IN CHICAGO IN THIS
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine and radio show produced for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 5, Issue 17 Editor-in-Chief Hafsa Razi Managing Editors Julia Aizuss, Andrew Koski Directors of Staff Support Baci Weiler Community Outreach Jasmin Liang Senior Editors Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Sam Stecklow, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Adia Robinson Education Editor Rachel Kim Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Food & Land Editor Emeline Posner Music Editor Christopher Good Contributing Editors Maddie Anderson, Elaine Chen, Mira Chauhan, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Rachel Schastok, Michael Wasney, Yunhan Wen Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Editor Erisa Apantaku Radio Hosts Andrew Koski, Olivia Obineme, Sam Larsen Social Media Editors Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Lizzie Smith Photography Editor Jason Schumer Layout Editor Baci Weiler Staff Writers: Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Kiran Misra Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Sam Joyce, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Sam Stecklow, Tiffany Wang Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma Webmaster
Pat Sier
Publisher
Harry Backlund
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Jason Schumer
The Weekly is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute the paper each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com
Cover illustration by Siena Fite 2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors
CPS to Phase Out Englewood High Schools, Not Shut Down On Monday, CPS reversed its decision to close all four neighborhood high schools in Englewood. Instead, TEAM Englewood, Harper, and Hope will “phase out” over the next three years, remaining open until current students graduate, without accepting freshmen. Robeson will close; when the new school opens there in 2019, it will only take freshmen. Put one way, it sounds like a victory for Englewood families who would have had to send their kids out of the neighborhood next year. But it is still unclear where the class of current eighth graders (freshmen in the fall) will go. Despite promised extra funds from CPS, TEAM, Harper, and Hope will still face the (likely worsening) lack of students and resources that prompted the closings in the first place. Their empty buildings will still need to be repurposed eventually. And, as WBEZ reported in November, CPS has used phase-outs before as a proxy for the less popular “closings.” But what else can the district do, with too-large buildings and shrinking enrollment? On the West Side, politicians are looking for solutions, given feedback that community members don’t want school closings, not even in exchange for a shiny new building. They might consider creative uses of school spaces, or look back to a 2011 report from Englewood residents on how to attract students to neighborhood schools. The Future of Rib Tips and Hot Links? South Side–style barbecue—the kind cooked in a glass-encased aquarium smoker and served alongside fries and Wonder Bread—is a dying art, according to a saucy profile Kevin Pang wrote for Saveur Magazine. He offers a sobering estimate for the number of people left who can be counted as professionals when handling an aquarium smoker: maybe twenty at best. Those that do are tasked with literally and figuratively keeping the South Side–style flame alive (and of course, tempering that flame with water when the smoker gets too hot). Barbecue joints that are still smoking their pork rib tips in aquarium smokers, like Lem’s Bar-B-Q on 75th, tend to be on the South Side or in the south suburbs. Once these disappear—which might happen if today’s pitmasters can’t find a willing cohort of youngsters to become pitmasters themselves—this mouthwatering tradition might run dry not only for Chicago, but for the world. Expanding Voter Access and Education in Illinois Jails On February 7, 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law led a statewide coalition of organizations and public officials—including Pritzker running mate and state Rep. Juliana Stratton—to announce the introduction of HB 4469. Currently, many of the almost four million people who have a past felony conviction in the state, and many of the 20,000 people who are being detained before their trials, either do not have access to vote or do not know they are eligible to vote. HB 4469 is designed to expand voter access and education efforts in Illinois jails by measures such as mandating that county jails establish a process that allows detainees awaiting trial to cast their ballots during elections, directing county jails to provide a voter registration application to any detainee eligible to vote, and providing those being released with an updated registration form. Mark Konkol’s Executive Message for Reader Editor: “You’re Fired” There’s something particularly callous and cruel about firing someone for no particular reason after they return from their honeymoon. That soap opera-level dramatic sentence is unfortunately true of Jake Malooley, the talented, recently fired editor-in-chief of the Reader, the city’s other, larger alt-weekly. Crueler still, the man whose “vision” Malooley was removed to make room for is Mark Konkol, the former DNAinfo columnist, producer of the CNN Rahm Emanuel reelection vehicle Chicagoland, and noted bike lane hater. Mark Konkol––we take no pleasure in reporting––was installed as the Reader’s “executive editor,” above the editorin-chief, just last week. Be sure to watch this space for sure-to-be withering critiques of his sure-to-be impending Reader (or Sun-Times) columns.
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ISSUE the staples letters: it’s not a oneperson show
“ You’ll get a sore jaw for your trouble and not much else.” staples...............................................3 taxing a divided chinatown
“It is a tax on my community.” elaine chen.......................................4 dancing day to day
“All the kids that attend this school, they have to have that passion.” maple joy............................................7 stories of reform and resistance
While abolition looks towards the future, it is grounded in the present. kiran misra........................................8
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It’s Not a OnePerson Show
nspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the Staples Letters are a series of essays in the South Side Weekly written in the form of letters from a veteran teacher, Staples, giving advice to a young teacher, Ms. T. All events in the Staples Letters are drawn directly from real-life experiences in Chicago schools, and names and identifying details have been removed in the interest of privacy. Though fictional in form, the letters are used to address a variety of issues in education, from quotidian classroom considerations to national policy. Ms. T— Have you considered you’re working too hard? Or at least working too hard at the wrong times? I mean, you say your jaw aches at the end of each class, that you’re bleary-eyed from reading papers late at night, that you’re guzzling coffee. I mean, some of this stuff just comes with the job, and your letter is admirable in a way. But I have to ask: do your students do anything? Or are they just watching you work? I think some teachers get so tired of coaxing students to work, they just start doing it all themselves. Hell, I’ve seen teachers conduct whole classroom discussions like it’s a one-person show and the class is the audience! Student 1: I, uh, liked it. Teacher: Ah, so what you’re saying is that Holden’s red hunting hat is really deeply symbolic! That it represents his desire to be seen as his own person and that his choice to love it despite its strangeness reveals something essential about his character? Is that what you’re saying? Student: Uh. Teacher: Wonderful! We want meaningful work to occur so badly we sometimes convince ourselves that the mere words being spoken aloud are enough, that if only we cast the right spell knowledge will automatically pass to the students.
ILLUSTRATION BY LIZZIE SMITH
Teachers caught in this deception are often disappointed when they get a look at the students’ tests or papers. “I can’t believe everyone did so poorly,” they’ll mutter. “We talked all about this in class!” No, you talked about it in class. No one else did a thing. I saw a teacher in my building the other day reading to the class. It was first period, early in the morning, and the students could barely keep their eyes open. The teacher had clearly made the calculation that the students would never read on their own, so she decided to do it for them. Lord knows I’ve found myself in that situation. And bless the teacher’s heart—she was willing to work extra hard for what she thought was the good of the students. But is reading to your sleeping students for thirty minutes good for them? C’mon. No way. You’ll get a sore jaw for your trouble and not much else. So how do you avoid reducing your students to a passive audience? Well, I think there are a lot of structural causes that are beyond the teacher’s control. For one thing, school starts way too early. Way too early. It’s one of the stupidest things about school. Anybody who knows anything about adolescent sleep will tell you that, but no, we persist with this ridiculous—actually, okay, I’m gonna stop there for now. Let’s talk about sleep later. But okay, aside from better sleep, what else? That teacher was reaping the problems inherent to a certain mindset: that the teacher is the knower who possesses all the knowledge, while the students are empty and require the teacher to fill them up with skills and information. This is how most teachers structure their class, whether they are aware of it or not. They don’t always have much choice, of course—this is the same mindset of the standardized testing system teachers are required to take part in—but it’s destructive. I’ve found, too, that teachers sometimes develop a martyr complex. They’re so used to working so hard and sacrificing so much for their job that they start to see those things—hard work, sacrifice—as inherently good, as noble no matter what outcomes they are in service of. This is why it’s so easy for politicians or principals to take advantage of teachers, and why teachers end up reading all morning to their sleeping class. They start to think that their suffering is a precondition of student success. But relinquishing perceived authority can be scary! Believe me, I know. By spending as much time as possible at the front of the room speaking authoritatively to your silent students, it feels like you are reducing the chances the class will slip into chaos. By jamming as many facts into your students’ heads as you can, it feels like you’re accelerating their learning. But these are illusions. This learning is not real. Like a mirage in the desert, the closer you approach it, the more completely it will vanish. To really do any good in your room, you have to see your students as active subjects of their own education, not passive objects. With this change will
come discomfort—discomfort with the possibility that class on any individual day won’t go perfectly. You have to learn to actually...trust your students! Okay, what does that look like? Just take literacy for example: I’m really not down with having every student in your class read the same book. Just think of all the problems that arise from that plan: some kids will be bored by the subject, some will find it too difficult, others too easy. Some will inevitably fall fifty pages behind the class and immediately just give up. Some will, for whatever reason, absolutely despise Catcher in the Rye and resent you for subjecting them to it—some might even conclude it’s all books they hate, rather than just this particular one. And even beyond all that, does this have anything in common with reading outside of school? A person handing you a book, telling you to read thirty pages, and then quizzing you on the characters? Hell no. So what instead? Let the students choose what book they want to read. Let them read about stuff they actually care about, whether that’s golden retrievers or Kobe Bryant. Let them read books at their reading level, whether that’s college level or third grade. Teach them how to gather information from a book based on its cover, the blurbs, the summary on the back, word of mouth, the first ten pages. If they find they hate it, let them pick a new one. In short, teach them how to find books for themselves, to create an identity as a reader. Believe me, this will serve them long after they’ve left your class. We also do this horrible thing where we teach kids to read when they’re six and then never again for the rest of their lives. Some people literally don’t know the strategies that great readers perform intuitively— how to monitor their own comprehension, when to reread a line or paragraph, how to use context clues and background knowledge, etc. This is why they hate to read, why despite their possibly best efforts they retain practically nothing on the page (it doesn’t help that standardized test prep reinforces the worst tendencies). Make these strategies the heart of your class, celebrate effort rather than knowing things, and watch how students who claim to hate reading start taking the book home with them to read on the El or before bed. Will it be a little uncomfortable at first, as every student opens a different book, including books you yourself have never read? Will it be impossible to quiz or test them all the time? Yes, and yes. Lean into it. In short, create the conditions necessary for your students’ success. Stop trying to perform it yourself. It might be daunting at first, but I promise any effort in this direction will be repaid one hundred times over. Your affectionate cousin, Staples
FEBRUARY 14, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3
Taxing a Divided Chinatown
A proposed Special Service Area exacerbates rifts in the changing neighborhood BY ELAINE CHEN
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ince fall 2016, organizers with the United Chinatown Organization (UCO), a coalition of small business owners, have been collecting signatures from Chinatown residents. In early January, they frantically organized the signatures into a petition, and on their exact deadline of January 16, they submitted it to the city. The petition opposed the potential levy of a Special Service Area (SSA) tax along Chinatown’s main commercial strips.The city’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) reviewed the signatures, and told the Weekly on Friday that the petition did not contain the required amount of signatures to stop the SSA from being implemented. An SSA is a local tax district that funds services such as beautification and security— on top of what the city provides—through an incremental property tax. The services are often meant to improve business, so SSA boundaries normally encompass commercial districts within neighborhoods. Typically, a local nonprofit organization, a “Sponsor Agency,” proposes a new SSA to City Hall, which decides whether to pass the proposal. If approved, the revenue from the additional tax goes into a city bank account controlled by mayorally-appointed Commissioners to disburse as they see fit, with nominal oversight from the city. There are fifty-three SSAs throughout Chicago, and the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce is pushing to create the first one in Chinatown—SSA #73. The UCO’s petition stemmed from over two years of opposition to the Chamber’s push for the tax. Local business owners initially formed the UCO to resist the Chamber’s proposal. Community opposition to SSAs in the 25th Ward, which contains Chinatown, has occurred before. In 2013, the nonprofit developer The Resurrection Project (TRP), which has close ties to Alderman Danny Solis, proposed a SSA tax on businesses along 18th Street in Pilsen. The proposal was eventually blocked by 18th Street store owners and activists with the Pilsen Alliance. 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
In Chinatown, the UCO and the Chamber have both passionately expressed their goals of improving business in Chinatown, but they possess vastly different ideas of how exactly to achieve those goals. The continuous tensions around the SSA highlight the chasm between the Chamber and small business owners making up the UCO. These small business owners have been questioning the Chamber’s actions. They suspect that the Chamber failed to comply with city policy by not submitting the required amount of signatures in support of the proposal, and also believe that the Chamber wrongly excluded most of the community when drafting its proposal. The business owners continue to feel profound distrust towards the Chamber, an organization whose professed mission is to support the local business community.
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hamber leaders first began drafting an SSA proposal in 2015, according to Darryl Tom, president of the Chamber from 2015 to 2016. They were motivated by the new developments occurring in and around Chinatown. In 2016, the city began construction on the Wells-Wentworth Connector, a multiphase project that aims to create a new road between the Loop and Chinatown. The sixty-two-acre parcel of vacant land between Roosevelt Road and Chinatown, which the Connector will run through, is also being privately developed into residential, office, and retail space. Construction is slated to begin next year. Moreover, major developments including the Jaslin Hotel and Wintrust Arena have opened in and around Chinatown. The city also announced a $40,000 grant to the community group Coalition for a Better Chinese-American Community (CBCAC) to study how to improve safe foot traffic in Chinatown last year. Seeing that Chicago’s Chinatown is one of the only in the country whose Chinese population has continued to
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grow, city planners are committed to investing in Chinatown to take advantage of its growth and preserve its cultural identity. In light of these new developments, Chamber leaders believe that there will be many more visitors to Chinatown in the near future. The Chamber’s goal for the SSA proposal is to beautify Chinatown to ensure that visitors will continue to come and support local businesses—the Chamber’s constituents, said Tom. The initial proposal specified boundaries that encompassed essentially every commercial or mixed-use building in the core of Chinatown, and specified services such as sidewalk trash and snow removal and decorative banners that cannot be fully provided by the City. The Chamber worked out a budget that would fund the proposed services, and then, knowing how much tax revenue the SSA would have to collect to meet the budget, worked backwards to determine a property tax rate of 0.31 percent. After the DPD vetted the Chamber’s proposal, the City Council’s Committee on Finance held a required public hearing to discuss the SSA in October 2016. After testimony from supporters and opponents, aldermen on the Committee found that many SSA opponents misunderstood the tax to be much greater than what the Chamber proposed, and postponed its decision until the Chamber addressed the miscommunication. The Chamber then held four public educational meetings, and in November 2017, the Committee on Finance held a second public hearing. The proposal this time included a smaller budget and excluded the outdoor Archer Avenue mall Chinatown Square from the SSA boundaries. At the second hearing, a DPD official said that it amended the boundaries after finding that an unpaid tax liability exists for Chinatown Square. A spokesperson later clarified to the Weekly that the DPD didn’t want to confuse property owners in the Square by adding an additional SSA tax on top of the taxes they already have to pay back.
It is unclear whether the resistance from Chinatown Square business owners affected the change in boundaries; the Chinatown Square Association had pleaded with aldermen during the first public hearing to be excluded, citing internal fees that business owners in the outdoor mall already pay for security and maintenance. Then, three months before the second hearing, supporters of the UCO hung banners throughout Chinatown Square denouncing the SSA. At the second hearing, many business owners again spoke up in opposition. Yet just one month later, the Committee decided to approve the SSA, quickly followed by the full City Council and mayor’s office. There was one last chance for the UCO to block it, however—per Illinois SSA law, if within sixty days of the public hearing, at least fiftyone percent of property owners and at least fifty-one percent of voters registered with addresses in the SSA sign a petition opposing the tax, all proceedings stop, and an SSA can’t be proposed for another two years. With this being its only course to stop the SSA at the City Hall level, UCO members scrambled to collect enough signatures by January 16, submitting 265 in the end. However, a little over a month after they were submitted, the DPD denied the petition, telling the Weekly that while the UCO provided enough signatures from property owners, the petitions did not contain enough from voters. The SSA, and its $93,605 annual budget, will now move forward with the city set to appoint the SSA Commissioners in June, according to the DPD. Darryl Tom, former president of the Chamber, has resigned from the Chamber to apply to become a Commissioner. Seeing that there were still a majority of business owners who signed the UCO’s petition, Tom said that the Commissioners will need to work on “demonstrating the value of the SSA” to the opposing business owners through further public engagement. “Over time, the business owners will find
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hen we first sat down in his office, Dr. Ing Hsu Wu pulled out a massive fluorescent green binder from under his desk. He opened the binder to reveal newspaper clippings, public hearing transcripts, SSA legislation, and finally, a timeline that he handwrote of all the SSA proceedings up until now. Wu, who runs a gynecology clinic in Chinatown Square and is a former president of the Chinatown Square Association, has ardently scrutinized the Chamber’s actions ever since it first proposed the SSA in 2015. Though he is not officially part of UCO, he has been a leading member of resistance efforts against the SSA, speaking in public meetings or to the media in defense of his patients who have expressed worries about the tax. “It is a tax on my community,” he said. Considering the Chamber’s deep involvement with the local community, the bitter reaction from business owners like Wu is surprising, said Chamber president Shu. The Chamber has long been dedicated to community projects, such as the annual Dragon Boat Race, he added. It has also garnered support for its proposal from Chinatown leaders outside of the business community. Bernie Wong, founder of the nonprofit social services agency Chinese American Service League, has publicly lent her support to the SSA. One of the reasons the UCO and its supporters have been so ardently opposed to the SSA is that they have found the Chamber’s actions to be opaque and dubious. Robert Hoy said he questions whether the Chamber complied with city policy. Before submitting its proposal to the DPD, the Chamber was required by city policy to collect support signatures from the taxpayers of at least twenty percent of the parcels within the proposed SSA boundaries. However, based on documents obtained from the
DPD, the Weekly found that the Chamber collected signatures for only twelve percent of the panels—and at least fifty-seven percent of the parcels on the signatory list are owned by Chamber board members, future board members, and in one case, the parent of a board member. Former Chamber president Darryl Tom maintained to the Weekly that the Chamber collected enough signatures to meet twenty percent. In a statement Monday, a DPD spokesperson said that the DPD had fully audited the signatures submitted by the Chamber and they were “found to have met the twenty percent threshold required. Any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate.” The spokesperson said that in this coming week, the DPD will review the documents that it had provided to the Weekly. Hoy also questioned why the Chamber did not submit a new proposal after the DPD changed the SSA boundaries. He “speculate[s] that if the Chamber tried to file a new proposal [that excluded Chinatown Square], they would not have gotten the [the twenty percent support signatures].” The question of Chinatown Square’s status also remains up in the air. During the second hearing, Alderman Danny Solis left open the possibility of later adding the Square back into the tax district, once the Square’s unpaid liability is paid back. After the hearing, the UCO sent a letter to his office seeking clarification as to whether the Square might be later included back into the SSA’s boundaries. Solis’s response, provided to the Weekly by the UCO, evaded answering the question. “I was very concerned to learn of the property tax issue that the Chinatown Square is currently faced with,” it reads. “I am sensitive to how this very pressing issue should take priority over and above any other matters within the community. Therefore, at this time, I encourage the community to focus all their time and efforts on resolving this unfortunate financial burden for the [Chinatown Square] Association and its members.” Solis did not respond to a follow-up letter sent by the UCO. In a statement, a DPD spokesperson described the establishment of SSAs as “always a community-led process…. Decisions about any future extensions of the Chinatown SSA would have to be initiated by the community and the alderman.” Additionally, Wu said that when the Chamber drafted its proposal, it did not involve the whole community. Indeed, when creating the draft, the Chamber created an advisory committee of thirteen—with eight
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[the SSA] to be a productive endeavor,” Tony Shu, a Loop attorney who now serves as the Chamber’s president, said. The UCO’s next steps have not yet been determined, said Joanne Moy, director of the UCO and a liaison with the Chinatown Square Association. Robert Hoy, an attorney based on Archer Avenue and the legal advisor for the UCO, said that its members are at an “investigative juncture.” They are questioning how the DPD calculated the percentage of registered voters, Hoy said, because they believe that registered voters who no longer live in Chinatown should not be counted.
JULIE WU
being Chamber board members—even though city policy states that the committee should include “primarily property owners/ tenants in the proposed SSA.” Responding to criticism about the makeup of the committee, Chamber president Shu said that there are so many citizens in Chinatown that “if we did a poll to ask [who wanted to be on the committee], nothing would get done,” and so the Chamber reached out to its partners to form the committee. The issue was acknowledged by Solis during the first public hearing. SSA opponents have also scrutinized the Chamber’s motives for proposing the SSA. In the second hearing, Hoy claimed that the Chamber has an ulterior motive, basing his claim off a line in the Chamber’s
initial SSA application: “SSA revenue will also help [the Chamber] replace the lost parking revenue.” The Chinatown Parking Corporation, a nonprofit organized by many Chamber board members, runs the parking lot across from the Chinatown library. Hoy believes that some Chamber board members want to develop that parking lot for private commercial use and would use SSA revenue to make up for the parking revenue lost when developing the lot. Chamber and Parking Corporation board member Raymond Lee confirmed to the Weekly Monday that the lot will likely be developed. Developing the lot, which sits along what will be the Wells-Wentworth Connector, was officially proposed in the 2015 Chinatown Vision Plan authored by the FEBRUARY 14, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
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Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, CBCAC, and Solis’s office. According to Lee, who was on the steering committee for the 2015 Chinatown Vision Plan, if the lot is developed, then the SSA would serve to provide services that revenue from the lot currently funds, such as street garbage pickup. Who would develop the lot and profit from its commercial use is not yet known. Hoy believes that Chamber board members will personally develop the lot, while Lee said that “many people applied” to develop it and ultimately the Illinois Department of Transportation, which owns the lot, will decide.
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he UCO and its supporters see inherent problems with the services the Chamber wants to provide with the SSA. Hoy does not see beautification services as “concrete and measurable” in terms of actually increasing visitors and sales. “When you go to Disney World, do you look at the trees? You go for the attractions. What attractions [has the Chamber] planned?” Hoy believes that tourism efforts should be directed towards attractions, such as a rickshaw service between Chinatown and McCormick Place, rather than beautification. Wu also does not see beautification services as conducive to business and tourism. He said that change should start within the businesses by improving customer service and interior design. According to research on the effectiveness of SSAs and other types of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), whether the Chinatown SSA would actually improve sales is ambiguous. Stacey Sutton, an urban planning professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), found in a 2014 study that New York City’s community BIDs with small budgets and located in weak economic areas with local businesses and less foot traffic actually drove sales down. This is likely because community BIDs lack organizational capacity and don’t receive enough visitors to leverage expanded consumption, Sutton found. On the other hand, destination BIDs, which have larger budgets and are located near major commercial areas with much foot traffic, increased sales, but only modestly. The proposed Chinatown SSA potentially possesses aspects of both community and destination BIDs. Its proposed budget is small and its boundaries contain mostly local businesses, but, with the
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new developments in and around Chinatown, foot traffic within the SSA could significantly increase. Even if the Chinatown SSA aligns more with a destination BID, as Sutton’s research suggests, the benefits would be minimal. The business owners are also concerned that “there are no milestones” established in the SSA proposal, said Hoy. “We need accountability.” Accountability for SSAs in Chicago is indeed weak, according to research by UIC urban planning professors Gina Caruso and Rachel Weber. In 2008, they found that the city sent out annual performance measure forms to SSA program managers,
the SSA, but a majority is required to stop it—is unfair. “The laws are not written to protect common people,” the UCO’s Joanne Moy said. “They are designed to benefit a select few.”
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he Chamber leaders are “not elected by the people of Chinatown,” declared Leslie Moy, owner of Oceania Tours in Chinatown Square, in the second hearing. The governing board of the Chamber is elected only by members of the Chamber. However, Chamber membership is open to all business owners, with annual membership fees starting at $220 for small businesses with
“The laws are not written to protect common people. They are designed to benefit a select few.” – Joanne Moy, United Chinatown Organization
but the managers are not penalized if they don’t submit the forms. Additionally, they found the form itself to be flawed, confusing outputs with performance measures. For example, it listed the number of new plants as a performance measure, even though plants do not indicate actual increases in visitors or sales. When asked whether the DPD currently enforces the requirement that SSA program managers provide the city with performance measure forms, a spokesperson said, “Each SSA must submit four quarterly reports to DPD. Those reports include performance measures and satisfy that requirement.” Moreover, the UCO and other opponents oppose the process of how SSAs are established. Per city policy, SSA sponsors are required to collect signatures of taxpayers in just twenty percent of the parcels within the proposed SSA to bring the proposal to the DPD for approval. However, to stop the proposal from passing, as noted above, there must be a majority to sign a petition. For many local business owners, this process – in which only a minority is required to propose
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twenty-four employees or fewer, and reaching $1000 for companies with over one hundred employees. While local business owners could join the Chamber and help choose the leadership, many don’t because of these costs. The Chamber has made “a positive effort to reach out to” the resisting business owners, said Shu, by suggesting that they apply to be SSA Commissioners. Wu and Robert Hoy said they were asked to apply, but they declined. On the surface, the business owners and the Chamber leaders diverge on the issue of taxation. Lee, a Chamber board member, noted in the first hearing that he “personally own[s] about five properties in Chinatown.” The SSA “means [he will be taxed] more money as an owner of the property...but in the long run, we make it so that the tourists continue to come.” Other local business owners, on the other hand, see the SSA tax as an additional burden. In the first hearing, Pat Jan, owner of Judy’s Cosmetics in Chinatown Square, noted that along with a potential SSA tax, “we also have a sales tax increase” and “a city-mandated
wage increase.” Lorac Chow, who runs the nonprofit Gee Tuck Sam Tuck Association on Wentworth Avenue, said in the second hearing that “Chicago already has the second highest tax rate in the whole country.” “All this tax, we're simply paying too much tax,” said Chow. Beneath the surface, the business owners and Chamber leadership’s divergent attitudes about the tax is rooted in their vastly different daily lives. Wu described the working conditions of local business owners. “Every morning I go to the bakery at 8am, but they [the bakery owners] have to start working at 5am. And all the people working at the restaurants go to the grocery store from 6 to 8am and work until midnight.” For these business owners, the little money acquired from working so long is extremely valuable, and so even a small tax feels like a large burden. The Chamber’s board members and executives, on the other hand, mostly work in law, business, or finance. They own property in Chinatown, but it’s unclear whether they personally run the businesses in their properties. Former Chamber president Darryl Tom, for example, said that he rents out his property to tenants. SSA opponents charge that Chamber leaders not only have no experience with the working conditions of the small business owners along Archer or Wentworth but also wouldn’t be likely to be subject to the SSA tax burden if they rent out their properties. According to Sutton, a business improvement tax is typically treated as a “pass-through” tax, meaning that property owners increase rent for their tenants rather than pay the tax themselves. Disconnect between the two groups is evident also in their varying English proficiencies. Chamber leaders, fluent in English, often have had experience interacting with city officials, while many business owners have not fully grasped English nor had many opportunities to work directly with the City. At the second hearing, Chinatown Square store owner Jan said that she was speaking for business owners who accompanied her but could not advocate for themselves in English.
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ith such significant discrepancies existing between SSA opponents and the Chamber leaders, business owners have grown increasingly cynical towards the Chamber’s actions. Hoy, for example, believes that the Chamber is too powerful.
NEIGHBORS
“The SSA proponents want to be the government. They want to tax you to control your property. If you don't comply, then you get your property taken away,” Hoy said. He refuses to collaborate with them and apply to be a Commissioner, saying, “Do you really think my vote against their vote will have any effect?” Chamber president Shu contrastingly expressed that everything the Chamber does is “transparent,” and that the Chamber only embarks on projects with “a long-term view of Chinatown.” The resisting business owners think that the Chamber leadership is “heavily influenced” by commercial interests, Shu said, but “that’s farthest from the truth.” As the SSA opponents continue to scrutinize the Chamber, Chamber leaders have also gotten more frustrated. “They just want to tear down what some good people are doing,” Shu said. The chasm between the two groups only continues to grow. “I am sincerely confident that everyone here today has the same goals and aspirations for the Chinese community…. The only difference we have is how this will be accomplished and who will manage this process,” said local property owner Leslie Moy in the second hearing. This is the central issue, and so far, local business owners and Chamber leaders have only pushed each other farther as they continue to seek the “same goals and aspirations.” Wu sees this divergence between the two groups as a grave issue for the community. At the end of his interview, he put all the documents back in his green binder, took out a pen and paper, and began writing in Chinese. “水可载 舟, 亦可覆舟” – “the water can carry the boat, it can also drown the boat.” The people, the “water,” do not support the SSA, and yet the Chamber leaders, the “boat,” are pushing for it. Wu foresees that the boat is bound to capsize and that the entire community is bound to feel the ripple effects. ¬ Sam Stecklow contributed reporting. A translation of this story in Chinese will be available at southsideweekly.com.
Dancing Day to Day
Balancing life as a student at Chicago Academy for the Arts BY MAPLE JOY
I
saiah Day, a sophomore at the Chicago Academy for the Arts, has found his purpose. “I just really love dance. I believe this is why I’m on earth.” Isaiah and his family currently live in Hyde Park; the Academy is located in River West. Monday through Friday, Isaiah leaves his house for school at 7:34am. It is a fiveminute walk to the Metra station. “It’s kind of cold, but it’s okay. Sometimes I have to run, but it’s okay,” Isaiah said. Like clockwork every morning before Isaiah gets on the Metra train, his mother calls to make sure he made it to the station safely. He then gets off at the Van Buren stop and takes the Academy’s shuttle to school. Isaiah arrives at 8:20am, ten minutes before school starts. Academic classes are held from 8:30am–1:20pm. At that point, Isaiah quickly puts his assignments and books away, changes clothes, and prepares to spend the remainder of the day dancing: he studies ballet, jazz, and modern. After dance, Isaiah heads back home to Hyde Park to do physical strength and flexibility exercises. Isaiah has tendinitis in his right ankle. But, as many dancers do, he simply pushes through the pain. “You just got to keep dancing,” Isaiah laughed. “Go home, ice it, and do your exercises.” Aside from suffering from tendinitis, Isaiah has to push through the pain of the final part of his evening: completing his homework. “Sometimes I fall asleep doing my homework because I’m so tired from the day. I have to wake up to finish it,” Isaiah said. “I get up at six o’clock. If I want to do homework then I need to wake up at five, an hour earlier.” Isaiah always tries to be in bed by 10:30pm every night. After hectic weeks, one might think Isaiah would just relax over the weekends. But, most Saturday mornings, when there’s no weekday shuttle to catch from the CTA, Isaiah wakes up at 3am, leaves the house with his mom at 4:30am, and sits in the car outside of
KATHERINE HILL
his mother’s job for five hours until repertory rehearsal start at 10am, which lasts for three hours. All of this work pays off. When Randy Duncan, Chair of the Dance Department at the Academy, first caught sight of Isaiah among hundreds of dancers at a master-class convention, he knew Isaiah would be a great fit at the school. Two years into the program, Duncan still sees the desire that Isaiah has week in and week out. “All the kids that attend this school, they have to have that passion,” Duncan said. “This is not a school for those who just want to kind of dabble in dance, or music or theatre or whatever. It really is about those special kids who have a desire to be professional once they leave here.” But while he’s here, Isaiah now also finds motivation among the student community at Chicago Academy for the Arts. “The kids here really inspire me the most.
It’s kind of mind-blowing to see the talent in this school, especially in dance,” Isaiah said. “I look at my peers and I’m like, wow you guys are actually amazing. It pushes me to be better. It pushes me to be a better person, a better dancer.” Although the program at the Academy is extremely strict, dance is a way for Isaiah to express himself. It is also an escape from an outside world that has not always been kind to him: Isaiah has faced more than a few bullies along the way who tried to thwart him in his dancing path. Regardless, Isaiah has persevered with contagious positivity. In fact, after high school, he has plans not just to dance professionally, as Duncan would expect, but also to teach. “I want to go into a contemporary ballet company or something like Alvin Ailey,” he said. “And after my dance career, I’d really love to do math, so I want to teach math, mainly algebra.” ¬
FEBRUARY 14, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
Stories of Reform and Resistance For the People Artists Collective chronicles a history of police violence in Chicago BY KIRAN MISRA
“D
o Not Resist?,” For the People Artists Collective’s 2018 exhibition, closed last Friday, February 9, after nearly a month of interdisciplinary generative installations and events across the city. From a training in the basics of cop watching to panels about topics including the abolition of the prison industrial complex, and reporting on police violence, the programming engaged thousands of Chicagoans in a conversation about the history of police violence in the city and alternatives to policing in Chicago. “The police can’t be reformed. You can’t reform something that was never meant for us to begin with,” explains organizer Monica Trinidad of the thesis at the center of the series of installations. “So when you think about ‘we just need police to get better training,’ or, ‘we just need police to get body cameras,’ it doesn’t change anything. We have to think about alternatives to keeping communities safe that don’t involve police.” The earliest police departments in the United States grew out of slave patrols in the South and Indian Constables, who policed Native Americans on their own ancestral lands after settlers arrived, in New England and the Midwest. The function of these early police officers was to protect private property and, by extension, the system of capitalism by assisting wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves and seizing control of Native land for private ownership by settlers. Fast forward a couple of hundred years: Black and Native populations still experience disproportionately high amounts of policing and incarceration across the country and in the city of Chicago, a reality that has sparked artistic resistance like “Do Not Resist?” for the last several years. The multi-site, interdisciplinary project was inspired by Black and Blue, a series of events about police violence, resistance, and the prison industrial complex put on in 2013 by Project NIA, a grassroots organization working to end youth incarceration. After the series, in 2015, Mariame Kaba and other 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
KIRAN MISRA
Chicago activists created an art installation in City Hall, to which artists from around the city contributed pieces that highlighted specific incidents of police violence, as a part of a campaign for $5.5 million in reparations to be paid to survivors of police torture in Chicago. Trinidad contributed a piece to the installation on the Memorial Day massacre of 1937, a day during which the Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators in the city. “That sparked a lot of research for me, looking more deeply into police violence, so it was from there that I applied through the Propeller Fund for a grant for the For the People Artists’ Collective…we started planning [“Do Not Resist?”] in spring of 2016, so we’ve been planning for a year and a half now,” said Trinidad. In many ways, the installation reflects the moment of its
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inception, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, which sparked a national discussion about police brutality as a systemic issue rather than a series of isolated incidents. After fundraising and securing an additional grant through the Crossroads Fund, Trinidad and other organizers including Ruby Pinto, Deb Kim, Sarah-Ji Rhee, and Serena Hodges put out a call to artists across the city, canvassing in every neighborhood in Chicago to solicit pieces. “Having all these different neighborhoods represented was a real success for us because it meant a lot of people were being represented. We had artists from the far far far South Side to the far far far North Side to the West Side to the East Side, so we really felt successful in reaching all parts of the city,” Trinidad said. Over forty artists contributed to the exhibition from more than twenty-five
different neighborhoods. Intended to be a play on words of the police’s command when making arrests, “do not resist,” the goal of the exhibition was to point out the inherent contradictions between policing, increasing public safety, and working against violence in this city. As Trinidad puts it, “How can you not resist all of this violence in our communities? Do not resist? Really? After one hundred years of police violence and impunity?” The opening night of the exhibition drew a crowd of nearly 600 Chicagoans ranging from experienced abolitionists to Chicagoans curious about their city’s history. “We were trying to be in conversation with everybody,” Trinidad said. “I think anybody that walked into that space could take something away with them. Even the most experienced organizer could still go into that
POLICING
room and still not know about one of those incidents that happened in Chicago over the last one hundred years, and just learning one more piece of that history could really change your perception or theory of change. So that’s what we were trying to do, is using art and history to change people’s minds and open people’s minds.” Trinidad wants the exhibition to provide people with more than just knowledge, but also to spur a new mode of thinking. “There are people right now who are living without policing, right? People that are in upper-class white communities that don’t interact with the police on a daily basis. They don’t see them, they don’t interact with them. So that goes to show that people can exist without having police. [So, through the exhibition], I want people to think for one second, ‘how can we follow a different way of living? What is an alternative to policing? For those who were unable to make it to any of the four sites, a virtual exhibition space and a documentary film by filmmaker Tom Callahan chronicling the process of creating and displaying the exhibitions will immortalize the series online for years to come. The exhibition’s fourth and final opening, at In These Times, featured a panel and discussion with Kelly Hayes of Truthout, Maya Dukmasova of the Reader, Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute, and Alex Hernandez of In These Times. The panel was moderated by activist, organizer, journalist, and City Bureau fellow Charles Preston. The panelists’ discussion explored the complexities of reporting on police violence in Chicago. When a reporter from outside the city, without certain subconscious rationalizations about Chicago, approaches the context with a fresh set of eyes, it may be easier for them to pick up on clues of cover-ups and corruptions that native Chicago reporters may not pick up on. “The inverse of that is that they might not have a lot of the nuance that someone from here needs,” said Fernandez. According to the panelists, further exacerbating the problem of police violence in the city are issues including widespread societal conditioning to trust and believe the police, extremely effective FOP lobbying to decrease transparency, and a lack of proactivity on the behalf of the city government in addressing the many shortcomings of policing in Chicago. Also, effectively reporting sexual assault perpetrated by the CPD is nearly impossible because of an opaque and misleading police misconduct
classification system, as well as the fact that sexual assault complaints against the police are investigated through the department’s internal affairs division. Throughout the panel discussion, Hayes highlighted that the first step to staring unflinchingly at the violence of the police state is to develop a shared vocabulary and understanding around state violence, citing the sexual assault and entrapment of Standing Rock water protector Red Fawn Fallis as an example. Accused of discharging a firearm and attempting to kill a police officer, the only evidence against Fallis was a gun found in her proximity that belonged to her boyfriend at the time, who was an informant for the police. “When we have an agent by the state that invests themselves in the community under false pretenses, who adopts a false persona, that was state violence. That was rape at the hands of the state,” said Hayes. “We need to be able to talk about things like what happened to Red Fawn as takedowns that are orchestrated against activists. [We need to understand that] violence is definitely more expansive than what we were told as children.” And in Hayes’s eyes, the key to a shared understanding of violence is an orientation on the framework of harm, which is often simpler to conceptualize and discuss than issues of legality and the police’s monopoly on statesanctioned violence. Utilizing the framework of harm-reduction in conversations about accountability and justice has the advantage of not replicating the language and logics of the carceral system, which has historically been weaponized and mobilized against marginalized groups. However, even with all the right tools and vocabulary for addressing police brutality and violence, Hayes and the other panelists are skeptical that change will be led by mainstream journalistic outlets and reporting. “The media is more than ninety-percent corporate-owned right now, and I think that’s one of those things, with the internet becoming more and more compromised, that we’re going to have to look to things like zines more, we’re going to have to look into our past more about how we proliferate news and knowledge and analysis,” explained Hayes. The use of this nontraditional and independent art and media, like zines, was the focus of “Do Not Resist?”’s February 3 events, The History of Policing Thru Zines and The Aesthetics of Abolition in the 21st Century. While the In These Times opening reception
looked back, at the history of police violence in Chicago, these two events looked forward towards an abolitionist vision on the horizon. “For me, what I mean when I talk about abolition is that I want the end of the whole entire system of mutually reinforcing relationships between surveillance and prisons and policing that fuel and maintain and expand social and economic inequities and institutional racism,” said one of the two panelists, organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba. “So, the idea, basically, is the dismantling of a whole system that leads to premature death for many many people around the world.” The current systems of justice under the prison industrial complex disincentivize accountability and encourage denial, Kaba argued. As such, the abolition of the prison industrial complex for Kaba and other abolitionist organizers requires more than just closing prisons. It requires addressing the problems of policing and broader issues like accountability and resource inequity. Dismantling a system is the central difference between police and prison abolition and police and prison reform, one of the themes of many of the “Do Not Resist?” events. “We’re trying to do away with the system, rather than finding a way to make that system ‘work better’ or ‘be nicer’ or be ‘more humane.’ The system is actually built to be inhumane. It’s killing exactly who it targets. So the sort of main framework of abolition is not just to tear down, but to build up the main framework for the world we want to live in,” Kaba said. “As Ruthie Gilmore has said, abolition is about presence. A presence of something else.” Given that policing, prisons, and surveillance have been a core part of America since settlers arrived in this country, Kaba sees art as being central to imagining a future that does not yet exist, in addition to dismantling the current system. “I really rely on what Jeff Chang has said over the years, that cultural change precedes political change…I would contend that social movements themselves are a form of collective art-making. We need new chants, which is also artistic. We need new singing. We need new songs.” This discussion and many others through the night centered on exploring the collective understanding of often nebulous concepts. As Kaba asked Sarah Ross, an educator and the other panelist of the night, to define the name of the event, The Aesthetics of Abolition, Ross speculated, “I think that art that supports and informs abolition is experimental, challenges us with questions, and is collaborative. Art
that has an abolitionist framework is also generous. In the demand for freedom for us all, it asks questions publicly and is vulnerable publicly and that in that generosity, we move some place together. Abolition is a movement informed by those who are inside prison and who have been inside prison. The abolitionist movement has learned that without the actual participation of prisoners, there can be no campaign. Another tenet [of abolitionist art] would be to name people’s names. And this room does that. The whole exhibition does that.” The installation at Hairpin, to which Ross was referring included audio interviews with Rekia Boyd’s family, a blue patchwork quilt that had written on it the names of people lost to police brutality over the last few years, and a piece of pottery featuring the names of people who had experienced police violence in Chicago among many other audio, visual, and tactile installations. “Tomorrow we’re not going to tear down all the walls of the prisons, as much as we would like to, but we are all doing this work together, we are all doing it with a vision of ending white supremacy and ending racism and capitalism,” reflected Ross on the topic of abolitionist organizing. And this is the reality of abolition as reflected through “Do Not Resist?”: that this movement is a centurieslong journey of millimeter-length steps to create alternatives to policing, prisons, and surveillance. And, as “Do Not Resist?” showed, while abolition looks towards the future, it is grounded in the present. “I always tell people the importance of writing yourself into history, not because you are vain, but because somebody should know what you did because it is important,” Kaba advised. “Your work is building off of the work of ancestors and somebody’s work will be building off of yours.” From winning the campaign for reparations for survivors of police torture in Chicago to a reduction in the population of youth incarcerated in Illinois from about 2000 people to 400 to the closure of three youth prisons, organizers have achieved remarkable victories in the past few years upon which future generations of abolitionists will expand and build. “I don’t believe in throwing people away. I don’t believe in disposing of them by locking them away like we’re never going to have to interact with them again,” Kaba said. “Most people who go to prison come out. So the question is how do we want them to be able to live having come out. What kind of culture do we create for them?” ¬ FEBRUARY 14, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
BULLETIN Roundtable on Gun Violence in Hyde Park Build Coffee, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Thursday, February 15, 11:30am–1pm. Free. Must register online at bit.ly/HPGunViolence Renato Mariotti, a candidate for Illinois Attorney General, will host a conversation with Khary Penebaker, a Democratic National Convention representative, to discuss gun violence in Hyde Park. (Samantha Smylie)
Black History Month African American Lit Fest Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. February 3–26. soulfulchicagobookfair.com/events Kick off Black History Month by getting lit with the African American Lit Fest. The Soulful Chicago Book Fair, in partnership with the Chicago Public Library African American Services Committee, will host a series of events with local authors, poets, and storytellers throughout the month. (Erisa Apantaku)
Pilsen Community Town Hall on Rent Control & Property Taxes St. Pius V Parish, 1919 S. Ashland Ave. Monday, February 19, 6pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/PilsenRentControl In light of ongoing gentrification in Pilsen, the Pilsen Alliance, the South Side chapter of the DSA, and the Illinois chapter of Our Revolution are hosting a community town hall on solutions to the housing crisis through the implementation of rent control and reform to the property tax assessment system. Attendees will include gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Daniel Biss and State Rep. Theresa Mah. (Sam Stecklow)
Fabian Elliott @ Chi Hack Night & City Tech Black History Month Speaker Series Braintree, 222 W. Merchandise Mart Plz, 8th floor. Tuesday, February 20, 6pm–9:30pm. Free. Must register online at bit.ly/ChiHackElliott. chihacknight.org Chi Hack Night and City Tech are hosting a speaking series for Black History Month to encourage diversity in the civic-tech 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
community in Chicago. On February 20th, Fabias Elliot will talk about the experiences that led him to found Black Tech Mecca in 2015. (Samantha Smylie)
Democratic Primary Congressional Forums 3rd District: Moraine Valley Community College, 9000 W. College Pkwy, Palos Hills. Wednesday, February 21, 7pm–8pm. Free. bit. ly/3rdDistrictPalosHills 4th District: First forum: Riverside Township Auditorium, 27 Riverside Rd., 2nd fl., Riverside. Thursday, February 15, 7pm–9pm. Free. bit.ly/4thDistrictRiverside Second forum: Cicero Community Center, 2250 S. 49th Ave, Cicero. Monday, February 26, 7pm–8pm. Free. bit.ly/4thDistrictCicero In the rapidly approaching Democratic primary—which, in Chicago, matters a whole lot more than the general election—you can never be too well informed. In that spirit, we encourage everyone living in Illinois’s 3rd and 4th congressional districts, which include a number of South Side neighborhoods, to attend these upcoming forums, hosted by a coalition of west suburban Indivisible groups and the League of Women Voters of Chicago, respectively. In the 3rd District hear from incumbent conservative Democrat Rep. Dan Lipinski and liberal nonprofit founder Marie Newman. In the 4th, Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, nonprofit founder Sol Flores, and Chicago police sergeant Richard Gonzalez all make their pitches as to why they should replace outgoing Rep. Luis Gutiérrez. (Sam Stecklow)
Chicago-area girls in grades 6-8 come together each year for this career conference focused on STEM fields. Students take part in a day of workshops and handson activities led by women in these fields. Online registration is mandatory; scholarships are available. (Rachel Schastok)
Lo Rez Brewing for craft beer, live music, an auction, and “Dichos y Diretes,” a collection of the work of nine Latinx and Latin American printmaking artists from the IGC. Show up early so you don’t miss the happy hour fundraiser for the National Museum of Mexican Art. (Roderick Sawyer)
VISUAL ARTS
MUSIC
Diana Solis Fundraiser
Winter Blue
Pilsen Outpost, 1958 W. 21st St. Saturday, February 17, 5pm–10pm. $10-$100. bit.ly/DianaSolisFundraiser
Some Like it Black, 4259 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Unit D. Thursday, February 15, 6pm. $5 donation. (773) 891-4866. somelikeitblack.com
Diana Solis is a Chicago-based painter and illustrator whose paintings and drawings have been showcased in Chicago, Mexico, Spain, and Germany. Now, she needs your support to travel to the Czech Republic this summer. Come for raffle prizes, great music, and snacks and beverages. All ages are welcome. (Maple Joy)
Artist Block Vol.10: Love Stinks Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar, 960 W. 31st St. Saturday, February 17, 1pm–6pm. Free. 21+. bit.ly/ArtistBlockV10 Drink, draw, and collaborate at one of Bridgeport’s best-known pubs for the tenth volume of the Chicago Creative Collaborators’ Artist Block.You can borrow doodle paper, art supplies, and coloring pages––and you don’t even have to be an artist to attend this free, low-key public hangout. ( Joseph S. Pete)
Chinese New Year Celebration
Eclipsing Workshop: Nourishing Noir with Nicole Melanie
Chinese American Museum of Chicago, 238 W. 23rd St. Saturday, February 17, 2pm–4pm. Free. (312) 949-1000. RSVP required. bit. ly/2EuKoAP
Arts and Public Life, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Friday, February 16, 5pm–7pm. Free. (773) 702-9724. bit.ly/NourishingNoir
Ring in the Year of the Dog at the Chinese American Museum’s annual celebration, complete with food, music, arts and crafts, and a Chinese lion dance, performed by acrobatic dancers to represent luck for the coming year. (Tammy Xu)
Vegan chocolatier Nicole Melanie will lead “Nourishing Noir,” a workshop on the historical context and cultural significance of black foods. She’ll also discuss the nutritional benefits of a plant-based diet. (Roderick Sawyer)
Expanding Your Horizons Chicago
Rezident: Featuring Instituto Grafico de Chicago
UofC Kent Chemical Laboratory, 1020 East 58th St. Sunday, March 24, 8am–3pm. $5. Registration opens February 12. eyhchicago.com
Lo Rez Brewing, 2101 S. Carpenter St. Friday, February 16, 7pm–11pm. Free. (312) 738-1503. lorezbrewing.com
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Join the Instituto Gráfico de Chicago and
The final session of the Winter Blue series features artistry from urban rock fusion band Black Flowerz Movement and a sizzling open mic lineup of Chicago talent. Get ready for poetic prose and rhythmic vibrations for the soul. (LaToya Cross)
Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot Harper Theater, 5238 S. Harper Ave. Thursday, February 15, 7pm–8:30pm. (773) 834-1936. bit.ly/HoraceTapscott Barbara McCullough’s new film tells the story of influential jazz musician Horace Tapscott, whose activism got him blacklisted in the seventies. After the screening, McCullough will discuss the film with composer Renée Baker and series curator Jacqueline Stewart. (Neal Jochmann)
Black Cinema House Presents: Oscar Brown Jr. Black Cinema House, 1456 E. 70th St. Friday, February 16, 7pm–9pm. Free. (312) 8575561. rebuild-foundation.org Songwriter and playwright, politician and activist, poet and actor––it might be clichéd to suggest that someone contains multitudes, but Oscar Brown Jr. did. Join his daughter, the singer Maggie Brown, for a retrospective screening and discussion at the Black Cinema House. (Christopher Good)
Bit x Bit DADS, 2515 S. Archer Ave. Saturday, February 17, 8pm–12am. $7 before 10pm, $12 after. (312) 451-2962. bit.ly/BitXBit Bit x Bit is returning for another installment at Chicago’s own Digital Arts Demo Space. Come to see some innovative electronic
EVENTS
musicians, including Hypnogram and Aethernaut—and catch the multimedia work of some VJs as well. Can’t make it? The event will be livestreamed at twitch.tv/ dadschicago. (Michael Wasney)
Work on the Sabbath featuring The DOT BING Art Books, 307 E. Garfield Blvd. Sunday, February 18, 3pm. Free. (872) 2569702. bit.ly/the-dot This “Sunday Service” is sure to refuel your soul for the week ahead with instrumental selections from The DOT, a three-piece band comprised of organist/pianist Justin Dillard, guitarist Vinnie Roof, and drummer Samuel Jewell. The group fuses avant-garde jazz and modern R&B with soul-funk sounds. (LaToya Cross)
STAGE & SCREEN Poetry Out Loud City Regionals Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior St. Wednesday, February 14, 10am. Free. (312) 787-7070. poetryfoundation.org Chicago high schools participating in this annual competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation will send their poetry recitation champions to the city regionals this Valentine’s Day. Students are judged both for presentation and accuracy, with the winner advancing to state finals and a chance at the national finals held in Washington, D.C. in April. (Tammy Xu)
Welcome to This House Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Saturday, February 17, 7pm-10pm. Free. (773) 702-2787. southsideprojections.org The second part of a two-night celebration of lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s work, this night is the Chicago premiere of Hammer’s 2015 documentary on the life, loves, and homes of the poet Elizabeth Bishop—a project whose commitment to the memories and “unexpected details” embedded in buildings and landscapes recalls a line from one of Bishop’s own poems: “no detail too small.” ( Julia Aizuss)
Sydney R. Daniels Oratorical Festival
Harold Washington College, room 1115, 30 E. Lake Street. Tuesday, February 27, 2pm–4pm. Free. (312) 553-5600. bit.ly/DanielsOratoricalFest The annual Sydney R. Daniels Black History Month Oratorical Festival by Harold Washington College’s English, Speech & Theatre Department offers scholarships to all participants, including $1,000 to the first-place winner. Orators are tasked with commemorating educators, humanitarians, scientists, politicians, and other influential African Americans. ( Joseph S. Pete)
The Extraordinary Everyday Marriage Duo South Side Weekly Radio Hour, Tuesdays in February, 3pm–4pm WHPK 88.5FM or whpk.org Listen to authors Sean and Dorian H. Nash during segment two of a four-part series dedicated to love and relationships. The Duo will share key elements they have learned for building and sustaining a healthy marriage, as described in their book, Do You Love Me Still? Listeners are invited to call in their relationship questions for the Duo to answer live on-air for the final segment on February 27. Questions can be voice mailed now to (224) 215-1890. (The Weekly Read)
Breach Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. Friday, February 9–Sunday, March 11. 7:30pm Tuesday–Saturday, 7:30pm; Saturday–Sunday, 3pm. $15–$60. (773) 8713000. victorygardens.org Jeff Award–winning playwright Antoinette Nwandu’s Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate is a comedy about family, friendship, and motherhood billed as “a love letter to black women.” Caren Blackmore stars as Margaret in her debut on the Lincoln Park stage. ( Joseph S. Pete)
Eye of the Storm: The Bayard Rustin Story eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Friday, February 9–Sunday, March 11. Fridays and Saturdays 8pm, Sundays 3pm. $40, discounts available for seniors, students, and groups. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org
Playwright McKinley Johnson tells the story of behind-the-scenes Civil Rights Movement organizer Bayard Rustin, whose work garnered him the moniker “The Architect of the March on Washington.” Despite Rustin’s efforts and achievements, he was persecuted for being gay. In conjunction with the play, a Contemporary Conversation on Race, Sexuality and Politics will be the topic of a joint panel scheduled with eta and the UofC Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture on Saturday, February 10 at 6:30pm with the playwright as well as social justice leaders and scholars from Chicago. (Nicole Bond)
All My Sons Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Extended through Sunday, February 18. Tickets $20– $68. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org Charles Newell directs Arthur Miller’s 1947 Drama Critics’ Award-winning play All My Sons. Featuring Timothy Edward Kane, John Judd, and Kate Collins, this dramatic tale, based on true events, weaves business, love, and tragedy, and established Miller as an American theater icon. (Nicole Bond)
FOOD & LAND The Black Farmer KS-Holistic Training and Development Center, 10340 S. Western Ave. Sunday, February 18, 3pm–5pm. Tickets $25.26. Ages 10+. (773) 938-0324. RSVP at bit.ly/2EpgzlZ Join Jacqueline Smith, gardener, earth stewardess, and owner of GrowAsis Urban Garden Consulting. Smith will talk about the role of Black farmers in America and Africa, current farming practices, and indigenous food growing. Refreshments will be provided. (Emeline Posner)
City Bureau Public Newsroom: Property Taxes Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Thursday, February 22, 6pm–8pm. Free. (773) 819-5188. bit.ly/2HcDw9Y Property taxes got you confused, stressed, or generally down? At this week’s public newsroom, journalists at ProPublica Illinois will first walk you through their reporting on Cook County’s unfair and error-ridden property tax system, and then help you through your own assessment or appeal— bring a copy. (Emeline Posner)
51st Street Community Farmers Market Internship Applications Send applications, questions, to Stephanie Dunn, Sdunn1342@gmail.com. Applications due February 15. bit.ly/51stInternshipApps United Human Services, a food pantry that operates twelve community gardens and farms in Back of the Yards, is looking for three farmers market interns and three farming interns for the coming season. The marketing internship will offer a $500 stipend for ten hours a week from May to October, and the farm internship is unpaid, with a free produce share and money-making opportunities at weekly farmers markets, for sixteen hours a week. Candidates will be interviewed and selected by March 15. (Emeline Posner)
Chicago Food Policy Summit South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr. Friday, February 23, summit 9am–5pm, reception 5:30pm–7:30pm. Reception $10, summit and reception $20. chicagofoodpolicy.com Registration is now open for the thirteenth annual Chicago Food Policy Summit, organized around this year’s theme “From Survive to Thrive.” The event is hosted by the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, a volunteer organization advocating for equal access to healthy food options in the city. Details about summit workshops, speakers, and vendors to be announced. (Tammy Xu)
Healthy Food Hub Pop-Up Market Day Chicago State University Library, 9501 S. King Dr. Saturday, February 24, 11am–1pm. (773) 410-3446. healthyfoodhub.org Come find produce, spices, and other goods at the Healthy Food Hub’s Chicago State University pop-up market day. The Englewood-based agricultural cooperative is taking a break from its normal weekly schedule for the winter, so don’t sleep on what may be the Hub’s only market day until the spring. Arrive at 9am to participate in an intro class for the Hub’s Lifeboat Permaculture Design Certification and Commercial Farm Training. (Emeline Posner)
FEBRUARY 14, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
THE HOU S I N G I SS U E TAL K BAC K Join the conversation on housing & homelessness Hear from South Side Weekly journalists reporting on the issues and from community organizers in the field. Bring your questions, comments, and stories in response to our Housing Issue: southsideweekly.com/housing-issue-2018 SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1PM–4PM
Blackstone Bicycle Works U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 12pm Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)
CO-HOSTED WITH THE PILSEN ALLIANCE AT THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY LOZANO BRANCH, 1805 S. LOOMIS ST.
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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
follow us at @blackstonebikes blackstonebikes.org
Blackstone Bicycle Works is a bustling community bike shop that each year empowers over 200 boys and girls from Chicago’s south side—teaching them mechanical skills, job skills, business literacy and how to become responsible community members. In our year-round ‘earn and learn’ youth program, participants earn bicycles and accessories for their work in the shop. In addition, our youths receive after-school tutoring, mentoring, internships and externships, college and career advising, and scholarships. Hours Tuesday - Friday 1pm - 6pm 12pm - 5pm Saturday
773 241 5458 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637
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