People’s History of Chicago GROUP POETRY SHOW featuring writer FRIDAY, JANUARY 19 Kevin Coval 6 pm - 8 pm Logan Penthouse 915 E 60th St. (Floor 9) Chicago, IL 60637
Be a part of the show! Email chicagostudies@uchicago.edu by Jan. 10, 2018 with your name and poem to be considered.
Sponsored by:
2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ DECEMBER 20, 2017
Event is FREE. Refreshments will be provided.
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 5, Issue 12 Editor-in-Chief Hafsa Razi Managing Editors Julia Aizuss, Andrew Koski Directors of Staff Support Baci Weiler Community Outreach Jasmin Liang Senior Editor Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Adia Robinson Education Editor Rachel Kim Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Food & Land Editor Emeline Posner Editors-at-Large Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen Contributing Editors Maddie Anderson, Mira Chauhan, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Sam Stecklow, Margaret Tazioli, Yunhan Wen Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Editor Erisa Apantaku Radio Hosts Andrew Koski Olivia Obineme Social Media Editors Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Lizzie Smith Photography Editor Jason Schumer Layout Editor Baci Weiler Staff Writers: Elaine Chen, Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michael Wasney Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Sam Joyce, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Sam Stecklow, Rebecca Stoner, Tiffany Wang Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma Webmaster
Pat Sier
Publisher
Harry Backlund
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Jason Schumer
The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. 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 Natalie González
IN CHICAGO
A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors
Food Gap Grows with Healthy Hub’s Departure After three years in South Shore, the USDA-designated Healthy Food Hub is moving from the Quarry Event Center to Englewood’s Barbara A. Sizemore Academy, the organization announced through a series of Facebook posts last week. The decision will leave South Shore residents with even less access to fresh food—the former grocery space in Jeffery Plaza has been vacant ever since Dominick’s closed in late 2013 (though a Shop ‘n Save may be negotiating for the space), and there remain only corner stores and Walgreens to fill the produce gap opened by the Healthy Food Hub’s departure. The Hub, which is run by the Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living, provided non-GMO, local, Black-grown produce, herbs, teas, and spices—from growers like Eden Place, the Green Lots Project, Growing Power, and Basu Natural Farms—as well as blood pressure screenings and dishes prepared by local family physician Dr. Jifunza Wright. Produce could be ordered in advance for pick-up on Saturday market days. In the new location, the Hub is looking to transition into a “vertically integrated cooperative of growers, worker-owners, and consumers.” The Hub is leaving South Shore “with a heavy heart,” but would like to hear from those, South Shore residents or otherwise, who are interested in participating in the organization’s transition—and can be reached at healthyfoodhub@gmail.com. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back The perpetually embattled Chicago Public Schools system found itself in a myriad of controversies this month. Not only did it announce plans to close four Englewood high schools— Harper, Hope, TEAM Englewood, and Robeson—but Forrest Claypool also resigned from his position as the district’s CEO after Inspector General Nicholas Schuler exposed Claypool as being complicit in what he called a “full-blown cover up.” Claypool’s firing was sparked by a stunning Sun-Times piece that revealed Ronald Marmer (the district’s top lawyer) was overseeing his former law firm, which was contracted to build a case for more state funding, while also receiving annual severance payments of $200,000 from that law firm. Despite CPS’s ethics rules banning oversight in cases of potential conflicts of interest, Claypool approved of Marmer’s oversight, ignored and concealed the disapproving legal advice from six different attorneys, and deliberately searched for an approving seventh legal opinion that came from none other than one of Claypool’s former campaign contributors. Throughout the scandal, the one man who stood by Claypool’s side was none other than Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who once hired Claypool as his former chief of staff. Emanuel doggedly called Claypool “selfless” and his actions a mere “lapse in judgment”—but the damage to CPS’s battered reputation of integrity (see: Byrd-Bennett, Barbara) was already done. Taking Claypool’s place is Janice Jackson, a former CPS student, educator, and principal, with a daughter who also attends a CPS school. Perhaps Jackson’s first challenge is the Illinois State Board of Education’s recent and “unprecedented” (per the Tribune) inquiry into CPS special education programs. The district drastically changed its special education manual in 2016, citing low test scores, a lack of oversight, and inconsistent standards despite increasing costs and a tightening budget. An investigation by WBEZ found not only that these guidelines were made in secret but also that instead of fixing the issues noted by CPS, they caused many students—disproportionately Black and brown ones—to lose necessary services[delete space] like physical and occupational therapy, extra class time, and social work. The Chicago City Council’s Education Committee promised a public meeting on special education funding this week, but the hearing was abruptly canceled without an explanation on Sunday despite many parents, teachers, and students waiting to testify. Despite taking a few small steps forward, CPS’s unwillingness to face or even acknowledge its own problems with inefficiency and corruption ultimately—and obviously—continues to prevent it from making any substantial progress.
IN THIS ISSUE the shots heard round the city
“His company sits on the edge of controversy.” michael wasney................................4 mano a mano
“It’s beautiful when Mexico and Puerto Rico come together.” henry bacha......................................8 communal healing
“I think in Chicago people have been waiting for a movement, and I’m so happy to be a part of it.” charles preston.............................10 exploring empathy and entitlement in ecology
“Is our idea of what the forest is perhaps misguided?” bridget gamble...............................12 closer to resurrection
“We’ve got to get this right, and it takes all of us to make that happen.” christian belanger........................13
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Support the Weekly southsideweekly.com/donate Due to the New Year, the Weekly will resume regular publication on January 10.
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3
The Shots Heard Round the City
Are Chicago’s new shot detection and predictive policing technologies worth it? BY MICHAEL WASNEY
A
gunshot is fired. Depending on where in the city it is, the sound might not just be picked up by human ears. But by early next year, almost 130 square miles of Chicago will be monitored for gunshots by mechanical ears as well, via a technology called ShotSpotter. ShotSpotter sensors—which have already been installed on rooftops and telephone poles in six districts and will be installed in another six by mid-2018— register the boom. Three sensors triangulate the location of the sound’s origin, within a radius which SST Inc., the technology’s manufacturer, purports to be no more than twenty-five meters from the actual shot. SST’s Californian headquarters receive a recording, where it’s determined if the sound was actually a gunshot. If confirmed, metadata—including information like location and time of the shots, rounds fired, and the direction that the shooter was traveling in—is pinged back to the smartphones of Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers in the appropriate district, where they’re deployed to investigate the shooting. Ralph Clark, CEO of SST Inc., has claimed that this whole process takes forty-five seconds and supplies police with accurate information over eighty percent of the time. ShotSpotter is one of several high-priced predictive and surveillance technologies that the CPD is rolling out this year, packaged in the form of Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSC). SDSCs are intelligence hubs located in a police district, accessing 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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not only its ShotSpotter network, but also its Police Observation Devices (PODs)—a system of cameras installed in 2003 that are now being integrated with ShotSpotter technology—and armed with a predictive policing software called HunchLab. The first SDSC was implemented in Englewood (7th police district) in January. In 2016, Englewood had some of the highest incidences of gun violence, making it a tier one district—tiers denote levels of violence, with one signaling the highest. Since then, the technologies have been launched in five more tier one districts like Englewood, and installation has begun in six tier two districts. The CPD has been quick to tout the success of the SDSCs: that homicide rates are down in all six of the already technologized tier one districts from what they were in 2016. But 2016 was an exceptional year, so much so that, excluding 2016 from consideration, 2017 is shaping up to be the most violent year since 2002. It’s important, then, to explore the efficacy of these technologies, especially given their price tag—an estimated $1.5 million per district—and the controversy they’ve drawn in other cities, particularly ShotSpotter. Controversy has not been limited only to questions of the technologies’ effectiveness, but also to the legal and ethical implications of their use. Chicago itself has had dissatisfactory results with SST Inc. before: the city initiated a pilot program with the company in 2007 that was promptly discontinued. According to a 2010 NBC Chicago report, the CPD cited the technology’s ineffectiveness as its reason for abandoning it; the company, meanwhile, claimed that the city of Chicago still owed them $200,000. Another pilot program was initiated in 2012, with sensors installed in “a total of three square miles” in Englewood and Harrison districts, said Jonathan Lewin, Chief of the CPD’s Bureau of Technical Services. (He did not mention the 2007 pilot program, although he’d been asked when Chicago’s relationship with SST Inc. began). Neither the allegations of ShotSpotter’s ineffectiveness, nor the legal and ethical concerns prompted by ShotSpotter software’s use in other cities, seem to have slowed Chicago’s zealous roll-out process. “This is the fastest pace of implementation...that [SST Inc. has] ever conducted,” Lewin said—a claim that SST Inc.’s Clark did not confirm by press time. “[ShotSpotter is] really designed to tackle districts with violence. It’s built around gun violence,” said chief communications officer Anthony Guglielmi. Although the
SDSCs are intended to be a more general crime-prevention strategy, they were also conceived because of 2016’s almost unprecedented gun crime. “There was an unacceptable level of gun violence in 2016, and I think the department and the mayor recognized that something had to be done,” Lewin added. “I think the SDSCs are our signature crime fighting strategy.” The CPD has been quick to embrace the program. On January 7, the SDSC in Englewood was launched. ShotSpotter and POD programs were expanded, and cell phones with access to real-time crime data were issued to cops in that districts. Between January and July CPD launched SDSCs in Harrison (11th), Gresham (6th), Deering (9th), Ogden (10th), and Austin (15th)— all tier one districts. By June, CPD and Mayor Emanuel’s office had already begun to attribute declining violent crime rates in Englewood and Harrison to the SDSCs. In September, CPD announced plans to expand the program into six tier two districts—Wentworth (2nd), Grand Crossing (3rd), South Chicago (4th), Calumet (5th), Chicago Lawn (8th), and Grand Central (25th). Each expansion costs around $1.5 million, making the total cost of the project $18 million, which Guglielmi said was raised through leveraging both city and private funding. The nerve centers should be online in twelve of Chicago’s twenty-two districts by the middle of 2018, Guglielmi added. Once installation is complete, almost 130 square miles of the city will be within earshot and eyeshot of the Chicago Police.
W
hat is $18 million buying the city? Guglielmi broke down the SDSCs’ “three pronged”
approach. First, there’s “the gunshot detection, that’s ShotSpotter.” ShotSpotter technology is actually licensed out and operated by SST Inc. for an annual fee, a service which they now provide for over ninety agencies around the country. The service typically costs about $65,000 to $90,000 per square mile, per year, not including the fees the company charges to install its sensors. Some, including a 2016 Forbes magazine article, have called the company’s 2011 transformation—from what Clark called “a premise-based high price system” into a subscription service—a political and economic maneuver more than one meant to improve its product. The change allows the company to retain ownership of their data and possibly to sell it later. According to
POLICING
SST, INC.
Lewin, the arrangement is in the best interest of the city too, because the city “doesn’t have to worry about maintenance” while ensuring “contractual service levels that [SST Inc.] has to meet.” “The second thing that’s happening is the ShotSpotters are integrated with our crime cameras,” Guglielmi said. PODs were originally installed in 2003 in some of the city’s most high-crime areas. They are now being integrated with ShotSpotter using a software called Genetec. Once a sensor pinpoints a gunshot, cameras can be directed to swivel towards the location of the source. Every POD in a district can be accessed from that district’s SDSC. “The last piece of it is HunchLab,” said Guglielmi. It’s the CPD’s new predictive policing software that, like ShotSpotter, is licensed to the police department by its developer Azavea. HunchLab uses environmental risk factors—weather, season, proximity to institutions like liquor stores or banks, and other predictor variables— combined with historical crime data and what it calls “socioeconomic indicators” to predict crime in an area. HunchLab’s use of environmental risk factors draws on a method called Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM). Recent studies testing other RTM software had statistical success in predicting crime. Azavea itself has not yet released any formal studies on the effectiveness of its approach.
The CPD brought in the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab as a “data partner” to perform quality-assessment checks on its own. According to Guglielmi, the CPD was able to do so with funding it received from the Department of Justice. Research managers at the Crime Lab said that they were working with CPD to implement SDSCs and facilitate the smooth rollout of SDSCs in tier two districts. Although the Crime Lab has partnered with the CPD before, Kim Smith, a research manager at the Crime Lab, said, “This is certainly [the Crime Lab’s] biggest technical assistance to date.” Guglielmi maintains that “[the Crime Lab] is independent” from the department, despite the fact that Crime Lab analysts are now working side by side with police officers in SDSCs to provide them with a real-time statistical hand. The CPD’s contracting of Crime Lab to crunch numbers is nothing new, however, nor is their confidential data sharing agreement, which bars the lab from sharing any of the data that underlies its findings. It makes their research into a sort of black box: Smith declined to say whether the SDSCs—or individual elements of them, like ShotSpotter—had a statistically significant role in the decline of shootings from 2016 to 2017, saying that they weren’t “sure that we’re ready to make that public yet.” Lewin, however, was more open about their findings, saying that they now had
enough information from Englewood—a good “barometer,” in his words—to ascertain that its SDSC is doing something positive for the district. “It’s been running long enough, so there’s enough data collected in the performance period now to say with some validity that we’re pretty sure the SDSC process itself has contributed to the crime reduction [in Englewood],” he said. Lewin explained the Crime Lab’s methods: they created a “synthetic control” model, a projected version of Englewood patched together from other districts in Chicago without the SDSC technology, but similar to parts of Englewood in other respects. Statisticians were thus able to project the hypothetical crime rate for the neighborhood had an SDSC never been installed. By November, crime in that projected Englewood had diverged enough from the real one to make the statistically significant statement that, indeed, the SDSC process was an important contributor to the declining crime rate in the neighborhood. Lewin listed off numbers from other districts, although none yet have passed similar tests of statistical significance. “Seven and eleven, which were the first two to go live together, are down thirty-two percent in shootings as of the end of October. All the SDSC districts are down twenty-four percent. If you take the six SDSC districts out
of the city, the city is down twelve percent.” He put it another way: “The districts that used to drive up the violence, which are the tier ones, are now driving it down.” Residents in Englewood have noticed a decline as well. Chauncey Harrison, Public Safety Liaison for the nonprofit Teamwork Englewood, said that “[the SDSCs have] been a good help, and I think it has been in many ways a positive step in the right direction, from a public safety standpoint in the community.” However, Harrison said that he doesn’t think “the ShotSpotter technology is... necessarily leading the charge [in terms of ] reducing nonviolent offenses,” although he’s noticed a decline in those too. Indeed, that has been a “research challenge,” as Lewin put it, for the CPD and the Crime Lab: figuring out what elements of the SDSC system are doing what. “It’s hard for us to use our typical evaluation methods to determine which components are contributing to the reduction, if they are,” Smith said. “Because everything was kind of rolled out at once, and ShotSpotter was not even rolled out at the same time across districts, it’s hard for us to isolate the impacts.”
I
t’s an important concern to address, given the questions of efficacy that have surrounded ShotSpotter’s implementation in other cities, and the cost the police department will be paying each year for the technology—at least $6.5 million per year in subscription fees for ShotSpotter alone, if it isn’t expanded into more districts. It’s hard to say how effective ShotSpotter is in Chicago based on results in other cities and studies, mainly because many of those results have contradicted each other. One 2006 study conducted by the National Institute of Justice found that the technology could detect up to 99.6 percent of gunshots, while detecting 90.9 percent of them within forty feet of where they were actually fired. SST Inc. itself actually advertises a less precise locational accuracy, purporting to detect gunshots eighty percent of the time, and pinpoint them within twenty-five meters (a little over eighty feet) of where they were actually fired. What has been found, however, is that these numbers vary greatly from city to city, in large part depending on local factors like topography, the presence of tall buildings, and even temperature and humidity. Earlier this year, it was found in a court case in San Francisco—a notoriously hilly city, and one of SST Inc.’s customers—that the sensors
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
were not, in fact, as accurate as the company claimed. ShotSpotter evidence was used to pinpoint the location of a gun crime; later evidence showed that ShotSpotter’s triangulation of the event was a block off from where the actually crime was committed. Clark, SST Inc.’s CEO, subsequently was quoted in a San Francisco Examiner article admitting, “the eighty percent is basically our subscription warranty, as you will. That doesn’t really indicate what someone will experience,” but boasted that it is usually better. Another concern that often crops up pertains to ShotSpotter’s effect on the clearance rate—whether or not an alert actually translates into an arrest. It’s a qualm that the Forbes article explores in detail using data it obtained from agencies in seven cities around the country that use ShotSpotter. Prior to the article’s publication, SST Inc. implored its customers not to release any information to Forbes. Some cities’ experience with the technology was more promising than others: In Milwaukee, 10,285 ShotSpotter alerts translated into 172 arrests; in San Francisco, however, 4,385 ShotSpotter alerts translated into only two arrests. As of yet, it’s unclear how ShotSpotter has affected Chicago’s clearance rate. “That’s a specific measure that we haven’t done yet,” Lewin said. Last month, the Weekly requested data from the CPD and the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC) for all ShotSpotter events and related information. The CPD, as of press time, is three weeks overdue on its response. OEMC, however, provided data from February—when it says it began logging ShotSpotter alerts— to November 18. OEMC also provided contemporaneous data for all citizen and police reports of gunshots, and whether the alert resulted in a case being opened by CPD detectives. The vast majority of alerts received from SST Inc.’s headquarters to CPD resulted in dead ends: no evidence found, and no reason to begin a case, let alone make an arrest. Of 4,814 unique ShotSpotter-linked events identified by the Weekly in OEMC’s data, just 508—a little over ten percent—resulted in the CPD finding enough evidence to open an investigation. This is roughly analogous with the rate of cases opened from solely human-reported gunshots across the entire city for the same time period—nearly fourteen percent—bringing into question how much more effective ShotSpotter truly is. 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
SST Inc. often claims that most gunshots go unreported in urban environments, but in Chicago, that is not borne out by our data. Of the 508 ShotSpotter alerts that lead to opened cases, 435—eighty-five percent— were also reported within five minutes by civilian calls to 911, police reports, or other on-the-ground witnesses. On the other hand, a full sixty percent of miscellaneous or unlabeled ShotSpotter-linked events were attributed to ShotSpotter alone. However, ShotSpotter was slightly faster (about thirtytwo seconds) than its human competition, which can be the difference between life and death with a traumatic injury like a gunshot.
T
hen there are the legal and ethical questions that the use of ShotSpotter has engendered in other cities. The ACLU, for example, has voiced concerns about the potential threat to an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights such recording devices could pose, particularly if those devices have the capacity to record voices. Historical examples demonstrate that the technology does have that capacity: in 2011, sensors installed in New Bedford, Massachusetts captured snippets of conversation on either side of the actual gunshot (the ShotSpotter server, called LocServer, downloads sound from two seconds prior to and four seconds after the actual boom). The sound bite was subsequently used in a court case to convict one of the suspects—a strategy that the defense counsel alleged was illegal under both Massachusetts’s wiretapping laws and their client’s constitutional Fourth Amendment rights. In 2010, a similar scenario played out in an Oakland courtroom. Clark dismissed these as “edge cases,” anomalous incidents that are nothing to worry about—that the technology is designed to pick up only “things that go bang.” But given the particular stringency of Illinois’s Eavesdropping Statute, reoccurrence of these “edge cases” might be just what the city needs to worry about. (The Weekly found no cases of this occurring yet in Chicago). Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, sat down with CEO Clark to probe more into ShotSpotter’s capacity as an eavesdropping device. His takeaway from the discussion, which was mostly positive, was posted on the ACLU’s website. He reported the following: that the sensors are constantly recording audio; that audio is retained for “hours or days not weeks” after the event, according to Clark; and that any sound bite confirmed to correspond to a gunshot—
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again, which contains two seconds prior to the event and four seconds after—is sent to the customer agency, along with the alert. While Clark “was very open and forthcoming,” Stanley still expressed concerns about the length of time that audio is stored, the proximity of recording devices to homes, and that the company had not released its source code. To the last point, Clark offered to share with the ACLU a confidential (NDA-protected) version of the company’s code, although the ACLU did not end up undertaking the review. Ultimately, however, Stanley writes that he’s not “losing sleep over this technology at this time,” mostly because Clark seemed to realize “that his company sits on the edge of controversy,” and it is thus “his incentive to not to allow it to be turned to broader ends”—that is, to the ends of state surveillance. Predictive policing, too, has its fair share of issues. As University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate Aaron Shapiro notes in an article for the journal Nature, “confounding factors make it impossible to measure directly its effectiveness at reducing crime.” Effectiveness aside, he brings up the concern that “[e]quating locations with criminality amplifies problematic policing patterns.” In other words, “geographical” and “socioeconomic” factors incorporated into HunchLab’s RTM model could be nothing more than proxies for other biases in the data which have the potential to encourage the practice of racial policing. The ACLU of Illinois has leveled similar critiques—that it encourages racial profiling by police—against the CPD’s Strategic Subject List (SSL), another predictive strategy it began in 2013. SSL is a list of individuals generated by an algorithm that guesses which ones were likely to be involved in violent crime. Disregarding the ethical quandaries posed by such a list— which the Weekly has explored in the past— it’s also unclear if the list is even statistically meaningful: a study conducted by the RAND Corporation, a think tank, found that individuals on the SSL were no more likely to be involved in violent crimes than individuals not on the list. (CPD disputed these claims, and RAND is working on a second study of the program). Harrison isn’t too concerned with the possibility that CPD has overstepped their legal and ethical bounds by installing an SDSC and expanding ShotSpotter in Englewood. “I think the rules are being followed,” he said. “I think the laws are being
upheld as well,” though he added that “there has to be a balance, because you don’t want to have so much technology that people feel that their privacy is being violated.” But he was adamant that technological policing is by no means a comprehensive violence-prevention strategy: “You can’t just attribute the reduction in shootings to the ShotSpotter technology and the other technological upgrades within the Englewood community.” Speaking supportively of the CPD’s 2017 attempts to revive its flagging CAPS program, Harrison said, “CAPS is doing exceptionally well in the 7th district.” But policing in general is no panacea, either. “The thing is, you can’t attribute that success singlehandedly to police,” Harrison said. “When you’re trying to address violence in the community, police have a role to play, parents have a role to play, prevention has a role to play, and partnerships have a role to play.” This multifaceted approach to violence in communities is important, especially because the jury is still out on the CPD’s new technologies. The most optimistic of results, with regards to the SDSC process, are the Crime Lab’s findings in Englewood, according to Lewin: that the reduction of violence can in fact be attributed to the new technologies being deployed there, even if it’s unclear which components—ShotSpotter or otherwise—are actually making the difference. “That’s what the University of Chicago, and we together are really focused on trying to measure,” Lewin said. Also worth remembering is that it will take time to understand the long-term consequences of these changes, a caveat that Clark even admits with regards to his own technology: “You’ve got to be deployed two years” at least to see and understand its effectiveness in a given city, Clark told DNAinfo. And while its first year looks promising when compared to 2016, 2017 still looks like the next most violent year for Chicago since 2002—even if it’s the tier one districts bringing down this year’s violence. The true test, then, is still to come: to see whether or not violence will continue to decline in 2018 and beyond, to a level that isn’t just deemed satisfactory because it’s lower than an exceptionally violent year that came the year before. ¬ Data editor Jasmine Mithani, webmaster Pat Sier, and contributing editor Sam Stecklow contributed reporting to this article.
POLICING
ELLEN HAO
DATA FROM OEMC DATA ANALYSIS BY JASMINE MITHANI, PAT SIER, & SAM STECKLOW GRAPHIC BY JASMINE MITHANI
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
Mano a Mano Inside Chicago’s Latinx relief efforts BY HENRY BACHA
C
hicago may sit more than 2,000 miles away from San Juan and over 1,500 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, but the connections between Chicago, Puerto Rico, and Mexico run far deeper than geography would suggest. The city is bound to these regions by the heritage of over one million of its residents—there are over 900,000 people of Mexican descent and over 100,000 people of Puerto Rican descent living in Cook County—and by neighborhoods such as Pilsen, Little Village, and Humboldt Park that form Chicago’s ethnic and cultural mosaic. When natural disasters struck Mexico and Puerto Rico this fall, the suffering they brought to millions of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans impacted Chicago too. In the days, weeks, and months following the September 19 earthquake that caused widespread devastation in central Mexico and the September 20 landfall of the Category 4 Hurricane Maria, Chicago’s Mexican and Puerto Rican communities mobilized in force to send supplies, donations, and volunteers to aid the people of Mexico and Puerto Rico and pressured local government leaders to ensure that resources were devoted to helping those affected. Such efforts— taking place from the grassroots level to the centers of power in City Hall and Capitol Hill—serve as a powerful display of solidarity with the victims of the natural disasters by Chicago’s greater Latinx community. Where the U.S. federal government response has been inhumanely insufficient in providing disaster relief, in a city fighting to live up to its pro-immigrant reputation, citizens and local officials have risen to the challenge. As winds of over 150 miles per hour began to batter Puerto Rico, preparations for aiding in recovery efforts were already underway in Chicago, recalls Doug Rivlin, Director of Communications for U.S. Representative Luis Gutiérrez of the 4th District, whose district includes predominantly Puerto Rican and Mexican-American areas of the city. “The Puerto Rican Agenda and leaders 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
of the Puerto Rican community came to Congressman Gutiérrez...and said, ‘How are we going to be able to help? We can gather supplies, but how do we then get them to Puerto Rico once the airports are navigable?’” he said. The Puerto Rican Agenda is a coalition of civic and political organizations that advocates on behalf of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. According to Rivlin, a conversation with Mayor Emanuel quickly yielded the cooperation of Chicago-based United Airlines, which offered airliners to help haul supplies to the island and transport stranded Puerto Ricans back to the mainland. “They literally loaded supplies into the belly of a United Airlines jet and flew into San Juan,” Rivlin said, describing the first of four trips that Gutiérrez has made to Puerto Rico since Maria. The response from Chicago’s MexicanAmerican community was similarly swift when news broke of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked Mexico City and the surrounding states of Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos in the early morning hours of September 19, killing over 360 people and injuring thousands more. Father José Sigfredo Landaverde, a Salvadoran-born immigrant rights activist and priest of the Faith, Life, and Hope Mission in West Chicago, began using social media to call for donations almost immediately after the earthquake, and donations of goods and money soon started to flood into the DuPage County church. On September 27, Landaverde left Chicago for the affected regions of Mexico with fifty-five volunteers and thirty semi-trailers—filled with 900 tons of donated food, water, and clothing—in tow, proudly declaring his cargo to be “the largest donation [of disaster relief supplies] in history by the Illinois immigrant community” on the Mission’s Facebook page. Landaverde documented on social media the transit, delivery, and distribution of the donations to earthquake victims in Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Puebla, Guerrero, and Morelos, as well as Oaxaca and Chiapas (which were struck by a separate 8.2
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magnitude earthquake in early September). He emphasized that the relief efforts that he spearheaded were mano a mano—that is, relief supplies were placed directly into the hands of the people, rather than having their distribution slowed by bureaucratic inefficiency. In the immediate aftermath of the quake, members of the Chicago Mexican community also rapidly organized a fundraising and coordination committee “Chicago con México” to streamline fundraising efforts and distribute collected donations to the American and Mexican Red Cross and other disaster relief NGOs working in Mexico. The committee evolved organically as a synthesis of community and political organizations, said Artemio Arreola, political director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and a member of the Chicago con México committee. Alfonso Seiva, another member of the committee and vice president of the Federación de Clubes Morelenses en Chicago, a cultural organization serving Mexican immigrants from Morelos, explained that the Federación has historically mobilized around immigration issues such as raising money to support the families of deported breadwinners. To Seiva, contributing to fundraising efforts for earthquake victims in Mexico (particularly in his home state of Morelos, which was hit especially hard by the earthquake) was a natural extension of that mission. By mid-October, said Arreola, Chicago con México had received enough donations to send another thirty trailers’ worth of supplies to the worst affected areas. In the weeks following Hurricane Maria and the earthquakes in Mexico, spontaneous fundraising events for disaster relief efforts of all types—from DIY house shows to cultural festivals featuring Mexican cooking and Morelos-style traditional dancing—sprung up across Chicago. One such fundraising show for Mexico and Puerto Rico, featuring several local bands (Kelroy, Súbele, Maladicto) and singer Lester Rey as emcee, took place at the Dojo in Pilsen on October 13; another fundraiser followed in November. “It’s beautiful when Mexico and Puerto Rico come together,” Rey said at the October performance, succinctly describing the feeling of the show which featured artists from both Chicago’s Mexican and Puerto Rican American communities. Rey, who is Puerto Rican and still has family on the island, elaborated in an email on the need for solidarity between different Latinx groups both in terms of the recent
natural disasters and the current political climate. “Sometimes misconceptions find their way into Latino communities to build animosity among different Latino ethnicities, which is very sad,” he said. However, he continued, “Since the disaster, I’ve seen more people supporting both communities. It is beautiful to see and more importantly [to] come together to raise funds for relief efforts, which are being poorly handled by the U.S. government.” Referencing the fact that dozens of volunteers with the Mexican Red Cross crossed the border in early September to provide aid to hurricaneravaged Texas, Rey wrote, “When Irma and Harvey hit Houston, Mexico sent support but…[Trump] has threatened to pull aid from Puerto Rico.” He continued, “Trump continues to go after minorities and the more he does that, the more we will come together as one voice.” As the weeks after Maria have turned into months, the situation on the ground in Puerto Rico remains dire—even in late November, according to official estimates, only fifty percent of the island had access to electricity and hundreds of thousands of people still lacked clean drinking water. Meanwhile, in Chicago and in Washington, Gutiérrez established himself as a relentless critic of the failure of the federal response to the hurricane and one of Puerto Rico’s fiercest advocates on the mainland. According to Rivlin, Gutiérrez’s repeated trips to the island have allowed him to oversee the distribution of aid from the Chicago diaspora community, attempt to keep Washington and the American public focused on the crisis in Puerto Rico, and see the daily reality of life on the island “for his own eyes.” Rivlin said that Gutiérrez, who has visited the municipalities of Caguas, Toa Baja, Loíza, Comerio, Dorado, San Lorenzo, Cayey, Vega Alta, and Jayuya, among others, decided in part which areas of Puerto Rico to visit based on the requests of his constituents: “If you look at our Facebook [page]…there are thousands of comments saying, ‘Hey, you forgot about this town,’ or ‘You forgot about that town,’ or ‘Please go visit my relatives in such and such a place.’” In November, Gutiérrez led the House Democratic Caucus in a “Day of Solidarity with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands”; spoke at the Unity March for Puerto Rico on the National Mall, which brought out thousands of demonstrators on November 19; and condemned the Trump administration’s callous reaction to the ongoing crisis on the House floor, which he has called “a stain on the
POLITICS
Lester Ray
Alderman Danny Solis
Father José Sigfredo Landaverde reputation of the United States.” Addressing the House on November 8, Gutiérrez commended the response of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community to the crisis, contrasting their effort with the federal government’s insufficient response. “Individuals in Chicago are investing in the well-being of people in Loíza they have never met...The people of Chicago are getting help to the people of Puerto Rico before any official resources are coming to their rescue.” Puerto Ricans, continued Gutiérrez, are “finding ways to make do, just as the people of Chicago are making do by sending their own help in their own way...Life goes on, even when the government has turned their back on you.” Here in Chicago, however, the grassroots and city efforts to help Puerto Ricans affected by Hurricane Maria have not been limited to airlifting supplies to the island and critiques of Washington’s response to the crisis. Rather, community organizations and city government officials have sought to make Chicago a destination for Puerto Ricans fleeing the hurricane’s devastation and ensure that hurricane refugees are made welcome— whether they intend to stay in Chicago for a few days, a few months, or permanently. In early October,flanked by Gutiérrez and dozens of Latinx aldermen and city officials, Mayor Emanuel announced that Chicago would prepare to invite “tens of thousands” of Puerto Ricans to the city. Promising a sustained, committed effort to welcome hurricane evacuees from the island, Emanuel said that Chicago would “be living up to what
it means to be a sanctuary city.” At the time of the press conference, an estimated 1,600 Puerto Ricans had already arrived in Chicago and 36th Ward Alderman Gilbert Villegas, leader of the City Council’s Latino Caucus, said that he expected Chicago’s Puerto Rican population to double in the coming months due to the exodus of Puerto Ricans fleeing to the mainland. That prediction hasn’t quite materialized, even though some 160,000 Puerto Ricans have left the island since the hurricane hit. Although central Florida and the greater New York City area have absorbed most of that migration, Villegas says that between ten and fifteen thousand Puerto Ricans had arrived in Chicago by late November. The mayor’s office reported only 1,600 as arriving on humanitarian flights in the weeks after the hurricane, but the true number of evacuee Puerto Ricans in the city is difficult to estimate— most of those who arrived have been staying with and relying on family members, without connecting to city resources; on the other hand some Puerto Ricans arrived in Chicago purely because Chicago was the only city on the mainland where they were able to find a flight to, and have since moved on to New York, Central Florida, California, or elsewhere. Alderman Roberto Maldonado represents a large population of Puerto Ricans living in Humboldt Park, Hermosa, and Logan Square, and his 26th Ward has been at the heart of Chicago’s efforts to welcome Puerto Rican evacuees to the city. “I predicted when Maria hit Puerto Rico that
Luis Gutiérrez LIZZIE SMITH
there was going to be a massive migration” off of the island, recalled Maldonado. “I started to prepare here through the [city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications] in the event that we would start to see a flow of migration into Chicago.” According to Maldonado, a few weeks after the storm, recently arrived Puerto Ricans began appearing in his Humboldt Park office seeking food and housing assistance, help in navigating the FEMA claim process, and to enroll their children in school. Even on a Monday afternoon in mid-November, there was a man from Puerto Rico inquiring about such services. The office staff directed him to the Hurricane Resource Center, which opened November 2 at the Humboldt Park field house and will be staffed at least two days a week until January 2. Although managed by the OEMC, the Center operates in collaboration with local community groups, including the Puerto Rican Agenda, and private charities such as the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. Maldonado says that the Center offers newly arrived Puerto Ricans access to a variety of resources to aid in their resettlement and transition to life in Chicago, among them the city’s Department of Family Services, emergency food assistance, winter coats and clothing, Chicago Public Schools, FEMA, and the Chicago Housing Authority. Children from the island are being enrolled “left and right” in CPS, Maldonado said— according to CPS, by early December, approximately 169 Puerto Rican evacuees
had already been placed in classes. Teachers who fled Puerto Rico are being invited to work as substitutes in city schools to help accommodate the needs of evacuee children for a bilingual education, Maldonado said; the state has created an expedited licensing process for them. Although he believes that the conditions in Puerto Rico will prevent people’s return for the foreseeable future, he expressed optimism that Chicago will continue to support and provide for Puerto Rican refugees for as long as necessary. In Chicago, “People are truly feeling welcome,” Maldonado said. “There is so much we can do for the people who are coming here.” Alderman Danny Solís, whose 25th Ward includes parts of Pilsen, Chinatown, and University Village, calls Chicago “the most American city in the United States.” Solís, who was born in Monterrey, Mexico and immigrated to Chicago as a child, says that Chicago’s efforts to help Mexico and Puerto Rico, particularly with regard to the resettlement of hurricane evacuees, is representative of the city’s long “tradition of being a welcoming city for immigrants.” Calling Emanuel “a tremendous advocate for the immigrant community in general,” Solís commended the continuing efforts of the city government to accommodate hurricane refugees and their commitment to fundraising for disaster relief efforts in Puerto Rico and Mexico. Over the past two months, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been donated through a city website that features dozens of charities and organizations working in
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
hurricane and earthquake relief. Through these disaster relief efforts, city officials and the mayor have reframed what it means to be a “sanctuary city”—not just a place where undocumented residents can live and prosper without fear of deportation, but also a place where victims of disaster can find shelter. But Chicago’s commitment to the original definition—protecting undocumented residents—and its proimmigrant reputation have their critics. Despite the city’s Welcoming Ordinance, Chicago agencies can still cooperate in the arrest, detention, or deportation of undocumented residents under certain exceptions: for example, if they are included in the Chicago police’s gang database. The database is notoriously opaque and critics say it targets Black and Latino men based on where they live or who lives around them. The city recently paid a settlement to a Latino immigrant who was mistakenly placed in the database, arrested, and may be deported. Advocates for immigrants and refugees, including the ICIRR and Organized Communities against Deportations, have called for the city to remove the exceptions entirely. Nevertheless, the response of Chicago’s communities and city officials to the crises in Mexico and Puerto Rico is a testament to the aspiration of the sanctuary city and to the strength of the greatest parts of the city’s identity as not only the center of the Mexican and Puerto Rican American communities in the Midwest but also as a place that welcomes and extends compassion to people from all over the world. As the current presidential administration largely ignores the pleas of Latinx people in disaster-stricken areas, the unified front presented by Chicago’s Latinx communities in response to Hurricane Maria and the Mexican earthquake is a powerful rebuke of the administration’s rhetoric and policy. And in some ways, the crises in Puerto Rico and Mexico have given leaders in Chicago an opportunity to further cement their stance in opposition to that anti-immigrant agenda. The disasters in Puerto Rico and Mexico have given Chicago the chance to truly “[live] up to what it means to be a sanctuary city,” as Mayor Emanuel said at the October press conference—to turn rhetoric into action and political posturing into relief for people and communities in need. ¬ 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
Communal Healing
SEBASTIÁN HIDALGO
Camesha Jones on mental health, violence, and innovation BY CHARLES PRESTON
C
amesha Jones was about to enter graduate school for a degree in social work when she began to experience symptoms of a mental illness. This “somewhat traumatic” experience with the mental health care system four years ago led her to found Sista Afya, a mental wellness organization for Black women, this year. She hopes the group can help others overcome the challenges she and her family faced while going through treatment. Jones, twenty-six and living in Bronzeville, considers herself a social entrepreneur. Her group aims to destigmatize mental health and create a community of support by hosting events and providing online
¬ DECEMBER 20, 2017
resources. On Veteran’s Day weekend, Jones and the Association of Black Psychologists coorganized Chicago’s first Black Mental Wellness Weekend, which included a series of panel discussions, a film screening, a reiki healing session, and a mixer for Black mental health professionals and potential clients. Several events were packed to capacity and Jones says she is eager to make it an annual event. I sat with Jones before and after the inaugural event to hear her reflections on mental health in Chicago, Sista Afya, and the community model for black mental health. This is an edited transcript of our conversations. The Weekly also interviewed Jones in
November on SSW Radio, our weekly radio hour on WHPK 88.5 FM; you can listen to that conversation, which touched on Jones’s personal journey through the mental health system, at bit.ly/CameshaJones. What challenges have you encountered in working on Black mental wellness that led you to consider alternative approaches? The way that mental health is approached is through behavior, which is not the best [approach]––particularly for Black folks. What we are experiencing is about way more than behavior. There’s so many factors:
MENTAL HEALTH
systemic, community-level, individual, generational family patterns. We have a long history of experiencing trauma. I love Dr. Joy Degruy. She is known for [the theory of ] Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. She talks about how Black folks have never had a break to heal or develop in a way that they deserve and should because of the constant attack from white supremacy, racism, and other institutions. With Black girls and boys, any time they are acting out or doing things outside of what makes people comfortable, it’s labeled as a “behavior problem.” What I understood working with young men is that they are expressing the pain they are experiencing in their communities. What makes Sista Afya different from mainstream mental health care? Sista Afya has a community support model that anchors mental wellness through community. Basically, no one is going through things alone. Whether it’s a support group or educational workshop, people are depending on each other. Sista Afya pushes advocacy in our model as well—Black women being able to advocate for and amongst themselves for the wellness care they need. I’m still fine-tuning and developing this model. I believe the people who are most affected by these conditions should be the leaders. I have a bipolar disorder, which is a very severe and serious mental condition. No PhD, no license can trump real experience. I believe that’s what makes Sister Afya a success. People hear my story and see where I stand today and go “Wow!” They understand I have bipolar but I maintain my mental wellness and practice what I’m preaching. How does Chicago factor in what you see or work with daily? The city’s violence is always in the media and I wonder if that plays a role in mental health. I’m not a Chicagoan. I wasn’t born here. But before I came to this city, I thoroughly studied its history. I’ve never seen a place where so many actions were taken to suppress Black people mentally through institutions.
This affected family, then community, then individual. The violence in Chicago is sensationalized. There is a good buck to be made off of violence and trauma. In the mental health field, people are making money off our pain. What better way to heal ourselves than to collectively come together, identify generational and community-level issues, and demand things from institutions that are complicit in our oppression? What role do you think mental health plays in substance abuse? Substance abuse is usually the expression of something someone is trying to avoid, something painful, or something traumatic. When someone uses heroin, they know that heroin isn’t good for them. When you think about the communities who have the most prevalent substance abuse, those communities usually don’t have the mental health resources or institutions that are needed to support full and healthy lives––things like a grocery store, jobs, and adequate housing. If you live in a community where you’re suffering from not having these things, you go to substances to sedate or express that pain. Before the two-year Illinois budget impasse led to huge funding delays and other issues in the state’s health care system, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed six mental health clinics. Where can people go for assistance? I’ll share a couple. Dr. Obari Cartman’s Association of Black Psychologists, Chicago’s Association of Black Social Workers, Breaking the Silence of Mental Health, Sista Afya, and Black Lives Matter Chicago Communal Healing are all partnering together to create a directory by the end of this year. People who live in Chicago can put in their ZIP code and find a Black practitioner in their area. I think that will help people to know what’s available. Someone can be providing mental health services right in your neighborhood and you may not even know it. Instead, you may think you have to go all the way downtown or outside of your community.
Of course, Sista Afya’s website is a resource: people can click on different topics that are particularly important to Black women and get an information sheet about resources that may benefit them. I would also say Psychology Today is another good resource for finding a therapist until we release our directory. There are a couple of really good nonprofit organizations across the city such as Trilogy Behavioral Healthcare, Metropolitan Family Services, and Thresholds. Those organizations are a lifeline for people who may not be able to afford insurance, providing high-quality mental health care. That’s a really big thing in our community. People don’t have insurance or they have Medicaid and cannot receive the best care they need. Does the state owe us the mental health clinics and services? Absolutely. But we also know that history can repeat itself ,and they can snatch it away at any time. We have to think about how we can rely on our own expertise and our own talents in our communities to make sure people are connected to resources to sustain mental wellness. What would you like to see from the state? Can you think of new ways for the state to be impactful for community alternatives to traditional health care? I think they failed already by trying to provide services through clinics that they can shut down at any time. We deserve and should demand that government fund mental wellness services, particularly through Black practitioners. But we also have to prepare when they don’t. This is the time for us to embrace something that will be long-lasting. When I say “Sista Afya 2018,” what comes to mind?
Veterans Day weekend people will know to clear their schedules. In the summer of 2018 we will be having the next Black Mental Wellness Expo. I’m also planning monthly events so people can stay plugged in through Sista Afya. Every month people can expect a workshop that is free or very low-cost. I will also say, innovation. This year we tried to creatively think of ways that we can bring people together around mental wellness that is not intimidating, but fun, caring, and supportive. This will be another year of innovation. Do you believe that we are getting better identifying mental health issues in our community? Yes! I think the future’s very bright. Chicago has so many talented people that can address our community’s needs. People are talking about it. When I first started Sista Afya, people would come up and say to me, “Well, what are you going to do about the stigma? How are you going to get people to come to your event?” So I thought about my own experience, about what pulled me into caring about mental health. I started to think, how can I make mental health fun, simple, accessible, and centered on us? Once you do that, people feel comfortable. I think in Chicago people have been waiting for a movement, and I’m so happy to be a part of it. ¬ This report was produced by City Bureau, a Chicago-based journalism lab. Attend their workshop on the mental health care system this Thursday:
Finding Help, Fighting Stigma in Mental Health. Build Coffee, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Thursday, December 21, 6pm–8pm. Free. (773) 819-5188. facebook.com/citybureau
Consistent presence. I think the first year of Sista Afya was a lot of figuring out the things people like and don’t like, while still staying true to what we want to provide to the community. I want to make [Black Mental Wellness Weekend] an annual event, so every
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
VISUAL ARTS
BRIDGET GAMBLE
Exploring Empathy and Entitlement in Ecology BY BRIDGET GAMBLE
U
nder the current administration, national parks face massive budget cuts. Protected U.S. monuments are shrinking, and as the budget for national parks decreases, admission costs are rising. Next year, entry to parks like Yosemite could cost as much as admission to Six Flags. In light of the heightened barriers to access to America’s protected lands, a new exhibit at the Hyde Park Art Center wants us thinking more about nature, and less about ourselves. Edward Hines National Forest is an immersive exhibit created for the Hyde Park Art Center by Chicago-based artist Sara Black and Aotearoa New Zealand artist Raewyn Martyn. The suspended catwalk offers a view from above and the experience of moving through an expanded spatial field, 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
while down below, trellis structures of wood and long sheets of cellulose are scattered in various arrangements from floor to ceiling. On November 19, the artists held a special discussion at the art center with Kim Landsbergen, associate professor of biology and environmental science at Antioch College, and Karsten Lund, assistant curator at the Renaissance Society. The group shared their thoughts on humans’ relationship to nature and the historical tendency to prioritize land’s utility over its ecological functions. The conversation occurred just a few weeks before President Trump announced his intentions to dramatically downsize two massive national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, telling the crowd of Utah residents that “no
¬ DECEMBER 20, 2017
one knows better how to use [this land].” The unprotected land will be made available to private enterprises, such as mining and cattle grazing. In the U.S., conversation about public land has long focused on human use, which Black finds problematic. “When we hear the term ‘use,’ it’s easy to think about it through the lens of capitalism,” she said in the discussion. Natural exploitation is written into the histories of our nation and our city. Edward Hines, after whom the artists named this exhibit as a “wry gesture,” was the owner of a Chicago-based lumber wholesaler that deforested all of Wisconsin’s Northwoods during the late 19th and early 20th century. The counter-intuitiveness of a national forest named after a lumberman “aims to shift the ground beneath our feet,” the artists said, “and to face all-too-real complications in our environments and their histories.” Some of those complications include colonial settlers’ acquisition of land, the destruction of various species to accommodate human lifestyles, and the problematic view of forests as a resource depot rather than an ecosystem meriting preservation. If themes abound in Edward Hines National Forest, literal representation is scarce. Though the exhibit includes “forest” in the title, the artists insist it is not meant to literally mimic a woodland area. “A forest has a different phenomenology, smell, humidity, air flow,” Martyn said. “This space has its own set of those things. We’re not trying to represent the actual forest.” Instead, the structures of wood and cellulose are intended to recreate the experience of walking through an ecosystem. The artists used lumber from Hayward, Wisconsin, from trees that are genetic descendants of the old-growth Northwoods deforested by Hines’ lumber company. “This thing needed to work without becoming highly representational, like ‘here’s a trunk,’ and ‘here’s a branch,’” Black said. She noted that the trellis structure utilized in Edward Hines National Forest was actually invented in Wisconsin and was used to transport materials to Chicago, while the 2x6 and the 2x3 trellises were inventions of the Hines-era of the timber industry. Landsbergen, for one, appreciated the use of art as a gateway to the conversation because it makes the topic more appealing to people of many backgrounds. “I’m gonna roll the dice and say that if I had an ecology talk, you all might not have been there,” she said.
Martyn hopes the exhibit will encourage viewers to pay attention to how they experience their own movement throughout a space, and how elements like changes in light and vantage points affect their experience. While designing the exhibit with Martyn, Black kept in mind a 19th century painting by Caspar David Friedrich known as “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.” In the painting, a man overlooking a seascape from his perch on a rock is the focal point. To Black, the work “represents a common human relationship to the landscape reflected in the attitudes toward the forest or toward everything non-human in the Americas,” she said. “To break away from that worldview is a difficult thing to do. Is our idea of what the forest is perhaps misguided?” The artists hope these are the questions visitors continue to ponder after they leave the art center. Guests can take home free copies of the “Edward Hines National Forest Use Book,” a custom-published imitation of the original national forest preserve document issued by the secretary of agriculture in the early 20th century. The book has over 100 pages of historical information regarding deforestation, interviews by the artists with various nature authorities, photos of U.S. forests by the artists and more. It also includes an insert about www.trumpforest. com, a website where people can donate to have trees planted to “offset [President] Trump’s monumental stupidity.” “Edward Hines National Forest” is sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Creative New Zealand, Chicago Community Trust, the Artist Advocates and Patricia Swanson. When the exhibit closes on February 11, 2018, the majority of the wood will be redistributed to the Rebuilding Exchange, while the rest of the wood and cellulose will be shipped to New Zealand for a new exhibit. The November 19 discussion concluded on the note of biophilia, which Landsbergen defines as the ability to recognize a living thing’s right to exist. “Biophilia is a way of unlocking your empathy,” she went on. It doesn’t have to start with a trip to Yosemite, or any park requiring a $70 entrance fee. “You can just look at what’s growing in the cracks of your sidewalk.” ¬ Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Free admission. (773) 324-5520. www.hydeparkart.org
DEVELOPMENT
Closer to Resurrection
Cook County Land Bank Authority announces community-led redevelopment of historic bank building in Woodlawn BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER
T
he Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA) will soon begin a community-led redevelopment process of the Washington Park National Bank Building, executive director Rob Rose announced at a Woodlawn Chamber of Commerce meeting this past Friday evening. Rose’s organization acquired the building, which sits on 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, in the first week of December. The nonprofit group Preservation Chicago had put the building on its annual list of the city’s most endangered buildings at the end of 2016. In an accompanying blurb, the group wrote: “This once prominent intersection has experienced great decline and this amazing banking structure has fallen into disrepair,” adding that they hoped its inclusion on their list would “encourage a reuse of the building and a restoration of its façade.” Now, the empty building has moved a small step closer toward a resurrection, though it remains to be seen how faithful that will be to preservationists’ wishes. “As we went through this process, I did not want to sit down with a small group of developers, and come up with a plan,” said Rose on Friday. “What we want to do is initiate a community-led process. For me, this just makes sense. Woodlawn has a certain history, and this corner is a very important corner. We’ve got to get this right, and it takes all of us to make that happen.” The CCLBA—which was created in 2013 as part of the Cook County Government—obtains, refurbishes, and sells off vacant, abandoned, or tax-delinquent properties across the city. The redevelopment process will consist of three separate meetings in early 2018, each of them open to the entire Woodlawn community. The input from those meetings will then structure the city’s subsequent Request for Proposals (RFP) from developers, said Rose. Basically, this means that any developer who submits a plan for the bank building in response to the RFP will, in
all likelihood, have to abide by planning guidelines agreed upon by Woodlawn residents. The RFP itself will be released by the city in April and awarded at some point during the summer, according to Rose. The planning process that the CCLBA is using originates from the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC)’s Corridor Development Initiative (CDI). The MPC, which will operate as a partner on the project, describes the CDI on its website as a process that “helps residents understand issues such as density, affordable housing and the true cost of development, while creating a set of priorities to guide community leaders as they plan for future development in their neighborhoods.” It’s not the first time the agency has facilitated a CDI in the area: starting in 2008, the agency used the process during the early stages of planning the Harper Court development in Hyde Park. “In Woodlawn, we want to look at what’s been done, what’s been said. We recognize that there’s a lot of work that’s been done here,” said Kendra Freeman, a manager at the MPC. Before it was taken over by the CCLBA, the Washington Park Bank Building was owned by the Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church and the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation, according to public records. Rose said that the CCLBA acquired the property in a tax sale, an auction in which bidders can buy stakes in properties that have fallen behind on their taxes. According to records from the Cook County Clerk’s Office, the property has accumulated more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes since 1996. The Community Development Corporation and the church (until recently known as the Christ Apostolic Church) are both affiliated with Reverend Leon Finney, who is the pastor of the church and the Community Development Corporation’s chairman. Finney is perhaps best-known as one of the original leaders of The Woodlawn
Organization, the activist group created in the mid-twentieth century with the help of Saul Alinsky. In 1964, TWO crafted an agreement with the University of Chicago that it would not build south of 61st Street. (Last year, the University announced that, in the wake of discussions with Woodlawn community organizations it did not name, the agreement was no longer in place.) In recent years, however, Finney has come under scrutiny for his practices as a landlord. In 2010, a group of Finney’s tenants protested living conditions at his buildings at City Hall. In 2011, he was briefly added to the city’s list of scofflaw landlords (landlords barred from doing business with the city because of code violations on their properties). But while Finney, or an organization he’s affiliated with, has owned the bank building for decades, the structure’s history stretches further back, to the beginning of the twentieth century. As the Weekly reported last year, it was erected in 1924 as part of a localized building boom that saw five other structures around 63rd and Cottage Grove go up around the same time. The architect behind it, Albert A. Schwartz, appears to have had an affinity for South Side bank buildings—he also designed the South Side Trust and Savings Bank in Bronzeville. Though the Washington Park National Bank was never particularly stable, the building itself, with a fondly remembered Walgreens on the ground floor, recalls Woodlawn’s more prosperous past. But the building has not been declared a federal, state, or municipal landmark; it’s not listed on the National Register of Historic Places or the Chicago Landmarks list. That means that it’s not subject to certain protective regulations governing its redevelopment, and that a demolition, or an otherwise radical restructuring of the building, remains an option. Rose also noted that the city has begun a feasibility study of the building in order to determine exactly what limitations there will have to be on any new development, and that results from that study will be shared at the
first community meeting. In the meantime, one model that the community may look to is the site of the former Strand Hotel, across the street and a few steps south. Long vacant, it opened in late 2015 as a forty-four–unit apartment building, with a strip of retail and an art gallery at street level. The renovation won an award from preservation nonprofit Landmarks Illinois, which praised it as “an inspiring example of how historical preservation can spark positive redevelopment and reuse.” Rose announced at the meeting that the CCLBA also owns a significant number of other properties in West Woodlawn, each of which it intends to sell off gradually to individual developers. Online records show that in the part of West Woodlawn bounded by 63rd and 67th Street, and King Drive and Cottage Grove, the organization owns seventy-nine parcels, all but one of them currently vacant land. Although this sale process will presumably take place less publicly, the cumulative fate of these parcels, and the organization’s other properties in the neighborhood, will end up having an far greater impact on Woodlawn’s future than the redevelopment of any single building, however prominent. Still, Rose argues that the redevelopment of the bank building is significant, an important example of leaving decisionmaking in the hands of a community that, historically, has had change imposed on it from outside. “The single greatest change we can make is in how we build up assets,” Rose told the Weekly. “We always ask permission, except for in Black communities. But this is how it should be done.” ¬ The Metropolitan Planning Council plans to release more information, including meeting times and locations, in the following weeks. Visit metroplanning.org/woodlawn for more information.
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13
BULLETIN Southside Community Holiday Jamboree South Shore United Methodist Church, 7350 S. Jeffery Ave. Saturday, December 23, 3pm–6:30pm. (773) 752-6233. bit.ly/SouthSideJamboree Those interested in giving back, community uplift, education of different cultures, and above all, “Holiday FUN” are welcome at this community holiday event, which will feature community service projects and toy giveaways as well as treats, various artistic activities for kids, and a performance by KidWorks Touring Theatre Co. ( Julia Aizuss)
Conscious Dating, Relating, Marriage Bop Biz Center, 644 E. 79th St. Sunday, December 24, 3:30pm–7:30pm. (773) 8915939, bit.ly/ConsciousRelationshipsBopBiz Acclaimed author, certified development coach, and expert on relationships Kelley Porter (Coach Kelley) is coming to Chicago to help us with ours. Come to her talk this Sunday to hear her discuss “conscious dating, relating, and marriage.” Mature adults are welcome, and the first ten (couples or singles) get her book Overcoming Toxic Relationships for free. (Michael Wasney)
Holiday Gift Making Classes Englewood Enterprise Gallery, 7039 S. Wentworth Ave. Every Saturday and Sunday from December 2 to December 30, 2pm–4pm. $5. (773) 719-9848. bit.ly/EnglewoodEnterpriseGallery The Englewood Enterprise Gallery is hosting a series of classes to teach children and adults how to make bags, jewelry and jewelry stands, t-shirts, and more that you can give as a gift to your loved ones. The cost of materials is not included in the cost of the class. (Adia Robinson)
Steam Radiators 101 with The Steam WhispererTM ReBuilding Exchange, 1740 W. Webster Ave. Saturday, January 6 and Sunday, January
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21, 1pm–3pm. $10. (773) 252- 2234. rebuildingexchange.org. Hssssss...there isn’t a snake in your apartment—just an old steam radiator. And if yours is making loud clanking sounds or heating the unit unevenly, it may be time to pick up some advice from Dave Bunnell, the Steam WhispererTM. Relying on twenty years of experience, Bunnell will be giving a workshop on maintenance, spotting and solving common problems, and improving the efficiency of your steam radiators for a better, more comfortable experience. (Adam Przybyl)
Brown Books and Paintbrushes NFP. INC. “Kid Party & Book Drive!” The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West, Saturday, January 6, 10am–1pm. Free. RSVP at bit.ly/BrownBooksPaintbrushes. promontorychicago.com Brown Books and Paintbrushes NFP. Inc. supports exposing the community to Black authors and artists. Join the fun by donating new and gently used diverse books as this organization hosts their annual Kid Party and Book Drive. Children ages one to five will have the opportunity to enjoy African and African-American arts and crafts, book giveaways, literacy stations, movement and music, and so much more. (Maple Joy)
Racial Justice for South Loop Schools Location in South Loop TBD. Wednesday, January 10. 6pm–8pm. (312) 448-8900. chicagounitedforequity.org Chicago United for Equity will be leading its third of three “Racial Justice and South Loop Schools” meetings pertaining to CPS’s proposal to close the National Teachers Academy (NTA) and open a new high school. This final session will focus on ways to promote racial equity and justice in the NTA proposal. (Michael Wasney)
VISUAL ARTS A Tribute to Eduardo Galeano National Museum of Mexican Art,
¬ DECEMBER 20, 2017
1852 W. 19th St. Wednesday, December 20, 6pm. $10. (312) 738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org Come celebrate the life and work of late Uruguayan journalist and writer Eduardo Galeano at the National Museum of Mexican Art this Wednesday. Sandra Cisneros, English professor Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, and poet Raul Niño will share anecdotes, analysis, and readings from Galeano’s work to commemorate his amazing career. (Michael Wasney)
Make PR Lit Again Chicago Art Department, 1932 S. Halsted St., Ste. 100. Saturday, January 6, noon–10pm. $5–$50. bit.ly/MakePRLitAgain Months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, more than half of the country is still without power. Join Chicago Creatives for Change as they fundraise for solar relief and water filtration. Guests can enjoy an artists’ gallery, sip and paint, Caribbean yoga, and a live talent showcase followed by an afterparty. Small plates of authentic Puerto Rican food will be available for purchase; BYOB. (Maple Joy)
MUSIC Roy Ayers The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Wednesday, December 20, 9pm. $25–$55. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com The Godfather of Neo-Soul Roy Ayers comes to the Promontory this December with his generation and genre bridging hits such as “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” “Searchin’,” and “Running Away.” (Adia Robinson)
The Dojo Presents: Dark Daze The Dojo, message on Facebook for address. Friday, December 22, 9pm–1am. $5 donation. thedojochi.com Winter days are dark and long, but the Dojo has a show lined up for you that’ll be sure to warm you up and light up the night. Catch an all-star lineup of local acts— Cado, Syren, Roy French, Solo the Dweeb, and Draco’s Iron Lungs—with sounds by Lord Haiti, all for just a five-dollar donation. (Andrew Koski)
B-Side Vinyl Shop + Swap
Party Noire presents Black Metropolis New Year’s Eve 2017
Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Saturday, January 6, 11pm–4pm. Free. arts.uchicago.edu/artsandpubliclife/ai
The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Wednesday, December 31, 9pm. $75–$100. 21+ (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com
Curated by local vinyl stores and collectors, the Arts Incubator will be transformed into a one-day-only pop-up record & swap shop, all to the tune of local DJs Ayana Contreras, Jesse De La Peña, and Mr. Jaytoo. (Rod Sawyer)
Artist Talk with Pope.L and Dieter Roelstraete Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Thursday, January 4, 6pm–8pm. Free. wrens.uchicago.edu As part of the event “What’s Next: A fivehour marathon conversation and more on immigration, migration and home,” artist Pope.L and curator Dieter Roelstraete will talk Pope.L’s contribution to Documenta 14, Flint Water, and the Brown People Are the Wrens in the Parking Lot project. (Rod Sawyer)
This New Year’s Eve, the hottest party in Hyde Park will be at the Promontory. Special guest artists will give live performances, surprise artists will be making appearances, and there will be music curated by DJ Rae Chardonnay and Party Noire resident DJ Lisa Decibel. Make sure to snag a ticket because you’ll get “tasty hors d’oeuvres, a two-hour open bar, a midnight champagne toast, and an assortment of goodies from local Hyde Park favorites.” (Andrew Koski)
FuzZz Reggie’s, 2105 S. State St. Friday, January 12, 8pm. $5. 21+. (312) 949-0120. reggieslive.com Chicago-based funk band FuzZz “has been making crowds groove since mid-2011.” The five-piece band has toured as far as
EVENTS
New Orleans, and for one night at Reggies, they’ll be bringing their usual mix of originals and reinvented covers to our fair city, with Kansas City–based groove jazz band The Sextet and local prog rock brass band Robert J. Zimmer?. (Andrew Koski)
George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, January 31, 8pm, 7pm doors. $38-$58. 17+ (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com The Mothership will be touching down in Pilsen this January and you know what that means—an unforgettable night with funk legend George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. With over forty R&B hit singles, three platinum albums, and decades of legendary performances, this isn’t a show to be missed, so get your tickets soon. (Andrew Koski)
STAGE & SCREEN BACinema Presents: “White Christmas” Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Wednesday, December 20, 7pm. $6, $5 BAC members. (773) 446-3838. beverlyartcenter. org What are you up to tonight? If the answer is “not much,” you might as well head down to 111th Street to see this 1954 classic featuring the best titular Christmas song written by a Jewish man. ( Julia Aizuss)
Black Cinema House Presents: “Pariah” Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Friday, December 22, 7pm–9pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Whether you want more Dee Rees after seeing her latest feature, 2017’s Mudbound, or are new to her work, it’s worth returning to her wrenching 2011 film Pariah, about a teenaged Black lesbian living in Brooklyn. ( Julia Aizuss)
eta Family Theatre Initiative: “The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves”
eta Creative Arts, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Through Saturday, December 23. $40, discounts available for seniors and students. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org Nora Brooks Blakely’s musical adaptation of a book by her mother Gwendolyn Brooks was already a fitting choice in the year of the Brooks centennial, to start off eta’s 2017–18 season. Even more fitting, given Brooks’s dedication to youth poetry, is that the musical will launch eta’s partnership with the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation. The initiative will encourage Chicago students to read the book and then to see the musical. ( Julia Aizuss)
Lemonade, with Julie Dash and Jacqueline Stewart Harper Theater, 5238 S. Harper Ave. Thursday, January 4, 7pm–9:30pm. Free. (773) 834-1936. bit.ly/Cinema53Lemonade Cinema 53’s four-part series in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the Combahee River Collective Statement fittingly comes to a close with the most recent and probably most famous artistic statement of Black feminism yet: Beyonce’s visual album Lemonade. The screening will be followed by a discussion with UofC film professor and Cinema 53 curator Jacqueline Stewart and pioneering filmmaker Julie Dash. ( Julia Aizuss)
Hyde ya Kids, Hyde ya Park! The Revival, 1160 E. 55th St. Saturday, January 6, 7:30pm. $20, $10 students. the-revival.com This somewhat confusingly capitalized show, the Revival’s Winter Sketch Comedy Revue, promises “fierce, silly sketches” on matters topical to Hyde Park and the world at large: graduate student unionization, Barack Obama’s law school days, male privilege, and more. Come the first week of January for a preview performance of the revue. ( Julia Aizuss)
Collected Stories Auditions Augustana Lutheran Church, 5500 S. Woodlawn Ave. Sunday, January 7, 4pm– 7pm, and Monday, January 8, 6pm–9pm. info@hydeparkcommunityplayers.org, hydeparkcommunityplayers.org
Interested in putting your acting chops to the test? Come audition for Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories—a two-hander that dramatizes the relationship between an older writer and her protégé over a period of sixty years. If you haven’t gotten a chance to work with the wonderful Hyde Park Players yet, this is your chance. (Michael Wasney)
Lorraine Hansberry: ‘Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart’ Du Sable Museum IBLA Theater, 740 E. 56th Pl. Thursday, January 11, 6pm–8pm. Free. (773) 947-0600. dusablemuseum.org On the night before the anniversary of Lorraine Hansberry’s death, the DuSable will screen a new documentary that illuminates her life and work through interviews with those who acted in her plays. The filmmakers will be present to discuss the film. (Neal Jochmann)
check, credit, and LINK are all accepted. Come next year, they’ll be operating from Englewood. (Emeline Posner)
Meals for Christmas Brave Space Alliance, 237 E. 58th St. Sunday, December 24, noon–4pm. (773) 424-2959. bit.ly/Meals4Christmas Black Lives Matter is putting on their second annual Meals for Christmas event this Christmas Eve, aiming to feed and provide a warm, welcoming space for 400 individuals. To reach that goal, they are looking for volunteers to help with the event and donations of personal hygiene products, hats, and gloves to be served with the hot meal. (Emeline Posner)
Community Dialogue on Pilsen Land Use Rudy Lozano Chicago Public Library, 1805 S. Loomis St. Saturday, January 6, 12:30pm. (312) 243-5440. facebook.com/ thepilsenalliance
FOOD & LAND Cleo’s Pop-up Cleo’s Southern Cuisine, 4312 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Friday, December 22, 5pm. Free. (773) 575-7120. cleossoutherncuisine.com Catering company Cleo’s Southern Cuisine and clothing brand Pillars are inviting you to the pop-up shop they’re co-hosting this Friday. Cleo’s is supplying the menu; Pillars, the looks. RSVP to take part in this night fun, fashion, and Southern flavors. (Michael Wasney)
Healthy Food Hub Market Day The Quarry Event Center, 2423 E. 75th St. Saturday, December 23 and Saturday, December 30, 11am–3pm. Preorder at healthyfoodhub.org. (773) 357-6097. facebook. com/healthyfoodhubchicago Stop by the Quarry for the Healthy Food Hub Market for their last two days at the South Shore location. “Far more than a farmer’s market,” the market provides produce, dry goods, teas, herbs, and prepared foods—last week was a black bean soup—available through pre-order. Cash,
Join the Pilsen Alliance for a community dialogue about the role, and lack of transparency, of the Pilsen Land Use Committee (PLUC), which serves as an advisory committee for Alderman Danny Solis. The meeting, which will be youthled, will look at how PLUC’s practices relate to gentrification. Both Ald. Solis and members of PLUC have been invited to participate. (Emeline Posner)
Beginning Farmer of the Year Nomination Submission due by January 12 to Advocates for Urban Agriculture, info@auachicago. org. (773) 850-0428. Details: bit.ly/ FarmerOf2018 New to sustainable farming,and want to share your accomplishments to date? The Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA) wants to hear from you in the form of three-minute video submissions. All videos received will be posted on the AUA website and voted on by viewers. The winning submission will be nominated by AUA for a $1,000 prize. (Emeline Posner)
DECEMBER 20, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15
Sculptor and Storyteller Now Open
Celebrate the holidays at the Art Institute. Auguste Rodin. Adam, modeled 1881, cast about 1924. Gift of Robert Allerton.