gateway Journalism Review, 14East Magazine, The DePaulia and The Chicago Monitor. This is her first piece for the Weekly. Adam Przybyl contributed reporting.

Witness to History

At 107 years old, Juanita Mitchell saw the 1919 race riots firsthand BY ELISE SCHMIKE, BELT MAGAZINE

arlier this year, Juanita Mitchell invited me to take a road trip through history. Her daughter, Mary, joined us as driver. The last time Juanita drove was in 2008. She was ninety-six years old then; she’s 107 now. Every day it becomes harder for Juanita to keep small things straight in her mind. The afternoon of our trip, she misplaced her caramel macchiato from “that lady” (the Starbucks logo). She was unable to recall it

IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA

was Mary’s college roommate Bobbi on the other end of the phone moments prior. And she had forgotten that today, not tomorrow, was when she was set to return from Mary’s apartment outside Madison, Wisconsin to her home in the south Chicago suburb of Flossmoor. One thing Juanita can still remember, though, is the horror that she witnessed soon after entering Chicago a hundred years ago, on July 27, 1919. This summer marked

the centennial of the 1919 Race Riots in Chicago: a week of violence that shaped the city’s unequal social and political structure. Eight-years-old and new to the city, Mitchell witnessed the riots from her aunt and uncle’s Bronzeville home. Everyone who has known Juanita—or who has so much as been her cab driver—knows the story. Mary’s neighbor, Diane Williams is no exception. In February, Black History

Month, Mary received a forwarded email invitation from Diane. The Newberry Library had planned an ongoing collection of events called “Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots,” a “series of public programs examining the legacy of the 1919 Chicago race riots.” The first event on the agenda was an afternoon of “breakout conversations” about various factors at play during the period at the DuSable Museum of African American History: included in the lineup

NOVEMBER 20, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

HISTORY

were a journalist discussing media and race; a historian speaking to police violence; and an architectural critic covering segregated housing in Chicago. Encouraged by Diane’s email, Mary drove her mother from Wisconsin to Washington Park for the Newberry event, so that Juanita could bring her rare perspective as a living eyewitness to the riots. At the event, she recounted her experience for a video booth installation the DuSable had made available for event attendees to tell their families’ stories of migration to the Midwest. Juanita dressed for the occasion: a textured black top with a gold paisley skirt and polished nails. In front of the video booth camera, she twiddled her thumbs as she talked. Her body remained motionless in her wheelchair, but her words rebuilt Bronzeville, and her aunt and uncle’s living room, near 35th Street and Giles, on July 27, 1919: “You know that story you told when your Uncle Cecil saw the people coming down the street with the guns?” Mary asked on the drive. “Oh, yeah,” Juanita responded. “He said, ‘Here they come.’” “Yeah. But they did not shoot into your house; I don’t think I ever recall you telling me they shot into where you guys lived.” “No–I saw my uncle say these words: ‘Here they come!’ And when he said that, it meant the white people were coming down 35th Street with loaded guns. And in the meantime, I saw my uncle take out one of the longest—to me—guns I had ever seen out of his pocket. And he’s standing in the window and saying, ‘Here they come down 35th Street’ and he’s prepared for all the white people that come down that street with those loaded guns. My mother is afraid to death, she’s crying. And my sister and I are hiding behind my aunt’s piano. Thank God she had a piano. And we hid behind the piano and cried. And my mother is crying in the house. “That is really about all I can remember [of ] Chicago. A lot of people, and my uncle was standing in the window. I stood up with him, looked out the window and I saw the people coming down the street, coming down 35th Street. And that is the beginning

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

of the race riots. That is how I remember it. I remember how those people came down the street. I heard my uncle say, “Here they come, and I’m gonna get ‘em!’” “So when people would ask you about coming to Chicago,” Mary interjected, “You would always tell them that, ‘Well, when I came it was in the middle of the Race Riots and then moved into the Depression.’” “I have no good memories of Chicago that I know,” said Juanita. “At that time,” Mary clarified.

efore this year, Chicago’s only memorial to the mass violence of 1919 was a single, funerary plaque set off of the 29th Street Beach where Eugene Williams, the first victim of the riots, was stoned to death while swimming in Lake Michigan. But in 2019, as cultural institutions around the city have held events exploring the history of the riots for the one hundred year anniversary, voices like Juanita’s have played an important role as connections between the past and present. “The history that we get in textbooks doesn’t provide the emotional sense that you can get from an actual human depiction of the story,” said JT Ruffin, a twenty-twoyear-old recent graduate from Hampton University and Mary and Juanita’s neighbor in Wisconsin. “Ms. Juanita was able to provide a sense of urgency. But, when you look at the [high school] history books, it’s a run-of-the-mill story about how we came from slavery and then we just fought our way through, and we had Rosa Parks who sat on the bus because she was tired, and we had Martin Luther King that was just walking down the streets. Those were real life situations that, you know, if you had to classify a kind of from a movie perspective, it’d definitely be rated ‘R,’ and the school itself, they try to make it a very ‘G’ version.” Not everyone will have the opportunity to have a conversation with Juanita. However, local historians, artists, and activists have spent Red Summer’s centennial exploring ways to keep the past alive in ways besides the pages of a textbook. This summer, artist Jefferson Pinder set out on a “Red Summer Road Trip”: a series of performance art pieces designed

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to reignite conversations about racial injustices that continue to shape our society by reactivating the spaces they occurred in a century ago. “The whole idea is to deal with all of this intense history, and try to make it accessible, and try to find a way to interact with history,” said Pinder. The last stop on Pinder’s tour was Chicago, on July 27, where he created a “living monument” to Eugene Williams in FLOAT: a piece that included dozens of Chicagoans floating in simple inner tubes on Lake Michigan against a soundscape with audio ranging from a crew team rowing to Juanita telling her story. “It blows your mind, the way that Chicago history is intertwined with this, but somehow no one really knows about it,” said Pinder. “I think it’s really a symbol of what people want to talk about, what they want to share, and the inner power of these stories.” And those stories have not stopped after July: in addition to events like the DuSable’s and performances like Pinder’s, Dr. Peter Cole and the Chicago Race Riot Commemoration Project are working to create memorial markers to people killed in the riots that will extend throughout the city of Chicago, similar to the stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones,” that commemorate Holocaust victims across Europe.“If we want to live up to our professed ideals, we need to confront the past in order to make a better future,” said Cole.

t the time of our drive, Juanita had been living in Mary’s apartment outside of Madison, Wisconsin— after she broke her pelvis in a fall two months previous, moving any distance greater than that from the borrowed hospital bed in the living room to a wheelchair pulled inches alongside had been difficult. But, after considerable deliberation with her mother’s doctors, Mary had decided that it’s time to return Juanita to a more comfortable recovery spot. After an hour on the highway (Mary driving, Juanita propped up by pillows in the passenger seat), a jazzy ringtone came over the car stereo. It was Diane, calling to check in because she hasn’t seen Mary and Juanita in a while. Mary put the call on speaker. “The reason we got to DuSable is because

you had emailed me a couple of times and said ‘Your mother—they need to interview your mother!’” she said. “That’s exactly right, that’s exactly right,” Diane agreed. “I remember her describing that day to me and it was like she was walking through the day right then. She could see all the detail. It was just amazing to have her tell that story to me. I wanted her to share that with other people, too.” Diane couldn’t remember when, exactly, she first heard Juanita tell the story, but she recalled that it happened while she was sitting in Mary’s kitchen. Juanita whispered from the passenger seat: “I remembered it well then.” Mary amplified the message for her mother: “Diane, she said, she remembered it well then.” The car lapsed into laughter. “You know, yourself Mary, that when your mother tells a story, she doesn’t just sort of brush over it or give you the highlights,” Diane said. “She gives you the details.” The closer the car got to Flossmoor, the more Mary thought about the list of phone calls she needed to make: the man from the Chicago Tribune to schedule a sit-down interview, the documentarian who needs samples of family photos, and the Bells of Ballantrae to coordinate an upcoming social. They were all interested in hearing Juanita’s story. At the last turn into their subdivision, Juanita, sleeping until now in the passenger seat, roused and turned to her daughter. “How are you Juanita?” Mary laughed and smiled at her mother. She’d never be able to replicate the 107-yearold’s stories, but she will ensure that they do not fade. “I’m not Juanita—you’re Juanita,” Mary said. “But I’m alright.” ¬ Elise Schimke is a Chicago-based writer and photographer covering history, art and culture. Elise received her Master of Journalism from Medill School of Journalism. She can be found on Instagram at @e_leased. Belt Magazine is a digital publication by and for the Rust Belt and greater Midwest. Originally published online November 8. Reprinted with permission.

POLITICS Within the data, these top findings emerge: 1.

ELLIE MEJÍA

Local Agencies Get Failing Grade for Transparency

Nearly one-fifth (18.9 percent) of the agencies investigated do not have a public meeting schedule online. For instance, Chicago Community Land Trust, the controversial and troubled entity tasked with acquiring land for affordable housing development, does not currently have a schedule of meetings online. Across the board, meeting times are very inaccessible to 9-to-5 workers, with ninety-five percent of meetings taking place between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. The Board of Education, a taxing body that oversees Chicago Public Schools, regularly holds long meetings during work hours. When we could find a public comment policy, sixty-one percent of the time it was restricted in ways that the Attorney General says it can’t be. For instance, the Chicago Transit Authority, which has an annual $1.51 billion operating budget, requires people to register at 10 a.m. the day before in order to make a public comment; the Attorney General has ruled that agencies cannot impose any requirement to register before a meeting begins.

Dozens of city and county agencies fall short on Open Meetings Act, according to a City Bureau analysis. BY SARAH CONWAY AND PAT SIER

rades are out, and Chicago has an ‘D-’ average for its adherence to the Open Meetings Act and other public accessibility guidelines, according to a City Bureau analysis of 148 local agencies. The data is published in City Bureau’s Open Gov Report Card, which grades how Chicago and Cook County government agencies share important meeting information like agendas, minutes and schedules with the public. Based on 11 criteria, only a fraction of public meetings in Chicago and Cook County received an ‘A’ grade—just 2.7 percent —while eighty-five percent of public agencies had a ‘C’ grade or below. The average score for city and county government public agency meetings is sixty

PAT SIER

4. percent, an ‘D-’ grade. The only agency with a perfect score (one hundred percent) is the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which administers the election system for the city, including managing voter registration and safeguarding voting protections for Chicagoans. James Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, said that their high score is a result of following the Open Meetings Act to a ‘t.’ “First off having transparent and open public meetings is the law and second, it’s a practice that the Board of Election Commissioners believes we must do in our meetings. We are pleased that we are getting this grade and we hope to continue to get a good score in the future,” Allen said.

meetings and they have the right to inspect meeting minutes. Five criteria are based on best practices of government transparency. The City of Chicago Board of Ethics, which scored a ‘B’ grade, welcomes the Open Gov Report Card as a tool to hold itself accountable to members of the public and rebuild trust in local government, according to Steven Berlin, its executive director. “It’s critical for our agency to have accessible public meetings because we need to bolster people’s confidence by making our inner workings as transparent as possible,” Berlin said. The data is a snapshot of these criteria, and a passing or failing grade is often not a full picture of the agencies’ record on transparency. For instance, though the Chicago Police Board received a ‘C’ grade, that does not account for this year’s Tribune report revealing that the Police Board has compiled profiles on every citizen who spoke at public meetings of the city’s police disciplinary panel, a level of surveillance that is sure to have a chilling effect on public participation. As a counterpoint, the Chicago Public Library also received a ‘C’ grade although it’s made a substantial effort to hold meetings all over the city. Variance of meeting location, though it likely encourages attendance, was not chosen as a criteria because of the difficulty of setting a pass/fail threshold for that data.

Only eighteen percent of public agencies make recordings or livestreams of their meetings available online. Around thirteen percent of the public agencies with meeting minutes online do not supply enough details as required by the Open Meetings Act. Despite Chicago City Council’s own rules regarding posting detailed meeting minutes, it is often the biggest offender.

The report card scoring system is based on eleven comprehensive categories that measure whether public agencies are truly open to the public. Six of the criteria relate to the Illinois Open Meetings Act, a law that stipulates that members of the public have a right to access a large number of state and local level government meetings; the public must receive prior notice of these

City Bureau Documenters and staff pulled data from agency websites and public records requests from January 2018 to September 2019 on 148 public agencies concerning available information, public comment, scheduling and meeting locations. ¬ Sarah Conway and Pat Sier work at City Bureau, a nonprofit journalism lab based out of Woodlawn. Support City Bureau’s government transparency reporting by becoming a Press Club member at citybureau.org/press-club. All donations are doubled right now thanks to a matching donor. Visit projects.citybureau.org/open-gov-reportcard to see the full site.

NOVEMBER 20, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

PHOTO ESSAY

Commemorating Chicago's Red Summer of 1919 Photos of key sites and commemorative events on the 100th anniversary of Eugene Williams’s murder

BY PAT NABONG, BELT MAGAZINE

n July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams went swimming in the blue waters of Lake Michigan, off the coast of Chicago’s 29th Street Beach. That summer, tensions between Black and white people in the city were rising. There was competition for jobs and housing, as African Americans migrated up from the South. White immigrants, who wanted to maintain segregation, were not happy about the influx of African Americans into their communities. Williams, who was seventeen years old at that time, accidentally drifted across the imaginary line that separated the portion of the water for blacks and the area that was reserved for whites. White kids threw rocks at Williams until he drowned. His death set off a week of riots; white mobs incited violence, and the police failed to hold people accountable. During what would come to be known as the Red Summer of 1919, thirty-eight people were killed, five hundred were injured, and the homes of a thousand Black families were destroyed. This story was recounted by Peter Cole, a historian at Western Illinois University and the co-director of the Chicago Race Riots Commemoration Project, a new initiative to acknowledge a history that he says seems to have been erased from Chicago’s collective memory. Through this project, Cole hopes that people will remember. “Forgetting the past has not resulted in racial justice and racial equality and racial harmony,” he said. 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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An attendee reflects during the libation ceremony for Eugene Williams and other people who were killed during the Red Summer. The libation ceremony took place at a memorial on 29th Street.

And the past is tethered to the present, added Franklin Cosey-Gay, the co-director of the Chicago Race Riots Commemoration Project. “The 1919 Chicago Race Riots is the origin story to help us understand the structural constraints that exist at the housing, education, economic, justice and health systems in Chicago,” he said. On July 27, 2019, one hundred people floated in the water off the 29th Street Beach as part of a public art performance by Jefferson Pinder, which aimed to reclaim a site of violence and create a living memorial for Williams. On the same day, to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of Williams’s death and the 1919 Race Riots that ensued, Cole and Cosey-Gay led a bike tour of some of the locations that were significant to the Red Summer. This photo essay documents Pinder’s public art project and the sites that were included in the tour. ¬ Pat Nabong is an award-winning visual journalist in Chicago. Dedicated to challenging stereotypes, she explores the intersections of culture, identity and social justice issues. Her work has appeared online at Chicago Magazine, Chicago Reader, Narratively, and Rappler, among others. She is a member of Authority Collective and was a fellow at City Bureau, the Pulitzer Center, and the International Women’s Media Foundation. Learn more at patnabong.com.

PHOTO ESSAY

The summer of 1919 was called the Red Summer. At the intersection of State and 35th Street, now home to a Starbucks, a Black man from Alabama was shot by a stray bullet during the 1919 riot, according to Franklin Cosey-Gay, the co-director of the Chicago Race Riots Commemoration Project.

During the bike tour, historian Peter Cole, co-director of the Chicago Race Riots Commemoration Project, explains the history of the 1919 Race Riots to Chicagoans who came from different neighborhoods. “America’s a different place … in some ways much better … in some ways, we haven’t nearly come as far as we could,” Cole said in a phone interview after the event.

The Angelus building, a predominantly white apartment building, used to sit on what is now the parking lot of the Chicago Police Department headquarters. On the second day of the riots, someone from the fourth floor of the building shot a Black person on the street. Police officers entered the building and did not apprehend anyone, according to CoseyGay. “[People thought], this sounds familiar. This is what happened at the beach. No justice no peace. That theme of “no justice no peace,” similar [to] conversations that we’re having to this day … so thousands of blacks mobilized demanding justice.”

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PHOTO ESSAY

The epicenter of violence, according to Cosey-Gay, was in the area around 35th Street and Wabash Street. Seven people died in the corridor, which is demarcated by South Dearborn Street, East 33rd Street, East 37th Street and South Wabash Avenue.

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PHOTO ESSAY

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Kelsey Taylor, one of the participants on the bike tour, said he didn’t know about the race riots until this year. “You can either ignore [history] or you can face it and draw strength from that,” Taylor said. “As a human being, you make those choices to sort of ignore your weaknesses and shut it down and that’s to your own detriment, I think. So I think as a society, it’s the same sort of thing. We look and reflect and we have a chance to grow out of it.”

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“Once you kind of learn more about the conditions that led to the race riot then, and other race riots that were occurring around that time, a lot of those same conditions are still going on now,” said Erik Wilson, who participated in the bike tour.

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PHOTO ESSAY

The vaducts in the Bridgeport neighborhood, where a lot of Irish immigrants lived, were like borders that warned people to beware, Cole said. “Because when you come into this neighborhood, you may or may not be welcome,” he explained. In 1918, the poet Langston Hughes walked in the Bridgeport neighborhood and was beaten up by white people. “The remnaints of that division was still alive just twenty years ago,” Cosey-Gay said.

The house at 3365 South Indiana Avenue was one of the dozens of Black homes that were bombed during the riots. No one was punished for those bombings, Cole said. As a consequence of the Great Migration, African American families were moving into predominantly white neighborhoods. “People who lived in these neighborhoods that were all white previously are angry at the ‘invasion,’ as they see it, of Black people, and so they use violence in order to intimidate Black people from potentially moving into these neighborhoods,” he added.

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PHOTO ESSAY

Ida B. Wells, an investigative journalist and activist, moved into this house on 3624 South Martin Luther King Drive, which was just a few blocks away from the epicenter of the riots. She wrote about the riots as well. Wells’s house was included in the tour because they wanted to talk about resilience and Black resistance, Cole said.

What is now the Chicago Military Academy used to be the Eighth Regiment Armory. The 8th Illinois Infantry Regiment, which consisted of Black soldiers, fought in World War I and reorganized itself to defend the Bronzeville neighborhood, which was then called the Black Belt, from white violence during the riots.

At 4.p.m. on July 27, 2019, exactly one hundred years after Eugene Williams’s murder, and in exactly the same location, participants of Float, a public art performance by Jefferson Pinder, hold onto one another’s ropes to stay together.

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1919

Scenes from History An excerpt from a photovoice and oral history project exploring the Chicago 1919 riots BY SYDNEY LAWRENCE AND ANTOINETTE RAGGS

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Henry Baker was a black male who was killed on July 28th in Douglas Park at 10:00-11:00pm by a bullet wound in the skull on 544 East 37th Street. David Marcus was a white male who was killed on July 28th in Douglas Park at 9:3010:30pm by a bullet wound on 511 East 37th Street. SYDNEY LAWRENCE

n 2018, Western Illinois University Professor Peter Cole mobilized a small group of community organizers, teachers, community organizations, professors, and researchers to consider ways to commemorate the anniversary of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. This group is known as the 1919 Chicago Race Riot Commemoration Project, or CRR19. CRR19 seeks to raise awareness about the worst incident of racial violence in Chicago’s history by installing artistic markers in the sidewalks near each location where the thirty-eight people were killed in 1919.

CRR19 is inspired by German artist Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine project, which uses embedded brass “stumbling stones” in sidewalks to honor Holocaust victims in Europe. In 1996, Demnig installed twenty markers in Germany. Presently, there are over 70,000 across Germany and twentyfour other European countries. The CRR19 project helps Chicago confront its racist and violent past. It sets a path toward achieving social justice and equity by acknowledging the horrors of the past and discussing the ways in which structural inequities persist.

1919 In 2019, Franklin Cosey-Gay, the executive director of the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention (CCYVP) at the University of Chicago, and Alicia Bunton, Director of Community Affairs at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), joined CRR19. Ms. Bunton helped organize and hosted the public launch at IIT on July 27th, 2019, the centennial of Eugene Williams’s murder. Professor Cole, Dr. Cosey-Gay, and Ms. Bunton convened community partners, including Go Bronzeville and Slow Roll Chicago, to support CRR19 in a bike tour of historically relevant locations in Bronzeville and neighboring Bridgeport, ending along the lakefront near where

Williams was murdered. After the bike tour, attendees returned to IIT for the CRR19 launch, which featured VanderCook College of Music’s One City jazz orchestra, 3rd Ward Aldermn Pat Dowell and 4th Ward Alderman Sophia King , Pastor Chris Harris of Bright Star Church of God in Christ, and architectural critic Lee Bey. The speakers talked about the import of this history and gave endorsements of CRR19 markers. In addition, the program included youth groups Good Kids Mad City, youth interns at Public Narrative, and One Summer Chicago students with Bright Star Community Outreach, a nonprofit led by Pastor Harris.

Dr. Cosey-Gay, who currently volunteers as the co-director of CRR19, worked with CCYVP One Summer Chicago Students to train them in qualitative interviewing and photovoice methods as a way to understand collective memory of the Chicago race riot and examine how the locations of race riot deaths look today. On October 22nd at the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, Professors Eve Ewing and John Clegg convened a symposium on the Chicago Race Riot. Lawrence and Raggs's photos and vignettes were featured in a gallery display for the entire symposium. The students’ aim was for the photos and vignettes to create opportunities for discussion on

race, racism and the persistence of structural and interpersonal violence. Lawrence was inspired by Jun Fujita, the JapaneseAmerican photojournalist and Phillips High School graduate, to superimpose photos of abandoned lots onto images of a once-dense community to highlight not only interpersonal trauma but also presentday structural trauma. Here we present an excerpt of the photos and interviews from their project. Tammy Gibson We interviewed Tammy Gibson, a travel historian who has lived in Chicago her whole life. She is proud of the work she

The site of the Chicago Race Riots’ highest concentration of death and violent injuries, the nine blocks immediately surrounding the Angelus Building at 35th and Wabash became known as the “Vortex of Violence” where 44 people were shot and seven were killed. SYDNEY LAWRENCE

NOVEMBER 20, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

1919 does as a travel historian but is more proud to teach what she learns about Black history to the next generation. Ms. Gibson shared a story about how she was in a California cemetery trying to locate the graves of Sam Cooke and Sammy Davis Jr. While searching, a white woman yelled at her that she shouldn’t be there. Ms. Gibson and the woman got into a heated argument, and the white woman said she was going to call the police because she felt her life was being threatened, even though Gibson never said anything threatening to the woman. Ms. Gibson felt like the woman was saying she didn’t belong there because she was Black. As a travel historian who focuses on the hidden heroes of black history, Gibson

already had a considerable amount of knowledge on the Chicago 1919 Race Riots. She still had a lot of thoughts on the riots. Ms. Gibson felt the riots were handled horribly by the City of Chicago and the Black community in Chicago as a whole. The city never apologized nor did any of the attackers get penalized for what they did. For example, the man that threw the rock at Eugene Williams never went to jail, the people whose homes got destroyed never got justice. Though Black people fought back, they got nothing out of this riot but the same old problems and the Black community never really recovered. With this, she wanted to find the gravesite of the man that started it all, Eugene Williams, realizing

that his grave was in the old part of Lincoln cemetery where there are many unmarked graves. In 2018, Ms. Gibson worked with the employees at Lincoln Cemetery, especially Pathia Reese, the Lincoln Cemetery Family Service Counselor, to find the exact location of Eugene's grave. After one year and countless phone calls, they located Eugene Williams gravesite. Now Ms.Gibson is looking for the gravesites of other victims of the 1919 race riots and is trying to put together funds to get a headstone for Eugene's grave, at the moment there is only a pole saying “HERE LIES EUGENE WILLIAMS” with an American flag ribbon tied around it. While talking about this temporary marker with

Ms.Gibson, she expressed her anger and confusion for why the flag of the country that didn’t even arrest Eugene’s killer was placed on his grave. When asked about the differences between now and 1919, Ms.Gibson does not believe racism has changed. Chicago is still highly segregated, but now our neighborhoods are being gentrified more; there are fewer Black-owned businesses, and we do not support each other. The only difference she says is that racism is just hidden better now. Her hope for the Black community though is that we get back the sense of community we used to have that we come together and work as one.

Edward Lee was a black male who was killed on July 28th in Douglas Park at 8:00pm by a bullet wound on 35th and State Street. SYDNEY LAWRENCE

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1919

G.L. Wilkins was a white male who was killed on July 30th in Douglas Park at 1:30pm by a bullet wound on 3825 S Rhodes Avenue. SYDNEY LAWRENCE

Bobby We interviewed seventy-nine-yearold, Bobby, who has been living in Chicago her whole life. She has also been living in Oakwood Shores Senior Residence for nine years. She grew up in the eastern section of the Chicago community Near West Side, which was locally referred to as Jewtown because of the Eastern European Jewish residents who immigrated in the late nineteenth century. During the great migration, Jewtown was predominantly Black residents, but most of the businesses remained Jewish-owned. She never really encountered racism on a personal level, but she knew when she was growing up, there

were places Black people couldn't live or go. While growing up, she realized that even though her neighborhood was made up of African Americans, the only thing that was Black-owned was a small corner store. When talking to Bobby about the 1919 Chicago Race Riots, even though the details were unfamiliar to her, she was not surprised. It did not shock her that something like this happened in Chicago, and no one talked about it or addressed it. As Bobby put it, “Kids today ain't learning nothing.” She thinks what’s wrong with our society today is the way people are raising their kids. Bobby believed parents today are not teaching their kids values and respect

which resulted in what she described as a generation of killers and thought that the only way for the Black community to move forward is to stop killing each other. ¬ Sydney Lawrence is a fifth-generation Bronzeville native who lives in the home of her great-great grandparents who lived through the Chicago Race Riots. Her great-great grandfather was a Pullman Porter. Sydney is freshman at Harold Washington College studying to be an art historian. She graduated from Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School.

Antoinette Raggs is a senior at Kenwood Academy High School. She is a member of Kenwood’s student government and an ambassador for Women in STEM. She is currently applying to colleges across the country and hopes to study gender and women’s studies. Sydney and Antoinette are members of the Ladies of Virtue mentoring program. They completed this photovoice and oral history project as part of One Summer Chicago with the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.

NOVEMBER 20, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

EVENTS

BULLETIN The Place Called “Chicagoua” Chicago Map Society, 60 W. Walton St. Thursday, November 21, 5:30pm–7pm. Free, donations encouraged. bit.ly/Chicagoua_CMS Amateur historian and etymologist John Swenson has spent three decades trying to dig up the origins of the word Chicago. At the Newberry Library, Swenson will discuss his archival research and present evidence supporting his own interpretations of early maps and documents related to the French colonization and naming of the area, which began in earnest after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable settled near the mouth of the Chicago river in the 1780s. ( Jim Daley)

Cumbre de Educación de Pilsen/ Pilsen Education Summit Arturo Velasquez Institute, 2800 S. Western Ave. Friday, November 22, 9am–2pm. Free. https://www.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)

Beverly Holiday Pop-Up: Opening Weekend Joplin Marley Studios, 9911 S. Walden Pkwy. Saturday, November 23, 10am–Sunday, November 24, 5pm. Free. bit.ly/BevPopUp You can hit a different holiday market every weekend between now and Christmas in a few different neighborhoods. Start off by shopping for nature-inspired holiday decorations and gifts in Beverly. Joplin Marley Studios, which will host the market, is accessible via the Metra Rock Island District Line or the 95th Street bus. Street parking is also available. ( Jim Daley) 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Pilsen Holiday Weekend 1436 W. 18th St. Friday, November 29, 10am–Sunday, December 1, 10pm. Free. bit. ly/PilsenHolidayMark The second weekend on this South Side holiday tour is in Pilsen, where you’ll be able to shop for unique gifts by local artisans and small businesses while accompanied by live music. Food will also be available for purchase. The Holiday Market will take place in the legendary APO building, where art by students in the JDef Peace Project will be on display. To volunteer, perform, or get a vendor permit (discounted rates for Pilsen residents), email pilsenholidaymarket@gmail.com. ( Jim Daley)

Jeffrey Haas: The Assassination of Fred Hampton 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Monday, December 2, 6pm–7pm. Free. bit.ly/ JeffHaas57th Fifty years ago this December, 14 Chicago police officers stormed Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton’s apartment in the middle of the night. When they left, 21-year-old Hampton lay dead in his bed. Jeffrey Haas, one of the founders of the People’s Law Office, will discuss an updated edition of his book The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. The book exposes the conspiracy behind the police murder of the young leader. A Q&A and book-signing will follow the discussion. ( Jim Daley)

Englewood Leadership Symposium Kennedy-King College, U Building, 740 W. 63rd St. Saturday, December 7, 9am–4pm. Tickets $39–$59. bit.ly/EngLeaderSumm Hosted by the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (RAGE), Teamwork Englewood, and Englewood Rising, the Symposium will bring together leaders to explore current efforts within the community. State Rep. Sonya Harper (D-IL6) will deliver opening remarks, and 16th Ward Ald. Stephanie Coleman will moderate a panel about working with volunteers. Tempestt Hazel, the Field Foundation’s art program officer, will lead a session on art and culture in community

¬ NOVEMBER 20, 2019

building. Sessions are divided into three tracks: “Building Leaders,” “Building Community,” and “Building Bridges.” ( Jim Daley)

The Wildest Flea Holiday Market Marz Community Brewing, 3630 S. Iron St. Sunday, December 8, 12pm–6pm. Free. bit.ly/ WildFleaMarz Round out your tour of neighborhood holiday fairs in Bridgeport, where the Wild Life Flea Market (“an uncommon market”) features handmade arts and crafts. The Co-Prosperity Sphere’s annual assemblage of holiday pop-up shops, this year’s Market will feature local vendors and artists. Food and drink available for purchase. ( Jim Daley)

VISUAL ARTS Hyde Park Handmade Saturday The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Saturday, November 30, 11am–3pm. Free to attend. bit.ly/HPHandmade2019 Before you spend all your holiday gift money at retail stores and online warehouses on Black Friday, consider saving some for the following morning and venturing to the second floor of the Promontory. There you will find an assortment of over thirty vendors selling pound cakes, baby clothes, handmade soap, soy candles, silk scarves, and many, many other beautiful, useful, and delicious things. Do your gift-buying here and you will be sure to impress your family, friends, and co-workers. “Where did you get this handmade rice pack for natural pain and stress relief ?” they’ll ask. But some things are better kept a secret between you and us. (Adam Przybyl)

founder of the Nap Ministry, will curate and facilitate a nap for the audience. After the nap, there will be a public conversation with Hersey and Mati Engel on “rest, healing, and redemption practices.” Bring pillows, yoga mats, blankets, and anything else to be comfortable and cozy! (Adam Przybyl)

Renegade Chicago Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St. Saturday and Sunday, December 7 and 8, 11am–5pm. Free to attend. bit.ly/ RenegadeChicago2019 Hosted by Renegade Craft, a “curated marketplace of makers, designers, doers, and dreamers,” this marketplace will feature over 250 vendors, seasonal cocktails, a live DJ set, a place to take holiday photos, and more. Judging from their online roster, you will find everything from jewelry to houseplants, purses to essential oils, art and luxury pens and mugs. Come do your holiday shopping, or just explore and take in the visual feast of so much craft and design in one place! (Adam Przybyl)

Human Rights Day Show: No Walls, No Cages Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Friday, December 13, 6pm–10pm. Free to attend. uri-eichen.com Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) is an undocumented-led group that organizes against deportations, detention, and incarceration in the Chicagoland area. This show features several local artists, many involved with OCAD, displaying prints and mixed-media work at the intersection of migration and human rights. (Sam Joyce)

MUSIC

The Nap Ministry Smart Museum, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Monday, December 2, 4:30pm–6:30pm. Free, but space is limited. Register at: bit.ly/ NapMinistry2019 Are you dissatisfied with your naps? Have you ever thought, “Gee, I wish I knew how to rest better?” Do you spend your days imagining how to use your desire to sleep as a source of resistance? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, you might want to consider coming to this unique event in which Tricia Hersey, “Nap Bishop” and

Red Bull Music Festival Chicago Multiple locations across the city. November 17–30. $20 and up. bit.ly/ ChicagoRedBullMusicFestival The Red Bull Music Festival is back for a two-week celebration of the Chicago music scene. More than forty artists will be playing at venues across the city. This year’s headliners include Chicago-born artists like Grammy winner Lupe Fiasco, Jamila Woods, and more. (Atavia Reed)

EVENTS

Housegiving: Farley Jackmaster Funk, Mark Farina & Dee Jay Alicia Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Ave. Wednesday, November 27, 8:30pm–1am. Free. All ages. http://bit.ly/Housegiving2019 Stop by Navy Pier the evening before Thanksgiving for an all-night celebration of house music. Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, Mark Farina, and Dee Jay Alicia are expected to spin during the night, and all donations will benefit the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. (Atavia Reed)

3rd Annual Sauers Reunion Thanksgiving Party The Promontory, 5311 S Lake Park Ave. Thursday, November 28, 2019, 9pm– 2am. General admission $15 advance, $20 at the door. 21+ only. http://bit.ly/ ReunionThanksgivingParty The third annual Sauers Reunion will feature performances from The Chosen Few DJs, with both old school and classic music and beats. (Atavia Reed) `

STAGE & SCREEN

Oedipus Rex Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Now through Sunday December 8. Performances are Wednesday through Sunday, 7:30pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 2pm and 7:30pm. Ticket prices vary. Call or visit the box office at (773) 753-4472 or courttheatre.org Director Charles Newell brings a Jeffrecommended twenty-first century vision to Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, as translated by the Court’s founding director, Nicholas Rudall. This tragic tale of fate and identity, with multi-cultural casting, is the first in the Court’s Oedipus Trilogy, to include Gospel at Colonus, on stage next May to round out the 2019–2020 season, followed by Antigone, performed during the 2020–2021 season. The performance runs eighty minutes without intermission, so arrive early enough to visit the bar and try both signature cocktails: Jocasta’s Brooch and Greek Tragedy. (Nicole Bond)

Late Night Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th St. Saturday, November 23, 7pm and 9:30pm. Sunday,

November 24, 4pm. General admission tickets $7. docfilms. uchicago.edu. (773) 702-8574 Summer’s hit “dramady,” starring Emma Thompson as a late-night talk show host whose show’s ratings begin to tank after a long reign at the top of the food chain, along with Mindy Kaling, who is who plays the role of the first woman staff writer hired by Thompson in an attempt to resuscitate her failing show. (Kaling also wrote the screenplay.) This film is rated R. (Nicole Bond)

Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Sunday, November 24, 11am. Free. Reservations encouraged. Visit bit.ly/35kBU9r. Delve into the art of puppetry with puppeteers Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins, Mark Blashford, and Vanessa Valliere, for a mix of family-friendly performance and workshop featuring a variety of puppetry styles that will show why Chicago is a destination for puppet theatre. (Nicole Bond)

FOOD & LAND

Decolonizing Desire: A Listening Party & Discussion

South Shore Speaks: Let’s Talk Economic Development

Build Coffee, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Sunday, November 24, 4pm-6pm. bit.ly/35h9JYC

Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, November 23. 12:30pm– 2:30pm. Free. bit.ly/SouthShoreSpeaks

Weekly audio producer Erisa Apantaku will host a candid conversation, specifically for people of color, on the topic of decolonizing desire, inspired by her realization that most of the crushes she’d ever had were on white people, and her search to explore why. Apantaku’s interviews with queer, nonwhite friends around this vulnerable topic inspired an audio segment, commissioned by the BBC Radio program Short Cuts, that unpacks some of the issues that arise when people of color partner with white people. (Nicole Bond)

The Murder of Fred Hampton Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, December 7, 1:00pm–3:30pm. Doors open at 12:30pm. Free. Limited capacity. Seating is first come first served. Use this link to register bit.ly/2XwCUEz Registration does not guarantee seating. The Rebuild Foundation will screen the 1971 film The Murder of Fred Hampton, the final installment in their Black Panther Party 10 Point Film Program series. The film began as a documentary portrait of the Illinois Black Panther Party, but became a much different story when Illinois Chapter Chairman Fred Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were murdered in their sleep by Chicago police during an infamous pre-dawn raid. (Nicole Bond)

Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival Sweet Water Foundation, 5749 S. Perry Ave. Saturday, November 23, 11am.

The UofC’s Office of Civic Engagement joins South-Shore-based Neighborhood Network Alliance for a town hall-slashinformational session. Residents are invited to hear about the university’s programs and share their opinions and concerns regarding economic development in South Shore. Come out to learn what the UofC is up to and tell them what you think needs doing regarding economic inclusion. (Sarah Fineman)

Housing Bronzeville: Monthly Meeting

Rents rising? Saving up to buy? Housing Bronzeville is a neighborhood organization dedicated to supporting affordable home ownership for all Bronzeville residents — head out to the December installment of their monthly meetings to hear about their recent efforts and upcoming projects. (Sarah Fineman)

Mission South Shore, 8554 S. Commercial Ave. Friday, November 23. 3:30pm–5pm. Free, register at bit.ly/MissionDanksgiving It’s getting to be turkey time — and Mission South Shore, one of the South Side’s few medical marijuana dispensaries, is hosting a potluck! They’re using the occasion to unveil a new education

Los 26 de la 26 Celebration 2528 S. Kedzie Ave. Thursday, November 21. 6pm–9pm. $55, includes dinner, open bar, and a raffle ticket. bit.ly/Los26dela26 Small business owners are the often unrecognized hearts of the neighborhoods we love. Negocios Now, a Spanishlanguage media organization, has taken it upon themselves to honor the business community of La Villita for leading and upholding cultural identity in the neighborhood. Come out to celebrate the chosen “Los 26” and support the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, to whom Negocios Now will donate thirty percent of the event’s takings. (Sarah Fineman)

Southside Studios Free Food Giveaway TDAN Care Center, 11848 S. Western Ave. Wednesday, November 27, 6pm–8pm. dancarecenter.com. bit.ly/SouthSideStudios This is a free food giveaway for families in need, sponsored by Southside Studios. Registration is encouraged. (Sam Joyce)

Chosen Fam Dinner Collective

Oakwood Community Center, 3825 S. Vincennes Ave. Wednesday, December 11. 6:30pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ HousingBronzevilleDecember

Mission’s Danksgiving Potluck

community space and inviting patients, caregivers, and neighborhood members to all share a meal. Bring a dish, meet others in the community, dance to some Danksgiving tunes. (Sarah Fineman)

Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Sunday, November 24, 4:30pm–7pm. experimentalstation.org. bit.ly/ChosenFam The Chosen Fam Dinner Collective is hosting their first dinner, offering a meal crafted from surplus produce that would have otherwise gone to waste. Dinner conversation will focus on the ways our identity, community, and memory is connected to food. Attendees are encouraged to bring childhood memories of food, or a meal to share. All are welcome, RSVP requested. (Sam Joyce)

South Indian Cooking Course 6730 S. Euclid Ave. Monday, December 2, 6:15pm–9:15pm. $80. coursehorse.com This three-hour class offers attendees a hands-on opportunity to explore India’s culinary tradition. Attendees will learn how to make vegetarian dishes like coconut NOVEMBER 20, 2019 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

EVENTS

chutney (coriander and coconut relish), dosa (flaky lentil crepes), and Rasam soup (tomato lentil ginger soup), followed by a sit-down dinner. Space is limited, so register now! (Sam Joyce)

Making Futures Discursive Dinner Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Sunday, November 24, 4pm–7:30pm. Free, BYOB. experimentalstation.org. RSVP by emailing matthew@experimentalstation.org As their contribution to the Chicago Architectural Biennial, Berlin-based architectural group raumlabor is hosting a “discursive dinner.” Collective cooking begins at 4pm, followed by dinner at 6:30pm. Dinner will be interspersed with twenty-minute presentations from innovative Chicago architects, including Ann Lui of Future Firm and Maite Borjabad López-Pastor of the Art Institute of Chicago. The event is free, but please bring a drink to share. (Sam Joyce)

NATURE Artecito Pavos St. Agnes of Bohemia, 2651 S. Central Park Ave. Saturday, November 23, 10am–1pm. Free. bit.ly/artecito 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 turkeys while also offering a chance to make art. (Sam Joyce)

Black Friday Opt-Outside Hike West Beach, 376 N. County Line Rd., Portage, IN. Friday, November 29, 1pm–4pm. Free. nps.gov/indu

National Park and Save the Dunes for a free, family-friendly hike and beach cleanup. The hike will be led by experts in birding, botany, insects, geology, and ecology, who can provide informative commentary along the 3.5 mile hike. The hike is moderate, with 250 stairs and some sections of loose sands, but easy cut-offs back to the parking lot can shorten the route to one or two miles. For those who would prefer to beautify the park, the beach cleanup will also start at 1pm. (Sam Joyce)

Opt Outside at Big Marsh Big Marsh Park, 11559 S. Stony Island Ave. Friday, November 29, 10am–2pm. Free. RSVP at bit.ly/bigmarsh Don’t want to make the trek out to the Dunes? There’s an opt outside event here on the South Side, with a day of stewardship at Big Marsh. Projects will include building and maintaining the park’s nature trails, doing some ecological restoration, and cleaning up litter. Tools, water, coffee, and bagels will be provided. (Sam Joyce)

Firelines: Midwestern Prairie Restoration Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St. Tuesday, December 3, 6pm–7:30pm. Free. newberry.org Join photographer Jill Metcoff and ecologist Mike Mossman to discuss the role of intentional fires in maintaining the prairies of the Midwest. Metcoff spent fifteen years embedded with controlled burn crews and currently stewards a six-acre prairie; her latest book, Firelines, includes eighty-nine black-and-white photographs of intentional fires in the Midwest. Mossman is a biologist and ecologist who has studied the role of fire in the Midwestern prairie, both before and after the arrival of European settlers. This event is free, but an RSVP is requested. (Sam Joyce)

Looking to dodge the Black Friday crowds? Opt outside instead: join the Indiana Dunes

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ NOVEMBER 20, 2019

Going Green in Chicago

West Pullman Park Workday

Clearing Library, 6423 W. 63rd Pl. Wednesday, December 4, 6pm–7:15pm. King Library, 3436 S. King Dr. Saturday, December 7, 3pm–4:15pm. chipublib.org

West Pullman Park fieldhouse, 401 W. 123rd St. Monday, December 9, 10am–1pm. openlands.org/trees/forestry-events

“Going green” seems to be all the rage, but what does that actually mean for Chicago? This talk, presented by urbanologist and author Max Grinnell, will look at how both the public and private sectors are undergoing a sustainable transformation, through initiatives like community gardens, green roofs, improvements to the city’s public transportation system, and more. (Sam Joyce)

Climate Crisis Game Day Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St. Thursday, December 5, 3pm–5pm. Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. Thursday, December 5, 5:30pm–7:30pm. chipublib.org How would you design an ecosystem? How about a forest? If you had to design Chicago’s power grid, how would you do it? This game night explores these and other environmental possibilities through the use of fun, interactive board games like Planet, Reef, and Terraforming Mars. Suitable for ages twelve and up. (Sam Joye)

Before the Skyscrapers: Chicago’s Natural History Kelly Library, 6151 S. Normal Blvd. Thursday, December 5, 6pm–7:15pm. Garfield Ridge Library, 6348 S. Archer Ave. Saturday, December 7, 11am–12:15pm. chipublib.org 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)

Join Openlands’s Beverly TreeKeepers in finishing the season’s mulching and pruning at West Pullman Park. Make sure to bring your gloves, a water bottle, and eye protection; bringing your own tools is helpful but not necessary. Coffee and muffins included! (Sam Joyce)

Wooded Island Bird Walk Museum of Science and Industry East Parking Lot. Saturdays, 8am–11am. Free. Contact Pat Durkin for more: pat.durkin@comcast.net. bit. ly/JPBirdWalk 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)

Se solicita señora que pueda quedarse en casa que sepa cocinar, lavar, planchar, y limpiar. Dias serian de lunes a sabado. Para mas informacion, favor de llamar a Sra. Elena 773-676-0210

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