January 7,2021

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

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor

Volume 8, Issue 3 Jacqueline Serrato Martha Bayne

Senior Editors Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editors Ashvini Kartik-Narayan Michelle Anderson Literature Editor Davon Clark Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan Joshua Falk Lucia Geng Matt Moore Robin Vaughan Jocelyn Vega Tammy Xu Jade Yan Staff Writers AV Benford Kiran Misra Jade Yan Data Editor

Jasmine Mithani

Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Elizabeth Winkler, Lucy Ritzmann, Kate Gallagher, Matt Moore, Malvika Jolly, Charmaine Runes, Ebony Ellis, Katie Bart Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino HaleyTweedell Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Mell Montezuma, Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

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

IN CHICAGO Vaccination As we were putting out our last issue before the holiday break, the first COVID-19 vaccine was still awaiting approval by the FDA. Now, in the first week of January, two vaccines named Pfizer and Moderna (for the labs where they were created) are undergoing distribution by the Illinois Department of Public Health—but the how and when remains in question. We have an idea of who's getting them: doctors and healthcare workers, caregivers, elected officials, and clergy. But not teachers, not grocery store workers, not custodial staff, not postal workers, practically no other essential workers. Officials say more than 35,000 shots have been administered and they’re expecting another 33,000 doses to arrive any day. Mayor Lightfoot, who has criticized Trump’s administration for not delivering the amount promised, said at this rate it will take well over a year to vaccinate all Chicagoans. The shot, however, is not mandated.

CPD’s abuse of Black women caught on camera In her latest attempt at damage control over her administration’s handling of a February 2019 raid in which CPD officers burst into the wrong home and handcuffed Anjanette Young unclothed, Mayor Lightfoot released 153 emails related to the raid that revealed she was aware of the incident at least as early as November of that year—despite claiming she had only heard of it after CBS-2 aired body-cam footage this past December. After meeting privately, Lightfoot and Young issued a joint statement saying they are “committed to continuing to identify areas of common ground” and “to working towards necessary policy changes together.” Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson announced an investigation into the raid and retired federal judge Ann Claire Williams is leading a separate inquiry. Most recently, body-cam videos obtained by activist William Calloway of a separate incident shows CPD in November 2019 running over a woman in South Shore for no apparent reason; Martina Standley is still recovering from her head and leg injuries a year later while a lawsuit is pending. Mayor Lightfoot said she will look into it.

Where’s my money?

If your $600 haven’t dropped, you can check the status of the second stimulus check at irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment. As long as the IRS has your information on file, you should be automatically eligible for the stimulus payment, including mixed-status immigrant families who didn’t receive it the first time.

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Cover Illustration by Mell Montezuma

IN THIS ISSUE as remote learning continues, reopening plans remain a concern

Checking in with CPS students, parents, and teachers ten months into the pandemic elora apantaku, charmaine runes.....3 physician’s privilege

A new memoir about the AIDS crisis reveals the flaws and benefits of a clinician’s detachment jessica eanes...........................................7 downgrades to er services and closure of south side clinics

Clinics in Woodlawn and Bronzeville will be absorbed into Provident Hospital yiwen lu..................................................9 on a gradual path to a

$15

minimum wage

Many low-wage workers who commute may live in Chicago, but make a smaller minimum wage in surrounding suburbs jacqueline serrato..............................11 the people rose up

A Black Summer 2020 Timeline The TRiiBE & South Side Weekly....12 the neighborhood as image of the city

Hardscrabbler, Part One kristin ostberg....................................16 challenging democracy at the local school council level

Close to 500 LSCs in CPS held their elections this past November, but they were faced with unique challenges that undermined the legitimacy of the process kelly garcia..........................................17 the unsolved cases of missing and murdered women

A proposed bill would look into fifty strangulation cases in the South and West Sides kira leadholm......................................20

EDUCATION

As Remote Learning Continues, Reopening Plans Remain a Concern

Checking in with CPS students, parents, and teachers ten months into the pandemic

BY ELORA APANTAKU AND CHARMAINE RUNES

A

t around 7:30am each weekday morning, John Siangho helps his son—a second-grade CPS student at the Regional Gifted Center through Carnegie Elementary in Woodlawn—get ready for another day of remote learning. The two of them wash up, chat during breakfast, and at 8:30am, fifteen minutes before class officially begins, Siangho’s son goes to his desk, turns on his school-issued device, and waits for his teacher to let him into the virtual classroom. He spends most of the day watching live instruction, with a few breaks to snack, read, or move around.

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA

By 3:20pm, his digital class has wrapped up and Siangho’s son spends another thirty minutes filling out worksheets or submitting homework.

“I'm making it sound, with all the time hacks, like it's super regimented and routine,” Siangho said. “The morning is a little bit more like that, but the afternoon, not as much.” This is what school has become for Siangho and his son during the COVID-19 pandemic: several hours in front of a screen, learning from teachers and peers from afar.

In August,after months of deliberation on whether and how children should reenter schools in the midst of a pandemic that had already killed thousands within the city, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) decided to have students continue with all-remote learning rather than moving to a proposed hybrid model—which would see students at school two days a week for in-person instruction.

There was strong opposition to the hybrid plan, both from parents, the majority of which did not intend to send their children to physical classrooms, and from the Chicago Teacher Union (CTU), which organized protests, but this left a herculean task for the district—and for hundreds of thousands of children, parents, and teachers who have been working against years of inadequate funding allocation—to meet the needs of young Chicagoans who rely on the schools for more than just education. CPS had to address multiple issues, including device shortages, internet inequities, and teacher support, to ensure that the 355,000 students enrolled in public schools throughout the city received equitable education services.

Now, with COVID-19 cases on the rise again and CPS announcing that teachers and some students will return to school next week, and the rest in February, worries abound that reopening schools will not improve the educational experience of children in communities where COVID-19 positivity rates are the highest—and may put them at risk.

W

hen classes began last September 8, the first two weeks of school saw an additional 3,821 cases of COVID-19 and thirty-five deaths in Chicago, with a positivity rate around 5.2 percent, close to the city’s goal. However, many neighborhoods on the South and West sides had positivity above ten percent.

The need to keep students from catching and spreading COVID-19 in school buildings seemed clear. However, educators and parents continue to fear that remote learning structures are less than optimal for many students and will further penalize children from poorer neighborhoods. And while CPS has implemented policies and processes to try and meet their students’ needs, their opacity has made it difficult for anyone outside the district to assess their impact during this unique public health crisis.

Different stakeholders have made convincing arguments for sending children back to school as well as for keeping them at home. While COVID-19 has only killed four children or adolescents aged eighteen and under in Cook County, representing about 0.1 percent of total deaths, children can still suffer from COVID-19 and spread the infection to others in their communities (although it is still unclear how infectious children are in comparison to adults).

On July 23, 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released suggestions called the “Importance of Reopening Schools,”

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

EDUCATION

which cited the relatively few child cases and deaths from COVID-19, the value of developing social and emotional skills, the creation of safe environments from schools, and the facilitation of physical activity as reasons to “[reopen] schools as safely and as quickly as possible given the many known and established benefits of in-person learning.” However, in a statement, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Jesse Sharkey voiced his uneasiness that this call for inperson learning may have resulted from “Trump successfully bullying the CDC to revise its ‘guidelines’ and risk the lives of students, their families and their educators by forcing in-person learning.”

Dr. David Zhang, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago, also mentioned the importance of in-person learning, but told the Weekly that safety shouldn’t be overlooked. “We know that for younger

children, school doesn’t just provide educational instruction. It’s extremely important for their social and emotional skill development, things that are just unable to be replicated in an in-home environment,” Zhang said. “Young kids need to be in groups, learn how to interact with those outside their family, and develop and maintain friendships.”

However, he also explained that while most children will have less severe COVID-19 infections compared to adults, he has seen children with pre-existing conditions requiring hospitalization. Additionally, some children can develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a condition thought to be spurred by COVID-19 infection that causes organ systems to inflame and can affect the function of the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain. And while rare, there have been a few cases of MIS-C in Chicago, with

$44 million in equity grants distributed to schools largely on the South and West Sides

Most equity grants went to schools on the South and West sides. On average, schools received $174,000. The largest grant, at $679,600, went to Bronzeville Scholastic Academy High School, and the smallest grant, at $4,800, went to Leif Ericson Elementary Scholastic Academy in East Garfield Park. Schools in North Lawndale, New City, La Villita, East Garfield Park, and Englewood received the most in equity grants.

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

patients requiring hospitalization and monitoring in intensive care units.

Every teacher that the Weekly reached out to also had concerns about returning to in-person learning before school staff received the personal protective equipment (PPE) and sanitation supplies necessary to function safely prior to a vaccine being deployed.

“Ideally, there would be an effective treatment and a vaccine for school reopening,” said Rachael Nicholas, a ninth-grade world studies teacher at Taft High School in Norwood Park. Bethanie Smith, a preschool teacher at William H. Ray Elementary in Hyde Park agreed. “I am worried about some children falling behind, but the need for a safe and healthy learning environment outweighs that concern,” she said. “The emotional trauma that all stakeholders would suffer if young students and their families became ill or worse is an insurmountable

issue that I can’t even imagine.”

Mary Winfield, a teacher at Pilsen’s Benito Juarez Community Academy, expanded on the idea that the role of school in some communities goes beyond just teaching and supporting students.

“My ideal reopening plan would be to remain remote until there is a vaccine and to treat the students and their families with care,” she said. “We can take this time to help families connect in ways that support the school communities. We can focus on systems of support and let go of systems that aren’t useful or are harmful.”

Winfield added that schools are often in a unique position within communities to be able to provide direct services to a large number of families. “My school— as have many others—functioned as a food and diaper distribution hub. We also established a fund for families in need.

This is the real work of schools rights now.”

EDUCATION

Adapting an entire learning system to at-home learning introduces new variables for students and schools, and many fear that the shift would be detrimental to areas that have already been affected by decades of inequity in funding, staffing, and district support— mostly schools on the South and West sides. “The biggest pitfall last spring was the gross inequity that we’ve been fighting against for years,” said Michael Shea, a twelfth-grade civics teacher at Kenwood Academy in the Hyde ParkKenwood neighborhood. “We all know those inequities affect grades, attendance and the material support that kids need to learn and grow. Some of the same challenges are still present this fall— access to devices, access to reliable connectivity, access to health and wellness coverage and support.”

I

n March, just weeks after in-person schooling was cancelled for all students, Dr. Janice K. Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of CPS and LaTanya McDade, Chief Education Officer, released a Five-Year Vision for Chicago Public Schools. Interspersed with planning and goals to the three main commitments of academic progress, financial stability, and integrity, were additional plans to address the district’s ability to increase equity with an emphasis on supporting underserved populations. On August 20, the CPS Equity Framework was released and CPS CEO Jackson said, “I continue to believe that CPS is a district on the rise and our remarkable academic progress is stronger than a pandemic…With equity at the heart of our district’s vision for the future, we will press on toward our mission of providing our future leaders with the world-class education that they deserve.”

To that end, CPS reports having spent $119 million in resources to directly support schools during the pandemic.

This has included funding for computing devices, cleaning supplies, masks, and additional services.

However, budgeting has long been an issue for CPS. The CPS district, which oversees 642 schools and employs 21,000 teachers and 16,000 other staff, had an

operating budget of $6.32 billion in fiscal year 2020. Funding to individual schools is parsed out using a method that many say perpetuates the divestment from neighborhoods most affected by population flight (predominantly Black and brown communities), and deepens inequity: student-based budgeting.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned on finding a better way to fund schools, and CTU has long been opposed to this method of allocating resources, referring to it as a perpetuation of racism. But during the announcement of the 2020-2021 school year budget in April, CEO Jackson said that “studentbased budgeting” is the most equitable method available” and argued that the real problem is insufficient funding from the state and federal level.

Illinois estimates that CPS is only receiving sixty-four percent of the funding it needs to run effectively in the 2020-2021 school year, even as funding increased from the prior year by $191.3 million, with $125 million geared towards special education, college and career readiness, and supports for district’s schools in highest need areas.

Jackson said that schools only receive about fifty percent of their funding from student-based budgeting, and alluded to using “equity grants” to ensure schools that need the most will get more funding.

The 2020-2021 budget incorporated $44 million of equity grants given to 255 schools, using UIC’s Economic Hardship Index which looks at multiple factors including poverty, unemployment, housing, and income of students, to determine which schools would receive additional grant funding. Because student-based budgeting distributes dollars depending on enrollment, equity grants often go to schools with low or declining enrollment so that students who attend those schools can continue to receive the same quality of services, even as student-based funding declines.

Per CPS, “Schools have the autonomy to spend equity grant funds based on their individual needs, whether that’s an additional support position, after-school programming or academic supports.”

But the challenges of remote

learning cannot be addressed by increased funding alone. Prolonged disinvestment from communities means that even with increased funds, the infrastructure required for learning from home simply doesn’t exist. Last spring, Kids First Chicago estimated that 110,000 CPS students lacked access to broadband internet, and similar numbers of children lacked access to personal computing devices. Chicago Connected, an initiative spearheaded by local hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin, seeks to bring together the city and other philanthropists to deliver broadband to households in need by way of internet service providers (ISPs) in Chicago. The plan was to get every child the resources they needed to succeed in remote classrooms this fall.

Many believe that Chicago Connected is a step in the right direction for CPS, which plans on continuing the initiative for four years without cost to certain eligible families. Eligibility was decided based on free or reduced lunches, Medicaid qualifications, the UIC Economic Hardship Index, and other factors that can make it more difficult to learn, such as English not being a first language or an unstable living situation.

Karinna Astorga and Joel Rodriguez are both community organizers from the Southwest Organizing Project, one of the community-based organizations (CBOs) that was tapped to help connect families with internet services in Gage Park and West Eldon. Astorga works specifically with supervising SWOP’s Chicago Connected Initiative. They both say that Chicago Connected is a unique initiative that is going as well as could be expected, although there have been some difficulties. “I think an apprehension is undocumented families giving out information and I think that that is always a concern,” Rodriguez said.

Another concern parents had was that the service would actually end up costing them money. Still, they noted that Chicago Connected’s move to team up with CBOs was incredibly beneficial.

“A lot of families have been used to hearing one thing which turns out to be something else. I think the best move was to put it in some of the CBOs that have

established rapport with communities,” Rodriguez said. “That helps apprehension go down considerably.”

The transient nature of renting has caused some issues for families seeking out service, as internet service providers can only set up one unit per address.

“We’ve got families that rent out the basement or the attic. If there’s already existing Comcast or any internet, that’s a challenge that they’ve been trying to figure out with hotspots,” Rodriguez said. “That’s just the nature of our communities and dynamics we have to confront. There’s very little a company can do if there’s already an existing line.

They can’t add another to an apartment that truly doesn’t exist.”

Astorga said that most people have been appreciative of Chicago Connected’s services, and that they are looking forward to hosting digital literacy events to help parents and students learn how to use Google Classroom. However, a month into the 2020-2021 school year, many families still did not have access to the tools that make meaningful virtual learning possible. Only 29,000 families had been signed up as of October 8, despite dozens of CBOs helping connect families with internet service providers. As Winfield said, “CPS has been underfunded for so many years that schools had no way of providing a device for each student in a short amount of time. Next came the hurdle of reliable internet. Many didn’t—and still don’t have it.”

Even if reliable broadband was provided to everyone, CPS families have faced complications adjusting to remote learning. In the spring, parents and students alike struggled to keep up with multiple platforms to access and submit classwork and assignments. Siangho said: “I think there were nine or ten different apps that I had to learn. It was really difficult, with different submission policies for each of these apps: do you need to print it out? Scan it and send it? Is the homework submitted on the app? Do you need to use your Gmail email? Dropbox?”

Shea, a teacher who has kids of his own, noted that CPS teachers who are also parents often face the same

DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

EDUCATION

difficulties as students and their families.

“If I'm not receiving support from the district as a CPS teacher or as a parent, then I know my students and their families will struggle as well,” he said. “It doesn't matter if someone is working or not, parents and caregivers can help kids when they know how and when they have the time and resources to do so, and they struggle when they don't.”

This fall, CPS centralized their tools using the Google Education Suite.

Siangho said that the platform experience is now more streamlined but “the frustration of technology” continues. “It’s less about experiencing a technological glitch,” Siangho added, “and more that a significant amount of your mental capacity is devoted to worrying about it and knowing that somehow you're gonna have to deal with it.”

Moreover, CPS continues to struggle with the fact that remote learning remains inaccessible to the thousands of students who do not have dedicated personal computing devices at home. This fall, Siangho’s son received a school-issued Chromebook, but last year, technology distribution was more limited. “CPS asked those who had devices to leave resources for others,” Siangho explained.

CPS was already gearing up to buy more computing devices to provide every child in every school in the district with a computing device as part of their fiveyear plan to close the digital divide, which remote learning has intensified.

According to the district’s CFO emergency spending report details, as of August 31, CPS had purchased an additional 90,000 personal computing devices, including Chromebooks, iPads, and Dell laptops; 12,000 hotspot units; and 100,000 pairs of headphones beyond what they had planned. In mid-August, CPS announced that they had distributed 128,000 computing devices and that they intended to distribute another 36,000 this school year.

No matter how CPS progresses with increasing the equitable funding within its schools, the lack of publicly accessible data on its initiatives is concerning, especially given their commitment during budget meetings in August for resource 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

equity and fair policies. In September, the Weekly submitted public records requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the CPS FOIA Center, asking for all records with aggregate data on the number of families or students enrolled in the Chicago Connected Initiative.

But this FOIA request was denied by CPS, stating that it would “require CPS to create a record it does not normally maintain within the course of business”.

In May, when the initiative was initially discussed and a presentation was released to the city, a database to collect this data was listed as a goal to measure project performance. But the data has yet to be made available. In order to make good on the promise of equity, it will be important to release data about the district’s progress.

The Chicago Connected Initiative’s rollout paves the way for a similar idea promoted on the citywide ballot as a non-binding referendum, “Should the City of Chicago act to ensure that all the City’s community areas have access to broadband internet?” 90 percent of voters said yes. However, by not knowing which children still struggle with access to remote schoolwork, other support systems are left to figure out how they may be most beneficial. And there are a myriad of issues that make remote learning a struggle.

O

n January 3, a group of 32 aldermen sent a letter to both Mayor Lightfoot and CEO Dr. Jackson, voicing concerns about CPS schools reopening this month.

They offered nine steps to improve trust between families, educators, and the school system. Some of these steps include matters CPS has repeatedly failed to address, such as "reducing screen time, especially for students in early grades'' and "promoting clear public health criteria for reopening", calling attention to CPS stepping away from using a case positivity benchmark of 5 percent to an "infection doubling in fewer than 18 days" as positivity rates have ranged between 8.3 and 13.1 percent over the last month.

In addition to calling for increased

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

transparency from CPS about the decisions they make, the aldermanic letter also called for increased collaboration with CPS, teachers, and the CTU. "We have been alarmed to see, read, and hear consistent testimony from educators expressing their profound frustration with the status quo and how it hinders their ability to do their job." In its final sentences, the letter’s signatories commit to assisting CPS achieve “true buy-in from and collaboration with parents, communities, and organized labor… A successful reopening plan must inspire public trust through transparency, communication and collaboration.”

Late that evening, Jackson released a nine page rebuttal, declaring that opening up schools can be done safely, and that schools have not been shown to be a large contributor of COVID-19 transmission.

This builds on what Dr Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, discussed during the announcement to bring children back into schools on October 16.

At that time, Arwady pointed out that COVID-19 spread in schools was lower than initially feared and that students suffer from remote-only learning. “The unfortunate fact is that despite our best efforts and the heroic work of teachers to make remote instruction effective for CPS students, it is a poor substitute for in-person learning for many of our most vulnerable students,” Jackson said.

The current plan will see certain groups, including pre-kindergarten and cluster students, who require moderate to intensive supports, returning to school on January 11; K-8 students are scheduled to return to schools February 1. Although CPS claims to have established several of COVID-19 mitigation strategies for in-person learning, on Monday multiple teachers across the city reported insufficient PPE, inability to distance, and inadequate ventilation improvements.

On Tuesday, January 5, thousands of teachers and support staff did not show up for their first day of work ahead of the spring semester.

Rachael Nicholas spoke to the state of reopening and how it would affect Taft High School, where she teaches. “We

have a cluster special education program at our school and I believe they will be returning. I do not know the number of students but it is pretty small,” she said.

“I still don't think it is safe because the community spread is too high. In addition, the students in the cluster programs often need help eating and using the bathroom, so the teachers will be in close contact with the students.”

Even in December, the percent positivity for those under the age of eighteen was an alarming 16.5, an increase from the first weeks of remote learning in September when positivity for the same group was just 7.4 percent. CPS has said that it will try to make sure that COVID-19 mitigation strategies will be provided for incoming students, including contact tracers to work specifically with schools, mandating face coverings and daily screenings, providing COVID-19 testing, and onboarding additional custodians to ensure every classroom is clean and has proper ventilation.

However, it is still unclear when these strategies will be fully implemented at all schools.

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA

LIT

CTU officials maintain that CPS should keep students and staff out of schools, saying that clerks—who were told to return to school buildings despite an arbitration ruling for clerks to work from home—should not have to choose between doing their job and protecting their health. “School workers are becoming infected with COVID-19.

Some are dying, and CPS has taken no new steps to ensure this won’t continue to be the case,” CTU officials said in a statement.

Zhang noted that many CPS families are facing a double-edged sword where the safety of in-person learning is deeply concerning, and the logistics of remote learning are largely unsustainable. “For some households in difficult situations, the question isn’t: should I send my kid to school? The question is: I don’t have a choice, how do I send my kid to school safely?” Zhang said. “I would urge parents to evaluate their family situations and determine what’s best for their families.”

During the Chicago Board of Education meeting on November 18, LaTanya McDade reported that plans to reopen were being made to reduce the racial inequities in grades and attendance that have worsened during remote learning. The divide is greatest for students with insecure or no housing.

And while there are plans to increase child learning hubs—places around the city where students can access the internet and be supervised by an adult—there are currently only fifteen hubs with limited enrollment, meaning many children who may benefit from this are being excluded simply because of space.

For their part, CTU’s position is to improve remote learning instead of trying to force school reopenings. They have stated a desire to increase remote learning’s effectiveness by ensuring that internet and laptop access is available to all students, increasing the number of teaching assistants available during remote learning, and providing learning opportunities to caregivers on how to assist their students. In October, CTU conducted a survey with Lake Research Partners (LRP) of 600 Chicagoans— seventy-two percent felt that “Chicago

schools should not be re-opened until the spread of the virus is controlled.”

Rodriguez emphasized that no matter what CPS’s decision is on school reopenings, SWOP and organizations like theirs are committed to serving the students and families who have been hardest hit by the pandemic: “These are really extraordinary times, and extraordinary times require folks to use imagination and use all the resources they have at their disposal to try and tackle this monster,” he said. “So that’s what we’re doing.”

Despite the struggle of adapting to remote learning, there have been some positive additions. Brittannee Rolle, a twelfth-grade AP English teacher at Butler College Prep in Pullman (and a contributor to the Weekly’s Best of the South Side issue), mentioned some new programs at her school that have emerged during remote learning. “We were able to start a club that had guest speakers on topics of interest to young Black girls in my school. Students loved talking about topics they were interested in and engaging with women from different fields,” she said. “I think it taught me to utilize virtual features more often even when we go back to meeting in person at school.”

When asked what his hopes were for the rest of his son’s academic year, Siangho responded, “Survival.“ He laughed and explained, “This is not a banner year for education anywhere, right? But as long as he is kept engaged, that's my thing—I want him to continue to be engaged so that the love of learning does not stop.” This story was supported by a National Association for Science Writers (NASW) Diversity Reporting Grant.

Elora Apantaku is a medical doctor and writer. She last wrote about a study linking neighborhood characteristics and resources to COVID-19 mortality rates.

Charmaine Runes is a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Computational Analysis and Public Policy program. She last wrote about biking for environmental justice on Chicago’s West Side.

Physician’s Privilege

A new memoir about the AIDS crisis reveals the flaws and benefits of a clinician’s detachment

BY JESSICA EANES

I

n a kinder world or a gentler time, Dr. Ross A. Slotten’s memoir Plague Years about his experience as a primary care physician during the AIDS crisis in Chicago might feel niche and, at times, endearingly awkward. Interesting more for the position he held during an important and chronically overlooked catastrophe than for Slotten’s skills as a memoirist, the story nevertheless contains enough charm to stand on its own. The second chapter opens with Slotten’s background as a writer— scant—and his early interest in literature.

“In those days I was such a fucking snob!

Perhaps I still am,” he confesses. The answer, unquestionably, is that yes, yes he is. This snobbery, combined with the clinical detachment characterizing much of the prose, infuses the account with a precision and clarity that cuts through the potential for melodrama or packaged and processed grief. They lay bare both the toll wrought by the unchecked spread of HIV and the failures of government to address a killer that disproportionately affected people mainstream society considered undesirable. Read in the COVID-times, that clarity becomes a devastating indictment.

Gay, closeted, and longing for California, Slotten began his career as a primary care physician by setting up practice with a colleague who remained at his side through the duration of the crisis. Despite owing the National Health

Service Corps service in underserved, poverty-stricken areas, he explains that he set up practice at Seton Medical Center on the North Side because “Ronald Reagan, whom we otherwise despised for his public homophobia and failure to address the AIDS crisis before it spiraled out of control, created the so-­ called private practice option that allowed young doctors like us more freedom of choice.” While Slotten frankly explains that this program had been intended to help rural areas that had difficulty recruiting doctors, in the next breath he spends just as much time explaining how this arrangement allowed him to remain in Chicago and indulge in international travel.

This acknowledgment of privilege without lingering or reflection fits with Slotten’s self-accusation of snobbery, and sets the reader up to receive a later observation: “Sometimes I wondered what kept me from throwing myself off the precipice, either literally or figuratively … Questioning motives sows doubt; doubt leads to indecision; and indecision to inaction, the worst possible response to a crisis, especially for a doctor.

So I simply did not question my motives.”

This tidy summation, meant to explain how he endured the crushing strain of the work, both explains so many of the character faults unreflectively displayed, and much of the behavior we can observe going on now, in the current pandemic.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

LIT Anyone familiar with the progress and circumstances of the AIDS crisis will find little new information in this memoir, but the history and informational elements of the narrative aren’t where it shines. Instead, Slotten’s narrative voice breaks free of his tendency for clinical distance in the brief anecdotes about relationships and patients. “Despite her age, she was still a sexual being and would make remarks that startled me,” he writes. “When an octogenarian broached the topic, somehow I thought he or she was being ‘cute’ and I laughed...having never considered that the desire for sex, like the lust for life, doesn’t end until your final breath.” These anecdotes are cannily spread throughout the memoir, in conversation with each other across the years even when the narrative doesn’t explicitly connect them. The humorous story of the sexually frank older woman has echoes in a later, far more serious story: “In the late 1980s one of my patients, a chronically depressed man in his mid-­ fifties, convinced his reluctant HIV-­ positive boyfriend to fuck him without a condom. Like a wife who chooses to die on the funeral pyre of her dead husband, he expressed a wish to go down in flames with his lover.” Superficially unrelated, both stories at their core feature a patient with a new-to-Slotten perspective on the relationship between sex and mortality, while planting a flag for quality of life.

These subtle thematic underpinnings are the source of most of the book’s satisfying nuance.

Tempting as it is to read the memoir entirely as a once-removed commentary on the current pandemic, the text resists that and, presciently, argues against the urge to turn the AIDS pandemic into a prologue for COVID-19. In discussing Rock Hudson’s 1985 revelation that he had AIDS, Slotten comments, “His death in early October raised awareness of the disease and doubled federal funding, though it was still far below what was needed to combat an epidemic.” While this might feel like a similarity to the federal failures in handling the current pandemic, the next sentence immediately makes such superficial mapping impossible: “But the stigma of AIDS persisted, and AIDS forced many gay 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

men out of the closet.” This dimension of the disease, where victims carried the additional weight of a society that would shun them not just for being ill, but for the actions of a full and fulfilling life that put them at risk of the illness, was a unique and defining factor in the AIDS pandemic and one that simply does not map onto our current circumstances.

Slotten tries to end on an upbeat note, sharing the story of a recent patient freshly positive for HIV. That patient, Slotten relates, is unlikely to ever develop AIDS and, as long as he maintains access to treatment, is likely to live a fairly normal life. He can’t make it through the anecdote, though, without sharing, “For those with access to care and who are compliant with their medications, death from HIV is no longer inevitable or even likely.” Sitting right there, as unexamined as so many other casual quips of privilege throughout the memoir, is the truth that makes the AIDS pandemic a relevant, active force today, as well as a warning for any potential “solution” to the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to care is vital to the outcomes and the upbeat, hopeful image capping off this physician’s reflections—and because he’s a physician, it’s taken for granted that his patients have that. Yet there was a need to specify this requirement, because for the gay men contracting AIDS now, that access isn’t guaranteed. That same vulnerability lies in wait on an even larger scale with this new pandemic. Ross Slotten, M.D., Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey Through the AIDS Crisis, $20, University of Chicago Press, 224 pages.

Jessica Eanes is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. She last wrote for the Weekly about how South Side theater companies are coping with COVID-19.

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

“Tempting as it is to read the memoir entirely as a onceremoved commentary on the current pandemic, the text resists that and, presciently, argues against the urge to turn the AIDS pandemic into a prologue for COVID-19.”

HEALTH

Downgrades to ER Services and Closure of South Side Clinics Clinics in Woodlawn and Bronzeville will be absorbed into Provident Hospital

BY YIWEN LU

T

he 2021 Cook County budget closed a shortfall of more than $400 million with funds from the county’s general reserve, eliminations of vacant jobs, more than a hundred layoffs in the Cook County Health (CCH) system, clinic closures, and restructuring of county-run hospitals. The budget will close two South Side clinics—the Near South Clinic and the Woodlawn Clinic— eliminate twenty-six full-time positions at Provident Hospital in Washington Park, and downgrade that hospital’s emergency department to a twenty-fourseven standby ED. Unlike comprehensive hospital emergency services—which require the presence of a licensed physician, physician specialists, and fully staffed laboratory, X-ray and pharmacy services—standby EDs are only mandated by the state to have one registered nurse on duty in the hospital and one licensed physician on call. The clinics, at 35th and Michigan Ave and at 63rd and Woodlawn, will be closed and consolidated into the Sengstacke Health Center at Provident Hospital.

Nurses and activists have expressed concerns over the plan, with National Nurses United calling health care service cuts during a global pandemic “a death sentence for Black and Brown communities” in a statement.

The changes are expected to reduce the cost of ambulatory health services, for which community health centers like the clinics provide primary care and outpatient services, by $3.3 million compared to 2020. The county cited decreases in primary care visits in 2020 as a result of COVID-19 as one

reason for the clinic closures. “With the consolidation of the clinics, CCH will be able to offer the patient better access to specialty care and other improved services at the Sengstacke Health Center, which is within a ten-minute drive from both locations and has better access to transportation,” according to the budget recommendation from the office of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. “[The county is] shutting down the Near South and Woodlawn Clinics and condensing them into Provident, and we are being told that this is an expansion,” said Dennis Kosuth, a part-time nurse at Provident Hospital, in an interview. “On what planet are you cutting services and say you are providing more? That makes no sense to me.”

The budget proposal also cited lower patient volume as the reason to downgrade Provident’s ED to a standby ED, replacing its comprehensive emergency treatment services. According to the preliminary budget, Provident has not accepted ambulances since 2011, and most cases seen at the ED in the past few years could be treated in a primary care setting at the walk-in clinics on the Provident Hospital campus. In addition, Provident’s ED sees few patients after 7pm, and high-acuity emergency room cases, including life-threatening medical conditions that require significant care, are usually transferred to Stroger Hospital in West Loop. As a result, Stroger Hospital becomes busy with emergency and trauma surgeries, leaving few spaces for non-emergent, outpatient services.

“These circumstances provide an opportunity to reallocate and save

additional resources as emergency rooms are one of the most expensive places to care for patients,” the CCH Preliminary Budget reads. The budget envisions turning Provident Hospital into a primary location for elective surgeries, which could be scheduled in advance, designating non-emergency and emergency services to different hospitals.

“It is true that fewer people come in [Provident], but it was their decision to stop having ambulance runs bring people to the ED,” explained Kosuth, who worked at Stroger Hospital for eight years before starting his current position at Provident. He said ambulances have “always been bringing patients” to Stroger,

instead of other hospitals.

With the clinic consolidation, more high-acuity cases might be directed to Stroger Hospital. And as two clinics are consolidated into the health center at Provident Hospital, patients who use the clinics for primary care services such as getting prescriptions filled could turn to EDs. “It’s double-edged, because on the one hand they’re going to be closing clinics, and that’s going to limit people’s ability to access their doctor and get their prescriptions filled,” Kosuth said. “On the other hand, there’s not even going to be a doctor in the ER. And that doesn’t even speak to all the other reasons people come to the ER.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL NURSES UNITED

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

HEALTH

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“We can argue over semantics if they want to and say that it’s not a closure.”

In his three years at Provident’s ED, Kosuth has also seen patients with gunshot wounds, heroin overdoses, heart attacks, and severe asthma attacks. “These are the things that need emergency care. They are not things where you can [solve] having a nurse with no doctor and no equipment.”

In the statement, National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the nation, pointed out that the patients who seek services at Provident Hospital, Near South Clinic, and Woodlawn Clinic are primarily Black and Latinx. Moreover, the proposed changes will lead to the layoff of more than 130 workers, including Kosuth.

“With the Covid-19 pandemic, it is not the time to remove these crucial jobs and critical health care resources from the people who are most vulnerable and most at risk. We need to save these jobs and save health care!", Debra SimmonsPeterson, the president of Teamsters Local 743, said in the statement.

On July 29, Mercy Hospital in Bronzeville announced its plan for closure during Spring 2021 after a failed attempt to merge with the four other South Side hospitals. However, an Illinois state board unanimously rejected Mercy’s proposal for closure on December 15, citing community pleas and concerns about serving the surrounding community amid the pandemic. Trinity Health system, the owner of Mercy, said that it would again propose their plan to discontinue inpatient services, including ED operations, in early 2021, due to profit losses.

If both Mercy and Provident’s ED close, the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) will become the only hospital with a comprehensive emergency services capacity in the South Side, according to NNU. In a memo submitted to the Cook County Board of Commissions, NNU executive director Marti Smith noted that UCMC’s ED was already investigated last year for overuse of ambulance diversion, where

hospitals send incoming ambulances to other EDs instead of taking the patients themselves. In 2019 the Tribune reported that UCMC was one of three hospitals investigated by the state Department of Public Health because it “turned to the tactic so often.” Smith wrote that if all of Provident’s and Mercy’s patients went to UCMC instead, that hospital’s ED would see a “massive increase” in patient volumes that would make it “far more likely” to rely on ambulance diversion.

“The University of Chicago is not far away, but it’s already incredibly busy,” an NNU spokesperson told the Weekly. “So the question is, where do all these folks go then? Where did the poor folks who usually go to the two county hospitals go?”

In a public hearing on October 29 about the county’s 2021 budget, Kosuth raised concerns over the disproportionate effect of the pandemic on the healthcare of the Black community. To his comment, Cook County Board Commissioner Bridget Degnen responded, “The service [at Provident] is gonna continue, I just want to make that clear.”

“We can argue over semantics if they want to and say that it’s not a closure,” Kosuth told the Weekly, but the hospital won’t be the same anymore, he said. “It’s just lying to yourself about what you are doing.” An earlier version of this story was published online on November 27, 2020.

This story is a part of the Solving for Chicago collaborative effort by newsrooms to cover the workers deemed “essential” during COVID-19. It is a project of the Local Media Foundation with support from the Google News Initiative and the Solutions Journalism Network.

Yiwen Lu is a reporter for the Weekly who primarily covers politics. She last wrote about how lessons from previous pandemics informed local responses to COVID-19.

HEALTH

On a Gradual Path to a $15 Minimum Wage Check your pay stubs to ensure that time worked in January is paid right

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

ILLUSTRATION BY ELLI MEJIÍA

O

ver the summer, Chicago’s minimum wage increased to $13.50 per hour for small employers and $14 per hour for larger workplaces. Some municipalities in Cook County are close behind at $13. But for many Chicagoans who work outside the city and county limits—not uncommon for the region’s lowest-paid workers—the Illinois minimum wage increased by one dollar to $11 per hour on January 1st.

While the wage increase seems unremarkable, Illinois residents are seeing a domino effect play out. The state minimum wage will continue to increase an additional $1 per hour each year on January 1 until it reaches $15 per hour in 2025, according to legislation Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law in 2019 after former governor Bruce Rauner repeatedly vetoed the effort. In Chicago, the minimum wage will increase to $15 per hour on July 1, 2021, though small employers will have until 2023 to reach $15.

At least ten percent of workers “reverse commute” from Chicago to more suburban and rural municipalities, according to a 2016 study by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Low

(A.S.B.) Accountax School of Business

earners often drive or carpool to get to industrial, warehouse, and retail job centers in more diffuse locations, the study found.

At the state level, wage increases already went into effect in 2020, to $9.25 per hour in January, followed by a raise to $10 per hour on July 1. “Even before the pandemic, many working families were struggling,” said state senator Kimberly A. Lightford (D-Maywood), chief sponsor of the law. “This increase won’t solve all of their problems, but it will surely help.”

Before the hikes in 2020, the last time Illinois increased its minimum wage was in 2010, when it was raised to $8.25—meaning it hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of living and inflation.

The SEIU-backed “Fight for 15” campaign and supporting labor organizations have popularized the concept of a $15 minimum wage by striking and calling out McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and other corporate giants for their oppressively low wages since 2012 and filling buses to Springfield to pressure legislators. They’re now taking their demands to D.C. This year, workers in Chicago will

also be able to sue employers who violate the city’s Fair Workweek ordinance, which requires certain bosses to give hourly employees advance notice of their schedules and compensate them for last-minute changes. In years past, unpredictable schedules and inconsistent paychecks made it hard for workers to plan for child care, hold down a second job, or pay the bills on time.

So check your pay stubs to ensure that time worked in 2021 is legal and fair. Employees can file a complaint in more than one language with the Illinois Department of Labor at (312) 793-2800 or the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection at (312) 744-6060. ¬

A Profile of Continuing Professional Education Mario Parham - Vice President/CS Vendor 119 E. 43rd Street, Suite 100 • (P) (312) 221-5769 (F) (731) 518-4046 • www.accountax.us

This story is a part of the Solving for Chicago collaborative effort by newsrooms to cover the workers deemed “essential” during COVID-19. It is a project of the Local Media Foundation with support from the Google News Initiative and the Solutions Journalism Network.

Jacqueline Serrato is editor-in-chief of the Weekly.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

The People Rose Up: A Black Summer 2020 Timeline

A selection of uprisings that took place in Chicago following the police killing of George Floyd

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12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

MAY 30: STOP POLICE CRIMES CARAVAN Two contingents, one meeting in front of Trinity Church near the South Loop, and the other at 26th & California, honked their horns all the way to the Federal Plaza in a national day of protest against the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

MAY 30: NATIONAL DAY OF PROTESTS AGAINST RACIST MURDER Hundreds drove around Cook County Jail and past the Juvenile Detention Center and ICE headquarters to Federal Plaza to protest of racist police killings. That evening, while Lightfoot raised bridges and ordered a citywide curfew, CPD kettled protesters near Trump Tower, arresting and injuring hundreds.

JUNE 2: CHICAGO FAITH COMMUNITY DEMONSTRATION Clergy led thousands of faithful through Bronzeville in a demonstration for George Floyd and other Black Americans killed by the police and by systemic racism. Speakers included the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

JUNE 2: NORTH SIDE PROTEST Activists marched from Wrigley Field to the 18th District police station at Division and Larabee on the Near North Side, where speakers addressed a crowd of about 1,000 as National Guard troops looked on.

JUNE 3: JUSTICE FOR GEORGE MAY 31: THE BATTLE OF HYDE PARK FLOYD CARAVAN DAY OF ACTION South Side residents and student activists held a demonstration on 53rd and Hyde Park Blvd., where police beat and pepper-sprayed the unarmed protesters and made several arrests that later resulted in a lawsuit against officers assigned to the 2nd District.

Following a half-mile-long car caravan that drove from Bronzeville to CPD headquarters at 35th and Indiana, activists knelt silently in nearby Dunbar Park for nine minutes—the amount of time police knelt on George Floyd’s neck, killing him.

PHOTO BY DARIUS GRIFFIN

JUNE 4: KANYE WEST JOINS JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD PROTEST

Rapper and former Chicagoan Kanye West joined a march to CPD headquarters, where protesters demanded justice for George Floyd and for the Chicago Public Schools to cancel a $33 million contract with CPD and remove police officers from schools.

JUNE 5: DEFUND CPD, FUND BLACK LIVES Hundreds marched through West Town to demand an end to citywide curfews and National Guard patrols, and called on the city to defund CPD—which accounts for about forty percent of the budget—and fund schools and COVID relief instead.

JUNE 6: THE FIGHT ISN’T OVER

PHOTO BY ALEXANDER GOULETAS

Thirty thousand protesters marched from Union Park, at Ashland and Lake, to Seward Park, one block east of the 18th District police station, to protest police brutality and call for justice for George Floyd.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

JUNE 11: LIGHTFOOT’S TENT CITY Community residents and activists occupied a vacant lot at 63rd and Blackstone in Woodlawn, where they pitched tents and raised banners to demand community investment and that Barack Obama's presidential library plan include a community benefits agreement to prevent gentrification and displacement.

JUNE 12: STOP THE MURDER, STOP THE TORTURE Demonstrators rallied by the hundreds in Washington Park and activists dropped a banner from a railway viaduct to demand a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC).

JUNE 14: GRADUATES MARCH Recent graduates of CPS marched from Hyde Park Academy High School in Woodlawn to the 3rd District police station at 70th and Cottage Grove to demand the school district end its contract with CPD.

PHOTO BY ALEXANDER GOULETAS

JUNE 24: BLACK LIVES MATTER, EDUCATION EQUITY OR ELSE! Hundreds of CTU teachers, SEIU healthcare workers, students, and community activists from numerous South, West, and North Side organizations rallied in the Loop under steady rainfall to oppose the Board of Education’s vote to keep its $33 million contract with CPD.

JUNE 14: JUNE 28: DRAG MARCH FOR CHANGE PRIDE WITHOUT Thousands marched in Boystown (Lakeview). Organizers PREJUDICE/RECLAIM called for justice for Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and PRIDE MARCH George Floyd, plus reclassification of violence against Trans individuals as a hate crime, a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) now, the immediate release of all protesters, and the acknowledgment from all levels of government that Black lives matter.

In lieu of the annual Pride Parade, which was cancelled due to COVID, LGBTQ+ activists marched in Uptown and Lakeview and rallied in Grant Park in support of Black Lives and against racism.

JUNE 17: PROTEST AT CITY HALL

JUNE 30: PRITZKERVILLE 24-HOUR TENT CITY

While hundreds of activists marched around City Hall in support of an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), members of the public addressed the City Council, urging lawmakers to defund CPD. Protesters outside were so loud that the mayor had to momentarily mute the virtual meeting.

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

Housing advocates rallied outside of Gov. Pritzker's Gold Coast mansion to demand the governor cancel rent and mortgage payments and lift the state's rent control ban in light of the pandemic.

JULY 4: QUALITY OF LIFE MARCH Activists trekked from CPD headquarters to Dyett High School in Washington Park, where they read aloud a platform demanding education, housing, public safety, and other tools to combat systemic racism.

JULY 11: LOVE MARCH IN WOODLAWN Youth activists of GoodKids MadCity led dozens in a march through Washington Park and Woodlawn to lift up the names of youth lost to gun violence and demand Mayor Lightfoot reallocate two percent of CPD’s budget to Black and brown neighborhoods.

JULY 17: DECOLONIZE ZHIGAAGOONG GRANT PARK RALLY Following a Black and Indigenous solidarity rally at Buckingham Fountain, protesters marched to the statue of Christopher Columbus, where some attempted to topple it; police attacked the crowd with batons and pepper spray, injuring dozens, including Miracle Boyd of GoodKids MadCity.

JULY 24: FREEDOM SQUARE ANNIVERSARY RALLY

AUGUST 15: BLACK LIVES MATTER MARCH ON THE DAN RYAN

AUGUST 26: CHICAGO VIGIL FOR JACOB BLAKE

Four years after the Freedom Square Rally, hundreds occupied the same lot across from CPD’s Homan Square facility, offering food, clothes, and other free services.

More than 100 activists marched through Bronzeville in ninety-degree heat to denounce police brutality, surrounded by throngs of helmeted CPD and Illinois State Police who blocked their planned route along the expressway.

In the evening, more than 200 gathered in Union Park for a candlelit vigil for Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back and partially paralyzed by police in Kenosha, WI three days earlier.

JULY 25: LOVE MARCH ON THE WEST SIDE Several hundred people rallied, danced, and marched together against gun violence on the West Side.

Organizers emphasized the need to defund the police and support victims of violence.

AUGUST 9-10: CIVIL UNREST IN DOWNTOWN SHOPPING DISTRICT After police shot and wounded twenty-year-old Latrell Allen during a foot chase in Englewood, looting spread to the Magnificent Mile overnight.

AUGUST 10: JAIL SUPPORT RALLY 18TH & STATE Black Lives Matter activists rallied outside of the 1st District headquarters at 17th and State St. to demand the release of those held there in connection with the previous night’s unrest.

AUGUST 13: YOUTH-LED DEMONSTRATION AT MAYOR LIGHTFOOT’S HOME Dozens of youth activists rallied near Mayor Lightfoot's Logan Square home to demand the removal of police from public schools and the cancellation of the CPS contract with the police department.

AUGUST 15: DOWNTOWN PROTEST TO DEFUND CPD AND ABOLISH ICE Activists marched from the Bean to Michigan and Wacker, where, after a stand-off near raised bridges, police attacked the crowd—some of whom defended themselves—before CPD chased and kettled them as Supt. Brown watched. Activist Mohawk Johnson was put on house arrest for allegedly swinging a skateboard against a helmeted officer.

AUGUST 22: BREAK THE PIGGY BANK An activist coalition led marchers from Whitney Young High School in the West Loop to the nearby FOP lodge to demand an end to the CPS-CPD contract and the redirection of CPD funding toward schools.

AUGUST 26: #COPSOUTCPS VOTE While the Board of Ed met all day to renew the district’s contract with CPD, about 100 demonstrators chanted and danced in joyful defiance to local hip-hop played by DJ illest outside CPS headquarters in the Loop.

AUGUST 29: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CAMPOUT Students and activists occupied the street in front of U of C provost Ka Yee Lee’s Hyde Park home to demand the University defund its massive police force and implement an ethnic studies program.

SEPTEMBER 5: RALLY FOR MIGUEL VEGA Five days after police shot and killed twenty-six-yearold Miguel Vega in Pilsen, his family and friends joined organizers at Plaza Tenochtitlán to demand justice and call for the release of body-camera video.

SEPTEMBER 5: STRIPPER STRIKE Organizers led a crowd of lingerie-clad strippers and sex workers in a demonstration and march downtown, as they demanded work-place security and safety.

SEPTEMBER 23: JUSTICE FOR BREONNA TAYLOR Protests took place in Logan Square, in St. Sabina Church, and at CPD headquarters after a Louisville grand jury declined to charge the police who killed Breonna Taylor as she slept in her apartment in March.

To access the complete living archive, visit thetriibe.com.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

HISTORY

The Neighborhood as Image of the City Part One: Acknowledgment

BY KRISTIN OSTBERG “And there in that great iron city… we caught whispers of the meanings that life could have, and we were pushed and pounded by facts much too big for us.”

T

hat’s novelist Richard Wright, introducing Black Metropolis, the classic social study of Chicago’s Black ghetto in 1945. Chicago’s Black belt started in Douglas, a neighborhood geographically side by side with Bridgeport, with a parallel history, close but not touching. You could describe Bridgeport for years without acknowledging it.

In 1945, Bridgeport resembled the city of Chicago the way the writerly like to recall it: hard working, hard drinking, ready for a fight. The workers saw themselves that way, too. They had jobs where they made things of substance.

Or they handled and hauled them. Their virtues were different from the patience and courtesy they’re called to exercise now, from their service jobs. They were well represented politically too—the city’s white ethnics having firmly taken control from the Protestant establishment a decade before. Bridgeport was very white ethnic. The neighborhood was the image of the city, except in one glaring respect.

The years after World War II were golden years for America’s industrial cities. Business was booming. There was an abundance of good union jobs, starting on the factory floor where the newcomer could get his foothold. Chicago’s politicians and business leaders moved in concert to take advantage.

But they had their concerns.

Chicago has always been a swirl of populations, strong currents moving in 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

and moving outward, but mostly moving in. After 1950, the balance would tip, even while the city was still booming with industry, its growth machine growling to life. Already the business and political leaders were worried about it. They looked around and saw blight everywhere. They countered with big building projects. They’d remove what was old and crowded in great blocks, and replace it with modern structures soaring upwards, surrounded by lawns and public plazas.

Even the most powerful men operate within the pushing and pounding of facts too big for them, bigger than they fully comprehend. And if they can’t comprehend it then they don’t control it. Their bold action reverberates in ways they don’t foresee.

Later, some looked at the effects of some of those projects and say they accomplished exactly what the builders intended—the wall of public housing tied in by the Dan Ryan expressway entrenched the boundaries of the Black ghetto, walled it off from neighborhoods like Bridgeport.

What they didn’t foresee was how the effects would ripple through the decisions of ordinary people in their millions.

The ordinary people were moved by their pursuit of a good life and what they thought that meant. For decades, they thought the good life meant moving outward and upward, away from the neighborhoods where people struggle, toward better ones a little farther out, neighborhoods with green lawns and two-car garages, the two-parent families whose mothers could stay home to manage the family’s lifestyle full time.

That picture is not gone.

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

“The picture of the good life that moves populations is shaped by the collective pull of human imaginations. We each have some power to shape it, by what we are willing to see as diverse for instance, by what we describe as good.”

Some forty years later, the powerful men of the growth machine would be fretting that big cities were obsolete. They thought telecommunications might have broken our ties to geographic place. They spoke of edge cities and built office parks on the outskirts—but even as they were doing it, the currents were starting to turn.

People moved by new whispers were coming back to the city. They said they liked urban diversity. They saw possibility in it, it spoke of the stimulation of new things, and of openness, acceptance that would give them the space to be the individuals they wanted to be.

In practice, there were limits to the kinds of diversity they wanted. And then the waves of their return tended to wash diversity away. But we do have some control over what we want. The picture of the good life that moves populations is shaped by the collective pull of human imaginations. We each have some power to shape it, by what we are willing to see as diverse for instance, by what we describe as good.

Some say human currents change in spans of forty or fifty years, which would make us about due for a new turn. And here we are, sitting home with COVID-19. There are already voices murmuring this is really going to break our ties to urban place—forced to work from home, if we’re lucky to still be working, the stimulations of our urban lifestyles suspended.

If it’s really true this time, and city people start dispersing for the hinterlands, they will bring diversity with them, and some of their confidence in the good things it brings. Imagine it spreading like ripples as they move. Originally published at The Hardscrabbler: A Bridgeport Blog; reprinted with permission.

This is part one in a five-part series.

Kristin Ostberg works in the affordable housing field, and writes about work, art, and social life in Bridgeport. This is her first piece for the Weekly; she can be reached at ostberg.k@gmail.com.

EDUCATION

Challenging Democracy at the Local School Council Level Close to 500 Local School Councils in Chicago Public Schools held their elections this past November, but they were faced with unique challenges that undermined the legitimacy of the process.

BY KELLY GARCIA

J

udges were a no-show. Ballots were thrown out. Voters were turned away.

These were just some of the problems in the election of one of the country’s largest democratic governing bodies: Chicago Public Schools’ Local School Councils (LSCs).

You might’ve heard of them when they were shoved into the spotlight this past summer, as pressure was placed on these twelve-member councils by the Board of Education to decide on the fate of police officers at their schools. This year, close to 6,000 seats at each of the 509 LSCs in the school district—including representation for parents, community members, teachers, non-teaching staff, and high school students—were up for grabs.

LSCs have purview over the principal’s contract, the school budget, and the school improvement plan. Council members serve two-year terms. There’s been a general decline in participation for LSC elections since its inception and this year was no different,with only 35,066 people voting, according to data released by the district.

Initially, the elections were scheduled to happen in April, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were pushed back to November. At several schools, the races were hotly contested, with more candidates running than seats available, and the elections became a

focus for citywide advocacy groups and community organizations fighting for police-free schools. But for many school communities, the LSC elections were underpublicized and difficult for people to participate in even if they wanted to.

These challenges reflected much larger issues at hand with urban education— disinvestment and consolidated power in the hands of a few.

“The lack of clear, timely, reliable information was really concerning,” said Natasha Erskine, a parent organizer with Raise Your Hand (RYH), a public education advocacy group for parents in Illinois. “Throughout the entire process, our team had to send letters to [the Office of Local School Council Relations (OLSCR)] to make changes for a better election.”

Despite the months of delay leading up to the November elections, information about how they would be conducted remained unclear. At the end of August, CPS announced that candidates would have to submit applications by October 2 expressing their intent to run.

Candidate forums were scheduled to take place the same month, and elections would happen in mid-November for both elementary schools and high schools.

Challenges pertaining to accessibility and transparency around the elections were nothing new, but they were exacerbated by the transition to virtual platforms,

and several school communities were not equipped to handle the unique challenges of this year’s election.

Ahead of the election, most school websites did not have videos of their candidate forums posted or a full list of their candidate statements, making it hard for parents and community members to access the candidates running to represent their schools. The department in CPS tasked with assisting LSCs during the election process, the Office of Local School Council Relations, was unresponsive throughout the election process, according to Erskine. CPS said in a statement that communication regarding the election was disseminated through “a variety of channels” like social media and radio, in addition to biweekly meetings with LSCs and monthly directors’ meetings with LSC chairs about the election.

Election day came with its own problems. Elementary schools held inperson elections on November 18 and high schools held theirs on November 19. After safety concerns were raised by school communities around inperson elections, the district introduced a new vote-by-mail process strictly for parents that raised concerns about voter anonymity. There were also concerns about the deadline for mail-in ballots which was initially on election day but then was pushed back to November 30

after concerns were raised about mailing lags, Erskine said.

The official count for ballots didn’t happen until December 1, almost two weeks after election day. Election judges were expected to review and certify all ballots. But at Jones College Prep, a selective enrollment school in the South Loop, one of the judges never showed up. “The Office of Local School Council Relations ended up sending someone the next day,” said Erskine. “But because no one showed up the first day and there was no [immediate] response from [OLSCR], they didn’t get their official results until [December 3].”

There were also concerns about spoiled ballots as a result of unclear instructions on how to fill them out. At the December 16 Board of Education meeting, Peirce Elementary parent and LSC candidate Aisha Noble spoke during public comment about the seventy-five ballots that were discarded in their school election, most of which were from parents and community members. According to CPS, ballots are marked defective if they were not marked as instructed or if voters voted for more than the allotted candidates for that ballot. Mail-in ballots were marked defective if the postmark was after the deadline or if they didn’t have a valid return address, which was used to validate the ballot against their master list.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

EDUCATION

On December 30, OLSCR informed the Peirce LSC candidates that a recount will be granted in response to the petition, despite the hearing officer’s recommendation to do an entirely new election for parents and community members. It is not clear if the seventyfive defective ballots will be included in the recount. The recount will take place on January 5.

“We had to rely on the Chicago Lawyers Committee [for Civil Rights] for help during the election,” said Erskine.

“Anything that did go right during the process, came from people, community, and the schools coming together to figure it out.”

Candidates were given two days to file post-election challenges if they wanted to appeal the results of their election. CPS’s law department requires challengers to file a petition with signatures from five eligible voters. Then the department would determine if it required a hearing facilitated by a Boardappointed officer, who would make a recommended decision to the Chief Executive Officer, Janice Jackson.

On election day, Khwaja was present near the school assisting voters. Though schools were required to have proper signage outside the building to provide directions for voters, including people opting for curbside voting, there was nothing outside Hyde Park Academy.

Khwaja helped direct voters to the polling place and at one point argued with a school staffer who she said refused to assist curbside voters. “There were voters who were coming in that were reasonably nervous about voting in-person during the pandemic, which I was trying to explain to the [staff member],” she said.

“But they put their foot down and insisted that unless [voters had a disability] they had to come inside [to vote].”

Khwaja suspects her interaction with the school staff member is what led to the petition challenging her win for one of the community representative seats.

Her hearing was eventually scheduled for December 22. Kishasha Ford, an attorney

T

he process was murkier for community candidate Maira Khwaja at Hyde Park Academy, the local high school for parts of Woodlawn and South Shore, who was challenged on the basis that she didn’t live in the voting district, despite living less than two miles from the school. “I was taken aback when I received a call from a special investigator [from the CPS law department] that I was being challenged on my eligibility even though I certainly live in the voting district,” said Khwaja, a contributor to and former editor for the Weekly who now works as the director of outreach and development for the Invisible Institute, an editorial partner of the Weekly.

HYDE PARK ACADEMY HIGH SCHOOL. PHOTO BY JASON SCHUMER

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

with the CPS law department, and Andrea Horton, the Board-appointed hearing officer, facilitated the virtual hearing, to which more than a hundred people showed up, most of them in support of Khwaja’s candidacy. But the unusual number of people at this hearing led to almost an hour of technical difficulties because the meeting had reached capacity, preventing new observers from entering the call. Ultimately, the case was dismissed because the challenger, Sheila Scott, and the five people who co-signed her petition, did not show up. “The hearing was very indicative of the bureaucratic mess CPS created with these LSC elections,” said Khwaja. “It shows that they’re never prepared for real civic engagement.”

CPS did not respond to a request for comment on the Hyde Park hearing.

Khwaja’s challenge wasn’t an isolated incident. At Ashburn Elementary, candidates challenged the school election

after school staff, including candidates, were forced to count the ballots on their own after none of the judges showed up. “[The Ashburn LSC] contacted OLSCR over five times [about the absent election judges] and never got a response,” said Erskine. At the hearing, Natasha says parents and community members also expressed concerns over retaliation and intimidation tactics related to the election. CPS said in a statement that back-up staffers were available for “situations in which a replacement was needed” and had “not been made aware of any school without coverage that did not receive staffing support”.

At Mollison Elementary in Bronzeville, one candidate never received an invitation to a hearing challenging the election process. “I initially won the [teacher] election when the ballots were counted on December 1,” said Kelly Longmire-Crawford, a math teacher and LSC member at Mollison. In an email

EDUCATION

to her, CPS law attorney Kishasha Ford said that Longmire-Crawford should’ve received an invite to the hearing as an interested party of the election, but that her specific candidacy wasn’t being challenged so her presence wasn’t required.

But once the hearing happened, she found out that they were going to redo the teacher election. “By December 11, they re-did the election and I lost.”

Longmire-Crawford suspects the pushback could be related to a previous LSC meeting at Mollison in which members, including herself, voted not to renew the principal’s contract. “Despite the hurdles, I’ll still keep showing up [to LSC meetings],” she said. “I won’t have voting power, but I’ll still have a voice.”

According to the district, twentythree hearings related to post-election challenges were held at seventeen schools, including Robinson Elementary, Jefferson Elementary, Mollison Elementary, Walter Payton College Prep, Wentworth Elementary, Yates Elementary, Morrill Elementary, Fort Dearborn Elementary, Peirce Elementary, Volta Elementary, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, Hyde Park Academy High School, Whistler Elementary, Agassiz Elementary, Goethe Elementary, Monroe Elementary, and Prosser Career Academy.

Many questions remain about this year’s election process, including

questions around mail-in ballots that continue pouring into some schools weeks after the election. But for now, new LSC members should expect an organizational meeting in the coming year to figure out logistics, including setting a consistent date and time for their LSC to meet.

The new terms for LSC members begin on January 11. “Council members should also expect to create and vote on their bylaws,” said Erskine. “They should also be receiving documents from the principal pertinent to their school community such as the school budget, school staff position report, discipline matters.”

Erskine also encourages council members to create subcommittees within their LSCs that non-members can participate in. These subcommittees have the power to make recommendations to LSCs but don’t make final decisions.

Examples of subcommittees include remote learning committees or racial equity committees.

L

ocal School Councils were envisioned in 1987 by a group of activists and community leaders fighting to decentralize school power in a much larger effort to reform the nation’s third-largest school district. Coming on the heels of a nineteen-day teachers’ strike, Mayor Harold Washington convened over 1,000 parents, board members, teachers, and business leaders in an education summit to create a comprehensive

proposal for school reform.

About a month later, Washington died, but members of the summit vowed to continue working on a plan for school reform in his honor. By April of 1988, the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs) Coalition was formed.

Its goal was to push for Chicago school reform through state legislation. After months of lobbying in Springfield in what one legislator called, “the most effective grassroots lobbying campaign” he had ever seen, the ABCs Coalition successfully passed the Chicago School Reform Act through the Illinois General Assembly. Local School Councils were officially established.

The first LSC elections were held in October 1989, with over 300,000 voters participating and 17,000 candidates running for only 5,940 seats. The shift to hyper-local governance inspired key stakeholders—parents and community members—to leverage their power, reflecting the energy of Black and Latinx students twenty years prior during the 1968 high school walkouts. During those walkouts, students were also demanding decentralization and self-determination.

Their actions eventually led to a long list of implementations including hiring more Black and Latinx educators and offering bilingual education through the creation of Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen.

But the excitement around LSCs

“Voter turnout has yet to come close to the first election cycle in 1989. But if 2020 was any indication, interest in Local School Councils will grow as school communities push for more answers on policing and investment.”

died down after Mayor Richard M. Daley began curtailing their power. Soon after his election in 1989, he appointed his own interim members to the Board of Education, ignoring input from Local School Council members throughout the selection process.

In 1995, Daley led a successful campaign in Springfield to amend the Chicago School Reform Act to give his office authority over Board appointments and the appointment of the school system’s head, now called the Chief Executive Officer. By this point, philanthropic support for training materials and LSC elections also dried up. Since 1991, turnout for LSC elections has generally dropped, with the lowest being in 2012, when only 20,000 voters participated.

Voter turnout has yet to come close to the first election cycle in 1989. But if 2020 was any indication, interest in Local School Councils will grow as school communities push for more answers on policing and investment.

“Being a part of my Local School Council has made me realize how much potential there is in my community,” said Dixon Romeo, a lifelong Chicagoan, organizer, and LSC member at Parkside Academy in South Shore. “But, the fact of the matter is, [CPS] can’t keep treating schools like a business. They’re a civic institution which means we need to fund them.”

The push for more investment into LSCs is parallel to the ongoing fight for an elected representative school board. The levels of bureaucracy around democratic local governance in CPS— from the Office of Local School Council Relations to the entrenched power of the law department—are a testament to the top-down model that communities are itching to democratize.

“People most affected by this stuff are closer to the answer,” said Romeo.

“If we really want them to be engaged, [CPS] has to start listening.” Kelly Garcia is a freelance journalist covering education and was previously a Civic Reporting fellow for City Bureau.

This is her first piece for the Weekly.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

JUSTICE

The Unsolved Cases of Missing and Murdered Women

A proposed bill would look into fifty strangulation cases in the South and West Sides.

BY KIRA LEADHOLM

T

homas Hargrove, a retired investigative journalist, felt something was suspicious as he analyzed Chicago homicide data in late 2014. He identified several eerie patterns among a cluster of fifty-one unsolved female homicides: most of the victims had been sex workers or drug users, ninetythree percent of the murders occurred outdoors or in abandoned buildings, the murders were concentrated on the city’s South and West Sides, and in every single case, the cause of death was asphyxiation or strangulation.

Hargrove had developed a computerbased algorithm that used homicide data to flag potential serial killers. “The Chicago case could not have been more classic,” he said of the murders, which date back to 2001. After analyzing FBI data and archived news stories, the evidence became undeniable to Hargrove.

Those fifty-one women were not killed by fifty-one separate men, he said: “Most of these [women] were killed by men who have killed [other women] before.”

Shortly after discovering the Chicago cluster, Hargrove founded the Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit investigative group that tracks unsolved homicides in the U.S. Hargrove presented the Chicago data at the 2017 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, which galvanized a flurry of media attention from the Chicago Tribune, Vice News and CBS Chicago.

The media coverage, along with a report released by the Murder Accountability Project, prompted the FBI and CPD to 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

form an investigative task force in 2019.

But only the case of Diamond Turner, who was murdered by Arthur Hilliard in 2017, has since been closed.

A dearth of DNA evidence makes these murders uniquely difficult to solve.

Only eighteen of the fifty unsolved homicides yielded DNA samples, which is unusual for physical crimes like strangulation and asphyxiation. “The fact that there is such a low rate at which DNA has been obtained is suggestive,” Hargrove said. “It’s possible this killer or killers are pretty intelligent and are aware not to leave their DNA behind.”

The obtained DNA samples complicate the theory of an active serial killer. None of the samples match the DNA profiles of known criminals in the FBI’s database, nor do they cross-match to each other, a CPD representative said in an email. “At this point, there are no links or matches to a common offender,” the representative wrote. “We will use every resource at our disposal to analyze the case data and work with advocates to ensure that victims receive the justice they deserve.”

Hargrove said confidential information provided by witnesses has led CPD to believe there are two or three active serial killers, but CPD declined to corroborate this.

CPD could have used this information years ago, but the Illinois State Forensic Lab didn’t finish analyzing the DNA samples until 2019 due to massive backlogs. Miscommunication between labs and the court system; improper

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

training of police officers, attorneys, and judges; equipment procurement issues; underfunding, and understaffing all contributed to the backlog, according to a 2020 report from the Governor’s Forensic Science Task Force.

Carrie Ward, the executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault and a member of the task force, said issues at the lab caused a backlog of sexual assault testing kits as well. “There are storage rooms that have kits on top of kits on top of kits,” she said.

Ward fears that cases involving sex workers may sit longer than others because they often lack resources to advocate for themselves. “Sex workers are a vulnerable population, and depending on what their connections are, they may not have a lot of support to help move a case forward,” she said.

Though the lab reduced the backlog by thirty-three percent, according to an official press release, “We worry about statutes of limitation for reviewing information,” Ward said. “We don’t think any survivor should have to have their case thrown out because of timelines that weren’t met through no fault of their own.”

Sex workers often assume aliases and live transient lifestyles, so it’s hard to pin down who they saw last or where they were leading up to the murder, and distrust for the police makes sex workers reticent to cede information.

The pandemic has delayed passing legislation that might expedite the investigations. Slightly over a year ago,

Illinois House Rep. Kambium Buckner introduced the Task Force on Missing and Murdered Chicago Women Act to the Illinois General Assembly. The bill, which would study the causes behind Chicago’s murdered and missing women and increase awareness of sexual assault, was on track to be enacted into law. But when the pandemic hit, the General Assembly ceased to congregate.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has posed challenges to sex workers and survivors of assault. COVID-19 shuttered services available to survivors of sex trafficking, the city’s stay-at-home order has sequestered victims at home with their abusers, and unemployed people may be turning to sex work—a field that makes them particularly vulnerable to sexual assault.

Sex workers are frequent targets

O

ne night in the late nineties, Lynette Frazier (a pseudonym), was selling sex in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. She was picked up by three men who strangled, beat, and raped her behind a building near North State Street and West Delaware Place.

CPD officers happened to be nearby and managed to catch one of Frazier’s assailants, who had stolen her wallet, ID, and cash, which the officers used to corroborate Frazier’s story.

The attacker was jailed and faced felony battery and theft charges, but felony charges in Illinois must be reviewed by the state’s attorney. Frazier said the Office of the State’s Attorney

JUSTICE

declined to charge the man with a felony because Frazier was a known sex worker. Instead, she said he received a misdemeanor assault charge. To Frazier, the incident solidified her mistrust of the criminal justice system. “In that day at that scene, I knew they weren’t going to do anything,” she said.

If there are killers targeting sex workers in Chicago, it’s likely some victims have survived the attacks and could serve as key informants, Hargrove said. But like Frazier, many sex workers have reason not to go to the police.

According to a January 2020 report produced by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, sex workers in Chicago have largely reported negative interactions with the police.

“Folks in the sex trade are not treated well by police, and that’s putting it lightly,” said Madeleine Behr, the Alliance’s policy manager and author of the report. “It’s not only discriminatory comments, derogatory comments or verbal harassment, but escalating all the way up to sexual assault and abuse and using the badge to do it.”

Sexual misconduct is the second most common form of police misconduct, according to the Alliance’s report.

In addition to sexual misconduct, Behr identified several factors that undermine relations between sex workers and law enforcement. CPD tends to enforce prostitution laws against those selling sex rather than those buying sex or trafficking, which assigns guilt to sex workers. In 2017, ninety-one percent of prostitution arrests were for selling sex, according to the report, and this portion has only grown since the Alliance began to collect data in 2013. Behr said this is likely because sex workers are more visible than johns or pimps, and because male police officers identify more with men who buy sex “or a trafficker, especially if it’s a white guy, someone that they probably can relate to.”

Paul Olson, a retired Cook County Sheriff ’s officer, said some of his former colleagues eschewed arresting johns.

“Some guys had the attitude of, ‘If I arrest this guy it’s going to ruin his life, his wife’s going to find out,’” he said.“[The police]

are driving around, they see a girl they know is a prostitute and they just put a case on her for soliciting even though they didn’t catch her doing anything.”

Olson retired from the force in 2008, but Behr said this phenomenon still occurs. While interviewing former sex workers for the report, Behr heard stories of women who were arrested after leaving the sex trade because the police recognized them. “They spoke about being fearful to do everyday activities in their neighborhoods because of it,” Behr wrote in an email.

Behr believes victim blaming—the belief that sex workers are responsible for their trauma—is also at play. “We as a society are more comfortable blaming people for their circumstances, rather than holding men, particularly white men with power and privilege, properly accountable,” she said.

Brenda Myers-Powell, co-founder of the Dreamcatcher Foundation and a former sex worker, said, “The police treat us with no dignity and no respect. If somebody rapes you or hurts you, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have been out there.”

Mahoganey Harris, another former sex worker, rarely reported men who attacked her for this reason. Around 2011, Harris had a violent brush with a man she believes had killed another sex worker. She had heard of a sex worker who was strangled to death, the skin of her assailant still under her fingernails when she died. Less than a week later, Harris found herself in a hotel room with a man who was covered in fresh scratch marks.

The man tried to lock Harris in the room so she fled unclothed to the hotel lobby.

The hotel employees were skeptical of her story, and even more so when the man claimed Harris had stolen money from him (she didn’t). Harris never reported the man to the police and doesn’t know if there was ever an investigation. “[The police] don’t investigate that stuff,” Harris said. “I know three girls who were killed, strangled, and they didn’t do anything.”

Harris had reason to hold this belief.

Years later, she reported a man who tried to rape her and stole her phone. CPD put little effort into the investigation, even

“I would be surprised if the community is not aware of some of the individuals warning each other to stay away from this guy or that guy.”

though tracking her phone would quickly yield the man’s location, Harris said.

“Society looks at sex workers like they are nobody,” Harris said. “That’s what makes it so easy for a person to do something to a sex worker.”

Harris acknowledged that officers from some police departments were kinder than others. When she was arrested for prostitution by the Maywood Police, the officers gave her money to get home.

Misconduct varied based on police district—officers in the CPD 8th District were reported to be more degrading toward sex workers, while those in the 7th District are reportedly friendlier, according to the Alliance report. Three of the fifty-one women were murdered in the 8th District, and five in the 7th.

In an emailed statement, a CPD representative stressed that the department does not condone police misconduct of any kind. “Anyone who feels they have been mistreated by a CPD officer is encouraged to call 311 and file a complaint with COPA [the Civilian Office of Police Accountability], which will investigate allegations of misconduct.”

Racism also drives a wedge between law enforcement and sex workers. Years after the stolen phone incident, Harris was among a group of sex workers arrested by Chicago police on the West Side. At the police station, Harris said the white officers offered help to the white sex workers, asking them where their parents were and why they had

been in a dangerous neighborhood. The Black sex workers received no such mercy, Harris said.

Women of color are not only mistreated by racist officers; they’re also more vulnerable to sexual violence.

Among the fifty unsolved strangulations, seventy-seven percent of the victims were of color, according to data from the Murder Accountability Project.

“Had it been fifty Caucasian women we’d have everybody looking for them, but that’s not the case, is it?” MyersPowell said.

Prostitution charges financially burden sex workers who are already strapped for cash, and they make it difficult for one to find a job should they leave sex work. A Class A misdemeanor, a common prostitution charge, can result in one year in jail and/or up to $2,500 in fines.

Beyond getting arrested, ceding information to law enforcement can be dangerous. Informants risk violent retribution from murderers and their affiliates, and speaking to the police can wrap one up in court proceedings.

“One thing you don’t do on the street is talk,” Myers-Powell said. “If you do talk, you may have to back up what you said. You might have to testify.”

Instead of talking to the police, Hargrove said survivors are more likely to warn other community members about the killers. “I would be surprised if the community is not aware of some of the individuals warning each other to stay away from this guy or that guy,” he said.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

JUSTICE

What Hargrove is describing is a phenomenon many sex workers talk about—an informal network of surveillance that exists in lieu of police protection. Harris said she learned about her attacker in the hotel because others had warned her.

In order to solve the murders, law enforcement will have to earn the trust of Chicago’s sex workers. It’s possible, but Myers-Powell isn’t confident it will happen. She said that law enforcement and sex workers live in two different worlds, and that the divide between them is not closing.

Some solutions have proven effective in bridging this gap. The Chicago Prostitution and Trafficking Intervention Court, established in 2015, is a deferred prosecution program that gives arrested sex workers the option to complete a rehabilitation course in lieu of prosecution.

Participants receive aid in applying for jobs, obtaining identification cards, securing housing, addressing trauma through Christian Community Health Center and Salvation Army STOPIT, getting their charges dismissed, and overcoming drug and alcohol addiction.

As of September 2019, 396 people had graduated from the program, and many reported a positive experience, according to the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.

Hiring former sex workers to work alongside law enforcement has also yielded success. After twenty-five years in the sex trade, Myers-Powell spent ten years with the Cook County Sheriff ’s Department’s Human Trafficking Response Team. Along with two other former sex workers, Myers-Powell offered services to arrested prostitutes

and trained officers on trauma sensitivity. “[The girls] would say, ‘We’ve never seen this before but we love it,” MyersPowell said. “They’d never been arrested and had another survivor there to talk to them and offer services.”

Frazier said former sex workers have a greater capacity to empathize with current sex workers and would therefore be an asset to a homicide investigation.

‘Everybody liked Dellie’

P

aul Olson worked for the Cook County Sheriff for thirty-three years. He spent seventeen years in the vice unit, which focuses on so-called public-order crimes like prostitution.

During that time got to know numerous sex workers on the West Side. Unlike some of his colleagues, Olson said his time on the job taught him to view sex work as a necessity rather than a choice.

He treated sex workers like human beings, which is why he’s still friends with many of them today.

Dellie Jones was one of the women Olson knew well. On August 10, 2002, Olson arrested Jones for solicitation near Cicero Ave. and Division St. When Jones got in his car, she pleaded to be released. “She started crying,” Olson said.

“She said ‘Paul, I’m sick of going to jail.

I’m dope sick, I lost my kid, and I don’t have anywhere to live.’” Olson issued her a city ticket—a lesser charge than a misdemeanor—and advised her to go to Genesis House, a rehabilitation center for sex workers on the North Side.

“Everybody liked Dellie,” said Frazier, Jones’s sponsor at Genesis House.

“She was really sweet. It was just the drugs. She couldn’t stop using.”

“Folks in the sex trade are not treated well by police, and that’s putting it lightly.”

GRAPH COURTESY OF THE MURDER ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JANUARY 7, 2021

JUSTICE

One night, Jones left Genesis House and never came back. “I begged Dellie not to leave the day that day,” Frazier said. “She left and got killed that night.”

Jones’ body was discovered on September 7, 2002 in a garage on the West Side. She was thirty-three. Frazier said the police never visited Genesis House to investigate Jones’s murder, which was one of the first among the fifty unsolved strangulation cases.

Olson believes her transient lifestyle likely complicated the investigation.

While investigating a homicide, law enforcement tries to determine where the victim was at the time of the murder, who they were with, and why they were with them. In a world where people can disappear for days or weeks at a time, and may be incapacitated by drug use, these crucial details can get muddled.

“A lot of times in a homicide, you get killed by someone you knew,” Olson said.

“But these girls are getting into cars with guys they don’t know anything about.

They have no idea who they are.” Olson said it can be nearly impossible to figure out when and where a sex worker enters an assailant’s car, and that it’s even harder to determine where they drive to.

To complicate matters more, sex workers may be estranged from family members. “A lot of times when these girls go missing, nobody ever reports them,” Olson said. “Even their family and friends know they’re out on the streets, and it’s not unusual for them to go missing for days or weeks at time.”

Dysfunction within CPD has also hindered numerous homicide investigations. Bill Dorsch, a retired CPD homicide detective turned whistleblower on police misconduct, said he was often rushed from one case to another due to understaffing. “It’s not unusual that you will be working a case very diligently, and suddenly, something else happens and your boss puts you on a new one,” Dorsch said. “You accumulate an awful lot of overtime because you’re going to court, you’re managing your workload; you’re not going home after eight hours.”

Dorsch also said many of his superiors were hired through connections at the department and lacked investigative skills.

“The people that get placed in positions of supervision are not the best of the best,” he said. “It’s who you know, that’s how you got there. And that’s tragic.”

Though Dorsch retired from the force in 1994, a 2019 report issued by the Police Executive Research Forum suggests that not much has changed. According to the report, understaffing, lack of equipment, inadequate supervision (of detectives), and disorganization all contribute to CPD’s low murder clearance rate.

Missing postal legislation

K

worker

inspires

ierra Coles, a twenty-six-yearold USPS worker and expectant mother, went missing near her home at 81st St. and Vernon Ave. in Chatham, on October 2, 2018. Her body was never recovered.

Coles’disappearance deeply unnerved Illinois state Rep. Kambium Buckner of the 26th District. When he began to investigate similar cases, he learned of the fifty unsolved strangulation cases. “Many of these cases have been open for way too long,” Buckner said. “It is unconscionable that with all the resources and technology we have, that we still can’t solve these cases.”

In response, Buckner introduced the Missing and Murdered Chicago Women Act to the Illinois General Assembly in late 2019. The task force would work with CPD to analyze facets of law enforcement that adversely impact violence against women, and to develop alternative solutions to promote community safety.

Buckner said he designed this approach to combat victim-blaming. “We know that there is an issue with the way law enforcement deals with these people,” Buckner said. “Specifically the way that these women are often automatically treated like criminals.”

By drawing attention to Chicago’s murdered and missing women, Buckner says the bill would ramp up the investigations into the fifty strangulation cases. “I think [the bill] would have definitely gotten out of committee had we actually had a normal year,” Buckner said. Due to the pandemic, the General

Assembly will not reconvene until January 13.

The bill has eight co-sponsors from both parties, including Deputy Majority Leader Jehan Gordon-Booth (D).

Buckner said there is no official opposition to the bill, so it will likely pass next year.

The bill has yet to be read in committee, where the budget office will release a fiscal note detailing the bill’s cost.

Domestic abuse rises during the pandemic

T

he bill’s postponement could not have worse timing, though. Data provided by the The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence suggests that domestic violence is on the rise. The Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline has seen a 5,597 percent increase in texts and sixteen percent increase in phone calls compared to this time last year, according to data provided by the Network and the city of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services.

“Instead of being able to make a hotline call, people have been reaching out via Instagram, Facebook, even Google,” said Megan Rosado of Connections for Abused Women and their Children.

Rosado attributed this change to the stay-at-home order—victims at home with abusers are unable to call for fear of retribution. Rosado said survivor services including counseling, crisis intervention, and court advocacy are being offered remotely, which may deter people from seeking help.

“A lot of survivors have to come in person for a session because they don’t have any private space in their home,” Rosado said. Even survivor intervention services offered to hospital patients are now virtual. “It’s more complicated and difficult, especially if somebody is in the hospital, because it requires technology access.”

Rosado said Connections for Abused Women and their Children has had to reduce its shelter capacity by fifty percent.

Initially, a grant allowed the program to place survivors in hotel rooms, but the money has since run out. “[The grant] really just got us through the first couple

of months of the stay-at-home order,” Rosado said. Now, the program is operating at reduced capacity.

Some organizations, however, continue to offer in-person services.

Myers-Powell said the pandemic has made it difficult to find twenty-four-hour rehabilitation centers and safe housing for survivors of sex trafficking. “We are still doing the same work that we’ve always done because we are a crisis program,” Myers-Powell said. “But imagine trying to do crisis work when the whole country is under crisis.”

And with the increasing unemployment rate in Chicago, which skyrocketed to 17.5 percent in April according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, more people may be turning to the street economy. Mahoganey Harris fears younger and more inexperienced women are entering the profession.

“Because of COVID, the newer, younger generation of people—women suffering from drug addiction or domestic violence—are on the streets,” Harris said.

“And there’s no help available right now.”

Vickie Smith, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, acknowledged the dangers in delaying the house bill, but she also said that rushing into legislation can have unintended consequences. “There has been a lot of good that has come out of this,” Smith said of the shutdown. “It’s much better to take the time to develop [a bill] that’s really well thought out.”

Poor legislation can fuel the prison-industrial complex, which disproportionately affects Black and brown people and doesn’t ameliorate domestic violence, Smith said. She also views the shutdown as an opportunity to redesign outdated services for survivors of abuse and hopes to use this time to design services that will better serve the needs of immigrants, people of color, and members of the LGBT+ community.

Her first suggestion? To listen. Kira Leadholm is a Chicago-based freelance journalist who writes about social justice and music. She is currently earning an MSJ from Medill School of Journalism. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

JANUARY 7, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

SERVICE DIRECTORY SERVICE DIRECTORY SHOWCASE:

MASONRY, TUCKPOINTING, BRICKWORK, CHIMNEY, LINTELS, PARAPET WALLS, CITY VIOLATIONS, CAULKING, ROOFING.

Licensed, Bonded, Insured. Rated A on Angie’s List. FREE Estimates

Accurate Exterior & Masonry 773-592-4535 –

KELLY

PLASTERING CO.

(815) 464-0606 –

MASONRY -

+ Refrigerators, + Full Beds - $9900 Stoves - $9800 & Up + Single Beds - $6900 + Washers, Dryers + Bunk Beds - $19900 and Freezers + Chests - $4900 + Family Tables & + Sofa Sets - $22900 $ 00 Chairs - 115 + Lamps - $29/Pair

MASONRY, TUCKPOINTING, BRICKWORK, CHIMNEY, LINTELS, PARAPET WALLS, CITY VIOLATIONS, CAULKING, ROOFING.

“Furniture For All!�

1259 N. Ashland Avenue

(773)

276-0599 –

OPEN 7:30 AM + FREE Layway 1000 OFF APPLIANCE with this ad

$

CLEANING -

708-599-7000 House Cleaning Services

– owned since 1999 Family

Accurate Exterior & Masonry 773-592-4535

JOE & RUTH REMODELING General Contractors

- Family Owned Since 1982 -

Complete Remodeling – Services Specialists in: • Vintage Homes Restorations • Kitchens & Baths • Basements • Electric & Plumbing • Wall & Floor Tile • Painting & Carpentry

We Work With You To Meet Your Needs

773-575-7220 Let Us Help Build Your Business!

Advertise in the Business & Service Directory Today!!

773-977-9000 –

–

773-977-9000 Advertise in the Business & Service Directory Today!!

–

ROOFING -

Conrad Roofing Co.

PLASTER PATCHING DRYVIT STUCCO FULLY INSURED

SPECIALIZING IN ARCHITECTURAL: METAL WORK:

PLASTERING CO.

(815) 464-0606

PLUMBING -

Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

Serving Hyde Park and surrounding communities

–

KELLY

MICHAEL MOVING COMPANY

www.bestmaids.com CONSTRUCTION -

Serving Hyde Park and surrounding communities

PLASTERING -

Licensed, Bonded, Insured. Rated A on Angie’s List. FREE Estimates

MOVING -

Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

PLASTER PATCHING DRYVIT STUCCO FULLY INSURED

APPLIANCES -

MIKE’S FURNITURE

MICHAEL MOVING COMPANY

Residential Plumbing Service – SERVICES INCLUDE:

Plumbing • Drain Cleaning • Sewer Camera/Locate Water Heater Installation/Repair Service • Tankless Water Heater Installation/Repair Service Toilet Repair • Faucet/Fixture Repair Vintage Faucet/Fixture Repair • Ejector/Sump Pump • Garbage Disposals • Battery Back-up Systems

Licensed & Insured • Serving Chicago & Suburbs

10% OFF Senior Citizen Discount License #: Call 773-617-3686 058-197062

HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW! –

Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory today!!

of Illinois Inc.

• Cornices • Bay Windows • Ornaments • Gutters & Downspouts • Standing & Flat Seam Roofs

ROOFING WORK: – Tile • Slate • Clay

• Cedar • Shingles • Flat/Energy Star Roof

(773)

286-6212

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Let Us Help Build Your Business!

Advertise in the South Side Weekly Business & – Service Directory Today!!

CLASSIFIED Section 001 Help Wanted /<5;,9 7967,9;0,:

Help Wanted

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773-477-7070 â&#x20AC;˘ www.hunterprop.com Autos Wanted

066 Masonry

We Want Your Old Car! We Pay Cash! $100 to $500 cash!

Phenomenal Towing Jump Starts, Tire Change, Local Tows Contact Rod at 773-930-7112

120 Records/Music

146

WILL BUY <285 9,1</ Records in good to Mint shape preferred. Blues, Rock, etc. Call Mike: 312.656.4882

$FFXUDWH ([WHULRU and Masonry

Masonry, tuckpointing, brickwork, chimney, lintels, parapet walls, city violations, FDXONLQJ URRĂ&#x20AC;QJ We are licensed, bonded and insured.

5DWHG $ RQ $QJLH¡V /LVW 9VVĂ&#x201E;UN Free Estimates

773-592-4535

&215$' 522),1* &2 Specializing in Architectural Cleaning 070 Metal Work, Gutters & Movers 123 Downspouts, Bay WinBest Maids GRZV &RUQLFHV 5RRĂ&#x20AC;QJ 0,&+$(/ 029,1* Will clean your Slate, Clay Tile, Cedar, house or apt.

We Move, Deliver, Shingles, References available. and Do Clean-Out Jobs Flat/Energy Star Roof Call Best Maids 773.977.9000 773-286-6212 708/599-7000 Construction

083

Plastering

143

KELLY Plastering Co. Plaster Patching, Dryvit, Stucco.

FULLY INSURED. 815-464-0606

Real Estate Services

300

+8' %DQN )RUHFORVXUHV City & Suburbs &DOO )UHG ' &OLQN 773-294-5870 Realty Services Consortium

JO & RUTH REMODELING We Specialize in Vintage Homes and Restorations!

Painting, Power Washing, Deck Sealing, Brick 145 Repair, Tuckpointing, Plumbing Apartments for Rent-Chgo 305 Carpentry, Porch/Deck, The Plumbing Kitchen & Bath Studio for Rent - $850 Department Remodeling.

5135 S. Kenwood, #204 *Since 1982* Available for all of your Sandra @ 708-307-2968 residential plumbing needs.

Furniture for Sale 092 Lic. & insured. Serving %HGURRP $SW 1 blk. South of U of C Chicago & Suburbs.

773-987-6835 0,.(¡6 )851,785( Senior Discounts. ´)XUQLWXUH )RU $OO ¾ Call Jeff at 773-617-3686 Beds, Sofa sets, Lamps, Spacious Bronzeville Kitchen Appliances, 3 BD, 2 BA. $1800. Call: more!

Jennifer, 312-218-8785 773-276-0599

Let Us Help Build Your Business!

Advertise in the Business & Service Directory Today!!

Ad copy deadline: 1:00 p.m. Friday before Wednesday publication date. To Place your ad, call:

1-773-358-3129 or email:

malone@ southsideweekly.com