February 19, 2020

FEBRUARY 19, 2020

ARTS, CULTURE, POLITICS

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MEET THE CANDIDATES, CANNABIS IN SOUTH CHICAGO, PRISON EDUCATION, AND MORE

It’s time to register for Spring programs with the Chicago Park District!

SPRING SESSION

REGISTRATION Online registration begins:

Monday, February 24 at 9AM

for parks WEST of California Ave. (2800 W.)

Tuesday, February 25 at 9AM

for parks EAST of California Ave. (2800 W.)

Tuesday, February 25 at 12PM for gymnastics centers

In-Person registration begins:

Saturday, February 29 for most parks.

Some parks begin Monday, March 2

Activities start the week of March 30 for most programs.

For more information visit

www.ChicagoParkDistrict.com or call 312.742.7529 or 312.747.2001 (TTY)

City of Chicago Lori E. Lightfoot, Mayor Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners Michael P. Kelly, General Superintendent & CEO

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

Volume 7, Issue 11 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editors Martha Bayne Sam Joyce Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, Adam Przybyl, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michelle Anderson Literature Editor Davon Clark Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor AV Benford Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Lucia Geng, Carly Graf, Robin Vaughan, Jocelyn Vega, Tammy Xu, Jade Yan Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Social Media Editors Grace Asiegbu, Arabella Breck, Maya Holt Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographer Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Shane Tolentino, Mell Montezuma Interim Layout Editor J. Michael Eugenio Deputy Layout Editors Nick Lyon, Haley Tweedell Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring.

Over the summer we publish every other week.

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

IN CHICAGO IN THIS 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

Chicago hosts the NBA All-Star game after more than thirty years Chicago’s skyline glowed red and blue this weekend throughout the NBA All-Star events, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted out proudly from the United Center that Chicago is the greatest basketball town in the world. True fans remember that the 1988 game included a roster of four Chicago-born players and Michael Jordan’s All-Star dominance that was a harbinger of the Bulls’ six championship rings. This time around, there were no Chicago players on deck, but Jordan did surprise local residents by throwing his fiftyseventh birthday party at Cinespace, a former warehouse-turned-film studio in Little Village.

Public officials raise the Pan-African flag For the first time, Governor J.B. Pritzker and state officials raised the Black Heritage Flag on the Illinois State Capitol in observance of Black History Month. Metropolitan Water Reclamation District officials also led the raising of the red, black, and green flag in the MWRD building downtown, with the attendance of Black aldermen, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.

Lakefront disaster status Lake Michigan water levels are at record highs, and the lake is projected to continue to rise. With the beach house in Calumet Park teetering on the edge of the water, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has called on the federal government to declare an emergency in response to shoreline flooding. The response, however, has been little. The Army Corps of Engineers’ 2020 work plan included no additional funding to study Chicago’s shoreline, a decision that’s disappointing but—coming from the Trump administration—not surprising.

However, the city has pledged millions to support the expansion of a site just north of Calumet Park where the Army Corps, the government agency responsible for dredging waterways, dumps polluted sediment. It’s disappointing that the mayor’s concern about the shoreline seems to stop at erosion, while plans to dump heavy metals on part of that shoreline move forward with the consent of her administration. We know that Trump doesn’t give a damn about Chicago, but we should expect more environmental justice from city government.

Bats are good for Chicago Chicago’s gleaming skyscrapers and close-packed apartments would seem to offer little space for wildlife, but a two-decade study from the Forest Preserve District of Cook County found that bats are actually more common in the city than in the surrounding suburbs. The city, it turns out, is an ideal home for bats: mosquitos and other insects are common and the city’s architecture provides plenty of horizontal and vertical surfaces bats can perch on while hunting. And, despite the cultural perceptions, they make good neighbors; Sierra magazine called them “charismatic mini fauna.” A single bat can eat upwards of a hundred mosquitoes in an hour! With American bat populations declining dramatically as a result of a fungal disease, the news that bats have found a home in Chicago is a rare, and highly encouraging, bit of good news.

ISSUE

mission complicated

The only weed dispensary south of 57th av benford.........................................4 supreme court candidates meet at injustice watch forum

“More candidates are paying attention to letting the voters know who they are” john seasly.........................................6 meet the challengers: marie newman

jim daley............................................7 anthony clark

yiwen lu.............................................8 kina collins

jim daley............................................9 robert emmons jr.

jade yan............................................10 meet the candidates: cam davis and kim du buclet

Two Metropolitan Water Reclamation District candidates in their own words sam joyce..........................................11 census spotlight

The Southwest Organizing Project christian belanger........................14 count us in

“If you don’t fill out the Census, the money that they allocate for your community won’t be correct.” christian belanger........................15 political cartoon

El Machete Illustrated eric j. garcia....................................15 lack of access, long waitlists: education in illinois prison

“Those people who know that they’re never going to leave prison—they’re some of our best instructors on the inside.” lee v. gaines.....................................16 the dispersal of black chicago

Cover by Mell Montezuna

How and why Chicago, and the South Side, is losing its Black population jacqueline serrato.........................19 FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Mission Complicated

Legalization in Chicago gets off to a rocky start

BY AV BENFORD

BY KENDALL SIMPSON

I

t’s October of 2019, and to catalog the rollout of recreational marijuana legalization in Illinois, I’m at 8554 S. Commercial Ave. This is the site of 4Front Ventures’ newest project: the Mission South Shore dispensary, where I’m getting a tour and talking with the dispensary’s general manager about how Mission— the only marijuana dispensary on the Far South Side—plans to position itself in a new market, as well as how the dispensary process works right before legalization.

Located on the site of a former laundromat and flanked by auto supply stores, the building does not blend into its industrial surroundings. The exterior is painted from top to bottom in bold colors and linear graphics. Unlike most dispensaries in the U.S. West Coast, Mission doesn’t display its products in traditional large storefront windows. The only windows are higher than its door, making it impossible to see into the building from the ground.

Policies around visiting a dispensary 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

pre-legalization are so stringent that, in order to even be able to set foot on the property as a non-medical cardholder, I had to get special permission from the state five days before my visit. The spirit of Prohibition runs through every step of the process.

Entering the dispensary requires you to hand your ID through an opening in what looks like bulletproof glass, fill out a form, and navigate through a series of four doors just to reach the sales floor—all while never seeing the product. Compared to its more retail-focused West Coast siblings, even the building’s bold colors can’t overcome the sterile, pharmacy-like atmosphere that pervades it.

In terms of its philosophy though, Mission South Shore fits with plans to revitalize the area. Situated in South Chicago, not South Shore (as the name would indicate), the dispensary has been selling medical marijuana for more than two years, and is located on a street that literally has commerce in its name.

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South Commercial Avenue began as a shopping district for steel and dock workers, who worked in nearby mills abutting the Calumet River. Starting in the 1880s, workers flocked to the area, and by 1891 an "inventory of businesses along the corridor included 45 saloons, 40 clothing stores, 24 food stores, 9 hardware stores, 5 druggists," and numerous miscellaneous ventures. The neighborhood’s population soared to over 55,000 in the 1950s, but by 1992, the last of the steel plants had closed and the area was sliding into rapid decline. The population in the area hit a record low in 2010, at just 31,198 residents.

A 2016 report from UIC’s Great Cities Institute recommended revitalizing the Commercial Avenue business district by adding an “anchor” that could draw people to the corridor from other neighborhoods, as well as the suburbs and Indiana. While the report—published before recreational legalization was politically on the table in Illinois—recommends a brewery, the

dispensary seems to fill a similar role. As the only dispensary south of 57th, Mission is well-situated to attract customers from all across the South Side. These customers would also presumably patronize nearby businesses, thus providing an economic boost to the entire corridor.

Originally, this much-needed center of commerce was supposed to be located just east of the business district of Chatham, at the intersection of 87th and Greenwood.

This is an area that has suffered a series of business closures in the past two years, losing two Targets, a Burlington Coat Factory, and multiple pharmacies.

But a neighborhood watch group, the 8th Ward Accountability Coalition, publicly pressured Ald. Michelle Harris to oppose the permit for the dispensary. The group loudly expressed their fears about putting a dispensary near a skating rink and a behavioral counseling center. The idea that locating dispensaries near places where youth gather might produce more underage users

BUSINESS

has been studied with varying conclusions drawn. But what does happen, according to a 2019 study from the Rand Corporation, is that a positive perception of the drug increases in 18 to 22-year-olds, who start to perceive the drug as more harmless. Either way, the zoning application for a medicalmarijuana dispensary on 87th was abruptly withdrawn.

One wrinkle in this story is that this zoning application had been filed by Harborside Illinois Grown Medicine, a company run by a Black man, Lester Hollis.

Ironically, part of the reason that Chicago doesn’t have a Black-run dispensary is that Chatham and Calumet Heights residents were worried about the dispensary’s impact on the neighborhood's "quality of life". In simpler terms: Black people opposed a Black-run dispensary in their backyard.

But this initial community pushback, and aldermanic trepidation, didn't stop with the move to the 10th Ward.

“It was a struggle because people didn’t want us out here,” said Rick Armstrong, the dispensary’s manager since its opening (he has since moved on to a position in Arizona).

“People were like ‘What do you mean?’ ‘My brother/sister is in jail for cannabis!’” They couldn’t believe that 4Front, Mission’s parent company, which had taken over the application process for Harborside after the fiasco in Chatham, was going to open a legal marijuana dispensary in the area. Two years later, however, they have a medical patient count of over eight hundred.

4Front was founded by Kris Krane and Josh Rogen in 2011, as a marijuana consulting company. It has helped open over sixty marijuana businesses to date.

The company has maximized its vertical integration in the past few years and now has three branches: Brightleaf, which focuses on cultivation and production; Pure Ratios, which focuses on wellness; and Mission, which functions as the company’s retail arm, with operations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Illinois.

Mission’s sales floor is sparse. There is a limited selection of glassware and smoking paraphernalia on view, with prices ranging from $20 to $70. Nothing here is exotic or expensive. The product itself can only be seen on palm-sized cards, each displaying pictures of flowering cannabis and cannabisderived products.

As I stare at a painting of a steelworker on the wall, and the large timeline of marijuana history that runs around the

space, Rick and I speak about equity in hiring.

“African-Americans and Hispanics have been targets [of marijuana enforcement] for a long time.” Rick is Latinx, and he tells me that “we are in this position because of racism.” This position is one of fear.

To combat this fear, Mission’s brand emphasizes education. They hold events both in the dispensary meeting room, and at community spaces and libraries to get out the message that “we are here... let us help you...we have a safe, clean, space.” Rick excitedly relates the need for education around marijuana usage, especially for older users who might benefit from different ways of using medical marijuana. Throughout October, they are hosting community classes.

“We just did a veterans’ event last week,” he tells me. “It wasn’t just a class. Just more of like, let’s talk about your struggles, let’s help you. Let’s meet other veterans in the community to have a good conversation.”

When I ask him if he is nervous about legalization, he doesn’t seem concerned.

“Because we have the most regulation, we are the most prepared,” he tells me. He lets me know that “we’ve had our systems in place for a long time, so the transition will be smooth. It’s just a matter of adapting to the flows … packaging, procedure. We have that in place, we should be pretty good.“ I smile to myself at his confidence.

O

n the morning of January 1st, I return to Mission to report on Illinois’s historic first day of legalization. Mission’s staff is warm, welcoming, and dressed for the occasion— one even sports a marijuana-themed tie.

At 6am, the first sale is completed. By 6:15am, Mission has encountered its first problems.

Mission’s internal system, LeafLogix, is not cooperating with BioTrackTHC, the program that the state uses to track every marijuana sale. Until the systems start cooperating, not a gram can be sold. It takes nearly two hours for the issue to be resolved.

Over the course of that first day, the wait to purchase marijuana as an adult-use customer climbs to seven hours. Patrons complain loudly and often about the taxes, the wait times, and the cold.

I return a few days later to find a very frazzled and curt staff. Mostly gone are the smiles and goodwill. Strong demand has whittled down the inventory to just two strains of flower. Most dispensaries in

the Chicagoland area have either sold out of their recreational products or soon will.

But Mission still has marijuana in stock, available to purchase in amounts up to onequarter of an ounce.

The next week, when I return to check on the progress of things, uniformed security is now managing the ever-present line outside the building. Us customers queue outside like we are waiting for entry to a club. I wait, talking with patrons, for over an hour in the cold. Upon entry, some of the staff smiles have returned, but purchasing limits are sending some patrons leaving the store cursing loudly.

“We are a corporation, but we are very proud of where we came from.”

Instead of being able to buy up to a ¼ of an ounce, which is seven-and-a-half grams, customers are only allowed two grams of flower per purchase (well below the Illinois legal maximum of thirty grams per purchase). Unlike some other dispensaries, including Sunnyside and Dispensary 33 on the North Side, Mission has failed to use its website or social media platforms to keep their customers updated on the rapidly changing policies and procedures. If you call Mission before you come, they are very nice over the phone. But the amount available for purchase may change before you arrive at the dispensary or even while you are waiting in line.

Halfway through January, I return again. I wait the now-customary hour for entry, but this time I am turned away at the door. A Mission representative explains they were told by a visiting state representative to deny entry to people with IDs that don’t scan. I’ve had a passport card for over five years, a valid form of governmentissued identification under the state law, but it rarely scans outside of an airport or government office. Once again, Mission has changed its procedures, but has failed to inform its customers in dvance.

I am irritated by the inconvenience, and ask the representative to explain the changes. He goes red in the face, stammers, and asks another associate to step out of the

booth to explain. I’m still steaming as I sit on a CTA bench outside and wait for the rest of my party to exit. And I’m not alone: the Google ratings have plummeted over the past month, with customers citing the lack of professionalism, the lack of available products, and the complicated, club-like process for entry as points of concern.

As the only dispensary south of 57th Street, Mission holds a monopoly on marijuana over much of the South Side.

From a business and community standpoint, this provides it with a unique set of opportunities and challenges.

Mission has the opportunity and the responsibility to set the tone for marijuana sales in Black Midwestern communities.

They have the chance to create true equity, which, according to Everyday Feminism, “gives everyone what they need to be successful, not just equality which is treating everyone the same.” Mission is located in a community whose residents have been repeatedly arrested for doing exactly what they are now legally able to do. These folks are not in equal standing with their white North Side counterparts; they could use a leg up and a bit more compassion. The South Side needs a champion, but it remains to be seen whether 4Front is willing to carry that banner.

How Mission chooses to interact with their customer base, who they choose to hire, how they train their employees to be advocates in customer service, how they manage their inventory—all of this should and will continue to be scrutinized. It’s a lot of pressure, but they have chosen this location, at this time, and moreover certainly stand to make a handsome profit from it.

Even though 4Front is not Black or Latinx-owned, as Rick told me, “We are a corporation, but we are very proud of where we came from. To come to communities like here or Allentown, PA, one of the communities with the highest rate of opiate consumption. … We are trying to be very intentional, not [just] open[ing] on every corner. Just the areas that need it.” AV Benford is a Food & Land editor at the Weekly. She last wrote for the Weekly about Mission South Shore’s first day of sales.

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Supreme Court Candidates Meet at Injustice Watch Forum Judges and attorneys face off in a rare open race for the highest court in the state

BY JOHN SEASLY, INJUSTICE WATCH Injustice Watch is a non-partisan, not-forprofit, multimedia journalism organization that conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality. Originally published online February 11. Reprinted with permission.

S

PHOTOS BY DAVON CLARK, INJUSTICE WATCH

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

ix candidates for a rare open seat on the Illinois Supreme Court made their case to voters in a forum Monday night, hosted by Injustice Watch, the Chicago chapter of the American Constitution Society, and the University of Illinois at Chicago’s John Marshall Law School.

The candidates faced questions about their experience, conflicts of interest, court efficiency, and the importance of diversity on the court, in a race for the only seat on the state’s highest court ever held by a person of color.

One candidate, Appellate Judge Shelly Harris, declined the invitation to appear at the forum.

Attorney Daniel Epstein, the only non-judge running for the Supreme Court, garnered applause during his closing statements when he railed against cash bail in response to current Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville Jr., who had argued that some downstate counties wouldn’t be able to fund their justice systems without cash bail.

“I heard something outrageous tonight, that the reason we haven’t ended cash bail is because jails wouldn’t be able to fund themselves without it,” Epstein said. “That’s unconscionable.”

Epstein had faced questions about his lack of experience on the judiciary, and used the opportunity to make the case that

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

he’s the only candidate with a platform for reform.

The other candidates—all appellate court judges and Neville, who was appointed to the seat in 2018—asked voters to consider their decades of legal and judicial experience.

“I’m running on the old-fashioned idea that qualifications matter,” Appellate Judge Margaret McBride said.

But McBride punted when asked what she would change about the Supreme Court.

“I’m not on the Supreme Court so I’m not sure that I can really discuss how I would improve it,” she said.

Appellate Judge Nathaniel Howse emphasized his efforts to reduce the backlog of cases at the appellate level. A system he implemented – where justices with cases not addressed within six months must submit a letter explaining the delay – has brought the backlog to nearly zero, he said.

“I have demonstrated a willingness to speed up justice,” he said.

Appellate Judge Cynthia Cobbs said she would take steps to address the increasing number of litigants in the legal system who are forced to represent themselves in court for lack of funds.

“We have a large population of selfrepresenting litigants,” she said, adding that she would expand legal assistance programs.

Appellate Judge Jesse Reyes denounced the use of jails as places where people with mental disabilities are housed for extended periods of time awaiting trial.

“It’s a jail, it’s not a mental institution,” he said.

Neville asked voters to consider the weight of his appointment to the seat.

“The Supreme Court elevated me

because they knew I would bring about substantive change,” he said, noting that he had reversed more cases than any of the other candidates.

Neville, who is Black, also emphasized the importance of diversity on the court.

The seat was previously held by Charles E. Freeman, the only person of color to hold a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court.

“State courts face a crisis of legitimacy,” he said. “White courts don’t reflect society.

Cook County voters must decide if the Supreme Court will avoid the legitimacy crisis by retaining a person of color on the Supreme Court.”

Attorney Cindy Medina-Cervantes, one of about 125 people in attendance, said she appreciated seeing the diversity of the candidates’ perspectives.

“Every candidate represents a totally different approach to the issues,” she said.

Attorney Aleksandra Hodowany thought that the candidates seemed to be more focused on educating voters than in the past.

“It feels like since the last election, more candidates are paying attention to letting the voters know who they are,” she said. John Seasly is a reporter for Injustice Watch. He has served as a reporter on the investigative team at The Record in North Jersey, a staff writer at the Dubois County Herald in southern Indiana, and a graduate fellow at Medill Watchdog. He received his master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and his bachelor's degree in journalism from the Indiana University School of Journalism.

MEET THE CHALLENGERS

Marie Newman

The Weekly sits down with the nonprofit executive running for Congress in the 3rd District

BY JIM DALEY

In 2018, Marie Newman challenged incumbent U.S. Representative Dan Lipinski in the Democratic primary to represent Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District—which includes Bridgeport, parts of Beverly and Mount Greenwood, and several southwest suburbs— and narrowly lost. Lipinksi, who succeeded his father in the seat following complex legal maneuvering that allowed him to avoid a contested Democratic primary, is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. Newman, who is again challenging Lipinski in the March 17 primary, is a former small business owner and nonprofit executive who has taken a progressive stance and has been endorsed by a swath of progressive and moderate Democrats.

The Weekly recently spoke to her about her latest bid to unseat Lipinski. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell me about your background?

I was born in Beverly, and when I was in first grade we moved to Palos Park. I live in La Grange now with my two kids and my husband. I started my career in marketing and advertising, worked my way up to partner, then started my own small business.

I also developed a national coalition nonprofit called Team Up to Stop Bullying with my partner Sears. I wrote a book called <i>When Your Child is Being Bullied: Real Solutions</i>. And I’ve been a spokesperson for Moms Demand Action Illinois, so I have a strong background of legislative advocacy.

I’ve advocated for school reform, health care rights, economic rights, [and] gun safety rights.

How did those various paths lead you to decide to run for office?

I’ve been volunteering for campaigns for twenty years now. I worked my way up; I worked my way through college, and lived paycheck to paycheck for a good chunk of

my twenties and part of my thirties. I went without health care from time to time. I know how it feels to struggle. So, income inequality is really important to me. And I think that [on] that issue we have to have a paradigm shift legislatively. [My] lived experiences really led me to believe that I can change hearts and minds via advocacy and keep doing that no matter what, but also can use my power as someone who has had those lived experiences and bring those solutions to a political position.

Why do you support Medicare For All versus something like Medicare For All Who Want It? When I look at all those [other] plans, no one has been able to tell me how it’s different from what we have now. And rates are skyrocketing and people are dying. We now have people living shorter lives, rather than longer lives, for the first time in our history.

[Ed note: U.S. life expectancy declined from 2015 to 2018, the longest sustained decline in average life expectancy since 1915-18. That decline has been attributed to World War I and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.] If we keep going the way we are, which is effectively what Medicare For All Who Want It is, I don’t understand how we’re going to make things better. With Medicare For All, it’s tried and true. It is not only the best program, because it will actually contain costs and bring costs down, [but] what I like best about it is that we don’t have to keep being restrictive. [Other plans] still have this highly restrictive network, and you’re still going to be charged unpredictable deductibles and out-ofpocket. Pharmaceuticals will continue to skyrocket. Medicare For All will bring down costs and provide choice of doctor. It’s the only practical solution.

What issues do you think are most

important to voters in the 3rd District?

Income inequality is a big issue; we are incredibly stagnant. People can’t pay for childcare, so we need to get universal childcare paid leave passed. We obviously have to go to health care for all. Other issues that are really important are around immigration. I believe that we have to stop separating families, first and foremost, and start treating immigrants with respect and dignity. And if we leverage libraries, post offices, and community centers to start offering a path to citizenship that is wellknown, transparent, and documented, folks can go there and get a path to citizenship, understand access to affordable housing, jobs, and affordable health care. Again, let’s use what we have and make it better.

What is different now from 2018 that makes you think you can win this time?

The district is that much more frustrated with Dan and his do-nothing ways. In fifteen years, he has not written a district plan. I have a district plan and I have plans for all of the major economic topics and issues in the district. He's never written a plan once. We have no idea what his proposals are. He refuses to share any ideas or vision, or proposals, objectives, or strategy.

And in terms of campaign mechanics, last time I didn’t have a strong enough field [organizing team]. Our field is three to four times the size it was last time. And we got out there starting June 1, [2019]. And what we’re seeing now is amazing, amazing numbers. So, the work has paid off.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL have endorsed you. Do you think abortion is an important issue to voters in the district?

About seventy-one percent of the district is pro-choice, and there are people in the district who are not pro-choice. I think you have to make that bridge between

both of them the best that you can. If you are a single-issue voter, and your issue is on female health care rights, you may not choose me because that’s the only thing you are concerned with. Ninety percent of the district has multiple issues they are worried about: every day they’re worried about healthcare, their wages, [and] their kids’ education. They’re worried about a lot more than just a woman’s right to choose.

It is among the top ten issues for sure, but I wouldn’t say it’s the number one issue.

[Ed. note: The Weekly was unable to independently verify these numbers, and has reached out to the Newman campaign for clarification; we will update the web version of this story with their sourcing.]

You have also been endorsed by U.S. Representatives Alexandria OcasioCortez and Pramila Jayapal, and U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Do you plan to work with the rising progressive wing of the Democratic Party?

What’s most important to me is that I’m aligned with the district. We have knocked on [doors] and called literally tens of thousands of voters in the last several months, and it is clear that my proposals are in alignment with the district. Whether D.C. is moving one way or another kind of makes no difference to me; my job is to be in alignment with my district. I have endorsements from every perspective in the party, and what that tells me is that I have real solutions that everybody can get their arms around and feel good about. Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last wrote about public mental health in the city.

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

Anthony Clark

The Weekly sits down with the educator and community organizer running for Congress in the 7th District

BY YIWEN LU Anthony Clark is running to represent Illinois’s 7th Congressional district, which includes much of the West Side; parts of the South Side, including Englewood, Chicago Lawn, Back of the Yards, and Chinatown; and extends far into the west suburbs. He is up against U.S. Representative Danny K. Davis, who has held the seat since 1997. Clark first ran against Davis in 2018 and lost by nearly fifty points. As the first college graduate in a working-class family, he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s in criminal justice while serving in the military. Following his honorable discharge in 2009, Clark became an education advocate and a special education teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School in the west suburbs. He is also the founder of the nonprofit Suburban Unity Alliance. This interview has been edited for clarity and length; find the full version at southsideweekly.com.

What problems remain unaddressed in the 7th District?

This district is the microcosm of issues facing the nation, such as vast wealth disparities that are interconnected to historical oppression...You have localized poverty for the most part, where communities that are made up of wonderful individuals who love their communities and families, like [in] Austin [or in] West Garfield Park and Englewood, are just trying to survive. This is because the investment has been taken out of the community. Since the property taxes are extremely low, you have poverty— with poverty comes violence and with violence comes death. So simply put, it's all interconnected.

Within our communities, individuals are struggling; property values are extremely low. We see that in our school systems. That's why the public schools within predominantly Black and brown communities continue to close. They're under-invested. Our infrastructure is dying. You have high levels of toxicity and high levels of pollution 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

that disproportionately impact Black and brown. All this ties into [the fact that] Black people primarily lack social and economic generational wealth. We don't have property to pass down through the generations. We don't have income to pass down through the generations, oftentimes, when it's time for our youth to attend college and to go to the next level. My parents did not attend college, so when it was time for me to go, they didn't have their social generational capital to pass down to me. So you see this across the board, you know, within communities like Austin, West Garfield Park, and Englewood. Even when you go on to communities like Oak Park, you still have people that are struggling.

What do you think is the most important part of your Reparations Agenda in terms of achieving economic empowerment in the community?

I cannot pinpoint [one] agenda independent of another, because all issues are interconnected. So if you look at health care, because we have extremely low affordable health care, it impacts employment.

Employment impacts livable wages, which impacts the individual's ability to maintain a home, then we have homelessness, and it's all tied into the environment at last.

So essentially my Reparations Agenda is a live document that will continue to be updated and will continue to evolve. What my agenda tries to tell people is recognize and understand within the class struggle, because Black and brown and poor people— but specifically Black people—have been disproportionately impacted by the class struggle.

My Reparations Agenda is essentially stating that every policy needs to have a reparations lens. So no matter what policy we're pushing,whether it be an environmental policy, whether it be an employment policy, whether it be an infrastructure policy, or a criminal justice policy, we need to look

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

at it from a reparations lens and identify how much money needs to be allotted to the Black community, which has been disproportionately impacted.

Could you talk about your pledge to #EndPoliceViolence? How is policing an issue that remains unaddressed in the 7th District?

We know that the relationship between communities and police, predominantly in communities of color, Black communities, is fractured. The relationship is not positive, it's [an] us-versus-them mentality. Daily, we wake up, and we recognize [that] the police violence that exists needs to be tied directly to gun violence. Our police departments are currently militarized. But across the nation, we don't have a civilian oversight committee to better hold police departments accountable.

We need to push for revolution, which includes policing. Now, there are policies listed that [give] police departments warning grants. The police are awarded military-grade weapons and military grade level vehicles. That's why you see areas like Ferguson, where police are riding around and tanks and armored vehicles, seem like they're prepared to go to war against people who they are supposed to protect and serve. It's a huge issue that exists. We need to close those loopholes that allow police departments to get their hands on military-style weapons and military-style vehicles. There needs to be implementation nationally with regards to training, to address and hopefully eliminate [and uncover] any biases.

What issues do you agree or disagree with Danny Davis on?

There's a difference between surviving and fighting for revolution. I thank Danny Davis for his service, but it's impossible to say that

he cares about the people in your district or that he is a fighter. When you look at the district, when you look at the vast disparities that exist, we can't blame that on the Republican party. This district is extremely blue. This is a D+38 district, a Democratic stronghold. So we have to look ourselves in the mirror...Essentially, what happens is he sits back and places party first, and is invested in maintaining [the] status quo.

What does the status quo look like? There is divestment in communities in which young individuals are not voting. He particularly depends upon the older vote and the church vote.

But what are we doing? We're out there fighting, we're pushing for revolution.

We're saying that low voter turnout is no longer acceptable. We're saying that the divestment in our communities is no longer acceptable. We're saying that we're not going to wait for someone else to fight for Medicare for all, or climate change or housing as a human right, so on and so forth. We're going to fight for two. We're going to work [on] building coalitions with these wonderful organizations across the district, hand in hand with other fighters, and pushing forward. In 2020, we have to have the courage and the boldness to take the community and the party to where they need to be. And that's the difference. Danny is meeting the community where it is to survive. We have the boldness and courage to take the main community where it needs to be because we believe in revolution. Yiwen Lu is a politics reporter for the Weekly.

This is her first submission to the Weekly.

POLITICS

Kina Collins

The Weekly sits down with the community organizer running for Congress in the 7th District

BY JIM DALEY Kina Collins was born and raised in the Austin neighborhood. As a student at Rufus M. Hitch elementary and Von Steuben high school, she began organizing around stopping gun violence in her community. She later attended Louisiana State University and has organizing experience with the Center for American Progress, the protest movement that emerged in 2015 around the police murder of Laquan McDonald, and Physicians for a National Health Program.

Collins is challenging U.S. Representative Danny K. Davis to represent Illinois’s 7th district; Davis has held the seat since 1997. It is Collins’ first campaign for office. The Weekly discussed her organizing background and platform. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

as the national organizer for Physicians for a National Health Program. I organized 20,000 doctors and medical students across the country, fighting to secure a single-payer Medicare for All. When I found out that Congressman Davis was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of corporate money from pharmaceutical companies and private insurance companies, I decided that I was organizing already, building coalition, and writing policy, and that I was going to mount a primary challenge against him.

How have your experiences informed the values of your campaign?

I was born in Austin, I was raised in Austin, and when we win, I'm going to stay in Austin. I grew up in a pro-union household. My dad is a Teamster, my mom is SEIU, and so organizing has been in my blood from the very beginning. As a child, I witnessed another child murdered in my community. I started doing anti-violence work in Chicago Public Schools with my peers, and then that turned into national work. I went to Louisiana State University, where I was working with Generation Progress around gun violence prevention.

I came back to Chicago in 2015, after the Laquan McDonald tape was released, and I'm part of that cohort of young activists who organized the [2015] Black Friday shutdown and other actions. In 2017, I wrote the Illinois Council on Women and Girls Act, which was a direct response to the Trump administration eliminating an Obama-era policy called the White House Council on Women and Girls. I took on the GOP of Illinois and a Republican governor, and we won.

I am currently the only candidate in this race who lives in a marginalized community.

When we think about federal rollbacks and the cutbacks in social services and public goods, the communities that are hardest hit are the neighborhoods in our district like Englewood, Back of the Yards, Austin, and North Lawndale. I think that my actual lived experience of seeing folks struggle every single day in my community makes me an expert at a lot of these issues that we want to tackle on the federal level.

I believe that if every congressional leader lived in the poorest area of their district, we would not have lead in our water; we would not be suffering from public school shutdowns; we would not see the spike and continuation of state-sanctioned violence and police brutality because these would be all the things that [congresspersons’] families would be experiencing. So for me, this run and the election of 2020—both the presidential election and the down-ballot races—are about a return of representative democracy. In a district that's over eightyfive percent Democrat, overwhelmingly working-class, and nearly seventy percent people of color, we deserve a working-class champion, and I am that candidate.

Why did you decide to run for office?

A year before I announced, I was working

What are the main issues residents in the district face on a daily basis?

Can you tell me about your background?

Health care, gun violence, and criminal justice reform are top issues. Increasingly, as we’ve been knocking on doors we’ve been hearing more people being concerned about the environment and immigration as well.

We are the most Democratic district in all of Illinois. But even with as progressiveleaning and Democrat-leaning as we are, we also have the largest life-expectancy gap in the country. Streeterville has a life expectancy of ninety years. If you travel to Englewood, which is also in our district, that life expectancy drops to sixty. It’s a thirtyyear life drop inside of a twenty-minute car ride. We know that’s because of the social determinants. It’s the lead in the water; it’s the bullets that are flying. And health care is essentially at the core of everything. When we talk about toxins in the air and lead in the water, that’s an environmental health issue.

When we talk about food deserts, that’s a nutritional health issue. When we talk about gun violence, that’s a public health issue.

To me, it is the most important thing that I want to tackle in my first hundred days, because I believe that life-expectancy gap definitely sits on the lines of race and class in our district.

How do you intend to tackle the lifeexpectancy gap in your first hundred days?

I’m going to put a health care task force together. It will consist of environmentalists, physicians, ER doctors, and folks in the community, activists who have been organizing in the community and have been doing this work for a really long time.

We want to compile a report and take that back to the health care subcommittees in Congress. We need to be sure that we’re talking to people like FEMA to say we need emergency water filtration systems in these portions of our district. We need to unlock the federal resources to come in and start to chip away at that thirty-year gap.

you support, translate to residents in the district?

The GND is not just an environmental piece of legislation, it’s a workforce piece of legislation. One thing that stops bullets is opportunity, and one thing that makes people feel valuable is a high-paying union job. Those are the things that we need to be bringing back to the district. When we saw the wipeout of manufacturing jobs here on the West Side, we saw the entire community get crippled. If you read the GND legislation, it does talk about the ramifications of climate change, but it also says we need to be investing in the green sustainable economy that is providing strong local economies for districts like ours. And that can help with the decrease in life expectancy by investing in green energy in IL-7. So I look at it not just as the eradication of environmental injustice and environmental racism, but also as an economic engine for Illinois.

How do you see yourself on the emerging spectrum of progressive versus moderate wings of the Democratic Party?

I see myself as an independent reformer.

The party is flowing more toward the working class. I could give you a laundry list of ways that the Republican and Democratic parties have forsaken urban communities in America. When you look at my neighborhood, Austin, you can’t compare it to Streeterville or Oak Park— which is where my opponents live. You have to compare Austin to Baltimore, to Philadelphia, to the Bronx, because that’s the level of poverty that we deal with. So, we want everyday people who can speak to everyday issues. Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last wrote about public mental health in the city.

How does the Green New Deal, which FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

POLITICS

Robert Emmons Jr.

The Weekly sits down with the gun violence prevention activist running for Congress in the 1st District

BY JADE YAN Running to represent Illinois’s 1st District in Congress, Robert Emmons Jr. has placed stopping gun violence at the center of his campaign. Part of this stems from his experience with the death of his college roommate and best friend, who was shot and died from his wounds. Since attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in political science, twenty-sevenyear-old Emmons has worked with activist groups including Generation Progress, NextGen Climate, and J Street to advocate for gun violence prevention, solutions for criminal justice, and stronger climate policies.

Emmons is the youngest candidate in the race and is taking on a longtime incumbent Bobby Rush, a pastor and former Black Panther and alderman who has held the seat for more than twenty years. Emmons believes that Rush is ineffectual and out of touch, evidenced by the fact that his “district has looked the same for twenty years.”

Emmons has been endorsed by climate groups such as 350 Action and the Sunrise Movement, as well as organizations against gun violence. A few days after our interview, Emmons earned a surprising endorsement from the Tribune, a paper whose editorial board is relatively conservative but has also been critical of Rush in the past. This interview has been edited for length and clarity; find an extended version at southsideweekly.com.

How much power does a Congressional representative have to make the changes that you want to see?

Tons. [A representative has the power to reverse amendments such as] the Dickey Amendment, [which is an amendment that] prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying gun violence as a public health epidemic. We need to completely reverse the Dickey Amendment in order to dive deeper into gun violence.

It’s a public health epidemic, and we have to 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

acknowledge it as one.

[A representative also has the power to] allocate funding. That’s one of the most important things a member of Congress can do, because cities and states know what to do with that money better than the federal government does. We have to allocate funding to go directly to community based organizations that are already doing the work on the ground to end gun violence.

That’s the hallmark of our solution: we don’t have a monopoly on the best ideas. In fact, our best idea is that we don’t. I want to give money to the people on the ground, who are already doing the work and who understand the community.

How do you see yourself as different from other people running for Congress?

I’ve been in this campaign for officially about a year, but unofficially, for one year and six months. I left my work, and took three to four months just exploring a run for Congress. [I went] around the district asking key questions [like] what people want to see in the representative, and where they want to see this district and country go. When I saw that what the people of the 1st District wanted was the same thing as what I wanted to do, I officially made my decision [to run].

So I’ve proven that I have the stamina and the conviction to be [a] Congressman, and I’ve also listened to real people on the ground.

Some of my other opponents haven’t done that work. Sarah Gad jumped in September of 2019, after I had already been in [the race] for a good amount of time. If she truly believed that we need a progressive in the seat, she would have gotten behind us, rather than jumping in to divide. She didn’t do [the] work necessary to make sure that the people of the 1st Congressional District truly want you to run. Back when I was exploring a run for Congress, I went all

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

across the district, not just in Chicago, I went to the southwest suburbs also and talked directly to them. My first endorsement was from Will County board chair Amanda Koch, because we did that work necessary to truly understand the entire district, and we did so honestly, and transparently.

You’re running against incumbent Bobby Rush, who has been Congressman of the 1st District for three terms. In what specific areas do you feel you could do a better job than him? How specifically do you plan to improve these areas?

During our campaign, we’ve been incredibly sensitive to the situations and trauma that Rush has faced over his tenure, so we typically don’t like even talking about the fact that he has one of the worst voting records; we more or less focus on the times he’s voted incorrectly.

For example, he voted for the disastrous 1994 crime bill, which disproportionately impacted Black and brown, predominantly young people. Then he apologized for it, but twenty-five years later, he’s still supporting candidates and policies that do the same thing. He [recently] supported a mayoral candidate in 2018 who said that we should spend $50 million on drone surveillance on the South and West Sides of Chicago in order to reduce crime. [Ed. note: that candidate was Bill Daley; the $50 million was proposed for gang intervention, but Daley did propose mass drone surveillance over wide swaths of the city.] That means Bobby Rush hasn’t really learned his lesson.

So it’s more or less about when he is voting, what is he voting on.

Also, Bobby Rush has taken $540,000 from the fossil fuel industry over the course of his tenure; this is why he sits on the Committee of Energy & Commerce, and why he called the Green New Deal a “smash and grab.” Who you take money from helps

to dictate your decision-making. That’s why my campaign hasn’t taken money from any corporation—the fossil fuel industry or the pharmaceutical industry. I’ve taken the pledge to not take money from any corporation, ever. With that, I think we’re building a movement that is sustainable because people trust when their leaders are only being held accountable by them.

The only group of people that I want to be responsive to are the people of the 1st Congressional District. Jade Yan is a contributing editor to the Weekly.

She last wrote about efforts to increase youth voter turnout in the city and state.

MEET THE CANDIDATES

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THE YEARS

January 24

Harold Mendez —

NOW

The Weekly sits down with two Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioners running for re-election

BY SAM JOYCE Two of the ten candidates currently running for the Democratic nomination for three seats on the board of commissioners that governs the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) are incumbents who have been slated by the Democratic Party.

(A third incumbent, Frank Avila, has not been slated but is actively campaigning for reelection.) These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

March 8

You can find extended versions of these interviews, as well as an interview with candidate Mike Cashman, an educator, at southsideweekly.com. Democratic candidates Heather Boyle, a public works and engineering clerk for northwest suburban Des Plaines; Michael Grace, a trustee of the southwest suburban South Lyons Township Sanitary District; Patricia Theresa Flynn, a village trustee of southwest suburban Crestwood; Deyon Dean, a former mayor of south suburban Riverdale; and Avila have not responded to requests for interviews. Interviews with candidates Eira Corral Sepúlveda, the village clerk of northwest suburban Hanover Park and the Democratic Party’s pick to unseat Avila, and Shundar Lin, a water scientist who has previously run for board seats on the Democratic and once on the Republican ticket and has served on the Illinois Pollution Control Board, are forthcoming.

C

am Davis was first elected in 2018 to fill a vacancy created by the death of Commissioner Tim Bradford. As a result of the timing of Bradford’s death, three days before the filing deadline, every candidate had to run a countywide write-in campaign. Davis set the Illinois record for most write-in votes in an election, winning 54,183 votes and the two-year term. This time around, his path looks considerably less difficult: his name is listed on the ballot. Before he was elected two years ago, Davis had a long and varied career in water protection work. He previously served as then-President Barack Obama’s “Great Lakes Czar,” coordinating environmental restoration in the region. He has also worked as president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes and as an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation.

What have you done in the last couple years on the board?

There have been several things that I’m really grateful I had the chance to do. One of them was the chance to vote for an independent inspector general. For the first time in a hundred and thirty years, we have what I call forensic accountants and attorneys who can follow the money and make sure that the agency, including us as commissioners, is

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

business with the district.

You’re in a county of more than five million people, running for an office that doesn’t really get a lot of attention, with nine other people on the ballot. How do you distinguish yourself and get your name out there in this kind of election?

GABY FEBLAND

doing what it’s supposed to do, and complies with all laws and policies on the books.

I’ve helped lead the effort to update our watershed management ordinance. My goal with that effort has been to continue to reduce the impact of flooding on disproportionately impacted communities in Cook County. That’s something I’ve vowed to keep working for, and revising and updating that ordinance is one of the most powerful ways to do that.

I’ll close with this one: not many people know MWRD is the second-largest property holder in Cook County, second only to the Forest Preserve District. Yet we can and should be making better use of that property. I’ve been advocating for neighboring communities around MWRD property to be able to help influence what happens with that property. For example, if they would like to use MWRD property for community farming, as long as it helps reduce stormwater, it could provide space for people to have an inexpensive, healthy source of locally grown food. Especially in places like the South Side, where we have food deserts—communities without easy access to inexpensive, healthy produce—this is a good way to combat that problem.

On ethics, the Green Party slate raised this issue in the 2018 election, saying that commissioners and candidates were taking contributions from companies that had business before the district. Do you think there should be rules that restrict or limit those kinds of contributions?

Basically, those rules are now consistent with state rules. I’ve gone beyond that and have voluntarily restricted myself from taking contributions from engineering firms doing 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

I’m the only one running, whether a sitting candidate or a challenger, who has dedicated their entire adult life to protecting the public’s interest in clean water. It’s all I’ve ever done.

And I think people see that: when I ran in 2018 to fill the two remaining years of Commissioner Tim Bradford’s term, because of the timing of when Mr. Bradford died, I had to run as a write-in candidate. It was this really quirky race that most people thought could never be won, had never been done on a county-wide scale in recent memory. I think a lot of people saw that qualifications really do matter, especially in the face of the Trump administration’s public health protection rollbacks. If the federal government’s not going to protect us, we better damn well elect people who have a long, demonstrable track record of protecting the public.

K

imberly Neely Du Buclet was first elected in 2018 to fill the two remaining years of Cynthia Santos’s term after then-Governor Bruce Rauner appointed Santos to the Illinois Pollution Control Board. She’s now seeking a regular six-year term, with the support of the Party, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Before she was elected to the board, Du Buclet worked as the director of legislative affairs at the Chicago Park District. From 2011 to 2013, she also served as the state representative for the 26th District, which includes parts of South Chicago, South Shore, Woodlawn, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Bronzeville, and the Gold Coast.

Can you describe your background and interest in the work of the MWRD? I am a native Chicagoan from the very far South Side, the Southeast Side of Chicago, kind of near 87th and Stony Island. I grew up in a home out that way that flooded frequently, just about every time it rained. It was such a burden on my family, trying to figure out how to stop the flooding, so home flooding has always been a very personal

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

cause for me. And as our cities, especially in Chicago, become more and more urbanized and we’re using more and more asphalt and other surfacing that’s not permeable, and as we’re getting more frequent—what used to be hundred-year storms [are] now one-year storms—all of this became an issue for me.

As you mentioned, urban flooding is a major issue, particularly on the South Side. Expansion is continuing on McCook reservoir as part of the Deep Tunnel project, but apart from building more reservoirs, what creative solutions can the MWRD pursue to minimize urban flooding?

Urban flooding can be influenced by how water flows, by aging and inadequate water infrastructure, new development that creates more water runoff, and of course climate change that creates these heavier storms. Green infrastructure, I believe, is one solution.

What does green infrastructure look like? What’s an ideal green infrastructure project on the South Side?

We could talk about permeable pavements for alleys, we could talk about green roofs, we could talk about the partnership we have with [south suburban] Robbins. We partnered with the City of Robbins to work with the community and stakeholders to produce a community plan that addresses their flooding challenges, but also takes into consideration how, by mitigating or by helping them with their flooding issue, the local municipality is hoping that will increase their economic development.

on the horizon for the district that voters might not be thinking about, but that will impact the district in your next term?

Obviously, climate change is an issue that we’re all going to be dealing with over the next few years, and requires change to stormwater management. Stormwater management is crucial to protecting our water, as well as our health and community, and so dealing with stormwater management is going to require us to use very creative and unique approaches for the residents and local governments working together to address these challenges. We all face the challenges of climate change.

I think we should do more to prevent stormwater from entering our overburdened system. Maybe we could provide tax credits or rebates for the inclusion of green infrastructure, maybe we could provide tax credits for permeable pavement, or for redevelopment in line with the watershed management ordinance. By doing so, we’ll allow water to be captured and stored, as opposed to running into our sewer system.

I also think, in conclusion, that we can lead the effort to promote green building codes throughout Cook County. It’s my mission to continue to work with these suburban counties and municipalities to adopt policies that we can use to promote permeable pavement, green buildings, and other environmental best practices. Sam Joyce is a managing editor and the nature editor of the Weekly. He last covered Hyde Park & Kenwood for the 2019 Best of the South Side issue.

Since the MWRD is the second-largest landowner in Cook County, are there any specific projects you think should be pursued with that land?

I support efforts that we’re doing to solicit proposals to help develop a solar plant on vacant MWRD land in Crest Hill near the Des Plaines River. But just in general, I support the protection of MWRD lands as open space, so we can allow community uses and long-term uses that comply with our leasing policy and the state’s leasing statute. If we lease the property under our supervision, we can protect it while still allowing development to take place.

What are the other challenges that you see

GABY FEBLAND

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POLITICS

Census Spotlight Southwest Organizing Project

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER In preparation for the 2020 Census, the Weekly is featuring an organization doing work around the census and ways to get involved in each issue. This is the second in the series.

A

cross Chicago, some of the hardestto-count census tracts—labeled as such because of low response rates to previous censuses—are in predominantly Latinx communities. Historically, factors like language, poverty, and education have contributed to these populations being undercounted: the Census Bureau does its job best when tallying up rich, Englishspeaking, highly-educated areas. For this census, the temporary addition of a

citizenship question to the Census—the Supreme Court ultimately rejected the addition last June—has made matters worse. U.S. Representative Jesús “Chuy” García, whose district includes largely Latinx neighborhoods on the Southwest and Northwest Sides and suburbs, stated his constituents must “overcome fear and confusion” around the count, which begins April 1.

One group working to ensure that some of Chicago’s Latinx community areas are properly counted is the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP). The organization’s area of coverage, which is sixty-two percent Latinx, includes Chicago

Lawn, West Elsdon, and Gage Park— neighborhoods where the self-response rate to the more frequent American Community Survey tends to hover around or under thirty percent. (In nearby Oak Lawn, for comparison, the response rate tends to be about sixty percent.) Laurel Bornman, a master’s student at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and an intern with SWOP, said that getting people to respond to the survey, either on paper or online, is a focus of their organizing.

“The government is not trusted a lot in these communities. That’s why we’re saying, ‘Make sure you’re turning surveys back in.’ We’re not gonna encourage people to open their door to the government because of ICE or whomever, even just cops,” she said.

To that end, SWOP is canvassing its area of coverage, knocking doors in a set of tracts assigned to them through a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services by way of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. But Mayra Sarabia, who’s leading SWOP’s census efforts, said the organization is also doing more, like visiting schools to give presentations with Census information.

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“One student said, ‘We’d like to learn more about it because we’re gonna be helping our parents to fill it out.’ They can pursue the parents more than me,” she said, noting that Pell Grants are allocated through federal funding determined by census numbers.

“They can say, ‘It’s important for my education. I want to go to college—when I apply for college, I might not get enough.’”

The Weekly’s coverage of the 2020 Census is supported by a grant from the McCormick Foundation, administered by the Chicago Independent Media Alliance. Christian Belanger is a senior editor at the Weekly and a staff writer at the Hyde Park Herald. He last covered a traveling exhibit of community-made media, currently on view at University of Chicago art centers.

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POLITICS

Count Us In

Organizations discuss how to make the Census matter to South Siders

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

O

n a snowy Thursday a few weeks ago, the Oakwood Community Center at the corner of 38th Place and Vincennes Avenue in Bronzeville filled up with people in attendance for a free, public panel discussion on “The Power of the US Census in Black Communities.” The event was part of Community Grand Rounds, a relatively new outreach series focusing on improving health on the South Side, organized by the Center for Community Health & Vitality at the University of Chicago’s medical system.

Dr. Doriane Miller, the center’s director and an internist at UChicago Medicine, made a few introductory remarks, during which she noted that, while it might seem a little surprising to connect the Census to health outcomes, she was working with a broad definition of health—“the presence of physical, mental, and social well-being, not simply the absence of disease.”

A pamphlet put together by UofC medical students clearly laid out the connections between the Census and funding for health-related programs in Illinois. Medicaid and Medicare, for example, get some of the most money allocated using Census data—$312 and $70 billion, respectively—by calculating reimbursement levels based on state income and cost of practicing in a certain area. Even a seemingly small undercount can have significant results: according to a study by the Chicago Urban League, undercounting Illinois’s population by one percent means the state would lose $122 million each year in Medicaid funding.

In 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that Illinois was undercounted by about half a percent. But undercounting doesn’t take place equally—the agency also found that, nationally, the Black population was undercounted by 2.1 percent, while the Latinx population, as the Census Bureau refers to it, was undercounted by 1.5 percent.

Renters, a group that sometimes serves as a stand-in for low-income people, were undercounted by 1.1 percent.

Perhaps taking a cue from Miller’s point that health is not merely the absence of disease, Jasmine Gunn, one of the panelists, pointed to some of the ways that funding from the Census is tied to a range of other social welfare programs. Gunn works as a project manager at Claretian Associates, a community organization that develops and manages affordable housing in South Chicago. Claretian Associates uses Community Development Block Grant funding and rents to people using Section 8 vouchers—both programs whose funding is partly determined with Census data.

“The demand for affordable housing...I would call it a crisis. The lack of units that are available—they just don’t exist,” Gunn said. “If you fill out the Census, there will be more funds allocated to nonprofit [organizations] that are trying to build affordable housing…. But if you don’t fill out the Census, the money that they allocate for your community won’t be correct.”

Gunn also pointed out that plenty of businesses use information from the Census to decide whether to set up shop in a particular neighborhood or to find investment for their business: “People giving out business loans, the first thing they have to do [is] a market analysis of the customers…. That profile comes out of the Census data.” Her point was part of a larger theme that oriented much of the evening’s discussion: economic health in majorityBlack communities, particularly in a part of the city that’s steadily been losing its Black population over the last few decades.

One of the other panelists, Cassiopeia Uhuru, is the co-founder of The Black Mall, an online directory and newsletter that encourages buying from Black-owned businesses. “It’s why it’s really important

for us to be counted in the Census… with us being counted, we actually have the chance for more dollars to be circulated or disseminated into our communities and to help with our communities,” Uhuru said.

Melvin R. Thompson, the executive director of the Endeleo Institute in Washington Heights, echoed Uhuru’s point.

He pointed to a concrete example of a new business being created in a Black community: this year, Thompson’s organization, which is part of the powerful Trinity United Church of Christ, plans to open Cafe DuBois, a coffee shop at the corner of 95th Street and Harvard Avenue. (W.E.B. DuBois was the first Black person to get his PhD from Harvard University.)

It appeared attendees of the panel were already grappling with issues relevant to the Census as well as broader social, economic, and political struggles in poor communities and communities of color. During the question-and-answer session following the panel discussion, the conversation circled back to the Census. One audience member pointed out that people who are incarcerated are counted by the Census as part of the population in the area where the prison is located. “They’re being counted downstate and in Statesville… they get counted down

there, and they’re getting dollars for that,” she said. “We need to be the ones that say, ‘No, you need to put that money back in.’”

A 2010 report from the Prison Gerrymandering Project showed that, even though sixty percent of Illinois’s prison population is from Chicago, ninety percent of those people are incarcerated downstate.

In one rural county, the prison population is twenty-five percent of the total. Over the last decade, state Representative La Shawn K. Ford, whose 8th District includes much of Austin and some western suburbs, has repeatedly introduced a bill that would count prisoners using their last previous address before they were incarcerated. The latest version, introduced in 2018, is in committee, and has fifty-nine cosponsors.

The Weekly’s reporting on the 2020 Census is supported by a grant from the McCormick Foundation, administered by the Chicago Independent Media Alliance. Christian Belanger is a senior editor at the Weekly and a staff writer at the Hyde Park Herald. He last covered a traveling exhibit of community-made media, currently on view at University of Chicago art centers.

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

LEE V. GAINES/ILLINOIS NEWSROOM

Lack Of Access, Long Waitlists: Education In Illinois Prisons State policies for GED and degree programs in prisons block some from education

BY LEE V. GAINES, ILLINOIS NEWSROOM Powered by Illinois Public Media/WILL radio/tv/online, Illinois Newsroom provides news about Illinois and in-depth reporting on agriculture, education, the environment, health, and politics. Originally published online February 11. Reprinted with permission.

W

hen Ralph Gray transferred from one prison in Illinois to another, he didn’t know the move would mean sacrificing access to an education.

Gray guessed he was sixteen credits shy of receiving an associates degree from Lake 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Land College, a community college that offers classes in several prisons in Illinois, when he left Western Illinois Correctional Center, a medium security facility located between Springfield and Quincy.

When he arrived at Graham Correctional Center in Southern Illinois several years ago, Gray said he was told he’d be placed at the end of the waitlist for an auto body course. The class was the reason he requested a transfer. He’s still on the waitlist, according to Gray.

Gray isn’t the only person incarcerated

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

in Illinois prisons that isn’t able to further their education. A lack of teachers, funding and the department’s own policies prevent many from obtaining their GED, associates degree, or a trade skill.

An Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) policy stipulates that once a class is full, inmates are placed on the waiting list in order of their release date, with those getting out soonest receiving priority.

According to IDOC officials, the policy was changed in June 2013. Previously, prisoners were placed on the waiting list

in ascending order based on the date they requested access to the educational program or course. Gray’s projected parole date is January 2029.

Despite the fact that inmates like Gray remain shut out of educational programming due to the policy, IDOC spokesperson, Lindsey Hess, said the department does not plan to change it.

“Given our limited resources, we must prioritize educational programming for men and women reentering their communities first,” Hess wrote in an email.

EDUCATION NATURE

Access to education in IDOC facilities is low. In fiscal year 2018, which runs from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, 723 inmates received a GED, and 168 received an associates degree, according to department data. That same year, IDOC held more than 15,000 inmates without a high school degree, and more than 18,000 without a college degree, department data shows.

I

A lack of opportunity

DOC Director Rob Jeffreys attributes low attainment numbers to a lack of teachers and a lack of funding in the corrections and community college system, as well as the geographic location of many of Illinois’ prisons.

In fiscal year 2018, the department employed 119 educators in a prison system with roughly 40,000 inmates. The number of educators in the system rose slightly to 124 in fiscal year 2019, according to IDOC data.

Jeffreys said it’s more difficult to recruit educators in rural areas, leading to a concentration of educational opportunities in prisons located near urban centers. For example, DePaul University, North Park University, and Northwestern University operate privately funded educational programs inside Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security facility located just outside Chicago.

Including Stateville, only three of the system’s twenty-eight prisons offer credit bearing courses above the associates degree level. Those programs, which are located in Stateville, Sheridan and Danville Correctional Centers, are operated by colleges and universities. Two prisons, Pontiac and Menard Correctional Centers, offer neither post-secondary nor vocational programming. The remaining twenty-six facilities have some vocational courses, but whether they offer associates degree classes depends on if the community college that works inside the prison can pay for and hire an adjunct professor to teach in the facility, according to prison officials.

“When you talk about the Chicago area, I mean, we have all types of facilities up there to provide programming,” Jeffreys said. “But when we start talking about… the southern part of Illinois, there’s not a whole lot of opportunity to provide secondary education in those particular facilities.”

Hess wrote in an email that Jeffreys is “primarily focused on expanding educational

programming in facilities in downstate Illinois.”

Funding is also an obstacle.

The department contracts with community colleges to provide vocational programs inside state prisons, while community colleges are responsible for the cost of academic post-secondary programming, for which they receive reimbursement from the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB).

But state investment in community colleges has dropped dramatically over the last two decades, according to data from the state’s community college board.

In fiscal year 2000, state funding accounted for about a third of community college revenue. In fiscal year 2017, state funding made up just about fifteen percent of community college funding. Adjusted for inflation, the state invested about half as much in Illinois’ community college system in fiscal year 2019 as compared to fiscal year 2002.

In the absence of increased investment, community colleges have increasingly relied on local tax dollars and tuition. Matt Berry, a spokesperson for ICCB, said incarcerated students rarely pay tuition.

“The colleges are able to claim these students for ICCB reimbursement, but… the funding formula is significantly underfunded,” Berry wrote in an email.

Offering more courses inside state prisons would not necessarily lead to more revenue, given that the amount of state funding available to community colleges is “a finite pot of resources,” Berry wrote.

Trading educational opportunities for better living conditions

G

ray said he understands that the money available for education in state prisons is limited. But he thinks the current policy, which prioritizes those with shorter sentences for programming, is unfair to people like him.

Gray grew up in Champaign, and he was sent to prison in 2012 shortly after he turned eighteen. He was sentenced to twenty years after he pleaded guilty to the aggravated kidnapping of an Australian researcher who was visiting the University of Illinois during the fall of 2011. Gray is now twenty-five.

Truth-in-sentencing laws dictate that Gray must serve the majority of his sentence, which means he’s also not eligible

to receive “good time”—time cut from his sentence—for participation in correctional department programs.

During his first few months in prison, Gray said he acted out, largely because he was still processing the length of time he had to serve. But then, he said, he had an epiphany.

“I was really determined to, you know, kind of get on the right track, and I never lost sight of wanting to go home,” he said.

A big part of getting on track for Gray meant getting an education. He requested a transfer to Western Illinois from Menard Correctional Center because Lake Land College offered classes there.

“I gained a lot of college courses. I took almost every business course that they had there,” Gray said. He said he was able to get into the courses because many of the inmates at Western Illinois were serving similarly long sentences.

“One thing about Western [Illinois] Correctional, your living conditions were bad, but they made sure that everybody has the opportunity to get into school,” he said.

At Western Illinois, Gray said he could only leave his cell for about an hour and a half each day. He decided to request another transfer, partly because he wanted a better quality of life, but also because he wanted to take an auto body course.

“Because when you think about it, an incarcerated person, a person with a felony is fighting with a lower chance for a job compared to a person that doesn’t,” Gray said. “But if you take a guy that’s been incarcerated and you give him a skillset that he can learn, he can take that to the street with him when he’s released.” Graham Correctional offered an auto body class, and Gray thought that developing those skills would make him a more attractive candidate to a future employer.

What he didn’t realize, he said, is that leaving Western Illinois for Graham, a lower security facility located between Springfield and St. Louis, would mean he’d lose access to all in-person educational programs.

“A lot of guys are sacrificing leaving prisons that are worse living conditions to come here and, you know, they’re leaving their educational classes and all that stuff. They’re not realizing that when you get to these lower level prisons, that you’re not going to be able to obtain courses and classes,” Gray said. “So that pretty much exiles us from gaining educational programming in certain facilities, which doesn’t seem right.”

F

California’s solution

ew states have succeeded in recent years to pass legislation aimed at increasing access to post-secondary programming in prisons. California is an exception.

California went from offering face-toface college classes inside only two state prisons to having community college classes and teachers in thirty-four of the state’s thirty-five correctional facilities in a five year time span.

The change occurred as a result of legislation passed in 2014, which allowed educators to teach classes inside correctional facilities and provided a mechanism for which community colleges could receive reimbursement for those classes from the state.

Last year, the state’s then-governor, Jerry Brown, approved a budget which allocated $5 million to the state’s community colleges serving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. Now, people incarcerated in state prisons can earn college credits and associates degrees that are fully transferable to public universities in the state, according to Brant Choate, who directs the division of rehabilitative programs within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Choate said there’s a financial incentive for community colleges to participate in prison programming.

“Some of the colleges in remote areas have seen this as an opportunity to increase their enrollment,” he said. “But I think more so, and I can only tell you this anecdotally from what I’ve seen… there’s this feeling of social justice.”

Choate said stakeholders, including prison officials and college educators, have benefitted from the arrangement. He said educators have realized the environment may be safer than they previously thought, and that the students are extremely engaged.

“Many of our students are actually receiving honors,” Choate said. “And it’s very exciting to see that, and word spreads amongst community college faculty where, in many cases, that’s where everybody wants to teach.”

Choate said the increase in educational access has also led to improvements in the workplace for prison personnel.

“It’s almost like a conversion of one officer at a time,” he said. “They attend the graduation, they see the behavior change on the yard, they see an attitude change in the

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

MUSIC

People in Prison System

Associate Degree Attainment in Illinois State Prisons

20,000

10,000

0 2015

2016

2017

Year

AA degrees awarded

2018

2019

People without College Degrees

GRAPH BY DEBLINA MUKHERJEE FOR SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY. BASED ON WORK BY LEE V. GAINES FOR ILLINOIS NEWSROOM

inmates… and that just makes it a better work environment.”

Unlike IDOC, Choate said the department allows anyone who wants to to access college programming, including those with life sentences.

“We view them as human beings and people that deserve an education, but at the same time, those people who know that they’re never going to leave prison—they’re some of our best instructors on the inside,” he said.

Choate said incarcerated scholars have served as mentors and tutors to other inmates, and as role models for those just entering the prison system.

“It changes them from essentially criminals to academics,” Choate said.

“People are huddled around the domino table now talking about the most recent classic literature piece they’ve read, as opposed to talking about how they’re going to get in trouble because they’re bored.”

Choate said the dramatic change in access to education in California prisons came in large part from buy-in both at the correctional and community college system levels, as well as state lawmakers.

He said he’s “very aware” of what kind of programming other state prisons offer incarcerated people.

“The key difference is that we have support from our legislature, and California has decided to make this a priority and fund it,” Choate said. “Funding is the biggest barrier for all the other states, so they’re reliant upon private foundations to fund college and that’s the main difference.”

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The cost of an education in prison

W

hile funding remains a barrier in Illinois, the state may actually save money if it were to implement broader access to educational opportunities inside its prisons, according to research from the Rand Corporation.

A meta-analysis from the nonprofit policy think tank found that people who participated in educational opportunities while incarcerated were forty-three percent less likely to recidivate than those who did not. Additionally, the report states that for every dollar a prison system spends on education, they’ll realize five dollars in savings due to reduced recidivism rates.

A 2018 report from the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council estimates that forty-three percent of those who are released from state prison will return within three years. The report also estimates that recidivism related costs to victims and taxpayers will total $13 billion over the next half-decade.

State analyses indicate that educational programming in prison settings saves money.

A 2018 report from the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget predicted that vocational, adult basic education and post-secondary education would reduce recidivism, with post-secondary education yielding the greatest benefit to cost ratio of nearly thirty-nine dollars in savings for Illinois taxpayers and crime victims for every dollar spent on it.

State Representative Mary Flowers, a

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

Democrat who represents parts of the South and West Sides, filed legislation in 2017 that would have mandated educational and vocational programming in all of Illinois’ adult and juvenile prisons. The measure died in committee.

She said she filed the bill because she wanted to see something done to address recidivism in the state.

“The vast majority of the people that are incarcerated come from the minority districts, and so they really come back to my area,” Flowers said. “And as a result of them not being educated, not having health care, not having job training, it’s really a double or triple whammy on the community, because you could guarantee that someone’s going to get hurt, you can guarantee that there will be recidivism, you can guarantee that it will be an extra cost on the taxpayers.”

A fiscal note provided by IDOC stated that Flowers’ proposed legislation would cost the department more than $380 million over ten years. Flowers said she was told that the bill failed due to its projected cost.

But she believes the price of not educating the state’s prison population will ultimately cost taxpayers more. “If they really want to do a fiscal note, how much money we have paid out for false incarceration, or how much money we have paid out for recidivism, it would way surpass this $380 million. It was really insulting to me,” she said.

Flowers said she plans to reintroduce similar legislation this year.

“There’s fewer people incarcerated now, so I would like to see how much they say it would cost,” she said. “And I always like to ask the question: ‘how much will it cost if we don’t do it?’ But I never get an answer.”

he believes he needs.

“My family has been very big in helping me, and without them I would not be able to do them classes,” Gray said.

A spokesperson for Illinois’ prison system wrote in an email that agency officials are trying to increase educational opportunities for incarcerated people, including building partnerships with public and private colleges and universities. In an interview last fall, Jeffreys also said the department planned to hire a vocational coordinator, and he hoped to bring people from local trade unions into the prison to serve as teachers.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for IDOC wrote, “Director Jeffreys and IDOC’s programming staff are reviewing educational programming in other states and how those programs are funded. We are actively seeking additional partners and working to expand programs currently in place. ” The funding stream—regardless of educational partnerships—for the Illinois prison system is controlled by the state’s General Assembly. Choate, with California’s correctional system, said that’s the case in that state, too. He said they needed political support to expand educational programming in California’s prisons.

“I mean, it needs to come from the people that are in charge of the money,” Choate said. “And if you convince your legislature—and it’s always helpful to also have your governor’s office and the governor, him or herself, be behind it—but once you have that support, then it’s just a matter of, in our case, crafting the bill to make sure that everybody was happy with it, so it could pass. And that’s what happened with us.” ¬

Real worries

Lee Gaines covers education for the Illinois Newsroom. She started at Illinois Public Media in 2017 and her stories have been featured nationally on NPR. Prior to her work at IPM, Lee wrote for newspapers and magazines in Chicago and nationally. Her work has appeared in the Tribune, Reader, Chicago Magazine, and the Marshall Project. She also recently completed a fellowship with the Education Writers Association.

G

ray said he worries about his lack of access to an education largely because of his family. He said he’s a father, and he looks forward to supporting his family when he returns home from prison.

He said he’s heard that the administration at Graham Correctional Center, where he’s located now, may implement a baking class.

Gray said he hopes that’s true.

“Because anything that I can take educational wise, I will take because I know it’s important, and it’s detrimental to my future if I don’t have them courses,” he said.

Gray said he’s looking into correspondence courses, which his family will have to pay for, to access the education

POLITICS

The Dispersal of Black Chicago

A new report explores how and why Chicago, and the South Side, is losing its Black population

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

A

t one point, Chicago was the land of opportunity for millions of Black Americans who were leaving the Jim Crow South. The industrial city expanded rapidly through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as waves of Black Southerners sought economic opportunity in Chicago and permanently settled in the city. However, a combination of factors, including the collapse of the manufacturing sector and discriminatory policies, according to a recent report on changing Black Chicago demographics from the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Since then, Black communities in Chicago have lost about 350,000 residents.

The breakdown of population by race demonstrates an inverse relationship between white and Black population changes, not just recently, but historically.

According to the report, between 1990 and 2016, neighborhoods that experienced an increase in white residents saw a decrease in Black residents, and neighborhoods that experienced an increase in Black residents saw a decrease in white residents. Similarly, from the fifties through the seventies— when the Black population was at its peak—local, state, and federal governments developed pristine suburbs and incentivized white residents to move their families to greener pastures, and the white population in Chicago fell by nearly 900,000.

When so many white Chicagoans left, private interests and every level of government decreased their investment in the city.

“Inequity is built into the fabric of Chicago during and after the Great

Migration. [The] segregation of Black residents to the Black Belt, and the subsequent economic disinvestment from these communities, had enduring effects that would surface more prominently in the 1980s and beyond,” said report co-author Amanda Lewis, a UIC sociology professor and director of the institute, at an event held on UIC’s campus last month.

Population loss coincided with the loss of manufacturing jobs. Black residents relied on employment in Chicago’s factories on the South and West Sides during the midtwentieth century, and were hit particularly hard when manufacturing companies that previously employed tens of thousands of people shut their doors. According to UIC’s Great Cities Institute, in 1947, at the peak of manufacturing employment in Chicago, there were 667,407 manufacturing jobs; by 2014, the number had dropped to 110,445.

“In these same neighborhoods where the manufacturing jobs left, where there’s concentrations of segregated populations, primarily Black populations, the numbers of joblessness is extraordinarily high… and we’re still feeling the impacts of the decline in manufacturing,” said Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute, at the same event in January. “So the real question then becomes: as the economy continues to change, how are we going to build an inclusive economy?”

In particular, the report claims the destruction of the city’s public housing during the 1990s and early 2000s is “undoubtedly a factor” contributing to the displacement of Black residents in several communities: the Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green, Stateway Gardens, Ida B.

THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH ON RACE AND PUBLIC POLICY AT UIC

Wells Homes, Jane Addams Homes, Harold Ickes Homes, Grace Abbott Homes, Henry Horner Homes, Randolph Towers, and Loomis Courts.

Dispersing these concentrations of Black residents was the first step in the Chicago Housing Authority’s $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation. “At the core was an ambitious experiment of social engineering called mixed-income housing,” said Lisa Yun Lee, director of the National Public Housing Museum, of the CHA’s sweeping plan to reshape the city’s public housing.

“It is clear that by creating mixed-income developments and a voucher system for long-term rent subsidy contracts in privately owned developments, the city intentionally shifted much responsibility for housing and management to the private sector.”

While previous studies have found that

Black neighborhoods in Chicago do not typically gentrify, at least not in the same way as Latinx communities, the report found that the rising cost of living is making it difficult for Black residents to remain in the city, and the report projects it will only to worsen with massive developments like the Obama Presidential Center. “It is notable that the neighborhoods with the largest increase in whites and the largest decrease in Blacks are all located near downtown (Near North Side, Near South Side, Near West Side) or with direct access to downtown through public transportation via L trains (West Town, Logan Square, Lake View, Uptown),” the report reads.

The researchers cited work by the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, which concluded that, despite Chicago’s Fair Housing Ordinance and the

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

EVENTS

federal Fair Housing Act, “historic practices of housing discrimination by race and source of income have not become extinct, but rather persist and continue to serve as barriers to housing opportunity to African Americans and low-income households across Chicago.”

The report showed that Austin, for example, lost over 16,000 residents since 1990 and had one of the highest foreclosure rates during the recession.

“Chicago has led the way and embraced these low-road development practices and categorically adopted market-based investment in the public sphere, meaning privatizing our roads, privatizing our parking spaces, privatizing [traffic] tickets, privatizing public housing, so many of the mechanisms that were part of the public sphere that allowed people to remain in place, that either weren’t punitive or they were actually supportive, have been eroded,” said Stacey Sutton, an assistant professor of urban planning and policy at UIC. “Not only are they Black, they’re low-income.

They’re working-class Black folks that are leaving because they can’t afford to stay.”

Other structural conditions continue to burden Chicago’s Black community. For example, Illinois’s prison population has increased 450 percent since 1980, with the majority of this growth occurring through the incarceration of Black residents, according to the report. Public school closures in Black communities have also disproportionately affected this demographic: according to a WBEZ report cited in the study, 44,700 Black students have experienced a school closing since 2002.

“I’m not necessarily convinced that this is a shared sentiment, that Black people leaving the city is necessarily a bad thing,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, an associate professor of African American history at UIC who also serves on the Chicago Board of Education. “Black communities continue to be defined as places of pathology, as unredeemable, as places of deficit. Implicit in this is that the city may be better off with less Black people. Black people are problem people, with our problem schools, and our problem families, in our problem neighborhoods.”

According to the data, the Englewood and West Englewood community areas had the largest Black population loss in the city, followed by Austin. On average, an increase of ten additional white residents in a neighborhood between 1990 and 2016 was associated with a loss of three Black 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

residents. The report argues that residential racial segregation is not only getting worse in Chicago, “but the factors associated with population growth for one group relate to population decline for the other.”

The breakdown of Black net population loss by neighborhood since 1990 is as follows: West Englewood (-23,501) Englewood (-23,183), Austin (-18,838), Auburn Gresham (-14,905), Roseland (-14,863), Grand Boulevard (-14,520), North Lawndale (-14,259), Douglas (-13,497), Humboldt Park (-12,165), South Shore (-11,799), West Pullman (-11,460), Washington Park (-8,069), West Garfield Park (-7,129), Grand Crossing (-6,913), Woodlawn (-6,742), Greater Chatham (-6,503), East Garfield Park (-5,519), Washington Heights (-5,640), Edgewater (-4,051), Uptown (-4,164), South Chicago (-3,846), Riverdale (-3,601), Calumet Heights (-3,417), Hyde Park (-3,093).

But despite such losses, 829,781 Black people still live in Chicago, and Chicago remains the second largest U.S. city for Black people. And those who move don’t usually move very far, often relocating to surrounding suburbs in Illinois, or just across the state line in Indiana.

“There has been like an assault on Black people and Black communities in this city, and the migration numbers to me suggest exactly that,” said Alden Loury, senior editor of WBEZ’s race, class, and communities desk. “I hope this report is a call to action, that this is finally a statement that is made that says, ‘Chicago, wake up!’ Something is happening, we as a city, as a collective community, are doing something to these communities that are literally driving people away… But I do think Chicago needs to be slapped in the face, it needs to be made apparent, we still have a tremendous issue with race… In the city of activism, let’s get active, let’s make something happen.” Jacqueline Serrato is the editor-in-chief of the South Side Weekly.

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

BULLETIN Chicago Abolitionist Book Club Meet Up Chicago Freedom School, 719 S. State St. Wednesday, February 19, 6pm–7:30pm.

Free. bit.ly/AbolitionistBookClub Looking to join a new book club?

Believe that the carceral state should be dismantled? Free this Wednesday evening?

Then check out this new group, which is reading Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha as its first offering. Mocktails and cookies will be served. (Sam Stecklow)

Chicago and Afrofuturism: Dr. Eve Ewing Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Thursday, February 20, 6pm– 7:30pm. Free. chipublib.org Author, sociologist, and Weekly alum Eve Ewing will discuss Chicago’s role in the Afrofuturism literary movement with Stacie Williams, who directs the Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Chicago Libraries. (Sam Stecklow)

Chicago Tool Library at the Harold Washington Library Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Wednesday, February 26, 6:30pm– 7:30pm. Free. chipublib.org Learn about the Bridgeport-based Chicago Tool Library—which, as its name suggests, lends tools to those in need— how it was started, how you can get involved, and how you can get your hands on some tools! (Sam Stecklow)

VISUAL ARTS S is for Soul Sister Arts and Public Life, 301 E. Garfield Blvd.

February 19 through March 20. Open Wednesday through Friday, noon–6pm. Free.

(773) 702-9724. arts.uchicago.edu/apl

Fifty years ago, kids who lived in the Near South Side’s Harold Ickes Homes were photographed for inclusion in a “Black ABCs” project that was used as a teaching aid in classrooms across Chicago. Photographer and University of Chicago neurobiologist Okunola Jeyifous captured these same children as adults for this exhibit, overlaying and collaging his photos to expand on the traditional idea of portraiture as well as to question the impacts of science on Black personhood.

(Emeline Posner)

In Praise of Hands National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. Saturday, February 22, 2pm–3:30pm. Free. (312) 738-1503. nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org As part of current NMMA exhibition “Woven: Connections and Meanings,” on view through April 19, Georgina Valverde is moderating a panel of three Chicagoan activists—Ken Dunn, Gina Gamboa, and Carolina Macias—who will speak about their crafts and labor, and the significance of these practices for community-building.

(Emeline Posner)

ZINE NOT DEAD – a new comics reading Archer Ballroom (ask a punk). Saturday, February 29, 8pm–11:30pm. $10. facebook. com/events/465219084358457/ The fourth anniversary of this quarterly comics and performance art series brings together some of your favorite Chicagoan illustrators, ritualists, improvisers, and art makers of other stripes, including Lyra Hill, Marnie Galloway, and Jules Darling, for readings and performances. DM for address. (Emeline Posner)

Second Wednesday Lecture: Sebastián Hidalgo Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central Park Ave. Wednesday, March 11, 6pm–7:30pm. Free. (773) 638-1766. garfieldconservatory.org For the March installment of its monthly lecture series, the Garfield Park

EVENTS

Conservatory will welcome photojournalist (and Weekly contributor) Sebastián Hidalgo to talk about his work, which explores issues that affect communities of color, including gentrification and displacement in Pilsen, wrongful convictions, and rising property taxes in the suburbs. (Emeline Posner)

Jay Simon: Fathers Lead Photography Exhibition Closing Reception Homan Square Community Center, 906 S. Homan Ave. Friday, March 13, 4pm–6pm.

(773) 638-2712. saic.edu/homan-square Self-taught, Chicago-based photographer Jay Simon honors fatherhood across generations in this exhibit, which promotes narratives of loving, present fathers through photos, videos, and podcasted conversations. The exhibit remains open and free to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays until its closing.

(Emeline Posner)

MUSIC The Pop Up Get Down #3 The Pop Up Get Down, 1400 W. 46th St. Thursday, February 20, 6pm--9pm. $10 at the door, includes one drink. facebook.com/ whinerbeer Come to the Pop Up Get Down, a monthly Funk Soul dance party held by Backyard Fresh Farms. This dance party is run in collaboration with Whiner Beer Company and the Plant, which means that there will also be a night market of food producers for guests to explore. For people who want to know more about the Plant, there will be the chance to buy tickets for a tour of the old meat-packing facility turned food business incubator, with all profits going to a food distribution charity. ( Jade Yan)

IN THE WURKZ by The Era Footwork Crew Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Friday, February 21, 7pm–9:30pm, doors at 6pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuildfoundation.org

Learn about the history of footwork over the course of an evening. The dance show will be performed by IN THE WURKZ, a touring dance project. The performance is based on the lives of dancers from west and south Chicago, and showcases the evolution of footwork-dancing, from its origins mimicking church spirit possession motions, to modern Black teenage dance culture. The dancers will use mixed media, with drums and synthesizers combined with poetry reading and original tunes from Chicago musicians. ( Jade Yan)

$15--$40. Ages 17+. (312) 801–2100. promontorychicago.com

Dem Beats: Friday Night Dance Party with Fehinty

Sound Voyage in Englewood feat.

The New Black Renaissance Band

Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd. Friday, February 21, 8pm. $20 online or $25 at the door, cash and card accepted. bit.ly/vanakula2020 This Friday night dance party, DEM BEATS, gives guests the weekly chance to listen to music from the African diaspora.

The party is held by Fehinty African Theatre Ensemble, and is part of the organisation’s Diaspora Monologues, which is a movement to showcase works from Africa. Guests can also visit the Fehinty Marketplace, on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at specific times until March 8, to support local art, food, and clothing. ( Jade Yan)

Madd Crates: Bring Your Own Vinyl Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Sunday, February 23, 3pm--7pm. Free.

(312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Enjoy some eclectic music at the Stony Island Arts Bank’s monthly Bring Your Own Vinyl Sunday. While the event will have its own resident DJs, the idea is that all guests are the DJ. Anyone can bring one record or a crateful of records, and take these vinyl CDs for a spin on the Art Bank’s sound system. Guests can also buy cocktails, beer, wine, and nonalcoholic drinks on-site. ( Jade Yan)

Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Friday, February 28, 7pm–9:30pm.

College. (Ashvini Kartik-Narayan)

We Tell Film Series: Wages of Work

Jazz musicians of international recognition will be bringing their songs to the Promontory, in the form of a performance

by The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. The group has been going for forty-five years, and focuses on exploring Black music. The ensemble includes musicians such as Kahil El’Zabar, who has worked with names like Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder. ( Jade Yan)

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Thursday, February 20, 7pm– 10pm. Free. bit.ly/WeTellFilmWagesofWork

Kennedy-King College Theater, Building U, 740 W. 63rd St. Friday, February 28, 7pm8:30pm, doors at 7pm. $15. svinenglewood. eventbrite.com Englewood’s music scene is being revitalised by a new concerts series, Sound Voyage in Englewood. This series will be kicked off by the New Black Renaissance Band. The band will be performing in Kennedy-King’s almost 300-person theatre, providing Englewood’s music lovers with plenty of space to hear some R&B and soul tunes with lead vocals by singer Genesis. ( Jade Yan)

STAGE & SCREEN Ella Baker and Angela Davis: Two Films DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Wednesday, February 19, 7pm–10pm. Free. bit.ly/ EllaBakerAngelaDavisFilms

This screening is a part of “We Tell: 50 Years of Participatory Community Media,” a six-screening national traveling exhibition of community-made documentaries by grassroots activists in the United States. Wages of Work spotlights how communities approach issues surrounding job opportunities, wages, unemployment, and underemployment. The program will include films and shorts about Black workers, the United Mine Workers of America, Latinx workers, and Chicago’s fast-food employees. (Ashvini KartikNarayan)

Truth, Lies, & Headlines: Part 3 Filmfront, 1740 W. 18th St. Saturday, February 22, 6pm–9pm. Free. bit.ly/ TruthLiesAndHeadlines Truth, Lies, & Headlines is a six-part monthly film series dedicated to exploring the impact of American media, its appetite for sensation, and its influence on public opinion. Part 3: Lurid Headlines will show the film Ace in the Hole by Billy Wilder.

The screening will be followed by a group discussion. There is limited seating, and attendees are encouraged to come early to save a seat. (Ashvini Kartik-Narayan)

The Harold Washington Community Movie Production

South Side Projections and the DuSable Museum of African American History continue their examination of African Americans in the United States political system with a screening centered around two prominent Black women activists who helped to shape the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. The first film discusses the activism of Ella Baker, a friend and advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. The second shows Angela Davis’s 1972 conversation with journalism pioneer and activist Lutrelle “Lu” Palmer at Malcolm X

Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Tuesday, February 25, 5–8pm. Free. bit.ly/HaroldWashingtonCommunityMovie This special showing of the documentary The Greatest Good is open to the community, and is intended to celebrate the legacy of Harold Washington in Chicago. Joseph Michael Chopin, the film’s director, writer, and producer, will be present at the event, and food will be provided. The documentary explores Harold Washington’s journey in promoting leadership by example. (Ashvini Kartik-Narayan)

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

EVENTS

We Tell Film Series: Collaborative Knowledges Green Line Performing Arts Center, 329 E. Garfield Blvd. Thursday, February 27, 7pm–10pm. Free. bit.ly/ WeTellFilmCollaborativeKnowledges Also part of the screening series “We Tell: 50 Years of Participatory Community Media,” the Collaborative Knowledges collection focuses on intergenerational dialogues as a way to reclaim history and knowledge. The screening will be hosted

by U of C professor and film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, with Carmel Curtis of XFR Collective and Margaret Caples of the Community Film Workshop of Chicago. (Ashvini Kartik-Narayan)

Rebels of the Neon Screen: A Tsai Ming-Liang Retrospective Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E. 59th St. Fridays 7pm and Sundays 1:30pm, until March 15. $7 per screening, $40 for a Doc Films season pass. bit.ly/ RebelsoftheNeonScreen

the United States. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Heather Miller, a member of the Wyandotte Nation from Oklahoma, who is the current Executive Director of the American Indian Center in Chicago. (Ashvini KartikNarayan)

LITERATURE Sayed Kashua - Track Changes Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 6:00pm–7pm.

Free. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Sayed Kashua discusses his book Track Changes, which follows an Arab-Israeli memoirist as he reckons with the weight of his past, his memories, and his cultural identity. Kashua joins University of Chicago professors Na'ama Rokem and Anastasia Giannakidou in conversation about the book with a Q&A and book signing will follow the conversation.

(Davon Clark)

Artist Talk: W.D. Floyd

This retrospective of the films of leading contemporary Chinese-language filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang. Is the first complete presentation of Tsai’s feature films to ever take place in the Chicago area. The Doc Films series, which was programmed by the Weekly’s very own interim layout editor J. Michael Eugenio, features several rare 35mm prints and some of Tsai’s short films that are otherwise inaccessible. It’s a rare opportunity to see the complete works of one of Taiwan’s most influential filmmakers.

(Ashvini Kartik-Narayan)

Semicolon Bookstore, 515 N Halsted St. Thursday, February 20, 6pm-8pm. BYOB. (312) 877-5170. semicolonchi.com.

Cinema 53: Dawnland with Heather Miller and Eve Ewing

Apple Michigan Ave, 401 North Michigan Avenue. Tuesday, February 25, 6:30pm-8pm.

Free. apple.com/today

Harper Theater, 5238 S. Harper Ave. Thursday, March 5, 7pm–10pm. Free. bit.ly/ Cinema53Dawnland This screening is a part of the Race and American Schools series curated by Eve Ewing at Harper Theater. Dawnland explores how, as recently as the 1970s, one in four Native American children lived in non-Native foster care, adoptive homes, or boarding school. The film shows the untold narrative of Indigenous child removal in 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Semicolon’s artist-in-residence, Chicago photographer W.D. Floyd, discusses his exhibition The Joy: The Visibility of Black Boy Childhood with Jane Addams Hull-House Museum’s curatorial manager Ross Stanton Jordan. (Davon Clark)

Music Lab: Crafting Your Memoir with Roy Kinsey

Explore fresh ways to record your personal journey with Chicago rapper and librarian Roy Kinsey. He’ll discuss the art of the memoir and share his tips for creating a structure. You’ll get hands-on with iPad and learn how to use the Notes app and Voice Memos to write and record ideas in the moment. (Davon Clark)

¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020

Music Lab: Narratives with D-Composed and Raych Jackson Apple Michigan Ave, 401 North Michigan Avenue. Wednesday, February 26, 6:30pm8pm. Free. apple.com/today Explore your personal narrative with musicians from the Chicago-based chamber music experience D-Composed and South Side poet Raych Jackson. They’ll talk about their collaborative efforts to redefine the classical music experience.

Then, guided by Jackson, you’ll get handson with iPad and Apple Pencil to write your own poems in the Notes app while D-Composed improvises music to elevate your words. (Davon Clark)

LTAB 2020 Preliminary Bouts Young Chicago Authors @ Columbia College Chicago, Various Locations. February 26–March 4. $2. Part of YCA’s Louder Than a Bomb Youth Poetry Festival. youngchicagoauthors.org Stretching over two weeks, this first round of the slam-style poetry competition features performances by hundreds of youth poets from schools and community organizations from all sides of the city & beyond. Preliminary Bouts will be held at various times on Wednesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 8am. (Davon Clark)

Pilsen Community Books: February Book Club Pilsen Community Books, 1102 West 18th Street. Thursday, February 27, 2020, 7:30pm-9pm. Free. Additional information. pilsencommunitybooks.org The monthly book club discusses domestic fiction novel The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, the debut novel

by Anissa Gray. To join the book club, you just read the book and show up. (Davon Clark)

Big Kid Slam Que4 Radio, 2643 W Chicago Ave. February 28, doors open 7pm, show starts 7:30pm. $5 suggested donation. 18+. instagram.com/ bigkidslam

Chicago poetry show for Big Kids, every last Friday of the month at Que4 Gallery.

February’s featured performer will be Naira, Chicago’s representative for the Women of the World Poetry Slam. This will be her going away show and trunk party to send her off to Dallas. (Davon Clark)

NATURE Going Green in Chicago Little Village Branch Library, 2311 S. Kedzie Ave. Thursday, February 20, 6pm–7:15pm. chipublib.org “Going green” seems to be all the rage, but what does that actually mean for Chicago?

This talk, presented by urbanologist and author Max Grinnell, will look at how both the public and private sectors are undergoing a sustainable transformation, through initiatives like community gardens, green roofs, improvements to the city’s public transportation system, and more.

(Sam Joyce)

Chicago Food Policy Summit South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr. Friday, February 21, 9am–5pm.

Free. chicagofoodpolicy.com The fifteenth annual Chicago Food Policy Summit will focus on the theme of collective power, celebrating the past fifteen years of movement-building to create better food policy in Chicago. This year’s summit includes workshops and lectures, as well as other opportunities to connect with food workers, farmers, vendors and more to discuss issues facing urban agriculture and food procurement. The summit will also include a food business clinic and a marketplace of resources and vendors. (Sam Joyce)

Garfield Park Conservatory Tree Walk Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central Park Ave. Friday, February 21, 10am–12pm.

Free. openlands.org Join Openlands’s professional arborists for a walk around the grounds of the Garfield Park Conservatory. Learn how to identify trees during the winter, as well as how trees

EVENTS

are still growing and changing even during the winter months. The tour will meet in the front lobby of the conservatory. (Sam Joyce)

Artecito: Conexiones entre Animales True Value Boys & Girls Club, 2950 W. 25th St. Friday, February 21, 4pm–6pm. Free. bit. ly/artecitoconexiones This afternoon of art gives kids an opportunity to learn about the natural world by painting and creating. Co-hosted by the Lincoln Park Zoo and OPEN Center for the Arts, this event will teach children about ecological interactions while also offering a chance to make art. (Sam Joyce)

Before the Skyscrapers: Chicago’s Natural History Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St. Saturday, February 22, 11am–12:15pm.

chipublib.org This talk, presented by urbanologist and author Max Grinnell, will explore how the landscape that underlies Chicago has changed over the past centuries. Or, more succinctly: what happens when you reverse a river, raise the Loop, and dig a Deep Tunnel? And how does all that history matter to us today? (Sam Joyce)

Policy for the Public Near West American Job Center, 1700 W. 18th St. Tuesday, February 25, 2pm–3pm. Free. jobstomoveamerica.org Last year, the CTA made a commitment to adopting a good jobs policy, ensuring that the CTA purchases trains and buses from companies that hire Chicagoans and pay them a living wage. This forum is part of a series of meetings with CTA riders and other Chicago residents, especially those who have been unemployed or underemployed, to discuss what a CTA policy that uplifts disinvested communities should look like. Light refreshments will be served. (Sam Joyce)

Polar Adventure Day Northerly Island Park, 1521 S. Linn White Dr. Saturday, February 29, 12pm–4pm. Free, parking $3. chicagoparkdistrict.com Enjoy winter in Chicago with the Park District’s Polar Adventure Day, which features hot cocoa, explorations of Northerly Island by snowshoe, natureinspired winter crafts, and a variety of live animals, including Siberian huskies, wolves, and birds of prey. (Sam Joyce)

Southwest Environmental Alliance Meeting St. Paul’s Catholic Church, 2127 W. 22nd Pl. Monday, March 2, 6:30pm–8pm. facebook. com/SouthwestEnvironmentalAlliance The Southwest Environmental Alliance is currently organizing to oppose the renewal of an environmental permit granted to Wheatland Tube Company, a major polluter in Back of the Yards. The Illinois

EPA is collecting comments through February 28, so this meeting will likely focus on the next steps in this campaign.

The meeting is in the rectory at St. Paul’s.

(Sam Joyce)

Clean Energy Lobby Day Aldridge School, 630 E. 131st St; Sixth Grace Presbyterian Church, 600 E. 35th St; and Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th St. Wednesday, March 4, 10am–2pm. ilenviro. org Travel to Springfield with the Illinois Environmental Council, Faith in Place, Sierra Club Illinois, and more for the 2020 Clean Energy Lobby Day. This is a unique opportunity for Illinois residents from across the state to to speak directly to their elected representatives about tackling climate change by moving toward clean energy. This event is free and open to the public, and bus transportation is provided from the above locations on the South Side.

(Sam Joyce)

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

5 Chicago Locations

Midway Merrionette Park Bridgeport North Riverside (coming soon!)

Oak Lawn