February 15, 2017

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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

Volume 4, Issue 19 Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Director of Staff Support Ellie Mejía Director of Writer Development Mari Cohen Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editors Emeline Posner, Julia Aizuss Education Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor

Hafsa Razi Austin Brown Nicole Bond Corinne Butta

Contributing Editors Maddie Anderson, Joe Andrews, Jonathan Hogeback, Andrew Koski, Adia Robinson, Carrie Smith, Margaret Tazioli, Yunhan Wen Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producers Andrew Koski Daphne Maeglin Web Editor Camila Cuesta Social Media Editors Emily Lipstein, Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Jasmin Liang Layout Editors Baci Weiler, Sofia Wyetzner Staff Writers: Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Michal Kranz, Anne Li, Zoe Makoul, Kylie Zane Fact Checkers: Eleanore Catolico, Sam Joyce, Rachel Kim, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Carrie Smith, Tiffany Wang Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma, Lizzie Smith Data Visualization: Jasmine Mithani Webmasters

Sofia Wyetzner

Publisher

Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

IN CHICAGO

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

R.I.P., Pivot Gang’s John Walt In our Music Issue we wrote, “[T]his is an issue about the music of the South Side, but more than that, it’s about the people who made that music possible. To those people, we say thank you—for offering us answers, and for everything else too.” Last week, we saw the devastating flip side of that personal sentiment. Walter Long, Jr., better known as John Walt and dinnerwithjohn, one of the original members of Pivot Gang and a cornerstone of the West Side’s hip-hop scene, was killed near the Metra tracks at Union Station on Wednesday, February 8. He was stabbed after an altercation on the CTA. The Weekly never covered John, but the impact of his music, voice, personality, and more on the best and brightest creative minds of the city was undeniable, rippling through every inch of Chicago’s music scenes, and the loss will be just as potent.

Chance the Rapper, Meet Bruce the Governor In what can only be described as a hometown victory, Chance the Rapper won three awards at the Grammys on Sunday, including awards for Best New Artist (his first mixtape came out in 2012) and Best Rap Album; he is the first unsigned artist to win a Grammy in the history of the awards. The next day, Governor Bruce Rauner, whose austerity policies and mismanagement of the state budget have wreaked havoc on social services throughout Chicago, including in neighborhoods like Chatham, where Chance the Rapper is from, offered his congratulations to Chance via Twitter. Chance tweeted back requesting a meeting with (joke credit to the Sun-Times) Bruce the Governor, and the governor quickly agreed. There’s no word yet on whether this meeting will result in a kind of come-to-Jesus moment for Rauner or whether the two will collaborate on a diss track targeting Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Can’t Judge a TV Segment by Its Title Chris Hayes couldn’t have picked a worse title than “Chicago in the Crosshairs,” which brings to mind the never-ending litany of media that luridly describes Chicago’s violence without analyzing its cause and dehumanizes the city’s South and West Side residents. And when the host of MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” announced that he would be taping a town hall at the South Shore Cultural Center with that aforementioned name, he received well-deserved flak from Chicago residents on Twitter. But in the segment itself, which aired last Friday, Hayes made it clear that he was determined to avoid the pitfalls of “parachute journalism” and to discuss the nuances of Chicago’s gun violence in response to President Trump’s recent threats to “send the feds” to Chicago. Hayes proceeded to speak with a variety of Chicago activists and officials not just about gun violence but also about police brutality, school closures, and the lack of available jobs and mental health services. Among other segments, the forum highlighted the ways in which Chicagoans are already organizing against violence, and, in a filmed interlude, Hayes’s colleague Trymaine Lee walked the streets of Chatham with WBEZ’s Natalie Moore as she discussed the history of black Chicago and the impact of segregation.

But while city officials like Deputy Mayor Andrea Zopp and Chicago Police Commissioner Eddie Johnson argued that the city was already taking steps to reduce violence, activists took the opportunity to condemn not just Trump but state and local politicians. A clip of activist Ja’Mal Green telling Hayes that “this mayor that we have in the city of Chicago does not care about black people” received traction on social media. Green pointed out the mayor’s history of investing money in projects like the DePaul basketball stadium and downtown bus stops while neglecting the needs of predominantly black communities. It’s a particularly potent critique given that Emanuel is currently enthusiastic about yet another pricey project that no one seems to need: an express train from downtown to O’Hare.

IN THIS ISSUE four challengers for the fourth ward

“Why can’t that be on 35th Street? Why can’t that be on 43rd Street?” max bloom.........................................4 a family affair

The concept of music as action that can save, heal, and change isabelle lim.......................................7 two artists fighting in a white cube

“That’s what completed it, just having everyone be implicated in viewing it.” ashvini kartik-narayan.................10 universities get political

“Myself and many of the members at SAGA don’t believe that standing on principle has a deadline.” michal kranz..................................12 south side sisterhood of writers

“When you come to something from us, you gonna learn something.” adia robinson..................................14 boots on the ground

“What we need from you is your talent and time.” hafsa razi.......................................15

OUR WEBSITE S ON SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM SSW Radio soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio Email Edition southsideweekly.com/email Support the Weekly southsideweekly.com/donate

Cover photo by Jason Schumer

FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Four Challengers for the Fourth Ward Despite a crowded field, Sophia King remains the favorite to win the Fourth Ward’s aldermanic election

BY MAX BLOOM

I

’m sitting across from Reverend Gregory Livingston, candidate for alderman of the Fourth Ward, in his office on Cottage Grove Avenue and 43rd Street. We’re talking about accessibility and transparency in ward politics. “I love this quote by Voltaire,” says Livingston, fishing through his phone for the precise wording.

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”

G

iven its size, at a little over fifty thousand residents, Chicago’s Fourth Ward is remarkably diverse.

Beginning at Jackson and State, in the historic blocks of Printer’s Row, it tracks through the high-rise condominiums and elegant lakeside park space of the South Loop, sprawls south for thirty blocks through the patchwork of senior housing, vacant lots, apartment complexes, and historic townhouse architecture of Bronzeville, runs headlong into the mansions of South Kenwood and finally terminates in the dense student housing of northern Hyde Park. Former president Barack Obama lived within the current boundaries of the ward thirty years ago; sixty years before that, and twenty blocks to the northwest, Ida B. Wells made her home; sixty years before that, Stephen Douglas was buried a couple blocks away, facing the water in a great tomb that still stands today.

The shape of the ward is so counterintuitive, so immediately striking that the Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC), a local organization dedicated to attending “to the civic needs of the community” according to their 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

website, used a map of the ward to advertise their upcoming forum, HPKCC President George Rumsey told me. The current shape is a result of redistricting in 2012. Before then, the ward encompassed a diverse but readily comprehensible patch of the South Side—a quasi-rectangle more or less extending from Balbo Drive to 53rd Street, and from King Drive to Lake Shore Drive.

But in the first decade of the 2000s, the public housing projects that had for fifty years or so characterized Bronzeville were demolished, displacing tens of thousands from the near and mid South Side into the southern suburbs and the bungalow neighborhoods along the border of the city. The Fourth Ward had to make up the missing population somehow; it couldn’t expand west into the Third Ward, which had lost even more people when the projects were demolished, and the Fifth Ward, to the south, was underpopulated too. To the east lay Lake Michigan and so the Fourth Ward expanded north, into the rapidly developing blocks of the South Loop.

As a result, the Fourth Ward now represents three more or less distinct constituencies: the affluent, largely white, and young professional population that has moved into the South Loop over the last decade; the socioeconomically and racially diverse population of Hyde Park and Kenwood; and the middle-income AfricanAmerican population of the historic blocks in between.

Control over this unruly patchwork of neighborhoods was up in the air as of February of last year, when Alderman Will Burns stepped down to work for AirBnB.

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Within a few months, Sophia King, founder and president of the nonprofit advocacy group Harriet’s Daughters, was selected by Mayor Emanuel to replace him until the upcoming special election, scheduled for February 28. The election will pit King, who has been endorsed by Barack Obama and now the Sun-Times, and has a big lead in fundraising, against a number of insurgent candidates, most of whom contend that Chicago’s political establishment has been inattentive and unresponsive to the needs of the residents of the Fourth Ward. The outcome of the election will test whether the ward’s long-established political apparatus still has the confidence of its constituents.

Alderman King now faces four challengers for her seat: Gregory Seal Livingston, a reverend and activist; Ebony Lucas, a real estate lawyer; Gerald Scott McCarthy, an attorney; and Marcellus H. Moore, Jr., also an attorney. In conversations with the Weekly, none of them criticized King directly but all expressed opposition to the way things have been managed in the ward, both by Emanuel and by more local officials and organizations. One major area of concern has been Tax Increment Financing (TIFs) funding, mentioned independently by almost every candidate I spoke to. On paper, TIFs are special funds designed to subsidize redevelopment in “blighted” areas of the city through incremental rises in property tax revenue.

But several candidates argued that TIFs allocations divert revenue from public goods like schools and parks, and, contrary to their intended focus on helping traditionally disenfranchised neighborhoods, are instead

funding development in already prosperous communities, such as Hyde Park or The Loop.

“TIFs are not being used in blighted communities and the schools are getting shorted at the same time,” said Ebony Lucas. “It makes sense to me to provide developers in blighted communities with some sort of incentive. It makes no sense to me to provide those same resources to a developer that’s building a skyscraper in downtown Chicago.” Lucas continued, “On 53rd Street, the development is great. I’m happy about it. But the TIF funds should not have been used there.”

“I live on 41st and Ellis,” Lucas said.

“There’s been a lot of development in Hyde Park. Before Mariano’s, there was nothing on Cottage Grove, no amenities in our community—and there still aren’t. I felt that we need someone who understands development.” Gerald Scott McCarthy, making a similar point, suggested that Bronzeville in particular had potential for development. “I remember when Pilsen was one type of area—and look at it now.

Andersonville—I was just there the other day. Why can’t that be on 35th Street? Why can’t that be on 43rd Street?”

Marcellus Moore identified public safety as the primary issue facing the Fourth Ward. A lawyer like Lucas, Moore spoke to me on the twenty-first floor of a Loop office building, interrupting our conversation briefly to advise an elderly client closing on a house. Also like Lucas, he too had planned to run against Burns in the 2019 election before Burns stepped down. “I love my community,” said Moore, who lives

POLITICS

Total contributions received so far by each candidate 1 head = ~$10,000

$223,666.52

$37,173 $23,000 $12,000 $10,204.47

in Bronzeville, “but I’m not completely comfortable letting my fifteen-year-old son walk blocks down the street to the train station.” Moore, who suggested that collaboration between the various private and institutional security forces in the area could help decrease crime, pointed to 53rd Street as a potential model. “UofC police has a great partnership with CPD,” said Moore. “If you drive up and down 53rd Street between Lake Park and Woodlawn, you see that collaboration. You see five uniformed officers. You see six police cars.”

Moore is not unusual among the candidates in his focus on public safety, although his proposed model of more, higher-visibility policing is in stark contrast with the activist-favored community collaboration supported by Gregory Livingston (although Moore spoke positively of walking beats and other forms of community policing). Far more striking was Moore’s relatively positive appraisal of the Mayor, which stands out against a field of critics—even Emanuel’s appointee, Sophia King, has joined the Progressive Caucus that frequently opposes him.

“I am not a Rahm hater by any means,” said Moore, maintaining that he would work with Emanuel when he acted in the interests of the Fourth Ward and oppose him otherwise. “I respect anybody who takes a role like Mayor,” said Moore.

One of the most common complaints voiced by the candidates so far has been that citizens have been shut out of the decisionmaking process at both the aldermanic and mayoral level. Gerald Scott McCarthy, for instance, has framed almost his entire campaign around community engagement.

“Whether it’s right or wrong,” said McCarthy, “I think there’s a perception of disconnect. Transparency doesn’t mean you have your say, transparency means you know what’s going on.” McCarthy suggested a roster of options that could increase transparency, ranging from community think tanks to TIF advisory boards. But he also blamed a political culture that he felt safeguarded establishment candidates while shutting out possible rivals.

“The one thing that has bothered me is the endorsement process. I probably won’t get any endorsements because some of them are rigged,” said McCarthy, who charged that he had not even been made aware of certain forums for endorsements until immediately before they were scheduled to occur.

Most scathing of all was Gregory

Sophia King

Ebony Lucas

Gerald McCarthy

Marcellus R. Gregory Moore Jr. Livingston

ELLEN HAO

FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

POLITICS

Livingston, a reverend with a long history of working with Chicago activism, and who stressed his opposition to Mayor Emanuel over a range of issues from public education to police accountability. It was his belief that residents of the Fourth Ward had been deprived a forum to voice complaints “by intention.”

“I’m an outside guy,” said Livingston. “I consider myself a grassroots guy.” Then came the Voltaire quote. “When you hear people ranting and raving,” finished Livingston, “see if they actually will say anything about those who actually hold the purse strings.”

Gabriel Piemonte, former editor of the Hyde Park Herald, suggested that the lack of transparency in ward politics was a product of the general political environment in Chicago. “The level of civic discourse is fairly low,” said Piemonte. “People are either nervous about wanting to run afoul of the aldermen or they’re cynical—there are these little fiefdoms. If people want to do something, they do it outside of the political system.” Sensing an unusual possibility for openness following the resignation of Alderman Burns, Piemonte set about hosting a series of forums for ward residents to air grievances and discuss their priorities for the incoming alderman. He intends to express the “ideal” alderman envisioned by the community in a forthcoming report, to be published soon before the election.

The meetings were attended by Marcellus Moore, Ebony Lucas, Gregory Livingston, and, after her selection, Sophia King.

“People are really concerned about accessibility, about process,” said Piemonte.

“People were interested in these hybrid processes—like transparency with an emphasis on finances. Our aldermen should be thinking about how to solve the city’s problems with finances. They should really be brainstorming this path.

“A lot of the conversations were driven by this idea that people have lots of ideas and they weren’t integrated into the political process in a way that allowed these ideas to be heard,” Piemonte said.

If the Fourth Ward does constitute

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a fiefdom, it is less that of Sophia King than that of Toni Preckwinkle, who was alderman of the ward from 1991 to 2010 and now serves as President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. George Rumsey, the President of the HPKCC, ran against Will Burns in 2011 following Preckwinkle’s resignation. But, Rumsey told me, Preckwinkle wielded enormous institutional clout in favor of Burns.

“It’s the way Chicagoans play,” said Rumsey. “I raised $30,000. I was excited.

I thought it was amazing that a local person was able to raise $30,000,” Rumsey

another $77,000 in unused funds.

As another indication of Preckwinkle’s continued influence over Fourth Ward politics, Rumsey pointed me to the new map of the Fourth Ward. The boundary between the Fourth and the Fifth Ward runs along 51st Street, from Cottage Grove to Woodlawn—except, curiously, for one block, where it zags down Greenwood Avenue to 52nd Street and then back up University to 51st. This block, it turns out, is home to Toni Preckwinkle, who would lose her critical position as Fourth Ward Committeewoman if she were zoned out of

“The level of civic discourse is fairly low. People are either nervous about wanting to run afoul of the aldermen or they’re cynical—there are these little fiefdoms. If people want to do something, they do it outside of the political system.”

—Gabriel Piemonte, Hyde Park resident

continued, claiming, “Will [Burns] was sending out campaign materials every day for the last ten days of the campaign—every day, to the entire Fourth Ward. It’s about $7000 to do a simple mailing. And it didn’t put a dent in his finances, because Toni saw to it that he had what he needed to win.”

Campaign record contributions show that Rumsey spent approximately $20,000 over the course of the campaign, finishing with a small amount of cash on hand. During the same period, Burns spent approximately $361,000, finishing the election with

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the ward.

Preckwinkle’s support is fully behind King, both Piemonte and Rumsey told me. King has raised over $220,000, easily outstripping the other candidates’ efforts by a wide margin. (After Obama endorsed her a few weeks ago, her fundraising totals also skyrocketed.) In second place is Ebony Lucas, who has raised over $37,000. Against such a landscape, Piemonte and Rumsey agreed that it would be extremely difficult for one of the four challengers to win.

“The establishment is all operated here

through Toni Preckwinkle,” said Piemonte.

“There is an apparatus that will turn out for Sophia King that you will not see her construct—because she doesn’t have to construct it. It’s been around for twenty years. It’s been supporting Toni’s candidates since she left herself.” Combined with the advantages of incumbency, Piemonte told me, it would take either an exceptional challenger or a “colossal screw-up” on King’s part to have her lose the election. And neither Piemonte nor Rumsey sees the current crop of challengers as particularly exceptional.

Rumsey noted that in years of running community meetings with the HPKCC, he had never seen any of the current candidates until the race began.

Piemonte related to me something he had been told by the powerful mid-century Hyde Park alderman Leon Despres. “‘The job of the alderman,’” Piemonte remembers Despres telling him, “‘is twofold. You have to be a good housekeeper...And the other job is that you have to articulate the values of your community.’ He was humbling himself as an alderman by saying—don’t worry so much about the middle part. Let the community dictate what’s happening.” By “middle part,” Despres was referring to the extensive reforms—a step above providing basic services, but below voicing the ideals of the community—many aldermanic candidates promise, which can often be difficult for individual politicians like aldermen to implement.

Instead, Piemonte said, candidates should promise to “take care of the basics, and articulate the aspirations. My worry is that everybody kind of operates from the middle part: ‘I’m going to bring development in, I’m going to bring jobs in.’ Really, what alderman really gets development in? I worry about the candidates,” concluded Piemonte. “Are they entirely in the middle?

Or are they really worried about keeping the streets clean and preserving the high-level conversation?” ¬

STAGE & SCREEN

A Family Affair Navigating the legal landscape of Oscar Brown, Jr.’s legacy

BY ISABELLE LIM

J

azz artist Maggie Brown bursts into song at one point during our conversation in Bridgeport Coffee. She uses her phone for digital accompaniment, pulling up a track that “speaks to the young people”—a jazz rhythmic loop—before launching into the first verse, “I’m fed up with all this bad news/ The crime here got me singing the blues/ I wish the headline could report on something good, instead of shooting in my neighborhood.” The coffee shop table transforms, momentarily, into a one-person stage.

“What if the words we say led to a better way of being certain that our future’s a brighter day/ Well people, people that’s what to talk about.”

She’s free-scatting over the beat, fingers drumming the table before interrupting herself. “Here come his words,” she says, before launching into the verses of her father, the late South Side jazz legend Oscar Brown, Jr. It’s an improvisational demonstration that encapsulates the musical heritage that Maggie grew up in, a mix of jazz, poetry, and hip-hop; but more than that, it’s a confluence of what currently and has always preoccupied her: music as a family affair, and in particular, the legacy of her father.

While each member of the Brown family has some presence in the music industry—Maggie is an accomplished performer, as is her step-sister Africa, and so was their late brother Oscar III—the

JASON SCHUMER

Maggie and Africa Brown on a section of South Harper Avenue along 53rd Street, named after their father, influential jazz musician Oscar Brown, Jr. FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

familial constellation revolves around Oscar Brown, Jr., his work, and, now, the effort to preserve it. The South Side jazz giant, composer, and activist factors into nearly every conversation that Maggie has about her solo career, but one senses that it’s not an unwelcome association for her.

While Maggie admits that she’s often on the receiving end of calls to “do her own thing” and “step out of your dad’s shadow,” she also expresses a belief in the continued ability of her father’s work to be a healing salve—a belief that roots her commitment to spreading it.

“I think it’s the rising,” she says. “The fact that the poetry and music is stuff [that] rises to our need for being able to articulate who we are, and how we feel [as] black people. And also to show our beauty and to redeem, to rise above this struggle. So his material, it spoke to our human condition— his stuff ties us back to the Great Migration, his stuff ties us to Chicago in the early 1900s when he was growing. Even when you look at ‘Work Song,’ the men working on the chain gang and some rural situations too.”

And indeed, much of Brown’s work vacillates between intimate historical commentary and incisive contemporary criticism of black history. A recent staging of Brown’s In De’ Beginnin’ at eta Creative Arts, for instance, was a retelling of the Genesis story from a black perspective, which involved mixing scripture, black vernacular, and iambic pentameter.

Maggie’s advocacy of her father’s material has been in the works for quite a while now, beginning far before 2005, when Brown passed at the age of seventyeight. Maggie recalls family meetings where cataloging her father’s deluge of poetry, songs, plays, and essays would come up. It occurred to a young Maggie (about eighteen or nineteen at the time), that Brown’s body of work was “massive and kind of undiscovered.” Brown, known for hits like “Work Song” (popularized by Nina Simone), “Signifyin’ Monkey,” and “The Snake” (quoted by Trump on the the campaign trail, an event the Brown family worked to send a cease-and-desist letter in response to), had in fact produced a far larger corpus of work than was ever published or known by the public. In a 2015 interview in the Tribune, Maggie noted that in many ways, it was Brown’s anti-commercial, antibusiness inclinations that had contributed to the lack of publication and publicity of his work during his lifetime.

“He was so dead set on not letting 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

anything get commercialized and compromised, that it left him difficult [to deal with],” she said in the interview. “He didn’t want to put [music] out there any old way.”

It was this attitude that left behind a goldmine of unpublished material after Brown’s death—and left his family with the immense task of sifting through his creative output. Naturally, the works were in varied forms—typewritten manuscripts, handwritten notes, floppy disks (“You remember those?” Maggie asks), and computer-typed documents, all of which were scattered between residences in Chicago and Washington, where Brown had lived. At the end of it all, Maggie estimates that they had catalogued some one thousand poems among other written works, most of which have never been published.

To this day, this archiving work remains central to the popularization of Brown’s work that Maggie envisions. Having a collection that is easily available to the public is her ultimate aim, and to that end, Maggie is now looking to the digital realm. “A cybrary,” in her words, would be the goal— having Brown’s work live on in pixelated posterity. And in talks with her for this digital push is the Rebuild Foundation, an arts and cultural development organization started by Theaster Gates and behind community-focused projects like the Stony Island Arts Bank. It’s a move that has been part of Maggie’s attempt to broaden the reach of Brown’s works and bring it into the contemporary arts and music scene of the city, rather than have it remain in the annals of forgotten history.

Early in 2016, what would have been the year of Brown’s ninetieth birthday, Maggie put out a call to arts organizations across the city to urge that they adapt Brown’s works for their season’s offerings. The call was answered by the city by way of Maggie and Africa performing a set that incorporated several Brown works in the city’s Jazz Festival, a staging of In De’ Beginnin’ by eta Creative Arts, and a showcase by Muntu Dance Theater incorporating features of Brown’s work. Maggie describes these arts organizations, particularly the latter two, “like family,” with the same community focus and concern that has always undergirded the Brown family’s musical work, especially on the South Side. Brown had notably collaborated with members of the Blackstone Rangers gang in a musical stage show entitled Opportunity Please Knock in 1967, a collaboration which, as

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he described in a 1996 interview with Rick Wojcik, “really changed my life...because it let me see that there was this enormous talent in the black community.” Or, in Maggie’s words: “there’s gold in the ghetto.”

I

n the background of these new revivals of Brown’s work, though, and behind the intimate and communal atmosphere surrounding his legacy, there have been complications about the legal management of his artwork.

A legal quagmire emerged following Brown’s passing in 2005. Vehemently against the commercialization of his art, Brown’s attitude of institutional resistance had bled over into other spheres of his life. He didn’t believe in paying taxes, for one—Maggie explains that he believed black people, who’d been enslaved and then suddenly made taxable citizens without recompense shouldn’t have to pay taxes—but, more relevantly to the current legal situation that Maggie and Africa deal with, he hadn’t left a will.

This meant that the aftermath of dealing with music and publishing rights soon became a protracted battle between Brown’s remaining family members and record companies, and also within the Brown family itself. It was a process that Maggie says “set us, me, my sister, my siblings, into a bit of a tailspin.”

When it came to establishing who owned the rights to Brown’s work, Maggie says dealing with the recording companies was straightforward. Because the terms of a typical recording contract that her father had signed in the 1950s and 1960s were more often than not unequal, giving the companies far greater leverage over their artists than the artists had rights to their art (an issue still relevant today), the “hit songs” that Brown recorded are still owned by companies like Columbia Records under the original terms.

Maggie didn’t find the prospect wholly unsatisfactory, however, simply because “there’s all this that hasn’t been touched, tapped, or exploited...there’s wide-open range.”

That wide-open range quickly formed the battleground for family disputes. All currently unpublished material by Brown is owned by the family as a whole under an imprint called Bootblack Music. From time to time, it turns a profit from artists choosing to cover this material, or sample it, or otherwise utilize it. (Maggie relates to me a bizarre instance where rapper Cassidy’s sampling of Diana Ross covering Brown’s “Brown Baby” became grounds for

licensing.) After his death, because of a lack of a will, intestacy laws kicked into effect, which meant that Brown’s estate was equally divided between his late spouse, Jean Pace Brown (Africa’s mother, now deceased), and his remaining children. Maggie tells me that the struggle over the estate was largely one that emerged after her stepmother’s passing, when a stepsibling residing in California (a daughter from Jean Pace Brown’s first marriage) began staking claims to the rights to Brown’s creative work. Maggie declines to go into detail, but tells me that the dispute was protracted and tumultuous for the family.

Within this climate a third-party representation company called CMG Worldwide was brought in as an independent, third-party mediator, through whom requests to use Brown’s work now go. Maggie serves as co-manager of Bootblack Music, with the stepsibling based in California pulling comanager duties. It’s not the ideal settlement for Maggie and Africa, but it’s one that they’re learning to work with in the mission to popularize their father’s work.

CMG entered the picture last January.

In an email statement to the Weekly about their status in representing Brown and their working relationship with the family members, the company stated, “CMG Worldwide is the agent for Oscar Brown, Jr.’s representatives, who are the owners of Oscar Brown, Jr.’s right of publicity and trademark rights, along with various interests in works

by Oscar Brown, Jr., such as poetry, songs, etc.” That’s a far cry from the personal style of communication that used to occur, when Maggie herself fielded queries from people interested in using her father’s work— people who, often, were longtime friends or associates who knew her father, or arts organizations like eta Creative Arts that she regards as “family.”

It’s a professional relationship that Maggie professes is still a learning process, with her and Africa still needing to guide CMG, especially in toning down corporate modes of communication. In the eta staging of In De’ Beginnin’ for instance, Maggie recalls the CMG representatives’ communication with eta: “They came with all this stuff and I was like, ‘Hey hey hey hey, this is like family, and we’re open to them,” she said. “I invited [eta]. Don’t bulldog them.

Do that when Broadway wants to do a piece.

We want them to toe the line with us. But this, go easy.”

Whether going easy or toeing the line, the Browns will now find themselves dealing with this triangular legal-representative

STAGE & SCREEN

Since Oscar Brown, Jr.'s passing in 2005, his daughters, jazz musicians themselves, have been on a protracted journey to popularize and preserve his legacy.

JASON SCHUMER

situation for at least the next five years—the duration of the current contract.

E

ven as they adjust to the legal complications of managing their father’s legacy, the biggest obstacle Maggie and Africa face in exposing more people to their father’s work may be the passing of time. It’s easy to feel that as years pass and the generation more familiar with Brown’s work begins to fade, so too will his legacy and memory. Maggie is taking cues from younger Chicago- and South Side-based artists in learning to counter that. Particularly, she mentions that new methods of distribution are allowing artists to reach a larger audience than ever before.

The conversation, naturally, turns to Chance the Rapper, whom Maggie “is so proud of,” having been friends with his mother, Lisa Thompson Bennett. She talks about giving music away, and how initially unpalatable

that notion was to her. “[Brown] used to say we should give it away,” she says. “We should give the music away, and that people of like minds would come together and support us and we didn’t have to sell the music. I always had great resistance and my brothers and sisters too, like ‘Oh no, we can’t just give it away. We’re trying to send kids to college and buy homes of our own.’ And when I look at what people like Chance the Rapper’s doing right now? I feel like a fool.”

What ultimately matters to her, she says, is that Brown’s work gets out there some way, somehow, to work its healing magic.

One gets the sense, in talking to Maggie and Africa, that the concept of music as action that can save, heal, and change is more real to them than it is to the average person. When asked why it was important to continue a legacy such as her father’s, Africa wrote in an email response, “In De’ Beginnin’ 1978 was

my first taste of performing live, and it’s at the core of who I am today. Because at a very early age, I got the sense that in my family, we were Freedom Fighters and in a hostile situation. Important historically because of the righteous path he chose to use his talent, with words as a weapon against injustice.”

The same stubborn optimism and belief in the pure restorative ability of music persists in Maggie. In our conversation, she expresses a desire to one day have a brick and mortar center in Chicago that continues her father’s legacy of “edutainment”—educational entertainment. It would be, she envisions, a space that could teach you how to “deal with your talent,” using artistic gifts in a productive manner, in much the same way her father’s community-centered arts work functioned when he was alive.

“One thing Oscar would always say is that you can’t drown out noise with noise,” she says. “You gotta put it onto one. You gotta

heal it. You can’t hate, or out-hate hate. You know what I’m saying? You gotta introduce a love thing to quell that. And get it on to one.

And get everybody in a common ground, or a common harmony or rhythm, as the case is when music is involved. And then kind of feel our common humanness.”

The words of her and her father present a refreshingly reassuring vision of music— listening to Maggie, one feels that the kind of spiritual salvation both she and Africa talk about is within reach. But with the knowledge of the kind of corporate and organizational obstacles that the sisters now face, one only hopes that the glimmering strength of Brown’s music and legacy can pull through until there’s enough of an organizational groundwork to circulate it far and wide.

Until then, the sisters continue pushing and performing, while, behind compromises and complication, Brown’s musical healing continues to work its magic. FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Two Artists Fighting in a White Cube

COURTESY OF THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY

“Intermissions” brings performance art to an empty Renaissance Society

BY ASHVINI KARTIK-NARAYAN

A

s the audience first walked into Xavier Cha’s event for The Renaissance Society’s “Intermissions” series, what they saw was less important than what they didn’t see: the space was completely empty, awaiting a live performance, and invited curiosity with its high ceilings, bright white walls, and overall expansiveness. The Renaissance Society, housed on the fourth floor of Cobb Hall at the University of Chicago, is no stranger to the international art scene. It has hosted contemporary art exhibitions since 1915, but starting this year its curators decided to try something different: the “Intermissions” series, which 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

held its inaugural performance on January 28, attempts to celebrate live performance works in a space that artist Xavier Cha and “Intermissions” curator Karsten Lund agree looks “like a sci-fi cathedral.”

“Intermissions” is held in between exhibitions, when The Renaissance Society is normally closed in preparation for its next show. The Ren plans to host the series one day at a time, twice a year, to allow different artists to explore the space through various kinds of media and performative works. Solveig Øvstebø, the Ren’s executive director and chief curator, says that Lund curated “Intermissions” as a way to use the

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gallery “as a site to stage experimentation and production.” The space itself is vast, and, for this first performance, was completely devoid of the frames and sculptures one might expect at an art gallery. The work presented on this day was “In the News”

by New York-based artist Xavier Cha, who produces mostly live and video works.

Cha created “In the News” to express “how everything is being sensationalized, and how manipulative things are in the media.” She hoped the piece would draw on the audience’s tendency to dramatize what they view. “There’s a violence in viewing itself, the act of fetishizing viewing,” she explained.

Indeed, the progression of the piece forced the audience to pay attention, largely due to its many elements of mystery. At first, I wasn’t even sure where to stand: there was no clearly defined area that separated the audience from the performers. The other attendees and I simply stood around the gallery, and I expected that at one point, we would be instructed to go to one side or the other.

Instead, shortly after the event was slated to begin, and with no introduction, two actors catapulted into the expectant crowd, engaging in a choreographed physical fight. The confrontational encounter traveled

VISUAL ARTS

Actors Nate Hitpas and Tony Vittorioso engaged in a fight choreographed by artist Xavier Cha and Greg Poljacik for Cha's performance piece "In the News." The work was the first in The Renaissance Society's new "Intermissions" series, which will occur twice a year.

COURTESY OF THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY

The confrontational encounter traveled all the way around the room, forcing the audience to accommodate the fight. all the way around the room, forcing the audience to accommodate the fight as it moved from one area to another. There was no designated performance space because the performance took place everywhere, utilizing the room to its fullest capacity.

“It felt really intense,” Cha said after the performance was over. “I just didn’t know what would happen with the audience, and...that’s what completed it, just having everyone be implicated in viewing it.”

As the performance continued, the location of the actors was just as unpredictable as when they began. Eventually, the two ran out of the gallery, with the watchful eyes of the audience following them. Some audience members appeared to go looking for the actors, but the rest waited for them

to return, no longer able to anticipate what would happen next and consumed by the world that Cha had created. The actors themselves were also skilled, pulling off stunts that Lund noted would normally only be seen in movies. Cha always envisioned the piece as a live performance, but she also wanted it to have a cinematic or theatrical feel. “It’s something you would be used to seeing as a video, like an Instagram clip,” she said. As her art often takes the form of live performance or video, it was fitting that this work attempted to capture elements of both.

The venue provided for “Intermissions” made this mission all the more feasible: “It feels like this strange vortex from a movie,” Cha said of the Renaissance Society space.

Lund, who is also assistant curator for

The Renaissance Society, was excited to invite Cha for the first work in the series.

“The kind of work she makes feels like it could come alive in a space like this,” he said. It definitely took a life of its own—the performance was forced, due to its format, to play off audience reactions and movement, as though the entire room were a part of the performance.

The performance was especially impressive considering the fact that, according to Lund, this is the first time the Ren has put on a live performance in a space like this. “It fits in with what the Ren believes in terms of working with new artists to generate something new,” he said.

Particularly with “Intermissions,” there is enough time to develop a distinct character for each performance, with the next in the series slated for August.

As “Intermissions” moves forward, it joins the movement of the art world as a whole in rethinking traditional, four-whitewalls gallery spaces. Lund doesn’t think that these traditional spaces are disappearing, but that they can coexist side by side with more experimental ways of presenting art. “It certainly reflects the wide range of ways that artists are working,” he said. As for the future implications of “Intermissions,” Øvstebø

said that it has the potential to transform how art is received at the Ren. While Lund acknowledges that “Intermissions” is just one part of a “larger spectrum” of performance art in Chicago, he adds that there is something that makes this particular series unique. “There is something about the space itself that is so distinctive,” he said. Because the venue is not designed specifically for performance, the series’ divergence from normal gallery programming creates a contrast that emphasizes both the traditional aspects of the gallery and the ephemeral nature of the work. For Lund, it seems to make performance works more “high-profile.” He said that the Ren was interested in “finding this place where [they] can really be front and center…instead of just kind of being a side program, or always being relocated to a theatre space.”

Cha was eager to disrupt this traditional gallery space with a work that tested its boundaries. “That experience of a ‘white cube’ is what makes it kind of thrilling to me, to drop that,” she said. And as “Intermissions” continues to develop as a series, Lund says that we can expect even more surprises: “The fact that we have that kind of latitude is exciting.” ¬

FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

Universities Get Political

Chicago’s universities respond to Trump’s immigration policies

BY MICHAL KRANZ

D

onald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies have upended the lives of people around the world, and if his administration follows through on promises made on the campaign trail, the futures of both documented and undocumented immigrants in the U.S. may face additional threats in the years to come.

As a result, American universities and their communities, which rely on student talent from all over the world, are among the institutions that stand to lose because of Trump’s policies. In Chicago, many universities and colleges are taking steps to respond to these policies.

The U.S. and much of the world was caught off guard when, on January 27, Trump signed an executive order suspending the entry of refugees into the U.S. and blocking entry for ninety days for citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa—Iraq, Libya, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Sudan. The order has been temporarily blocked pending further litigation since February 3. While this was perhaps the most consequential action Trump has taken thus far on immigration, he has also announced his intention to axe a key part of Obama’s legacy on immigration, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. The program allows undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before turning sixteen to apply for work permits and protects many university students from deportation and imprisonment. Students protected under DACA can renew their deferred action status every two years.

Because programs like DACA and the immigration ban directly impact many university students, many of Chicago’s universities, including some that lie on the South and Southwest Sides, have responded to Trump’s proposed policies on immigration in the wake of his election and eventful, controversial first few weeks in office. While the responses varied from institution to institution, in general Chicago’s universities 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

JASMIN LIANG

have reaffirmed that they will uphold their commitments to their students regardless of nationality or citizenship.

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has responded to Trump’s intentions for DACA in a way that exemplifies the general tone of other universities’ responses.

On December 13, 2016, Chancellor Michael D. Amiridis of UIC, along with several other administrators, sent a campus communication to the school’s students and staff assuring them that the university is “dedicated to the education of all of its students regardless of citizenship, immigration status, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or national origin.” The letter goes on to call attention to the needs of UIC’s undocumented and Muslim students and affirm UIC’s commitment to upholding DACA.

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“UIC will continue to assist and advocate for our undocumented students and those who have benefitted from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program so they have access to full educational opportunities,” the communication reads.

The letter also mentions sanctuary campuses (universities where undocumented people can seek refuge from federal immigration authorities) and argues that the discourse around them is fundamentally about guaranteeing students of all backgrounds access to university education. However, the university stopped short of declaring its own campus a sanctuary campus.

This has frustrated some campus activists. “At the present, the campus and the board of the University of Illinois system has not made any formal statements to my knowledge that they are willing to accept a

policy where UIC or other universities would become sanctuary campuses,” says Ryan Rock, an alumnus of the university.

Rock is a member and co-founder of Student and Graduate Activists (SAGA), a UIC activist group that has tackled a number of issues over the years and recently spearheaded a “Dump Trump” campaign aimed at resisting Trump’s federal policies.

SAGA often cooperates with organizations like The People’s Lobby and Fearless Undocumented Alliance (FUA). He says that without DACA, undocumented students at UIC could be at risk of deportation.

Since the January 27 executive order, however, SAGA’s concerns, and its ambitions, have expanded while UIC’s administration has been quieter than those of other universities. According to Sherri McGinnis Gonzalez, the Senior Executive Director

POLITICS

of Public Affairs at UIC, 184 students, faculty, staff, and affiliated scholars there hail from the seven affected countries, but the university has not sent out any additional letters to its students and faculty since the ban went into effect (though the University of Illinois system, like many universities, did urge students from the seven countries to avoid traveling abroad for the time being).

On the student side, meanwhile, Rock says SAGA has shifted its strategies considerably in the last several weeks, seeking

However, the system receives a significant portion of its funding from the federal government; in the fiscal year 2015, 13.3 percent of the system’s budget came from federal grants and appropriations. Trump has already threatened to pull federal funding from the University of California, Berkeley because of the university’s handling of violent protests surrounding a speaking event by hate-mongering right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos earlier this month. While that incident was not directly related to

“Let me be clear. We will protect our students, their rights, and their well-being. This is our common moral obligation.”

–Kwang-Wu Kim, president of Columbia College

to expand its role following the immigration ban.

“We are starting to change the scale at which we are trying to operate,” Rock explains. “We are currently in the process of trying to get affiliate chapters started at other campuses in the Chicagoland area.” At the moment, SAGA is preparing to hold a threeday “Weekend of Action” event in the city to build momentum in the campaign to get the University of Illinois to adopt sanctuary campus policies at all of its campuses.

The City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) also affirmed campus protections for students after Trump’s election, adopting a formal resolution in December to declare CCC campuses “welcoming campuses” (though again stopping short of using the phrase “sanctuary campus”). In the wake of the immigration ban, the school has offered a number of information and resource sessions for students, and has also sent emails to students familiarizing them with resources provided by CCC for legal aid and mental well-being.

As the University of Illinois is a public university system that receives taxpayer money, it would seem that it would be its duty to support students from tax-paying families regardless of their national origin.

immigration, the precedent means that UIC and other Illinois public universities have grounds to be cautious about taking political stances that diverge from Trump’s.

Several private universities in Chicago have also made statements supporting DACA, but in contrast to UIC’s relative silence on the immigration ban, some, including the University of Chicago, Roosevelt University, DePaul University, and Columbia College of Chicago, have explicitly denounced the ban and offered resources for students from the affected countries. As independent institutions, these universities have more leeway than UIC and other public universities when it comes to making political statements, and many have taken advantage of that. In the week following Trump’s election, Illinois Institute of Technology student-activist Luis Gomez called out Rahm Emanuel in a public meeting for not expanding support for immigrants, demanding he “stop categorizing and separating the undocumented community between deplorable and DREAMers.”

Gomez also made a speech at a protest on the UofC’s campus calling for Chicago-area universities to support and protect students covered by DACA. The University of Chicago and

Roosevelt University have been particularly proactive about responding to Trump’s executive orders and policy proposals. The UofC College Council, a division of student government, has encouraged the school to ensure that students in the DACA program will continue to be protected and supported.

In January, the council voted in support of creating an additional council to deal with the effects of challenges to DACA. Since the election, a group of administrators has been meeting regularly to identify resources for students potentially affected by Trump’s actions on DACA, as well as meeting with students who rely on the program to plan forums and support groups designed to help them protect their federal benefits. Roosevelt University president Ali Malekzadeh took a similar approach, creating a “committee on Sanctuary Campus issues.”

In addition to these concrete actions related to concerns about DACA, the UofC and Roosevelt have joined other private universities, including DePaul and Columbia College, in reaffirming their commitment to an inclusive and diverse student body. “We recognize that many undocumented and DACA students are experiencing significant financial uncertainty during this time, and we will help to address these concerns…The University will continue to meet one hundred percent of the demonstrated financial aid need of all undergraduate students, regardless of immigration status,” reads a January 4 campus-wide UofC letter that pledged support for undocumented students and the DACA program. The presidents of each of these universities, with the exception of DePaul, also joined more than 400 other university and college presidents in signing a letter in support of DACA. Each university issued statements to their campus communities addressing the immigration ban as well, denouncing it either explicitly or implicitly; the heads of DePaul, Roosevelt, and Columbia issued the most strongly worded responses to the policy.

Three days after the January 27 executive order, UofC president Robert J. Zimmer and provost Daniel Diermeier took the additional step of sending a letter to Trump himself urging a reconsideration of the executive order’s broad travel ban. The university has also joined a group of nearly twenty research universities from around the country in filing an amicus brief in a federal district court’s review of the order, opposing the order and arguing that it creates “significant hardship” for the universities’ international students and

faculty.

As at UIC, some members of private campus communities are still demanding their universities do more. In December, 386 members of the UofC faculty signed a letter to Zimmer urging the school to craft more consequential policies to protect students and staff. “We believe it is necessary to take concrete steps in order to live up to the administration’s recent efforts to assess and improve the campus climate with respect to issues of difference, diversity, and discrimination,” the letter reads. The letter was cited in the UofC’s January 4 letter identifying steps the university was taking to support students who might be affected by changes to DACA. While DACA and immigration issues top the list, they are not the only concerns on the minds of students, administrators, and activists as the Trump administration begins to pursue its agenda; many also have concerns about the ability of students to express themselves and protest federal policy on police reform and climate change.

Columbia president Kwang-Wu Kim made his university’s commitment to protecting its students clear in a letter sent to students and staff on November 14: “We will protect our students, their rights, and their well-being.

This is our common moral obligation...We will not accept discrimination against any group or individual within our community nor will we permit expressions of intolerance of differing views or beliefs.”

Activists like Rock hope UIC and other universities will also make protecting their students a priority. “Myself and, I believe, many of the members at SAGA, don’t believe that standing on principle has a deadline,” he says. “After the implementation of the initial executive order [on immigration], it should have become evident to the board of trustees that they really can’t be agnostic about a travel ban and that they really need to adopt sanctuary campus policies. Clearly at this point that message has not yet gotten across.”

In the coming months, Rock says SAGA and other organization will have to continue to respond to events at the federal level on a case-by-case basis. He hopes the universities whose students SAGA and its allies represent will join the fight themselves as well. Rock believes universities across the board, public and private, must develop the will to enact bold policy positions in light of Trump’s administration. With a little prodding, he hopes this goal is close at hand. ¬

FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

LIT

South Side Sisterhood of Writers

Going against the flow for the love of writing

BY ADIA ROBINSON

O

TURTEL ONLI

n a slightly gray Saturday, I walk up to the Beverly home of Tina Jenkins Bell, the president of For Love of Writing (FLOW), to sit in on an impromptu meeting of the group’s core members. Chirskira Caillouet, FLOW’s vice president, invites me in and offers me food—she tells me that whenever the group meets, there’s food.

The ladies of FLOW trickle in over the next half hour. When they’re all together, watching the group is like watching your mother and her friends chatting around the kitchen table: they laugh, bounce writing ideas off each other, reminisce about the old days, talk about how white people don’t get it sometimes, and offer each other bits of advice and knowledge about writing and life in general.

FLOW is a group of seven professional African-American women writers who host regular seminars on the craft and business of writing for a multicultural, multigenerational audience. It began in the 1990s as a small group of women who came together to share their work and enjoy the company of other writers. That original group faded out, but the spirit of FLOW was rekindled in 2012 when Bell and Lucille Usher Freeman put out a call that assembled the group’s current members: Bell, Caillouet, Freeman, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Janice Lively, L.D. Barnes, and their newest member, Felica Madlock.

The new group originally gathered for workshops, retreats, and readings, at which the members would critique each other’s 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

work. “That part was to help each writer build a bridge to whatever their next step was professionally,” said Bell.

The authors in FLOW write across genres. Caillouet and Madlock primarily focus on poetry (the Weekly’s most recent Lit Issue featured two of Caillouet’s poems); Barnes writes both poetry and murder mysteries; Jackson-Opoku, Freeman, Bell, and Lively work with prose. One of FLOW’s former members, Pauline Lampkin, who recently passed away, occasionally wrote erotica. “It really depends on the story,” said Bell, adding that sometimes she will begin a piece as a novel or short story and end with a dramatic script.

Since all of the ladies of FLOW are Chicago natives, the city is featured heavily in their work. “Everything I write about is Chicago, because it’s just so rich here,” said Barnes. “There’s so many stories.”

FLOW writers featured work in Revise the Psalm, an anthology of poetry and essays honoring another Chicago writer, former poet laurete Gwendolyn Brooks. JacksonOpoku edited the anthology.

In 2014, the group hosted its first seminar, which covered how writers can use digital marketing and social media to advance their careers. The goal was to provide resources for both professional and amateur South Side writers.

The group has since offered seminars on subjects as practical as how to pitch to publishers and as personal as how to get over writer’s block and how to use the

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framework of National Novel Writing Month (“NaNoWriMo” in November) as a tool. The seminars, said Caillouet, focus on teaching both hard skills and how to be a respectful literary citizen.

“When you come to something from us, you gonna learn something,” said Caillouet.

FLOW has also offered “write-ins,” or day-long retreats where writers can get work done and share with others. Its members frequently do readings around the city, and Bell and several other FLOW authors read at AMFM’s Old Black Magic exhibition to promote Revise the Psalm.

Going forward, the group plans to do more: more workshops, more readings, more write-ins, and more members. The group is planning to offer an associate membership for those who want the support of FLOW but can’t make the time commitment that full membership requires. They have two seminars planned for this year—one in May on intellectual property and another later this year on how to outline a novel.

FLOW has also partnered with the Soulful Chicago Book Fair, which will take place for the second year in a row in July, to offer a publishing workshop. They have also partnered with Chicago Public Library’s Beverly and Walker locations to do free workshops. The group emphasizes that their workshops are for everyone. “There’s no age limit,” said Bell. “If they are interested, they can come.” Bell added that their goal is to provide resources for their community regardless of experience or skill level.

For its core members, the group is more than a forum to sharpen their skills and meet other writers—it’s a family. In Bell’s living room Barnes said, “We’re a sisterhood of writers. We’re not just a writer’s group.

We’re a sisterhood.” Grateful for the support the group offers, its members challenge each other to be their best and rely on the diversity of the group.

It’s no secret that the literary world is overwhelmingly white, even in Chicago, and each member of FLOW attests to the fact that being the only black person in a writing workshop is a difficult place to be. “When we’ve been in workshops with individuals outside the community, there is a preconception of what it is to be us,” said Lively.

“They [white people in writers’ groups] want to correct your work and either deny [your] experience or reshape the experience according to what their perception of who we are is.”

“They know,” Lively said, gesturing around Bell’s living room to the other members of the group. “To be able to have that community is what makes FLOW vital to us.”

As the meeting approached its third hour, talk dwindled down and switched to husbands, children, and newborn grandchildren. As the meeting ended, the authors of FLOW left me and other young writers with a valuable piece of advice: write every day, just for the love of writing. ¬

EDUCATION

Boots on the Ground Parents organize Friends of Kenwood to fill budget gaps

BY HAFSA RAZI

O

n February 2, at Kenwood Academy High School’s library, Kimberly Harding announced the launch of a new parent fundraising organization, Friends of Kenwood (FOK), along with a plan for an army of committees under the organization. Harding is the president of the board of the nonprofit group, which aims to “ensure the future of Kenwood [Academic Center] & [High School] as the premier education Academic Center and Academy in Chicago and the world.”

“We’re going to have probably fifteen committees that we’re going to establish over the next two weeks,” Harding declared.

“And I need talent on those committees.”

Her audience of about a dozen parents was gathered for a meeting of Kenwood Academy’s parent advisory council. Kenwood has seen its fair share of budget cuts over the years, including last week, when the school lost $160,514, or 1.24 percent of its budget.

The district cut $46 million across CPS in response to Governor Rauner’s veto of $215 million in expected funds. During the past three school years alone, Kenwood’s budget has shrunk by over $1 million, from $14 million in fall 2014 to $12.7 million as of last week. One casualty of these cuts was the director of the Kenwood Academic Center, a selective program for students in grades seven to twelve, who was laid off in 2015.

Harding said she was inspired to start Friends of Kenwood when her son’s classes were cancelled this past summer; a few days after it happened, she ran into a neighbor’s daughter who was on her way to school at Jones College Prep downtown. The neighbor’s summer program, too, had been slashed by budget cuts, Harding said, but Friends of Jones stepped in and covered the cost.

When she heard this, Harding said, “I almost passed out.”

In an interview with the Weekly, Harding voiced a mistrust of the district and state’s ability to provide for students. “We can’t depend on CPS,” she said, so parents

HAFSA RAZI

Danielle McDaniels, Chairperson of the Kenwood Academy Parent Advisory Council and board member of Friends of Kenwood (FOK), spoke in the Kenwood Academy library to parents about the launch of FOK. should do whatever they can to help their kids succeed. And she’s not the only one thinking this way.

With education budgets across the city remaining subject to cuts throughout the school year, a 2015 analysis by Catalyst Chicago found that the number of “Friends of ” groups is on the rise, as are the amounts of money these groups are raising. Forty-one schools had groups that raised over $50,000 in 2014, double the number of schools that had such groups in 2006. In the same time, the number of schools with “Friends of ” groups raising over $300,000 went from

zero to eight.

The few high schools in the mix are mostly selective enrollment—groups at Whitney Young, Jones, Walter Payton, and Northside Prep are the biggest fundraisers.

In wealthier communities, school fundraising efforts have been extraordinary, even extravagant—some can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day, through efforts such as an email blitz after teacher layoffs are threatened, or a high-end auction.

Harding acknowledged that many parents are averse to school fundraisers,

most often because those parents don’t have thousands to spare. At Kenwood, sixty percent of the students qualify as economically disadvantaged, meaning their family income is less than or equal to 185 percent of the federal poverty line.

This percentage is smaller than the district average, but greater than the thirty to forty percent at Northside, Payton, Jones, and Whitney Young.

But Harding stressed that Friends of Kenwood doesn’t want parents to pay up themselves.

“Honestly, we’re not looking for money

FEBRUARY 15, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

EDUCATION

from the parents; we need boots on the ground from the parents,” she said at the launch. “What we need from you is your talent and time. We need someone who can build and manage a website, we need liaisons.”

FOK’s goal for this year is to raise $50,000, Harding said in her interview with the Weekly. FOK’s board wants to first lay the groundwork, focusing on getting parents and community members involved; once they’ve done that, Harding expects to be raising six-figure amounts within three to five years FOK’s strategy is to enlist parents in seeking out corporate sponsorships and donations from local businesses. Harding pointed to the $11,040 raised by Nando’s Peri-Peri on 53rd Street, which donated its first day of sales to Kenwood Academy.

Kenwood used some of the money to fund college tours.

Now that Friends of Kenwood has nonprofit status, she said, it should be even easier to get companies to donate money and to receive tax benefits. Harding also encouraged parents to find out if their employers would match their personal donations to a nonprofit, doubling their impact.

“We’ve been leaving a lot of money on the table the past few years, not [having] a 501(c)3,” Harding said.

Harding and Danielle McDaniels, fellow FOK board member and Chairperson of the Kenwood Parent Advisory Council, described Friends of Kenwood as a project for the entire neighborhood. “Believe me, companies are looking to give money away,” McDaniels said at the launch. “Friends of Kenwood can be anyone, it can be the community.”

According to Harding, even local parents who send their children to private schools will find that Kenwood’s success is

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

HAFSA RAZI

in their self-interest.

“Everyone that lives in the Kenwood– Hyde Park area—whether they send their kids to Latin or UC or Parker— they should be excited about making [Kenwood Academy] the premier school in Chicagoland and the world, because it helps what? Property values,” Harding said. “It is the neighborhood school. The alderman [Sophia King], and the [candidates] that are running for the 4th Ward—this should be their number one priority.”

For McDaniels, an alumna of Kenwood herself, Friends of Kenwood is an investment in the future of the school and the community.

“This is an ongoing process,” McDaniels said. “This is something that we establish so that after we’re gone and our kids are gone and their kids are gone, this is something that will still be in place. So those programs that were cut—the engineering program, the summer school program—that’s when the school says, ‘Hey, Friends of Kenwood!’ ” ¬

¬ FEBRUARY 15, 2017

“Everyone that lives in the Kenwood– Hyde Park area—whether they send their kids to Latin or UC or Parker— they should be excited about making [Kenwood Academy] the premier school in Chicagoland and the world, because it helps what? Property values. It is the neighborhood school.”

—Kimberly Harding, president of the board of Friends of Kenwood

EVENTS

BULLETIN Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin Day 1: First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington St.; Day 2: DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. February 16–17, 6pm–7:15pm both days. $15 for CHE members, $20 general admission, $10 students and teachers. Online RSVP required. chicagohumanities.org For a two-night event co-presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival, DuSable Museum of African American History, and Chicago Urban League, Trayvon Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, will discuss their journey of grief and seeking justice for their son’s life. There will be a book signing of their newly released book Rest in Power following the program (Njeri Parker)

From Civil Rights to Black Power: Tracing the African American Freedom Struggle Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave. Friday, February 17–Saturday, February 18, 8:30am–5pm. $50 general admission, $20 students and seniors. Advance tickets required; $5 fee for walk-ins. Buy online at bit.ly/ ChiSNCC2017. cafsncc.org Join the Chicago Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to learn about the Black Power movement as an essential era in the fight for racial equality. The two-day conference includes three film screenings, musical performances, and discussions with black activists young and old. (Hafsa Razi)

Urban Livestock Expo Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, 3857 W. 111th St. Saturday, February 18, 10am–1pm. Free. auachicago.org For those interested in raising livestock, the city can be a difficult place to get started.

But it’s time to put aside those worries.

Attend Advocates for Urban Agriculture’s Urban Livestock Expo, and learn everything you need to know to become the urban farmer you’ve always aspired to be. People of all expertise and interest levels welcome. (Michael Wasney)

Bronzeville’s 4th Ward Aldermanic Candidate Forum Kennicott Park Gymnasium, 4434 S. Lake Park Ave. Tuesday, February 21, 6pm–8pm. Free. facebook.com/ bronzevilleneighborhoodcollaborative Candidates for 4th Ward alderman will square off to debate approaches to economic development, public safety, and affordable housing in advance of the February 28 special election. The forum is sponsored by the Bronzeville Neighborhood Collaborative. (Sam Clapp)

Turning Your Stretch of the River into A Neighborhood Destination Chicago Maritime Museum, 1200 W. 35th St. Wednesday February 22, 9:30am–noon. Free.

Online RSVP required. (773) 376-1982. greatriverschicago.com A workshop will help anyone who has ideas on how to enliven stretches of the Chicago, Calumet, and Des Plaines Rivers. Attendees can get feedback from professionals and learn about grant opportunities for neighborhood projects along the river banks. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Community Members Standing Together Against Violence AKArama Foundation Community Center, 6220 S. Ingleside Ave. Thursday, February 23, 6pm–8pm. RSVP online.

Free. Dinner served. (773) 834-4244. communitygrandroundsfeb2017.eventbrite. com The University of Chicago’s Center for Community Health and Vitality’s latest installment of Community Grand Rounds will be a discussion on efforts to lessen community violence. Community members are invited to engage on the issue with researchers and other attendees over a complimentary dinner. (Sara Cohen)

VISUAL ARTS

MUSIC

Space by Proxy

Valentine's Day Love and Laughter with Michel'le

Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Opening Saturday, February 18, 3pm-4:30pm. Through Sunday, March 12.

Monday-Thursday, 9am–8pm; FridaySaturday, 9am–5pm; Sunday, 12pm-5pm.

Free. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org

The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Tuesday, February 14. Doors 6pm, show 7pm.

Tickets $35–$85, $50 for meet-and-greet.

21+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com

In conjunction with the ongoing exhibition “Precariat,” Matthew Sage of the record press Patient Sounds will be leading a discussion around questions of safe DIY spaces and those spaces’ relationship to political action. Sit patiently, and you just might get a chapbook, as part of a limited run. (Corinne Butta)

Black Clay: A Survey of Contemporary African-American Ceramics Chicago State University President’s Gallery, 9501 S. King Dr., 3rd floor. Reception Tuesday, February 21, 1pm–3pm. Through February 3–April 21. Monday–Friday, 8:30am–5:30pm. Free. (773) 995-3984. csu.edu Chicago State University’s Art and Design program will present a group exhibition of work by seven contemporary AfricanAmerican ceramicists. A special exhibition will honor Marva Jolly, pioneering black sculptor and matriarch of the CSU ceramics program. (Sam Clapp)

Chicago on My Mind Garfield Park Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. Opening reception Friday February 24, 6pm-8pm. Through Sunday, February 26.

Monday-Friday, 10am-6pm. Free. (773) 702-9724.

Based off of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1969 exhibition “Harlem on My Mind,” curatorial residents Sadie Woods and La Keisha Leek revise the concept to apply to Chicago. They bring together works that unite a vision of Chicago cultural and social practice. (Corinne Butta)

80’s Soul Survior R&B artist Michel'le headlines an intimate Valentine's Day dinner concert for fans old and new. Share a boneless lamb loin main course for two, with an optional wine pairing for an additional $15. The opening acts for the evening are Just Nesh, Da Wild Cat, BLT, and Gemini Porter. (Nicole Bond)

DJ Rude One 606 Records, 1808 S. Allport St. Friday, February 17. 6pm–8pm. Free. All ages.

(312) 585-6106. 606records.com Recent Closed Sessions signee DJ Rude One debuts tracks from his new project, ONEderful, at 606 Records next Friday.

Check it out for a set of instrumental, downcast hip-hop that could only have come from producers in the Windy City.

(Austin Brown)

Civic Chamber Music Series #1 Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative, 1456 E. 70th St. Saturday, February 18.

4:30pm–6:30pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Want your classical music fix but don't want to make the trek to the CSO? Listen to the genre's rising stars—a woodwind quintet from the Civic Orchestra of Chicago—perform this Saturday evening as part of their 2017 civic engagement series, where ensembles perform for free at three South and West Side locations. (Emily Lipstein)

The Range (with Austra & My Gold Mask) Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, February 18. Doors 8pm, show 9pm. $20.

17+. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com Since releasing his sophomore album Potential in 2016, The Range (aka James Hinton) has been touring the US with

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EVENTS

his brand of electronic music. His latest offering comes after scouring and sampling hours of Youtube videos, utilizing clips from little- and unknown vocalists for a tech-chorus that packs an aspirational punch. (Isabelle Lim)

STAGE & SCREEN Blues for an Alabama Sky Court Theater, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 19. Ticket prices $38-$68.

(773)753-4472. courttheater.org Pearl Cleage’s 1999 play explores the effects of the Great Depression on a set of characters living in the wake of New York’s Harlem Renaissance, the interwar cultural movement among the Black community in the famous New York neighborhood.

The play is part of a larger celebration of the Harlem Renaissance around the South Side, including jazz concerts with poetry readings and an exhibition at the Beverly Arts Center. (Christian Belanger)

American Masters – Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise Blue 1647 Tech Innovation Center, 1647 S. Blue Island Ave. Tuesday February 14. Free.

(312) 880-7540. blue1647.com Be among the first to see the documentary film chronicling the life and work of poet Dr. Maya Angelou, in a screening held before its nationwide premiere on PBS, as a part of AARP’s “Movies for Grownups” Series. (Nicole Bond)

Black Sex Matters – Black Joy is Resistance Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Saturday February 18, 6pm VIP Cocktail Hour, 7pm General Admission. $10 suggested donation, $20 advance VIP tickets, $25 VIP tickets at the door. blacksexmatters.com This event promises to be the place where Black means good, liberated, and outside the gaze of oppressive power structures.

All are welcome to join playwright/activist

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Kristiana Rae Colón, in partnership with the Alphawood Foundation and Art AIDS America exhibit, in celebration of sensuality, with VIP cocktail reception, erotic poetry slam, body painting, @DJ, free HIV testing, and more. Portions of ticket and bar sales will support the #LetUsBreathe Collective. (Nicole Bond)

"Gentrified" at Harold Washington Cultural Center Harold Washington Cultural Center, 4701 S. King Dr. Saturday, February 18, 7pm. $20. gentrifiedmovie.com/tickets This "explosive" documentary film from Black Channel Films promises to explore the process of gentrification or, as the film calls it, "ethnic cleansing Americanstyle...the most devastating socioeconomic movement in America today." Watch the film at Bronzeville's Harold Washington Cultural Center and reflect on Chicago's own complicated history of gentrification. ( Jake Bittle)

The Moth: Chicago StorySLAM The Promontory, 511 S. Lake Park Ave. Wednesday, February 15, 7pm. $10. 17+ unless accompanied by an adult. (312) 8012100. promontorychicago.com Every month at the Promontory, The Moth showcases the diversity of human experience by presenting real people and their stories. This month’s theme: “Love HURTS.” Watch, participate in, and enjoy a series of five-minute stories about real experiences of love gone bad. (Drew Holt)

Grown Folks Stories The Silver Room, 1506 E. 53rd St. Thursday, February 16, 8pm-10pm. Free. (773) 9470024. thesilverroom.com Show up early to grab a seat and hear stories from people all over the city. Those who feel adventurous can grab a fiveminute time slot and tell a story of their own. No themes required—just real life and real talk from real adults. (Rachel Henry)

¬ FEBRUARY 15, 2017

THE PUBLIC NEWSROOM UPCOMING WORKSHOP Thursday, February 16

4pm–8pm: Public Newsroom is open

6pm: Decoding the Police Union Contract and Launch of City Bureau & Invisible Institute’s FOP Tracker led by Invisible Institute

CITYBUREAU.ORG/PUBLICNEWSROOM THE EXPERIMENTAL STATION 6100 S. BLACKSTONE AVE

S

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