05.09.24

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY IN CHICAGO

The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 11, Issue 8

Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor Adam Przybyl

Investigations Editor Jim Daley

Senior Editors Martha Bayne Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Alma Campos

Politics Editor J. Patrick Patterson

Music Editor Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales

Immigration Editor Wendy Wei

Community Builder Chima Ikoro

Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton

Visuals Editor Kayla Bickham

Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino

Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino

Staff Reporter Michael Liptrot

Director of Fact Checking: Savannah Hugueley Fact Checkers: Patrick Edwards Arieon Whittsey Christopher Good Mo Dunne

Layout Editor Tony Zralka

Interim

Executive Director Malik Jackson

Office Manager Mary Leonard

Advertising Manager Susan Malone

Webmaster Pat Sier

The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to:

South Side Weekly

6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637

For advertising inquiries, please contact: Susan Malone (773) 358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com

For general inquiries, please call: (773) 643-8533

Cover photo by Marc C.

Monaghan

Marijuana reclassified

Last week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) moved to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance. Schedule III drugs are a less tightly regulated category in which federal rules allow for some medical uses, but the proposal would not legalize marijuana for recreational use. Schedule III drugs are still controlled substances subject to federal criminal prosecution of anyone unauthorized to sell. The reclassification also would not immediately impact anyone already affected by criminalization of marijuana.

Federal reclassification may help ease tax burdens for the marijuana industry, which currently experiences an effective tax rate of over 70 percent. If marijuana is moved to Schedule III, cannabis businesses will be allowed to take the same federal tax deductions as any other business.

Chicago Sky’s Candace Parker retires

“The competitor in me always wants one more, but it’s time. My HEART & body knew, but I needed to give my mind time to accept it,” said three-time WNBA champion Candace Parker in an Instagram post announcing her retirement.

Parker, who grew up just outside of Chicago in Naperville, was a No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 WNBA draft. She played for the Los Angeles Sparks starting in 2008 while also playing overseas during the WNBA off season, and joined the Chicago Sky in 2021. During her time with the Sky, the franchise won its first championship, and the following year Parker spearheaded the team's best record. She ended her career with the Las Vegas Aces, sharing that she walked off the court with her daughter after what was now her last game. “I ended the journey just as I started it, with her,” she wrote.

Parker has had over ten foot injuries in her storied career, and as preparation for this upcoming season approached, these injuries pose significant challenges. Instead of undergoing another surgery, Parker has decided to retire and focus on her other interests and businesses. Fans have taken to social media to wish Parker good luck on her recovery journey and what the future holds while sharing how much she’ll be missed.

CPS change from student based budgeting

In early April, Chicago Public Schools officials shared preliminary plans for a new budgeting formula that will seek to standardize staffing levels at all schools based on need—a significant shift from funding policies of old.

Back in 2014, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) adopted a budgeting formula predicated on student enrollment. This meant that schools with higher enrollment levels would receive more funding, and schools with lower enrollment levels would receive less. Between 2012 and 2022, student enrollment in CPS schools dropped by 80,000 students, leading to widespread budget cuts at schools where enrollment had dropped, and maneuvers such as Rahm Emanuel’s infamous closure of fifty schools in 2013. Multiple reports since then, and criticism from activists groups and the Chicago Teachers Union alike, have critiqued student-based budgeting as one that negatively impacts the South and West sides, creating clusters of underresourced schools in those communities. Individual school budgets are currently being determined under the new formula by the district, school principals, and local school councils.

Chief Keef at Summer Smash

Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash festival in Bridgeview dropped their lineup and it instantly made waves on social media for its unexpected Sunday headliner: Chicago’s own drill king, Chief Keef. It’s been over a decade since the South Sider performed live in the city due to an outstanding warrant related to a child support case. In an attempt to still perform, the now twenty-eight-year-old held a hologram concert that was shut down in July 2015 at Hammond, Indiana’s Craze Fest. Keef’s last Chicago performance was at Congress Theater alongside King Louie and Lil Durk; they opened for Meek Mill in 2012. The concert was also shut down due to an altercation. Chief Keef was only sixteen-yearsold at the time and has since relocated to California.

The drill artist dropped a new album alongside Mike WiLL Made-It titled Dirty Nachos with eighteen tracks on March 15 this year. The project features artists like Sexyy Red and 2 Chainz. A Chief Keef performance is a real treat for Chicagoans who can buy single-day passes starting at $150 and three-day tickets for $385. The festival is taking place June 14-16. .

On the cover: A group of Gaza Encampment protestors occupy the main quadrangle of the University of Chicago campus in defiance of a message from university President Paul Alivisatos that the encampment for Palestine “cannot continue,” Friday, May 3, 2024.

IN THIS ISSUE

call & response books celebrates black stories

Call & Response Books founder and owner

Courtney Bledsoe brings a new, community-centered bookstore to Hyde Park.

jasmine barnes 4 intimate hip-hop talk series ‘legend conversation’ comes to the south side

Heavyweights and up-and-comers sit for intimate interviews at the newly renovated Ramova. jocelyn martinez-rosales ..................... 6

finalists for public safety commission announced

The nominees have experience in academia, law, and government. by jim daley 8

u. of c. police clear gaza encampment

Organizers vow they won't stop until the university divests from Israel.

kevin hu

9

report: many school districts have reformed or removed police since 2020

The study by the Chicago Justice Project also found no evidence police in schools reduce crime.

micah clark moody

‘everyone is mad at the wrong people’

12

Black organizers call for focus and nuance in the affordable housing blame game. wendy wei, leslie hurtado .................. 13 ‘todos están enojados con las personas equivocadas’

Personas que han pasado por inseguridad de vivienda, incluyendo residentes negros y solicitantes de asilo latinos, enfrentan barreras similares para obtener una vivienda permanente. por wendy wei y leslie hurtado traducido por jacqueline serrato 17 chicagoans and artists advocate for housing through printmaking

Red Line Service connects professional artists with artists who have lived experience of homelessness. michael liptrot .................................... 19

south shore residents discuss generational wealth with financial experts

Topics ranged from demystifying the stigma and fear associated with financial institutions within the Black community, budgeting, and navigating today’s economy and job market.

michael liptrot 20

public meetings report

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

scott pemberton and documenters 22 the exchange

The Weekly’s poetry corner offers our thoughts in exchange for yours.

chima ikoro, victoria mendiola 23

Call & Response Books Celebrates Black Stories

Call & Response Books founder and owner Courtney Bledsoe

brings a new, community-centered

bookstore to Hyde Park.

BY JASMINE BARNES

There are some 150 Black-owned bookstores in the United States. That’s only about six percent of the 2,500 independent bookstores in the country.

While book bans and legislative attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and critical race theory sweep the nation, Hyde Park’s newest bookstore, Call & Response Books, offers a much-needed space where stories by and about people of color are centered and celebrated.

Courtney Bledsoe, a Chicagoan and book enthusiast, plans to bring more of these stories to the South Side.

“I want this to be a space that reflects literature that is impactful for me and would support young people and older people who also are seeking to see themselves in books,” said Bledsoe. “There's also the bigger context for us to have more spaces and to fight for Black literature.”

Bledsoe said “call and response,” an African diasporic tradition in which listeners respond in real time to oral storytelling, was a common practice in her church upbringing. “I think most Black people, when they see ‘call and response,’ know exactly what that means,” said Bledsoe. “I wanted the name of the store to sort of convey an active listening or active participation—a back-and-forth conversational element.”

She plans for the bookstore to elevate diverse and nuanced Black stories, while inviting all readers to be in conversation

with narratives that might broaden their empathy and understanding.

Bledsoe is inspired by her own reading experiences. She distinctly remembers reading the young adult novel Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier as a young person. It was one of the first times she read a book with a protagonist who was a person of color, and she resonated deeply with it.

The book, centering the story of a South Asian teen and her family, allowed Bledsoe to see an experience of a character that didn’t fit into the racial and cultural norms of her high school. Even though the family didn’t share Bledsoe’s exact racial identity, the crosscultural similarities were still validating and resonant for her.

While conceptualizing Call & Response, Bledsoe knew she wanted

the bookstore and its inventory to offer readers the transformative experience of seeing themselves represented in stories and literature. She shared this sentiment on the Call & Response website, writing, “We hope to provide a space for the many people who, for so long, have not seen ourselves represented in literature, empowering all to share their stories with the world.”

These foundational memories and this ongoing passion for books led Bledsoe to an awakening in early 2023, when she began seriously contemplating stepping away from her career as a lawyer to invest her time and resources in opening a bookstore.

“My dream in life was to open a bookstore,” Bledsoe said. While she always imagined realizing this dream later in life, her passion for amplifying stories

for and by people of color compelled her to take the leap sooner. As a selfidentified “risk-averse person,” it was her love of books that fueled her to step into the unknown.

The first year developing and managing the business was a steep learning curve. To receive professional support and network with other local business owners, Bledsoe attended Chamber of Commerce meetings and started engaging with the Illinois Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the Polsky Exchange.

“A lot of the early stage was really just research and getting to talk to other booksellers,” said Bledsoe. While the American Booksellers Association, a trade organization that promotes independent bookstores, was a major resource in the early stages of the business, she was also intentional about connecting with other small bookstores in Chicago, including Exile in Bookville in the Loop and Women and Children First in Andersonville.

“I was [also] talking to bookstore owners who were people of color who have that specific experience of running bookstores that focus on books by people of color,” said Bledsoe. Her relationship with the other Black and woman-owned bookstores nationwide have proved to be particularly insightful. Bledsoe has looked to the other Black woman-owned bookstores in the Chicago, Semicolon Books in West Town and Da Book Joint

Courtney Bledsoe.

Photo by Jasmine Barnes

in Washington Park, for mentorship and guidance.

“Dani from Semicolon [Books] has just been an amazing cheerleader,” said Bledsoe. When reflecting on what she’s learned from other Black woman booksellers, Bledsoe lands on an often overused but accurate word: resilience. “Things can be falling apart and they're just like, ‘You know what? We don't have time for this. We're just going to keep going. It'll be okay. We'll figure it out when we get there.’”

That mentality has helped Bledsoe move through the stress and challenges of fulfilling online book orders, managing and growing a social media presence, participating in local book pop-ups across the city, and finding a brick-and-mortar location.

“Generally there are a lot of obstacles, regardless of whether you are Black in this country, to owning a small business,” said Bledsoe. “It's becoming increasingly true due to things like Amazon and other kinds of e-commerce platforms.”

While choosing to invest in a physical bookstore presents its own precarity and challenges, especially for a minority, firsttime business owner, there are also larger social and political challenges that Call & Response faces simply by existing.

In 2023, the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented the highest level of censorships in its history, with 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship and 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources. Forty-seven percent of censorship attempts were titles about LGBTQ and BIPOC people.

Young people nationwide are most notably impacted. PEN America reported a record-breaking 3,362 instances of books banned during the 2022-23 school year—a thirty-three percent increase from the previous school year.

This “Ed Scare” also impacts public libraries, higher education institutions, and public schools. The national attack on critical race theory in academic institutions and DEI efforts makes promoting the stories of characters with marginalized identities an innately political effort.

signed into law the ban against book bans, which is really great for people who are in Illinois,” said Bledsoe. “[But] you still have a problem where a lot of the stories that are front and center are just not stories that are reflecting the diversity of lived experiences in this country.”

Amidst ongoing book bans in the fall of 2023, Bledsoe launched a GoFundMe to fundraise for a physical storefront. By early 2024, she had raised more than $5,000, exceeding her goal and allowing

Bledsoe plans to intentionally curate the store’s inventory to prioritize the interests of community members. To her, this means offering a book selection that speaks to many facets of the Black experience and mirrors the lives of residents in historically Black neighborhoods. “I think it’s really important for people of color and Black people in particular to see we're not just living through racialized trauma all the time,” said Bledsoe. She also plans to

“There's also the bigger context for us to have more spaces and to fight for Black literature.”—Courtney Bledsoe

Bledsoe to secure a place in Hyde Park.

Hyde Park has a rich literary landscape, with 57th Street Books, Powell’s Books Chicago, and Seminary Co-op Bookstores all within a few blocks of each other, as well as the Blackstone library branch. Bledsoe imagines Call & Response contributing to this already thriving ecosystem.

“We're all striving towards similar goals of celebrating stories and storytelling,” said Bledsoe. “I think Call & Response is just another [space] that is saying there are specific stories we’d like to focus on within the larger world

really an event-oriented bookstore space,” said Bledsoe. “I want [Call & Response] to be a place where everyone has their hands on and feel like it's a place that they can contribute to.”

When describing her vision for the bookstore in the coming year, Bledsoe mentioned children’s programming, including reading days, storytimes, and arts and crafts workshops. She also plans to host events that extend beyond the strict confines of books, including open mic nights and singles mixers. While Bledsoe plans to start small with the Call & Response staff, splitting labor between herself and one other in-store book seller, she believes the collective efforts of the community will allow the space to thrive and expand its impact.

Through community engagement, Bledsoe hopes to expose people to stories and experiences that mirror their own and encourage curiosity and compassion. When asked about some of the books she’s been reading, James Baldwin’s Another Country and Just Above My Head came to mind. “They really speak to a lot of the contours of race and class and gender in the United States and…feel timeless,” said Bledsoe. “The commentary that a lot of these characters [make] feel like they could have been made by someone who is living in 2023 or 2024.”

As history repeats itself, and obstacles to minority businesses and independent bookstores show no signs of abating anytime soon, Call & Response Books calls out with radical hope and awaits the community’s impassioned response.

have an online book request form for community members to share what they want to see on the shelves.

With a successful grand opening on May 4, there’s been more local interest in using the space for events, gatherings, and workshops. A signing event for Arionne Nettles’s new book We Are The Culture will be held on May 13. Even before the opening date was announced, Bledsoe received inquiries about hosting events at the store.

“The biggest thing I wanted to be is

Visit Call & Response Books at 1390 E Hyde Park Blvd, Chicago, IL 60615 for its next event, a book singing for Anionne Nettles' new book We Are The Culture on May 13 at 3pm. ¬

Jasmine Barnes 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.

Rollin Rosa Photo by Jasmine Barnes

Intimate Hip-Hop Talk Series ‘Legend Conversation’ Comes to the South Side

Heavyweights and up-and-comers sit for intimate interviews at the newly renovated Ramova.

BY JOCELYN MARTINEZ-ROSALES

When life gets too overwhelming, sometimes all there is to do is hit snooze. For Alexander Fruchter, a power nap during one of his rock-bottom moments turned into the birth of Legend Conversation—a live interview and dinner series featuring some of the most notable and heavyweight names in the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame.

“I woke up and felt almost like all the negativity somehow washed away,” Fruchter said. He had woken up to the news that Raekwon and GZA from WuTang Clan were hitting up Chicago on their 2021 tour.

Fruchter felt his inner music journalist stirring. After running the hit hip-hop and culture blog rubyhornet (which he founded in 2008) and Chicago-based record label Closed Sessions (founded in 2009), he was itching for a way to reconnect with his journalism and revamp Legend Conversation

“The concept was an intimate night with these artists. I think there's a lot of people that want that connection that a concert doesn't really offer,” Fruchter said.

Legend Conversation kicked off with its first two chats at SoHo House Chicago in 2018. For the new era of the series, Fruchter wanted to come back with a bang. He reached out to Raekwon to special guest in between his Chicago tour dates. The third conversation was held at Barrel House. Dorian’s I’m Wicker Park will also be host to several events.

At their eleventh event, which featured Canadian DJ and record producer A-Trak, the Conversation made waves at the newly opened Ramova Theater in Bridgeport on April 11, marking the series’ South Side debut.

“I started this series way back to be around new people, spark these collaborations, tell the stories and then to

Fruchter said. “Bridgeport wasn't even a place that we hung out when I was a kid.”

Bringing A-Trak was a treat for many South Siders who remember him not only for winning the DMC World DJ Championship at the age of fifteen (making him the youngest person to do so) but also for being Kanye’s tour DJ. A-Trak’s superior turntable and scratching skills have cemented him as a respected figure in hip-hop. He’s gone on to found and run the record label Fool’s Gold.

For Legend Conversation, he ended the night in the booth delivering a high energy and enthralling set. The show was a full-scale production with special guests like Chicago-based rappers femdot. and Jay Wood, and DJs including DJ Ca$h Era and Eva Maria.

The repertoire of collaborators is extensive, one of them being Jugrnaut, which produces a collector’s T-shirt designed with the featured artist in mind. The eleventh Conversation tee, sold exclusively at the event, sported a Chicagostyle hotdog duck, a nod to the DJ duo Duck Sauce, made up of A-Trak and American DJ Armand van Helden.

The interview’s tag team is led by

Legend Conversation, Hyde Park local Dave Jeff—a streetwear trailblazer and influencer. Fruchter begins prepping weeks ahead, diving into blogs and past interviews so he can serve up a cocktail of questions that can satisfy devoted fans and newbies alike.

Among the crowd were names like Ric Wilson, Sir Michael Rocks, Don C, and Chicago’s own blogfather, Andrew Barber, creator of Fake Shore Drive.

“I got a VIP card now. I get like a punch card cause I’ve been to so many,” Barber joked, noting that he’s only missed one of the conversations.

“It’s a good crowd, good networking, I meet younger new people that might be up and coming on the scene, new DJs that I’ve never heard,” Barber said, gesturing towards returning DJ Eva Maria.

That’s one of the unique aspects of Legend Conversation: it’s intentionally multigenerational. This allows not only established figures in the scene to be recognized but also provides a platform for discovering and showcasing new artists.

“These culture makers, these people before us laid down a foundation that we need, that we enjoy today,” said event producer, award-winning Chicago

journalist, and my friend, Jesus J. Montero. Montero joined the team after Fruchter revamped the series following the pandemic in 2021. Since its relaunch, names such as The Alchemist, DJ Premier, Jazzy Jeff and even returning artists like Bun B have become part of the line-up.

“[The] main focus at the end of the day is honoring those before us,” Montero said. “As long as we do that, then we did our job and anything outside of that is just a pure blessing.”

The series has amassed several sponsors and partners, such as RYTHM cannabis company, which handed out free mini-joints for guests to enjoy at the event. Ramova allowed for open consumption in designated areas, potentially setting a catalyst for smoking sections to make a comeback.

“It's a communal experience, puff, puff, pass—it is about sharing. And I just think it's awesome that the government and laws have caught up to people and to be able to have these events,” Fruchter said.

Looking ahead, Fruchter wants to add variety and bring more women into the mix. “We do try to really focus on that inclusivity and showcasing as many different people as we can,” he emphasized, noting the variety in age, gender, and ethnicities at his events.

He hinted at an upcoming video and podcast series derived from Legend Conversation. For Fruchter, whose passion for journalism intertwines with his love of music, this series has been a dream come true.

“I just wanted to interview and talk to my heroes,” he said. ¬

Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales is a Mexican American journalist from Belmont Cragin and the Weekly’s music editor.

From left to right: Alexander Fruchter, A-Trak, and Dave Jeff in the middle of an interview at Legend Conversation.

Photo by Alejandro Hernandez

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Finalists for Public Safety Commission Announced

The nominees have experience in academia, law, and government.

BY JIM DALEY

Mayor Brandon Johnson selected seven finalists for the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCSPA) on April 29. Two of the mayor’s picks, Anthony Driver and Remel Terry, are currently the Commission’s interim president and interim vice president, respectively. The other five finalists have backgrounds in academia, law, and city and state government.

As mandated by the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance that created the CCPSA, three of the permanent commissioners will serve two-year terms, and four will serve fouryear terms.

In addition to Driver and Terry, the mayor’s picks to serve on the permanent CCPSA are:

• Aaron Gottlieb, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and a member of the Consent Decree Use of Force Working Group.

• Abierre Minor, the chief fiscal officer of the Progressive Minds Show and the former chief of staff for state Senator Mattie Hunter.

• Angel Rubi Navarijo, the director of constituent services for 48th Ward alderperson Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth and a member of the CCSPA’s NonCitizen Advisory Council.

• Kelly Presley, the associate general counsel of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago and a former attorney for the Illinois Department of Corrections, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and the Office of the Public Guardian.

• Sandra Wortham, an attorney, president of the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, administrative law judge for the City of Chicago and a hearing officer

for the State of Illinois who previously was a civilian CPD employee.

The seven finalists were informed by a city staffer via email on April 26. The mayor chose them from a list of fifteen candidates selected by a nominating committee made up of Police District Council (PDC) members. The Weekly broke the news the morning of April 30, and the CCPSA put out a press release confirming the names that afternoon.

The seven-member interim CCPSA was appointed by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot in August 2022. During their tenure, the interim commissioners have enacted policies that did away with the CPD’s notorious gang database and strengthened departmental rules banning members of hate groups from serving as officers. The interim CCPSA also played a major role in selecting Superintendent Larry Snelling, whom they shortlisted with two other candidates, marking a sea change in how Chicago’s top cop is chosen. Before Snelling, all superintendents were picked by the mayor with no formal input from civilian oversight bodies.

Along with the Commission, the city’s twenty-two PDCs were established by the ECPS ordinance. Each three-member council appointed one representative to serve on the nominating committee. The committee spent months establishing the application process and vetting candidates, ultimately interviewing dozens. On March 8, the committee sent fifteen names to the Mayor’s Office. Under the ordinance, the mayor had thirty days to select finalists, but missed that deadline, frustrating many PDC members.

Interim CCPSA commissioner Yvette Loizon said that she’s glad Johnson has picked finalists because the city needs “strong community voices” heading into summer, with festivals, the Democratic National Convention and associated protests looming. Gun violence also typically peaks during summer months. But she added that the missed deadline has made the CCPSA’s work more difficult.

“The last few weeks have been traumatic for our city and the delay in appointing the new Commission made oversight very difficult at a time when

it was crucial,” Loizon said. “I’m glad to see that the mayor chose a balanced Commission that will bring a wide variety of viewpoints. This is hard work and there is a lot more of it to do. It will take all seven appointees working collaboratively with each other and all stakeholders to ensure continued progress for our city’s public safety infrastructure.”

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office did not respond to the Weekly’s request for comment.

Asked about the missed deadline at an April 4 press conference, Mayor Johnson said that while expeditiousness is valuable, “being in a rush…could be sloppy, and I’m not sloppy.” Sources familiar with the vetting process told the Weekly that the Mayor’s Office did not interview any of the seven finalists before they were chosen.

The ECPS ordinance requires the City Council’s Police and Fire Committee to first consider the finalists before advancing them to the full Council for approval. Police and Fire chairperson Chris Taliaferro (29th Ward) told the Weekly on Monday that he would schedule a committee meeting as soon as the mayor’s office provides him with the list of finalists’ names.

The press release stated that the nominating committee will release a process report detailing how it vetted and selected candidates. “Our commitment to transparency extends beyond the nomination process,” said Angelica Green (PDC 25), a member of the committee, in the release. “We invite the public to review our report and gain insight into the efforts undertaken to ensure the selection of candidates who will serve our city with distinction.” ¬

Jim Daley is the Weekly’s investigations editor.

CCPSA interim president Anthony Driver and interim vice president Remel Terry have served on the Commission since 2022.

U. of C. Police Clear Gaza Encampment

Organizers have vowed to return to the quad and continue demanding the university divest from Israel.

BY KEVIN HU

This is a developing story. Parts of it may be outdated by the time the paper is distributed.

Before dawn on Tuesday, University of Chicago police (UCPD) raided and cleared a Palestine solidarity encampment that had occupied the campus quadrangle for eight days. Students erected the encampment on Monday, April 29, joining a national wave of similar demonstrations on college campuses and demanding the university divest from companies with ties to Israel.

The U. of C. encampment followed dozens of others at universities across the country and around the world. Student protesters have called for their universities to divest from the war on Gaza, namely financial investments in weapons manufacturers and academic partnerships with Israeli institutions, since October 2023.

Since Hamas launched Operation Al Aqsa Flood on October 7, killing over 1,100 people in Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has sustained a counterattack in the Gaza strip that has killed more than 34,100 Palestinians, displaced nearly 2 million people, and destroyed more than 60 percent of homes. The IDF has also destroyed bakeries and farmland, and restricted the flow of international humanitarian aid, leading to more than a million Palestinians in Gaza experiencing catastrophic food insecurity. Cindy McCain, the director of the United Nations World Food Program, said on May 4 that there is a “full-blown famine” in the north of Gaza that is spreading southward.

In January, the International Court

Like hedge funds, universities invest in stocks by allocating a percentage of their endowment fund in order to generate a profit. The student movement for divestment follows similar tactics to the Boycott Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to sever economic ties to institutions perpetuating the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. When university students participated in a similar movement during South African apartheid, it led to U.S. universities divesting billions of dollars from firms participating in apartheid and helped mobilize a wider movement against apartheid.

of Justice (ICJ) found it “plausible” that Israel’s ongoing assault violates the Geneva Conventions against genocide. Student protesters and United Nations experts have also decried “scholasticide”, the systematic obliteration of education; some 80 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, and nearly 6,000 students and teachers killed.

Despite the ruling by the ICJ, which prescribes steps for Israel to de-escalate its assault, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved an invasion of Rafah, where over 1 million Palestinians are currently displaced due to the siege.

The U.S. has provided a steady flow of military aid to Israel, amounting to

approximately $300 billion since its founding in 1948. In 2019, a new ten-year contract was formalized to send $3.3 billion to Israel per year under the Foreign Military Financing Program, which requires Israel to spend a majority of the conditioned aid on U.S. goods and services. According to a 2023 report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 69 percent of all Israeli weapons imports come from U.S. firms. On April 29, Amnesty International released a research briefing documenting how the use of U.S.-made weapons by Israel in Gaza is in violation of both international and U.S. law, demanding an immediate suspension of the transfer of arms.

After months of student protests, rallies, walkouts, and sit-ins calling on university administrations to be transparent around investments and to cut all ties with Israel, the student movement escalated their protests by building encampments in public university spaces, beginning with Vanderbilt University on March 26, and taking off after students at Columbia University began camping on April 17.

Since then, protests have rippled out to universities with some of the biggest endowments, such as Yale and Harvard. As of May 3, the encampments have expanded to 16 countries spanning nearly every continent.

In Illinois, students have also set up encampments at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois in UrbanaChampaign, DePaul University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

UChicago United for Palestine

Scores of tents remain erected on the main quadrangle of the University of Chicago campus in defiance to a message from University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos that the encampment for Palestine “cannot continue,” Friday, May 3, 2024. Photo by Marc Monaghan

(UCUP) organized the encampment. The coalition includes Students for Justice in Palestine, Chicago Against Displacement, Environmental Justice Task Force, the National Lawyers Guild, Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), Dissenters, Care Not Cops and others.

The coalition has three demands: That the university disclose its investments, budget, and holdings; that it divests from weapons manufacturers by withdrawing funds and from Israeli institutions by ending partnerships; and that it repairs the damage done by funding the reconstruction of Palestine’s education system, beginning with Birzeit University, which is located in the West Bank but was damaged in an Israeli raid last year. U. of C.’s endowment, as of last year, was $10 billion.

The group connected the genocide in Gaza with both the decades-long gentrification of Black residents on the South Side and the burning of fossil fuels, of which students also call for disclosure, divestment, and reparations.

“Both Black South Siders and Palestinians are being displaced and forced to live in tents in a modern apartheid with no community, no shelter, and no safeguards,” said an organizer with UChicago Against Displacement at an April 26 rally before the encampment went up.

“The fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex are fundamentally intertwined,” said an organizer with the Environmental Justice Task Force, who noted that U. of C.’s Board of Trustees chairman, David Rubenstein, is also co-chair of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm invested in two dozen oil and gas companies. “The purpose of the military and militarism is to preserve the extractive economy—an economy and political system in which the U.S. and its western imperialist allies can have complete access to the natural resources and labor of the global south.”

As part of their calls for reparations, the students also called for the abolition of U. of C.’s private police force and the reallocation of those funds to invest in housing and education on the South Side.

“All these things are tied. We can’t acknowledge the impacts the university has in terms of the genocide of Palestine without recognizing the impact that

they have on the community that we’re occupying,” said Youssef Hasweh, an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine. “Whether we like it or not, our [issues] are so intertwined and embedded with other social issues and movements, which have been going on for years.”

According to a 2020 report by the Chicago Maroon, U. of C.’s investment portfolio has ties to fossil fuels, weapons manufacturers, and deforestation. A 2023 Amnesty International report gave the university a failing grade on the alignment of their financial investments with the UN’s Guiding Principles on Human Rights.

The administration has resisted calls for divestment thus far in all these fronts, including during an academic boycott of Israeli universities in 2013 and a business divestment from Israeli companies in 2016. In each of these instances, administrators have deferred to their position of neutrality toward political issues in the Kalven Report, written in 1967 during protests against the Vietnam War.

In response to a request for comment from the Weekly, a U. of C. spokesperson reiterated the Kalven Report, highlighting a quote in the document: “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”

UCUP organizers have responded by stating that investing is in itself a political act.

University administrators have largely followed Columbia’s precedent in how they’ve responded to these demonstrations. Some schools, such as Northwestern University and Indiana University, have altered policies specifically to prohibit the Gaza solidarity tent camps. Scores of students have been suspended and evicted from student housing around the country. It’s unclear as to whether or not expulsions will follow.

Many administrators deployed police to arrest and detain student demonstrators, and in some cases arrest faculty who were defending students. On the morning of April 30, Columbia President Minouche Shafik authorized hundreds of NYPD riot police to raid that university’s encampment. The ensuing sweep of the tents and an occupied building resulted in 108 arrests, which one reporter described as “brutal.”

At UCLA, campus police, LAPD, and the California Highway Patrol swept the camp and shot demonstrators with lesslethal projectiles. One protester said they’d received “11 staples and 4 stitches to their dome” after being hit. According to The Appeal’s tracker of pro-Palestinian campus arrests, about 2,500 protesters have been arrested within the last month.

The encampments have also faced violence from pro-Israel counter-protesters.

At UCLA, the night before the sweep, counter-protesters attacked the Gaza solidarity encampment by breaking down wooden barricades, shooting fireworks at protesters, spraying teargas, and throwing sticks, stones, and metal fences. It took LAPD four hours to respond.

Four days into the U. of C. occupation, counter-protesters approached the encampment carrying American and Israeli flags and chanting “U.S.A.” A representative from UCUP told the Weekly that small groups of “zionists” had been coming every night and “playing loud music, yelling, and tearing down posters.” UCPD in riot gear arrived on site within half an hour and assembled in a line between the two groups. The confrontation soon de-escalated.

The administrative responses raise questions about whether universities are violating students’ First Amendment rights. Palestine Legal, a Chicago-based advocacy group, filed a civil rights complaint against Columbia after the NYPD was deployed on demonstrators. Northwestern students have accused their university of free speech violations. Student journalists from both Columbia and USC reported being threatened with arrests while attempting to cover the police raids. Independent journalists were also detained at UCLA on May 6, allegedly while filming arrests.

Amid the protests, the House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would effectively make criticism of Israel illegal. It is now pending a vote in the Senate.

As of May 4, university administrations had settled on agreements with Gaza solidarity encampments to remove the tents at Northwestern University, Brown University, Rutgers University, and Evergreen State College, none of which promised immediate divestment from Israel.

The day the encampment went up, U. of C. President Paul Alivisatos sent an email to members of the university community stating that administrators would tolerate the encampment temporarily on the grounds of “freedom of expression” as the “core animating value of the university,” but warned of university intervention if the encampment became “too disruptive”

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, his senior advisor Rev. Dr. Janette C. Wilson, other aids, Abkaner Abu Taleb and her son Ayman Abu Taleb chant during a rally of Gaza Encampment protestors as they occupy the University of Chicago main quadrangle, Saturday, May 4, 2024.

Photo by Marc Monaghan

and limited the freedom of expression, learning, or movement of other students.

UCUP released a line-by-line response that called the invocation of freedom of expression “ironic.”

Later that week, Alivisatos sent another email to community members noting that negotiations with students had reached an impasse and concluding intervention was justified. At no point in the emails did Alivisatos directly address the coalition’s demands.

Organizers claimed that the president refused to “seriously engage with any of [their] demands” and refused “to even acknowledge that Gazan universities have been bombed.”

In a statement to the Maroon, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) said that “the administration has not negotiated in good faith with our students, offering them absolutely nothing in hastily arranged meetings.”

On Friday, Mayor Brandon Johnson broadcast that he had phoned Alivisatos to reinforce his “commitment to free speech and safety on college campuses,”and Block Club reported that Supt. Larry Snelling said the CPD had no interest in escalating tension on Chicago campuses unless “violent acts” were present.

Late Monday evening, the Weekly reported on Twitter that a credible source had warned of an impending raid by UCPD. In the early morning hours of May 7, UCUP called supporters to rally in the quad in anticipation of a police raid. By 2am, police presence had increased and faculty reported no longer having access to buildings around the quad, according to the Maroon

Just before 4:25 am, after most supporters had left the camp, UCPD arrived. The Maroon reported that Cook County Sheriffs were also on site and UCPD gave protesters a few minutes before beginning to tear down tents, denying entry to protesters, reporters, and legal observers. By 5am, everyone initially occupying the quad had been cleared, with one person attesting to being shoved to the ground. Leaflets with instructions on leaving the camp were reportedly handed out after protesters had already been removed.

Eman Abdelhadi, professor of comparative human development who

was among the faculty who left around 4am, called the raid “cruel” for waiting for students to fall asleep before storming in. Retweeting a video of the sweep, Abdelhadi stated, “The point of this raid was terror.”

Following the raid, protesters who were pushed out of the quad formed a line and locked arms at an entrance, where UCPD police in riot gear blocked them from reentering. The protesters chanted: “You came for our tents while we were sleeping, because you’re afraid of our power when we’re awake.”

Around 7am, Alivisatos sent an email declaring an end to the camp. An email from Dean Michele Rasmussen followed, explaining that the encampment was a violation of “the University’s commitment to free expression.”

The Mayor’s Office put out a statement later that morning that said the administration had been in conversation with Chicago police and UCPD prior to the raid. “During these conversations, CPD raised operational concerns and expressed an unwillingness to participate in a pre-dawn clearing of the encampment,” the statement read. “UCPD ultimately decided to move forward with the removal independently. Mayor Johnson and the Johnson Administration continue to be committed to free speech and safety on all of Chicago’s college campuses.”

Protesters said that the end of the camp

to-student infrastructure, to care for each other, it shows how easy it would be for the university to do so,” Lukas said. “And how absurd it is that they continually won’t… In creating this space, we show how feasible it is [and] how possible it is. A better world is possible and it’s valuable to take space to try to experiment.

“In theory, that is the point of the university.”

In a May 6 press conference, members of FJP at U. of C. urged administrators to engage in “goodfaith” negotiation with students and not to resort to the use of police. They also called out administrators for what they called a selective deployment of the Kalven Report.

would not deter them from continuing to make their demands.

Lukas, an organizer with the antiwar organization Dissenters, told the Weekly that the meaning behind occupying the quad is to reclaim space from the university. He said organizers were following the example of the Indian Village Movement in the 1970s that set up large encampments to demand the U.S. honor Native treaties.

“When you talk to faculty, when you talk to students… they don’t want their employer to be paying for bombs [or] to be invested in General Dynamics [and] to be invested in fossil fuels. The people who want that are upper level university administrators,” Lukas said. “I think this space is really reminding the university that this university does belong to the students. It does belong to the faculty. It does not belong to the people who manage our endowment.”

In addition to tents for shelter, others were equipped to perform normal day-today public functions such as a medic tent, a tent with bathroom supplies, and a tent that represented a welcome center. A small library was set up along the margins of the camp.

“When we imagine what this space can be, it points out all that it isn’t. When we imagine what it’s like to create student-

Faculty members expressed concerted support for their students and reiterated their commitment to defending them for as long as they speak out against the “ongoing Israeli genocide” of Palestinian people.

“There are multiple teach-ins occurring every day. University community members are going there to learn about the horrifying events unfolding every day in Gaza,” said Faith Hillis, a professor of the history department and member of the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies. “And in fact, as a result of this encampment, I’ve seen more students and faculty conversing in a deep way, and working together than I ever have before. Numerous of my faculty colleagues have commented that they feel they are learning more from our students than we can possibly ever teach them.”

Jessica Darrow, a professor in the university’s School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, said the student encampment was a form of hands-on learning.

“When [the students] choose to stand up for what they believe in, they’re applying the lessons of history, ethics, governance, and social justice that they have learned in our classrooms and from our texts,” she said. “They are not merely learning democracy, they’re doing democracy.” ¬

Kevin Hu is a multidisciplinary writer, tech worker, and a recent Chicago re-transplant. You can find more of their writing at www. kevinhu.dev.

A couple stands on the lawn of the University of Chicago's main quadrangle, dappled with the outlines of tents that were removed earlier in the day, and listen to a group of Gaza protestors chant in front of Levi Hall, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. Photo by Marc Monaghan

Report: Many School Districts Have Reformed or Removed Police Since 2020

The study

by

the Chicago Justice Project also found no evidence police in schools reduce crime.

BY MICAH CLARK MOODY

For Chicago Public Schools students, walking into school with no police this fall is going to be “an absolutely great feeling,” said Anna Durr, a Hyde Park Academy High School alum and restorative justice coordinator with Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP). “The biggest thing for me is the culture shift. Folks feel like safety is the issue, but [it’s] the whole culture: how we treat each other, how we show up.”

Starting fall of 2024, there will no longer be any police working as school resource officers (SROs) in CPS. The new policy, passed by the Board of Education in February, is aligned with a significant number of other school districts. According to a report from the advocacy nonprofit Chicago Justice Project, 10 percent of the nation’s largest school districts have reduced the number of police in schools since 2020, and another 27 percent have removed police completely.

In 2020, Local School Councils (LSCs) in high schools across Chicago voted on whether to keep police on their respective campuses. Fifty-five schools kept one or two police officers, and seventeen schools removed them completely. Until then, LSCs at schools that currently have police will create safety plans and receive up to $80,000 from the district to implement them.

The Chicago Justice Project’s report cites studies that have found a relationship between hiring police in schools and an increase in suspensions and expulsions. Compounding that issue is the fact that schools are more likely to suspend, expel, and arrest Black students, Indigenous students, and students with disabilities.

Black and disabled students are overrepresented in school arrests. In 2015, about 40 percent of CPS students

were Black, but 70 percent of in-school arrests were of a Black student. Studies have consistently found discrimination in school discipline. But in 2020, nearly all of the city’s LSCs at majority-Black schools voted to keep their school resource officers, meaning Black students would be far more likely to interact with police at school than white students.

These disparities also extend to school discipline that does not include police. According to CPS, schools suspended 20 percent of Black boys during the 20182019 school year, compared to 4 percent of white boys and 2 percent white girls.

Proponents of school resource officers argue that removing them will make schools less safe for students. Clifford Scott, who has taught English for ten years and been a dean for sixteen at John F. Kennedy High School on the Southwest Side, said

he’d prefer to have police.

“I thought it was great to have them in the building [to] serve as a deterrent and just to be that presence of authority,” Scott said. “I think Chicago being one of those cities that’s known, unfortunately, for its violent behavior and high homicide rate, having a police presence should be a priority in schools.”

The report says studies have found no evidence that police in schools reduce crime or gun violence. There is, however, a correlation between police in schools and student arrests. Schools with a police officer were four times more likely to call the police on a student. And police presence can have a chilling effect on students confiding in adults, according to critics.

“A lot of my students don’t open up to a lot of people in fear of, ‘If I say the wrong thing, [my teacher’s] going to go back and

tell somebody,’ and it turns into a bigger issue,” Durr said.

Researchers have found that police presence in schools also increases the number of drug- and weapons-related crimes. A 2020 study compared thirty-three public schools that added school resource officers with seventy-two similar schools that did not, and found that heightened police presence increased the number of reported crimes, suspensions, and expulsions. This finding has been persistent across studies: a 2015 systematic review of published research on police in schools found that police presence was consistently associated with increased suspensions and arrests.

Research has suggested that the correlation between police in schools and heightened school crime rates is not because there is more actual illegal conduct, but because conduct that would otherwise be dealt with by administrators without involving the criminal system instead defaults to the police when they are already in the building. This has serious implications for the arrested student and the school to prison pipeline, but does not clarify if students' actual underlying conduct was impacted by the presence of school police.

Report author Anna Bryant said she was initially interested in this research because the harms are consistently documented and the benefits are unproven. “I was under the same assumptions that [some] people have about police in schools being something that’s needed for school security,” Bryant said. “Then I ended up digging into it for a school project, and I realized, wait, all of this literature is showing that police in schools have these harmful impacts, and that they’re not actually making our schools safer.”

Hyde Park Academy students and Southside Organizing for Power (STOP) organizers speak outside CPS headquarters after the vote to remove police from schools on February 22.

Photo provided by STOP

Bryant noted that a “relatively small number” of schools in Chicago currently have police officers. “There’s only fiftyseven School Resource Officers currently in all of CPS,” she said. “So I think [parents can] look at that and say, ‘Okay, there’s all these schools that are able to function and be safe.’”

Bryant’s report found that organizers have advocated for the removal of police from schools in twenty-seven of the nation’s thirty largest school districts. In many, including Chicago, Charlotte, Columbus, and San Diego, the campaigns were led by students. Notably, these movements were not calling for reforms to school police like increased training or improved recruitment. Activists called for the complete removal of police from schools.

“For students, there’s a lot of imagining of what it would be like without SROs, especially the ones who have been pushing it for so long,” Bryant said. “And so, they

Scott said he supports the CPS’s shift to emphasizing restorative justice by moving away from suspension and expulsion. “Statistically, minority students were being suspended throughout the district overall at higher rates than other students,” he said. “And just looking at students we lose in the school system through academic failure or numerous behavioral infractions, they end up in prison, with the school to prison pipeline…the restorative intent I think is good.”

At Hyde Park Academy, students can participate in restorative justice circles and a social justice program run by Dunn. She said they’re constantly working to create a safe place together and imagining what it would take to feel safe at school. When she asks them what makes them want to come to school, she gets a lot of reasons why they don’t.

“But when we added the safety question to get deeper, they talked about

“Folks feel like safety is the issue, but [it’s] the whole culture: how we treat each other, how we show up.”

have a great picture, I’m sure, which is why their voices are so important. Collectively, as a society that’s been so reliant on policing for so long, it’s kind of hard for us to think, ‘Wait, okay, are they really needed in this situation? What could potentially be better for our safety and for our schools?’”

After twenty-six years teaching at his school, Scott had a different view of what’s required for safety, and particularly safety from violent crime. “People are speaking out against the police and saying they aren’t necessary, but they absolutely are,” he said. “And sometimes people pretend like they don’t need the police until they need the police. So I’d rather have them and not need them than need them and not have them, that’s my view.”

He added that during passing periods, he stands in the hallway to maintain an authoritative presence and deter disruptive behavior. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. [The students] know who I am,” he said.

‘Everyone

Is Mad at the Wrong People’

Black organizers call for focus and nuance in the affordable housing blame game.

BY WENDY WEI, LESLIE HURTADO

While anti-migrant sentiments have been expressed by many Chicagoans of different backgrounds, much media focus has been on the Black community’s historical tension with Latinx communities. However, lifelong Black housing advocates say that the energy spent on anti-migrant protests could be more productively used if it was channeled towards addressing the root causes of housing instability in the city.

forums, and a protest that ended with the physical assault of an alderwoman. The focus of ire is the city’s allocation of over $310 million—a mix of county, state, and federal funds—to support approximately 40,000 asylum-seekers, of which 8,695 are staying at city-run shelters.

their friends, teachers they feel hear them; they talked too about [how] their parents want them to show up,” Dunn said. “Then we ask them what would make them want to show up, and a lot of them talk about if we have a barber school, we had cosmetology, we had nursing, we had a music program that actually included a studio. And just amenities, having more people they actually feel like care about them.”

The report found that some cities completely removed police from schools, only to bring them back later. Three of the eight districts that completely removed police from schools brought back some officers. “I just think that the debate is not going to end once the officers leave the building,” Bryant said. ¬

Micah Clark Moody works at Civil Rights Corps where she investigates pretrial jailing systems across the country, particularly in Los Angeles. She is also a researcher who has worked as a court watcher in Cook County Bond Court.

Since the first bus sent by Texas governor Greg Abbott arrived in August 2022, residents have vented their frustrations, including shouting matches at town halls, arguments in online

Yet the vast majority of new arrivals from Texas are now living independently. As more new arrivals leave the shelter system, they are beginning to confront the severe deficits in Chicago’s affordable housing market and myriad eviction practices—challenges that predate their arrival by decades and have plagued the Black community as well.

The Weekly spoke with people experiencing housing insecurity, including Black residents and Latinx asylum seekers who face similar barriers to permanent housing in Chicago and systemic policies that favor the interests of landlords over tenants across the board.

Federal solutions to a federal problem

BOX 1: Why do we use the term “asylum-seeker” instead of migrant?

There is no formal legal definition of “migrant.” According to the International Organization for Migration, “migrant” is a loose umbrella term that describes a person who moves away from their place of usual residence for a variety of reasons. To be specific about the circumstances of the migrants housed using government funds in Chicago, it is more accurate to refer to them as “asylum seekers.”

Unlike refugees (such as those from Ukraine) who apply for entry from abroad, people seeking asylum under U.S. law must apply on U.S. soil, usually by asking to be screened by U.S. officials at a border port of entry. Texas has twenty-nine ports of entry, the most of any state. According to City records, 40,000 people have been bussed or flown from Texas. Most of them are, by all measures, seeking asylum.

On May 10, the Biden administration issued what has been dubbed an “asylum ban” on the vast majority of people seeking asylum at the southwest border. The ban bars asylum from anyone who passes one or more other countries en route to the U.S. border and did not apply for and be denied asylum in one of those prior countries. International law states that people fleeing persecution have a right to seek asylum at US borders, no matter how many countries they have passed through prior.

With legislation constantly in flux, people may prefer to use “migrant” because it doesn’t carry the same baggage as “immigrant” and it acknowledges the “limbo” status of asylum seekers.

The majority of arrivals are from Latin America, and were bussed or flown in from Texas under Operation Lone Star, which started in March 2021. Abbott maintains that his motivation for sending migrants to sanctuary cities is to protest the toll of President Joe Biden’s federal policies on the US-Mexico border.

As of January 2024, Texas has spent $148 million bussing and flying over 100,000 asylum-seekers to predominantly Democratic cities.

Don Washington, the executive director of the Chicago Housing Initiative Coalition, said that the number of asylum seekers is a federally determined issue and so should be solved by the federal government, not by city governments like Chicago.

Washington pointed to the direct federal government assistance available to certain groups of migrants, such as Ukrainian refugees.

Since 2022, Chicago has absorbed more than 30,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Washington says Ukranians are just one of many nationalities who have been integrated without causing a citywide financial crisis or social upheaval.

“We’re still moving Afghans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Somalis,” he said. “We’re still absorbing them and no one’s

migrant and single mother living in Chicago with her three-year-old daughter. After walking to Mexico from Chile, Samedi and her daughter ended up at the Texas border. In Texas, a Catholic organization offered to pay for their flights to Chicago, where a distant relative said they could stay with his family. Samedi and her daughter arrived in Chicago on August 22, 2022, but was never able to reach her relative. They spent two weeks sleeping at O’Hare International Airport’s receiving center until her daughter became sick and they were moved to the Piotrowski Park shelter in Little Village.

saying boo about it. They’re Black and Brown folks.”

He added that it is the different levels of federal support to different nationalities that is the root cause of the disparities and tensions.

The federal system privileges asylumseekers of certain nationalities over others. Uniting for Ukraine, for example, is a federal program that allows an unlimited number of Ukranians to enter the US as long as they are sponsored by Americans. The federal government also created a humanitarian sponsorship program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in early 2023, though the government caps the number of approvals at 30,000 a month for these countries.

Ukrainians with American sponsors are given the right to work as soon as they set foot on U.S. soil, without having to go through the lengthy process of applying for a permit, and the first wave of Ukranians were eligible for refugee resettlement benefits such as food stamps. Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, who also arrive under a sponsor, have to apply for a work permit.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, 236,000 cases have been approved under Uniting for Ukraine, and 350,000 Ukranians have arrived in addition to that program.

Even within the refugee resettlement benefits program for some groups, there are differences.

Rose Michelle Samedi is a Haitian

“It’s like I forgot everything I’d learned,” said Samedi, who arrived not speaking much English or Spanish. “I [couldn’t] even use my cell phone to find a map or directions. My Spanish was minimal compared to now. And at this shelter I was the only Haitian, my daughter too.”

As a Haitian individual who was granted entry to the U.S., Samedi qualifies for additional assistance such as Medicaid, food stamps, and cash assistance through the Office of Refugee Resettlement. These benefits are only extended to Cubans and Haitians.

Samedi found work as a school janitor, and supports her daughter with a work permit that Florez helped her obtain.

Juan Flores, who is Samedi’s case manager and lead of the Southern Border Arrivals Program at the Instituto del Progreso Latino, said via text message that he witnesses how different levels of government support can breed resentment amongst immigrants towards his organization and toward asylum seekers of certain nationalities.

“Some other participants have expressed frustration upon seeing Rose receive almost all the benefits because she was from Haiti, assuming she received priority treatment,” he said. “But the reason was that people from Haiti get more benefits for the situation in their country. Rose stands out as one of our more successful cases, and her success can partly be attributed to her origin and definitely her desire to overcome barriers.”

Of the almost 40,000 asylum-seekers that have arrived since June 2022, cityrun shelters are currently housing 8,695 (less than 9,000 or about 22 percent). The

Photo by Jason Schumer

bulk of government spending has gone towards staffing and running the shelters, to the tune of $310.3 million, with $210.7 million going towards Favorite Healthcare Staffing, Inc, a private company.

Washington said that the money and resources allocated to operating shelters were not taken from money originally intended for the Black community. Rather, that there was never enough money earmarked for Black Chicagoans in the first place.

“The problem is that…we don’t think that poor Black and brown folks here who are citizens, we don’t think that those people are worthy of any additional resources,” Washington said. He noted that the funded shelters for asylum-seekers are not providing them with long-term solutions, or even adequate short-term humane housing options.

“What’s happening is that we’re finding little pots of different money to warehouse—not house—warehouse these brown folks,” he said.

Federal funding to Chicago for sheltering asylum-seekers has so far come through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and some allocations from the American Rescue Plan, the federal fund to help communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, for fiscal year 2024, Congress cut funding for the Shelter and Services program under FEMA by 20 percent to

decades.

Dominique faced exploitation from a landlord who encouraged her to complete a housing application, even though the landlord knew that Dominique didn’t have the required documents. She paid a $75 fee only to have her application denied.

“I told [the landlord] I didn’t have it from the beginning,” she said. “[The landlord] just wanted that money for the application. That’s not nice.”

Rental application fees in Chicago can greatly impact migrants in the housing process. Nonrefundable fees, which can range from $25 to more than $350, may be required even when the application is denied. A Sun-Times report found that some landlords accept more applications than there are vacancies.

landlords cannot refuse to rent to families with children or impose restrictions on the number of children in a unit. But they often discriminate anyway, and rarely face consequences for doing so.

Because there is no rent control in Chicago, landlords can also increase rent as long as they provide advanced notice.

“We’ve witnessed numerous families struggling to afford rent or bills postprogram, and some landlords exploit the situation by raising rents, knowing the program will cover it, such as charging $1,800 for a one-bedroom apartment,” Florez said.

$650 million. Biden signed that budget into law in March.

Finding and keeping affordable housing in Chicago; A homegrown problem

In a small room in Englewood, Dominique, an immigrant from the Bahamas, shares a cramped space with her two children and a roommate. It’s the only space available to her as she awaits approval for an apartment through Family Focus, an

Application and move-in fees can discourage migrants from pursuing stable housing due to financial constraints and uncertainty. Such practices add extra hurdles for migrants (and all potential renters) who are seeking housing in an already challenging environment.

Wendy Benitez, a Venezuelan migrant, came to Chicago with her three children in May 2023 to be with her husband, who had already been in a shelter for nine months. Benitez and her children, aged fifteen, thirteen, and two, traveled from

“Before the first migrant showed up, we had a housing crisis in Chicago that we were not meeting.” – Don Washington

Illinois organization that provides migrant families with rental assistance using state funding.

Dominique moved to Chicago in 2021 to seek better opportunities. She arrived in June, just as the city was beginning to emerge from pandemic restrictions. She left the Caribbean during a difficult time, as the pandemic impacted jobs and wages. She was able to find someone to rent a room to her through a community Facebook group.

As more migrants have to find their own housing, they often face hurdles like no-cause evictions, discrimination based on race or income status and other housing barriers that have existed in Chicago for

Venezuela to Brownsville, Texas. They were bussed to Chicago, and after a short stay in a Pilsen shelter, moved into an apartment with rental assistance covering the first six months.

In December 2023, the family started paying rent themselves. Benitez faced challenges searching for housing because some landlords did not want to rent to her family due to her small children, with one landlord explicitly stating he preferred renting to adults only.

The Fair Housing Act has protections against lease clauses that discriminate based on familial status, including families with children under eighteen. This means

Additionally, migrants face unique challenges that increase their vulnerability to abusive practices by landlords. Landlords often take advantage of migrants’ fear of involving authorities due to the risk of deportation or retaliation. Migrants with uncertain or unauthorized immigration statuses are hesitant to report abusive landlords, fearing repercussions.

Language barriers can be a significant obstacle for migrants during their housing search. When migrants only speak lesserknown languages (like Samedi, whose first language is Haitian Creole), it’s harder to understand rental agreements, communicate with landlords, and navigate legal processes and resources, leaving them at a higher risk of discrimination and abuse by landlords.

Michelle Gilbert, the legal and policy director at the Law Center for Better Housing (LCBH), draws upon anecdotal evidence from her decades-long career as a housing lawyer and said she believes that some landlords may take more egregiously illegal actions in evicting undocumented tenants than they would against U.S. citizens. Gilbert’s work at LCBH includes providing free legal aid to low-income renters.

“I hear about these cases, especially where people have little kids, and then the landlord turns the heat off in the middle of the winter,” she said. “I’m not talking about, the heater’s broken and they can’t fix it right away. I’m talking about turning the heat off, they turn the water off, so that they are making the place uninhabitable.”

Benitez reported that a migrant from her shelter said a landlord had hit him, possibly due to unpaid rent, and tried to evict him.

“There’s a way that lawyers use the word [‘evicted’] and then there's a way that we kind of use the word commonly,” she said.

Gilbert said that in the context of the law, the term “eviction” describes the legal process that must be followed in removing a non-paying resident from a rental unit, from the first eviction notice, to eviction court paperwork to the actual court date, and potentially an eviction order that can be enforced by the Sheriff’s Office.

When the term “eviction” is applied to shelters putting out migrants and landlords locking out tenants, it doesn’t carry the same legal implications, but reflects unique housing challenges that undocumented immigrants face. It is common for evictions affecting undocumented immigrants to be informal affairs that do not go through the legal process, according to researchers at the Eviction Lab. Because these informal or illegal evictions are not reflected in court records, it is difficult to track how widespread they are.

What is widely documented, however, is that low-income Black renters, especially Black women, face a disproportionate share of evictions.

According to analysis by American Civil Liberties Union of nation-wide eviction data from 2012-2016, landlords filed evictions against Black renters at nearly twice the rate of white renters. due to discriminatory practices where landlords give more leniency to white tenants but are less flexible with Black families.

“We know the rationale that people think,” Gilbert said. “A landlord is more likely to give a white family a longer chance, a payment agreement, and not extend the same sort of deal to Black women.”

Data from Chicago’s Early Resolution Program shows that the percentage of Black defendants in their program before eviction court (70.6 percent) greatly outweigh the percentage of Black Chicagoans (28.5 percent).

Shay Jones, is currently staying at Sarah’s Circle, a women’s shelter in Uptown after being evicted from Edwin Berry Manor Apartments, an affordable senior rental property in Woodlawn. Jones, a Black American woman, said she believes her eviction was a retaliatory action after she began photographing and raising concerns over poor property conditions.

“They put me out February 21 in

the rain and so I had no place to go,” she said. “I just walked around the front of the building and put my arms in the air and just started praying.”

Despite having the legal right to contest the eviction and seek help, Jones struggled to find support. “It’s really exhausting,” she said. “I went to so many agencies and everybody sends you everywhere else but nobody really helped.”

‘We have two crises - a migrant crisis and a housing crisis’

According to DePaul’s Institute for Housing Studies, in 2021, before the first bus arrived from Texas, the city was already short 120,000 affordable housing units to accommodate Chicago’s low-income renter households.

That same year, the Chicago Department of Family and Support

more than half of the total population experiencing homelessness.

“There has been an egregious disrespect from the city [and] the state for not …meeting the needs of low income Black folks,” said Consuela Hendricks, cofounder of People Matter, an interracial advocacy organization that frequently partners with Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) and Lugenia Burns Hope Center.

Hendricks says that frustrations have been brewing since the 2008 Great Recession, and were worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Black Chicagoans faced severe disparities. Despite constituting about 30 percent of the city's population, they accounted for 60 percent of its COVID-19 fatalities and a quarter of Illinois’ confirmed cases.

“It's so important to redirect our hatred or anger towards people who actually are causing us pain versus towards people who have nothing to do with our suffering.”

– Consuela Hendricks

Services counted 3,000 people in shelters, and 702 sheltering on the street (though this number could be as high as 1,500). 73 percent of this population was Black.

Street homelessness is only part of the picture. In 2021, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless estimated that 68,440 people were experiencing homelessness in Chicago, with most temporarily staying with others, or “doubling up.” In their report, Black Chicagoans made up

Washington and other Black organizers like Hendricks want communities to focus on the systemic root causes of both crises: housing shortages, widespread evictions, and housing discrimination, for example.

“Both Black and brown people who are in these situations right now are all suffering,” Hendricks said. “It’s so important to redirect our hatred or anger towards people who actually are causing us pain versus towards people who have nothing to do with our suffering.”

She added that despite media portrayals of anti-migrant sentiments among Black Chicagoans, there are Blackled organizations like the Chicago Housing Initiative Coalition doing the long-term work behind the scenes of listening and acknowledging different community needs - material and emotional. ”Divisiveness affirms things in people, but I think that solidarity can bring more hope out of people,” Hendricks said, “because there is hope out there.”

Building a broader coalition also has practical benefits. Both Hendricks and Washington said there are differences in power between different groups, and including those with certain privileges in a coalition can make it stronger.

Movements “also have to include people who claim relationships…and those that reap benefits and do the impact,” Washington said.

“Because poor people were under a lot of stress and pressure, when they see somebody getting a resource, and they know they've been denied some space, they blame those folks and they blame the people who are providing them with those resources. And it becomes a racial tension,” Washington said. “So that's a misunderstanding of the real situation. We have two crises. A migrant crisis and a housing [crisis].”

Jones also finds strength in numbers. Since her eviction, Jones has been active in fighting to end no-fault evictions. She was recently in Springfield rallying for House Bill 5432, which would ban crimefree housing ordinances in Illinois. These ordinances require landlords to evict tenants for even minor contact with law enforcement, including those experiencing domestic violence. She was alone in speaking up against the code violations in her former building, but today Jones finds power in working as part of a chorus calling for change.

“I have no problem alone, but being with other people, oh yeah it was great,” Jones said. “Squeaky wheel gets the grease, and if you get squeakers, you can get some stuff done.” ¬

Wendy Wei is the Weekly’s immigration editor and Leslie Hurtado is a freelance reporter at the Weekly.

Photos provided by the South Side Home Movie Project

‘Todos están enojados con las personas equivocadas’

Personas que han pasado por inseguridad de vivienda, incluyendo residentes negros y solicitantes de asilo latinos, enfrentan barreras similares para obtener una vivienda permanente.

POR

WENDY WEI Y LESLIE HURTADO TRADUCIDO POR JACQUELINE SERRATO

Apesar de que muchos habitantes de Chicago de diferentes orígenes han expresado ideas antiinmigrantes, gran parte de la atención de los medios de comunicación se ha enfocado en la tensión histórica de la comunidad negra con las comunidades latinas.

Sin embargo, los defensores de la vivienda negros dicen que la energía invertida en las protestas contra los migrantes podría usarse de manera más productiva si se canalizara hacia abordar las causas fundamentales de la inestabilidad de la vivienda en la ciudad.

Desde que llegó el primer autobús enviado por el gobernador de Texas, Greg Abbott, en agosto de 2022, los residentes han expresado sus frustraciones, incluyendo gritos en reuniones comunitarias, discusiones en foros en línea y una protesta que terminó con la agresión física a una concejal.

La ira es por la asignación por parte de la Municipalidad de más de $310 millones (una combinación de fondos del condado, estatales y federales) para apoyar a aproximadamente 40,000 solicitantes de asilo, de los cuales 8,695 se alojan actualmente en refugios municipales.

La gran mayoría de los recién llegados de Texas ahora viven de forma independiente. A medida que más recién llegados abandonan el sistema de refugios, comienzan a enfrentar las barreras en el mercado de viviendas asequibles de Chicago e innumerables prácticas de desalojo, desafíos que han existido por décadas anteriores a su llegada y que también han afectado a la comunidad negra.

El Weekly habló con personas que han pasado por inseguridad de vivienda,

incluyendo residentes negros y solicitantes de asilo latinos que enfrentan barreras similares para obtener una vivienda permanente en Chicago y políticas sistémicas que favorecen los intereses de los propietarios sobre los inquilinos en todos los ámbitos.

Soluciones federales para un problema federal

La mayoría de los que llegan provienen de Latinoamérica y fueron transportados en autobús o en avión desde Texas en el marco de la Operación Estrella Solitaria, que comenzó en marzo de 2021. Abbott sostiene que su motivación para enviar migrantes a ciudades santuario es para protestar por el costo de las políticas federales del Presidente Joe Biden en la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México.

¿por qué usar la palabra “migrante”?

No existe una definición legal formal de “migrante”. Según la Organización Internacional para la Migración, “migrante” es un término general que describe a una persona que se aleja de su lugar de residencia por diversas razones. Para ser específico sobre las circunstancias de los migrantes alojados con fondos gubernamentales en Chicago, es más exacto referirse a ellos como “solicitantes de asilo”.

A diferencia de los refugiados (como los de Ucrania) que solicitan la entrada desde el extranjero, las personas que buscan asilo bajo la ley estadounidense deben solicitar asilo en suelo estadounidense, generalmente solicitando ser examinados por funcionarios estadounidenses en un puerto de entrada fronterizo. Texas tiene veintinueve puertos de entrada, la mayor cantidad de cualquier estado. Según los registros municipales, 40,000 personas han sido trasladadas en autobús o en avión desde Texas. La mayoría de ellos están solictando asilo.

El 10 de mayo, la administración Biden emitió lo que se ha denominado una “prohibición de asilo” para la gran mayoría de las personas que buscan asilo en la frontera suroeste. Esta prohíbe el asilo a cualquier persona que pase por uno o más países en ruta hacia la frontera con Estados Unidos y no haya solicitado ni se le haya negado asilo en uno de los países anteriores. El derecho internacional establece que las personas que huyen de la persecución tienen derecho a buscar asilo en las fronteras de Estados Unidos, sin importar cuántos países hayan atravesado antes.

Por la legislación en constante cambio, es posible que la gente prefiera utilizar “migrante” porque no conlleva las mismas connotaciones que “inmigrante” y reconoce el estatus de “limbo” de los solicitantes.

Hasta enero de 2024, Texas ha gastado $148 millones en transporte en autobús y avión a más de 100,000 solicitantes de asilo a ciudades predominantemente demócratas. Don Washington, director ejecutivo de la Coalición de Iniciativa de Vivienda de Chicago, dijo que el número de solicitantes de asilo es una cuestión determinada a nivel federal y, por lo tanto, debería ser resuelta por el gobierno federal, no por los gobiernos municipales como Chicago.

Washington destacó la asistencia directa del gobierno federal disponible para ciertos grupos de migrantes, como los refugiados ucranianos.

Desde 2022, Chicago ha absorbido a más de 30,000 refugiados ucranianos que huyen de la invasión rusa de Ucrania. Washington dice que los ucranianos son sólo una de las muchas nacionalidades que se han integrado sin causar una crisis financiera o agitación social en toda la ciudad.

"Seguimos trasladando a afganos, etíopes, sudaneses y somalíes", dijo. “Todavía los estamos absorbiendo y nadie dice nada al respecto. Son gente negra y morena”.

Añadió que la causa fundamental de las disparidades y tensiones son los diferentes niveles de apoyo federal a las diferentes nacionalidades.

El sistema federal privilegia a los solicitantes de asilo de determinadas nacionalidades sobre otras. Unidos por Ucrania, por ejemplo, es un programa federal que permite que un número ilimitado de ucranianos ingresen a Estados Unidos, siempre y cuando estén patrocinados por estadounidenses. El gobierno federal también creó un programa de patrocinio humanitario para cubanos,

haitianos, nicaragüenses y venezolanos a principios de 2023, aunque el gobierno limita el número de aprobaciones a 30,000 por mes para estos países.

Los ucranianos con patrocinadores estadounidenses tienen derecho a trabajar en cuanto ponen un pie en suelo estadounidense, sin tener que pasar por el largo proceso de solicitar un permiso, y la primera ola de ucranianos tenía derecho a beneficios de reasentamiento de refugiados, como estampillas de alimentos. Los cubanos, haitianos, nicaragüenses y venezolanos, que también llegan bajo un patrocinador, deben solicitar un permiso de trabajo.

Según el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional, se han aprobado 236,000 casos en el marco de Unidos por Ucrania y, además de ese programa, han llegado 350,000 ucranianos.

Incluso dentro del programa de beneficios de reasentamiento de refugiados para algunos grupos, existen diferencias.

Rose Michelle Samedi es una migrante haitiana y madre soltera que vive en Chicago con su hija de tres años. Después de caminar a México desde Chile, terminaron en la frontera de Texas. Allí, una organización católica se ofreció a pagarles los vuelos a Chicago, donde un pariente lejano dijo que podían quedarse con su familia.

Samedi y su hija llegaron a Chicago el 22 de agosto de 2022, pero nunca pudieron comunicarse con su familiar. Pasaron dos semanas durmiendo en el centro de recepción del Aeropuerto Internacional O'Hare hasta que su hija se enfermó y las trasladaron al refugio del Parque Piotrowski en La Villita.

“Es como si hubiera olvidado todo lo que había aprendido”, dijo Samedi, quien llegó sin hablar mucho inglés ni español. “Ni siquiera podía usar mi teléfono celular para encontrar un mapa o direcciones. Mi español era mínimo comparado con ahora. Y en este refugio yo era la única haitiana, mi hija también”.

Como individua haitiana a quien se le concedió la entrada a los EE.UU., Samedi califica para recibir asistencia adicional como Medicaid, estampillas de alimentos y asistencia en efectivo a través de la Oficina

de Reasentamiento de Refugiados. Estos beneficios sólo se extienden a cubanos y haitianos.

Samedi encontró trabajo como conserje de una escuela y mantiene a su hija con un permiso de trabajo que Florez le ayudó a obtener.

Juan Flores, quien es el administrador de casos de Samedi y líder del Programa de Llegados de la Frontera Sur en el Instituto del Progreso Latino, dijo a través de un mensaje de texto que es testigo de cómo los diferentes niveles de apoyo gubernamental pueden generar resentimiento entre los inmigrantes hacia su organización y hacia los solicitantes de asilo de ciertas nacionalidades.

“Algunos participantes han expresado frustración al ver que Rose recibió casi todos los beneficios porque era de Haití, asumiendo que recibió tratamiento prioritario”, dijo. “Pero la razón fue que la gente de Haití obtiene más beneficios por la situación de su país. Rose se destaca como uno de nuestros casos más exitosos, y su éxito puede atribuirse en parte a su origen y definitivamente a su deseo de superar barreras”.

De los casi 40,000 solicitantes de asilo que han llegado desde junio de 2022, los refugios administrados por la Municipalidad albergan actualmente a 8,695 (menos de 9,000 o alrededor del 22 por ciento). La mayor parte del gasto gubernamental se ha destinado a la dotación de personal y el mantenimiento de los refugios, por una suma de $310.3 millones, de los cuales $210.7 millones se

Vivienda de DePaul, en 2021, antes de que llegara el primer autobús desde Texas, a la ciudad ya le faltaban 120,000 unidades de vivienda asequibles para acomodar a los hogares de inquilinos de bajos ingresos de Chicago.

Ese mismo año, el Departamento de Servicios Familiares y de Apoyo de Chicago contó 3,000 personas en refugios y 702 en la calle (aunque esta cifra podría llegar a 1,500). El 73 por ciento de esta población era negra.

destinaron a Favorite Healthcare Staffing, Inc, una empresa privada.

Washington dijo que el dinero y los recursos asignados al funcionamiento de los refugios no se tomaron de dinero que fue originalmente destinado a la comunidad negra. Más bien, nunca hubo suficiente dinero destinado a los residentes negros de Chicago.

“El problema es que… no creemos que los negros y latinos pobres aquí que son ciudadanos, no creemos que esas personas sean dignas de recibir recursos adicionales”, dijo Washington. Señaló que los refugios financiados para solicitantes de asilo no les brindan soluciones a largo plazo, ni siquiera opciones adecuadas de vivienda humana a corto plazo.

“Lo que está sucediendo es que estamos encontrando pequeños botes de dinero diferente para almacenar, no albergar, si no almacenar a estas personas de color”, dijo.

Hasta ahora, la financiación federal destinada a Chicago para albergar a solicitantes de asilo ha llegado a través de la Agencia Federal para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA, por sus siglas en inglés) y algunas asignaciones del Plan de Rescate Estadounidense, el fondo federal para ayudar a las comunidades a recuperarse de la pandemia de COVID-19.

Sin embargo, para el año fiscal 2024, el Congreso recortó los fondos para el programa de Refugio y Servicios de FEMA por un 20 por ciento a $650 millones. Biden promulgó ese presupuesto en marzo.

Según el Instituto de Estudios de

La falta de vivienda en las calles es sólo una parte del panorama. En 2021, la Coalición de Chicago para las Personas sin Hogar estimó que 68,440 personas se encontraban desamparados en Chicago, y la mayoría se quedaba temporalmente con otras personas. En su reporte, los habitantes negros de Chicago constituían más de la mitad de la población total sin hogar.

“Ha habido una falta de respeto atroz por parte de la Municipalidad [y] el estado por no... satisfacer las necesidades de los negros de bajos ingresos”, dijo Consuela Hendricks, cofundadora de People Matter, una organización de defensa interracial que frecuentemente se asocia con Kenwood Oakland Community. Organización (KOCO) y Lugenia Burns Hope Center. Hendricks dice que las frustraciones se han estado gestando desde la Gran Recesión de 2008 y empeoraron con la pandemia de COVID-19, durante la cual los habitantes negros de Chicago enfrentaron severas disparidades. A pesar de constituir alrededor del 30 por ciento de la población de la ciudad, representaron el 60 por ciento de las muertes por COVID-19 y una cuarta parte de los casos confirmados de Illinois.

“Debido a que los pobres estaban bajo mucho estrés y presión, cuando ven que alguien obtiene un recurso y saben que se les ha negado, culpan a esas personas y culpan a las personas que les proporcionan esos recursos. Y se convierte en una tensión racial”, dijo Washington. “Así que eso es un malentendido de la situación real. Tenemos dos crisis. Una crisis migratoria y una [crisis] de vivienda”. ¬

Wendy Wei es la editora de inmigración del Weekly y Leslie Hurtado es reportera freelance en el Weekly

Chicagoans and Artists Advocate for Housing Through Printmaking

Red Line Service connects professional artists with artists who have lived experience of homelessness.

BY MICHAEL LIPTROT, SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Efren Paderes has been homeless since the start of the pandemic. Originally from the Philippines, Paderes’s family moved to the United States in the 1980’s to pursue the American dream. His family experienced hardships when his mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the early 2000s. Without insurance, his brother, father and himself banded together to pay for her treatments.

She passed away in 2005 and the Paderes family, now behind on mortgage payments, lost their home in 2008. The family moved to a smaller home until Paderes’s father died in 2015.

Afterwards, Efren moved to a single room occupancy (SRO) building while he worked at a restaurant. In 2020, the restaurant was shuttered amidst the wave of closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, he has been staying near train stations and in bus shelters across the city.

Today, Paderes is working on getting back on his feet. He works seasonally as a skate guard at Millennium Park and has friends who support him in providing help in the form of housing and food.

One of these friends told him to consider visiting Red Line Service, self-described by the organization as “a community of Chicago artists with lived experiences of homelessness collaborating with professional artists” at Mana Contemporary Chicago in Pilsen.

“It helps us reintegrate back into society by ways of introducing us to art, which is a therapeutic way of calming us down and expressing our thoughts, our emotions,” Paderes told the Weekly. “It does help with slowly giving us back our place in society, not to be looked upon as worthless and homeless.”

Red Line Service is currently teaming

up with the University of Miami School of Law for a printmaking project that explores housing insecurity. The graphics will be available online for housing advocates nationally to use in housing rights campaigns at bit.ly/RedlineUofMprints.

To learn more about Red Line Service, join a group or attend an art event, visit redlineservice.org.

threats to health, structural hazards and disease vectors.”

The lecture began by exploring what these terms mean in a housing context and why aid for the housing crisis differs between the pandemic and now. “Who determines when [homelessness is] an emergency?” Red Line Service executive director Rhoda Rosen asked the group.

“One of those nights, I was dreaming of living in a normal house.”

Printmaking sessions at Red Line Service begin with a lecture and discussion on housing issues led by a U. Miami law student. At a recent meeting, second-year student Abby Schneekloth and seven artists talked about the availability of public services and habitability, which the group defined as “adequate space and protects them from cold, damp, heat, rain, wind,

“When it impacts people who are middle class and people who are wealthy. When it’s only impacting people who live below the poverty line, then it’s a different sort of situation.”

The discussion also looked at real crises going on across the country that violate the habitability and accessibility of services, but are not prioritized as urgent as

other emergencies by the different levels of government.

Several communities across the country do not have proper access to water and sanitation. In one example, the group discussed the environmental injustice of Alabama’s Black Belt region, where 40 percent to 90 percent of homes have inadequate or no septic systems, leading to raw sewage accumulating in backyards and increasing the spread of diseases.

In Chicago, a Johns Hopkin study revealed that 68 percent of children in the city under six years old live in households with tap water containing detectable levels of lead. The study authors called the results “disheartening.” Compounding the issue is the fact that Black and Latinx children are less likely to be tested for lead exposure than white children.

The discussion then touched on access to sanitation via public toilets. Illinois only has five public toilets per 100,000 residents, compared to states like Washington, Montana and Minnesota, which all have twenty-four public toilets per 100,000 residents.

“We think of the bathroom as a private thing and that it’s all about privacy,” a group member said. “It’s a public thing. It’s about public health, public access. It’s time to shift our thinking around what a bathroom is.”

Chicago may soon see improvements regarding the issue of public restrooms. Block Club reported in January that public bathrooms operator JCDecaux would be installing and managing four public bathrooms in Chicago as part of a pilot program. City officials stated the four restrooms would be in central and highly traveled neighborhood corridor areas, though the timeline is unclear. Sponsor Ald. Daniel La Spata said the city is “moving with urgency” for the installation

Photo courtesy of Jordan Esparza

to occur before the Democratic National Convention.

As the group debriefed about what they learned from the lecture, people began drawing and whittling on wooden blocks that would be the molds for the print.

Marcela Adeze Okeke is a professional artist, whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Science and Industry, Woman Made Gallery, and Fourtunehouse. She is also an undergraduate student at Northwestern University, majoring in film and English, and has previously taught introductory art at Marwen, a Chicago art nonprofit.

Ozeke had her phone next to her block, with the screen displaying a picture of a young man with his fingers in his ears, looking sad. The young man is her twentyone-year-old brother Maxwell, who is autistic.

“My carving is [about] accessibility and the fact that housing needs to be accessible in order for it to be adequate. I’m carving a portrait of my younger brother plugging his ears because we grew up in the line of flight travel,” said Okeke, who was raised in Albany Park. “He’s highly sensitive to sound. He plugs his ears when he’s outside because numerous planes fly over our neighborhoods constantly.”

South Shore Residents Discuss Generational Wealth With Financial Experts

For Okeke and many of the artists who work with Red Line Service, being able to connect with the community is meaningful, especially to connect with those as marginalized as the unhoused.

“I always look forward to going. People are from all walks of life that are a part of it,” Okeke said. “We share so many similarities because, luckily enough, we are all really open and kind to each other. We tend to laugh a lot and enjoy each other’s company. Community is a huge part of art making and art discussions, in how to develop anyone’s practice.”

Paderes’s art was displayed on a wall of Mana Contemporary Chicago. A black page displayed a man laying on a bench. In a thought bubble, there is a house. The title, “The Myth of the American Dream,” is displayed at the top of the page. For Paderes, the piece speaks to his struggles with affordable housing.

“The idea came to me when I was living in an SRO. It got so hot and I didn’t have a fan. I ended up sleeping outside on a bench two blocks away from the SRO near a courtyard because I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

“One of those nights, I was dreaming of living in a normal house.” ¬

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

Topics ranged from demystifying the stigma and fear associated with financial institutions within the Black community, budgeting, and navigating today’s economy and job market.

BY MICHAEL LIPTROT

Aconference on building generational wealth brought together dozens to educate community members on financial skills, career development, entrepreneurship, and homeownership.

“The next generation is the wealth of our community,” Mindset2Money founder and conference organizer Veronica Barnes told the Weekly. Mindset2Money, a financial empowerment and community wealth-building organization, hosted its 2nd annual conference on Saturday, May 4 at the South Shore Cultural Center.

The Generation Wealth Conference was presented in partnership with several local and national partners, including Urban Alliance and the Chicago Freedom School.

“Wealth is overall well-being, and financial stability is a tool that helps people achieve that. For me, generational wealth is helping people learn the financial skills, knowledge and career tips to have financial stability,” Barnes added.

During the pandemic, she saw how Black and Brown families were being impacted by inequities compounded by

the lack of financial literacy. A Heartland Alliance report revealed Chicago’s Black and Latinx families had increased unemployment rates, with a rate of fourteen percent for Black families and twelve percent for Latinx families, triple the previous year’s rate. Sixty percent of Latinx households in 2021 said they are still feeling the effects of the pandemic and fifty percent of Black families said the same, while forty percent of white families agreed.

Her desire to make a change led to her starting Mindset2Money in 2021 as a passion project to lead workshops with nonprofit organizations and small businesses. Eventually, her services grew to where she was able to host the first Generation Wealth Conference in 2023 “to have a broader reach in terms of programming and increasing accessibility.”

Around this time last year, Barnes, a Google HR specialist, moved from Madison to Chicago to work at Google’s West Loop Campus. Seeing the dynamics of the city made Barnes want to elevate her impact. “I thought it was very fitting to be able to have an economic empowerment

Art by Efren Paredes. Photo by Rhoda Rosen.

conference in a venue that at one point was a segregated country club,” Barnes said of the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr. “I wanted the conference to be accessible. I wanted it to be in our community.”

The conference began with an opening from Barnes followed by a welcome from 5th Ward Alderman Desmon Yancy.

“When you talk about generational wealth, it’s important because Black households make up about thirteen percent of all households, but only hold about 4.7 percent of the wealth,” Yancy said.

Then former City of Chicago inaugural Diversity Officer and current Obama Foundation vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Marquis Miller, made some remarks as well as keynote speaker therapist Dominique Pritchett. The conference turned to breakout education and networking sessions.

Topics in the hour-long session ranged from demystifying the stigma and fear associated with financial institutions within the Black community, budgeting, and navigating today’s economy and job market.

“Before you start thinking about investing outside of your 401K, you’re gonna have to have your savings up,” said Jared Evans of JPMorgan Chase & Co., who led the financial literacy session. “You have to know what you can afford. And in order to truly know that, you have got to put it on paper. You have got to have that budget, that savings plan.”

Evans then focused on building and rehabilitating credit towards getting loans and best financing practices.

The homeownership session was led by RE/MAX Premier Hyde Park manager Krystal Corley, focusing on getting approved for a home, the dynamics of properties on the South Side compared to the city overall, and the realities of today’s housing market. Corley also taught the importance of credit, proper financing, and pre-approval in the home buying-process.

Corley, who serves clients across the South Side, focused on South Shore and Woodlawn. South Shore, which is close to ninety-three percent Black, has a housing occupancy of seventy-five percent renters compared to about twenty-five percent property owners.

Corley emphasized that most of the benefits of homeownership come from the

long-term commitment of investing in a property, with many mostly taking out a home loan and then paying on the interest of the property initially before contributing to equity. “At the beginning of your loan, you’re mainly paying interest,” Corley said. As time goes on, you’re starting to pay down your principal.”

As one pays down the principal of their loan, they begin to gain equity in owning the property.

“Ownership benefits in equity,” Corley said. “As you grow and pay more payments, you get more equity. With that equity, you can decide to take a loan out against the equity, you can sell your home, get that money then upsize into a bigger home… There’s just so many different avenues you can use real estate for financing once you have equity built up.”

they gave to me,” said Amure, an aspiring pharmaceutical researcher. “Titles don’t equate to wealth, it’s more what you do.”

“Generational Wealth is something that you can build off on,” added Uthman, who moved from Nigeria to Chicago in 2018. “I think the American Dream is that and more. It’s a thing that you have to work for.”

Uthman said her family moved from Nigeria to seek a place with better opportunities and economy. Seeing their hard work to provide her with a better life inspires her to build further success for the future of her family. “If you want a dream, you want to live in your dream, you should work towards it,” she said.

Both young women said attending the conference was impactful in teaching them skills to build wealth. Amure is already

“A lot of people owned real estate in Woodlawn that did not live there and then they rented it out to Black people. And that’s similar to how it is in South Shore.”

Access to this equity in South Side communities, Corley said, is limited when so many residents rent, and those who own properties in these communities do not live there.

“Woodlawn was a prime example. It’s a majority Black neighborhood, but the number of homeownership in Woodlawn for Black people was significantly lower,” Corley said, who owned property in Woodlawn. “A lot of people owned real estate in Woodlawn that did not live there and then they rented it out to Black people. And that’s similar to how it is in South Shore.”

Omotar Uthman and Rachel Amure are both seventeen-yearold juniors at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School and attended the conference through their involvement with Urban Alliance.

“[Generational wealth] is more what I have that I can give to my future generations than what parents had that

aspect and it really helped open my eyes. It’s okay to take [student] loans, that’s what I’m understanding.”

For Uthman, an aspiring anesthesiologist, she said seeing how the speakers and successful professionals overcame challenges was motivating to her.

“Hearing their challenges, because I know I might face those challenges as well, really motivates me in a sense,” Uthman said. “What I learned is to just keep on going. And I jotted down some ways that helped them motivate themselves to be what they are today.”

Uthman said she believed her other peers are missing the bigger picture of building financial wealth. “They want short term. They feel like ‘I’m getting money now, I’m spending money now,’” she said. “They don’t understand that there’s so much more. It’s generational for a reason. It has to be long term…[Short term] doesn’t always last for eternity. I think they just need to learn how to be patient.”

“I feel like young people don’t realize that before you invest in all these other things, you need to invest in yourself,” Amure added. She also emphasized that education is important, though everyone does not have to go to college to be successful.

thinking about how she is going to finance her graduate education and the conference helped her ease her fears of student debt.

“When I came to this conference I was more interested in how [the speakers] were able to get to their position,” Amure said. “Money is a real thing. So how were they able to finance it? I learned more in that

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

Both young women say they plan to build additional streams of income beyond their primary occupation and wish for more young people to learn wealth building skills. ¬

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

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

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

Public Meetings Report

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

BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS

April 15

At its meeting, the Local School Council Advisory Board (LSCAB) considered several questions about the 2025 fiscal year CPS budget; allocation of resources, especially for English as a second language classes; and how better communication from LSCs to the Board of Education can be facilitated. The LSCAB advises the Chicago Board of Education on LSC matters such as elections, duties, and school improvement. It’s made up of eleven parents, two community members, and one teacher. There were no online public commenters but one at the in-person meeting complained about the two-minute commenter limit and asked that it be changed to three minutes. Principals received budget information on April 8 and it was recommended that they share it with their LSCs by April 12. The LSCs were to vote on the budgets by April 30. The Board then continued a discussion that began last October about its guidelines including goals in the preamble specifying that “local conflicts” be clarified as “local school conflicts,” and that issues of violence be addressed.

April 16

The Chicago City Council Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards heard public comments about expanding the widespread Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs) Ordinance at its meeting. Adopted by the City Council in late 2020, the ordinance expanded housing access across the city by allowing ADUs in attics, basements, and accessory buildings. ADUs include coach houses, backyard dwellings, and in-law apartments. The first speaker cited benefits that include multigenerational housing and rental income that would enable low-income homeowners to stay in their residences. A homeowner from the 47th Ward said his mother-in-law lives in a coach house on his property, the income from which has enabled him to raise a child in the city, and he suggested increasing the cap on square footage. A Lincoln Park resident said she wants to build an ADU but can’t because they are banned in her neighborhood.

April 22

At a meeting of the 5th Police District Council—Roseland/Pullman/Riverdale, Chair Robert McKay announced that CPD is not yet fully complying with a consent decree requiring it to reform its operations in several areas. Those areas include “training, policies, and practices in…use of force, community policing, impartial policing, training, accountability, officer wellness, data and information systems, and more,” according to the Office of Community Policing website. The goal is to ensure that CPD keeps “both community members and officers safe and restores the community’s trust” in the department. McKay promised to invite a University of Chicago professor and Anthony Driver, president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), to explain the decree and answer questions at the council’s next meeting. The council also heard about the implementation of the state’s 2021 SAFE-T Act, which stands for Accountability, Fairness, and Equity Today. One goal is to ensure that ability to pay bonds no longer determines freedom for arrested individuals. Other goals are to reduce incarceration and crime and to strengthen communities.

April 24

Attendees accused council members, guest speakers, and each other of being responsible for an increasing crime rate at a meeting of the 9th Police District Council—Chinatown/ Bridgeport/Back of the Yards. Three incidents were cited: the recent killing of police officer Luis Huesca, an attempted kidnapping of two girls, and a shooting in Back of the Yards that left a seven-year-old girl dead and two boys, seven and one, injured. One commenter said that a council member is anti-police, which discourages police from patrolling and increases crime. Guest speakers were also blamed. Maggie Hickey from CPD’s consent decree Independent Monitoring Team and G. McDade, board chair of Cook County Crime Stoppers, made presentations. Hickey explained that her team measures CPD’s compliance to determine whether the police are fair and equitable in their work. Her office surveys residents across the city and applies other data-gathering tools. They also offer CPD support and counseling. She said that the department is struggling with staffing and a lack of community engagement. She was frequently interrupted with accusations of using skewed data and providing “bad” information about Black and Latino men’s police interactions. McDade experienced fewer interruptions. He explained that Crime Stoppers is a nonprofit organization that helps police solve felonies by offering cash rewards for tips. An audience member asked if any tips had led to wrongful convictions. McDade answered, “No.”

At its meeting, the Chicago Department of Public Health Board of Health announced that it has received more infectious-disease reports in 2024 than in the past five years combined. One probable reason, according to the Board, is that parents have delayed vaccinating their children. Sixty-four measles cases among “new arrivals” have been reported. Seven additional cases not associated with new arrivals are evidence that the disease is spreading. Audience questions implying that new arrivals were the source of an increase in measles prompted the board to explain that a lower vaccination rate is the issue, not new arrivals. The board is also trying to increase the number of eligible CPS students enrolled in Medicaid. While 79 percent are eligible, only about 85 percent of those students are enrolled, according to data supplied by the state. Plans to remedy the problem include a helpline, increased marketing, direct outreach to families, and schoolbased events. Other issues covered at the meeting were Black maternal health, drug-use and smoking reduction, and increasing vaccinations for COVID-19 and influenza.

April 25

At its meeting, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) heard comments about police actions, especially in connection with the death of Dexter Reed during a “pretextual” traffic stop on March 21. Reed was shot thirteen times and his death ruled a homicide by the Cook County medical examiner. Such stops are made for minor violations and are sometimes seen as pretexts for police to search for signs of other illegal activity. But they “are not improving traffic or public safety,” reported Impact for Equity, and are “disproportionately impacting Chicago’s Black and Latinx drivers and communities.” CCPSA president Anthony Driver acknowledged public frustration with the confidential nature of investigations into police misconduct but emphasized that process and fairness exist. Some attendees worried that an investigation being conducted by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) would be biased against police; others asked why CPD hasn’t fired the officers yet.

At a meeting of the Chicago Public Schools Board of Education, Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova reported that CPS has received almost 75,000 pre-kindergarten applications, which include an expanded free daylong pre-K for four-year-olds. Offers are scheduled to be sent out beginning May 22. Chkoumbova also acknowledged the work of assistant principals and clerks, saying they play an important role in creating a welcoming atmosphere in the schools. A shortage of bus drivers remains an issue. Possible solutions are to extend pickup locations, adjust class schedules, help drivers obtain commercial driver’s licenses, and waive special requirements. The board has also raised hourly wages to $27 and a signing bonus, offered flexible schedules, and recruited drivers older than fifty at job fairs.

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

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

KonMari, a Survival Tactic

by chima “naira” ikoro

I have two vivid memories of standing in the hallway where the walls part for the bathroom, my sisters old room, my old room, my brothers room, (all the same room) and my parents' room.

In the first memory, we’ve discovered my uncle is soaring past the upper room where there’s a nap waiting for him that no hospital bed could ever promise.

In the second memory, Escitalopram has used the Marie Kondo Method on my brain, and now I have room for the person that lives there to lie down on something more than a pile of clean laundry worn by other people but washed and dried by me.

In both memories, silence.

Not a single thought wriggling up my back.

In the first memory, I am too young to understand grief enough to cry.

In the second, grief has outlived some of my friends and is finally taking a nap for the first time that no backseat of a car or ambulance could ever promise.

In the first, the silence is out of respect for the dead.

In the second, the silence is out of respect for myself, alive finally.

the freedom i feel when i am practicing yoga outdoors by victoria mendiola

the wind whispers my name "v i c t o r i a" the sun tickles my face with warmth the soil welcomes my feet with grass blade kisses all of nature embraces me a love that is omnipresent a freedom that is felt a truth that is known "i am a part of you and you are a part of me"

THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU REMEMBER VIVIDLY FOR SEEMINGLY NO REASON? WHAT DOES RECALLING THIS TELL YOU ABOUT YOURSELF?”

This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-ofconsciousness 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

Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder.