IN CHICAGO IN THIS
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 5, Issue 9 Editor-in-Chief Managing Editors
Hafsa Razi Julia Aizuss, Andrew Koski
Directors of Staff Support Baci Weiler Community Outreach Jasmin Liang Senior Editor
Olivia Stovicek
Politics Editor Education Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor Food & Land Editor
Adia Robinson Rachel Kim Nicole Bond Rod Sawyer Emeline Posner
Editors-at-Large
Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen
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Maddie Anderson, Mira Chauhan, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Sam Stecklow, Margaret Tazioli, Yunhan Wen
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Jasmine Mithani Erisa Apantaku Andrew Koski Olivia Obineme Social Media Editors Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Lizzie Smith Photography Editor Jason Schumer Layout Editor Baci Weiler Staff Writers: Elaine Chen, Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michael Wasney Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Sam Joyce, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Sam Stecklow, Rebecca Stoner, Tiffany Wang Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma Webmaster
Pat Sier
Publisher
Harry Backlund
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Jason Schumer
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Cover photo by Emeline Posner
A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors
ISSUE
DNAinfo and Chicagoist: Where Are They Now After the abrupt shutdown of DNAinfo and Chicagoist on November 2, we’ve been keeping an eye on how their former reporters are faring. Here are a few of the places they went (hint: all of them are online blogs). Chicago Cityscape, a database provider of construction and development in Chicago neighborhoods, hired former DNAinfo reporters for its Medium website. Here you can find the work of Alex Nitkin for the Far Northwest Side, Alisa Hauser for the Wicker Park and Bucktown beats, and Sam Cholke, the omnipresent reporter for the South Lakefront. Hauser is now back to editing the Medium website Chicago Pipeline, her old neighborhood blog that she wrote until 2012 and revived this month to cover Wicker Park, Bucktown, and West Town; some former DNAinfo and Chicagoist writers are on board now as well. Former Englewood and Chatham reporter Andrea Watson, on the other hand, has struck out on her own and keeps reporting for the communities who know and trust her work—find her at andreavwatson.wordpress.com.
DIALOGUE AT DADS
Whitewashed Opioid Epidemic It is well known that the opioid epidemic started with the abuse of painkillers as palliative care swept over white people in rural and suburban areas. What is missing from the narrative is opiates’ impact on African Americans; as a result, the Chicago Urban League stepped in to fill in the gap and published a brief, the first in a series, claiming that the current narrative on the opioid epidemic is whitewashed and trivializes the severe struggle of black addicts— who, according to the brief, “account for nearly one quarter of opioid overdose deaths despite making up fifteen percent of Illinois’s population.” Chicago is an extreme case study since the city’s death rate of African Americans from opioids is quadruple the national average while also having the “lowest treatment capacity for medication-assisted treatment in the Midwest.” One wonders, of course, whether these meager resources are evenly distributed among different racial groups. As the brief points out, any existing resources certainly aren’t geographically, economically, or culturally tailored.
THE HEROISM OF THE ORDINARY
At Last The Chicago Police Department’s shuffling slow-walk down the path toward becoming, if not wholly reformed, even marginally less corrupt, finally got a kick in the pants from State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office last week. Foxx vacated the convictions of fifteen men who were prosecuted in cases involving officers associated with disgraced former South Side public housing sergeant Ronald Watts. This happened after officers notified prosecutors they would plead the Fifth Amendment and not testify against the men during upcoming hearings. Joining the fifteen was Jose Maysonet, who was released after four former officers who worked with former Northwest Side detective Reynaldo Guevara refused to testify. It is the first mass exoneration in Cook County’s history according to Foxx’s office, and it is essentially exactly what Foxx was elected to do. “I think it’s moving from kind of the myopic vision of ‘can we win on this issue?’” she told the Tribune. “Having a broader view of ‘did the right outcome happen in this case?’ versus ‘can we defend the conviction?’” The exonerations came after months of criticism from the left against Foxx for not vacating cases associated with known corrupt police supervisors. Foxx’s office at least has a reason for the slow pace of its work; according to the Tribune, it has just four attorneys in its post-conviction review unit. Eddie Johnson, who put seven Watts-linked officers on desk duty after the exonerations, has no such excuse—he and other top CPD brass have known of the officers’ misdeeds for years according to whistleblowing former cop Shannon Spalding, who was one of the sources for Jamie Kalven’s “Code of Silence” series on Watts and crew’s criminal habits. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle showed Johnson how to do it back in November when she fired her head of Homeland Security, who was Watts’s supervisor, almost immediately after Kalven’s exposé was published. But of course, she isn’t a CPD lifer who has never seen police misconduct on the job.
The opposite of a spectacle. erisa apantaku..................................3 GARDEN TO CAFETERIA
“I basically want to plant everything in the garden.” anne li & emeline posner................4 CHARTING CHICAGO’S LATINX POPULATION
“When you’re planning, you’re planning for everybody.” tammy xu...........................................6 “They reflect the heroism of the ordinary person in the community.” liana fu.............................................8
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VISUAL ARTS
Dialogue at DADS
The Digital Art Demo Space organizers on their DIY venue and home BY ERISA APANTAKU
D
ADS—the Digital Art Demo Space, a DIY new media space in Bridgeport—is one large room that takes the form of whatever exhibition is being shown. Old TVs playing glitched-out videos are placed on Roman columns. There’s a virtual reality game being played next to a hot tub. That’s right—DADS has a hot tub with an eight-bit style painting of Mt. Fuji behind it. In the far back of the room, past the bar, two more video games are set up on TVs and projectors. All the while, a live DJ curates the mood. As the space approaches its third year, I sat down with Thorne Brandt and Bobbie Carr, two of three organizers that live at DADS, to talk about the challenges and rewards of running their DIY space. Has anybody ever contracted any diseases from this hot tub? Thorne Brandt: That’s your first question? We maintain the hot tub with utmost cleanliness: PH balancing chemicals, and I have litmus strips and check it very regularly, and we change the water pretty regularly. No one has contracted any disease. But someone once brought a bath bomb and didn’t inform us that they were gonna do that and there was glitter in it and that clogged the jets—but that’s a different story for another time. Digital Arts Demo Space, often abbreviated as DADS. What is it? TB: It is a new media gallery venue for audiovisual performances, a maker space, and also a residence. How long has it been in existence? Talk to me about the origins of it. TB: We have been doing shows for about two and a half years. Personally, I have lived in DIY spaces for over ten years in Chicago. I had a brief six-month period where I was just staying in a normal apartment and went a little crazy from just not having the energy that comes with a public or shared space. Before
living at this location, I was living at the Hills Esthetic Center, and that was a Garfield Park gallery that suffered a fire.... It only had art openings with paintings, and it was usually some form of abstract expressionism. There was a few performance openings, but it was mostly focused on the fine art. There was a lot of things that happened that kind of turned me off. At the opening, there’s not really much dialogue about what the art means. Especially for people coming into the space just to drink the wine or whatever, they’re just like, “Oh, this is an important thing, I’m supposed to be caring about this.” There is just this emperor’s clothing effect, and it’s the kind of thing I was trying to avoid with this type of space—a new medium space, in which the focus is on the interactivity and the transformation of the space, dialogue, showing unfinished work, and people critiquing each other’s stuff. Describe the kinds of shows that you curate here at DADs. TB: There’s not really one type of show. We generally go for things that are weird and things that are nerdy. Things that we don’t think we would see anywhere else. We started off exhibiting large-scale games, like board games. Our first few shows were created by this game designer, Andy North, who made this performance based loosely based on Dungeons and Dragons. When you walked into the space, you were put into this game show, and there was a point system that was evaluated with Nerf guns and things like that. So that’s a good example of the type of show that we’re interested in. Another great example is the Pop Up Arcade, which is a seasonal show that we’ve had a few times, usually around the end of the semester. Because a lot of people in Chicago are in art schools and studying game development, it’s a good venue for them to just bring a laptop, set up an arcade console, and look at what other people are making and share ideas. That’s my favorite type of show, because it’s the opposite of a spectacle.
JIM JAM
It’s not very finished. But you can kind of see these exchanges happening, these really honest critiques and collaborations forming, and really raw, budding talent that is present and willing to be open.
to have these large gathering—is horrible things might happen. Have there ever been times where things also went kind of drastically wrong, or maybe times when things went drastically amazing?
What is a unique challenge to running a DIY space, especially one that focuses on new media?
TB: There’s been a lot of recent tragedies at other spaces. I think the most famous one is Ghost Ship [in Oakland, California], and the Hills, the last place that I lived in, also had a fire, a three-alarm fire. And, we’ve been pretty lucky here. I mean, the bath bomb is like such a minuscule tragedy, and the power going out is probably the worst thing that’s happened here. When we have a show that we know is going to be popular, we try to really check the attendance, cut off the door, and announce before it gets filled that it’s sold out, because we don’t want to be at capacity or over capacity. And it happened during
TB: The power went out a couple of times in the last show. So there’s the limits of the bad electricity that comes in old buildings that artists are able to afford, and the general access to resources is lacking, which I try to supplement with my nine to five. So it’s definitely a labor of love. I think the biggest thing when people think of DIY spaces—where people live and try
NOVEMBER 22, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3
VISUAL ARTS
the magic show that we had last winter. A few people reached out to me after that show saying that they were super nervous, because it was like a month after Ghost Ship, and some of the themes in the show were dealing with fire and death, and...I think that it triggered some people. Some people advised that we have these exit lights and the fire extinguishers and stuff really visible. So we’ve taken that kind of care. The other part of your question was things going really well—I think that happens every time, honestly. We’re always really dazzled by how cool everybody is when they come here.
The ABCs of Gardening A national nonprofit brings gardening and learning into Chicago schools
What’s one thing that you did not expect when you began this enterprise that then happened?
BY ANNE LI & EMELINE POSNER
Bobbi Carr: Doing noise shows, I don’t think I expected that at all. It kind of just came to be after putting on shows and meeting each other.... We started off as a game remix kind of space, so I didn’t expect to meet people in that realm. I didn’t expect to branch out in that way from doing game remixes. I like that it went that way, for sure. What’s a show that you guys have always thought of, but have not yet been able to create? Is there a dream show that you want to put on in the next year, two years? TB: We’re really interested in escape rooms and also spook houses, and would love to invite guest artists to collaborate to create a space that people would be locked in in some way—in a scary way, in a psychologically disorienting way. And be forced to solve puzzles in a spin on the traditional escape room fad [that’s been around] for the past couple years. ¬ Listen to the full interview online at southsideweekly.com/category/radio
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COURTESY OF THE KITCHEN COMMUNITY
O
n a rainy and unseasonably cold October day, Sam Koentopp and others from the national nonprofit organization The Kitchen Community (TKC) was leading the kickoff for the school’s new Learning Garden. Every twenty-minute class began in the cafeteria, with a discussion about gardening and the importance of winter crops—crops that are planted not to be harvested, but to keep the soil filled with nutrients over the winter— and continued out in the garden. TKC started in Colorado with the vision of impacting the food culture scale. Restaurateur and TKC cofounder Kimbal Musk came to the idea after observing how school gardens can improve children’s academic performance, emotional wellness, and access to healthy foods. By amplifying a
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standardized school garden model on a large scale, TKC seeks to bring effective school gardens to communities that particularly lack access to healthy foods. Colorado was only the beginning. TKC began accepting applications from Chicago schools in 2012 as part of its push to start at least one hundred learning gardens in each of its ten regions. Koentopp, the Program Manager for TKC’s Chicago area, came on board in the fall of 2013 to support this initial push—fifty-four gardens were built in Chicago during that first fall. “It was really intense,” Koentopp recalled. “We had three local TKC staff members doing the work, with lots of national members from Colorado flying out to Chicago, since we were building four to six learning gardens every week the first year. It
was incredibly tiring, challenging work, but we were able to work with schools and the district to get to that number [one hundred gardens] really quickly.” That work has led to promising results—in fall 2016, six hundred pounds of food were harvested from thirtytwo learning gardens in Chicago Out in the rain, the Woodlawn Charter School sixth graders ran around the raised, curvilinear garden boxes with seeds in their hands. The sixth graders were in charge of planting the winter wheat, while other classes had already planted garlic, peas, and butterhead lettuce. Once they had scattered the seeds, Koentopp told the class to push them down into the pungent mushroom compost soil. Once the chorus of “ew’s” subsided, students plunged their fingers and hands into the soil, or else used the pencils
FOOD
in their pockets to do so. On the way back out, students with mischievous smiles stuck out their dirt-covered hands for a handshake with Koentopp. The gardens themselves are very uniform, consisting of 150 square feet of growing area, raised beds at a height easy for young students to use, and a curvilinear setup that encourages group work. “It’s not a huge amount of growing space compared to urban farms,” Koentopp said, “and the set-up does impact how teachers use the gardens. It’s usually limited to one class at a time, but some schools use a buddy system to pair older and younger students.” The buddy system allows teachers to fit two classes into the learning garden. The gardens are specifically designed to serve as learning spaces, and are highly recognizable. The gardens on the Woodlawn campus are adjacent to an existing community garden, which has typical wood garden beds with weeds and soil everywhere, in contrast to the pristine white and neatness of the learning garden. I recognized a learning garden in a Little Village elementary school from afar just by the format. Koentopp went on to explain what happened after the hundred gardens had been built. “We immediately shifted our focus from aggressively building learning gardens to looking at those gardens and school communities, and building a program model to make sure teachers had all the tools and knowledge they needed to grow food with their students.” Since then, an additional forty-four learning gardens have been built in Chicago, and TKC has continued to develop their support model for schools. TKC has modified their program to provide more in-kind support to schools by providing seeds, plants, compost, and fertilizer. TKC has also received support from local urban farms. An employee from Gotham Greens, a rooftop greenhouse farm in Pullman, donated some extra seeds and a tray of butterhead lettuce to be transplanted. The soil was made with mushroom compost from Urban Canopy, another urban farm in Chicago. The primary role of TKC is to provide technical assistance to the schools. As
Koentopp explained, “Our staff doesn’t do the growing in the gardens. We empower schools to make those choices.” One way they do so is by providing an annual growing plan, with suggestions about what plants are best suited for a school garden. These decisions vary by season, and are based on what will produce fresh, healthy food. The TKC staff then compares those choices against what seeds and plants they are receiving from their partner organizations, such as Jonny’s Selected Seeds. The growing plans were presented at three back-toschool workshops held on the North, South, and West Sides in late August. Teacher involvement itself varies greatly from one school to another. Some schools have one champion teacher who is exceptionally passionate about the school garden and engages their students in the project. In other schools, there is a team of three to five teachers with a garden team or club. Teachers often recruit parents to help with the learning garden as well. Katina Makris, a teacher at Laura Ward Elementary School in Garfield Park, has played multiple roles in her school’s learning garden. The learning garden at Laura Ward has been around for four or five years, and this year, Makris is taking the lead. Previously, Makris explained, another teacher was running the garden. It was hard at first to get teachers’ buy-in because a lot of teachers were scared, as Makris herself was, to take on something they didn’t know anything about. But the lessons provided by TKC, as well as the staff coming in and coteaching some of the classes, have boosted confidence. By now, her whole school is involved. Students from pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade participate, be it through cleaning up the space, harvesting produce, or planting seeds. “Every teacher is on board at our school,” Makris said, “and we have parents who want to work in the garden during the summer when we aren’t here.” For her, this is a good thing, especially when it comes to the actual garden work. “I don’t know much about gardening, and I don’t have a green thumb—but slowly, with the professional development TKC has provided over the years, I’ve gotten better,” she said. “Now I have plants in my room
ELLIE MEJÍA
that the kids take care of. We have classes out there [in the garden], and we have a kindergarten class that does read-alouds in the garden.” The garden is more than just a classroom for the students. Each class has a schedule for garden work, and each grade covers different topics. Since Laura Ward is a STEM school, the teachers work to infuse STEM habits into the learning garden programming. Students watch educational videos and then discuss topics such as what the soil needs to remain healthy, what care plants require, and how to use vocabulary such as “crops” and harvesting.” In prekindergarten, for example, the students learn about the needs of a plant. By eighth grade, the students have advanced to a unit on sales, with an eye toward selling the produce at a local farmers market. Makris said that they haven’t produced enough to sell on that scale yet, but that they are heading there. There is enough produce, though, to give the students an ample taste. Starr, a fourth grader who was in Makris’s class the
previous year, eagerly recounted the process of planting radishes. “When I got involved with the garden, the first thing we started doing was making furrows, and putting strings between the furrows for the radishes. We started planting lettuce, radishes, spinach, and fruits. We went with the other third-grade teachers’ classrooms and made a whole salad in the end.” Looking forward to the next growing season, Starr said, “I’m really excited to plant radishes and collard greens and spinach. I basically want to plant everything in the garden, because either way it goes, I want to make my body healthy so other people can be healthy.” Tasting the produce in the classroom is a common way schools use their harvest, according to Koentopp. There are five key modes of consumption, depending on each school’s needs and the size of their harvest. Some schools harvest the produce and then send it home with the students for families to cook at home. TKC provides take-home notes that teachers can adapt and send home with the students so that parents know how
NOVEMBER 22, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
FOOD
fresh the produce is and how it needs to be washed. There are also recipes on the TKC website. Simple in-classroom tastings of the kind Starr described are very popular as well. A third, similar way to use the produce is with a tasting tour in the garden, in which students and teachers clean and taste the produce. Tasting tours aren’t encouraged in Chicago, since eating the unprocessed produce is against CPS policy, but in general many schools have found the tasting tours to be a good way to excite students about food. TKC also helps serve produce in the school cafeteria by coordinating with the cafeteria team, dining service management, and those in charge of the learning garden. “Generally not enough is grown to make a full dish,” Koentopp said, “but schools highlight those ingredients [from the garden] to excite students about eating healthy food and eating school meals.” The fifth and newest way that the learning garden harvests are consumed is through school farm stands, set up outside the school when the school day ends. In high schools, the focus is on selling the produce to students, while in elementary schools the parents are the target market. “It’s about sharing the bounty of that harvest with the entire community,” Koentopp explained. Some schools use the funds to support the garden, while others use the proceeds to pay high school students to take care of the garden during the summer. The students at Woodlawn Charter will soon get a small taste of their brand new garden’s produce before the garden is put to rest for the winter. The young butterhead lettuce plants, donated to the school by Gotham Greens and transplanted earlier that day, will be ready for tasting soon. This was not lost on the sixth graders, who whispered excitedly about using their first greens for an organized school taco lunch. In Chicago, TKC has carried out its partnership with CPS with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s support. Koentopp said that
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TKC usually connects with the Mayor’s office a couple of times a quarter, in addition to monthly meetings with the Office of Health and Wellness to coordinate progress toward food and wellness goals in Chicago’s schools. That partnership also serves to make sure that TKC targets schools without many outside partnerships to ensure that resources are being delivered where they’re needed most. Eighty-four percent of students served by TKC are from lowincome families, a statistic parallel to CPS’s overall population. Eighty-six percent of TKC partnered schools in CPS receive Title 1 funding. For Katina Makris, the TKC learning garden at Laura Ward is all the more remarkable because of the neighborhood surrounding the school. Makris, who lives in the same neighborhood she teaches in, said that one difficulty in maintaining a longterm learning garden is the high turnover rate among students. Makris has thirtyfive students this year; for fifteen of those students, this is their first year at Laura Ward. “It feels like every year it’s a new school, because people are displaced,” she said. “They have to move somewhere else, which is really common in high-poverty areas. But you still have those core community members who have lived here for forty years and have seen everything.” The potential for engaging community members also contributes to what makes the learning garden so exciting for Makris, who plans to focus on parent involvement this year. Already, the learning garden programming has increased the community’s knowledge of healthy eating and access to healthy food. “Last year we had an overabundance, so we sent it home with the kids,” Makris said. “Many of the kids live with different generations of people, so they were able to teach them and show them about our garden [and how healthy food] may not be readily available around you, but you can grow it in your house.” ¬
¬ NOVEMBER 22, 2017
Charting Chicago’s Latinx Population “The Latino Neighborhoods Report” puts urban planning in conversation with urban communities BY TAMMY XU
O
n October 11, a study of twelve predominantly Latinx community areas in Chicago was published by the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) and the Great Cities Institute, research centers affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). “The Latino Neighborhoods Report” examines income levels, employment opportunities, homeownership rates, and health insurance coverage in each of the twelve community areas; most notably, it finds that education rates among Chicago’s Latinx communities lag well behind their Black and white counterparts. The report’s subject matter is a familiar one for its author, José Miguel AcostaCórdova, a second-year master’s student of urban planning and policy at UIC. Acosta-Córdova grew up in Little Italy, where his family settled after emigrating from Mexico in the early 1950s. But in the sixties, the UIC campus where he now attends school was constructed. His family experienced firsthand the negative impact of urban planning on a local community when they, like many other families in their neighborhood, were forced further west. With this report, and also through the student organization he helped found, Acosta-Córdova shows how urban planners might begin to solve some of the same problems their discipline often creates.
In January 2016, during his senior year at UIC, Acosta-Córdova cofounded a group for promoting the matriculation of Latinx urban planning majors. The group dubbed itself LPODER— Latino Planning Organization for Development, Education, and Regeneration—pronounced “el poder,” or “the power” in Spanish. Around the same time, an organization for Black urban planning students, the Society of Black Urban Planners (SBUP), also formed; the organizations’ joint purpose was to encourage minority students in a profession that often doesn’t reflect the demographics of the communities it works in. Nationally, eighty-one percent of professional urban planners are white, and Acosta-Córdova explained that the motivation behind creating the student organizations was to empower residents from the communities and ensure that communities in the future would benefit from “having [planners] that are from the neighborhoods and from these areas, or at least can relate much better.” In addition to recruiting Latinx students to the field of urban planning, LPODER aims to educate fellow urban planning majors on planning topics related to the Latinx population. Over its first two years, LPODER has organized panel discussions and film screenings on topics such as public transit and gentrification, as well as the African diaspora in Latin
POLITICS
America. The organization also works to encourage more Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students in districts with high percentages of Latinx students to study urban planning at UIC. One project LPODER worked on with West Town Bikes helped students in an After School Matters program use census data to determine the best locations in their community to propose new bike lanes. “When you’re planning, you’re planning for everybody,” Acosta-Córdova said. “Everybody in the city, everybody in the region… Sometimes understanding the big picture also helps different organizations or different groups that are fighting for a similar cause be able to collaborate.” LPODER’s work with CPS students overlaps with a trend from the report that Acosta-Córdova found particularly striking: the discrepancy in educational attainment between Latinx and other populations. Overall, almost a third of Latinx Chicagoans over the age of twenty-five lack high school diplomas, compared to five percent for white and fifteen percent for Black Chicagoans. The figures for bachelor’s degrees are even lower: in half the studied community areas, only four to six percent Latinx residents have bachelor’s degrees; the highest figure, in Irving Park, is fifteen percent. That’s compared to twenty-one percent of Black people and sixty-two percent of white people. “The majority of community areas in the city that have issues around educational attainment are predominantly Latino,” Acosta-Córdova said. “And it’s something that I feel like not enough people are talking about.” The report’s authors speculate that the low levels of high school and college graduation may be related to the high percentage of Latinx residents who were born outside the U.S. But the lack of Latinx teachers in CPS may also contribute to the trend. During the 2015-2016 school year, Latinx students made up close to half of the CPS student body, but the number of
Latinx teachers in CPS was only seventeen percent of the total. Students of color in particular do better in school when they have teachers of the same ethnicity, as the IRRPP reported in its State of Racial Justice report earlier this year. The report also brings out other puzzling questions: why West Lawn has unusually high median income and homeownership rates despite average education levels, and why Little Village has one of the lowest median incomes for Latinx people despite having the second highest grossing commercial corridor in the city, just behind the Magnificent Mile. Ricardo Estrada, president and CEO of Metropolitan Family Services, the nonprofit charitable organization that commissioned the report, says these are promising areas for future study. In the report, Acosta-Córdova calls for policymakers to enact policies that promote early childhood education, high school completion, higher education, and job retraining programs for high-paying jobs in existing and emerging industries for Latinx residents. The report also recommends pursuing policies that promote home and business ownership and improving health insurance rates among Latinx residents. In many cases, this is already the work of organizations like LPODER and Metropolitan Family Services, which are connected to the report’s creation and are from within the communities they are trying to change. For Acosta-Córdova, the most gratifying aspect of producing the report is empowering the people living in the area to understand the state of their communities within a broader context. “It’s kind of a Latino neighborhood database,” he said. “That was definitely the most important thing for me—that this is accessible to the community. I don’t want this to bounce around academia. It’s important that the organizations out there that are doing the important work and the work that needs to be done have access to this resource.” ¬
SOURCE: THE LATINO NEIGHBORHOODS REPORT AND THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY DATA VISUALIZATION BY JASMINE MITHANI
NOVEMBER 22, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
LIT
The Heroism of the Ordinary A book release and discussion remember and revisit the Wall of Respect BY LIANA FU
Abdul Alkalimat, Romi Crawford, and Rebecca Zorach, eds., The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Liberation in 1960s Chicago. $35. Northwestern University Press. 376 pages.
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A
fifty-five-inch flat-screen TV framed Abdul Alkalimat, Romi Crawford, and Rebecca Zorach, the three editors behind The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Liberation in 1960s Chicago. It stuck out—not because of its sheer size, but because it was a backdrop providing a constant reminder of the event’s purpose: the importance of visibility. The book release and panel discussion, moderated by Northwestern University Press editor-in-chief Gianna F. Mosser and hosted by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago on November 9, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of the Wall of Respect—a mural that once stood on the side of a building at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue in Bronzeville. The event followed an exhibit on the Wall, curated by Alkalimat, Crawford, and Zorach, that ran from February to July at the Chicago Cultural Center. Mosser started the event by asking Alkalimat, an activist and founding chairperson of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), what historical events in the 1960s led to the formation of OBAC and the creation of the Wall of Respect. “I have a lot to say tonight,” he said. “But I first have two things to say. How many people here actually saw the Wall?” A few hands shot up from the audience. “Second thing,” he said, looking over to those raised hands. “A very important cultural figure in the history of the arts of Chicago is here tonight. A dancer, who brought the African diaspora home to Chicago. I want
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you to give a round of applause to Darlene Blackburn.” Blackburn, a Chicago dance instructor who appeared on the Dance section of the Wall, smiled from the audience. Alkalimat then delved into timeline that led to OBAC’s creation of the Wall: the March on Washington and the Chicago Public Schools boycott in 1963, the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and the emergence of Black Power in 1966. The Wall was visual representation in a time when positive African American imagery was seldom found on billboards or recognized in the mainstream art world. “There was activism, poetry, and this sort of being present and around the Wall,” Crawford, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, said as she flipped through images on the TV screen. “It was a site and locus for community activity all the time, and community members that were engaged in a diverse set of art practices.” The Wall is not widely acknowledged in mainstream discussions even though it united dozens of artists, and, as Alkalimat put it, “brought people out of their studios and created a community of artists who felt responsible to each other.” In spite of the Wall’s undervalued impact on today’s discussions about public art, photographic evidence like that in the book illuminates the Wall’s existence and broadens conversations. Packed with photos curated by Crawford, The Wall of Respect is a study of pieces of memories coming together. Without photographs, much of the discussion surrounding the Wall would not exist. “The Wall is one of the few murals that
has photography articulated and embedded into it,” she said. “The photographs reveal pertinent information about the Black liberation struggle. They give us cues to the kind of ways of being, in a vernacular sense, for some of the Black community that were the educators, artists, and conceptualists of the Wall—and also the people from the neighborhood.” Because the mural depicted real people from real photographs, the community was able to connect to it. One of the main goals of both the Wall and the event was to give name and presence to Black community figures erased by mainstream media. Crawford made a point during the event to name the photographers of the Wall who never had a chance to display their work in galleries: Billy Abernathy, Darryl Cowherd, Robert Sengstacke, Roy Lewis, and Onikwa Bill Wallace. They were Black photographers capturing Black experiences. Although their images are static, the everyday life the community found in them—and the interaction between their different styles—makes them feel alive. The Wall included seven sections— Statesmen, Athletes, Rhythm & Blues, Religion, Literature, Theater, and Jazz— worked on by fourteen different artists. In display, it became a place of performance. Poets such as Alicia Johnson and Gwendolyn Brooks performed their work at the Wall. And not all the people depicted on the Wall were celebrities, Zorach noted. While most figures on the Wall were well-known nationally—like W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X—many were widely unknown in the mainstream media, such as Blackburn,
EVENTS
BULLETIN
Join blogging sensation Luvvie Ajayi, who will be discussing her new book I’m Judging You. Written for those of us living in a thoroughly digital world, the so-called “good manners handbook” promises to give us the hard truths about our lives with Luvvie’s characteristic wit and humor. (Rachel Kim)
The Pre-Thanksgiving Skate Jam The Rink, 1122 E. 87th St. Wednesday, November 22, 9pm–midnight. $10. Skate rental included. idlskatejam@gmail.com. Tickets at bit.ly/SkateJam
who shared African and Afro-Caribbean dance with Chicago Public Schools, and young Muslim women praying. “They reflect the heroism of the ordinary person in the community,” Zorach said. The structure of The Wall of Respect mirrors this visual structure. Poetry by Brooks written in dedication to the Wall, primary documents illuminating the founding of OBAC, interview transcripts with one of the lead muralists, William Walker, and photographs complementing the text are weaved throughout the 376-page book, similar to how different sections of the Wall, although embodying individual artistic styles, were woven together cohesively. But as much as the Wall created a collective unity of artists and thinkers, it also caused controversy. Alterations were made to the Wall in later years, reflecting changing political sentiments. One significant alteration was the addition of a Ku Klux Klan figure. “Rebecca has a slightly different take of this, and I support it, but I maybe support my take—which is that there was wrong done,” Alkalimat said. “It became the Wall of Disrespect.” In the section of the book exploring responses to the Wall, Zorach writes about a “key moment of strife” during the Wall’s life. Walker allowed neighborhood residents to whitewash Norman Parish’s “Statesmen” section, so Eugene “Eda” Wade placed a KKK figure on the Wall. “I’m not trying to defend his actions,” Zorach said. “But in some ways, it did open the Wall up to a different kind of change and involvement by people in the community.”
“Critical revision is an important part of the Wall,” Crawford added. “It makes it unlike any other works, even though it began in that beautiful moment of collective consensus of what it should be.” Even though the Wall was torn down after a fire in 1971, it lives on in memory. “The Wall lives on in community engagement art,” Crawford said. “I find myself bringing it up a lot to contemporary practitioners; so many don’t know about the Wall. It’s really useful to the current generation of artists.” It lives on, also, in a single physical piece. The only part of the Wall remaining today, Crawford said in reply to a question near the end of the event, is a photographic piece of Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones) captured by Darryl Cowherd. Cowherd returned to the neighborhood in a state of distress after five years in Sweden, and he had a strange feeling—so he put up a ladder and took the piece down. The Wall’s location, 43rd Street, was considered downtrodden by outsiders, but was also known as “Muddy Waters Drive” because of its reputation as a gathering place for blues musicians. “It was a cared-for location even though it was a forbidden zone,” Crawford said. It continues to be cared for—and to be seen. While the Wall is no longer physically visible, the memory of its impact found in the people, the images, and the event provides a backdrop for a future lying in wait. ¬
The night before Thanksgiving, the Iota Delta Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., is hosting its annual skate jam and fundraiser. The brothers ask that you also bring nonperishable food items to be donated to a local food pantry. (Rachel Kim)
Little Village Holiday Shopping! La Villita, 3700 W. 26th St. Saturday, November 25, 10am–9pm. Food provided from 9am–11am. (773) 521-5387. bit.ly/LVHolidayShopping On #SmallBizSat, the Little Village Chamber of Commerce wants you to do your holiday shopping in the neighborhood by providing offers and discounts for fifteen affiliated local businesses. Come early for free appetizers and small gifts. (Rachel Kim)
Giving Tuesday: Rewrite the Narrative with Donda’s House Virgin Hotels Chicago, 203 N. Wabash Ave. Tuesday, November 28, 6pm–8pm. Tickets $20 in advance, $25 at the door. (773) 3054064. bit.ly/DondasHouse The local arts-focused nonprofit Donda’s House is hosting a fundraising social to discuss reclaiming narratives of low-income communities and youth of color on the South Side. The event promises food, drinks, and exclusive announcements regarding its new home, partner, and upcoming event with a Chicago hip-hop legend. We can only hope it’s Kanye. (Rachel Kim)
Luvvie Ajayi Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, November 29, 6pm–7:30pm. Free. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com
Protest! Libraries, Archives, and Black Resistance in Chicago Chicago State University, 9501 S. King Dr. Library, Ste. 300. Wednesday, November 29, 6pm–8:30pm. Free. Parking is $5. Must register online at bit.ly/BMRCProtest Infollectuals and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium will host a panel of archivists, a public librarian, and a historian at Chicago State University to discuss the history of protest by Black Chicagoans and the engagement between Black communities and the archives that collect this history. (Samantha Smylie)
Hyde Park Holly-Day Harper Court, 5235 S. Harper Ct. Saturday, December 2, 8am–7pm. Free. (773) 702-0936. hphollyday.com Hyde Park will be hosting a street holiday festival that promises food, ice sculpture carving, cookie decorating, caroling with a local alderman, Santa, costumed characters, and real—or, as the organizers put it, “live”—reindeer. (Rachel Kim)
Englewood Quality of Life Quarterly Meeting Volunteers of America Illinois, 6002 S. Halsted St. Saturday, December 2, 11am– 12:30pm. Free. teamworkenglewood.org Teamwork Englewood will be celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Englewood Quality of Life Plan II, which set goals and created communitybased task forces to strengthen and improve Englewood’s standard of living. The meeting will discuss progress made and plans for the upcoming year. (Rachel Kim)
NOVEMBER 22, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
VISUAL ARTS YCA On The Block: Pilsen La Catrina Café, 1011 W. 18th St. Through December 1. Fridays, 6pm–8pm. Free. In collaboration with Yollocalli Arts Reach and La Catrina Café, Young Chicago Authors will be hosting free open mics and workshops every Friday. Come through and learn how to write poems and hear others perform. (Roderick Sawyer)
Cultura in Pilsen Holiday Tianguis La Catrina Café, 1011 W. 18th St. Saturday, November 25, 11am–6pm. culturainpilsen.com Of your many Small Business Saturday options, Cultura’s should be pretty tempting: aside from the variety of local and Oaxacan vendors, which range from botanical bath products to handcrafted art and clothing to posters and postcards based on Akito Tsuda’s Pilsen Days, all proceeds from the holiday raffle earthquake relief in Oaxaca. ( Julia Aizuss)
BYOB Oaxacan Alebrije Painting Class La Catrina Café, 1011 W. 18th St. Friday, November 24, 7pm–9:30pm. $25–$45. bit.ly/AlebrijePainting If you missed Alebrije artist Carlos Orozco’s previous visits to Chicago, this last class of the year is not one to miss—he’ll be teaching the history and technique of the alebrije, small, carved wooden animals that are a Oaxacan folk art tradition. Choose your beverage and a pre-carved alebrije to paint; all proceeds will go toward Orozco’s Oaxacan art collective Puech Ikots. ( Julia Aizuss)
My South Side: Putting the Neighbor in the Hood Art Exhibit Art on 51st, 1238 W. 51st St. Tuesday, November 21, 3pm–6pm. Free. bit.ly/MySouthSide51st Richard’s Career Academy CASA afterschool art students will showcase their artwork with the community. The academy offers a variety of classes such as graffiti, photography, radio, and Mexican folkloric dance; some of which will also be displayed at the opening reception. (Maple Joy) 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
MUSIC Chosen Few DJs present: The Giving The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Thursday, November 23, 9pm–2am. 9pm doors. $10 in advance, mandatory coat check for $3. 21+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com House music pioneers the Chosen Few DJs will be hosting their annual Thanksgiving Night party. In addition to the Chosen Few’s line-up, this event will also feature The Young Guns, DJ Ameer, and DJ Marcellus. (Adia Robinson)
The Jeff Gibbs Quartet Reggies, 2015 S. State St. Friday, November 24, 8pm doors. 17+. $10–$25. (312) 9490120. reggieslive.com The Jeff Gibbs Quartet thinks that without music we would be “emotionless,” which is probably why they are also, apparently, “a chameleon to all types of music.” If you come to Reggies in a couple weeks, you’ll find out what music that means for saxophonist Jeff Gibbs, bassist James Carter, keyboard player Cleo Bryrd, and drummer DJ Abernathy—and what emotions you’ll feel. ( Julia Aizuss)
Marquis Hill The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West. Friday, November 24, 7pm doors, 8pm show. $15–$40. 21+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com Chatham native Marquis Hill has been described by the New York Times as a “dauntingly skilled trumpeter” and the Tribune has said that “his music crystallizes the hard-hitting, hard-swinging spirit of Chicago jazz.” But even beyond Chicago jazz, his music incorporates elements of hip-hop, jazz, R&B, soul, blues, and even spoken word. For this tape release party for his new release Meditation, Hill will be joined onstage by Mike King on keyboard, Junius Paul on bass, and Makaya McCraven on drums, with guest DJ Jamal Science on MPC and J.P. Floyd as an opener. (Andrew Koski)
Makaya McCraven with Irreversible Entanglements and Dos Santos
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Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, December 2, 8:30pm. 17+. $15 (early bird), $20. (312) 536-3851. thaliahallchicago.com At this show, Thalia Hall will be celebrating the album releases of two local artists (jazz musician Makaya McCraven and “liberation-oriented free jazz collective” Irreversible Entanglements) on Bridgeportbased recording company International Anthem. Dos Santos’s closing performance, meanwhile, is an album teaser—they’ll have their first full-length album out with International Anthem this summer. ( Julia Aizuss)
Rai Presents: Luz y Sombra EP Release The Dojo, message on Facebook for address. Saturday, December 9, 8:30pm. $5 donation. thedojochi.com Contrasting the “stellar melodies of hope” with the “dark sounds of reality,” Luz y Sombra is a dynamic and long awaited EP by Rai, Décima, Lester Rey, and Swooning. Come to the Dojo to be the first to hear it and also enjoy live art by Meli Alvarez Juarez and Ariana Romero. (Maddie Anderson)
Twin Peaks, Knox Fortune, and Sun Cop Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Friday, December 29, doors 7pm, show 8pm. $25–$35. All ages. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com It’s a locals’ night at Thalia Hall, with three Chicago bands on display. Come to watch Sun Cop rise. Stay all night with Knox Fortune, of Chance the Rapper’s “All Night” fame. And in the end, come home with Twin Peaks of indie rock acclaim. (Lewis Page)
STAGE & SCREEN Connect South Shore Arts Festival Connect Gallery, 2226 E. 71st St. Friday, November 24, 6pm–9pm; Saturday, November 25, noon–8pm; Sunday, November 26, noon–5pm. Free. connectsouthshore.org Last month, the remarkable unveiling of the Renew ’71 project marked another step
in the South Shore community’s journey to redevelopment rather than disinvestment. Bringing local residents together again, stop by the Connect South Shore Arts Festival, where you can engage and celebrate local artists, musicians, retailers, and filmmakers. (Maple Joy)
Queer Lines: A Queer Thanksgiving Chicago Art Department, 1932 S. Halsted Ave. Friday, November 24, Doors 6:30pm, show 7:30pm-10pm. Suggested donation $15. 21+. (312) 725-4223. chicagoartdepartment.org Drag king performances, spoken word, live music, DJing—these promise to turn Black Friday into “an honest and celebratory evening” for queer families. Attendees are also invited to bring “a photo to share”— you’ll have to go to Queer Lines to find out how you and your family will add to the celebration. ( Julia Aizuss)
Sydney R. Daniels Oratorical Festival GoFundMe Harold Washington College, 30 E. Lake St. (Room 115). Festival Tuesday, February 27. Email sserres@ccc.edu for more info. gofundme.com/oratorical-festival-scholarships Harold Washington’s long-running Black History Month Oratorical Festival— named after the late beloved professor Sydney R. Daniels—was suspended last year when funding distribution for scholarships changed. With the festival’s thirtieth anniversary approaching, speech professor Sunny Serres is heading a GoFundMe effort to bring back the festival and the scholarships; it’s already nearly halfway there. ( Julia Aizuss)
Nguzo Saba films with Carol Lawrence Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, December 2, 3pm. Free. southsideprojections.org For the last two years, South Side Projections has screened Carol Munday Lawrence’s Nguzo Saba films. This December, Lawrence herself will present the animated short films on the seven principles of unity, most commonly associated with Kwanzaa, and discuss them after the screening. (Adia Robinson)
EVENTS
Were You There DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Saturday, December 2, 7pm. Free. southsideprojections.org South Side Projections; the Logan Center; the UofC Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture; the DuSable Museum; and Black World Cinema will all present two episodes of Carol Munday Lawrence’s 1981 TV series Were You There on film pioneer Oscar Micheaux and bluesman Willie Dixon. The screening will be followed by a discussion on Black women in film between Lawrence and Afrofuturist writer and filmmaker Ytasha L. Womack. (Adia Robinson)
The Belle of Amherst Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through Sunday, December 3. $25–$68, discounts available for seniors, students, faculty, and groups. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org Emily Dickinson could not stop for death, but you should stop by the UofC’s Court Theatre to see William Luce’s play about the revered poet’s reclusive life in Massachusetts. Kate Fry stars as the prolific Dickinson who “dwells in possibility” and famously characterized hope as a “feathered thing that perches in the soul.” ( Joseph S. Pete)
Meet Juan(ito) Doe Free Street Storyfront, 4346 S. Ashland Ave. Through Friday, December 15. Mondays and Fridays, 7:30pm. Free or pay-what-you-can; advance tickets starting at $5. (773) 7727248. freestreet.org Free Street Theater’s latest play, created by multidisciplinary artist Ricardo Gamboa in collaboration with Ana Velasquez and “an ensemble of brown and down Chitowners,” was supposed to close last week, but now that its run has been extended for a month. You have no excuse for missing out on this play based on the true stories and input of Back of the Yards residents— you won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the city. ( Julia Aizuss)
FOOD & LAND Teen Gaming: Never Alone (PS4) CPL, Back of the Yards Branch, 2111 W. 47th St. Saturday, November 25, 9am–5pm. Free. (312) 747-9595. chipublib.bibliocommons. com Play through this “arctic adventure” as you navigate Inupiat (Alaskan Native) culture and Alaskan landscapes in the PS4 platform game Never Alone. The game, which was created through the input of around forty Inupiat community members, will be available for play by request even after Native American Heritage Month is over, but be sure to come for this final group event—the game can be played collaboratively by two players. (Emeline Posner)
The Increasing Presence of Upscale Restaurants in Pilsen La Catrina Cafe, 1011 W. 18th St. Thursday, November 30, 6pm–8pm. Free. (312) 4225580. facebook.com/ILhumanities
Get Sliced! Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Friday, December 1, 7pm–11pm. $30 in advance, $40 at door. Buy tickets online at bit.ly/GetSliced. (773) 837-0145. coprosperity.org It’s “frickin horribly hard” to make Lumpen Radio, Bridgeport’s beloved low-fi radio station. Fortunately, the folks at Lumpen have made it easier than ever to help you help them keep their “psychomagical” programs on the airwaves with a local pizza–local media fundraiser. At the Get Sliced! benefit, a $30 ticket will get you a slice from every Bridgeport pizza joint and land you a spot on the pizza jury. (Emeline Posner)
Beginning Farmer of the Year Nomination Submission due by January 12 to Advocates for Urban Agriculture, info@auachicago.org. (773) 850-0428. Details: bit.ly/FarmerOf2018
New to sustainable farming and want to share your accomplishments to date? The Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA) wants to hear from you in the form of three-minute video submissions. All videos received will be posted on the AUA website andvoted on by viewers. The winning submission will be nominated by AUA for a $1,000 prize. (Emeline Posner)
The Chicago Community Climate Forum The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr. Enter through East Entrance. Sunday, December 3. 6pm–9pm. Free. RSVP at bit.ly/ChiCommunityClimateForum. (312) 922-9410. fieldmuseum.org Civic leaders and engaged residents will talk about ways to fight climate change in the Chicago area. Twenty-five different organizations from across Chicagoland are staging a public forum that will address the North American Climate Summit’s global goals, local solutions, shared commitment to action and related issues, like clean air and water. ( Joseph S. Pete)
Illinois Humanities and the Pilsen Alliance host an Illinois Speaks discussion on how new upscale restaurants have been working with the community of Pilsen—and how they should be. Amid tensions after two higher-end eateries were tagged with “GET OUT,” a small group will talk about the prospect of community benefits agreements and special deals for residents. ( Joseph S. Pete)
Take Root Program for Vets Applications through December 1. Free to apply. Military veterans only. (815) 3898455. learngrowconnect.org/takeroot Military veterans who want to trade their swords for plowshares can learn the trade of sustainable farming at established farms across Chicagoland, including in Southeast Wisconsin. Those selected will receive training in organic production while working for an hourly wage, a yearlong membership to Upper Midwest CRAFT, and admission to the MOSES Organic Farming Conference in February. ( Joseph S. Pete)
Left: Mariia Feliksovna Bri-Bein, Woman Worker and Woman Collective Farmer, Join the Ranks of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, 1934, lithograph on paper, Ne boltai! Collection. Right: Olga Chernysheva, March, 2005. Courtesy: Diehl, Berlin; Pace, London; Foxy Production, New York.
Smart Museum of Art The University of Chicago 5550 S. Greenwood Avenue smartmuseum.uchicago.edu
NOVEMBER 22, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
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ARTS FESTIVAL
Music + Market + Film + Food
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Blackstone Bicycle Works
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CONNECT South Shore is a three day festival of art, music + film, celebrating the South Shore community. Join us for live events, installations, pop up exhibitions and a vendor market perfect for holiday shopping. + 12p / 9p + 2100 E. 71st Live performance by Res at 4pm + 2100 E. 71st Vendors
Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 12pm Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)
+ 2100 E. 71st Dj Duane Powell 2-4:30
follow us at @blackstonebikes blackstonebikes.org
+ 1900-1908 E. 71st Pop-Up Art Galleries + 2226 E. 71st Film Fest Curation
Blackstone Bicycle Works is a bustling community bike shop that each year empowers over 200 boys and girls from Chicago’s south side—teaching them mechanical skills, job skills, business literacy and how to become responsible community members. In our year-round ‘earn and learn’ youth program, participants earn bicycles and accessories for their work in the shop. In addition, our youths receive after-school tutoring, mentoring, internships and externships, college and career advising, and scholarships.
+ 2226 E. 71st Friday night reception 6-9 with Dj Elbert Phillips Sponsored by:
Hours Tuesday - Friday 1pm - 6pm 12pm - 5pm Saturday
773 241 5458 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637
A PROGRAM OF
+ For more information
visit www.connectsouthshore.org