12-21-23

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 10, Issue 31 Editor-in-Chief

Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor

Adam Przybyl

Senior Editors Martha Bayne Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Alma Campos Jim Daley Politics Editor Labor Editor Immigration Editor

J. Patrick Patterson Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales Wendy Wei

Community Builder

Chima Ikoro

Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton Visuals Editor

Kayla Bickham

Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Director of Fact Checking: Savannah Hugueley Fact Checkers: Rubi Valentin

Isi Frank Ativie Bridget Killian Christopher Good Kate Linderman Layout Editor

Tony Zralka

Program Manager

Malik Jackson

Executive Director

Damani Bolden

Office Manager

Mary Leonard

Advertising Manager

Susan Malone

Webmaster

Pat Sier

The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, please contact: Susan Malone (773) 358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com For general inquiries, please call: (773) 643-8533

Cover photo by Xochitl-Quetzal Danza Azteca

IN CHICAGO

IN THIS ISSUE

Vigil for journalists in Gaza On December 11, a few hundred journalists, media workers, and allies held a candlelight vigil at a Pilsen art gallery for the sixty-three journalists who’d been killed at that point in Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, now in its third month. After a few speeches and a moment of silence, Chicago journalists read aloud the names of the dead as their photos were projected on a wall. Then, attendees wrote messages in pages torn from reporters’ notebooks, which were affixed to a wall in an installation that will remain at the gallery through the spring.

The death toll in the latest invasion on Gaza includes not just Palestinians, but four Israeli and three Lebanese journalists as well. At the time of this writing, at least seventy-three media workers have been killed, making the war in Gaza the deadliest for journalists since the International Federation of Journalists began keeping track in 1990. Our Palestinian colleagues, such as Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza City, have courageously continued to report on the war even as Israel’s military appeared to be targeting them. Al-Dahdouh lost his entire family in an Israeli airstrike last month, and was wounded in another that also killed his camera operator, Samer Abudaqa, last week. He was back on air the same day. The violence is not limited to Gaza: Last week in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers brutally beat Palestinian journalist Mustafa al-Kharuf. And the violence is not new. In 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist, was killed by an Israeli sniper. At the time, Abu Akeh was wearing a blue flak jacket emblazoned with the word “PRESS,” a piece of protective equipment common to war correspondents that, in Gaza, has become a target for bullets and bombs.

As journalists, we are charged with telling the truth. We are also admonished to be objective and avoid advocacy. In the face of the relentless bombing of civilians in Gaza and the unprecedented slaughter of our colleagues, however, we must speak out, condemn the killings, and stand in solidarity with the courageous victims. To paraphrase Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in what appeared to be a deliberate Israeli airstrike: should they die, we must live to tell their story. We must make it a tale.

city council rejects arbitration for police discipline

Migrant child dies at Pilsen shelter A five-year-old boy died on December 17 after falling ill inside an overcrowded migrant shelter in Pilsen, and the following day four children and an adult staying there were hospitalized. The converted warehouse near Cermak and Halsted is Chicago’s largest city-run shelter, housing more than 2,300 men, women, and children. For months, it has been the subject of complaints about poor treatment and unlivable conditions.

In an investigation that Borderless Magazine published last week, residents described “horrible” living conditions, freezing temperatures, dirty bathrooms, and occasional spoiled food.

On Sunday afternoon, police were notified that a five-year-old boy was suffering a medical emergency at the shelter. The child, later identified as Jean Carlos Martínez Rivero, was transported to Comer Children’s Hospital in Hyde Park, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is under investigation, police say, and an autopsy is pending.

The day after Martínez Rivero died, Borderless reported that a Venezuelan migrant living at the shelter said the boy had a fever of more than 100° F and was convulsing in the bathroom before emergency medical services were called. Though the city maintains that Martínez Rivero died shortly after arriving at the hospital, migrants at the shelter told Borderless they believe he died in the shelter bathroom.

On Wednesday, volunteers held a candlelight vigil for migrants near the shelter and collected warm winter clothes to distribute.

In a press conference a day after Martinez Rivero’s death, Mayor Brandon Johnson deflected questions about conditions at the shelter, pointing a finger instead at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “They’re just dropping off people anywhere. Do you understand how raggedy and how evil that is?” Johnson said. “Then you want to hold us accountable for something that’s happening down at the border? It’s sickening.”

However, Martínez Rivero did not die “down at the border.” According to the city, his family arrived in Chicago on November 30. He, along with the five others who were hospitalized Monday, fell ill in a city-owned shelter that is staffed by a vendor hired by the city. Johnson’s administration is responsible for the well-being of those staying in those shelters, and should be held accountable for their conditions as well as the city’s oversight of them—or lack thereof.

As part of our community safety initiative, the Weekly invited community members to join us in pick up basketball games, a first aid teach-in, and more.

An arbitrator’s ruling would allow officers facing firing or suspension of more than a year to go around the Police Board.

jim daley...................................................4 ellis avenue church developing free store for migrants

Unlike traditional church and nonprofit giveaways, a free store allows people in need to retain their autonomy of choice when receiving help.

michael liptrot for hyde park herald....................................5 iglesia del lado sur abrirá tienda gratuita para migrantes

Una tienda gratuita les permite a las personas necesitadas conservar su autonomía al recibir ayuda.

por michael liptrot, hyde park herald traducido por jacqueline serrato.......6 ‘it’s a human dignity issue’ A data analysis reveals stark disparity in quality of nursing home care for Black and white Chicagoans.

blair paddock...........................................7 hip-hop museum among efforts to put respect on chicago’s contributions “It’s developed into something that is definitely not a subculture anymore. Hip-hop is embedded in everything now.”

evan f. moore..........................................11 an absurd episode in black girlhood

CHAOS holds up well all on its own, but when in conversation with Barber’s musical discography, a larger universe unfolds.

arieon whittsey.........................................13 community hoops

chima ikoro, jordan esparza................14 keeping ancient traditions alive

After ten years of learning dances and ceremonies from Mexico, a local Aztec danza group gains recognition from Indigenous elders.

jacqueline serrato....................................16 after i was shot, my friends wanted retribution. i chose empathy.

I believe we need to approach gun violence with mercy— and not seek more punishment.

marlon english, the trace....................19 the healthcare system failed me after getting shot

After I survived a mass shooting, I had to beg a Chicago hospital for simple things like a wheelchair. My community helped me recover.

carla johnson, the trace......................20 i left my neighborhood due to gun violence. how many others have done the same?

Communities like Woodlawn need more economic investment—and the people who live there need opportunities to reach their full potential.

aja johnson, the trace...........................21 inside chinatown’s century-long fight for power

The immigrant enclave was once isolated and excluded from city politics. How did Chicago Chinatown’s community leaders transform the neighborhood?

xuandi wang............................................23 calendar

Bulletin and events.

zoe pharo................................................26

POLICE

City Council Rejects Arbitration for Police Discipline

An arbitrator’s ruling would allow officers facing firing or suspension of more than a year to go around the Police Board.

BY JIM DALEY

O

n December 13, the City Council rejected an arbitrator’s decision to allow police officers who face serious discipline to circumvent the Police Board, which has historically ruled on discipline, and have their cases heard by an independent arbitrator instead. At least three-fifths of the Council had to vote against the ruling to reject it; the vote was 17–33. At the same meeting, the Council separately passed (42–7) an extension to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) contract that doubles pay raises and gives all officers a bonus.

The vote sends the ruling back to the independent arbitrator and sets up a likely court battle in which a Cook County judge will rule on whether to uphold it. Ald. Silvana Tabares (23rd Ward), who voted in favor of the ruling, said during the meeting a lawsuit would be an “open-and-shut case” because state law already gives police officers a right to arbitration.

Independent arbitrator Edward Benn, who has ruled on police and firefighter misconduct cases for years, issued the ruling in August. John Catanzara, the president of the FOP, the largest union representing Chicago police officers, lauded the decision at the time. Johsnon and Police Board president Ghian Foreman called it a “major setback for police accountability and reform” at the time. Deborah Witzburg, the city’s inspector general, also criticized the ruling at the time, saying that the police disciplinary process must be transparent.

Benn’s ruling would effectively remove transparency from police discipline in the most serious cases. Police Board rulings are currently public, as are COPA findings.

Under the new ruling, officers who face firing or suspensions of more than a year for misconduct would have their cases heard behind closed doors by an arbitrator. In

Ald. Maria Hadden (49th Ward) speaks at a rally opposing a ruling that would send serious police discipline cases to an arbitrator rather than the Police Board.

Photo by Jim Daley

the ruling, Benn contended that the illinois Public Labor Relations Act, which was passed in 1984, “could not be more clearer making final and binding arbitration the public policy of the state.”

In October, Johnson issued a statement asking the City Council to reject the ruling. Last week, the council’s Workforce Development Committee did so by a 10–5 vote while also approving the rest of the FOP’s contract extension.

The extension doubles officers’ raises in 2024 and 2025 from 2.5 to 5 percent and ties pay hikes to inflation in subsequent years; provides a one-time, $2,500 bonus to all officers; gives twenty-year veterans a retention bonus of $2,000 for each year on the force; and provides twelve weeks of paid family leave. An analysis by the Better Government Association found the contract extension will cost the city at least $76.8 million above what’s included in the 2024 budget, passed by the City Council in November.

Members of the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) Coalition, which was instrumental in passing an ordinance establishing more

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

community oversight of police via the new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) and three-member elected councils in each police district, rallied in opposition to the arbitrator’s ruling ahead of the City Council meeting. Alderpersons Maria Hadden (49th Ward) and Byron SigchoLopez (25th Ward) spoke at the rally.

Social worker Anjanette Young, who was the subject of a botched police raid on her home in 2019, also attended the rally.

During the meeting, Hadden, who voted against the ruling, said “public accountability for the highest misconduct violation is key to us having an honest and healthy relationship with police.”

Ahead of the vote, forty-one Police District Council members representing eighteen of the city’s twenty-two police districts signed an open letter condemning the arbitrator’s decision, which the letter called an effort “to sidestep oversight and dodge accountability.”

The letter noted that the Police Board will for the first time “be chosen and governed by” the CCPSA. Ratifying the arbitrator’s decision “would significantly

erode efforts for transparency and accountability at the precise moment when both are within reach,” the letter read. “Such an action also deals a devastating blow to community trust in law enforcement’s ability to self-regulate, underscoring the need for independent oversight now more than ever.”

The CCPSA does not have direct control over disciplinary cases, but it does have influence over how they’re administered. The commission can recommend hiring and firing the chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), which investigates misconduct cases, as well as members of the Police Board, which recommends disciplinary action for officers whose misconduct allegations are sustained, and the police superintendent, who still has the final say over such discipline.

“Currently there are five policeinvolved shootings and four domestic violence cases before the Police Board.

We cannot afford to have these cases heard behind closed doors,” said Anthony Driver, the CCPSA president, on Tuesday.

Driver noted that in June, the Police Board voted to fire one of the officers involved in the botched 2019 raid on social worker Anjanette Young’s home, and said “we would’ve never known the fate” of that officer without the board’s transparency.

“The City Council made the right call today and stood for transparency and justice, and our city will be better because of it,” Driver said after the vote. “Transparency is a prerequisite to justice.” Jim Daley is an investigative journalist and senior editor at the Weekly.

IMMIGRATION

Ellis Avenue Church Developing Free Store for Migrants

Unlike traditional church and nonprofit giveaways, a free store allows people in need to retain their autonomy of choice when receiving help.

BY MICHAEL LIPTROT FOR HYDE PARK HERALD This story originally published by the Hyde Park Herald. Reprinted with permission.

I

n the basement of Ellis Avenue Baptist Church in Kenwood, a small group of volunteers spend their Thursday mornings organizing coats, hats and other winter clothes for a forthcoming free store for migrants.

“All the people in need, whether they’re newer or they’ve been here for a long time, need to know where they can go to get things,” said Jonathan Friesen, the church’s pastor of fifteen years.

Located at 5001 S. Ellis Ave., the free store will offer winter clothes, sanitary products and other essentials for people to choose at their own discretion.

It’s the latest in a series of projects the church has begun to provide some aid to the hundreds of migrants sheltering at the nearby Lake Shore Hotel, 4900B S. Lake Shore Dr. Since early September, more than 600 people, primarily families from Central and South America, as well as Haiti, have moved into the city-run shelter.

When the parish first heard the news of the shelter’s opening in late August, Friesen said, members of the congregation sprang into action, launching a winter coat drive. The scope of this effort soon expanded to include clothes, hats and sanitary items—as well as housing for a few new families.

By mid-October, the church moved three families from Venezuela—a total of thirteen people, including an expectant mother—into its Sunday school classrooms converted to bedrooms. Within a week, two of the families living at the church were able to secure spots at shelters elsewhere in the city. The remaining family stayed at Ellis Avenue through Thanksgiving, before

moving to the Woodlawn’s Wadsworth shelter.

During families’ stays, the church employed the adults to complete various tasks including assembling donated goods to be displayed.

“I started out by having some of the migrants that were living here start organizing (donations) into a place where people could find things, get things and take things,” Friesen said.

He said the idea of a free store was not the original intention, but was encouraged to pursue it by a volunteer who’d been assisting migrants with food and supply deliveries at local police stations.

A free store, Friesen said, is a space allowing the community to come for basic necessities without charge. Over the past year and a half, similar stores have been established in Humboldt Park, Rogers Park and Bridgeport.

Unlike traditional church and nonprofit giveaways Frieson said, a free store allows people in need to retain their autonomy of choice when receiving help. “(We) are in the business of trying to retain people’s dignity,” said Friesen. “They get the agency and the dignity of getting to choose. And I think that’s much better than handing them a free bag and they don’t have a say in it.”

“Sometimes people are underresourced and (face) a lot of situations where their dignity gets taken away from them,” he continued.

Neighbors helping neighbors On a Thursday morning in midDecember, several volunteers were hard at work stacking shoes and folding coats in the church basement.

Among them was Julie Vassilatos, a Hyde Parker who has spent her last four Thursdays working to promote the developing free store.

“There’s no question that this is going to improve so many things,” said Vassilatos.

“This is creating an infrastructure that we will be able to use for the unhoused for years to come. We hope that we can get it organized enough to have kids in one room, grownups in another and bedding, toiletries and basic needs.”

Since late August of 2022, when the first waves of asylum seekers were bused to Chicago from the country’s southern border, hundreds of volunteers in neighborhoods across the city have stepped up to meet a growing need for supplies and other supportive services.

On the mid-South Side, which currently houses more than 1,000 migrants at temporary, city-run shelters from Bronzeville to Woodlawn, things are no different.

Often looking through bags of clothing alongside Vassilatos is Vicky Long, a Hyde Parker who also helps tutor ESL at nearby Shoesmith Elementary School.

“These people needed help and the type of help was fairly simple: providing clothes, food and shelter. It seems like it was the right thing to do,” said Long. “There’s a lot of people in Chicago that need help.”

In another room, Janie Neal described her path to volunteering while sifting through boxes of children’s clothing.

“I was looking for how to help. I used to volunteer a lot then I stopped when the pandemic started. I’m ready to come back,” said Neal, a graduate student. “I think it’s unfortunate that people had to leave their home. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t prepared to receive them.”

Neal, who lives across the street from the Lake Shore Hotel shelter, 4900B S. Lake Shore Dr., said that she’s followed much of the community controversy surrounding the site, but doesn’t understand the opposition.

“I thought it was great that people were going to have somewhere to live. I was disappointed in my neighbors for the hoopla they put up about it,” she said.

“Since I’ve been there, I really haven’t noticed anything.”

A free store for all At a chaotic community meeting with city officials in late August, neighbors were divided over the city’s plan to open the East Hyde Park shelter. Many of those who opposed it voiced frustration at the shelter opening with little notice, and the prospect of aid going to new arrivals after decades of divestment in South Side communities.

But on Thursday, Friesen said, he hopes the free store can be a unifier.

“It is absolutely not one of those things where we have to choose one or the other (community),” Friesen said. “We can and should do both for sure. That’s why my vision for the free store is that it would not be just for the migrants or our newest neighbors, but that it could be for the wider community too.”

Friesen said he anticipates the free store will be ready for business multiple mornings a week early in the new year, “maybe mid-January.”

For more info or to get involved, email ellisavenuechurch@gmail.com. Michael Liptrot is a staff writer for the Hyde Park Herald and a production fellow at WBEZ’s Reset.

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

INMIGRACIÓN

Iglesia del lado sur abrirá tienda gratuita para migrantes

Una tienda gratuita les permite a las personas necesitadas conservar su autonomía al recibir ayuda.

POR MICHAEL LIPTROT, HYDE PARK HERALD TRADUCIDO POR JACQUELINE SERRATO, SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

E

n el sótano de la Iglesia Bautista Ellis Avenue en el vecindario de Kenwood, un pequeño grupo de voluntarios se pasan los jueves por la mañana organizando abrigos, gorros y otras prendas de invierno para una nueva tienda gratuita para migrantes.

“Todas las personas necesitadas, ya sean nuevas o que hayan estado aquí durante mucho tiempo, necesitan saber dónde pueden ir a conseguir estas cosas”, dijo Jonathan Friesen, pastor de la iglesia durante quince años.

Ubicada en 5001 S. Ellis Ave., la tienda gratuita ofrecerá ropa de invierno, productos sanitarios y otros artículos esenciales para que las personas elijan a su discreción.

Es el más reciente de una serie de proyectos que la iglesia ha comenzado para brindar ayuda a los cientos de migrantes que se refugian en el hotel cercano, Lake Shore Hotel, 4900B S. Lake Shore Dr. Desde principios de septiembre, más de 600 personas, principalmente familias de Centro y Sudamérica, así como Haití, se han mudado al refugio gestionado por la Municipalidad.

Cuando la parroquia escuchó por primera vez la noticia de la apertura del refugio temporal a finales de agosto, dijo Friesen, los miembros de la congregación entraron en acción y lanzaron una colecta de abrigos de invierno. El alcance de este esfuerzo rápido se amplió para incluir más artículos, así como vivienda para algunas nuevas familias.

A mediados de octubre, la iglesia trasladó a tres familias de Venezuela (un total de trece personas, incluyendo una futura madre) a sus salones de escuela dominical convertidos en dormitorios. En una semana, dos de las familias que vivían en la iglesia pudieron conseguir lugares en refugios en otras partes de la ciudad. La familia restante se quedó en Ellis Avenue

hasta el Día de Acción de Gracias, antes de mudarse al refugio de Wadsworth en el vecindario de Woodlawn.

Durante las estadías de las familias, la iglesia empleó a los adultos para completar diversas tareas, como organizar los bienes donados.

“Comencé haciendo que algunos de los migrantes que vivían aquí comenzaran a organizar (donaciones) en un lugar donde la gente pudiera encontrar cosas, conseguirlas y llevárselas”, dijo Friesen.

Dijo que la idea de una tienda gratuita no era la intención original, pero un voluntario que había estado ayudando a los migrantes con entregas de alimentos y suministros en las comisarías de policía locales lo animó a implementarla.

Una tienda gratuita, dijo Friesen, es un espacio que permite a la comunidad acudir para satisfacer sus necesidades básicas sin costo. Durante el pasado año y medio, se han establecido tiendas similares en Humboldt Park, Rogers Park y Bridgeport.

A diferencia de las donaciones tradicionales de iglesias y organizaciones sin fines de lucro, dijo Frieson, una tienda gratuita les permite a las personas necesitadas conservar su autonomía al recibir ayuda. "(Nosotros) estamos en el 'negocio' de tratar de conservar la dignidad de las personas", dijo Friesen. “Obtienen la autonomía y la dignidad de poder elegir. Y creo que eso es mucho mejor que darles una bolsa gratis y que no tengan voz”.

“A veces las personas carecen de recursos y (enfrentan) muchas situaciones en las que les quitan su dignidad”, continuó.

Vecinos ayudando a vecinos Un jueves por la mañana a mediados de diciembre, varios voluntarios trabajaban arduamente arreglando zapatos y doblando abrigos en el sótano de la iglesia.

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

Entre ellos se encontraba Julie Vassilatos, una residente de Hyde Park que pasó los pasados cuatro jueves trabajando para promover la tienda gratuita en desarrollo.

"No hay duda de que esto mejorará muchas cosas", afirmó Vassilatos. “Esto está creando una infraestructura que podremos utilizar para las personas sin vivienda en los próximos años. Esperamos poder organizarlo lo suficiente como para tener niños en un cuarto, adultos en otro y ropa de cama, artículos de higiene y necesidades básicas”.

Desde finales de agosto de 2022, cuando las primeras oleadas de solicitantes de asilo fueron transportadas en autobús a Chicago desde la frontera sur del país, cientos de voluntarios en vecindarios de toda la ciudad han ayudado a satisfacer una creciente necesidad de suministros y otros servicios de apoyo.

En la zona central del lado sur, que actualmente alberga a más de 1,000 inmigrantes en refugios temporales administrados por la Municipalidad, desde Bronzeville hasta Woodlawn, las cosas no son diferentes.

A menudo, mirando bolsas de ropa junto a Vassilatos se encuentraá Vicky Long, otra residente de Hyde Park que también es tutora de inglés en la cercana escuela primaria Shoesmith.

“Estas personas necesitaban ayuda y el tipo de ayuda era bastante simple: proporcionarles ropa, comida y alojamiento.

Parece que fue lo correcto”, dijo Long. “Hay mucha gente en Chicago que necesita ayuda.

En otro cuarto, Janie Neal describió su camino hacia el voluntariado mientras revisaba cajas de ropa para niños.

“Estaba buscando cómo ayudar. Solía hacer mucho trabajo voluntario y lo dejé cuando comenzó la pandemia. Estoy listo para regresar”, dijo Neal, una estudiante de posgrado “Creo que es lamentable que la gente haya tenido que abandonar sus

hogares. Es lamentable que no estuviéramos preparados para recibirlos”.

Neal, que vive frente al refugio del Lake Shore Hotel, dijo que ha seguido gran parte de la controversia comunitaria en torno al sitio, pero no entiende a la oposición.

“Pensé que era fantástico que la gente tuviera un lugar dónde vivir. Me decepcionaron mis vecinos por el alboroto que armaron al respecto”, dijo. "Desde que estoy allí, realmente no he notado nada".

Una tienda gratuita para todos En una caótica reunión comunitaria con funcionarios de la ciudad a finales de agosto, los vecinos estaban divididos sobre el plan de abrir el refugio en East Hyde Park. Muchos de los que se opusieron expresaron su frustración por la apertura del refugio sin previo aviso y por la perspectiva de que la ayuda llegara a los recién llegados después de décadas de desinversión en las comunidades del lado sur.

Pero el jueves, Friesen dijo que espera que la tienda gratuita pueda ser algo unificador.

"No es en absoluto una cosa en la que tenemos que elegir una u otra (comunidad)", dijo Friesen. “Podemos y debemos hacerlo con ambas. Por eso mi visión para la tienda gratuita es que no sea sólo para los migrantes o nuestros nuevos vecinos, sino que también pueda ser para la comunidad en general”.

Friesen dijo que anticipa que la tienda gratuita estará lista para funcionar varias mañanas a la semana a principios del nuevo año, "tal vez a mediados de enero".

Para obtener más información o participar, envíe un correo electrónico a ellisavenuechurch@gmail.com. Michael Liptrot es reportero del periódico Hyde Park Herald y es pasante de producción en el programa Reset de WBEZ..

HEALTH

‘It’s a Human Dignity Issue’

A data analysis by WTTW News and the Hyde Park Herald/South Side Weekly found a stark disparity between access to quality nursing home care for Black and white Chicagoans.

BY BLAIR PADDOCK This story is a collaboration between WTTW News, South Side Weekly and Hyde Park Herald. Additional data reporting by Charmaine Runes and Jared Rutecki.

W

hen nursing home resident Curtis Spears fell while getting out of bed, his sister Julia Preston and Belhaven Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center staff members agreed on one detail: He fell.

How he ended up on the ground is where their stories differ.

Preston recounts Belhaven telling her that as Spears was being transferred to the bathroom, he lost his footing and fell.

Yet according to Preston, Spears had lost trunk control after a stroke years prior, and wouldn’t have been able to walk from his bed.

“He could recount the story almost verbatim,” Preston recalled. “[Staff ] was helping him out of bed to his chair, the chair moved and he fell to the floor, hurting his left knee and ankle. Why did the aide not use [the mechanical lift]?”

Preston said the home never acknowledged the discrepancy in reports.

Her brother, who has since died, spent several years in the home located in Morgan Park. The fall is just one of a series of issues Preston alleges in the numerous complaints to the home and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) she’s raised over the years.

Preston said the treatment at Belhaven is a symptom of a larger issue: a lack of standard enforcement by IDPH that leads to a racial and economic disparity in access to high-quality nursing homes.

“You can’t really blame Belhaven, because Belhaven is eating up the chicken and Public Health is letting them eat it,” Preston said.

An analysis by WTTW News and

the Hyde Park Herald/South Side Weekly found that the disparity between access to

quality nursing home care for Black and white Chicagoans is stark: Three of the

city’s five-star homes, as rated by Medicare, house majority White residents and are concentrated on the city’s North Side. There is another five-star home on the North Side that did not submit demographic data for 2021 to the Illinois Health Facilities & Services Review Board (HFSRB), the agency that collects this information.

There is a five-star home on the South Side that houses majority White residents.

There is also a five-star home on the West Side, but the home also did not submit demographic data to HFSRB. Among four- and five-star nursing homes, an average of 22 percent of residents are Black, while 70 percent are White.

Chicago’s population is 28.8 percent Black and 42.4 percent white, according to census data.

Medicare, the federal agency that evaluates nursing homes, rates a home’s performance using one through five stars on the basis of health inspections, staffing and other quality measures. One star means quality much below average and five means much above average quality.

Of the sixteen nursing homes with majority Black residents in Chicago, fifteen are one- or two-star homes.

Eight homes in Chicago did not submit their demographic data to HFSRB, including three North, three South and two West Side homes.

“Nursing homes that provide services for Black and Brown people, predominantly, those services are poor in the first place,” Preston said. “There’s serious racial disparities, when it comes to those persons who depend upon Medicaid to pay for their care.”

This disparity is also found in how residents are paying for homes: In those one-star homes, 91.6 percent of residents are using public sources like Medicare or Medicaid.

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

HEALTH In 2010, the Illinois legislature passed updates to landmark nursing home reform legislation intended to address these disparities. That ambitious legislation included new requirements like minimum staff-to-patients ratios in homes and increases in the number of nursing home inspectors.

But thirteen years later, a WTTW News and Hyde Park Herald/South Side Weekly analysis has found that IDPH has lagged in implementation of the legislation.

“It’s my life’s work down the toilet. I mean, like, thirty years of doing this, and the differences are so minimal,” said Wendy Meltzer, the former executive director of the advocacy group Illinois Citizens for Better Care.

“These really significant, theoretically, legislative victories—what happens afterwards is that nobody enforces them,” Meltzer said.

When asked about the disparities among area nursing homes and current efforts being taken to address them, IDPH officials pointed to recent legislation signed

by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2022 that ties funding to staffing.

The lack of enforcement around staffing and inspections from IDPH is in large part why these stark differences in quality of care persist, according to multiple people interviewed for this story.

What’s also causing a lag in accountability of bad actors in homes is that nursing homes in Illinois aren’t required to carry liability insurance.

Attorney Steve Levin of Levin and Perconti said a substantial number of nursing homes are operating with grossly insufficient insurance to none at all— leaving ownership to dodge financial responsibility in lawsuits.

Two Homes: A Block Away, A World of Difference For a deeper look into these disparities, take a look at Belhaven and Smith Village in Morgan Park on the Southwest Side.

Belhaven, a one-star home in which the majority of residents are Black, is a mere block away from Smith Village, a three-star home in which the majority of residents are White.

When comparing four years of reports from the Illinois Department of Public Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the difference

that they are currently in the process of implementing a new licensure system, which would “provide us additional insight into facility ownership.” They said they plan to roll out the system in 2024 and that it would give the department “additional capabilities to link multi-ownership to facility performance.”

Care Complaints and Staff Shortages

Belhaven Nursing Home in Morgan Park.

in quality of care is stark.

In one reported incident at Belhaven, the facility failed to perform CPR on a resident, according to IDPH surveys. That patient died shortly thereafter.

In March 2021, a certified nursing assistant (CNA) found the seventy-oneyear-old resident “not responsive and slumped over in the bed,” with a faint pulse, and the CNA “didn’t really see [the resident’s] chest move.”

Yet the nursing assistant did not perform life-sustaining CPR because she mistook the resident for a DNR, otherwise known as a “do not resuscitate.” She “thought that [the resident] was a DNR because of his decline that he wasn’t well for a while,” the survey reads.

It was when family and other staff were notified of the resident’s death that the CNA realized the resident required full code care (i.e. all resuscitation measures), stating “O.M.G. [the resident] was full code,” according to the survey.

The survey also details that another nurse failed to provide visitation to immediate family members of a resident under the same name after the resident’s death.

In response to the incident, the home stated in a subsequent plan of correction that all residents in the facility have been assessed for either a Full Code or Do Not Resuscitate order.

Alleged issues about the quality of care at Belhaven go beyond this incident.

In reports from 2019 to 2023 collected

by IDPH, Belhaven has been cited for repeated cases involving a lack of fall prevention, failure to prevent abuse and COVID-19 mitigation.

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

Photo by Brittany Sowacke

Medicare has rated the home’s performance one out of five stars on the basis of health inspections, staffing and quality measures. According to the agency, Belhaven ranks “much below” the national average.

Over the past four years alone, the home has amassed a total of $118,700 in state fines and more than $879,000 in federal fines.

In 2021, Belhaven received nearly $13 million from Medicare and Medicaid from patients. It housed 170 residents.

The for-profit home has three owners with 5percent or greater interest in licensee: Michael Blisko with 35 percent ownership, Moishe Guin with 16.2 percent and Tira Gubin with 16.2 percent. They all own about a dozen other homes with much overlap. Of the thirteen other homes Blisko has ownership in, five have been cited for abuse and twelve of those homes have a one- or two-star Medicare rating.

One home under Blisko’s ownership is not rated due to a history of serious quality issues, according to CMS. The home, City View Multicare Center in west suburban Cicero, “is subject to more frequent inspections, escalating penalties, and potential termination from Medicare and Medicaid as part of the Special Focus Facility (SFF) program.”

Blisko did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The administrator for Belhaven said the facility had no comment.

IDPH wasn’t able to comment specifically on Blisko’s record, and said that home violations are not currently kept based on facility ownership.

The department did point out

Staff at Belhaven, too, report difficulties within the home.

Walking into the home is overwhelming, according to a staff member. WTTW News is not using the staff member’s name due to fear of retaliation. They said it can smell like urine, that nursing stations are falling apart and, overall, residents aren’t getting proper care.

“They barely have nurses in here because don’t nobody want to be here,” the staff member said. “They barely have CNAs here to take care of the patients because of the lack of pay … so a lot of patients aren’t getting the proper care.”

One contributing factor to these conditions is chronic understaffing on the floor, the worker alleged. Meanwhile, multiple staffers’ hours are getting cut short, the worker alleged.

Typically, this staffer would work seventy-five hours per pay period, plus overtime. The staffer claims that lately, they’ve been reduced to forty-five hours per pay period.

“How do they expect for us to live like that,” the staffer said. “We can’t pay our bills. … They act like they do not care.”

According to IDPH surveys, residents haven’t received proper incontinence care.

According to a report dated June 24, 2022, a CNA and surveyor walked into a resident’s room where “the ammonia smell from the urine was so bad [their] eyes were burning” and the CNA said the soiled disposable brief from a resident weighed “about seven pounds.” The resident stated that “no one changes her during the night.”

In another incident from a June 13, 2019, survey, the facility was cited for a failure to ensure incontinence care was provided in a timely manner. The survey details that a large amount of feces was noted on a fitted sheet and the resident was “heard crying out ‘please someone help me, please God, help me, help me.’”

Mya James, a CNA at the home, said she has seen these instances of neglect

HEALTH firsthand.

She’s worked in the home for about a year, primarily with patients who have dementia. She said a resident’s call light button was repeatedly put out of reach by another nurse—an action that James called abuse.

But when James brought this to the attention of her supervisors, she said, initial talk of investigating the matter soon faded.

She said she was never interviewed by management, and IDPH inspectors never came to investigate the abuse complaint.

James said she was met with apprehension from co-workers about reporting this. She said there were rumors floating around and people were “talking bad” about her.

“You mean to tell me you guys care more about (employing) workers than the abuse and the care of patients in the facility?” James said.

Though she said IDPH never responded to her complaint, similar complaints can be found in previous state reports. Within the past four years, at least four IDPH surveys of the facility detail a failure to ensure call lights were in reach for residents.

Paying for Care How does a resident end up at a home like Belhaven?

Preston said one reason is the payment procedure. When arriving at a facility, Medicare is going to cover 100 percent for the first twenty days. The next eighty days, Medicare will cover 80 percent.

However, after that Medicare funding runs dry, families need to apply for public aid. Preston said it can take six months to a year to get loved ones approved. And in the interim, few homes accept pending Medicare funding.

But Belhaven does, “and that’s where the problem comes in,” Preston said.

Preston tried to create change within the home while her brother was a resident, but said she was met with resistance.

She became the president of Belhaven’s family council, a group of residents’ family members who try to reform care.

But instead of resulting in more oversight, Preston alleged management kicked her brother out of the home without proper reasoning—a practice known as hospital dumping.

“They took him to the [Veterans

Smith Village nursing home in Morgan Park.

Affairs hospital] and left him and would not go back for him and would not let them send [him] back,” Preston said.

Just a six-minute walk away at Smith Village, residents of the three-star home are offered striking services: a movie theater, a salon and spa and a dinner menu offering filet mignon cooked to a resident’s desired temperature.

Medicare gives Smith Village a threestar overall rating and a five-star staffing rating. It’s a nonprofit home that services a population of people who are majority White and privately paying. In 2021, the skilled nursing section of the home reported having forty-two residents.

In operation for almost 100 years, the home offers both independent and assisted living. Smith Village describes itself as a “a secure, inclusive place that affords you the opportunity to explore the new, rekindle old passions, and forge connections with warm and caring people.”

But even a higher-rated home gets complaints to IDPH. In reports from 2019 to 2022, Smith Village has been cited for more than $79,000 in state fines and more than $126,000 in federal fines.

Advocates say staffing is at the heart of the issue of inadequate care for most homes across the city.

“Enormous racial disparities in the qualities of care,” said Meltzer, formerly of advocacy group Illinois Citizens for Better Care. “They’re less enormous and not because the Black homes have gotten better, but because some of the majority White homes are not as good as they were because of staffing issues.”

Even highly-rated homes see their care questioned by IDPH. In one IDPH survey from January 2022, the facility failed to report a fall with

Photo by Brittany Sowacke

a serious injury and death to the state.

Per the report, a resident was found lying on the bathroom floor with blood and a gash to the back of the head. Though emergency medical services were called and the resident was sent to the hospital, they died shortly after arriving.

When an IDPH official asked for the report, the home’s executive director stated that Smith Village “didn’t have to report that incident, R39 died at the hospital from cardiac arrest.” The associate executive director told the surveyor that “they were told by their consultant that this incident was not reportable.”

Later in the report, the surveyor writes that a resident under the same name had several falls during their time at the home, yet the facility did not put any interventions in place to prevent or minimize the resident’s falls and to avoid serious injury.

Smith Village officials did not immediately return a request for further comment.

Legislative Hopes Dashed There was a renewed hope for improvement among advocates and residents when the 2010 nursing home reform law was passed. The amendment built on the existing 1979 Nursing Home Care Act—a consumer rights statute to protect residents’ rights in Illinois.

That 159-page bill updating the law attempted to address everything from raising the floor for staff-to-resident ratios to state oversight to creating designation for distressed facilities.

But hope has fizzled as implementation of the landmark legislation is falling flat.

“We would not be confronting the same issues thirteen years later [if the legislation was effective],” said former state

Sen. Jacqueline Collins, a Democrat of Chicago, who pushed for the reform.

“Ultimately, if you enforce the law, the quality of care would meet a legal standard across the board,” Meltzer said.

But some nursing homes are not meeting the minimum staffing numbers as required by the 2010 law.

Per the bill, effective Jan. 1, 2014, minimum staffing ratios were increased to 3.8 hours of nursing and personal care each day for a resident needing skilled care, and 2.5 hours of daily nursing and personal care for a resident needing intermediate care.

Within the available data from CMS and IDPH, about 32percent of homes in Chicago are not meeting the minimum 2.5-hour requirement for residents.

In response to these figures, IDPH said there are “several factors that have affected the implementation of the staffing requirements starting with a lengthy rules making process in which the nursing home industry pushed for rules that were advantageous to the industry.”

In addition, under an amendment to the law passed in early 2023, the fines tied to the state’s minimum staffing requirements were delayed by two and a half years to July 1, 2025.

The department said a “larger issue of state hiring challenges and national staffing shortages has impeded IDPH’s ability to hire more surveyors, however the department is in the process of hiring additional surveyor staff to meet requirements.”

The state’s health department, too, continually falls short of legal staffing requirements for its home surveyors, the people who conduct inspections and complaint investigations. Per the 2010 law, at least one surveyor should be employed for every 300 licensed long-term care beds in the state. All surveyors should have been hired and trained by the end of the calendar year 2015, according to Long Term Care Facility reports from IDPH. Yet, when comparing the number of beds to nursing home surveyors, the state is currently behind its legal requirement.

According to IDPH records, as of 2022 there were 104,420 licensed and/or certified beds in the state. That year, the state employed 187 surveyors—about 161 surveyors short of the requirement. It’s a goal the state has continued to miss since the law went into place.

In response, the department again DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

HEALTH pointed to the national staffing challenge for nursing homes.

Another integral piece of the 2010 reform package was the creation of a designation of distressed facilities. This piece of the law requires IDPH to generate and publish a quarterly list of nursing homes that were considered “distressed.”

IDPH would establish a mentor program for owners of distressed facilities, as well as establish sanctions against facilities that don’t comply with the act.

Again, IDPH has not followed through with this. Thirteen years after the bill’s passage, the Illinois House approved a plan to clarify which nursing homes meet a distressed facility designation.

In response to this, IDPH said the department is in the process of completing the administrative rules the Distressed Facilities legislation requires.

“If you have a really crappy nursing home, you can impose additional requirements and additional supervision and make them hire a consultant to help fix it up,” Meltzer said. “And they’ve just never done it.”

No Compensation for Victims Levin has been advocating for residents since there were just a handful of lawyers working on nursing home-related cases nationwide.

In his decades-long experience, he says the most pressing issue now is that nursing homes in Illinois don’t require liability insurance—which would mandate the person responsible for damages to pay for the damage they caused.

Though lawyers “perfected the art of discovering what nursing homes do wrong,” Levin said, victims aren’t actually receiving financial compensation due to this lack of insurance. “[Homes] started to cut back on things like insurance, so a substantial amount of nursing homes are operating with grossly insufficient insurance or no insurance at all,” Levin said.

Before or during litigation, a nursing home being sued can transfer the operating company to another entity, according to Levin. That company being sued can then say that they’re out of business and therefore don’t have assets that can be collected.

Though it’s effectively the same

residents and staff, Levin explained, “You can’t collect against them because they weren’t the licensee at the time your client was a resident.”

This loophole, he said, has led to a backlog of hundreds of lawsuit winners in Cook County and throughout Illinois with nowhere to turn to for financial compensation.

“It’s no different than a twenty-yearold drunk driver who killed someone and you go to sue them and they say, ‘Sorry, we don’t have insurance and we don’t have any money—you’re out of luck,’” Levin said.

Levin is teaming up with other lawyers to try to require homes to have insurance.

The lawyers are currently meeting with legislators to push for this.

“Homes shouldn’t be allowed to have the licensee transferred until some of these financial responsibility topics I’m addressing are met,” Levin said.

It’s strenuous work advocating for a loved one in a nursing home. That can involve working alongside an ombudsman who will “work their butts off ” for families but can only serve as an advocate, Preston said. However, if a family goes the complaint route through IDPH with a specific issue, in her experience, Preston said “they’ll say they don’t see it.”

Nursing homes are as effective as a family member demands them to be, she said.

Since her brother’s departure from Belhaven, Preston has moved on to national work. She heads the Regional Family Council Consortium Network, a national group that hosts seminars and other talks to increase public awareness about abuse in homes.

“They work through us, they really try to advocate for their family members—they are concerned about their family members,” Preston said. “And people should receive quality care across the board—not because they have the resources to do so, but because it’s a human dignity issue.” Contact: bpaddock@wttw.com | @BlairPaddock Blair Paddock is an investigative reporter with WTTW News. Previously, they were an associate producer with “Chicago Tonight.”

Prior to joining the station, they interned at a variety of places, from NASA to WBEZ to the Chicago Sun-Times’ Homicide Watch Project.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

Hip-Hop Museum Among Efforts to Put Respect on Chicago’s Contributions The folks who fondly remember the South Side 90s hip-hop scene are fiercely protective when preserving their history.

BY EVAN F. MOORE

C

hicago Hip-Hop Heritage Museum cofounder Darrell Roberts often finds himself having to set visitors straight when it comes to the focus of the Grand Boulevard-based institution, which opened in 2021.

Roberts, a Roseland-raised graffiti writer nicknamed “Artistic,” says some tour goers are expecting that rap legends Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur are prominently featured in the museum. He kindly reminds them that the building is a Chicago hip-hop museum—not a New York or Los Angeles one.

“When people come in and see the entirety in one space, people say stuff like: ‘We didn't know Chicago had this much history.’ They’ve never seen anything representing us,” Roberts said. “We went ahead and decided to convert this thing into an actual continuing exhibit and then we created the name Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Museum. We’ve been rolling ever since.”

Roberts doesn’t blame those folks for their “conditioning,” as he put it. After all, he remembers New York’s iron grip on hip-

hop in the public imagination and its effect on how other cities see themselves in the battle for respect.

“My room was filled with New York, and I knew the history. I knew more about New York than I did Chicago. And I didn’t realize that it had conditioned me because [Chicago] hip-hop wasn’t readily available.”

Chicago hip-hop got no love from the media. “You couldn’t access ours as easy as you could New York’s. New York’s was everywhere, right? Front cover of magazines, books, TV, and the movies.

Chicago doesn’t have a hip-hop movie.”

Locally, househeads often looked down on hip-hop, Roberts says. He recalls the early subculture clashes between househeads and hip-hop purists stemming from the former genre being created locally, while the other traced back to New York.

“I didn’t realize this back then, but I feel that people from the house community [enjoyed] having ownership of House being created in Chicago, whereas hip-hop wasn’t,” said Roberts. “[Househeads] pretty much saw a predominantly New York thing—so people rejected that.”

MUSIC The Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Museum is the most comprehensive space celebrating and preserving the city’s hip-hop scene to date. Throughout the two-story building, visitors can see party flyers (known in the day as “pluggers”); concert posters; mixtapes and CDs; graffiti pieces; photos of Chicago rap legends like Common, Twista, Chance the Rapper, and Da Brat; newspaper and magazine articles featuring these artists.

Perhaps most importantly, it features a timeline detailing Chicago’s contributions to not only the genre, but to music in general. (Full disclosure, one of the writer’s articles is framed in the museum) Roberts and his team do something rarely seen this year during hip-hop’s 50th anniversary: the museum gives the city—its breakers, emcees, DJs, and graf writers—their flowers. After all, Chicago’s contributions to hip-hop are often reduced to passing mentions or a quick, backhanded acknowledgement of drill, a controversial subgenre now imitated by other cities and international artists.

The folks who fondly remember the South Side 90s hip-hop scene are fiercely protective when preserving their history— so much so that many continue to keep their lived experiences in mind when contributing to their communities today.

Whether they’re advocating for the responsible consumption of marijuana, preserving local hip-hop heritage, or

Euphonics members hanging out in a South Side basement.

“A lot of times, being a young girl in the culture could be challenging, you know?

Just because it was almost like we were looked at as [if ] we had to prove ourselves harder just because we were women,” said Richards. “One of the things that was birthed out of that was us forming the Euphoria crew.”

Having lived in Bronzeville and Beverly, Richards was one of the co-hosts of “Whatz Up Show,” a 90’s CAN TV callin talk show where Euphonics/Euphoria members brazenly discussed the city’s subculture.

“Why do we feel like we have to answer to these guys all the time? [The guys] don’t put that same pressure on each other. But

Photo provided

him to build a community with the hiphop scene.

This is top of mind when advising GKMC and the Peace Book, a public safety resource that sets up neighborhoodbased peace commissions. The Peace Book also aims to assist community-based groups who will train young people to become peacekeepers, violence interrupters, mediators, and restorative justice practitioners.

“When I got introduced to hip-hop, it brought me a community and relationships with people who would otherwise have been

“It’s developed into something that is definitely not a subculture anymore. Hip-hop is embedded in everything now.” co-founding a youth organization that’s leading the conversation on self-reliance within intentionally divested communities, hip-hop remains front and center for the people who spoke to the Weekly.

Arianne Richards is the executive director of Chicago NORML, a marijuana advocacy organization, and a member of Euphonics, a South Side hip-hop collective that was well-known for its parties at Chicago venues. Later, she was instrumental in forming Euphonics’ all-girl offshoot, Euphoria.

now when I look back, I look at it as it was, a safe space for us as young women figuring ourselves out and who we were.

[And] it’s funny because we were looked at as this subculture, and it’s interesting how it’s developed into something that is definitely not a subculture anymore. Hiphop is embedded in everything now.”

Kofi Ademola, the cofounder of youth organization GoodKidsMadCity, credits Chicago hip-hop for saving his life.

Ademola says the genre pulled him out of tense situations in the streets and allowed

Darrell Roberts.

Photo by Evan F Moore

my opps [opposition],” said Ademola, who is also an Euphonics member. “It taught us more of our similarities than differences….

It made us put a lot of our flags down to really build a community together.”

People like Richards, Roberts, and Ademola often give credit to community elders who provided spaces for youth like them to navigate the world.

Nancy Cobb, the mother of Euphonics member Krsna Golden, thought of her community organizing background when allowing her son and his friends to utilize the basement of her Washington Heights home—as long as Golden agreed to her strict terms (graduate from high school, get a job, pay rent, etc.) Virginia Cobb, Nancy’s mother and Golden’s grandmother, who bought the home in 1966, co-signed Euphonics’ use of the space.

The collective now had space to strategize, breakdance, and write raps, among other activites. “As they were creating Euphonics they were meeting at my house and Krsna was at that stage of wanting some independence, but he wasn’t grown; he’s still in high school. I said, ‘Well, here’s what you got to do,’” said Cobb. “I have an appreciation for the culture as it was a way to persuade not just the kids themselves, but the adult communities of parents to be involved and support these kids in their artistic endeavors.”

“The kids are going to run their world eventually, so let’s give them a good start.

There were a couple of kids where hip-hop saved their lives, because they sort of went the other way; the gangs were recruiting them. I let [Euphonics members] stay in the basement. They always thought they were sneaking in or sneaking out, or staying late. I knew what was going on [laughs].”

Richards reflects on the significance of Cobb’s basement as a gathering and creative space. She passes down the lessons learned back then as she raises three daughters ages fifteen, ten and eight.

To some, saying hip-hop saves lives may sound corny. Others will say the genre is rife with violence, sexism, culture vultures, shattered dreams, and broken promises.

However, many call bulls--t on any blanket statements—including Chicago’s erasure.

After all, several of our city’s community leaders found their footing in hip-hop: a genre that prefers honesty over perfection. Evan F. Moore is an award-winning writer, author, and DePaul University journalism adjunct instructor. Evan is a third-generation South Shore homeowner.

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

CLASSIFIED SERVICE DIRECTORY Section To place your ad, call: 1-773-358-3129 or email: malone@southsideweekly.com Ad copy deadline: 1:00 p.m. Friday before Thursday publication date

Cleaning Service

Help Wanted070 Exterminators Best Maids 708-599-7000 House Cleaning Services Family owned since 1999 www.bestmaids.com

Construction

083

JO & RUTH REMODELING We Specialize in Vintage Homes and Restorations!

Painting, Power Washing, Deck Sealing, Brick Repair, Tuckpointing, Carpentry, Porch/Deck, Kitchen & Bath Remodeling. *Since 1982* 773-575-7220

088 Plastering 143 Help Wanted 001

=DS ¶(P 7UDS ¶(P Pest Control, LLC Residential and Commercial Pest Management Services offered: • Bug Spraying • Fumigation • Exterminator Services • Insect Control • Other Pest Control • Rodent Control & Removal • Termite Control CALL FOR FREE ESTIMATE: (773) 590-0622

Movers

123

MICHAEL MOVING We Move, Deliver, and Do Clean-Out Jobs 773.977.9000

KELLY Plastering Co. Plaster Patching, Dryvit, Stucco.

FULLY INSURED. 815-464-0606

7S\TIPUN

The Plumbing Department Available for all of your residential plumbing needs.

Lic. & insured. Serving Chicago & Suburbs. Senior Discounts.

Call Jeff at 773-617-3686

Advertise in the South Side Weekly Today!!

9VVÄUN

001

CONRAD ROOFING CO. Specializing in Architectural Metal Work, Gutters & Downspouts, Bay Windows, &RUQLFHV 5RRÀQJ 6ODWH Clay Tile, Cedar, Shingles, Flat/Energy Star Roof 773-286-6212

Advertise in the South Side Weekly Today!!

Let Us Help Build Your Business!

Advertise in the Business & Service Directory Today!!

Ad copy deadline: 1:00 p.m. Friday before Thursday publication date.

To Place your ad, call:

773-358-3129 or email:

malone@southsideweekly.com 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

BUSINESS & SERVICE SHOWCASE:

Conrad Roofing Co.

MICHAEL MOVING COMPANY

of Illinois Inc.

SPECIALIZING IN ARCHITECTURAL: METAL WORK:

• Cornices • Bay Windows • Ornaments • Gutters & Downspouts • Standing & Flat Seam Roofs ROOFING WORK: • Slate • Clay Tile • Cedar • Shingles • Flat/Energy Star Roof

(773) 286-6212

ZZZ FRQUDGURRÀQJ FRP

708-599-7000

Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

House Cleaning Services

Family owned since 1999

Serving Hyde Park and surrounding communities

773-977-9000

www.bestmaids.com

PICTURE YOUR BUSINESS HERE! Advertise in the Business & Service Directory today!!

CLEANING -

PEST CONTROL -

708-599-7000 Residential and Commercial House Cleaning Services

Family owned since 1999

www.bestmaids.com

CONSTRUCTION -

Residential Plumbing Service

࠮ )\N :WYH`PUN ࠮ -\TPNH[PVU ࠮ ,_[LYTPUH[VY :LY]PJLZ ࠮ 0UZLJ[ *VU[YVS ࠮ 6[OLY 7LZ[ *VU[YVS ࠮ 9VKLU[ *VU[YVS 9LTV]HS ࠮ ;LYTP[L *VU[YVS

Plumbing • Drain Cleaning • Sewer Camera/Locate Water Heater Installation/Repair Service • Tankless Water Heater Installation/Repair Service Toilet Repair • Faucet/Fixture Repair Vintage Faucet/Fixture Repair • Ejector/Sump Pump • Garbage Disposals • Battery Back-up Systems

Services offered:

CALL FOR FREE ESTIMATE:

SERVICES INCLUDE:

Licensed & Insured • Serving Chicago & Suburbs

10% OFF Senior Citizen Discount

(773) 590-0622 Call 773-617-3686

KELLY

)DPLO\ 2ZQHG 6LQFH PLASTERING CO.

4`^a]VeV CV^`UV]Z_X DVcgZTVd PLASTER PATCHING DRYVIT :WLJPHSPZ[Z PU! STUCCO

࠮ =PU[HNL /VTLZ 9LZ[VYH[PVUZ ࠮ 2P[JOLUZ )H[OZ ࠮ )HZLTLU[Z ࠮ ,SLJ[YPJ 7S\TIPUN ࠮ >HSS -SVVY ;PSL ࠮ 7HPU[PUN *HYWLU[Y`

of Illinois Inc.

Pest Management

-2 587+ PLASTERING 5(02'(/,1* *HQHUDO &RQWUDFWRUV

ROOFING Conrad Roofing Co.

PLUMBING -

FULLY INSURED

(815) 464-0606

License #: 058-197062

SPECIALIZING IN ARCHITECTURAL: METAL WORK:

• Cornices • Bay Windows • Ornaments • Gutters & Downspouts • Standing & Flat Seam Roofs

ROOFING WORK:

• Slate • Clay Tile • Cedar • Shingles • Flat/Energy Star Roof

(773) 286-6212

ZZZ FRQUDGURRÀQJ FRP

HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW!

Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory today!! email: malone@southsideweekly.com

HELP YOUR

BUSINESS GROW! MOVING :H :RUN :LWK <RX 7R 0HHW <RXU 1HHGV

MICHAEL MOVING COMPANY Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

Serving Hyde Park and surrounding communities

773-977-9000

Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory. Call today!

1-773-358-3129 email: malone@southsideweekly.com

FILM

An Absurd Episode in Black Girlhood “CHAOS holds up well all on its own, but when in conversation with Barber’s musical discography, a larger universe unfolds.”

BY ARIEON WHITTSEY

T

he short film CHAOS, written by Chicago native Jasmine Barber, also known as J Bambii, depicts the disorienting experience of Black girlhood.

Barber is an artist, tarot reader, and founder of the music showcase series The Brown Skin Lady Show. Released on Halloween and joining a lineup of recent Afro-Surrealist media, such as The Other Black Girl and Atlanta, CHAOS portrays the absurdity and horror of the Black experience, and specifically internalized racism.

CHAOS holds up well all on its own, but when in conversation with Barber’s musical discography, a larger universe unfolds. She dropped the soulful boom-bap EP Retrograde under the name J Bambii in December 2018. The three-track project touches on a range of topics and Barber is a confident emcee who intertwines childhood nostalgia, feelings of apathy toward a complicated world, and the effort to be her authentic self into the lyrics. The EP’s cover features a school photo of a young Barber wearing a pink sweater adorned with small purple tulips. Her hair is styled in large curls and a metallic ball secures a curly ponytail on top of her head. She appears completely unconcerned with the camera in front of her. The YouTube description holds a single Audre Lorde quote: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

CHAOS depicts this bruising—what it looks like to be vulnerable and be met with a very specific kind of violence. Navigating Black girlhood is the paradox of being told that your blackness is all at once too much and not enough, even by other Black people. With the entire film shot in black and white, it seems like a memory, dated.

A discomfort presents itself to the modernday viewer, as the film and its events should feel older, but viewers can sense that the same ideologies are present today. This

element lends itself to the film’s thematic style, which is similar to that of an oldschool horror movie.

The film’s opening foreshadows the negation of a happy, uncomplicated ending for someone who exists in a body like Barber’s. Two young lovers hold hands, dreamily staring into each other’s eyes as a horn swells. They sit comfortably outside on school bleachers, leaning in for a kiss. The music turns into a sudden shriek, and the two disappear to reveal a young Jasmine (portrayed by Harlem West) daydreaming in class. Jasmine gazes at her crush from across the science room and later gives him a note with the question, “Will you go out with me?” followed by “Yes” and “No” checkboxes.

In the next scene, the absurd is introduced as a group of Black boys insult Jasmine in ways that are tinged with internalized racism. The boys compare her to famous Black characters who have become synonymous with ugliness: “Man, he finna go hang out with Precious big ass.”

She’s also likened to Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple along with a string of insults about her weight. The crush, played by hip-hop artist $imba P, is mocked by his friends for hanging out with Jasmine.

Their mouths fill the screen as the friends trade insults about her and the soundtrack becomes something out of a thriller, foreboding and dangerous.

The scene holds a palpable weight, displaying a tension and absurdity that carry the film and sync up with Afro-surrealist techniques. CHAOS uses the behavior of the boys to add additional layers to a situation that could be seen as teenagers behaving poorly. The layers of the story build as the viewer moves through the film displaying a reality that can seem nightmarish but still accurately represents the complex reality of Black people. In this scene, we understand that these boys have learned to mock a reflection of themselves, their mothers,

sisters, and aunts. This issue is highlighted later in the film when the boys end up in detention and Jasmine’s best friend (played

by Chima Ikoro, the Weekly's Community Builder) says, “Who’s going to pick you up from detention? Your Black-ass mama.”

What’s even more potent about the scene is the intentionality in the insults.

Black media figures such as Precious from the eponymous film and Celie from The Color Purple are identified within their individual cinematic worlds and in real life as unattractive. They are both dark-skinned, poor, and considered either too skinny or too fat. Despite their significance in film history, they have both been criticized for perpetuating Black stereotypes. This criticism is not only a depiction of how these boys perceive Jasmine but also a reflection of how she is often viewed in society and how society forces her to see herself.

CHAOS continues to explore internalized racism throughout the rest of the film, displaying what should feel like dated racial ideologies. In true horror fashion, a spiraling piano medley introduces us to the worst-case scenario: Jasmine gets the note back with “Fat Black Bitch” written across her original question.

She’s later pictured watching Tyra Banks berate a girl on the 2000s series America’s Next Top Model. Tyra’s monologue, in this context, feels like a device to point out the ridiculous responsibility placed on Jasmine to change something about herself after the note incident. “We were rooting for you; we were all rooting for you—learn something from this!” Immediately after, a skin-whitening commercial appears on screen and begins to haunt Jasmine.

The over-the-top, cream-slathering ad, featuring the line, “This is the skin to die for,” is unforgettable—an illusory and horrific moment. At this point, we finally learn more about how Jasmine’s self-image is influenced by the world around her.

But what stands out most in this film

is J Bambii’s rap interlude, which takes a closer look at the patterns in Jasmine’s romantic life and the tension created by her Blackness, hair, and weight. It’s a dynamic scene within the film, featuring Jasmine as Frankenstein’s bride, an even younger version of Jasmine dancing innocently, and a mad scientist mixing a skin-lightening potion. The lyrics illustrate the effort to live authentically and loudly: “Add the weight/ I’m breaking seams bitch.” There is an obvious confidence, a sense of acceptance that has been reached, but on the other hand, the bruising is also obvious: “Keep these niggas in yo dreams bitch/ hurt by what you heard and seen, shit.” With this scene, Barber vulnerably communicates the contradictions of her experience, highlighting how young Black girls learn to navigate societal expectations while remaining true to themselves. She also explores the jarring experience of encountering racism within one’s own community.

Despite its use of disorienting film techniques, such as its black-and-white aesthetic, a set of instrumentals, and surrealist visual effects, the nine-minute film manages to stay grounded in reality.

It never displays traumatic images for shock value or veers into overly campy elements. CHAOS is a worthwhile watch to understand the complicated emotions and experiences associated with internalized racism. Although it’s not a joyful film, there is an undercurrent of hope—and a silent ask for the world to be a little kinder to Black girls. Arieon Whittsey (they/them/theirs) is a storyteller who has recently made their home in Chicago. They are an enjoyer of all forms of media, especially contemporary novels that make them cry and music that makes them dance.

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Community Hoops

As part of our community safety initiative, the Weekly invited community members to join us in pick up basketball games, a first aid teach-in, and more.

BY CHIMA IKORO, JORDAN ESPARZA

O

n Saturday, December 9, South Side Weekly hosted Community Hoops, the first event in our community safety initiative series. The Weekly invited community members out to have conversations about gun violence on the South Side, receive resources via a first aid teach-in, commune over food, and play pick up style basketball games. The event took place at Lakeshore Sport and Fitness in the Loop from 11am to 3pm.

At the start of the event, participants filed into the gym to the sound of music spun by DJ Brogawd. Players began to shoot around and warm up for the games. Once enough people arrived, players organized themselves into teams, autonomously choosing captains based on performance they noticed as they warmed up.

Musician and South Sider Ausar was among the group of basketball players.

He walked into the event hoping to build community and have fun.

“There were a lot of new faces that I don't see in the artistic sphere, but there were also a lot of homies who I have met throughout the years who were also there and were kicking it and it seemed like a great environment and just a dope time in general.” Ausar said.

“There was also food so that immediately took it to another level,” he continued, laughing.

With South Side Weekly and Hyde Park Herald shirts as their jerseys, the first game kicked off. The room filled with anticipation and excitement as team SSW came back from a deep early game deficit to win by a single basket.

“It was competitive, which I always enjoy because it brings out the best in people, and it was a lot of fun,” said artist and teacher Trey Raines, also known as The Third. “I enjoyed being able to step up and compete, I enjoyed losing because people

The Third (right, in SSW jersey) guards Ausar on a Hyde Park Herald fast break.

Photo by Jordan Esparza

on the other team got excited, and then that got me excited.” he said.

Third also expressed gratitude for having the space to meet new acquaintances. “Now that I go outside I may see somebody and it’s like ‘aye, we met at [this] community event, and now we have community together,” he said.“It just

Medics Group. Ujimaa Medics got started in 2014 with basic gunshot wound training and first response for asthma, while sharing some Know Your Rights information in some of their workshops. The group has expanded since then, adding CPR training, among other resources. “The core of the work that we’re doing is this idea of

has left people in the Black community vulnerable,” he said.

Before getting into the workshop, Ujimaa members asked attendees about their experience with gun violence. Asked if anyone was concerned about being shot, or concerned for the safety of friends and family, almost everyone raised their hands.

The group was also asked if anyone present had ever been shot, and one participant raised his hand. The group responded with an expression of gratitude for his life.

“A lot of the answers to those questions were unfortunately ‘yes.’ I can remember there were only two things that I actually put my hand down for,” Ausar said. “But in terms of being around gun violence or hearing gunshots or even seeing somebody else get shot, all the answers to all of those were ‘yes.’ So it was kind of harrowing to see everybody else around you and their answers to those questions at the exact same time because you realize it’s a much more unified experience than you really would think.”

The teach-in walked the group through a scenario where two friends are

“It was competitive, which I always enjoy because it brings out the best in people, and it was a lot of fun” – The Third kind of grows a sense of comfort, because Chicago can be really divided.”

Players raced up and down the entire court as The Weekly’s Community Builder (that’s me) kept score. They dapped up and congratulated the winning team, excited for the next game.

Before the games continued, participants gathered around for a gun violence first aid teach-in led by Ujimaa

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

collective care, collective community care.

We just want folks to have skills,” said Joey, a member of Ujimaa Medics. He started with Ujimaa almost ten years ago, when he was thirteen.

“We’re a mutual aid organization, so these are skills that were shared with us that we’re trying to share with other people, in the hopes that we can collectively apply those skills to fill the gaps in which the state

Chima “Naira” Ikoro, The Weekly’s Community Builder.

Photo by Jordan Esparza

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

A group photo taken after the first game.

out in public, and one of them gets shot.

Largely narrated by Joey, the teach-in covered safety measures, the importance of asking for consent, how to prevent blood loss, how to communicate with 911, police officers, and paramedics, and more.

Joey welcomed hands-on participation, and invited artist and South Sider The Third to join the demonstration of how to apply pressure and minimize blood loss. Despite the subject being heavy and serious, Joey sprinkled in humor to lighten the mood.

“I thought that was incredible,” Ausar said of the teach-in. “I actually did not come in expecting it because I saw the flier and I just saw ‘hoop session,’ and I was like alright, cool. “I’m gonna pull up.”

But upon arriving and discovering

Joey, Sam, Jasmine from Ujimaa Medics.

Photo by Jordan Esparza

there would be a teach-in, Ausar agreed that it was an important addition to the event.

“In the communities that we come from— it's unfortunate, but I do think [this training is] a very pivotal piece of information to have especially when we know about the lack of resources and just equity we have in the communities that experienced the most violence,” he said. “That type of information is literally the difference between someone living and dying.”

“I think it just kind of helped everybody actualize a likely event, especially growing up where we grew up at, and then giving them the tools and resources, which is the most important part,” said Third, who is originally from Chatham.

After the teach-in, some players

Photo by Jordan Esparza

The Third practices applying pressure to a gunshot wound during the teach-in. Photo by Jordan Esparza

decided to start another game, while others subbed out to dive into a catered lunch.

“I’m not talking about me because I’m the greatest hooper in Chicago,” Ausar said, laughing. “But everyone isn’t incredible at hooping and they just wanna come and get some buckets and build in the community, and this felt like that. You didn’t have to be the best at it, you just had to come and chill.”

“I think we should do more of these events. I think more people should come out,” Third said. “If you don't feel like you can learn anything—which is always the case, right? Some people feel like they know everything; then that means you have something to contribute.”

“The Weekly also created a survey for

participants that asked questions about their personal relationship with gun violence, their opinions on the reporting of gun violence, and resources they’ve seen work or want to see more of. One of the questions asked participants if they knew of any resources for victims of gun violence; all except for one response was “no.” As The Weekly continues the work of this community safety initiative, we hope to compile more responses and resources to share. Please take a moment to fill out the survey at bit.ly/sswsafetysurvey. Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Builder.

Makafui Searcy, founder of FOURTUNEHOUSE, and Matt Muse, rapper and founder of Love & Nappyness.

Photo by Jordan Esparza DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

CULTURE

Photos courtesy of Xochitl-Quetzal Danza Azteca

Keeping Ancient Traditions Alive

After ten years of learning dances and ceremonies from Mexico, a local Aztec danza group gains recognition from Indigenous elders.

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

A

n Aztec dance group from Chicago’s South Side was bestowed recognition from fellow national and international danza groups in a public ceremony this summer at St. Agnes Church where a lifelong leader of the group, a chief, was also ordained.

Little Village-born Henry Cervantes, thirty-six, was raised Catholic by his Mexican parents from Iguala, Guerrero, and as an adult his spiritual identity began to evolve. Shortly after the death of his mentor and dance chief, Jorge Nieto, ten years ago, he followed in his steps and founded the local danza group XochitlQuetzal.

Danza is a Spanish word that

encompasses not only its literal verb, dance, but also the spiritual songs, rituals, prayers, and symbolism that go back about five centuries to Indigenous and colonial Mexico. Cervantes said he traveled to the homeland on repeated occasions to witness and learn the ceremonies.

“For the past four years, the elders prepared me and our dancers because it is a life commitment. When somebody becomes a chief, you become married to the culture so that it doesn’t die,” Cervantes told the Weekly.

Ensuring the survival of ancient traditions is the core responsibility of the chief or capitán. When in 1521, the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan—modern-

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

day Mexico City—collapsed under the Spanish invasion, with it came the coercion and punishment of Native people who attempted to practice their languages, religions, and customs. The stigma continued for generations.

Danza azteca, also known as danza mexica, is the amalgamation of physical and spiritual expressions that outlived colonization. “It’s a responsibility,” Cervantes said. “And it’s a direct way of serving the people—something as precious as what survived the colonization and things that are not supposed to exist anymore.”

“The whole point of the conquest was to defeat the Indigenous. That was the

whole point. The whole point of destroying codexes (sacred books), the whole point of destroying the temples, that was the point, to destroy [evidence] that any history resisted here.”

In many cases, ancient elements were able to persist under the guise of Catholicism, a phenomenon now understood as religious syncretism. As pyramids and sacred places were destroyed and churches built on top with Indian labor, old practices were secretly embedded into the new physical and religious landscape.

“What very little we have in terms of songs, in terms of dance, in terms of what we call palabra, it’s precious that it’s still around after 500 years. That the children

CULTURE

that we're teaching these ways to have the exact same steps that were danced, not just 500 years ago, but prior to those 500 years,” Cervantes said.

Each recognized danza group is commonly referred to as a mesa and assigned a patron saint. The saint is usually the Christian version, so to speak, of an indigenous deity, like Tonantzin, Tlaloc, or Mayahuel. In Mexico, many towns and villages have an annual festivity or procession for their local patron saint.

Santiago (St. James) is XochitlQuetzal’s patron saint, who is celebrated in various parts of Mexico every July 25. “The weight and the reason we picked that date is because it commemorates a battle, one of the last battles that took place between the Spanish colonizers and the Indigenous

Chichimecas in northern Mexico, one of the last tribes to be defeated…. That battle took place on July 25, 1531.”

Chiefs and elders from many groups attended Xochitl-Quetzal’s initiation in the Little Village church: from Mexico City, New York, California, Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, among them. They played their traditional instruments, and prayed and danced together during the initiation ceremony, in what resembled a Native American powwow.

While most mesas use Native musical instruments like the huehuetl and teponaztli drums, whistles, flutes, and ayoyote rattles, Xochitl-Quetzal’s members also play small guitars made with armadillo shells or conchas—a sacred animal.

“We are known as concheros because we dance with these Mexican-made instruments that have the caparazón of an armadillo... So the Mexica dance evolved into the conchero dance. So that’s why we sing in Spanish and we sing in Nahuatl.”

Recognized danza groups like XochitlQuetzal each lift a processional banner called an estandarte that displays their corresponding saints and iconography, and in the back are the names of the group leaders past and present. One banner at the St. Agnes ceremony was 101 years old and had been handed down by three chiefs.

The group of roughly thirty-five members has weekly practices in La Villita Community Church and other churches in Little Village, Pilsen and Back of the Yards.

They also give presentations in libraries

and universities in and out of state.

Some of Xochitl-Quetzal’s most significant annual ceremonies are on November 1 and 2, commonly known as Day of the Dead, and on December 12 in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe and in accordance with the Mexican Catholic liturgical calendar.

“Danza is not just something you do as a hobby,” Cervantes said. “It’s something that people gave their lives to back in the day so that people don’t remove your identity, your culture. Es de vida y muerte.” Jacqueline Serrato is the Weekly’s editorin-chief.

Photos courtesy of Xochitl-Quetzal Danza Azteca

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

CULTURE

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY XOCHITL-QUETZAL DANZA AZTECA

Are you caring for a spouse, parent, relative, or friend?

We are here to help!

Caregiver Services Programs include FREE services such as: Education & Training: Learn new skills to care for you and loved ones Gap-Filling Funds: Help buying essential items like clothing, furniture, grab bars, eyeglasses, technology, and hearing aids One-on-One Counseling: Help with decisions, self-care, and support Support Groups: Share your stories, successes, and challenges caring for your loved ones with fellow caregivers Respite: Take a short-term break with help at home from a professional caregiver or caregiver of your choice or a nursing home stay for the person receiving your care Programs are for individuals of any age who are caring for: A Chicago resident age 60+ OR under age 60 with Alzheimer’s Disease or Related Contact the DFSS Senior Services Division Information and Assistance Unit aging@cityofchicago.org • 312-744-4016

DFSS

Department of Family and Support Services

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

Low L ow Down Down Payments.

Payments.

Countless Solutions.

Solutions.

Countless Great S ervice.

Great Service.

15 YR FIXED: 6.375% | 6.488% APR* 30 YR FIXED: 6.990% | 7.061% APR* Contact us today for your FREE mortgage consultation!

630-324-5799

Rates current as of 12/13/2023 and based on a $320,000 loan for the purchase/rate-and-term refinance of an owner-occupied single family home with an 80% loan-to-value and a borrower FICO score of 760. Contact your DKMC loan officer for current rates. Interest rates and annual percentage rates (APRs) are estimates and not to be construed as exact quotes but a reasonable approximation for informational purposes only, are subject to change without notice and may be subject to pricing adjustors related to property type, loan amount, loan-to-value, credit score and other variables. Actual APR may differ depending on borrower’s credit history and loan characteristics. Other programs are available based on the individual needs of the applicant. This information does not constitute a loan approval or commitment and is not an invitation to extend credit as defined by section 226.2 of Regulation Z. All information presented is subject to change, and all programs are subject to Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp.’s underwriting guidelines.

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY * annual percentage rate Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. (NMLS ID # 2551 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org) IL:MB.0004263) an Illinois Residential Mortgage Licensee located at 1431 Opus Place, Suite 200, Downers Grove, IL 60515. Telephone 630-376-2100. Regulated by IDFPR located at 100 West Randolph, 9th Floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Telephone 312-814-4500. © 2023 Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. All Rights Reserved. 04600-117 12/2023.

JUSTICE

After I Was Shot, My Friends Wanted Retribution. I Chose Empathy.

I believe we need to approach gun violence with mercy—and not seek more punishment.

BY MARLON ENGLISH, THE TRACE This story was published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in the U.S. Reprinted with permission.

I

always knew I would get shot. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.

I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago in West Chatham and in Woodlawn. I became involved with a street tribe at a young age. The block we lived on and who my friends and family were determined my affiliation. I witnessed the kind of things you might see in a movie: drug trafficking, gambling, shoot-outs, fights. I was deeply entrenched in the heart of conflict, destruction, and mayhem. Because of that, I’ve suffered a lot of loss and grief—and gained a wellrounded understanding of why people shoot.

Things started to change for me in 2009. After one of my neighborhood friends was killed, my mom decided to relocate my sister and me to Rogers Park.

Being in a different neighborhood on the opposite side of Chicago exposed me to better opportunities and possibilities. I started working summer jobs and became involved with community organizing.

But I always seemed to find my way back to the hood. I started to feel like I was living two separate lives. I’d spend my time in Roger’s Park working or doing community work only to head back to the block in Woodlawn. Life was pulling me between gang banging and community activism.

Then on August 15, 2015, my two worlds collided. It seemed like an ordinary day, but for some reason, I felt very paranoid. I received a call from one of the homies asking me to keep a

Chicago Stories of Survival cohort

peace circle with some members of our street tribe. There was a lot of infighting.

He knew I was leading peace circles to squash conflicts on the North Side and asked me to help.

On my way to 61st and Kimbark, I took the scenic route to avoid running into the opposing side. When I arrived, we were all hanging on the street like we normally did. I observed a car passing by with two guys who appeared to be staring at us. Soon after, the same car drove past again. That’s when I heard the loud explosions and saw sparks flying.

My ears rang as I tried to move out of the way of the gunfire that rained upon us. I felt a sharp burning sensation in my right hand and wrist. When I stopped to check on myself, I noticed a hole in my shirt near my lower abdomen. I immediately sat down. My friends rushed

Photos by Carlos Javier Ortiz for The Trace

to me in a panic and called an ambulance.

I remember being in pain and feeling anxious that I wouldn’t get to the hospital in time, knowing the long journey would be long because the South Side didn’t have a trauma center.

Family, friends, and my activist community all came to visit me in the hospital. While I felt like my life had always been characterized by chaos, their presence made me realize I was also surrounded by a lot of love. Getting shot made me witness how valuable I am to a lot of people.

I spent the next six months recovering at my uncle’s house. The bullet that entered my stomach damaged my kidneys, colon, and intestines. I could no longer use the restroom on my own, which meant I had to wear a colostomy bag. That was extremely humbling. I

didn’t want to eat much or really be around people.

While I was embarrassed by my physical condition, my recovery also gave me the chance to sit and reflect on my life for the first time. I realized that I could’ve been dead. I became grateful to be alive and have the opportunity to improve not only my life but the lives of the people around me. Strangely enough, getting shot put me in a position to be stronger and wiser. I began to think about people in my community who were constantly in a state of mourning—for the loss of loved ones or for themselves. And I didn’t want that for myself.

That moment of reflection also helped me see that gun violence is a much more complex issue than how it’s usually portrayed. People not having what they need, not being able to access different

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

POLITICS

Marlon English

Photo by Carolina Sanchez for The Trace

pathways to healing, or an overall purpose in life, often leads them to situations where they feel like they need to pick up a gun. I believe that people don't want to kill other people but do so mostly out of fear. I understood why the person who shot me was hunting me and my friends—it came with the world we were a part of. Getting shot made sense to me. But it made more sense to me to walk away from all of that.

So I left the streets and threw myself into my community work even more. I wanted to do my part in helping to stop the cycles of violence I was once a part of.

I now run a group called Stick Talk that works with youth who are incarcerated

at the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice. Working with them showed me that we need to approach gun violence more empathetically. Listening to their stories, I realize how many of the young people in Chicago are products of their environment. Some of the young men I work with had their first gun placed in their hands by their own parents.

When I was shot, my friends and family were angry and wanted retribution.

I instead chose to focus on the fact that I still had my life and could help stop the violence in my community. It took a lot of life experience to understand that punishment and revenge aren’t the solution. I didn’t want the guys who shot

me to go to prison because I know prisons are just a cage meant to punish people, not rehabilitate them. I often ask people to think about what if someone you loved made a mistake? Would you want society to handle them with care and grace or with punishment and violence? Would you want them to have the chance at rehabilitation or be thrown away forever?

This story is part of a collection of essays and reported stories driven by gun violence survivors in Chicago, a product of the Trace’s Survivor Storytelling Network.

Read the full collection at thetrace.org ¬

The Healthcare System Failed Me After Getting Shot

After I survived a mass shooting, I had to beg a Chicago hospital for simple things like a wheelchair. My community helped me recover.

BY CARLA JOHNSON, THE TRACE This story was published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in the U.S. Reprinted with permission.

I

t was a beautifully warm summer evening in June 2021. I was eight months pregnant and still queasy most days, but I decided to get some tacos from a restaurant in West Englewood that I visited often. I took a shower, threw on my favorite black sundress and matching Ivy Park slides, and headed out into the perfect Chicago summer night.

After getting my food, I headed over to say hello to my best friend, Angela, just a couple of blocks away. When I arrived, I saw another friend, Yogi, who was excited about my pregnancy. We joked, chatted about what she was going to cook for my baby shower, and updated each other on the latest viral Reels. I waved goodbye, styrofoam taco container still in hand,

Carla Johnson

Photo by Carolina Sanchez for The Trace

and heard gunshots.

As I lay on the ground in a pool of blood, all the worst thoughts played in my

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

head: stories of people who died before reaching a trauma center, my unborn child not surviving, the devastation this would bring my family.

More than two years later, I’m still healing from my injuries. I'll never be the same. My journey to recovery, which started with so many mishaps in the hospital, has been long and excruciating.

It has shown me the heavy burden society places on survivors of gun violence to heal themselves. In a city with thousands of gun violence victims, and over 7,000 hospital beds, I felt failed by the healthcare system.

It's hard to believe that the standard of care is so low for survivors.

I’ve always found confidence in my strength. My physical well-being was always a priority. I worked out regularly, ran track, and was an avid soccer player for years. When you’re young, you can’t control many things, but my physical

ability was something I felt like I had power over. It sustained me in my work as a longtime community organizer and chef. It helped me start my own catering company that helped to feed community members in low-income neighborhoods.

But the mass shooting that injured me, ten others, and took Yogi’s life, shook that foundation. I’m sharing the details so people can witness what happened to me and understand what happens to other victims of gun violence every day.

As the bullets rang out, I remember telling myself to get down. I remember people running in every direction—some of their dashes curtailed by the force of the firearms. I remember watching bodies fall to the ground while I was still getting shot. I remember searching to feel the ground through the blood beneath me.

I remember how a police officer stepped over me with no acknowledgement as I

begged for a tourniquet. I remember the male EMT who inspected my stomach and left my sundress rolled above my pelvis before walking away to attend to others.

I spent about a week-and-a-half in the hospital. My experience there was another trauma. My pain was excruciating and due to my pregnancy, there was not much medicinal relief offered. My left foot, left calf, right leg, thigh, and arm all had been hit. The damage to my right leg was the most severe—it broke my tibia completely, causing severe nerve damage that still limits my walking and balance. I had to beg hospital staff for simple things like a wheelchair, commode, gauze, and a shower chair. I was discouraged from having those necessities billed to my insurance and told to buy them myself.

While still in a traumatized state, I was given little instructions and was expected to know how to care for an injury I never had before.

All I could think about was how would I deliver a baby in my condition, how would I get home and inside my apartment, how would I use the bathroom, what would motherhood look like now?

With the help of family and advocates, I was able to get home with a few supplies to carry me over for a week. And just like that I was expected to start healing.

The truth is that this is when the lasting trauma began. I visualized the terror from that night constantly, believing the shooters who haven’t been caught would return at any moment to finish me off. The bulk of my days were spent attempting to guide my thoughts away from the shooting, so that I could pretend I was OK. The unknown was the scariest part: How would I take care of this baby? Would I ever walk? Who even am I now? My ambitions, my drive, my dreams ran out of me as quickly as the blood in my body.

The lack of adequate care that survivors often receive can worsen our conditions, create mistrust, and prevent us from accessing the healing we deserve.

It wasn’t until I turned to a community of survivors that I was able to set myself on a path toward recovery. These were friends and family who had been shot themselves—people I love and respect who are able to successfully navigate their day-to-day lives despite their disabilities.

From them, I learned where to get free gauze and which types would work best for my wounds. A friend instructed me on the necessity of leg warmers and heating pads during the Chicago winter because the cold heightens the pain of the bullet fragments that are still in my body, making it feel like I’m being sliced from the inside. Another friend walked me through the best way of getting up and down my stairs on FaceTime.

Connecting with a community of other survivors made me feel less alone. It has helped me process my emotions. And it lit a spark in me.

I joined community organizations and projects that focus on educating and empowering our neighborhoods. I threw a Black joy event with a focus on training people in the community to respond to shootings. We gave first medical kits to businesses in the area where I was shot, in case community members needed to provide first aid to gunshot victims as they waited for help. I hosted a winter wonderland toy drive just a few yards from where I was shot. Some people questioned why I would go back, but this is my community. Where else would I go?

I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in September 2021. She was healthy and perfect, and she gave me a daily dose of strength and motivation that I needed.

I always loved being a mom, watching my kids grow, and being able to guide them on their journeys. My life was always so fast-paced, but now I’m taking in motherhood moment by moment.

I’ve made sure to celebrate each of our milestones together.

Taking time for myself was necessary, but new to me. I’m still physically struggling with everyday tasks and trying to get back to a routine. My life still feels like a roller coaster. But this community has helped me realize that I was always strong—not because of my physical abilities, but because of the inner strength I possess. Sometimes, you just need people who’ve had similar experiences to guide you.

This story is part of a collection of essays and reported stories driven by gun violence survivors in Chicago, a product of the Trace’s Survivor Storytelling Network. Read the full collection at thetrace.org ¬

I Left My Neighborhood Due to Gun Violence. How Many Others Have Done the Same?

Communities like Woodlawn need more economic investment—and the people who live there need opportunities to reach their full potential.

BY AJA JOHNSON, THE TRACE This story was published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in the U.S. Reprinted with permission.

O

n March 20, 2023, I got a call telling me that my dear friend Kim “Casper” Williamson was shot and killed. I met Casper in the early 90’s after my family moved to Woodlawn from Hyde Park. At first, I couldn’t process his death. I’d like to think it was my body protecting me.

As I sat at Casper’s funeral, listening to his daughter speak, I realized he had successfully positioned his family to not need anything financially. That aspect of Casper’s death reminded me of a death in my own family and the financial and emotional toll it took. I thought I’d let down my neighbors in Woodlawn by not helping them plan for a better financial

future—especially because I travel the country speaking at seminars about financial literacy and closing the wealth gap. What more, I thought, could I have done for the neighborhood I left?

I grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood at a time when you could send your child outside to play and know they would come back home safely. The beach along Lake Shore Drive was my backyard. My friends and I regularly went to the Museum of Science and Industry and Harpers Court Movie Theatres.

We dined at Thai Siam, Giordanos, and El Lugar. Having multiple parks to choose from was a luxury. We would build clubhouses in the alleys because they were clean. The neighborhood was vibrant, multicultural, and rich with history, architecture, and design.

Our neighbors were artists, historians,

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

bankers, activists, doctors, students, and even included Harold Washington, the former mayor of Chicago. Hyde Park had many two-parent homes where the fathers worked and the mothers stayed home. My neighbors were usually in a rush. I thought it was because they had somewhere to be in life.

In 1992, after eight years in Hyde Park, my mother and step-father, Stanley ‘China Man’ Muldrow, moved our family southwest into Woodlawn to save money on rent. Living in Woodlawn was a complete culture shock. I was so upset that I wouldn’t play outside for an entire year. Many homes were in bad condition, people seemed to roam aimlessly, and gun shots could be heard at all times. I didn’t understand why I had to live there.

I didn’t see the beauty of Woodlawn and everything it had to offer. It felt like a place that seemed almost impossible to survive. I vowed to move away the second I could.

Not long after we moved there, Stanley was shot and killed. Just like Casper, my step-father was shot after intervening in a dispute. Stanley tried to break up a fight between his niece and her abusive boyfriend on a basketball court behind Dunbar High School.

My mother and step-father got married after only three dates—less than a year before his murder. Their relationship provided financial and emotional balance to my mother’s life. He was smitten with her and loved getting up to work at a regular job, then bringing home his check. Because they had moved so fast in their union, we didn’t have much time to develop a personal connection. I was OK with that because he was proving to be upstanding and gentle regardless of his gang ties.

My step-father’s death didn’t leave us poor. Unlike many peers who also lost loved ones in Woodlawn, my family was fortunate enough to have a small insurance policy that helped cover his burial. And because he was murdered on the streets of Chicago, I received a monthly $300 benefit from the state until I went to college. That money helped me

Aja Johnson.

Photo by Carolina Sanchez for The Trace

continue school and stay focused.

I never saw my mother cry or react to my step-father’s death. I guess her body’s defense mechanism to dealing with the trauma was to work. She was now responsible for taking care of me by herself. This is when I feel like my mother lost balance. She always made sure I had the best of things, lots of money in my pockets, but she couldn’t be there because she was always trying to keep herself busy to not deal with the loss of her husband.

By the time I was ready to experience

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

Woodlawn firsthand, there were only a few people in the neighborhood that I looked forward to seeing, and Casper was one of them. He lived on the next block.

He was definitely living in the fast lane as part of a street organization, but he was different in that he always showed respect to everyone, no matter their age. He was creative and wise. I felt safe when he was around.

There weren’t enough Caspers in my life to make me want to stay in Woodlawn. After a few years, I could

see how the environment and a lack of parental guidance were having a negative impact on everyone. Many of the boys from the neighborhood were getting killed. In 1996, I left. For many years, I would never speak to anyone from Woodlawn except for Casper. My trauma made me shun the area.

But with some time and distance, I realized that people living in Woodlawn have valuable skills to offer. The neighborhood had tons of children bursting with creativity, and people surviving with just a little bit. It took Casper’s death for me to understand the many facets of the neighborhood and the special people who call it home.

Woodlawn is lacking resources by design.

People who live there need to be given opportunities like jobs and education to reach their full potential. Change can’t come from those that aren’t invested enough to live there. That is the highest level of commitment and sacrifice.

After sitting with the guilt I started to feel at Casper’s funeral, I came to realize that gun violence perpetuates cycles of poverty. Not only does it leave family members in financial need for funeral costs, and often missing an income, but it also has a bigger ripple effect. The crisis is killing people who have the potential to stabilize their neighborhoods—people who could be leaders and help stem the violence—while simultaneously scaring off residents who could also help improve it economically and culturally. People like me.

Like a distant cousin, I had become once removed from Woodland and twice removed from being a part of change for a community that’s hit hard by gun violence. The trauma of losing friends and family while living in Woodland fueled my desire to leave. Now, I realize I had it all wrong.

This story is part of a collection of essays and reported stories driven by gun violence survivors in Chicago, a product of the Trace’s Survivor Storytelling Network. Read the full collection at thetrace.org ¬

POLITICS

Inside Chinatown’s Century-Long Fight for Power

The immigrant enclave was once isolated and excluded from city politics. How did community leaders transform the neighborhood?

BY XUANDI WANG

I

n May, Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC), attended an international conference about the plight of immigrant enclaves in the U.S. and Canada. While civic leaders from Chinatowns across the two countries lamented the disappearance of their neighborhoods, McKibben said she felt grateful that Chicago’s Chinatown has yet to be confronted by a similar existential crisis.

On the contrary, Chicago’s Chinatown, currently the only North American Chinatown whose population is growing, is thriving. In addition to receiving investment to build a boat house and a field house in 2013, and a new public library in 2015, the neighborhood has become more and more visible in the political landscape.

In 2023, Chinatown constituents elected Nicole Lee as their alderperson, making her the first Chinese American to serve in the City Council and the first to represent an Asian American majority ward.

“For the first time in our history here in Chicago, Asian Americans have someone that can be that voice for them on the council,” Lee said to a crowd during a community event in October.

Beneath their success was a long and hard fight. It took decades of strategic planning and community organizing to ensure that community members’ voices were heard after a long century of exclusion.

Like many other Chinatowns, Chicago Chinatown was initially built to protect residents from racism, according to Edward Jung, seventy-two, president of the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. In the early 1870s, migrant workers escaping

Chinatown Wentworth Ave.

anti-Chinese violence on the West Coast migrated to Chicago and settled on Clark St. near downtown, an area in which other people were hesitant to live during the time.

In 1912, as the Loop expanded and rents rose, the Chinese community moved south to its current location on Cermak Road.

Chinese American Museum of Chicago

laborers from entering the United States, but also barred Chinese immigrants who were already in the country from naturalizing.

Some immigrants, like Jung’s grandfather, came to the U.S. during that time as “paper sons,” purchasing forged

“Until we get somebody who has a seat at the table, we’re always going to be left behind.

For me, that was something that needed to change.” –Theresa Mah Anti-Asian immigration laws were another early barrier for Chinatown residents. From 1882 to 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act not only banned Chinese

documents that said they were relatives of Chinese people who were already citizens.

Jung said these immigrants always tried to resolve community issues without going to

the authorities, because many of them did not speak English well, or because they came to the U.S. illegally.

Chinatown’s residents, the majority of whom were men and separated from their wives or children in China, were left to themselves to form mutual aid groups.

Many joined associations based on family names, hometowns, or professions, creating a sense of kinship through newly forged networks.

Jung remembers visiting On Leong Merchants Association, one of the early community institutions operated by the Moy family—among the first Chinese arrivals in Chicago in 1878—at the site of what is now the faith-based community organization Pui Tak Center. Unofficially known as “Chinatown City Hall,” the association provided community space and essential services for new Chinese immigrants, albeit through illicit funding from gambling. An informal court inside the building helped resolve civil disputes among Chinatown’s residents, according to Jung. The association also regulated business operations, demanding that a restaurant not be established next to a similar one to avoid competition.

“They never asked the government, because they were afraid of facing deportation,” Jung said. “So they preferred to suck it up and sort things out within the community.”

C

.W. Chan, seventy-eight, a veteran community organizer, came to the U.S. in 1969 amid political turmoil in Hong Kong, and enrolled at the University of Chicago to study social work. Four years earlier, the Immigration

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

POLITICS

Edward Jung and his brother stood on Wentworth Ave in 1957.

and Nationality Act of 1965 had relaxed immigration restrictions on people from Asia. Chan became a U.S. citizen upon graduation. During this time, thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived to work and unite with their families in Chicago. Chan said the existing infrastructure struggled to meet the new population’s rising demands.

Community leaders realized isolation could no longer be a viable survival strategy for Chinatown’s residents.

“It [had] worked up to that point,” Chan said. “We realized that we’ve been so isolated that a lot of resources never reached us. A lot of needs were unmet and there were a lot of neglects.”

Jung, who grew up in Chinatown during the 1960s, said the neighborhood was at the time an insular community that was isolated from the rest of the city. Jung said that he couldn’t leave the neighborhood by himself as a kid due to rampant racial violence from ethnic white Italians in surrounding areas, and had to go with his white teacher or in big groups just to get to a playground or a market outside Chinatown. Racial discrimination in job and housing markets also constrained Chinese residents to the neighborhood.

“We were always stuck by these artificial boundaries,” he said. “We don’t dare cross. We get beat up.”

Chinatown was also physically bounded by the interstate highways built in the 1960s as part of an “urban renewal” initiative. The construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway and Stevenson Expressway, which started in 1961, displaced over 80,000 people from the South and West Sides, the majority of them Black and Brown people and recent immigrants. In Chinatown, the highway construction split

Chinese American Museum of Chicago

the neighborhood in half, destroying many businesses and residential areas as well as community centers.

“That [was] very, very disturbing,” Jung said. “There was a lot of anguish and frustration by the community because it destroyed half of Chinatown.”

Jung said he found out about the construction through a pastor at the church, but only after the whole plan was already set in motion. A demolition crew tore down the whole block behind his house and paved Hardin Square and Stanford Park, some of the only recreational space in Chinatown at the time. Officials guaranteed that the city would build another park as a substitute, but never realized the promise until Ping Tom Park was opened in 1999.

Today, the Chinatown area is still bounded by the Dan Ryan Expressway to its south, the Canal Road viaduct to its west, and the Dan Ryan off-ramp to its east. Underpasses below these elevated expressways connect Chinatown to the outside world, but many are dark and dilapidated, and a frequent site of crime.

The highway construction helped galvanize Chinatown residents to engage politically, Jung said. The neighborhood destruction happened because policymakers disregarded residents’ opinions, and Chinatown residents didn’t have a seat at the table. They soon began organizing to change that.

In 1978, Chan and his classmates founded the Chinese American Service League (CASL). The organization, which originally operated out of the back of a dentist’s office, provides basic services such as translation, tax rebates, and assistance with social security applications.

Jung said the 1980s and ’90s witnessed

24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

the growth of community service groups in Chicago Chinatown. Chan moved on to chair the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in 1991, a liaison group created by Raymond Lee and Ping Tom to negotiate with politicians and protect local business interests. In 1993, the Chinese Christian Union Church purchased the former On Leong Merchant Association Building and opened Pui Tak Center as a community center that offers English curriculum, vocational training, and help to immigrants seeking citizenship. Chan said the early founders modeled these entities after mainstream organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and other nonprofits in the city, with the hope of bringing external resources into the Chinatown community.

“There’s a world out there,” Chan said.

“There are a lot of resources and services that we previously have not been able to access.”

Nevertheless, decades of exclusion and lack of political representation meant that Chinatown was often overlooked by policy makers and social welfare programs, according to Chan.

Paul Luu, CASL’s current CEO, said that when the city launched initiatives to provide grant funding for nonprofit organizations, Chinatown was sometimes excluded from the geographical regions

eligible to apply, even though many Chinatown residents face poverty and make less than the average of the city. In 2022, Chinatown’s median household income was $65,489, lower than the city’s median household income of $71,673.

“Actions like that, intentionally or not intentionally, hurt the community,” Luu said.

C

han and other civic leaders attribute the exclusion to Chinatown’s lack of a political voice and involvement, to the detriment of the community. In 1998, Chan founded CBCAC, which brought together existing institutions like Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, CASL, and Pui Tak Center to unite the community and strengthen its political power. The organization engaged in regular canvassing events to encourage voter registration and held community meetings.

The idea was to engage all the community members so that they could identify issues they want to address and find collective solutions, Chan said.

Part of the problem was structural.

Chinatown was always split among different legislative and representative districts—at times the area was split among four wards, four state representative districts, and three state senate districts, and three Congressional districts at its peak—

A photo taken outside of the building on 2443 S. Wentworth Ave. The shop on the left is Tong's Shoe Repair shop and the business on the right is DiFoggio & Sons Plumbing. They are still in business in Bridgeport. Gene Lee's father (Nicole Lee's grandfather) owned and operated Tong's Shoe Repair shop.

Chinese American Museum of Chicago

POLITICS making it difficult for the community to advocate for their demands.

“No one was fighting for our needs, because the Chinese portion of their district was so small that it was pretty easy to ignore the needs of the community,” said David Wu, the executive director of Pui Tak Center. In response, community organizers from CBCAC and Asian American Advancing Justice, an advocacy group, began pushing for state redistricting and ward remapping with an Asian majority.

“Racial and ethnic communities are one way of defining communities of interest,” Grace Pai, AAAJ’s executive director, said. “The idea is to kind of keep that constituency together, so that their advocacy voice is stronger in future elections.”

In 2011, then-state senator Kwame Raoul introduced the Illinois Voting Rights Act, designed to ensure that racial or language minorities would be grouped together in future redistricting. Chan, coining it the “Chinatown Bill,” lobbied in Springfield for passage of the legislation.

The bill’s ratification ultimately helped draw Asian Americans in the South Side into a new state district. Theresa Mah, who was the first full-time faculty at Northwestern University’s Asian American studies department and spent almost a decade working at various civil rights organizations, was elected to represent the district in 2016 and became the first Asian American in the Illinois General Assembly.

Mah said the lack of Asian American political leadership from the previous generation was an incentive for her to run.

“Because I studied history, I know that we’ve never had a voice in these laws that were passed that had a negative impact on our community,” she said. “Until we get somebody who has a seat at the table, we’re always going to be left behind. For me, that was something that needed to change.”

The fight for a ward remap took longer, Wu said, in part because previous political leaders were unwilling to give up their power. The 11th Ward had long been dominated by the Daley family, Chicago’s most enduring political dynasty. But the continued growth of the Asian population ultimately helped make the case for the 11th ward to be an Asian American ward, Wu said.

In 2011, civic leaders unsuccessfully

Chinatown residents celebrated Chinese New Year in a parade on Wentworth Ave in 2019.

Chinese American Museum of Chicago

advocated for Chinatown to be drawn into one ward. But the Chinese population continued to grow in the following decade.

In 2021, during another ward remap negotiation (wards are redrawn after every Census), Wu joined other organizers like Chan and McKibben to campaign for the city’s first Asian American-majority ward, under the banner “from zero to one,” Wu said.

The remap received initial pushback from several City Council members like then-11th Ward Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson and 15th Ward Ald. Raymond Lopez. But the political wind was on their side. In April 2021, then 11th ward Ald. Thompson came under investigation for tax fraud and, after his conviction in 2022, left the 11th Ward open for grabs. Both the Black and Latino Caucuses supported the proposal for an Asian American majority ward, albeit they debated intensely during the ward remap.

In 2021, Chinatown was drawn into the city’s first Asian American majority ward. Nicole Lee, who was initially appointed by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot following Daley Thompson’s conviction and resignation, won reelection in 2023.

“Chicago is 185 years old. The first Chinese came here about 157 years ago.

And we’ve been gerrymandered for all of that time until just recently,” Lee said during a community event in October. “We got lucky because the system was not built to give us a voice.”

Lee said various challenges remain in Chinatown. The community has been advocating for a public high school for more than a decade, but a former proposal

received backlash because the chosen site was on public housing land, and its future is unknown due to changes in the city’s administration. The rent in the neighborhood has been rising in recent years, making affordability an issue for some residents. The current estimated wait time for public housing in Chinatown is over twenty-five years, according to Chicago Housing Authority.

Voter turnout also remains a big

challenge in the community, according to Pai. “A lot of immigrants don’t come from places that have robust democratic systems or processes,” Pai said. “They may have negative associations with voting or politics in general. So it helps when these community-based organizations can bridge that gap and communicate to them the importance of participating in our democracy here in the U.S.” But by nurturing civic engagement and proactive planning, coupled with a new-found political voice, Chinatown’s civic leaders are hopeful that the community will continue to thrive.

“Now we have a seat at the table, we have an inkling of what’s happening,” McKibben said. “We have to work together as a community and put our minds together.” Xuandi Wang is a journalist and policy researcher. His writing on urban affairs and environmental governance has appeared in Block Club, the Reader, In These Times, and elsewhere.

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

'The Christmas Schooner'

Beverly Arts Center of Chicago, 2407 W. 111th St. until December 23. Tickets are $25. bit.ly/xmasSchooner The Beverly Arts Center presents “The Christmas Schooner,” based on the true story of the Rouse Simons, a schooner ship which brought the first evergreen trees to Chicago by way of the “treacherous winter water of Lake Michigan.” (Zoe Pharo)

Discover Boating Chicago Boat Show

McCormick Place - South, 2301 S. Lake Shore Dr. Wednesday, January 10–Sunday, January 14, 10:00 am–5:00 pm. Tickets are $15; kids 12 years and younger get in for free. bit.ly/boatshowChicago

The 2024 show will feature a wide selection of boats, attractions and fun for all ages. (Zoe Pharo)

123 Andrés Family Concert

Richard J. Daley Library Branch, 3400 S. Halsted St. Sunday, December 17, 2pm– 3pm. Free. bit.ly/3RPHUlu

FAMILY DAY! 123 Andrés is back in Chicago, with their high-energy, interactive show in Spanish and English. GRAMMY nominees and Latin GRAMMY-winners, Andrés and Christina combine Latin rhythms, singalong lyrics and silly dance moves. This concert celebrates community and gets the whole family singing and dancing along. ¡Día en familia! 123 Andrés vuelve a Chicago, con su show interactivo y lleno de energía, en español y en inglés.

Andrés y Christina son ganadores de Latin GRAMMY y nos traen ritmos latinos y rimas divertidas. Disfruten de una tarde en familia, con un show que pone a todos a cantar y bailar.

(Daley Library)

A Night at the Museum 2023

Museum of Science and Industry, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr. Thursday, December 21, 6:30pm–10:30pm. Tickets are $15, children ages 3+ need a ticket. bit.ly/NightAtMSI The fifth annual “A Night at the Museum” returns to the Museum of Science and Industry. This benefit for the homeless features an evening of music, performances, interactive vendors, museum exhibits, giveaways and more. Guests are encouraged to bring new or gently-used coats, hats, gloves, scarves and toys for individuals experiencing homelessness, which the SocialWorks team will distribute to shelters in February. SocialWorks is a Chicago nonprofit founded by musician and humanitarian Chance the Rapper.

(Zoe Pharo)

'Elf' showing

ChiTown Movies, 2343 S. Throop St. Thursday, December 21, 7:45pm–9:25pm.

Tickets are $33 to $43. bit.ly/Elfscreening ChiTown Movies in Pilsen is hosting a drive-in screening of “Elf ” for the holidays. Spaces are determined on a first-come, first-served basis. Mexican food, popcorn, and other snacks can be purchased and delivered to vehicles.

(Zoe Pharo)

26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023

Last Minute Holiday Market

Connect Gallery, 1451 E. 53rd St. Friday, December 22–Thursday, December 23, 11am–7pm. Free. bit.ly/lmholidaymarket The Connect Gallery and Reformed School are hosting a last minute holiday market with a wide variety of local vendors selling their handcrafted goods, artwork and treats, from handmade jewelry and ceramics to clothing and home decor. (Zoe Pharo)

'Divine Masculine, Divine Feminine'

Pilsen Arts & Community House, 1637 W. 18th St. Until Friday, December 22, 12pm. Gallery is free to view, the closing activation costs $5 or more. bit.ly/divineexhibit Open through December 22, the Communal ArtSpace exhibition is an exploration of transness, queerness and spirituality. The exhibit pushes the bounds of binary gender expressions and societal bounds. There will be a closing activation with exhibiting artists on Dec. 22. (Zoe Pharo)

Winter Wonderland Party

King Center, 4314 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Friday, December 22, 3pm. Free.

Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th) is hosting a community Winter Wonderland Party this Friday. The event will be an afternoon with toy giveaways, an ugly holiday sweater contest, cookie decorating, arts and crafts, face painting, pictures with Santa and more. No RSVP required. (Zoe Pharo)

Christmas Toys and Coat Giveaway

Washington Park Refectory, 5531 Russell Dr. Saturday, December 23, 12pm–4pm.

Free. bit.ly/STARSgiveaway Seeing Today’s Adolescents Reach Success, or S.T.A.R.S., is hosting a holiday party, toy and coat giveaway filled with gifts, treats and visit forom Santa. (Zoe Pharo)

Lessons and Carols for Christmas Eve

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. Sunday, December 24, 4pm–5:30pm. Free. bit.ly/xmasevecarols The Rockefeller Chapel Choir and the Rockefeller Children’s Choir will sing carols old and new at the candlelight service Lessons and Carols for Christmas Eve. Members of the children’s choir will present the Christmas story “in the traditional tableau,” and the performance will feature the Millar brass quartet, organ and choirs. (Zoe Pharo)

10th Driver’s License Reinstatement Expo

Malcolm X College, 1900 W. Jackson Blvd.

Saturday, January 27, 9am–3pm. Free. bit.ly/driverslicenseexpo Pilsen Neighbors Community Council and partners wil be hosting the 10th annual Driver’s License Reinstatement Expo. Created as a restorative justice event, members of the community get a chance to have their case reviewed and may be able to get their license reinstated. (Zoe Pharo)

DECEMBER 21, 2023 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27

UCHICAGO MEDICINE FOR KIDS. THAT’S COMER CARE. A parent will do anything for their child. So will we. Comer Children’s Hospital is dedicated to addressing the full spectrum of patient care needs – from common childhood illnesses to the most daunting medical challenges.

We offer each the latest treatments and clinical breakthroughs, because every child deserves to grow up healthy, happy, and strong.

UChicagoMedicine.org/Comer

28 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 21, 2023