October 19, 2016 by South Side Weekly

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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 4, Issue 4 Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Director of Staff Support Ellie Mejía Director of Writer Development Mari Cohen Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Education Editor Lit Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor

Hafsa Razi Sarah Claypoole Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta

Contributing Editors Joe Andrews, Ariella Carmell, Jonathan Hogeback, Andrew Koski, Carrie Smith, Kylie Zane Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producer Maira Khwaja Web Editor Camila Cuesta Social Media Editors Sierra Cheatham, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Layout Editors Baci Weiler, Sofia Wyetzner Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Maddie Anderson, Sara Cohen, Bridget Gamble, Christopher Good, Michal Kranz, Anne Li, Zoe Makoul, Sonia Schlesinger Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Social Media Intern

Ross Robinson

Webmasters Alex Mueller, Sofia Wyetzner Publisher

Harry Backlund

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

Cover art by Zelda Galewsky

IN CHICAGO

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

IN THIS ISSUE

Poor Defendants Shouldn’t Sit in Jail: Dart, and The People Suing Him Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is pushing for state legislation that would allow him to request lower bails for inmates who are sitting in jail before their trials simply because they can’t afford to bond up. The sheriff ’s office counts 271 jail inmates who have not been able to pay bonds of $1,000 or less. Currently, prosecutors and defense attorneys can request bond reductions for defendants, but Dart’s office argues that he is uniquely suited to advocate for inmates based on his familiarity with their situation. The sheriff ’s pronouncement came on Saturday—just a day after his office was sued by two inmates of Cook County jail in a class action lawsuit that accuses Dart, along with other county officials, of running a system that discriminates against poor defendants. Adding further pressure is the fact that in the past week, both ABC7 and nonprofit news group Injustice Watch have independently published investigations that highlight the dubious legality and ethics of incarcerating individuals who have not been charged with a crime for months or years until their trials conclude. Dart’s policy officer, Cara Smith, said the decision to name Dart in the lawsuit is “puzzling and defies logic,” according to the Tribune, given the sheriff ’s efforts to reduce inequities in the bail system. The sheriff ’s timely announcement may be an answer to the charges, but even he would probably admit that retroactively reducing some of the unreasonably high bonds still being set doesn’t really get at the root of the issue.

a broken shield

More Metra Money The Metra has long been a pricier transit option than the CTA, and that price difference is likely to increase as Metra proposes its third fare hike in as many years. According to the Tribune, the commuter rail service’s board proposed the new increase on Friday, which would add twenty-five cents to one-way tickets, $2.75 to ten-ride tickets, and $11.75 to monthly passes. The purpose of the price increase is to raise funds for Metra’s ten-year, $2.4 billion modernization plan. This increase will generate $16.1 million, which is especially crucial for Metra, since it has fallen behind on paying for maintenance and new equipment due to a shortage in funding from the state. Public hearings on the proposal will be held on November 2 and 3, and the board will make a final vote on November 11. In other Metra news, a coalition of South Side community groups and businesses continues to advocate for increased Metra Electric service, including trains that run every ten to fifteen minutes, and integrated fares across Metra, Pace, and the CTA. According to a Tribune article from June, a study examining capacity along the Metra Electric line, whose results might have implications for the campaign for increased transit service, is underway and slated for completion in early 2017.

“We need to become a different kind of society.” rachel kim......................................14

Surprise Re-Opening The chain-link fences around Jackson Park’s Wooded Island will finally come down this weekend after a long eighteen months. The Army Corps of Engineers, and $8.1 million, have turned an overgrown island full of invasive and pest-vulnerable plants into a native “prairie garden,” as described by the park’s volunteer steward to DNAinfo. Although the restoration project was initially slated to last until 2020, it was announced last week through the park’s volunteer newsletter that the park would be opening almost four years ahead of schedule. One can’t help but draw a connection between this abrupt change of plans and the unveiling of Yoko Ono’s “Skylanding,” an art installation on Wooded Island, which wouldn’t have been accessible to the public until the new plantings became established. Although the Army Corps will maintain the site and fences have been installed to make sure the more delicate plantings are protected, it’s hard to predict how this change in the timeline will affect the work that’s been done. The park will open to all activities (aside from fishing) on Saturday, October 22 at 10am.

“Ms. Bishop, I can’t stay here one more day.” eleanore catolico............................4 producing dialogue

Sometimes a little level of support goes a long way. natasha mijares..............................9 bigger than buying black

The final winner succeeded in selling a total of 109 rolls of toilet paper with 40.33 dollars of net profit. yunhan wen....................................12 a fundamental loss of freedom

home on the state street corridor

“ You live in the projects?” she asks. jasmine sanders..............................16

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OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

A Broken Shield

Cook County’s public defenders are overworked and underfunded. But criminal justice reform won’t succeed without them. BY ELEANORE CATOLICO

eanne Bishop believes her profession is a vocation. After her pregnant sister and her brother-in-law were killed, she wrote a book about her path to forgiving her family’s murderer. Then she became a public defender in Cook County, representing those charged with lesser or even similar crimes. Of all the legal professions, the public defender is the underdog, pitted against prosecutors armed with more money and manpower. Being a public defender can be a thankless job, met with an all-too-common refrain: How can you defend these people? Nevertheless, many are driven by a fierce moral imperative: to fight for those exiled to society’s margins. Yet quiet wars waged in courtrooms can become attritional, leading to compromise. Often, public defenders meet with their clients when they are already detained in a place infamous for its controlled chaos: the Cook County Jail, one of the most overcrowded jails in the United States. As the months, or even years, drag on before the trial even begins, Bishop says defendants become anxious, stuck in an echo chamber with other prisoners. “People who have never been locked up before don’t realize what an enclosed environment that is. You are locked away from your friends and family. Some people can’t afford to visit,” says Bishop. The time defendants spend in the Cook County Jail takes its toll. “They’ll plead guilty sometimes to get out. I tell people, ‘Please don’t do that,’ and they’ll say, ‘Ms. Bishop, I can’t stay here one more day.’ ” 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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ZELDA GALEWSKY

If a defendant cannot afford to hire their own attorney, the government is obligated by the constitution to provide them with one. In this sense, public defenders are often the only resource for those accused of crimes. Their ability to protect their clients is undermined, however, when the infrastructure of the criminal justice system gets in their way. Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board President, outlined an ambitious criminal justice reform agenda in March, calling for the end of mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent offenses and for the creation of better juvenile justice laws. However, few have explored the role that reforming public defense can play in the larger criminal justice reform conversation. Even less attention has been paid to how

mass incarceration helped create the crisis the public defense profession faces today. If public defense continues to be devalued, in Cook County and elsewhere, this will maintain an unequal balance of justice that harms poor defendants—those who have the most to lose from the consequences of a drained public defense system. PUBLIC DEFENSE IN COOK COUNTY

ore than half of all criminal defendants in Cook County are represented by a public defender. That’s no small number. In its statistical reports, the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts found that the Cook Coun-

ty courts saw a significant drop in misdemeanor and felony case filings from 2009 to 2014. However, there has been a 162 percent increase in the county’s incarceration rate since 1978, according to the Incarceration Trends Project, an analytical tool created by the Vera Institute of Justice to track incarceration rates in jails across the U.S. Because of how many people the county incarcerates, the public defender office manages more than a hundred thousand cases each year— and that’s a conservative estimate. “I know we are severely strained for clients,” Bishop says. “You hear all the time, ‘You don’t see rich people on death row.’ Our resources are limited from the county. Even though every year the head of our office asks for money, we have to work within the resources that we do have. So it’s a constant challenge.” The significant burdens on public defenders raise questions about whether they can be as effective as private lawyers, or work through all their cases without undue delays. Those burdens also make it harder for them to protect defendants from court fees and assessments that can push low-income clients into a cycle of debt. In Cook County, some misdemeanors can carry a fine of $2,500 or more, and certain drug convictions can result in fines of more than $500,000. And it’s not just convictions: multiple smaller court costs can also create an inescapable fiscal burden for defendants living in poverty. “The pressure of too many defendants and too few resources has subtle but important effects on communities,” reported

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the Illinois State Bar Association in its 2013 publication on the funding crisis in the Illinois courts. “Delays in resolving cases leave victims, witnesses, and even whole communities with no sense of closure, and leave those who are wrongly accused with a diminished sense of vindication. In the criminal system more so than in other parts of the court system, justice delayed can truly be justice denied.” A PUBLIC DEFENSE CRISIS?

llinois is hardly the only state facing this problem. The national narrative of public defense is one of crisis: resource deficiencies, funding instabilities, and crushing caseloads are endemic to public defense offices across the country, leaving some hopelessly crippled. In Missouri, the state’s top public defender responded to persistent funding shortages by unsuccessfully attempting to order the governor, a lawyer who more than once has blocked increased funding for the office, to defend an indigent person. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the New Orleans public defender’s office has joined the host of public defense systems sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—in their case, for refusing to represent more clients. Some public defender’s offices are stronger, such as the one in the Bronx in New York City, which uses a holistic defense model incorporating social services, and in San Francisco, where residents elect the chief public defender. But they are exceptions. Where do Cook County public defenders fall on the crisis spectrum? Though Cook County’s public defense system is not in such dire straits as those in, say, Missouri, it is still affected by the same obstacles of insufficient finances and unreasonable workloads. But even if the diagnosis isn’t fatal, the disease shouldn’t be ignored. The public defense budget endures waves of volatility. Funding models for public defense vary state by state, and Illinois has a county-based public defender funding model. Counties that exceed the threshold of 35,000 citizens are legally required to establish and fund their own offices. Last week, Preckwinkle released the fiscal year 2017 budget recommendations for Cook

County; they would cut eighteen staff positions from the public defender’s office, says Lester Finkle, the Cook County Public Defender’s Office Chief of Staff. Preckwinkle’s proposal includes slight increases in appropriations for public defenders, but these are to pay for employee benefits like health insurance, which were not previously included in departmental budgets. But, Finkle notes, the recommended budget is funded in part by revenue from a proposed tax on sugary drinks. If no such additional revenue is generated, there could be as many as a thousand positions cut in not only the public defender’s office, but also the sheriff ’s department and the state’s attorney’s office. Preckwinkle’s smaller cuts, then, are dependent on an unsecured source of funding. Even though Cook County has one of the largest public defender systems in the country, with twelve divisions and over 5 attorneys, a constellation of failed criminal justice policies, including high arrest and incarceration rates, pre-trial detention, and poor jail conditions, directly impact the work of the public defenders. The more people who are incarcerated, the more lawyers there must be on hand to defend them. As a result of these difficulties, usually all a public defender can accomplish is mitigation, or the negotiation of sentence reductions. Often it’s a form of damage control. “Our job all the time is to prevent our clients from going into custody, or if they are in custody, to get them out,” Bishop says. “We file motions to reduce bail. We file motions to get our clients on electronic home monitoring while they’re waiting for their case to be resolved.” But public defense has been largely left out of the national conversation on criminal justice reform. Jonathan Rapping, founder of Gideon’s Promise, an Atlanta-based nonprofit dedicated to training public defenders, says this is a fatal flaw. “As someone who has been devoted to public defense reform my entire career, I am excited that finally, as a nation, we are talking about criminal justice reform,” says Rapping. But you can watch countless panels and presentations and read countless articles [on

GRAPHICS BY JASMINE MITHANI

OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

criminal justice reform], and there will be forums put on about it, and we talk about sentencing reform and decriminalizing certain behaviors, but the words ‘public defender’ will never be mentioned once. The  Democratic Party’s platform finally addressed criminal justice but never mentioned public defenders.” THE IMPACT OF MASS INCARCERATION

ass incarceration has not only made the United States the country with the largest prison population, both in total and per capita; it has also dealt an enormous blow to public defense. (Some scholars also argue that the opposite is true, that a weakened public defender system makes mass incarceration worse.) In the 1970s, a perfect storm of enforcement mandates spiked the number of arrests for drug crimes. These cases added to the workloads of public defenders, less than twenty years after Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision that ruled that the states were constitutionally obligated to provide lawyers for criminal defendants who could not afford to hire one on their own. “[O]ur criminal justice system has grown dramatically since 1963—without the funding necessary for public defenders to keep up with growing caseloads and resource demands,” reported the Brennan Center for Justice in “Gideon at 50.” Keith Ahmad, the assistant public defender under the head of the Cook County public defender’s office, Amy Campanelli, says that the sheer number of defendants public defenders must represent has a direct impact on case outcomes. He has been a public defender for more than twenty-eight years. “The longer it takes for us to represent a single client, the longer Cook County jail has to house that person. What directly impacts how long it takes us to represent those clients is the number of clients there are per attorney,” Ahmad says. The fewer public defenders there are, the more clients each defender has, and the more a defender must jump back and forth between different 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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cases, making it difficult to resolve each case in a timely manner. The Guardian has reported that the overuse of continuances by public defenders, or postponement of trial in order to buy more time to prepare, creates trial delays that force poor clients to stay in jail longer. The average caseload burden for a public defender in the felony, misdemeanor and juvenile divisions is astronomical. According to Finkle, the average caseloads for felony attorneys are approximately 250 cases per year; for misdemeanor attorneys it’s more than double, at 750 to 800 cases per year; and the attorneys in the juvenile justice division manage around 300 juvenile delinquency cases a year. These numbers far surpass American Bar Association’s national guidelines for reasonable workloads (150 cases per year for felony attorneys, 400 for misdemeanors, and 200 for juvenile justice), even though the office has seen slight increases in appropriations over the last five years. This overwork can be exacerbated by flawed criminal justice practices, such as detaining those who aren’t convicted of crimes. Pre-trial detention. the policy of detaining those who cannot pay bail, has led to what is lamented as an “assembly line” for justice; it’s a key reason why the Cook County jail is so overpopulated. Bond court at 26th and California sees a revolving door of defendants every day. It’s where public defenders meet with their clients for the first time, and this interaction usually lasts less than two minutes before the hearings. The brevity is a result of public defenders’ huge caseloads, which limit the amount of time, preparation and investment they can devote to each case. Even when public defenders are spending time representing a client, studies indicate that there is an asymmetry in the courtroom that puts them at a disadvantage. In July, the Cook County Sheriff ’s Justice Institute (SJI) released an analysis of felony bond court based on a review of 1,574 cases from February 1 to March 29 of this year. The SJI found that private attorneys were given 300 seconds on average to speak on the behalf of their clients, but public defenders were only given one hundred seconds. The

POLITICS

SJI also found that within thirty-one days of appearing in bond court, fifty-two percent of private attorneys’ clients bailed out compared to twenty-three percent of public defenders’ clients. It’s evident that the odds are stacked against both public defenders and their clients. SHORTCOMINGS OF PUBLIC DEFENSE

t’s also no secret that choruses of complaints have been levied against public defenders. In the context of the obstacles public defenders face, it can be difficult for clients to feel they have been represented fairly. One such former client is Colette Payne. A local TV news anchor once asked Payne why she broke the law if she loved her two young sons. Payne, now forty-nine, said the question made her head spin. It’s a reminder that the past can never truly leave you. As a teenager, Payne’s life was far from easy. She came of age in the 1990s and lived in the Ida B. Wells housing complex during the heyday of the city’s public housing projects. Her mother was a secretary, and her father owned a dance studio. She had two sisters and three brothers. Her older sister suffered from mental illness, which was swept under the rug, she says. When her father got sick, her family fell on financial hardship and ended up losing their home. That’s when she started to steal. Later, she would battle a drug addiction. From the 1990s to 2012, Payne was incarcerated five times. For one of those convictions, she was represented by a public defender. Payne felt let down by her legal counsel. “I felt at the time that the public defender was not on my side. I feel that they didn’t have my best interest at hand,” she says. “They would say things like, “ ‘Well, you have a background.’ I would say, ‘I need help, I’m addicted.’ And they’d say, ‘Okay, whatever.’ But you know, you’re facing anywhere from two to ten [years] because of your background. It wasn’t like they were really trying to help me get out of the situation.”

Her story mirrors the frustrations felt by others in similar situations: their doubts and fears can fall on seemingly unsympathetic ears, and there’s a loss of trust. In at least one case, tensions between a public defender and a client reached a boiling point. In 2001, the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Anthony Jefferson, who at the time was incarcerated at the Menard Correctional Center serving a seventy-five-year sentence, after the Cook County public defender assigned to his appeal filed an Anders motion, which dismisses an appeal on the grounds that it is frivolous. The ACLU’s lawsuit argued that the office refused the case unfairly and alleged the office routinely filed such motions on appeals that were not frivolous solely to clean out the office’s mounting backlog of cases. After several months, then-governor George Ryan approved a $4.7 million budget to have the state appellate court take on a large portion of the appeals cases. Some of the frustrations voiced by Payne, however, point to how public defenders are only able to assist their clients with the legal process, not the factors that got them there. “We believe there is an important purpose to the criminal justice system, especially if there are crimes of violence and crimes where there are victims. But there are a lot of victimless crimes that can be treated other ways,” says Aisha Edwards, the supervising criminal defense attorney at Cabrini Green Legal Aid, a legal service offered in the city that specializes in criminal and housing cases. It is the only no-cost legal service for adult criminal defendants in Chicago other than the public defender’s office. Edwards transitioned into criminal defense practice after eight years as a state prosecutor. Edwards believes public defenders and other attorneys representing low-income clients face a mountain of difficulties. “I think public defenders and us who work on behalf of those who are indigent do the best with what we have. The reform starts with the types of laws we have on the books,” she says. “Even as a prosecutor, there’s a lot of cases in the system where they are just not the best use of judicial resources and OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

taxpayer money. There’s so many nonviolent cases. There are so many misunderstandings. There’s a lot of cases where there aren’t any crimes being committed until law enforcement happened upon the scene.” Edwards also meditates on what the short-term gains are for incarcerating a person for a minor offense versus the longterm way a rap sheet can disrupt a person’s life. “Should this one case go on and prevent them from living a productive life, and have a job and contribute to society?” Edwards asks. “Especially if they are really young?” WHAT DOES NEED?

PUBLIC

DEFENSE

n the public defense crisis, the stakes for the indigent are high. Their fate rests in the hands of these lawyers, who, by and large, recognize the collateral damage of the criminal justice system, from the harsh conditions of its facilities to the lifelong burden of a criminal record. If public defenders can’t win an alternative to holding a defendant in custody, or if they lose a case, it harms clients’ immediate present (loss of work, strain on family bonds), and it can hurt their chances for a second act. Resolving financial and resource deficiencies is only a start. Caseload caps— and the funding required to continue representing all clients while still enforcing them—can alleviate workloads. But increasing resources won’t fix the underlying problems that cause such strain on the system, as the chief Cook County public defender Amy Campanelli recognizes. She told Chicago magazine in February that “it’s all about poverty.” It’s necessary to shift the focus to addressing the structural social problems faced by residents in impoverished neighborhoods that catapult them into the justice system in the first place. Rehabilitating defendants and healing divides with those they’ve harmed is at the heart of the concept of restorative justice, and in Chicago, the restorative justice movement has gained some traction: the first community court was established in North Lawndale last April. Still, right now, the allocation of these services is limited; there’s not enough for everyone who may need them. Diversion programs, like mental health and drug courts that provide treatment options

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to clients instead of incarceration, are also limited in the number of participants they can accept, and strict requirements must be met by those accepted into these programs. But the reality is that as long as we maintain the basic framework of criminal justice, people will always get arrested, and people will always go to jail. For Malcolm Rich, executive director of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, empowering public defenders means low-income defendants have better access to justice. And because the majority of low-income criminal defendants are people of color, the issue of public defense becomes one of racial justice too. “A strong public defender system is essential to provide the check[s] and balance[s] necessary within the criminal justice system; protecting...individual rights but also protecting the integrity of the system,” he says. “For example, a public defender can challenge an unfair bail ruling, thereby reducing overincarceration. A public defender can challenge unfair imposition of court costs, fines, and fees—protecting against these ‘taxes’ which destroy lives and communities. Public defenders safeguard our criminal justice system.” The conversation about criminal justice reform, on a national and local level, would benefit from recognizing how failed criminal justice policies feed into the obstacles public defenders face. If public defenders were consistently given sufficient money and resources, they could invest more time into advocating for their clients, which would result in fewer people incarcerated, and ensure that those who are convicted are sentenced more fairly. If bond reform measures were implemented, such as releasing more people under electronic monitoring, fewer people would be held in custody before their trials begin, and relations between public defenders and their clients could dramatically improve. Reforming mandatory minimum sentencing and moving toward jail diversion programs would alleviate the pressures both public defenders and clients face to accept unfair sentences and would instead put the focus on the client’s treatment and rehabilitation. In a system that empowered and supported public defense, it would be easier for public defenders to use the law as a shield for lowincome defendants rather than as a sword against them. ¬

ART

Producing Dialogue

Artists open up Produce Model Gallery in Pilsen BY NATASHA MIJARES

pen on the corner of 19th Street and Morgan, Produce Model Gallery is ready to speak back to its neighbors. Artists Javier Bosques and Maggie Crowley bought the gallery space in early 2016, and debuted its inaugural exhibition, “FRUIT,” on July 23. Originally a laundromat, the artists have kept the original signage in order to preserve its history in the neighborhood. Bosques and Crowley met at a residency program in Maine called Kamp Kippy. Maine is just one of many states where Bosques and Crowley have gradually forged good relationships with a number of established artists. Bosques, who is from Puerto Rico, went to Cooper Union in New York before completing his master’s at UCLA. Crowley went to Eastern Illinois and Illinois State, where she earned a master’s in art education. She then completed a second master’s at the University of Chicago in studio art. With their combination of East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest peers, colleagues, and mentors, Bosques and Crowley have been able to work with people that they truly admire. “It is inherent in our vision to involve the community,” Bosques says. “By inviting emerging and established artists from the Chicago artist community and elsewhere, we want to bridge the conversations and see what connections can be made. At our gallery, seventy percent of the profit goes to our artists. That’s more than you’re gonna get at any other kind of art institution.”

Because Produce Model is an artist-run space, the curatorial duo put the needs of their artists first—and “needs” don’t always include money. “We also support a lot of our artists during production in order for them to properly execute or complete a piece that we’re interested in showing,” says Bosques. In the gallery, he pointed out frames and pedestals that elegantly complement the pieces. That Produce Model is able to provide these for the artists is evidence of the cooperative, supportive relationship they’re aiming for. Bosques likes to introduce “FRUIT” with a sculptural painting by the Cuban artist Zilia Sánchez, “Series ‘Las Amazonas.’ ” Bosques studied under her in Puerto Rico, and this piece is from his personal collection, which he used to eat in front of every day while in college. It served as an inspiration to develop and challenge his own work. This sculptural painting’s manipulation of white space has a silent draw; it plays with the way you orient yourself to the gallery walls. “Series ‘Las Amazonas’ ” hangs apart from the other works in the show. When installing the works, Bosques considered the physical space that each piece needed in order for the viewer to best appreciate it. Hung on the wall adjacent to Sanchez’s piece is “Images in Debris” by Sara Sze. It employs a similar use of white space as an entry point to the work’s subject. The piece is a refreshing departure from the sculptural works she’s more known for: here, her

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF PRODUCE MODEL GALLERY

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technique was to put her thumb on different parts of the image while the ink was still wet, dragging the paper to spread out the colors and create a dripping effect. Two paintings by Katherine Harvath on the opposite wall work with similar tonal values, but in a more painterly context, setting up a dialogue between the two works. The most sculptural piece in the exhibition is that of Jessica Stockholder, chair of the University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts. Her piece was originally titled “Expression Blue.” In one of her correspondences with Produce Model, she mentioned the title’s origin: “Oh—Expression Blue, berries are blue.” This was enough of a connection for Bosques and Crowley to put it in “FRUIT.” The installation, which mimics the remnants of a painter at work—a ladder and corresponding surfaces covered in blue—starts a different conversation than the other pieces. It sets up an entryway to the process of making in a way that feels open and full of intuition and play. This sense of play is also present in one

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of the most striking features of the exhibition: the accompanying text, available on Produce Model’s website. “A Methodological Examination of Fruit Types” is credited to Patricia Rose and has contributions from exhibiting artists Carris Adams, Anaïs Daily, and Sam Vernon. Rose adopts the form of the colophon (a statement at the beginning or end of a book that typically gives information about its authorship and printing) as a platform for defining the botanical and consumptive properties of fruit and its vegetal allies. While exhibitions often have dry and tired essays explaining the curatorial themes of the show, this text does all that through the power of collaged language, allowing for the pieces to be seen as a fragments or flavors of methodology, instead of trying to collect the exhibition into a whole. Curatorial statements aside, Bosques realizes another Pilsen gallery might not appear pressing at first glance. “There are of course other studios and galleries around, but we are confident that what we are do-

ing is still necessary,” Bosques told me. “We want to showcase the underrepresented, the disenfranchised. While this isn’t a part of our marketing strategy, our first show includes all women artists—that’s just consequential of the discourse we wanted to create in the space. We want to create unity within a working community.” Produce Model also wants to give voice to younger, emerging artists. Christine Wang, an artist from Los Angeles, exhibits her paintings of x-rays along one of the windows of the space. “A lot of people ask us if they’re human x-rays or her [Wang’s] x-rays,” says Bosques. Wang paints a series of confrontational messages about her Asian-American female experience and sexuality. She tackles questions like, “What does it mean to be in a body? What does it mean to be subject to the male gaze?” The images and letters are rendered hastily and urgently, speaking out with anger and desperation at Wang’s frustration with the pressure to “define” oneself. The opposite window echoes these ideas

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around sexuality and the body: here you can find the work of Katherine Harvath, one of the exhibition’s Chicago-based artists. There is a retail-style postcard rack that has postcards by the artist depicting different kinds of drapery. On the floor beside them are her “Clits.” These neon-colored sculptures were made after the artist learned that the clitoris is shaped very much like a wishbone. They are adorned with early-2000s relics of femininity: puffy rearview mirror charms, small pouches to put your lavender in, and other dangling oddities. The “Clits” appear almost as if they’re walking, and their sense of movement leads us to the floor-based work of Anaïs Daly, another local artist. She creates sculptural compositions with debris from an abandoned town that she frequents. She photographs the area and then tries to re-illustrate or inform her sculptural work with them. These works function in the way a painting would, but allow for more inspection and reference to the archive.

Bosques finds that “sometimes a little level of support goes a long way. In the U.S., you don’t really find that there is a level of ownership that galleries claim to their artists. We’re not for that, we just want well-curated shows. It demands a different type of attention, but we still want every artist to feel special. We want to be able to put them in dialogue with the right people for their next venture.” Bosques and Crowley stress community as an entry to art-making while maintaining a vision for work that does not seek to over-define itself. Many collectives and institutions strive for this dynamic, but Produce Model succeeds in a way that’s gentle, compassionate, and “tutti fruitti.” ¬ “FRUIT” is open at Produce Model Gallery until October 22. 1007 W. 19th St., Suite 1. Open Saturdays 1pm–5pm or by appointment.

OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

Bigger than Buying Black An entrepreneurship program explores the challenges facing black-owned businesses

BY YUNHAN WEN

n August 12, at the chapel of Gifts from God Ministry (GFGM) in Englewood, twenty young adults sang and danced to James Brown’s 1968 hit “Say it Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” Holding in their hands Future Business Certificates issued by the church, they celebrated their graduation from a six-week entrepreneurial experience program designed to show them the ins and outs of running a black business. The program they were a part of—its full title is ““Dr. Webb Evans Black South Entrepreneurial Experience: Say it Loud, I’m black and I’m proud”—was one of sixty-four recipients of a $1000 grant from the Chicago Community Trust, a citywide community foundation. GFGM designed the program to let a younger generation “get a first-hand understanding of what it takes to develop and maintain a successful business,” according to the church’s video submission for the award. Young participants of the program toured local black-owned businesses including a beauty salon, a hardware store, and a McDonald’s, and listened to the owners share their experiences. After all the field trips and meetings, the program culminated in an assignment, wherein the participants were required to sell toilet paper using what they learned from the past few weeks. The final winner succeeded in selling a total of 109 rolls of toilet paper with $40.33 worth of net profit. “We feel this experience will be educational, informational, and inspirational, leading our youth to explore black business management courses as they continue their education,” said GFGM co-pastor Elder Chisum in the video submission. The goal of the program was not simply 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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ELLEN HAO

to introduce the participants to ideas about entrepreneurship. As the name suggests, the color of local enterprises matters greatly to the creators. In fact, the course was established in honor of Dr. Webb Evans, a legendary social activist who earned the nickname “Mr. Buy Black” by encouraging African Americans to invest in their own community. Dr. Evans’s philosophy suggested two ways of making such investments: first, buying from local black businesses and second, to establishing local black businesses to facilitate buying black and offer jobs to unemployed people in the neighborhood. As a result, the two parts of the strategy complement each other and money circulates within the community. The Buy Black movement has gained new attention in recent years. In her 2012 book, Our Black Year, Maggie Anderson, who lives in the Chicago suburbs, described her family’s endeavor to buy only from black businesses for all of 2009. In a New York Times profile, Anderson described how inconvenient this sometimes became: for example, she had to purchase gas from a black-owned Citgo thirty-five miles from her home. Of course, Anderson is relatively wealthy and well-educated (she has an MBA and a law degree); for the majority of consumers, inconvenience can make it more difficult for them to change their habits. Our Black Year reflected, in particular, on the lack of growth, and perhaps even decline, in the number of black businesses within the city’s mostly black areas. “It was heartbreaking taking in how the West Side and the South Side used to have so many business owners, and now most of those businesses are owned by outsiders,” Anderson told the Times. According to the 2012 Survey of

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Business Owners published by the United States Census Bureau in 2015, 9.4 percent of firms are owned by African Americans, who make up 13.3 percent of the population. For comparison, white-owned firms are 78.0 percent of the total, while white Americans occupy 77.1 percent of the population. There are historical reasons for the underrepresentation of African Americans in business. As research done by the Economic History Association reveals, the economic

instilled in the program’s participants, who are promising consumers as well as potential business owners. It is a brave attempt to revive black entrepreneurship, grounded in the hope of alleviating the toll that structural change has taken on black communities. However, such an attempt might have a hard time making real change if not accompanied by other societal changes. According to academics, the institutional challenges faced by African American

“There was a whole lot of issues. They refused me many times and in the end someone else had to step in to put up a guarantee.” —John Stallworth, owner of John’s Hardware status of African Americans experienced significant growth during wartime in the 1940s, but starting from the seventies the introduction of new technology, coupled with a low education rate among AfricanAmericans, severely hurt blue-collar manufacturing jobs. That was especially true in cities, that became informationprocessing and financial centers. “The economic engine behind the midcentury improvement in black economic status was based on employment in the manufacturing and state sectors of the economy,” said University of Chicago Political Science Professor Michael Dawson, who is also the director of the UofC’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. “The devastation these two sectors experienced from the late 1960s to the present has led to massive un- and under employment in black communities, such as the South Side of Chicago... [These changes] also led in part to disproportionate failing of black businesses during the same period.” GFGM’s program, if it becomes an annual event, will thus carry on Dr. Evans’s legacy perfectly: it encourages a young generation of black business owners while making sure the ethos of buying black is

communities cannot be solved solely by black entrepreneurship. An entrepreneurial strategy is only a partial answer, one that has to be accompanied by other structural reforms that fight existing racial discrimination and cover up the racial economic gap that has only been exacerbated over the last forty years. A revival of black entrepreneurship, and an improvement in the socioeconomic status of African Americans in general, require separate pushes for institutional reform, social change and government support—but most of those pushes are still lacking. According to the official site of the City Treasurer of Chicago, for example, there is no governmental financial support specifically dedicated to minority business enterprises (MBEs). Instead, small businesses are the general targets. Even for small businesses, the Treasurer’s Small Business Loan Programs function mostly as an intermediate connecting small business owners to third-party lenders, in response to President Obama’s Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. But according to Dawson, entrepreneurs who come from underserved communities are less likely, when subjected to the same standard as others, to get fully funded by

third-party lenders, since the track records of their enterprises, the scale of their business, and the number and the quality of their employees all suffer from the existing racial inequalities. “Research at many leading universities show that substantial racial discrimination continues in loan, retail, housing, and employment markets,” he said. John Stallworth is the owner of John’s Hardware and Bicycle Shop in Englewood, the store where young participants of the GFGM program went to receive training in hardware business. When he started the business, he applied for the federal Small Business Loan, which granted him $70,000. That took him ten years to pay back, but he had trouble procuring the loan in the first place. “There were a whole ton of issues for whatever reason...Finally, someone else had to step in to put up a guarantee,” Stallworth told the Weekly. “They refused me because their policy was that, I had to put in ten percent [of the loan.] At that point I had ten percent, but I didn’t have the collateral. They also wanted collateral.” There’s also lingering cultural hostility toward the expansion of black businesses. According to a Tribune article, many successful black entrepreneurs will hide that their businesses are black-owned in order to market their products to new clients. Only when the new customers become regulars do they consider revealing the nature of their business. When asked whether they realized this will only add to the racial discrimination, they gave the Tribune answers such as I’ll worry about it later, and “There’s a perception that black people can only do black stuff [which limits blackowned business].” Together with a lack of institutional support, these social stereotypes can lead to strong resistance against significant growth in black businesses. And if black entrepreneurship cannot grow significantly, black-owned businesses will have difficulties realizing Evans’s vision of hiring the unemployed to create self-reliance within the community and founding more black businesses to invest in. “It is true that a partial answer to bridging the wealth/income racial gap is building up black businesses and increasing the amount of a time any given dollar circulates within the black community before it leaves. But that is only a small part

of the problem,” says Dawson. Of course, the GFGM program participants will encounter an additional problem: being a teenager doesn’t always square well with being a CEO. During the course, participants got to meet Jayden Hammond,the twelve-year-old entrepreneur who runs his own gourmet vegan popcorn business in Englewood. When asked what challenges young entrepreneurs are likely to face, Jayden immediately answered, “The first challenge will be not having the money and supplies.” Jayden himself solved that issue with a thoughtful business model: by making popcorn, Jayden could start his business simply with the popcorn popper he already had at home. The biggest challenge young entrepreneurs will encounter, however, is a limited business scale, since they also have to go to school. “Usually every week we have about fifteen to twenty orders [online],” says Jayden, whose popcorn varies from three to eight dollars in price. “I do want to expand the business when I’m older, but right now the schoolwork is my priority since I want to have very good education.” And black youth entrepreneurs should gird themselves for even more obstacles, since they’ll face the same problem as adults when they try to expand their business: existing racial inequality reflected in lending, marketing, and buying. At the end of the interview, Jayden took an optimistic stance: “I want people to know that J-Rock‘s Pop is a small business now, but it will grow larger and it needs people’s support,” he said. When he grows up, that support may be bigger and more robust than a simple commitment to buying his products. ¬

OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

LIT

A Fundamental Loss of Freedom

Forrest Stuart and Jamie Kalven on the toll of hyper-policing BY RACHEL KIM

COURTESY OF THE SEMINARY CO-OP

orrest Stuart, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, joined Jamie Kalven, writer and executive director of the Invisible Institute, at the Seminary Co-Op last Wednesday to speak about Stuart’s new book Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row. As part of research for his book, Stuart spent time in the neighborhood and with the people of Skid Row, in Los Angeles. Skid Row, Stuart noted, has the highest concentration of reentering prisoners in the country. Stuart argued that the omnipresence of police in Skid Row, where one can get ticketed or even detained for jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, takes a material, social, and mental toll on the residents. Under the constant threat of being stopped by police, they perform an identity that emphasizes their non-criminality. This “cognitive displacement,” Kalven added, shows that people in places like Skid Row and the South Side of Chicago are already situated in their society with “a fundamental loss of freedom.” However, the necessity of self-policing one’s identity, under the threat of incarceration and violence, rarely allows residents to notice these losses. Kalven then noted that the kids on the South Side are all too familiar with this 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

form of hyper-policing in their own neighborhoods. In every trivial interaction with the police, he argued, local youth are sure of two things: that the police have all the power in the situation, and if the encounter takes a turn for the worst, that people won’t believe them. Stuart remarked that the constant vigilance and performativity it takes to navigate hyper-policed landscapes not only makes it difficult to build communities, but it also leaves little mental room to think about everyday things like school dances, soccer practice, or dinner plans. This is a cognitive freedom that people living in more privileged communities often take for granted. Nevertheless, Stuart mentioned grassroots organizations that are resisting hyper-policing, such as the Los Angeles Community Action Network, which is completely staffed by residents of Skid Row. Armed with video cameras, they document these interactions with police officers and use them in federal lawsuits and injunctions. In some ways, Stuart noted, hyper-policing practices have now allowed activists to force the police to become all the more visible.

tuart also spoke to many police officers that worked in Skid Row. Many of the cops who were genuinely compassionate and wanted to improve the neighbor-

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hood were often, to Stuart’ s surprise, the ones who were the most repressive. On their watch, law enforcement was not used as a tool to fix criminal behavior but to make residents as uncomfortable as possible, so that they would stop “choosing” to be poor, homeless, or mentally ill. Both Stuart and Kalven agreed that the overuse of policing forces is an indication of the failures of multiple American institutions, as well as a stark reminder of the limits of law enforcement. According to Stuart, Skid Row has depopulated and repopulated since the 1850s depending on the strength of the American social safety net. But potential solutions such as improving healthcare, offering decent wages and housing, or even just feeding students or investing in restorative justice and nonviolent resolutions, have been replaced by having more cops on every street corner. As Kalven noted, when this “quotidian use of police in everyday spaces” becomes normalized, people begin ignoring the roots of the issues that plague neighborhoods like Skid Row and end up relying on the police alone to repress the consequences. Ultimately, Stuart argued, the police in Skid Row know that they are not social workers. But their compassion becomes lost and misguided when, as Stuart noted, the only resources they have are their guns, batons, and hands. The real issues lie be-

yond law enforcement’s influence—they are structural problems that demand a reevaluation of both American policing and politics. Kalven remarked that this “post-Ferguson moment” in America is a “historical opening for fundamental change” in which we are “grappling with a set of structural patterns built into our society.” These issues with police accountability must be tied into a larger conversation about race in America, as it is impossible to change policing without acknowledging the fact that hyper-policing of certain neighborhoods is ultimately tied to racial segregation. However, Stuart admits that it is hard to convince policymakers that a ticket or a brief detention can lead to significant consequences in a person’s life. “Policymakers think that these are trivial incidents with officers,” he said. “They’re not talking to people who have five or more interactions a week [with police] just because of the neighborhood they live in.” But according to Kalven, there is “no way with our current inequalities that we’ve learned to accommodate that any sort of meaningful change can occur.” “Gradually, incrementally,” Kalven argued, “we need to become a different kind of society.” ¬

HOUSING

Home on the State Street Corridor

JULIE XU

BY JASMINE SANDERS

am eleven, and as we leave the eye institute at 35th Street, I feel like I have the vision of an eagle or some other large, keen-eyed predator. My irises are dark, dark brown, almost indistinguishable from my dilated pupils, but I like to imagine the small black pools slowly growing to obscure the irises surrounding them, performing a tiny, ocular eclipse.

Widened pupils take in more light, and for some people this makes their vision blurry. But for me, dilation makes my vision extra sharp, allowing me to see details I normally can’t discern even with my glasses. I can see the dozens of rough, tiny bumps that make up the concrete sidewalk, the way that scales make up an alligator’s hide. It is fall in Chicago, but summer lingers in the air and in my summer-browned skin. I am wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved yellow T-shirt, my colorful windbreaker knotted around my waist. We board the 29 State Street bus and my sensitive eyes spot a friend, one of the older girls from Washington Park summer camp, which I attended until a few weeks prior. She is darker than me, her skin a deep auburn with reddish undertones that my grandma called mahogany. This day her prettiness almost makes my eyes water. She waves, and I make my way to her. She hugs me and I try to distance myself from my grandma and

auntie, to look as old and mature as she is, riding the bus alone. Her hair is down and pressed straight, lightly skimming her lovely shoulders, while my own mane is pulled and gelled into two ponytails, as always.

We chat as much as two girls can in eight stops, which is a remarkable lot. We talk about classes and her upcoming freshman year of high school, whether we will return to camp next summer. I pull the metal chain for my stop, at 43rd and State. “You live in the projects?” she asks. Her face twists and her lips pull in tight. “My grandma does,” I reply. My rebuttal isn’t really a lie, since my grandmother does live in the Robert Taylor Homes housing projects, and I live with my grandma. But I need my deflection to distance me from whatever ugliness she obviously associates with where we live. My whole life is here, and it has never occurred to me to be ashamed of it. But her question, the harsh set of her face, the way that she quietly says “bye,” her eyes avoiding me, plant the first seeds of shame about the place that I call home. As we walk to my building, the seed grows into

something big and vile enough to choke me. The sixteen-story buildings, which I had always called white, to my new eyes seem dull and stained. I take in every individual bone-colored brick, each one uglier than the last. We pass the playground where I learned to ride a bike, where the ground used to shimmer like it was covered in diamonds or crystals. I realize that the glitter is actually millions of shards of glass from liquor bottles and other broken, delicate things. I never saw that girl again, but I have met dozens of versions of her; I’ve learned to expect that reaction when I tell people where I grew up. We lived in the Robert Taylor projects until I was fourteen, and I returned to hang out there until they were demolished when I was eighteen. My mother was unable to care for me and my two sisters, so my grandma welcomed us into her home, which she had moved into when the projects were first constructed in the 1960s. By the time we came to live with my grandma in the 1990s, she had already raised nine children and a handful of grandbabies in that apartment. Every surface of her home was covered in pictures, mementos, diplomas, bronzed baby shoes, and random odds and ends: all the vestiges of a life well lived. My aunt lived in the building next to us, with half a dozen cousins, and my other aunts and uncles were never too far away. Every holiday and birthday brought a

OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

horde of relatives to our home, with my grandma spending days cooking and preparing, calling in my cousins to help clean. I cannot remember a birthday or report card that was not celebrated or acknowledged in some way, or when the phone didn’t ring constantly with relatives sending their well wishes.

rowing up, I was ensconced in JULIE XU blac kness—and as an adult, I now see and appreciate the ways that affirmed my identity. I finally saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when I was twenty-four, and I was shocked that it was lauded as a “staple” of teen comedy. I had always thought that the classic tale of Chicago youth skipping class was Cooley High. I didn’t learn whiteness as a default— or the limitations placed on those who exist outside of it—until I was much, much older. All of our movies, the music we listened to, the books we read, the food that we ate—everything was a representation of Black American people and culture. I think that the first time I saw a picture of white Jesus was at a friend’s house; I remember thinking he was an entertainer or model, with his big blue eyes and blonde hair. At our house, a large picture of Martin Luther King Jr. was framed and hung up as if he were a member of the family, and I think the first time I used the word “handsome”

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was in reference to a print of Marvin Gaye we kept near the living room table. When I was twelve, I picked up Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; when I put it down, I knew that I was a writer. Maya had given me permission. I was permitted to be a sensitive, curious, whip-smart black girl because all around me were black girls who had done the same, from Cassie Logan in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry to the cache of brilliant black women who were my teachers and mentors. If Ms. Wright had never handed me Sula in seventh grade, how would I be able to give words to the living, tender thing between me and my best friend, my Nel? How could I have become a writer of Midwestern ghost stories and lover of Southern conjures and root work if my older cousin hadn’t passed me her copy of Beloved?

his is what movies like Chi-Raq get wrong. Not all poor and black environs are dysfunctional. And even if there is dysfunction, it does not always exist independent of warmth and happiness. Our neighborhoods are broken in so many ways, but there is light here as well. This is not to say that our home was perfect, because it wasn’t. When we had get-togethers, family members would either leave early or spend the night, concerned about their safety in the projects after dark. I also had several suburban cousins who were forbidden to spend the night with us. Sometimes we slept on the floor, because my grandma was afraid that the gunfire she heard outside would make its way through our seventh-floor windows.

HOUSING

Gang violence turned our playground into a war zone, once keeping us indoors for an entire summer.

the days where everyone gathered to give thanks or celebrate a child’s birthday.

I remember having nightmares about Girl X, the young girl from the Cabrini-Green Homes who had been held and tortured in a vacant apartment. She was the same age as me when her victimizer left her mute, partially paralyzed, and brain-damaged. I asked everyone I knew why we didn’t know her name, why news outlets never printed or stated it. It seemed callous and reductive to not at least speak her name when we were rattling off her injuries and the brutalization of her nine-year-old body. Referring to her as “X,” an unknown, meant that she would always be defined by her trauma, which somehow, intuitively, I knew that she wouldn’t want. I watched the court trial closely, hoping to at least place a face to this girl we talked about so often, to know her beyond her tragedy. This year, I learned that her name is Shatoya Currie.

I still live on the South Side, and there are Robert Taylor reunion picnics every year in Washington Park, within walking distance of my apartment. Former inhabitants gather to catch up and talk about who lives where, who’s had a baby. Sometimes this regathering is nice, but sometimes it feels regressive. Sometimes I wonder if nostalgia has mythologized all of our pasts, added a sepia filter so that we remember them as prettier and softer than they really were.

The city of Chicago eventually decided that the Robert Taylor projects, a social experiment in affordable housing and urban development, had failed. Demolition of our buildings, lining State Street between 43rd and 47th, began in 2003. The last building, 4429, fell in 2007, and by then it was a wasteland, but people still grabbed and kept bricks from the demolished building as mementos. My grandma died the following year. With my grandma gone, my family doesn’t have a matriarch to prevent petty bickering and infighting, so my Christmases and Thanksgivings are usually spent at two or three different homes. Gone are

As a people, Black folks are deeply familiar with the miles of distance between where your feet are planted and where your heart calls home. Maybe placelessness, whether emotional or spatial, is just another pillar of the diaspora; maybe that is the invisible, hurting thread connecting all of us. We grasp at home wherever we can, even if it is full of snares and maws that eat our young with such ferocity so often that I begin to hate myself for the non-reaction I have when I hear of another felled black body. Last summer, I went to a boy’s nineteenth birthday party for the second year in a row. Twice now, I have watched his mama barbecue and laugh between the tears she sheds for her boy, chopped down by bullets before he could be a man.

rom Fred Hampton to Hadiya Pendleton, Chicago is a city bathed in black blood, and I often wonder where all these ghosts go. What becomes of Black girl haunts and Black boy phantoms who take their last breaths here? Do they make their way back to the South, where our grandparents came from, or do they stay and haunt the PJs, the only home that mattered to a lot of us? If Black Chicago ghosts make tracks for the South, why not keep going further, back to whatever West African coast our ancestors were dragged away from? Between slavery, reconstruction, the great migration, mass demolitions of public housing projects, and now our rapidly gentrifying hoods, the majority of us are unlikely to be able to live in the same home claimed by an older sibling, much less a parent or ancestor. For so many Black Americans, home and the concept of it is as transient as we are. I still ride the 29 State Street bus, pulling the metal chain to get off at 55th and State. I look out the window, and neat townhomes stand in place of those sixteen-story monoliths that once grew out of the ground. The Black Belt, Bronzeville, or the Low End have all been names for my former home, the place I spent my formative years. My elementary school is dark and eerie now that it’s boarded up. A lone, sickly tree stands in the yard to the left of the entryway. I pass by and even though my eyes say otherwise, my heart still says home. ¬ A previous version of this article appeared on Buzzfeed.com as part of a series on the meaning of home.

JULIE XU

OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

BULLETIN Affordable Housing Opportunity Richard J. Daley Library, 3400 S. Halsted St. Thursday, October 20, 2:30pm–4:30pm. Call to register. (312) 666-3430. eriehouse.org This Thursday, Erie Neighborhood House, a nonprofit aimed at helping Chicago’s Latino community, will be hosting an affordable housing information session in Bridgeport. If added enticement is needed, there will be a free raffle. (Christian Belanger) The Displacement of Environmental Justice Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Sullivan Room. Wednesday, October 19, 4pm–5:30pm. Free. Register online at bit.ly/2ebsDrO. (312) 341-3670. roosevelt.edu Kimberly Wasserman-Nieto, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, will be sharing her experience in environmental organizing at this talk put on by Roosevelt University’s human rights project. Despite all of her political work, Wasserman-Nieto says her biggest accomplishment is “raising three community organizers aged 18, 11, and 8.” (Christian Belanger) A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation with Natalie Moore UIC Student Center East, 750 S. Halsted St., Room 329. Tuesday, October 25, 6pm– 7:30pm. Free. Register online. (312) 3555922. sji.uic.edu The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum joins UIC’s Social Justice Initiative for a talk by WBEZ reporter and South Side maven Natalie Moore. In her book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, Moore examines the separation of Chicago residents and “the policies that keep it that way.” (Christopher Good)

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Foundations of Restorative Justice The New Teacher Center, 310 S. Peoria St., Suite 510. Wednesday, October 26, 8:30am–noon. $75–$85. Register online at bit.ly/2dnuczL. (773) 312-3898. umojacorporation.org Are you an educator, community leader, or concerned citizen interested in learning about restorative justice? Look no further than the Umoja Student Development Corporation’s workshop on the Foundations of Restorative Justice, where you can take part in discussions and activities that will leave you feeling, well, restored. (Anne Li) City Colleges of Chicago Open Houses Harold Washington College, 30 E. Lake St.; Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson Ave.; Kennedy-King College, 6301 S. Halsted St.; Malcolm X College, 1900 W. Jackson Blvd.; Olive-Harvey College, 10001 S. Woodlawn Ave.; Daley College, 7500 S. Pulaski Rd.; and Wright College, 4300 N. Narragansett Ave. Thursday, October 27, 1pm–7pm. Free. Register online at bit.ly/2e0L2bP. (312) 5532500. ccc.edu The gateway to college beckons as all of the City Colleges of Chicago open their doors to welcome new applicants. The open houses will feature information on how to transfer to four-year universities, navigating financial aid, and career opportunities after graduation. (Anne Li) Panel Discussion on Human Trafficking

local communities, and engage the audience in “dynamic discussion.” (Hafsa Razi)

VISUAL ARTS Michiko Itatani: Hi-Point Contact Zhou B Art Center, 1029 W. 35th St. Opening reception Friday, October 21, 7pm–10pm. Exhibition runs October 17 to December 30, 10am–5pm; closed Sundays. Free. (7731) 523-0200. zhoubartcenter.com This event’s press release asks its own questions: “What is Michiko Itatani?” “Where is Michiko Itatani?” “When is Michiko Itatani?” We’re short on answers, but what we can tell you is that the Japanese-American artist doesn’t paint so much as build worlds. As the release portends: “hyperchromatic macrocosms, atoms arranged in a particular form...” (Christopher Good) Kate Perryman: Catch as Catch Can The Learning Machine, 3145 S. Morgan St. Opening reception Saturday, October 22, 7pm–10pm. learningmachine.chi@gmail.com There’s no catch here: just the latest exhibition by Chicago multimedia artist Kate Perryman, a meditation on color and space “initially inspired by 19th century animal trap illustrations.” Starting with these steelsprung instruments, Perryman pivots to the abstract: the concept of trap and of lure. (Christopher Good) Timothy Morton on Dark Ecology

Lindblom Park, 6054 S. Damen Ave. Saturday, October 29, 10am–1pm. Free. (773) 567-1805.

UofC Kent Hall, 1020 E. 58th St., Room 107. Sunday, October 23, 2pm. Free. (773) 702-8670. www.renaissancesociety.org

Voices of West Englewood invites parents and students to this panel, presented by The Chicago Alliance on Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation. The group aims to raise awareness of how these issues affect

For environmental writer and Rice University professor Timothy Morton, developing ecological awareness is like travelling along a Möbius strip. In his Renaissance Society lecture, related to the Ren’s ongoing exhi-

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bition Urth, Morton will demonstrate how this bizarre journey takes our understanding of the world from the “melancholy and negativity of coexistence” toward “something playful, anarchic, and comedic.” ( Juan Caicedo) what the body knows Stony Island Art Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. October 28–29, 6:30pm doors; 7:30pm performance. Free, registration required. (312) 857-5561 Renowned artist Barak adé Soleil will perform What the Body Knows, a nuanced suite of intimate dances he choreographed to a score by Sadie Woods to explore the intersection of race and disability, and diverse bodies. New York-based dance artist Jerron Herman also performs at Theaster Gates’s bank-turned-museum. ( Joseph S. Pete) Every link is a separation Slow, 2153 W. 21st St. Opening reception Saturday, October 29, 6pm–9pm. Through November 26, 2016. Free. (773) 645-8803. paul-is-slow.info A beaded curtain. Words. The backyard preserved in childhood memory. Each is used as the starting point from which artists Noël Morical, Fidencio Martinez, and Valentina Zamfirescu explore the inherent link between separation and connection, and the ambiguous nature of boundaries. (Michelle Yang) 11th Annual Folk Art Festival National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Friday, October 14, 10am–8pm; Saturday–Thursday, October 15–20, 10am–4pm; Friday, October 21, 10am–8pm; Saturday and Sunday, October 22–23, 10am–4pm. Free. (312) 758-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org Artists from all corners of Mexico come to the NMMA to occupy its own corners for a

EVENTS

weeklong celebration of their folk traditions and artistic craft. A range of materials and techniques are featured, from Talavera pottery from Puebla to foot-pedal loom weaving from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca. (Corinne Butta)

MUSIC Mr. Russia Pinwheel Records, 1722 W. 18th St. Wednesday, October 19, 6pm–9:30pm. Free. All ages. (312) 888-9629. pinwheelrecords.com Mr. Russia is a Chicago duo that plays furious, melodic garage rock, “100% guitar-free from cradle to grave.” Drummer Josh Vicari and singer/bassist Ivan Russia, known for their raucous live shows, will bring their aggressive, minimalist sound and catchy punk hooks to an in-store concert at Pilsen’s Pinwheel Records. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Red Bull Sound Select Presents: A Quest for Love Tour Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Thursday, October 20, doors 8pm, show 9pm. First come first serve. $3 with RSVP, $10 day of show. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com Mick Jenkins’ s Quest for Love tour will be stopping at Thalia Hall before heading to Europe. For their Chicago date, Jenkins and Smino will be joined by Kweku Collins. Jenkins dropped his very first (and very woke) album The Healing Component on September 23rd. (Kylie Zane)

Progtoberfest II Reggies, 2105 S. State St. October 21–23. Friday 6pm, Saturday 1pm, Sunday 11am. $75. 21+. (312) 949-0121. reggieslive.com Highlights of this three day prog-stravaganza are the reunited jazz fusion project Brand X and prog supergroup The Security

Project, whose members count Warr guitarist Trey Gunn, formerly of King Crimson, and Jerry Marotta, who toured with Peter Gabriel for ten years. (Kylie Zane)

Sonic Avenues, Brain Bagz, Nato Coles and the Blue Diamond Band Punks 2040. Saturday, October 22. 7pm-1am. $8. Message Bert Bertrand on Facebook for the address, or ask your local punk. Join Montreal pop-punkers Sonic Avenues (who just dropped a new album Disconnector in August), Salt Lake City pysch-noise outfit Brain Bagz, and country-punk riffers Nato Coles for a long night of punk rock in all its forms. There’s a load of local support, too. (Kylie Zane)

The Coop Op Presents: The Nightshow The Cooperation Operation, 11339 S. Saint Lawrence Ave. Saturday, October 22, doors 6pm, show 7pm–1am. $7 suggested donation. cooperationoperation.org Pullman’s nonprofit Cooperation Operation—or Coop Op, as the cool kids call it—is home to a community garden and various social services. Now, they’re hosting an evening full of talent: poetry, artwork, and sounds ranging from the buoyant pop of Daymaker to the high-strung, lo-fi blues-punk of Attaboi. (Christopher Good)

Carlos Johnson Buddy Guy’s Legends, 700 S. Wabash Ave. Friday, October 21, 9pm. $20. 21+. (312) 427-1190. buddyguy.com Native Chicagoan Carlos Johnson headlines at the iconic Buddy Guy’s Legends to deliver some hard hitting classic blues, paired sweetly with local veterans of the scene, Sonic Soul. Johnson and Soul are a must see for fans hoping to taste some Chicago blues. (Daniel Betancourt)

STAGE & SCREEN

An Evening of Horror & Suspense in the Old-Time Radio Tradition

Walk All Night: A Drum Beat Journey

Augustana Lutheran Church, 5500 S. Woodlawn Ave. Saturday, October 22, 8pm. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. hydeparkcommunityplayers.org

Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Wednesday, October 19 at 8:15pm. $6 for members, $11 for non-members. (312) 8462800. siskelfilmcenter.org Gaps in time, space, and culture are bridged when four teenaged South Side bucket drummers take a crowd-funded trip to Senegal under the guidance of social worker and Eritrean refugee Elilta Tewelde. The filmmakers will lead an audience discussion after the screening. (Emma Boczek)

For the seventh year running, the Hyde Park Community Players are hosting a spooky old-time radio show, complete with live sound effects and the voice of perennial favorite HPCP radio announcer Chris Skyles. As usual, it’s hosted in a church, but this year’s show promises to be devilishly scary. (Emma Boczek)

Get Spooky!

Pills, Pills, Pills: A “Moment in the Life” Game Night & Talk Back

Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Sunday, October 23, 2pm. Free. (773) 4453838. beverlyartcenter.org

Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Wednesday, October 19, 6:30pm–8pm. Free. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org

Join the Beverly Art Center for some spooky Halloween fun! In addition to its haunted and not-so-haunted house, the BAC offers activities for those more inclined to friendly frights. From arts and crafts to dance lessons to a photo with Frankenstein’s bride, there will surely be something for everyone in the family to enjoy. (Michelle Yang)

Most board games revolve around escapism, fantasy, and play. Adrienne Ciskey’s Bitter Pills, on the other hand, does precisely the opposite, putting its players in the shoes of someone afflicted with chronic illness. By exploring medication and the better living that’s supposed to follow from it, roleplaying Pills makes for a jagged little evening. (Christopher Good)

The Colored Museum

African American Film Pioneers: The Flying Ace Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, October 22, 7pm. Free. (773) 7028596. filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu The Flying Ace returns from the 1920s, but with a new music score written by composer and music director Renée Baker. Featuring an all-black cast, the silent aviation drama unfolds with drama, mystery, and the live accompaniment of Baker’s Chicago Modern Orchestra Project. (Michelle Yang)

eta creative arts, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Through Sunday, October 23. Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 3pm. $35; $25 seniors; $15 students. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org In eleven “exhibits,” George C. Wolfe’s satirical play, staged by Pulse Theatre Company, examines stereotypes and identity in the black experience from a “celebrity slave-ship” to an imagined dinner party where “Aunt Jemima and Angela Davis was in the kitchen sharing a plate of greens and just goin’ off about South Africa.” (Adam Thorp)

OCTOBER 19, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

WHAT DO YOU WHAT’S MISSING WANT TO SEE IN INYOUR YOUR‘HOOD? ’HOOD? TEXT “SSW” TO

312-697-1791 Then you want thinkto is Thentell tell us us what what you missing your community. see ininyour community. This is a public engagement project from City Bureau, Chicago’s civic journalism lab based in Woodlawn.