03.28.24

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Join us for SAVVY CAREGIVER™,afree, interactive 6-week training series designed to support family caregivers.

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To register, pleasegotothe link: http://bit.ly/SavvyCG Spaces are limited! For more information, contact Danielle Rileyat 312-743-1475 email: Danielle.Riley@cityofchicago.org or VictoriaRusso at 312-743-3528 email: Victoria.Russo@cityofchicago.org

Primary Results: Bring Chicago Home fails, and State’s Attorney race a Nail-Biter Chicago’s Primary Election polls closed last Tuesday with what officials called “shockingly low” voter turnout. Of the city’s nearly 1.7 million registered voters, only 22 percent cast a ballot, according to the Chicago Board of Elections. For comparison, the 2020 presidential primary saw a 37.8 percent turnout. Johnson’s marquee initiative, Bring Chicago Home, failed to pass, with 52.2 percent votes against and 47.7 percent votes for the referendum. At press time, the race for Cook County’s State’s Attorney is still a toss-up between Eileen O’Neil Burke and Clayton Harris III, with Burke holding on to a slim lead of about 1,700 votes. According to the Sun Times on Monday, election officials said there are 53,768 outstanding mail-in ballots, though they do not expect all of them to be completed or mailed back. Officials plan on continuing to count mail-in ballots until April 2, as long as they were postmarked by last Tuesday.

Voters overwhelmingly favor Community Benefit Agreement Referendums

Voters in two 7th Ward precincts overwhelmingly voted to support a South Shore Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) to prevent displacement in areas surrounding the under-construction Obama Presidential Center. The non-binding referendum called for property tax relief, increased homeownership, and eviction protection, among other anti-gentrification measures. According to the Board of Elections website, out of 224 total returned ballots across the two precincts, 175 voted yes and 49 voted no. Construction on the more than $800 million center began in September 2021 along Stony Island Avenue, from 59th St. to 62nd St. Opening day is scheduled to be in 2026, according to reporting by the Sun-Times

Art Week in April on Navy Pier

EXPO ART WEEK is back from April 8–14. The event stretches along Navy Pier and across the city with contemporary and modern art installations, performances, dialogues and galleries. There is a night dedicated to the South Side on Tuesday, April 9. With eleven locations to visit on this day, event-goers can stop by the Hyde Park Art Center, South Side Community Art Center, the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center to name a few. The day’s full schedule can be found on their website: bit.ly/ExpoSouthSide2024. EXPO ART WEEK is in conjunction with EXPO CHICAGO which is hosted at Navy Pier and is back for its 11th year. The event at Navy Pier will feature over 170 galleries from more than twenty-nine countries; ticket prices begin at $40 for single-day admission.

as evictions begin, migrants face hurdles on the path to resettlement

Volunteers are on the scene to observe and document the eviction process in the face of the lack of transparency from city officials.

zoe pharo, hyde park herald and citlali pérez, south side weekly ............. 4 a medida que comienzan los desalojos, los migrantes enfrentan obstáculos en su camino hacia el reasentamiento

Los voluntarios están en el lugar para observar y documentar el proceso de desalojo ante la falta de transparencia por parte de los funcionarios de la ciudad. zoe pharo, hyde park herald y citlali pérez, south side weekly

traducido por jacqueline serrato ...... 5 city council approves historic police misconduct settlement

Jhonathan Perez, the officer at the center of the settlement, remains in the department.

michael liptrot .....................................

7 brick by brick

The Weekly hosts an urban design event with South Side community builders.

michael liptrot

fines don’t shovel sidewalks, but chicago levies them anyway

Englewood leads the city in citations, but it’s unclear why.

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rob reid .................................................. 10

in an apparent rebuke, 14.5 percent of chicago democrats voted blank or write-in for president

More than 48,000 Chicago Democrats declined to select a choice for president in last week’s primary, as voters around the country cast protest votes over President Biden’s support for Israel.

the editors of in these times

12

jamila woods comes back to us, for us

Reflections on Jamila Woods’s legacy and latest album Water Made Us, on the heels of her homecoming show at the Vic Theatre.

jasmine barnes

the long arc of covid-19

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Post COVID clinics in Chicago provide specialized care for people experiencing COVID symptoms long after infection.

reema saleh

matching your link card funds

How Illinois SNAP users can double their purchasing power for fruits and vegetables.

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joe engleman.......................................... 17

op-ed: chicago must transform its approach to mental health

Members of the Collaborative for Community Wellness and UIC’s Community Research Collective on the shortfalls of how the city deals with mental health crises.

arturo carrillo, uic community research collective 20

Cover photo by Blake Swanson

As Evictions Begin, Migrants Face Hurdles on the Path to Resettlement

Volunteers are on the scene to observe and document the eviction process in the face of the lack of transparency from city officials.

BY ZOE PHARO, HYDE PARK HERALD AND CITLALI PÉREZ, SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

As the city begins to carry out its sixty-day limit policy on migrant shelter stays, shelter residents across the city report confusion about the eviction process and worsening hurdles to finding more permanent housing.

At Woodlawn’s Wadsworth migrant shelter, 6420 S. University Ave., one resident, whose name in this article has been changed to Luis to protect his identity, was given an eviction date of April 13.

Luis, who traveled from Venezuela to Chicago in January, said that a forced relocation to a different part of the city would undermine the progress and connections he’s made at Wadsworth. He also fears it would complicate his asylum case.

“It's a difficult process because, with all the progress you’ve been able to make, you practically need to start from zero,” he said of his pending eviction.

Luis has relied on the shelter for food, a place to sleep and support from case managers for the last few months as he looks for work and waits for his asylum case to be processed. With a court date for his case set for April, Luis said he has used the shelter address in his paperwork and expects to receive important mail there.

He hopes to receive an extension to his stay from the city. If not, he and five other residents with the same deadline plan to rent an apartment together.

“If we don’t get a renewal we will make it possible by renting, and making it possible on our behalf instead of going

to another shelter,” he said. “Either way, we are adapted and we know people, we know how things work here.”

First introduced by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office in November, the controversial sixty-day policy mandates that anyone entering the city’s twentythree migrant shelters will be limited to a stay of sixty days.

But as the first wave of sixtyday notices were set to be acted on in mid-January, the city extended the eviction deadlines due to belowfreezing temperatures. The deadlines were extended several more times due to inclement weather and short staffing at shelters, according to the city. Officials

began carrying out the policy last week.

As of March 25, there are 10,555 people living in the city’s temporary shelter system. In total, since the first waves of people seeking asylum were bussed to Chicago from the country’s southern border in August 2022, more than 37,000 people have arrived to the city.

Since then, about 15,234 people have exited the shelters and resettled across the Chicago area; 5,439 people have reunited with sponsors, such as family and friends, and more than 4,000 people are currently being helped with resettlement efforts and securing housing.

In a statement about the policy,

the city maintains that the evictions are intended to “advanc(e) a pathway to stability and self-sufficiency” by “encouraging resettlement.”

There are case-specific extensions for health and safety issues, to be determined on “an individual basis.” Possible extensions could be made for people who are pregnant or caring for infants, people receiving medical care or who have a disability, those with concerns of genderbased violence or who need to quarantine.

Under the most recent guidelines, families with school-aged children will receive thirty-day extensions, which can be renewed up to three times through June 10 to “minimize disruption for the duration of the school year.”

When evicted, people have the option to return to the “landing zone,” the area where buses transporting migrants into the state are supposed to drop people off, in order to make a new shelter request.

“We’ve had people on the buses sometimes for a few days, sometimes three, sometimes four,” said a lead volunteer in the 2nd Police District, who asked to remain nameless. “There’s no showers at the landing zone, there’s no real meals at the landing zone. (There) are snacks and cold food.”

She said people are only allotted one bag to bring with them.

The first evictions occurred last Sunday, March 17 at the Wadsworth, Gage Park and Elston shelters, according to NBC. On that day, however, the city said that only three people were evicted out of the thirty-four slated for removal.

A tent outside of the 2nd District Police station, 5101 S. Wentworth Ave., Sept. 1, 2023.

Photo by Marc C. Monaghan

The city did not respond to questions regarding how many people have been evicted to date and what resources are being provided.

One volunteer who assists migrants with eviction needs, who goes by Joce, said they didn’t see evictions occur at Wadsworth that day.

Joce waited outside the Wadsworth shelter again on Wednesday afternoon after learning that evictions might occur that day. But they left after a few hours, determining that the evictions were not actually happening that day.

Joce added that volunteers are cobbling together information from press releases, news articles and from people living at the shelters.

“There is just a huge lack of clarity and a lack of transparency about the process,” Joce said. “When we talked to people in the shelters very few people have indicated that they are getting or have notice that they’re getting evicted, or they’re all saying it’s happening in April.”

Volunteers like Joce wait on the scene to observe and document the eviction process. They also try to lend a hand when they can, such as moving belongings, purchasing needed supplies and providing rides to the landing zone.

“We’re just doing our best to be servers and documenters of what’s occurring,” Joce said.

The city has said residents will be allowed forty-eight hours to keep their belongings at the shelter, but Joce expressed doubt about this policy

“It could mean they (leave), and then they could throw their stuff away,” they added.

Annie Gomberg with The People’s Shelter Response Team, which was formed in March of last year to respond to the needs of asylum seekers sheltered at police stations, called the sixty-day policy “a real shame.”

“The eviction policy as a motivator to get people to leave shelter does nothing—people don’t want to stay in the shelters,” Gomberg said. “They want to be independent, but they have few pathways to get there. If they don’t have money, can’t legally work, have no ID, no bank account, have no credit, aren’t citizens, don’t speak the language … What are

their options?”

The city has so far not been able to meet the high demand for Chicago CityKey ID cards, which is a governmentissued ID card for people regardless of their legal status.

“As that population has transitioned (from police stations) to living in city shelters, the need has shifted,” Gomberg said. “Most of us now have personal ties to this community and want to see the new arrivals thrive, not just survive, in the City of Chicago.”

She also alleged that the evictions were needlessly disruptive. Last Monday, Gomberg said she met another resident of Wadsworth, whose friends had been evicted from the shelter just days prior.

“(They) returned to the landing zone, were processed, missed the whole day of work and then were sent back to Wadsworth,” Gomberg said.

The Emergency Asylum Seeker Rental Assistance Program, a state program which provides three months of rental assistance, is only available to people who arrived on or before November 17 and are currently living in a shelter.

Because Luis arrived two months after the program’s deadline, he doesn’t qualify for that assistance.

“The only real help that we could receive is a work permit,” Luis said, noting that he and many others have struggled to find stable income without a permit. “No employer will risk hiring us without a work permit. Everywhere we look they ask for a work permit.”

When Luis can’t find work, he sells food and drinks outside of the shelters.

“We have to find a way to survive,” Luis said.

“We are conscious that if we are caught selling Coca-Cola or food outside of a shelter without a permit we will be charged with a fine or have an issue,” he added. “But even so, we need to try to survive because we have family in Venezuela, wife, kids, people who depend on us, we have to find a way to provide for them and for ourselves.” ¬

Zoe Pharo is a reporter at the Hyde Park Herald. Citlali Pérez is a freelance writer at the Weekly.

A medida que comienzan los desalojos, los migrantes enfrentan obstáculos en su camino hacia el reasentamiento

Los voluntarios están en el lugar para observar y documentar el proceso de desalojo ante la falta de transparencia por parte de los funcionarios de la ciudad.

Amedida que la Municipalidad comienza a implementar su política de 60 días para las estadías en los refugios para migrantes, los habitantes de dichos lugares informan que hay confusión sobre el proceso de desalojo y los obstáculos cada vez mayores para encontrar vivienda permanente.

En el refugio para migrantes Wadsworth, 6420 S. University Ave., en el vecindario de Woodlawn, a un residente, cuyo nombre ha sido cambiado a Luis para proteger su privacidad, le

dieron como fecha límite el 13 de abril.

Luego de haber viajado de Venezuela a Chicago en enero, dijo que una reubicación forzada a una parte diferente de la ciudad afectaría el progreso y las conexiones que ha desarrollado en Wadsworth. También teme que eso complique su caso de asilo.

“Es un proceso difícil porque, con todo el progreso que uno ha podido lograr, prácticamente necesitas empezar desde cero”, dijo sobre su posible desalojo.

Luis ha dependido del refugio para

POR ZOE PHARO, HYDE PARK HERALD Y CITLALI PÉREZ, SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY TRADUCIDO POR JACQUELINE SERRATO

obtener comida, un lugar para dormir y el apoyo de los administradores de casos durante los meses recientes mientras busca trabajo y espera que se procese su caso de asilo. Con una fecha de audiencia para su caso fijada para abril, Luis dijo que ha utilizado la dirección del refugio en su documentación y esperaba recibir correo importante allí.

Dijo que espera recibir una extensión de la Municipalidad. De lo contrario, él y otros cinco residentes con el mismo plazo planean rentar un apartamento juntos.

"Si no conseguimos una renovación, pensamos rentar y hacer las cosas posibles por sí solos en lugar de ir a otro refugio", dijo. "De cualquier manera, estamos adaptados y conocemos a la gente, sabemos cómo funcionan las cosas aquí".

Introducida por primera vez por la oficina del alcalde Brandon Johnson en noviembre, la controvertida política de 60 días exige que cualquier persona que ingrese a los 23 refugios para migrantes de la ciudad tendrá una estadía limitada a 60 días.

Pero cuando planeaban actuar sobre la primera ola de avisos de 60 días a mediados de enero, la Municipalidad extendió los plazos de desalojo debido a las temperaturas bajo cero. Supuestamente los plazos se ampliaron varias veces más debido a las inclemencias del tiempo y la escasez de personal en los refugios. Los funcionarios comenzaron a implementar la política la semana pasada.

Hasta el 25 de marzo, habían 10,555 personas viviendo en el sistema de refugio temporal de la ciudad. En total, desde que las primeras oleadas de personas solicitantes de asilo fueron trasladadas en autobús a Chicago en agosto de 2022, más de 37,000 personas han llegado a la ciudad.

Desde entonces, algunas 15,234 personas han salido de los refugios y se han establecido en el área de Chicago; 5,439 personas se han reunido patrocinadores como con familiares y amigos y más de 4,000 personas reciben actualmente ayuda en los esfuerzos de reasentamiento y vivienda.

En una declaración sobre la política, la Municipalidad sostiene que los desalojos tienen como objetivo ayudar a crear "un camino hacia la estabilidad

y la autosuficiencia” al “fomentar el reasentamiento”.

Hay extensiones específicas en ciertos casos por cuestiones de salud y seguridad, que se determinarán “de manera individual”. Se podrían hacer posibles extensiones para personas que están embarazadas o tienen bebés, personas que reciben atención médica o que tienen una discapacidad, personas con preocupaciones de violencia de género o que necesitan ponerse en cuarentena.

Según las pautas más recientes, las familias con niños en edad escolar recibirán extensiones de 30 días, que pueden renovarse hasta tres veces hasta el 10 de junio para “minimizar las interrupciones durante el año escolar”.

Cuando son desalojadas, las personas tienen la opción de regresar a la “zona de aterrizaje”, el área designada por la Municipalidad donde se supone que los autobuses que transportan a los migrantes deben dejar a las personas, para poder presentar una nueva solicitud de refugio.

"Hemos tenido gente en los autobuses durante unos días, a veces tres, a veces cuatro [días]", dijo el voluntario principal del distrito 2 de policía, que pidió permanecer en el anonimato. “No hay regaderas en la zona de aterrizaje, no hay comida realmente en la zona de aterrizaje. (Hay) bocadillos y comida fría”.

Dijo que a las personas solo se les permite llevar una bolsa.

Los primeros desalojos ocurrieron el pasado domingo 17 de marzo en los refugios de Wadsworth, Gage Park y Elston, según NBC. Ese día, sin embargo, la Municipalidad dijo que sólo tres personas fueron desalojadas de las 34 planeadas.

La Municipalidad no respondió a preguntas sobre cuántas personas han sido desalojadas hasta la fecha y qué recursos se les están proporcionando.

Un voluntario que ayuda a los migrantes con sus necesidades de desalojo, que se hace llamar Joce, dijo que no vio desalojos en Wadsworth ese día.

Joce esperó afuera del refugio nuevamente el miércoles por la tarde después de enterarse de que podrían ocurrir desalojos ese día. Pero se fue luego de unas horas y determinaron que los desalojos no se producirían ese día.

Joce añadió que los voluntarios están recopilando información de comunicados de prensa, reportajes y de personas que viven en los refugios.

“Simplemente hay una enorme falta de claridad y transparencia en el proceso”, dijo Joce.

“Cuando hablamos con la gente en los refugios, muy pocas personas indicaron que estaban recibiendo o habían recibido un aviso de que los estaban desalojando, o todos dijeron que sucedería en abril”.

Voluntarios como Joce esperan en el lugar para observar y documentar el proceso de desalojo. También intentan ayudar de la forma que puedan, como trasladando sus pertenencias, comprar suministros necesarios y llevarlos a la zona de aterrizaje.

"Simplemente estamos haciendo nuestro mejor esfuerzo para ser servidores y documentar lo que está ocurriendo", dijo Joce.

La Municipalidad ha dicho que los residentes podrán guardar sus pertenencias en el refugio por 48 horas , pero Joce expresó dudas sobre esta política.

“Puede significar que (al irse) luego pueden tirar sus cosas”, agregó.

Annie Gomberg, voluntaria de un grupo de respuesta llamado The People's Shelter Response Team, que se formó en marzo del año pasado para responder a las necesidades de los solicitantes de asilo refugiados en las comisarías de policía, calificó la política de 60 días como “una verdadera vergüenza”.

"La política de desalojo como motivador para que la gente abandone los refugios no sirve de nada: no es que la gente quiera quedarse en los refugios", dijo Gomberg. “Quieren ser independientes, pero tienen pocos caminos para lograrlo. Si no tienen dinero, no pueden trabajar legalmente, no tienen identificación, no tienen cuenta bancaria, no tienen crédito, no son ciudadanos, no hablan el idioma… ¿Cuáles son sus opciones?”

Hasta ahora, la Municipalidad no ha podido satisfacer la gran demanda de tarjetas de identificación Chicago CityKey, que es una identificación emitida por el gobierno para personas independientemente de su estatus legal.

“A medida que esa población pasó

(de las comisarías de policía) a vivir en refugios urbanos, la necesidad cambió”, dijo Gomberg. “La mayoría de nosotros ahora tenemos vínculos personales con esta comunidad y queremos ver a los recién llegados prosperar, no sólo sobrevivir, en la ciudad de Chicago”.

También alegó que los desalojos fueron innecesariamente perturbadores. El lunes pasado, Gomberg dijo que conoció a otro residente de Wadsworth, cuyos amigos habían sido desalojados del refugio apenas unos días antes.

"(Ellos) regresaron a la zona de aterrizaje, fueron procesados, perdieron todo el día de trabajo y luego fueron enviados de regreso a Wadsworth", dijo Gomberg.

El programa de asistencia de emergencia para la renta para solicitantes de asilo, un programa estatal que brinda tres meses de asistencia para pagar la renta, solo está disponible para personas que llegaron el 17 de noviembre o antes y actualmente viven en un refugio.

Debido a que Luis llegó dos meses después de la fecha límite del programa, no califica para esa asistencia.

“La única ayuda real que podríamos recibir es un permiso de trabajo”, dijo Luis, señalando que él y muchos otros han luchado por encontrar ingresos estables sin un permiso. “Ningún empleador se arriesgará a contratarnos sin un permiso de trabajo. Dondequiera que buscamos nos piden un permiso de trabajo”.

Cuando Luis no encuentra trabajo, vende comida y bebidas afuera de los refugios.

"Tenemos que encontrar una manera de sobrevivir", dijo Luis.

"Somos conscientes de que si nos descubren vendiendo Coca-Cola o comida afuera de un refugio sin permiso nos multarán o tendremos un problema", añadió. “Pero aun así, tenemos que tratar de sobrevivir porque tenemos familia en Venezuela, esposa, hijos, gente que depende de nosotros, tenemos que encontrar una manera de mantenerlos a ellos y a nosotros mismos”. ¬

Zoe Pharo es reportera del Hyde Park Herald. Citlali Pérez es escritora freelancer para el Weekly.

City Council Approves Historic Police Misconduct Settlement

Jhonathan Perez, the officer at the center of the settlement, remains in the department.

BY MICHAEL LIPTROT

Last week, the City Council approved $57.2 million in settlements for police misconduct, including the largest such settlement in Chicago’s history: $45 million for the maiming of Nathen Jones. Jones, who is now eighteen, suffered a traumatic brain injury in a 2021 police chase while sitting in the backseat of a vehicle that ran a stop sign. The officer, Jhonathan Perez, later testified that the chase, which reached speeds of sixty-seven miles per hour, was prohibited under a 2020 CPD vehicle-pursuit policy forbidding officers initiating a chase for minor traffic violations, according to the Tribune

Following the crash, Jones spent a year in rehabilitation. He is paralyzed, left unable to walk, speak, or feed himself, and requires constant care. Jones’ family filed a lawsuit with Cook County that named Perez and the fleeing car’s driver, officer Khalil Raggs, responsible for Jones’ injury. Raggs was sentenced in 2022 to three years in prison for charges related to the crash and a gun he was in possession of in the vehicle. Perez is still an active member of CPD.

competency to prevent future tragedies but did not elaborate on the specifics of

During the meeting, the City Council also approved several appointments, including that of Adrienne Johnson to serve on the First Police District Council (PDC). That district, which includes downtown’s central business district and the South Loop, has had only two of its three seats filled since May of last year, when district council members were sworn in. In November, Johnson rejected the nomination of Marcell Bright to the

Like many district councilors, Adrienne Johnson, a resident of the 3rd Ward who has an extensive background in retail pharmacy administration, has not previously held public office. Her nomination was championed by Alderperson Pat Dowell, who attended a committee meeting on Monday to show her support and spoke about Johnson in glowing terms after City Council met later that week.

In the press conference that followed the meeting, Johnson was repeatedly asked about Bring Chicago Home, a referendum on Tuesday’s primary ballot that, at the time of the meeting, appeared headed for defeat. Bring Chicago Home would increase the tax on real estate sales above $1 million dollars to fund homelessness initiatives while lowering it for sales below that amount. A coalition of organizers knocked doors for weeks in support of the referendum, while business interests fought to knock it off the ballot and, when that failed, spent nearly $1 million in TV ads opposing it. The referendum was ultimately defeated, with 53.7% of voters rejecting the measure.

The mayor refused to concede that a defeat of the referendum is a sign the progressive movement in Chicago may be faltering.

WGN reported that attorneys in the Law Department estimate a liable judgment would likely be upwards of $100 million for pain and suffering plus loss of normal life. The $45 million settlement, approved by the finance committee on Monday, includes $25 million paid by the city’s insurance and $20 million by the city.

In total, the City Council voted 33-15 to award $57.2 million in police misconduct settlements. The family of Roshad McIntosh, who was killed by a CPD officer in 2014, was approved to receive a settlement of $2.25 million. The next settlement approved was for $5.5

million awarded to Ricardo Rodriguez, who sued CPD detective Reynaldo Guevara for allegedly framing him in a 1995 Belmont Cragin shooting.

“One of the things that Superintendent Snelling and I talk about regularly is the type of training that we have to make available for officers who are coming into the force,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at a press conference after the City Council meeting. Asked by the Weekly for more specifics about what the training entails, Johnson responded, “It’s everything from responding to crises to responding to outbreaks or when people are demonstrating.” The mayor emphasized the importance of cultural

“Adrienne has already demonstrated her love for the city of Chicago and her interests in public safety in the First District,” Dowell told the Weekly. “She believes in trying to create a better dialogue between the community and the police, and that’s the kind of candidate that I wanted to support, because it’s needed.”

The council also named retired CPD official Jose Tirado as executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which operates the city’s 9-1-1 center and coordinates agency responses to crises. Elevate Chicago executive director Roberto Requejo was appointed to the Chicago Transit Authority Board.

“People who either attack or critique from the sideline, individuals who have never participated…don’t know the difference between winning or being defeated, because they never participated,” Johnson said. “The organizing doesn’t pivot. The organizing gets stronger. Because the same organizing that had to deal with the loss of schools, housing, mental health clinics, jobs, it’s the same organizing that propelled me into this office. We get stronger, and whatever we didn’t get the first time, we’ll get even more the next time.” ¬

Jim Daley contributed reporting to this story.

Michael Liptrot is a staff writer for the Weekly and the Hyde Park Herald.

Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke to reporters after March’s City Council meeting about the apparent defeat of Bring Chicago Home.

Photo by Jim Daley

Brick by Brick

The Weekly hosts urban design event with South Side community builders.

BY MICHAEL LIPTROT

On Sunday, March 19, South Side Weekly hosted Brick by Brick, a community engagement event that invited local residents to reimagine their communities, and panel discussion with community advocates actively involved in creating spaces on the South Side. The event took place in Bronzeville at the offices of civic media organization City Bureau.

As dozens of attendees ate vegan soul food from Soul Vegan, they were divided into five groups for an interactive urban design challenge. Each group was given a scenario by the Weekly’s engagement team that explored how everyday conditions in our community can be improved and the systems that can enable change. Prompts included imagining a grandmother advocating for more walkable sidewalks, a local grocer closing its doors, and a group of residents tasked with designing a park from scratch, and got attendees thinking about their community, seeing things from each other’s perspective to evaluate and problem solve.

“I do think town halls (are) a good forum, because there’s a certain sense of accountability when you’re in a room and you’re talking about something and everybody can hear you,” said panelist Cecilia Cuff, founder of South Side Sanctuary. Her group was discussing the scenario of a grandmother who struggles with a sidewalk riddled with cracked pavement, potholes and sparse street lights. In the scenario, a grandmother has tried to get the local alderman’s attention to no avail, and a decade has since passed.

During a panel following the activity, Cuff spoke about her work with the South Side Sanctuary, an ongoing effort to bring a new community gathering space to an empty lot at 4702 South King Drive. “There’s been an empty lot there for a few decades now and we

were able to convince the city of Chicago to allow us as a group of young people to transform that lot into a multi-use space that will offer health and wellness training (and programming), arts and culture programming, innovation and entrepreneurship like farmer’s markets,” Cuff explained to the crowd, noting the concentration of empty lots particularly on Chicago’s South and West Sides.

“We’ll be able to activate that space and use it as a case study. When we’re able to activate empty spaces as a community, we create spaces that not only create safer communities, but additionally are able to activate space that makes the whole corridor busier.” Also a co-owner of Bronzeville Winery and founder of The Nascent Group, a hospitality design agency, Cuff has a background in development, which she brings to her work.

In her small group, Cuff spoke to the challenges of town halls firsthand in progressing her own efforts. “Aldermanic town halls aren’t as well attended as they

probably could be. I only started going to town halls because we had a project and we wanted to be able to communicate or present at the town halls,” she said.

This testimony led the group to consider the town hall model, and the purpose of why people attend.

“Even though a lot of the issues seem trivial, it means a lot to the people in the neighborhood,” said City Bureau documenter and reporting fellow Ahmad Sayles on his experiences documenting police district council meetings. “No matter if it’s a small number of people complaining, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. You stand out a lot more when it’s a meeting that everyone wants to breeze through and you’re like ‘No, I actually have a problem.’”

The conversation included other means of putting these issues on the city’s radar, including through block clubs, calling 311 and potentially escalating to the Office of Emergency Management & Communications as possible solutions to

the sidewalks issues.

Led by journalist and critic Anjulie Rao, the day’s panel featured Cuff, urban farm Sistas in the Village cofounder Nyabweza “Bweza” Itaagi and #LetUsBreathe Collective co-founder Damon Williams.

“When we talk about urban design, it's a catch-all phrase. It’s architecture, sidewalks, parks, pollution management, zoning…it’s a lot of different things,” Rao said during the panel introduction. “What’s really interesting to me is that all of our panelists today are actually thinking about this idea of urban design and planning in a very different way. In a way that I think also acknowledges the fact that urban design is not just the thing that exists. It’s all of the policies that were designed to ensure that our city looks the way it looks now. I think that things like redlining are as much carefully urban designed as the Harold Washington Library.”

Williams’ background includes being an artist, abolitionist and self-described “movement maker.” Spawning in 2016 from the Freedom Square occupation, the #BreathingRoom space originated as community center by the #LetUsBreathe Collective and counter effort against divestment in North Lawndale. Currently it is located at 1434 West 51st Street in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Beyond being a community center since 2016, the Breathing Room has hosted a farm and garden for the last four years.

“The Let Us Breathe Collective has been in existence since 2014 and started at the intersection of cultural space and liberatory resistance,” Williams said. “Whether it’s in a park. Whether it’s downtown. Whether it’s in Ferguson. Whether it’s across the street from the Chicago Police black site.” Williams emphasized the importance of ensuring

Photo by Marc C. Monaghan

space for the movement for Black liberation while being “emergent, organic, experimental and non-traditional.”

Bweza Itaagi started Sistas in the Village in 2020 and also serves her community through Grow Greater Englewood, whose “primary focus is to repurpose some of the vacant spaces within the community into more nature centered gathering hubs,” Itaagi said. “We are working to repurpose an almost two mile long vacant, elevated train line that hasn’t been in use since at least 1960. That is really just the story of a lot of spaces around it.”

Itaagi explained shifting demographics and industries led to the creation of such vacant spaces. The influx of Black residents during the 50s and 60s coincided with many businesses and manufacturers relocating. “There used to be a very rich, active, light manufacturing industrial use in the area. And then as the demographic shifted. It became more Black as businesses were leaving. That community was left with a lot of just vacant spaces that are still vacant to this day."

“Primarily, the work that we do is to come up with community solutions to collectively decide what is the best use of these spaces and how it will help us live healthier, more robust lives.”

Itaagi continued, “We are an urban farm, about half an acre sized farm, on the corner of 58th and Ada. We focus on growing crops that are really central to the African diaspora. I am half Ugandan. I’m really passionate about just reconnecting us with the land and reminding us that all of us thrive as a community when we’re closer to the land when we’re connected as individuals.”

The remainder of the panel focused on how each individual panelist realized the presence of a need and unmet gaps in their communities. Cuff recounted first seeing income inequalities through working in the service industry. She also saw how climbing the ladder in hospitality was possible to close generational wealth gaps, as one could eventually go from being a lower position to becoming a chef or opening a restaurant.

She says she applied this same hope of vertical mobility, despite inequities, to

her work in urban design. “It just comes from hard work,” Cuff said. When I think about development, I think of how do we take empty space and how do we create hope in our community,” she said. Cuffs sees redlining, empty storefronts, highways blocking certain communities and other disparities as ways to remove hope. “When you’re frustrated when you don’t see a through line or a path, that takes hope away. My career path has always been counteracting that stop line and creating that hope to say ‘yes, I actually can.’”

Cuff’s work includes beautifying spaces through cleaning up trash, rejuvenating business corridors to increase foot traffic to businesses, and rewriting many common narratives about the South Side. She wants to create an environment where North Side residents can visit South Side Sanctuary or any business in the area and leave saying “I went to the South Side and I was okay.”

Williams spoke on realizing the need for the Breathing Room through experiencing the aftermath of the death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. “We, without knowing that we were about to become an organization, found ourselves in a nexus of folks saying ‘we want a world without prisons and police and we want a new infrastructure of social systems to take care of people,’” Williams said.

He emphasized that these ideas are not inherently new, having been

around the city, and around the country and the world.”

introduced in the mid-20th century by Black liberation movements such as the Black Freedom Movement and Black Panther Party.

“In 2014, 2015, (I was) seeing that there was this overlap of cultural community and burgeoning political activism that was connected,” Williams continued, noting activists such as Rick Wilson, Asha Ransby-Sporn and Jamila Woods. All of these involvements led him to starting Respair Production & Media which has been “archiving, documenting, learning from creating conversation with space makers, movement builders all

Itaagi first saw the need for urban design and incorporating nature through her childhood growing up in Denver, Colorado. When cannabis was legalized in 2012, she saw her hometown change. “There was this rush of people moving to displace all the Black, brown and Indigenous communities, and creating a new Denver,” she said. She says the displacement of minority communities led to people moving to food deserts, piquing her interest in fresh food. “That drew me to Chicago…I went to DePaul to study sustainable urban development because I was really trying to find these answers to how can a city grow and expand allow people to come in, while still looking out for the folks who have been there, and especially marginalized folks.”

“That’s when I started understanding how land is really central to the conversation. When we’re talking about urban development, it’s not just about building structures, but there needs to be a way of just really connecting with the Earth as a living breathing entity that we are privileged to live on.”

To stay updated on South Side Weekly events, follow us on social media. ¬

Michael Liptrot is a staff writer for the Hyde Park Herald and South Side Weekly

Photo by Marc C. Monaghan

Photo by Marc C. Monaghan

Fines Don’t Shovel Sidewalks, But Chicago Levies Them Anyway

Englewood leads the city in citations, but it’s unclear why.

BY ROB REID

Chicago is not afraid of winter. In the worst-case scenario, a blizzard sweeps across the Great Lakes, blanketing the city with snow. The Department of Streets & Sanitation (DSS) will deploy a fleet of more than 300 plows to carve through 9,400 miles of roadway: first the main arterials, and then the quieter residential streets. As required by the municipal code, Chicago property owners must take charge of clearing their own sidewalks, shoveling paths in front of their homes and rental properties, hiring help, or soliciting assistance from ad-hoc or coordinated volunteer efforts.

The result is usually passable enough that businesses stay open, most residents can reach their bus stops, and children can walk from their drop-off points to schools. But the effort is far from comprehensive, and even a single patch of ice can block seniors, people with disabilities, and parents with strollers from reaching essential destinations like grocery stores and child care facilities. Even those who are fully mobile sometimes sustain injuries from slipping on ice.

Getting everyone to shovel their own sidewalks remains an elusive goal. The city promotes peer vigilance, encouraging residents to report uncleared snow through 311 service requests. The Department of Transportation (CDOT) responds to these 311 complaints, issuing citations when property owners fail to clear daytime snow by 10pm or overnight snow by 10am. After a fifteen-hour grace period, property owners are subject to fines between $50 to $500 per day.

According to data obtained by South Side Weekly from the Department of Administrative Hearings, the city issued more than 1,900 uncleared-sidewalk

citations over four winters from July 2019 to June 2023. The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) issued nearly three-quarters of these citations, with DSS accounting for most of the remainder. In rare instances, police and the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection also issued citations.

But the data also show that enforcement of fines varies wildly across departments and from ward to ward. This variation suggests a lack of coordination between grassroots volunteer mobilization and neighborhood vigilance, top-down citywide efforts from DSS and CDOT, as well as aldermanic prerogative in directing ward services.

Between 2019 and 2023, the city issued more citations in Greater Englewood’s 15th Ward than any other, with 161 of its 171 citations issued by DSS. In Lincoln Park’s 43rd Ward, the second-most ticketed ward, CDOT issued 101 of 103 total citations. Citywide, the median number of citations

per ward is only 21.5.

Each ward faces different challenges, dependent on factors such as the prevalence of arterial roads and vacant buildings, as well as levels of trust in the city’s 311 system. Likewise, no two alders are the same, and each takes a unique approach to influencing enforcement.

CDOT, the primary city department ticketing for sidewalk snow clearance, reacts in part directly to residents who file 311 complaints. Property owners are typically warned first and then issued a citation if they’re not responsive.

But data show that the rate of CDOT citations relative to complaints is not at all consistent across the city. On average CDOT issues one citation per fifteen complaints. But the agency issues one citation per three complaints in Alderperson Silvana Tabares’ 23rd Ward near Midway airport, and one citation per roughly five complaints in the 3rd, 37th, 11th, and 13th wards.

Individual property owners may sometimes face the burden of a seemingly arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement system. But city data shows some large corporations and retail chains are frequent offenders.

CDOT issued citations to ComEd at six different properties across the city. The department likewise fined four Family Dollar stores and two Dollar Tree stores, while DSS cited a third Dollar Tree.

Nobody likes paying fines, of course. In January, Block Club published a guide to avoiding snow clearance fines, reminding readers that fines for uncleared sidewalks can run from $50 to $500 per day. The piece also encouraged residents to contact 311 to report neighbors who don’t shovel.

Such grassroots vigilance may be intended to complement CDOT’s proactive top-down efforts.

“CDOT public way inspectors respond to 311 service requests from the public and aldermen regarding uncleared sidewalks,” said Erica Schroeder, a CDOT spokesperson. “Inspectors also proactively check sidewalks throughout the city following snow and ice events. Inspectors will often opt to issue a warning instead of an immediate fine for first-time violators. The goal is not to issue citations, but to ensure compliance so that people can get around safely.”

Schroeder did not respond to a question about why Garfield Ridge, which includes the 23rd Ward, has a higher rate of fines per complaint than anywhere else in the city.

Citywide, DSS issues uncleared sidewalk citations far less frequently than CDOT. But those citations are highly concentrated in a small number of wards, with the top three wards: 15th, 16th, and

Snow falls in March 2024 in Chicago.

Photo by Jim Daley

6th, all in Greater Englewood. Two far North Side wards, the 40th and 49th, also issued a significant number of citations, but they were a fraction of those issued in Englewood.

Alderpersons are responsible for managing routine constituent services such as filling potholes and trimming trees. Their perceived competence at fulfilling such services plays a considerable role in their electability.

While each ward faces different challenges to comprehensive snow clearance, alderpersons have considerable latitude in how they tackle it. Each ward has its own ward superintendent, who works closely with alderpersons and monitors “sanitation services that include refuse collection, street cleaning, and snow removal for an assigned ward.”

Cat Sharp, chief of staff for alderperson Andre Vasquez, said that the 40th Ward takes snow clearance seriously, particularly as an accessibility issue. The ward office addresses this need in part by organizing a volunteer shovel squad. But she also said they work with their DSS ward superintendent to ticket businesses and large apartment buildings, particularly on major thoroughfares, as part of a stopgap solution. Administrative Hearings data confirms that amongst twenty-seven citations issued through DSS, all but two targeted properties on major thoroughfares.

The 40th Ward ranks fifth in citations issued by DSS for snow clearance. That’s less than a third of the number of DSS citations issued in the 16th Ward and about one-sixth of the number of citations issued in the 15th Ward.

16th Ward alderperson Stephanie Coleman did not respond to an email and a call requesting insight into why her ward issues so many citations and leans heavily on DSS. Ray Lopez, alderperson for the neighboring 15th Ward, offered some explanations as to why his ward has so many citations compared to others.

“We have a lot of vacant property that we cannot address unless a ticket is issued,” Lopez said. “And this relates not just to snow, but any city service that’s required to be brought to a particular location.”

Acknowledging that the fines alone may not directly solve the problem, Lopez said he hopes to get these properties “resurrected so that they are functional and a positive force on the tax rolls as opposed

to a drain on our departments’ resources.”

Such vacant properties are prevalent across wide swaths of the South and West sides. But they’re not at all unique to Greater Englewood.

“I don't believe that leniency is something that’s deserved in these circumstances, because it’s something that we’ve explained ad nauseam, something that we have educated our residents to report, and we expect people to comply for the good of the community,” Lopez said.

He acknowledged that the city doesn’t have an official contact list of property managers. This suggests that his ward office’s educational efforts may not reach everyone. He also conceded that property owners are often unclear on expectations, particularly when ward boundaries change over time. “It shouldn’t matter that one side of the street enforces snow removal and the other side does not,” he said.

As Lopez readily conceded, the fines don’t immediately address the problem of clearing sidewalks, given that court hearings can take several months to adjudicate fines.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said fines can change behavior but added that the relationship is “hard to demonstrate.” To the extent that the city does use a fines-based approach to enforcement, “We have basic responsibilities to do that in an

accurate and equitable way,” she said, adding that “keeping clear records” is critical.

DSS Director of Public Affairs Mimi Simon, like Schroeder at CDOT, did not respond to a question about disparities between enforcement in different wards. She stated only that the department addressed complaints from community residents and ward offices.

Witzburg attributed some of the disparities to differences in context.

“Different neighborhoods do in fact have different needs, different priorities, different challenges,” she said. But she added that she’s seen “problems of consistency across wards” in other contexts that she’s studied. As a general principle, Witzburg advocates a balance between consistency and local control.

“The ideal here should be consistency where it matters, in terms of access to, and equity in, the provision of city services,” she said. “But not consistency for consistency’s sake. Where there are unique needs and unique challenges in neighborhoods we should be addressing those.”

Police occasionally issue tickets for uncleared sidewalks. They’ve only done so twenty-five times over the four-year period. But those tickets are concentrated in West Englewood and Englewood, which account for ten of those twenty-five citations.

One police officer issued tickets to two churches in West Englewood in 2021, and a third in East Englewood in 2022. West Englewood’s Capernaum and New Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist churches were both found liable for $50 fines, while East Englewood’s ticket was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Despite fines issued by CDOT, DSS, and police, uncleared sidewalks remain. During a mild winter, the city’s 311 line received 1,227 complaints related to uncleared sidewalks since January.

Alderperson Lopez said he doesn’t see the high level of citations in his ward as a problem. Instead, he pins blame for persistent snow clearance problems on inconsistent enforcement.

“The problem that we see isn’t the fact that we are enforcing the law [in the 15th ward],” he says. “I think the problem is that forty-nine other people have their own versions of enforcement.”

Lopez says he’d like to see better coordination between city departments. Specifically, he’d like the Department of Buildings and DSS to maintain a registry of building owners, which Lopez and other alders could use as contact lists. Specific to vacant properties, he expressed concern that the Department of Buildings, the Law Department, and Police Department

“like to work in silos” in a way that “works against the community’s desire to see these vacant properties either rehabbed, demolished, or maintained and secured.”

DSS spokesperson Simon pointed out correctly that CDOT is the primary agency enforcing snow clearance. CDOT’s Schroeder did not address a question about how (if at all) those two agencies coordinate their efforts.

In March 2023, the Inspector General published an advisory citing eleven examples of coordination issues between city departments. Witzburg noted that the city is required by its own municipal code to hire an administrative officer to “lead interdepartmental coordination in city government.” But, she says that role “has gone unfilled for decades.”

In a response attached to that advisory, Mayor Lightfoot’s chief of staff dismissed the IG’s suggestion as “an archaic and overly simplistic approach to City management.”

As an alternative to the finesbased approach, the Plow the Sidewalks working group is expected to provide their recommendations to Chicago’s Committee on Pedestrian Traffic and Safety by the end of May. The committee will then decide whether to advance a funded pilot program which could grant a reprieve on fining properties within these pilot zones. This would raise new expectations for a coordinated effort across selected pilot zones.

Witzburg anticipates there’ll never be enough resources to “shovel every foot of sidewalk in the city,” but hopes that the inevitable budget-motivated prioritization decisions “should be aligned with clear assessment of need across Chicago’s communities.”

Hinting at the limitations of the 40th Ward’s reliance on levying fines via DSS, Cat Sharp said the 40th Ward office sees the Plow the Sidewalks pilot as a stepping stone towards “expanding the City snow shoveling pilot to ensure clear sidewalks in our ward as a long-term solution.” ¬

Rob Reid is a freelance local journalist specializing in data wrangling, map-based storytelling, and community history.

In an Apparent Rebuke, 14.5 Percent of Chicago Democrats Voted Blank or Write-in for President

More than 48,000 Chicago Democrats declined to select a choice for president in last week’s primary, as voters around the country cast protest votes over President Biden’s support for Israel.

BY THE EDITORS OF IN THESE TIMES

This story was originally published by In These Times

Results from the March 19 primary in Chicago show a significant gap between the number of Democratic ballots submitted and the number of votes cast for one of the four listed presidential options.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting (and the results still unofficial), 335,465 Democrats turned out to vote in the election while only 286,660 voted for any of the presidential candidates listed on the ballot a gap of 48,805 votes, or 14.5 percent.

By contrast, in the hotly contested 2016 primary, only 12,687 voters (1.8 percent) declined to select a presidential option, and in 2012, when President Barack Obama ran uncontested, 24,285 (9 percent) declined.

President Joe Biden received 227,756 votes and another 11.5 percent opted for less-popular candidates Dean Phillips (4 percent), Marianne Williamson (4 percent) or Frank “Frankie” Lozada (2.5 percent). Including votes for other candidates, at least a quarter of Chicago’s Democratic voters declined to vote for Biden on Tuesday.

The 14.5 percent gap appears to include both voters who left the presidential line blank (known as “undervotes”) and writeins. The Chicago Board of Elections could not be reached for comment.

The vote in Chicago comes as the Uncommitted movement launched in protest of Biden’s support for the war on Gaza has gained momentum and

spread across the country. It began in the key swing state of Michigan when a short but electric campaign resulted in some 100,000 voters writing in “Uncommitted” on their Democratic presidential ballots. This followed a smaller, but still notable “ceasefire” write-in campaign in New Hampshire.

Including votes for other candidates, at least a quarter of Chicago’s Democratic voters declined to vote for Biden on Tuesday.

Organizers and activists in other states have followed suit, including Minnesota, Arizona and Washington, and others have launched campaigns for their upcoming elections including an “uninstructed” campaign in Wisconsin and a “leave it blank” campaign in New York.

“Uncommitted National is so proud of organizers in Chicago for mobilizing support for our anti-war movement,” says Layla Elabed, chair of the Uncommitted National campaign. “Even without an uncommitted or equivalent option on the ballot, Chicago organizers were able to strongly refute Biden’s unrestricted funding of genocide in Gaza.”

Shortly before the vote in Michigan in late February, Elabed, who was then campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, which was organizing the campaign around the Uncommitted vote, told In These Times that “One of the reasons it’s not okay to vote for a different Democratic candidate is because the whole institution of the Democratic Party has really turned on their constituency, has turned on their base.

“Before we can even talk about Biden

getting support at the ballot box, the very minimum that the Biden administration would need to do, for us to talk about what support would look like come November, is support a permanent cease-fire and a reevaluation of our policy of unchecked, unconditional military funding to Israel.”

Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian American resident of the Chicago suburbs who organizes in the community, said after seeing the primary results that “there should be no surprise that Palestinians, Arabs, Black people, immigrants, and many others would be rejecting Biden right now.”

“Genocide Joe is responsible for over 30,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since October, and folks want to hold him accountable. This is one way to do it, and the other way is to mobilize for protests at the DNC, which is what USPCN, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and dozens of other organizations will be doing in Chicago in August.”

Illinois did not have an uncommitted option on its Democratic presidential ballot line and also does not formally report blank presidential votes or write-ins. However, many Illinois municipalities, like Chicago, do report total turnout, allowing the total who did not select a listed candidate to be calculated.

Organizers did not build a formally structured campaign around Tuesday’s election in Illinois in the same way that they did in Michigan, which makes the results all the more significant. Many voters saw themselves as part of the larger national campaign and in the days leading to the

election, a key part of the discussion among movement groups and activists was how to effectively contribute with their vote lack thereof for president. Some Muslim leaders, along with progressive Jewish groups and other anti-war activists in Chicago, urged voters to write in “Gaza” or “Free Gaza” or leave the presidential line blank.

One way to help evaluate the protest message is that, unusually, Democratic voting in the down-ballot state’s attorney race was higher than the presidential race, with 279,422 votes cast, 25,020 more than the top line contest.

Chicago has been a major locus of the national anti-war movement pushing for an end to the genocide in Gaza, where recent numbers show about 32,000 Palestinians killed in the unrelenting assault by the Israeli military since October 7.

Home to the largest Palestinian population in the United States, Chicago also recently became the largest city in the country to pass a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who came out in support of the cease-fire, cast the tiebreaking vote that ensured the resolution would be passed.

The movement for cease-fire has reached all corners of Chicago and united groups and communities in resistance to the violence. The U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) has helped lead dozens of actions and efforts, while broad coalitions that include a combination of Palestinian, Muslim, Jewish and multiracial and multiethnic groups also came together to try and spread the anti-war message and push elected officials to act with urgency on the daily massacres in Gaza.

President Biden has remained a central target of these protests. Much of

the criticism focuses on how his actions and support for Israel have helped fuel a genocide and enable it to continue.

About a week ago, USPCN released a statement surrounding their disgust that “representatives of the White House had invited Chicagoland Palestinians and others to a meeting” on March 14, and demanded that Palestinians, Arabs and any other organizations and individuals refuse to attend.

“It’s as if Genocide Joe Biden and his team haven’t learned any lessons from the past few weeks,” Abudayyeh, who in this instance was speaking as the national chair of USPCN, said in a statement. “Michigan Palestinians and Arabs rejected a White House meeting, and over 100,000 of them voted ‘Uncommitted’ in the presidential primary there. We saw the same on Super Tuesday.”

About a week before that, Biden’s motorcade faced difficulty even getting to the State of the Union because protesters tried to block its path on the way to the Capitol.

Timed to also coincide with the State of the Union, a broad anti-war formation of Chicago activists and organizers held a 24hour vigil for Gaza where as many names of those Palestinians who have been killed were read one after another. The vigil was punctuated by short speeches, including a State of the Genocide by In These Times executive editor Ari Bloomekatz and contributing writer Eman Abdelhadi.

Many political observers are now focused on how the Uncommitted movement is going to continue to play out in other states particularly in Wisconsin, where Biden topped Trump by a razor-thin margin in 2020.

“We are excited to keep building on this momentum in Wisconsin next,” Elabed says. That election is on April 2. ¬

Jamila Woods Comes Back to Us, for Us

Reflections on Jamila Woods’s legacy and latest album Water Made Us, on the heels of her homecoming show at the Vic Theatre.

BY JASMINE BARNES

On a snowy night in February, an eager and doting audience at the Vic Theatre cheered as the night’s performer took the stage. Jamila Woods, her locs sculpted into a crown and adorned with jewels, bathed in the crowd’s loving cheers before beginning the last show of the North American tour for her latest album, Water Made Us

After singing her playful first song, “Bugs,” she cheerfully called out, “Chicago, how you doing?” to a roaring response. This homecoming felt particularly intimate as Woods serenaded fans with some of the most vulnerable songs of her career.

“When I was writing, I really wanted to look myself in the face,” Woods said partway through her set. “Someone was joking with me like, ‘Where's the Jamila song?’ But this is kind of like the Jamila album.”

As a Chicago transplant, I first encountered Jamila Woods’s soulful, singer-songwriter style in early 2018 through my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Like most musicians, she was someone I perceived as an amorphous artist, a creative being who existed in the soundwaves that came through my headphones. As I’ve come to call the South Side of Chicago home, I understand more clearly the cultural specificity of her lyrics, which explore themes of playfulness, joy,

sensuality, and growth.

Mass media loves to fuel the narrative of a Chicago riddled by crime and violence. Stereotypes circulated about the South Side implicitly—and sometimes explicitly—dehumanize Black and Brown folks, who largely make up these communities. The city has experienced what some are calling a “Black Exodus” and an ongoing epidemic of missing Black folks, especially Black women and girls. In the face of despairing realities, we need more artists to claim Chicago as their home and create art that offers new visions of what a thriving Black Chicago can look like. Woods, along with many of her contemporaries and collaborators, offers a new narrative that celebrates the abundant talent the South Side nurtures and produces.

Raised in Beverly, Woods’s work as an educator and community organizer in Chicago has influenced her commitment to creative collaboration. This inclination is made evident through Wood’s involvement as a student turned executive director for Young Chicago Authors (YCA), a nonprofit supporting young people’s creativity.

Similarly, her musical partnerships with other Chicago artists like Chance the Rapper, Saba, Peter CottonTale, and Nico Segal anchor her creative endeavors

Two protesters embrace as Ashley Bohrer of Jewish Voice for Peace reads the names of Palestinians killed in Gaza during a March 7 vigil in the Loop.

Photo by Jim Daley

in the city. Whether inviting friends like Fatimah Asghar to co-direct her music videos or featuring South Side cultural staples like the Stony Island Art Bank in her visuals, Jamila makes it a point to reinvest in the places and people that have made her who she is.

On stage, CottonTale and Segal made guest appearances while Woods’s sister Kamaria offered background vocals throughout the show. When explaining the origins of the angelic song “SULA (Paperback)” from her previous album

LEGACY! LEGACY!, Woods said, “I was living with my sister at the time, and she

cutting onions and contemplating how to keep going in a moment of global chaos, bridged the gap between the scale of her talent and the intimacy of her artistry. Again in June of 2020, Woods’s album LEGACY! LEGACY!, which was released a year earlier, served as a kind of anthem to the collective rage and reckoning that swept Chicago and other cities globally following the death of George Floyd.

The jazzy anthem “BASQUIAT” played on repeat in my apartment. The lyrics “(Are you mad?) / Yes, I'm mad / (What make you mad?) / I don't fuckin' know / You should tell me so, you done

“Woods remains devoted to Chicago and the community that raised her, even as she spends more and more time away, touring nationally and internationally and working on creative projects far beyond the bounds of the Midwest.”

was like, ‘I can play this song on the guitar. I can play it for you.’ We sung it that way, and I loved it even more than the original.”

To date, “SULA” is one of her most popular songs with more than 6 million streams on Spotify. For Woods, family and early creative relationships are foundational to her process and essential to the authenticity that rings clear in her music.

Wood’s aesthetic and artistry are particularly Black and femme. As a millennial Black woman, I see mirrors of myself throughout her work: choosing to release her album on October 13, 2023, based on astrological alignment; learning to swim in her early thirties to make underwater portraits for her album cover; and skillfully and effortlessly intertwining early-2000s alternative hits, like “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap and Paramore’s “That’s What You Get,” into her live musical sets.

In the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, I received an email from a poetry newsletter that featured Woods’s poem “Day 29 (2020).” The knowledge that Woods, who once felt like a distant projection, was likely a few miles away,

done it,” stung with the rage I felt and didn’t know how to express.

Her willingness to place herself even more squarely at the center of her artistry for Water Made Us, serves as a reminder that the choice to grieve and grow as a Black person in relationship to yourselves and others, matters.

Tof the Midwest.

Much like the imagery presented in her song “Tiny Garden,” she doesn't discard relationships or past life experiences but instead composts them in hopes that, with tending, they might be transformed into something new.

Additionally, intimate voice notes peppered throughout (including a conversation with a tarot reader and reflections on love shared by an elder) pull from the archives of Woods’s personal experiences to weave together her most revealing body of music yet.

“The songs are really about the way that we talk to each other and the way that we listen to each other, especially in moments of conflict,” Woods said to the crowd.

As conflict weaves its way through our lives in both intimate and collective levels, Woods invites us to become first and foremost in the right relationship with ourselves.

At the end of her set, Woods took a moment to share a story with the audience about Harriet Tubman. The iconic abolitionist survived a traumatic brain injury at the hands of an enslaver and was reported to have had prophetic dreams and visions for the rest of her life as a result. In one of those dreams, she heard God speaking to her.

he title of Water Made Us was inspired by a Toni Morrison quote from a talk she gave at the New York Public Library in 1986: “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” This sentiment of returning to one’s truest nature encompasses the energy of the album. In the song “Good News,” Woods references the title, singing, “The good news is water always runs back / Where it came from / The good news is water made us.”

Much like the thesis of her song from a previous body of work, “EARTHA” (“Who gonna share my love for me with me?”), Water Made Us ponders complex questions about healing, accountability and commitment.

“A lot of the lessons that I was learning were breaking; cracking open this image

that I have of myself [as] being a ‘good person,’” Woods said. “What I noticed was the more I clung to that idea of myself, the bigger the blind spot became… I couldn't see how sometimes I can hurt people.” She most clearly explores that dichotomy in her song “Wolfsheep,” repeating the line, “Everybody’s good, no one is,” like a mantra.

Her poem “I Miss All My Exes,” which is featured on the newest album, takes compassion for our duality and humanity a step further. The loving ode to exes past ends with the couplet, “I never left any one of them, not really / I just went somewhere new.” In the same way, Woods remains devoted to Chicago and the community that raised her, even as she spends more and more time away, touring nationally and internationally and working on creative projects far beyond the bounds

“She woke up from [the] dream, and she said, ‘My people are free,’” Woods said. “She didn't misspeak. She didn't mean to say my people will be free. She said my people are free because she saw it. Then, as we know, she spent her life molding her actions to make that the reality that she was living in.”

Walking out of the Vic Theater after the show, surrounded by hundreds of other concert-goers chatting and laughing and mapping their way home, I found a verse from the pre chorus to “Headfirst” replaying in my mind—“I know it took me long / But I won't leave you”—and felt a hum of connection to this city, its people and myself. ¬

Jasmine is a Chicago-based facilitator and multidisciplinary writer calling on the Black womanist tradition in her work. You can learn more about her by visiting her website: www.jasbarnes.com

Jamila Woods performs at the Vic Theatre. Photo by Blake Swanson @blakeswans.photo

The Long Arc of COVID-19

Post COVID clinics in Chicago provide specialized care for people experiencing COVID symptoms long after infection.

BY REEMA SALEH

In March 2020, Patrick Malia, then thirty-seven, left work on Friday feeling under the weather. He spent the next day shivering so hard his bed was shaking. When he got to the emergency room, he had a 104-degree fever and a hard time breathing, especially with his asthma. As the hospital filled with coronavirus cases, he was sent home. His doctor didn’t think he had COVID-19 but was afraid that he’d catch something worse by being there.

Malia didn’t know it then, but he first got infected with the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic. At the time, testing was only available by a doctor’s order, and Malia’s doctor was convinced he didn’t have it. He stayed home without knowing what was wrong and kept away from his family, but he never seemed to recover.

“I stayed in the house for thirty-eight days. I didn’t leave the house,” he said. “I couldn’t walk more than ten feet without collapsing…I couldn’t lie down and sleep because I couldn’t breathe, so I slept in the recliner for three weeks sitting up.”

The world looked completely different when he left the house again. He saw a pulmonologist, who told him he had every symptom that other hospitalized COVID patients were experiencing. But without a positive COVID-19 test, he struggled to get a proper diagnosis for a long time.

He was navigating a maze of doctor visits, seeing different specialists for fatigue, heart issues, and migraines, and trying to figure out what was causing it. Tests came back negative for Epstein-Barr Virus, mononucleosis, and other diseases that matched his symptoms. He ended up taking six months off from his job as a technician at a surgery center, and when he went back to work, his symptoms made daily tasks more difficult.

“I was basically unrecognizable to everyone. I was the one everyone relied on

to help out and jump in. I could do fifteen things at once,” he said. “Then there’s me that comes back, hobbling down the hallway and getting winded by standing up.”

It wasn’t until he’d gotten an appointment at Northwestern University’s long COVID clinic that he felt things start to change. Talking with Dr. Marc Sala was the first time he felt his symptoms were truly heard.

“He spent a full hour with me to talk about everything you could imagine,” Malia said. “The first thing he said was, ’I believe you.’...That’s what I needed because I was almost starting to believe that I was losing my mind. I couldn’t explain how I could get short of breath by standing up and getting a drink of water, but it was happening.”

Malia spent the next year going to the clinic regularly for help with day-to-day functions and cognitive rehab at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Occupational and speech therapy helped him learn how to adapt when his brain fog or forgetfulness started to flare up. He knows to rest up in advance if the next day looks like it will take a big physical or mental toll. But COVID didn’t fully leave him.

“I’m looking to work my way out of healthcare because I can’t physically do it anymore,” he said. “To be on my feet all day, every day, running from one place to another, moving patients, moving heavy things. It has taken such a toll on me physically that, right now, I’m just trying to figure out what to do because I know that I can’t do this anymore.”

Northwestern Medicine’s Comprehensive COVID-19 Center was the place where Malia first learned how to manage his symptoms. Sala, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, co-directs the clinic. Established in the summer of 2020, it became one of the first to treat patients with lingering symptoms

of the virus, such as brain fog, shortness of breath, and chest pain.

“There’s no predictive strategy to know if you’re going to develop persistent symptoms….Even if we’re not dealing with ICU-level illness, we still have a huge number of people who have symptoms after their infection that they didn’t kick,” Sala said. “We have a complete lack of answers about how to help those situations.”

Since 2020, the United States has seen more than 100 million reported COVID-19 cases. But even after the acute phase of the illness passes many still deal with its symptoms long after infection. That year, patients coined their lingering symptoms as “long COVID,” describing their often-disabling symptoms in forums and patient-advocacy groups online. In 2022, the American Academy of Neurology declared that long COVID was the third leading neurological disorder in the United States.

“The history of long COVID and the focus put on it was very much a grassroots effort from patients…It led to providers such as myself needing to take it more seriously and pay attention,” Sala said. “It’s not uncommon for me to see people in the clinic who have just seen three or four doctors who said that it would be much more temporary or the worst case, it’s all in your head, which is always disturbing to hear.”

Even after the body clears the virus that causes COVID-19, many people continue to have symptoms or develop new health issues afterward. One in four adults who contracted COVID-19 reported having experienced long COVID in 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Anywhere from 7.7 million to 23 million Americans have developed long COVID at some point during the pandemic.

Since the pandemic’s onset, several

long COVID clinics have popped up at universities and hospitals. As of 2022, sixty-six health systems nationwide have post-COVID-19 care clinics, including several in Chicago. UChicago Medicine is currently the only clinic operating on the South Side.

Long COVID clinics emerged as a “one-stop shop” for patients who may be managing many different kinds of symptoms due to the virus. For Malia, having all these resources in the same place made it easier to seek care.

Long COVID is not well understood, despite its prevalence. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) identified more than 200 long COVID symptoms, including extreme fatigue, cognitive impairment, post-exertional malaise, and respiratory symptoms. More severe infections are more likely to result in long COVID, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all disease for people, so piecing these symptoms together becomes challenging.

Dr. Leonard Jason is a psychology professor at DePaul University. His work studies long COVID through the lens of other chronic fatigue syndromes, finding a lot of similarities between long COVID and Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), another debilitating condition that lacks clear diagnostic tests.

“Medicine is good at helping people with clear-cut disorders…What medicine isn’t good at is these types of unexplained disorders,” Jason said. “Primary care doctors are not great at figuring out how to deal with these chronic conditions that affect so many people.”

Over a year later, while studying long COVID and ME/CFS symptoms, he found many similarities between them.

“People with long COVID over the years generally tended to get better than people with ME/CFS,” Jason said. “What

HEALTH

that suggests to us is, a number of people with long COVID, over time, will begin to get better, and some will completely get better. But some will maybe not completely but be pretty functional. Those who basically continue to be sick and very impaired will probably transition into the category of ME/CFS.”

One of the current theories behind why people get long COVID is that their bodies cannot completely clear the virus and stay in a state of chronic infection that flares up from time to time. It could be similar to how the Epstein-Barr virus can stay dormant in the body and reactivate to make someone ill again.

Some researchers have zoned on microclots in long COVID patients’ blood which block the flow of oxygen to critical organs. Others believe the infection destabilized their immune systems, which stay on high alert and go on to attack healthy cells. But much of how the disease operates and compounds with other conditions is a mystery.

“With a novel virus or a novel illness, the research will always move slower than people need it to…But in the last six months, I’ve seen more papers getting closer to pragmatically helping people than we saw throughout the rest of the pandemic,” Sala said. “I think it’s finally hitting an inflection point where we’re going to come up with strategies to heal people faster from these conditions.”

Dr. Jerry Krishnan leads the long COVID clinic at UI Health, which has been active for the past two years, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Coming to a long COVID clinic over a primary care doctor can be worth it because it means getting in touch with long COVID experts familiar with how the condition varies, Krishnan said.

“Long COVID can affect any part of the body. It can start in the original problems or areas you had, so if you had COVID pneumonia, maybe it starts with the lung, but it can also affect the brain… It can create almost any symptom you can imagine,” Krishnan said. “One of the most challenging aspects of diagnosing long COVID is that it isn’t just a specific list of problems.”

Long COVID can be difficult to diagnose. No single test exists for it yet, although some are under development. Its symptoms can also sound like many other

health conditions, or it can complicate preexisting ones, like diabetes or high blood pressure. Sometimes, a person with long COVID may not even realize they have it or chalk it up to aging.

“The diagnosis depends on whether you and the doctor can tell you had an infection that sounds like it was COVID, and after that, something changed, and you don’t have any other easy explanation,” he said. “You may have had diabetes for a long time, and then you had COVID, and then you realize you’ve had more difficulty measuring or taking care of your diabetes… It gets more complicated if you have underlying health conditions.”

Marta Cerda heads ASI, a home care agency that supports patients who are disabled or chronically ill. She caught a severe case of COVID-19 in the fall of 2020. After the infection, she recovered but realized she hadn’t recovered her full taste and smell.

“There were certain things that I felt when I had COVID, like extreme fatigue, that crushing feeling, and certain other conditions,” she said. “I definitely had brain fog, and then, the weirdest thing was that I started to stutter sometimes. It happens rarely, [but it’s like] my thoughts are ahead of my ability to speak.”

Despite working in healthcare for decades, she still had trouble connecting the dots between her COVID-19 infection and her lingering symptoms. But her questions led her to join the RECOVER study, an observational study of long COVID patients through the federal government’s National Institutes of Health. Krishnan directs one of the clinical sites for the RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) Initiative, which he said has enrolled 15,000 adults, including nearly 1,000 in Illinois, to understand how long COVID impacts people and ultimately launch clinical trials to treat it.

Joining the RECOVER study helped Cerda understand where some of her unexplained symptoms were coming from. Now, she worries about the people in her communities who may have gotten long COVID but don’t realize it. It motivated her to get involved with long COVID advocacy and community outreach. She mentioned that the more individuals understand the presence of the condition within themselves, their family, or friends, the easier it becomes for them to seek help.

“There are legitimate reasons to fear clinical trials in our communities,” she said.”A lot of it is about being in the community with people who understand the fears and can say, ‘Yes, I understand, you’re correct, it’s important to have those fears, but this study is going to make sure you get all the information about what’s happening, and you can back out of it anytime.’”

Last fall, Cerda testified with Krishnan before the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee about long COVID. They both work with Illinois Unidos, a coalition of Latinx healthcare providers, policy advocates, and community organizations advocating for equitable COVID-19 recovery and response.

The pandemic has also impacted communities of color differently, as longdocumented health disparities worsened its impact. Black and Hispanic adults were disproportionately represented among severe COVID cases. They were also more likely to report COVID-19 symptoms lasting three months or longer, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

“We want people to understand that the health disparities of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians caused us [to be] highly susceptible to long COVID. We got hit by COVID-19 the hardest because of those health disparities and because our immune systems were down,” Cerda said. “Once you got hit, in large numbers, we developed an exacerbation of all those issues within long COVID.”

In July 2021, long COVID became a recognized condition that could result in a disability—giving patients the same anti-discrimination protections or accommodations as any person with a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But more needs to be done, said Cerda. For example, long COVID patients are typically younger than the patients served by her home care agency, making them ineligible for this type of support.

UI Health is currently launching clinical trials examining brain fog, dizziness, sleep disorders, and postexertional malaise among long COVID patients with partners at UChicago, Northwestern, RUSH University, and others. Researchers are also testing whether Paxlovid, a prescription

treatment for acute COVID, can treat people with long COVID.

Krishnan said the state should create a dashboard to track the number of long COVID cases in Illinois. This would allow people to identify areas where long COVID is more prevalent and which neighborhoods or vulnerable populations need the most support. They’re also pushing for the state to disaggregate COVID data collection by different subgroups, like age, gender, race, and ethnicity, so researchers can better determine where critical resources should go.

“There is no single place where you can see which neighborhoods long COVID is more common than others,” he said. “That’s something we should ask our government officials to create,” he said. “At least those individuals now, we can look at them more carefully to bring the resources we have for those suffering the most.”

The best way to prevent long COVID is to avoid catching it in the first place. COVID prevention can include masking in public spaces, regular testing, or using air purifiers to remove COVID-19 particles indoors so people can prevent its spread and the complications it might bring.

Vaccination against COVID-19 also prevents infection, and many studies have also found that it significantly lowers the risk of developing long COVID after infection. But only 15 percent of Chicagoans are up to date with their vaccinations as of March.

While working with ASI to increase vaccination rates, Cerda has felt that people no longer want to hear about COVID-19. “Now, what I say is, ‘COVID did not leave me,’” she said.

“We have to think about it because people are dying or going to be dying from long COVID…A whole group of people are now unemployed because they’re unable to work…This is impacting the country whether or not people want to talk about it or not,” she added. ¬

Reema Saleh is a writer, journalist, and multimedia producer. She last wrote about labor organizing at the Chicago Transit Authority.

Matching Your Link Card Funds

How Illinois SNAP users can double their purchasing power for fruits and vegetables.

BY JOE ENGLEMAN

Link Up Illinois, a three-person operation out of the Experimental Station, manages Link Match—a grant funded program that both doubles the amount of fruit and vegetables Illinois SNAP users can purchase, while supporting local and regional food producers by increasing and expanding residents’ access to fresh, locally and regionally grown food. Nearly two million low-income people in Illinois, 930,000 of them in Cook County, receive monthly federal financial assistance to purchase food via the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

Liz Abunaw, the owner of Forty Acres Fresh Market grocery store and delivery service, has worked with Link Up Illinois and the Link Match program since 2020. Abunaw said that Link Up and community groups have done an incredible job expanding the program, noting that, “They’re going to where the consumers are” and making the LINK Match coupons universal means that a midweek meat purchase at a participating grocery store can turn into produce at a weekend farmers market supported by Link Match.

Abunaw described the Link Match program as adding “fuel to a fire”, but the problem she sees is that “it’s very contained.” Abunaw would like to see the state agencies develop a “cohesive plan of action” to educate Link users about Link Match and strategies to utilize the maximum benefit from the moment they start receiving benefits. “With this kind of offer, more people who shop with Link should know of Link Match’s existence so they can use it,” she said.

Link Up, which takes its name from the Link card that Illinois residents receive their SNAP benefits on, works to increase awareness of the matching benefit and make it easier for SNAP recipients to access it, farmers markets and grocers to implement it, and local and regional

farmers to sell more fruit and vegetables, said Matthew Ruffi, Link Up’s program manager since last summer.

Last year, Link Up provided grant funding to enable more than one hundred farmers markets, food cooperatives, community-supported agriculture subscriptions, delivery services, and grocers across the state to double Link’s buying power. At farmers markets, farm stands, CSAs, and mobile markets, the Link match can be as high as $25 per transaction. Link Up is now accepting applicants for its 2024 Link Match grant program.

Link Up and the Link matching program has come a long way since the Experimental Station first debuted the program at its 61st Street Farmers Market in 2009. At the time, the idea was a philanthropic project of the Wholesome Wave Foundation along with the Experimental Station and the Illinois Farmers Market Association. The program caught enough attention that the 2014 federal farm bill allocated funds to provide matching grants for SNAP fruit and vegetable purchases. The program was seen as successful enough that the 2018 farm bill doubled the program’s funding.

The city of Chicago also funds Link Up to make sure that Link Match is offered at all Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events public farmers markets in the spring, summer, and fall.

Link Match offers a clear benefit for both the consumer and the producer (especially producers who are in the local or regional food system), particularly in communities with low food access, where many SNAP recipients don’t have many options about where to buy their food. It’s estimated that more than a quarter of all SNAP benefits are spent at Walmart and 95 percent of SNAP recipients use Walmart at least once a year. This means that the food SNAP users purchase tend to

be processed foods or products of a fragile, carbon intensive food system.

The Illinois Stewardship Alliance, a nonprofit that supports small farmers and food producers, estimates that 95 percent of all the food that’s consumed in Illinois originates outside the state’s border. Farmers markets provide an essential outlet for small and regional food producers to sell their products directly to consumers. A recent Congressional Research Service report highlighted that SNAP purchases at farmers markets nationwide total around $43 million, less than .05 percent of all SNAP purchases.

To combat these conditions and reach even more people, Link Match expanded to traditional grocery stores in 2021. Brick and mortar stores tend to see higher usage of SNAP. Link Match is now active in nine grocers in the Chicago area including two Jewel Oscos and a Cermak Market, two food cooperatives, and Forty Acres Fresh Market, to name a few.

While the match that participating grocery stores offer is lower overall than at a farmers market, because many grocers accept Link already, adding the matching component can be quite easy, Ruffi said. The other benefit of the still relatively new grocery program is the program has improved access to fresh fruits and vegetables at stores that might not otherwise prioritize carrying them.

“We want access to food first,” Ruffi said. “You can take things to the next level like helping businesses with aspirational goals and sourcing locally.” Many of the conversations Link Match staff have with corner stores and small grocers about sourcing starts small and grows from there. In smaller stores, measurable fruit and vegetable sale increases can come from things as simple as having apples and bananas at the cash register and a clerk to say that the fruit is free with a Link

purchase.

Once stores that weren’t selling fruit or vegetables start to see more demand and sales, Ruffi said, store owners and managers can start to source more and better produce. Ruffi is hopeful that Link Up could get close to doubling the number of brick-andmortar stores that Link Match is accepted in this year.

The administrative burden—a phrase coined by policy professors Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan to describe the ways in which government program design can inhibit or create barriers to utilizing benefits—does appear to sit with the Link user to identify farmers markets and grocery stores which accept Link, and of those, Link Match participants.

If you visit the Illinois Link card page on the Illinois Department of Human Services’ website for example, you’ll find that Link Match is not mentioned in the program brochure FAQ or PDF. Only by sleuthing the links in the sidebar can you find an article called “Farmers Markets that Accept the Illinois Link Card” which directs you to a list of markets that accept LINK and asterisks that indicate Link Match or “double value coupons” is accepted.

On market days at the Austin Town Hall Market, which Abunaw and Forty Acres manage, Abunaw said customers using Link will often try to start their shopping at Forty Acres, but she and the staff direct them to start shopping with other vendors so a customer can come back for the Link Match-eligible produce last to maximize the benefit.

One way to raise public awareness is through expanding the Link Match program further. At the same time, one can’t help but wonder why every farmers market or grocery store in the city isn’t offering Link Match yet, especially when the Link Match grant application itself takes “ten minutes to fill out,” Ruffi said.

FOOD AND LAND

Farm stands, CSAs, and especially farmers markets tend to run into two barriers—the initial cost of electronic benefit transfer equipment and staffing.

After applying for a Link Match grant, a farmers market or store that hasn’t accepted Link before will need to file some paperwork with the state. While Link Up doesn’t provide the electronic benefit transfer equipment (a machine to scan the Link card essentially)—there are specific vendors who sell the equipment. In some cases, these vendors have their own grant programs. Link Up is now working with some services to try and subsidize the processing equipment, Ruffi said.

Link Up offers grant funding for administration and marketing, defraying the fees associated with processing SNAP transactions, and training volunteers and staff in operations and reporting requirements for the program.

Staffing is the other major barrier for farmers markets. Ruffi, a self-described “recovering corporate guy” who helped launch the Uptown Farmers Market, is well aware that this can be an issue at volunteerrun markets even before offering Link Match. Staffing a market’s Link booth

keeping, and Ruffi acknowledges that finding a couple people to fill this role consistently during the long market season can be a real challenge. Some markets use a portion of their grant funds to compensate a dedicated staffer or two to work the Link table the duration of the season.

Speaking from his personal experience both with the Uptown Farmers Market and the forthcoming Chicago Market food cooperative where he sits on the board, Ruffi said he’s found that making a specific ask, one rooted in community benefit, usually pays dividends. “If two people could commit to being there for two hours, now we have the Link table covered…and by doing this, we’re helping our neighbors in this community be able to shop here, enjoy this, spend more, and eat healthier,” he said. “Most people are terrified of putting an ask out there,” he said, “you’d be surprised how often people want to do things, especially at farmer’s markets.”

Ruffi offers assurances that Link Up staff provide trainings and visit Chicago area program participants on a weekly basis to get feedback and troubleshoot any issues that arise. He and his fellow staffers want every market that can participate to do so

can do to help, please ask. The forms may look daunting, they’re not. The equipment sounds a little complex, it’s not. We can help you or we can put you in touch with people who can,” he said. He pointed out that new participants often see the benefits during the first year, even if it feels new or there are some initial hiccups. “It may be hard your first year, but then for years after you’ll be able to do this with ease,” Ruffi said.

This will be the fourth year that Forty Acres Fresh Market will be participating in the Link Match program, Abunaw estimated that around a third of Forty Acres’ sales at the Austin Town Hall Farmers Market are made with Link or Link Match. However, Link and Link Match represent a much, much smaller slice of their grocery delivery service which is available citywide and into the western suburbs year-round.

“Did I mention that we accept LINK for home delivery and we Link Match?” Abunaw said for the fourth or fifth time to emphasize how challenging it is to let people know about the benefit. ¬

Joe Engleman is a Chicago-based writer and

How does Link Match work?

For SNAP/Link recipients who haven’t interacted with the program, Ruffi recommended that they head to a participating market, look for Link and Link Match signs to find a Link table. A recipient should determine how much they would like to spend from their SNAP allocation, up to a maximum match of $25 per purchase. A volunteer or market staff member will process the transaction and give you a coupon or voucher with a dollar amount on it. The entire process is cashless and then you can browse at your leisure. Abunaw, who manages the Austin Town Hall Farmers Market, encourages Link/ SNAP users to maximize their benefit by buying fruit and vegetables last. She recommended using Link to purchase other eligible items, like fresh meat at a grocery store. Then Link/SNAP users can match—the doubled buying power—to cover all their fruit and vegetables.

Op-Ed: Chicago Must Transform Its Approach to Mental Health

Members of the Collaborative for Community Wellness and UIC’s Community Research Collective on the shortfalls of how the city deals with mental health crises.

Care Beyond the Crisis Moment

BY ARTURO CARRILLO

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 budget allocates $5.2 million to reopen two public mental health centers and $15.9 million to hire additional mental health professionals. These investments are vital, but insufficient to address decades of disinvestment from public mental health services.

The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) operated nineteen public mental health centers and an alcohol treatment center in 1989. By 2011, there were just twelve public mental health centers.

Today, only five remain open.

Within this landscape, mental health needs often go unaddressed until they reach a point of crisis. Removing police from the crisis response is a priority for our city. In addition, we must recognize that the crisis moment is too late for meaningful intervention for people struggling with mental health challenges.

New research reports from the Collaborative for Community Wellness (CCW) and the UIC Community Research Collective lend support to community demands for building an accessible, patient-centered, high-quality public mental healthcare system to serve the people of Chicago.

Divestment from public mental health services has created a dynamic where mental health challenges are more likely to escalate to the level of acute crisis while relying on police for crisis response is further traumatizing and does nothing to reduce future crises. Key points of failure in the current system include limited access to preventive services, coercive short-term medical treatment, and a lack of long-term, post-crisis support options.

Privatization has severely limited access to preventive services within Chicago’s mental health service landscape. In 2023, the CCW assessed service accessibility by conducting a phone survey of private, non-profit providers that received funding from the city of Chicago to deliver mental

health services. Although former Mayor Lori Lightfoot described these providers as offering services “without access barriers,” findings from the CCW’s research reveal that Chicago’s privatized mental health service landscape is far from facilitating no-barrier access.

Volunteer callers were only able to complete phone surveys with 42 percent of agency locations, pointing to challenges navigating phone systems and connecting with organizational representatives. Furthermore, more than half (56 percent) of surveyed locations had a wait time of one month or longer to initiate services; 15 percent reported that they did not serve individuals who were undocumented; and only 41 percent offered free services.

Of a total of 80 agency locations, only five were found to be without any access barriers. These five barrier-free locations were concentrated within four Chicago community areas, providing evidence that the vast majority of Chicago’s population does not have access to barrier-free mental health services through a privatized provider. This assessment mirrored findings from research that CCW conducted in 2021, which demonstrated that access barriers through privatized providers are a long-standing problem and have remained consistent over time.

With a divestment in public services and limited access through privatized providers, it is not surprising that Chicagoans are unable to address their mental health needs until they reach a point of crisis. The CCW’s analysis of 911 behavioral health calls from January 2019 through February 2022 indicated that the highest rate of calls are concentrated in parts of the city where public mental health centers have been closed. These findings point to the dire consequences of divestment when Chicago residents are left with no other recourse but to call 911 to address their mental health needs.

From July through October 2023, the UIC researcher team conducted interviews

with Chicagoans who shared stories about their encounters with the city’s crisis response system and the aftermath of these crisis moments. Several respondents explained that they feared calling 911 for mental health crisis support because they expected police to escalate the situation and criminalize and stigmatize the person experiencing a crisis.

911 is too little, too late for Chicagoans struggling with mental health challenges. Respondents asked for a hotline option other than 911 that would provide mental health support. Many respondents also called for reopening and expanding public mental health centers in their neighborhoods. The participants also made clear that preventative support needed to include broader services including housing, food resources, job training, and other healthcare, to prevent the kinds of acute life crises that often escalate into mental health crisis events.

The current options in the aftermath of a crisis are also ineffective and further traumatizing. The typical response involves transport to a hospital where initial triage occurs. The person experiencing a crisis is then either treated at the hospital until they are considered stabilized or transferred to an in-patient psychiatric clinic for treatment.

These stays are often involuntary, meaning that people cannot decide for themselves when to leave treatment. During periods in medical custody, people are forced to participate in treatment that they do not desire or consent to. Multiple respondents explained that involuntary commitment felt coercive and did not result in improvement in their mental health.

Inpatient treatment also exposed participants to dehumanization and stigmatization from care providers. Respondents reported that they were not allowed contact with family members and that they were subjected to unnecessary sedative medications. No respondent described receiving post-crisis support that went beyond this initial medical custody. Thus, the medical care received as a crisis response was temporary and often unsatisfactory. Participants expressed a desire for access to ongoing therapy support

post-crisis, that would help them address their mental health needs in the long-term.

The solution to both a lack of preventive services and the lack of longterm post-crisis support is an investment in public mental health services.

Last summer, the CCW released a white paper identifying remedies to the current challenges presented in the research. Public mental health centers provide both the preventative mental health support services that help reduce the likelihood that Chicagoans’ mental health struggles will escalate to the point of crisis by engaging with residents proactively by developing a community care corps, and can also provide long-term, post-crisis intervention programs to help residents improve their mental health and learn strategies to reduce the risk of acute mental health crisis.

The UIC research project found that respondents desired mental health services that were accessible within their neighborhood, community-based, and of high quality. Respondents also shared that mental health services needed to be made more accessible through interventions like transit assistance, expansive clinic hours, reduced wait times, increased staffing, more comprehensive insurance coverage, and other financial support.

Findings from the UIC research project are consistent with recommendations that the CCW has outlined based on years of community-based research on mental health service access and community visions for mental health service delivery. Truly ensuring that mental health services are available for all Chicagoans in their moment of need requires the re-opening of all public mental health centers that have been closed over the past several decades, in order to facilitate access to free, long-term services that are available to everyone, regardless of insurance status and immigration status.

Recognizing the range of medical, material resource, and psychosocial needs that impact mental health, public mental health centers would benefit from operating as integrated service facilities that offer peer support, arts, and culture-focused enrichment activities, medical services,

housing assistance, and case management support in conjunction with mental health services. Addressing this range of holistic resource needs is critical to preventing mental health crises and promoting longterm healing when crises do occur.

Addressing holistic resource needs in a manner that is person-centered, culturally affirming, and high quality further requires that the City of Chicago prioritize the hiring of a Community Care Workers corps of individuals who live in the communities where the public mental health centers are located and who have similar lived experiences to the community members

who are seeking services.

Investing in a worker corps that community members can trust and relate to promotes affirming and high-quality service delivery, which is essential to both preventing mental health crises and responding to crises through an approach that facilitates long-term healing. Lastly, to ensure that care is long-term following a moment of crisis, it is critical that there is coordination between immediate crisis support and follow-up services.

To this end, public mental health centers should serve as centralized hubs for non-police mobile crisis response teams

Cops out of Crisis Response

BY UIC COMMUNITY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 budget includes $5.2 million to reopen two public mental health centers and expand mental health services, along with $15.9 million to double staffing for the city’s team of professionals who respond to mental health and substance abuse crises. Despite this important allocation of resources, activists and community members aim to implement a more holistic patient-centered vision for equitable mental healthcare in 2024, including removing police from crisis response.

We, the UIC Community Research Collective, partnered with the Collaborative for Community Wellness (CCW) this past Summer to interview Chicago residents about their experiences with mental health crisis response. In our newly released report, residents shared stories demonstrating that police typically: 1) escalate the crisis, 2) rely on criminalization and violence, and 3) dehumanize and stigmatize the person experiencing the crisis. Our findings lend support to the CCW’s call to halt co-responder models that deploy police alongside mental health professionals.

For Chicago to truly transform its mental health services, we must prioritize the people trying to access support, and recognize the longstanding personal and community trauma created by police involvement in crisis response, regardless of training.

Chicagoans are familiar with the names Laquan McDonald, Quintonio

composed of mental health professionals and peer support workers. Through this approach, mobile crisis response teams will be based at the public mental health centers and will travel to homes and community locations when an individual is experiencing a mental health emergency. Their integration within the public mental health centers will make them best equipped to facilitate a seamless connection to long-term mental health services and other psychosocial supports following the crisis event, in turn building the support systems that are necessary to promote longterm healing and prevent future crises.

By building a public mental health infrastructure that is designed to simultaneously focus on prevention, crisis response, and long-term follow-up care, the city of Chicago can ensure that all Chicagoans can access the care that they need to promote their optimal emotional well-being. ¬

Arturo Carrillo, PhD., LCSW, is a mental health researcher at UIC and community organizer with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and Collaborative for Community Wellness

LeGrier, and Irene Chavez. McDonald and LeGrier were shot and killed by police during mental health crises with sixteen and seven bullets, respectively. Chavez died by suicide in police custody after her repeated pleas for mental healthcare went unheeded.

These disastrous interventions point to a truth many Chicagoans know too well: police involvement in mental health crisis response is harmful.

During our interviews, Chicagoans recounted numerous instances in which police responded to crises with escalation, treating residents in dehumanizing ways. Kim, a twenty-nine-year-old Japanese Filipina woman, was having suicidal ideations when police arrived at her motel room for a surprise wellness check. She was showering, so she answered the door in a towel, only to be dragged out naked on a cold, winter night. “They put me in cuffs. They’re dragging me out without telling me anything. They didn’t tell me it was a wellness check,” Kim recounted. Time and again, police response to crises takes the form of criminalization over care.

As a direct result of harmful encounters, Chicagoans who experience mental health crises do not trust police to handle future crises without responding violently. Caroline, the mother of a Black child, stated she would only call police as a last resort if her child’s life was in danger. Otherwise, she insisted, she would never contact the police because “that’s gonna make everything much worse.” Others

who felt compelled to call police in the past recounted how they were forced to manage the emotions of the police to prevent the use of violent, dehumanizing force against them or their loved ones.

When we insist on involving police in our city’s response system, we prevent Chicagoans from accessing the support they need and deserve. How many Chicagoans must be traumatized, or worse, before we transform our response to mental health crises and treat people with dignity?

Other cities across the country have already instituted systems that remove law enforcement from mental health responses. Denver’s STAR system, for instance, dispatches two health care staff—a mental healthcare clinician and a paramedic—to 911 calls requesting assistance with a mental health crisis. The program has been a massive success, with many municipalities piloting their own programs based on Denver’s model. There is even evidence the STAR program has reduced crime.

It’s time Chicago adopted a more humane model as well. This begins with the removal of police from crisis responses.

Proponents of police involvement argue police are necessary to maintain safety for those in crisis, their communities, and the clinicians in the co-responder model. Others argue police use of violence stems from a lack of proper training. Chicagoans with direct experience of police intervention in mental health crises present a fundamentally different reality. When police are involved, situations escalate, and Chicagoans are harmed.

The results speak for themselves. Even with trainings like CIT being introduced

and expanded over the last twenty years, the experiences of those who need help remain largely unchanged. Research shows additional training does not protect those in crisis or crisis workers. The only reasonable path forward is to reallocate resources toward rebuilding Chicago’s response system without police involvement.

The community members who shared their stories provided visions for an alternative mental health system that addresses their basic needs and provides high-quality, community-based, destigmatizing mental health care. Their vision for a new crisis response system prioritizes non-police response teams and non-aggressive, collaborative practices that center the person experiencing a crisis.

Like many respondents, Lola, a Black woman in her twenties, shared her hope for a decriminalized response, “The biggest change to the approach for mental health in the city…is that there needs to be another option than dialing 911, and then this whole crime response happens. Because having a mental health crisis is not a crime, and I think it’s treated that way a lot.”

If the city wants a mental health system that successfully cares for all Chicagoans, it’s time we start listening to and uplifting the voices of community members with firsthand crisis response experience as experts who should be shaping the city’s policies. ¬

Soleil Smith, Ren Ruso, and Timothy Johnson are PhD students in sociology and members of the Community Research Collective at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Public Meetings Report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.

BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS

March 5

Thanks to a unanimous vote at the Chicago Department of Planning and Development Community Development Commission’s first meeting of the year, a North Lawndale street vendor food cooperative is expanding. Commissioners unanimously approved all agenda items, including a request from the Department of Planning and Development to negotiate the sale of city-owned land to Cocina Compartida de Trabajadores Cooperativistas. The food cooperative was founded in 2016 by a group of street vendors who bought a shared commercial kitchen space. Plans call for renovating and building out an existing vacant building to house a fresh food market, community garden, greenhouse, and restaurant. The $4.6 million project relies on grants and private funding; the city will sell the two parcels of land for one dollar each.

March 7

A potential federal grant for a quantum computing track at the City Colleges of Chicago was discussed during the City Colleges of Chicago Finance and Administrative Services Committee and Regular Board Meeting. The goal of the grant is to give students more opportunities to explore the field and connect with potential employers. The program would involve, in part, partnerships with the University of Chicago, IBM, and Argonne and Fermi national labs, and other organizations and enterprises. Governor J.B. Pritzker’s budget includes $500 million for quantum technology work. In October, the greater Chicago area was designated a U.S. Regional and Technology Hub for quantum technologies by the Department of Commerce.

March 8

The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) District Nominating Committee released a list of fifteen candidates to serve as commissioners on the CCPSA itself at its meeting. There were 120 applicants. The CCPSA is one of two pillars created by ordinance in 2021; Police District Councils are the second pillar. The nominating committee is composed of a representative from each district council and employed a three-month process that included a citywide search, a community-informed rubric, and a comprehensive assessment. Now, Mayor Brandon Johnson must select within thirty days of receiving the list seven of the fifteen candidates to serve four-year terms. If the mayor rejects the recommended names, the process begins again.

March 12

At its meeting, the Chicago City Council Committee on Budget and Government Operations approved a program to incentivize whistleblowers to report illegal or “fly” dumping, the discarding of waste material—concrete pieces, tires, large appliances, for

example—on public or private property without a permit from the Department of Public Health. People who share tips that result in a conviction are eligible for a $100 reward. A pilot program began in 2013 and fines for fly dumping were increased in 2017 by about ten times to $30,000, depending on the specific offense. Committee members also approved the mayoral appointment of Julie Hernandez-Tomlin as commissioner of the Department of Fleet and Facility Management, which oversees a wide array of city assets ranging from vehicles to graphic design. Hernandez-Tomlin said she plans to prioritize energy efficiency and ADA accessibility in facilities.

March 13

Commissioners from the Department of Housing (DOH) presented a progress report on the City’s 2019-2023 five-year housing plan at a meeting of the Chicago City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate. Since 1994, the city has developed six five-year plans to provide more affordable housing opportunities, particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods, by creating more affordable rental units, supporting paths to homeownership and subsidizing home repairs. During that time the city spent nearly $2 billion on housing efforts (152 percent of its goal) but only produced or impacted 23,000 units (88 percent of its goal). Managing Deputy Commissioner Jim Horan said that the COVID-19 pandemic and surge in development have resulted in higher prices. The seventh five-year plan (2024-2028) is in the works and will be released this summer.

March 14

At their meeting members of the City Council Committee on Public Safety voted to approve Jose Tirado as executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC). Tirado, a veteran CPD official who most recently headed the department’s counterterrorism and criminal networks bureau, has been the interim head of OEMC for nearly a year. OEMC coordinates responses to 911 and 311 calls and other large-scale emergencies, including the city’s ongoing response to newly arrived migrants. Council Member Andre Vasquez (40th Ward) asked what percentage of current 911 operators speak Spanish and for a breakdown of how many calls are related to homelessness, new migrant arrivals, or language access. Tirado said he didn’t have those numbers on hand. Vasquez also questioned the OEMC’s handling of a measles outbreak at a city-run shelter and the implementation of the sixty-day eviction policy for migrants. Tirado said OEMC is exploring mandatory vaccinations and separate quarantine shelters for those who have tested positive.

Sandra Blakemore’s appointment as commissioner of the Department of Human Resources was approved at a meeting of the Chicago City Council Committee on Workforce Development. Blakemore, who has served as interim commissioner since January, has led the Department of Assets, Information, and Services (AIS). AIS was a merger of the departments of Innovation and Technology, and Fleet and Facilities Management, that Lightfoot created as a cost-cutting measure. Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed to reverse that decision, as part of the budget he released last year. Blakemore spoke about leading AIS, where she oversaw a $500 million budget and more than 1,000 employees. She also discussed delivering the key contract for 100 percent renewable energy in municipal buildings and electrifying twenty-five percent of the light-duty fleet.

March 16

Accusations of attempts by two council members to exclude another from discussions of council business disrupted a meeting of the 2nd Police District Council—Bronzeville/ Washington Park/Hyde Park. Julia Kline said fellow council members Ephraim Lee and Alexander Perez, met secretly and kept her out of the information loop. Perez, however, said that Kline hadn’t checked her email, failing to retrieve necessary information. Kline and Perez had previously clashed at a January meeting over goal-setting, where Perez distributed a letter calling for Kline to be held accountable for her alleged comments and behavior.

This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.

ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD/SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Our thoughts in exchange for yours.

The Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.

my moms dating advice, as told by jollof by chima “naira” ikoro after second

generation ars poetica by monica sok

i don’t know the difference between scotch bonnet and habanero pepper. all i know is that the first time i made my own pot of jollof rice, i decided it was time to reclaim all the meals i’ve eaten that weren’t spicy enough. my mom, watching me approach the pantry with concern, said no matter how hot she made the food i would add more before even tasting it. didn’t even give the soup a chance to touch my tongue—everything and everyone was so mild. when i went to the grocery store my freshman year of college, i decided that this time my food would meet my plate ready for me took an entire pepper, plucked the stem and added it to the smallest pot of rice.

(For reference, one scotch bonnet was enough to spice a meal for six, according to my mothers expertise.)

the pupil has not become the teacher, she has become the example. my food was so hot, i couldn’t hear. turns out i wasn’t listening anyway. but i ate the whole pot in protest. suffocated my stubbornness in defiance. i scooped and i chewed, and i chewed. i came up for air, and kept eating.

i don’t know the difference between scotch bonnet and habanero pepper, but my mother does. i ask her how she knows as we talk on the phone while i grocery shop. she tells me i’m worried about the wrong things.

FEATURED BELOW IS A READER RESPONSE TO A PREVIOUS PROMPT. THE LAST POEM AND PROMPT CAN BE FOUND ONLINE.

Losing it

by ahnika franklin

Watch my hands shake, The flame flickers the same way in The sanctity of the pyramid of your hands. The wind knows something I don’t.

Watch me, Embarrassed, scrambling after I’ve just spilled something, scattering Across the floor, Messy and embarrassingly uncontained.

Watch my unraveling,

This vessel of water, blood, and so many Feelings is no more.

And now there's a mess on the floor, So impolite, messy, and embarrassingly uncontained.

Would you still love me if I lost it?

Left the mess of me until I’m ready

To be whole again, if I suddenly became A shit ton of marbles spilling all over the floor, Bouncing off the walls, sneaking under your feet. Would you cherish every one?

Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder.

THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WRITE ABOUT A NECESSARY LESSON ONLY EXPERIENCE COULD TEACH YOU.” This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com

Celebrate the Living Legacy of Ida B. Wells

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Hall, 915 E. 60th St. Thursday, March 28, 6pm–9pm. Free. logancenter.uchicago.edu/programs

The Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, in partnership with WTTW, are co-hosting a celebration of civil rights leader, activist and journalist Ida B. Wells’ legacy and commitment to free expression for all. Speakers and performers will include people from the Torture Justice Center, the Invisible

Institute, The TRiiBe and WBEZ, as well as professors. (Zoe Pharo)

“Wrapped in Steel” screening

Roma’s Restaurant, 9300 S. Commercial Ave. Friday, March 29, 5pm. Free.

South Chicago Cinematic History will present a screening of “Wrapped in Steel,” a PBS documentary of the neighborhoods of South East Chicago. Doors open at 4pm, movie runs from 5pm to 7pm. (Zoe Pharo)

Sister Circle of Solutions: Mbongi, Notes on Navigating Womanhood in Chicago

The DuSable Black History Museum

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and Education Center, 740 E. 56th Pl. Saturday, March 30, 2pm–5pm. Free. bit. ly/NavigatingWomanhoodPanel

The Dusable Museum is hosting a panel discussion on navigating womanhood in the city. Featured speakers include Giziribtah Debasah with The Earth Center, Dr. Kim Dulaney, with The Dusable museum, Aliyah Jervier with Global United Diaspora, Angela Brown with “The Blueprint of Success,” professor Dr. ShawDawn and Afrika Porter with Afrika Enterprises. (Zoe Pharo)

Puerto Rican Archives: Preserving Community Memory Symposium

National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, 3015 W. Division St. Friday, April 5–Saturday, April 6, 11am–4:15pm. Free. bit.ly/PRSymposium

The National Puerto Rican Museum, located in Humboldt Park, is hosting a two-day symposium focused on the political relevance of Puerto Rican archives, both on the island and in the diaspora. A collaboration between “Digitizing the Barrio,” an archival project

On Saturday, October 15, 2022, around 4:15 P.M. this couple was driving westbound on Archer Avenue There was a driver going eastbound at a reckless speed, well above the speed limit, in a Jeep Cherokee that T-boned this couple’s Nissan Murano at the intersection of Poplar Street & Archer Avenue The wife was in the passenger seat and died instantly at impact. The husband died in the ambulance en route to the hospital. It took the fire department over 45 minutes to pull the wife’s body out of their vehicle. They were married 65 years. Their family and friends are seeking justice through the court system with the help of a witness or video

of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), it extends from the current MCA exhibit, “entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico,” which documents social movements and community organizations. The symposium foreground histories of Puerto Rican protest, including speakers from presentday Chicago organizations, through panels, a keynote and workshops. (Zoe Pharo)

Community Conversation: Modeling Reparations in the Midwest

Virtual. Saturday, April 13, 1pm–3pm. Free. bit.ly/ReparationsInTheMidwest BlackRoots Alliance and Equity and Transformation (EAT) are hosting a virtual event to discuss various reparations models in major cities. Hear from representatives from reparation councils around the Midwest, connect with others in the movement and compare strategies and discuss Chicago’s reparations plan. (Zoe Pharo)

If you witnessed the crash on that day please call this number:

708-522-7332

If you know of anyone who witnessed the crash, please encourage them to call the number above