January 7, 2015 by South Side Weekly

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY JA N U A R Y 7 , 2 0 1 4

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La lucha por quedarse

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Wilson Gomez-Pu was deported in November, but his wife and children remain Wilson Gomez-Pu fue deportado en noviembre, su esposa y sus hijos permanecen aquí sin él

BROTHER MIKE, THE PLACES WE’VE BEEN, VOYCE, METROSQUASH, MY BLOCK, MY HOOD, MY CITY

MORE INSIDE

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ay t S

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IN CHICAGO

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side, and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Editor-in-Chief Bea Malsky Managing Editor Hannah Nyhart Deputy Editors John Gamino, Meaghan Murphy Politics Editors Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Schastok Music Editor Jake Bittle Stage & Screen Olivia Stovicek Editor Web Editor Sarah Claypoole Contributing Editors Maha Ahmed, Lucia Ahrensdorf, Emma Collins, Lauren Gurley Editor-at-Large Bess Cohen Photo Editor Illustration Editor Layout Editors

Luke White Ellie Mejia Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler

Senior Writers Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers Olivia Adams, Christian Belanger, Austin Brown, Amelia Dmowska, Mark Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja, Emily Lipstein, Jamison Pfeifer, Wednesday Quansah, Kari Wei, Arman Sayani Staff Photographers Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Siddhesh Mukerji Staff Illustrators Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Hanna Petroski, Amber Sollenberger Editorial Intern Clyde Schwab Business Manager

Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 1212 E. 59th Street Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com

Cover art by Julie Wu and Ellie Mejia.

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

Stealing Lunch Money The Inspector General for the Chicago Board of Education revealed Monday in its annual fiscal report that a CPS operations employee, along with several colleagues and vendors, stole more than $876,427 from the district. The CPS employee, referred to throughout the report as “Employee A,” resigned and was placed on a “do not hire” list. The alleged fraud involved the billing of several vendors for goods and services never delivered, while the CPS employee received kickbacks, and the submission of fake reimbursement forms for school items. The report also revealed that some districts had misclassified dropouts, falsely labeling around 300 of them as transfers, and that at least twelve students applying for selective enrollment schools gave false information for their address, increasing their chances of admission in the competitive process. Progress as Usual As the NYPD reneged on broken windows policing for the second straight week, with its officers making half as many arrests as they did in the same period a year ago, Bob Fioretti once again announced his plans to hire more police officers if elected. He said he would put 500 more officers on the street, something he has said for much of the past year. Two weeks ago, Jesus Garcia, the other progressive challenger to Rahm Emanuel, raised the stakes and announced his own plan to hire another 1,000 officers. Though some important issues have been raised—whether officers know

and have the trust of their neighborhoods, why the city continues to pay officers $100 million in overtime every year—there are other issues being ignored, like whether police officers are really the most central route to safer communities. One wonders whether Rahm’s reformist challengers should be playing the politics of fear—as one wonders whether Eric Garner would still be alive if the NYPD had been this reticent last summer. He’d only been selling loose cigarettes. Weather as Usual The weather, having hovered at suitably warm temperatures for a few months—temperatures at which one could, among other things, leave one’s home, put one’s hands in the open air, and walk across the street without feeling like one’s cheeks had been sheared off—has, in fact, just as the new year was getting off to a good start, just as one’s resolutions were starting to seem (for once) attainable, plummeted from its former temperature down to a new temperature, this temperature being a temperature at which it is not only impossible to do all of the things listed above but at which it is also difficult to do such things as get out of bed in the morning, administer to one’s daily responsibilities, and maintain an even semi-positive outlook on most things, a temperature that goes by many names, among them: “cold,” “freezing,” “frigid,” “Arctic,” “Antarctic,” “maliciously cold,” and “it’s so fucking cold.” It is so fucking cold.

IN THIS ISSUE the fight to stay

“The voice on the phone says, ‘We are calling because we’re going to take your husband. Bring the keys so you can lock the house.’” lucia ahrensdorf...4 true stories, well-travelled

There is the idea that travel is, in and of itself, somehow virtuous, more than a just a luxury. hannah nyhart...12

kids on a new block

Cole was struck by the way that these teenagers described their homes, in terms of only a few streets or even a single block. olivia adams...8 voyce speaks out against harsh school discipline

Students are often suspended or expelled for nonviolent offenses that could be resolved within the school. hafsa razi...14

who was brother mike?

A homage to the Chicago-based poet, activist, digital media educator, and mentor who passed away last month. carlos matallana...10 a look at illinois’s new school funding reform bill

“That some kids would have twice as much [funding] and a head start to others is a terrible thing.” mari cohen...15

making a racquet

bob fioretti speaks to his people

When finished, it will be the largest standalone squash facility in the Midwest. jamison pfeifer...16

At the center of the room, but not of attention, Fioretti stood. patrick leow...17

The Fight to Stay Wilson Gomez-Pu was deported in November, but his wife and children remain BY LUCIA AHRENSDORF

”Where to start… My husband came back from work, I gave him something to eat, and he showered. And I tell him, ‘I’m going to the park with the kids, do you want to come?’ And he says ‘No, you all go.’ We left, and after twenty minutes he called, and I thought, ‘Oh now he wants to come.’ Well, the voice on the phone says, ‘We are calling because we’re going to take your husband. Bring the keys so you can lock the house.’ And we came running and they were all there and I asked them what was happening, why they were taking him and he said that he couldn’t say, he couldn’t explain, that it was for a lot of things. The kids were crying, and I was like a crazy person, looking for him. I went around to prisons looking for him. The police asked me what they looked like, the ones who came. I didn’t look closely, they were in all black. When police told me it had been ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], I started to shake, and thought, ‘I have to see a lawyer.’ I was desperate, because I had never thought about this moment.” —Josefa Gonzalez

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i l s o n Gomez-Pu was deported at the end of November after a DUI caught the attention of immigration officials. His partner, Josefa Gonzalez, and their two children remain in Chicago. Gonzalez refers to Gomez-Pu as her husband in testimony, but they aren’t legally married. Suffering from depression and diabetes and dealing with mounting debt, Josefa is struggling to raise her children alone. Josefa Gonzalez is one of many left behind in the wake of a family member’s deportation. She and her children share equally in the punishment doled out to their breadwinner. Families navigating the uneasy path between undocumented and documented immigration status received a glimmer of hope this past fall. On November 20, 2014—the same week that Gomez-Pu was deported to Guatemala—President Obama announced two programs that will be implemented in the coming months. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that was established through executive action in 2012, will be expanded to include a wider range of applicants. Deferred Action for Parent Accountability (DAPA) will soon allow for parents of children born in the United States to acquire deferred action status. Deferred action postpones deportation of an individual for

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a certain period of time. People who have been granted deferred action are authorized to work in the United States. Rosi Carrasco, a program director at Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), is pleased with announcement of the executive orders, but is disappointed by its limitations. “Unfortunately, it excluded people without U.S. citizen children, or those who didn’t have kids. It excluded members of the gay community, people who have worked here for many years.” She remains committed to her organization’s number one priority: stopping deportations through grassroots mobilization and education, rather than political lobbying at the federal level. “For us, the work continues.” Isabel Anadon, a senior policy analyst at Latino Policy Forum, a research and educational organization that works in multiple areas of advocacy and reform, highlights

a widespread concern that the programs are made of paper, liable to crumple and warp at the will of whomever happens to be in political power. “I think some of the other challenges they’re seeing to this are that it’s just temporary at this point and we’re not sure, in a couple of years when there’s another presidential election, how that individual may or may not make changes to these policies.” No application has been made available for the expanded DACA or DAPA, and Anadon says that those who think they might be eligible should be wary of figures promising early admission to the program She recommends that hopeful applicants speak to accredited legal services to get a sense of their own case. The process of acquiring Deferred Action is not a simple one. To qualify for expanded DACA one must have arrived in the U.S. before their sixteenth birthday,

IMMIGRATION continuously lived in the U.S. since January 1, 2010, and graduated from high school, obtained a GED, or be enrolled in school. The requirements call for information that can be difficult to prove. Applicants must provide proof of identity, proof of continuous residence in the U.S., and proof of student or military status. Undocumented immigrants must offer up documents that prove the date of their arrival and presence in the U.S.—anything from birth certificates to money order receipts to official records from “religious entities.” In addition, they must pay a fee of $465. Imelda Salazar, a community organizer for the South West Organizing Project (SWOP), takes a cautiously optimistic view. “I think, at least the families that I’ve worked with, they are really willing, saving the money, they want to apply. It’s $465. I wish it was less, but for the relief, it’s priceless. For a mom to be able to sleep because immigration won’t come, I think it’s priceless.” Salazar served as a conduit between Josefa Gonzalez and SWOP and frequently visits the family, bringing supplies and food. But for many, the decision to apply is a tough calculation. According to the Migration Policy Institute, only fifty-five percent of the young immigrants who met the program’s criteria applied for the DACA program in 2012. A report released by the Institute in August of 2014, “DACA at the Two-Year Mark,” cites the application fee, inability to prove continuous presence in the U.S., and a failure to pursue the necessary education requirements as reasons that forty-five percent of eligible youth chose to forego the DACA process. As expanded DACA and DAPA have not begun accepting applications, it is unknown if they will be more successful in attracting applicants. The mediocre success of the first stage of DACA indicates a lack of communication between the federal government and the undocumented population. For an undocumented resident, there are risks to jumping onto the government’s radar.

hereas the U.S. government measures legal status by factors such as location of birth and continuous presence in the country, immigrant rights groups push the idea that immigration and deportation status should be decided on the terms of social integration within a community. Organizations like OCAD use their collective voice to prove that those in danger of deportation are well-loved, active citizens in the South Side community.

Rosi Carrasco of OCAD explains, “What we have learned is that when there’s an organized community, it makes a big difference. What’s most important for us is to understand, clearly, that the authorities always have the ability in each case to use discretion. So with that conviction, one of our strategies is to accentuate and give importance to the contributions of our families.” OCAD and its allies are able to sway the hard constraints of the current policy by forcing immigration officials to recognize that, in executing and fast-tracking deportations, they are denying reprieve to people who act, work, and live as Americans. “I think that the community will continue to put on pressure,” Carrasco says, “because in the end, our people have roots in this country—their houses, their jobs— and so they have to keep fighting for their right to live here with dignity and justice.”

returning to Guatemala after an interview with an asylum officer. However, after he requested a review of the decision from an immigration judge, it was determined that he did, in fact, have reasonable fear of returning to Guatemala. He then went through a strenuous appeals process that ultimately failed. Gomez-Pu’s account was found to be contradictory and his proof found to be insufficient. In reading through the court decision, one is struck by the gravity placed on the small discrepancies in Gomez-Pu’s testimony. He was denied asylum by an immigration judge and, fourteen months after his initial detainment, he was deported. Carrasco cites the double standard at play in punishing undocumented immigrants. “Even though it says in the rules that if you have a DUI, you can’t be included, we know that there’s still discretion on the part of the authorities. The problem is

The figure of the illegal immigrant, a two-dimensional description that defines a person by their state status, is complicated when one considers an actual case. Even in relation to the Gomez-Pu case, which she was involved in, Carrasco is confident that officials could have used discretion and been more lenient. The details of the Gomez-Pu case do not point to an obvious solution. Wilson Gomez-Pu came to the United States in 2000, escaping gang violence in Guatemala that claimed the lives of his brother and father. He re-entered the United States without inspection in 2001, and after meeting Josefa Gonzalez, settled down and made a home for himself in Gage Park on the South Side. The couple has two children, Dalila and Wilson Jr. In 2013, Gomez-Pu was convicted of a DUI, which brought him to the attention of immigration officers. In August of that year, ICE personnel removed him from his home and placed him in detention. After describing his perilous situation in Guatemala, Gomez-Pu was recommended to the Chicago Asylum Office and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He was found not to have “reasonable fear” of

that they punish people with deportation. If a citizen makes a mistake, he has the option to take a class, pay his fines. He has the option to correct and mend the damage he has caused, or pay the consequences.” The double standard applies to Gomez-Pu’s case. “Deportation shouldn’t be a consequence,” Carrasco says, “We want people to correct the errors they have made. In the case of Wilson, he had his kids, his home, his family. He made a mistake, but immigration can always use discretion and they didn’t.” OCAD and SWOP don’t just help make cases public, circulate petitions, and provide legal assistance. Like many immigrant rights organizations, the local groups also focus on the mental health and wellbeing of those living with the deportation of a loved one. Salazar talks about the importance of mental health resources in the community. “Mental health is a big part of SWOP, of our immigration team. Because we know

how devastating for a family it is, that someone, especially the provider, is gone. So for the mom, it means another life. For the stay-at-home mom, now she needs to find a job, and then the kids are not going to have a two parent home. It’s a totally new life.” This focus is tied into recognizing the human element in each immigration case. SWOP places a large emphasis on human-to-human connection through testimonials and personal attention in its outreach. Salazar says: “Because we’re human beings, all we want is recognition and to be treated with dignity.” Even with help from organizations like SWOP, Josefa Gonzalez is finding it hard to raise her children as a single mother. My son was very attached to his dad. They ask when their dad will come back, they ask a lot, and the truth is that I just don’t know. I don’t know what to say because I don’t want to lie to them. It’s been…it’s been so bad. I work for a cleaning company, but they pay us very little. Fifteen dollars for a house. I don’t lie. This week from Monday to Saturday, I only made 200 dollars. I’ve applied to other places. I’m desperate. I feel desperate because my kids need shoes, clothes. And what will I do? I left my first husband because he hit me too much, in Mexico. Wilson drank. I prefer that he drink but doesn’t hit me. Better that he drinks.

—Josefa Gonzalez

he figure of the illegal immigrant, a two-dimensional description that defines a person by their state status, is complicated when one considers an actual case, an actual person with a past, a family, and an individual experience of migration. The case of Wilson Gomez-Pu is undeniably messy. On one side, character references from work supervisors, fellow detainees, and detention officers, and the affection of his family. On the other, an undocumented re-entry and a DUI. After fourteen months of legal limbo, the government finalized his deportation. Was he good enough to stay? That is a question at the center of his, and every, immigration case. It’s a question that, even as laws change, the government will answer with a yes or a no. The problematic idea of measuring worthiness is the core of immigration policy: who deserves to be an American?

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La lucha por quedarse Wilson Gomez-Pu fue deportado en noviembre, su esposa y sus hijos permanecen aquí sin él POR LUCIA AHRENSDORF “Por dónde empezar…. Mi esposo llegó del trabajo, le di de comer y se bañó. Y yo le dije, ‘vamos a ir al parque con los niños, ¿no quieres ir?’ Me dijo ‘no, váyanse ustedes.’ Nos fuimos y veinte minutos más tarde me llamó, y le dije, ah, ahora sí quieres venir. Bueno, dijo, ‘Estamos llamando porque le vamos a llevar a su esposo. Traiga llaves y venga pronto para cerrar la casa.’ Vinimos corriendo y todos estaban allí. Le pregunté a uno por qué estaban llevando mi esposo. Y me dijo que no nos podía decir, no nos podía explicar nada. Los niños llorando, ay, y yo andando como loca, buscándolo. Fui a todas las prisiones para buscarlo. Los policías preguntaron como eran, los que habían venido. Y yo pues, no me fijé bien, todos estaban vestidos de negro. Los policías dijeron que habían sido los de ICE [Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de Estados Unidos]. Yo empecé a temblar y dije, ‘tengo que ver a un abogado.’ Andaba desesperada, porque yo nunca había pasado por este momento.”

-Josefa Gonzalez

i l s on Gomez-Pu fue deportado al fin de noviembre después de que su DUI atrajo la atención de los oficiales de inmigración. Su pareja, Josefa Gonzalez, y sus dos hijos siguen en Chicago. Gonzalez refiere a Gomez-Pu como su esposo, pero no están legalmente casados. Sufriendo de la depresión y de la diabetes, Josefa está inundada con la responsabilidad de criar a dos hijos sola y pagar sus deudas. Josefa Gonzalez es parte del grupo de personas que permanecen 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

aquí, solas, después de que sus familiares fueron deportados. Ella y su familia comparten el castigo que recibió su sustentador. Familias navegando el proceso complicado entre estatus ilegal y legal vieron una luz de esperanza este otoño, cuando el presidente Obama anunció dos programas que se van a implementar en los próximos meses. El presidente hizo este anuncio el 20 de noviembre del 2014—en la misma semana que Gomez-Pu fue deportado. DACA (Acción diferida para los llegados en la infancia) que fue establecida en 2012, será extendida para incluir a más gente. DAPA (Acción Diferida para padres de ciudadanos estadounidenses y residentes permanentes legales) les permite a los padres de hijos nacidos en los Estados Unidos ser diferidos. La acción diferida es el uso de discreción para posponer temporariamente la deportación de un individuo. Los que han sido elegidos para la acción diferida están autorizados a trabajar en los Estados Unidos. Rosi Carrasco, una directora de programas para Comunidades Organizadas Contra las Deportaciones (OCAD) está feliz que una orden ejecutiva haya sido implementada, pero se siente decepcionada por sus limitaciones. “Desafortunadamente excluyó a la gente que no tiene hijos ciudadanos, o que no tiene hijos. Excluyó a los miembros de la comunidad gay, excluyó a gente que ha trabajado por tantos años aquí.” Carrasco propone usar educación y movilización de la comunidad para parar las deportaciones. “Para nosotros, el trabajo continua.” Isabel Anadon es una analista políti-

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ca para Latino Policy Forum, una organización que pone la importancia en la educación y en trabajando a varios niveles de apoyo y reforma. Ella recalca la preocupación que estos programas pueden cambiar dependiendo de quién tiene el poder político. “Creo que los desafíos que están viendo son que son solo temporarios, y no estamos seguros cómo, en dos años cuando haya otra elección de presidente, el nuevo presidente cambiará o no las leyes.” No hay una aplicación todavía para los dos programas, entonces los que piensan que califican deben tener cuidado de la gente fraudulenta que promete admisión temprana a los programas. Anadon sugiere que la gente que cree que califica para DACA o DAPA debe hablar con servicios legales certificados ahora mismo para entender su caso y para estar lista con los documentos necesarios cuando las aplicaciones se abran. Adquirir la Acción Diferida no es simple. Para calificar, es necesario cumplir varios requisitos estrictos. Tiene que

probar que llegó a los Estados Unidos antes de cumplir los dieciséis años, ha vivido ininterrumpidamente aquí desde el primer dia de enero del 2010, y ha graduado, ha obtenido un GED, o sigue en la escuela. Puede ser difícil obtener documentos que demuestran estos eventos. Candidatos tienen que tener pruebas— prueba de identidad, evidencia de presencia ininterrumpida en el país y prueba de estatus como estudiante o militar. Los indocumentados tienen que mostrar documentos que muestran el dato de su llegada y su presencia en los Estados Unidos—documentos como una acta de nacimiento, recibos de giros bancarios o documentos de la iglesia. Además, tienen que pagar una multa de 465 dólares. Imelda Salazar, una coordinadora de la comunidad para El Proyecto Organizador del Suroeste (SWOP) está optimista pero cautelosa. “Yo creo que por lo menos con las familias con las cuales yo he trabajado, están listos, están ahorrando el dinero, qui-

INMIGRACIÓN eren aplicar. La multa es de 465 dólares, es una lástima que no sea menos, pero el alivio es invaluable. Que una mamá pueda dormir tranquilamente porque no va a venir inmigración es invaluable.” Salazar fue una intermediaria entre Josefa Gonzalez y SWOP y visita la familia frecuentemente para traer comida. Pero para muchos, es una decisión difícil. Según el Instituto para Policía Migratoria, solo 55% de los inmigrantes jóvenes que calificaron aplicaron para DACA en 2012. Un reportaje publicado por el Instituto en agosto del 2014, “DACA después de dos años” dice que las razones por las cuales que 45% decidieron no aplicar a DACA son el precio para aplicar, no poder probar que han estado en los Estados Unidos continuamente y no poder adquirir los requisitos educativos necesarios. Como estos nuevos programas no han empezado a aceptar aplicaciones, no se puede saber si van a ser más exitosos. El éxito mediocre del programa del 2012 muestra que no hay comunicación clara entre la administración y los inmigrantes indocumentados. Si los inmigrantes sin documentos quieren ser legalizados y tener protección contra la deportación, y el gobierno les ofrece esa protección, es raro que ni siquiera una mitad de los que califican aplique. Sea desconfianza en el gobierno, sea falta de educación sobre el programa o sea error de juicio de la parte del gobierno, este caso muestra que hay una brecha entre legisladores y la populación sin documentos. Por un residente sin documentos, es riesgoso anunciarse al gobierno.

dad de influir las restricciones estrictas de la policía. Forzan a los oficiales de inmigración a reconocer que cuando ejecutan y aceleran las deportaciones, están negando amnistía a los que ya trabajan y viven como americanos. Carrasco continua, “Creo que la comunidad va a seguir presionando porque al final la gente nuestra tiene raíces en este país—tienen sus casas, sus trabajos, sus hogares— y entonces tienen que seguir luchando por su derecho a vivir aquí con dignidad y con justicia.” Aun en el caso de Gomez-Pu, Carrasco está segura que los oficiales podían usar la discreción y ser menos severos. Carrasco estuvo involucrada en el caso. Los detalles de su caso no ofrecen ninguna conclusión obvia. Wilson Gomez-Pu vino a los Estados Unidos en 2000 para escapar las pandillas en Guatemala que mataron a su hermano y su padre. Él volvió a los Estados Unidos sin inspección en 2001. Después de

l gobierno mide el estatus legal usando factores como lugar de nacimiento y presencia ininterrumpida en el país. Lo que los grupos de inmigración enfatizan es la idea que la deportación y el estatus de inmigración deberían ser medidas desde el punto de vista de la participación social en la comunidad. Grupos de inmigración como OCAD usan su voz colectiva para probar que los que están en peligro de ser deportados son queridos y activos en la comunidad del sur de Chicago. Carrasco explica, “Lo que hemos aprendido es que cuando hay una comunidad organizada hace una gran diferencia…Lo más importante para nosotros es entender eso claramente, que siempre las autoridades tienen la facultad en cada caso de usar discreción. Entonces, con esa convicción, una de las estrategias es precisamente darle la importancia que tiene a las contribuciones de nuestras familias.” OCAD y sus aliados tienen la capaci-

conocer a Josefa Gonzalez, se establecieron en Gate Park en el sur de Chicago. La pareja tiene dos hijos, Dalila y Wilson Jr. En 2013, Gomez-Pu fue condenado por manejar bajo la influencia del alcohol. Este incidente atrajo la atención de oficiales de inmigración. En agosto del 2013, agentes de ICE le sacaron de su casa y le pusieron en detención. Gomez-Pu describió la situación peligrosa en Guatemala y fue referido a la Oficina de Asilo en Chicago y Servicios de Ciudadanía y Inmigración de los Estados Unidos. En una entrevista, un oficial de asilo decidió que Gomez-Pu no tenía suficiente “miedo legitimo” de regresar a Guatemala. Sin embargo, después de protestar esta decisión, un juez de inmigración decidió que en realidad, sí tenía suficiente “miedo legitimo.” Pero al fin, después de un proceso arduo, fue negado por el juez y Gomez-Pu fue deportado. El juez juzgo que la manera en que Gomez-Pu explicó los

eventos en Guatemala era contradictoria y insuficiente. En la decisión de la corte, se puede ver que pusieron mucha importancia en discrepancias pequeñas en la narración de Gomez-Pu. Carrasco cita el doble estándar que está presente en la penalización de los inmigrantes indocumentados. “Aunque dice en las regulaciones que si tiene un DUI no puede ser incluido, nosotros sabemos que sigue todavía la discreción de parte de las autoridades. El problema es que castigan a la gente con la deportación. Si es un ciudadano él que comete un error, tiene opciones de tomar un curso, de pagar sus multas, de corregir y enmendar el daño que hizo o pagar las consecuencias. El doble estándar que Carrasco cita está presento en el caso de Gomez-Pu. Ella continúa, “Pero la deportación no debería ser una consecuencia, así que queremos que la gente corrija los errores que cometió. En

La figura del inmigrante ilegal es una simplificación que defina una persona por su estatus político en el país. Esta simplificación no considera que estamos hablando de una persona verdadera, con un pasado, una familia, y una experiencia única de inmigración. el caso del señor Wilson, tenía sus hijos, tenía su hogar, su familia, cometió un error, pero siempre los agentes de inmigración pueden usar la discreción y no lo hicieron.” OCAD y SWOP no sólo ayudan a publicitar los casos, circular peticiones y ofrecer ayuda legal. Como muchas organizaciones que pelean por los derechos de los inmigrantes, los grupos locales también prestan atención a los efectos de las deportaciones en la comunidad: la salud mental y el bienestar de los miembros de la comunidad que han sufrido la deportación de un querido. Salazar dice de la importancia de los servicios de salud mental en la comunidad, “La salud mental es una gran parte de SWOP, de nuestro equipo de inmigración. Porque sabemos lo devastador que es para una familia, que alguien, especialmente el sostén, no este allí. Para la mamá, quiere decir una vida diferente. Para la mamá que se queda en casa, ahora tiene que encontrar

trabajo, y los hijos no van a tener un hogar con dos padres, es una vida completamente nueva.” Este centro de atención está liado al reconocimiento de los seres humanos en cada caso de deportación. OCAD acentúa la conexión a través de testimoniales y gran atención personal a cada caso. Salazar lo dice bien: “Somos seres humanos, y todo lo que queremos es reconocimiento y de ser tratados con dignidad.” “El niño estaba muy apegado con su papá. Ellos preguntan cuándo va a regresar su papá, y la verdad es que ya no sé ni qué decir porque no los voy a estar engañando. Ya quieren que regrese a casa, se sienten muy tristes y la verdad. Ha sido ay no….me ha ido tan mal. Yo trabajo para una compañía de limpieza, pero nos pagan bien poquito. 15 dólares para una casa. No miento. Esta semana, de lunes a sábado, no saque ni 200 dólares. Ya apliqué para otros lados. Ya me desespero. Me desespero porque mis hijos necesitan zapatos, necesitan ropa.”

—Josefa Gonzalez

eparada de su esposo y lejos de sus otros familiares, a Josefa Gonzalez le cuesta sobrevivir después de la deportación. Mal pagada, estresada y deprimida, para ella y para muchos otros, la importancia de servicios para la salud mental es innegable. La figura del inmigrante ilegal es una simplificación que defina una persona por su estatus político en el país. Esta simplificación no considera que estamos hablando de una persona verdadera, con un pasado, una familia, y una experiencia única de inmigración. Sin duda, el caso de Wilson Gomez-Pu es complicado. De un lado hay las referencias positivas de los detenidos y los oficiales en su centro de detención y la devoción de su familia. Del otro lado hay una reentrada ilegal y un DUI. Después de catorce meses de suspensión, el gobierno finalizó su deportación. ¿Mereció quedarse? Ésa es la pregunta al centro de este caso, y todos los casos de inmigración. Aunque las leyes cambien, el gobierno siempre responde definitivamente si o no a esta pregunta. Midiendo el mérito está al centro de las leyes de inmigración, una cosa que es bien problemática. La pregunta es: Quién merece ser americano? Cristina Ochoa, Alejandra Arce, y Rachel Schastok ayudaron traducir y corregir el artículo.

JANUARY 7, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

Kids on a New Block Jahmal Cole crosses Chicago’s segregated neighborhood boundaries BY OLIVIA ADAMS

ahmal Cole has been a public speaker since 1988. He was four during his first speech. That address, delivered to his fellow preschool graduates and their families, now serves as the mission statement for his life, a narrative founded on community building and positivity. “I always knew I’d be a speaker,” he says. “But when I started giving presentations, I realized that I actually learn more from community members than what I was telling them, so I better start learning, I better start listening,” Cole said. Twenty-six years later, Cole heads the Role Model Movement (RMM), a nonprofit that aims to resolve one of Chicago’s central contradictions—the city’s tendency to accept and celebrate its diverse but racially and socioeconomically segregated neighborhoods. Cole began to see this tension while volunteering at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center in 2008. Assigned to the AT, or automatic transfer unit, Cole worked primarily with teenagers who would be transferred to an Illinois prison for ten-fifteen year sentences due to the nature of their crimes. “I was a little bit nervous, but when they walked into the room I realized that 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

“I think that when somebody gets shot in Englewood—that should actually matter to the people in the Gold Coast, and when that 3D printing company opens up in Edgewater, that should matter to us in Chatham.” they weren’t sociopaths like Chicago media makes them out to be,” says Cole. “They were actually the same guys I see on the Red Line. They could’ve been anything they wanted to be, but they just never had positive role models.” For Cole, one of the most positive role models available to these teenagers lies in

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the city itself. Chicago’s abundance of diversity in culture and life experiences can provide the impetus necessary for young people to see beyond their circumstances. However, in conversations with the inmates, it became clear that the city of Chicago existed as a stereotype for them in the same way that their own lives were reduced

to a few headlines in the Tribune. When he asked them whether they had ever seen downtown Chicago, a chorus of no’s would reverberate from the walls of the detention center. Most would instead talk about their own neighborhoods, oblivious to the rest of the city. Cole was struck by the way that these teenagers described their homes, in terms of only a few streets or even a single block. “I found it ironic that they could see downtown from their block or their hood, but had never seen it for themselves,” Cole said. My Block, My Hood, My City (M3) is Cole’s answer to this lack of perspective. “At the beginning I called it ‘Changing Perspectives’ but that didn’t look good on t-shirts, so I was stumped when I was creating my Kickstarter,” he explains. ”And a mentor of mine said, ‘Come on, you’re always talking about my block, my hood, my city—why don’t you just put that on a t-shirt?’ So that’s how it was born,” Cole explained. The Explorer’s Club, one of the M3 initiatives, serves as an organized shuttle service for kids from underserved communities to visit neighborhoods, primarily on the North Side, where many have never

ACTIVISM

been and may never have expected to experience. In one instance, Cole accompanied a teenager named Emmanuel from Humboldt Park to a new 3D printing facility in Edgewater. Emmanuel was able to create a 3D printed model of his dream home with the help of the Edgewater Workbench staff and a free online modeling program. Cole is also working to create a web series under the M3 name which will detail each of Chicago’s seventy-seven community areas in eight-to-ten minute videos starring Cole himself. Each snapshot includes excursions to local establishments, as well as interviews with local residents. The videos provide information on the history of each neighborhood, as well as the role each neighborhood fills within the larger Chicago landscape. These histories include positive segments focused on new businesses, like a profile of the Penthouse Boutique in the Woodlawn episode. They also reflect candidly on some of the problems facing each particular neighborhood, and each community’s efforts to find solutions—in the Rogers Park episode, for instance, Cole speaks with a former gang member. To date, Cole has profiled nine neighborhoods, and he plans on compiling the entire seventy-seven episode series into a documentary. Cole remedied his own struggles as a young man through travel. A student at an alternative high school, he first doubted the possibility of college enrollment. Two weeks before graduation, after declaring to his high school guidance counselor his plans to enroll at the University of Michigan on an unrealized basketball scholarship, he received a rude awakening. “She was like, ‘You go to an alternative high school, one, you hardly ever show up in school, two. You better go to the military.’” Cole laughs. “So I ended up ripping a page off a book on her shelf and shoving it in my pocket—she had left for the phone— and with the paper in my pocket, I pulled it out of my pocket, opened it up when I was downstairs and it said ‘Wayne State College, Nebraska.’” Cole eventually attended Wayne State, where he earned a degree in communica-

tions, and took opportunities to travel to Hawaii and the United Kingdom. Cole continued his education with a masters in internet marketing at Full Sail. However, he insists that the most valuable arena for an activist like himself lies in the community itself. “The communities are my classrooms,” he says. “That’s my education. I was gonna go to law school a year ago, but I decided to travel with M3 and educate myself that way.” Cole is well known for his community activism, especially among South Side organizations (he lives in Chatham). Asiaha Butler, the co-founder and president of the Residents Association of Englewood (RAGE), counts him among a core group of young visionaries who currently supply their neighborhoods with potential for social growth and welfare, and has hinted at the possibility of collaborations between RAGE and RMM. Collaborations, but not partnerships— Cole currently wishes to run his nonprofit and its initiatives like the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. The RMM and, more

importantly, the M3 names exist separately from any Chicago entity that may be interested in the organization’s goals and strategies. To Cole, RMM is self-sustaining as a brand. “I think that—I’m open to collaboration, don’t get me wrong—if Chicago Public Schools calls me up and says that they want to implement my program, then I’m all about that,” he says. “But right now, we’re identifying organizations that serve teenagers and providing this experience to them free of charge.” Much of Cole’s time is spent researching and applying for grants. Both the Explorer’s Club and the 3M web series are expensive, and Cole relies on his own personal funds as well as donations and grants to carry out each trip. “For every one that I win, I might fail three,” he says of grant applications. “It’s hurtful to fill out a big grant application and wait six months just to find out you lost. That hurts your ego man, you know?” As a result, Cole is defensive of his own project, and frustrated with Chicago’s climate for nonprofits like his own. Hun-

dreds of NFPs exist within Cook County, and most, if not all, rely on donations and grants in order to complete their work. This creates a level of competition that can be difficult to survive, especially for a business that doesn’t produce any profit of its own. “You have all these people fighting for the same pool of money, and they are struggling with ideas. And I think I’ve got a fresh idea, I know I do.” said Cole. The M3 web series has profiled one-seventh of Chicago’s seventy-seven community areas. The Explorer’s Club is also just beginning to kick off, with two completed trips and another planned for a Bulls game trip downtown. Cole hopes to take some sort of statistical analysis from the latter in order to better advertise the program to Chicago organizations that also work to help empower kids from underserved communities. “In two to three years, I want to see if the Explorer’s Program is working. What are my high school students’ GPAs, are they attending college, what is the college persistence rate. I want to be able to say two years from now that eighty-five percent, ninety-five percent of the Explorers go on to graduate—or go on to enroll in college. And stay in contact, stay engaged,” Cole said. Cole’s projects are new, and the results of their attempt to combat Chicago’s segregation and its isolation of underprivileged youth will not be seen for a while. Both problems span the entire city. Cole recognizes this and knows that his role in breaking down barriers will be ineffective without support from others—both other organizers and other ordinary Chicagoans. “People say in Chicago, ‘Do you live in a bad community in Chatham?’ or ‘Is Englewood bad?’ or ‘Is South Shore bad?’ No! Chicago is bad. I mean, we all should take responsibility for what’s going on. So, I think that when somebody gets shot in Englewood—that should actually matter to the people in the Gold Coast, and when that 3D printing company opens up in Edgewater, that should matter to us in Chatham.”

JANUARY 7, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

HOMAGE

True Stories, Well Traveled A review of The Places We’ve Been BY HANNAH NYHART

“H

e points out into the overgrown green where his sister Bertha once gardened,” writes Pria Anand, in the journal she kept in Colombia. “I see bananas and trees and long grass, but only one f lower, a tiny one, growing like a weed by the shed.” Reading The Places We’ve Been, which includes Anand’s work and that of forty-seven other travelers (forty-eight if you count editor Asha Veal Brisebois) feels a bit like walking into that back lot looking for a garden, and finding instead a whole mess of plants you weren’t expecting. Brisebois founded The Places We’ve Been books in Chicago in 2011; the collection is the publishing house’s first finished volume, reaching beyond the city to cull work from international contributors. The book is subtitled “Field Reports from Travelers Under Thirty-Five,” and many of the participants are activists, explorers, or artists. Some of them are one or more of those things before they are writers; at times their dispatches are rough around the edges. This can make the four-hundredpage collection feel overgrown. But it’s not without its f lowers. Many of the pieces feel welltended, written as much for the sake of writing as telling. And some of the less lit-focused contributions are as sturdy as trees: interviews with extraordinary people, straight reports from far-f lung places, pieces that feel like letters home. In her editor’s note, Brisebois borrows from Lee Gutkind, founder of the magazine Creative Nonfiction, to define the genre: “true stories, well told.” But within that sort of writing there is often another gauntlet thrown down, a

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deepening of the “well told” part that demands a “so what.” Writer and longtime Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, who has written some of the best travel stories I’ve ever read, writes that he tells his young reporters that their pieces are always, one way or another, about the meaning of life. Whether or not you buy that (he makes a good case), I know that I seek in reading nonfiction a telling that gets at a truth I care about, or writes a truth so well that I am at least startled by its true-ness. In travel we face a similar demand. There exists the idea that travel is inherently virtuous, more than a just a luxury. It is a broadening, a chance to open your mind and see yourself in a different light. And this idea of ref lection comes through in many of the anthology’s pieces, as young writers compare themselves to foreign counterparts. In her account of a trek through China, Sierra Ross Gladfelter writes about the gulf between herself and her Tibetan hosts, yak herders sleeping on the other side of their dung-burning stove—they are nineteen and twenty to her twenty-two. In “Assault Rif les in the Ruins,” Frank Izaguirre waits out the rain with a cluster of Colombian teenage soldiers. Shadowing a midwife in Pachaj, Guatemala, Liz Quinn writes: “Surrounded by nursing mothers younger than I was, I felt my breasts to be conspicuously small, inert, and useless.” Recounting a conversation in the midst of months of travel, Lisa Hsia says, “Traveling the world sounds like something a cool person would do, and I guess I just thought that once we started, I would become cool too. But now...I just feel like myself.” Maybe virtuous is the wrong word. But the traveler does

BOOKS

embark hoping for transformation, and when they return, the inevitable question—“how was it?”—implies others. How are you better? How are you cooler? What have you learned? At times, the pieces in The Places We’ve Been thrust suddenly at answering those questions— and the “so what?”—in their final lines. Sometimes those conclusions are presented so neatly that they ring hollow, more a forced moral than an insight. Of course, many of those included in the anthology are working writers, even as they are other things. Some identify themselves explicitly, writing about writing, others play with form to the same effect (here I’m thinking of poet Laura Madeline Wiseman’s “How to be a Russian Sleeper for the U.S.,” a set of f lowing guidelines in the second person). Still others manage to convey their craft more quietly, their true stories strikingly well told. As with most anthologies, The Places We’ve Been is best read any way other than cover to cover. It risks the fatigue of a long trip, when homesickness takes the traveler and newness starts to feel old. The book is organized by continent, but by reading start to finish one might miss Mike Madej’s three-page narration of a single night in Kenya, or Molly Headley-Benkaci’s pretty and brutal account of her French lover. Kept on a nightstand to be thumbed through, the anthology offers up pieces like Yuki Aizawa’s account of her glamorous, and maybe lonely, Aunt Yumi, whose small Tokyo bar hosts intimate nights full of “champagne f lutes stuffed with forgotten cigarettes.” By the end I felt I’d recognize the aunt or bar on sight.

ith the book ’s thirty-fiveand-under constraint, it’s easy to look for themes about growing up. But even if the reader isn’t searching, anybody who has ever felt around for an imagined threshold to adulthood will find f lashes of those concerns in these pages. Ian Bardenstein’s “NYClopedia” is an A-Z scatter of thoughts on his life in the city, none of

on top of his personal mountains, and if that reconciliation is awful or not.” As somebody who has never wondered this, I can only assume its truth. The writers grow up in less explicit ways as well, and sometimes their journeys deal with time as much as space. One woman writes her way to the moment just before she meets her father’s killer. A student visits Ward 86, the San

As with most anthologies, The Places We’ve Been is best read any way other than cover to cover. It risks the fatigue of a long trip, when homesickness takes the traveler and newness starts to feel old. which gets more than six lines. His entry for “grown-up” reads, “Seeing how other people have matured since high school makes me feel undeniably adult. When I was younger, I never thought that one day I would be friends with a teacher.” In the midst of his tale of a climb in Venezuela, Andrew Bisharat writes, “I’m cynical enough to find my ambitions pointless, but too zealous and insufferable not to blindly pursue them. I often wonder if this feeling dwindles with age as a person realizes he may never stand

Francisco wing dedicated to AIDS as it emerged as an epidemic, and imagines the death of an uncle he never knew. Years after she envies the breasts of the young Guatemalan mothers, Liz Quin continues to mourn an infant strangled by its umbilical cord. She recalls the midwife wondering whether things would have gone differently at a hospital. Years have made Quin question the mantra—“we’re all human, we’re all human”—that she’d carried in the place where she felt so apart. “How dare I pre-

tend that we are more the same than we are different?” she asks. In her introductory note, Brisboise writes that more often than not, reading the pieces in her anthology made her want to go to the places they talk about. She is right that this is one of the book ’s strengths. Putting it down, the reader is left with images of a snowstorm at sea, a bird’s nest in a defunct Colombian lamppost, the walls of Tangier’s medina. But at its best, the collection provokes a desire not just to visit the places in its pages, but to return to those pages themselves. In “The Human Arrow,” Christian Lewis’s tour of that medina, he writes of his no-plan travel style: “It was certainly more dramatic. In my mind, I was Christopher Columbus.” On arrival, painfully American in a city whose language he doesn’t speak, he has the sudden urge to turn the boat around. “We become who we are because we figure out what we don’t like,” says Bisharat, the climber. “This is why traveling is really just a vacation from growing older.” But travel, writing, growing up—they’re more aligned than they aren’t. In all of them, becoming who we are is tangled up with figuring out who we are not. Not Columbus, or Indiana Jones. Not the same as those we visit, and also not exceptional. The pieces end up being as much about the people as the places they’ve been, and many are worth revisiting. Asha Veal Brisebois, ed. The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35. The Places We’ve Been LLC. 400 pages.

JANUARY 7, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

Youth Activists Challenge State Disciplinary Policies VOYCE mobilizes students toward educational equity BY HAFSA RAZI

ne morning, a Chicago student entered school and walked through the metal detector. It’s part of the daily routine, a precaution meant to prevent students from bringing weapons to school. But this time, the beeper went off. The student stopped. School security and administrators gathered around. They looked through the student’s backpack and found no weapons—but they did find a small pack of gum, each piece wrapped in aluminum foil. In accordance with the school’s nogum policy, the gum had a five-dollar penalty, with each stick costing an additional dollar: eight dollars in total, for a pack of gum that probably cost a quarter as much. It may seem bizarre, but the disciplinary case is just one of many that Jose Sanchez has encountered as the Safe Schools Consortium coordinator for the collaborative Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE). Sanchez works with VOYCE’s cohort of youth leaders, many of whom are CPS students who joined the organization’s Campaign for Common Sense Discipline after being subject to school disciplinary policies that they deem unfair. “Our organizing philosophy is that

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the people impacted most by the issues have the capacity to make the change for themselves,” Sanchez said. “So because of that, VOYCE youth tend to lead a lot of the things within VOYCE itself. So whenever we have meetings, they run the agenda, they create the agenda, they facilitate the agenda.” In November, a group of VOYCE youth leaders traveled to Springfield to speak with lawmakers about their personal experiences with harsh discipline and to advocate for Senate Bill 3004, which calls for reforms to school disciplinary policies across the state. The bill is currently pending in the Illinois Senate and will be reintroduced in the new session. Among its provisions is a ban on punitive fines, but it also proposes a host of other changes that aim to stop suspensions and expulsions from obstructing learning. Currently, Sanchez said students are often suspended or expelled for nonviolent offenses that could be resolved within the school. Dress-code violations are particularly contentious—Sanchez cited one student who was suspended for wearing open-toed shoes, another for wearing sweatpants to school on a cold day. Out-of-school suspensions and ex-

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pulsions for nonviolent offenses create challenges for both students and teachers by creating large attendance gaps, Sanchez said, preventing students from learning and teachers from instructing in a regular routine. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, students who are penalized with out-of-school suspension or expulsion are ten times more likely to drop out of school, and often participate in more high-risk activities while out of school rather than reforming their behavior. SB 3004 would prevent schools from giving out-of-school suspensions longer than three days without written justification and the existence of “immediate danger to the classroom environment.” It also requires that schools provide services and support to students while they’re absent. Some groups, such as the Illinois Principals Association, are concerned that schools will be unable to maintain students’ safety if they cannot suspend or expel students before they cause harm to others. However, Sanchez said the bill allows schools to define what constitutes “immediate danger.” The real reason for excessive suspensions and expulsions, Sanchez argued, is a

lack of resources and preparedness on the part of schools to deal with disobedience in a more constructive way. The consequences are unequal—Illinois is the number-one state in the U.S. for racial disparity in school suspensions, according to a 2012 UCLA report. The divide is present both in Chicago and in the rest of Illinois, making this a state issue. According to Sanchez, youth participation in policy and advocacy allows VOYCE to address the realities that students face in school, rather than relying on outside groups to create policies. And their perspective is just as important in the political sphere. “I could share something with an elected official, [but] it’s completely different for them to hear it from someone on the ground, someone who lives through it every day,” Sanchez said. “Just in terms of what Springfield looks like—it tends to be older, male, [and], you know, white—to have, for example, a young woman of color there, able to talk to an elected official and convince them to work and focus on this issue—it’s not only powerful and empowering for the young person, but I think it’s a great benefit to the type of representation that Springfield has.”

EDUCATION

A Look at Illinois’s New School Funding Reform Bill The first part in an ongoing analysis of the rebirth of SB 16 BY MARI COHEN

n June 2012, as students across Illinois received their report cards in the mail, the state itself received a report card, and didn’t exactly make the honor roll. A report titled “Is School Funding Fair?” produced by Rutgers University and the Education Law Center in New Jersey, gave the state a big fat F in distribution of funding. The data showed that, in general, the more concentrated poverty was in an Illinois school district, the less state and local funding it was getting. Of forty-eight states ranked in the report, Illinois was second-to-last. “That some kids would have twice as much [funding] and a head start to others is a terrible thing,” said state representative for the 26th District Christian Mitchell, co-sponsor of an education funding reform bill, previously known as SB 16, that is scheduled to be reintroduced with changes when the legislative session opens next week. State Senator Andy Manar, of the 48th District, introduced SB 16 (also called the School Funding Reform Act of 2014) in last April. The bill responded to recommendations by a committee the Senate had created in 2013 in the wake of the Rutgers “report card.” The bill passed in the Senate and went to the House rules committee, but got stuck there and never made it to a vote. The new version of the bill combines various streams and grants into a single formula that sets a “foundation level” of aid and adds weights for districts that might require more funding. The weights depend on factors like concentration of low-income students, English language-learners, special education students, gifted students, and transportation needs. The district’s “available local resources,” such as property tax revenues, are subtracted from the calculation, and the state pays the rest. Exact funding details from the new version have yet to be released, but Mitchell

was able to identify a few key changes. He said that the new bill will address specific concerns about funding for special needs students, may include adjustments for employee cost of living in certain districts, and may also remedy some cases where high-poverty districts end up losing money. Mitchell also hopes the bill could be an opportunity to investigate the fairness of funding within CPS, including inequities between North and South Side schools. If passed, all Illinois districts would be required to report their funding distribution to the state, giving it the chance to check the CPS budget before handing out funding. However, even with these changes, the bill won’t be palatable to everyone. Instead of adding funding, the bill would redistribute it so that some districts lose portions of their current funds to others. Districts that will get less money under the bill, including many suburban districts, are unlikely to support it. A Google search for “Illinois SB 16” returns letters, PowerPoints, op-eds, and even Change.org petitions by various superintendents and lawmakers, many from suburban districts, galvanizing their communities to fight against the bill. But the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE)’s funding projections for the previous version, SB 16, also revealed that CPS would lose about $38.5 million under the bill, even though 84.9 percent of its students are low income and it educates 32.7 percent of the low income students in the state. Mitchell, however, claims this is a mistake: he says ISBE used 2013 numbers in their calculations and therefore missed some money, and that under the new bill CPS would actually gain money. If this is true, the updated numbers for the new version of the bill, combined with the changes that Mitchell mentioned, could appease some critics—at least within Chicago.

JANUARY 7, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

SPORTS

Making a Racquet Squash and schooling find a joint home in Woodlawn BY JAMISON PFEIFER ellie mejia

ig things are happening with racquet sports on Chicago’s South Side. Last May Mayor Rahm Emanuel and XS Tennis announced the construction of a gargantuan $9.8 million tennis facility in Washington Park, slated for completion this spring. Then, late last August, MetroSquash, a non-profit squash-cum-afterschool program catering to CPS students on the South Side, broke ground on its new Woodlawn facility at 61st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. The facility will be comprised of eight squash courts (including one doubles court), four academic classrooms, a computer lab, locker rooms, and administrative space. When finished, it will be the largest standalone squash facility in the Midwest. In addition to its squash programs, MetroSquash provides its students with afterschool academic support, homework help, and test prep. Since its founding in 2005, MetroSquash has primarily operated out of the University of Chicago’s squash courts at the Henry Crown Field House at 56th Street and University Ave16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

nue, holding its academic sessions at University Church one block south. “What the facility is going to allow us to do is double the capacity of the program,” said David Kay, the executive director of MetroSquash. With their own facility, the program will also operate more easily on evenings and weekends. In its current location MetroSquash can serve 130 students of all ages, from fifth graders through college sophomores. The new facility will be able to support at least 300 students year-round, though Kay says this is a conservative estimate. A few years back, when MetroSquash first discovered the available lease on the Woodlawn lot, the “long-term plan,” says Kay, “was to have the squash space, the academic space, and the administrative space all together.” At 21,000 square feet, the Nagle Hartray-designed building will cost $8 million to build. While much of that money is coming from funding raised by MetroSquash over the past few years, $1.5 million comes from the New Markets Tax Credit program, a part of the

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Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000 aimed at revitalizing lower-income neighborhoods. Since the city granted Woodlawn tax increment financing (TIF) status in 2010, the neighborhood has seen its share of redevelopment. Though the new MetroSquash facility will sit just one block outside the TIF zone’s boundaries, Kay still considers the project “one piece of the puzzle of the community redevelopment and revitalization of the neighborhood.” Currently, MetroSquash’s major partner institutions include schools in Woodlawn such as Fiske Elementary and the UofC’s Woodlawn Charter Prep High School, as well as Hyde Park schools like Kozminski Community Academy and Kenwood Academy. In discussing the new facility, Kay was careful to emphasize the academic aspect of the MetroSquash. “We want people to focus on what we do outside of the squash court as well,” he says. “In reality, we’re a holistic program aimed at producing college-level students.”

Kay notes the sport’s recent growth in popularity, attributing it in part to the fact that almost any able-bodied person can play it. (Sixty percent of MetroSquash’s students, he says, are girls.) “The other major thing is the [sport’s] connection with education,” Kay explains. He alludes to the blue-blooded sport’s traditional affiliation with Ivy League schools: “It can be a real differentiator for students applying to colleges.” Kay expects the facility to be completed sometime this May, at which time MetroSquash will finally have a home of its own on the South Side. “The program, we feel, has been a hidden gem—tucked away within the University of Chicago campus,” he says. In the Woodlawn site, Kay says, MetroSquash will be able to expand into a new community, albeit still drawing resources from the UofC. “We feel very excited to be part of Woodlawn,” he said. “We’re ready to serve the community and to be a safe place for kids to learn.”

CALENDAR

Bob Fioretti Speaks to His People BY PATRICK LEOW

hese were Bob Fioretti’s people, this was his standing-room-only crowd. On Monday night at the University of Chicago, 2015 mayoral candidate Fioretti could finally come into his own, for in this room, he was finally far away from the people who sneered at his candidacy. Here, there were no big corporate shills living by the Lake who belonged to his incumbent opponent, men in suits who thought his ideals naïve. There weren’t the minorities in the other faraway Chicago, either, residents of neighborhoods that CTA trains don’t trundle through, who might find him naïve for their own reasons. At the UofC, there were instead fresh-eyed students in sweaters who spoke breathlessly of campaigns past for Democratic candidates in their native California, who wondered how the hypothetical Mayor Fioretti would hold accountable the men and women who served in police blue for their racism. There were older, whiter Hyde Parkers, residents who had indignantly propelled generations of independent, liberal aldermen into power—aldermen who opposed both Mayors Daley in the same lonely and principled way that those residents think Bob Fioretti has done since 2007. And there were also policy wonks who rattled off questions about participatory budgeting and who nodded along to the candidate’s conversion to targeted social media outreach, his online strategy predicated upon “Follow Fioretti on Fridays.” And at the center of the room but not of attention Fioretti stood, the unlikely liberal lion being pushed out of office by redistricting, a man without a ward because

he had shaped a political career out of telling this mayor “no,” forcefully and often. Because he had voted in accordance with Mayor Emanuel’s wishes only forty-five percent of the time in a rubberstamp Council, he was running for mayor himself, and these were the people who were now truly receptive to his ceaseless inveighing against the monster who ran their city. On Monday night, Fioretti showed himself as their vessel for change, and the flickering hope he represented brought together a dissimilar crowd unified primarily by a conviction that four more years of this mayor meant only four more years of desperate, unnecessary inequality. But he seemed no standard bearer, no leader of an organic movement. When speaking of his commitment to social justice, of his staunch liberal principles that were shaped by the streetwise common sense of his Roseland childhood, he invoked his experience as a full-time attorney, a tireless public advocate in Chicago’s courts for most of his adult life. Perhaps it isn’t fair to compare Fioretti to those politicians—Karen Lewis, Luis Gutierrez—who possess a rare talent to ignite a crowd, and perhaps voters will soon come to realize that sterling voting records in City Council and awards from the Independent Voters of Illinois are preferable to the man they had come to despise. But Fioretti ended the forum by declaring that his mayoralty would be about the collective: “It’s not me, it’s we. Everyone in this room is going to be mayor, and I shouldn’t be on that fifth floor of City Hall.”

BULLETIN 4th, 5th Ward Aldermanic Candidate Forum Given the past four years of polarizing mayoral administration marked by clashes over neighborhood schools, policing, and other issues, the South Side incumbent alderman should be an endangered species. That hypothesis will be put to the test this Saturday at a forum hosted by the Hyde Park-Kenwood Coalition for Equitable Community Development, as the 4th and 5th Ward incumbents Will Burns and Leslie Hairston engage their less experienced opponents (on the ballot this year: a real estate agent, a policy consultant, and a spa owner) on economic diversity in the neighborhood. Augustana Lutheran Church, 5500 S. Woodlawn Ave. January 10, 10am-12pm. Free. (773)643-7495. hpkcoalition.org (Patrick Leow)

WOMEN Against the Machine Chicago is lacking women in positions of power—with only sixteen sitting female aldermen, representation is thin. Elections are fast approaching, and WOMEN Against the Machine are using the opportunity to examine what it means to be a woman in Chicago politics. Come out this Saturday to see progressive and independent candidates in the aldermanic elections talk about women who are on the front lines of the f ight for the city’s future. Former mayoral candidate Amara Enyia will moderate the panel. Jane Hull-House Museum, 800 Halsted St. January 10, 4pm-6pm. (Ryn Seidewitz)

lice Violence.” Topics include reparations for victims, sustainable jail support, local rotating bail, the role of art in protests, youth involvement, and the impact of police violence on women and trans people. This program is part of a grassroots campaign advocating the end of oppressive policing, and is intended to be both an informational event and a call to action. Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave. January 24, 9am-6pm. wechargegenocide.org (Akanksha Shah)

11th Ward Aldermanic Town Hall Forum Here in Chicago, the new year could bring major changes: a new mayor, new speed limits, and even the resurrection of the Daley dynasty. A historic stronghold of the Daley political machine, the 11th Ward is set for a tight aldermanic race between community activist Maureen Sullivan, law student Patrick Kozlar, and Patrick Daley Thompson, grandson of former Mayor Richard J. Daley. On January 25 the ward will host a town hall forum where candidates will assemble for a Q& A,and perhaps duke things out among themselves. The forum will allot equal speaking timeslots for each candidate. Spanish and Chinese translations will be available. First Lutheran Church of the Trinity, 643 W. 31st St. January 25, 3pm. (Lauren Gurley)

STAGE & SCREEN PER_FORM

MLK Celebration and Public Meeting SOUL and Reclaim Chicago, two of the South Side’s most active social justice groups, are throwing their annual MLK Day celebration on January 17. Perhaps best described as a cross between a political rally, a public assembly, and a gospel concert, this event is a joyful and productive day of action. Admittance is free and attendees should expect music, speakers, an introduction to a slate of progressive Chicago City Council candidates, and an afternoon of canvassing and phone-banking. Participants should RSVP online and make their way to the Grand Ballroom (on the corner of 63rd and Cottage Grove) at 9:30am, ready to ring in a new year of action and resistance with fellow activists and community organizers from across the city. The Grand Ballroom, 6351 S. Cottage Grove Ave. January 17, 9:30am. Free. mlkchicago.com (Colette Robicheaux)

MLK 4 Mile March 4 Mile Marches, promoted by the Coalition Against Police Violence, are planned for MLK weekend in over twenty cities across the country. The march in Chicago, which is being organized by Total Blackout for Reform, will start from the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower Place and will include several four-minute die-ins to remember the four hours Ferguson teenager Mike Brown was left lying in the street after being fatally shot by a police off icer this August. 4 Mile Marches are primarily meant to achieve two goals: to call attention to police brutality and racial prof iling, and to remember the victims of police violence. The organizers ask participants to bring a pocket-sized picture of one of the 1,038 people killed since the start of last year 2014 or an index card with the victim’s name written on it. City Gallery of the Historic Water Tower Place, 806 N. Michigan Ave. January 19, noon. 4milemarch.org (Zoe Makoul)

Watching the Watchers In order to aid protests and action that address police violence and create a base of motivated citizens, the organizations We Charge Genocide and Project NIA have organized a day of workshops and discussions titled “Watching the Watchers: Strategies to End Po-

A unique mixture of performance and exhibition art, “PER_FORM,” a collection of works presented by the Chicago Art Department, focuses on the exploration of the body as both the inspiration for and the f inal product of art. The artists include renowned performance artist Tony Orrico, known for creating his own physical symmetry practice; visual artist and body enthusiast Matty Davis; Peter Reese, who explores the relationship between what he terms “the maker, the making, and the made;” and performance duo ROOMS, Todd Furgia and Marrakesh, whose piece “INSOMNIA at Our Lady of the Open Wound” contrasts Marrakesh’s recitation of Furgia’s words with projections of her image around the gallery. Visitors are free to explore and observe the art at their convenience. Chicago Art Department, 1932 S. Halsted St. Room 100. January 9, 6-10pm. Donations accepted. (312)725-4223. chicagoartdepartment.org (Itzel Blancas)

The Black West This lecture, hosted by the DuSable Museum and given by critically acclaimed author Art T. Burton, will delve into the rich and storied history of African-Americans in the Old West—a history long ignored in popular culture and academia alike. Burton has written three books on the subject, which tell the stories of great generals, scouts, soldiers, and other adventurous black men who each made his own way through the wild American West. On January 15, you can hear these stories from Burton himself as he opens up the world of African-American pioneers living, f ighting, and exploring during one of the most romanticized periods in American history. The DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Thursday, January 15. 6:30pm-8pm. Free. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Colette Robicheaux)

Waiting for Godot This season, Court Theatre will take on absurdist play Waiting for Godot, by prolif ic author Samuel Beckett, who wrote the full play in both French and English. The story follows two moody vagrant men, who are (you guessed it) waiting for a mysterious Mr. Godot. The tragicomedy has been interpreted in countless ways since its 1953 premiere, becoming one of the most well-known plays of the twentieth century. Court’s interpretation comes from accom-

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plished director Ron OJ Parson, and the cast includes regulars A.C. Smith, Allen Gilmore, and Alfred Wilson. After Parson’s work on Seven Guitars in 2013, audiences will be waiting to see his returning direction at Court, whether or not Godot shows up in the end. Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. January 15 through February 15. $35–$65. Discounts available for seniors and students. (773)753-4472. courttheatre. org (Sammie Spector)

Bad Grammar Theater Despite the drama the name may suggest, Bad Grammar Theater is an evening of various Chicagoland authors reading their work. Every third Friday of the month, both recognized and up-and-coming authors gather to read new and published pieces. With host Brendan Detzner steering the show among genres including horror, fantasy, sci-f i, pulp f iction, and simply “the unexpected,” Bad Grammar Theater uses its diverse selection to put the focus on local authors and give fresh voices a chance to be heard. With stories starting every half hour, people are free to come and go as they please. Powell ’s Bookstore University Village, 1218 S. Halsted St. Friday, January 16. 6pm-9pm. (312)243-9070. badgrammartheater.com (Akanksha Shah)

BAC Student Film Festival As a student, having your work displayed in front of a large audience can be the difference between an artistic career and a day job. Twenty-six student f ilmmakers will have this chance at the Beverly Art Center’s Student Film Festival. As a festivalgoer, you will have the chance to become a f ilm student for the weekend at the festival’s workshops and panel discussions on screenwriting, stop animation, directing, and genre f ilmmaking, as well as “other aspects of the creative process.” Spanning three days, from January 16 to January 18, the workshops and panel discussions will occupy the afternoons and the student f ilms themselves will be screened in the evenings. Audience members will also have the chance to f ill the role of f ilm critic through Audience Choice awards that will provide funding for the winners’ future f ilm endeavors. And in the true spirit of a student-centered event, students can attend the festival free of cost with ID. Beverly Art Center, 2407 W. 111th St. January 16 through 18. Friday, 7pm; Saturday and Sunday, all day. $6 daily passes, $15 weekend passes. BAC member discount and students free with ID. (773)445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org (Maha Ahmed)

The Peasant and the Priest Beyond the idealist’s vision of Tuscany—lush family-owned vineyards and olive groves, magnif icent hilltop villas—there lie unsettling and oft-overlooked manifestations of globalization and corruption. Esther Podemski, acclaimed visual artist and f ilmmaker, provides the realist’s vision in her f ilm The Peasant and the Priest. She prof iles two Tuscan men who, paths never crossing, stand f irmly with tradition in the face of changes that threaten to transform their home region and country, perhaps irreparably. The “peasant,” the last of his area’s sharecroppers, refuses to give up his practice of traditional farming in favor of the prof it and eff iciency promised by corporate agriculture; the priest is devoted to the f ight against the rampant problem of human traff icking within Tuscany. The Film Studies Center brings this insightful f ilm, its director, and UofC Professor Emerita Rebecca West together at the Logan Center for a screening with discussion to follow. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, January 17, 7pm. Free. (773)702-2787. arts. uchicago.edu (Emeline Posner)

Story Club South Side At this point in time, you may as well be living under a rock if you’ve never heard of a poetry slam. But you’re wrong if you think the emotion and enunciation found at these events is reserved just for verse. Story Club Chicago, which considers itself part of the “live lit community” and holds monthly events on the South Side, makes a show out of nonf iction

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storytelling. The nights feature paid storytelling performers as well as an open-mic component—the four featured performers for the January show are all South Siders, and there will be two open mic spots. If you’re game to spin your own yarn, head down to Co-Prosperity, where Story Club will provide you with a mic, a music stand, a stool, and a timer that will stop you after eight minutes. The rest is up to you.Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, January 20 (every third Tuesday of the month). 7:30pm doors and open mic sign up, show at 8pm. $10 suggested donation. BYOB. (773)696-9731. storyclubchicago.com (Mari Cohen)

Missing Pages Lecture Series Over the course of our lives, we have often been under the impression that we were presented with the whole story—after all, our high-school history textbooks must have covered everything we needed to know, right? The DuSable Museum doesn’t think so. Aiming to reveal the people, places, and events that haven’t gotten proper credit for shaping history, the lecture series Missing Pages, starting November 20 and running through March, is designed to address larger themes of politics, culture, race relations, and personal identity. The largely unknown f igures and topics will be presented and discussed by nationally known speakers, and while their subjects never received much recognition in common memory or the media, now they take center stage. All this series asks of its audience members is that they remain open to what they might not have known and be willing to pick up a pencil and f ill in history’s forgotten pages. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Various Thursdays, through March, 6:30pm. $5. dusablemuseum. org (Emiliano Burr di Mauro)

VISUAL ARTS Mathias Poledna The Renaissance Society is currently celebrating their hundredth anniversary. Their most recent showcase, the f inale to this f irst century, not only celebrates the past decades of audiences and artists galore, but also considers, and dismantles, the very structure of the Renaissance Society’s gallery. Literally. Los Angeles-based Viennese artist Mathias Poledna has removed the gallery’s steel truss-gridded ceiling, an emblem (and tool) of the space since 1967. He is the f irst artist to physically alter the gallery, asking viewers to consider both iconoclasm and the nature of material property. This altering of the gallery will be supported by a 35mm f ilm installation. The Renaissance Society’s invitation to Poledna to demolish the iconic grates, as well as the co-production of his f ilm, stems from their readiness to enter their second century as a leading modern art gallery. Poledna’s work—highly concentrated f ilm stills and their contextual contemplations—creates a dialogue between the historical legacy of the Renaissance Society and the avant-garde artworks within it. The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., Cobb Hall 418. Through February 8. Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, 12pm-5pm. Free. (773)702-8670. renaissancesociety.org (Sammie Spector)

Ground Floor Marking the seventy-f ifth anniversary of the Hyde Park Art Center, “Ground Floor” features artworks from prominent Chicago MFA programs, creating a biennial showcase of emerging talents so new they haven’t even begun their careers yet. The twenty artists, selected from over one hundred nominations, represent a wide range of mediums, forms, and universities: Columbia College, Northwestern, SAIC, UofC, and UIC. These artists have also had the chance to exhibit at September’s EXPO Chicago in HPAC’s booth. This unique program, showcased throughout the entirety of HPAC’s ground f loor gallery space, offers the chosen artists a helpful push toward a career in the art world; “Ground Floor” alumni include two artists who have recently displayed artwork at the Whitney Biennial.

CALENDAR Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through March 22. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm-5pm. Free. (773)3245520. hydeparkart.org (Sammie Spector)

Nuestras Historias From ancient Mesoamerican artifacts to contemporary artwork from both sides of the border, from neon pink protest art reading “Make Tacos Not War” to a sculpture about laborers made from a lawnmower, the latest exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art seeks to challenge the idea that there is a single history that def ines Mexican identity in North America. “Nuestras Historias” draws an amazing range of pieces from the NMMA’s world-class permanent collection, creating a display diverse in both medium and narrative. The exhibition also features folk art, ceramics, and items from the colonial period, as well as a section devoted to artists from Chicago dealing with themes such as immigration, gentrif ication, and incarceration. National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Through November 30. Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. (312)738-1502. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org (Akanksha Shah)

People at Work Who ever thought that everyday jobs could be interesting? Nobody, really, except Michael Gaylord James, who has captured the workday tasks of people around the world in photographs taken over the course of f ifty years. Beginning in Chicago, James carried his camera every where from Cuba to Ireland to the late USSR, snapping pictures of the glamorous and the not-so-glamorous on the daily grind. Though this might seem like a mundane topic, beware of underestimating the intrigue of this show, for these aren’t your typical nine-to-f ives. In photos selected from a larger collection, you will see President Kennedy in a motorcade, the unseen kitchen hands of Chicago, Muddy Waters and James Cotton playing music, dancers, mechanics, and many others on the job, all frozen in an almost eerie moment of monotonous movement. Take a break from your own job and visit “People at Work ” to witness f irst-hand how beautiful everyday life can be. Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. January 9 through February 6. Opening and closing receptions 6-9pm. Additional hours by appointment. (312)8527717. uri-eichen.com (Dagny Vaughn)

Lands End Walk to the Point, to the edge of the rocks, where Lake Michigan meets your toes. “Lands end. They all do,” claims a new exhibition, curated by UofC alumna Katherine Harvath and faculty member Zachary Cahill. Starting this Friday the Logan Center gallery will feature the work of thirteen sculptors, painters, and performance and installation artists from lands across the world, contemplating the role of landscape in contemporary life. Spectators will have a chance to ponder with f ive of them in person at speaker events throughout the exhibition’s run: on opening day, Canadian artist Gillian Dykeman will lead a guided tour and performance with Mountain Valley Mountain Tours. Norwegian painter Andreas Siqueland will give a talk the Monday following the opening, and on February 16, Logan will host a panel discussion with Brian Holmes, Claire Pentecost, and Dan Peterman, all featured in the exhibition. Come explore old lands through new eyes.Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. January 9 through March 15, Tuesday-Saturday, 9am-8pm; Sunday, 11am8pm. Opening reception Friday, January 9, 6pm-8pm. (773)702-3787 arts.uchicago.edu/landsend (Kristin Lin)

Exodus Exodus: the triumphant escape from slavery into... into what? Into the desert for forty years? A collaborative new show featuring the works of Alexandria Eregbu and Alfredo Salazar-Caro, “Exodus” plays with and inverts the themes of liberation and migration in vivid multimedia. Eregbu’s installations employ curious combinations of industrial materials to probe the meaning of identity, belonging,

assimilation, and alienation, drawing on her own Nigerian-American heritage. Salazar-Caro’s interactive installation, titled “Border Crossing Simulator Beta,” features a video game narrative of crossing the United States-Mexico border. His digital work complements Eregbu’s physical constructions while challenging the viewers with disorienting touches, demanding that the viewer engage with the world presented in “Exodus.” This installation was chosen as the winner for Arts + Public Life’s 2015 open call for proposals. Arts Incubator Gallery, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. January 16 through March 20. Opening reception Friday, January 16, 6pm-8pm. Tuesday-Friday, 12pm6pm; Thursday. 12pm-7pm. Free. (773)702-9724. arts. uchicago.edu/ (Lillian Selonick)

Free at First The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an experimental jazz collective founded in 1965 by Chicago musicians and composers interested in developing a radical infrastructure to support their unconventional style. Since its inception, AACM musicians have made monumental contributions to the development of free and experimental jazz. “Free at First: The Audacious Journey of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians” at the DuSable will take visitors on a journey through the early years of the AACM and the sociopolitical context of the musicians who liberated themselves through their genre-defying musical pursuits. In addition to archival photos, performance artifacts, and a musical soundscape, the interactive exhibition will feature a scavenger hunt-style game and a working recreation of AACM member Henry Threadgill’s “hubkaphone,” an instrument made of hubcaps. DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E, 56th Pl. January 19 through September 6. Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. $10 general admission; $8 Chicago residents; $7 students. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum. org (Kirsten Gindler)

MUSIC Alex Wiley and Sterling Hayes This Friday, Reggies patrons will be able to catch performances from two (2) artists featured last month in the Weekly’s year-end Music Issue. Alex Wiley, whose scattered, doped-out album Village Party was named one of our favorite albums of the year, will headline the venue’s rap-themed “Lyrical Showcase 3.0” with help from experimental band Hurt Everybody. Wiley is fresh from the success of his hit song “#MoPurp,” co-written with the legendary Chance the Rapper, and chances are that number will bring down the house. On the list of Wiley’s openers is SAVEMONEY member Sterling Hayes, one of the up-and-coming Chicago collective’s most prodigious wordsmiths. Reggies Chicago, 2105 S. State St. Friday, January 9, doors at 8pm. $10. 18+. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com ( Jake Bittle)

Maurice “Mobetta” Brown Maurice “Mobetta” Brown, trumpeter-turned-rapper, makes hip-hop that feels lighter and airier than the current trend in the genre. Mobetta’s music skitters and dances around, making use of the skills that won him the Miles Davis Jazz Competition and a jazz Grammy to push his compositions as far as they can go, and ending up with...what Flying Lotus would sound like if he cared about popcraft? There’s rapping on the album, too, but you’re not listening for lines like “Even though I got skills / you my lucky charm.” You’re listening for those trumpet samples and the subtle compositional details, like the synths on the same track (“The Connection,” if you’re wondering) that enter halfway through and wander around, eventually crescendoing into an eighties-style “solo.” These records are best played loud (gets that piano track where it needs to be), and hopefully a stage at the Promontory will let Mobetta project just f ine. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. January 9, 8pm. $20; $25 at the door. (312)8012100. promontorychicago.com (Austin Brown)

Southside Music Series ft. De La Soul It’s high time someone decided to blend tasting plates with experimental jazz, wining-and-dining with hip-hop. This month the Promontory will present the Southside [sic] Music Series, focusing on the discography of the eight-piece band of brothers (really) known as the Hypnotic Jazz Band. Over the course of eighteen releases, these brothers have traveled the world with only their horns and their drum set, playing with the likes of Prince, Mos Def, and Gorillaz, as well as living up to the name of jazz legend Phil Cohran, their father (really). The band’s show at the Promontory will feature legendary guest artists De La Soul, a renowned hip-hop trio who revolutionized the genre in 1989 with their debut album. The collaboration between the two is sure to bring a night of innovative, witty, and masterfully played music. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. January 15, 9pm, doors at 8pm. $25-$60. (312)8012100. promontorychicago.com (Sammie Spector)

KRS-One at the Shrine As the entire country once again f inds itself in turmoil over issues of race and civil rights, the city of Chicago makes ready for a visit from the rap legend known as “the Teacher,” KRS-One. One of the original hardcore rappers and the former leader of Boogie Down productions, KRS-One will be performing and empowering our great city for one night at the Shrine on January 16. Attendees should expect to hear all his classics and be ready to bounce to slamming, old-school beats and sharp, smart lyrics that have stayed bitingly relevant even as the man himself has aged. Tickets are going for $30, but early birds will get a ten-dollar discount. The Shrine, 2109 S Wabash Ave. January 16, 9pm. $30. 21+. (312)7535700. theshrinechicago.com (Colette Robicheaux)

Oi! with the Punk Boys Already “It’s time for an old-fashioned hippie ass-whomping!” proclaims the sampled voice of The Simpsons’ f ictional Police Chief Wiggum at the start of “Ain’t Gonna Win,” the best-loved track on Brass Tacks’ 1999 album Just The Facts. This week, the Madison, WI, natives will bring their hardcore sound to headline the Oi! punk show of your guitar-slamming nightmares, whomping some serious hippie ass alongside seasoned acts with such intense names as Assault and Battery, Degeneration, and Brick Assassin. Rooted deep in the working-class struggle, the Oi! punk scene eschews commercialization and extols a kinship born of the hard-knock life. So, if your New Year’s resolution is to embrace your inner rage and assert a sense of tough-scrapes brotherhood, this Reggies lineup is your f irst (and likely your best) opportunity to make good. Reggies Chicago, 2105. S State St. January 16, doors at 7:30pm. $10-$12. 18+. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Olivia Myszkowski)

Gregory Alan Isakov Thalia Hall, Pilsen’s freshest renovated venue, will play host to singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov on January 17. Raised in Philadelphia, but with strong artistic roots in the American West, Isakov’s music is lyrically driven, often ref lective, and could easily be compared to the softly sung storytelling of Leonard Cohen or Josh Ritter. Parallels aside, Isakov is a talented artist all his own, dishing out acoustic ballads lush with skilled instrumentation and his unique lilting voice. Although Isakov’s music lends itself best to solitary listening, Thalia Hall offers you the chance to listen to his melancholic, emotional compositions in the company of others who may be equally moved. Pass the tissues. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. January 17, doors 6:30pm. $21. (312)5263851. thaliahallchicago.com (Elizabeth Bynum)

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