VS Roll Call is a podcast mini-series dedicated to the past, present, and future of Black poetry. Lend your voice by submitting your ideas, or applying to produce it! The selected creators will have editorial guidance from VS cohost Danez Smith and Still Processing cohost Jenna Wortham.
DEADLINE: JAN 17 LEARN MORE: PoetryFoundation.org/RollCall
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, photographers, artists, and mediamakers of all backgrounds. Volume 8, Issue 2 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editor Martha Bayne Senior Editors Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editors Ashvini Kartik-Narayan Michelle Anderson Literature Editor Davon Clark Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan Joshua Falk Lucia Geng Matt Moore Robin Vaughan Jocelyn Vega Tammy Xu Jade Yan Staff Writers AV Benford Kiran Misra Jade Yan Data Editor
Jasmine Mithani
Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Elizabeth Winkler, Lucy Ritzmann, Kate Gallagher, Matt Moore, Malvika Jolly, Charmaine Runes, Ebony Ellis, Katie Bart Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino HaleyTweedell Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Mell Montezuma, Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Webmaster Managing Director
Pat Sier Jason Schumer
The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. 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, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com
Cover Illustration by Ellen Hao
IN CHICAGO IN THIS ISSUE Last issue of the year This is our final print issue of 2020. Back in April, we weren’t sure we would be able to continue to print the paper—but in this challenging, chaotic year we didn’t miss a single issue. We’re proud of that, and taking a little break to rest and recharge. We’ll continue to post stories online throughout December (keep an eye out at southsideweekly.com) and we’ll be back in print with a full complement of South Side stories on January 7, 2021. Happy holidays! Aid for Illinois motorists The Illinois Tollway is reminding drivers that they have until December 30 to take advantage of pandemic-related reductions. Fines are being reduced to $3 per outstanding toll for passenger vehicles, regardless of amount owed. Their website illinoistollway.com may automatically show that unpaid violations have already been "partially paid". Meanwhile, most Secretary of State facilities will remain closed until January 5, 2021 due to the second wave of COVID-19. Therefore regular driver's licenses and IDs have been validated until June 2021. Some relief for immigrants, finally On December 4, a federal judge ruled that undocumented adults who were brought to the country as children will be able to reapply for protection under DACA the Obama administration’s temporary work permit program that Trump attempted to eliminate beginning in 2017. Though activists dubbed Obama "Deporter-in-Chief " for having deported millions of people, many in immigrant communities breathed a sigh of relief at Joe Biden's presidential election victory, because the former Vice President promised in a televised debate that he would create a path to citizenship for undocumented residents. In Illinois, governor Pritzker approved Medicaid benefits for low-income undocumented senior citizens in Illinois, effective December 1. NewsMatch This year, our newsroom has been selected to receive an additional matching grant from NewsMatch for our dedication to serving communities of color in Chicago. That means if we raise $10,000 before the end of the year, we’ll receive an additional $20,000 in matching funds from NewsMatch and local funders. This is a huge opportunity for us and it means every dollar you donate until we get to $10,000 is tripled! If you're able, please consider supporting our journalism today. You can donate online at southsideweekly.com/donate or by mailing a check to 6100 S. Blackstone Ave., Chicago, IL 60637. Checks can be made payable to our fiscal sponsor, "Experimental Station." Thank you!
black artists show resilience in battle with challenges of the pandemic
Many call for the city to do more for creative initiatives on the South and West Sides corli jay, city bureau...................................................4 opinion: king von, drill music, parkway gardens, and south side chicago
A memorial kulwa apara...................................................................6 how 2020 pushed blvck svm to new heights
“ You don't really think about how much you don't know about race as a Black person. You just kind of live it.” noah tesfaye.................................................................8 bless the mic
Q & A with rapper Phalair Carter jim daley......................................................................10 there's an uptick in street overdoses during the pandemic
“We knew that the homeless checked all the boxes in terms of underlying conditions that made them the most vulnerable.” peter winslow............................................................12 the neighborhood you live in affects your covid-19 risk
"By mapping out which areas were hit hardest, the connection between communities of color and COVID-19 cases and deaths is apparent." elora apantaku...........................................................14 chicago gun violence is a public health crisis
A violence prevention organizer speaks out charles jones..............................................................16 an end to cash bond in illinois is only the beginning of restorative justice
“We need to get rid of the fact that your safety and freedom is tied to money.” nikki roberts...............................................................18 struck from the record
Bobby Seale exits the movie with the gag still firmly in his mouth. It’s indicative of Sorkin’s treatment of the Panthers. elliot frank................................................................20 head vs. heart
In The Trial of the Chicago 7, two key characters embody the Left’s ongoing inner conflict malik jackson..............................................................22 north lawndale teachers and parents tackle school closures head-on
Plagued by memories of past school closings, they organized against their own plan madeleine parrish......................................................24
Black artists show resilience in battle with challenges of the pandemic
As COVID-19 heightens awareness of historic disparities, many call for the city to do more for creative initiatives on the South and West Sides. BY CORLI JAY, CITY BUREAU
A PRE-COVID PERFORMANCE AT TRAP HOUSE CHICAGO. PHOTO BY ROHAN AYINDE
L
ast summer, restorative justice clothing brand store TRAP House Chicago, in East Chatham, was full of musicians, poets, and rappers. If there were any strangers at the monthly spoken word event no one would’ve known. Known simply as “People Say,” the event felt like a family gathering for the creative community on the South Side: eager artists showcased their musical talent and poetry over light snacks in a cathartic space designed to bring like-minded young creatives together. Founded by spoken word poet and documentary filmmaker Resita Cox in 2018, People Say is a monthly open mic made in partnership with TRAP House 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
Chicago founder and designer Mashaun Hendricks. But for the past year, Cox hasn’t been able to host any gatherings because of the pandemic—the last open mic was in August 2019. Earlier this fall, with COVID cases slowing down, Cox was planning to bring back People Say, but with fewer people in the space—and then the third wave of COVID hit in November and she had to postpone. Keeping her community physically safe had to take priority to her art and fostering community on the South Side. The pandemic has laid waste to inperson community building for Black artists who view their practice as a form
¬ DECEMBER 10, 2020
of community organizing, collective care, and resistance. “Isolation is a tool of colonization, our oppressors want us to be isolated because there's power in community,” she said. Art is an integral part of the city’s culture that’s necessary to make Chicagoans on the South and West Sides feel alive, especially during a time where there’s been a sharp rise in suicides among Black Chicagoans. Cox, like many Black artists, has been forced to maneuver through strict social distancing guidelines to keep her practice going amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst city financial crisis in years. As of November 19, the COVID-19 death rate among Black
Chicagoans was the highest among the city’s four largest racial or ethnic groups and nearly double that of the city’s white residents, according to a WBEZ report. COVID-19 hit Black communities hard, and not just in terms of positive cases. It’s also an economic nightmare for people working in arts and culture. It’s forced some arts entrepreneurs in underrepresented communities to rely on creative solutions to survive and to deal with the disparities that have been further exacerbated by the pandemic. For Black Chicagoans this means tapping into their resiliency—the same resiliency that has made these communities flourish for decades amid disinvestment.
ART
“I think when funds get cut off, when things get tight, it creates the opportunity for ingenuity. And I think that's where we shine.” Vershawn Sanders-Ward is the owner of Red Clay Dance Company, a Black-woman owned company that runs education programs as a pipeline into a career in professional dance by providing dance instruction to children and adults on the South Side. Red Clay shifted to virtual instruction this year while facing the usual systemic barriers that Black entrepreneurs face in Chicago. “I will say that COVID-19 has amplified our ongoing struggles as a Black woman-led organization when it comes to funding, capital, and access but Red Clay Dance is a resilient organization. We continue to find ways to survive, but for me, I want my organization to be thriving so that is what we are focused on,” she said. Sanders-Ward plans to move Red Clay to its first brick and mortar space in Woodlawn Station, a mixed-use development on 63rd and Cottage Grove, by the end of this year. The entrepreneur has been looking for a space for about two years, this just so happened to be a perfect time to move as the Chicago Park District shuttered the dance company’s access to the Fuller Park Field House, where Red Clay has held classes for the past five years. “We had been looking for our own spaces because you need autonomy to run programs.” For creatives like TRAP House Chicago founder Mashaun Hendricks, the challenges facing Black artists during this time is another push for them to be even more creative. “I think when funds get cut off, when things get tight, it creates the opportunity for ingenuity. And I think that's where we shine,” he said. Hendricks expanded his business to a third location this year, even as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on Chicago’s business community, spurring thousands of job losses and permanently shuttering more than half of businesses that had meant to close temporarily, according to a Chicago Tribune report.
TRAP House Chicago’s CONCEPT STORE 003 opened in Wicker Park this October. Hendricks said that if it were up to him he would’ve opened the store in North Lawndale or Roseland. The opportunity to open CONCEPT STORE 003 happened when Jayme Joyce, the owner of the restorative justice film company Local Legend Films, reached out to Hendricks for a collaboration. The Wicker Park storefront expanded TRAP House’s message and brought in more discretionary income to bring back to the South Side. “We take this money up here and reinvest it, keep the same message,” said Hendricks. The 79th Street store in East Chatham will remain the base where TRAP House Chicago’s core community members are located, he said. But even with the success of opening the new store, Hendricks felt the impact of the pandemic. Earlier this year, he was approached by the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCASE) to be a part of the city-run Maxwell Street Market, for which he would’ve been paid $1,000 in grant funding. But the market closed and Hendricks only received half of the amount he was promised. Many artists and initiatives have experienced a year of lost opportunity and revenue because of venue closures and strict pandemic population guidelines. DCASE partnered with Arts Alliance Illinois to provide $5.9 million in emergency funds to artists during the pandemic to soften the blow of the economic impact—resulting in $10.7 million in funding this year. With the giant economic hit the city faces due to losses in tax revenue, DCASE took a forty-nine percent cut in its 2021 budget. However, despite these cuts, the Cultural Grants Program (which funds individual artists and art organizations across the city) will remain intact, providing a minimum of $2.7 million in much-needed financial support to artists
and organizations citywide next year. Artist Vanessa Stokes is no stranger to using grants from DCASE to further art literacy on the West Side. She relied on grants for years to get her dream arts center off the ground. Stokes received grants from DCASE to showcase her father’s work at the Silver Room in 2014; her father, Dorrell Creightney, founded the first Black-owned photography studio in Chicago. In 2017 she used DCASE funding to place his photography at several Green Line stops in Austin and under the viaduct at the Union Pacific Metra station at the Kinzie/Lake stop. Stokes is a cofounder of Front Porch Arts Center, an art organization created in the summer of 2019 to celebrate artists in the Austin neighborhood. She made the tough choice to leave Front Porch Arts Center that same year it was founded, to provide for herself and her family. “Starting any type of nonprofit is hard, because you got to do the work, and then make money at the same time,” said Stokes, explaining how hard it was for her to try to depend on her nonprofit for sole income. She now manages the Special Service Area #72 in the Austin neighborhood, where she provides resources to help entrepreneurs, small businesses, and artists. “The challenges of the art community and of artists on the South and West Side are the same challenges of families on the South and West Side,” said Tempestt Hazel, a program officer at the Field Foundation. Hazel explained that the disparities in funding are really about how people are being treated overall. If the people in these communities are facing challenges then the art sector will face challenges:“You can’t have art without people.” Arts organizations in communities of color rely more on grant funding than white arts organizations and receive .50 cents for every $1 their white counterparts receive in art grant funding
according to a study done by Enrich Chicago. The Field Foundation, which prioritizes providing funding support in underserved communities, found that in Chicago just six percent of grant funding between 2009 to 2019 was awarded to organizations in communities where the majority of residents were people of color. That translated to $60 million less in funding for Black arts initiatives compared to their white counterparts. Nina Sanchez, the director at Enrich Chicago, is hopeful that the city will finally recognize the disparities that people of color face in acquiring arts funding. “What I would hope for Chicago is that there is a noticeable and measurable shift in resources to communities of color so that there's more intention in directing resources to those institutions to those communities, and that we're treating arts as though they are essential.” While historic inequities on the South and West Sides were exacerbated in 2020, this year has done little to stymie the creativity that lives in the Black artists who’ve made these communities their homes. Cox herself remains hopeful that she can host another People Say open mic for artists who've been inventing new pieces alone during the pandemic to share live on stage in community soon. Her resilience resembles that of her community and other Black creatives, showing that neither a pandemic nor economic injustice can stop their creativity from flourishing. ¬ Editor’s note: Resita Cox is a former City Bureau reporting fellow. Corli Jay is a freelance writer based in West Pullman. This fall she reported on the 2021 budget as a reporting fellow for City Bureau. Corli is passionate about telling stories about resilience in the Black community despite adversities due to systematic oppression. This is her first contribution to the Weekly.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
Opinion: King Von, drill music, Parkway Gardens, and South Side Chicago
MUSIC
A memorial BY KULWA APARA
ILLUSTRATION BY ELLEN HAO
6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ DECEMBER 10, 2020
MUSIC
R
est in peace King Von. I wonder if your afterlife will be more peaceful than your Earthly life? Both you and Michelle Obama are from the South Side of Chicago, from the same notorious housing complex of Parkway Gardens stretching from 63rd to 66th Street along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. But time and place mean everything in today’s world. Fleeing the racist violence of the South for Chicago, African-American migrants were confronted with Black Belt housing laws. These Black Belt laws forced seventy-five percent of Chicago’s African-American population into defacto segregated housing on the South Side. Parkway Gardens was one such residence, and it was built several stories upward as opposed to outward, so as not to infringe upon the boundaries of Chicago’s ethnically white neighborhoods. For Michelle Obama, Parkway Gardens was a stepping-stone to becoming our nation’s premiere AfricanAmerican First Lady. When baby Michelle Obama resided at Parkway Gardens, she had two loving parents, with grandparents just across the hall. Back then, Parkway Gardens was an innovative Black-owned cooperative: a direct response to American structural racism. But what about you King Von? Or should I call you Dayvon? What was it like for you in Parkway Gardens? Your songs narrate the dynamics of just one of South Side’s blocks — the now-infamous O Block. Did you have both a mother and father in the home? Were your grandparents just across the way? Did you grow up with children’s books on your shelf ? Or perhaps someone reading you bedtime stories? I honestly do not know what your early childhood was like, but I’m almost certain it did not have the same stability.
But similar to your South Side Chicagoan sister, you too believed in paving your legacy through words. Both you and Michelle understand the power of lexicon. Michelle blessed us with her memoir Becoming, and you recently left us with the lyrical record Levon James. In the song “Took Her to the O,” you tell us about driving a young woman from Kankakee around the South Side. While making a pit stop at her house, a “goofy” man starts to attack her as she tries to get back into your car. You claim wanting to help, but because she is not your “ho,” you decide to lock your doors and drive away, watching in the rearview as the enraged man continually beats her. Suddenly, the same man throws a brick at your car and you decide to “raise your blick and let off two shots” to stop his violence — against your car. The relieved young lady jumps into your whip and you both flee the scene. You apologize to her, stating, “I know you mad cause I smoked your man”, but she cavalierly replies, “Fuck that n***a, he from 63rd.” I am not here to judge your words or your life, King Von. I am simply reflecting on the words you left us prior to your murder. Words that chronicle what you saw as a young Black man from one of the deadliest neighborhoods in America. Words that reflect a semblance of what your immediate surroundings engineered for your future. But most importantly, words that highlight the violence and separation America intended for you. The 6400 block of South King Drive, dubbed “O Block” in honor of slain twenty-yearold Odee Perry, is indeed a microcosm of the unspoken side of the American Dream. You and Michelle Obama both used words to forge a new trajectory. Being a lawyer, Michelle used rhetoric and speech to forge her way. Being a rapper, you used rhymes and lyrics. Unfortunately, you
would not live long enough to understand the importance of shifting the energy of your work. And your becoming was cut short. Your socially prescribed lifestyle was predetermined by the block in which you were raised. Stoked by a world that glorifies violence against Black bodies with clout and financial gain, you exploited the very system that was designed to exploit you. Drill philosophy pushes lines and codes of conduct. As a practitioner of this school of thought, you used your platform to stoke rivalries. In the rhyme “All These N****s,” you boldly rap: “Tooka in my lung, I say that every time, ’cause he got smoked…”. You are also seen coaxing a toddler into saying the words, “Fuck Tooka” in an IG live video that went viral. Consequently, other rappers outside of Chicago began to throw around the phrase “fuck Tooka”, not realizing Tooka was a fifteen-year-old child murdered while waiting at the bus stop. Unfamiliar with the historic nuances of drill music, most of these nonChicagoan rappers were quick to offer apologies to the family of Shondale “Tooka” Gregory upon realizing the error of their ways. But even as a father in your late twenties, you never gained the selfrealization or awareness to offer the same. RIP Shondale “Tooka” Gregory, RIP Modell McCambry. But here, I will not make a mockery out of your life force, because though I do not agree with some of your moves, I hold great respect for the breath God placed into your lungs and I applaud the drive and hustle you utilized to escape the American engineered nightmare that stole your innocence. I only wish more people had encouraged you to use your craft towards atonement, and forging unity between South Side rival gangs Black Disciples and Gangster Disciples. But we all can’t be Nipsey Hussle.
Through music you narrate the underbelly of America’s other dream. And more than anything, people admire your ability to tell such stories through drill trap. I marvel at the resilience of your hood mindset, and I tremble at the hidden hands that contributed to the tragic ending of your own story as a storyteller. An urban griot, marked with sharp features of a stolen Fulani prince, your legacy embodies the long forgotten racist laws that built Parkway Gardens; the lenient rules of Atlanta, Georgia which allowed Monaco Hookah Lounge to be open during a deadly pandemic; and the diabolical consciousness often applauded through social media platforms, where violence against Blackness gains more followers than a Kardashian chasing Black men. I appreciate the telling of your story. Though it’s not neat or peaceful, it hails true. Ultimately, your story is a reflection of our country’s collective consciousness: A consciousness invested in the perpetual death of Black minds and bodies… aka, entertainment. But your demise is not entertainment, it is a foreboding omen of where we are headed if we do not lower our heads for a moment of silence. King Von, may you continue to seek growth in the afterlife, and may your children be afforded the peace you never fully knew in this life. ¬ Kulwa Apara is a Spanish-speaking Black woman with Midwest roots based in Oakland, CA. As an artist and community health activist, she is passionate about intersections of historical trauma, historical triumph, and mental health. She is committed to using cultural arts as a tool to advance mental health outcomes in marginalized communities. This is her first piece for the Weekly.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
MUSIC PHOTO COURTESY OF BLVCK SVM
How 2020 pushed Blvck Svm to new heights
In a year marked by pandemic and political activism, Hyde Park’s Blvck Svm persevered and leveled up. BY NOAH TESFAYE
A
s COVID-19 began to worsen in March, twenty-three-year-old Ben Glover, who raps under the moniker Blvck Svm, was on a countdown clock. Governor Pritzker’s stay-at-home order closed the gym where Glover worked, cutting off his main source of income and forcing him to consider moving back in with family near West Palm Beach, Florida. Still living in Hyde Park nearly two years after graduating from the University of Chicago, Glover was in the process of buying GRE prep books and contemplating whether he really wanted to continue pursuing music full time. 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
He was stuck at 300 monthly listeners on Spotify and losing money on social media promotion every time he put out a song. But he decided to give it a shot. The strategy? Release biweekly singles on all streaming platforms to what he describes as the most captive music listening audience in recent memory. Glover thought if he was going to “make something shake,” this would be the moment. That first single, “Bleach” released on March 19, was the one that landed, initially reaching 15,000 streams on Spotify in its first month and over a half a million as of press time. Glover said “Bleach” went on to become his first song
¬ DECEMBER 10, 2020
to crack 100,000 streams, thanks in part to Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. For Glover, growing as an artist in a year marked by a pandemic and political activism makes sense. Majoring in critical race and ethnic studies, Glover wrote his thesis on why white people like trap music. Today, he’s organizing resource guides and interweaving thoughts on prison abolition and mutual aid into his rhymes. Glover said he is taking this moment with seriousness and optimism to create the music that he is proud of. As he raps in his song “Supercomputer,” “Quarantine really pushed me to the brink and it worked.”
Growing up near West Palm Beach, Glover enjoyed rapping for fun with his friends throughout high school. “I performed freestyle Fridays for my homies at lunch but I never had an official performance,” he said on a Zoom call from his apartment in Hyde Park. “I was just doing it for fun every Friday.” At the time, his closest friend Jawanza Ingram, now a producer who goes by Sheri A, didn’t think much of the casual, fun rhyming. During lunch at Heritage High School, Sheri would see Glover doing percussion, “beating on tables, rapping,” he said. “I didn’t know it was serious for him at the time, and it really was. And he made it serious.”
MUSIC
“Quarantine really pushed me to the brink and it worked.”
Almost immediately after Glover arrived at UofC for his freshman year in October 2014, he took the jump to perform publicly for the first time at a hip hop poetry slam at the Logan Center. A shy and reserved first-year, he stepped on stage and wanted to hear what people who weren’t his friends thought of his music. “I didn't realize that I should have had my lyrics memorized so I showed up with sheets of paper,” he said. “The thing I can remember the most is shaking like a leaf when I was up there. At points, I could barely read what I had typed up because my hands were shaking so much.” That night, Glover placed third behind two student rappers who had significantly more experience than he did. The experience made Glover “hungry to perform more and to write more and just get better overall.” The bar that gave him the biggest applause during his first performance? “He ain’t doing shit like Clarence Thomas.” Glover’s politics were present in his bars from the beginning. Right before he got to college, he was stopped and frisked for the first time back in Florida—a confrontation that he said left him questioning his place in society as a Black person. College gave him an opportunity to explore these thoughts, he said. “I was surrounded by a lot of people who were much smarter than I was who put me on game very quickly about a lot of different things: about gender, about sexual orientation, about mental health, about race,” he said. “I guess you don't really think about how much you don't know about race as a Black person. You just kind of live it.” It was his curiosity about Blackness that kept him in school as opposed to
dropping out and pursuing music full time during junior year after he declared his major. Glover’s thesis advisor, Allen Linton II, first met Glover on the basketball court at Ratner Athletics Center before he knew he would be working with Glover. “It was really cool to see this person in several different spaces and the centrality of his character,” Linton said. “His character [was] this engaging, fearless but deeply grounded and critical person whether it was idly talking shop at the basketball court, or working through centuries of racial differences when it comes to cultural consumption and engagement.“Ben’s a creative and he's always thinking about himself and his story and the audience,” Linton said. “That was a way we connected on all the elements that he outlines [in his thesis]: tempo, lyrics—not just content of lyrics but delivery, the musical selection. Put all of those pieces and apply them to other spaces.” The amalgamation of elements was his final thesis paper, entitled “From Minstrelsy to Migos: An Examination of White American Enjoyment of Trap Music.” It was a convergence of his identities as a Black person and rapper. By February of 2018, Glover switched his stage name to Black Sam, later Blvck Svm (pronounced “Black Sam”), after the sixteenth-century African samurai Yasuke. Glover continued to pursue music as a full-time vision after graduating while balancing his job at a gym and staying in Hyde Park. He returned to campus a few months later for UofC’s Major Activities Board Fall Show in November of 2018, opening for Waka Flocka Flame. Before the pandemic, he was performing in clubs around the city and independently releasing EPs and songs semi-frequently.
For Glover, bringing in facets of critical theory and radical politics is a space where he feels he can continue to express himself in ways that go beyond the confines of normal conscious rap. This summer, amid protests in response to the police murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and the white supremacist murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Glover felt he needed to adjust the schedule of his regular bi-weekly single releases. He knew he wanted to write something about this moment, but the last thing he wanted was to sound like most rappers making songs about political unrest. “I think most conscious rap is just really corny,” he said. “Nobody is talking about anything new. The beats are usually wack, they're like pseudosoulful. and whatever the rapper is saying is…it doesn't necessarily have to be new information but I think it should be packaged in a way that at least makes it personal to that person. And it never is. It always sounds very contrived, and the reason I don't really make music like that, and didn't in the past, is because I didn't want to sound like them.” With this in mind, Glover spent two weeks writing what he says was the most difficult song he’s ever released, “Cloak.” He chronicles the horror of watching the video of George Floyd’s murder and how challenging it was to stay focused on anything as protests ensued. In under two and a half minutes, he criticizes Blackout Tuesday, advocates for donating to mutual aid funds, and points out the hypocrisy in denouncing rioting while remaining silent when police executions are happening. After writing and reaching out to friends for feedback, Glover released the song on all
streaming platforms on June 26. “I sent it to a bunch of people, a bunch of my Black friends, and asked them if they thought it was too canned, [or] was worth putting out,” Glover said. “I got good responses from them, and so I ended up putting it out. and I'm glad I did because-not really because of the feedback, but because I proved to myself that I could make a song about serious topics that isn't corny.” Sheri said he sees Glover’s meticulous writing process first-hand whenever they work together. If Glover feels like a bar doesn’t fit in context or flow sonically in the verse, it doesn’t make the song. Once during a studio session, Sheri said Glover came prepared to write in iambic pentameter. “His poetry comes in really calculated, understandable ideas,” Sheri said. Glover’s music has now become his main source of income. By the start of December, he had amassed more than 740,000 streams, over 174,000 listeners, and reached ninety-one countries in 2020, according to Spotify data he shared on Instagram. Although labels have approached him to secure a deal, Glover said he plans to independently drop a few more bi-weekly singles and release an EP titled Carpaccio on December 16. He wants to sell more features, “not worry about money anymore,” and, most importantly, continue to make music that “my parents are proud of, that my friends are proud of, and that people really like listening to.” ¬ Noah Tesfaye is a Bay Area-born journalist, columnist at the Maroon student newspaper, and second-year at UofC studying political science and critical race and ethnic studies. This is his first piece for the Weekly.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
MUSIC
Bless the Mic
South Shore rapper PhalaiR released Blssd in November, and he’s just getting started BY JIM DALEY
PHOTO COURTESY OF PHALAIR CARTER
What are some of your musical influences? I grew up in the neo-soul era, so a lot of Jill Scott and Erykah Badu, and in Chicago, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Twista. When I was like five years old, “Gold Digger” by Kanye West was my favorite song. It was the first song I ever memorized. And a lot of my dad’s music as well. How did you start rapping? My father was an emcee named No Try Do Sincere from when he was my age until his mid-thirties, so I’ve always been around the culture of hip-hop. When I got to high school, my friend Miles Gillespie—who was the main producer on Blssd—his father had a studio in his basement. We ended up making a rap collective, Clear Conscious. We’ve been working on each other’s music for about four years now. Can you explain the production decisions you made for Blssd?
P
halair Carter is making moves. The eighteen-yearold rapper, who graduated from Kenwood Academy in 2020, is heading to Florida in a few weeks to study music business at Full Sail University and plans to release one or two new songs every month. In November, Carter, who performs under his first name only, dropped Blssd, his first fulllength mixtape, on Spotify and Soundcloud. Comprising eight tracks and clocking in at about twenty-seven minutes, Blssd is markedly different in tone from Carter’s 2018, four-track EP Respected, and features beats reminiscent of the ethereal sound of Be, Common’s 2005 album. But Blssd presents the same thoughtful, intricate wordplay that places Carter firmly within Chicago’s tradition of gifted lyricists. 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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In June, Carter performed “Sleep,” the fourth track on Blssd, for Chicago’s online citywide high-school graduation celebration, #Grad2020, which also featured Common, Oprah Winfrey, and Hamilton star Miguel Cervantes. “Sleep” features an almost drowsy beat that recalls a nursery music box, which Carter raps over with wide-awake lyrics. “I ain’t got no, got no time to sleep,” Carter raps in the chorus. “I may be stupid for the lucid/ but I’m too lazy to dream/ you talk about goin’ beyond/ I am yawnin’ at the thought/ I may be drowsy/ don’t crowd me, cause my mind is far from gone.” The Weekly recently reached Carter by phone to discuss hip-hop, his musical influences, and his plans for the future. An edited transcript follows.
Every song on the album is pitched in a 432-wave frequency. That way when people hear it, it actually heals them when they listen to the song. When you listen to something on the radio, it has a lower frequency, because they want to project a certain message. A lot of times in [music played for] Black communities, they say the worst possible things and play the music at the lowest possible frequency. I wanted to put it in a good frequency with hooks and melodies that make people inspired. I wanted people to feel good, feel positive things.
“I don’t care if I’m top fifty or whatever, as long as my album is better than my last album, and then I’m progressing.” The title track, “Blssd,” which discusses eviction and other struggles you’ve been through, includes the line “Mother told me not to drop this verse/ she heard the first three lines and clutched her purse.” Is that based on real life?
like “Blssd,” or “Respected.” Everything happens for a reason, and I just let my pain help me evolve.
We lived in an apartment complex on 72nd and South Shore Drive, right over the lake. And gentrification happened, so the rent is climbing, and the apartment was getting worse and worse, like they didn’t want us in there anymore. The landlord wasn’t investing in things to keep us there, like extermination; they weren’t doing what they were supposed to do, because they didn’t want us to be there. We ended up getting evicted, and we had another place we were going to move to, but that person pulled out of the deal and we didn’t have anywhere to stay. It was a very humbling moment for my family, and it was something I never forgot. I played my mom that verse, and she said no, you cannot tell people that. I was like, Ma, I have to, because this is the truth; it’s something we’ve been through. People are going to relate to this, they’re going to love this. But it’s one of those verses that I hear played back, and I still get nervous.
On the one hand, the pandemic leveled the playing field for everyone. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get it done, because if you can make the investment in your product, in your music and your merch, you can really push it. Artists like Drake or DaBaby can’t dominate like they used to. You have to really be a DaBaby fan to get access to his music now. You have to really search for it. For an artist like me, [the pandemic] allowed me to get a fresh slate and restart my plan, and really think about what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it. On the other hand, I wasn’t able to record at studios, which was very difficult. I recorded “Satisfied” on my iPhone, which was not ideal. And it pushed my release date back; Blssd was supposed to be released in April. So it depends on how you look at it.
How have the challenges you’ve overcome informed your hip-hop?
I think hip-hop is the voice of the future. And the youth are the best at it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some OGs that are great at the craft and great at putting raps together, but the youth are what make it hip. It went from rapping on the street corner with friends to rapping on the Xbox. Everything evolves. And I feel that hip-hop plays a powerful role in motivating us to want to change and make the world how we want to see it. I think it’s the most influential genre, period, to me. ¬
They give me lessons that I need to learn and need to evolve. I’m really big on evolving and growing, it’s something I really take pride in. I don’t care if I’m top fifty or whatever, as long as my album is better than my last album, and then I’m progressing. So when it comes to the things that I’ve been through, all they do is allow me to progress. Like when we got evicted, I had to move in with my dad. And the lessons I learned from my dad allowed me to become a better artist and a better man. So if that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t even have gotten a mixtape
What’s it like to drop an album in the middle of a pandemic?
What role do you think hip-hop can play in the current moment?
Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last wrote about the State’s Attorney’s approach to prosecuting protesters.
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HEALTH
There’s an Uptick in Street Overdoses During the Pandemic
Cook County is projected to double the number of opioid-related overdoses among unsheltered homeless persons this pandemic year. BY PETER WINSLOW
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atonia Easter, forty-six, waits in line to receive food and harm reduction supplies provided by a Chicago Recovery Alliance (CRA) truck parked at the corner of 68th and South Halsted. Easter has been homeless for more than ten years and struggles with chronic opioid use. The coronavirus pandemic has only reinforced her reluctance to seek shelter and resources from local health care and homeless support service providers. She worries about contracting the virus at shelters and instead chooses to stay in a few abandoned buildings in Englewood. Because Easter prefers to be on her own, she uses drugs in private, meaning that her chances of a fatal overdose drastically increase. When CRA staff offered her Naloxone—an injectable medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose—Easter declined. The United States experienced a record of nearly 72,000 overdose deaths in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Other preliminary reports suggest that 2020 has the potential to be deadlier. The Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), which tracks emergency calls responding to suspected overdoses, found that sixty-two percent of counties in the United States indicated increases after COVID-19related lockdowns began. Illinois is one of those states. 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed 1,267 opioid overdose deaths in 2019, and ongoing analysis suggests that Cook County is projected to double the number of opioid-related overdoses this year. Research shows that drug use often increases during times of economic distress, and data from the Illinois Department of Employment Security showed the statewide unemployment rate tripled in 2020, with 10.2 percent in September compared to 3.7 percent last year. Although national data on overdoses remains incomplete, frontline preventive health care specialists and homeless service providers have seen notable upticks in substance misuse and housing insecurity throughout their service populations across Chicago. Anthony Strong, a community health worker at Heartland Alliance, said that while driving across the city he has seen a proliferation of homeless encampments—more than he has ever seen in his five years with the organization. When asked if a rise in new homeless persons and overdoses have occurred compared to pre-pandemic conditions, Strong said, “All of the above. It used to be an older crowd and it is slowly getting to be a younger crowd, where you are having, at one point, very able-bodied twenty-year-olds that could go get a job unable to because of this addiction, which leads to, at a faster track, homelessness.”
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He frequents the West and South Side to provide outreach services to individuals struggling with addiction and homelessness. “Over the past three months, I’ve seen maybe fifteen overdoses with my own eyes, and all of them have been in a four- or five-block radius on the West Side, near Chicago Avenue and Kedzie Street,” he said. Clifton Sanchez, an outreach specialist and director of human resources at CRA, concurred that a notable increase in homeless individuals has taken place since the pandemic began. “I pass 51st right off of State Street, between State and the Dan Ryan, there is a viaduct right there, that viaduct is totally full with homeless [people],” said Sanchez. “In January or February of this year, when we drove by there, there was no one in that viaduct … the increase was substantial to the point where I told a couple of pastors that do a lot of outreach—giving out food and such— and they went over there to bring food for the folks,” he said. Based on the harm-reduction materials that Sanchez distributes at his five sites across the South Side, he has been able to note the differences of the drug supply in certain areas. CRA currently has eighteen locations across the city that their mobile units travel to to provide harm reduction materials and health care services. “The majority of the people we are serving are addicted to crack cocaine, ten to one,” said Sanchez. “[They] are coming for the safe snort and smoke kits—we’ve seen a super uptickat all the sites.” Sanchez said that the majority of illicit opiates on the street contain fentanyl, a powerful synesthetic opioid analgesic that is fifty to one hundred times more potent than morphine, which has been an all-too familiar culprit of the overdose epidemic.
A lack of donations and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic has hindered CRA’s ability to consistently provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to their clients. “We try to give them hygiene kits when we have them,” said Sanchez. “We try to give them food and snacks when we have it. We literally save this stuff just for our homeless population because we don’t have enough to give it to everybody. You got to ration it out.” Sanchez estimated that about a quarter of CRA’s total client population is unsheltered homeless. “When folks come to the truck, their masks are dirty, they got food on them, and they have been wearing those masks for a few days, because that’s the same mask we gave them last week,” said Sanchez. “So, there is no intervention between the times that we see these folks. What we give them is what they have until we see them again.” Throughout 2018, an estimated 76,998 people experienced homelessness in Chicago, 18,126—about twenty-four percent—of whom lived in the streets or shelters, according to a report released by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. These numbers do not account for the tens of thousands of individuals in Chicago that currently live paycheck-topaycheck and are one financial setback away from eviction or homelessness, nor do they account for the expected climb as the economic downturn continues to worsen the financial stability of Americans. An analysis conducted by Dr. Brendan O’Flaherty, a professor of urban economics at Columbia University, estimates that there will be a forty to fortyfive percent increase in homelessness nationally by the end of 2020. The majority of open-space congregate shelters in Chicago were forced to reduce the number of available beds in an effort to abide by CDC social
HEALTH
distancing guidelines and other preventive measures to combat infection rates from climbing. “We cut our population in half,” said La Forice Nealy, president and CEO of the Olive Branch Mission, a long-time social and homeless service provider on the South Side. In March, local health care and homeless service providers formed a cross-sector partnership innovative called the Chicago Homelessness and Health Response Group for Equity (CHHRGE), to address and combat the devastating impact the COVID-19 health crisis has had on Chicago’s most vulnerable communities. As of June 5, the group was comprised of more than thirty organizations, including A Safe Haven, All Chicago, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and Cook County Health (CCH), among others. “We knew that the homeless checked all the boxes in terms of underlying conditions that made them the most vulnerable, the most susceptible to getting the disease, getting sick from
it,and dying from it,” said Neli Vasquez Rowland, president of A Safe Haven and a founder of CHHRGE. Working in tandem with the City of Chicago Department of Public Health and Rush University Medical Center, in April A Safe Haven opened a medical respite isolation space to serve unsheltered COVID-19 positive patients in their headquarters in Tri-Taylor, where the organization dedicated a wing to house 100 beds for homeless persons diagnosed with the virus. Unfortunately, the majority of homeless and transitional living shelters are unable to create isolation areas for COVID-19 patients or accommodate the expected increase in demand during Chicago’s coldest months. Pre-pandemic, the Olive Branch Mission had 350 beds split between two locations—now they hover around 170. Andrew Wodja, a substance use advocate with The Night Ministry, has seen how harmful the pandemic can be to homeless persons, especially affecting
how they obtain money, resources, and basic health care services. The Night Ministry, a homeless service provider located on the North Side, operates a street medicine team that provides free healthcare, survival and harm reduction supplies, and direct support to Chicago’s underserved population. “Just a couple months ago, if you were in the Loop at any given time of the week, you’d see how drastic the change was,” said Wodja, commenting on how some homeless individuals he works with subsist on money from panhandling in the central business district of the city. “A lot of these folks make money down there because that’s where all the foot traffic is, and if there is no foot traffic down there, there is no money to be made,” he said. “If you mess with their money, you are messing with their habit, a habit that is down to a science at this point, and when you mess with that science, people die.” The Night Ministry works with UI Health to onboard clients on a
PHOTO BY PETER WINSLOW
“It used to be an older crowd and it is slowly getting to be a younger crowd, where you are having, at one point, very able-bodied twentyyear-olds that could go get a job unable to because of this addiction, which leads to, at a faster track, homelessness.”
Suboxone treatment program to help homeless persons detox and break their dependency. “Of the individuals that are interested in Suboxone, we don’t have success with all of them,” said Wodja. Over the last few months, Wodja and his street medicine team members have surpassed over fifty participants in the Suboxone treatment program. There are many challenges when it comes to tracking the progress of participants, including locating the individuals to make sure they are following the regimen protocols, said Wodja. Stephan Koruba, a senior nurse practitioner with the street medicine team, estimates that about twenty percent of the Suboxone program participants see it through to the end. But Koruba said that COVID-19 has pushed many to turn to the program, as resources and certain drug supply chains are inconsistent due to the limiting nature of the pandemic. Matthew, forty-nine, who lives in a tent under a viaduct near West Chicago Avenue and North Sacramento Avenue, was on Suboxone for four months before turning back to his daily opiate use. He said the Suboxone manifested in intense gastrointestinal discomfort and being “dope sick,” which led him to back to opiate use, despite the fact that he’s known of four individuals close to his friends and him who fatally overdosed over this past year. Since the pandemic began in March, Matthew, who has been on the streets for years, said he has seen more homeless people turning up and that it has been much harder to obtain resources and supplies. Dr. Jeffrey Watts, a board-certified psychiatrist and addiction medicine physician at CCH, said that the greatest risk of overdose is when the drug supply chain is intermittent. There has been a dramatic increase in fentanyl-laced drugs during COVID-19 because the synthetic opioids are easier to come by as compared to the naturally occurring drugs, Watts said. “During COVID-19, the supply has been inconsistent, and when people are able to get something, they are not aware of what they are purchasing,” he said.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13
HEALTH When asked if there is a correlation between substance-use disorders and homelessness, Watts said absolutely. “They are affecting how we feel, how we think, the decisions that we make and sometimes that ends up with a person losing their housing, or not being able to pay their rent, maybe their behaviors lead them to not be able to go back to the place where they were staying before. All of these things are tied together very closely.” Watts said that telehealth practices and loosened regulations on prescriptionfilling protocols could be a useful tool to combat the opioid epidemic during the coronavirus pandemic and thereafter. “We were granted, through the DEA and through the federal government, the ability to prescribe treatments, whether that be methadone or buprenorphine, without directly seeing the patient, which had been a barrier in the past,” Watts said. “We have been able to engage patients on the street, either through telehealth, telephone, tele-video, or having them come into a clinic that might be near a homeless shelter. We’ve actually seen an increase and I think it’s an opportunity to engage patients.” Some patients may only need to go once every two weeks or once every month, versus six days a week. “We’ve been able to use centralized appointment sites and bring the patient where we have tele-video capability,” said Watts. “And even if the provider isn’t there, we are able to provide them services and send their prescriptions.” Telehealth technology has the potential to reach underserved populations and strengthen preventive care capabilities for outreach specialists and homeless service providers, but a buffer period exists in terms of widespread availability of these technologies. Ideally, those in recovery would “be in a detox center and under medical supervision, away from being triggered by people shooting up around them,” said Wodja. “We accept it as part of the struggle … they are their own doctors, they are good at surviving for the most part.” ¬
The Neighborhood You Live In Affects Your COVID-19 Risk Lack of access to healthcare and home internet are associated with higher COVID-19 deaths, suggesting resource availability is linked to mortality rates BY ELORA APANTAKU
ILLUSTRATION BY ELORA APANTAKU
Peter Winslow is a reporter for Gazette Chicago Newspaper and a freelance writer. This is his first piece for the Weekly. 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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n April, Weekly data journalist Bea Malsky designed an online tracker that illustrates where COVID-19 deaths in Chicago are concentrated and which populations are hardest hit by the pandemic. The tracker pulls Cook County Medical Examiner (CCME) data from the Cook County Data Portal and shows the number of COVID-19 deaths by community area and by the race of each person who has died. By mapping out which areas were hit hardest—in a city still facing the effects of decadeslong discrimination and segregation— the connection between communities of color and COVID-19 cases and deaths is readily apparent. “Illness and mortality appear along geographic and racial lines of disparity, neighborhood by neighborhood,” Malsky wrote at the time. In May, Molly Scannell Bryan, an epidemiologist at UIC’s Institute for Minority Health Research, contacted Malsky about the tracker. Scannell Bryan wanted to know how Malsky had processed the CCME’s data to report COVID deaths by race and location, because she knew that CCME occasionally makes corrections after data is posted. Malsky had made sure the tracker took that into account. “I reached out to [Bea] in particular because in the death data, race and ethnicity coding changes over time,” Scannell Bryan said. “For recent decedents, the race and ethnicity [information] is not always accurate. Some of the records are corrected later, but even with the corrected data misclassification is still possible.” This can cause underrepresentation of Latinx deaths in the final data, because often those deaths are initially reported as “white.” Malsky's tracker reports the
most recent demographics available, so if CCME makes any changes to it, they are reflected in the tracker the next day. Scannell Bryan researches health disparities: why and how certain communities are affected more than others by myriad health issues. She became interested in exploring COVID-19 as soon as the city shut down. “When COVID-19 started erupting in spring,” she said, “I wanted to understand how it was affecting Chicago specifically.” Her approach found a focus after reading a study that piqued her interest. Researchers from Harvard University had compared air pollution levels to death rates in thousands of counties across the United States. “Counties that had high pollution tended to be urban counties, and that was particularly in the spring and summer where deaths were concentrated, too,” Scannell Bryan explained. Since Chicago is encompassed by one county—Cook—she decided to look at census tracts. Chicago has approximately 1,000 census tracts, each containing roughly 4,000 people. In November, Scannell Bryan co-authored a study in Annals of Epidemiology that drew upon CCME data and other information to examine the relationship between COVID-19 mortality and Chicago’s neighborhoods. The researchers focused on 795 census tracts in Chicago that had experienced a combined 2,514 COVID-19 deaths through July 22. For each tract, they looked at thirty-three different variables that they suspected could affect either COVID-19 infection risk (such as living in dense housing, transportation habits, and access to broadband internet at home) or mortality risk (health care access, rates of comorbid conditions, poverty rate, and air quality). Their findings seemed to mirror the results of similar studies conducted across the country: more COVID-19 cases, and more COVID-19 related deaths, are occurring in Black and Latinx communities than in white ones. Black deaths from COVID-19 are disproportionately higher than white or Latinx deaths, and Latinx deaths from COVID-19 occur at a younger age compared to white counterparts, at sixty-three years, compared to seventy-
one for white residents. The study also revealed that mortality rates were not evenly distributed throughout the city as much as they were concentrated in certain neighborhoods with shared characteristics. Scannell Bryan said this was “not so surprising for an infectious disease,” but they did not see a strong effect of dense housing, where multiple apartment buildings with more than twenty units are located. Instead, “what we saw rise to the top were these indicators of barriers to social distancing, specifically internet access.” Diane Lauderdale, the chair of the University of Chicago’s public health department, cautions that while census tracts give researchers an opportunity to look closely at specific areas, they may also lead to inaccurate assumptions about certain locations because of additional variables that aren’t present in the census data. “Because they do not have very many individual characteristics for the COVID cases beyond age and race, contextual variables that are identified by this analysis are not actually risk factors at the contextual level but are analogs to individual characteristics that put individuals at risk,” she explained. This means that the neighborhood characteristics the study identified are not definitive risk factors for individuals becoming infected or dying from the disease, but instead may serve as proxy indicators for larger problems that make surviving a pandemic more difficult. Internet access, for example, “might be a proxy for something else, but it might also flag neighborhoods that had an easier time navigating the shutdown without leaving home,” she said. Scannell Bryan added that if true, this suggests health outcomes could be improved with policy that increases both healthcare access and people’s ability to stay in their homes. Lauderdale said that Chicagoans should follow the Chicago Department of Public Health’s advice on how to protect themselves from COVID-19. “I have been very impressed with how the city has reached out to a number of experts across the city for advice and brought together the research community to lend their expertise,” she said. But she also acknowledged that decades of inequality have made it difficult for many
residents to remain healthy. “Many of these circumstances are within Chicago’s control and some are broader national problems that we are seeing in Chicago.” Scannell Bryan emphasized the importance of encouraging public health policies and messaging that is consistent and scientifically driven. “Yes, individual decisions matter,” she said, alluding to washing hands, wearing masks, and social distancing, ”but the burden of solving this
cannot be put solely on the people who are already disproportionately burdened by COVID-19. Providing additional resources to support those living in these neighborhoods is a more equitable approach." ¬ Elora Apantaku is a medical doctor and writer. She last wrote an Illustrated FAQ to COVID-19.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15
JUSTICE
Chicago Gun Violence is a Public Health Crisis A violence prevention organizer speaks out BY CHARLES JONES
PHOTO COURTESY OF FIRST DEFENSE LEGAL AID
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un violence is a major problem in Chicago, increasing the need for violence prevention. This year alone we have already experienced 716 homicides, which is a fifty percent increase over the total homicides last year. Like COVID-19, gun violence is a pandemic and has to be treated from a public health perspective: as a disease that, if left untreated, will spread like any other disease. I have been doing violence prevention work now for ten years. Recently, while reading an article, I found a striking fact: despite fluctuations in the murder rate over the years, Chicago has averaged a little over 500 murders a year for the last twenty years. However, there is something unique about the increase in homicides in 2020. How did we manage a fifty percent increase in homicides while under quarantine and stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19? Although there may be many reasons for this increase, I would like to point to three issues: the failure to treat gun violence as a public health issue, the disenfranchisement of poor Black and brown youth, and lack of accountability from the Chicago Police Department. Both the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have adopted the United Nations findings recognizing the fact that gun violence is a public health problem, and has to be treated from a public health perspective. The public health approach addresses the fact that violence is a learned behavior and if not interrupted will be transmitted and spread like any other disease that goes untreated. Most of those that chose to commit
violent acts have learned this behavior and accept violence as a normal solution to their daily problems. In their minds, they are oppressed and violence is necessary. In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon argued that violence is necessary and natural against an oppressor like a colonizer. However, to the oppressed, the world is small and they only see people who look like them and see them as their oppressor. Black and Latinx people together make up nearly sixty percent of the population in Chicago. However, nearly eighty percent of gun homicides occur in poor Black and brown communities like Englewood, Austin, and Humboldt Park. This unacceptable disparity, and the fact that those in power refuse to accept gun violence as a public health problem, has led to many unsolved murders and the increase in the murder rate. The community resources needed to solve this problem have been woefully underfunded, mostly addressing the effects of the problem and not the root of the problem itself. In Mike Royko’s Boss, a history of Richard J. Daley’s years as mayor of Chicago, the legendary newsman noted that Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in America. Boss told the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. coming to the city to protest racial discrimination and marching through one of Chicago’s predominately white neighborhoods. He was spat on and hit with bricks and treated like he was not even a human being. Dr. King stated that the racial oppression he experienced in Chicago was far worse than any racism
JUSTICE
“As long as gun violence is perpetuated by and against the less fortunate, those in power will not treat gun violence as a public health issue.” PHOTO COURTESY OF FIRST DEFENSE LEGAL AID
he experienced in Southern states. Much of what Royko noted about Chicago neighborhoods in the 60s still exists today. Today, Chicago still remains a city divided along lines of race and income. What does all this have to do with gun violence or COVID? As long as gun violence is perpetuated by and against the less fortunate, those in power will not treat gun violence as a public health issue. When something becomes a public health issue, it is seen as affecting whole communities and adequate resources are directed to solving the problem. As long as gun violence was contained in these poor Black and brown communities, it was not treated as an issue. The pandemic changed all this, and exposed gun violence as a public health issue that needs to be addressed immediately. We were not ready for COVID; it has changed our lives forever. For the first time in my life, all major sports were shut down, schools closed, and we were ordered to stay at home. But COVID did something else: it overburdened the health care system. Hospitals were filled beyond capacity with COVID patients to the extent that many hospitals were unable to treat other patients. Now, in addition to COVID, we have a fifty-percent increase in gunshot patients that have to be admitted to the hospital, further overburdening a system on the brink. Hospitals are experiencing a shortage of health care personnel, as workers now have to worry about
their lives when victims of gun violence come in because many are suspected to be COVID-positive. The city was forced to deal with a monster that has been lurking in the shadows for the last twenty years—except now this monster is wreaking havoc on the whole city and not just poor neighborhoods. COVID-19 has exposed how gun violence affects the whole city and not just the population where it was predominately happening. It should be noted that COVID has disproportionately hit the Black community; Black Chicagoans make up almost forty percent of COVID-related deaths. Most victims of gun violence are from poor Black and brown communities. In addition, the shooters are also poor Black and brown individuals. It would be illogical to conclude that this group is just more violent, especially without taking other structural factors into consideration. Violence is a learned behavior, and this group has long been disenfranchised and stereotyped as having violent tendencies. Victor Rios is a formerly incarcerated professor and author who conducted indepth research into the lives of Black and brown young men in urban areas. He concluded that these young people strive for dignity in a social landscape that seems to deny them basic human acknowledgment. We can trace Chicago’s rich history of denying young Black and brown children basic human rights from the creation of the projects, to the Jon Burge torture era, to now where in
some neighborhoods they have a police station literally posted up at schools to criminalize age appropriate behavior. Conditions that poor Black and brown youth live under are a result of systemic racism. Then COVID comes along and forces those already living in overcrowded, under-resourced areas to stay at home and quarantine! This increased everyone’s tensions, and with everything basically closed, people hung in the neighborhood more and increased the violence. Finally, I want to point out that gun violence increased during COVID because there is a lack of accountability when it comes to how law enforcement treats Black and brown boys. What does this have to do with COVID, one may ask? Earlier I mentioned how Black and brown youth are treated by the police. I talked about Jon Burge and police in the schools. Although George Floyd was not killed in Chicago, his death was recorded for the world to see as he screamed for his life. After Floyd’s death, major protests across the world ensued. Although the police murder of Black suspects had been an issue for some time, it was Floyd’s death that set a new and unprecedented tone. There was a sweeping demand by citizens for police reform and the demand to end systemic racism. The call for police accountability put pressure on the Chicago police force and for some time this summer, it seemed poor Black and brown communities were practically unpoliced.
At this time violence swept through these communities like wildfires. There were news reports where the police just watched looters loot the city. Chicago police also violently beat protestors with batons, tear gas, and more. As a result, the violence exploded as the police sat back and did little. It is not my premise that COVID-19 alone caused the increase of gun violence in Chicago. COVID exposed preexisting conditions that have gone unaddressed for years, such as how violence is viewed, how Black and brown people are treated by the city at large, and the abuses of the Chicago Police Department. We must treat this issue as the public health crisis that it is by directing resources to address the root causes. ¬ Charles Jones was born and raised in Englewood. He was a legal worker with First Defense Legal Aid, where he worked on police misconduct lawsuits and conducted know your rights workshops. In addition, Jones was a violence prevention/intervention specialist with Opposite Negative Environment. Jones was incarcerated for over a decade after being forced into a false confession by Chicago police after he was held incommunicado when he was a teen. After coming home, Jones dedicated his life to ending incommunicado detention, police violence, and intracommunal violence. Charles Jones passed away on November 27, and will be missed dearly by his family and the many people whose lives he impacted and transformed.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17
JUSTICE
An End to Cash Bond in Illinois is Only the Beginning of Restorative Justice Should it pass, the Pretrial Fairness Act will fundamentally change the way public safety has traditionally operated in Illinois. BY NIKKI ROBERTS
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ast month, state Senator Robert Peters and Representative Justin Slaughter announced a bill known as the Pretrial Fairness Act that, if passed, would make Illinois the second state to end the use of money bonds after New Jersey. In Cook County, where about a quarter of the county’s detainees are kept incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay their bond, the passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act could be a positive step towards reforming the state’s judicial system. Because of the abrupt cancellation of the General Assembly’s fall session, the bill has yet to be entered into the record. When a person is arrested and charged with a crime, a judge determines whether the individual is eligible for bail. One common condition of bail is that the defendant must pay a monetary bond before they are released, and this amount is determined by a judge at the defendant’s bail hearing. In Cook County, there are two types of bonds that require payment upfront: C-bonds and D-bonds. A C-bond requires that the entire bail amount be paid, while a D-bond requires that ten percent of the bail amount must be paid—the full amount is only paid if the defendant fails to appear in court or violates another condition of bail. More than 90 percent of detainees 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
at Cook County Jail are awaiting trial, according to data from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, though that is likely lower this year due to the reduction in transfers to IDOC during the pandemic, the Coalition to End Money Bond said. The only reason many defendants remain incarcerated prior to their case being heard in court is because they are unable to afford their bond payment. Usually, the detainee themselves is not the person who posts their own bond—that burden is placed on the detainee’s family and close relations. “If you are poor, but especially if you're poor and Black, and especially if you're a woman, you are at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to pretrial incarceration compared to someone who has money, is white, and is a man,” said Peters, who chairs the senate’s Special Committee on Public Safety and worked on the issue of money bond as an activist before being appointed to his seat in 2019. “We need to get rid of the fact that your safety and freedom is tied to money. We need to get rid of the idea that freedom is a privilege. Our freedom is a right. You are not guilty because you're poor.” The Coalition to End Money Bond includes policy, organizing, and religious groups that seek to abolish the use
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of money bond through county-level policy change, state legislation, public education, and organizing efforts— carrying on a fifty-year legacy of organizing on this issue in Cook County. Early on in the pandemic as coronavirus cases surged in the Cook County jail, the coalition’s campaign focus shifted to more immediate decarceration work by putting pressure on city officials to reduce the amount of people being incarcerated and to release inmates that were awaiting trial. “We were trying to save lives because we know that jails are prime spaces for viruses to spread,” said Malik Alim, the campaign’s coordinator. “[The COVID-19 pandemic] has shed light on the barbaric practice of locking people in cages. When [the courts] began releasing people, what do we make of that response? We can understand that means that a lot of people in jail are not there because they need to be there in order to keep [the public] safe. They're there as part of this punishment bureaucracy— the criminalization of poverty.” This summer, a study by Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice found that even though Cook County Jail released nearly twenty-five percent
of its detainees, between March 22 and November 22, the “overall reported crime decreased across the City of Chicago relative to a 3-year average of the same time period.” The researchers found that holding defendants in jail prior to their court dates did not have a direct correlation to either an increase in crime or a decline in public safety. In addition to abolishing money bond, the bill will include measures that ensure those charged with a crime appear in court by supporting them, rather than holding money over their heads—which is what Alim refers to when he refers to the “criminalization of poverty.” Courts would be required to send reminder texts and phone calls prior to an individual’s court date, and transportation services, such as CTA fare, would be provided for low-income people who are more likely to miss court over transportation arrangements or being unable to afford taking the day off from work. These services would help reduce the likelihood of missing a court date, but, in the event that does occur, the accused person would be given notice that they have forty-eight hours to appear in court before a warrant is issued. The bill will also require that the state becomes more transparent about pretrial decisions by
JUSTICE
“We need to get rid of the fact that your safety and freedom is tied to money.” collecting and publishing data that will be made available to the public. If cash bond is abolished, activists will shift their focus to how risk assessments are used to determine a defendant’s eligibility for bail. When an accused person sees a judge for a bail hearing, they are quickly informed of the charges against them and a bail amount is set. A risk assessment is used to determine whether a defendant is eligible for bail—including prior arrests and convictions, pending charges, and the violent nature of the current offense. The proposed bill would attempt to enforce that all detainees who are not deemed a flight risk or threat will be released without needing to make any bond payment prior to their court date. If a judge determines that an individual should be denied bail, then enough evidence must be presented to prove that the person is a legitimate flight risk. Already, the proposals in the bill have been opposed by criminal justice officials. Some adversaries have cited their reliance on bond-based revenue as a primary reason for opposing the bill. During a subject matter hearing on October 20, Holly Lemons, the Republican Circuit Court Clerk in Montgomery County, outside of St. Louis, and president of the Illinois Association of Court Clerks, listed several programs funded by bond revenue, including administrative court services and restitution for crime victims. Peters said in an interview that the argument that legislators feel the need to “lock up their own constituents” for financial reasons is a dangerous stance to take. “The best argument people are going to have against the bill isn’t going to be focused on public safety. There will be fear mongering, but it won’t be rooted in fact
because they can’t defend a failed system that is just not working,” he said. “One thing that I've learned doing this work is that for forty years, policy was built off of fear. And yet nobody feels safe, no matter where they are. It doesn't help people feel like they have dignity in their lives.” Outside of government officials relying on bond money to “bolster their budgets,” Alim said another challenge that money bond abolitionists have had to overcome is the perception that Cook County already reformed its use of money bond a few years ago. In 2017, Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans issued an order that judges had to determine how much someone charged with a crime could reasonably afford to pay, and to not set the individual’s bond any higher than that amount in order to prevent excessive bond. The order stated that those who were deemed safe to be released without money bond were not to remain in jail because they could not afford to pay their bond, and detainees held without bail must present a “real and present threat.” Additionally, all detainees that had not posted bond in seven days were to have their cases reviewed. Because the ruling reduced the median amount and use of monetary bail bond, according to a report issued by Evans’ office in 2019, this reform was seen as a tentative victory for money bond abolitionists. However, it was only an incremental step forward— the ruling did not completely eliminate the use of excessive money bonds. As recently as December 2019, Cook County Judge Susana Ortiz set a defendant’s bond at $300,000 after prosecutors first tried to deny bail— meaning a bond amount of $30,000 needed to be paid for the defendant’s release. The defendant in question was
ILLUSTRATION BY ELLEN HAO
arrested after a shooting in Englewood, but was not alleged to be one of the shooters. In addition to not eliminating excessive bond, there was actually an increase in the number of defendants who were denied bail after the order went into effect. The use of both C-bonds and D-bonds decreased, but these bonds were often replaced with defendants being denied bail when they may have been deemed eligible previously. Evans’ 2017 order had not reformed the county’s judicial system in the way many hoped it would, and advocates say no change had been made to the use of money bond in the rest of the state. When the legislature returns to session, Peters said he will fight for the Pretrial Fairness Act. His primary tactic
is to be “ruthless” when it comes to changing the state’s judicial system. “You can't be afraid of being ruthless on the issues you care about. The people who oppose us are ruthless. We need to be as ruthless as them, but we need to know that we're coming from a place of love,” he said. Should it pass, the Pretrial Fairness Act will fundamentally change the way public safety has traditionally operated in Illinois. ¬ Nikki Roberts is a freelance writer from the western suburbs with a journalism degree from DePaul University whose writing has appeared in local publications including Chicago Reader, Chicago magazine, and South Side Weekly. She was the Bridgeport captain for Best of the South Side 2020.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19
FILM
Struck from the Record
The Trial of the Chicago 7 fictionalizes the stories of its participants. In the case of Bobby Seale, the inaccuracies tell a larger story. BY ELLIOT FRANK
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ritics are enjoying, if not quite raving about, The Trial of the Chicago 7. Writer and director Aaron Sorkin, having learned about the 1968 Democratic National Convention from Steven Spielberg, forged a courtroom drama from the major events of the trial in which eight left-wing activists were charged with conspiring to start a riot. It’s acknowledged that the movie takes liberties with the historical record, but the resulting writing is pointed and energetic, and the performances of the ensemble cast are said to capture the real-life bravado of such figures as Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin ( Jeremy Strong). However, critics have had comparatively little to say about Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays Bobby Seale, cofounder and national Chairman of the Black Panther party. Seale was the eighth defendant in the Chicago conspiracy trial, but in November 1969 his case was declared a mistrial and severed from that of the remaining seven defendants. As a result, Seale is absent from its end. This is a shame, because out of all the characters, the themes of the movie—political repression via the justice system, the importance of protest, the challenges of solidarity—are most clearly told in the story of Bobby Seale and the Illinois Black Panther Party. Seale was shoehorned into the trial to impede his
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organizing with the Black Panthers, the pro-Black, anti-capitalist radical group that the FBI had deemed “the greatest threat to internal security of the country.” The conspiracy charges against Seale were on their face ridiculous, in light of the fact that Seale had not met the seven other members of the defense before the trial. To make matters worse, Seale’s lawyer, Charles Garry, was undergoing gallbladder surgery in California and his motion to postpone the trial was denied by Judge Julius Hoffman. The judge, failing to conceal his disdain for the defendant, repeatedly insisted that William Kunstler be the lawyer for Seale; Seale in turn insisted he was not. After his demand for his lawyer was repeatedly denied, Seale asked to act as his own lawyer and cross-examine witnesses. Seale attempted in good faith to develop a legal defense for himself: he received legal advice from Garry, asked Judge Hoffman to coach him in the procedure of cross-examination, and argued for his right to defend himself with a special Reconstruction law affirming a Black man’s right to equal protection under the law. When these demands were also denied, Seale responded to the arbitrariness of the judge by calling him a pig, a blatant racist, and a fascist. Seale was, as the prosecution’s lawyer put it, “a very effective speaker,” and his
FILM performance in the courtroom was a synthesis of legal reasoning and political protest. A journalist at the trial stated “there were times when it seemed that there was only one relationship in the courtroom, the struggle between Bobby Seale and Judge Hoffman.” So it is no surprise that AbdulMateen II’s scenes are some of the most engaging in the film, especially when they stay true to Seale’s actual courtroom performance. Yet Abdul-Mateen II often substitutes righteous anger in place of Seale’s coolness, cunning, and persistence. The Bobby Seale of the movie seethes and stares down the racist judge; he raises his voice to appeal to the courtroom audience, he pounds the table and is taken away by the marshals. While Abdul-Mateen II’s performance is laudable, the film does not convey that Seale’s actions in the trial were part of a deliberate, studied strategy. Nor are Seale’s political beliefs ever elaborated. At times, Seale makes appeals to anti-racism generally, such as when he alludes to lynching in speaking to Tom Hayden, but the political goals of the Panthers—community control of the police, anti-poverty programs, an end to military service for Black men—are never broached in the film. While the film is generally sympathetic to the Panthers, it shows no real interest in their history. The film’s most dramatic factual error is its portrayal of Fred Hampton and of his murder. Hampton, the leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, was assassinated on December 4, 1969 in a 4am raid on his house organized by the FBI, the Chicago Police Department, and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. This was a month after Bobby Seale was already severed from the trial; in fact, footage exists of Fred Hampton speaking outside of the trial, telling a crowd about the “physical and mental torture” the judge was inflicting on Seale. The film appropriates Hampton’s murder for its own narrative by imagining it took place a month earlier. In Sorkin’s ahistorical iteration, Seale learns about Hampton’s murder in jail and still must participate in the trial that day. In the courtroom, he continues to advocate for himself, but his patience is exhausted. After a final row with
the judge, he stands, turns towards the courtroom audience, and shouts “it was premeditated murder... Fred Hampton was assassinated last night!” The movie then segues back into historical fact as Seale, as a result of his outburst, is ordered by the judge to be gagged, chained to his chair, and brought back into the courtroom. But by shifting the timeline, the movie imagines that Seale was gagged and bound as a consequence of his emotions, not as a response to his consistent struggle for his constitutional rights. Seale continued to struggle throughout the three days of the trial that he remained gagged and bound, interjecting when he felt he was being misrepresented and shouting down the judge when his gag happened to slip. Outside of the trial, courtroom sketches of Seale in chains were disseminated as a powerful symbol of the political repression the Black Panthers were facing. After three days, Judge Hoffman came to terms with the fact that gagging Seale was both ineffective and a political windfall for the Panthers. On the next Monday, Seale’s restraints were removed, and a day later his case was declared a mistrial. When the judge declares a mistrial in the film, the crowd cheers. Bobby Seale, whose central conflict in the film is his desire to be heard fairly by the judge, exits the movie with the gag still firmly in his mouth. It’s indicative of Sorkin’s treatment of the Panthers: The Trial of the Chicago 7 is sympathetic to them but refuses to give voice to their political demands. That the film silences these activists and their analysis that policing, prisons, and poverty are central obstacles to equality for Black people, speaks better to the current moment than any of the other political ideologies in the film. Critics have unanimously agreed that the film holds up a mirror to our present, with its protest scenes that closely resemble the police riots of this summer. But the film contains no answers as to why, fifty years later, Black protestors must still wage the same political fight. ¬ Elliot Frank is a writer and web developer living in Chicago. This is his first contribution to the Weekly.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21
Head vs. Heart
In The Trial of the Chicago 7, two key characters embody the Left’s ongoing inner conflict
PHOTO COURTESY OF NETFLIX
BY MALIK JACKSON
T
here’s a tension between two of the main characters in The Trial of the Chicago 7 that bubbles throughout the film and is made manifest visually by the contrast in their appearances. Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), draped in Oxford shirts and solid-color ties with a messenger bag at his side, seems to be the polar opposite of his fellow revolutionary Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), who for the better part of the film appears to be wearing assorted pajamas. The two are at odds from the beginning of the film over a number of subjects: whether their trial is lawful or political, whether the revolution is cultural or electoral in nature, and whether America’s sacred institutions deserve to be treated with the dignity that they command of the public, even in the midst of the disastrous Vietnam War. But ultimately their dissonance boils down to a difference in their philosophy as it relates to a fundamental question: “Why am I here?” The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
based on the mass protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the controversial trial that followed. The film follows that trial’s defendants, who were tried under the anti-riot provisions of Title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which made it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite or the intent to conspire to incite a riot. The irony of the law they were being tried under is only briefly underscored in the film, but it should be noted that the very piece of legislation that was crafted in 1968 to expand civil liberties to historically oppressed populations was now being maliciously manipulated to punish what was mostly lawful dissent, just a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The differences between Hoffman and Hayden, the film’s two focal characters, are graphic, even though they’re on the same side of the courtroom. In a scene where Jerry Rubin ( Jeremy Strong) and Hoffman show up in judges’ robes to poke fun at his Honor, the imperious
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Judge Julius Hoffman, Hayden sits on the adjacent edge of the defendants’ table, scoffing at the duo for their stunts. Hayden, the first defendant we’re introduced to in the film, is the leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a 1960s national student activist organization with large membership bases across the nation from Columbia University to the University of Chicago. We first encounter him at a routine SDS meeting, where he speaks before a lecture hall about the patent similarities between the two 1968 presidential candidates: Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, and Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee. We’re introduced to Abbie Hoffman shortly after, who makes no mention of the war or the election, but instead talks about the imminent convention with frivolity, hinting at the possibility of public fornication and groups of hippies singing western folk music like church hymns. Hoffman and Rubin were the leaders of the Youth International Party, or Yippies, a far cry from the SDS, at least
in terms of professionalism. Ideologically defined by their anti-war sentiment, the Yippie leaders were more symbolically characterized by their raunchy pranks and antics, their anarcho-communist leanings, and their loose, free-spirited demeanors. Hoffman and Hayden first clash in the film when the defendants privately convene after a few initial statements in the trial. Hayden, who’d gotten a haircut prior to the trial, implores Rubin and Hoffman to tone down their flamboyant behavior so that the group can beat the case and continue their work in the revolution. The difference in ideals is immediately made evident, as Hoffman’s response references the chants he heard on his way into the courthouse—“The whole world is watching!”—which he viewed as grounds to treat the trial like a stage for the revolution. Because of his work with SDS, Hayden has been regarded by history as the father of some of the largest mass protests in American history—but his vision was always skewed toward influencing electoral politics. In the film,
FILM
“We define winning differently, you and I.” his contempt for Hoffman and Rubin’s methods comes through plainly when he explains that the two of them are a detriment to the progressive movement because they erode its dignity and detract from its principles: equality, justice, progress. “They’re gonna think of a bunch of stoned, lost, disrespectful, foul-mouthed, lawless losers—and so we’ll lose elections,” he says at one point. The condescending tone behind this indictment and the focus on electoral victories as the path to change is stunningly similar to the arguments within the Left today. Democrats like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and even former presidents have come out to dampen the spirited progressive messages that blossomed this year, claiming that slogans and street actions won’t get anything done. Meanwhile, activists and organizers continue to hold that passionate protest and unfiltered demonstrations are the most critical pieces of revolution, as history would suggest. Tom Hayden, though a revolutionary in the sense of advocating for change, is portrayed as someone who sees no use for the faction of revolution opposite to his—the faction that would rather not comb their hair for the sake of an elected’s comfort, or watch their words in the face of their oppressors. In a scene where lawyer Bill Kunstler (Mark Rylance) storms into the team’s Hyde Park headquarters to encourage the defendants not to hold press conferences, we hear the playback on the television of Hoffman and Rubin’s press conference from earlier in the day. We hear Jerry Rubin rebuke a journalist’s notion that defendant Bobby Seale (Yahya AbdulMateen II) was causing trouble by refusing to be represented by Kunstler, clarifying that Seale’s lawyer was in the hospital and his motion for postponement had been denied. We also hear Hoffman proudly proclaim that he would give his life for the revolution, which comes in contrast to Hayden, whose primary and understandable ambition during the trial
is to avoid jail—no bold statement or courtroom gesture is worth the loss of his freedoms. The irony of this ambition flies in the face of Black Panthers cofounder Seale’s predicament during the trial, as he was charged despite having had no role in planning the protests. The spectacle that the film creates around the demonstrations and the trial obscures some of the very naked injustices that were prevalent within it. The exciting, often lighthearted tone surrounding the white male defendants was not a reality for Fred Hampton— then chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party—who was assassinated during the trial, or Seale, who was incarcerated during it, for a crime for which he was later exonerated. The film’s pace only slows after the news of Hampton’s assassination, and it serves as the only moment in the narrative that Seale could reveal his own answer to the question, “Why am I here?” In a visit from Kunstler and Hayden, Seale takes the opportunity to ask Hayden if he recognizes the difference between why they fight. “Your life, it’s a fuck you to your father right?” he asks. “And you can see how that’s different from a rope on a tree?” As much as this is a nod to the privilege that the seven other defendants have as white men, the fact that this conversation is had with Hayden once again puts Hayden’s back against the wall and his priorities into question. In this scenario, electoral politics don’t mean anything for Seale or American troops, as it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law, and it was also Johnson who sent troops to Vietnam in 1965. This fact brings the dichotomy between Hoffman and Hayden back into focus. Abbie Hoffman was as much a hero to revolutionaries as Tom Hayden, who eventually went on to serve eighteen years in the California State Legislature. But in one of the later film arguments between the two, Abbie shoves Tom and chalks
PHOTO COURTESY OF NETFLIX
up their disagreements to one statement. “We define winning differently, you and I,” he says. This quote, and their tense relationship throughout the film, makes the viewer think about the characters and their methods, and just how useful either of those methods are. Hoffman may not have shown himself to be one of the most diplomatic leaders in the movement, but he added a rawness and an excitement that made people want to join hands and embrace their most honest and free-spirited sides—traits that became equated with the countercultural Left. Hoffman’s common platform, as highlighted in the film, flourished at the bar. Joined by comrades with drinks and cigarettes, his monologues were topical comedy, which was likely therapeutic for those who’d been so beat up by the work day in and day out. This environment makes room for joy, and lends itself to the type of atmosphere that the Youth International Party sought to create: a cultural revolution. Hayden was a dedicated leader and a moving speaker. He led one of the largest and most organized political organizations in the country and is
remembered as a significant 1960s movement leader and vocal politician. Though he is symbolic of the old guard that values respectability and diplomacy to the extent that he’d silence his peers, he still plays an important role in this story, the mass demonstrations, and eventually in electoral politics. There is merit to both of their madness, and both Hayden and Hoffman deserve their fair share of praise and scrutiny as they were portrayed in the film. There’s a necessity for both in this current system, but history has shown us that there is no perfect democracy, and sometimes it is more effective for the people to be in union on the streets and in prose than at the ballot box. Setting the two philosophies in conflict with one another is just one of many dynamics that Sorkin layers in this uneasy yet compelling film. ¬ Malik Jackson is a South Shore resident and recent graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in Urban Studies. He last wrote a review of Lee Weiner’s Conspiracy to Riot: The Life and Times of One of the Chicago 7 for the Weekly.
DECEMBER 10, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23
EDUCATION
North Lawndale Parents and Teachers Tackle CPS Head-on Plagued by memories of past school closings, they organized against a plan to consolidate three schools BY MADELEINE PARRISH
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ireless organizing over the past month has prevented the closure of three public elementary schools on the West Side. The North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council (NLCCC) proposal would have consolidated three neighborhood schools—Lawndale Community Academy, Sumner Math and Science Community Academy, and Crown Community Academy of Fine Arts—into a new STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) Partnership Academy. But community residents, many of whom felt the plan did not address the true issues faced by the neighborhood, and plagued by memories of past school closings, formed a group to organize against it.Now,the North Lawndale Parent and Community Coalition (NLPCC) is creating an entirely parent-led proposal which calls for the $65 million dollars proposed for the new school to instead be invested into the existing schools in ways that genuinely address the root causes of under-enrollment. The idea for a STEAM school originated from the NLCCC’s 2018 Quality-of-Life Plan, which sought to address issues like housing, economic development, transportation, and public safety. They submitted their proposal to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) on November 2. It would have closed and consolidated the three schools into Sumner’s campus for a new pre-K-8 STEAM school, which would allegedly offer hands-on learning experiences 24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in a new state of the arts facility. These three neighborhood schools are not failing schools: Crown is rated Level 2+, Lawndale is rated Level 2, and Sumner is rated Level 1, based on CPS’s School Quality Rating Policy which goes from 1+ to 3, where 1+ is the highest rating. Instead, the NLCCC cited under-enrollment in the three schools as the motivation behind the proposal. According to CPS data, during the 2019-2020 school year Lawndale was at 24 percent capacity, Sumner was at 20 percent capacity, and Crown was at 31 percent capacity. CPS calculates space utilization by comparing a school’s actual enrollment to its “ideal” enrollment capacity. But this method of calculating a school’s “efficiency” has been criticized. Jianan Shi, the executive director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, said the formula for school utilization is “a rigid formula; it doesn’t include the different factors that are in a school, looking at different needs of different programs, elementary versus high school, the different settings, how it includes and counts spaces. Ultimately it’s based off certain numbers that don’t quite make sense for every student and every kind of program.” “I think that conversations about building utilization are odd, because building utilization is not an educational quality question—it's a budget and management question,” said Eve Ewing,
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a UofC sociologist, poet, and author of Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. “When we start basing policy decisions on how many children are in a building, we're asking families and students to accept choices made based not on what's best for teaching and learning, but on what's best for the bottom line.”
Community concerns Parents and community residents were skeptical of the promise that the new STEAM school would guarantee spots for each of the 620 children in the three neighborhood schools. The proposal stated that the new school would have 700 spots. But it would have ultimately been up to CPS to decide who could attend the school, which could include making it a selective enrollment school or requiring tests for admission, advocates said. Christel Williams-Hayes, the recording secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), remembers her experience as an organizer on the West Side when they closed four schools in Englewood in 2019 to open a new Englewood STEM high school. CPS officials said they would guarantee a spot for each of the kids in the closed schools, she said, “and they lied.” One purpose of the proposal and the Quality of Life plan was to stop the cycle of parents sending their children to schools outside of North Lawndale. According to the plan, in 2018, thirty-
one percent of K-8 and sixty-nine percent of high school students living in North Lawndale were enrolled in a school outside of the neighborhood. “They think that this new STEAM school will bring people back to the area, because obviously you would have to live in the attendance area to attend the school,” said Shavon Coleman, a community resident and pre-K teacher’s assistant at Lawndale Community Academy, and an alumna of the school herself. “If your enrollment is going to be 650 to 700 children, and you may have 200 kids in each of these three schools, that only leaves 100 more slots I’m supposing. But [if ] anyone from the neighborhood can go there, how are you saying in your proposal that you guarantee our children a slot?” “We all know that this new STEM school is being created for a new group of people that this whole regentrification process is preparing for,” Williams-Hayes said. “We already know that kids are going to have to test to get in here, and they’re not going to be accepted.” Many community residents also felt like they had been kept in the dark about the proposal. The NLCCC stated that they had held more than fifty public meetings with about 300 residents since 2018, but many parents and teachers said that they had not heard about the proposal before the beginning of the school year. “I don’t know who they spoke with but I know my parents didn’t really know anything about it,” said Tasha Dudley, a fourth and fifth grade math
EDUCATION and science teacher at Crown. “I would have thought that if they were talking to all these people they would have talked at least to a few of the Crown parents.” Coleman, who is in her Local School Council (LSC), only found out about the proposal in August at a meeting held by the NLCCC. “So, if the LSC of the school is just finding out, no one knew at the time,” she said. After organizing efforts began, she realized most people in the neighborhood hadn’t heard about it. There was also pushback from the students. At an NLCCC press conference in October, Latajah Wilson, a fifth grader at Sumner, spoke out against the new proposal. “It’s sad how y’all just wanna close our school down just ‘cause we don’t got enough stuff in there,” she said through tears. “I only went to this school three years, and I have learned so much about these teachers and they care so much about us.” Though initially undecided about how she felt about the proposal, Dudley was swayed when she conducted a poll in her fourth and fifth grade classrooms at Crown and found that 85 percent of her students wanted it to remain open. 40 percent said they liked it the way it was, and 45 percent said they wanted some slight improvements, “things that can be fixed, it was nothing major that the STEAM school could really offer them,” said Dudley. “A lot of what they talked about was basically the comfort levels, the normalcy, their friends...it hit me hard because they were like ‘are you going to be there?’” The new STEAM school would not guarantee spots for each of the teachers and staff members in the three existing schools. “What’s unfair is that we would have to reapply for our positions,” said Coleman. Relationships, Dudley said, are the most important aspect of school for her students. “I think just for the demographic that I teach, relationships are almost everything,” she said. “If their relationship is not there, if you don’t feel cared for, that’s when you get the spiraling out of control.” Dr. Aisha Wade-Bey, a fifth and sixth grade language arts teacher at Lawndale, also discussed the proposal
PHOTO BY GRACE DEL VECCHIO
with her students. “Oh, the children, they spoke up, they were very disenfranchised about closing their schools because they said they feel connected to their teachers, they feel connected to their friends, they feel connected to Lawndale.” Parents, teachers, and community members were also concerned that the proposal did not address the root causes that led to under enrollment in the three schools in the first place. “No one’s talking about the disinvestment in the schools or in the North Lawndale community itself. No one’s talking about the unaffordable housing in the area, no one’s talking about the violence,” Coleman said.
A history of disinvestment For many, the threat of school closings brought back painful memories of 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration shuttered fifty CPS schools, predominantly on the South and West sides; eighty-eight percent of the students in the schools that were closed were Black. And these three schools are predominantly Black and low-income: according to CPS data, Lawndale is 97.6 percent African American and 97.6 percent low-income, Crown is 90.2 percent African American and 83.3 percent low-income, and Sumner is 97.5 percent African American and 92.5 percent low-income. Two schools in North Lawndale were shuttered: Matthew A Henson
and Nathaniel Pope Elementary School. Henson was sold to Single Room Housing Assistance Corporation (SRHAC) in 2018 to build affordable housing, though the building is currently empty; SRHAC said that the building is still in progress and has not been opened yet. Pope was slated to be used by the Chicago Housing Authority. “I can remember… parents crying and saying ‘don’t close our school, we’ve been here forever,’” Williams-Hayes said. “I saw the change that the closing schools did, I saw children separated—one having to go to one school because they couldn’t get accepted to the other school, it was just really crazy.” For some teachers, having to fight against school closures is a recurring nightmare. In 2013, Wade-Bey successfully fought alongside other community members to keep Bronzeville school Thomas A. Hendricks open. In 2015, she was part of the thirty-fourday hunger strike to keep open Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts in Washington Park, which forced the district to listen to their demands to reopen the school and increase funding and programs. “And so now here we are in 2020, I’m at Lawndale, and they were talking about Lawndale closing.” “We see so many vacant lots and vacant buildings over there it’s ridiculous,” Coleman added. “So are you telling me that you want to close these schools and have them stay vacant as well? Because all
of those schools that closed in 2013, a lot of them are sitting boarded up when they were once utilized for something positive.” According to the Quality of Life plan, North Lawndale has more than sixty acres of vacant commercially zoned land. And according to NLCCC’s 2016 Existing Conditions Report, the neighborhood has 274 acres of vacant land in total—nearly eighteen percent of North Lawndale’s land. Most recently, the Board of Education closed Frazier Charter School due to “poor performance”. Coleman told the story of the parent of a third grade student who had just moved to Lawndale from Frazier. “I ache for her, because how many more schools will she have to move her son to before they get it right?” Shi spoke about the distrust and the broken promises continually made by CPS. “In 2013, there were students that they could not find still, that they could not track,” he said. “There were many students that they couldn’t actually make sure that they had followed through on and were actually at another school.” “The biggest thing is the huge destabilizing force,” he added. “Schools are not just places where students spend their time to learn academic courses. They are part of a community fabric.” A report by the UofC Consortium on School Research found that after school closings in 2013, it was hard for staff and students from the closed schools to build new relationships because they were mourning the loss of their school communities. Students often felt unwelcomed and marginalized in their new schools, where there was an increase in fights and bullying after their arrivals. And on average, closing schools did not improve student outcomes—in fact, students affected by school closures experienced negative effects on test scores.
Aldermanic inaction Community members were upset that 24th Ward Alderman Michael Scott refused to take a side on the issue. “He said he was being neutral. And the question is, how can you be neutral when you have
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EDUCATION three schools that are up for closure?” Bey said. Coleman said the alderman made a statement that he can’t visit every school and can’t be at every meeting. “Well sir,” she said, “I’m here to tell you that maybe you cannot be at every meeting, but by now, because you have been alderman for a couple years, you could have very well visited every school in your ward. You’re not going to sit here and lie in my face.” She added that parents have repeatedly invited Scott to events at the school, none of which he has shown up to. “So there’s not a lot of trust in the alderman at all,” she said. Scott did not respond to a request for comment from the Weekly. Ewing pointed out that because the leadership at the Board of Education and CPS is appointed, unlike every other municipality in Illinois where people get to elect those positions, community members turn to aldermen in the hopes that the pressure of re-election might make them more supportive of their concerns. “It's really discouraging and confusing for parents and community members,” she added. “Across the city, we need new models of truly participatory governance that allow Chicagoans to truly inform the systems that affect their lives, rather than just being reactive to decisions made without them at the table.” At a meeting held by the NLCCC and CPS on November 2, Scott, who is the Chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Education and Child Development, said that the three neighborhood schools may close anyways. “We can still lose these schools,” he said. “Because down the road, when our numbers continue to dwindle, that will happen.” Shi balked at the alderman’s prediction. “There are ways we can build strong community schools,” he said. “I think it’s a false choice that they’re saying those schools are inevitably going to get closed down. Yeah, sure, if they keep starving a school, sure. If you don’t fully resource a school in a community. But again, aldermen, CPS, the community have options to improve it.” Dixon Romeo, an organizer with United Working Families and the 26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
NLPCC, said he understood why the promise of a new school may seem attractive to some. “Because [disinvestment has] been going on for so long, people are used to drinking so much sand. It’s like you’re in a desert. If you’ve been drinking sand for years, dirty water looks really really good. Salt water looks really really good,” he said. “And I think educating and giving money for Black children, there isn’t a price tag. That’s not an investment,” he added. “What we’re talking about is a debt. The city, state, country owes these Black students so much because of what has historically been taken from them. I think it’s unfortunate that the city and CPS oftentimes feel like they have to take with one hand and give with the other. In order for us to get good stuff, we have to lose things that are essential. Schools are essential.”
Organizing ahead After the press conference at Sumner, organizers did extensive outreach to “the real community, the stakeholders, to let them know what’s going on under our noses, and they didn’t have a clue of it,” said Coleman. The NLPCC created Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, as well as a petition which now has over 1,600 signatures, and held weekly organizing meetings. They sent emails to the Board of Education, the mayor, the alderman, and members of the coalition spoke at the November Board of Education meeting. “We are here because we are the front-liners and we’re letting you know what we are hearing and what we are seeing,” said Lisa Torres, a special education classroom assistant (SECA) at Crown. “We went out in the community, canvassed, knocked on doors, spoke to the people in the community, spoke to businesses, passed out flyers, giving them information about what’s going on, and one after another nobody knew what we were talking about.” They knew that they were working on a tight timeframe. “They were pushing this proposal trying to get it approved by November 30,” Coleman said. On December 1, CPS sent a letter to
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parents that said the NLCCC “withdrew their proposal in order to better engage with parents impacted by the proposal.” Dudley said parents talk about how much Crown has improved since they hired a new principal. “A lot of the parents were saying, and they’ve been there before I came, that it’s definitely different, it’s better, even the school building looks better,” she said. “They talked about the upkeep of the building, they talked about students having different learning experiences and being happy about their education, even our parent engagement.” She also described a STEM night which took place in February, right before the onset of COVID-19, with math and science games, parent participation, and a middle school science fair. Among Lawndale’s partnerships is a mentorship program called Pitch In, an after-school program in which mentors help kids with homework and host monthly Family Dinners. This program is still occurring online. Lawndale has also been partnered with the Egan Office for Urban Education and Community Partnerships at DePaul University for the past six years. Highlights of the partnership include JumpStart, a literacy and social emotional program for Pre-K kids, as well as a tutoring program for kindergarteners and first, fifth, sixth, and seventh graders. John Zeigler, the director of the Egan Office, also talked about their nursing program in which nursing students serve in the school and the help they offered Lawndale in building their first website. Zeigler is excited about programs moving forward, like an upcoming virtual college tour of DePaul with students, as well as the planning of a Kwanzaa ceremony with eighth graders. He also discussed their Veterans Read program that they are currently planning to implement at Lawndale. The NLPCC is going to continue to advocate for the three neighborhood schools. After the proposal was withdrawn, they released a statement declaring their intention to begin the process for a parent-led proposal that will call for the $65 million dollars that would have been used for the STEAM school to be invested into the existing
schools. “What I heard from all of [the parents] was that if folks have money and resources to give to North Lawndale, we don’t have to wait for there to be a new building to do it. We need to be doing it right now,” said Romeo. Dudley said her students at Crown need more social emotional support. “I just think that needs to be a priority for CPS. Because trauma has such a major major effect on people, not just kids but adults as well, and I don’t think we’re adequately dealing with that, because I think if we deal with that, then the rest will kind of work itself out.” Bey discussed how her students at Lawndale said they wanted a language program in the school, improvements to their science lab, and better computers for remote learning. “Tell them we have a library without a librarian,” Coleman said about Lawndale. “Why is it that nurses aren’t in our schools all the time, not just once or twice a week? These are the things that we need in order to survive.” The NLPCC is looking for support from the over twenty-five partners for the proposed STEAM Academy, which include fiscal planning partners like BMO Financial, Cinespace, Exelon Foundation, McGowan Family Fund, People’s Gas, the Steans Family Foundation, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and Cabot Microelectronics. Moving forward, they will be looking to see how those partners respond to the new parent-led proposal. “Why are these nonprofits or companies only attracted to supporting Black and Brown students when it’s shiny and new?” Shi said. Williams-Hayes echoed this concern. “You have investors that want to come into that community and invest in it,” she said, “but not be a part of what’s there.” ¬ Madeleine Parrish grew up in New Jersey and is currently a University of Chicago political science undergraduate. She last wrote about high-school student activists who organized to remove CPD from public schools.
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