09.07.23

Larry Snelling Was Implicated in ’97 Corruption Scheme

The mayor’s pick to lead CPD allegedly was one of four officers who threatened to frame a man if he didn’t get them a gun.

BY MAX BLAISDELL

In 1997, Larry Snelling was implicated as one of several officers who coerced a man into bringing them a gun by threatening they’d plant drugs on him if he didn’t cooperate. According to records obtained by the Weekly, a sting operation conducted by Internal Affairs as a result of a complaint the man filed snared three officers close to Snelling, including his partner at the time, in the scheme.

Snelling is Mayor Brandon Johnson’s

pick to be the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD’s) next superintendent. He was short-listed for the top position by the new Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) after a months-long search, and Johnson announced he’d be his choice on August 14. The City Council has yet to confirm him. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to the Weekly’s questions by press time.

CCPSA president Anthony Driver told

the Weekly that the commission reviewed Snelling’s entire disciplinary history and that he “still 100 percent” supports him becoming the next superintendent.

“The vast majority of Chicagoans I’ve talked to support him,” Driver said. “We would not have put his name forward if we thought there was something in his record that disqualified him. The best indicator of a changed person is changed behavior, and I think the last twenty-five years of his record speaks to that.”

Chicago mayors and the department’s top brass have long prioritized taking guns off the street, and the officers who do this kind of work are often rewarded with promotions or other commendations. The tactics employed to accomplish this have occasionally been illegal. In its 2017 investigation of CPD, the Justice Department highlighted “allegations that CPD officers attempt to gain information about crime using methods that undermine CPD legitimacy and may also be unlawful” and reported that the investigation “indicates that these practices in fact exist.”

The events surrounding the sting operation began a couple blocks south of Sherman Park in Englewood on a sweltering July day in 1997. A thirty-yearold man and his girlfriend were sitting on the porch of her house when four officers— Snelling, his partner Leroy Horton, Robert Haile, and Terance Nalls—pulled up. In their sworn statements to Internal Affairs investigators, the officers later claimed they were responding to a narcotics call. They handcuffed and searched the man and placed him in the back of one of their squad cars while they continued combing through the area surrounding his girlfriend’s home.

The man later alleged that one officer

then came back to the car and showed him “six blue tinted zip-lock bags containing rock cocaine,” and insisted the drugs were his. The officers never inventoried the baggies, and all later claimed not to have found any drugs on the man or that they even arrested him. Instead, they said they’d brought him to the station to fill out a contact card.

According to a complaint the man later filed, the four officers took him to the 7th District in West Englewood. After arriving at the station, the man—who had been arrested less than four months before on a separate drug offense and was on parole for a prior conviction—said that the officers, including Snelling, told him that they’d let him go if he promised to bring them a gun.

Should he fail to do so, the officers said the next time they saw him they would plant drugs on him and send him to prison, the man alleged.

“Don’t fuck me over,” the man alleged Haile told him, “or he would “have [your] black ass back in the penitentiary."

Haile then handed the man his business card and gave him specific instructions to page him at his number with the code “57” and to place the gun in “the hole of a tree” behind his girlfriend’s house where they would know to pick it up. Then they released him.

Two days later, the man called Internal Affairs to report Snelling, Haile, Horton, and Nalls. He was interviewed by investigators a few days later, and he gave them the business card. It bore Haile’s full name and his title, “preliminary investigator,” as well as a freemason insignia and the motto “Often Tried, Never Denied.”

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 24

Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor Adam Przybyl

Senior Editors Martha Bayne

Christopher Good

Olivia Stovicek

Sam Stecklow

Alma Campos

Jim Daley

Politics Editor J. Patrick Patterson

Labor Editor Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales

Immigration Editor Wendy Wei

Community Builder Chima Ikoro

Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton

Contributing Editors Jocelyn Vega

Francisco Ramírez Pinedo

Visuals Editor Kayla Bickham

Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino

Staff Illustrators

Mell Montezuma

Shane Tolentino

Director of Fact Checking: Savannah Hugueley

Fact Checkers:

Christopher Good

Micah Clark Moody

Alani Oyola

Lauren Sheperd

Layout Editor Tony Zralka

Program Manager Malik Jackson

Executive Director

Office Manager

Advertising Manager

IN CHICAGO

FEMA relief for flooded homeowners

Disaster relief for Cook County residents is now available for homeowners, renters, and businesses impacted by summer floods and storm damage between June 29 and July 2, 2023. Four FEMA assistance centers will be open until mid-October for people who experienced three to four feet of water flooding. Individuals can apply for grants or low-interest loans. However, FEMA deputy regional administrator Mike Chesney emphasized that this is just help, saying, “FEMA assistance is not intended to get you back to where you were before the disaster.” Residents can apply for FEMA relief online, by calling the helpline at 800-621-3362 or via the FEMA mobile app. People can also visit the assistance centers in person located in Washington Square Mall, Morton College, Columbus Park Fieldhouse, and the Berwyn Grove Avenue Parking Garage. If you choose to go in-person, make sure to bring along a photo ID, an insurance policy, and any receipts documenting related expenses. No appointments are necessary; the deadline to register is October 16.

Chairman Fred Hampton Day designation

Last week, Mayor Brandon Johnson declared August 30 Chairman Fred Hampton Day to honor the late civil rights leader and deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party’s Illinois chapter. Johnson presented Hampton’s son, Fred Hampton Jr., and Hampton’s wife Mama Aka N’Jeri with a copy of the declaration in front of the West Side house on 2337 W. Monroe Street where Hampton was assassinated by Chicago police in 1969. As a Black Panther, Hampton founded the anti-racist, class-conscious, multiracial political alliance known as the Rainbow Coalition, which brought together the Puerto Rican Young Lords, the poor white Young Patriots Organization, and the Blackstone Rangers street gang. With their combined resources, the Rainbow Coalition provided aid to low-income citizens and agitated for better housing and living conditions.

Hampton’s life was cut short at age twenty-one when police shot him in his bed on December 4, 1969. Standing outside Hampton’s former home, Johnson stated, “Chairman Fred embodied what clearly is a demonstration of power, a demonstration of one of the strongest, if not the strongest force on the planet. And that’s love.”

IN THIS ISSUE

larry snelling was implicated in ’97 corruption scheme

The mayor’s pick to lead CPD allegedly was one of four officers who threatened to frame a man if he didn’t get them a gun.

max blaisdell ..........................................

‘girl, you wrote that!’

Some StreetWise vendors don’t just sell the magazine–they write for it.

2

Damani Bolden

Mary Leonard

Susan Malone

Webmaster Pat Sier

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

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

South Side Weekly

6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637

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

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

Chicago needs federal assistance for asylum seekers

One year ago this week, the first busload of asylum seekers arrived in Chicago. Since then, Chicago has taken in more than 13,000 people; currently, 6,500 are staying at sixteen City-run shelters.

Mayor Johnson has repeatedly said that he inherited the City’s response from his predecessor even while seeking new avenues to feed and house asylum seekers. Johnson opened new shelters and engaged with networks of mutual-aid volunteers to manage the crisis. Plans to open shelters have repeatedly faced pushback from residents (see “Hyde Park Divided,” p. 19). In August, a volunteer-run shelter in Pilsen was forced to close due to a lack of funding.

Johnson wants to stop using police stations as temporary shelters, a practice begun under former mayor Lightfoot. Allegations of mistreatment have emerged at multiple stations. On a recent call with volunteers, Rey Wences, Johnson’s first deputy mayor of immigrant, migrant, and refugee rights, said the City hopes to stop using police stations as shelters by the winter.

With costs approaching the hundreds of millions, Johnson and his allies are pushing for federal assistance. In mid-August, Congresspersons Jonathan Jackson (IL-1) and Delia Ramirez (IL-3) joined a few alders to quietly tour shelters at the 3rd Police District and former Wadsworth Elementary School in Woodlawn ahead of what sources described as a behind-the-scenes push for federal funding. Last week, Mayor Johnson joined Governor J.B. Pritzker to publicly call on the feds to fast-track work authorization permits for migrants.

The buses keep coming, averaging one per day. The City is now considering opening another new shelter in Greektown. But its ad hoc response isn’t adequate or sustainable, and more funding is required. The need for federal assistance is dire.

sharon bloyd-peshkin ...........................

5 who is can tv for?

Employees and community producers at the publicaccess station allege reduced programming and mistreatment.

jason flynn ..............................................

south siders maintain high hopes for brandon johnson

Interviews with respondents of a mayoral Weekly survey from May.

wendy wei ..............................................

8

12

chicago cops accused of domestic violence are rarely disciplined

Advocates say the lack of accountability has a chilling effect on survivors’ willingness to report abuse.

max blaisdell

‘small batch, big love’ culminates in creativity and community

New craft grow cannabis licensees bring more equity to the industry.

vidal n. granados

hyde park divided over city plan to house migrants

An emergency meeting in Hyde Park largely mirrored meetings concerning migrant shelters in Woodlawn and South Shore.

michael liptrot and hannah faris, hyde park herald

15

17

19 esidentes de hyde park divididos ante el plan municipal de alojar a migrantes

Una reunión de emergencia en Hyde Park se asemejó en gran medida a previas reuniones sobre en Woodlawn y South Shore. por michael liptrot y hannah faris, hyde park herald traducido por alma campos ............... 20 ‘this is how you do it right’

Environmental activists on the last couple of years, the progression of their organizing, and what they want to see next.

alma campos .............................................

calendar Bulletin and events.

zoe pharo

21

23

Cover photo by Gerri Fernandez

After hearing the man’s allegations, Internal Affairs investigators decided to conduct an “integrity check” of the officers with a sting operation. They obtained a .357 magnum from CPD’s Education and Training Division and had it dusted with an ultraviolet powder so that anyone who touched it would have invisible traces on their hands and clothes. They put the handgun in a white plastic bag along with ten small zip-lock bags containing a rocky white substance made to look like crack.

They placed the white plastic bag in the hole in the tree behind the man’s girlfriend’s house and paged Haile.

Haile called the man, who told him where to find the bag. As expected, Haile, Horton, and Nalls drove to the house in an unmarked vehicle shortly after the call. Unbeknownst to the officers, Internal Affairs was surveilling and recording their movements. Investigators witnessed Haile get out of the car, quickly retrieve the white plastic bag from inside of the tree, and then take it back into the car before opening it up and looking inside.

Rather than driving straight back to the station with the recovered gun the officers made a street stop of a group of people and searched the area around them as Internal Affairs investigators continued to surveil them. Back at the station, investigators saw Haile carry the handgun inside. The officers didn’t bring in the baggies of fake crack or report their recovery. In their case report, they claimed an “unknown citizen” paged them and told them he’d seen teenagers put the bag in the tree.

Having witnessed the officers seize the planted gun and place it in evidence

‘Girl, you wrote that!’

as if they had obtained it in the course of normal police business, Internal Affairs investigators stopped them as they were leaving and informed them of the man’s allegations. They found traces of the ultraviolet powder on the officers’ hands, indicating that each had separately held the planted gun.

Investigators later served Snelling with a notice that he was also one of the accused officers.

In formal statements to investigators, all four denied that they had threatened the man with prison time or that they had ever told him to get them a gun. Haile claimed that after removing the gun from the bag, he’d balled up the bag and thrown it away without ever seeing the zip-lock baggies with fake crack cocaine.

Internal Affairs found the allegations against Haile, Horton, and Nalls sustained, and they all served short suspensions of no more than five days.

Snelling, who was formally accused of having “threatened to plant drugs on the complainant if [he] did not get him a gun” before releasing the man without charges, denied the allegations. Investigators found the complaint against him not sustained, meaning there wasn’t enough evidence to prove or disprove the allegations.

The CPD’s press office did not respond to the Weekly’s request for comment.

The CCPSA will hold a public forum on Thursday, September 7 at 6:00 p.m. at the National Museum of Mexican Art where Snelling will answer questions from the commission and the public. To submit questions or comments for Snelling, fill out this form: bit.ly/SnellingForum. ¬

BY SHARON BLOYD-PESHKIN

It’s noon on a Thursday in June, and folks filter into a sunlit office on Chicago’s near South Side, stopping for cookies and warmly greeting one another before taking their seats. Denise Santomauro, a teaching artist with the Chicago Stories Project, begins the writing workshop with a review of the guidelines the group wrote during an earlier session: be open to experimentation and ideas; be supportive and encouraging; be constructive rather than critical; snap your fingers when someone’s done something you like.

Today’s focus is the upcoming issue on Disability Pride Month, and these writers bring more to the table than their notebooks and pens. As vendors for StreetWise magazine, each of them has first-hand knowledge of how disabilities—temporary or permanent— can upend a person’s life, leaving them homeless and destitute. If they haven’t had that experience themselves, they know people who have.

A. Allen, sixty years old, tells the story of a vendor who was discharged from a hospital after an injury and had nowhere to go. “How do they release people from the hospital who are homeless who have temporary disabilities?” he asks.

Kianna Drummond, thirty-six, brings up the impact she’s seen from the closure of City-run mental health facilities. Cornelius Washington, sixty, recalls his own experience after eleven months in a nursing home.

Soon they are brainstorming about

the many issues faced by people with disabilities that are also obstacles for unhoused people and everyone else, such as the lack of public restrooms in the city.

StreetWise is the rare publication where the voices of people who’ve lived on the streets are woven throughout. Like other street papers across the country and the world, StreetWise publishes profiles of its vendors and quotes them in stories. But unlike most other papers, it also coaches them as writers and features their stories in the magazine.

The vendors’ writing group is where their story ideas are shared and shaped. Santomauro and StreetWise’s editorin-chief, Suzanne Hanney, guide the discussion. Then the vendors spend twenty minutes writing drafts of their stories, which are due the following week.

Because this is the last writing workshop of the season, Santomauro ends the session by distributing new notebooks and pens “so that resources won’t prevent you from writing this summer.” As the vendors file out, they agree to meet the following Thursday in her absence.

“There’s a sense of community that has formed between the participants around the craft of writing and in a general sense, too. They seem to look out for each other outside of class and know what’s going on in each other's lives,” Santomauro said. “While that may have existed without [the] writers group, I think it’s definitely deepened those relationships.”

Some StreetWise vendors don’t just sell the magazine–they write for it.

corruption scheme. Personnel file photos of the four officers, clockwise from upper left: Snelling, Robert Haile, Terance Nalls, and Leroy Horton.

Earning and learning

For thirty years, StreetWise has provided a low-barrier way to earn money for people who are re-integrating into society after being incarcerated, hospitalized, or unhoused. “They can get off the ground immediately and earn an income with dignity,” Amanda Jones, director of programs for StreetWise, said of the magazine’s hundred or so vendors. “It’s a good source of income and selfesteem.”

StreetWise was launched a few years after the first contemporary North American street paper, Street Sheet, started publishing in San Francisco in 1989. Today, it is one of at least two dozen street papers in the U.S., according to the International Network of Street Papers, whose members in thirty-five countries provide jobs for an estimated 20,500 vendors.

Streetwise has about one hundred vendors in Chicago.

The magazine is “the cornerstone of our brand,” added Julie Youngquist, executive director of StreetWise. “We started as a publication and that’s all we did.” Over time, StreetWise added a jobs training program, social services, provision of hygiene supplies, and a cafe serving free food, but “the core of what we do is produce a magazine so vendors can sell it and it’s a recurring source of revenue for them,” Youngquist said.

The magazine plays two roles: “It’s the product our vendors sell so they can earn an income and reintegrate into society, and it also tells the stories of vendors and stories that are often not heard otherwise,” Jones said.

Much of the recruitment is through word of mouth from other vendors. Allen, who has been with StreetWise for twelve years, learned about the paper from a man at a shelter who told him he was working downtown. “That sounded like a prestigious job,” Allen said. “I wanted to do that.” The man explained that his job was selling papers, so Allen attended a StreetWise orientation session and began selling the magazine, too.

“Before, I was dealing with mental health issues and drug addiction, so when I came to StreetWise, it was a way for me to stay sober and earn money,” he said. “I had been to the hospital, been to rehab,

because it could help keep me focused. And I’d be earning an honest living.”

Until two years ago, Drummond, a current vendor of StreetWise, was homeless, supporting herself by asking strangers for money outside the Chicago Cultural Center. “Another vendor saw me doing that and said, ‘If you can do that, you would love doing what I do,’” Drummond recalled.

“Suzanne [Hanney] is a really good teacher,” she said. “She taught me … you have to know how to write your words around any situation you’re writing about so it can be more about people than about one person. But once I grabbed that concept … it’s become easier and easier.” Now she keeps a notebook and writes every day.

“StreetWise was a step up for me. That’s why I was so good at it,” she said. “I

When Allen found out about the writing group almost ten years ago, he recognized the opportunity. “I said, ‘I might as well advance my skills and my life,’” he recalled. “I wanted to grow.”

Back then, the writing group was run by volunteers and interns; a grant two years ago from the Field Foundation allowed for a paid facilitator as well as stipends for attendance and for writing stories.

Washington, who has been with StreetWise for twenty years, first as a vendor and now in the StreetWise Transition to Employment Program, appreciates the freedom it allows him. “I’ve always been mobile. I like moving around,” he said. “And vendorship is a wonderful place to be.”

He values the way the writing group helps him clarify his ideas. “It helps me to know what I’m talking about,” he said. From Hanney, the publication’s editorin-chief, he picked up a fascination with how understanding history explains our present times. He almost never misses a session.

“I push people to tell me, ‘Why is that important to you?’” Hanney said of the way she coaches the writers. That’s where the mission of the magazine and the mission of the organization connect. “Our niche is marginalized people,” Hanney said. “How do we give them full participation in America? How do we help them reach their full potential?”

The writers group “gives [vendors] the tools and the confidence to tell their stories,” Jones, the director of programs for StreetWise said.

Making connections

When Allen began writing, customers responded enthusiastically. “People were like, ‘You’re really developing your skills. I notice your writing is improving. Keep up the good work,’” he said. “Some of them call me a columnist.”

So she signed up. After Drummond became a vendor, Allen invited her to the writing group. “I like your drive and you have a lot to say,” she remembered him telling her. “I think you’ll like it.”

She began attending the meetings, earning $15 for being there, and then writing, for which she was also paid. It

was already doing it but I had nothing to give back other than ‘thank you and have a nice day.’” She made a point of reading each new issue before arriving at her post outside the Mariano’s at 16th and Dearborn. That way, she could talk about the articles with her customers, which helped with sales.

Drummond was proud when she first saw her words in print, and there was an extra payoff when she began selling magazines with her byline in them. “Customers would say, ‘Girl, that’s you! You wrote that!,’” she said, and tipped her more generously.

She appreciates the way writing lets her think deeply about topics and share

Kianna and Allen.

PHOTO BY DIANA PIETRZYK

StreetWise is the rare publication where the voices of people who’ve lived on the streets are woven throughout. Like other street papers across the country and the world, StreetWise publishes profiles of its vendors and quotes them in stories. But unlike most other papers, it also coaches them as writers and features their stories in the magazine.

her thoughts and observations with others. “I be outside all the time, so that gives me the chance to really put my words out there for people,” she said. She hopes her stories bring people insights into lives unlike their own, and another view of the city they share.

“We are the voice of the street,” she said. “I used to panhandle. I came from panhandling to giving back to the people.”

Allen hopes his stories provide readers with “a perspective from the streets, because I used to live on the streets. I was homeless for three years … people have different perspectives depending on where they are from. I’m hoping they will get a street-level perspective.”

Because vendors stay in one location over time, they develop regular customers who talk about the stories with them. “You have a tendency where you actually get to know the people very well. And once they start purchasing from you, you develop a relationship,” Allen said.

“The paper bridges the gap, and once the gap is bridged, you discuss the articles and you discuss basic issues in life.”

Customers sometimes influence the magazine, too. “Some of the issues I discuss, I can bring back to StreetWise and we can write about,” Allen said. When Tina Turner died, one of his customers suggested StreetWise publish a story about her. Allen, who had met Turner when he was a child, suggested the idea to Hanney, who made it the cover story in the June 21-27, 2023 issue. “What the

vendors are excited about, they can sell better,” she said.

Vendors in the writing group also influence stories written by others. During the workshops, Hanney reads the stories she’s working on and invites their critique. Many of her stories include quotes from them or short sidebars written by them. For example, Hanney’s Juneteenth cover package (June 14-20, 2023 issue) quoted Allen and Washington, and includes

fact, Drummond refuses to take money if a customer declines the publication.

“The way I try to explain it: At the moment that you approach a vendor, they’re equal to you. You are engaging in a transaction. So what it does is it removes the dignity from that transaction and turns it into charity,” Youngquist said. “It’s totally different from tipping. It’s almost worse than not buying it at all.”

“What people don’t understand is this is their job. They like this; they are

who are doctors. I would never communicate with a doctor unless I was in a hospital; I would never communicate with a lawyer unless I was in a courtroom. I’m grateful that I get to meet a variety of people.”

Drummond also has ambitions she never dreamt of when she was panhandling outside the cultural center. “Being a writer and an information seeker, it could take me a long way,” she said. She’s been offered jobs and invited to join other writers groups. “I have opportunities,” she said.

Hanney, too, has aspirations for the writers. She wants to get to the point where the vendors come up with their own story topics without any prompting from her because they can bring fresh ideas and approaches to the magazine.

But writing is still a slow process for them, and time spent writing is time not selling magazines and earning money. “I’m open to it, and they know that,” she said. “But it's something that doesn’t happen right away.”

And although the two-year grant supporting the vendors writing group has ended, Jones is confident the group will continue to meet and write. “We will find

freedom by them and vendor Jacqueline Sanders.

“I want StreetWise to be able to throw these issues out there and get them discussed,” Hanney said. “So it was important to ask the vendors to listen and tell me what they thought.”

Dignity, not charity

Vendors purchase the magazines from StreetWise for $1.15 apiece and sell them for $3 plus tips. That doesn’t always amount to enough to live on, but for many, it supplements other modest income sources such as disability, veteran and social security benefits. StreetWise also connects vendors with public support services.

Customers are encouraged to tip on top of the cover price. But they are strongly discouraged from paying and telling a vendor, “Keep the magazine.” In

their own boss,” Hanney said. “They stay because they like what they’re doing. They’re in neighborhoods where they are interacting with high-level people.”

Those are the readers the magazine— and the vendors—want to reach with their stories. “Our vendors’ voices are in there and we have a different take on topics than other outlets,” Youngquist said.

The vendors who write for the magazine have “a unique skill to share and cross the divide,” Jones said, by “telling stories people don’t often hear but people want to hear … there’s a lot of relationship building and cross-cultural learning that happens, too.”

Some day, Allen hopes to write a book about selling street papers. “This is actually a fascinating job,” he said. “You get to interact with people.

“I have customers who are lawyers, customers who are architects, customers

a way. We figure things out on the fly,” she said. “We’ll keep it going somehow.” ¬

Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin is a professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago and an accredited solutions journalism trainer.

Cornelius writing. PHOTO BY TREY LEGIT

Denise.

PHOTO BY TREY LEGIT

Writing group.

PHOTO BY DIANA PIETRZYK

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Mike Stekala

Who Is CAN TV For?

Employees and community producers at the public-access station say managers reduced programming made by Chicago residents and mistreated staff.

BY JASON FLYNN

Today we’re gonna send a big, big shout out to the people that got us here, Doc. We’re gonna talk about CAN TV,” said Eugene “Geno” Matthews in his exuberant opening to a short-lived series, The Elders, that he produced in the studio of Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

In the first episode, titled simply, “CAN TV Has Changed,” Matthews and his co-host “The Doc” laid out their concerns with recent developments at the public-access television station where they’ve been community producers for decades.

They claimed it has become more difficult for locals to book time at the station, rent equipment, take classes, and broadcast their programs.

The video, filmed on a black background with only a table and a couple of chairs for the host and guest—a minimalist style so associated with publicaccess television that it’s been parodied by the popular internet series Between Two Ferns—apparently struck a chord for CAN TV employees who had their own concerns about upper managers’ actions.

In follow-up episodes, internal disputes were broadcast after current and former employees relayed their negative experiences with upper management to Matthews, who reported their frustrations, including criticism of Executive Director Darrious Hilmon, on the show.

A third episode aired on YouTube before the station’s page was temporarily shut down. When the page went live again, The Elders had been removed.

The removal of The Elders brought

up concerns about free speech and the extent of managers’ authority to moderate community members’ content, which overlapped with staff concerns about the overall direction they say CAN TV has been heading.

In interviews with South Side Weekly, current and former CAN TV employees said they battled upper management for years and faced opposition when advocating for redress on health and safety issues, harassment, budgetary cutbacks, decreased station access hours, favoritism, and poor staff retention.

Those interviewed said Hilmon, who was hired in April 2022, exacerbated long-standing problems at the television station, relaying incidents such as a nearelectrocution, denials of bathroom breaks, and interrogations by upper managers.

CAN TV opened the airwaves to all Chicagoans under a publicaccess model distinct from public television outlets such as the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

While public television stations provide professionally produced content programmed by a small group of directors, public-access television is dedicated to non-professional community members to create content or request coverage for broadcast.

The City Council chartered the Chicago Access Corporation (CAC) in 1983 to oversee public-access cable following years of advocacy work by community groups such as Citizens Committee on the Media.

The television station, which airs programs on channels 19, 21, 27, 36, and 42, is financed largely by a charter

agreement requiring corporate cable providers such as Comcast to fund the community programming.

The station has aired tens of thousands of programs over decades of operation. The organization’s YouTube page reveals the most popular videos are from groups often marginalized by other media, such as particular religious perspectives, political orientations, identity groups, academic work, and government meetings.

Programs include political figures such as Angela Davis and academics like Michelle Alexander. ADAPT, a program discussing disability issues, and Perspectivas Latinas, which highlights art and organizing among people from Latin America, are two of the most popular recurring programs.

CAN TV programs are generally produced under the heading of a few groups: “community producers,” “community partners,” and “non-profit services.”

“Community producers” are residents who are trained by staff to use equipment, edit programs, and broadcast their work on one of the station’s five channels. “Community partners” are residents that make requests for CAN TV staff to film local events, such as meetings, concerts, sports, and parades.

Soon after starting as executive director in April 2022, Hilmon implemented a new category of TV shows titled “signature programs,” a group of shows produced by CAN TV staff members instead of community producers. In practice, Hilmon’s new content model more closely resembles

a public broadcast than a public access model.

Station employees said colleagues

Aric Ramirez and Rob Galletta quietly resigned from the station soon after Hilmon took over as executive director in 2022.

“Rob Galetta … quit because he had been tasked with producing the signature shows to the detriment of all the other historical work that the [community partners] department has done for a long time,” said a CAN TV employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

Andrea Alberti, who resigned from CAN TV in March 2023, took over as manager of the Community Partners Department following Galletta. She was tasked with working on the signature programs after Galletta resigned.

“I was doing some pre-production to the weekly studio [signature] shows, directing and technical directing all of them, and then being post-production supervisor for all of them,” Alberti said.

Alberti said Ramirez was very invested in the expressed mission of CAN TV and unhappy about the new focus on signature programs. She believes he ultimately left because of pay issues after a decade at the station.

“But, really, what that department was meant to be for was to cover important community events … what we had been doing up until that point, was shooting things at the library, shooting city council meetings,” Alberti added.

Hilmon’s new model required significantly more time from staff to produce and edit, compared to the usual community partners program. The station was getting significantly fewer hours of community partners programming as a result of the transition to signature shows.

“Our department, Community Partners, is supposed to be in charge of pretty much all content that's on Channel 27,” Alberti said. “That channel was in desperate need of content. It was really running out of content, and Lesley [Johnson, the programming director] was just replaying things over and over.”

Hilmon hired outside contractors from Big Shoulders Digital Video

Productions to support the transition. But the move only fostered more frustration among the staff, as contractors were paid significantly more than the regular employees. Meanwhile, the operation that previously ran with thirty nonmanagement employees was reduced to fifteen by July 2023 due to resignations, firings, and staff positions going unfilled.

“[Hilmon] tried to argue to me that

consistently, but the chief engineer chose, instead, to put a lot of his money, a lot of CAN TV’s money and time, into a rooftop camera to go on top of the station so you could see a shitty, live version of the city skyline,” Alberti said.

Employees said money was spent on gear like music equipment that was never used for production, and upwards of a million dollars were spent on studio

month, McDonald said.

The prop room at the station, which had previously been available for community producers to furnish the studio for their programs, was also made off-limits to community producers even when studio time became available, Matthews said.

“Now most of the stuff is the signature shows’ property, and you can't touch it,” Matthews said.

McDonald brought concerns to the CAC board in December 2022 and met with Hilmon in January 2023. At the meeting with Hilmon, McDonald laid out concerns that had been raised by community producers about the opaque process in which they were being denied access to the station.

“We just know we can't access the studio, and that people we haven't seen before, people who aren't part of the community as we know it, they're coming in,” McDonald said.

He said Hilmon explained the new programs were supposed to be a way to generate new revenue for the station.

Since then, some time slots have been reopened for community producers, but they still don’t have the same level of access they had before the introduction of signature programs.

it's cheaper for them to outsource this work than to hire an employee,” Alberi said. “They worked for five to six hours. I think they make $900 a day.”

Despite the price tag, CAN TV staff said they found themselves consistently cleaning up the contractors’ mistakes, which they could spot as Big Shoulders’s work needed to be passed back to station employees before going in air.

“If it's coming in late, or with problems, [CAN TV employees] can see it,” Alberti said.

On top of the staffing issues, employees said they often had issues with faulty equipment that money wasn’t allocated to fixing and the issues were exacerbated by rushed production setups. In one extreme case, Alberti claimed an employee was nearly electrocuted by faulty wiring.

“It was kind of hilarious the things that were chosen to spend money on … things were going wrong pretty

cameras instead of field cameras which they say should have been a higher priority.

CAN TV representatives did not reply to requests for comment.

The issues with signature programs are no secret.

Keith McDonald is a community producer who has helped produce around 9,000 shows both for himself and other CAN TV members since 1995. Starting last August, McDonald heard complaints from other producers who couldn’t book a slot at the studio for the whole month. The same issue came up the following month.

He found three-fourths of the time slots historically reserved for community producers were being filled up by signature programs. Without notice, “there were only fifteen slots, and not sixty slots, available to producers,” in a

Multiple community producers, and current and former employees, said they took issue with apparent favoritism in the prioritization of signature programs over other productions. The signature programs, like on In The Arena With Darrious Hilmon and Can Speaks, often featured Hilmon and a group of people he’s close to as hosts and guests.

“People that were hosts of these shows were all people in his personal, professional network,” Alberti said. “You can draw a direct line from Darrious to almost everybody who was hosting, and probably half the people who were guests.”

Andrea Zopp, host of Chicago Newsroom 2.0, Tawanna Streater, host of DIY DEI, and Melanie Sillas, who was a guest on In The Arena and Generation Flex, worked with Hilmon at the Chicago Urban League, a non-profit that promotes Black education and business growth through corporate and civic

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL COLÓN

relationships.

Zopp, Sillas, and Christina Steed, host of For the Culture, worked with Hilmon during his time at Chicago State Foundation, a fundraising arm of Chicago State University. Zopp, Sillas, and Melissa Donaldson, host of Generation Flex, are also connected to Hilmon as members and boosters of NGO Chicago United.

Current and former CAN TV staff and community producers pointed out that employee use of station resources to create their own programs during work hours has long been against station guidelines.

“It was understood that [CAN TV staff] could not use equipment on their time,” a standard that McDonald said was in place to avoid even the appearance of a misuse of station resources.

The staff utilizing the time, space, and equipment at the station for signature shows put them in “direct competition” with community producers, Matthews said on The Elders podcast.

“If the aldermen eventually get wind of this, if the cable channels actually focus on this, CAN TV won't exist because we are not paying them to be the competition,” Mattews said in an interview.

Community producers brought their concerns to yet another public board meeting in March 2023. Elma Lucas, the producer of Elma and Company, said she’d been creating shows at CAN TV for thirty-one years and couldn’t book a slot at the studio.

“I'm speaking up for some of the producers who are not here,” she said.

Staff members also expressed concerns internally about the lack of promotion of community programs.

An audio recording of an all staff meeting from January 2023 that includes the voices of Omari Nyamweya, the former manager of nonprofit services, Hilmon, and other staff members, was recently added to YouTube by user @ iloveCANTV (the video is no longer public). A portion of the audio was used in an episode of The Elders

In the recording, Nyamweya pushed back against Hilmon’s assertion that the community producers are consistently

highlighted on social media.

The anonymous CAN TV employee said upper managers turned to intimidation tactics after the audio was released in a search for whistleblowers in the organization.

“There was kind of a witch hunt to find out who recorded that meeting and who shared it with The Elders,” the source said. “It was extremely hostile. It was extremely intimidating.”

The video also featured a counter displaying the number of social media posts promoting signature shows versus community produced shows in January 2023: there were eighty-seven posts promoting signature shows, and one post

Alberti, who also resigned before the meeting, described being suspended without pay for apparently closing a door loudly. “This decision, from what I understand, was made from the executive director, and him alone, which I interpreted as a clear act of intimidation meant to push me out of my position,” she said in the meeting.

In a letter to the board dated March 9, 2023, Alberti described a “toxic workplace” in which employees were routinely asked to work at an unsafe and logistically untenable pace, and gaslighting from upper management.

Eric Torres, a senior trainer employed at CAN TV for twenty-three years, said

without the staff.”

Following the meeting, the CAN TV board appointed a lawyer, Charlie Wysong, to investigate employees’ allegations of mistreatment and wrongdoing by Hilmon and upper management.

In the middle of the investigation, on April 7, Nyamweya was fired after working at CAN TV for twenty-two years. Managers promoted Julianna Gurdal, who started at the station about a year ago as an intern, to Nyamweya’s position.

“They had only offered me the full time position because they had no one else,” Gurdal said in a June interview. “For over a month they left me as the one person in a department that's supposed to have like four people.”

Nyamweya is a plaintiff in an employment discrimination lawsuit against CAN TV filed July 20.

Gurdal said she was concerned she may be the next person fired, because she’d assisted in the production of The Elders podcast, though podcast production was a regular responsibility in her position.

Managers restricted Gurdal’s access to parts of the station in May after the podcast was taken down. Managers tasked Gurdal with training them on duties in the non-profit services department, and turned the office she shared with a coworker into a storage area.

promoting community producers.

The same YouTube user, using the display moniker Can’t TeeVee, also uploaded the removed videos from The Elders podcast.

At the March board meeting, CAN TV employees also described their own negative experiences, including poor communication, safety issues, intimidation, and discriminatory discipline.

Madeline Carl, who said in the meeting she worked at the station for three months and resigned before the board meeting, described being admonished in an employee review. “I was told that I needed to soften my dialogue, and I was told that I slammed my notebook on the desk when I walked in,” Carl said. “I was told that twice.”

in the March board meeting employees were “disturbed” by the treatment of station staff, who had been under a lot of pressure with little in the way of compensation.

“I think I feel invisible here for the most part, and I think a lot of us do,” Torres said. “We've all asked for raises. We have the right to ask for a raise in our contract and… to my understanding, none of us have been given a raise.”

Lucas and McDonald expressed their own concerns about the apparent mistreatment that led to Alberti’s and Carl’s resignations.

“We want to give compassion to up-and-coming staff because once they come in, they are part of us, and we need to start being more respectful [to] each other,” Lucas said. “We can't do anything

Seeking some level of protection, Gurdal asked General Manager Dave Tainer what her union membership status was, since she’d been at the station for a year. Tainer told her the probationary period under the contract with the union, during which time new employees are not protected as full union members, restarted when she was moved into the full-time role, she said.

On May 10, the board held a closeddoor emergency meeting over Zoom, in which they reviewed the findings of Wysong’s investigation and decided against firing Hilmon. Instead board members opted to form a supervisory committee and hire someone as a management coach.

Matthews, after talking with a board member who attended the meeting, said the decision was made because the group

“I think I feel invisible here for the most part, and I think a lot of us do. We've all asked for raises. We have the right to ask for a raise in our contract and… to my understanding, none of us have been given a raise.”

didn’t want to deal with the negative optics.

Gurdal expressed her concerns about the firing of Nyamweya at a June 13 board meeting.

“The decision to fire Omari was irrational not just because it was abrupt, but also because it followed a year of remarkable work. It's an achievement in and of itself that the department didn't collapse when there was a clear lack of support for it,” Gurdal said in a statement. “The department has still not recovered.”

Gurdal was fired on June 16.

Current and former employees contend the treatment of staff fits into a longer-term pattern of staff suppression and union busting to the financial benefit of upper management.

Jannelle White, now an organizer for AFSCME, was a CAN TV employee for sixteen years and one of the members employed when the staff elected to unionize in 2015.

“We were met with a lot of resistance. Early on, they wouldn't voluntarily recognize the union, so we had to have an election through the NLRB. We had to file a handful of unfair labor practice charges, which were found in our favor,” White said. “The anti union sentiment at CAN TV was prevalent almost immediately.”

White was eventually terminated for her role in union organizing, she said, though the official reason was not wearing an employee lanyard.

“That was a grievance arbitration. Unfortunately, we did not prevail,” White said. “We probably should have asked the arbitrator to recuse himself because he did disclose that he had some limited involvement with CAN TV.”

The anonymous CAN TV staff member said the stance against union employees has continued, and even worsened. They said managers have broken down the bargaining unit variously by pressuring employees to leave, moving employees into management positions, keeping wages low, and doing little to fill open staff positions.

“We can definitely function without all these managers,” the staffer said, pointing to an imbalance where there

are about twelve managers working at the station and about fifteen other staff members. “Omari did that work before they made him the manager. There was no manager for a long time in his department… probably a couple of years.”

In the previous union contract, which covered bargaining unit employees from 2016-2020, and was extended through into 2022, the starting wage for employees was $15 per hour. The top pay rate for employees with fifteen or more years of service was a bit over $20 per hour.

In the time between 2016 and 2021, former Executive Director Jim McVane’s salary increased by $66,000, to $189,442 a year; Associate Executive Director Mary Stack’s salary increased by $42,000, to $165,500 a year; and Chief Engineer Jason Byant’s increased by $20,000 to $123,806 a year. General Manager Dave Tainer’s salary in fiscal year 2021 was listed at $102,000.

Hilmon’s salary is not available in currently accessible tax documents.

“Leadership is too busy adding their own pocket with these exorbitant salaries when a) the money should be allocated back into the organization, and b) the staff should be able to afford to work there,” White said. “You can't really afford to work at CAN TV.”

As station executives solicit donations ahead of a 40th anniversary celebration, CAN TV staff and community producers are wondering: who is CAN TV for? ¬

Jason Flynn is a gig worker based in Chicago writing about working-class issues and organization. This is his first story for the Weekly

GLOBAL PEACE PICNIC PICNIC

High Hopes

BY WENDY WEI

Glenn Harrell, seventy, was sitting in his South Shore apartment on a late Saturday afternoon enjoying his downtime from his job driving deliveries for DoorDash. Traversing Chicago in the driver’s seat has been a source of income for Harrell since 1973—when he started driving yellow cabs. Today Harrell also works as a limousine driver, door security officer, and a private investigator, and on Sundays he serves as Reverend for a small storefront church.

“I pretty much rip and run the streets all day doing one of the four,” he said.

Though Harrell initially supported former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s candidacy in 2019, by the 2023 municipal election, he had switched his vote to current Mayor Brandon Johnson. “I like her—give credit where credit’s due, she did get a few things [done],” he clarified. “Her attitude is what kept her from doing more.”

Harrell was frank about his worries over increased crime in his neighborhood, where he’s lived for over thirty years. “South Shore has gone to the dogs,” he lamented. Last year, Harrell was carjacked. In Johnson, he sees a leader who may be more successful than Lightfoot was in improving public safety.

Harrell is among the forty-eight South Side residents who responded this May to a South Side Weekly survey that asked respondents to rank six of most memorable moments and themes of Lightfoot’s legacy–her responses to COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, the Chicago Teachers Union strike, Chicago Public School funding, the police union,concerns of public safety, her working relationship with City Council, and her media image. The survey was distributed via social media and a print edition of the Weekly.

For some, one hundred days into Johnson’s term, the energy of his victory

has tempered into a cautiously optimistic assessment on his likelihood to deliver on all he promised. During this transitional period, we wanted to hear directly from South Siders about their expectations for Johnson, as shaped by their memory of Lightfoot.

Since the pandemic, national and local headlines have trumpeted Lightfoot’s steep fall from grace, but they fail to capture why most Black South and West Side voters still supported her in her February reelection bid. Notably, in a lost race in which Lightfoot only cinched seventeen percent of the vote, precincts on the South and West sides were the only ones she earned a first-place finish.

Before the runoff in April 2023, pundits speculated about who would win over Lightfoot supporters in these majority-Black wards on the South and West sides. As it turned out, Johnson, too, can thank them for his victory: in April, majority-Black precincts delivered him around 88,000 more votes than he had in February, which ultimately vaulted Johnson past Vallas’ 60,000-plus vote lead in the

general election.

What about Lightfoot’s four years garnered South Side voters’ support in 2023—a time when so many in other parts of Chicago were happy to see her booted out? In Johnson, which positive traits of Lightfoot’s tenure are South Siders hoping to see echoed? What approaches do they hope are different?

Like Glenn Harrell, Charlene Guss wants better for the South Side, she relayed while driving home to her Douglas neighborhood. A lifelong Chicago native of sixty-eight years, she rated Lightfoot higher than average on all six categories. Reflecting back on the highlights of her tenure, Guss praised Lightfoot’s COVID-19 response. “She did not drag her feet in response to COVID-19.” Speaking from her experience living in Douglas during the pandemic, Guss recalled that “there were facilities in places where people could go for testing [and] vaccinations…and there

on a low note, during her first year, she enjoyed positive approval ratings, according to one poll, for her COVID-19 response in early 2020. Just over half of our survey respondents agreed, giving Lightfoot an average of 2.77 stars out of five.

Lightfoot did not start out as the South Side’s preference in 2019’s municipal election. (Preckwinkle had twenty-three percent of the South Side vote while Lightfoot only had fifteen percent.) However, by the municipal elections in 2023, Lightfoot was overwhelmingly the favorite in many majority-black West and South Side wards.

Guss was an early supporter of Lightfoot since 2019. “I admire [her] initiative to revitalize neglected neighborhoods on the South and West Sides,” she wrote in response to the Weekly survey in May 2023, referring to Invest South West, Lightfoot’s signature threeyear plan to pour $750 million in public funds to neglected neighborhoods and corridors. But by 2023’s municipal election,

South Siders look back on Lightfoot in our survey and discuss a future under Johnson.

Glenn Harrell PHOTOS BY WENDY WEI

be an understatement. According to a survey in February 2023, seventy-five percent of Chicagoans were dissatisfied with public safety, and only thirty-three percent were satisfied with the city’s public education. In the Weekly survey, South Siders ranked Lightfoot’s treatment of both public safety and public education poorly—averaging less than two stars out of five.

Throughout Chicago history, public safety and police misconduct have disproportionately affected South Side residents. According to a 2020 audit, police officers stop Black Chicagoans at overwhelming rates in the South Side and are more likely to use force against them. West and South side residents are also at the highest risk of gun violence, yet suffer the longest wait times for responses to 911 calls in certain neighborhoods such as Woodlawn and South Shore.

Some South Siders’ vote for Johnson was more indicative of their refusal to support Paul Vallas’ perceived racism rather than approval of the policies that make up Johnson’s public safety platform.

“I hate to say it, but Paul Vallas is a racist,” Harrell stated point blank, when explaining his vote for Johnson in May. Guss also contextualized her support for Johnson with her view that Vallas “would be a puppet for the leader of the police union… And under no circumstances do I

want to do anything to support the current Fraternal Order of the Police leadership

Several South Side respondents stated that their memory of Lightfoot is negatively defined by her policing responses that seemed to disproportionately target Black youth, especially during the Black Lives

Sativa Volbrecht, twenty-five, moved to Chicago from the suburbs for college in 2016. Since graduation she’s lived in Bronzeville. After qualifying for city residency in 2023, Volbrecht’s first ever vote for Chicago mayor went to Johnson. Like Guss, she was understanding of Lightfoot’s actions in 2020 given the unprecedented context of a global pandemic, but ultimately balked at Lightfoot’s response to the BLM

In response to BLM protests in May and June 2020, Lightfoot ordered to raise the bridges connecting downtown with the northside, installed the National Guard to man checkpoints, and increased CPD patrols, for which a watchdog organization found that CPD underreported baton strikes used against crowds. South Side Weekly compiled over fifty testimonials on excessive use of force reported on May 30 alone. In the Weekly survey, South Siders rated Lightfoot’s BLM protest response the lowest out of any of the provided categories at barely over 1.5 stars.

“It, to me, was sending a message… that protesting isn’t welcome, which I don’t think is the right response to protestors,” Volbrecht explained. She prefers a more rounded approach to addressing public safety than Lightfoot’s, which, to her, felt heavy-handed. “I personally felt that the South Side is over policed a lot, and I think that it increased under Lightfoot,” Volbrecht said.

Like Volbrecht, for Anna Schibrowsky, Lightfoot’s decisions during the short but volatile period in June 2020 defined the former Mayor’s legacy, specifically her decision to barricade downtown from the rest of the city. Schibrowsky, forty-four, has lived in Bridgeport for over twenty years and works as a marketing coordinator in commercial real estate. Schibrowsky, who voted for Preckwinkle in 2019, only became more disillusioned with Lightfoot’s leadership by 2020.

“The photos of the bridges raised have become iconic and traumatic,” she

said. “The thing I'll never forget is that Lori had the National Guard barricade off northeast Chinatown from the grocery stores in southwest Chinatown. Volunteers had to skirt blockades of armored vehicles to take fresh produce to elderly Chinese Americans during a pandemic.”

Though Lightfoot requested in June 2020 that Governor JB Pritzker deploy the National Guard to surround the downtown area, she pushed back on aldermanic attempts to call on the National Guard in August 2020 to patrol the city. On the South Side, where a higher proportion of residents experienced violent crime, Alderpersons and residents were split over the appropriate amount of force to apply to the situation.

Schibrowsky understands the complexity and multi-faceted nature of addressing public safety—and resists narratives to oversimplify or stereotype opinions. “There’s no one cohesive opinion on the Southwest Side about the police,” she stated. “Some of them are ready to abolish the police because they see young people being harassed by CPD and their futures being restricted by CPD, charging them with things that we don’t see kids in more affluent areas get charged for. But there’s also gun violence, people are saying, ‘Well where is CPD? There was a shooting and CPD didn’t come for two hours.’ I think where people agree is that CPD is doing things we don’t want.”

Schibrowsky voted for Johnson in both 2023 elections. She says that Lightfoot did not prioritize Chicago Police Department reform and that “under Johnson, I would like to see the consent decree compliance,

prioritize[d] and forward[ed] more quickly. I would like to see us start having mental health first responders who are not accompanied by people with guns, I’d like to see the new police district council tak[e]

concern for the South and West Side, in which the city’s heavy industry is disproportionately concentrated and in which the city’s highest percentage of Black and Latinx residents live. Inside Climate News deemed these areas “sacrifice zones” which is defined as populated areas with high levels of pollution and environmental hazards where the health and safety of residents is sacrificed for the economic gains and prosperity of others.

Under Lightfoot, an investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in July 2022 accused the city of not listening to Southeast Side residents’ opposition to General Iron. HUD ultimately deemed the handling a violation of Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Lightfoot rejected General Iron’s request for a permit.

Johnson campaigned on a Green New Deal, including a comprehensive study “of this city’s environmental needs, with a focus on identifying the hazards on the South and West sides.” Johnson suffered with asthma as a child and currently lives in Austin, one of the most polluted areas in Chicago. Both Volbrecht and Schibrowsky will be closely following Johnson’s commitment to reinstating the city’s Department of the Environment, which was dissolved under the Emanuel administration.

Anna Schibrowsky PHOTOS BY WENDY WEI

Sativa Volbrecht PHOTOS BY WENDY WEI

Johnson’s Transition Report sets out to not only reinstate the Department, but to match or exceed funding for the previous Department with a $5 million budget.

In her free time, Schibrowsky volunteers with Southwest Environmental Alliance, a grassroots organization combating environmental racism in the Southwest Side. During a community forum she attended during runoff season between Vallas and Johnson, she recalls that Vallas had made stronger commitments to the Southwest Environmental Alliance. Nonetheless, Johnson’s less pinned down answer made a positive impression on Schibrowsky. “He was like, I’m not going to commit to not issuing any permits [to industrial sites] because some communities might actually want those permits issued and have more jobs in their community. The fact that he was not always telling us just what he knew we wanted to hear, but telling us he would listen to individual communities…That was strongly in his favor for me.”

Schibrowsky said that Southwest Environmental Alliance tried to secure meetings with Lightfoot during her tenure, but that “she kept refusing…she didn’t want to listen.” Though the Alliance has yet to meet with Johnson directly, Schibrowsky said they did convene with his chief of staff in August. “So we’re already seeing someone who’s more willing to make his staff available to listen to the concerns of the community. Hopefully, we’ll see more action in addition to that.”

As of June 2023, Johnson has also stated that he will fight to appeal a ruling allowing a permit to operate a metal shredding and recycling facility, Southside Recycling (formerly General Iron), at 11600 S. Burley Ave.

Shepherding promises off the campaign trail and into the mechanisms of city bureaucracy requires finesse with both the science of rigid processes and the art of collaboration.

“I strongly feel that what defeated her in not accomplishing more, was her abrasiveness. Lori’s attitude was ‘my way or the highway,’” Harrell said, touching on a common thread between most respondents who lost confidence in the effectiveness of Lightfoot’s strong-headed leadership

style to build the political support needed to get things done. Several respondents mentioned her lack of collaboration as a defining weakness. As one respondent to the Weekly survey put it, “she may be the only politician who could alienate the cops and the progressives.”

One of the public quarrels referenced the most by survey respondents was Lightfoot’s fraught relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union. Education is a huge issue for voters, especially for South Siders. As SSW reported, “a large majority of the schools closed [in 2013] were on the South and West sides of the city where the students were majority, if not completely, Black or brown.” The CTU itself is a political force that contributed over $1 million to Johnson’s campaign and represents over 25,000 school-related professionals in Chicago.

Despite her support for Lightfoot’s economic and health policies, Guss was ultimately “disappointed by…her verbal sparring and bickering with [teachers] union leadership.” After Lightfoot’s refusal to recognize the overwhelming CTU vote for a return to remote learning in January 2022, due to the rise in COVID cases, the union walked out. Over the five days of school closure, the #LoriLockout hashtag trended on social media to follow CTU’s teachers “burned” by Lightfoot’s actions to freeze teachers’ pay and lock them out of virtual classrooms. Union Vice President Jackson Potter by January 2023 characterized the union’s relationship with Lightfoot as “with this mayor, something that should become a

cakewalk is always a dogfight.”

Johnson’s history as a CTU organizer and CPS teacher, and extensive record of collaboration with CTU solidified Guss’s vote for him in both 2023 elections. “I think his past involvement with the teachers’ union will help us in a peripheral way; it makes the people who are leadership in the teachers’ union feel… that they have an ally, who they can tell what they want.” Allyship between the mayor and CTU is going to be especially important starting in 2024 when CTU will increase their bargaining power in city policy. For the first time, Chicago will have an elected school board, which will start with eleven seats appointed by the mayor and elected ten seats.

Volbrecht also welcomes an amicable mayoral governing style with the teacher’s union. She felt that the framing of Lightfoot’s comments on CTU actions sent the wrong message—that “teachers didn’t care about the kids that they were teaching.” Lightfoot had characterized the CTU strike in 2022 as “an illegal walkout”

Harrell has seen nine Chicago mayors come and go in his lifetime and is optimistic while realistic about what Johnson can accomplish. “Everything that I’ve seen from Brandon so far, he has no problem compromising,” Harrell said. In response to a question about Johnson’s potential deviations from campaign promises, he replied “[Johnson’s] willingness to backtrack and take another look at it says to me that you’ve got enough sense to reexamine and hear other opinions.…He doesn’t have tunnel vision.”

Every one of the four respondents we spoke with felt it was too early to make any concrete judgment about Johnson’s administration. Harrell will reserve judgment of Johnson until at least six months into his tenure and on “something that he actually gets off the ground. Not ‘I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that.’ I mean, actually accomplish it, put it in motion and then see where it’s at.”

“Let's give him a couple more months, and then we'll have a better idea,” Schibrowky said. “He’s started changing people in charge of some of these city departments. Hopefully once the new people get in and get familiarized, we'll see some changes.”

With so many pieces still needing to be put in place, Volbrecht said it will be a year before she attempts to make a judgment on Johnson’s fitness as mayor. “It seems like a long time, but I feel personally, [for] the government, it isn’t that long—bureaucracy is slow.”

Guss found media criticism of Johnson’s early term at this stage to be premature. “I took exception to some things I read in the Sun-Times in [August] because I think it was…sensationalized.”

in which teachers “abandoned their posts and… abandoned kids and their families.”

Volbrecht liked that Johnson “talked about [the CTU protest] in a nuanced way. He’s like ‘okay, you know, the children are important, but people deserve good working conditions and good leaders.’ In general, he tends to take a more nuanced view of things in a way that I really like.”

“I think it’s important to remember that this is Chicago. Who accomplishes anything in this city as complex as it is in just 100 days?” said Guss. “I know if we had a big snowstorm, we’d have that [cleared] up in less than 100 hours. But in terms of our problems, I don’t know that anyone could finish them. Even if they started, we’d be criticizing them.” ¬

Wendy is the immigration section editor at South Side Weekly and covers interracial solidarity between communities of color.

Chicago Cops Accused of Domestic Violence are Rarely Disciplined

BY MAX BLAISDELL

Recent investigations by WBEZ and the Weekly uncovered domestic violence allegations against interim police superintendent Fred Waller that prompted Karla Altmayer, the chair of the City’s task force on gender-based violence, to demand a meeting with Mayor Brandon Johnson, who hand-picked Waller for the job in May. In a letter to the mayor obtained by WBEZ, Altmayer wrote that the task force was “deeply concerned” about the allegations against Waller. “The truth is that there is a deep culture of misogyny and sexual assault within the Chicago Police Department,” she added.

In both cases, Waller was cleared of wrongdoing and underwent no discipline. Advocates say it’s indicative of a larger pattern of domestic-violence complaints against officers being dismissed.

“It's not a bad apple, it's a bad barrel,” said Amanda Pyron, a member of the task force and the executive director of the domestic violence advocacy group The Network. “[If] it was acceptable for the interim police chief, then who is it not going to be acceptable for?”

Records the Weekly obtained from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and CPD show that at least thirtyeight officers — most from CPD but also including the Cook County Sheriffs and suburban municipalities in Cook County — were charged with domestic battery between 2011 and 2023. At least thirtyone of them had their cases dropped or dismissed, three were found not guilty, and two are active. Only two officers were convicted. That’s not altogether unusual:

a 2018 study by the US Department of Justice found that prosecutors in state courts secure convictions for misdemeanor domestic violence offenses, like domestic battery, in less than onequarter of cases.

Records show that twenty-four of the Chicago police officers who were criminally charged with domestic battery remain CPD employees, some even after multiple alleged incidents of genderbased violence. One is Sergeant Richard Bednarek. He was charged with domestic battery twice, once in 2017 in Tennessee, and again in Cook County in 2020. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), which investigates police misconduct, sustained the allegations against him in that case.

Another is Steve Jedd, who is detailed to a K-9 and explosives team. In 2016, he was charged with domestic battery. The year before that incident, Jedd allegedly pushed and punched a pregnant Black woman, before saying, “You better be lucky I didn’t hit your black ass hard enough to make you lose that damn baby.”

In 2019, COPA sustained the allegations against Jedd.

Six of the officers still employed by CPD are currently assigned to beats patrolling the city’s streets, according to police attendance records obtained by the Weekly. As beat officers, they may themselves be responding to domestic violence incidents.

Advocates for survivors of genderbased violence say that far from being an unlikely event, this is taking place with alarming regularity. “Survivors across our

city who reach out for help because of gender based violence, only to find out that the people responding are actually perpetrators,” Pyron said.

The criminal cases represent just a fraction of domestic violence complaints reported against CPD officers. Between 2017 and June 2023, 399 CPD officers were investigated by COPA for domestic violence allegations, according to data obtained by the Weekly via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The data show that only twenty-six of the 399 cops investigated from 2017 to 2023 had the allegations sustained, meaning COPA investigators found substantial corroborating evidence that the domestic violence allegation in fact occurred, and recommended the officer for discipline.

The percentage of officers COPA recommended for discipline, 6.5 percent, is lower than the eight percent of cases that the COPA’s predecessors, the Independent Police Review Authority and Office of Professional Standards, recommended for discipline from 2000 to 2017. COPA took the serious step of recommending that four of those twentysix officers be separated from CPD. COPA’s average recommended penalty was less than two months of suspension.

But these recommended penalties do not immediately go into effect unless CPD’s superintendent signs off on them. Without the superintendent’s agreement, these cases head to the Police Board for review, a process that can take years to play out as appeals wind their way

through the courts. Pyron says this is evidence of a flawed process that leaves survivors with little trust in the system.

“For COPA to be successful it needs to be fully independent,” she said. “It needs to support survivors in civil judgments and civil processes against officers. It needs to protect their confidentiality.”

Studies estimate that between twenty-eight and forty percent of police families experience some form of domestic abuse, which, if true, would mean that this issue affects upwards of 3,000 CPD households.

“Law enforcement officers are often very skilled abusers who are trained to maintain the key elements of domestic violence: power and control,” said Amy Fox, an attorney and the executive director of Life Span, an organization that offers legal services and advocacy to victims of domestic violence. Since its inception in 1978, Life Span has assisted hundreds of survivors whose abusers worked in law enforcement.

“[Officers] are trained at using force to maintain control. They are adept at surveillance and have access to information that allows them to track victims. They know the location of shelters. They carry firearms. Their very position as an officer conveys credibility that may be used to discredit a victim’s version of events,” Fox said.

The lack of serious punishment is consistent with a 2013 investigation by the New York Times and Frontline which found that police officers are less likely to face severe disciplinary consequences for domestic abuse than for other

Advocates say the lack of accountability has a chilling effect on survivors’ willingness to report abuse.

kinds of misconduct, let alone criminal prosecution. While investigators rejected disciplining officers who had multiple domestic violence incidents on their records, others who were found with trace amounts of marijuana in their system have been immediately fired.

“CPD is deeply committed to supporting and protecting victims of domestic violence,” a spokesperson for CPD said in a statement to the Weekly “Allegations of domestic violence by Department members are taken seriously and investigated thoroughly.”

But Pyron says that the department is not taking them seriously enough.

“When…the interim police chief is a person who's most well known for making a comment derisive to sexual assault survivors, you've got a problem,” Pyron said.

Although the small number of sustained violations by COPA could suggest that the actual incidence of CPD officers committing domestic violence is quite small, in only two cases out of the nearly 400 investigated did COPA find evidence to show that “the reported incident did not occur.”

Instead, the data show that 170 officers had “No Finding” determinations from COPA — that is, there was insufficient evidence to determine whether the domestic abuse occurred or not. For many of those cases no information is provided for why investigators concluded their investigations without a finding, but that information exists for others.

Investigations involving sixty-two officers were closed because of the lack of affidavits signed by the complainant. (Experts have said the affidavit requirement has a chilling effect on complaints; in 2021 the Illinois General Assembly amended the Uniform Peace Officers’ Discipline Act to remove that requirement for complaints against officers below the rank of commander.) Five investigations were closed because the victims refused to prosecute. This suggests that many domestic violence complaints do not move forward not because there is no underlying factual basis to the complaint but instead because victims of the alleged abuse choose not to cooperate with investigators.

TDistrict Council and is herself a survivor of abuse at the hands of a CPD officer. She says she endured significant physical and emotional abuse by her exhusband, who is now retired from the department.

After one violent incident, Parker’s parents called 911. Officers responded to her home and escorted her to a police station where she could be interviewed separately from her then-husband. She was interviewed by two female officers who she felt were sympathetic, she said, but nevertheless faced a difficult choice regarding whether to move forward with her case.

“When I asked, ‘Would he lose his job

forward with it,” Parker said, “like they'd seen it before.”

If she had chosen to bring charges against her husband and got a restraining order against him, he would have lost his firearm and therefore would not have been able to serve as a CPD officer, according to the departmental regulations. That would have meant losing the financial support Parker depended on from her husband to take care of her young child and the second baby she was pregnant with at the time, she said.

Parker said that people experiencing domestic violence at the hands of police officers often feel caught in a bind like she did, and ultimately decide not to press

charges because they fear their partner will

“It has a lot to do with where that survivor is or that victim is in the moment, and to what level or degree they have been isolated from their families such that they feel like [their spouse] is who they solely rely on,” Parker said.

“Even if the survivor is no longer with the abuser, if they have children [and] the abuser loses his job, he will no longer be able to pay child support significantly impacting the survivor’s economic stability,” Fox said. That can mean survivors are not able to put food on the table for their children, pay their bills, or meet rent.

On the negative effects of police domestic abuse, though, Parker was emphatic. “It affects not only the person,

ILLUSTRATION BY KAYLA BICKHAM

but families and children,” she said. “I definitely think domestic abuse is something that should disqualify you from police work.”

Stephanie Love-Patterson has also worked with survivors from police households over her extensive career. She is the executive director of Connections for Abused Women and their Children, a Humboldt Park-based nonprofit that has worked with survivors since 1977.

“There's no stereotypical sort of picture of persons who cause harm,” she said. “They can be police officers, they can be preachers, they can be doctors or attorneys or reporters. They can be anyone.”

Some of the survivors Love-Patterson has worked with have expressed concerns that nothing happens to their abusers precisely “because they are police officers.” These fears were grounded in experience, she said. In some cases, survivors told her that police didn’t even respond to their 911 calls when they reported abuse by their spouses. Sometimes when officers did respond, they simply separated their fellow officer from the victim, talking to each party, but making no arrest, leading the victim to be even “more fearful,” according to Love-Patterson.

Love-Patterson said officers investigating domestic violence complaints involving other cops should never advise survivors that their spouses may lose their jobs because that “sends a horrible message that this person maintaining their job is more important than the victim's life or their safety and well-being for themselves and for their children.”

Survivors already appreciate the seriousness of bringing allegations forward when they make the difficult decision to call the police for help, Love-Patterson said. What is essential, in her view, is that victims know all the available options and have the support, both financial and emotional, to bring cases against their spouses forward should they so choose.

Fox said that a prevailing concern among some of the survivors she’s worked with is that if officers lose their jobs because of a domestic violence complaint, they will hold survivors responsible, causing further harm.

Highlighting the complexity of the

issue, Fox noted that officers’ employment can also temper their abusive behavior. “If they lose their job, they may have nothing left to lose,” she said. “Being employed in law enforcement is therefore a deterrent in some cases.”

CPD’s response to domestic violence has varied over the years, often based on the direction and priorities of the top brass, Fox said. While CPD used to have a groundbreaking, nationally recognized program to help survivors that included confidential advocacy services paid for by the City, over time, those positions were phased out and replaced by services provided directly by CPD employees at headquarters, she said. And she claims that the resources for CPD’s internal domestic violence office have dwindled in recent years.

In 2023, the City allocated a little over $1.3 million for CPD’s response to domestic violence. Out of CPD’s total budget of $1.9 billion that represents just 0.05 percent of the budget, and is less than the four times as much as the department spends in a single day.

“CPD could be more innovative and victim centered in their response to officer involved domestic violence,” Fox said.“There are very few supports or treatment options, including Partner Abuse Intervention Programs, for officers, and so the recourse for the department is often suspension or termination.”

“This may not be safe for the victim or what the victim wants, so they no longer choose to engage in the process,” she said.

Pyron said this amounts to a failure of leadership to take the issue of genderbased violence seriously, stretching back decades.

“Given the fact that violence against women and gender minorities is rampant within the police department, this should be a priority area,” she said. “CPD needs leadership that's committed to ending violence against women and gender minorities externally in the community but also internally when that violence is perpetrated by their own officers and their own leadership.” ¬

‘Small Batch, Big Love’ Culminates in Creativity and Community

BY VIDAL N. GRANADOS

On August 18 the cannabis retailer nuEra hosted a “Small Batch, Big Love” event outside its North Ave. dispensary. Several tents were set up showcasing recently licensed local graft grow cannabis brands and products that will hit the market soon. Craft grow licenses not only allow for the cultivation, drying, curing, and packaging of cannabis products, but also allows for holders to sell wholesale. The atmosphere was lighthearted and fun as a DJ blasted classic Chicago house anthems to keep attendees grooving while they spoke directly to vendors about their companies.

In January of 2020, Illinois legalized the use of recreational cannabis for people 21 and older. However, the dispensaries that have emerged in the local market are overwhelmingly multi-state operators (MSOs). Local would-be dispensary owners from marginalized communities have been at a disadvantage at finding their footing in the new market.

According to a 2022 state report, 88 percent of the dispensaries last year were white-majority owned. Black-owned and Latinx-owned dispensaries only made up 1 percent apiece. Illinois also has some of the highest cannabis taxes in the country at forty percent (compared to Michigan’s ten percent).

This has frustrated many potential dispensary owners, but social equity programs championed by groups like the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) have given people from historically impacted communities a chance to break through.

Laura Jaramillo, who’s originally from Colombia and the COO of nuEra, described her unique journey into the cannabis industry to the Weekly

“The War on Drugs has been a really big deal in Colombia, but I ended up in cannabis almost by accident,” Jaramillo said.

She says she’s always been interested in policies surrounding cannabis and the effect the plant has had on the country. nuEra is a family-owned company founded by Jaramillo’s father-in-law. Formerly known as nuMed, by 2019 they were making the transition from medical to adult recreational use.

“We knew that [there] was going to be a huge explosion of work and demand and things changing,” Jaramillo said.

She ticked off a list of obstacles new distributors have faced. Cannabis companies “are taxed [at] an effective rate of [about] eighty percent. We have really intense regulations, we have a really hard time raising money…But if [there’s]

New craft grow cannabis licensees bring more equity to the industry.

Max Blaisdell is a fellow with the Invisible Institute and a staff writer for the Hyde Park Herald

something that I would highlight in Illinois, in particular, has been the really difficult road to make this social equity cannabis dream come true.”

Ambrose Jackson, the chairman and CEO of The 1937 Group, a minorityowned company in Illinois, reiterated those growing pains.

“The reality is the application process was not set up to really help new entrants

of applications to be submitted for and there were parties that won multiple of these limited licenses,” Limon said. “Why would we allow for an unlimited license application process to allow someone to put in as many applications [as] they possibly could afford?”

It was almost as if “the hope was to limit who got access to these licenses.” Overlooked, Limon says, was the

The CEO and co-founder of Umi Farms, Akele Parnell, has a similar mission. He started working for cannabis company Green Thumb Industries in 2017 and wanted to learn about the legal cannabis industry. “I was like, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of money being made in the legal industry and I want Black and brown boys to be a part of it,’” Parnell said.

He went on to work with Chicago NORML and the Cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition to “make sure that legalization in Illinois created opportunities for people that come from communities that have been, unfortunately, affected by the war on drugs.”

Parnell has launched incubators— facilities designed to nurture and accelerate small business’s growth—across the country for African American, Latinx, veteran, and women entrepreneurs in Detroit, Colorado, and New York City. But there is still more work to be done. Throughout Parnell’s career in different markets, he has repeatedly encountered the same issue.

“The biggest hurdle is the racial wealth gap. And so the answer to closing the gap on equity in the industry is really just access to capital,” Parnell said.

While some MSOs didn’t know

Although decades of propaganda gave cannabis negative connotations, that stigma leaves room to educate those still not aware of the plant's beneficial properties. And attitudes are beginning to change after years of hard work.

“I see it every day with our employees, how passionate and really how life changing cannabis is, for so many people,” Jaramillo said. “We invited those craft growers, those small growers, we invited those infusers to come set up and share with our customers and share with our community, the products that we're bringing to market, all the innovation, all of the love that they're pouring into those products that they're

gain access to the legal cannabis industry. And that's why you see multiple years later there's still a lack of participation by minority-owned, social equity cannabis companies in Illinois,” Jackson said.

“We're starting to see what we would expect to see when you have more inclusion and diversity in the industry, right? We're starting to see more and more excitement, we're starting to see more variety of products…I'm happy to see that we're finally overcoming that dark space where only a few companies dominate the entire market.”

Fabian Limon, a cannabis lawyer and former police officer, explained the problem of getting a license early on.

“There was a limited number of licenses that allowed an unlimited amount

opportunity to bridge the divide and educate the public on ways to be part of the industry without obtaining a license.

Limon is a co-founder of Imperial Products and collaborates with South Side resident and renowned chef Manny Mendoza to distribute artisanal cannabisinfused chocolate and olive oil.

“The plant is giving, right? And really what we like to focus on is the fact that so is the cannabis community,” Limon said. “Cannabis [has] by no means made me some incredibly wealthy person, but it's made my life richer. And I mean that because of the relationships I've made, because of the friends I've developed, because of the businesses…I want to build with people. And I want to make money with people, not off people.”

“everything in the beginning,” explains Parnell, they did have the tools to access that information and the funds to hire people that did know how to navigate the intricacies of the industry. The lack of knowledge on how to run a business post obtaining a license is the gap Parnell wants to bridge, especially in underserved communities.

producing, and we're excited to welcome them onto our shelves.” ¬

Vidal N. Granados is an entertainment journalist who covers everything from sports, movies, video games and music events throughout Chicago. He is also a regular contributor for Quip Music Magazine

“Why would we allow for an unlimited license application process to allow someone to put in as many applications [as] they possibly could afford?”

Akele Parnell PHOTO BY VIDAL N. GRANADOS

PHOTO BY VIDAL N. GRANADOS

The 1937 Group

PHOTO BY VIDAL N. GRANADOS

Hyde Park Divided Over City Plan to House Migrants

An emergency meeting in Hyde Park largely mirrored meetings concerning migrant shelters in Woodlawn and South Shore due to the short notice, security concerns and the history of disinvestment in Black communities.

BY MICHAEL LIPTROT AND HANNAH FARIS, HYDE PARK HERALD

In a contentious community meeting Wednesday, Hyde Parkers were divided over city plans to use East Hyde Park’s Lake Shore Hotel as a temporary shelter for hundreds of migrants. Many attendees were outspoken in their disapproval of asylum seekers moving into the community, while others encouraged the neighborhood to open its arms.

About 200 people gathered for the Aug. 30 meeting at The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Held by Ald. Desmon Yancy’s (5th) office and city officials, the meeting was intended to answer neighbors’ shelter questions but speakers were frequently drowned out by shouting among some audience members.

As of now, the city plans to start moving about 300 men, women and children into the hotel as early as Friday, Sept. 1. (Yancy's office was previously told the move would begin on Sept. 5.) Officials said they plan to use the hotel, 4900B S. Lake Shore Dr., for about six months.

From January to April of this year, the Lake Shore Hotel had been used as a temporary shelter for about 50 migrants. This history and the hotel’s large capacity, Yancy said, is why officials choose the location.

“But I was not a part of any conversations with the owners of the hotel … I’ve gotten very limited information from the city,” Yancy said at the top of the meeting. “We’re here because I thought it was important for people in the community to know what’s going on, even if the mayor’s office wasn’t willing to.”

According to Stephen Chung, Deputy Chief of the Chicago Police Department, security contracted by the city will be on the

premises 24/7, and an 11 p.m. curfew for those living at the shelter will be instituted. CPD officers will conduct frequent patrols of the area, paying “special attention” to the shelter. Visitors are not permitted and residents are required to sign in and out of the shelter with hotel staff.

Residents may be discharged from the shelter if found to be in violation of the facility’s rules, such as breaking curfew, engaging in violence and drug use.

As for support, health care and mental health services, English classes and connections to support networks—such as faith-based organizations and nonprofits— will be provided. Case management services will also be provided on site.

More than 6,679 new arrivals are currently housed in 16 temporary migrant shelters across the city. Another 1,650 people are awaiting shelter placement and are sleeping on the floors of police stations and airports.

The meeting was held one day before the year anniversary of the first bus arriving in Chicago. Since Aug. 31, 2022, more than 217 buses have arrived in the city. According to officials, two more buses arrived on Wednesday.

Early in the meeting, Jesus Del Toro of Chicago’s Office of New Americans stressed compassion and patience from residents as the city’s resources are stretched thin under the influx of new arrivals. He also urged the federal government to intervene.

“We’re trying our best to meet the moment, but without federal action such as funding or the ability for (migrants) to work, we find ourselves in a hole,” said Del Toro. “Our goal is to meet folks' basic needs, but also put people into a path to

resettlement.”

“This hotel is a temporary solution, but the goal is a path to resettlement,” he added. “The alternative (to shelters) in my eyes is 13,000 to 14,000 people in Chicago unhoused. That creates another potential public safety situation.”

He was quickly interrupted by members of the audience shouting alternative cities in the state for migrants to be relocated.

“It is an intentional attack on the city of Chicago to get us to be divided,” argued Ald. Andre Vasquez (40), the chair of the city’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights. The reference to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has sent a majority of the buses of migrants to Chicago in protest of federal immigration law, was met with loud applause.

“Every single day, we’re seeing 80 to 100 people being sent to the city,” Vasquez added.

Community tensions during Hyde Park's meeting largely mirrored recent meetings concerning migrant shelters in Woodlawn and South Shore. As has happened in those meetings, several residents on Wednesday expressed frustration at the short notice of the shelter, security concerns and the city’s history of disinvestment from largely Black communities.

A few speakers expressed fear that property values would decrease and xenophobic sentiments, accusing asylum seekers of spreading sickness and crime in the city.

Residents in support of the shelter spoke about community efforts to further support migrants—such as food and supply deliveries—and implored the city to fight for federal aid from the Biden

administration. Others reminded attendees of the ongoing economic crises in places like Venezuela and other countries the asylum seekers have fled from, which have been exacerbated by American sanctions.

“We have more than enough resources in the city and in this country. We’re the richest nation in the richest time in history,” one attendee argued. “We can provide resources for all communities at once ... the city can provide material reparations to Black folks at the same time as resources are provided to brown folks.”

Yancy, exasperated, concluded the two hour meeting by thanking the audience for attending; he also blasted the city for moving forward with the shelter.

“When I got a call from the mayor’s office (last) Wednesday evening, I was pissed ... This is a deal that was already done,” Yancy said. “I’m also pissed because, as a Black person that has lived in the city for 51 years, I have seen the disinvestment in our communities. I live in South Shore, and South Shore has one of the highest eviction rates in the city.”

“The root of the problem is that our elected officials have let us down. Period. Whether it is those at the state level, those at the federal level, and many of those at the city level,” he continued. “I’m grateful that everybody in this room came to share their opinion about what is going on, but if we had this kind of engagement before, then the city wouldn’t have been able to pull this kind of crap.” ¬

Francisco Ramírez Pinedo is a freelance journalist and web developer based in the Southeast Side.

Residentes de Hyde Park divididos ante el plan municipal de alojar a inmigrantes

Una reunión de emergencia en Hyde Park se asemejó en gran medida a previas reuniones sobre en Woodlawn y South Shore sobre alojamientos para inmigrantes, debido a la poca antelación con la que se organizó, las preocupaciones por la seguridad y el historial de desinversión en las comunidades negras.

En una reunión comunitaria el miércoles 30 de agosto, residentes de Hyde Park se mostraron divididos sobre los planes de utilizar el hotel, Hotel Lake Shore en el este del vecindario, como refugio temporal para cientos de migrantes. Muchos se mostraron totalmente en contra de que los solicitantes de asilo se alojen en la comunidad, mientras que otros mostraron apoyo a que el barrio les abriera los brazos a los recién llegados.

Cerca de 200 personas asistieron a la reunión en el lugar de eventos, The Promontory, en el 5311 al sur de la avenida Lake Park. La reunión fue organizada por la oficina del concejal Desmon Yancy del distrito 5 y funcionarios de la ciudad. El propósito de la reunión era responder a las preguntas de los vecinos sobre el hotel, pero los que hablaban frente a la audiencia a menudo se vieron ahogados por los gritos de algunos miembros del público.

La Municipalidad planea comenzar a trasladar a unos 300 hombres, mujeres y niños en el hotel tan pronto como el viernes, 1 de septiembre. (Se le dijo a la oficina de Yancy previamente que el traslado comenzaría el 5 de septiembre.) Los funcionarios dijeron que planean utilizar el hotel durante unos seis meses.

De enero a abril de este año, el hotel había sido utilizado como refugio temporal para unos 50 migrantes. Por esto, y por la gran capacidad del hotel, dijo Yancy, los funcionarios eligieron la ubicación.

“Pero yo no fui parte de ninguna conversación con los propietarios del hotel… he recibido información muy limitada de la Municipalidad”, dijo Yancy. “Estamos aquí porque pensé que era importante que la gente de la comunidad supiera lo que está pasando, incluso si la oficina del alcalde no estaba dispuesta a hacerlo”.

Según Stephen Chung, jefe adjunto del Departamento de Policía de Chicago (CPD, por sus siglas en inglés) habrá

seguridad contratada que estará en las instalaciones 24 horas al día, 7 días a la semana, y se establecerá un toque de queda a las 11 de la noche para quienes vivan en el hotel.

Los agentes de CPD patrullarán con frecuencia la zona, prestando “especial atención” al refugio. No se permitirán visitas y los residentes deberán firmar a la entrada y salida del refugio con el personal del hotel.

Los residentes podrán ser dados de baja del refugio si se descubre que no siguen las normas del centro, como no cumplir el toque de queda, participar en actos violentos y consumir drogas.

En cuanto a apoyo, se les ofrecerán atención médica y servicios de salud mental, clases de inglés y acceso a redes de apoyo, como de organizaciones religiosas y sin fines de lucro. También se prestarán servicios para manejar sus casos.

Más de 6,679 inmigrantes están alojados actualmente en 16 refugios temporales en toda la ciudad. Otras 1,650 personas están a la espera de ser albergadas y duermen en los suelos de comisarías y aeropuertos.

La reunión se llevó a cabo un año después de la llegada del primer autobús a Chicago. Desde el 31 de agosto de 2022, han llegado a la ciudad más de 217 autobuses. Según las autoridades, el miércoles llegaron dos autobuses más.

Al comienzo de la reunión, Jesús Del Toro, de la Oficina de Nuevos Estadounidenses de Chicago, enfatizó la importancia de que los residentes muestren compasión y paciencia ante la escasez de recursos municipales debido a la llegada de los migrantes. También urgió al gobierno federal a intervenir.

“Estamos haciendo todo lo posible para hacer frente al momento, pero sin una acción federal como la financiación o la posibilidad de que (los migrantes) trabajen [legalmente], nos encontramos en

un ollo”, dijo Del Toro. “Nuestro objetivo es satisfacer las necesidades básicas de la gente, pero también [ayudarlos a establecerse]”.

“Este hotel es una solución temporal”, añadió. “En mi opinión, la alternativa (al no disponer de refugios) es que entre 13,000 y 14,000 habitantes de Chicago no tendrán dónde vivir. Eso genera otra posible situación de seguridad pública”.

Rápidamente fue interrumpido por miembros del público que gritaban que había otras ciudades alternativas en el estado de Illinois para reubicar a los inmigrantes.

“Es un ataque intencionado a la ciudad de Chicago para conseguir que estemos divididos”, argumentó el concejal Andre Vasquez del distrito 40, presidente del Comité de Derechos de los Inmigrantes y Refugiados del Concejo Municipal.

La referencia al gobernador de Texas, el republicano Greg Abbott, que ha enviado la mayoría de los autobuses de inmigrantes a Chicago en protesta por la ley federal de inmigración, fue recibida con fuertes aplausos.

“Cada día, estamos viendo a entre 80 y 100 personas que llegan a la ciudad”, añadió Vásquez.

Las distintas reacciones de la comunidad durante la reunión reflejaron en gran medida las recientes reuniones sobre los albergues para migrantes en los vecindarios de Woodlawn y South Shore. Como ha sucedido en esas reuniones, varios residentes también expresaron su frustración por el corto aviso, las preocupaciones de seguridad y la larga historia de desinversión en las comunidades negras.

Algunos residentes también expresaron su temor a que disminuyera el valor de la propiedad y mostraron actitudes xenófobas, acusando a los solicitantes de asilo de transmitir enfermedades y causar delitos en la ciudad.

Pero algunos residentes también expresaron apoyo a que los migrantes

se alojen en el hotel y hablaron sobre la necesidad del apoyo comunitario a los migrantes —como la entrega de alimentos y suministros— y les imploraron a los funcionarios de la ciudad que se esfuercen por conseguir ayuda federal del gobierno de Biden. Otros presentes les explicaron a los que no estaban de acuerdo que tuvieran en cuenta las actuales crisis económicas en lugares como Venezuela y otros países de los que han huido los solicitantes de asilo, que se han visto empeoradas por las sanciones estadounidenses.

“Tenemos recursos más que suficientes en la ciudad y en este país. Somos la nación más rica en la época más rica de la historia”, argumentó un residente. “Podemos proporcionar recursos a todas las comunidades... la Municipalidad puede proporcionar reparaciones materiales a la población negra al mismo tiempo que se proporcionan recursos a la población latina”.

Yancy se mostraba algo irritado y concluyó la reunión de dos horas dando las gracias al público por su asistencia; también criticó a la Municipalidad por seguir adelante con el plan de refugio.

“Cuando recibí la llamada de la alcaldía (el pasado) miércoles por la noche, me enfurecí… es un acuerdo que ya estaba hecho”, dijo Yancy. “También estoy furioso porque, como persona negra que ha vivido en la ciudad durante 51 años, he visto la desinversión en nuestras comunidades. Vivo en South Shore, y South Shore tiene una de las tasas de desalojo más altas de la ciudad”.

“La raíz del problema es que nuestros funcionarios electos nos han defraudado. Y punto. Ya sean a nivel estatal, a nivel federal y muchos a nivel municipal”, continuó. “Agradezco que todo el mundo en esta sala haya venido a compartir su opinión sobre lo que está pasando, pero si hubiéramos tenido este tipo de interacción [comunitaria] antes, entonces la Municipalidad no hubiera podido hacer esta clase de porquería”. ¬

POR MICHAEL LIPTROT Y HANNAH FARIS, HYDE PARK HERALD TRADUCIDO POR ALMA CAMPOS

‘This is How You Do It Right’

BY ALMA CAMPOS

South Side communities have pushed major environmental justice campaigns to the forefront in recent years with important gains. South Side Weekly caught up with three environmental activists who have used their unique skills and networks to fight against powerful industrial facilities and hold city officials accountable. They reflected on the last couple of years, the progression of their organizing, and what they want to see next.

The Campaign to Stop General Iron is a grassroots fight aimed to prevent the industrial facility General Iron from moving to the Southeast Side, a working-class, Black and Latinx community historically burdened with heavy industry. It began when previous mayors Lori Lightfoot and Rahm Emmanuel gave General Iron’s parent company, Reserve Management Group (RMG), the green light to move to the Southeast Side when it was operating in Lincoln Park, a majority white and rich North Side neighborhood near the $6 billion Lincoln Yards megadevelopment.

Those efforts were blocked through city-wide protests and a 2021 hunger strike by community members to draw attention to decades of environmental racism. According to the City’s latest Air Quality and Health Report, the South and West sides have some of the worst air quality in the region—in particular, areas like the Southeast Side, which are “bisected by major highways with high concentrations of industry,” the report found.

The construction of MAT Asphalt in McKinley Park, another majority Latinx neighborhood with a large immigrant community, spawned a separate campaign in 2018. An asphalt mixing factory, MAT Asphalt sits across the street from a public park near schools and housing. According to activists, the dust and fumes produced each day have had a harmful effect on lung health and those with asthma.

Its dubious construction underscored the importance of learning how zoning practices work in the city, and created awareness about the need for community input in development projects and transparency from alderpersons. Still, residents are concerned that despite numerous complaints and fines for air pollution, the City has continued to award MAT Asphalt with millions of dollars in contracts. Activists continue to push for its closure.

These events took place on the South Side of the city—in poor and workingclass communities of color. Each campaign demonstrated cross-community solidarity and saw sacrifices made in the face of indifference from the City. And they’re not over yet.

Trinity Colón had just become a junior at George Washington High School in East Side when the Campaign to Stop General Iron exploded in growth. I met her in 2020, when she and her classmates led a rally and march to then-alderwoman Susan Sadlowski Garza’s house to demand a response after General Iron received a permit to build near homes and George Washington High School. This

was at the start of the pandemic; Colón had just begun online classes at home.

Next month, Colón will turn twenty. She reflected on her teenage years, which largely revolved around stopping the facility from harming her community. “I missed out on a lot because I was planning protests. I was also healing from a lot of trauma that actually stemmed from the movement.”

Colón said she missed a lot of important milestones and fun community gatherings. Instead, she was at various rallies—often the one holding a megaphone—and leading peers and community members in protests at City Hall and throughout the city. She was interviewed by various local, national and international publications, and in 2020, she co-wrote an article in <i>Teen Vogue</i> to tell teens like herself about the Campaign to Stop General Iron.

Colón said she was also often ostracized, especially by adults who supported General Iron’s move to East Side. Some even worked at the school she attended. She said after students went back to in-person classes, she noticed “weird stares” from some of the staff and faculty. Some criticism came after public events. At times, Colón was verbally attacked, inperson and on social media, for superficial

reasons: wearing crop tops, or being petite, or cursing at public events. She remembers one comment in particular, along the lines of: “How can we even listen to what she’s saying when she’s dressed like this?” What kept her going was feeling a sense of pride in her community and the support she received from her neighbors and mentors.

Later in 2020, three Southeast Side environmental organizations filed a complaint with the federal government, stating that moving General Iron to the Southeast was a continuation of decades of environmental racism. The organizations alleged racist city zoning and planning policies had kept heavy industry in communities of color on the South Side. The complaint led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and in 2022, it was concluded that City officials had “discriminated on the basis of race and national origin” by concentrating polluting factories in communities of color.

As a result, the City must cooperate with community organizations and come up with an environmental justice plan to address and remedy the impacts of pollution and discriminatory zoning through a cumulative impact assessment September 1. The City will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding if it doesn’t come up with a plan to address environmental justice problems this fall. The action plan is to be based on data assessments, policy recommendations from environmental justice organizations and public opinion collected through community engagement events, which began this summer. The end goal is to draft a cumulative impact ordinance. At press time, CDPH did not respond to a request for updates about the September 1 environmental justice plans.

In February 2022, the City denied RMG a permit to operate. But this June, a judge reversed that decision. In June,

Environmental activists on the last couple of years, the progression of their organizing, and what they want to see next.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTHONY MOSER

Mayor Brandon Johnson stated that the city will appeal.

Colón is optimistic about the future of the fight, especially given the solidarity between environmental justice organizations on various campaigns. “All my experiences in life are tied to this place geographically, demographically and culturally,” said Colón.

Southeast Side resident Gina Ramirez, Midwest outreach manager at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and co-chair of the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke, was instrumental in the federal complaint.

Ramirez remembers that as a child, when she and her family would drive past the industrial facilities in her neighborhood, her dad would tell her to roll up the window so she didn’t inhale the fumes. She also watched her mother, who grew up near the U.S. Steel plant, struggle with asthma.

But she first learned the concept of “environmental racism” while studying at DePaul University in Lincoln Park. “When I first started college, I noticed the tale of two cities—how different Lincoln Park was compared to my neighborhood. How different the air quality was—[and] the quality of life and vitality and investment,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez said she became involved in environmental justice work when petroleum coke “petcoke” was being stored by KCBX Terminals at a metals storage facility, S.H. Bell in East Side. She was also pregnant during that time. “I knew…I didn’t want my son growing up, you know, breathing this in,” she said. Petcoke causes a variety of health problems, including asthma and other respiratory and pulmonary issues which can lead to premature death. Ramirez and other Southeast Side environmentalists fought for the banning of the product in 2015.

Ramirez then joined the Campaign to Stop General Iron. “The campaign started out really small—it was in the middle of a pandemic, there wasn’t much we could do to organize. So we started out with lawn signs.” Social media also gave the campaign leverage. “We really used the power of social media to compel younger generations to learn more about what environmental racism is, and that this was something that is indeed happening in their backyard.”

Ramirez is now part of several environmental campaigns, including the cumulative impact assessment with the Chicago Environmental Justice Network (CEJN) to advance advocacy around public health issues. She said a lot more of her work will focus on politics and lobbying under the Natural Resources Defense Council.

For instance, something she would like to see next: a state bill that repairs the broken permitting system that exists in Illinois. “Right now, if you’re in an industry and you want to set up shop in a manufacturing district, you’re just granted a permit. They don’t have to look at past violations that an industry has. They don’t have to take community input into consideration. That needs to be overhauled,” said Ramirez.

Like Colón, Ramirez also alluded to having missed out on important things. She would much rather be teaching her child how to ride a bike than “attending community meetings about another poisonous neurotoxin in the air.” But she continues to be inspired by the people in her community who have stood up against what was wrong. “Regular, everyday community members can band together and create power from the ground up, [can] hold a mirror up to the City [and say] that this is wrong, what you’re doing is wrong, what you’ve done for generations upon generations is wrong. This is how you do it right.”

Anthony Moser is a software developer, resident of Brighton Park, and board president of Neighbors for Environmental Justice (N4EJ). He helped to found the environmental justice organization in Spring 2018, from the attic of his home, in response to MAT Asphalt’s opening in McKinley Park.

Moser takes it upon himself to find and clean up city government data that is messy and difficult for people to find and make it accessible. His search for complaints and tickets relating to MAT Asphalt led him and his organization to write and publish a report, Ineffective by Choice, which looks at how the City has regulated environmental violations in Chicago across the last two decades.

In his investigation, Moser found problems not just with newer facilities like MAT Asphalt, but also with existing ones,

such as Pullman Innovations, Sims Metal Recycling, and T&B Limited (owned by the Tadin family, which also owns MAT Asphalt). He found that the City consistently drops their environmental violations charges, does not effectively apply environmental laws, settles small fines and caps the number of citations issued to these companies at three, preventing escalating fines.

When Moser asked CDPH about why they limit citations, CDPH responded that it is part of a “legal strategy” meaning “as long as previous violations remain unresolved and negotiations continue, no further tickets are issued,” according to the report. But according to Moser, this is an incentive for facilities.

This summer, Johnson’s transition team recommended, along with a Green New Deal, the establishment of the Department of Environment (DOE) which was disbanded in 2012 under Rahm Emmanuel.

But Moser wants the public to see that the issue of capping tickets has been going on since before the department was dismantled. “Obviously, [the Chicago Department of Public Health] took over this role and did much worse at it. But those practices [of not issuing more tickets] already existed.”

Moser thinks there must be more than just reinstating the DOE and the current Cumulative Impact Assessment that the City and community groups are working on. He thinks current facilities need to be looked at, too. “It’s going to take substantial thought, especially when it comes to what authority is granted to the Department of Environment and how that department will work with other City departments for things to happen in a meaningful way.”

A map created by Moser that looks at environmental violations, also from the last two decades, shows where the Chicago Department of Public Health and the DOE have spent the majority of their time and energy. Since 2002, the departments have issued the most tickets for small infractions such as cleanliness during construction, or for expired certificates of operation. Moser said the city could instead focus on making sure people aren’t harmed from the pollution that these companies produce. “You can think of it as almost like

busywork,” Moser said of this finding. “It suggests that there’s a focus on quick-hit easy things, small-scale stuff.”

Moser said his work in accessing and cleaning up data is about holding the City accountable and making it easier for people to understand what’s going on. “You have to put [data] into a context that makes it meaningful. Just dumping different categories of spreadsheets on the internet isn’t, for most people, going to help them make sense of how things work. So a lot of times I’m just trying to bring together different pieces to make it easier to see how they connect.”

As far as the City’s Cumulative Impact Assessment, Moser said he is looking forward to the cumulative impact assessment’s environmental justice plan. “The challenge before us now is to act,” he said. “We have to address those findings, make sure that the city follows through on changing its policies and practices, and end the sacrifice zones where pollution has been concentrated.” Moser will be putting out a similar report on environmental regulations on a yearly basis so that the public can continue to monitor these issues and hold the city accountable.

Ramirez is inspired by seeing younger generations like Colón carrying the torch. “They’re doing the work, and I love to see it. And whatever I can do to take a step back and let others lead to create a community of care that they want for their life and for their future children, I’m here to help along the way.”

As for Colón, she is now a student at Northwestern University studying social policy, environmental policy, culture and Spanish. But she continues to be involved with local environmental organizations on the Southeast Side. While she said there is still more work to do, she is optimistic about the progress made. “I think one of the most important things I learned is that my story has power,” she said. “And I don’t think I realized that before. I didn’t realize how powerful my existence is and how powerful it was for me to stand outside chanting, writing speeches, going on pressers, going on the news, and really calling it like it is.” ¬

Alma Campos is a senior editor for the Weekly

BULLETIN

Mexican Independence Day Parade

West 26th Street. Saturday, September 16, 12pm. Free.

For the first time in recent memory, the Little Village neighborhood will host its annual parade on actual Mexican Independence Day—September 16. Each float will represent a different Mexican state. A 5k race will take place before the parade. (Jackie Serrato)

Literary-inspired Fall Scavenger Hunt

Chicago Women’s Park & Garden and McKinley Park, 1801 S. Indiana Ave. and 2210 W. Pershing Rd. (meet at the stone urns on the south side of the lagoon). Saturday, September 16–Tuesday, September 19, 1:30pm–6:30pm. Free.

bit.ly/LiteraryScavengerHunt

Author-illustrator team Fiona Cook and Jessica Roux will guide participants through an Autumn Equinox-inspired multi-sensory scavenger hunt based on their book “The Wheel of the Year,” in partnership with the Chicago Park District. (Zoe Pharo)

EDUCATION

Property Tax Exemption Clinic

Woodlawn Resource Center, 6144 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Thursday, September 7, 7pm–8:30pm. Free.

bit.ly/PropertyTaxExemptionClinic

Presented by the South Side Housing Data Initiative, housing counselors will be on site to assist attendees with claiming their property tax exemptions, completing certificates of error for any

missed exemptions and claiming refunds for any overpayments. (Zoe Pharo)

Neighbors in Nature

Mckinley Park, south of the playground, 2210 W. Pershing Rd. Saturday, September 9, 2pm–5pm. Free. bit.ly/NeighborsInNature

Nonprofit Neighbors for Environmental Justice is hosting a free community event series to connect neighbors around the environment and offer spaces for reflection, creation, remembering and reimagining. The next event is a dropin art workshop called “making and movement” at McKinley Park.

(Zoe Pharo)

Chicago Focus Group for MSM of Color

6307 S. Stewart Ave., Suite 209., 6307 S. Stewart Ave., Suite 209. Thursday, September 14–Thursday, September 21, 3pm–5pm. Every participant will receive a $50 gift card. bit.ly/PrEPfocusgroup

The Connect2Care team at Chicago House is hosting a focus group for Black and Brown same-gender loving men between the ages of eighteen and forty years old to discuss barriers to accessing PrEP, the medication that helps prevent HIV, on the South Side. Two sessions.

(Zoe Pharo)

Arts + Public Life Residency Info Session

Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd. Wednesday, September 20, 8pm–9:30pm. Free. bit.ly/residencyinfosession

Arts + Public Life will be hosting an info session about three different

opportunities: the L1 Creative Business Accelerator Fellowship, the ArtistsIn-Residence (AIRs) program and the Performance Residency. Artists and creative entrepreneurs are invited to attend to learn more about each of these programs and to hear directly from past participants. (Zoe Pharo)

Finding True Happiness

Whitney M. Young, Jr. Branch, Chicago Public Library, 415 E. 79th St. Saturday, September 23, 2pm–4pm. Free. bit.ly/FindingTrueHappinessevent

Meaningful Conversations South Side

Chicago is hosting a virtual conversation on what it means to be “happy,” meaning one that is not just temporary but that also nourishes and develops us. This conversation will discuss the spiritual perspective offered by the Bahá’í teachings on true happiness and how to nourish it in our individual and collective lives. (Zoe Pharo)

FOOD & LAND

Chicago Urban Ag Crawl and Annual Backyard Barbecue

Growing Home Urban Farm, 5814 S. Wood St. Sunday, September 10, 3pm–9pm. All-inclusive tickets are $100 for the general public and $25 for residents and businesses of Greater Englewood and Auburn Gresham, trolley tour-only tickets are $25. bit.ly/ChicagoUrbanAgCrawl

The Chicago Urban Ag Crawl is a multistop event across Greater Englewood featuring local chefs, food, drinks, live music, urban farm and garden trolley tours, garden activities, raffles, games, a paddle raise and more. Proceeds benefit Growing Home, Grow Greater

Englewood, Urban Growers Collective and local urban farmers and gardeners. (Zoe Pharo)

ARTS

DuSummer Music Series

DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, Roundhouse Plaza, 740 E. 56th Pl. Thursday, September 7, 7pm–9pm. Tickets are $20. bit.ly/DuSummer.

The DuSummer music series at the DuSable Museum continues with two final performances by Danny Boy and Simone Green. Doors open at 5pm. (Zoe Pharo)

Under the Bridge

Ping Tom Memorial Park, 1700 S. Wentworth Ave. Saturday, September 9, 12pm–10:09pm. Suggested donation. bit. ly/underthebridgetechno

Super Shmove is hosting a day rave for techno lovers featuring local selectors Ariel Zetina, Microdot, Kobe Dupree, Circus Ant, Astraleon, Flores Negras, Initial G and Amayah. This event is 21+. (Zoe Pharo)

Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, September 9, 2pm–4pm. Free, register in advance. bit. ly/Brooksyouthpoetryawards

Attend the 7th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards ceremony. Brooks began the awards in 1969 during her time as Illinois Poet Laureate, and continued the awards until her death in 2000. In 2017, Illinois Humanities joined together with the Poetry

created. And that is what is important,” Brooks said in 1977. (Zoe Pharo)

6th Ward Back Alley

Jazz + Hip Hop

77th King Drive and Vernon Street, 77th King Drive and Vernon Street. Saturday, September 9, 2pm. Free. bit.ly/6thWardBackAlleyJazz

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip hop and leading up the Hyde Park Jazz Festival on September 23 and 24, this third annual jazz and hip hop festival returns to the 6th ward—which includes parts of West Woodlawn, Chatham, Park Manor, West Chesterfield, Auburn Gresham and Englewood—featuring jazz artists Reginald T. McCants and Sam Thousand and hip hop artists Chise Up, Freddie Old Soul and _stepchild. Bring a chair. (Zoe Pharo)

Celebrating Richard Hunt

The Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Sunday, September 10, 3pm. Free. bit.ly/RichardHuntcelebration

The Smart Museum of Art is hosting a special afternoon screening and celebration of sculptor Richard Hunt, who’s bronze monument to journalist Ida B. Wells was unveiled in Bronzeville in 2021. Meet the artist as he helps to introduce “The Light of Truth: Richard Hunt’s Monument for Ida B. Wells,” a feature documentary film by Rana Segal. Following the screening, view select works by Hunt from the Smart’s collection and continue conversation

South Merrill Community Garden, 7030 S. Merrill Ave. Sunday, September 10, 4pm–6pm. Free. bit.ly/SonesdeMexicoensemble

The Grammy-nominated and Chicagobased Sones de Mexico Ensemble is hosting a free family-friendly performance of the “The Black Music of Mexico” featuring food, music, history and dance, including son jarocho and mariachi, among others. In partnership with the city, state and local nonprofits, the series is designed to “promote a greater understanding, empathy and friendship among Mexican and African American communities in Chicago.”

(Zoe Pharo)

Chicago Underground Film Festival

Harper Theater, 5238 S. Harper Ave. Wednesday, September 13–Sunday, September 17, 8:30pm–9:30pm. Individual tickets are $12 and all-access festival passes are $150. https://cuff.org/

The 30th edition of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the longestrunning underground film festival in the world, is moving to the South Side at Harper Theater. Previously held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in the Loop, and since 2011, at the Logan Theatre, opening night will still be held at Gene Siskel. Highlights of this year’s festival will include three locally-produced world premieres, an after-party at the Promontory, curated by Eric Williams of the Silver Room, and an underground market at the Kulture Museum in

Chicago Vintage Fest

35th Street and Morgan Street. Friday, September 15–Sunday, September 17, 4pm–6pm. Free. bit.ly/vintagefestBridgeport

Chicago Vintage Fest is coming to Bridgeport for three days and will feature more than seventy-five vintage and handmade vendors, food trucks and curated cocktails, as well as giveaways. First twenty-five guests get a free tote. Vendors accept multiple payment methods, but cash is recommended. (Zoe Pharo)

MidWest Flow Fest

Ping Tom Memorial Park, 1700 S. Wentworth Ave. Saturday, September 16, 11am–6:30pm. Tickets are $45 in advance and $60 at the event. bit.ly/MidwestFlowFest

MidWest Flow Fest, a performing arts festival, returns with workshops in circus arts, dance, yoga and more. The day ends with an instructor showcase performance. (Zoe Pharo)

Englewood Music Fest

On Halsted, near 63rd Street. Saturday, September 16, 1pm. Free. bit.ly/EnglewoodMusicFest

Englewood Music Fest returns for its third year with a lineup that includes Trick Daddy and Trina. Sponsored by the Englewood Arts Council, the event will feature live music, love vendors, back-to-school programming, prizes,

with Dionne Victoria

Dionne Victoria Studios, INC., 735 E. 79th St. Thursday, September 21, 6pm–7:30pm. Free.

bit.ly/ArtAfterWorkDionne

Intuit Art After Work is hosting a series of free facilitated art-making workshops. This month, it is partnering with Chicago-based artist Dionne Victoria for a workshop inspired by her practice, in which participants will use mixed-media to create collaborative selfportraits. “How we view ourselves is the most important view we have and can make or break us … This activity helps you take a look at yourself by creating a self portrait while receiving the input of those around you.” (Zoe Pharo)

Hyde Park Jazz Festival

Various locations. Sunday, September 24–Monday, September 25, 2pm–8pm. Free. www.hydeparkjazzfestival.org/

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, put on by the University of Chicago and the Hyde Park Jazz Society returns this year, with a highlight on female artists. The festival takes place at a variety of venues across Hyde Park and features artists such as the Bethany Pickens Trio, Meagan McNeal, Sam Thousand & Justin Dillard, Melanie Charles with special guest Marquis Hill, Tomeka Reid and Junius Paul and more. One performance will also pay tribute to forty years of the South Loop establishment, the Velvet Lounge. (Zoe Pharo)