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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 4, Issue 21 Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Director of Staff Support Ellie Mejía Director of Writer Development Mari Cohen Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editors Emeline Posner, Julia Aizuss Education Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor
Hafsa Razi Austin Brown Nicole Bond Corinne Butta
Contributing Editors Maddie Anderson, Joe Andrews, Jonathan Hogeback, Andrew Koski, Adia Robinson, Carrie Smith, Margaret Tazioli, Yunhan Wen Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producers Andrew Koski Daphne Maeglin Web Editor Camila Cuesta Social Media Editors Emily Lipstein, Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Jasmin Liang Layout Editors Baci Weiler, Sofia Wyetzner Staff Writers: Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Michal Kranz, Anne Li, Zoe Makoul, Kylie Zane Fact Checkers: Eleanore Catolico, Sam Joyce, Rachel Kim, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Carrie Smith, Tiffany Wang Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma, Lizzie Smith Data Visualization: Jasmine Mithani Webmasters
Sofia Wyetzner
Publisher
Harry Backlund
The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com
Cover illustration by Ellen Hao
IN CHICAGO
A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors
IN THIS ISSUE
Much Ado About Nothing? Barring an April 4 runoff, the Fourth Ward special election will be done and dusted by the time this note appears in print. Mayoral appointee Sophia King holds a considerable edge, both in fundraising (more than three times the field combined) and connections (her endorsements and supporters make up a laundry list of Chicago’s political luminaries: Obama, Preckwinkle, Emanuel—though she’s tried to distance herself slightly from the latter). Her advantage may have just increased a little, too: a recent Tribune article showed that real estate lawyer Ebony Lucas, the candidate who has raised the second largest amount of contributions, is under state investigation over charges of dishonesty and misconduct, as part of a Kenwood condominium association dispute. An August complaint from the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission alleged that Lucas, who owns a dozen units in the Drexel Commons, had forged “phony meeting minutes” together with a friend to move $75,000 from the condo association’s bank account to one under her control. She defended herself to the Tribune, blaming fellow condo mogul Tony Osias’s attempts to gain control over the building. The article also details a courtroom dispute between Lucas and a judge as well as a pair of arrests on misdemeanor charges. (The last, largely irrelevant bit of information might reveal more about the Trib’s editorial decisions than Lucas herself.) The candidate’s response on Facebook was to blame the negative press on King’s perceived interference. She likened the “smears” against her to Rahm’s cover-up of the Laquan McDonald shooting. An inapt comparison, to be sure; it remains to be seen if it will help her at the polls.
cooperative engagement
Michael Reese Hospital Refinanced But Not Revived Earlier this week, DNAinfo reported on a grand plan for the redevelopment of the longvacant Michael Reese Hospital site in Bronzeville, one that “pulls from just about every previous idea for the site.” The aptly-named Imagine Development outlined a scheme for high-rise and mid-rise condos and apartments, sports complexes, an entertainment district, and potentially even an extension campus for a Chinese university. If DNAinfo has not given the proposal the kiss of death by comparing it to Chicago’s other “city within a city” concept, McCaffery Interests’s ill-fated Lakeside development, then the city may select Imagine’s redevelopment plan. A decision should be announced by April 6. Meanwhile, back in the land of reality, Mayor Rahm Emanuel refinanced the city’s debt on the Michael Reese property for a second time, lowering the interest rate on the city’s loan and thus reducing the debt burden on Chicago taxpayers from $120 million to a measly $116 million.
“These cuts are hurting our classrooms.” henry bacha....................................12
CPS Strikes Back In a shocking move, CPS officials and state politicians once again placed CPS students in the middle of their political crossfire on Monday when district officials announced that it might end this school year two and a half weeks early unless Springfield lawmakers give more money to CPS or a court orders them to do so. The announcement came almost two weeks after five CPS families filed a lawsuit against the State of Illinois on behalf of the school district, citing that the state is violating the civil rights of CPS students because of the unequal distribution of funds across the state. The lawsuit describes two unequal systems for funding public education in Illinois: one for Chicago, whose public enrollment is ninety percent children of color, and another for the rest of Illinois, whose public school children are predominantly white. But both the lawsuit and Monday’s announcement drew much criticism. When CPS held a press conference about the lawsuit at Lindblom High School in Englewood, more than fifty Lindblom students staged a walkout protesting cuts and denouncing CPS leaders. Illinois has some of the worst school funding disparities in the country, with Chicago schools receiving seventy-one cents to every dollar received by other school districts in the state, but CPS neighborhood schools on the South and West Sides—where the district’s poorest students live—consistently get the short end of the funding stick. In a statement released Monday, the Chicago Teachers Union called the lawsuit “a cynical political ploy designed to divert attention from the failed leadership and flawed decision-making of Mayor Emanuel.”
“It’s a new beginning, new people, new house.” sara cohen........................................4 restoring a political leader's home
“I’m going to have the rights of every other Congressman—no more and no less.” rachel kim........................................7 an existing problem made much worse
Higher education takes continuous hits. hallie parten...................................8 a neighborhood school, but without a neighborhood
“If you want your school, fine. But make sure you have your voice in this, or else CPS will get it wrong.” rachel kim......................................10 unfair at the front lines
greater than the sum of its parts?
The story of genuine, cordial cooperation across communities did not strike everyone in the audience as convincing. yunhan wen....................................14
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Cooperative Engagement
KATIE BART
Qumbya Housing Cooperative expands its neighborhood presence into Bronzeville BY SARA COHEN
A
typical Monday night at Concord House unfolds with a motley group of nearly twenty adults dishing up bowls of lentil stew in their Hyde Park home. A strong family dynamic is evident in the dining room, which is adorned with photos, calendars, and bulletin boards; a crowded bookshelf; and a central table, upon which rest six bunches of bananas, a carton of assorted hot sauces, and an oversized jar of some mystery vegetable, presumably pickled, labelled “DO NOT STIR.” Like 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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many of the objects in the three-story home, these table items are communally shared among its residents, who are related not by blood but rather by chosen lifestyle: that of the housing cooperative. A similar nightly routine has begun to take root four Green Line stops away, at Wells House, which sits near the corner of 41st Street and Michigan Avenue. Named for civil rights champion and former Bronzeville resident Ida B. Wells, it is the fourth and newest of Qumbya Housing
Cooperative’s locations. Committed to “affordable, communityoriented, group-equity housing,” Qumbya has presented an alternative to the traditional housing market since opening three Hyde Park communal living residences— Haymarket, Bowers, and Concord Houses— in the 1990s. When Qumbya purchased the fifteen-person Bronzeville home that has become Wells House last August, it expanded its South Side presence beyond Hyde Park for the first time.
Over the past months, as Wells’ interior has accrued comfortable furnishings and bulk containers of grains and other vegetarian staples, its new residents have begun to adjust to the home, as well as the at-times unconventional ethos of the co-op lifestyle. “It’s a new beginning, new people, new house,” says Magnolia Diamond, one of the first members of Wells, who previously lived for a year and a half in Bowers House. Since the three-story house was
HOUSING
refurbished, Diamond sees Wells increasing its involvement within the Bronzeville neighborhood. “I really want to do outreach,” Diamond said. “As a community, I think we should be not only for the people who are living in the house, but also for everyone around.” Despite an established presence on the South Side, Qumbya and other coops remain enigmatic to many who do not participate in cooperative living. As Wells residents settle into their new home, they
on seven key principles—Voluntary and Open Membership; Democratic Member Control; Member’s Economic Participation; Autonomy and Independence; Education, Training, and Information; Cooperation Among Cooperatives; and Concern for Community—as a basis for their own structure. The North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO), an umbrella nonprofit that connects and provides resources and education for and about coops, also adheres to these seven guiding
other groups like that.” Like the other Qumbya houses, Wells has implemented responsibilities for all its residents. These include cleaning, preparing shared vegetarian-friendly meals each night, attending weekly house meetings, and acting as a liaison on Qumbya’s board. As a result of such active participation, Diamond, as well as the other Qumbya members with whom I spoke, remarked that each of the four houses seems to foster its own unique culture. Over dinner, Concord
“Most of it is about building a fortified alternative economy that is respectful of and enabling to people in a way that is essentially alternative to capitalism. So a lot of it is about having groups that aren’t driven by a profit motive, and supporting other groups like that.” —Michael Eugenio, Bowers House resident
and other Qumbya members have begun to consider how this expansion affects their organizational identity and their role within the larger community. They see Qumbya’s expansion into Bronzeville as an opportunity to dispel skepticism about cooperative living, and, in its place, to extend an image of awareness and inclusion.
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ounded in 1988, Qumbya loosely resembles the cooperative housing model popularized in New York City’s Queens neighborhood of South Jamaica by the United Housing Foundation’s Rochdale Village. Rochdale in turn was named for one of the first co-ops set up in England in 1844. An example of an attempt at race integration at the height of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Rochdale Village boasted a cooperatively owned pharmacy, groceries, eye care, and a power plant, as well as middle-income housing. At its height, the village provided residents with a democratic say in their own homes, and the opportunity to resist quotas and other discriminative practices that fed the segregation of American cities. Throughout the 1960s, interest in the co-op propagated. Currently co-ops operate
principles. NASCO Properties owns Bowers and Concord, while Wells and Haymarket are owned by Lots in Common (LINC), an affiliate company. Each co-op manages its own members’ house dues and food costs, but members pay rent to Qumbya, which makes lease payments to NASCO Properties and LINC. Despite its association with NASCO and its location in Hyde Park, Qumbya is not exclusively student-based. With its website banner proclaiming a standard of “Community. Democracy. Affordability,” Qumbya markets to any who might opt for its communal lifestyle for economic, social, or political reasons. “To me, it seems that it’s important for people to have a say in the structures that affect their lives, and that the more of the structures like that there are, the better,” explained Michael Eugenio, sixyear member of Bowers House, Qumbya board president, and NASCO Properties board member. “Most of it is about building a fortified alternative economy that is respectful of and enabling to people in a way that is essentially alternative to capitalism. So a lot of it is about having groups that aren’t driven by a profit motive, and supporting
members ascribed to their house the quality of introversion and a common affinity for board games. Others commented on house stereotypes, describing Bowers as the party house and Haymarket as “cozy.” “I wanted to be in this house to help to create the culture of what we want to be as a group,” Diamond said. “Like, do you want to just say ‘hi’ at the Sunday meeting and that’s it, or do you want to build something for us and for others?” Between Wells’s intentions to offer a comfortable living space for its residents and stay appropriately engaged with the surrounding community, Diamond worries that the house may struggle to strike a balance. Though Diamond herself is a proponent of outreach efforts, every decision made by the house must be voted and agreed upon democratically. It was only in the past week that somebody took up the position of outreach coordinator. In the past, Qumbya houses have enacted community engagement—in accordance with two tenets of Rochdalestyle cooperatives, Education, Training, and Information, and Concern for Community— of their own accord. Concord members, for example, talked about fostering close
connections with their neighbors through offering open invitations to communal dinners, regularly volunteering with winter snow-shoveling, and participating in service opportunities at the nearby church. The development processes for other NASCO co-ops in Chicago have involved meeting with aldermen, local businesses, and community organizations, as well as talking to residents, attending community meetings and church services, and distributing flyers. Although Wells has been slow to implement similar practices, individual members are stepping up to the helm. Qumbya transplant and longtime South Side resident Bernadette Steele volunteered to take on the newly constructed position at Wells House of interim outreach coordinator. The role requires her to regularly attend Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) meetings, Bronzeville Chamber of Commerce functions, and other neighborhood-wide forums, or otherwise secure a proxy in her place. Steele accepted the responsibility with the hope of dispelling common myths about co-ops. “It is important in the sense that communal living is one of those things that people either know nothing about, or what they do know about it is based on some old information,” she said. “People have a negative view of communal living in the 1960s, and drug use and illicit things going on, and some people think when you have a bunch of unrelated people living in a house, it’s some sort of cult. So that has to be mediated. And to do that is by getting out in the community, and putting different faces to it so that people can put a name to Wells House.” Other challenges that Wells members hope to overcome through building positive neighborhood relationships involve zoning restrictions and the requirement of legal permits to carry out any further developments, such as their idea of planting a community garden in the adjacent lot. Wells is not the first to face these tests; outside of Qumbya, at least five other co-ops or intentional communities currently thrive on the South Side, providing examples of the diverse means through which co-ops may benefit their residents and neighborhood at large. Some of these, such as Genesis Cooperative, an African-Americanoperated co-op in South Shore, and Su Casa, a Catholic Worker House in Back of the Yards, target specific demographics with empowerment-focused aims. Amelia Lorenz, a founding member of MARCH 1, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
the intentional community Hesed, located in Pilsen/Little Village, explained that she and a group of friends from McCormick Seminary formed the co-op with a “vision for our community that it would be a supportive place for people who are often in careers that serve in some way but can take a lot out of the people that are in them or don’t pay very much.” Most of their residents, she says, are nurses, social workers, teachers, or otherwise committed to service. “A big part of our growing edge,” said Lorenz, “is learning how to tap into the community...Those of us who were not Spanish speakers coming into the house have taken it upon ourselves to learn Spanish....One of the members here is on the board of the park that’s just north of us, a couple of the members here are involved in the community garden that’s out back in the alley, and then there are things that we try to turn up for as a house, like cleaning up trash a couple of times a year as we can.”
T
he structure and recruitment system at Qumbya may not always lend itself to the kind of openness that the new members of Wells are striving for. “The [co-op] project is an inwardfocused project,” Concord resident Sam Law says. “The only time it would make sense outwardly is if the people inside the co-op have a collective sense of something they want to change in the world or if they need to fill vacancies.” Normally, though, house vacancies fill quickly through word of mouth. As a result, most of Qumbya’s current residents had some prior experience with co-ops before joining. The co-ops tend to attract graduate students, post-graduates, and various other university affiliates. “I think that that kind of student, dorm-style scene with a cooperative structure is something that is still somewhat inaccessible,” Eugenio admits. “The types of people who know about or are familiar with the structure of that institution are people who have been a lot around campus cultures, and unfortunately campuses are not entirely accessible places, either.” Many of Wells’ members, however, hope that the opening of Wells will mark a shift toward expanding the accessibility of co-ops to include more nonstudents and more who are new to communal living. Though the commitment Qumbya
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KATIE BART
mandates is not for everyone, the group equity model that it follows allows for a competitive price of housing, varying from $360 to $600 a month. For Steele—who first became acquainted with communal living while residing in the University of Chicago’s International House—Wells’ affordable rates and convenient proximity to downtown have provided her with support during a period of instability. “I’d known about Qumbya for several years, but the timing had never worked out. But I recently became unemployed, so I needed to find a cheaper place to live,” she said. “I was happy to see that there was [a co-op] that wasn’t in Hyde Park...Wells House is near the train station, and it’s near the King Drive bus and the State Street bus, so transportation’s easy.” In addition to affordability and selfsufficiency, co-op life contains a built-in social web, making it not only attractive to twentysomethings transitioning to a new city environment, but also to single mothers and post-retirement-age individuals—both demographics that have benefitted from the
Qumbya co-ops over the years, members said. Diamond sees co-op living as a rare opportunity for self-growth. “It’s teaching you how to cooperate and how to be tolerant and how to communicate your needs. It’s a very, very different logic. You don’t have such opportunities when you are living alone.” Diamond and other Wells residents hope that knowledge of these advantages will assuage concerns that cooperative housing organizations will encourage gentrification in their neighborhood or elsewhere. Eugenio says Qumbya should focus on “just being able to be a resource in conjunction with the community, as opposed to coming into a community following the flow of the lowest common denominator.” As members work on developing this balance, co-ops on the South Side and elsewhere continue to catalyze a shift in the way society defines a home. “That’s what [co-ops] should be about,” said Diamond. “Not only comfortable living and food, but also community.” ¬
Magnolia Diamond, one of the first members of Wells House.
HOUSING
The Bronzeville Oscar Stanton De Priest House on 45th and King Drive. Stanton De Priest, Chicago's first black alderman and the first black congressman of the 20th century, bought the house in 1929 after having lived there since 1921.
Restoring a Political Leader’s Home Preservation project announced for former home of South Side congressman and alderman Oscar De Priest BY RACHEL KIM
O
n January 12, the National Park Service (NPS) granted funding for preservation projects on thirtynine African American and Civil Rights landmarks across the United States. The African American Civil Rights Grant Program was approved by Congress in 2016 through the Historic Preservation fund, which uses “revenue from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf to provided assistance for a broad range of preservation projects without expanding tax dollars,” according to the NPS. Spread
COURTESY OF LANDMARKS ILLINOIS
over twenty states, the grants cover the restoration, preservation, and education costs of landmarks such as the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Alabama, which was bombed by white supremacists during the Civil Rights Movement, and Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of the first schools to undergo forced desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education. One of these new new preservation projects is close to home, on 45th and King Drive in Bronzeville—the Oscar Stanton De Priest House, which was
originally designated a National Historical Landmark in 1975 by the Secretary of the Interior for its “exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States.” An eight-flat brick building with windows dressed in green, the De Priest House is one of eighty-six National Historical Landmarks in the state of Illinois, forty-five of which are in Chicago and nineteen of which are in the South Side. Oscar Stanton De Priest, who bought the building in 1929 and lived on its second floor starting in 1921, was the first African-
American person elected to Congress in the twentieth century, and served three terms from 1929 to 1935. Born in 1871 to two former slaves in Alabama, he moved to Chicago in 1889 and worked various jobs before starting his own real estate management firm. At the time, Chicago was heavily divided into wards and precincts, each controlled by a precarious balance of “political appointments, patronage positions, and favors.” As the black population of Chicago dramatically increased during the Great Migration of the early 1900s, De MARCH 1, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
HOUSING
Priest became increasingly active in the Republican party. He was so effective at mobilizing black voters in the Second and Third Wards that he was eventually elected to a seat on Chicago’s Cook County board of commissioners from 1904 to 1908. He then became Chicago’s first black alderman and sat on the city council from 1915 to 1917. However, De Priest was forced to resign from his seat when he was accused of accepting money from a gambling establishment. Though he was later acquitted, his political reputation was damaged, and he was unsuccessful in gaining a third nomination for a seat on city council. He spent some time out of politics running his very successful real estate business. At the time, De Priest also owned a home at 38th Street and Vernon Avenue, which lay between two segregated neighborhoods. That home was firebombed after he chose to rent out the residence to a black family instead of a white one. Eventually, De Priest’s reputation recovered enough to be named Third Ward committeeman in 1924. But when Martin Madden, who was the Representative for a Chicago district that included the Loop and Bronzeville, suddenly died after winning a thirteenth term in Congress, Chicago’s Republican machine chose De Priest to replace him. De Priest narrowly won the candidacy in 1929 and was then sworn in to the 71st United States Congress. Soon after his election, he allegedly sent to his constituents 10,000 copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. De Priest’s win challenged the segregation laws that were still in effect even in the Capitol. When First Lady Lou Hoover invited De Priest’s wife, Jessie De Priest, to the White House for tea, Southern legislators vehemently opposed the gesture and called for “the necessity of the preservation of the racial integrity of the white race.” “I’m going to have the rights of every other Congressman – no more and no less,” De Priest said, “if it’s in the congressional barber shop or at a White House tea.” De Priest remained the only African American person in Congress during all three of his terms. He proposed bills that would have punished the disenfranchisement of black voters and give pensions to former slaves older than seventy-five, and successfully passed antidiscrimination 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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measures for unemployment relief programs and reforestation committees like the Civilian Conservation Corps. After failing to regain his congressional seat in 1934, De Priest returned to Chicago, to the City Council, and to his home on 45th and King. After losing his seat on the City Council in 1947, De Priest once again became active in his real estate business until he died in 1951. Now, De Priest’s great-grandson has taken it upon himself to keep De Priest’s legacy alive. He became the administrator of the De Priest estate in 1992 and, upon his visit to the house on 45th and King Drive, realized that De Priest’s political office had been locked since his death. De Priest’s desk, documents, and safe inside that room had remained untouched for over forty years. Although De Priest’s great-grandson noted at the time that the building had suffered some water damage and part of the ceiling had collapsed, he was still able to enter his great-grandfather’s political office. He opened the desk with a crowbar, and found “a veritable time capsule.” He also hired a safecracker to open the safe, and the safe inside of the first safe, and found “a treasure trove of information…and $64 in cash.” Landmarks Illinois, a non-profit organization that works to preserve historic buildings and spaces across the state, was awarded $250,000 through this federal grant program to complete essential roof and masonry repairs to the De Priest House. According to Kaitlyn McAvoy, the communications manager for Landmark Illinois, the non-profit is “currently in the process of finalizing the grant agreement with NPS and creating a more specific project scope and timeline. We hope to get started as soon as possible on the repair work to the building, ideally beginning by summer of 2017.” For now, Landmarks Illinois intends to focus on physical restorations of the home, primarily reparations on the house’s roof. Although they are planning to share the details of the restoration plans as soon as they become available, there has been no announcement regarding the future of the documents and artifacts that lie inside of the De Priest House. For now, the house remains closed to the public, but its historical significance, and the extensive archive surrounding Oscar Stanton De Priest’s career all serve as a testament to the political and cultural influence of black leaders from the South Side. ¬
An Existing Problem Made Much Worse
A new report tracks Illinois’s longtime disinvestment in higher education BY HALLIE PARTEN
I
llinois’s public universities are facing a virtually insurmountable funding crisis. According to a report recently published by the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (CTBA), higher education in Illinois suffered a 67.8 percent cut in its allocations from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2016, receiving approximately onethird of the recommended budget proposed by the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE). Because of the state legislature’s failure to approve a complete budget for higher education, public universities operated on the minimal funding from the $627 million stopgap budget, a short-term budget that appropriated a small amount for expenditures in higher education through January 2017. The report also shows that higher education took a much larger year-to-year funding cut than K-12 education, which only took a 1.1 percent hit. State Representative Kelly Burke, who is chairperson of the Higher Education Appropriations Committee and whose district includes parts of the South Side including Beverly and Auburn Gresham, offered an explanation for the huge funding cut to higher education— Governor Bruce Rauner. In his 2016 budget address, Governor Rauner reinforced his commitment to K-12 and early childhood education but made no mention of higher education funding. When presented with a package of bills representing the proposed budget for fiscal year 2016, Governor Rauner passed the K-12 education bill but vetoed
everything else. The vetoes were motivated by Rauner’s staunch push to get recognition and support from statehouse Democrats for his business-friendly “turnaround agenda,” but the move left higher education without dedicated funding for fiscal year 2016. According to the report, the dramatic allocation loss has affected every public university in Illinois to some degree. The most visible effects have been immediate lay-offs of non-faculty employees, huge hikes in tuition costs and subsequent dips in enrollment, and fewer academic course offerings. The CTBA report specifically highlights the impact felt at Chicago State University (CSU), Illinois’s only majority-minority university. CSU serves 3,500 students, most of whom are AfricanAmerican, low-income, and/or returning adult students. CSU relies on state funding the most of any public university in Illinois: state funds account for thirty-one percent of the school’s total budget, but CSU also bore the largest funding cut in the 2016 fiscal year, with allocations dropping by 65.3 percent between 2015 and 2016. CSU was forced to lay-off 400 non-faculty members at the end of the 2016 fiscal year. For students, the effect of these institutional funding cuts has been compounded by the simultaneous underfunding of the Monetary Assistance Program (MAP), which helps pay tuition costs for lower income students. MAP funding was included in the temporary 2016 stopgap budget for higher education, but the CTBA report estimates that 1,000
EDUCATION
–46.0%
–47.0%
–47.0% –47.0%
–65.3%
ELLEN HAO
students did not re-enroll in both public and private universities in Illinois due to unpaid MAP grants from the 2016 fiscal year. While the issue of higher education funding has become much more urgent in the wake of the state budget crisis, the report from the CTBA also highlights the long-term disinvestment in higher education stretching back to the turn of the century. Specifically, the report shows an overall forty-one percent decrease in higher education appropriations between 2000 and 2015, which is significantly higher than the decreases in any other core service area of the state’s general fund. Between 2008 and 2015, Illinois cut per-student higher education funding by fifty-four percent, a greater percentage than any other state in America, except for Arizona. The report’s main author, Danielle Stanley, said she was interested in showing that higher education has been underfunded for years and that the recent cuts that have come as a result of the state budget crisis have only made an existing problem much worse. Through this report, Stanley says she hopes to provide data to speak to the systemic issues generated by long-term disinvestment in higher education.
The report argues that racial disparities are continually reinforced by these longterm cuts to higher education funding: students of color tend to rely more heavily on MAP grant funding, and majority-minority institutions like CSU tend to have smaller endowments and therefore rely more heavily on support from the state. The report also shows how essential a college degree is for black adults in the workforce: black adults with a college degree are twice as likely to be employed as black adults without one. This observation underscores the importance of higher education in supporting upward economic mobility. (Even with a degree, though, black college graduates are still twice as likely to be unemployed as their white peers.) Public universities also provide a huge boon to their local economies, one seriously affected by Illinois’s long-term pattern of large funding cuts to higher education. As enrollment decreases and more and more faculty members are laid off, these cuts may spell huge busts for local private-sector activity generated by the large populations that attend and work at these institutions. Typically, for each dollar spent on higher education, there is a reciprocal, oftentimes
even higher, amount spent in the private sector. The higher education funding cuts have now become realized as losses for many local economies. Funding higher education, the report concludes, “makes economic sense.” Danielle Stanley and others at the CTBA have begun presenting the findings of this report at universities across the state that have been affected by cuts to state funding. These presentations have included panel discussions with firsthand accounts from professors, mayors, state representatives, and local businesspeople about the effects of this long-term disinvestment. As long as Illinois continues to run a structural deficit, outspending the revenue it takes in yearly, and as long as the legislature remains in a stalemate over present budget negotiations, the outlook for the state’s public universities is dark. During his budget address on February 15, Rauner did mention plans to expand allocations for MAP Grants, perhaps prophesying a compromise on higher education funding. But as the CTBA’s report shows, disinvestment in higher education has been a serious problem for a long time, and will take a long time to fix. ¬
This graph shows the decrease in state funding for five public universities in Illinois between the 2015 and 2017 fiscal years. Funding this year went up from last year, but still remained well below funding from 2015, the last year Illinois had a comprehensive General Fund budget.
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A Neighborhood School, But Without a Neighborhood Englewood and Chinatown campaign for a new CPS school to meet neighborhood needs BY RACHEL KIM
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hicago Public Schools (CPS) revealed late last year in their 2017 capital plan that a new high school will be coming to the South Side. While CPS has seventy-five million dollars set aside in their budget for this project, the exact location of the school has not been decided yet. Several neighborhoods, such as Chinatown and Englewood, are organizing to be involved in the decision-making process. Last December WBEZ released a preliminary “internal planning list” of 2017 CPS projects. The list is organized into columns titled “Overcrowding Relief,” “Deferred Maintenance,” “Site/ Target Improvements,” and “Committed Projects.” One row under the “Site/Target Improvements” column, however, is curiously labeled “New Englewood Area HS,” and is allotted fifty million dollars. Emily Bittner, a spokesperson for CPS, later told WBEZ that the “final number of projects is dependent on financing,” but CPS has clearly chosen to finance a new South Side high school, having slated the seventy-five million dollars for “New South Side High School Construction” in their 2017 capital plan. In the capital plan, however, the location of the new school is listed as “TBD.” Despite the current lack of information of the actual location of the new high school, it is clear that Englewood remains to be one of the most significant contenders as the neighborhood has seen multiple recent public school closings and also received some of the city’s newest major public investment efforts. Englewood’s neighborhood schools have also long been facing plummeting student enrollment numbers as the neighborhood’s population has fallen and its students have been given additional options in enrollment, such as charter schools that lie outside of neighborhood school attendance 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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boundary lines. Subsequently, neighborhood schools are losing the funding for programs that could make them more attractive to surrounding students, such as advanced academic programming and extracurricular activities. Megan Hougard, the Chief of Schools of CPS’s Network 11 (which includes Englewood and Auburn Gresham), addressed the falling enrollment numbers at a Residents’ Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) meeting on January 17. Despite the “bashing” of neighborhood schools, she said, the network is still showing considerable progress and has “a lot to be proud of.” Last year, the elementary schools in the district maintained over ninety-five percent of their average daily attendance and have displayed the most attendance growth out of any district in Chicago. If a new high school came to Englewood, the district would allegedly have to shut down and consolidate anywhere from four to six neighborhood schools, including underenrolled schools like Hope, Harper, TEAM Englewood, and Robeson. According to WBEZ, these four high schools in Englewood “…have among the smallest freshmen classes in the city.” According to Roderick Sawyer, the Alderman of the Sixth Ward, who was also in attendance at the R.A.G.E. meeting, plans for the new school are still up in the air. He has sat in on preliminary briefings that covered the “concept of the school,” and said they were “very cordial, very friendly, but nothing definite.” He also stressed the importance of appreciating and maintaining the progress of Englewood schools like Robert Lindblom Math & Science Academy. Lindblom, located in West Englewood, was renovated in 2003 and reopened in 2005 as Chicago’s only math- and science-focused
college preparatory public school. However, Lindblom’s status as a selective enrollment high school, where students must test-in in order to attend, limits the number of students from the neighborhood that can enroll. Several community advocacy groups have openly voiced their support for bringing a new high school to Englewood. Denise Dyer, an organizer with the Greater Englewood Community Action Council, said the group is looking forward to a new high school in order to retain their high achieving students that tend to enroll into schools outside of the neighborhood. She recalled the salutatorian of Nicholson STEM Academy, an elementary school in Englewood, leaving for Whitney M. Young High School, a West Loop school that boasts more robust STEM programming than schools in Englewood. But residents of Englewood like Derrick Lawson, an alumnus of Harper High School, are still deeply skeptical of the changes that the potential new high school would bring to the neighborhood. “The schools considered bad now were good back then,” he said. “Going to Harper saved me. Back then, I could walk to school every day. And all the neighborhood kids who went to that school all knew each other, so there were no fights.” His most significant concern with the new high school, however, is whether or not the school will be able to properly serve the black students of Englewood. “What teachers will be at the new high school?” he asked. “The older teachers, who were predominately black, are pushed out of high schools during changes in order to bring newer teachers. I would be more comfortable being taught by people who look like me.” Over the years, the percentage of black teachers working for CPS has fallen, despite
black students consistently representing a significant percentage of CPS students. According to WBEZ’s Natalie Moore, “the [CPS] teaching workforce is whiter and less experienced.” In 2000, forty percent of teachers in all CPS schools were black and black students made up a little over fifty percent of all students in CPS. Now, despite declining enrollment numbers, black students still make up about forty percent of the students in CPS schools, but are more likely to be taught by white teachers. According to the Illinois Report Card for the City of Chicago, from 2007 to 2016 the percentage of black teachers in CPS schools dropped steadily from thirty-three percent to twenty-two percent. Other Englewood high school teachers in attendance at the R.A.G.E. meeting shared this concern about significant faculty changes. “I don’t oppose new schools,” said Curtis Bynum, a former teacher and a current CTU organizer. “The residents of Englewood have been ready…they have every right to a new school. But if you’re going to build a new school, make certain that the new school has the services necessary to adequately serve the community…don’t build a new building on the backs of the residents of the city just for political stance or show. Put things in place.” According to Bynum, CPS’ track record with creating new schools in South Side neighborhoods has been less than stellar. Bynum previously worked as a teacher for the Miles Davis Magnet Academy, a Pre-K to eighth grade school that opened as an engineering-focused school in 2008 after the closings of Miles Davis School and Johns Middle Academy. The remodeled Miles Davis boasted a brand new facility and the district’s first hands-on engineering program. According to Bynum, the school
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“The older teachers, who were predominately black, are pushed out of high schools during changes in order to bring newer teachers. I would be more comfortable being taught by people who look like me.” —Derrick Lawson, alumnus of Harper High School JASMIN LIANG
was not properly equipped to meet the needs of the neighborhood and the students that attended it. “[Davis] was great in terms of structure, but there were limited resources in the building to help it thrive in the way you would’ve wanted to see the kids thrive,” he said. “It was maybe a fifty-million-dollar building. A couple of years later, they eliminated the librarian position. How does that help children grow? It’s not as if the children can’t learn. It’s as if CPS has written these children off.” “What will happen to qualified veteran teachers?” Bynum continued. “CPS and its track record have shown that when they begin to hire, they do away with the old and bring in the new…a new building does not equal that they need new teachers. You have to know the demographics of the children. You have to understand where those children are. You have to meet them where they are and help them grow and develop.” Bynum emphasized the necessity of proper special education, crisis intervention, and vocational programs for any new neighborhood school that would properly devote itself to addressing and supporting
the needs of its students. “If you want your school, fine,” he said. “But make sure you have your voice in this, or else CPS will get it wrong.”
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dvocates and families in Chinatown, however, are fighting for this new high school to come to their neighborhood because of the lack of nearby neighborhood schools. According to the Sun-Times, the nearest high schools to Chinatown, like Thomas Kelly, Whitney Young, and King College Prep, are not underperforming schools, but require students from Chinatown to spend hours on several buses to get to and from school. The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC) and many Chinatown residents have been asking for a new high school for about ten years. They have held huge community forums and passed around petitions in the past but ultimately didn’t result in any changes. Debbie Liu, the Community Development Coordinator at CBCAC, said their most recent push was largely due to their new Chinatown Mission Plan, which launched in 2015. Around 2013, CBCAC collected
data from residents, business owners, and tourists, who provided feedback about the neighborhood’s lack of a library, field house, and high school. Now they have the library and the field house, but are still working to bring a new high school. “We recognized that there were many needs that weren’t addressed in this community even though we’ve been around for a hundred years,” she said. “Chinatown’s centennial was in 2012. We need to figure out the next hundred years of Chinatown... Now is an opportune time to get [our] message across. In the past, [CPS] said that they don’t have the money. But now that they have sold off their bonds...this is a good opportunity to address the long standing needs of the community.” The lack of public high schools in the area is largely due to the Chinatown area’s historical population of Irish and Italian families, many of whom sent their kids to Catholic schools instead of public schools. But according to Liu, there is a growing number of Chinese Americans in Chinatown who are looking for more options to educate their kids. The schools Chinatown students attend now are not only far away but also
do not provide Limited English Proficiency programs. Ultimately, she said, the residents of Chinatown want a nearby neighborhood high school that has strong teachers and is sensitive to the community’s cultural and linguistic needs. So far, Chinatown residents and organizers have appealed to their aldermen and staff from the Mayor’s office and CPS, and have testified at CPS hearings and board meetings.
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PS officials have not offered clear timelines on the decision process to organizers and officials from either neighborhood; it plans to continue receiving “community feedback” before making a final decision. However, both communities’ residents have made it clear that regardless of the location chosen for the high school, CPS needs to provide ample support and resources for the students, teachers, and staff of the new high school. The school must be more than a consolation prize or a publicity stunt—it must be carefully implemented while taking into account the input of the community members it serves. ¬ MARCH 1, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
Unfair at the Front Lines
CPS teachers protest furlough days, cuts to teacher training BY HENRY BACHA
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n Friday, February 3, Paula Wyatt should have been at her school on Chicago’s Northwest Side, where she works as a librarian for 1100 students. This particular Friday was scheduled as a coveted (and contractually required) staff professional development day. Wyatt should have attended a discussion of LGBT issues in schools with staff from Lurie Children’s Hospital and a presentation by a bilingual specialist. She should have attended a curriculum-planning meeting, a grant-writing seminar in order to apply for library refurbishment funds, and a meeting with Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) mentors regarding the implementation of new Next Generation Science Standards. Her colleagues should have been engaging in other training and development opportunities or using the day for grading and meetings. But instead, on February 3, Wyatt’s school remained closed, like all the 516 other schools operated by Chicago Public Schools (CPS). This district-wide closure left over 31,000 CPS employees without pay and over 320,000 students unable to reap the benefits of those teachertraining programs. February 3 was the first of four furlough days, which are mandatory unpaid leaves usually called for by companies due to financial reasons, announced by CPS in mid-January; the other three will also fall on what were supposed to be paid teacher training days. Now, CPS teachers and educators will have lost a combined seven days’ worth of professional development and training—with a total of nine furlough days—between fiscal years 2016 and 2017. The district argued that the announcement came as a cost-cutting response to Governor Bruce Rauner’s December veto of a bill that
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would have provided CPS $215 million in funding to help balance the district’s budget. While Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool have pointed fingers at the governor, many CPS employees see Claypool and Emanuel’s actions as a troubling capitulation to Rauner’s cut-first mentality, and as demonstrative of City Hall’s unwillingness to pursue a progressive agenda on behalf of Chicago educators and their students. In a statement released on January 15, the CTU placed blame for the cuts firmly on the shoulders of Emanuel and Claypool. “Today’s decision by the district to mandate four system-wide furlough days is just the latest consequence of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and handpicked CPS CEO Forrest Claypool’s unwillingness to pursue progressive revenue for our schools,” the statement said. On a broader scale, the recent cuts to teacher training days are only one part of a series of policy decisions and cuts over the past year that hurt Chicago Public Schools. Over a hundred CTU members spent their first furlough day on the fifth floor of City Hall, outside Emanuel’s office, in protest against the decision. Amidst calls to “Get rid of Claypool” and “Furlough Rahm,” teachers and other CPS employees voiced concerns over what they perceive to be an attitude of negligence and disregard for the concerns of school employees and middle-class Chicagoans in general. Jose Jimenez, a school clerk who has worked at Wells Community Academy High School on the Near Northwest Side for twenty-nine years and serves as a CTU Paraprofessional and School-Related Personnel representative, described how school clerks have become a prime target of
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budget cuts despite the crucial role they play in day-to-day school operation. “We do whatever has to be done to support the students, the school, the teachers, the staff,” said Jimenez. “We make sure that that payroll is done correctly. We make sure that that parent knows who the teacher is. We make sure that that bus is on time. We order that bus. We do all the financials for that school. And we do all the transportation. Now the mayor decides to cut, to give us furlough days. This is unfair.”
“We move Chicago!” The assembled demonstrators met her pronouncement with chants of “Shut it down!” This expressed solidarity between CTA and CPS workers has a basis in the cast of City Hall actors behind the furlough day decision. In May of 2015, in one of his last acts as President of the CTA, Claypool slashed $21 million in subsidies for reduced transit fares from the CTA budget. He cited Rauner’s threat of more severe cuts as the basis for his decision. That July, Claypool
"We do whatever has to be done to support the students, the school, the teachers, the staff. Now the mayor decides to cut, to give us furlough days. This is unfair.” —Jose Jimenez, school clerk at Wells Community Academy High School and CTU Paraprofessional and School-Related Personnel representative
According to event organizers, eighty percent of school clerks in CPS are black and Latina women. This statistic was not lost on Deborah Lane, a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, which represents Chicago Transit Authority workers. Lane, who also spoke at the demonstration, noted that eighty-five percent of CTA workers are people of color and said that CTA employees are victims of the same “backroom deals” being brokered by City Hall at the expense of CPS employees, of whom nearly eighty percent are female. Lane went on to describe the genderspecific struggles of CTA employees. She said employees are forced to work thirteenhour days for only eight hours of pay, that female employees work throughout their pregnancies due to CTA’s lack of a maternity leave policy, and that female employees are sexually assaulted on the job. Lane then shouted triumphantly,
was appointed by Emanuel to serve as CEO of CPS and, according to his critics, would continue to capitulate to Rauner’s threats in his new position, resorting to budget cuts and other strategies that severely impact CPS teachers and students. According to Roxana Gonzalez, a teacher at Prieto Math and Science Academy on the Northwest Side, the addition of more furlough days to the CPS calendar is representative of the indifference shown by Emanuel, Claypool, and the rest of City Hall for teachers and students in Chicago. “Any CPS teacher can tell you the challenges that we face in our classrooms,”she said. “These cuts are hurting our classrooms. If you do not prioritize teachers, you cannot say that you prioritize students.” Gonzalez, who teaches in a school with a student body that is nearly ninety-five percent Hispanic, also denounced the lack of a response from
City Hall to a recent CTU press release that demanded the implementation of policies that would create “safe sanctuary schools for students.” These demands, released on January 24, included a call to “Defend and protect all CPS students.” This would involve creating a protocol to protect students from immigration raids, starting to train teachers and counselors on trauma-related issues, and increasing resources devoted to students experiencing trauma. “We need social workers, counselors, and nurses in our schools every day,” says Gonzalez. “Not part time, because students don’t need help on a part-time basis. It is insulting that Rahm says that our city is a sanctuary city when he’s not taking steps to protect our students.” To Wyatt and her colleagues, the four new furlough days represent a serious attack on teacher training and preparedness, which in turn affects the quality of the education students receive. “It does have this trickle-down effect, since teachers are notorious for using every single second of the day,” said Wyatt of the furlough days. “Taking four days of time is a lot for us, because we jam pack it.” Wyatt said that budget cuts, furlough days, and the dearth of training and development opportunities that they represent has left teachers frustrated as they seek to provide the best education possible to their students despite the obstacles put in place by the offices of the mayor and the governor. Describing the exasperation that she feels when she sees other, wealthier school districts, flush with cash and opportunities for further training and professional development for their teachers, she said, “It’s frustrating because you know that other school districts are getting more, and you want your kids to have the same opportunities and resources that everybody else has. It feels unfair, at the front line.” At a time when schools in Chicago are already reeling from years of budget cuts and teachers are already burdened by excessive workloads caused by these cuts, the addition of new furlough days only further threatens the fragile state of public education in Chicago. Recent events have demonstrated
that the CTU and other advocates and allies of public education will continue to push back against Emanuel and Claypool’s collaboration with Rauner’s austerity agenda. We can expect that CTU members will again fill City Hall on the three coming furlough days (scheduled for April 7, June 21, and June 22), that the CTU will continue to call for Claypool’s resignation, and that CTU leadership will continue to advocate for progressive taxation policies to help balance the CPS budget. In the union’s statement on the announcement of the furlough day mandate, CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said that Emanuel “and his CPS CEO should work in an honest way with elected officials in Springfield to move a millionaires tax, move the closure of corporate tax loopholes at the state, and move a shift toward adequate and equitable funding for schools in Illinois.” We can also expect, however, that cuts will continue. On February 6, CPS announced that they would cut another $46 million from the district budget. (On February 24, CPS walked back those cuts by $15 million, after criticism that the cuts disproportionately affected majority-Latinx and African-American schools.) And on Monday, February 27, CPS announced it might end school almost three weeks early on June 1 if it does not receive more state funding soon. Both of these announcements were made with Claypool’s now-predictable criticisms of Rauner (Claypool even compared him to President Trump). But while Emanuel and Claypool accuse Rauner of reneging on his promises to protect CPS and Rauner pins blame on statehouse Democrats for their lack of commitment to pension reform, the maneuverings in both Springfield and Chicago City Hall are heavily impacting teachers and students in Chicago. As teachers see their opportunities for career development and training disappear, Wyatt says that she and her colleagues feel a sense of helplessness and frustration. “The frustration is all around, because as a teacher, my responsibility is looking into the eyes of my children every day, and to advocate for them. My colleagues are the same way,” she said. ¬
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Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts?
Organizers propose cross-neighborhood collaboration for Obama Library benefits, but some remain skeptical BY YUNHAN WEN
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n February 16, during the 3rd Ward town hall meeting at the KLEO Center just west of Washington Park, Pastor Torrey Barrett and Dr. Carol Adams announced their plan for a new organization representing Woodlawn, Washington Park, and South Shore. The organization will look to ensure that three communities affected by the upcoming construction of the Obama Presidential Library in Jackson Park have their concerns heard and interests met. It’s still in the phase of what Adams called “early community engagement,” and hopes to open the application for board seats within the next two or three weeks. “WoWaSo,” as it’s been informally named, wants to consolidate existing scattered neighborhood plans and push for a more comprehensive agenda regarding the Obama Library, but there are doubts and concerns about how fair this consolidation will turn out to be. Ever since May 12, 2015, when the Obama Foundation announced that the University of Chicago had won the bid for the library, there have been tensions between some residents of Washington Park and Woodlawn because of the huge investment of capital and infrastructure the Library will bring to the neighborhood where it is built. In late July of this past year, Obama finally chose Jackson Park as the location. But even before that, Barrett, founder of Washington Park-based KLEO,
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didn’t think tension about the decision should turn into animosity. “It all started when the president started talking about whether it’s gonna be Jackson Park or Washington Park,” said Barrett. Once they chose the South Side of Chicago, reporters started to call. They were like, ‘Hey, what are you trying to do? It's Jackson Park up against Washington Park.’ And I thought in a different way. No matter what community gets it, it’s gonna benefit the entire South Side. “We reached out,” Barrett continued. “I called Dr. Brazier and I said, ‘can we sit down and make sure that we have the same message that, going forward, whichever community gets the library, both communities benefit?’ And [Brazier] said, ‘I think you’re right. That’s what we should do.’ ” Dr. Brazier is Reverend Byron Brazier, pastor of the Apostolic Church of God in Woodlawn, whose late father Arthur M. Brazier was a prominent community figure and an influential leader in Chicago’s civic movements in the 1960s. Brazier, inheriting his father’s legacy, is himself a prominent figure in Woodlawn’s community organizing. He is the current leader of the Network of Woodlawn, a group that, according to its website, “seeks to coordinate a comprehensive approach toward addressing social, physical and human capital needs of Woodlawn's residents.”
After Barrett’s phone call, the Network of Woodlawn and the Washington Park Consortium, which Barrett said KLEO “has done a lot of work with,” started working together. “We decided that, moving forward...the two organizations would champion the message that regardless of where it'd go, we want both communities to benefit,” Barrett said during the meeting. Sharing the benefits brought by the library, however, must take place on at least two fronts: first, making sure the library will in fact benefit the community instead of bringing another round of gentrification and dislocation. Second, making sure that every impacted community will get its fair share of benefits. To succeed on the first front involves attention from the city, the University, and the Obama Foundation on what the communities truly want. Currently, there’s a sense that there has been an insufficient amount of engagement from these parties, a sentiment expressed by 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston among others. In an open letter to the Foundation, Hairston called for more attention to the community’s needs. “Obviously, the Foundation has the last word, but it is imperative to forge a working relationship that is transparent, honest, respectful, productive and protective of the African American legacies of the OPC (Obama Presidential Center), residents, and these communities,”
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she wrote. (Michael Strautmanis, vice president for civic engagement of the Foundation, responded by promising, “We look forward to continuing to work with the city, Aldermen Hairston and Dowell, and the South Side community to develop and refine our plans.”) Hairston is not the only one who feels uneasy about the current level of community engagement—so do Barrett and Brazier. “We got word that the city is about to put together this task force, and the task force is going to oversee the process,” Barrett told the audience at the town hall meeting. “I said, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea because it will have no credibility within the community.’ So Dr. Brazier and myself went to the mayor. We had a conversation with him and we said, if the city launches this task force and you are not gonna engage with the community to do this process, we think it’s gonna be a total failure.” Barrett did not say what Mayor Emanuel’s response was. But how strong should the voice of the communities be in order to make the Foundation and the City listen and open negotiations more widely? Even if they open up negotiations, what specific plans should the communities, whether in Jackson Park or in Washington Park, bring to the table? And how can communities make sure that the plans they raise in fact represent the true interests of the residents? Those questions make up the second challenge of sharing benefits across the three impacted communities, a challenge that will take place within the three neighborhoods. This challenge motivated Barrett and Brazier to create a cross-neighborhood organization that will unite the impacted communities and collectively bargain for community interests. Their pursuit found support from the Chicago Community Trust (CCT), a grantmaking foundation that aims to give local residents opportunities to support their communities; CCT also selected Next Street, an advisory firm, to be part of the preliminary research effort for Barrett and Brazier’s organization. According to a Tribune article about a community meeting Brazier held on February 21, where the concept of the cross-neighborhood organization was
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introduced to Woodlawn residents, CCT granted Next Street $250,000 for funding and donated another $75,000 to Brazier’s own foundation. The formation of Barrett’s and Brazier’s concept took eighteen months and started before the final location was determined. Now, Barrett said, comes the work of setting up this organization. After Barrett spoke, Dr. Carol Adams, the former president and CEO of the DuSable Museum of African American History, took the floor and started elaborating on the concept of a Woodlawn–Washington Park–South Shore coalition, which she affectionately dubbed “WoWaSo,” although the official name of the coalition has not yet been announced. Adams argued that existing plans
for the library are scattered around the impacted communities, generated by many different organizations, and are redundant in their pursuits. “We know we have strong communities,” said Adams. “In other words, [the Foundation is] not coming to a place where nothing is. Our communities have assets; they have strength. They have great human capital, great opportunity, institutions, histories, and legacies,” Adams said. “We heard there was a desire to collaborate across existing organizations, rather than to silo this. “And [now] for every opportunity, we have to talk to fifteen different groups and if we all can come together with a representative body, it makes it easier for things to get done.... This is like, the mega
collab, and that’s what we are looking at.” However, the story of genuine cooperation across communities did not strike everyone in the audience as convincing. Donna Hampton-Smith was the first person present to express her concerns. “I’m just gonna be really honest that I don't appreciate the process of this...You have the ear of a lot of people so I want you to take this back to those people you talked to. First of all, if there was funding that came for Next Street, there should’ve been a RFP process to allow people to apply for that,” she said. A request-for-proposal process, abbreviated as RFP, is a process that allows different parties to bid and compete for
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POLITICS
“It all started when the president started talking about whether it’s gonna be Jackson Park or Washington Park... No matter what community gets it, it’s gonna benefit the entire South Side.” —Pastor Tory Barrett, founder of the KLEO Center
funding. Next Street didn’t go through this process to receive the grant from CCT. “Secondly, the process of selecting the advisory committee for Obama Presidential Library, they selected you and other people,” said Hampton-Smith, directing her comments at Adams. “I didn’t hear anything about this being put out in the community for application.” Adams was selected to the University of Chicago’s Community Advisory Board for the Obama Presidential Library in January 2014, before the University won the bid. According to a UofC news release, the board is composed of “prominent South Side community leaders who, over the course of their careers, have demonstrated an enduring commitment to strengthening the quality of life on the South Side of Chicago and in the city more broadly.” The UofC did not release any more specific information on the selection process for the Advisory Board. Barrett and Adams answered both concerns with a they-picked-whoeverthey-deemed-appropriate argument. Barrett answered the first question by saying that CCT selected Next Street “based on what they saw across the country, that they felt have the expertise to do this process and they made the decision to fund it.” Adams jokingly said about her selection to the Committee, “They picked whoever they want. I was a good pick.” But Hampton-Smith’s worry was also broader than just Barrett and Adams; she wanted to know how it would be determined who exactly had a say in the WoWaSo coalition. “You were absolutely right that the communities have to be involved. Dr. Brazier and I just went and said this is what needs to happen. Now, that doesn't mean 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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that we are controlling the process,” Barrett said. “Our recommendation was, for every board seat you have, you have to have a founding board; the founding boards are the ones who are gonna go out and raise the money; they are gonna go out and raise the money to make sure the organization can do what it does. But there also needs to be additional board seats to have. We recommend either two or three residents per community to be on the board… There will be an application process…And that should be happening within next two to three weeks.” Since the organization is still in the earliest stages of its development, uncertainties are understandable. However, the event’s presenters did not discuss exactly how the organization will push forward a collective agenda to win and share benefits brought by the Obama Library. The Weekly asked Adams whether getting one of WoWaSo’s initiatives will be to get the Foundation to sign a Community Benefits Agreement regarding the library, something many activist groups and community organizations have been campaigning for. Her answer was not definitive: “I think what we are proposing, the three-community organization, a [CBA] is exactly the kind of thing this organization has to examine and decide if it wants to proceed with,” she said. “A lot of folks in this room are very currently involved in that.” ¬ A link to the community feedback survey (bit.ly/SouthSideVision) was given out during the meeting; the survey is designed to collect opinions and concerns from residents of different neighborhoods.
EVENTS
BULLETIN Metro Planning Council Roundtable on Historic Pullman Metropolitan Planning Council, 140 S. Dearborn St., Ste. 1400. Wednesday, March 1, noon–1:30pm. $15 for MPC donors, $30 for non-donors. RSVP required. (312) 863-6010. metroplanning.org
Panel and Discussion: How Do We Know What Education Reforms Work? UChicago Charter School Woodlawn Campus, 6420 S. University Ave. Thursday, March 9, 6:30pm–8:30pm. Free. RSVP online. (312) 422-5580. ilhumanities.org
At this roundtable, presenters will talk about Pullman’s recent resurgence, what lessons from this resurgence can be applied elsewhere in the city, and how the company town can fulfill the promise of its National Monument status under a new federal administration. Attendees will also discuss how to use Pullman’s growth to lift up surrounding South Side neighborhoods. ( Joseph S. Pete)
At this event, Illinois Humanities brings together academics, parents, and community members to talk about which education initiatives work, and how stakeholders can make those judgments themselves. The panel will include Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Payne of the University of Chicago, Charles Tocci of Loyola University, and Mariela Estrada of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. (Hafsa Razi)
Haki Madhubuti: The Black Arts Movement and Beyond
VISUAL ARTS
Institute of Politics, 5707 S. Woodlawn Ave., Thursday, March 2, 6pm–7:15pm, doors 5:30pm. Free. RSVP required at bit.ly/IOPHakiMadhubuti. (773) 834-4671. politics.uchicago.edu UChicago's Organization of Black Students co-sponsors a conversation with educator, author, poet, and founder/ chairman of the nation’s largest Blackowned independent publisher, Third World Press, Dr. Haki Madhubuti. Along with an empowering discussion expected to range from the Black Arts Movement to South Side political engagement; Madhubuti will also read select works from his collection of original poetry. RSVP is required, but seating is limited, on a first-come-firstserved basis. (Nicole Bond)
State of the State Coffee Harper Court, 5235 S. Harper Ct., 11th floor. Friday, March 3, 10am–noon. Free. (773) 288-0124. hydeparkchamberchicago.org The Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce will be hosting State of the State Coffee, where members of the local business community will have the opportunity to discuss relevant Illinois policies with elected state officials. State Senator Kwame Raoul, State Representative Barbara Flynn Currie, and State Representative Christian Mitchell will be in attendance. (Michael Wasney)
Tiffany Gholar at William Hill Gallery William Hill Gallery, 6442 S. Dorchester Ave. Through Saturday, March 4. Friday–Sunday, 11am–6pm. Closing reception Saturday, March 4, 6pm–9pm. Free. (312) 351-0573. williamhillgallery.com Artist, interior designer, and writer Tiffany Gholar takes a fun-house mirror to the world of Barbie in her photography series “The Doll House.” Putting books like How To Lose Weight in their hands and attaching skeletal legs to these dolls, Gholar chases the unattainable body image and beauty standards pressed upon young girls in advertising, media, and, of course, children's toys. (Emily Lipstein)
PUBLIC SCHOOL Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through June 25. Free. Monday–Thursday, 9am–8pm; Friday–Saturday, 9am–5pm; Sunday, 12–5pm. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org Artist Jim Duignan returns to the Hyde Park Arts Center to reimagine types of spaces where learning takes place. PUBLIC SCHOOL transforms objects like a fort, a stage, and a school bus into a playground that doubles as an alternative learning environment. The exhibit will also incorporate interactive workshops, classes, and performances that explore different ways of valuing education. (Hafsa Razi)
Semblance of Order Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Opening reception Friday, March 10, 6pm– 10pm. Open by appointment through April 7. (312) 852-7717. uri-eichen.com In an era of heightened concern over the use of security and safety technologies, the latest project of Michael Rado, Frances Lightbound, and Louis Kishfy is timely. The trio behind the Topographies of Defense project last year now returns to their examination of “defensive architecture” in Chicago with photos that aim to identify— and dismantle—design that promotes security, authority, and ownership. ( Julia Aizuss)
Heather Mekkelson: In Absentia Luci 4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Through Sunday, March 16. Saturdays, 1pm-5pm. Free. 4wps.org Where will you be on Sunday the 26th if not here? In her new show in Hyde Park gallery 4th Ward Project Space, Heather Mekkelson examines the fundamental constructs of time, space, and number that guide us in discovering our place in the universe through her own sculptural constructions and assemblages. (Corinne Butta)
MUSIC The Radio Dept. Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, March 4, 7:30pm doors, 8:30pm show. $15 online, $18 floor, $20 seated. 17+. (312) 5263851. thaliahallchicago.com Indie pop group The Radio Dept. have been a going concern since the heyday of indie, when their hazy guitar pop made its debut on Lesser Matters in 2003. They’ve since grown, toward songcraft and even, recently, politics. We’ll see whether that newfound social awareness makes an appearance at Thalia Hall this Saturday. (Austin Brown)
The Era + Friends Promontory Chicago, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, March 5, 6pm. $5 online, $10 at the door. All ages. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com
Chicago’s preeminent footwork dance crew The Era will be bringing their juke moves to The Promontory on Saturday. Accompanying them will be Teklife producers DJ Manny and DJ Phil, along with such rising talents as a cappella group The Remedy (past Weekly profilees) and producer Jody Digital. (Austin Brown)
Uli Jon Roth: Tokyo Tapes Revisited Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St. Friday, March 3, 7pm. $20 general admission, $40 above stage, $60 balcony. 17+. (312) 9490120. reggieslive.com Former Scorpions guitarist and neoclassical metal icon Uli Jon Roth will be touring around his recent live album, Tokyo Tapes Revisited–Live In Japan at Reggies this Friday. Expect riffs, vocal histrionics, and long, long hair—all good things, when it comes to this stuff. (Austin Brown)
Incantations for the Sunset Society Listening House, 6918 S. Dorchester Ave. Friday, March 3, 7pm–10pm. Free. All ages. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Stony Island Arts Bank pays homage to the legacy of house music with their Friday evening event curated by musicianin-residence Coultrain. He’ll be playing lounge and house classics indebted to the preserved record collection of Frankie Knuckles, so there’ll be fresh tunes for vets and househead newbies alike. (Austin Brown)
STAGE & SCREEN Intersectional Women’s Issues at Applied Words Hosted by Guild Literary Complex, location TBA. Tuesday, March 14, 7pm. Free. (877) 394-5061. guildcomplex.org March’s installation of the “Applied Words” series of critical conversations, hosted by Guild Literary Complex, will focus on the representation of women in media and the impact these representations have on young women. Dr. Nicole Spigner, a professor of African-American literature at Columbia College, will moderate the discussion. ( Jake Bittle) MARCH 1, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17
EVENTS
By the Apricot Trees eta Creative Arts, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm through Sunday, April 2. See website for prices. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org eta’s new production, written by Ntsako Mkhabela, follows the story of TK, the only girl arrested in a famous series of protests led by black South African schoolchildren in 1976. The children took to the streets of Soweto, a township outside of Johannesburg, to protest the introduction of Afrikaans as the official language of schooling. They were met with a brutal response from the police. ( Jake Bittle)
Hobo King Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave., 3rd Floor. Thursday, March 2 through Sunday, March 5. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 7:30pm. Saturday and Sunday, 2pm. Tickets $19.50–$27. Student and Senior discounts available. (773) 935-6875. congosquaretheatre.org Congo Square Theatre ensemble member Javon Johnson premieres Hobo King, an urban drama inspired by true events, when a city’s homeless community mobilized to survive in the wake of police misconduct against one of their own. Strong language. Not suitable for younger audiences. No late seating. (Nicole Bond)
The Hard Problem Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. March 9 through April 9; showtimes vary. $38–$48. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org
Acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard, whose long list of credits includes Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Shakespeare in Love, has a new play. The Hard Problem, directed by Charles Newell, concerns a young psychologist who’s grappling with some of the biggest philosophical questions about human consciousness. ( Joseph S. Pete)
The Marriage of Bette & Boo University Church, 5655 S. University Ave. Friday and Saturday, 8pm show; Sunday, 3pm show. Through March 12. $12 online, $15 at door. hydeparkcommunityplayers.org For two weekends, Hyde Park Community Players will present an "acidic, ironic" dark comedy about marriage, mental illness, alcoholism, and the many, many difficulties of family relationships. ( Jake Bittle)
I Be Done Been Was Is DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Tuesday, March 7, 7pm–9pm. Free. (773) 947-0600. dusablemuseum.org As part of its Margaret Burroughs Centennial Film Series, presented in collaboration with South Side Projections, DuSable will show a 1984 documentary focusing on four black women comedians, following them backstage and on the road and exploring "the pain and absurdity of everyday life." ( Jake Bittle)
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THE PUBLIC NEWSROOM Once a week, City Bureau and the South Side Weekly turn our Woodlawn office into an open space where journalists and the public can gather to discuss local issues, share resources and knowledge, and learn to report and investigate stories. We bring in guest speakers and host hands-on workshops on things like how to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain government records, how to find and analyze public data, and how to tell your own audio/video stories. For working journalists, the public newsroom is a place to find and shape stories in direct conversation with readers. For the public, the newsroom is a front-row seat into how journalism gets made, and a chance to impact the way your community is covered in the media. The #PublicNewsroom is always free and always open to the public.
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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS Thursday, March 2 4pm–8pm: Public Newsroom is open 6pm: Discussion: What do you want from the Public Newsroom? Thursday, March 9 6pm: Workshop: Policing in Chicago Public Schools Led by Yana Kunichoff, VOYCE, and Mikva Challenge at 332 S. Michigan Ave. St. 400 Thursday, March 16 4pm–8pm: Public Newsroom is open 6pm: Workshop: Games as Storytelling Led by Ashlyn Sparrow and We Are Chicago Thursday, March 23 2pm–8pm: Training: Google Tools for Journalists Led by Mike Reilley CITYBUREAU.ORG/PUBLICNEWSROOM THE EXPERIMENTAL STATION 6100 S. BLACKSTONE AVE
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