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The Family Drama Begins November 3
THE
LION WINTER IN
BY
DIRECTED BY
Sponsored by
Ron OJ Parson’s residency is made possible by
ART BY DANIEL MINTER.
JAMES GOLDMAN
2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ NOVEMBER 2, 2023
5535 S Ellis Ave | Free Garage Parking (773) 753-4472 | CourtTheatre.org
RESIDENT ARTIST RON OJ PARSON
TONY
AWARD
WINNING
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds. Volume 10, Issue 28 Editor-in-Chief
Jacqueline Serrato
Managing Editor
Adam Przybyl
Senior Editors Martha Bayne Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Alma Campos Jim Daley Politics Editor Labor Editor Immigration Editor
J. Patrick Patterson Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales Wendy Wei
Community Builder
Chima Ikoro
Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton Visuals Editor
Kayla Bickham
Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Director of Fact Checking: Savannah Hugueley Fact Checkers: Rubi Valentin Isi Frank Ativie Bridget Killian Christopher Good Kate Linderman Layout Editor
Tony Zralka
Program Manager
Malik Jackson
Executive Director
Damani Bolden
Office Manager
Mary Leonard
Advertising Manager
Susan Malone
Webmaster
Pat Sier
The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, please contact: Susan Malone (773) 358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com For general inquiries, please call: (773) 643-8533
Cover photo by Jim Daley
IN CHICAGO City launches first composting program Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced mid-October the city’s first composting program. Chicagoans can now dispose of their food waste in fifteen locations throughout the city. Residents can visit the drop-off sites and place their food scraps into green bins. The city’s website does advise residents to not use “bags of any kind” when discarding the food waste. The program comes after a waste management study published this past July noted that Chicago generates more than four million tons of material waste annually. The study outlined a need for equitable access to locations for disposal of recyclable materials to mitigate the problem. Eight of the fifteen locations are located in the South Side with locations for the compost program in Pilsen, Chinatown, McKinley Park, Gage Park, Bronzeville, Englewood, Auburn Gresham, and Morgan Park. Materials from the sites will then be transferred to a composting facility and processed into compost. “Diverting food scraps for composting is one of the easiest and most impactful ways for individuals and cities to address the climate crisis,” said Mayor Johnson. “We can reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions that occur when organic food material decomposes in a landfill, return organic materials to the earth, and most importantly, create healthier communities across our great city.” Rental assistance for migrants Illinois state is funding temporary housing, including rented apartments, for migrants with up to $9,000 in rental assistance over a six-month period, move-in assistance, and a starter kit to furnish the apartment. “Ideally people would have started their legal process, secured legal work authorization and be able to sustain that apartment,” said First Deputy Chief of Staff Christina Pacione-Zayas. Chicago is the only sanctuary city prioritizing resettlement as the primary solution to helping migrants achieve self-sufficiency. The payment will be made directly towards the landlord (about 1,155 landlords are renting to new arrivals) and is based on market rate prices. About thirty to forty case management workers at Catholic Charities and other immigration organizations are actively working to secure housing for migrants through this program, with more being recruited. The Chicago Low-Income Housing Trust Fund has also been assisting migrants find housing with a combination of state and city funds, specifically $15 million from the city and $5 million from the state in 2023. In 2022, CLIHTF started allowing residents who are self-employed—often unhoused, undocumented, and now migrants—to self-certify their income through a notarized letter, which provides a pathway for migrants who are paid in cash for their work to qualify for permanent affordable housing. The organization is currently closed to new applications but expects to open applications again in the first quarter of next year, said the executive director Annissa Lambirth-Garrett. Auto workers reach tentative deals with auto manufacturers The United Auto Workers (UAW) union reached tentative deals with GM, Ford (which has an assembly plant on the South Side), and Stellantis last week, putting an end to more than six weeks of strikes in Detroit. If ratified by workers, the new contracts will net workers average raises of twenty-five percent over the course of the contracts, which will run until 2028, though some workers will see raises of as high as eighty-nine percent. UAW, under new leadership by Shawn Fain, began targeted strikes against select factories run by the auto manufacturers on September 14. The union declined to give companies much notice of the strikes, leaving them with little time to prepare for the disruptions. The tentative agreements include stipulations that the auto manufacturers will limit hiring temporary, lower paid workers; that workers retain the right to strike in response to plant closures; and the inclusion of workers at electric car battery factories. In a video address to workers, UAW President Shawn Fain said, “We wholeheartedly believe our strike squeezed every last dime out of General Motors. They underestimated us. They underestimated you.”
IN THIS ISSUE un specialist warned city council that tent camps could become permanent
Camps can outlast their initial scope by years—and U.S. courts can be slow to process asylum seekers.
wendy wei, jim daley, and matt chapman..................................4 experto de las naciones unidas advirtió que los campamentos para migrantes podrían hacerse permanentes
Los campamentos pueden ser extremadamente burocráticos y las cortes estadounidenses pueden tardar en tramitar a los solicitantes de asilo porque la infraestructura nacional de reasentamiento se ha reducido en años recientes.
por wendy wei, jim daley, y matt chapman traducido por alma campos..................6 city council moves forward on treatment not trauma
Ald. Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez said the working group intends to call for six of the shuttered mental health clinics to reopen over the next four years.
jim daley...................................................8 documentary screening sparks conversation about the future of chicago’s chinatown
Following the screening of Karen Cho’s Big Fight in Little Chinatown, community leaders discuss how to preserve and develop the immigrant enclave.
xuandi wang.............................................9 woodlawn free food market sees growing demand
“The face of the food market has changed as far as the clientele.”
zoe pharo, hyde park herald...............10 chicago protests demand a ceasefire in gaza, end to israeli occupation
On consecutive Saturdays, thousands flooded Michigan avenue to march for Palestine.
kevin hu.....................................................11 jewish protesters block traffic to demand ceasefire in gaza
A coalition of Jewish groups demonstrated outside the offices of Senators Durbin and Duckworth before sitting in on Ida B. Wells Drive.
jim daley.................................................14 the rise of the femcee
Chicago women in hip-hop discussed the present and future of what it means to be a femcee. kia smith, jasmine morales, and isiah “thoughtpoet” veney.......................15 public meetings report
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.
scott pemberton and documenters......19 the exchange
The Weekly’s poetry corner offers our thoughts in exchange for yours.
chima ikoro, marvin alexis ..................20 q&a: how chief sustainability officer angela tovar plans to tackle environmental racism
Tovar says her experiences growing up near “Slag Valley” on the Southeast Side deeply influence her approach.
aydali campa...........................................22
IMMIGRATION
UN Specialist Warned City Council that Tent Camps Could Become Permanent
Camps can outlast their initial scope by years—and U.S. courts can be slow to process asylum seekers. BY WENDY WEI, JIM DALEY, AND MATT CHAPMAN
I
n September, a shelter and emergency preparedness specialist at the United Nations-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights that tent camps can last far longer than expected. Experts on refugees and migration who spoke to the Weekly agreed with that assessment, and said the winterized tent camps Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to use as temporary shelters for asylum seekers are susceptible to becoming longer-term settlements. Emails obtained by the Weekly reveal that Committee Chair Andre Vasquez (40th Ward) discussed the camps with Joseph Ashmore, the IOM specialist, last month. In an email exchange following the discussion, Ashmore provided materials on mass shelters that explain topics such as preparedness, violence prevention, and community involvement. Ashmore emphasized that tent camps are “a last resort,” adding in his email to Vasquez, “They can be unsustainable, can last for much longer than expected, and are expensive to run and maintain.” Ashmore declined requests for an interview. Vasquez told the Weekly he spoke to people with international experience in such camps “who reiterated that going that route should be the last resort, due to their experience of things that could go wrong.” As a result of those conversations, he said he voiced his concerns “directly to the [ Johnson] administration” before making a public statement. Since August 2022, more than 18,500 asylum seekers have arrived in Chicago, most of them bussed here by authorities in Texas. After arriving at the city’s landing zone, they’re sent to police stations to
Many in the audience at an October 24 meeting about a proposed tent camp in Brighton Park applaud a Colombian migrant (facing away) after she gave public comment through a translator. PHOTO BY JIM DALEY
await placement in one of the city’s public shelters. Some have been at police stations for months due to a lack of space in the shelter system, which Johnson has been rapidly expanding to try to keep up with the influx of buses from border states. More than 3,000 people are currently staying at police stations, and in many cases they’re sleeping outside. About 500 people are staying at O’Hare or Midway airports. In September, Johnson signed a $29 million contract with GardaWorld Services and its subsidiary Aegis Defense Systems to build and staff “winterized base camps” for asylum seekers. City officials have repeatedly stated the camps are meant to be temporary. At a contentious public meeting on October 24 at Thomas Kelly College Prep in Brighton Park about a camp the city is planning for a site at 38th and California, Ald. Julia Ramirez said, “The city is asking a lot of Brighton Park with this plan. This is temporary, but we all stay here, we’re from here, and we’ll be here.” Deputy Mayor of Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights
4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ NOVEMBER 2, 2023
Beatriz Ponce de León and Deputy Chief of Staff Cristina H. Pacione-Zayas also reiterated the intended temporary status of the camps at that meeting. But in other cities, such camps have lasted far longer than originally planned, and the experts who spoke to the Weekly said that it could happen in Chicago as well. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defines refugee camps as “temporary facilities” and “a short-term solution to keep people safe during specific emergencies,” while also highlighting that “emergency situations can become protracted resulting in people living in camps for years or even decades.” “First and foremost, they’re not refugee camps,” said Pacione-Zayas at a press briefing on October 26, describing the campsite in Brighton Park. “Unfortunately that’s not the designation that the federal government has provided for the individuals that are seeking asylum and other migrants.” “Refugee,” “asylum seeker,” and
“migrant” are terms that have different legal ramifications in the U.S. An asylum-seeker is someone who has left their country seeking protection from persecution, but whose request for sanctuary is still being processed and has not yet been recognized as a refugee. Not every asylum seeker will ultimately be recognized by a court as a refugee, though every person recognized as a refugee was at one point an asylum seeker. The process of applying for asylum can take years. Nationally, more than four out of every ten asylum cases filed in 2000 were still pending in 2021, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. As of September, 8,546 Venezuelan asylum seekers in Chicago had a pending hearing, for which the average wait time was more than two and a half years. Chicago’s base camps are likely to house asylum seekers and migrants regardless of their case proceedings, and so technically they’re not refugee camps. A former UNHCR employee with over five years experience in refugee response said that national context matters when assessing the permanence of camps. While camps do become permanent in most refugee crises, the majority of refugees (seventy-six percent) are hosted by low and middle income countries and there are differences between the options available to a Western nation such as the United States, and a less resourced nation, she said. She added that a country like the United States can stem migrants at the border and send people back to their country of origin, which can reduce the need for camps more quickly than in other contexts. However, asylum seeker and migrant reception centers in the West could “become sort of a ghetto,” the former UNHCR
IMMIGRATION employee, who asked not to be named in this article, said. “Probably they would just blend into the town as a neighborhood— but probably a neighborhood that starts out of poverty, and [they’ll] have a really hard time becoming more than that.” Whether housing refugees or asylum seekers, camps that meant to be temporary often wind up lasting longer than intended, said Melissa Gatter, an anthropologist at the University of Sussex who has studied refugee camp dynamics. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how temporary a place of refuge is intended to be, in most cases people end up having to stay longer than expected because they don’t have many other options,” Gatter said. “It’s the case for most refugee camps and it will likely be the case for this base camp, regardless of what they’re calling it.” The former UNHCR employee said that temporary camps also become protracted when the people staying in them are stuck there, the likelihood of which is determined by the host country’s immigration policies. If new arrivals aren’t integrated into the local economy, they can become desperate and turn to illicit means of survival or become dependent on aid. “When people don’t have access to things like jobs or they cannot physically leave the camp or they can’t really be that mobile, that’s when they start to settle where they are,” Gatter said. “It’s less about the camps and more about people’s economic opportunities.” The fact that GardaWorld is first and foremost a security company suggests that “there’s going to be a high level of policing of people’s movements, whether or not it’s formal or informal,” she added. “Anywhere that you have thousands of people in like cots, beds, whatever it is—whenever you have people in rows, it’s going to be militarized or policed in some way.” Additionally, camps can be extremely bureaucratic, and U.S. courts can be slow to process asylum seekers because domestic resettlement infrastructure has been reduced in recent years. Record-low refugee resettlement during the Trump administration has led to closures of 134 domestic resettlement offices since 2017, representing a thirty-eight percent cut in capacity. “I think the status of these people as ‘waiting’ might go on for longer than we predict in other places,” Gatter said. Asked October 26 how the administration intends to ensure the
camps don’t become permanent, PacioneZayas reiterated that the structures are prefabricated and temporary. “Our intention, as we’ve always said from the beginning, is resettlement. We want people to be self-sufficient, selfdetermined, self-actualized,” she said. “So, as long as we are pairing [migrants] with the appropriate case management and wraparound services, and having a housing stock in which we can have temporary asylum seeker emergency rental assistance, we will be moving people along into self sufficiency and out of a base camp, into a temporary shelter.” Camp infrastructure can also remain long after migrants have moved out of them and the camps are shut down. The materials Ashmore provided to the Immigration Committee include detailed examples of this happening during the European response to more than a million migrants arriving in 2015 and 2016.
approved work permits for Venezuelans who arrived before July 31, the status of those who came after that date is in limbo. Thirty thousand migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua will be allowed to enter the United States each month with two-year work permits, and another 40,000 asylum seekers will be able to use a government app to make appointments with officials at border crossings. Biden’s announcement of expedited work permits for asylum seekers was followed by another saying it will begin deporting Venezuelan migrants who lack a legal basis to remain in the country. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the new deportation policy as “a key piece” of the administration’s migration policy. The first flight departed for Caracas, Venezuela on October 18 with 127 people on board. Residents who gave public comment at last Tuesday’s meeting were roughly evenly
“It doesn’t matter how temporary a place of refuge is intended to be, in most cases people end up having to stay longer than expected because they don’t have many other options.” Germany built winterized reception centers, including single-family tents and prefabricated structures, for housing refugees short-term while they waited for longer-term accommodation in 2015. The reception centers evolved from shortterm to mid-term accommodation sites to provide additional support during the asylum application process. In all, over ninety percent of the people spent less than twentyfour hours in the facilities. By July 2016, all the refugees were resettled, but the centers are still standing today, ready to operate within thirty days if more migrants arrive. Another dynamic that often arises between host and migrant communities is tension over economic concerns and harmful narratives about migrants fueled by disinformation, which can sometimes turn violent. At last Tuesday’s public meeting, a woman from Colombia and a volunteer who spoke on behalf of several other asylum seekers both said the new arrivals in Chicago want jobs, but many are stuck waiting for federal Work Authorization Permits. While the Biden administration
divided. Those opposed cited concerns about their property values and fears of increased crime, while those in favor spoke about the importance that Chicago remains a city that welcomes immigrants. Carolyn Brown, who has taught at Kelly since 2003, said she has “concerns over how temporary the situation really is,” adding that all Chicago residents need more stable housing. She said she’s taught students who have faced housing instability her entire career. Migrants “need walls [and] the dignity of living indoors,” she said. Regardless of which side they were on, most speakers at the Kelly meeting agreed on the need for more permanent and dignified shelter for new arrivals, and more federal and state money to do so. However, receiving federal money would come with aligning with federal policy. Gatter said that the U.S. government is likely not interested in putting new migrants in permanent housing. She explained that, in the eyes of the federal state, the migrants who haven’t officially been accepted as asylum seekers have no legal basis to be in the country, so there’s
technically no political impetus to move them out of temporary shelters, where they can more easily be controlled and monitored for deportation. International law does offer some protections for asylum seekers who have not yet received official refugee status, but they are limited. The former UNHCR employee said that while international law has a fundamental principle of “nonrefoulement” that forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to their country of origin where they are likely to be persecuted, this principle doesn’t hold if case managers determine there is not a direct threat to their life. She said that in legal terms, “asylum is not really applicable if you’re going to die of starvation because you can’t find a job.” From January 2019 to December 2020, the U.S. government returned close to 70,000 asylum seekers and migrants to dangerous conditions in Mexico to await their asylum claim decision under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). A report by Médecins Sans Frontières found that seventy-five percent of migrants returned to Mexico under the MPP had been victims of attempted kidnapping. While the U.S. works on and funds UNHCR projects in the Global South, it doesn’t collaborate with the UNHCR in its own management of migration within American borders, Gatter said. “You see them instead turn into their own governmental mechanisms, keeping track of people and controlling them until we figure out where they’re going to go.” The “last thing” the city should do is treat asylum seekers as a kind of eyesore or burden on the community. “They need to be seen as possible contributors and possible collaborators,” Gatter said. “I think anything where you allow people freedom of movement and the ability to also see themselves as potentially contributing to the city, as being valued…that’s going to have a positive effect on how this is handled, and how they’re going to be received, and how they’re going to be perceived as well by fellow Chicagoans.” ¬ Wendy Wei is the Weekly’s immigration editor and covers solidarity between communities of color. Jim Daley is an investigative journalist and senior editor at the Weekly. Matt Champan is a freelance journalist focused on transparency and policing.
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
INMIGRACIÓN
Experto de las Naciones Unidas advirtió que los campamentos para migrantes podrían hacerse permanentes Los campamentos pueden ser extremadamente burocráticos y las cortes estadounidenses pueden tardar en tramitar a los solicitantes de asilo porque la infraestructura nacional de reasentamiento se ha reducido en años recientes. POR WENDY WEI, JIM DALEY, Y MATT CHAPMAN TRADUCIDO POR ALMA CAMPOS
E
n septiembre, un especialista en alojamiento y preparación de emergencia de la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM), un afiliado de las Naciones Unidas, le advirtió a la Comisión de Derechos de los Inmigrantes y Refugiados de la Ciudad de Chicago que los campamentos para migrantes podrían durar mucho más de lo planeado. Otros expertos que hablaron con el Weekly estuvieron de acuerdo que los campamentos de invierno que el alcalde Brandon Johnson planea como albergues temporales son susceptibles a covertirse en vivienda a largo plazo. Unos correos electrónicos obtenidos por el Weekly revelan que el presidente del comité, el concejal Andre Vasquez, del Distrito 40, habló de los campamentos con Joseph Ashmore, el especialista de la OIM, el mes pasado. En un intercambio de correos electrónicos luego de la discusión, Ashmore le proporcionó materiales informativos sobre el alojamiento masivo que explican cómo es la preparación, la prevención de la violencia y la participación de la comunidad en estos sitios. Ashmore recalcó que los campamentos son “un último recurso”, y añadió en su correo electrónico a Vásquez: “Pueden ser insostenibles, pueden durar mucho más de lo previsto y son caros de gestionar y mantener.” Ashmore negó ser entrevistado por el Weekly. Vásquez dijo que habló con personas con experiencia internacional en ese tipo de campamentos “que reiteraron que seguir esa vía debería ser el último recurso, debido a su experiencia de las cosas que podrían salir mal”. Como resultado de esas conversaciones, dijo que expresó sus preocupaciones “directamente a la administración [de Johnson]” antes de
hacer una declaración pública. Desde agosto de 2022, más de 18,500 migrantes solicitando asilo han llegado a Chicago, la mayoría de ellos transportados en autobús por las autoridades de Texas. Tras llegar a la zona de desembarco en la ciudad, son enviados a las estaciones de policía a la espera de ser alojados en uno de los albergues públicos de la ciudad. Algunos llevan meses en las comisarías por falta de espacio en el sistema de albergues, que Johnson ha ido ampliando rápidamente para tratar de mantener el ritmo de la llegada de autobuses procedentes de los estados fronterizos. Más de 3,000 personas se encuentran actualmente alojadas en comisarías de policía, y en muchos casos duermen afuera. Unas 500 personas se encuentran en los aeropuertos de O'Hare o Midway.
quedamos aquí, somos de aquí, y estaremos aquí”. En la reunión, la alcaldesa adjunta de Derechos de los Inmigrantes, Migrantes y Refugiados, Beatriz Ponce de León, y la jefa adjunta de personal, Cristina H. PacioneZayas, insistieron en que tienen la intención de que los campamentos sean temporales. Pero en otras ciudades, este tipo de campamentos han durado mucho más de lo anticipado originalmente, y los expertos que hablaron con el Weekly dijeron que esto podría ocurrir también en Chicago. El Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados (ACNUR) define los campos de refugiados como “instalaciones temporales” y “una solución a corto plazo para mantener seguras a las personas durante emergencias específicas”, a la vez que señala que “las situaciones
“No importa lo temporal que pretenda ser un lugar de refugio, en la mayoría de los casos la gente acaba teniendo que quedarse más tiempo del previsto porque no tiene muchas más opciones”. En septiembre, Johnson firmó un contrato de $29 millones con la compañía GardaWorld Services y su subsidiario Aegis Defense Systems para construir y dotar de personal los “campamentos base invernales”. Los funcionarios municipales han dicho en repetidas ocasiones que los campamentos son temporales. En una polémica reunión pública el 24 de octubre en la secundaria Thomas Kelly College Prep, en Brighton Park, sobre un campamento que la Municipalidad está planeando en la 38th y California, la concejala Julia Ramírez dijo: “La Ciudad está pidiendo mucho de Brighton Park con este plan. Esto es temporal, pero todos nos
6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ NOVEMBER 2, 2023
de emergencia pueden comenzar a prolongarse y resultar en personas viviendo en campamentos durante años o incluso décadas”. “Para empezar, no son campos de refugiados”, dijo Pacione-Zayas, describiendo el campamento de Brighton Park. “Desgraciadamente, esa no es la denominación que el gobierno federal les ha dado a las personas que solicitan asilo y a otros migrantes”. “Refugiado”, “solicitante de asilo” y “migrante” son términos que tienen diferentes ramificaciones legales. Un solicitante de asilo es alguien que ha salido de su país buscando protección ante la persecución, pero cuya solicitud de asilo
aún se está tramitando y todavía no ha sido reconocido como refugiado. No todos los solicitantes de asilo serán reconocidos por un juez como refugiados, aunque todas las personas reconocidas como refugiadas fueron en algún momento solicitantes de asilo. El proceso de solicitud de asilo puede durar años. A nivel nacional, más de 4 de cada 10 casos de asilo presentados en 2000 seguían pendientes en 2021, según datos recopilados por el Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse de la Universidad de Syracuse. En septiembre, 8,546 solicitantes de asilo venezolanos en Chicago tenían una corte pendiente, para quienes el tiempo promedio de espera era de más de dos años y medio. Los campamentos de Chicago probablemente alojen a solicitantes de asilo y migrantes independientemente de los procedimientos de sus casos, por lo que técnicamente no serían considerados campamentos de refugiados. Una ex empleada del ACNUR con más de cinco años de experiencia en la respuesta a los refugiados en Kuwait y Zambia, afirmó que el contexto nacional importa a la hora de evaluar la permanencia de los campamentos. Aunque los campamentos llegan a ser permanentes en la mayoría de las crisis de refugiados, la mayoría de los refugiados (el 76 por ciento) son recibidos por países con menos recursos, y existen diferencias entre las opciones disponibles a una nación occidental, como los Estados Unidos, y a otra con menos recursos, explicó. Añadió que un país como los Estados Unidos puede detener a los migrantes en la frontera y devolver a las personas a su país de origen, lo que puede reducir la necesidad de campamentos. Sin embargo, los centros de recepción de solicitantes de asilo y migrantes en países
INMIGRACIÓN del Occidente podrían “comenzar a ser una especie de ‘ghetto’”, dijo la experta, que se negó a ser nombrada en este reportaje. “Probablemente se empezarían a integrar a la ciudad como un barrio, pero un barrio que surge de la pobreza, y [tendrían] muchas dificultades para superar esas condiciones”. Ya sea un campamento de refugiados o de solicitantes de asilo, todos estos lugares están destinados a ser temporales, afirmó Melissa Gatter, antropóloga de la Universidad de Sussex que ha estudiado las dinámicas en los campamentos para refugiados. “Al final, no importa lo temporal que se pretenda que sea un lugar de refugio, en la mayoría de los casos la gente acaba teniendo que quedarse más tiempo porque no tienen muchas más opciones”, dijo Gatter. “Ese es el caso de la mayoría de los campamentos de refugiados y probablemente será el caso de este campamento independientemente de cómo le llamen”. La exempleada del ANCUR afirma que los campamentos temporales comienzan a prolongarse cuando las personas que se alojan en ellos se quedan estancadas, cosa que dependerá de las políticas de inmigración del país. Y si los inmigrantes no se integran en la economía local, pueden desesperarse y recurrir a la actividad ilícita para sobrevivir. “Cuando la gente no tiene acceso a cosas como un trabajo, o no puede salir físicamente del campamento o no puede realmente tener tanta movilidad, es cuando empiezan a establecerse donde están”, afirma Gatter. “Se trata menos de los campamentos y más de las oportunidades económicas que tiene la gente”. El hecho de que GardaWorld sea ante todo una empresa de seguridad sugiere que “va a haber un alto nivel de vigilancia, ya sea formal o informal”, añadió. “Cualquier lugar en el que haya miles de personas en camas, catres, lo que sea... siempre que haya gente en filas, va a estar militarizado o vigilado de alguna manera”. Además, los campamentos pueden ser extremadamente burocráticos, y las cortes estadounidenses pueden tardar en tramitar a los solicitantes de asilo porque la infraestructura nacional de reasentamiento se ha reducido en años recientes. Los servicios de refugiados durante la administración de Trump han visto el cierre de 134 oficinas de reasentamiento nacionales desde 2017, lo que representa
un recorte del 38 por ciento. “Creo que el estado ‘en espera’ de estas personas podría prolongarse más que en otros lugares”, dijo Gatter. A la pregunta de cómo pretende la administración local garantizar que los campamentos no se hagan permanentes, Pacione-Zayas reiteró que las estructuras son prefabricadas y diseñadas para ser temporales. “Nuestra intención, como siempre hemos dicho desde el principio, es el reasentamiento. Queremos que la gente sea autosuficiente, tenga autonomía y se supere”, afirmó. “Así que, mientras les proporcionamos los servicios adecuados de asistencia y de gestión de sus casos, y dispongamos de un sistema de vivienda en el que podamos ofrecerles a los solicitantes de asilo ayuda temporal de emergencia para la renta, conseguiremos que sean autosuficientes y que salgan de un campamento para instalarse en una vivienda temporal”. La permanencia estructural de un campamento aún puede durar más del tiempo que la gente permanezca en él o que la duración de una crisis migratoria. El material que Ashmore le proporcionó a la Comisión de Inmigración incluye ejemplos detallados de la respuesta europea a la llegada de más de un millón de migrantes en 2015 y 2016. Alemania construyó en 2015 centros de acogida invernales, que incluían carpas familiares y estructuras prefabricadas, para alojar a los refugiados a corto plazo mientras esperaban un alojamiento más permanente. Los centros pasaron de ser lugares de alojamiento a corto plazo a lugares de alojamiento a medio plazo para proporcionar apoyo adicional durante el proceso de solicitud de asilo. En total, más del 90 por ciento de las personas pasaron menos de 24 horas en las instalaciones y para julio de 2016, todos los refugiados habían sido reubicados. Pero los centros siguen hoy en modo de espera, listos para funcionar dentro de treinta días si llegan más migrantes. Otra dinámica que suele surgir es la tensión entre los migrantes y el país acogedor por las preocupaciones económicas y las narrativas perjudiciales sobre los migrantes que son influidas por la desinformación, que a veces pueden volverse violentas. En la reunión pública del pasado martes, una mujer y voluntaria de Colombia que habló en nombre de varios migrantes
dijo que los recién llegados a Chicago quieren trabajar, pero muchos están a espera de permisos federales de autorización de trabajo. Aunque la administración de Biden aprobó permisos de trabajo para los venezolanos que llegaron antes del 31 de julio, la situación de los que llegaron después de esa fecha está en el aire. 30,000 migrantes de Venezuela, Cuba, Haití y Nicaragua podrán entrar en Estados Unidos cada mes con permisos de trabajo de dos años, y otros 40,000 solicitantes de asilo podrán utilizar una aplicación telefónica del gobierno para conceder citas con los funcionarios en las fronteras. El anuncio de Biden de permisos de trabajo fue seguido de otro en el que afirmaba que empezaría a deportar a los migrantes venezolanos que no tienen base legal para permanecer en el país. El Secretario de Estado, Antony Blinken, describió la nueva política de deportaciones como "una pieza clave" de la política migratoria de la administración. El primer vuelo partió hacia Caracas, Venezuela el 18 de octubre con 127 personas a bordo. En la reunión del 24 de octubre sobre el campamento en Brighton Park, los residentes que hicieron comentarios públicos estaban divididos en partes iguales. Los que se oponían citaron la preocupación por el valor de sus propiedades y el temor a un aumento de la delincuencia, mientras que los que estaban a favor hablaron de la importancia de que Chicago siga siendo una ciudad santuario para inmigrantes. Carolyn Brown, que ha sido maestra en la secundaria Kelly desde 2003, dijo que le “preocupa lo temporal que es realmente la situación”, y añadió que todos los residentes de Chicago necesitan vivienda más estable. Dijo que toda su carrera ha enseñado a estudiantes que han enfrentado la inestabilidad de la vivienda. Los migrantes necesitan “la dignidad de vivir bajo un techo”, afirmó. Independientemente del lado en que estaban, la mayoría de los asistentes a la reunión de Kelly coincidieron en la necesidad de un alojamiento más permanente y digno para los recién llegados, y de más dinero federal y estatal para lograrlo. Sin embargo, recibir dinero federal se trataría de alinearse con la política federal. Gatter afirmó que es probable que el gobierno estadounidense no esté interesado en ofrecerle alojamiento permanente a los nuevos migrantes. Explicó que, a ojos del
Estado, los migrantes que no han sido aceptados oficialmente como solicitantes de asilo no tienen base legal para estar en el país, por lo que técnicamente no hay ningún interés político en sacarlos de los refugios temporales, donde pueden ser controlados y vigilados más fácilmente para su deportación. Las leyes internacionales ofrecen algunas protecciones para los solicitantes de asilo que aún no han recibido el estatus oficial de refugiado, pero son limitadas. Una de las expertas explicó que, aunque la ley internacional tiene un principio fundamental de "no devolución" que le prohíbe a un país devolverlos a su país de origen, donde es probable que sean víctimas de persecución, este principio no aplica si los administradores de los casos determinan que no existe una amenaza directa contra su vida. Dijo que en términos legales, “el asilo no es realmente aplicable si te vas a morir de hambre a causa de no poder encontrar un trabajo.” De enero de 2019 a diciembre de 2020, el gobierno de los Estados Unidos devolvió a cerca de 70,000 solicitantes de asilo y migrantes a condiciones peligrosas en México para esperar la decisión de su solicitud de asilo bajo los Protocolos de Protección a Migrantes (MPP). Un reporte de Médecins Sans Frontières reveló que el 75 por ciento de los migrantes devueltos a México bajo el MPP habían sido víctimas de intentos de secuestro. Aunque los Estados Unidos trabaja y financia proyectos del ACNUR en los países del sur, no colabora con él en su propia gestión de la migración dentro de las fronteras estadounidenses, dijo Gattner. “En su lugar, se convierten en sus propios mecanismos gubernamentales, siguiendo y controlando a la gente hasta que averiguan qué hacer con ellos”. Lo “último” que debe hacer la Municipalidad es tratar a los solicitantes de asilo como una especie de carga para la comunidad. “Hay que verlos como posibles contribuyentes y colaboradores”, dijo Gattner. “Creo que cualquier cosa que le permita a la gente la libertad de movimiento y la capacidad de verse a sí mismos como posibles contribuyentes a la ciudad, como personas valoradas... eso va a tener un efecto positivo en cómo se maneja esto, y cómo van a ser recibidos, y cómo van a ser percibidos también por sus vecinos en Chicago”. ¬
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
POLITICS
City Council Moves Forward on Treatment Not Trauma Ald. Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez said the working group intends to call for six of the shuttered mental health clinics to reopen over the next four years. BY JIM DALEY
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t the beginning of October, the City Council approved an ordinance creating a working group to address how Chicago supports people with mental health issues, bringing the city a step closer to implementing Treatment Not Trauma, one of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promises. The creation of the working group is a win for supporters of Johnson’s progressive agenda, and for the many organizers who have fought for years to reopen mental health clinics. The new Mental Health System Working Group is tasked with creating a plan to reopen mental health clinics closed by former mayor Rahm Emanuel, as well as to have healthcare and social workers—instead of police—respond to mental health emergencies. The working group will deliver a report to the mayor and the Committee on Health and Human Relations by May 31, 2024. The group will include representatives from the Department of Public Health, Office of Emergency Management and Communications, Fire Department, Human Resources, the mayor’s office and other agencies, according to a statement from the mayor’s office announcing passage of the ordinance. The Police Department was not among the agencies listed, although it said other agencies “may be invited to join the working group as needed.” 33rd Ward Ald. Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez told reporters the working group intends to call for six shuttered mental health clinics—the same number Emanuel closed—to reopen over the next four years. Treatment Not Trauma was first introduced to the City Council by Rodríguez Sánchez in 2020. Then-
ILLUSTRATION BY JULIA ZELER
mayor Lori Lightfoot rejected Rodríguez Sánchez’s proposal to have a non-police response for mental health emergencies, instead favoring a co-responder model that sends police and healthcare workers. Lightfoot also broke a campaign promise to reopen the mental health clinics. Last year, organizers supporting Treatment Not Trauma fanned out across the 6th, 20th, and 33rd Wards to gather signatures to get a non-binding referendum on the November 2022 ballot asking whether the city should reopen mental health clinics and develop a non-police
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mental health emergency response system. In each of those wards, voters supported the measure by more than ninety percent. Spurred in part by those same organizers, Johnson promised during his campaign to reopen the clinics and support Treatment Not Trauma. Rodríguez Sánchez told the Weekly the fight for equitable access to public mental health services has been a decades-long struggle. “At least for the last decade, there have been people on the ground trying to fight to reopen the public mental health centers,” she said. “I am very proud of the
work that we have done to renew that fight with the understanding that we not only need those [mental health] centers to reopen, but we need comprehensive care.” She said that includes crisis prevention and a non-police crisis response system. “That is definitely a huge step forward for us, because now we are inside of the administration and we’re being able to have conversations about these commitments,” Rodríguez Sánchez added. “For decades, we have had so many neoliberal policies that have been taking resources away from the institutions that could actually deliver this type of care.” The working group will bring those people who have been most impacted by gaps in the public mental health system to the table, she said. “It allows communities to be able to have a say in how these systems are going to be established and implemented,” Rodríguez Sánchez said. According to a 2022 survey by the Chicago Department of Public Health, about seventy-five percent of Chicagoans who had moderate or serious psychological distress reported that they were not taking medication or being treated for mental health or emotional conditions. In the statement, Johnson called the working group a “tremendous step forward in our journey to ensure that all Chicagoans receive the mental health resources and support that they need. My administration is committed to building the capacity to respond to mental health crises with treatment—not trauma.” ¬ Jim Daley is an investigative journalist and senior editor at the Weekly.
STAGE AND SCREEN
Documentary Screening Sparks Conversation About the Future of Chicago’s Chinatown Following the screening of Karen Cho’s Big Fight in Little Chinatown, community leaders discuss how to preserve and develop the immigrant enclave. BY XUANDI WANG
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n North America, Chinatowns are disappearing. Urban development, shrinking populations, and pandemicinduced racism all endanger the existence of these historic immigrant enclaves. The plight of these communities is at the center of the documentary Big Fight in Little Chinatown, screened at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago last Saturday. The feature film traces the hardships experienced by five different Chinatowns in the U.S. and Canada in recent years, shedding light on how residents strive to safeguard their heritage and confront existential threats. The screening was followed by a panel discussion between the filmmaker Karen Cho and the museum’s interim executive director Mabel Menard, the executive director of Coalition for Better Chinese American Community, Grace Chan McKibben, and 11th Ward Alderperson Nicole Lee. The film draws parallels between multiple Chinatowns to highlight the inherent racism in urban planning, and how residents have organized to protect their communities in the past few years. In New York in 2022 demonstrators gathered to oppose the construction of the world’s tallest jail in their residential neighborhood. In Montreal, organizers have advocated for heritage status to safeguard key structures, such as the city Chinatown’s historic core, from real estate developers. Meanwhile, in Toronto, residents mobilized to prevent the establishment of large retail chains that threaten the existing mom-and-pop shops on their blocks. Each community employed distinct organizing strategies to preserve their respective neighborhoods while grappling with slowing business and anti-Asian hate crimes. According to the film, Chinese immigrants in North American cities often built Chinatowns on the outskirts of the downtown where people initially were
unwilling to live. Over the years, as the downtown areas expanded, policy makers and real estate developers lay their eyes on Chinatowns, treating these neighborhoods as disposable. Cho, a filmmaker based in Montreal, said Chinatowns often become sites for construction that local residents do not want because politicians perceive Chinatowns as “the neighborhood of least resistance.” Historical disenfranchisement of AsianAmericans and Asian-Canadians has often made it challenging for Chinatown residents to have their voices heard. Her first film, In the Shadow of Gold Mountain, tells the stories of the survivors
to Cho, the Canadian government suggested refurbishing benches in Chinatown with red paint instead of implementing substantial policies to benefit business owners. They think of Chinatown as a foreign and tourist place “like Disneyland,” Cho said. “The act of telling your story is an act of rebellion,” Cho said. “To insert yourself into the mainstream narrative of America… and write yourself into a future of a neighborhood is… the ability to have the audacity to fight for your rights.” Alderperson Lee, whose district includes Chinatown, said she feels fortunate that Chicago Chinatown—often known
“One of the dangers of gentrification is that… you don’t know that you’re gentrified until after you’ve been gentrified,” – Grace Chan McKibben of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act in Canada, which imposed a heavy head tax on Chinese immigrants from 1885 to 1923 and later banned Chinese immigration completely from 1923 to 1947. It was shot approximately twenty years ago in the Chinatowns of Vancouver and Montreal, where Cho’s father's side of the family grew up. Twenty years later, Cho, saddened by the state of decline in the Chinatowns, decided to revisit them for another documentary. Cho said she felt obliged to make this movie to draw more attention to the challenges facing the immigrant enclaves. She has been using her tour as an impact campaign, inviting local organizers at each screening event to connect the movie to local issues. Cho said those policy makers often prioritize the needs of tourists over that of Chinatown residents, making the neighborhoods less sustainable. According
as the only growing Chinatown in North America—is still vibrant. She recalled that when she grew up here, the residents were all from the same southern region of China. Now, the population has expanded and become more diverse, as reflected in various regional cuisines available in the restaurants. Ald. Lee said Chicago's Chinatown can thrive today thanks to the work of previous generations. From the mid to late 20th century, Chinatown was restrained from expansive development, bounded by the Chicago River, the Dan Ryan Expressway, and railroads. Community organizers waged a hard fight, constructing new malls and recreational space on land previously owned by the Santa Fe Railways, so that Chicago Chinatown was eventually able to expand. McKibben, CBCAC’s executive director, said another reason Chicago's Chinatown was spared from immediate threats of displacement is that the
community had already been displaced before. Chicago’s first Chinatown was initially established on Clark Street near the city’s downtown. But in 1912, Chinatown moved south to its current location on Cermak Road. McKibben said that had Chinatown stayed in its former location on Clark Street, it’s very likely that the same would happen: Chinese residents would be displaced given the current real estate value of the downtown area. McKibben added that there are many hidden threats underlying Chicago's Chinatown. Many residents have been complaining about rising rents and rising property taxes in the district—the thirdhighest property tax increases across all the wards. In the north of Chinatown, developers are building The 78—a residential development so large that the developers tout it as Chicago’s unofficial 78th neighborhood. “One of the dangers of gentrification is that… you don’t know that you’re gentrified until after you’ve been gentrified,” McKibben said. “Thinking proactively about how we plan for this community so that we can still be here… is really important.” Alderperson Lee echoed the sentiment. She emphasized that the same pressure facing other Chinatowns could also take place in Chicago if community leaders don’t plan ahead and be intentional about what kind of development projects they bring into the neighborhood. “We've got to be vigilant and thoughtful about how things develop and what we want to bring in and what sort of future we want for our community,” she said. ¬ Xuandi Wang is a journalist and policy researcher. His writing on urban affairs and environmental governance has appeared in Block Club Chicago, Chicago Reader, In These Times, and more.
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
FOOD AND LAND
Woodlawn Free Food Market Sees Growing Demand
Volunteers have noticed a sharp increase in demand this fall as more migrants are resettled into temporary shelters and apartments in the community. BY ZOE PHARO, HYDE PARK HERALD This story was originally published by the Hyde Park Herald. Reprinted with permission.
G
ail Robinson packed up boxes of produce and canned goods in the auditorium of Woodlawn’s First Presbyterian Church as waves of asylum seekers and residents perused shelves stocked with free groceries. “The face of the food market has changed as far as the clientele,” Robinson observed. The director of the weekly Free Food Market at 6400 S. Kimbark Ave., Robinson said that volunteers have noticed a sharp increase in demand this fall as more migrants are resettled into temporary shelters and apartments in the community. Open every Thursday for more than a decade, the market served between 120 and 150 people per week for most of this past year, Robinson said. But for the last two months, this number has risen to almost 200 people per week. Many of these new patrons, she noted, are families. “The housing we have for migrants for the Woodlawn area are single occupancy, which are single people with no children,” Robinson said. “So when we see a family coming in, that tells us they’re settled in the neighborhood." There’s also been an increase in longtime residents from Woodlawn, South Shore and Chatham, most of whom work full-time but still struggle to afford food. “The economy is just crazy. To go to the grocery store, it’s not affordable” Robinson said. “It’s just catching up to people.” Fortunately for market volunteers—a mix of adults and local high school
Free Food Market volunteers keep things running in First Presbyterian Church, 6400 S. PHOTO BY ZOE PHARO, HYDE PARK HERALD Kimbark Ave., on October 26, 2023
students—as demand increases, so too does supply. The Greater Chicago Food Depository, which supplies the market, has sent more produce, non-perishables and meats to meet the growing need. As the vast majority of the new arrivals
for themselves and their daughter. “We’re very grateful.” The two said they had learned about the market earlier this month, when they passed by the church and ran into a friend waiting outside. “He told us that here they
“The economy is just crazy. To go to the grocery store, it’s not affordable. It’s just catching up to people.” settled around the mid-South Side are from Venezuela, the market has also expanded its offerings, such as rice, tortillas and beans. Raúl Hernández and Yessika Marcano were shopping at the market for the first time with their 5-year-old daughter, Imkarly, on Thursday, Oct. 26. “It’s perfect,” said Hernández, adding that the couple found a number of items
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offer help to immigrants,” Hernández recalled. Hernández arrived in Chicago from Caracas, Venezuela last September and lived in a city-run shelter before moving to an apartment in South Shore. His wife and daughter joined him in Chicago six months ago. Several new arrivals living in local
city-run migrant shelters, such as the Lake Shore Hotel, 4900B S. Lake Shore Dr., said they patronize the market for a wider variety of food than the city provides. Irene Nolen, a thirteen-year Woodlawn resident who has frequented the market for the last ten years, said she only attends intermittently, recognizing the growing demand. “If I don't need the depository, I don't come,” she said. “I know there's greater needs out here.” She stressed the need for the market, saying grocery chains in the area have gotten increasingly cost prohibitive in recent years. “The prices are going up and up and up, and a lot of families can’t afford to go to Jewels,” Nolen said. “So the community really appreciates (the market) being here.” Thanksgiving market The increase in demand comes as market volunteers prepare for their annual holiday markets. The first of these is its Thanksgiving market, which will take place a week ahead of the holiday on Thursday, Nov. 16. The market will operate during its normal hours, 10am to noon, offering Thanksgiving standards like turkeys and pumpkin alongside its typical stock. Members of the nearby Institute of Christ the King parish, 6401 S. Woodlawn Ave., also provide pies and coffee. “We’re willing to expand (hours) if people are still standing in line,” Robinson said. “We won’t shut the door on anyone.” ¬
POLITICS
Chicago Protests Demand a Ceasefire in Gaza, End to Israeli Occupation On consecutive Saturdays, thousands flooded Michigan Avenue to march for Palestine. BY KEVIN HU
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or the past three Saturdays, Palestinian flags flew brightly under cloudy skies in the Loop as thousands gathered to call for the immediate end to the ongoing siege of Gaza by Israeli forces. The rallies have been multi-racial, consisting of folks who were Black, white, Asian, and Arab—namely, Palestinians, of which Chicago has one of the largest communities of in the U.S.—and multigenerational, including elders, babies, and families with young children. Attendees came from all over Chicago on October 14, some arriving by bus from the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, the Islamic Community Center of Illinois (ICCI) in Elmwood Park, and the Orland Park Prayer Center in Orland Park. The rally was organized by the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine (CSJP) to speak out against what organizers said are war crimes committed by Israel and the United States. On both weekends that followed, people returned to demonstrate again. L trains to the Loop were packed with demonstrators, and more drove and were bused in from across Chicagoland and as far as Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. Since October 7, when Hamas, the governing body in the Gaza Strip, launched a surprise attack on Israel, the total count of those dead, injured, or displaced has continued to soar. The initial attack targeted southern and central Israel and killed at least 1,400 civilians, according to Israeli officials. Israel has responded with a relentless aerial bombardment of Gaza, dropping at least 6,000 bombs, nearly matching the
Protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation of Palestine march down Michigan Avenue on October 21, 2023.
number of bombs dropped by the U.S. in Afghanistan in a year. Since October 9, Israel has completely cut off access to food, water, and electricity for Gaza. Last weekend, phone and internet service to Gaza was suspended for thirtyfour hours and airstrikes intensified across the Strip as Israeli forces began a ground invasion. Meanwhile, settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank proliferated. The civilian death toll in Gaza is more than 8,000, amounting to what protesters called
a full-blown genocide. “Access to basic needs [in Palestine] are completely controlled by the nation-state of Israel,” said one of the October 14 speakers, Diana Balitaan of Anakbayan Chicago. “Gaza does not have access to clean water and they barely have access to electricity, to fuel, and even going to work, they have to go through all these checkpoints. Those who are asking for peace, where are you right now?” In addition to Anakbayan Chicago,
PHOTO BY JIM DALEY
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network were among those who gathered on October 14 to express a united voice against Israel’s siege and U.S. imperialism at large. “All over the world, occupation, white supremacy, and imperialism is what needs to be condemned. We will not condemn people fighting for their freedom,” said one speaker who called the CTU their political home. “When Nelson Mandela was asked to condemn the Palestinian resistance,
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
POLITICS
Youth wave Palestinian flags in front of the Cultural Center on October 21, 2023.
PHOTO BY JIM DALEY
he said absolutely not. The people in the United States who funded the apartheid regime in South Africa have no right to tell them to condemn the Palestinian resistance.” The messages blaring from demonstrators’ megaphones connected the dots between what is happening in Gaza and other movements against occupation and apartheid across history. Speakers also addressed the way the story of Gaza has been framed within mainstream media. “Western media emphasizes this as a war between Gaza and Israel as if there were two equal sides,” said one protester. “This is a struggle between the colonized and the colonizer, the occupied and the occupier. Today we take back the narrative.” In 1948, 750,000 Palestinian people were displaced or expelled from their homes in what became known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” during the ArabIsraeli War that broke out after the United Nations completed the British Mandate of partitioning Palestinian land to create Israel. Another 300,000 Palestinian people were expelled from their homes in 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, during which Israeli forces also began occupying the Gaza Strip. In 1995, the signing of the Oslo Accords by representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) established semiautonomous Palestinian governance of
Gaza and the West Bank, but Israeli settlements and military forces remained in Gaza until 2005. Hamas won the last elections held in Gaza in 2006. Many of the protesters at both demonstrations criticized how Western media has portrayed—and obfuscated— not only that history but also more recent violence on the part of the IDF and farright settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. “There were multiple instances that we’ve seen happen in Gaza and Palestine in my lifetime that we knew about in the Arab community, but it was never reported. We didn’t see it on CNN. We didn’t see it on ABC. We didn’t see it on any major news outlet.” said Sanad Mahmoud, a Palestinian protester at the October 14 rally. He said that reports only began appearing as usage of social media increased, bringing visibility to once unseen tragedies. With the increase of coverage, he has noticed the problematic ways in which Palestinians are framed. “The way they speak about murderers and the murdered. Fifty Israelis killed, 110 Palestinians died.” The relative power dynamics between the Israeli state and military and Palestinian militant organizations are “always framed as clashes between the two. Never for a fight for resistance or against our oppressors,” he said. A 2021 study supported Mahmoud’s sentiment. Holly M. Jackson, a computer
12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ NOVEMBER 2, 2023
scientist who was then an undergraduate at MIT, used machine learning to analyze over 33,000 articles dating back to the First Intifada in 1987, found that the New York Times has historically employed framing that persisted anti-Palestinian sentiment. Rifqa Falaneh, who took part in organizing the rallies this week and the public presence at the City Council special meeting on Friday, said the media has been biased in support of Israel and spread unconfirmed reports that were corrected too late to undo damage, with the end result being “to elicit sympathy for a settler colonial and apartheid regime while painting Palestinians as terrorists.” Last month, the Chicago City Council held a special meeting to vote on a resolution proposed by Alderperson Debra Silverstein (50th Ward) standing in solidarity with Israel. Public speakers at the October 13 meeting were divided in their emphatic support and opposition to the resolution (Mayor Johnson eventually cleared the audience after repeated outbursts), as were alderpersons who rose to speak about it ahead of the vote. The resolution ultimately passed, with 33rd Ward Alderperson Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez, who had previously attempted to convince Silverstein to add language acknowledging Palestinians’ humanity to it, casting the lone “no” vote.
Even though this was not the result Falaneh hoped for, she said people mobilized to “voice their opinion against the bill,” which she saw as a victory. At the October 14 rally, speakers such as Frank Chapman of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Destiny Harris of the Dissenters, and Tarek Khalil of the Coalition for Justice in Palestine, condemned the City Council’s decision to pass the resolution. Aldersperson Rodríguez Sánchez addressed a crowd of thousands on October 21, as did Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward). Joining them were teachers, healthcare workers, and activists from Jewish Voice for Peace, the Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy, and others calling for an end to the occupation of Palestine. Isabel, a twenty-one-year-old woman who attended that protest, told the Weekly she was there because “there’s an ethnic cleansing going on right now in [Gaza], and … we should do everything in our power to stop it.” The week before, Falaneh tied U.S funding of war abroad to the disinvestment from communities here at home. “The U.S. sends $3.8 billion every year in military aid to Israel when they could be investing in solving homelessness, paying off student debt, or giving free healthcare to Americans,” she said.
Demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation of Palestine have flooded the Loop with thousands in recent weekends. PHOTO BY JIM DALEY
POLITICS
Thousands of demonstrators chant “Free, free Palestine” at a protest on October 28, 2023.
Asked about how she stays hopeful, she said, “Although we are all devastated beyond belief, we are not privileged enough to pause our organizing and mourn. We cannot crumble while our people are dying. We must fight and make the call of freedom known now more than ever.” On all three days, after the speeches thousands of participants poured onto Michigan Ave., shouting at the top of their lungs, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Children who looked to be as young as eight years old were shouting into microphones until their voices cracked. Some parents pushed blanket-swaddled babies in strollers, and toddlers swayed on the shoulders of others. A thirty-two-year-old Black protester
who grew up on the South Side and declined to give his name said he was at the October 21 march because he felt society needs to “wake up to the atrocities America perpetuates throughout the world.” There’s no clearer example of that than Israel bombing Gaza, he said. “Our politicians stand with them and praise them as if they’re heroes, and they’re not.” He added that Biden should demand a ceasefire “immediately” and “actually pursue peace—not colonialism, not supremacy, true peace.” On all three days, not a single moment was surrendered to silence. “An action like today is a really healthy and cathartic way to release the pent-up frustration and energy collectively. It’s a really beautiful, healing
PHOTO BY JIM DALEY
moment for a lot of us in the diaspora who face the struggle of psychological torture that they inflicted upon us by separating us from our land,” said Mahmoud, adding that Palestinians who live here as American citizens do not have the right to return, referring to the inability to hold dual citizenship. He wryly said that resistance is built into the Palestinian people’s very existence. “I am Palestinian through and through,” he said. “It sounds hard, but if anyone knows how to resist, it is Palestinians. We are never going to stop. We might get burnt out and tired, but I don’t see myself ever stopping to fight to free Palestine, even if I was the last person standing.” He has found resistance in the
Palestinian diaspora to be its own kind of home. “I’ve been there. I’ve experienced the life. I’ve felt the ground,” he said. “I’ve seen the history and I know not only through my experiences, but through my parents’ experiences. I see Palestine in my mom’s face every single morning. I see it through her wrinkles, I see it through the hunch in her back. I see it in her age. I see Palestine in her and it's not something I could ever stop fighting for.” ¬ Kevin Hu is a multidisciplinary writer, tech worker, and a recent Chicago retransplant. You can find more of their writing at www.kevinhu.dev.
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13
POLITICS
Jewish Protesters Block Traffic to Demand Ceasefire in Gaza
A coalition of Jewish groups demonstrated outside the offices of Senators Durbin and Duckworth before sitting in on Ida B. Wells Drive. BY JIM DALEY
O
n October 24, more than a hundred activists representing a coalition of Jewish groups— including the Chicago chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Never Again—and allied organizers demonstrated in Federal Plaza outside the offices of IL Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth. The activists demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have conducted a relentless bombing campaign since a surprise attack by Hamas. After singing and chanting together beneath Calder’s Flamingo sculpture, the crowd moved south to the intersection of Clark and Ida B. Wells, where about fifty demonstrators sat in the street to block rushhour traffic for nearly an hour, chanting “Ceasefire now,” “Free, free Palestine,” and “Never again is now.” Police eventually escorted demonstrators from the street one by one and issued them citations before releasing them. One demonstrator was briefly detained inside a police wagon; Chicago Police Department spokesperson Tom Ahern said there were no arrests. “What the coalition of Jewish organizations in Chicago are calling attention to in this moment is the necessity of an immediate ceasefire to stop the catastrophic loss of life,” Ashely Bohrer, an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Weekly. She called the loss of life in Gaza “tanamount to ongoing genocide.” A group of United Nations experts warned last Thursday that Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has created “a risk of genocide” against the Palestinian people. The demonstration followed sit-ins the previous week on Capitol Hill, where hundreds of Jewish activists were arrested while demanding a ceasefire, and at U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s (IL-9) Skokie
Protesters march for Palestine.
office, where seven protesters with the U.S. Palestinian Community Network were arrested while demanding Schakowsky join proposed congressional resolutions that would guarantee protections for people in Palestine. Recent weekends have also seen mass demonstrations in Chicago and around the world in support of a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine and U.S. aid to Israel. The latest hostilities in the region began on October 7 when Hamas militants in Gaza began firing barrages of rockets into Israel and hundreds of fighters breached the heavily militarized border, killing about 1,400 people, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Since then, IDF warplanes have dropped thousands of bombs on cities in Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the airstrikes have killed at least 8,000 people, more than 3,000 of whom were children, so far. Over the weekend, phone and internet service to Gaza was cut for thirty-four hours and bombing significantly intensified as the IDF began a ground invasion of Gaza—its fourth since 2008. In October, President Joe Biden visited Israel and met with its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to reiterate what
14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ NOVEMBER 2, 2023
PHOTO BY JIM DALEY
Biden called “unwavering U.S. support for Israel” in the conflict. While there, Biden negotiated an arrangement to allow humanitarian aid trucks to enter Gaza, where Israel has cut off access to food, water, and electricity to the 2.1 million people living there. Biden has also asked Congress to approve $14.3 billion in weapons for Israel. In a press release, Senator Duckworth indicated she will support the aid package, and Durbin also endorsed Biden’s plan in a statement. Both have also called for increased humanitarian aid to Gaza. Bohrer said humanitarian aid is “a fine step” but added that it’s nowhere near enough. “American tax dollars support the military atrocities that are being unleashed in Gaza at this moment,” she said. “Sending aid to people after they have been harmed is absolutely not the same thing as preventing that harm from taking place. And what we are demanding is that [the] harm be stopped.” Neither senator’s office responded to requests for comment. On Friday, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution supporting Israel’s right to self-defense and condemning Hamas. Last month, U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez
(IL-3) cosponsored a resolution urging the Biden administration to call for immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in the conflict. Ramirez told the Weekly that funding should be used to promote peace, not provide more arms in a conflict that is killing innocent civilians daily. “The president, our U.S. senators, as well as the rest of Congress should really ask ourselves, if the two-state solution [is] our priority, is further funding the military aid for war going to get us there?” she asked. “Or is it going to make it impossible for us to ever get a solution?” Ramirez said the current political climate, in which the Hamas attacks were described by some as “Israel’s 9/11,” presents a “terrible future” that is reminiscent months and years after the World Trade Center attacks, when Muslims and brown people were harassed, attacked, and profiled, and the U.S. embarked on a twenty-year war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. “This is why so many of us continue to say the steps to de-escalation and ceasefire is the only way we’re going to save lives,” Ramirez said. “Funding a war that Israel would lead will only extend more war in the region.” Katzman-Jacobsen said blocking rushhour traffic during the direct action was necessary because the crisis has reached a point where business as usual can’t continue. “This is the moment when we can stand up and say, ‘We will not let this go on,’” she said. “Because to let this go on will only lead towards exponentially more deaths and violence, and impending genocide against the Palestinian people. And that’s why we need a ceasefire right now.” ¬ Jim Daley is an investigative journalist and senior editor at the Weekly.
MUSIC
The Rise of the Femcee
Chicago women in hip-hop discussed the present and future of what it means to be a femcee. BY KIA SMITH, JASMINE MORALES, AND ISIAH “THOUGHTPOET” VENEY
T
he evolution of the female emcee has taken the hip-hop world by storm. The genre, which has historically been male-dominated, has had to make room for women who are not only bringing sex appeal and marketability, but skilled lyricism, to the forefront. “Femcees” across the world have begun to build an alliance. From Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, who have worked on chart-topping hits like “W.A.P” and “Bongos,” to Latto, who hopped on Chicago raptress Mello Buckzz’s “Boom Pt 2,” girl power is in full effect as artists continue to prop each other up. More recently, the BET Hip-Hop Awards put together a group of cyphers, which included Lola Brooke, Scar Lip, Maiya the Don, and Lady London, shedding light on a newer generation of women emcees that can walk onto any stage and rap just as good as, if not better than, their male counterparts. After the rise of hip-hop artists like Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, and Lauryn Hill in the 90s, the female voice seemingly faded into obscurity, leaving a void in the genre. But in the 2010s, Nicki Minaj stepped onto the scene, becoming one of the biggest hip-hop artists of all time and making it more palatable for more women across the world to leave their imprint. South Side Weekly got the opportunity to sit down with Chicago women in hip-hop: Truth, from the Austin area of Chicago, who is one half of the duo Mother Nature; Linda Sol from Humboldt Park; TWEAK’ G from the Auburn Gresham, Bronzeville, and Chatham neighborhoods; Dialect Tre, also from Austin; and Asha Omega who's based on the Southeast Side. They discussed the present and future of what it means to be a femcee,
Chicago rap duo Mother Nature
the unique position of being a Black woman in the industry, and what sets these Chicago women who rap apart.
T
here was a time in hip-hop where there could only be one female emcee in the top spot. Women
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
of New York’s Hot 97. Philly rapper Eve also admitted in 2018 that Lil’ Kim had snubbed her while the rapper was coming up in the late 90s and early 2000s. In the mid-2000s, Nicki Minaj became the leading lady in hip-hop. After becoming the first lady of Lil Wayne's
“You can't ask for shit back. You got to take it back sometimes. And I think that women right now, we took that shit back.”
rarely worked together, preventing sisterhood in the genre. During the 90s, Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown famously had a personal beef that spilled over into their music. After dissing Foxy Brown on Lil Cease’s 1999 song “Play Around,” the beef turned violent after shots were fired between the two emcees’ camps outside
Young Money record label, Minaj charted with hits like “Your Love” and “Right Thru Me.” As she garnered a solid female fanbase, she would reach a new level of respect from her male peers rapping on Kanye West’s “Monster”, featuring hiphop heavy weights Jay-Z and Rick Ross. Many hip-hop critics declared she outrapped all three men on the track.
But as her career blossomed, rumors swirled that Nicki wasn't so nice to other female rappers. Lil’ Kim would call her out several times for what she called a lack of respect towards her. Bronx rapper Remy Ma had a decade-long beef with Minaj that started way before Minaj was a household name. In Nicki’s 2007 mixtape, “Playtime is Over”, Minaj threw jabs at Remy Ma seemingly letting the Bronx rapper know she was coming for the top spot. The beef continued after Remy Ma was released from prison; in 2017, Ma released a seven minute diss song titled “Sheether”. Although the beef became viral, Minaj’s success was too strong. Minaj had secured her role as “Queen of Rap” until Cardi B was introduced to the world. After a few seasons on VH1’s Love and Hip-Hop, Cardi B’s popularity skyrocketed. Her hit song “Bodak Yellow”, released in 2017, not only hit number one on Billboard Charts, making her the first solo female rapper to do so since Lauryn Hill, but was also certified diamond. Her debut album “Invasion of Privacy” would also break records as the longest-charting album by a female rapper surpassing Lauryn Hills’ Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Cardi’s success would peak the interest of Nicki Minaj’s fan base “The Barbz”, shading the Bronx rapper and ultimately causing friction between the two emcees’s fan bases. Minaj and Cardi would later take part in their own beef following the recording and release of Migo’s song “Motorsport”. Because the female voices in hiphop have been few and far in between compared to their male counterparts, each beef affected how women were viewed in hip-hop. Their “beef ” is not typically seen the same as the men’s, leaving room for the patriarchy in hip-hop to continue.
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15
MUSIC
Chicago femcees (left to right) Asha Omega, Truth, Klev, Linda Sol, and Dialect Tre.
C
hicago artists like Da Brat, who is from the West Side and is the first solo female rap artist to receive a platinum certification, and South Side native Shawnna, who was the first female artist signed to Def Jam South, helped open doors for Chicago femcees. But Chicago has had a few of its own women in hip-hop, and much like Chicago in general, there is still a lack of respect and acknowledgment for the culture this city adds to hip-hop. Dialect Tre, the youngest affiliate of theGr8thinkaz collective, has been working non-stop, having just dropped a new project titled The Villain Arc: A Story About Character and building with Chicago hip-hop artists like Freddie Old Soul. “We can give our flowers to a woman
because women are what's really holding the game down. And I say that now because, even with all the different rap genres that are happening right now, if you searched up what's popular right now, it’s most likely gonna be a Brown [or] Black woman at the top of the charts,” said Dialect Tre. Mother Nature, which is made up of the emcees Truth and Klevah Knox, have been forging a lane in the Chicago scene for years. With a new project in the works and rumors of features coming from Vic Mensa, the Closed Sessions-signed group are ready to be heard. “I think with the music scene, just as a whole right now in Chicago, a lot of people are tapped in. So activists, community organizers, educators, and they also rap really, really well, you know
16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ NOVEMBER 2, 2023
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
what I'm saying? So it's a beautiful thing to see this next wave that's coming from Chicago, and it is being headed by women,” Truth said. “With everybody being authentic to who they are, and staying true to that, that’s what’s gonna make this next wave in Chicago even bigger than the last.” For some of these artists, falling in love with music and choosing hip-hop as a genre to pursue was an intentional choice. Others feel like hip-hop chose them. Asha Omega is a well-known community member and emcee in Chicago who recently performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) for the artist-led organization Chibrations. Asha was also featured in the Weekly’s Music Issue this summer.
“Hip-hop chose me, I’d like to say. I wanted to be the next Beyoncé growing up, but storytelling and poetry was my solace growing up, and during that time, being born in ‘98, hip-hop was changing so much and so fast. Many of my peers are the very same people that saw the gift I had and brought out the light of rhythm and poetry I had inside,” she said. TWEAK' G, known for both community organizing and for her lyricism on Rhymefest’s and Traxster’s newest album CHICAGO (A Side, B Side), spoke candidly about how she started rapping to prove a point. “In 1998, I was in a foster home and the first song that I actually heard was Lauryn Hill and Nas’s… ‘If I Ruled The World.’ The second song I was introduced to was Deborah Cox, ‘Nobody’s Supposed
MUSIC
Chicago rapper TWEAK’ G
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
To Be Here.’ I was like... if I ruled the world, kids wouldn’t be taken away from their family... So right then and there, I fell in love with music." She continued: “It wasn’t until sixth grade [when I saw] what I thought was a fight on 35th and Cottage was actually a group of people battle rapping. I tried to butt in on their shit, and they were like, ‘you can’t rap because you a girl.’” Her story is not uncommon. Patriarchy and misogyny in Black and Brown communities seeps into hip-hop; many women of color hear unwanted and unwarranted opinions on what
Dialect Tre
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
they can and can’t do. But they are now transforming the genre into a vehicle of defiance for women who have something to say. Linda Sol, who was recognized by WGCI this year as an artist on the rise, has been extremely busy. Having just finished a special music program at Harvard, where she met folks like Ab-Soul of Top Dawg Entertainment and Joey Bada$$, and with a new single out, she is positioning herself for bigger things next year. “We have a broad spectrum of emotions that deserve to be broadcasted to the world. Men who are in technically the same subgenres of hip-hop may be in the same mixes on the radio as these women in the mainstream, [and] their music is allowed to talk about other stuff. They talk about dead homies, they talk about shit they went through as a kid, all on the same beats,” said Linda Sol. “But if a woman does it—like when Megan is talking about things she went through on her last project—those songs are almost pushed to a different genre. They don’t get played on the radio the way that men do when they’re talking their shit.” During the interview, the artists nodded in unison about the plight of Black women while participating in what was once seen as a man’s game. “Just being a woman, and then being a Black woman in this space of creating music, especially in the rap realm, it gave me a voice. I wouldn’t want to say identity,
but it gave me a point to be expressive in the ways I was allowed to,” said Dialect Tre. “[Being a Black woman too], I feel like it's something that adds to our power and our magic.” An artist who is more sexually frank in her music may not get the same respect as an artist who is more focused on the craft. Both can be successful in their own lanes, but due to the patriarchy, the level of respect for them may differ. But these days, that stigma is being dismantled by women who are standing together and uplifting each other's music, no matter the content or style. And as a whole, artists in the Chicago hip-hop scene are fighting to maintain integrity and credit within the culture. “I think it's time for the next wave of what's after this era of reclamation, which is widening the depths, and I think that is something we carry, I don't think men
Linda Sol
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
sweet spot between underground and mainstream, Chicago femcees are using their power and flair to influence the city’s new generation of female rappers to be themselves and let their inner Chicago girl shine through their music. “I think Chicago is similar to New York in that it’s a melting pot of different people. And instead of outsourcing, we’re able to look inwards and look backwards to be able to see what's next. So I think that's what's special. And I think people here just push their skill in a way that's like, ‘I'm not trying to sound like the next person. I think that's cool. And watch how I'm gonna do it…’” Linda Sol said. “There is a certain confidence that we just got like, ‘I'm from Chicago, I don’t gotta be like anybody else, but the best version of myself.’ And I think that translates musically”. ¬ Asha Omega
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
could do it for us. They didn't let us do this,” Linda Sol said. “We did it…. You can't ask for shit back. You got to take it back sometimes. And I think that women right now, we took that shit back.” Whether it’s artists like Linda Sol who hopped on a track with Cece BKE, another female artist whose music reflects the streets with a touch of princess, or Mother Nature, who continue to find a
Kia Smith, Jasmine Morales, and ThoughtPoet are music contributors at the Weekly.
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17
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South Side Your Business! Weekly’s Business
POLITICS
Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD/SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS
October 10 At its meeting, the City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate voted to sell a former city firehouse in Pilsen to the National Museum of Mexican Art for one dollar. The museum plans to redevelop the property into a community center for Yollocalli Arts Reach, which provides free arts programs for thirteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds. Translated from an Aztec language, Yollocalli stands for “heart house.” Programs include drawing, painting, audio, photography, murals—fifty of them in public spaces, according to the organization’s website—and graphic design. Council members Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) and Daniel La Spata (1st Ward) supported the sale. At their meeting, members of the Chicago Community Development Commission approved a motion allowing the Department of Housing to negotiate redevelopment of the former Earle Elementary School building in West Englewood to affordable family housing. The item was deferred from a previous meeting due to questions around the developer’s experience and lack of engagement with local organizations. Partial funding of $4.2 million is to come from the 63rd/Ashland Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district. Those TIF funds account for less than fourteen percent of the total development cost. Plans call for the project to create 117 construction jobs and twenty permanent jobs. October 11 Mayor Brandon Johnson presented his proposed 2024 “People’s Budget” at a special Chicago City Council Mayoral 2024 Budget Address meeting. Johnson’s $16.6 billion budget seeks to satisfy campaign promises, especially to invest in housing, mental health, and community safety. It also aims to close a $538 million budget deficit without raising property taxes. A new element in this year’s budget is $150 million for welcoming and accommodating arriving migrants. Critics were concerned that the proposed funding would cover only six months of service and that the budget maintains a contract for ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot detection technology. Departmental hearings and budget negotiations are to be conducted through mid-November, when the City Council will vote on the proposed budget.
announced to the City Council Joint Committee: Environmental Protection and Energy & Public Safety at its meeting. Committee members learned that the deadline for individuals to apply for federal assistance had been extended to October 30. A plan to resolve damages, including hazardous basement mold, divides the city into four areas of underground tunnels and prioritizes the South and West sides, a City representative explained. The Thornton Reservoir is to be used for overflow. Short-term solutions (six to twelve months) include repair of private sewer drains and grid-based cleaning of the catch basins and sewer mains hardest hit during the floods. Twelve-to-eighteen-month, or medium-term, solutions include downspout disconnection to temporarily relieve the sewer water system and prevent basement flooding. Long-term solutions of two to five years envisage a regional tunnel system covering the city. Residents and committee members were concerned about a perceived lack of support at both the local and federal levels. October 18 The addition of a major new event—this past summer’s NASCAR street race—sparked support for a liaison position to serve the City Council and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). The suggestion came during the 2024 City Budget Hearings of the Dept. of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Dept. of Planning and Development meeting. Council Member Monique Scott (24th Ward) noted that the new event necessitated moving the Taste of Chicago from July to September and that the race cost the City $3.5 million but brought in only $620,000, as the Weekly reported. Most of that revenue, she said, came as Park District fees, which don’t count as City revenue. DCASE Commissioner Erin Harkey suggested that the Chicago Department of Finance could supply financial information about future NASCAR races. The 2024 DCASE budget discussed at the hearing totaled about $84.9 million, though there was uncertainty about the exact amount of the increase from FY2023. October 19 City Clerk Anna Valencia implored Council members for more funding to better staff her department and expand programming during a budget meeting: “My team is drowning.” Her request came during 2024 City Budget Hearings of the City Clerk and the Dept. of Public Health as she described a few of her office’s most successful programs, including one that serves both homeless residents and newly arriving migrants. CityKey enables United States citizens and non-citizens to obtain government identification using a birth certificate or identification provided by a consulate. Through the first half of the year, 16,412 CityKey IDs have been issued and demand continues to run high. The program serves as a library card, CTA Ventra Card, and a Chicago Rx discount card. Businesses in the city also offer discounts to cardholders. The program is free, and new funding would enable the program to be moved online. A highly popular home and business protection program used its complete allocation of $1.8 million in the first three months of this year and might not be renewed, City Council members learned at a meeting for the 2024 City Budget Hearings of the Chicago Public Library and Dept. of Family and Support Services. The federal funding came from the American Rescue Plan and COVID-19 grants, explained Acting Commissioner of the Department of Public Health (CDPH) Fikirte Wagaw. Launched in August 2022, the program gave rebates to businesses and homeowners who purchased private security cameras for their properties. Praising Phalanx Family Services, another grant-funded program, Council Member Ronnie Mosley (21st Ward) asked Wagaw what would happen to the workforce development opportunities Phalanx offers in his community when its grant money ran out. The CDPH commissioner couldn’t provide an answer.
October 12 A meeting of the 4th Police District Council—Avalon Park/South Chicago/East Side/Hegewisch provided community members with updates on the most recent nominating committee meeting. That committee is tasked with giving the mayor a list of potential appointees to the seven-member Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA). The 4th Police District Council discussed some of the requirements for representation. At least two seats must be filled by attorneys with at least ten years of experience in civil rights, civil liberties, criminal defense, or prosecution, for example. Another seat must be filled by someone with at least ten years of community organizing experience. Two spots are reserved for people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.
October 20 Planting and trimming trees was a key topic at a meeting of the 2024 City Budget Hearings of the Dept. of Streets and Sanitation, Dept. of Procurement. The Our Roots Chicago program is on schedule to plant more than 18,000 trees this year to “expand the tree canopy in Chicago through an equitable approach to every neighborhood,” explained Department of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Cole Stallard. A new, more efficient way of scheduling trimming enabled the department’s Bureau of Forestry (BOF) to trim 53,188 trees to date compared to 19,525 in the same period last year. The department’s proposed $345 million 2024 budget is a 9.4 percent increase that could add sixteen positions, thirteen in the BOF and three for rodent control.
October 13 Proposed remedies for individuals affected by the extreme rain and flooding in July were
This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org. NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19
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Our thoughts in exchange for yours. he Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.
Consumer Report by chima “naira” ikoro
- on a rating scale, most people say just “fine” - impressive, super efficient - capable - made for families, protective - relaxed, unhurried - willing to do long distance - top pick if you prefer frugal, reliable, comfortable - plenty of space for your baggage - good if you don’t expect anything that inspires passion - not an end goal, just a means to take you there - not a dream but pretty good for now - fun, fast (if that’s what you want) - not needy, easy to fix - easy to buy, too - good on gas.
- on a rating scale, most people say just “fine” - impressive, super efficient - capable - made for families, protective - relaxed, unhurried - willing to do long distance - top pick if you prefer frugal, reliable, comfortable - plenty of space for your baggage - good if you don’t expect anything that inspires passion - not an end goal, just a means to take you there - not a dream but pretty good for now - fun, fast (if that’s what you want) - not needy, easy to fix - easy to buy, too - good on gas.
The Nissan Altima won the MotorWeek Drivers choice award, and is an IIHS top safety pick. Isn’t that enough? What, you want me to post you, too?
The Nissan Altima won the MotorWeek Drivers choice award, and is an IIHS top safety pick. Isn’t that enough? What, you want me to post you, too?
Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder. THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WRITE ABOUT A TIME WHEN YOU WANTED MORE FOR YOURSELF, BUT FELT STUCK.” This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com
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Our thoughts in exchange for yours. he Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly. FEATURED BELOW IS A RESPONSE TO A PREVIOUS PROMPT FROM A READER WHO IS CURRENTLY INCARCERATED.
Fruits From A Poisonous Tree by marvin “prince saleem” alexis
They say bad fruit comes from a bad tree, sprouted from a bad root of a bad seed. However, we, we have somehow forgotten the awful gardens from which these particles were planted and plotted. Sown and sodden by a psychotic potter’s hand. Surrounded by murky mildewed milieus which serve as toxic arenas, Where wild weeds were tranced then mutated into wild hyenas Who circle our nurseries, poisonous fangs seeping venom, dripping to rip us from our culture and roots. We were shamed, then stripped of the knowledge of SELF. They drew a line between Him and I, then divided the two. They exiled him to the heavens, and made him out of reach for our spiritual pursuit. Our education was then soiled by 10th editions and false renditions,
All while being washed and bleached like dishes of its literal truth. We were made to be blind, deaf, and dumb folk. And the moment we began to turn the tides like jump ropes, We were told that we would never accumulate to more than the cumulus... But, those clouds were just gun smoke. So, they kept us high and drunk folk. Then said we’d never have the vision to see beyond the haze of our prisons... But see, those clouds were just blunt smoke. Unable to reach the stars, we began reaching for straws, Scurrying to assemble ourselves as scarecrows to fend our seeds from the vicious murders, their ravenous teeth and lacerating claws. There was no winter wonderland, no Aurora Borealis, Only cold, cold horrors that, Brought morbid darkness to our promised lands, Turning them into killing fields.
Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder. THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WRITE ABOUT A TIME WHEN YOU WANTED MORE FOR YOURSELF, BUT FELT STUCK.” This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces. Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com
NOVEMBER 2, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21
ENVIRONMENT
Q&A: How Chief Sustainability Officer Angela Tovar Plans to Tackle Environmental Racism Tovar says her experiences growing up near “Slag Valley” on the Southeast Side deeply influence her approach to reforming practices that have disproportionately burdened communities like the one she was raised in. BY AYDALI CAMPA This story was originally published by Inside Climate News. Reprinted with permission.
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hicago is at a crucial moment, as city officials and community leaders take the first steps to tackle environmental discrimination after a federal investigation revealed how the city’s zoning and planning practices have disproportionately placed polluting businesses in predominantly Black and Latinx communities in the South and West Sides. At the center of this endeavor is Angela Tovar, who grew up on the Southeast Side. Tovar’s family was part of a wave of immigrants in the first half of the twentieth century who moved to the area to work in the steel mills. Residents of the Southeast Side have been overburdened by economic challenges from the steel industry’s decline and the health risks posed by the legacy of toxic waste left behind. As the city’s chief sustainability officer, Tovar is leading the effort to reform city policies and practices that have disproportionately burdened Black and Latinx residents in this area and other parts of the city. Appointed by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2020, Tovar established the Office of Climate and Environmental Equity early this year. She also led the collaboration between the city and environmental justice leaders to study and identify environmental justice communities in the city and draft a crossdepartmental citywide plan. Next, she will be leading the effort to turn the city’s climate office into a new Department of the Environment tasked with managing the implementation of
the city’s 2022 Climate Action Plan, which aims for eighty percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2050. Inside Climate News recently spoke with Tovar about her vision for the Department of the Environment and the next steps in addressing environmental concerns in the country’s third-largest city.
Because of the jobs piece, perhaps people didn’t question it as much. But especially after the economy transitioned, you start to realize how much of an environmental impact that particular industry has had on your community. It is extractive in many ways, and it left nothing behind for the community as an asset as it transitioned out.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Did you know when you decided to pursue urban planning as a career that you eventually wanted to use that knowledge and training to return to the community where you grew up?
ICN: Did you realize that there was significant pollution in your neighborhood growing up, and how did living on the Southeast Side inform your work now as chief sustainability officer? Tovar: There are so many memories to look back on. I have very vivid memories of driving through the neighborhood and seeing the smokestacks and big flames from steel production. That’s ingrained in my memory forever. The area of South Chicago where I went to grade school was nicknamed “Slag Valley.” Slag is the byproduct of steel production, and valley meant that they were just open piles of slag. Another vivid memory is of a chunk of the lakefront being closed off to the public because that area was formerly industrial. All of my siblings had asthma. My brother especially had a very chronic case, was often taking at-home treatments for asthma and infrequently had to seek more critical medical care for it. I was the only one that didn’t have it. At the time, we didn’t make the connection to the health impacts of growing up in an industrial community.
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I pursued urban planning to become a community organizer. I remember time and time again…big presentations that planners gave in South Chicago about how they would change the neighborhood and bring back jobs. In the late ‘90s, many of those plans didn’t fully connect with communities in the way they hopefully do now. Those meetings and the lack of community engagement resonated with me. What if we utilized city tools to envision solutions for ourselves proactively? I wanted to pursue planning because I wanted to have the same tools, my interest in planning was community-focused. After graduate school, I worked in the South Bronx, which mirrors South Chicago in terms of a high concentration of industry — a lot of heavy truck traffic and many folks grappling with health disparities. It was community planning that I was interested in, but working in the Bronx cemented my commitment to environmental justice, realizing there was more than just a land-use issue. There were really meaningful ways to
think proactively about minimizing environmental impacts through zoning and land-use tools. How did you approach stepping into this role, which began right at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic? It was a whirlwind. There was a vacancy in the position for some time, so I think there were folks eager to work with someone to ensure their priorities were addressed, so I just jumped into the deep end. Many people had ideas they wanted to bring to life and wanted to see the city set some robust commitments on climate and environmental justice, things that had fallen off over the course of a couple of years. Departments were still leading the work. The Chicago Department of Public Health continued efforts at that time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but having a leader who could serve in a centralized role and work crossdepartmentally to foster the development of a vision in coordination with the mayor was a gap. And so folks were eager to have me lead the 2022 Climate Action Plan and continue coordinating on a shared agenda with stakeholders, advocacy leaders, environmental leaders and civic leaders. How do you expect the role to evolve or grow with time? Next year will be about putting the infrastructure in place for a growing Department of Environment. We will add some roles next year and then evaluate what positions should migrate into the Department. My role will be to
continue to lead the team and deepen relationships with stakeholders in some of our sister agencies like Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Transit Authority. Is there an element of mistrust from residents that you’ve had to address, and if so, how are you rebuilding that trust and working with EJ communities? Yes, it was apparent to me not just as a Southeast-Sider but as someone who has worked in environmental justice. Before city government, I spent ten years on the advocacy side, leading two nonprofit organizations and their environmental justice agenda. My job, especially in the Bronx, was to develop plans for the community based on its vision. It was completely community-led and in practice of the principles of environmental justice. That equity training, which is always a work in progress, the critical nature of that is something that I carried over to this role and in understanding that there is this deep distrust of the systems. I can identify with that.
I’ve been on the other side, in community meetings where I felt like we were just speaking out into this void, and it was unclear if anyone would take our feedback and make an outcome. I’ve sat through meetings where I have worked with community residents who pleaded for a planning project to change course. I understand why folks would be hesitant to anyone coming in to say that they value environmental justice. Before we started to work on policies, I spent time building rapport, inviting myself to communities, taking tours, getting to know folks and letting them know my background, my values and what I thought was possible. When I felt it was the right time, we started with the Environmental Equity Working Group and then another. I took my time proving that I was committed to working with folks and then demonstrating that commitment. It’s not perfect, and we will always encounter people with reservations about working with us. It’s up to us to continue to prove we’re listening and to get the best possible outcome.
How does it feel to be a part of this group of women of color at the forefront of this environmental justice movement, especially during this critical period of advancing EJ policy in Chicago? It’s a big responsibility for all of us. Everyone in this work feels that we all are shouldering a big responsibility and wants to deliver the best possible outcome. They understand that this is a once-in-a-lifetime moment to undo systems that may have led to outcomes that are inconsistent with what people see for their community. We have the opportunity to change those systems to provide better outcomes and minimize environmental harm. It took years to get there, but we have convened around shared values, which is an exciting moment. In terms of what it’s like to be part of this collective of women of color pursuing environmental justice, that’s pretty standard across the country. Environmental justice is primarily
led by women of color, and it speaks to the values that are instilled in us as protectors of our communities, our families and our children and their future. It’s wonderful to see the commonalities that you have, even as a government leader. I can see myself in and have tremendous respect for our frontline leaders. It resonates with me when [they] talk about…the fight to protect their families, their children’s health and their communities. It reminds me that I am them and that this is more than just a government process for me. I am not just another person taking this role because I care about one sustainability issue. This is deeply personal for us. ¬ Aydali Campa covers environmental justice at Inside Climate News. As a bilingual reporter with experience in multimedia, she has covered education, Covid-19 and transborder issues.
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BULLETIN Abolition Means No More War: FREE PALESTINE NOW! Event
Virtual. Wednesday, November 1, 5pm–6:30pm. The event is a fundraiser for Middle East Children’s Alliance. Donate at bit.ly/PalestineDiscussion. Haymarket Books is hosting a critical discussion on the ongoing war on Palestine with Dr. Angela Davis and leaders from the Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, INCITE! and Critical Resistance. Speakers will discuss the situation on the ground in Palestine, steps for organizations and people and abolitionist strategies. (Zoe Pharo)
City Civics Day
Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave. Saturday, November 4, 10:30am–5:30pm. Free. bit.ly/3QejrnU The City of Chicago is hosting a City Civics Day where Chicagoans can “connect with fellow residents, engage with community leaders and learn what makes the city work.” This all-day event features seminars, workshops and panels with City of Chicago officials and community voices, including “converting old rails to community trails,” “why local media matters” and other how-to workshops. (Zoe Pharo and Jackie Serrato)
Undocumented Student Resource Center Launch
Student Services Building, Conference Rooms A & B, 1200 W. Harrison St. Monday, November 6, 10am–1pm. Free. bit.ly/40mmJde The University of Illinois Chicago is hosting a ribbon-cutting for its new Undocumented Student Resource Center. The UIC center will be dedicated to the late immigration activist Rigo Padilla-Pérez. (Zoe Pharo)
Secret Agent Training (MSI Club for Kids)
Richard J. Daley Library, 3400 S Halsted St. Wednesday, November 8, 4pm. Free, but registration required. bit.ly/3QiNfQb Become a secret agent at our Science Club and join us for a special series of programs featuring hands-on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math)
activities that explore science. Attendance at all sessions is strongly encouraged. This will take place on the following Wednesdays from 4-5pm: November 8, 15, 29, and December 6. Please register online and plan to get messy. Recommended for kids in grades 3 to 6. Younger kids need assistance from their guardian. Chicago Public Library's Out-ofSchool-Time Science Club programming is made possible with gratitude to a partnership with the Museum of Science and Industry. (Richard J. Daley Library)
College & Scholarship Resource Fair
Arturo Velasquez Institute, 2800 S. Western Ave. Monday, November 13, 6pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ScholarshipResourceFair The Chicago Public Schools, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission and City Colleges of Chicago are co-hosting the sixth annual College Scholarship and Resource Fair, presented by the Network for Undocumented Scholarship Access, which will provide resources for undocumented students and families. (Zoe Pharo)
ARTS Chicago Humanities Festival
Various locations and dates in November. Varying prices, see specific events. chicagohumanities.org/events The Chicago Humanities Festival presents events across the city through November 16. Events include writer Joyce Carol Oates, poet Tracy K. Smith, writer Roxane Gay and Lindsay Hunter, Chicago artist Ines Sommer’s “The Hills,” which tells the story of environmental injustices in Chicago’s Southeast Side and a screening of the film “The Police Killing of Harith Augustus,” by Bill Morrison, about police violence and the Augustus’ death in 2018 in South Shore. (Zoe Pharo)
Committee of Six: Screening and Public Discussion
Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd. Friday, November 3, 4pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/CommitteeOfSix The Green Line Performing Arts Center is hosting a screening and discussion of Committee of Six, an award-winning film that delves into a meeting held in 1955 at the University of Chicago between community leaders and university officials, for the purposes of creating an Urban Renewal program for
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Hyde Park. The film was produced by U. of C. alumnus Fred Schmidt-Arenales and Ellenor Riley-Condit. Following the screening attendees are invited to enjoy dessert and join discussion facilitators from the National Public Housing Museum, the Chicago SunTimes, the Council on UChicago/Community Relations, the Invisible Institute, UChicago Against Displacement and more. (Zoe Pharo)
Chicago Stages at The Logan: Jeremy Joél Warren and the Messengers of Black Music
Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, November 3, 7pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/ChicagoStages Jeremy Joél Warren and the Messengers of Black Music will perform a free one-hour set at Café Logan. This is a free pre-show concert before the University of Chicago Presents concert Theon Cross. (Zoe Pharo)
Black Harvest Film Festival
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Friday, November 3–Thursday, November 16, 7:01pm–6:01pm. Festival passes are $30 for members and $60 for the general public. bit.ly/BlackHarvestFilmFest The 29th Annual Black Harvest Film Festival will showcase films that “celebrate, explore, and share the Black, African American, and African Diaspora experience.” This year’s festival highlights “Revolutionary Visions,” the history, politics and art honoring the legacy of revolutionary struggle across the diaspora, and the intersectionality of Black experiences worldwide. This year’s festival is being curated by Jada-Amina and Nick Leffel, in honor of film critic and Black Harvest Film Festival co-founder and consultant Sergio Mims, who passed away last fall, this year the Gene Siskel Film Center is also establishing the Sergio Mims Fund for Black Excellence in Filmmaking. (Zoe Pharo)
StoryStudio Writers Festival
Center On Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St. Friday, November 3–Sunday, November 5, 8pm–5pm. Registration is $350. bit.ly/StoryStudioFest Curated by Artistic Director Rebecca Makkai, StoryStudio is hosting the sixth annual twoday festival, which will offer classes, panels and social events to help writers develop their craft and build a supportive community. For those looking for feedback, the festival offers one-on-one manuscript reviews from authors and StoryStudio instructors. The 2023 keynote
speaker is author Rumaan Alam. (Zoe Pharo)
The Writer’s Room: A Town Hall on Dance + Performance Writing
Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. MLK Dr. Saturday, November 4, 4pm–6pm. Free. bit.ly/WritersRoomTownHall Performance Response Journal, Sixty Inches From Center and The Process Podcast are partnering for a town hall conversation with dancers, performers and writers in Chicago. The town hall is designed to be a community conversations, and will be moderated and guide by artists, curators and writers Tara Aisha Willis, Maggie Bridger, Benji Hart and Gervais Marsh. The Process Podcast will be holding small interviews post-discussion, and Patric McCoy’s exhibition “At First Glance” will serve as the backdrop for the discussion. (Zoe Pharo)
Voices of the South Side Screening
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Sunday, November 5, 3pm–5pm. Free. bit.ly/3tNWssc The Community Film Workshop of Chicago and Black Harvest Film Festival, Chicago’s annual showcase for films that celebrate, explore and share the Black diaspora experience, presents “Voices of the South Side,” a community screening of twelve short films covering topics as disparate as community gardening, gentrification, intergenerational mentorship and entrepreneurship. (Zoe Pharo)
Himnoteca: Chicago's Largest Latino Karaoke Party Distro Music Hall, 6815 Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn. Saturday, November 18, 9pm–3am. $10-20 admission. Request free tickets at events by The People's Stage Karaoke.
The People's Stage Karaoke and Kombi Chicago are excited to present the first annual Himnoteca, part 3. The party is a celebration of karaoke culture and the diversity of Latinx music across genres and generations. While it is being held in a Berwyn hall with a capacity for 400 people, the event draws Latino Chicagoans from all over the city. This iteration will include midnight tributes to current legends Peso Pluma, Karol G, Grupo Frontera, and Bad Bunny. ( Jackie Serrato)