January 22, 2020

Blackstone Bicycle Works

TEEN

OPPORTUNITY

FAIRS 2020

3 opportunities for Chicago Teens, ages 13 to 19, to learn about programs and get information in the following fields:

• Recreation • Educational/Vocational Opportunities • Job Readiness •

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31ST

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH

SATURDAY, MARCH 14TH

10 am – 1 pm Malcolm X College Community Center

10 am – 1 pm Truman College

10 am – 1 pm Kennedy King College “U” Building

1900 W. Jackson Blvd.

Chicago, IL 60612 Online Registration Activity #303686

1145 W. Wilson Ave. Chicago, IL 60640 Online Registration Activity #303687

740 W. 63rd St. Chicago, IL 60621 Online Registration Activity #303688

Advanced registration is encouraged at www.ChicagoParkDistrict.com

City of Chicago, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners Michael P. Kelly, General Superintendent & CEO

STAY CONNECTED. @ChiTeensInThePark

For more information about your Chicago Park District, visit our website at www.chicagoparkdistrict.com or call 312-742-PLAY (7429) or 312-747-2001 (TTY)

SPARK Grant Program The SPARK Grant is an award opportunity for visual artists who identify as ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American), an artist with acute financial need, an artist with a disability, or as a self-taught/ non-formally trained artist.

The SPARK Grant offers 25, unrestricted awards of $2,000 to Chicagobased contemporary artists.

This program is generously funded by the Joyce Foundation.

Application deadline: February 16, 2020 For more information, eligibility requirements, and the application call (312) 491-8888 x1004, or visit: https://chicagoartistscoalition.org/resources/cac-grants/spark-microgrants

Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 12pm Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)

follow us at @blackstonebikes blackstonebikes.org

Blackstone Bicycle Works is a bustling community bike shop that each year empowers over 200 boys and girls from Chicago’s south side—teaching them mechanical skills, job skills, business literacy and how to become responsible community members. In our year-round ‘earn and learn’ youth program, participants earn bicycles and accessories for their work in the shop. In addition, our youths receive after-school tutoring, mentoring, internships and externships, college and career advising, and scholarships.

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

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

A PROGRAM OF

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, photographers, artists, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 7, Issue 9 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editors Martha Bayne Sam Joyce Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, Adam Przybyl, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michelle Anderson Music Editor Atavia Reed Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor AV Benford Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Lucia Geng, Carly Graf, Robin Vaughan, Jocelyn Vega, Tammy Xu, Jade Yan Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Social Media Editors Grace Asiegbu, Arabella Breck, Maya Holt Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editors Siena Fite,

Sofie Lie, Shane Tolentino Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Siena Fite, Katherine Hill Interim Layout Editor J. Michael Eugenio Deputy Layout Editors Nick Lyon, Haley Tweedell Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring.

Over the summer we publish every other week.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

IN CHICAGO IN THIS A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

Lightfoot’s lite version of an Obama Center CBA The Housing Department presented a watered-down plan to address the displacement that the construction of the Obama Presidential Center could trigger. Organizers have been pushing for a comprehensive community benefits agreement that would protect residents in a two-mile radius from opportunistic developers and soaring property taxes along the lakefront, but the Lightfoot administration doesn't find all of that necessary and has decided to focus on Woodlawn alone. Housing commissioner Marisa Novara agreed to keep several elements of the grassroots CBA, such as offering maintenance grants for long-time homeowners, but eliminated a major component supported by Alderman Jeanette Taylor that would have raised the affordability requirement for new construction to 30 percent in Woodlawn, South Shore, and Washington Park.

Black students at the University of Chicago make demands At an MLK event on campus, students from the Black Students Association read an open letter responding to a racist meme that another UofC student allegedly posted on social media. The letter made five demands of the school administration: to include an antiracist policy in the student handbook that outlines specific consequences for students who violate the policy; to send a letter to the entire university community addressing recent events; to explicitly denounce racial slurs and derogatory speech on campus; to provide more diversity, equity, and inclusion training for faculty, specifically around the use of course material that includes racism and other potentially harmful themes; and to hire and retain more faculty and staff of diverse racial, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, and political identities.

One thousand less ICE arrests Immigration officials arrested about one thousand fewer Illinois immigrants in fiscal year 2019, which they complain is the result of tightened state and local laws. The state’s Trust Act does not allow police to arrest anyone on the basis of their immigration status and Chicago’s sanctuary city ordinance prohibits Chicago police from handing over people in their custody to ICE. Lightfoot has denied immigration officials from accessing certain government databases, but advocates say the mayor could take it further by signing an executive order that bars Homeland Security from accessing all local databases, including the problematic Chicago gang database, and that won’t permit Chicago police to act as “customs officials”.

Englewood’s five council members Englewood is famously gerrymandered into five different wards, creating a political patchwork often cited as an impenetrable impediment to civic participation and effecting change. But in a show of unity or electability, the five aldermen representing Englewood — Alds. Stephanie Coleman (16th Ward), David Moore (17th Ward), Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward), Roderick Sawyer (6th Ward) and Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) -- came together January 14 for a town hall at Kennedy-King College. A standing-room crowd of more than five hundred packed the room and speakers hammered hard on the urgency of equitable investment and access to city resources. The 2020 census should eventually result in a remapping of ward lines; between that and the millions promised to flow to Englewood and nine other neighborhoods through the city’s Invest South/West Initiative, residents are skeptically optimistic.

ISSUE

we tell: states of violence

Inexpertly shot videos, sometimes shaky and nervous, comprise a form of resistance in a surveillance state christian belanger..........................4 to and from the common brick

“The bureaucratic world isn’t connecting with the urgency.” eiren caffall.....................................6 how embattled alderman solis’ top aide landed three jobs

“I better give him a lot, so I’m on the radar.” alejandra cancino, bga, and maría inés zamudio, wbez.........................11 growing poetry in south shore

I was quickly transported from the frozen asphalt outside my apartment to a sunnier Chicago. jasmine mithani..............................14 connecting with conflict

“It doesn’t seem as removed as some of the other events can be...the teenager who drowned in Lake Michigan is about their age.” ashvini kartik-narayan.................15 email ties alderman cardenas to polluter

“No one asked us if this would be okay because they knew the answer would be no. So they did it quietly, passed around some cash, and magic happened.” jacqueline serrato.........................17 mission accomplished

Grown people, free of worry and stigma, are smiling from ear to ear and literally skipping from the dispensary. av benford.......................................18

Cover by Mell Montezuma JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

STAGE & SCREEN

We Tell: States of Violence A Traveling Exhibition of Community-Made Documentaries

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

T

he University of Chicago is playing host to We Tell: 50 Years of Participatory Community Media, a national traveling exhibition of short documentaries produced by community media organizations. The six-part series is made up of works related to topics like gentrification, labor, and public health; Thursday night’s screening, States of Violence, contained films about war, domestic abuse, and mass incarceration. (There were no Chicago-specific works, though later programs — split between the Logan Center and the Green Line Performing Arts Center — include a doc by Kartemquin Films about the 1975 Cook County Hospital strike.)

States of Violence consists of seven works filmed between 1978 and 2017. A glance at the program — chronologically ordered, in roughly decreasing length — already reveals much about the films, whose subjects skew toward topicality. A 2005 documentary in which a pair of interns wear a wire in order to surreptitiously record an army recruiter (“training camp is just like basketball tryouts!” he said), came out in the midst of American protest 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

movements against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A longer 1990 piece, “Just Say No,” presents the sprawling network of resistance to the First Gulf War. The final two pieces, short films about the Movement for Black Lives and cop-watchers in New York’s Sunset Park, reflect a heightened awareness of police brutality and violence.

But they also demonstrate how easy it is for anyone to create films with very high production values or just for anyone to create media. It’s amusing to trace technological developments across the decades in the context of state violence. The Brooklyn cop-watchers are able to engage in their activism because of the ubiquity of cellphones; their inexpertly shot videos, sometimes shaky and nervous, comprise a form of resistance in a surveillance state that seeks to monopolize image and data streams.

Indeed, it was difficult (particularly during these last two films in the program) not to think of Chicago, where demands for police accountability after civilian shootings have often revolved around footage of the incident in question. During a post-screening panel

STAGE & SCREEN

seventy-pound boxes by themselves up flights of concrete.

"INSIDE WOMEN INSIDE," 1978

discussion, Maira Khwaja of the Invisible Institute (and a former Weekly contributor), which produces media investigations around policing in Chicago, spoke about the 2018 killing of Harith Augustus by a Chicago police officer. In the aftermath of the shooting, Superintendent Eddie Johnson released bodycam footage of the incident.

“It was paused and zoomed in on Harith’s holster. It was also titled ‘Aggravated Assault of an Officer,’ ” Khwaja said. “I think we just have to be careful with that obsession [over body cameras]. Even the copwatch perspective is not the only angle of perspective that’s helpful.”

This attempt at pacification by the city — disingenuously annotating the officer’s view of the incident in order to redeem his actions — rang even more hollow a few months ago, when it was discovered that the city had “lost track” of two additional videos of the incident.

The program’s older films remain compelling in their graininess and apparent naivete. “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” produced by the New Orleans Video Access Center, features women who have been abused by their partners, as well as feminist activists discussing their efforts to set up organizations to help them. Louis Massiah, the series’s co-programmer and the founder of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, pointed out during the panel that the lack of synchronization between reels in the

film resulted in abrupt, slightly jarring transitions between scenes. You might also note the prolonged shots of the interviewers nodding mutely at subjects, interjecting with a quick “that’s right,” or allowing a woman to speak so long that her verbal tics — like a repeated “it just breaks my heart” — come through. You might chalk all of it up to a lack of resources or experience. But these superficially inelegant touches seem deliberate; the roughness breaks open the viewing experience and reminds the viewer of the brutality inflicted upon the women in the film.

The experimentalism is easier to discern in “Inside Women Inside” made

by Cynthia Maurizio and Christine Choy, who is perhaps best known for her Oscarnominated documentary on the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin. “Inside Women Inside” is about the incarceration of women: it was filmed at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women and the Correctional Institute for Women at Rikers Island, where Choy and Maurizio were given access that would seem impossible today. They follow inmates to their cells, into the cafeteria, to the rooms where they work on sewing machines and shout to be heard. The women tell them freely about the preferential treatment handed out to suck-ups and informants, the hair in their unpeeled potatoes, and the back-breaking labor they’re forced to carry out, hauling

Much like “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” Maurizio and Choy’s movie turns its low budget into an asset. Ambient noise bleeds in during interviews and people filmed through cell bars are cut off unconventionally. An interview with a prison superintendent is shot from the ground up, it seems — with a large dark desk taking up most of the frame, the official’s face looming over it, the footage takes on the quality of samizdat. “There’s no telling what I might do to get free,” says one woman. “There’s no telling what I might do, just to be treated like a human.”

Massiah introduced the program with some short remarks, in which he noted that what makes participatory community media particularly compelling is that the subject of a work is also often the author. Afterward, during the panel discussion with Khwaja and UofC professor Jacqueline Stewart, founder of the South Side Home Movie Project, Massiah explained this idea with reference to “Books Through Bars,” a short documentary produced with the help of his organization Scribe Video Center. Through one of its programs, Scribe sent two staff members to work with an organization as facilitators, helping its members create a film about themselves.

In this case, the organization was Books Through Bars, an anarchist-inflected group that sends books to people in prison. (The group still operates out of its headquarters in West Philly.) Massiah noted that there were concrete outcomes: the group ended up with a film that it could show its constituents and they learned filmmaking skills that would hopefully turn out to be helpful in the future. But more generally, making films also helped the groups better comprehend what they were trying to do. “When people work collectively to create work, it forces them to make decisions,” Massiah said. “All of those decisions, I think, force people to have a greater understanding of the subject, and I think the groups that work on these pieces are changed by them.”

Khwaja made the same point in connection to the work the Invisible Institute has been engaged in with students at Hyde Park Academy. There, students in the broadcast media program participate in the Youth/Police Project, aimed at helping them explore their own past and potential encounters with police officers. “It really is a lot more about the actual conversation that we’re having and what giving...students cameras can allow for. It’s less about the end

“It’s less about the end product that maybe we’ll edit together and make at some point, and more about the conversations.”

product that maybe we’ll edit together and make at some point, and more about the conversations.”

In the case of the Hyde Park Academy students, their work is for them alone, a way of making sense of the state-sanctioned violence many of them are threatened with daily. But Massiah also pointed out that a local focus can ultimately appeal to a broad range of people. “One of the things that happens with participatory journalism is, it is specific…. It’s kind of micro-focused. But there is a huge generality and universality in learning about something happening in one locale,” he said. “We all live in the same universe. When you make work you want people to watch it…. I think it’s an ongoing effort to figure out in a kind of systematic way how this work can take advantage of existing platforms.”

We Tell continues with screenings January 30, February 6, February 20, February 27, and March 12 at Logan Center for the Arts and Green Line Performing Arts Center. Check scribe.org/wetell/screening-venues for more information.

Christian Belanger is a senior editor at the Weekly. He last wrote about Nancy Hays.

JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

NATURE

To and From the Common Brick Slow-Motion Disaster on Chicago's South Side

BY EIREN CAFFALL FOR THE CENTER FOR HUMANS AND NATURE’S MINDING NATURE JOURNAL

T

o begin, imagine a brick.

This one is vintage, sought after by collectors, made of a unique type of clay only found from Lake Michigan to Kankakee, Illinois; from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Gary, Indiana. It is called Chicago common brick. It is pink—not shocking pink or peony pink, but pink like well-grilled salmon, mottled and pocked, idiosyncratic. It is anything but common.

Now imagine a wall.

This one is also vintage. It is one of the four walls of a brick bungalow built in the 1920s, nearly identical to its neighbors. The wall hugs the prairie ground and is covered with light powder—efflorescence—because the bricks are melting from constant exposure to climate change-fueled stormwater and sewage runoff backed up through the sewer pipes into the basement.

It isn’t just happening to this one wall.

This slow-motion, mostly invisible disaster disproportionately affects the residents of the South Side neighborhood of Chatham. Once that water backs up into the basements of their homes, it becomes their problem, not the city’s. These floods are exacerbated by decades of systemic 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

infrastructural neglect that has now been passed onto private citizens, nearly all of them low- and middle-income African Americans.

Cheryl Watson—retired Chicago public school science teacher, resident of Chatham, and owner of our brick—is trying to prevent the destruction of her neighbors’ health and economic stability by teaching them the real reasons that their basements are full of sewage and rainwater and their bricks are melting back into the prairie ground.

N

ext, imagine the lives of the people who live within the shelter of that brick.

Cheryl Watson and her family weren’t the first people it sheltered. “This area was an industrial area, so you had laborers who were living here: German, Irish, Polish. So the wealthier people had no interest in this area, in improving the infrastructure.” Watson has pictures from the early days, the alleys not yet completed, her sturdy bungalow intact, fresh, and brand new, the bricks crisp.

“My parents moved into Chatham in 1957, to a bungalow, an older home even back then. My memories were of the horrible flooding with sewer backup. The damage

in the basement was such that they never finished the basement. Every spring we went through a whole gyration to throw away things that were damaged. This went on for years as I moved into adulthood, then I was back in the home helping with my aging parents—this was a family project.”

It is a neighborhood project, too.

In Chicago, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, or MWRD, manages a sewer system that takes on both sanitary (household/human) waste and storm drain runoff. It goes to water reclamation plants.

When those plants are at capacity, the water has only a few places to go. One of them is Lake Michigan, the source for the city’s drinking water. Another is the rivers. The last is back into the pipes. In Chatham, due to a quirk of geography, those pipes empty regularly back into private homes.

Cheryl won’t reveal many specifics about what happens when her drains back up, but when they do, the water is storm runoff mixed with sewage; it saturates her lawn and yard and those around her.

Sometimes new families buy onto Cheryl’s street and fix up their basement, only to have it ruined. Drywall sits in

MELL MONTEZUMA

Chatham’s alleys, ripped out of refinished basements by people inexperienced in the ways of the sewers there. Some residents report maggots hatching in standing water under their kitchens. Flooding of this kind hits household infrastructure over and over again. It destroys furnaces and water heaters, washing machines and dryers. It ruins carpets and drywall. It breeds molds, all kinds— even dangerous black mold. And with all this flooding comes loss: of property value, possessions, peace, and health.

T

hat brick wall is connected to the vulnerabilities of the larger region.

Chatham gets more emergency flooding reports than any other part of the South Side. Damage reports from urban flooding from 2001 to 2011 rose disproportionately in the 60619 zip code in which Chatham is located.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) is a nonprofit that trains citizens to deal with the personal effects of climate change on Chicago’s neighborhoods.

They also track its costs. CNT estimates that $773 million in damages came from urban flooding in Cook County between 2007 and

NATURE

2011. The National Academy of Sciences reported in 2019 that, between 2004 and 2015, Chicago and the surrounding cities lost over $1.8 billion in subsidized grants, insurance payments, and loans to people affected by flood losses.

As the Tribune reported in May 2019, “Only hurricane-ravaged areas of coastal Louisiana, New York, and Texas received more federal flood aid during the decade.”

In Illinois, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) found that ninety percent of flooding occurred outside of any FEMA-designated flood maps, which means that those floods happened mostly on property not near rivers or lakes—houses are flooding from the inside, and they can’t be insured against that.

Climate collapse changes everything everywhere. But in the Midwest the major effects are grouped into problems of heat and problems of water.

Chicago’s devastating 1995 heat wave resulted in more than 800 deaths, mostly in vulnerable Black and brown elderly populations on the South Side. That disaster changed things. The city created contingency plans, added cooling centers, tried remediation through additional tree planting, improved disaster preparedness, and changed first response protocols. But in the case of water, it has prepared for a world outside the accelerant of climate change.

In 1975 the city began work on the Deep Tunnel, a citywide response to lack of capacity for sewer and stormwater overflow.

The final phase was completed a few years ago—a $4 billion, 109-mile system of pipes excavated from dolomitic limestone at depths reaching 350 feet below ground, running toward giant reservoirs—cavernous rectangles cut into the landscape, some formed from quarries. Designed to prevent flooding in 1.5 million structures and handle the next hundred years of rain, it may already have reached capacity.

There are nationwide assessments of urban flooding, but the Midwest, not traditionally affected by hurricanes, has been largely overlooked. However, the National Climate Assessment (NCA) has surveyed multiple problems in the region, noting the centrality of its population centers, food, and travel infrastructure.

Flooding is a key issue. This is reflected in the fact that 2019 has been a year of unprecedented rainfall across the Midwest, with the water level in the combined Lake Michigan–Lake Huron watershed thirteen inches higher than it reached in 2018,

“I took it upon myself to train my neighbors—to train them about the impact of the sewers. Beyond a certain point in their property line, it is on you.” according to the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

The problem of storm sewers comes up in the NCA report, and it further cites an Environmental Protection Agency estimate that “more than 800 billion gallons of untreated combined sewage released into the nation’s waters annually.” In many ways the report describes a return to the infrastructure collapses of the nineteenth century—the ones that gave birth to the brick city on the marshes. The Great Lakes provide drinking water to more than 40 million people, and those lakes are often responsible for taking in the excess stormwater and sewage overflow. That same report quotes a study that estimates that “increased storm events will lead to an increase of up to 120% in combined sewer overflows into Lake Michigan by 2100.”

Watson worries about this, too. The preparations the city has made don’t “really address the problems that are happening now [with climate change]. My sump pump is working overtime.”

“Over time I began to notice an increase,” she says. “I put in a check valve to help with that, but with climate change issues, we were having more frequent problems. I started getting flooding in the yard. My house and my two neighbors’, coming down the basement stairs.”

Cheryl Watson’s losses are like the losses of her neighbors.

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atson’s wall holds up a Chicago institution: the brick bungalow.

The bungalow, a classic design from the turn of the last century, is a staple of Chicago neighborhoods, so plentiful that city planners refer to the areas in which they predominate as the Bungalow Belt—a threading, twisting ring surrounding the city from the South Side to the north, stronger in some places, weaker in others.

In Chatham, the bungalows belong to

the rich tradition of the Black working and middle class—the same Black working and middle class that spawned Michelle Obama, for example.

Cheryl’s parents bought the bungalow with its pink brick when they moved up from the South, part of a great wave of the Black diaspora in the United States seeking jobs and land and dignity away from Jim Crow, landing in a community where most of the other owners had the same story and a collective approach to building fresh prevailed, even if they had to settle in a segregated neighborhood to get it.

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hicago has seventy-seven community areas, from Rogers Park in the north to Hegewisch in the south. Each one’s character is determined by history, racial and ethnic composition, and proximity to manufacturing. Chatham, just ten miles south of the Loop, began its life as a marshy area called “Mud Lake” or “Hog’s Lake,” part of the wetland ecosystem surrounding the riverine waterways adjacent to the Great Lake to the east.

Because of the marsh, development was slow. The railroads came first, then a watch factory, but the neighborhood didn’t have much of an industrial life until 1900, when steel plants began going up along the Calumet River and the shores of Lake Michigan. Waves of immigration slowly altered it all through that century—Italian stonemasons, then Irish workers, then Swedes, then Jews—until the 1950s, when everything changed. In 1950, the population of Chatham was one percent Black, but by 1960, it was 63.7 percent.

Chatham drew Black residents who were focused on community, neighborhood organizations, and home ownership.

Throughout its heyday, it was home to Black-owned businesses, including Johnson Products Company, which made Ultra Sheen Hair Products, and Independence National Bank, the largest Black-owned

bank in the United States until 1995.

Chatham is still ninety-eight percent Black. Its population is aging, like a lot of the South Side’s residents, but with a steady median income of $38,000 a year. This median income hasn’t shifted much in the last few census counts, although, like much of the South Side, Chatham is also losing population.

Like other parts of the Bungalow Belt, Chatham’s streets are in a regular, orderly grid that stretches across the city limits.

Named streets run north to south; because it is the South Side, numbered ones reach east and west. The roads are paved in gray tarmac; there are verges in front of each home, maintained by each homeowner as per city ordinance. Mature trees grow everywhere.

But so do board-ups, vacant lots, and the evidence of infrastructural neglect.

T

o understand the melting of the brick, you have to imagine its birth.

Chicago common brick is a material deeply linked to the geologic and city planning history of Chicago. At the end of the last Ice Age, Glacial Lake Chicago— the result of melting glaciers that remade the hilly Midwest into its current lush, flat greenness—finally began to recede. As it did, there were remnants: eskers, kames, fill, sand, erratic boulders, and lowered earth, damped down by the pressure of ice.

Low ground like that is wonderful at creating wetlands—vibrant and essential ecosystems that breed fish and birds and insects, harbor unique plants, and allow water filtration. They are both the birthplaces and the last resting places of rivers. Wetlands aren’t sexy. They can vacillate between wet and dry land, making them unsuitable for building, better for rice cultivation than dairy and cattle farming.

They flood, making planting tricky. Worse, they breed mosquitos, which used to breed malaria.

In the Midwest, malaria was devastating in the early years of white settlement, and it continued to be common until DDT was deployed to destroy the mosquitoes that carried it around the military bases supplying troops for World War II. By 1949, when malaria was declared eradicated in the United States, more than 4,650,000 house spray applications of DDT has been made in just two years. But for the earliest settlers, the connection to mosquitos as the source of the “ague” from which they suffered was obscured. The link wouldn’t be made clear until the late 1800s.

JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

NATURE

For them, the fevers were associated with the place, and specifically with “miasmatic waters.” Illinois governor John Reynolds, who served from 1830–1834, remarked that malaria was so linked to his state that “the idea prevailed that Illinois was a graveyard.”

Wetlands had to go, and go they did.

Watson remembers the wetlands that used to be part of Chatham. When she tells the story, she adds in the long view of her neighborhood, referring casually to its geologic past, as if for her the story of her home is still intimately connected to the land around it.

“The water [from Glacial Lake Chicago] receded and this was still considered a muddy area, a rural area. Even when my parents bought here . . .. We played with turtles and ponds, and there were even crawdads in the mud. There were even gaslights,” Cheryl Watson tells me in our phone interview.

“When I was growing up, this whole area was dirt roads. My parents, their neighbors paid to have the alleys paved. Now you don’t have the open woods feel to have the water absorbed into the ground.”

Between 1780 and 1980 the United States lost sixty acres of wetlands every hour for the entire two-hundred-year span. Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio have lost 36 million acres of wetlands since colonization.

Those acres represent nearly one third of all wetlands lost in the history of the United States.

But the ones surrounding Chatham and the South Side gave a last gift as they went—the discovery of the layer of unique, geologically deposited clay that would become Chicago common brick.

It is hard to build a city on the remnants of an old lakebed.

Chicago was founded on the unstable till, silt, and marsh at the mouth of the Chicago River. That slightly malleable foundation worked for a small trading town, even a frontier city on the make, but as it lurched toward the turn of the century, Chicago was finding it to be a less-thanideal basis for a metropolis. Standing water from poorly drained storms—as well as the sewage from the river contaminating the lake and, therefore, the city’s drinking water—led to an outbreak of cholera in 1854 that killed 6 percent of the population. By 1856, the city fathers decided to raise the city up above the swamp, to create new paved roadways, and to modernize the sewers into the bargain.

By 1858, they raised the entire city four to 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

fourteen feet above the soggy water table that was its prior height. In buildings that already existed, giant wooden screws were installed under foundations, and teams of workers twisted them slowly into the air.

Older homes in poorer neighborhoods sacrificed their first floors as road levels were raised around them, moving stoops and staircases, the second floor becoming the first, basement apartments springing up like mushrooms.

The building boom that followed the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 resulted in debris that was pushed into the lakefront and became the new downtown. Wooden construction was outlawed within the city limits. Only brick would be allowed. The Chicago River’s flow was reversed, sending contaminated water out toward the wetlands to keep the city’s drinking water safe. But one part of Chicago—which included the area that would become Chatham—was left at the original level and allowed to remain a wetland. That land, at the time, was barely settled, a distant neighbor of the metropolis.

But it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

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hicago treated these lower water table portions of its metropolis just like any other neighborhood. North Side water and waste went north, sometimes as far as near-suburban Skokie. South Side water went south into huge filtration and treatment plants run by the MWRD. In most of the city, pipes run under the streets through stable foundation constructed when the city was raised.

Since Chatham lies in the lower water table, it essentially sits—as early Chicago did—in a bowl of sand and till. It also occupies an unusual midway point of two separate water reclamation plants—one in Cicero, and another in Riverdale.

As the pipes come in from the north, they dip lower to meet the lower neighborhood and begin to run through sand with all the water of the preceding areas now inside them. Leaving the neighborhood, the pipes rise again—the water now straining against gravity—to meet the land on the other side of the bowl and begin their trip to the reclamation plants or the Deep Tunnel.

In a bad storm, the water meeting at Chatham’s center point stalls. There is too much water pressure to take it back up the elevation, so it begins to back up to the only place it can—basements and yards and streets—through those same pipes that were supposed to serve Chatham as equally as the regions of whiter Chicago.

“As a result,” Watson says, “the way the sewer systems were built, wherever the sewer system was built the pipe has to go up, and then get into that pipe, well, anything further north of us, if they are getting a lot of water, we’re the last ones to get into the pipe.”

T

he clay that made our brick lined the prairie and wetland for thousands of years before Chicago discovered it. Deposits laid down during the Ice Age created a thin band of clay, a distinctive blue color, and a composition that includes limestone, a unique result of its proximity to the glacial lake and all its creatures. The clay was plentiful in the region to the south of the city, including Chatham, Blue Island, East Chicago, and Kankakee.

In the rush to reinvent itself—reversing a river, rebuilding in brick—the clay was discovered during the digging of ship canals and new beds for the river. Soon after, there were so many brick manufacturers that Chicago became one of the largest producers and exporters in the world, setting the stage for its later life as king of steel exports.

“By the 1890s the area boasted more than 60 brickyards, clustered near Blue Island; manufacturers pumped out 600 million bricks a year,” reports the Tribune.

Those bricks went all across the country and the world. They are still sought after, collected and reused, with a number of reclamation companies at work in Chicago, inspired by the bricks left over after the uprisings of the 1960s in the city’s African American neighborhoods.

When fired, the blue clay of Illinois takes on that soft pink salmon color. The limestone in the brick is mercurial in heat, breaking and popping, creating its mottled color and texture. Chicago common is better able to breathe than other brick. It takes in moisture and sheds it easily, ideal for a wetland-founded city, but only if that moisture is not trapped by any other substance.

When one makes a brick wall, one cements the bricks together with mortar.

The brick in Chicago, however, requires a particular kind of mortar to survive. When a brick structure is repaired, the process is commonly called tuckpointing. Some debate exists about whether what is sold to U.S. consumers is really tuckpointing—a generic term used here to refer to any rebuilding of a brick wall. Repointing—putting new mortar around broken bricks and crumbling mortar uniformly, is not classic tuckpointing, in

which the mason mixes colored mortar to repair brick and plain mortar to restore old mortar. But here I’ll use tuckpointing to mean what most homeowners experience in Chicago—making up a standard heavy-duty mortar or concrete mixture to reapply where old mortar is loose and bricks are damaged.

When tuckpointing is completed on a brick building, the wall is shored up. But use modern tuckpointing mortar on Chicago common brick and the thick, non-breathable concrete suffocates the more porous clay.

The cement stays solid when exposed to moisture and the brick, with the moisture trapped against its surface, holds the water, cracks and crumbles, disintegrates, and melts, leaving a grid of mortar with nothing inside.

Whether a home gets expert tuckpointing or tuckpointing that ignores the delicacy of common brick depends mostly on class. If homeownership is precarious, every repair must be done on a tight budget, with neither time nor expertise to ensure that special brick gets special treatment.

Watson’s house had the wrong kind of tuckpointing at some point, and the damage started in earnest, helped along by the constant presence of moisture in her yard, basement, and foundation. “And now the bricks are falling, chipping, showing moisture damages,” Watson says. She was eventually able to call in an expert. “I had a preservation specialist come out that was familiar with my type of brick, a lot of brick replacement that would be needed. Heavy efflorescent materials, totally different than they had been. More moisture banging up against your walls. These Chicago walls were built with Chicago brick, meant to breathe, the special mortar is making it a problem, occurring on the walls, even taller than me and I’m 5’9”, even worse than what is happening from the sewers.”

W

hen a problem disproportionately affects a population by race or class, people begin to believe it is being inflicted on them deliberately.

After Hurricane Katrina, residents of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, the majority of them African American, voiced a suspicion, sometimes passionately held, that the levees breached by the storm had, in fact, been bombed in an act of ethnic cleansing, a racially targeted eradication of the Black residents.

In Chatham, a similar suspicion sprang up. “There was a myth that there was

NATURE

COURTESY OF INDUSTRIAL HISTORY BLOGSPOT

THE CLAY PIT OF THE ILLINOIS BRICK COMPANY IN BLUE ISLAND

something going on downtown, that the city was working with the locks downtown, that the city was deliberately flooding the neighborhood, and so the residents didn’t do anything to address the issues,” Watson tells me.

Her neighbors’ suspicions and questions—as well as her own—drove Watson to become a volunteer community flooding educator. She trained with the Civilian Conservation Corps (C3) to become a leader in stormwater management planning. “We had Army Corps of Engineers involved to dispel any mystery and get to the facts [about the conspiracy]. But it is going to take homeowners and business owners to think differently about how to do things differently.”

She spoke to reporters; she partnered with the Rain Ready Program, an organization that is part of the CNT. “I took it upon myself to train my neighbors—to

train them about the impact of the sewers.

Beyond a certain point in their property line, it is on you.”

This came easily to Watson, her science background and historical knowledge of the community integrating seamlessly with her work in her faith community. She’s “on the green committee for church. My church is going green in every way.”

Watson’s neighbors have responded, attended her meetings. They have acted collectively to solve what the city would like them to think are individual problems.

She says, “We’re trying to come up with what other intermittent solutions that will help homeowners so that we can keep from getting the water into their house and into their yard. Collecting names of rain gardens, native plants, what impact do trees have, are there different trees that we could use than are already here?”

But the weather may not wait for those

collective solutions to come to pass.

I

t isn’t only brick that makes up a home; there is drywall, wood, and carpet, all of which is susceptible to mold.

“Stachybotrys chartarum (also known by its synonym Stachybotrys atra is a greenishblack mold. It can grow on material with a high cellulose and low nitrogen content, such as fiberboard, gypsum board, paper, dust, and lint. Growth occurs when there is moisture from water damage, excessive humidity, water leaks, condensation, water infiltration, or flooding. Constant moisture is required for its growth,” says the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website.

They go on to say that black mold exposure can result in coughs, upper respiratory irritation, or the onset of asthma in susceptible people. “Other recent studies have suggested a potential link of early mold exposure to development of asthma in some

children, particularly among children who may be genetically susceptible to asthma development.”

Asthma appears at a rate of thirteen percent in Black children in the United States, compared with a rate of eight percent in whites, with Black children much more likely to suffer hospitalization as a result.

In Chatham, the overall population gets asthma at 14.4 percent compared to the city’s average of 9.1 percent.

The World Health Organization issued guidelines in 2009 for coping with mold and damp in home environments and specifically with the effects of dampness and mold on health, stating, “The overall evidence shows that house dampness is consistently associated with a wide range of respiratory health effects, most notably asthma, wheeze, cough, respiratory infections and upper respiratory tract symptoms.”

In the aftermath of hurricane damage, JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

NATURE black mold crops up on any home that had been underwater for a significant period of time. As soon as spores land on a target rich in fiber, they can begin to grow within twenty-four hours. Mold grows at a rate of one square inch per day. All the big storms of the twenty-first century saw black mold contamination: Katrina, Rita, Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

In Chicago, according to a recent study by the National Resources Defense Council, the South Side is disproportionately affected by all kinds of environmental health problems stemming from pollution, industrial contamination, flooding, and neglect. An interactive map of the city, coded blue for cleaner neighborhoods and red for more endangered, lights up crimson surrounding Chatham. But without a city plan to tackle the health crisis, residents are in the dark about their symptoms.

Watson began having mysterious breathing issues. Doctor after doctor turned her away until she found a specialist who had consulted with the first responder survivors of the September 11 attacks on their own range of mystery lung problems. “They had noticed these specks on my lungs, went in for the biopsy, looking at the MRI. It is common for people who live on the South Side to have this on their lungs because of the dampness and the mold.”

Watson had to go to several doctors before she was able to get this diagnosis, “[He] showed me images and he said, it isn’t life-threatening, people who live on the South Side of Chicago, if you have respiratory problems, or asthma, for me, my lungs were healthy, but in other people it might also be an attendant problem. I ‘ve seen the mold; it is more prevalent. I keep bleach around here. I’m medically minded; I wanted to be a doctor. These things catch my attention, to put my efforts in.”

Watson recovered over time, “He gave me medication that knocked it out, but it is a constant environmental thing that depends on exposure.”

But, like the slow effects of the floods themselves, there isn’t a concerted health study for the residents of Chatham to track the crisis. Again, a collective problem is made into a private matter between citizens and their doctors.

T

he wetlands that were destroyed in the building of the city and the harvesting of brick remain one of the most important potential solutions for flooding nationwide. Restore them and runoff has somewhere to go—a reset valve, a failsafe.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency began a program to promote wetland restoration. On their website, they list successful wetland remediation projects.

In the Midwest region there is only one, in Kansas. In the Great Lakes there are three.

Funds are available through grants to put wetlands back. But those projects are isolated.

Wetlands continue to disappear all across the United States, though at a reduced rate.

An article in Scientific American quotes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as reporting that during “the 1990s the rate of wetlands loss in the U.S. declined by some 80 percent over previous decades. But the nation is still losing upwards of 50,000 wetland acres per year.”

In 2011, Chicago architect Jeanne Gang published Reverse Effect: Reimagining Chicago’s Waterways. Her bold solution to the problems of the city’s sewage runoff, invasive species, green space access, stormwater flooding, and watershed overcapacity was reintegrating the region’s traditional wetlands and the lake, creating a city in and among its waterways—not controlling them, but rather allowing green space and marsh to co-exist with concrete and sewer systems.

Wetland rebuilding—a slow process of removing artificially added terrain and plants, allowing the watershed and its riverine ecosystem to restore its balance of plants and animals, flood and drought— requires empty land. People still buy in areas where floods occur, especially in places like Chatham, not considered part of any flood map FEMA has ever issued. Off the record, the people issuing flooding prevention plans for the Chicago area refer to Chatham the way that some people talk about the Ninth Ward—as a place that might be better served by a buyout plan, rather than the millions of dollars that remediation requires.

But there is no buyback plan for Chatham, and the residents don’t want one.

Watson wants to understand the question, to know what’s happening at the level of the water. “The big push is to get FEMA doing a study on urban flooding that is not related to the rivers. Everything has been designed around river flooding.”

She says, “Whatever studies they did were on the North Side. Studies take time. But in the meantime, this weather is taking a toll on our properties. The bureaucratic world isn’t connecting with the urgency.”

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, or CMAP, has a plan for coping with the increased pressures of climate change on Chicago, but, like the Deep Tunnel, it might be too little too late. CMAP

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

looks at riverine flooding in the long term— the importance of tackling the increased water in the region at every level, from storm sewers to infrastructural improvement. But as 2019 sets new records for rainfall across the region, their plan looks mostly like hanging on to a world that is disappearing faster than anyone can prepare for.

Watson wants some planning just for Chatham. She wants the city to “provide funds to allow homeowners to get their houses retrofitted, so it is a shared responsibility.” She wants the burden to fall more equally across the city. “There are some neighborhoods up north where people are on board with this, and those neighborhoods look totally different from ours. The North Side was far ahead on getting adapted to the sustainable needs of the community, they are at the table with their representatives.”

Tuckpointing Chicago common brick is tricky. It requires that the worker understand the materials, the history, the limestone.

On the North Side, in the bungalows that have housed many of Chicago’s mayors and Illinois’s governors, that tuckpointing comes as part of the responsibility of maintaining the neighborhood. It is an expense that is easily handled in those well-funded areas.

Flood prevention, too, is part of the cost of keeping those historic neighborhoods of the white Bungalow Belt intact, preserving what generations of people have protected by raising the roads and turning the rivers.

Cheryl Watson just wants the same thing for her home and her neighbors. “In this day and age all of it falls under the issue of social justice. It is required that we have to have a healthy environment. We have to get away from being siloed anymore. This is an old neighborhood, so no one is going to be tearing down and building new houses anytime soon. There is value in these homes but we need help in preserving them.”

W

hat is the common brick of a city?

You could say it is the buildings— the physical places that make up the experiment of living together. But events like the uprisings of Chicago’s African American community in the 1960s, the razing of the Chicago Housing Authority’s planned high-rise communities, and even the 1871 fire demonstrate that buildings come and go.

You could say it is the real estate itself— the incorporated areas that a municipal government declares as its own, everything within the city limits. But as the history of Chicago shows, those borders morph and change over the life of a metropolis.

You could say it is the infrastructure

that binds neighborhoods together—the sewers and roads, the schools and public transit, the parks and city services. But not everyone owns those equally; neglect is easy to enact in poor neighborhoods where the political clout, and even the will to fight, is gone.

You could say that it is the land itself—the geology, the riverine ecosystems, the weather and its consequences shared together, especially for a place of extremes like Chicago, where heat and cold—and, increasingly, rain—make common sufferers of people with little else in common.

But the common brick is really the people that make a place their home. Even as the demographics of cities change decade by decade, even as neighborhoods within cities change, the common brick of a city is the histories of those people—how they protect and inhabit the land and create stewardship of each other and all those other elements, just by staying put.

It isn’t too much to ask that the common brick of Chatham be protected, before it melts back into the wetland ecosystem and is gone.

For more information on urban flooding and resources available to Chicago homeowners, see the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s website at cnt.org/rainready/guidance or call the center at (773) 278-4800.

This essay was originally published in the Center for Humans and Nature’s Minding Nature journal, an online publication that explores conservation values and the practice of democratic ecological citizenship, and was supported through a fellowship in environmental justice journalism with the Social Justice News Nexus at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. You are invited to join the Center's community of thinkers and share your reflections at humansandnature.org. Originally published in Minding Nature’s Fall 2019 issue.

Reprinted with permission.

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her work on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Al Jazeera, Literary Hub, Entropy Magazine, the short film Becoming Ocean, and three record albums.

POLITICS

PAULA FRIEDRICH AND BILL HEALY

How Embattled Alderman Solis’ Top Aide Landed Three Jobs

As then-25th Ward Alderman Daniel Solis was cooperating in a sweeping federal corruption probe before leaving office last year, a top staffer was building a new career as a bouncer, security guard, and as a lobbyist at an Illinois utility company.

BY ALEJANDRA CANCINO, BGA, AND MARÍA INÉS ZAMUDIO, WBEZ

E

ntangled in Chicago bureaucracy that shut down his iconic Pilsen bar after a gangstyle shooting outside, the owner of Harbee Liquors did the same thing troubled business owners throughout Chicago have done for decades.

He enlisted the help of his local alderman.

In this case that alderman was Daniel Solis, who before leaving office last year was among the most influential politicians in Chicago. He chaired a powerful City Council committee and built his 25th Ward office into a center of Latino power politics during more than two decades on the council.

Just a couple months after Solis intervened with city bureaucrats on Harbee’s behalf, the taps were once again flowing at the popular bar. Grateful, Harbee owner Steven Frytz wrote $2,000 in checks for a Solis fundraiser.

“I literally thought, well, thank God I’m good with my license. I better give him a lot, so I’m on the radar,” Frytz said during a series of interviews. “It’s a tough world out there.”

That spring in 2016—after the bar reopened and he offered the contributions—Frytz also hired one of Solis’ top lieutenants to moonlight as a bouncer at Harbee.

It was a side job that would help launch a new career in private security for a longtime JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

POLITICS

top Solis aide, Francisco Lassio.

Over the next two years, Lassio continued to moonlight as a Harbee bouncer and went on to accept another side job at a politically connected private security firm where business took a turn for the better.

Even as he worked as a security guard for Blue Line Security Solutions, Lassio kept his city job as Solis’ director of city services and later as chief of staff, where he was repeatedly involved in getting city permits for festivals that hired Blue Line to keep the peace, according to a Better Government Association/WBEZ investigation.

Both Lassio and an attorney for Blue Line Security said his dual roles as a public servant and private security guard posed no conflict of interest, and that he did nothing wrong.

“If you’re saying there’s a correlation of hiring somebody from the community who also works in government that works as a part time, low-paid security officer, that is the worst payback scheme I’ve ever seen in my life,” said attorney Frank Avila, who represents Blue Line.

The revelations about the inner workings of the 25th Ward office come as federal investigators in Chicago are cracking down on a culture of self dealing that permeates Illinois politics. The corruption probe has already involved state lawmakers, suburban elected officials and aldermen, including Solis himself.

The BGA/WBEZ investigation found no evidence the help Solis gave to Harbee is part of the ongoing federal investigation.

Still, an examination of hundreds of pages of records and more than a dozen interviews shows that Lassio began building his new career at a time when Solis was in serious trouble with federal corruption authorities. The FBI has detailed in public documents Solis’ longtime pattern of shakedowns in which the alderman traded official acts for personal gain—including political contributions, freebies and even prostitution.

Solis has not been charged, but federal court records show he worked as a federal informant, secretly recording other elected officials as part of the sweeping investigation targeting a pervasive world of corruption where political connections run deep, power is often sold for cash and jobs are traded like currency to reward the loyal.

One aspect of the sprawling federal investigation centers on how Solis was secretly recorded by federal authorities trying to drum up legal work for the private 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

law firm of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Lassio worked in Solis’ ward office for more than a decade, serving as the alderman’s director of city services and later his chief of staff. After Solis got in trouble and left office this past spring, Lassio pivoted but never strayed far from intersections with the government. In addition to his security work, Lassio took a job as a community relations specialist for public utility giant Peoples Gas in April, a spokeswoman for the utility confirmed, and records show he registered as a lobbyist in July 2019.

Danisha Hall, director of corporate communications for Peoples Gas, declined to answer specific questions about how Lassio was hired, citing privacy laws, only saying his selection was part of a “competitive” process.

She said the company is “not aware” of any federal contact with its employees.

The BGA and WBEZ reported last year that another utility giant, Commonwealth Edison, was subpoenaed by federal authorities investigating its political hires, and WBEZ later reported how authorities are investigating potential links between those hires and regulatory favors.

‘I’D BE HAPPY TO SUPPORT THEM’

T

he saga of how a bar owner got help from an alderman began on the night of September 21, 2014 when a twenty-three-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his chest stumbled into Harbee looking for help.

According to Frytz, the bar doorman on duty that night didn’t notice the bullet wound, kicked out the wounded man who police later identified as a gang member, and then neglected to call 911.

The transgression earned Harbee and its owner a city citation for failure to report the incident to authorities, records show. It began a bureaucratic battle with City Hall that Frytz fought for more than a year.

Then, on December 15, 2015, the bar’s local liquor license expired, records show.

Frytz said he was unable to renew it with the cloud of the citation from the shooting incident still pending. That’s when Frytz closed the bar, and Solis began offering his help.

On December 17—the same day Frytz officially closed Harbee—Solis penned a letter to city officials that encouraged them

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

to allow the bar to renew its good standing.

Frytz said he believes his attorney requested the letter from Solis.

“Please be advised that I am in support to the reissuance of a liquor license to Harbee Liquors, Inc.,” Solis wrote on his ward letterhead. “Mr. Steven Frytz has been an owner that always complies with what the city requires. I have never received complaints against this business and I hope they can renew their license.”

Such letters of support from aldermen, especially one as powerful as Solis, have historically been key pieces of correspondence in Chicago that serve as the grease to loosen the machinery of city government. The letters often streamline government regulations, overcome bureaucratic red tape and facilitate action.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has promised to check such aldermanic prerogatives, saying it facilitates the type of corruption federal authorities are now pursuing.

After Solis’ intervention, Frytz’s troubles at City Hall evaporated, records show.

By February, Frytz had obtained his new city liquor license, the violation case was resolved and Harbee reopened in March.

In April, Frytz wrote checks for $2,000 to Solis’ campaign fund, according to campaign records. That was in addition to the $10,000 he contributed a year earlier after first receiving the citation from the city.

He said all those contributions came after he was invited to Solis fundraisers.

Records show Frytz has contributed about $30,000 to Solis’ political accounts since 2011. The bulk of the contributions came after the city cited the bar for such things as hiring a minor and selling alcohol to a minor, according to city records.

Frytz said all his contributions to Solis coincide with fundraisers to which he was invited, and were not offered in exchange for help at City Hall. “It’s better to be OK with this guy because he’s a force now,” Frytz said.

After he reopened the bar, Frytz also hired Lassio as a bouncer in April 2016, he said. Frytz said he had no idea at the time that Lassio was a top Solis ward employee.

He said giving a job to Lassio was not payback to Solis, and that he felt no pressure to make the hire.

Lassio told the BGA and WBEZ he worked alongside Solis at the 25th Ward office in Pilsen for fifteen years. As director of city services, his job was to work with business people and constituents in the ward who needed things from city government,

“If you’re saying there’s a correlation of hiring somebody from the community who also works in government that works as a part time, low-paid security officer, that is the worst payback scheme I’ve ever seen in my life.” from pothole repair to permits.

Lassio said his hiring at Harbee had no connection to his role as a Solis’ aide and that he never mentioned his city job to Frytz prior to being hired at the bar.

“He didn’t know I worked for the city,” Lassio said. “I never identified myself as a city employee when I first started coming into his business.”

For the next two years Lassio greeted Harbee patrons at the door and kept troublemakers out of the bar, Frytz said.

Lassio’s two jobs never intersected during those years, the bar owner said.

But in the summer of 2018 the relationship changed when Solis’ longtime chief of staff landed a high-ranking job with the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation. Lassio was promoted to Solis’ chief of staff and informed Frytz he could no longer work as a bouncer.

Instead, Frytz said, Lassio took on a managerial role finding and managing a crew of bouncers for the bar. He said he paid Lassio up to $200 each month.

While he was Solis’ chief of staff, records

POLITICS

show, Lassio completed firearm training and registered with the state to become a full-fledged security officer in July that year.

And, while still Solis’ chief of staff, he began working for a security company owned by yet another high-powered family in Latino politics, that of Edward “Eddie” Acevedo, the one-time highest ranking Latinx member of the Illinois House of Representatives.

The relationship between Solis and Acevedo goes back decades.

Both rose to power in the 1990s with the help of the controversial Hispanic Democratic Organization, which was loyal to Richard M. Daley until it was shut down in 2008 amid a federal investigation into patronage hiring.

Eddie Acevedo’s brother Manuel was running Blue Line in early 2018 when Lassio said he was recruited to work for the company. At the time, he was still a bouncer at Harbee, he said.

Both Edward and Manuel Acevedo declined comment.

That summer, Blue Line won work providing security at the three Pilsen outdoor festivals managed by event organizer

Fernando Nieto, according to Nieto.

Nieto said he first became aware of Lassio’s side job when he saw him working security at Chicago Michelada Fest in 2018, the first year he hired Blue Line.

“I was like, oh, I didn't know that he had worked with the company,” Nieto said.

“It never got awkward for us, because no one ever pushed us to hire them.”

B

WEARING A WIRE

y January 2019, Solis largely disappeared from public life after his role as a federal cooperator became public. He stopped attending City Council meetings and gave up his committee chairmanship. Until then, he had been secretly recording conversations with other aldermen for more than two years, according to federal court records.

Solis did not return messages for this story seeking comment.

In Solis’ absence, Lassio became the highest-ranking authority in the ward.

In that role, Lassio said, he routinely met with festival organizers who needed ward approval for their neighborhood events.

Lassio said he worked with Solis during his absence, issuing letters of support the organizers needed in order to win city approval. At the same time, his other employer, Blue Line, was listed on festival applications as the security contractor for at least five festivals — including the three run

by Nieto.

Nieto and two other festival organizers that recently hired Blue Line said Lassio’s dual roles played no part in their decisions, and they felt no pressure to hire the firm.

And Avila, the attorney representing Blue Line Security, said Lassio’s position as chief of staff had no impact on the work the firm got at festivals in Pilsen.

Lassio said he had no conflict because the festival organizers never worked through him to hire Blue Line.

“The contracts as far as the security, those were not obtained by me,” Lassio said.

“That would be a conflict of interest. But they were not obtained by me.”

The Better Government Association is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization and civic advocate working for transparency, efficiency and accountability in government

in Chicago and across Illinois. Chicago Public Media (WBEZ) serves the public interest by creating and delivering diverse, compelling content that informs, inspires, enriches and entertains.

A longer version of this story is available at bettergov.org and wbez.org. Originally published online January 13. Reprinted with permission.

Alejandra Cancino is an investigative reporter at BGA. She worked at the Tribune from 2009 to 2015 as a business reporter covering manufacturing, economic development and labor. Her 2015 labor coverage earned a local award for best business and consumer reporting.

María Inés Zamudio covers immigration for WBEZ. She is an award-winning investigative reporter who is now part of the race, class, and communities team. Prior to joining WBEZ, she worked for American Public Media’s investigative team, the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Chicago Reporter.

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LIT

Growing Poetry in South Shore Anayansi Ricketts’s collection of poetry transports the reader to a beautiful garden

BY JASMINE MITHANI

I

opened Anayansi Ricketts’s Zen Garden: Transformations on a frigid January day, when the wind chill pushed the temperature to the single digits. But as I dove into the poetry collection, I was quickly transported from the frozen asphalt outside my apartment to a sunnier Chicago, surrounded by colorful flora and the smell of fresh mulch.

An artist and environmentalist, Ricketts is the founder of Urban Echo, which she describes as “an environmental consulting, design and art movement working to connect people to their righteous creative selves.” She also teaches art workshops at places like the Chicago Public Library and the Silver Room in Hyde Park.

Recently, she purchased a vacant lot in South Shore and began the work of transforming it into a garden. She’s christened it South Shore Botanical, and plans to seed it with native Chicago vegetation. “I bought the lot because I wanted to bring some beauty into the world and to teach people about native plants and how they can be used,” Ricketts said in an email.

Released in 2019, the self-published book is a record of nature and neighbors, 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

and was included recently in an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art titled “Nature and Social Justice in TwentyFirst Century Cities.” “It chronicles transformation and growth, and how people can come together informally to create change,” Ricketts wrote in a statement accompanying the exhibit. “It is also a showing of positivity on the South Side.

There is so much good happening here, and it is so overlooked.”

Z

en Garden: Transformations chronicles Ricketts’s conversations with neighbors and passersby while she tends to the garden. Her observations of behavior are hopeful, alternating between contemplation and humor. Each poem is a few lines on the page, blank verse, paired with a photograph of the garden taken by Ricketts. The photographs, while not printed at the highest quality, are lush and dripping with rich color; flipping through the pages, the eye is instantly drawn to bright oranges and purples. There are also photographs of walls and cracked concrete, inviting the reader to see the beauty in these images too.

The poems aren’t organized in an obvious order. The book opens with

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

Ricketts watching “young, black boys” play in the garden and progresses to a poem documenting the moment when she bought the lot (“the land turned over to a neighbor/ as a way towards betterment”). Time is fluid; the poems are a diary of the seasons, equally noting days “too hot for man or beast or plant” and when “winds that chill blast away all evidence of summer.” Ricketts makes special note of the creatures living in the garden— my favorite poem references “two butterflies making whoopee”—acknowledging both the disruption her gardening makes and the new homes it provides.

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early all of the poems are written in the first person, sharing Ricketts’s conversations and inner monologues while she pulls weeds and repurposes found cardboard as mulch.

The care she feels for the garden flows through the page, when she “had to use my superpowers to stop/a litter bug” and “my special brand of crazy tells me:/it makes perfect sense to mow a double lot/with a push mower.” Her voice is realistic, unafraid to talk about the difficulties of creating the garden, but always full of wonder and hope.

I

have a black thumb, and these poems made me want to run outside and dig my fingers in some dirt. My daily interactions with nature are mostly limited to looking at the currently barren trees out my window, and I find myself yearning for a deeper connection. Ricketts’s writing conjures images of both my childhood home and a recent bike ride through Ping Tom Park, and inspires me to explore more of the city in search of the small beauties she so carefully describes.

At the end of the book, Ricketts thanks “everyone who has helped bring light into/ darkness,” including readers who have donated their money or labor to the garden.

(Proceeds from book sales directly fund the garden, with $630 having been raised to date.) The book’s penultimate image is a self-portrait of Ricketts’s shadow, the only glimpse we see of her in these photos.

Anayansi Ricketts.

Zen Garden: Transformations.

Self-published, 2019.

Available on Amazon.com.

Jasmine Mithani is an editor at the Weekly.

EDUCATION

T

Connecting with Conflict

MELL MONTEZUMA

100 years after the 1919 riots, Chicago Public Schools teachers find ways to reinvent their curriculum

BY ASHVINI KARTIK-NARAYAN

he centennial commemoration of the 1919 Chicago race riots, organized last year by the city in concert with academic and nonprofit organizations, was meant to memorialize an incident that left 38 dead, 537 injured, and around 2,000 Chicagoans— predominantly African-Americans— homeless. But for many, it was the first time they had heard of the riots at all. Details about what led up to the riots, as well as what came after, are often unknown even by native Chicagoans.

This relatively large blindspot in history education is beginning to be challenged as more teachers find ways to teach about the riots in Chicago Public Schools.

In Ian Brannigan’s Human Geography class at West Englewood’s Lindblom Math and Science Academy, the 1919 riots are taught as part of a unit about the spatial organization of race in Chicago. “We’re trying to answer the question of why is Chicago segregated, or why do people live where they do in Chicago,” Brannigan said.

The Chicago race riots of 1919 were preceded by years of rising tensions surrounding race, labor, and the return of Black soldiers from World War I, and began after seventeen-year-old Black teenager Eugene Williams was stoned by a white mob as he swam in Lake Michigan and drowned. The riots were an act of racial violence provoked by white people against Black people, part of a larger string of riots that took place in many major American cities during what is known as the Red Summer. As Brannigan mentioned, the riots have had lasting impacts on segregation in Chicago, often hardening existing racial lines. In maps of the riots’ resulting deaths and injuries, researchers have noted that particular streets that experienced greater rates of violence continue to act as color lines. John Clegg, a historical sociologist at the University of Chicago who oversaw the creation of an interactive map of the riots, noted that these streets “have almost a physical memory of this long history of racial violence.”

In Brannigan’s class, and in many history classes across CPS, students try to answer the question of how such riots came to happen, and how they have had a lasting impact on Chicago and the United States today. These units are working to challenge, as Brannigan said, “the notion or discourses that suggest that segregation in Northern cities is natural.” CPS educators use talking about 1919 in their classrooms as a way to remind students of the roots of modern-day segregation and to raise awareness about

parts of the Black liberation movement that are not mentioned in standard history textbooks.

Brannigan, along with Lindblom teachers Teddy Kent and Alison Eichorn, all have units that include a discussion of 1919 in their classrooms, and have been talking about the riots with their students for many years. However, while their current students are learning about the riots in high school, many CPS educators who teach the curriculum had not heard about the Red Summer until college, or even later. “I never learned about 1919 until I studied history on my own,” Eichorn, who teaches a History of Chicago class at Lindbom, said. “I never even learned about it in college, and I went to college in Chicago.” Kent and Brannigan echoed this sentiment.

“I think it’s probably part of the hidden history of Chicago,” said Jackson Potter, a teacher at Back of the Yards College Prep.

He explained that myths about racial tolerance in the North as compared to the South, as well as the sense that Chicago in particular was a haven of racial progress, can cloud the realities of events like 1919. “I just think there’s a real myopia around the racial violence in the North in particular...there’s continuity between these various systems of racial apartheid and separation,” he said, referring to the enforcement of Jim Crow in the South and segregation in the North.

The task for CPS educators: disrupting that myopia. In Eichorn’s History of Chicago class, she does so by teaching the riots as part of a larger unit called “Conflict.” The unit covers many of the conflicts in Chicago specifically that gave rise to the riots. “We talk about conflict in politics, conflict in labor, and conflict in race,” Eichorn said.

Erik Fiksdal, who teaches AfricanAmerican History, World Studies, and Honors U.S. History at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, and previously taught at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy, noted the importance of understanding the context in seeing how the problems of 1919 persist today. “As we start to unpack the story more [I think] that they start to really see correlations and relationships between what happened during that summer and what’s still happening now,” Fiksdal said.

Eichorn and her colleagues, as well as Potter and Fiksdal, are intentional about showing their students that the racial violence of 1919 was not an isolated event in Chicago. “Many students have come in with the understanding that [the death of ] Eugene Williams was the cause,” Kent said.

“So we can uncover the tension leading up JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

EDUCATION

behind that...it’s not just a rock that caused it.” Over time, the 1919 curriculum in many teachers’ classrooms has changed to include more study of present-day activism, as well as police and prison abolition movements.

Although teachers now are starting to be more explicit about making 1919 a part of their curriculum, many students are still unaware of the riots prior to high school elective classes; the background that students have varies greatly from classroom to classroom. At Lindblom, students are required to take Human Geography, which Kent and Brannigan teach, so all students hear about the riots during their freshman year, even if they don’t take later electives like History of Chicago. Still, even prior to freshman year, Kent and Brannigan explained that many of their students have some knowledge of the riots. “I find that most students are familiar with the flashpoint incident involving Eugene Williams, but not so many of them necessarily know about what happened afterwards,” Kent said.

However, in Potter’s classes at Back of the Yards College Prep, students are less likely to know about the riots. “I think every single one of my students, and I have about 135, 140 students, none of them were aware of the 1919 race riots. Not one,” Potter said.

According to each teacher, their students typically reacted to the material with surprise. “I think that they were stunned, they were a bit incredulous that they’d never heard about it before, I would even go so far as to say a bit betrayed, angry, but extraordinarily curious,” Potter said.

Discussion of 1919 is not required by the district, so its place in social studies and elective classes is left to teacher discretion, which is typically dependent on teachers’ familiarity with the material.

“Teachers often teach what they know,” Eichorn said. “So if there’s not a legacy of teaching the content because they didn’t learn it in school or they’re not familiar with it, then I think that there’s a hole in that content.” Kent further explained that many teachers want to teach 1919 in their classrooms, but find it hard to make the space for it with an already packed schedule and a lack of flexibility with electives. “I’ve talked with teachers who have said they want to teach it, but they said the course sequence, like there’s no specific class [in some schools] like the History of Chicago class, or geography class,” he said. “You have

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

to do some work in order to think about the context and where that fits.”

Potter noted that more teachers might be teaching the riots now because discussion of the Chicago Police Department’s legacy of violence against Black and brown communities is no longer as censored.

“The sort of dismantling of the end of the Chicago machine, where [Richard J.] Daley and his son sort of represent a continuous legacy of denial, whether it’s police torture, whether it’s intentional and planned segregation, whether it’s violence that Daley himself probably committed as a part of the Hamburg Athletic Club against the Black community in 1919— I think those things are no longer taboo.”

Particularly in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods, Eichorn explained that she felt discussion of the riots in classrooms was a little more common, or at least more comfortable for educators. “It also needs to happen in spaces that are not Black and brown, and a lot of the time it doesn’t,” Eichorn said. “In talking about the suburbs specifically, it’s really easy to talk about Black and brown issues in front of Black and brown students, but it gets into more dangerous territory when you get to teaching in the wealthier suburbs, or to a predominantly white audience...I think that’s where we see a gap in how curriculum is developed.”

One way to address the imbalance would be to make teaching 1919 a required part of the curriculum, like the way the “Reparations Won” curriculum, which covers the history of police torture in Chicago and the movement for justice by survivors and their families, was made mandatory as part of an ordinance passed in 2015. Potter, who worked for the Chicago Teachers Union before returning to teaching, said that CTU is a strong advocate for that option. “We played a pretty innovative role, an unprecedented role as a teacher’s union in pushing for curriculum that challenges racism and the history of racial disparities in the city,” Potter said, referring to the Reparations Won curriculum. Potter thinks that something similar is possible for 1919. “But you gotta ask, is curriculum enough.” Further structural changes in the city of Chicago, as well as greater public acknowledgement and memorialization of 1919, he said, are also necessary components to bring the riots to light.

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

“As we start to unpack the story more [I think] that they start to really see correlations and relationships between what happened during that summer and what’s still happening now.”

Even if teaching 1919 is made mandatory, it might come up against the same kinds of implementation challenges as Reparations Won, which has faced backlash for its critiques of the Chicago Police Department in predominantly white schools. At Wildwood Elementary on the Far Northwest Side, Principal Mary Beth Cunat resigned, in part, as a result of parents’ intense criticism of the curriculum.

But Potter doesn’t think pushback should be a deterrent. “It should be edgy enough to not only challenge the historical moment… [but] being able to talk about, hey, this happened in the past, but we have to talk about how it impacts us in the present,” he said. “Now we gotta do something about the kind of racial animus, the lack of affordable housing and decent jobs and like school investment that have occurred in the Black and Latinx communities because of institutional racism.”

CPS as a whole is certainly beginning to take the necessary steps, but there is still plenty of work left to do. There were plans to release a teaching guide for 1919 this past fall, although Potter said he had not been notified of any actual release, and no other teacher the Weekly spoke with mentioned using the guides. “A number

of us have a pretty dynamic curriculum that we know is effective, and the district actually has proprietary ownership over that curriculum...but they’re contracting out a lot of stuff,” Potter said.

In any case, teachers noted that the passing of the 100th anniversary seemed to spark a greater awareness of the riots, and further education about the riots has the potential to highlight the similar struggles faced by Black and brown people today.

Fiksdal noted that the riots in particular are seen a powerful and moving part of history by many of his students because, “It doesn’t seem as removed as some of the other events can be...the teenager who drowned in Lake Michigan is about their age.” In his AfricanAmerican history class at Whitney Young, Fiksdal starts the year by showing the documentary “Whose Streets?”, about the Ferguson protests. “Then they can see the emotions that those protestors were feeling,” he said. “And it has to be parallel to the things that people were feeling a hundred years ago.”

Ashvini Kartik-Narayan is a student at the University of Chicago majoring in public policy, and one of the current Education editors for the Weekly. She last wrote for the Weekly about the Burge reparations package and memorial effort.

Email Ties Alderman Cardenas to Polluter Residents form environmental alliance ahead of IEPA hearing

JACQUELINE SERRATO

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

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orried residents from seven Southwest Side neighborhoods met January 16 to discuss permitting that would grant an asphalt plant permission to continue to operate across the street from their largest public park.

Alderman George Cardenas, who chairs the Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy, backed the zoning for the plant, MAT Asphalt. Cardenas was notably absent from the town hall, which drew other elected officials.

Cardenas has told constituents in public meetings that he had no prior knowledge that MAT Asphalt was moving into his ward. In 2019, Cardenas’ spokesperson, Liliana Escarpita, told Block Club Chicago: “Going back to I guess two years ago, we were just as surprised as everyone else when we saw the huge silos in that plant development in that district.”

But an email provided to the South Side Weekly by Neighbors for Environmental Justice suggests that Cardenas and MAT Asphalt owner Michael Tadin Jr. had begun discussing the plant as early as February of 2017.

In the email, Tadin’s attorney Amy Degnan, a partner at the law firm Daley and Georges Ltd. (which was founded by the late Richard J. Daley in 1936), was attempting to set up a meeting for her client with the Department of Planning and Development. “[Tadin] said Alderman Cardenas told him we would have a meeting with DPD to discuss [the plant],” she wrote to zoning officials Patti Scudiero and Steven Valenziano in February 9, 2017. “He would like to request that meeting is scheduled.”

A month later Ald. Cardenas supported the rezoning of the property as mixed-

commercial, which was necessary for the plant to begin operations.

That summer, MAT Asphalt filed an application with the IEPA for a construction permit. The application was approved despite the fact that the IEPA did not collect public input, a move that was harshly criticized by 12th Ward residents. Around the same time, MAT Leasing, which is owned by Tadin’s father, was donating $10,500 to a Cardenasaffiliated PAC chaired by his brother.

In June 2018 the Chicago Tribune reported that the political action committees Twelve PAC and Friends of Cardenas had accepted tens of thousands of dollars from Tadin-owned businesses.

“We are hopeful [Cardenas] will change his mind and join his constituency instead of standing with MAT Asphalt, who provides him campaign contributions, or as some would say, ‘political payoffs’,” activist Mary González said.

Cardenas’ office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIANCE

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esidents and community organizations formed the Southwest Environmental Alliance to challenge dirty industry in Pilsen, Little Village, McKinley Park, Brighton Park, Bridgeport, Canaryville, and Back of the Yards, after data revealed that those areas harbor concentrated levels of pollution from manufacturing districts in the vicinity. In a meeting held at the National Latino Education Institute — just a short walk from the asphalt silos — about three hundred people considered the impact that local industry is having on the health and quality of life of their families.

At the January 16 meeting, a colorcoded map created by the Natural Resources Defense Council was displayed, showing graded pollution levels in the city caused by diesel trucks, dusty materials, noxious odors and other environmental hazards. The landscape was bright red in Southwest Side communities and in the often-overlooked Southeast Side, near the Calumet River.

“Aren’t you upset knowing that there’s so much asthma in our communities?

That our babies are getting sick?” Theresa McNamara asked the crowd. “Do they have it on the Northside? Not like this. They may have asthma, but not like this. They may have cancer, but not like this.”

In the front row sat local, county and state officials: Senator Tony Muñoz, Representatives Theresa Mah and Aaron Ortiz, Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya, U.S. Representative Daniel Lipinsky, all of whom publicly committed to working with one another to clean up their districts.

A petition addressed to John J. Kim, the IEPA’s acting director, demanding that the agency deny a 10-year permit for MAT Asphalt, had already collected 3,000 signatures by the time the town hall was held.

“One of the things that we can do immediately, and I think we should all commit to that,” said 25th Ward Alderman Sigcho-Lopez at the town hall Thursday, “is to make sure that we don’t take money contributions from polluters.”

IEPA HEARING PENDING

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he IEPA provides public notices as a matter of policy, but the practice is not mandated by law. Last March, Muñoz sponsored a bill that would require the IEPA to notify state elected officials when new developers apply for a pollution permit. The directive, however, does not necessarily mean officials will inform constituents.

At the town hall, Mah said she has another piece of legislation “that would require that plants like MAT Asphalt, when they are coming into a community...have to have a public hearing before their permit gets approved, and that considerations are made for the surrounding areas.”

According to Neighbors for Environmental Justice, the IEPA is in the process of scheduling a permit hearing for the spring — probably in March — that will include a meeting to share the contents of the MAT Asphalt permit and a written comment session.

“I think this is environmental racism, given that these neighborhoods are overwhelmingly people of color, Latinos, African-American, and Chinese, to name a few,” said González at the town hall. “No one asked us if this would be okay, because they knew the answer would be no. So they did it quietly, passed around some cash, and magic happened.”

Jacqueline Serrato is the Editor-in-chief of the South Side Weekly.

BUSINESS

COURTESY OF THE ODYSSEY PROJECT

Mission Accomplished

The debut of legal recreational cannabis brings out South Side shoppers

BY AV BENFORD

J

anuary 1, 5:30am. The first day of legal recreational sales in the state of Illinois. The night is sheer black at this hour, but South Commercial Avenue between 85th and 86th is unusually bright, lit by a row of large floodlights on the side of the Mission South Shore dispensary — now selling both medicinal and recreational cannabis.

This is by far the earliest party I’ve ever been to. The line runs the length of the building, wraps the parking lot, spills out onto the sidewalk and threatens to cross the street. The line grows and shifts throughout the morning, as if it were a metaphor for this process as a whole, and the management changes. More staff is added, making the entire operation— handing out new client forms, collecting those forms back, processing IDs—move a little quicker. Some of the staff members are dressed for the occasion, celebrating with dapper bow ties, trilbies with navy blue trim, wingtips. One even has on an all-green suit and marijuana-themed tie. Green confetti covers the damp ground.

At 6am, Mission Dispensary celebrated the first sale of legal recreational marijuana on 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

the Far South Side of Chicago. The purchaser, a long-time advocate of marijuana reform, was Edie Moore, a founding board member and executive director of Chicago NORML, a local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. When I asked her how she felt, holding her purchase after so many years of fighting for this change, she said that she “didn’t feel it until it was happening”, acknowledging that “this is a big deal” and that she was “honored to be tapped” to be the first one to buy.

Garrin Hudson is one of Mission’s patient consultants, a blond 21-year-old with a chin beard, an earring, and a warm and welcoming demeanor. He has worked for Mission for about six months. In previous years, states like Colorado had product shortages on the first day of recreational sales or soon after because of the high volume of sales. When I asked Garrin what he thought would run out on the recreational menu first, he listed flower, edibles, and carts (cartridges/vapes), in that order. (When I checked back in a few days, it was actually edibles that sold out first. Mission was one of the last dispensaries still selling

BUSINESS

recreational flower after the first few days of sales.)

As the budtender stepped away to assist a woman with an Indiana ID in her hand, I listened in to a group of three men: Bryan Hopkins, 27, of Calumet City, Chris Myers, 29, of Hyde Park, and Joseph Weaver, 24, Brentwood. In a very relaxed manner, they debated the efficacy of different strains, while smiling and tapping away at one of the many tablet kiosks scattered around Mission’s sales floor. The tablets are directly connected to inventory, providing real-time updates on availability.

The buying process has a food service familiarity to it: you place your order, either via tablet or online (though they are currently not accepting online orders), and a ticket is generated in the back for a runner who grabs your items. While your order is being prepared, you hop in another line to make your payment. If things are running smoothly, then by the time you reach the friendly budtender (who re-checks your ID, adds taxes and accepts your payment), your order is ready.

But it’s day one. And no, the line is not moving swiftly. In fact, for 45 minutes, the line is not moving at all. But it wouldn’t be the first day without a few hiccups; in this case, it’s a software conflict. The program that the state uses to track every single gram of marijuana sold, BioTrackTHC, is not cooperating with LeafLogix, the system Mission uses internally. Until the systems update and agree, not a single gram can leave the store. By 8am, the issue has been resolved and people are giddy with their purchases. Grown people, free of worry and stigma, are smiling from ear to ear and literally skipping from the dispensary. Some still feed the need to flip up their hoods and turn down their heads as they leave Mission’s doors, but most appear full of pure joy.

I first visited Mission in October to profile the place pre-recreational legalization.

Since then, the staff has more than tripled, from fewer than ten to over thirty. White, Black, Latin, and Asian budtenders. Queer budtenders. Budtenders closer to 21 years in age and those who appear old enough to have a 21-year-old.

At Mission, medical patients have priority, and as one lady sits comfortably on a couch near the front of the sales floor, she agrees to answer a few questions while her order is prepared. She has been coming to Mission for about a year, and wears a tightfitting skull cap with neatly pressed sweats and a colorful cane. She tells me about

Mission’s “great discounts” for veterans and their hardship program. She’s a Marine Corps veteran with Gulf War syndrome, which affects her heart, lungs, and nervous system, in addition to causing chronic pain.

She used to have to take eight different pills, and “none of them [were] working,” she said. She generally researches her purchases at home and then orders online, because “not every flower suits every need.” She sees a different budtender each time she comes.

She won’t tell me what her favorite strain of flower is— for fear that it will sell out quickly—but her second favorite is Cresco’s Katsu Bubba Kush Shake, which sells for $60 on the medical menu.

Mission’s South Shore dispensary (despite the name, it’s actually in South Chicago) is easily accessible for Indiana residents, and I saw a number of them in line with their unmistakable pink IDs. But the person I met from the furthest away was from Kenai, Alaska. Rocking a gray Ninja Turtles hoodie and a red chest-length beard, the man was on a cross-continental road trip with his dog. So far he’d driven from Alaska, through Canada, and into Washington State. He’d then headed east, visiting family and friends and hitting every state where weed is legal in the U.S. Today, he was in Illinois, but he planned to head for Michigan by nightfall. I asked about the favorite dispensary he’d visited along the way, and he told me of one out West completely made out of glass, natural wood, and fallen trees.

Also on hand to revel in the glory of their labor, along with grateful state residents, were three of the four “Marijuana Moms,” the female lawmakers who chose to long ago blaze a trail for legalization: State Senator Heather Steans and State Representatives Kelly Cassidy and Jehan Gordon-Booth. The fourth, former State Senator Toi Hutchinson, was only present in spirit—as Illinois’s new “cannabis czar,” Hutchinson was responsible for overseeing the rollout of cannabis sales across the state.

When I spoke with Gordon-Booth about why she had to be here for this event, she spoke about being “out experiencing who’s here, what’s the vibe.” She didn’t want to hear about the event on social media, she said. She wanted to be “on the ground, so [she] could feel it for [herself ].”

Before leaving, I decided to use the cash in my pocket to take the plunge myself and buy a legal gram. I wanted to know what it was like to legally do what my friends have been arrested for time and again. I took

my time and studied the tablet, asking a ridiculous amount of questions. Because I could. Because for the first time I knew the provenance and the terroir, the content and the terpenes. It didn’t require jumping in some dude’s car at 10pm when he finally remembered to deliver your order. It didn’t require hitting a guy up and waiting for hours for him to hit you back after work or after the gym. It didn’t require traveling for over an hour each way just to deal with someone reputable. For $15 ($17.50 with tax), I purchased a gram of The Great Chicago Fire in flower form, which equates to about $55 for ⅛ oz. On January 1 in the state of Illinois, I walked into a store, paid not that much more than if I were to make this purchase on the street, and walked out into the morning sun.

AV Benford is a Food & Land editor at the Weekly. She wrote for the Weekly about Chicago State’s Cannabis Industry Expo.

She didn’t want to hear about the event on social media, she said.

She wanted to be “on the ground, so she could feel it for herself.”

– Jehan GordanBooth

Join the Lakeside Pride Chamber Ensembles for a celebration of the great Arctic phenomenon of the Northern Lights!

AURAL BOREALIS Logan Center for the Arts | 915 E 60th St 2:30pm, January 25th Get $10 tickets at lakesidepride.org/lights

JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

EVENTS

BULLETIN The Original Rainbow Coalition: Documentary Screening and panel.

San Lucas United Church of Christ, 2914 W. North Ave. January 23, 7pm–9pm.

PBS Premiere. WTTW Ch. 11. Independent Lens. January 27, 10pm. bit.ly/rainbowcoalition A nearly forgotten movement in Chicago called the Rainbow Coalition brought together activists from different communities in the late 60s. In the absence of founder Fred Hampton, and fifty years after his assasination, the documentary features other key players and associates of the Illinois Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and the Young Patriots. ( Jackie Serrato)

other community resources. They’ll also have experts on hand who will explain how to expunge a criminal record, how to administer Naloxone, and more. Got a story idea? Reporters will be present to discuss it with you. ( Jim Daley)

Holler If You Hear Me Comic Book Launch

Empty Bottle Book Club: ‘The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook

Greg Michie’s 1999 memoir Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students recalls his experiences teaching seventh and eighth grade in the Chicago Public Schools. Now, Michie and illustrator Ryan Alexander-Tanner have teamed up with a group of young Chicago artists to create a comic-book adaptation of the memoir. The authors will discuss the book, copies of which will be for sale. ( Jim Daley)

Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave. Sunday, January 26, 3pm. Free; must be 21 years or older. bit.ly/EmptyBottleGuide Martha Byrne (who is the South Side Weekly’s managing editor) edited the latest in Belt Publishing’s series of idiosyncratic guidebooks, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook (Belt Publishing, 2019), a collection of essays, poems, photo essays and art that explore the community history and identity of Chicago’s more than 200 neighborhoods. ( Jim Daley)

Back of the Yards Preparatory High School, 2111 W. 47th Pl. Tuesday, January 28, 6pm–7:30pm. Free. bit.ly/HollerLaunch

Between the Great Migration and Growing Exodus: The Future of Black Chicago?

UIC Student Center East, Room 302, 750 S. Halsted St. Thursday, January 30, 8:30am– 10am. Free. bit.ly/FutureBlackChicago

Your Friendly Neighborhood Archive

Lee Bey: Southern Exposure

LATITUDE, 1821 W. Hubbard St. Ste 207.

Friday, January 24, 6pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ NeighborArchive

S.R. Crown Hall, 3360 S. State St. Monday, January 27, 6pm–7:30pm. Free with online registration. bit.ly/LeeBeyCrownHall

Artist in residence, Samantha Cabrera Friend, will host a panel of community researchers and panelists who created the archives Chicago Raza Research Consortium, Quinceañera Archives, Latinx Diáspora Archive, and Almighty and Insane Books. They will talk about archival practices as a form of community empowerment and share accessible techniques to begin building an archival collection in any community. ( Jackie Serrato)

Lee Bey’s book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, 2019) is dedicated to the remarkable and varied architectural gems that–due to racism, segregation, and systematic divestment–are often ignored. WBEZ South Side reporter Natalie Moore will discuss the book with Bey. ( Jim Daley)

Beginning in 1980, a decades-long trend of growth in Chicago’s Black population halted, then reversed: by 2016 it had fallen by 350,000 residents. Amanda E. Lewis, the director of UIC’s Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP), will present a report that details the historical shifts in population over the last century, with a focus on changes in Chicago neighborhoods from 1990 to 2016. Following the presentation, a panel that includes Teresa Córdova, Eve Ewing, Barbara Ransby and Elizabeth ToddBreland will discuss the research and share further findings. ( Jim Daley)

South Side Code & Coffee

Simon Balto: Occupied Territory

Sip & Savor, 528 E. 43rd St. Tuesday, January 28, 7am–10am. Free. bit.ly/CodeAndCoffeeDates

Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, 5733 S. University Ave. Wednesday, January 30, 4:30pm–6pm. bit.ly/OccupyTerr

This rotating meetup of software developers and enthusiasts gets together at a different South Side coffee shop every Tuesday morning. The group meets to talk tech and work on projects in a shared workspace.

Upcoming meetups include next week’s at Sip & Savor and, on February 4, at La Frida Café in Little Village. ( Jim Daley)

In Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power (The University of North Carolina Press, 2019), historian Simon Balto traces the history of the police presence in the Black community from the race riots of 1919 to the Black Power Movement of the 1970s.

The book’s central premise–that the police are a repressive paramilitary occupation of Black communities–is perhaps more

Chicago’s Free Resource Fair: Block Club Chicago Sinai Community Institute, 2653 Ogden Ave. Saturday, January 25, 10am–2pm. Free. bit. ly/BlockClubResource Hyperlocal news organization Block Club Chicago will distribute bags of essentials such as toothpaste, socks, and water, serve free meals, and provide free guides to 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

relevant than ever. Discussion with Q&A to follow; signed copies will be available for purchase. ( Jim Daley)

Jasmon Drain: Stateway’s Garden 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Wednesday, January 29, 6pm–7pm. Free. bit. ly/57thStreetDrain Englewood native and Pushcart Prize nominee Janom Drain’s latest book, Stateway’s Garden (Random House, 2020), includes a series of coming-of-age short stories that recall the community and residents who called this Bronzeville housing project home before it was demolished in 2007 to make way for a mixed-income development. Drain will discuss the book with author Ben Austen, and copies will be available for purchase. ( Jim Daley)

An Evening In Dialogue With Cyntonia Brown-Long Mandell Hall at the University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th St. Thursday, January 30, 6pm–9pm. Sliding scale $5–$20; no one will be turned away for lack of funds. bit.ly/ CyntoniaBrownLong In 2004, then-sixteen-year-old Cyntonia Brown-Long was convicted of first-degree murder by am all-white-male jury in Tennessee; Brown-Long, then a homeless sex worker, said she killed the man in self-defense. Sentenced to life in prison, she was released in 2019 after her sentence was commuted. Brown-Long will discuss her new book, Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System (Atria Books, 2019) with NewCity editor Tara Betts. Chicago-based survivor leader and advocate Brenda Stewart will also speak. ( Jim Daley)

The People’s Removal Trial of Donald Trump Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St. Saturday, February 1, 12pm–1:30pm. Free. bit.ly/ PeoplesTrial The impeachment trial of Donald Trump began this week, and the outcome is all but certain to leave him in office. In response,

EVENTS

local activists will stage a “People’s Removal Trial,” in which witnesses will be called to testify to “Trump’s crimes against immigrants, against reproductive rights, against the environment, against the people of Puerto Rico and more. ” Organizers will also share resources on how to resist voter suppression efforts. ( Jim Daley)

Author Conversation: Mikki Kendall Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Wednesday, February 5, 6pm– 7:30pm. Doors 5pm. Free. bit.ly/HWLCKendall Mikki Kendall, author of Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists (Ten Speed Press, 2019) will discuss that book alongside her upcoming essay collection, Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot (Penguin Random House, 2020), with Block Club Chicago reporter Jamie Nesbit Golden. ( Jim Daley)

VISUAL ARTS Manal Kara Poetry Reading Prairie Chicago, 2055 W. Cermak Rd. Sunday, January 26, 3pm. Show on view Thursday 6–9pm, Sunday, 1–4pm, and by appointment. prairie.website In “Song of the Other Worm,” currently on exhibition at Pilsen’s Prairie gallery, Manal Kara has assembled a molten collection of ceramic skeletons, clubs, and bludgeons. Kara will hold a reading in the space this Sunday as a farewell to the show.

(Christopher Good)

3-D Applications Workshop Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. Studio 420. January 25, 1–4pm. Free. (312) 850-0555. bit.ly/mana-3d In his final workshop on computerrendered images and animation, Mana artist-in-residence Philip Mulliken will look at techniques for sculpting detritus and digital grit. Attendees are “encouraged to bring devices loaded with their 3-D software of choice”—Blender is a free

option. (Christopher Good)

Conjuring: Black Histories in Jewelry South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. On view through February 28. Open Wednesday–Friday, noon–5pm; Saturday, 9–5pm; Sunday, 1–5pm. (773) 373-1026. sscartcenter.org Under the curation of LaMar R. Gayles Jr. (and with the support of the Society of North American Goldsmiths), the “first ever exhibition focusing solely on Black diasporic jewelry” is now on display in Bronzeville. The show traces this history from artisans like Winifred Mason, thought to be the first Black jeweler practicing in the United States, to the present day.

(Christopher Good)

The Petty Biennial.2 NYCH Gallery, 2025 S. Laflin St. On view Monday–Saturday, 11am–7pm, through February 14. (773) 413-9565. bit.ly/PettyBiennial2 The Petty Biennial—a multifocal, multi-site happening— highlights “the connective tissue of social systems” to challenge artworld conventions. At Pilsen’s NYCH, you can find artwork by Carlos Barberena, Liz Gomez, Jennifer Ligaya, Damon Locks, Zakkiyyah Najeebah, and Yasmin Spiro.

(Christopher Good)

Tender as the Language Ignition Project Space, 3839 W. Grand Ave. On view by appointment through February 22. acreresidency.org In her second solo exhibition in Chicago, installation artist Yesenia Bello interrogates language and bilinguality through sculpture.

These works, curated for this show by \ Elizabeth Lalley, evoke her account of the word: something “nonlinear and kinetic.”

(Christopher Good)

MUSIC The Double Shot Series feat.

Dirt Red Brass Band Hallowed Grounds, 5706 S. University Ave. Thursday, January 23. 7pm–8:30pm. Free. bit.ly/doubleshotseries

In this concert inspired by NPR’s Tiny Desk series, a series of musicians will give short performances — no more than three minutes — followed by a twentyminute concert from UChicago’s Dirt Red Brass Band. Both UChicago students and community members are encouraged to sign up to perform during the open mic section of the evening. Free drinks will be provided courtesy of Dark Matter Coffee.

(Sam Joyce)

Not For You, Janet (MO), Warmth, and Lorene Bouboushian Archer Ballroom, 3012 S. Archer Ave. Friday, January 25. 8pm–11pm. bit.ly/Archerconcert Noise rock band Not For You, St. Louisbased “Dada noise burlesque” performer Janet (MO), punk rockers Warmth (who released an album in December), and performance artist Lorene Bouboushian will all be performing at this concert, which has been promised to run well past the 11pm posted end time. (Sam Joyce)

Benjamin Gibbard at Thalia Hall Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, January 26, 7:30pm–11:30pm. $38–$78. thaliahallchicago.com Due to overwhelming demand, Thalia Hall has added a third show from Death Cab for Cutie lead vocalist and guitarist Ben Gibbard. Gibbard released his single debut album, Former Lives, in 2012, and was recently featured on Chance the Rapper’s “Do You Remember,” from Chance’s debut album The Big Day. The opener is singersongwriter Tara Jane O’Neil, who released her ninth solo album in 2017. (Sam Joyce)

Calexico and Iron & Wine Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, January 29, 7pm–11pm. $38–$65. thaliahallchicago.com Recorded over four days in December 2018, Years to Burn represents the first collaborative album from Arizona rock band Calexico and folk singer-songwriter Iron & Wine since their 2005 EP, In the Reins. The reception has been overwhelmingly favorable, with Years to Burn earning a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album and “Father

Mountain,” the album’s lead single, nominated for Best American Roots Performance. The opener is Gia Margaret, a Chicago-based ambient rock singersongwriter. (Sam Joyce)

FOOD & LAND Farmers Markets Saturdays 61st St. Farmers Market, Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. January 11, Feb. 8, March 14, April 11, 9am–2pm. This market accepts Link/SNAP & Link Match. experimentalstation.org/market Sundays: Maxwell Street Market, S. Desplaines St. & W. Taylor St. Sundays, 9am–3pm. bit.ly/ MaxwellStMarketChicago Pilsen Community Market, Blue Island Ave. and 18th St. Sundays, Jan 16th and Feb. 9th, 11am–3:30pm. facebook.com/pilsenmarket Multiple Days: Farm on Ogden Food Stand, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11am–7pm; Wednesdays, Fridays, & Saturdays, 10am– 6pm. bit.ly/ogden_farm Farmers Stand / Mercado De Cultura. A Cup of Joe (reboot), 6806 W Archer Ave. Saturdays and Sundays. Starting January 18. 9am – 4pm. bit.ly/joemercado

Dia De La Concha 2020 Zhou B Art Center, 1029 W 35th St. Saturday, January 25, 11am – 5pm. $10 adults, $2 youth. bit.ly/Concha2020 Join Grass Root Events NFP, a Pilsenbased nonprofit, for the third annual Dia De La Concha. Dia de la Concha is a celebration of the best kind of pan dulce: the concha. A number of Chicago’s best Mexican bakeries; including Panaderia Nuevo Leon, El Nopal, Panaderia Artesanal, and Panango!, will be serving up one of Mexico’s definitive pastries. The afternoon will include live music, local vendors and specialty Mexican drinks, and of course, a variety of delicious pan dulce.

This event is cash only and includes two sessions, beginning at either 11am or 2pm.

(AV Benford) JANUARY 22, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

EVENTS

Saturday Community Visioning Sessions 2020 Green ERA Chicago, 650 W. 83rd Street.

Saturday, January 25, February 22, March 28, April 25, May 23, June 27, July 25 at 11:30am – 1pm. http://bit.ly/greenera Green Era Sustainability, in partnership with Urban Growers Collective, plans on building and opening a “green energy campus” in Auburn Gresham by 2021.

Their aim is to create a closed-loop sustainable food system on a vacant brownfield lot:composting organic waste, growing produce, and providing jobs, all contained within and for the benefit of the Greater Auburn Gresham community. In the first quarter of this year, they’re hosting a few town halls to get residents’ input in the planning process. (Sarah Fineman)

Windy City Harvest Tour of The Farm on Ogden The Farm on Ogden, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesday, February 4, 3:00pm – 4:30pm. http://bit.ly/tourogden Does the thick of winter have you hungering for some green? The Farm on Ogden, now in its second year of operation, is a year-round one-stop shop for all your local agriculture needs. The facility features a greenhouse, aquaponics system, commercial kitchen, a farmers’ market, and classes in cooking and harvesting. Luckily for Vitamin D-deprived South Siders, its soil doesn’t stop turning in the winter— come by for an indoor tour of the Farm’s operations, organized by Windy City Harvest. (Sarah Fineman)

South Side documents the work of a photographer and writer who has long been enamored with the architecture of the South Side, from classical greystone beauties to funky ex-dry cleaners. An exhibition of the book’s photography (some of which was featured in the Weekly in November) is on view at the DuSable until February 16th. Head over to the museum to take a look, and then hear Bey himself discuss the project on February 5th at the Seminary Co-op in Hyde Park. (Sarah Fineman)

Openings SOUTH LOOP— MingHin Cantonese & Japanese Cuisine MingHin the dim-sum authority has opened its fifth restaurant, this time in the South Loop (1234 S. Michigan Ave.).

The dumpling masters are expanding their menu to include Japanese food for the first time. MingHin Cantonese & Japanese Cuisine opened January 13 with a lengthy, ever-so-comprehensive menu. Ownership says that they plan to add more traditional Japanese elements like sushi and hibachi, but they have yet to indicate when the changes will take place. minghincuisine. com (AV Benford)

Closings ENGLEWOOD— Peace of Pizza Was it the street construction that never allowed the place to fully take off ? It is sad to see a good community-focused idea not be able to sustain itself. The unique pizzeria, started by an anti-violence activist turned entrepreneur, offering opportunities to the young and unemployed while serving up fresh flavors, has closed at 1801 W. 95th Street. The restaurant opened in August after construction delays. (AV Benford)

Lee Bey’s Southern Exposure DuSable Museum of African-American History, 740 E. 56th Place. 10am–5pm Monday through Saturday, 12pm–5pm Sunday. Through February 16. (773) 9470600. dusablemuseum.org The Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, February 5. 6pm–7pm.

(773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Lee Bey’s recent book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

NATURE Climate Crisis Game Day Whitney M. Young Jr. Branch Library, 415 E. 79th St. Thursday, January 23, 5:30pm– 7:30pm. chipublib.org How would you design an ecosystem?

How about a forest? If you had to design Chicago’s power grid, how would you do it?

This game night explores these and other

¬ JANUARY 22, 2020

environmental possibilities through the use of fun, interactive board games like Planet, Reef, and Terraforming Mars. Suitable for ages twelve and up. (Sam Joyce)

Winter Bike Rally Daley Center Plaza, 50 W. Washington St. Friday, January 24, 7am–9am. activetrans.org Commute to work by bike, even in the winter? Join the Active Transportation Alliance and hundreds of your fellow cyclists to celebrate winter bike commuting at their annual Winter Bike Rally. Free slices of Eli’s cheesecake and cups of Dark Matter coffee will be available, along with more freebies from event sponsors (last year’s included Clif Bar and Revolution Brewing). (Sam Joyce)

Polar Adventure Day Northerly Island Park, 1521 S. Linn White Dr. Saturday, January 25, 12pm–4pm. Free, parking $3. chicagoparkdistrict.com Enjoy winter in Chicago with the Park District’s Polar Adventure Day, which features hot cocoa, explorations of Northerly Island by snowshoe, natureinspired winter crafts, and a variety of live animals, including Siberian huskies, wolves, and birds of prey. If you can’t make this one, another is planned for February. (Sam Joyce)

Environmental Balance Collage Workshop Greater Grand Crossing Branch Library, 1000 E. 73rd St. Saturday, January 25, 11am–12pm.

Lozano Branch Library, 1805 S. Loomis St. Tuesday, January 28, 6pm–7pm.

Thurgood Marshall Branch Library, 7506 S. Racine Ave. Wednesday, January 29, 6pm–7pm. chipublib.org Investigate the concept of ecological balance through this hands-on workshop.

Participants will use photos to develop environmentally themed collage works, and will have the opportunity to take home their own small collage. The event is free, but space is limited and first-come, firstserved. (Sam Joyce)

Beaubien Woods Restoration Workday Beaubien Woods, 13400 S. Doty Ave. Saturday, February 1, 10am–1pm. Free. fpdcc. com Join the Forest Preserves’ Centennial Volunteers to help restore the Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve. Volunteers will receive expert training in ecological restoration and may be involved in seed collection, invasive plant removal, or other tasks to help clean up the site. Tools and work gloves are provided, but participants should remember to wear clothes that can get dirty and bring a bottle of water. (Sam Joyce)

Calumet Revisited Calumet College of St. Joseph (Room 265), 2400 New York Ave, Whiting, IN. Tuesday, February 4, 5pm–7pm. Free. wolflakeinitiative.org This month’s Calumet Revisited forum, hosted by the Association for the Wolf Lake Initiative, will feature Dr. Larry McClellan, a former professor at Governors State University and an expert on the Underground Railroad in Illinois. He recently published The Underground Railroad South of Chicago, a book exploring the movement of freedom seekers through southern Cook County and northwest Indiana on their way to Canada.

(Sam Joyce)

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