61st Street Farmers Market Saturdays 9am - 2pm May 14 - December 17 61st and Dorchester
Accepting Senior Coupons and doubling Link up to $25
Artwork by Theora Kvitka
Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust
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http://thenounproject.com
@61Market 773.241.6044 experimentalstation.org
THE LEO S. GUTHMAN FUND
The 61st Street Farmers Market is a program of the Experimental Station, with the support of our sponsors.
Blackstone Bicycle Works Weekly Bike Sale Every Saturday at 10am
Wide selection of refurbished bikes! (most bikes are between $120 & $250)
Blackstone Bicycle Works is a bustling community bike shop that each year empowers over 200 boys and girls from Chicago’s south side—teaching them mechanical skills, job skills, business literacy and how to become responsible community members. In our year-round ‘earn and learn’ youth program, participants earn bicycles and accessories for their work in the shop. In addition, our youths receive after-school tutoring, mentoring, internships and externships, college and career advising, and scholarships.
Hours Tuesday - Friday 1pm - 6pm 10am - 5pm Saturday (773) 241 5458
A PROGRAM OF
6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637
2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
ÂŹ MAY 11, 2016
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. Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Education Editor Lit Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor
Hafsa Razi Sarah Claypoole Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta
Contributing Editors Joe Andrews, Eleonora Edreva, Andrew Koski, Lewis Page, Sammie Spector, Carrie Smith Editors-at-Large Mari Cohen, Ellie Mejia Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producer Maira Khwaja Social Media Editors Sierra Cheatham, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Layout Editor Baci Weiler Senior Writer: Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Maddie Anderson, Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Anne Li, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, Kristin Lin, Zoe Makoul, Sonia Schlesinger, Darren Wan Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Finn Jubak, Alexander Pizzirani, Julie Wu Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Editorial Interns
Gozie Nwachukwu, Kezie Nwachukwu, Bilal Othman
Webmasters Alex Mueller, 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, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly. 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 photo by Luke White
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
The New York Times Agrees: City is Off Course Between April 21 and May 3, 1,123 Chicagoans were contacted via phone for a poll conducted by the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation. On May 6, the New York Times published an article based on these findings titled, “In Deeply Divided Chicago, Most Agree: City Is Off Course.” Most are unsatisfied: 62 percent of residents said they disapproved of Emanuel’s job performance. An accompanying set of graphics sorts the responses into those from white, black, and Hispanic residents. According to these statistics, 33 percent of whites, 42 percent of blacks, and 36 percent of Hispanics said they would live outside of Chicago if it were up to them. 14 percent of whites, 25 percent of blacks, and 19 percent of Hispanics said they would rather live in a different area of Chicago than they currently do. The disparity is reflected in broader differences between the city’s starkly racially divided neighborhoods: notably, higher percentages of blacks and Hispanics reported viewing their neighborhood as less safe, more isolated, and more difficult to raise children in. The graphics neatly summarize the trials faced by Chicagoans, and have the added benefit of being very pretty, but the Times, as of yet, hasn’t proposed any solutions.
dude off
No Takeover for CPS Governor Bruce Rauner’s plans for a state takeover of the Chicago Public Schools district have been foiled: an Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) investigation of the district’s finances found no basis for an intervention from the state. Although the district has been on “financial watch status” since March, the ISBE stated that CPS does not meet the criteria for “financial difficulty” status, which would allow Rauner to intervene. This turn of events is sure to disappoint the governor, who confidently stated at the launch of the investigation in February that an ISBE takeover was “very likely.” CPS officials, on the other hand, have taken the investigation’s conclusions as a validation of what they’ve been saying for months—that the district’s only financial difficulties are the product of withheld state funds and a governor’s office that is determined, at least according to CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner, to “drive CPS into bankruptcy.”
soul survivor
A Petcoke Settlement The residents of an area in the 10th Ward contaminated by petroleum coke—often shortened to “pet coke” or “petcoke”—have won a settlement in a recent class action lawsuit against several companies, including KCBX Terminals. Pet coke is a product of oil refining: its tiny particles are often stored in large piles that can pollute the surrounding air and water and cause health effects when inhaled. According to the EPA, “Significant quantities of fugitive dust from pet coke storage and handling operations present a health risk.” However, the settlement itself makes no admission that the companies’ pet coke may have caused adverse health effects. KCBX and the other companies will continue to store and ship pet coke from their bulk material terminals, although they will eliminate all piles of pet coke by June of this year. Residents of the Class Area who file a claim by September 24 will receive a portion of the $1.45 million settlement after the costs of court, administrative and attorneys’ fees have been deducted. The Area stretches from 95th Street to 114th Street between Torrence Avenue and the Illinois-Indiana border. “For us, it’s a victory,” Olga Bautista, member of the Southeast Chicago Coalition to Ban Petcoke, told CBS Chicago. However, she added, “[the settlement is] not enough.”
59th
“ You can’t walk aside no one’s body and ever think that you could be them.” as told to christopher good.........4 an underfunded education
Eight of the ten universities graduating CPS students are most likely to attend have had to make cuts. hafsa razi.........................................6 prisoners of hope
“I believe the arc of justice is bent toward us. Light overcomes darkness.” jake bittle.........................................8 “Growing up around here, there’s not a lot of people making this kind of hip-hop.” joe andrews.....................................11 evaluating integration
The story of Chicago's middle-income housing. maddie anderson............................12 notes from the white rhino
The struggle is social; it’s emotional. ray salazar......................................13 Corrections
In the print version of the May 4 article “Section 8.4,” an infographic listed the earliest date of police misconduct records subject to destruction as 1976; in fact, it is 1967. Additionally, the article claimed that the FOP represents 83 percent of CPD's rank-and-file; in fact, it represents 83 percent of sworn officers overall. The Weekly regrets the errors.
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MAY 11, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3
Dude Off 59th
RP Boo on the past, present, and future of footwork AS TOLD TO CHRISTOPHER GOOD
I
t’s a beautiful spring afternoon, and I’m sitting outside the Medici on 57th with RP Boo. Wearing a red North Face jacket and easy smile, he looks more like an artist or a hiker than one of the most influential musicians and producers in Chicago. But when I first meet him, he’s already been spotted by some fans eager to ask him about footwork, the genre that many say he helped pioneer and revolutionize. Footwork, which grew out of the South and West Sides’ underground juke scene in the 1990s, largely consists of instrumental hip-hop productions that flutter around 160 beats per minute. Although most footwork producers share a few common tricks—sparse arrangements, syncopated 808 drum beats, and chopped-andscrewed vocal samples—the template has been pushed in all sorts of directions by producers like DJ Diamond, Jlin, and Traxman. RP Boo, however—real name, Kavain Space—has been redefining the scene’s boundaries ever since 1995, when he propelled the genre with some tracks he produced on a beatup Roland TR-6 drum machine. A West Side native who now lives near Rainbow Beach (by the last stop on the 6 bus, he tells me), Space draws on a kaleidoscope of sources and interests, sampling everything from the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey (on “Kemosabe”) and Justin Timberlake (on “187 Homicide”) to his own voice (on “Speakers R-4”) on his tracks. But he worked apart from the mainstream for much of his career— until the release of his debut LP Legacy in 2013. Today, Space, who calls himself “the source” of footwork, is looking ahead—but while I drink coffee (he’s too excited to spend much time drinking his), he takes a moment to tell me the story behind one of his breakthrough bootleg tracks, “Pop Machine,” which he produced in 2004.
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T
he song “Pop Machine” was something that actually took place. When I worked on 59th & Western, there was a pop machine, and you just had to keep pushing the buttons to get it to work, work, work. So one of my best friends, Rogers, said he knew I was going to do something. The next night, it was a party on 87th in Mr. G’s lounge. So, I had just made some heavy heat. I played [“Pop Machine”] at the party, and the crowd’s reception was like “What!?” It comes with timing. Once you get the flow of it, you live what you produce. Space still brings this scattershot spontaneity to his compositions today. But nowadays, he’s just as likely to bring that spontaneous recording style to the backstage of an Austrian concert hall, where he produced a track last week. “I took my MPC [drum machine] with me, and within three hours of going on stage, I made a track that I played later that night,” he says. He insists that he lands most of his gigs on the strength of his own tracks—something that, upon looking at his Boiler Room set lists, holds up to scrutiny. Where other producers might DJ their favorite tracks from other artists, RP Boo is prolific enough, and talented enough, to play his own work all night. When I speak with Space, he’s fresh off an international tour. In the past month alone, he’s performed in Osaka, Seoul, Beijing, and Shanghai. Next, he’s headed to Warsaw for a set at the tastemaking Red Bull Music Academy Weekender. “I’m seeing the world and I’m loving it,” he tells me. “I never thought it would ever happen!” What inspires me? Just life. No matter where I go, I always pick up something— and even if I don’t utilize it, it keeps a smile on me. And what I see gives me a better understanding of how different countries are,
how people are, how much love there really is outside the United States. To me, it’s a lot more peaceful going somewhere you’re not familiar with. Because if you have vacation days off, you walk, you see the sea, see the world. What a lot of people take for granted is being civilized. Everybody lacks something. But with other countries, it’s relative, and you learn. In Japan, I’d see the children and try and get their attention, and the way they’d look at me was different. But they’d smile! In China, I’d get more compliments; all the Chinese guys would be like “I never saw people with hair like yours,” and I’d be like, “How?” But the respect I got and the respect I gave, I can incorporate into my music. Although much of Space’s reputation boils down to his mixtapes and live performances, there’s something else that’s had a huge effect on his career: footwork dancing. Even a quick search on YouTube pulls up videos titled “How to Footwork” with hundreds of thousands of views, many of which are set to RP Boo’s music. Dance scenes and producing scenes are deeply and closely linked. [Dance in footwork] has changed tremendously. It’s changed to more of a showcasing—it’s almost extinct [compared with] the real source of it and what it used to represent. A lot of people don’t see it that way because they were too young to really see it. Back when the social media got exposed to MySpace, Wala was doing stuff with Channel 19, so he was able to expose it. But what happened is that [King] Charles ended up getting all this exposure, and it went south in a bad way, because no one knew what went on behind the scenes, the hard work. There’s no money in that.
When people see [footwork] on TV, getting exposed, they think there’s money in it. So you’ve got squads, and people [take] it the wrong way. The true inner feeling of it disappeared. It went to “I want to be seeing,” “I want to stunt on stage.” Times have changed. But every time I hop the plane, I’m pushing. I’m not doing this for money; I’m not talking to the agencies asking for money. I don’t come here to say I’m better than Teklife. Don’t have to compete with Teklife. Why? Because I built my own brand...that’s when you make it. We eliminated the competition. There is no competition! You just do your own thing. That’s how the dancers lost their way. Time and time again, Space tells me how the culture has changed over the years, but he’s anything but pessimistic about the genre’s future. Footwork, he tells me, has had more staying power than scenes like jungle and drum and bass—and with Danny Brown rapping over DJ Spinn tracks and Chance the Rapper footworking in his music videos, the following is only growing. [There are] a lot of people out here that really deserve to be seen and heard. I’m not saying no names in particular, but the best thing about footwork, what it is that we do, is that I now have the opportunity—when the time does present itself—to have a [successor]. A person that’s happy with [music] never complains about money, never. There’s some people I’ve got in mind that don’t even know I’m watching them. But after Pitchfork [Music Festival], it’s time to give back. And how you really give back is by educating, and being able to help and teach them how to carry on. One of the biggest things
MUSIC
ELLEN HAO
The production always has to change. For me, it changed without a thought. It just happened. But a lot of people used to try and figure me out. You can’t walk aside no one’s body and ever think that you could be them. Be yourself.
I tell people is that if you make it successful, you have to give back, because that’s what keeps the legacy going. The legacy is already set. Rashad is the only, right now, true legend. That’s it. We all could be legendary, but the legend is a person who doesn’t do it anymore. You have to die in order for your legacy to move on, and Rashad is the first. Space says he’s in talks with UK record label Planet Mu to release a new EP this fall. But after that, he plans to devote himself to an album of entirely new material. “I’ll have time to really sit back and look into what I want to do,” he says. “There’s still an album that I haven’t
really done for myself yet. There’s so much stuff that’s unreleased. So stick around!” Back in the ghetto house days, I had tracks that people would be like, “Is he really saying that?” I was almost the worst at it, but I had to change my mindset...after just seeing the streets hurt and crumble. I used to think it was cool, but now I see it’s not cool. It changed. It changed it a lot. That’s why I’m not quick to really do what people think I do. I just sit back and enjoy it. And there’s no end to it. I just don’t think there’s no end to it. [Footwork] has its ups and it has its downs...but there are still good stories yet to come. ¬
MAY 11, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
An Underfunded Education Illinois budget cuts hit destination universities for CPS students BY HAFSA RAZI
D
uring last month’s walkout and “Day of Action,” activists and teachers from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) gathered at two of the city’s public universities, Chicago State University (CSU) and Northeastern Illinois University, to advocate for increased funding across the education system. They protested a state budget crisis that has not only left Chicago Public Schools stretched thin, but also left public universities, including those two, without any state funding for most of the 2016 fiscal year. Beyond the parallel situations of CPS and Illinois public universities, CPS educators have another reason to protest the defunding of Illinois public universities: these are the four-year institutions that their students are most likely to attend. A 2014 report from the Chicago Consortium on School Research (CCSR), entitled “The Educational Attainment of Chicago Public Schools Students: A Focus on Four-Year College Degrees,” highlights the somewhat troubled path CPS students face between graduating high school and completing a bachelor’s degree. As part of its analysis, the report lists the top ten four-year colleges and universities attended by CPS graduates, ranked by average number of CPS enrollees between 2006 and 2013. Of the ten schools, all are located in Illinois and eight are public universities, five of which are located outside of Chicago. CSU, a majority-minority school pushed to the brink of shutdown without state support, is arguably the hardest-hit by the budget crisis. Like all nine of Illinois’s public universities, CSU finally received public funding on April 25, after Governor Bruce Rauner signed a stopgap
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measure that provided $600 million to the state’s public universities, community colleges, and its low-income student scholarship program, the Monetary Award Program. But just four days later, on April 29, CSU announced layoffs for 300 non-faculty employees, and even more layoffs might be coming. But the other public universities on the list are facing their fair share of uncertainty. None of these schools received more than half of the funding they requested before the start of the fiscal year—with the exception of CSU, stopgap funding for each school hovers around a quarter of the requested amount. Most schools have had to cost-cut to make it through the end of the spring semester; many of them based their decisions on Rauner’s proposed budget cuts, which still offered more funding than the stopgap measure that passed in late April. At Northeastern Illinois University, ranked number two on the CCSR’s list, all administrative and non-union employees have been working without pay for one day a week since March; hiring and spending freezes are also in place. In February, its credit rating was downgraded by Moody’s Investors Service. Outside of Chicago, Northern Illinois University also had its credit rating downgraded, and it cut over $15 million from its spring semester budget. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale plans to lay off 180 people and make cuts to academic and student employment programs. The school also attributed a decline in enrollment for the spring semester to the state budget crisis. Western Illinois University announced plans to cut $20 million from its budget over the next two years, lay
off 110 employees, and institute a hiring freeze; these plans have not been changed by April’s stopgap funding. The University of Illinois system, whose campuses are ranked number one (Chicago) and number three (Urbana-Champaign) on the CCSR list, received only a quarter of its requested funding. Since the schools have relied on state funding for only ten percent of their budget, and have greater endowments than most, they are relatively better-off than their peer institutions. But even these schools have faced cuts—in October,
these schools will work toward their degrees under constrained circumstances. The CCSR report paints a rather dismal picture of college-degree attainment for CPS students. Seventy-three percent of CPS ninth-graders graduate high school, and forty percent of those graduates enroll at a four-year institution. Even then, many students who make it to college leave without a degree. Just below fifty percent of the college enrollees graduate within six years—just fourteen percent of that original ninth grade class. These low rates of college success
With the exception of CSU, stopgap funding for each school hovers around a quarter of the requested amount. the University system cut $24 million in administrative costs, and in April, UIUC asked departments to prepare for layoffs in the fall. Illinois State University has also faced relatively minor shortfalls—the school instituted a partial hiring freeze and in May announced a three percent tuition increase for next fall. Most schools say that April’s stopgap funding is only a fragment of what they need: they hope for additional funding from the state before the end of the fiscal year in June. In the meantime, students at
indicate problems not only in higher education, but at the primary- and secondary-school level; they predate the precarious 2016 fiscal year, and they will likely persist in years to come. The road from CPS high schools to a four-year degree is clearly rocky—but this year’s funding crisis for public universities makes it that much harder for Chicago kids to succeed in the schools they most commonly attend. ¬
EDUCATION
*While funding data for these individual schools is unavailable, the University of Illinois as a whole requested $708 million in 2016 and received $168 million in stopgap funding.
College Name
SOURCES: CHICAGO CONSORTIUM ON SCHOOL RESEARCH, ILLINOIS BOARD OF HIGHER EDUCATION, ILLINOIS OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, COLUMBIA COLLEGE, SOUTHERN ILLINOISIAN DATA VISUALIZATION BY JEAN COCHRANE
CCSR Ranking University of Illinois at Chicago................................... 1 Northeastern Illinois University.................................... 2 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign................. 3 Northern Illinois University.......................................... 4 Southern Illinois University Carbondale....................... 5 DePaul University.........................................................6 Chicago State University.............................................. 7 Columbia College Chicago........................................... 8 Western Illinois University............................................ 9 Illinois State University................................................10
MAY 11, 2016 ÂŹ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
Prisoners of Hope
After a century, Saint Sabina's fights an uphill battle BY JAKE BITTLE
F
ifteen years ago, when Mack Julion first came to Saint Sabina’s in Auburn Gresham, the church didn’t have a youth ministry. After working for a few years in the office of the church’s longtime pastor, Father Michael Pfleger, he managed to convince Pfleger to let him start one. Now, the church’s youth ministry has programs for parishioners from ages thirteen to thirty-five. In some ways, Julion is a perfect Saint Sabina’s success story: the church empowered him to empower others. Julion looks and sounds younger than he is. In addition to his current work in the church’s high school ministry, he teaches at a Noble network charter school and writes spoken word poetry in his spare time. He believes that Scripture is crucial for teenagers from underserved neighborhoods: it helps them build a moral foundation they might not get anywhere else. “With teenagers, it’s always about peer pressure,” he says. “The Scripture just allows them to know that you’re not of this world. Just giving them that is very important.” Young people are not well represented at Saint Sabina’s on Sunday mornings. The few who do come to services sit in the rear pews to the left of the altar, near Julion. But for Saint Sabina’s, this demographic is nothing short of precious. Through ministry, Saint Sabina’s hopes to bring young people into the church before they make bad decisions. After sermons, Pfleger huddles with the young men in attendance, and sends each of them away with a hug. But though it may be empowering, youth ministry is also self-selecting. Not all young people who are involved with violence and crime can be turned around through preaching and evangelism. As a
LUKE WHITE
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result, Saint Sabina’s has resorted to other, more publicized methods to engage South Side residents young and old—marches, demonstrations, monetary rewards for guns turned in and information about shootings. But Julion says that despite its good intentions, this work is often too little, too late. “We hear that a child got shot and killed, we march,” he says. “That’s reactionary. There’s not much we can do beforehand other than provide the resources that we have.” Saint Sabina’s and Pfleger especially are famous in Chicago not just because they have spent forty years fighting to improve quality of life in Auburn Gresham, but because many think they have succeeded. The church’s work in the neighborhood has been described by admirers ranging from NBC’s Carol Marin to President Barack Obama as “heroic,” “transformative,” and as the “lifeblood” of the community. But after decades spent working for change within the neighborhood, Saint Sabina’s has taken up larger, more complex battles. The church now focuses its local outreach and intervention on the same systemic issues that have made Chicago the object of national attention— gun violence, unemployment, and disinvestment. Many members of the church admit that these battles often seem impossible to win: although the church is a fundraising powerhouse, with dozens of programs, services, and ministries, it deals with inequality and abandonment that extend beyond Auburn Gresham. Moreover, the church exists in a state that has gutted funding for social services and a city that seems unwilling or unable to address the crises facing its black neighborhoods. But Saint Sabina’s has only fought
FAITH
harder as the outlook has gotten worse, because what keeps Pfleger and the church’s leaders wading upstream isn’t just the belief that they’re doing the right thing. They also believe that no matter how bad things look, a higher power has ensured their victory from the start. Governments and charities might see social change as a matter of policy, but the church sees it as one of destiny; in other words, even if they can’t win, they have to keep fighting.
S
aint Sabina’s was founded one hundred years ago this July, when Auburn Gresham was still a predominantly white neighborhood. Pfleger first came to the church in 1975, when white flight had brought its membership down to fewer than fifty people—today, an average Sunday at the church draws several hundred. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, the church worked to restore the 79th Street commercial corridor and revitalize its immediate surroundings. The congregation first drove drug dealers away from 79th Street, then forced local gas stations and stores to stop selling drug paraphernalia and warded off an influx of tobacco- and alcohol-themed billboards from the neighborhood. Later, parishioners fought to root out prostitution on 79th and in Auburn Gresham at large, buying time from prostitutes and using it to try to convince them to change their ways. As the church has gradually restored its surroundings, it has expanded into a compound of stores, goods, offices, services, and living facilities. The cathedral stands on 78th Place and Racine, but there are buildings owned by or affiliated with the church in every direction, including a K–8 school, a senior living facility, and centers for employment, social aid, and neighborhood development. The church has lobbied to bring businesses to the neighborhood, including a BJ’s Market & Bakery, a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, an Osco drug store, and a combination Walgreen’s–Chase Bank that stands on the former site of a by-the-hour motel that prostitutes would frequent. But in September of last year Pfleger wrote an op-ed in the Tribune in which he argued that Auburn Gresham still faces the same problems it faced when he first moved to the neighborhood, and that, if anything, things have gotten worse since then. “Three decades ago I saw this South Side community struggle with poor schools, high unemployment rates, violence, drugs, and the availability of few business opportunities,” he wrote. “What’s painful today as
I walk down the same streets is that things seem to be getting worse. I see more boarded up homes and vacant lots. More people who have been in prison aren't given any options or job opportunities…Poverty remains on the rise.” The summer of 2015, Pfleger wrote, was the most difficult Auburn Gresham had ever seen. The “destitution” Pfleger wrote about has come about because of forces that are well beyond any church’s power to influence, much less overcome. All of the trends that parishioners say have dragged the neighborhood down have been decades in the making. Furthermore, the timeline for recovery isn’t really in the neighborhood’s control: in the early 2000s many South Side neighborhoods had begun to recover, but the 2008 housing crisis brought things back to square
ment to social action comes directly from Pfleger, who combines Catholic teaching with the philosophy of his idol, Martin Luther King, Jr. According to parishioners like Norma Bradley, who have attended the church since before Pfleger was pastor, Pfleger also taught the congregation to tithe. Members of Saint Sabina’s are all asked to tithe ten percent of their income in order to help the church raise $30,000 each week. For decades, local and national media outlets have made such a myth out of the priest that an outsider might think he had done all the work himself. To be fair, he is a compelling figure: a white priest beloved by a black congregation, a Catholic who learned to preach from storefront Baptists and locked horns with the Archbishop. As early as 1989 he was the subject of a lengthy
In the absence of systemic change, the church’s anti-violence work can feel like a case of one step forward, two steps back. But the church’s fight against the economic conditions that produce this violence is even more of an uphill battle than its fight against the violence itself. one. When I started attending services at Saint Sabina’s earlier this year, Ribs Unlimited, a black-owned restaurant that has been on 79th and Loomis for decades, had recently shut its doors. Hinton Heating, a black-owned business on 79th and Sangamon, was planning to close as well.
S
aint Sabina’s has picked different battles over the years, but its methods have been constant: in past decades, parishioners held demonstrations against drug dealing and campaigned for new businesses to come to the neighborhood; today, they hold marches against gun violence and demand increased investment in education and job creation. Ministers and parishioners alike will be quick to tell you that the church’s commit-
feature in the Reader whose subtitle was, “What’s a white boy like Mike Pfleger doing in a parish like this?” The author of that feature went on to write a book about Pfleger, Radical Disciple, which became the namesake of a glowing 2009 documentary. Earlier this year, Evan Osnos of The New Yorker wrote an 8,000-word profile of Pfleger; the article did not quote anyone else from Saint Sabina’s. But Pfleger says he’s never set the agenda for the church’s work in the neighborhood—that, from the beginning, he merely helped the parishioners take a stand and make their voices heard. But even as the church and the scope of its social work have grown, the immense need for this work seems to have outpaced that growth. “If we had churches that operated like [Saint Sabina’s],” says Julion, “then we’d see
communities begin to change. From 78th to 87th, if we just went down Racine, there’s a ton of churches...if every church operated to help members of the community, this whole stretch would change.”
W
ith over two hundred murders logged so far this year, 2016 is on track to be Chicago’s bloodiest year since the 1990s. Much like what Pfleger wrote about last summer, the consensus among parishioners is that this summer will be the hardest in recent memory. The church’s efforts to fight this violence are all based on the idea that it can convince gang members to stop shooting by intervening in their conflicts or by showing them the extent of the damage they’re causing. The church employs full-time “peacemakers” who actively work to diffuse gang tensions, and holds a “Peace League” on Monday nights, offering young men a safe place to play basketball. A monument was built recently in the church’s courtyard bearing the photos of young people whose lives have been lost to gun violence. Entitled “Gone but Not Forgotten,” the monument stares out at passersby on Racine. These programs and demonstrations might not all seem “reactionary,” but none of them address the root causes that produce gang wars and gun violence in the first place. Pfleger knows his routine tirades against shootings and homicides are meaningless if society can’t provide gang members and drug dealers with jobs and opportunities. This reality became apparent earlier this year after the death of Phillip Dupree, an ex-gang member who had recently started attending services at Saint Sabina’s when he and his grandmother were shot while driving, a half-mile away from the church. At Dupree’s funeral, Pfleger asked for any young men who wanted to turn their lives around to come up to the altar. Nearly one hundred and fifty men stepped forward. Saint Sabina’s might have enough resources to enroll these men in GED classes, but not enough to find them all jobs, or even to guarantee them all bus cards. In the absence of systemic change, the church’s anti-violence work can feel like a case of one step forward, two steps back— one of the church’s peacemakers was shot last year while in what Pfleger described as “somebody’s so-called territory.” But the church’s fight against the economic conditions that produce this violence is even more of an uphill battle than its fight against the MAY 11, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
FAITH
LUKE WHITE
violence itself. The statistics on unemployment, for example, are staggering: a Chicago Reporter analysis of 2013 census numbers showed that twenty-five percent of African Americans in Chicago were unemployed. Among young people, the problem is particularly dire: earlier this year a report from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that forty-seven percent of young black men in Chicago were unemployed; the jobless rate for residents of Auburn Gresham aged twenty to twenty-four was 61.3 percent. In the midst of these numbers stands Lisa Ramsey, the director of the church’s Employment Resource Center (ERC). Ramsey has been attending Saint Sabina's for twenty years; she started working for the church full-time after a career at Kraft Foods. When we spoke in the church’s basement, she stopped a few times during our conversation to talk to a teenage girl who is staying with her for a week while she doesn’t have a place to sleep. The ERC was founded in 1998 with the initial goal of ensuring that the new jobs that were being brought to the neighborhood went to people who actually lived there. Today it offers a list of services so long that Ramsey cannot list them all in one breath. Mainly, though, ERC staffers offer employment counseling to about five thousand people per year, less than five percent of 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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whom are members of Saint Sabina’s. At every stage of the counseling process, the ERC has to contend with the inequity and neglect that have shaped communities like Auburn Gresham. The ERC works in the opposite of a vacuum: it can’t provide counseling or services without understanding the forces that have influenced a person’s entire life. And in Ramsey’s view, unemployment causes as much spiritual hardship as it does economic hardship: just as Pfleger and the peacemakers try to fight gun violence by appealing to gang members’ souls, the ERC has to try not only to connect residents with job opportunities, but also to help them turn their lives around. “When those people walk in the door, you have to understand that they feel like crap,” she says. “A lot of these young men, all they want is someone to tell them that they see them. Just acknowledge that they’re an individual and they're a human being and they have value.” But as funding goes down and unemployment rates go up, such deep engagement becomes harder: the ERC’s funding was cut this past year, which brought its full-time staff down from twelve members to six. It has had to shift from individual counseling sessions to group sessions of up to thirty people. “You can always have someone sitting in an office, but the need is so wide, so broad,
and our young people, they don’t have skills,” says Ramsey. “If you come on the South and West Sides and look at the schools, there’s a huge disparity in the learning, and the ability to learn…the need seems to be increasing, not decreasing.”
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hen discouraged by these numbers, some church leaders take a cue from Pfleger’s legendary dedication to serving his community. Ramsey, for example, says he’s the only boss she’s ever had who works harder than she does. But parishioners and ministers say that what ultimately keeps them fighting isn’t admiration for Pfleger, but faith—“the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It’s this faith that drives Saint Sabina’s to fight in exactly the places where it seems the church is least able to make a dent. “You can’t get tired,” Ramsey says, “because somebody is sleeping in the car tonight, somebody is contemplating suicide because they can’t feed their child, somebody is ducking because they don’t want to get shot...most times I feel like I’m not doing enough.” As Deacon Richardson tells it, Saint Sabina’s is unique in its ability to look past the ever-changing numbers on poverty and violence, instead choosing to focus on what he calls the “bigger picture.” The church
keeps up what looks like an impossible fight because its ministers and employees share an essentially Christian belief: in the end, good wins—or as Pfleger wrote on Facebook the morning of Easter Sunday, “THE FIGHT IS FIXED!” Saying that faith is essential to a church’s work might seem far too obvious, but it’s worth considering whether Saint Sabina’s could do everything that it does if its leaders didn’t believe in the certainty of their victory. Pfleger, for his part, says that if he weren’t a Christian he would have walked away long ago, and he doesn’t see how it could be different for anyone else. He points to the faith of Martin Luther King, Jr., who also believed in a victory that he never lived to see. “I believe the arc of justice is bent toward us,” he told me one morning, having just returned the previous day from a trip to the White House. “Light overcomes darkness. That’s my faith. So I’m a prisoner of hope because of that. But it’s not about whether I see it.” A poster in the lower level of the church shows a much younger Pfleger holding a Bible and flanked by angels. The poster reads, “BUILDING AN END TIME CHURCH FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM.” Pfleger is three years shy of seventy, the recommended retirement age for priests in the Catholic Church. It’s not certain that he will retire once he gets there—after all, priests are also supposed to change parishes after six years. But if it really is faith that drives Saint Sabina’s, and not Pfleger’s charisma or clout, then the church has nothing to worry about. Pfleger himself designates younger ministers like Julion as the church’s next generation of leaders. He believes this next generation shares his certainty that good will win, and will keep that certainty despite any and all evidence to the contrary. At the height of his sermons, however, one might think that the deliverance he describes is right around the corner. The futility that the church’s ministers and social workers face on a daily basis seems to drop away. Standing in the Gothic church, surrounded by fake plants and woodcarvings, Pfleger returns again and again to a promise that always makes the congregation stand and shout: the Lord will provide, and he will provide soon. “Put up your hands and say, peace in Auburn Gresham!” he roared on a recent Sunday. “Peace in Englewood! Peace in Lawndale! Peace! Peace! Peace!” ¬
MUSIC
Soul Survivor
Hooligan on preserving sample-based hip-hop BY JOE ANDREWS
I
meet twenty-year-old hip-hop producer George Miller (stage name Hooligan) at Beverly Records, just a few miles north of his Calumet Park home. As more casual customers come and go, Miller scours stacks of LPs and boxes stuffed with 45s one by one. He’s searching for new sounds to take home and feed to his MPC—an analog music sampler and drum machine. Eyes barely showing from under his bucket hat, Miller navigates his slim frame through the cramped space, pulling Jack Bruce, Boz Skaggs, and Cal Tjader records from the shelves and into his armful of purchases. “Soul music is something that I’ve always been in tune with,” Miller says. “My pops was always playing Marvin Gaye, The Isley Brothers, Prince”—the list goes on. In fact, he tells me how he was so inspired by Prince’s music as a child that he talked his dad into getting him an electric guitar just to emulate the artist. “He was one of my first musical influences,” Miller explains. “I couldn’t believe it when he passed.” Not long after trying his hand at Prince-inspired guitar solos, Miller heard Dr. Dre and the Wu-Tang Clan for the first time. “That changed everything,” he explains. “My mom would try to keep me from listening to that stuff. She would even go through my iPod, but eventually she knew she couldn’t keep me from it.” But once Miller realized that both Dre and Wu-Tang sampled from records he’d been listening to all his life, he was really hooked. The eureka moment that pushed Miller from music fan to music maker came when he heard RZA’s production on WuTang’s 36 Chambers album. The off-kilter piano loops and sloppy but melodic arrangement of each song’s heavy-hitting drums sparked an urge to create that Miller never knew he had. “The way [RZA] layered sounds and stacked records was odd and eerie, but in a good way,” Miller explains. “The combinations of sounds were just always unexpected, and that really pushed me in the right direction.” This newfound infatuation led Miller to ask his father for yet another purchase—a Casio keyboard. “It wasn’t supposed to be a sampler,” Miller says of the keyboard model. “It had sampling capabilities but that’s not what
it’s meant for.” Trying to recreate beats from Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle album with only ten seconds of sample time wasn’t easy, but Miller says the difficulty was essential in teaching him the importance of detail and invention in beat production. When Miller’s aunt passed, she left him a few boxes of old soul records. “After that was when I really started digging,” he explains. “I started reading the names on the back of the records to see who was playing what—this guy plays strings, or this guy plays drums.” Now when Miller looks for new sounds, he can study the names of the session players in the liner notes and get a good feel for the record’s sound before he even listens to it. Miller outlines his creative process by taking me through the track titled “Drift” from his beat tape, BlankCassette. “This was the most challenging track on the whole project,” he says. “I made the original beat and it just wasn’t clicking. I was about to scrap it when I heard another sample that might work with it.” The main sample comes from a song on a
1987 electronic record by English composer Paul Williams, a spacy ambient song with little structure to it. After chopping, arranging, and layering the sample with drums and a filtered bass line, “Drift” becomes tighter and more rhythmic, a beat to zone out to. “It’s all about filtering,” he says, “stacking and merging sounds to get exactly what you want. It’s how you form your own sound and aura.” Like many of the greats he looks up to—Pete Rock, Madlib, J Dilla—Miller has a sound all his own, informed above all by a knowledge of the past. But unlike many golden-era-loving “purists,” Miller isn’t bitter toward the current trends in hip-hop: drill, trap, and the like. He simply finds what moves him and sticks with it. “I’m not disregarding the other stuff,” he says of today’s popular hip-hop. “I mean, I’m not rushing home to download it, but I feel where everyone’s coming from, and I actually dig some of it.” Still, listening to Miller’s music, you’d think he was born too late. “I don’t think people really get it,” Miller
JOE ANDREWS
says. “Growing up around here, there’s not a lot of people making this kind of hip-hop.” But even if Miller has mostly kept to himself, his quickly maturing sound has already attracted attention from some prominent movers and shakers in hip-hop. Just last year, super producer J. Rawls, best known for his work with Mos Def and Talib Kweli, took interest in Miller after hearing one of his beats. “Hooligan has a style of music that makes you feel nostalgic and futuristic all at once,” Rawls says. “I’ve been a fan since the first beat I heard.” Miller recently released a full-length instrumental project titled BlankCassette on Rawls’ Columbus, Ohio–based label, Polar Entertainment. He plans to release a new instrumental project next month and has a few unreleased collaborative works with rappers that are set to surface soon. ¬ You can find Hooligan’s beat tape BlankCassette at hooligan.bandcamp.com and soundcloud.com/ hooliganlive MAY 11, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
LIT
Evaluating Integration The story of Chicago’s mixed-income housing BY MADDIE ANDERSON
D
eep into six years of fieldwork, academic articles, and policy briefs, professors Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph decided that the complex story of Chicago’s mixed-income redevelopments needed to be told in its entirety. Responding to that need, they published Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-Income Public Housing Transformation in 2015. Clearly written and meticulously researched, the book gives readers a rare inside look at Chicago’s mixed-income developments and, in doing so, powerfully argues that mixed-income redevelopment is not the integrationist solution for curing urban poverty that it is often said to be. Chaskin and Joseph divide the book into two parts, the first providing theory and historical context and the second contributing the empirical heart of the book. Part one of the book tells the history of national housing reform efforts, culminating in mixed-income housing reform. Beginning with the 1937 Housing Act, which authorized and funded the construction of highly subsidized public housing developments across the nation that became oases of quality low-rise housing, the story then moves on to the decline of public housing in the fifties and sixties. Urban renewal put poorly designed high-rise public housing primarily in African-American neighborhoods that already lacked resources and jobs. Policymakers responded in two ways: by relocating public housing residents to more
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diverse neighborhoods with lower poverty rates through Section 8 housing vouchers and by establishing place-based mixed-income redevelopments under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 1992 plan, HOPEVI. From the latter effort arose Chicago’s Plan for Transformation, the most ambitious plan to fix public housing, which included a particularly zealous mixed-income redevelopment component. Part two of the book analyzes the policy shift towards mixed-income redevelopment in Chicago. Chaskin and Robert focus on Park Boulevard, Oakwood Shore, and Westhaven Park, replacing Stateway Gardens, Ida B. Wells, and the Henry Horner Homes, respectively. Both Park Boulevard and Westhaven Park were designed by for-profit developers; the third, Oakwood Shore, was developed by a nonprofit developer and a local minority-owned developer. According to Chaskin and Joseph, each site attempted to build community among tenants of varying incomes, but to little avail. They hosted youth sports teams, barbecues, movie nights, and youth summer programming, but activities were sporadic and short-lived. Often, higher income residents wouldn’t show up. They established job training and placement, adult education, health and wellness programs, and financial education, but they did not have enough money to provide long-term services. Chaskin and Joseph include interviews from public housing residents and higher income
residents that vividly depict both the distance between residents and the dissatisfaction of public housing residents. Coupled with these relatively unsuccessful attempts at supporting residents of public housing, each site has “dictionary-sized rules and regulations” demanding almost complete compliance from these residents. The rules are enforced by development team members, hundreds of on-site cameras, and an increased police presence with a zero-tolerance policy for acts as harmless as “hanging out” outdoors. In addition, there are ongoing and uneven inspections: tenants must open their door each month for inspections, which can incur a range of penalties, compared to homeowners or higher income renters within the developments who do so once a year, if that. If tenants accrue three penalties, they are forced out of the development. Chaskin and Joseph assert that the aggregate effect of all of these measures is incorporated exclusion rather than integration: differential targeting and inequitable enforcement of rules create new dynamics of marginalization rather than helping public housing residents feel like valued parts of the mixed-income community. That failure has implications. As Chaskin articulated in an interview, “I think there’s a tendency for policy to run ahead of evidence. Mixed income redevelopment has been sort of broadly embraced on the policy level and I don’t think that this book suggests
that that is fundamentally always a bad idea, but I think that the enthusiasm for it ought to be tempered by the experience we’re having. I think that a particular lesson here is the tendency to put too much emphasis or too much faith in addressing very complex socioeconomic problems like urban poverty with a relatively narrow policy intervention, which is mixed-income housing.” Beyond condemning and explaining the failures of mixed-income housing, Chaskin and Joseph conclude with a comprehensive set of recommendations. They suggest greater communication among actors about social goals in a particular site (asking the question, how should key actors promote greater mobility and social inclusion?); adopting and continuing Opportunity Chicago, a Chicago Jobs Council project aimed at finding work for public housing residents living in mixed income developments; training public housing residents to do some of the jobs necessary to build the developments; making a long term investment in social mobility programming for public housing residents; offering more services and primary supports for public housing residents; and allocating and integrating public spaces within neighborhoods. More than an indictment and incredibly detailed, Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-Income Public Housing Transformation is fascinating and timely, a must-read for those concerned with public policy and affordable housing. ¬
COLUMN
Notes from the White Rhino How low-income students at elite colleges create their own obstacles
T
Ray Salazar
oday, I came across a Boston Globe article from almost a year ago that highlighted the challenges many low-income students at Ivy League colleges face. The article’s title emphasized the students’ economic status: “What is it like to be poor at an Ivy League school?” But after reading it a few times, and after exchanging ideas on social media with a few people, I realized why the article was misleading readers into feeling sorry for these students. "Once on campus, students report feelings of loneliness, alienation, and plummeting self-confidence," reads the article. Guess what, Ivy Leaguers? This is not new. This lack of self-confidence has been part of the low-income, first-generation college experience for generations—especially for students of color. Since Ivy League colleges began “zero family contribution” programs—programs that give full scholarships at Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and other elite colleges for incoming students whose families make under $65,000— first-generation struggle has gotten more attention. I read in the article about a student who opted for a single dorm room her freshman year to avoid uncomfortable living quarters with someone from a privileged background and thought, “She’s ostracizing herself in some comfortable accommodations.” These students cannot separate themselves intentionally and then complain about not being included. What’s really happening for most of these students is that this is the first time they confront the uncomfortable fear that accompanies a reality where one is not at the top of the class, not the one everyone admires, not the one everyone believes. As more and more high-achieving, low-income students (mostly of color) enter the upper echelons of academia, these students learn what fewer of us learned when we started college: not everyone is going
to think we’re extraordinary. What no lonely Ivy Leaguer mentioned in the article is academic struggling. No one mentioned academic failure. In fact, the article mentions that “at Harvard and Yale, ninety-eight percent of students from minority groups underrepresented in college will graduate with a four-year degree within six years; at Brown, it’s ninety-one percent.” So the students’ struggle is not intellectual—they got into these schools. The struggle is social; it’s emotional. Maybe high schools are to blame. Perhaps we praise our extraordinary students too much. Perhaps, as one former student told me, we tell them what they do right but we don’t tell them enough what they do wrong. So when they get to college campus, when they get a C, when someone says their ideas are ill founded, they’re shocked. These students need to remember that they’ve gained admission into an elite college—and into the real world. I don’t have sympathy for the students in the article who feel ostracized because she had “peers who talked about buying $200 shirts or planning exotic spring break vacations.” I understand that “having grant money for tuition and fees and holding down jobs...doesn’t translate to having the pocket money to keep up with free-spending peers,” as the article also states. But guess what? This never equaled up for any low-income, first-generation college student. And some of these students seem to want the privileged reality of not working. I do admire the Ivy League students who advocated so they did not have to pick up free tickets to school events in a separate line, for example. They should fight against carrying the label of “the low-income kid.” But wallowing in the isolation, the guilt, and the self-doubt might only contribute to this label. I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, and people will discredit my opinion because I don’t know their reality. When I was fifteen, I wanted to go to Princeton. But I didn’t know how. When I was seventeen, I had the application to the University of Chicago in my hand. The essay topic that year was something like, “Tell us about your neighborhood.” I still envision what I could have written. But I had no mentors. Out of my entire graduating class of over two hundred students at a neighborhood high school, I earned admission to DePaul in 1990—still one of my proudest achievements.
So I do know what it’s like to be one of the only brown faces on campus, or the only brown face in a philosophy class. I do know what it feels like to feel lost. I do know what it’s like to pay my own tuition (and the mortgage, and the light bill, and the gas bill) and not have money for books. I do know what it's like to work thirteen hours a week and go to school full time. I know what it’s like to want help but not know how or whom to ask. The struggle of the students at elite colleges reminds me of a conversation with my mentor, a Latino in his fifties who earned his PhD at UofC. He told me that many Latinos reaching for self-transformation struggle so much, fear the unknown so intensely, that when we reach the threshold of becoming who we aim to be, we freak out and revert to self-preservation. This is what I think happens to so many brilliant young people who earn coveted spots at top universities. Sadly, I see this fear in the eyes of my most promising students when I give them a compliment about their writing. They look at me and don’t know what to say or do. To break up the awkward silence, I tell them. “You need to accept your intellectual ability.” Then I walk away. When their paragraphs do not work, however, I make sure to tell them exactly why the writing fails. "I'll never belittle you," I tell them. "But I won't BS you either.” I hope comments like this help them do what one of my brilliant former students Evelyn Hernandez—who attended Parsons School of Design—says we must do: “Redirect that lucha energy into persevering in a new kind of social adversity, beyond the monetary one we’re accustomed to expect.” By following Evelyn’s advice, I hope these Ivy League students realize soon what so many of us wish we would have learned earlier in life: sometimes our biggest obstacles are the ones we create for ourselves.
These students cannot separate themselves intentionally and then complain about not being included.
This column was first published on Ray’s blog, The White Rhino (www.chicagonow.com/white-rhino/) on March 1. Since 1995, Ray Salazar has been an English teacher in Chicago Public Schools and is a National Board Certified teacher. He started writing The White Rhino about education and Latino issues in 2011. Ray lives on the Southwest Side. Follow him on Twitter @WhiteRhinoRay ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER SUAREZ
MAY 11, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13
BULLETIN Crook County: Book Discussion with Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve UofC School of Social Service Administration, 969 E. 60th St. Wednesday, May 11, 4:30pm–6:00pm. Free. RSVP required. (773) 702-1250. myssaa.uchicago.edu After countless hours of firsthand research and investigation, legal scholar and author Nicole Gonzales Van Cleve penned Crook County, a damning account of the banal evils taking place in the largest criminal court in America. Now, Gonzales Van Cleve will discuss her book at the UofC. Not to be missed. (Christopher Good) Policy Through Poetry Quinn Chapel AME Church, 2401 S. Wabash Ave. Thursday, May 12, 5:30pm– 7:30pm. Free. RSVP online. (773) 2451621. nphm.org The National Public Housing Museum and the Poetry Foundation present this showcase of poems written by public housing residents. This reading is a follow-up to After the Plan, the museum’s January program, and will be moderated by Dr. Charlie Barlow. It continues to explore the effects of CHA’s Plan for Transformation. (Anne Li) Hyde Park Garden Fair Hyde Park Shopping Center, 55th St. and S. Lake Park Ave. Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14. (773) 955-4455. hydeparkgardenfair.org From chrysanthemums to carnations, the storied Hyde Park Garden Fair, billed as “Chicago’s oldest community garden sale,” boasts a vast selection of hand-curated plants. Mother’s Day might have been last weekend, but this is the perfect chance to pick up a bouquet for the near and dear. (Christopher Good)
Dimensions in Multicultural Education: Unraveling Privilege Ancona School, 4770 S. Dorchester Ave. Saturday, May 14, 8:45am–3:30pm. $20$30. (773) 924-2356. anconaschool.org Sweet variety! Register by 9am and stay all day for a slew of activities: free coffee, UIC professor David Stovall’s talk on how to walk the equity walk, lunch by Medici, your choice of several exciting “breakout sessions” on diverse topics, and even an afternoon film screening! (Neal Jochmann) Kenwood Oakland Community Organization Convention King College Prep Academy, 4445 S. Drexel Blvd. Saturday, May 14, 11am– 3pm. Free. (773) 548-7500. kocoonline. org Mattie Hunter is a veteran caucus whip on the Illinois Senate floor; Veronica Morris-Moore of Fearless Leading by the Youth is on the front lines of social change. Both outstanding voices are scheduled to speak at this event, which is KOCO’s fourth annual. What’s more, lunch is free! (Neal Jochmann) Conversation with Theresa Mah Institute of Politics, 5707 S. Woodlawn Ave. Monday, May 16, 6pm – 7:15pm. Free. (773) 834-4671. politics.uchicago. edu. Engage with local politics in this conversation with Theresa Mah, the Democratic candidate for the 2nd District’s state representative. Mah won an upset victory in the primaries, and with no Republican contenders, she’s on her way to being the district’s first Asian-American representative. (Anne Li)
VISUAL ARTS Adam Grossi: I Can See it Both Ways
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Chicago Art Department East, 1932 S. Halsted Ave., #100. Opening reception Friday, May 13, 6pm–10pm. Exhibition through Friday, May 20. Free. (312) 7254223. chicagoartdepartment.org
those who find themselves without one. The night will end in a celebration of the thriving Little Village creative community, so “bring your dancing shoes!” (Corinne Butta)
Adam Grossi can see it both ways. Can you? From tempera smears to Twombly scribbles, the philosopher, yogi, and artist has a scattered artistic vocabulary— but his buckshot methodology belies an impressive focus on loose structures and cool hues. (Christopher Good)
HCL Spring Open House
Oscar Magallanes: New American Portrait Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Opening May 13, 6pm–10pm. Free. (312) 852-7717. uri-eichen.com LA-based artist Oscar Magallanes debuts his socially and environmentally focused artwork at the Uri-Eichen Gallery. His work is known for its bold graphics depicting cultural and political iconography. Magallanes’s work will serve as a portrait of America’s relationship with labor. (Troy Ordoñez) Carlos Rolón/Dzine: I Tell You This Sincerely... Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Panel discussion and opening reception Saturday, May 14, 3:30pm–7pm. Exhibition through July 31, Monday– Thursday, 10am–7pm; Friday–Sunday, 10am–6pm. Free. cityofchicago.org Join Carlos Rolón, María Elena Ortiz, Enoc Perez, and Edra Soto for a conversation on the role of Latino artists in the contemporary art market. Then (and I mean this sincerely) the party starts with DJ Lugo Rosado, who will mix the selection for the exhibition’s opening. (Corinne Butta) Conscious Rise 2320 S. Kedzie Ave., 1st floor rear. Saturday, May 14, 6pm–midnight. Free. Join Las Artelitas in a night of visual art, spoken word, and musical performances aimed at raising the voices of
High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St. Saturday, May 14, 7:30pm–11:30pm. $15 general admission (1 drink ticket); $25 special admission (3 drink tickets); $40 VIP admission (open bar and other perks). highconceptlaboratories.org The days are getting longer, the nights are getting warmer, and pollen is everywhere. What better way to celebrate than attending High Concept Labs’s biannual open house? With an impressive lineup of artists and a bar stocked by just about every brewery in the area, it’s the perfect springtime kickback. (Christopher Good) MUSIC Pile (WHPK Summer Breeze) Eco, 2042 W. 21st St. Friday, May 13, 8pm. $10 donation. (773) 702-8424. facebook.com/whpk885 This year, WHPK Summer Breeze will be held at top-notch DIY venue Eco in Pilsen. With Bostonian noise-punkers Pile headlining and a whole multitude of local bands supporting, it won’t be hard for the show to live up to the station’s reputation as “the Pride of the South Side.” (Christopher Good) Hop Along with Speedy Ortiz Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Thursday, May 19, doors 7:30pm, show 8:30pm. $16 online, $18 day of show, 17+. (312) 5263851. thaliahallchicago.com. While their Twitter bio might describe them simply as “two short people and two tall people,” Philly indie rock foursome Hop Along are sure to bring
EVENTS
high energy and emotion to Thalia Hall. As an added bonus, the quartet will be performing alongside Massachusetts’s Speedy Ortiz and their new single, “Death Note,” hopefully making for a show to do more than just hop along to. (Kanisha Williams) Del The Funky Homosapien Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St. Thursday, May 12, doors 8pm. $16 online, $20 day of show. 17+. (312) 949-0120. reggieslive.com You might best know Del The Funky Homosapien as Ice Cube’s cousin, the renowned solo alt-rapper from the mid nineties, the “Mastermind” of one-off lightning-in-a-bottle project Deltron 3030, or that one guy from the Gorillaz’s classic “Clint Eastwood.” All (except for maybe the “Ice Cube’s cousin” thing) are great reasons to swing by Reggies this Thursday. As the title of his tour reminds listeners, Del is still “iller than most.” (Austin Brown)
With a comic title and a fondness for fish and chips, Two Guvnors—an adaption of Carlo Goldoni’s classic The Servant of Two Masters, retrofitted for 1963—all but Union hi-Jacks its source material’s hijinks. It’s fast-paced, farcical, and generally ridiculous—in short, quintessentially British. (Christopher Good) Quartiers Lointains: French-African Films Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Friday, May 13, 7pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Black Cinema House will show four recent, critically acclaimed French-African movies this Friday. Curated by French-Burkinabe cinema journalist Claire Diao and accompanied by one of the film’s directors, take a journey through the complexities of masculinity or the nature of wedding arrangements, all unified by one theme: love. (Kezie Nwachukwu) Grassroots Chicago
STAGE & SCREEN Nunsense Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Thursday, May 12–Sunday, May 15; show 7pm, except 3:30pm matinee on Sunday. $21 members / $23 general admission. (773) 445-3838. beverlyartcenter.org Here at the South Side Weekly, we’re no strangers to nuns: from flying nuns to radicals like Sor Juana Inés la Cruz, we cover it all. BAC Professional Series’ newest play, however—an irreverent slapstick comedy about food poisoning, Grease, and Hoboken—is nunprecedented. (Christopher Good) One Man, Two Guvnors Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Thursday, May 12 – Sunday, June 12. Full schedule available online. $38, discounts available for students and seniors. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org
Kartemquin Films. Streaming online Friday, May 13 – Thursday, May 19. Free. (773) 472-4366. watch.kartemquin.com Anyone interested in community organizing should be sure to watch Grassroots Chicago, which Kartemquin will begin to stream this Friday. The 1991 documentary follows residents in seven Chicago neighborhoods as they organize to create change in their communities. Plus new conversations and additional content from the Kartemquin archives will be included. ( Joe Andrews) Nam June Paik & TV Lab: License to Create Filmfront, 1740 W. 18th St. Saturday, May 14; doors 6:30pm, screening 7pm. Free. filmfront.org If you’ve ever watched reality television, you can thank Nam June Paik, the creator of TV Lab: an experimental series that aired on NY public television
during the seventies and early eighties, instrumental to the development of modern day TV. Filmfront will host a screening of a documentary about his work, with the filmmaker in attendance. (Bilal Othman)
George Kalamaras will read selections as part of Fifth Wednesday Journal’s mission to promote literature and photography in public spaces. (Anne Li)
Migration
57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Monday, May 16, 6pm. Free. (773) 684-1300. semcoop.com
eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 3pm between Friday, April 29–Sunday, June 19, 3pm. $35. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org The history of the great migration can be overwhelming—a confluence of important cultural strains, people, and institutions all loaded with historical import. Migration tries to capture the complicated interactions that brought thousands of African Americans to northern cities through music, dance, and dialogue. (Adam Thorp)
LIT Krystyna Dabrowska Reading University of Chicago Classics Building, 1010 E. 59th St., room 110. Wednesday, May 11, 6pm–7:30pm. Free, book $20. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Krystyna Dabrowska, renowned poet and recipient of the Wisława Szymborska Prize, joins fellow poet Karen Kovacik and translator Antonia LloydJones for a discussion of Polish female poetry and the art of poetry translation. The event will be moderated by UofC professor Bożena Shallcross and will offer refreshments and a book signing afterward. (Kezie Nwachukwu) Fifth Wednesday Journal Reading Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Wednesday, May 11, 6pm. (773) 7524381. semcoop.com Fifth Wednesday Journal, a nonprofit literary magazine, presents this reading by three highly distinguished poets. Haki R. Madhubuti, Hedy Habra, and
Ada Palmer's First Novel
Ada Palmer, who teaches Renaissance history at the UofC and also composes Renaissance-inspired a cappella music, will discuss her first novel, Too Like the Lightning, at 57th Street Books. The book, pursuant to Palmer's longstanding interest in science fiction, fuses Enlightenment philosophy and fantasy into a story about a political revolution in the distant dystopian future. The year, to be exact, is 2454. ( Jake Bittle) Story Club South Side Open Mic Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 S. Morgan St. May 17, sign-up at 7:30pm, show at 8pm. Free, suggested $10 donation. (773) 837-0145. storyclubchicago.com The first rule of Story Club is that you don’t talk about Story Club. Just kidding, that would defeat the purpose of a Story Club South Side Open Mic, wouldn’t it? On May 17, the Co-Prosperity Sphere hosts this edition of a Chicago-wide open mic series—bring your stories of secret fight clubs, but remember it’s an all-ages show. (Kanisha Williams) Grown Folks Stories Silver Room, 1506 E. 53rd St. Thursday, May 21, 8–10pm. (773) 947-0024. thesilverroom.com Come listen, come tell. Come to share, and to show. Spend an evening with other storytellers of all stripes, except professional ones, in a casual and unrehearsed setting. Tell us about something funny, something crazy, something heartbreaking, something that happened to you—tell us a story about life. (Anne Li) MAY 11, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15