June 29, 2023

AND PERFORMANCE

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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 10, Issue 20

Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor Adam Przybyl

Senior Editors

Martha Bayne

Christopher Good

Olivia Stovicek

Sam Stecklow

Alma Campos

Section Editors Sky Patterson

Wendy Wei

Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales

Community Builder Chima Ikoro

Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton

Contributing Editors

Jocelyn Vega

Francisco Ramírez Pinedo

Visuals Editor Bridget Killian

Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino

Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma

Shane Tolentino

IN CHICAGO

The Warehouse—birthplace of house music—gets landmark status

Last week, City Council voted to grant landmark status to a building widely considered to be the birthplace of house music. Located in the West Loop at 206 W. Jefferson St., in the 70s and 80s the building was home to The Warehouse, a dance club where DJ Frankie Knuckles pioneered the genre that would later spread around the world. Knuckles took samples from disco records, layering sporadic, uplifting vocals on top of steady beats. The Warehouse was initially a memberonly club for mostly Black gay men, but house music became a welcoming space for all manner of marginalized people, from Black and Latinx Chicagoans to LGBTQ+ clubgoers. As the late Knuckles put it, “House music is a church for the children fallen from grace.” The Warehouse closed in 1982 and the building currently houses a law office, but efforts to preserve the building have gained momentum since earlier this year. The landmark status protects the facade from alterations and demolition.

New minimum wage

Director of

Fact Checking: Sky Patterson

Fact Checkers: Christopher Good

Alani Oyola

Jade-Ruyu Yan

Layout Editor Tony Zralka

Special Projects

Coordinator

Malik Jackson

Managing Director Jason Schumer

Office Manager Mary Leonard

Advertising Manager Susan Malone

Webmaster Pat Sier

The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We publish online weekly and in print every other Thursday.

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

A bump to Chicago's minimum wage will go into effect on July 1. The hourly rate for large employers with twenty-one or more workers will be $15.80 an hour, compared to the current rate of $15. Tipped workers (workers who receive tips, like restaurant servers) will now have a minimum rate of $9.00 for smaller employers, and $9.48 for larger employers. Last week, nearly a dozen alderpersons joined restaurant workers and labor advocates in City Hall to call for the elimination of a “sub minimum” wage for tipped workers and “one fair wage” of $15 or more for everyone. Mayor Brandon Johnson later said he was committed to “wages that reflect the cost increase that is creeping up on all of us.”

Museum of Science and Industry unionizes

Workers at the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) overwhelmingly voted to unionize this month. According to the National Labor Relations Board, around seventy-five percent of members voted in favor of joining the IL Cultural Workers United AFSCME chapter. The worker campaign went live in April with a letter including fifty-four signatures. Part of what they are seeking to establish is pay equity to mitigate burnout and high turnover rates and implementing a zero tolerance policy against discrimination. In a tweet the worker organizing committee celebrated the achievement: “We came together out of care for one another as coworkers and out of love for this museum and the communities we serve. We are organizing with hope in our hearts to make MSI a better place to work…”

MSI joins the list of local museums, like the Field Museum, who are seeking to formalize unionization following the footsteps of the Art Institute and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

battle for the blacktops

Faced with a growing shortage of usable courts, hoopers are fighting to preserve streetball in America’s basketball city.

kit ginzky

public meetings report

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

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scott pemberton and documenters 8

memorializing jazz in the alley

A performance by South Chicago Dance Theater commemorates the alley jazz movement.

dierdre robinson

hyde park summer fest 2023 in photos

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The festival celebrated Black culture and music with performances by Pusha T, Lil Kim, Twista, Vic Mensa, and more. mateo zapata......................................... 12

south shore residents, organizers demand affordable housing protections at cba summit

The CBA Coalition hosted a summit on the impact of displacement by the Obama Center in South Shore. reema saleh........................................... 14

‘i call it pretend freedom’

Older adults coming out of Illinois prisons face steep roadblocks in their reentry journey. carlos ballesteros, injustice watch . 15

la larga lucha de pilsen contra el tif en medio de la gentrificación

Con los impuestos sobre la propiedad a niveles sin precedentes, los residentes de Pilsen se oponen a la ampliación del TIF en su vecindario por temor a que desplace a más. por savannah hugueley

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

Cover photo by David Schalliol

Battle for the Blacktops

Faced with a growing shortage of usable courts, hoopers are fighting to preserve streetball in America’s basketball city.

BY KIT GINZKY

On May 7, Jahmal Cole of My Block, My Hood, My City pulled up to the court at the National Teachers Academy (NTA) on the Near South Side hoping to join a pick-up basketball game, but he found the school’s pristine backboards without hoops or nets, and no other players in sight. Hoopers are resilient, but you can't ball without a rim. Fed up with what had become an all-too-familiar scene, Cole posted a photo of the empty court on his organization’s Facebook page. “Come on man,” he wrote in a caption, “I came all the way over here to hoop and the rims are gone.” An avid pick-up player, Cole sees the disappearance of rims as part of a broader trend.

There was never a mayoral decree or an aldermanic commission that declared war on streetball, but over the past several decades, the intensely local networks and public infrastructure undergirding the game have come under assault. From homeowners who wanted to keep Black and working-class youth from congregating in their neighborhoods to the destruction of public housing complexes’ outdoor courts as well as their communities of players and the accumulated neglect of public courts, the game has sustained blows from multiple directions. Yet the throughline—in basketball becoming victim to a dissolving social fabric and associated with disorder following the tough-on-crime era—is antiBlackness and shifting ideas about the right to the city.

Then COVID-19 brought a major shock to an already fragile system, as the Chicago Park District initially removed 647 of the city’s 771 rims from courts during the initial pandemic lockdown. Even as the Park District slowly began reinstallation, the episode brought new attention to the

neighborhoods,” but for those involved in the street game, the worst of the damage had been done years before the pandemic.

“Where have all the hoops gone?” asked a July 2000 investigation in the Chicago Tribune, tracing what was already by then a pronounced trend across the city.

The disappearance of rims has consequences for the game and for the community. Cole believes pick-up games

infrastructure, these social opportunities are foreclosed. In the days following his thwarted attempt to play at the NTA, Cole announced a campaign to “Save Streetball” by installing missing nets at courts across the city. He created an online form for Chicagoans to report local courts in need of repair. In the first week of the project, Cole acquired twenty-five Wilson nets and headed to Altgeld Gardens, where he

scaled a ladder to hang them from empty rims. This act—an inversion of the ritual in which victorious hoopers cut down the net following a championship—was a gesture of tactical urbanism, a cheap, rogue intervention to install a vital resource that formal channels failed to provide.

Repairing Chicago’s neglected streetball infrastructure requires buy-in and support far beyond the initial twentyfive nets. But these initial gestures— hanging nets and photographing courts in need of more serious repair—thrust the status of streetball into the public eye. As Cole’s campaign was covered by virtually every outlet in Chicago, “people started scrambling because they realized how much of an issue it was,” he said. “Even the park district said they started putting more rims back up because we made an issue out of it.”

In addition to replacing hoops still missing from the pandemic or removed due to prior complaints, Cole is working to raise $100,000 to fully renovate twentythree outdoor courts and is in talks with the Chicago Park District and a range of potential partners. Though formal partnerships have not been finalized, VP of community engagement for the Bulls, Adrienne Scherenzel-Curry, shared that the organization is “very excited about this initiative.”

Carly Ebisuya, a spokesperson for the Chicago Sky, echoed the team’s enthusiasm for the project, noting that streetball is both “ingrained in Chicago’s broader sports culture,” and “ingrained in our players’ backgrounds.” Ebisuya said that most of the team’s players—including former Sky star Candace Parker, who grew up in Naperville—honed their skill in pick-up games.

A My Block, My Hood, My City team member installs a new basketball rim.

PHOTO COURTESY MY BLOCK, MY HOOD, MY CITY

Fundamentally, Cole believes that streetball is good for basketball and good for Chicago. “Kids need safe things to do in summer,” he said. “They need free things to do—you might not be able to afford to go to the YMCA, you might not be able to afford AAU, you might not be able to afford to get on the bus to go downtown to do something. Those local parks are necessary, especially to build community.” Streetball’s advocates note that it’s also a potential response to national public health concerns about the detrimental effects of loneliness and isolation, as well as the ongoing promotion of healthy recreational outlets.

Given pronouncements like these, saving streetball seems like something everyone can feel good about. There are always hopes placed on streetball that the game on its own can provide opportunities for personal development or even a haven from violence. And while participants and fans have testified to its power, to really put basketball back in urban space, the city will have to confront larger issues of race, economics, and democracy.

Chicago is a world-class basketball town. We have two professional teams: the Bulls, who have come to represent the city as much as the skyline, and the 2021 WNBA Championshipwinning Chicago Sky, the second-most valuable franchise in the league. We’ve watched generations of Chicagoans— from Isiah Thomas and Antoine Walker to Derrick Rose and Jabari Parker—chase their hoop dreams on the national stage. We launched the political career of Barack Obama, America’s basketball president, whose election day games at the East Bank Club and regular White House scrimmages allowed the world’s most powerful man to accrue vital political cool and authenticity.

But Chicago is also a basketball town in another sense. The urban fabric of the city has sustained a vibrant amateur game for decades—streetball. Basketball has been played in parks, streets, and alleyways for almost as long as the indoor game has existed, but streetball is a distinct basketball culture that emerged in US cities after the Second World War. The blacktop is where basketball became Black. Like the contemporary beboppers who pushed the limits of jazz with their adventurous improvisation, streetballers originated

new, flashy moves—crossovers, dunks, spins—that reshaped what it meant to play the game of basketball. In its various arrangements, which include three-onthree, twenty-one, and thirty-two, streetball pushes the boundaries of teamwork and individual skill, as hoopers hustle to create their own shots.

But as State Representative Kam Buckner pointed out in a Tribune editorial this spring, the ongoing disinvestment of public basketball courts reflects entrenched policy and “a disturbing history of shutting young people out of public spaces, from removing basketball rims and backboards from parks to downtown curfews.” When it comes to the retrenchment of streetball, the Chicago Park District and its facilities have been a focal point of recent criticism: agency records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show twenty courts designated as “inactive.”

Of the nearly eight hundred hoops and

rims in Park District inventory, however, “active” status does not necessarily reflect equipment that is in working order—it just means the equipment is supposed to be there.

According to Cole, members of My Block, My Hood, My City canvassed one hundred parks around the city and identified more than fifty courts in need of serious repair. This indicates that a substantial number of facilities reported by the Park District as “active” actually lack basic functionality. But the Park District’s facilities are only one piece of the puzzle.

So what happened to streetball?

While there was never an official decree calling for its eradication, it’s clear that the public turned on the game as its supporting infrastructure fractured and as public investment in schools and parks dried up. It’s widely recognized that the destruction of Chicago’s high-rise public housing complexes dispersed tight-knit

communities and fractured their traditions, such as long-running playground games and tournaments. Many public basketball courts were demolished alongside the housing that sustained them.

The dismal conditions of the playground courts at Chicago Public Schools, where many hoops have been removed or are only available during school hours, reflect changing ideas about the public sphere, and specifically who has the right to public space in the city.

A spokesperson from Chicago Public Schools confirmed that there is no districtwide policy governing the availability of playground equipment, including basketball courts: decisions are left up to individual school principals. School playgrounds are typically open to the public, though many are closed from 9:30pm to 6am.

“Some District basketball courts have permanent basket stanchions with portable rims that are installed during the school day for student use and are taken down at the close of the school day,” said the CPS spokesperson. This leads to confusion about the status of neighborhood courts. Many Hyde Parkers consider the playground court at Ray Elementary School as one of the neighborhood’s lost blacktops. Indeed, the hoops are not up, but principal Gayle Neely disagrees with the characterization that the court has been demolished.

“Please note our basketball hoops are not missing,” she said, explaining that they are uninstalled for “school liability purposes” when classes are out of session. The use of “liability” in this case gestures at the law as an immovable external force, but in the case of playground basketball policy, it reflects less a specific legal vulnerability on the part of the school and more of a general notion that basketball creates problems.

Streetball has always depended on the conditions of “the streets.” In the underresourced neighborhoods where it became popular, the game benefited from its low barrier to entry. Neighborhood parks sustained regular pick-up scenes, where players could easily join in even if they didn’t personally own a ball. Hoopers have historically developed their skills in their own communities, and in the second half of the twentieth century, it wasn’t hard to find a place to practice.

In fact, state investments in urban infrastructure generated the very conditions for a flourishing streetball scene. School

A tattered basketball net at Margaret Hie Ding Lin Park in Chinatown

PHOTO COURTESY MY BLOCK, MY HOOD, MY CITY

playgrounds, neighborhood parks—which employed playground monitors who could provide coaching and instruction—and public housing complexes, which often had both outdoor courts and a critical density of players looking for something to do. Beyond these formal venues, dedicated streetballers made their mark on the city’s landscape, affixing backboards to utility poles and fashioning DIY alley baskets out of crates and other urban refuse.

These local games were linked together through a larger network of competition. South Sider Torrance Smith learned the game on the Fernwood Park blacktop in the 1980s. “Every now and then, you might get some people from the outside to come play,” he said, but most games were played with the same group of “guys from the neighborhood that would come to the park every day.”

Robert Reed, who began playing in the 1970s at Bronzeville’s Madden Park near the then-enormous MaddenWells-Darrow public housing complex, became a playground coach, helping the neighborhood regulars grow into formidable players. Arne Duncan, who grew up in Hyde Park and played professionally in Australia before serving as chief executive of Chicago Public Schools and secretary of education under President Obama, spent “hundreds of hours” practicing on courts at local schools: Bret Harte, Ray School, Murray, Shoesmith, Shakespeare, and Kenwood High School.

When it comes to streetball, Chicago’s hoopers’ hallowed grounds are a map of Black urbanism: the blacktop of Washington Park, the cages at Jackson Park, Cole Park in Chatham. After pushing the limits of competition with siblings and neighborhood kids, serious players traversed the city in search of new competitors and harder, better ball games. Friendships and rivalries were formed across neighborhood boundaries, often by people who only knew one another by their street names. Even so, Duncan said they were “guys I’d trust my life to, to get me in and out of neighborhoods.” He wanted to go where they could take him, because as he said, “the ball’s on the South and West Sides, so that’s where you go.”

Duncan experienced what Smith calls the “hooper’s pass,” or the idea that

basketball players would always protect and assist one as they navigated gang lines and the cartographies of urban violence “As a ball player, you got a pass,” said Smith.

In this era, Chicago’s streetball culture gained recognition, and community leaders took note of its popularity and potential. The city’s broader civic infrastructure underwrote a series of tournaments, such as the Youth-Vision-Integrity (YVI) summer tournament in Hyde Park. The highly visible tournament, which was founded in 1977 and ran for two decades, was originally held at Murray School and then relocated to the outdoor courts at Kenwood Academy, just a stone’s throw from the 6 and 28 bus stop at 51st and Lake Park Avenue. The tournament was a response to crowding on Hyde Park’s playground courts, which were packed daily

game touched not just the players but intergenerational crowds of spectators and fans. Now elite basketball development takes place privately behind closed doors.

For Chicago’s young basketball fanatics back then, though, the opportunity to watch and interact with top players was more exciting than college or pro sports on television. “Michael Jordan was doing numbers at North Carolina, Patrick Ewing at Georgetown,” said Michael Nance, who attended the tournament while growing up in Hyde Park, but “David Howell was playing at the YVI, and I was going to watch him play because he was tangible to me. I could touch him.”

Over the tournament’s twenty-year run, it hosted legions of talented hoopers including Tim Hardaway, Marcus Liberty, Nick Anderson, Sonny Parker (father of

from Illinois to be ranked number one in a national college basketball recruiting class. His death at the hand of another young Black man showed the limits of the “hooper’s pass” and tracked with what many consider to be a turning point in the structure and rhythms of Chicago’s street gangs and gun violence. Many describe it as a “loss of innocence” and a critical factor in local streetball’s demise. Wilson’s tragic “what-if” story became a cautionary tale for generations of Simeon players; serious ballers moved their games indoors and traded public streetball for privately organized leagues like AAU.

Derrick Rose, who wore number twenty-five in honor of Wilson during his Simeon career and more recently in the NBA, avoided streetball growing up out of fear for his own safety. Jabari Parker, another generational Simeon talent, honed his shot in the gym at Hyde Park’s Mormon temple instead of on the local blacktop.

For more casual players, the playground has changed. “They don’t have that sense of safety, and the community is not there,” said Reed. Jobs for playground supervisors and coaches like Reed have dwindled under the same austerity regime that neglected the courts.

in the summer by players of different levels. After establishing interest from the players, tournament organizers worked with the 4th and 5th ward aldermen, parents, and local businesses to secure space and funding for things like T-shirts and tournament prizes.

It was a strong contrast to how the top levels of youth basketball operate today, where athletes develop skills through specialized, resource-intensive, pre-professional training programs. “These kids are paying a lot of money,” said Reed. “To play in one of these leagues, [there are] uniform costs, travel expenses, all kinds of things that poor kids from the neighborhood can’t afford.”

Getting good at basketball was something that used to be done in public, and was robustly supported by public infrastructure: playground courts and playground coaches, and community tournaments where the power of the

Jabari), Tony McCoy, and Benji Wilson, the top-rated player in the country from Simeon Career Academy. To widespread shock and dismay, however, Wilson was shot and killed in 1984 on the eve of his senior season. While the shooting was unrelated to streetball, his death rocked the local basketball community. The YVI tournament was dedicated to Wilson’s memory in subsequent years, and a sportsmanship award was named in his honor.

Wilson was in many ways a streetball icon. By the time he was in seventh grade, he would travel more than forty blocks by bus to play at Madden Park on Coach Reed’s playground team. At the time, “nobody knew Benji,” said Reed, who often invited Wilson over for dinner and felt a familial bond with the young player. Within a few years, Wilson grew in height as well as in stature. He was the first player

Duncan has seen the change too: “Where you could have forty guys out there playing, fifty guys, the courts are basically empty,” he said. “No one feels safe because of gun violence.” After leaving Washington in 2016, Duncan returned to his hometown to cofound Chicago CRED, an integrative anti-violence organization working to reduce gun violence on the South and West Sides.

Somewhere along the way, basketball became a code word for Black urban crime, and the infrastructure that sustained it came under threat. In Chicago, there was a particularly cruel irony to the timing. As the Bulls were becoming one of the most dominant professional basketball teams in the history of the game, public courts around the city were increasingly targeted by community members as a source of social problems.

At the same time, the game was hailed as a promising anti-violence strategy, as evidenced by the Chicago Housing Authority’s short-lived “Midnight Basketball” league, which received support

The blacktop is where basketball became Black. Like the contemporary beboppers who pushed the limits of jazz with their adventurous improvisation, streetballers originated new, flashy moves—crossovers, dunks, spins—that reshaped what it meant to play the game of basketball.

from George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light” initiative until it fell victim to mounting bipartisan anti-Blackness. A beloved anti-violence tournament at the Stateway Gardens housing complex abruptly ended in 2001 following a massive police raid, in which players and spectators of all ages were blocked inside the fieldhouse and invasively frisked. (Residents eventually won a settlement for the violation of their civil rights.)

Basketball occupied a contradictory position in the civic imagination: the Bulls’ game was a source of pride and an elite status symbol, the supervised housing project games were a vexed but potentially effective vehicle for economic advancement and violence disruption, and the informal street game—played most vigorously by Black men—became a euphemism for trouble.

“There’s no research showing a connection between basketball courts and an increase in gun violence,” said Roseanna Ander, who leads violence prevention research initiatives within the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs network. Empirical studies back up the game’s anti-gang and pro-social potential, but basketball became a political pawn. Even Duncan, part of those networks as much as anyone, has a deep sense of classic streetball as a safe space, but from a sadly lost age. “I definitely don’t think the city is safer today because those courts are down,” he said. “If someone wants to prove me wrong, I’m happy to listen, but intuitively it just makes no sense whatsoever.”

“I can say that there were things that happened, but I never, ever, ever saw a gun out on those courts,” he added.

From Ander’s perspective, the issue raises questions about urban governance. “What is the motivation if there isn’t good evidence to support taking away a resource from a community that’s already struggling with a lack of access to positive opportunities?” she asks. As Ben Joravsky detailed in a series of articles for the Chicago Reader in 1990 about the conflict surrounding the Shoesmith Park court in Kenwood, homeowners portrayed local streetball players as “foul-mouthed and rude,” and contended that the courts attracted “boom-box-playing thugs and dope dealers who litter the park with glass,

trash, and other debris.”

That sentiment tracked with attitudes of many homeowners across the city, who registered their complaints about basketball courts in racially coded innuendo about noise, loitering, litter, and the potential for violence. When access is controlled by individual school administrators, it’s easy to imagine how courts fall in response to the complaints of “not-in-my-backyard” neighbors. The Shoesmith court came down. The Kenwood court, where YVI was played, became a parking lot. A 2000 investigation in the Tribune traced the disappearance of five basketball courts in the 19th Ward, including one that had been recently renovated on the Bulls’ dime, a thin guise for deterring Black youth from playing in the majority-white neighborhood.

As Chicago’s landscape continues to transform, public courts continue to be pushed to the periphery. In fact, there’s nowhere to play basketball downtown, save for the East Bank Club (a private facility

with a $235 monthly fee for adults over age twenty-five), which says something about how our city has treated the sport from which we derive so much pride.

The construction of Millennium Park notably began in 1998—the year the Bulls won their second three-peat—yet the crown-jewel park lacks a single basketball court. The Obama Presidential Center, which is currently under construction in Jackson Park despite concerns from residents over displacement, received a $5 million commitment from Nike to fund the construction of athletic facilities. “It wouldn’t be the Obama Presidential Center without a place to shoot some hoops,” the OPC website declares, but a spokesperson for the development declined to provide additional information about the courts and the terms of their future availability.

Every now and then, a new court opens up. In 2021, an innovative outdoor court and community space opened on the West Side following a partnership between

the Austin Special Service Area, Invest South/West, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. While high-profile court developments here and there will not undo the damage caused by decades of neglect, the inclusion of basketball signals a shift in policy that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration could expand on.

Recently, I noticed that two sets of hoops and rims were back up at Kozminski Elementary School after a several-year absence. I’m hardly a baller, but the playground is around the corner from my place, so I’ve started visiting to practice my shot. Walking around the neighborhood in possession of a basketball has opened a whole new register of social interaction. One of my first days out, a man asked me to pass him the ball, and when I feebly bounced it to him, he said, “That was garbage!” He was right.

Another time, a group of school-age kids cheered from the other side of the fence when I finally made a jump shot after many misses. During a game of two on two with some friends on Juneteenth, a passing motorist shouted, “White dudes can’t play basketball.” My favorite came as I walked home one evening: a mom leaned over to her young daughter, pointed to the ball in my hand, and said, “See, I told you girls play basketball.”

There’s been a trickle of activity at the court. Most of the time, it’s just one person or small groups of two or three players. One afternoon, my friends and I shared the court with Dhane, a student at Kenwood Academy, who was also happy to be back on our local blacktop. “I think it’s good for the kids because they’ve got another thing to do,” he said. “I used to come here a lot when the rims were up, but I don’t come here no more. This is my first time back.”

“There’s a common belief that if you take those rims down, that it will improve the safety of the community, and it’s not fair,” said Cole. “Parks belong to everybody.” This is true, and even more: the city itself belongs to everybody. ¬

Kit Ginzky is a Hyde Parker and a PhD candidate in history and social work at the University of Chicago.

CHA basketball court near Cabrini-Green

PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID SCHALLIOL

Public Meetings Report

ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD/SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

and state level.

BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS

June 8

The Cook County Commission on Social Innovation focused its meeting on policies to prevent gun violence and related deaths. In a presentation, Selwyn O. Rogers, Jr., MD, a surgeon, public health expert, and founding director of the University of Chicago Medicine Trauma Center, discussed the young victims who have died at hospitals ill-prepared to treat trauma. He explained that more than one-third of all violent crimes in Chicago occur within five miles of the Hyde Park center, with the center’s service area covering twelve ZIP codes and twenty-eight South Side communities. Rogers emphasized the urgency of investment in violence prevention and mental health services, as well as the expansion of trauma care into neighborhoods in need. Rogers contended that “wraparound services” are critical, and offered to assist the Commission in exploring their development. The Commission also considered challenges concerning battery-charging stations, food deserts, and disparities in neighborhood banking services.

In a meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and Permit Review Committee, three properties advanced on their journeys to Chicago landmark status, including the Greater Tabernacle Cathedral, the South Side church where Barack Obama worked as a community organizer before attending Harvard Law School. The church was part of the “Pullman Lands,” some of which were used to build the Town of Pullman (now a national historic landmark). Trolley service between the church and the Obama Presidential Center was also discussed. The second property was Old Town’s Eugenie Lane Apartments, of interest in part because of the 1962 design’s emphasis on fitting into an area considered historic. The third property under consideration was the Warehouse, a West Loop club known as the birthplace of House music, which was later approved.

June 13

A plan for a mixed-income development at the former site of the Cabrini-Green Homes on the Near North Side can move forward, thanks to a vote by the Chicago Community Development Commission at its meeting. The Commission authorized the Department of Housing to negotiate redevelopment with Parkside Phase III. The redevelopment would create townhomes, one eight-story building of sixty-nine units, and three-story walk-ups with a total of eighteen units. Studio to four-bedroom units would follow, with thirty (about a quarter) set aside for low-income tenants at or below the sixty percent area median income (AMI) threshold. The project is expected to cost about $65.7 million, with more than sixteen million dollars coming from TIF funds. Four other development projects were also approved, including a project at 4319 S. Indiana Avenue, which would reclaim an overgrown lot for redevelopment; and another, to sell land at 4032 S. Michigan to a private business for a parking lot. The Commission also approved extending the TIF boundaries for the Northwest Industrial Corridor to account for four “blighting factors,” which include building deterioration, structures that may violate minimum code standards, lack of economic growth, and inadequate utilities. It was announced that Commissioner Ivette Treviño was resigning.

Five appointees were given an initial stamp of approval to serve on special service areas (SSAs) at the City Council Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development meeting. SSAs are hyperlocal tax districts that give chambers of commerce or other community organizations a portion of local tax revenue (from area businesses) to provide economic development and beautification services beyond basic citywide services. For example, SSAs may be responsible for street-located trash cans. The appointees are to serve on SSAs for Calumet Heights/Avalon Park, Andersonville, Uptown, and Lincoln Square.

June 14

After being cautioned that a trial for a wrongful conviction and imprisonment lawsuit could cost the City $65 million, the City Council Committee on Finance approved a settlement of $7.2 million with Arthur Brown in its meeting. In 2018, Brown, now seventy-two, filed suit against the City for being wrongfully convicted and serving twentynine years in prison. The case involved the 1988 arson of a South Side video rental store in which two people died. Brown contends that the arson was instead carried out by police officers. The officers have since died, and the Cook County Circuit Court has certified Brown’s innocence. Jessica Felker, the City’s deputy corporation counsel, informed the committee that if a settlement were not approved, the case would be decided during a costly trial. The Committee also heard requests for TIF funds for property-related expenditures for the Steep Theatre Company, the Overton Center of Excellence (formerly Overton School), and the Chicago Park District.

June 15

During its meeting, the Chicago Plan Commission rezoned the former site of West Englewood’s Woods School, enabling an INVEST South/West development to move forward. The school was closed alongside numerous other Chicago schools in 2013.

Nicknamed “The Regenerator,” the Woods School redevelopment will feature fortyeight units of affordable housing in a sixty-thousand-square-foot facility and a mixed-use resource hub for formerly incarcerated people and their families. Services are to include job training and medical support. The project is supported by several City Council members and community organizations, including the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), Resident Association of Greater Englewood (RAGE), Teamwork Englewood, and E.G. Woode.

The Chicago Police Board made clear during its meeting that deceitful officers should be held accountable based on Rule 14 of CPD’s fifty-five rules of conduct. Rule 14 prohibits police officers from “making a false report, written or oral.” This rule is critical, explained one board member, so that courts can consider the testimony of law enforcement officers with confidence. The Board has come to understand from a study that some officers who have broken the rule are still on the job, despite law enforcement agencies agreeing that lying should not be tolerated. The chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), Andrea Kersten, noted that the office received 309 complaints in May. Interim Police Superintendent Fred Waller reported that 335 new officers which highlight the diversity and strength of CPD have been hired, which he deemed “an uptick.” Four public commenters expressed specific concerns about their districts: the lack of a community relations officer; the removal of officers from their area during the upcoming NASCAR race; a “public threat” in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood that could be mitigated by combining police districts; and that police officers have a difficult job.

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

Memorializing Jazz in the Alley

South Chicago Dance Theatre’s performance commemorates legacy of Chicago’s Jazz in the Alley movement.

BY DIERDRE ROBINSON

On a chilly Saturday evening, patrons young and old turned out to attend the South Chicago Dance Theatre’s debut performance of Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley at the Auditorium Theatre in downtown Chicago. The one-night-only June 10 show featured a company of twenty artists and was accompanied by Chicago’s own Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few performing a live score of newly arranged jazz standards, including John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Dizzy Gillepie’s “A Night in Tunisia.”

Historically, Jazz in the Alley was known as a meeting place for some of the country’s most prominent musicians, visual artists, poets, activists, and organizers. It was an event that occurred every Sunday in an alley between 49th and 50th, between St. Lawrence and Champlain. Jazz in the Alley began in a garage owned by Arthur Pops Simpson and was co-founded by the late musician and educator Jimmy Ellis. It existed until 1980 when the police closed it down for good during Mayor Jane Byrne’s

The dance concert, with a running time of one hour and fifteen minutes, was written, directed, and choreographed by South Chicago Dance Theatre founder and executive artistic director, Kia S. Smith. It also included a series of uniquely designed video projections created by Chicago scenic designer Rasean Davonte Johnson.

While Smith’s production was characterized as a work of historical fiction, it is said to have traced the experiences of imagined characters based upon images found in an online gallery of photos taken by Ellis, Smith’s father.

Smith was, in fact, the daughter of not one, but two parents with a passion for jazz. On the one hand, Smith’s father was a famed jazz saxophonist, who played with the likes of Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Earl Hines, and others.

And on the other hand, Smith credits the experience of sneaking into the historic Jazz Showcase in Chicago to watch jazz performances with her late mother as a pivotal moment in her life that would turn out to be “the sound of

my childhood,” she said.

Smith’s production told the dynamic story of a mysterious Lady in Red (played by Kim Davis) and the often tumultuous relationship that plays out in the alley between her and a relentless male suitor (played by Elijah Richardson).

Throughout the evening, the audience was treated to a colorful assemblage of talented dancers who, through their thoughtfully choreographed moves, helped bring to life Smith’s homage to the historic sights, sounds, and people who made Jazz in the Alley a movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Smith’s early training included the Hyde Park School of Dance. She went on to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance from Western Michigan University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of WisconsinMilwaukee where she was an Advanced Opportunity Program Fellow.

In 2017, Smith launched the South Chicago Dance Theatre (SCDT)—a multicultural organization aiming to preserve the art of dance through quality performances and educational opportunities. Now in its sixth year, the

South Chicago Dance Theatre

PHOTO BY ANDY ARGYRAKIS

theater, like Smith’s career, has continued to flourish. Since its initial launch, the company has toured regionally, nationally, and internationally like South Korea and the Netherlands.

On the week of her debut, I caught up with Smith to discuss her company, the SCDT, the influence of jazz in her life, and her debut at the Auditorium Theatre. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the history behind your theater? Why a dance theater?

It sounds silly but I grew up always wanting to have a dance company. That’s the most I can really say. I grew up around the 95th Street area and I just used to watch dance on TV all the time. And my family really couldn’t afford to put me in dance classes, but I had this vision from being a little girl that I wanted to have a dance company one day because I just watched it on TV and could see myself doing something like that. I went to Crane College Prep and the Joel Hall dancers came to my high school and did an outreach program for a year. From there I got a scholarship to go train at Joel Hall Dancers and then I ended up going to college for it. One thing kinda led to another and I just pursued my dream of having my own company one day. So in 2017, I enrolled in a graduate program, and at the same time I started South Chicago Dance Theatre, and I’ve just been doing it ever since.

What does Jazz in the Alley mean?

Yeah so, Jazz in the Alley is something that my dad kind of co-founded back in the 1960s and 1970s. And, it was happening before then. A man named Arthur Pops Simpson used to be in his garage every Sunday spinning records and it became a competition amongst live DJs that would come and spin records and people would come and listen. But one Sunday, my dad brought his saxophone to Simpson’s garage and then, you know, he started playing live and people enjoyed it. And then it just became a thing that my dad would come and then other musicians started coming.

And before you knew it, Jazz in the Alley was like this cultural happening that was specific to the South Side and that I think was really important to Chicago’s history and jazz in Chicago. You know, before the Chicago Jazz Festival was happening, or all these big things, as we know, Jazz in the Alley was happening and it was accessible. All kinds of people would come together and listen to music. It was special because not everyone could go to the Regal Theatre or go wherever the musicians were playing in town and get a ticket to go. But those musicians

—I was working on that for a whole year and I was planning to do it well before the Auditorium Theatre had reached out and asked us if we would come perform. So if we weren’t at the Auditorium, we’d be at some other theater doing the show. But then when they reached out and said “We’d love to have you next spring,” I said, “Yes, and actually, we’re doing a show called Memoirs of Jazz , all about the South Side and this movement called, Jazz in the Alley.” It was kinda perfect because the series that they curate is called, ‘The ‘Made in Chicago Series.’ So, it’s companies that literally are just, you know, founded and formed in Chicago. I felt like it was such a good fit that we could do something that was about the South Side.

How much preparation goes into a performance such as Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley?

That’s a good question. So, Chicago Dancemakers Forum is an organization in the city that provides grants to individual choreographers. And, they’re actually the only organization in Chicago that does anything like this specifically for choreographers. So, I applied for a grant from them and this was in 2022. I was what they call a lab artist. So, it means that I got to spend a whole year

before. So, making a jazz piece, in some ways felt safe because I was like okay, I know this world. I know this music. I can do this. So, it took me a year to do a lot of the thinking and the research but the actual creative process, I think we started in December of 2022. And we just kind of finished this month.

Were your parents able to see your productions?

Not so much. I mean, my mom passed away when I was fourteen, like my freshman year of high school. And, I actually didn’t start dancing until I was sixteen. Before I was doing dance, I used to do this group called Music Theater Workshop that actually brought kids from all over Chicago to the Field Museum to write and produce their own shows. And, so my mom saw me do some of those. But, she passed away before I started dancing really. And, then my dad definitely saw some of my shows. He came to see me when I was in college but I danced outside of Chicago for a lot of my actual career as a performer. By the time I had started my company, my dad was much older. So even though so much of my mom and dad are in this piece, it’s almost for me an opportunity to engage in a positive way with their memories because I don’t get to share the work with them.

Where can we catch up with the South Chicago Dance Theatre next?

would come to Jazz in the Alley and just play for the community. And so, I think that’s really special. It inspired me and I wanted to kinda pay an homage to that.

Did you have the opportunity to decide what you wanted to perform and all that?

Yeah, so, it’s funny. So Memoirs of Jazz

doing research for a new piece. And, actually, they were the ones that gave me the idea because I said I really wanted to make a big work. I want to have live music, and they were like, well, you have all this jazz lineage and history. Why don’t you just make a jazz piece? And, so when they told me that, [it] gave me kind of a prompt—it almost freed me. I’ve never made an evening-length work

After the Auditorium show, we actually have a summer break. So, we don’t have anything for the rest of June or July. But our next thing is actually a city-wide event that lots of different companies perform in called Dance for Life. So, we’re going to be participating in that in August as a performer. People can check out our website or social media to see where we’re at and what we have going on for season seven. ¬

Dierdre Robinson is a writer and accounting manager in Chicago. She has a BA in journalism from Michigan State University. She last wrote about Chicago’s Poet Laureate, avery r. young.

“You know, before the Chicago Jazz Festival was happening, or all these big things, as we know, jazz in the alley was happening and it was accessible.”

Smith and her dad.

Hyde Park Summer Fest 2023 in Photos

The festival

Black culture

BY MATEO ZAPATA

The 2023 Hyde Park Summer Fest celebrated Black culture with joy, peace and harmony. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop were Twista, Crucial Conflict, Do or Die, Shawnna and Vic Mensa.

Chicago’s own Grammy-nominated DJ Terry Hunter told the crowd, “Listen, house music started here. Right here, with Black and brown kids on the South Side of Chicago. House music is alive and vibrant.” The weekend’s host, Dave Jeff, presented the long awaited reunion of brothers Pusha T and Malice performing as Clipse, hailing the duo’s dedication to narrating the impact of the war on drugs on city neighborhoods.

Mayor Brandon Johnson himself presented Tobe Nwigwe as “a man on a mission from God” who began his set with “FYE FYE,” a song that celebrates unconditional love and overcoming economic hardships. Tobe Nwigwe also brought his entire family with him on stage, something he references in that song: “If you book me for a show and I can’t bring my wife and my babies, I’m leavin.”

Uncle Waffles, Oxlade and Libianca’s presence bridged the diaspora while Alex Isley’s voice summoned the Isley Brothers’ iconic sound. Jay Illa spoke about witnessing the growth of the fest over the years. “I remember we were in a bank parking lot off of 55th Street. To see it grow has been amazing.” He actually played a Nirvana song, and the crowd sang along, breaking through the notion that Black people don’t listen to rock music.

Lil’ Kim closed out the fest, beginning with Twista spitting his hypnotic verse from “Thug Luv”. Lil’ Cease from Junior Mafia also accompanied her, paying homage to Biggie throughout her entire set. The tone reminded everyone once again of the importance of celebrating Blackness and the range of its musical gifts on the South Side of Chicago. ¬

Mateo Zapata is a South Side-raised creative of Colombian/Chilean descent working at the intersection of photojournalism, film, art production, and hip-hop. He photographed this year’s Sueños Festival for the Weekly

celebrated

and music with performances by Pusha T, Lil Kim, Twista, Vic Mensa, and more.

Tobe Nwigwe with daughter Sage

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Dave Jeff - host

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Clipse

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Alex Isley

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Twista

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Lil Kim & Lil Cease

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Terry Hunter

PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

Two Chainz PHOTO MATEO ZAPATA

South Shore Residents, Organizers Demand Affordable Housing Protections at CBA Summit

The CBA Coalition hosted a summit on the impact of displacement by the Obama Center in South Shore and introduced an ordinance supported by Alderpersons Taylor and Yancy.

BY REEMA SALEH

After years of organizing by Woodlawn community members and activists, Chicago City Council passed an ordinance to help prevent displacement of renters and homeowners in the neighborhood. Now, activists are demanding the same housing protections for South Shore residents.

At a Saturday, June 24, Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) Summit, more than one hundred neighbors and organizers gathered at the South Shore United Methodist’s Unity Church to discuss the community’s experiences with displacement and needs as they draft a South Shore CBA ordinance. Led by the Coalition for a CBA, organizers made space for renters, property owners and those displaced from South Shore by rising rent and property costs to talk about their experiences and what protections residents need to stay in the neighborhood.

Throughout the day, speakers from Not Me We (NMW), Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) and Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP) led conversations on expanding tenant protections, preserving affordable housing, and ensuring equitable development in South Shore.

“How can we acknowledge that this neighborhood is shifting in so many ways that instead of displacing people, help to elevate our neighborhoods together, collectively?” said Not Me We organizer Trina Reynolds-Tyler. “Because once you’re displaced, there’s no way to come back, and we don’t want to lose people. We lose our most vulnerable populations on a regular basis.”

First announced in 2015, the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) site in Jackson Park has drawn criticism from activists

and neighbors alike, who have argued that longtime residents will be priced out of the surrounding neighborhoods without affordable housing protections in place. Construction on the OPC broke ground in 2021 and is expected to finish in 2025—but for many South Shore residents, the signs of displacement have long since arrived.

In 2019, an investigative study by the University of Illinois’s Voorhees Center found evidence of rising rents and property values in the two-mile radius around the Jackson Park site. This area is primarily made up of renters, of which forty-two percent of tenants have incomes below $20,000. That same year, the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing found that South Shore had the highest eviction filing rate of any community area in Chicago— about three times higher than the city as a whole.

Beyond new developments like the OPC, systemic issues with South Shore’s

housing stock are also putting tenants and homeowners at risk. Organizers and residents raised issues with negligent landlords, unsafe housing conditions, and a lack of tenant protections from the city.

“People across South Shore deserve to have protections in place and can make these fights easier and make it so that they don’t have to fend off landlords or their home that way,” said Sivi Miles, representing the Catalyst Tenants Union. This past winter, Miles was one of fifteen tenants of a Catalyst Realty building in South Shore who were displaced after the building’s heat and water failed.

South Shore has also seen the largest share of homes for sale bought by investors than any other neighborhood in the city. According to the Illinois Answers Project, investors bought up thirty-two percent of homes for sale in the third quarter of 2022—almost twice as many as investors bought the year the OPC site was

announced.

Kiara Hardin, a former South Shore tenant, was forced to move to Washington Park when it came time to buy a home. “If this system of working hard to be a homeowner and choosing the environments in which I wanted to live didn’t work for me, who is it working for?” she said.

Linda Jennings, a current property owner, drew attention to South Shore’s population of older adults—many of whom she described as owning their own property but could not afford rising property taxes or building maintenance costs. “We’re living with this threat of displacement. Regardless if some of us have paid off our homes…we still live in a certain type of precariousness, afraid it’s going to happen to us,” Jennings said.

In 2020, 20th Ward Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor sponsored the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance, along with former 5th Ward Alderwoman Leslie Hairston and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. After months of legislative debates, the ordinance unanimously passed City Council; it set aside $4.5 million for affordable housing programs in Woodlawn. While the proposal originally included protections for residents within a two-mile radius of the Obama Center, including Hyde Park, South Shore and Woodlawn, Hyde Park and South Shore were ultimately negotiated out.

For Taylor, Woodlawn’s ordinance is a step in the right direction, but the movement to protect low-income residents hasn’t gone far enough.

“Passing the Woodlawn Housing Ordinance has not stopped displacement. It has slowed it down, but it has not stopped. In my last four years (in) office, just in Woodlawn, we lost a thousand residents. And those are people who are not coming

Condominium owner and Not Me We member Linda Jennings speaks about the struggles of condominium ownership, particularly for older adults, during the Community Benefits Agreement Coalition Summit at South Shore United Methodist Church, 7350 S. Jeffery Ave., Saturday, June 24, 2023.

PHOTO BY MARC C. MONAGHAN

back,” Taylor said. “We got some work to do when it comes to making sure that we’re protecting the people who live in these spaces but also helping out homeowners.”

The pending South Shore ordinance would include more expansive protections to guard against displacement and preserve affordable housing near the OPC. To expand tenant protections, CBA Coalition organizers have also demanded that the city create an office to advocate for tenant rights and a publicly available rental registry to hold negligent landlords accountable, as well as setting aside $15 million in immediate rental relief.

For South Shore homeowners, the CBA Coalition calls on City Council to offer grants and down-payment assistance, forgive tax debts owed by lowincome residents, and allocate $20 million toward grants and low-interest loans to homeowner associations for badly needed repairs. Organizers also urge the city to set aside all city-owned vacant lots in

communities immediately near the OPC.

“We need to explore CBA citywide. We just do. Because it’s South Shore today, it’ll be Washington Park tomorrow. It’ll be Austin another time. It will be Lawndale,” Taylor said. “(Developers) have decided that they want our city, but they don’t want us and that just ain’t good enough.”

A non-binding advisory referendum saw nearly ninety percent of 5th Ward residents vote in support of a South Shore CBA ordinance in the February 28 municipal election. Yancy, whose ward includes South Shore, also confirmed that he was committed to backing the issue as a member of City Council, saying, “It’s time for the city of Chicago to support its residents and provide support for owners and renters so that we can enjoy the fruits of all our labor.”

“I moved to South Shore thirty years ago, for the same reason I moved to South Shore five years ago. It’s because it’s such a vibrant, beautiful historic community that

‘I Call it Pretend Freedom’

Older adults coming out of Illinois prisons face steep roadblocks in their reentry journey.

BY CARLOS BALLESTEROS, INJUSTICE WATCH

This story was reported by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom focused on issues of equity and justice in the court system, in collaboration with WTTW’s Firsthand: Life After Prison series.

Before he was released from prison, Bob Covelli told everyone he knew the three things he wanted most once he got out: a job, an apartment, and a kitten. “I’m less anxious, and I’m less angry when I hear a cat purring,” he said in an interview.

prisons since 2014, according to an Injustice Watch estimate based on state corrections data. And thousands more older adults are expected to come out in the coming years, many of whom were given long sentences at the height of the “tough-on-crime” era of the 1980s and ’90s.

South Shore and those at 63rd Street and Blackstone Avenue for affordable housing developments. This would reserve seventyfive percent of the units for households making no more than thirty percent of the Area Median Income, which in 2020 was $35,887 in South Shore and $27,541 in Woodlawn, according to city data.

The CBA Coalition also advocates for a guaranteed right to return for current and longtime South Shore residents, to prioritize loans, grants, and subsidized units to those pushed out by rising housing costs and evictions. “We don’t want to live in a neighborhood where we see the same faces less and less. We don’t want to push folks out of what they consider their home base,” said Reynolds-Tyler.

At the CBA Summit, Taylor and new 5th Ward Ald. Desmon Yancy reaffirmed their commitments to a South Shore CBA ordinance. Taylor has been a longtime supporter of affordable housing and equitable development programs and talked about the need to expand beyond the

is historically Black and needs to stay that,” Yancy added. “I’m going to work my tail off to make sure that we get, not just the twenty-six votes that we need to pass this ordinance, that we get the full support of the City Council and this Mayor. Because if we don’t save South Shore…they’re coming for the rest of us.”

South Shore’s community benefits ordinance has not yet been introduced to City Council. A list of demands can be found at obamacba.org, and the organizers intend to make the full text of the ordinance publicly available in the near future.

“We bring the crisis to its creators and take action to force our demands to be met. It can feel inevitable that we have to live at the whims of our landlords,” said Chinella Miller, an education organizer with KOCO. “It can feel inevitable that developers get richer, and we get priced out. It can feel inevitable that homelessness continues to get worse. But organizing is about changing the conditions of what is possible.” ¬

Covelli was incarcerated for almost forty years for a 1982 robbery and murder of an Elmhurst jewelry store owner. He was diagnosed with anxiety and bipolar disorder in prison, which he said helped him understand his behavior.

“I didn’t know I was experiencing manic episodes when I was stealing,” he said. “I just thought it was ‘magic time’— that no one could stop me.”

While incarcerated, Covelli became a published poet and cartoonist, calling attention to the plight of his fellow prisoners. He got a job as a custodian, throwing out the trash, cleaning cells, and mopping up the floors. He figured he could find similar work once he was out, and the rest of his life would follow after that.

But a year and a half after leaving prison, the sixty-eight-year-old is unemployed and living at a homeless shelter—“the only place left open to me,” he said.

“The way I’m living right now, I call it ‘pretend freedom.’”

Covelli is one of at least 17,000 adults age fifty and older released from Illinois

Nearly 10,000 people incarcerated at the end of last year—roughly one-third of the prison population—will be age fifty or older when they are projected to be released. More than half of them are Black, and many will have served decades behind bars.

Older adults coming out of prison face unique challenges on top of the social stigma facing all former prisoners, experts said. Many end up homeless and unemployed, and their criminal records can sometimes block them from accessing safety net programs meant to prevent older adults from falling into poverty.

Many come out with chronic illnesses and disabilities, but they can be turned away from nursing homes and other longterm care facilities, leaving their families— if they have any left—to pick up the slack.

Criminal justice reform advocates want state lawmakers to allow more incarcerated older adults to get out early, so they can have a better chance at building a stable life after prison, especially because older adults are less likely to reoffend than their younger counterparts.

“We chose as a society to hand out these really crazy sentences—focusing specifically on Black and brown men—for several decades, and our answer to that is we just want to throw you away, and you just have to figure it out,” said Avalon

“It can feel inevitable that developers get richer, and we get priced out. But organizing is about changing the conditions of what is possible.”

Betts-Gaston, project manager for the Illinois Alliance for Reentry and Justice, a coalition of legal aid and direct-service organizations.

Pathways for an early release in Illinois are limited. Only about three dozen people have been ordered released under a law enacted last year to create a path for parole for prisoners with terminal illnesses and those who are medically incapacitated. Another measure to open parole to elderly prisoners who’ve served at least twenty-five years has stalled in the state Legislature.

When they get out, older adults often confront a world that feels completely foreign, Betts-Gaston said.

“When they went in, things were drastically different in every aspect of life than they are right now, and we don’t have any systems in place to prepare them for that,” she said.

Betts-Gaston and a half-dozen other advocates and experts interviewed by Injustice Watch said local, state, and federal lawmakers should put more resources into supporting older adults upon reentry.

Otherwise, some older adults could end up like Covelli, wishing they were back in prison.

“At least in there, I felt respected for who I am,” he said. “Out here, I do everything that’s asked of me, but it never feels like enough.”

Older adults struggle with jobs, housing after prison

Last fall, after submitting two dozen job applications with no luck, Covelli was finally hired as a custodian at an industrial bakery in the suburbs. It took him two buses and sometimes more than an hour to get there from the South Side shelter where he lives.

But after only a few weeks at the job, Covelli said he felt a sharp pain in his back after he tripped on a folded carpet in one of the offices he was cleaning, triggering sciatic nerve problems that he developed in prison.

Afraid of falling again, Covelli stopped going to work until the pain dissipated. But by then, he said they stopped answering his emails.

Covelli hasn’t been able to find work ever since, despite practically begging for a job. “I am willing to work construction

or remodeling for a week for free,” he said. Now, he also faces losing his spot at the shelter.

“This shelter is only for one year. My year was up on May 1,” he said. “No one has said I have to leave, but no one has tried to help me get housing, either.

“I keep waiting for the third shoe to drop.”

Covelli’s struggles illustrate how formerly incarcerated older adults often have a hard time finding long-term work and housing.

A recent study from the U.S. Department of Justice found sixty percent of former federal prisoners age fifty-five

and older were unemployed four years after their release, compared to thirty-one percent of those younger than fifty-five. It’s estimated that former prisoners age fortyfive and older are twelve times more likely to be homeless than the general public.

Researchers say formerly incarcerated older adults often face discrimination over the stigma against people with criminal records, as well as the prevalence of everyday discrimination against older adults.

TJ Wendle, a community outreach specialist for the Reentry Support Institute at Roosevelt University in Chicago, said many of the more physically demanding

jobs open to people with criminal records, such as working in “warehouses or backof-house of a kitchen or janitorial things (are) jobs that somebody in their advanced age might have more difficulty with.”

Complicating the reentry journey for many older adults is their often-precarious health, which can make finding a job and housing more difficult. Research shows that living in prison deteriorates a person’s health more quickly because of the stressful and dangerous environment and lack of access to nutritional foods and quality health care.

More than fifty-seven percent of state prisoners age fifty-five and older surveyed for a recent report from the Justice Department reported having a disability—a rate three times higher than general public—and more than eighty percent said they had at least one chronic illness. In Illinois, the prison health care system has for years failed to meet the most basic standards of care, especially for elderly prisoners and prisoners with disabilities, according to recent reports from a court-appointed monitor.

These chronic illnesses and mobility issues make finding adequate housing even more challenging, said Michael Stone, legal director of the Center for Disability and Elder Law, a pro bono firm in Chicago.

“Affordable housing stock tends to be older, and older housing stock also tends to be less accessible,” Stone said.

Many of the state’s halfway houses are also inaccessible to people coming out of prison with disabilities, said Ashley Bishel, a staff attorney at the Uptown People’s Law Center, a Chicago-based civil rights organization that represents current and former Illinois prisoners. And because they can’t find an approved host site that meets their mobility needs, some disabled older adults end up staying in prison while they’re on parole “when they were supposed to be out in the community,” she said.

The Illinois Department of Corrections did not make officials available for an interview. A spokesperson for the department acknowledged in a statement the “small number” of beds at halfway houses deemed accessible under the American With Disabilities Act but said the decision about who to admit is up to the reentry facilities.

“While important, ADA accessibility and needs are not the only thing that vendors may consider when reviewing referrals from IDOC,” the spokesperson said.

It’s even more complicated for returning citizens who need to access nursing homes or other long-term care facilities, said Dr. Michelle Gittler, medical director at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago, which serves current and former Illinois prisoners.

“There’s no law that says someone with a criminal (conviction) cannot go to a nursing home, but the nursing homes have created a paradigm that says they’re not taking them,” Gittler said.

State law requires nursing homes to conduct criminal background checks on residents and allows them to deny entry to someone based on their criminal conviction. Gittler said sex offenders are particularly difficult to place in long-term care facilities.

“Anybody with any history of being a child predator or sexual offender will never get into a nursing home,” she said. “Even if they had bilateral strokes—can’t move their arms, can’t move their legs—and are clearly not able to do any harm, they won’t get in.”

It’s not clear how many returning citizens in Illinois need nursing care when they are released. Under state law, IDOC is required to report data to the state Legislature on the type of housing facilities where people live upon their release. In its most recent reports to legislators, however, the department says it doesn’t know where the majority of people are living, and nursing homes or long-term care facilities are not one of the options listed.

A spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment about the data.

Long sentences make reentry more difficult

Many older adults coming out of prison have spent decades locked up, making it even harder for them to adjust to life on the outside, said Jennifer Soble, executive director of the Illinois Prison Project, a nonprofit that helps prisoners apply for parole and advocates for laws that increase opportunities for release.

“The longer you remove a person from their families and their communities, the more work they and us as a society will have to do to get them the skills, support, and training they need to thrive independently,” Soble said.

The United States incarcerates a higher share of its population for a decade or longer than any European country, and

according to a recent report by FAMM, a national advocacy group formerly known as Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

A growing body of research shows that long sentences have no real positive impact on public safety. According to a statistical analysis published in January by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research group, reducing long

For Covelli, who spent more than half of his life behind bars, this means he didn’t earn enough to qualify for disability insurance, even if his back issues or mental health diagnoses might someday make it impossible for him to work.

Since 1978, when Illinois ended discretionary parole, there have been few avenues for early release for people with long sentences. Under the state’s “truthin-sentencing” laws, which went into effect in 1998, prisoners must serve between fifty percent and one hundred percent of their sentence, depending on their conviction.

In recent years, lawmakers introduced some new pathways to release, but few people have benefited. Cook County prosecutors filed motions last year asking judges to resentence three men, ages fiftyfive to sixty-three, under a new state law allowing for resentencing “in the interest of justice,” but none of the men were resentenced.

Under a separate law, prisoners who are terminally ill or medically incapacitated can apply for parole starting in January 2022. As of last month, only thirty-nine people have been paroled out of more than 340 applicants, data obtained by Injustice Watch shows.

More than half of the applicants were deemed unqualified for parole under the law, which requires a diagnosis from a prison doctor who says they’ll likely be “medically incapacitated”—meaning they can’t bathe or dress themselves—within six months or dead within eighteen months.

U.S. prisons are increasingly filled with older adults serving long sentences. In Illinois, people age fifty and older make up about twenty-two percent of the prison population, up from four percent in 1988. More than two-thirds of older adults in prison as of December were serving sentences of more than a decade.

Long prison sentences have had a disproportionate impact on Black Illinois residents, who make up less than fifteen percent of the state population but more than sixty percent of people with expected prison stays of fifteen years to life,

prison sentences in Illinois by thirty percent would result in “a virtually undetectable increase” in annual arrests.

“The vast majority of the people serving long prison terms have ‘aged out’ of criminal behavior near the end of their stays,” according to the report.

These long prison sentences disqualify many older former prisoners from some Social Security and Medicare benefits, which are predicated on wages earned throughout one’s lifetime—and prison wages generally don’t count toward those benefits.

Democratic state lawmakers have repeatedly introduced an “elder parole” bill, which would expand parole to older adults who have served at least twenty-five years in prison. But despite passing the Illinois House of Representatives’ criminal justice committee in March, the bill has stalled in the current legislative session.

If such a bill had been in place when Covelli was in prison, he would’ve been eligible for release more than a decade ago.

“I would’ve still been a young man or at least a younger man,” he said. “Who knows where I’d be right now. Probably not where I am.” ¬

Jonah Newman contributed data reporting to this story.

Bob Covelli, sixty-eight, was released from prison in 2021 after nearly forty years. He’s currently unemployed and living at Olive Branch Mission, a homeless shelter on Chicago’s South Side.

PHOTO BY SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO FOR INJUSTICE WATCH

“At least in there, I felt respected for who I am. Out here, I do everything that’s asked of me, but it never feels like enough.” —Bob Covelli

La larga lucha de Pilsen contra el TIF en medio de la gentrificación

En una calurosa noche en un jueves de mayo, una larga fila de personas se dirigía a la secundaria Benito Juárez Community Academy para asistir a una reunión sobre una enmienda propuesta al TIF (financiación por incremento de impuestos, por sus siglas en inglés) de Pilsen —una zona designada del barrio donde los fondos procedentes de los impuestos sobre la propiedad se destinan a financiar proyectos de desarrollo.

Desde que el TIF se estableció en Pilsen por primera vez en 1998 bajo el mandato del ex concejal Danny Solís, éste ha sido uno de los pocos foros públicos ofrecidos a los residentes para debatir el TIF y las implicaciones que tiene para su comunidad. Mientras cientos de residentes esperaban en la fila, muchas personas se quejaban de que ya habían hecho algo parecido antes, que esto les parecía un déjà vu de la vez que se organizaron contra el TIF décadas antes o cuando se vieron excluidos de la decisión sobre una extensión de doce años de ese TIF el otoño pasado.

En el gran patio de cemento la gente gritaba, “No al TIF” mientras los organizadores de la Coalición El Pueblo Manda, un grupo de miembros de la comunidad y aliados que se organizan contra la gentrificación, sobre todo en Pilsen, marchaban sosteniendo carteles en los que se leía: “Desarrolladores no se metan en Pilsen” y “TIF equivale a desplazamiento”.

Los impuestos sobre la propiedad en Pilsen aumentan mucho más rápido que el promedio de la ciudad, por lo que los dueños de casa de larga duración no pueden hacer frente al pago de sus impuestos (además de sufrir un aumento

general en el costo de vida). Los residentes que han vivido toda su vida en el barrio, han visto cómo sus familiares, que fueron dueños de sus casas durante generaciones, las han puesto a la venta. O sus rentas se han elevado enormemente, obligándoles a dejar el barrio.

Frente a las puertas del auditorio, la oficina del concejal Byron Sigcho López (25th) repartió tarjetas para votar en las que se les preguntaba a los asistentes si querían que se aprobara la enmienda o no. Trajeron por lo menos 250 tarjetas, que fueron insuficientes para la gran multitud.

Funcionarios del Departamento de Planificación y Desarrollo (DPD, por sus siglas en inglés) se sentaron en al frente mientras la gente se acomodaba en sus asientos, y los organizadores de El Pueblo Manda incitaron a la gente a que siguiera con sus cantos de “No al TIF” con quejas como: “¡Nadie los invitó aquí!” y “¡No queremos cambios en nuestro barrio!”.

Con DPD y sus consultores de Johnson Research Group detrás de él, Sigcho López comenzó la reunión reconociendo lo difícil que ha sido este tiempo para los residentes de Pilsen: “Sabemos que muchas de nuestras familias están ahora mismo en riesgo de perder sus casas. Mucha gente está estrangulada por los impuestos a la propiedad”. Fue recibido con afirmaciones por parte de los dueños de casa que han visto un aumento promedio del 63 por ciento de los impuestos a la propiedad en un solo año.

Decenas de asistentes compartieron sus experiencias personales con el aumento de los impuestos sobre la propiedad, como una residente cuyos impuestos aumentaron un 70 por ciento, lo que la

obligó a utilizar el fondo universitario de su hijo para mantener su casa. Luego de la reunión, Sigcho López contó que durante el invierno tuvo a ancianos llorando en su oficina porque no podían pagar los miles de dólares adicionales en impuestos, lo que los obligaba a perder casas en las que habían vivido durante décadas o incluso generaciones.

“Sin embargo, hay dinero público del que hay que rendir cuentas, y que históricamente no ha servido para preservar a las comunidades, sino más bien para gentrificarlas”, dijo Sigcho López.

El TIF es una estrategia destinada a promover el desarrollo en lo que el Estado denomina zonas “deterioradas”, atrayendo a los inmobiliarios a invertir en la zona y crear puestos de trabajo de construcción y negocios nuevos en la zona. Según la Ley TIF de Illinois, las zonas se consideran “deterioradas” cuando cumplen cinco de trece requisitos (o dos de seis en zonas no urbanizadas que son consideradas “vacantes”). Estas normas incluyen elementos como edificios deteriorados, servicios públicos insuficientes o en mal estado, o deshechos peligrosos.

Año tras año, la porción de ingresos que se vierte a los distritos TIF sigue creciendo, aumentando un nueve por ciento desde 2017, según un reporte publicado a principios de este año. En 2021, cerca del 40 por ciento de los casi $3.02 mil millones de dólares en ingresos por impuestos a la propiedad se destinaron a los TIF.

En los primeros tres años del mandato de Solís, se crearon cuatro nuevos distritos TIF en el distrito 25, principalmente el TIF del corredor industrial de Pilsen de 907 acres. Incluso entonces, los residentes

sabían que no querían que se creara un TIF en su vecindario por temor a que se hiciera un mal uso de ellos. Mary Calderón, que vivió en Pilsen durante más de sesenta años antes de mudarse, dijo que recuerda haberse organizado contra el TIF a finales de los noventa. “Y ahora, veintitrés años después, teníamos razón”, afirmó.

Desde 2011, un total de $122 millones en TIF se asignaron a proyectos en Pilsen. Según la presentación de DPD, más del 96 por ciento de esos fondos se utilizaron para usos públicos o vivienda asequible. Pero cuando TIF ha pagado por estos proyectos públicos, los residentes dijeron que no fue sin tener que luchar.

“Todos estos lugares que llaman la atención de alguien que visita Pilsen surgieron de la lucha”, dijo Vicky Romero, cuya familia ha vivido en la misma cuadra en Pilsen desde mediados de la década de 1950. Cuando en la presentación se mostraba un proyecto público financiado con fondos TIF, Romero podía recordar cuáles miembros de la comunidad habían luchado para que ese proyecto se llevara a cabo.

La enmienda en cuestión casi duplicaría el tamaño del distrito TIF original de Pilsen, según los expertos. El DPD afirmó que esta expansión apoyaría a los pequeños negocios y vivienda asequible, como la Casa Yucatán y lotes de la Calle 18 y Peoria.

Con estos fondos ampliados, la Municipalidad propone actualizar el plan de uso del terreno y revisar el presupuesto de reurbanización. Pero las declaraciones de los funcionarios fueron cuestionadas por los miembros de la comunidad. Ellos explicaron lo que los términos del DPD realmente significaban para ellos: Cuando

POR SAVANNAH HUGUELEY TRADUCIDO POR ALMA CAMPOS

Con los impuestos sobre la propiedad a niveles sin precedentes, los residentes de Pilsen se oponen a la ampliación del TIF en su vecindario por temor a que desplace a más.

el DPD decía “desarrollo”, la gente gritaba “desplazamiento”. Cuando decían “TIF”, la gente gritaba “presupuesto fantasma” o “fondos secretos”.

El aumento de los impuestos sobre la propiedad y de las rentas ha provocado que muchos residentes que han vivido en Pilsen por décadas hayan tenido que mudarse. Romero ha visto cómo su comunidad se ha ido desvaneciendo, por ejemplo, en las interacciones cotidianas en la cuadra donde vivía: “Los hipsters no saludan, no dan los buenos días... la gente ni siquiera te mira cuando vas caminando por la misma acera”. Pero estos cambios a nivel cuadra se deben a decisiones gubernamentales intencionales y estructurales.

“La gentrificación es muy calculada”, afirma Romero, que también fue presidenta del concejo de la organización sin fines de lucro Pilsen Alliance. Mucha gente cree que la gentrificación es inevitable, pero no es así. “Conocemos muchas formas de frenar la gentrificación, o hasta detener el desplazamiento de la clase trabajadora. Pero eso requiere esfuerzo y política”.

“Si no tienes la intención de irte, como yo”, dijo Romero, “aumentar el valor de la propiedad no hace más que aumentar tus impuestos sobre la propiedad”. Este sentir es común entre los residentes de Pilsen, según Sigcho López, quien dijo que a menudo le dicen lo cansados que se sienten de la fragilidad del cambio que está ocurriendo a su alrededor: “¿Por qué tenemos que estar siempre luchando para quedarnos?”.

También hay numerosas pruebas que demuestran que el TIF se ha utilizado mal. Por un lado, a menudo se crean distritos en zonas que no cumplen con la definición de "deterioradas". El proyecto TIF Illumination ha afirmado que esto significa que TIF beneficia en gran medida a zonas más prósperas de la ciudad, desviando dinero que debería destinarse a los servicios públicos. Y cuando se utiliza en zonas que sí cumplen los criterios de deterioro, los proyectos financiados por el TIF suelen ser en zonas que se están gentrificado rápidamente, como Pilsen. Esto ha contribuido potencialmente al desplazamiento de familias y personas de

bajos ingresos.

Sigcho López fue uno de los doce concejales que votaron en contra. Aunque es crítico con el uso de los fondos TIF, Sigcho López apoyó la renovación del distrito TIF de Pilsen el pasado otoño. También ha dicho que presionó a los funcionarios de planificación para ampliar el área que cubre el distrito actual para que más propiedades puedan beneficiarse. Ha dicho que la despensa de comida de Pilsen, Pilsen Food Pantry, que anteriormente estaba dentro de los límites del distrito TIF, sería una propiedad que se beneficiaría de esa ampliación.

Dijo que para él, esta reunión se trataba más acerca de crear una plataforma para la participación de la comunidad y para tratar de reparar una historia larga en la que la Municipalidad ignora la opinión de la comunidad y toma decisiones a puerta cerrada. “Es injusto que la Municipalidad continúe recaudando dólares e impuestos TIF sin representación [de la comunidad] y sin un proceso claro”, dijo Sigcho López durante su discurso de apertura.

Sin embargo, Leonardo Quintero, un residente que lleva toda su vida en Pilsen y que también es cofundador de Peace in Pilsen, dijo que cree que los residentes no confían en un sistema que “de por si no tenía credibilidad.” Aunque Sigcho López ha intentado ser más transparente, Quintero dice que hay una falta de accesibilidad en cuanto al TIF y que siguen dejando a los residentes fuera de la conversación; y se siente como si la historia se repitiera. “Siempre lo he descrito como cambios que nos pasan a nosotros en lugar de que ocurran con nosotros”, le hizo eco Romero.

Los distritos TIF están diseñados originalmente para expirar a los veintitrés años, pero la Municipalidad los ha extendido silenciosamente en repetidas ocasiones. En octubre de 2022, solo tres meses antes de su vencimiento, la zona TIF de Pilsen (junto con otras cinco zonas) se extendió doce años más. Quintero dijo que él y la gente que conoce ni siquiera se enteraron de la extensión hasta dos semanas después de que ocurriera cuando la gente comenzó a compartir información al respecto en Facebook.

A pesar de que la mayoría de los asistentes hablaban español, la única transcripción de audio disponible era en inglés. Cada vez que hablaba el traductor, se oían gritos de “No se oye” entre la multitud, y varios residentes se levantaron para decir que la traducción era imprecisa. Entre la multitud, se podía ver a jóvenes que le traducían la presentación en voz baja a sus vecinos y familiares.

Quintero es un representante del distrito 12 del Concejo de Policía, y dice que es testigo frecuente de esta situación. Él y otros concejales han solicitado servicios de traducción en sus reuniones, pero la Municipalidad les dice que no hay recursos. Así que tienen que arreglárselas por su propia cuenta. Y eso suponiendo que la gente pueda encontrar las reuniones. Según Quintero, frecuentemente envían a la gente a sitios web municipales sin instrucciones claras sobre cómo acceder a las reuniones públicas.

Tom Tresser, vicepresidente y director general de CivicLab (que dirige el Proyecto de Iluminación TIF), dijo que eso ha sido típico cuando se trata de que la Municipalidad notifique a los miembros de la comunidad acerca de los distritos TIF y sus proyectos. Su organización recibió una carta notificándoles de la expansión sólo unas dos semanas antes de esta reunión comunitaria. “Ya para cuando nos enteramos, es un hecho”, dijo Tresser.

Durante la reunión, los miembros de la comunidad tuvieron que preguntar cuándo se presentaría la enmienda en la reunión introductoria de la Comisión de Desarrollo Comunitario (CDC, por sus siglas en inglés), ya que los presentadores no compartieron esa información al principio de la presentación. Esa reunión estaba planeada para el 9 de mayo, sólo cinco días después. Una vez que una propuesta de extensión al TIF se introduce en esas reuniones, por lo general es demasiado tarde para detenerla. Como explicó Tresser, “en la historia de Chicago, ningún TIF ha sido rechazado por la comisión”.

Al final, la propuesta para modificar el TIF se retiró de la agenda un día antes de la reunión, probablemente debido a la oposición de la comunidad. “Es una gran victoria para los organizadores del pueblo de Pilsen”, afirmó Tresser.

Los organizadores de El Pueblo

Manda, el Proyecto de Iluminación de TIF que dirige Tresser, Pilsen Alliance y otros miembros de la comunidad y aliados han sido una parte importante de este esfuerzo.

Vicky Lugo, nacida y criada en Pilsen, ha sido testigo de todos los problemas que han afectado a su comunidad en décadas recientes, desde el cierre de escuelas en 2013 hasta la contaminación del aire y los incendios provocados por una trituradora de chatarra, así como el aumento exorbitante de los impuestos sobre la propiedad el año pasado. Tras ver cómo los impuestos afectaban a su familia y a sus vecinos, empezó a investigar y descubrió que algunos residentes tenían reembolsos de años anteriores que habían perdido o exenciones de las que no tenían conocimiento.

Por eso empezó a colaborar con El Pueblo Manda, para ayudar a su comunidad a mayor escala. El Pueblo Manda está presionando para que los hogares sean evaluados a través de un impuesto graduado donde la tasa de impuesto aumenta según los ingresos, dijo Lugo. También solicitan que el Condado y la Municipalidad no penalicen a las personas que no pueden pagar sus facturas, dijo Calderón.

Aunque la propuesta para modificar el TIF se retiró como punto del orden del día en mayo, puede volver a presentarse en cualquier momento. Lo que ocurra dependerá realmente del alcalde Johnson y de a quién nombre para la Comisión de Desarrollo Comunitario. Pero Tresser confía en que los orígenes comunitarios de Johnson y los concejales progresistas puedan ayudar a guiar a la comisión en una nueva dirección.

Mientras tanto, los organizadores y los miembros de la comunidad tienen planeado seguir informando a sus vecinos sobre el TIF, oponiéndose a la gentrificación y abogando por una reducción del aumento a los impuestos sobre la propiedad. Los organizadores de vivienda y otros defensores seguirán exigiendo evaluaciones justas de las propiedades, alivio para los dueños inundados de impuestos y la democratización de las decisiones en torno a los aproximadamente $65 millones restantes del TIF de Pilsen y fondos futuros. ¬

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

tag

by chima “naira” ikoro

in this dream i knew you’d just departed, but i did not let grief stifle my laughter. you tagged me, and i chased you through the hallways of a school down the stairs, you leap over the banister knowing i’d never catch you we were running around like kids–like teenagers, who are also still children despite what the world made of us we were young like you will always be like you were when you left.

and i am still “it,” woke up before i got to touch you again this is not a sad poem. this is to say thanks. thank you for visiting me, thank you for being so beautiful when you were here, so kind and so loving, that my life is forever changed even in your absence.

waiting

by sid mercury

Waiting has taught me to be rooted into the earth

Sinking

Sinking, sinking deep

Beneath the earth's surface

So still and quiet

But there are bones here

There is blood here

There is love here

With every breath waiting to Feel your embrace. Waiting shows me who i am when i see Myself

I see myself

My whole self

With every breath of waiting I hear the birds singing Conspiring And

Communicating

I think they like it when We are still and quiet so we can appreciate their songs

Waiting teaches me to Be present with my Thoughts and self, waiting Sometimes feels like Weights

Stacking up on my chest

Waiting taught me to remember to breathe

Remember where love is

Centered

Remembering where love lives

Where life lives. Waiting has taught me that i am love And I am loved as i am Protected and i am Protective.

THIS WEEK'S PROMPT FOR THE LITERARY ISSUE: “HOW DO YOU PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE RADICAL SELF-LOVE, REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT (OR ACTION), OR THE RECLAMATION OF FREEDOM AND COMMUNITY?”

This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com by July 22.

Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder.

BULLETIN

How Both Halves Lived: Exploring the Pullman Legacy

Glessner House, 1800 S. Prairie Ave. Saturday, July 8, 10am–6pm. Tickets are $95 per person and $80 for members. Advanced registration required, limited to 14 participants. bit.ly/Pullmantour

This tour by the Glessner House and the Town of Pullman explores George Pullman and his Pullman Palace Car Company, which loomed large in late nineteenth-century America, from his mansion on Prairie Avenue to the town he constructed in the early 1880s to house his factory and employees. The tour begins at Glessner House with a presentation on the Pullman mansion (demolished in 1922) and the Town of Pullman. After a brief walking tour of the Prairie Avenue neighborhood, participants will board the Metra Electric line for a 25-minute ride to the town, taking the exact route Pullman himself did. Lunch will be provided in Arcade Row, and the Pullman House Project will open up its three sites for interior tours, before ending with a walking tour of the neighborhood and a return trip to Glessner House. (Zoe Pharo)

Motor Row Walking Tour

Glessner House, 1800 S. Prairie Ave. Saturday, July 8, 11am–12:30pm. Tickets are $25 per person and $20 for members. Tour limited to 15 participants. bit.ly/MotorRowtour

Glessner House is also hosting a walking tour down South Michigan Avenue to explore what is considered the largest intact early “automobile row” in the U.S. At its peak in the early twentieth century, over 100 different makes of automobiles were being sold in Motor Row. More than sixty of the

original showrooms survive today as the landmark Motor Row District, with examples by architects Holabird & Roche, Alfred Alschuler, Christian Eckstorm, Philip Maher and Albert Kahn. (Zoe Pharo)

ARTS

Pride South Side

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, 740 E. 56th Pl. Saturday, July 1, 1pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/PrideSouthSide

The fifth annual festival celebrating the life, legacy, and history of LGBT people on the South Side returns to the DuSable Museum on the first day of July with music, booths, and vendors. Performers include Ameer the DJ, Bella Thee Stallion, DJ Dapper, Gregory Stewart, Jade the Ivy, Jahari and the Hippies, June, DJ Lora, DJ Mealhouse, Mikey Everything, Nyla Bella Donna, Virgo Gang, and YNG Romance. (Zoe Pharo)

30th African/Caribbean

International Festival of Life

Washington Park, 55th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. Saturday, July 1, 1pm–11pm. Tickets are $20 for general admission and $55 for VIP access. bit.ly/30thFestivalofLife

The four-day 30th anniversary of the African/Caribbean International Festival of Life in Washington Park is a cultural celebration featuring Jamaican, Caribbean, African, and American entertainers, arts and crafts, food, games and more. Music ranges from reggae and world music to Afrobeat, R&B, blues, gospel, hip hop, jazz. and Latin, and features artists Stone Love, Bass Odyssey, and King Addies and Lil June, among others.The festival will once again be combined with the Jerk, Seafood and Vegan Fest and the return of

the Carnival of Nations Expo. (Zoe Pharo)

Fierceness Served: Creating Black Queer Cultural Space

Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd. Saturday, July 1–Sunday, July 2, 8:30pm–12am. Free. bit.ly/fiercenessserved

This event will honor decades-long work and the vital role of Black and queer artists and community gatherers with a night of film, conversation and celebration. It will feature Michelle Parkerson’s new film “Fierceness Served! The Enikalley Coffeehouse,” clips of Chicago’s queer art spaces Holsum Roc, and Party Noire and a roundtable conversation with local Black queer cultural leaders: Nick Alder with Party Noire, Stephanie Coleman with Holsum Roc, Chris Smith with Affinity, Karlie Thornton with FroSkate, Donna Rose Weems with Literary Exchange and Yvonne Welbon with Sisters in Cinema. The evening will culminate in a Party Noire takeover of the Green Line Performing Arts Center. The free event includes two drink tickets. Registration does not guarantee entrance, attendance is first come, first serve. (Zoe Pharo)

Chosen Few Picnic and Festival Jackson Park, 6401 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday, July 8, 9am–11pm. General admission tickets are $60. bit.ly/ChosenFewFest

The massive Jackson Park gathering dubbed “the Woodstock of house music” returns to 63rd Street and Hayes Drive on July 8. Music ranges from reggae and world music to Afrobeat, R&B, blues, gospel, hip hop, jazz. and Latin, and features artists Stone Love, Bass Odyssey, and King Addies and Lil June, among others.

(Zoe Pharo)

Passport Vibes Street Festival 2023

The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Saturday, July 8, 1pm–11pm. Free. bit.ly/PassportVibes

The fifth Passport Vibes street festival presented by Afrolux is returning on July 8. Afrobeat is a music genre originating in West Africa and fusing traditional Nigerian music, highlife, jazz and funk. Contemporary afrobeat has grown to include Caribbean and electro influences as well. The festival will showcase music from Chicago top local and international DJs, food, and retail vendors, outdoor laser tag, and virtual reality, photo installations and more. (Zoe Pharo)

Poetry of Witness and Resistance: A Writing Workshop and Reading

5045 S. Ellis Ave. Saturday, July 15, 3pm–9:30pm. Suggested donation of $25. bit.ly/FireplacepoetryWS

The Kenwood intentional community The Fireplace is hosting a poetry workshop with writer Jeannine Pitas followed by dinner, an evening reading, and open mic. In the workshop, participants will read poems by writers from around the world who have lived through times of struggles. Participants will then be given prompts to generate their own writing in a supportive, non judgemental environment. The goal is for all participants to leave with four drafted poems. Open to all, this workshop is meant both for absolute beginners and seasoned bards. The workshop will be followed by Jeannine Pitas reading from her new poetry collection, Or/And, as well as an open mic for anyone to share their work. (Zoe Pharo)