INTERVIEWS
“There’s no words to describe how most of us are feeling” The Weekly interviews Englewood activist Asiaha Butler BY MARTHA BAYNE Asiaha Butler is the president of R.A.G.E., the Resident Association of Greater Englewood. The lifelong Englewood native has been working to effect change in the neighborhood for the last ten years by activating public spaces, fostering positive dialogue between young people and old, and encouraging creative community development initiatives. The most recent project, Go Green on Racine, developed in partnership with the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, Teamwork Englewood, and E.G. Woode, aims to bring new investment to the commercial corridor at 63rd and Racine, and is one of several South Side projects in competition for the $10 million Chicago Prize, a place-based community development grant funded by the Pritzker Traubert Foundation (other prize finalists are projects in South Chicago, AuburnGresham, and Little Village, as well as Austin and North Lawndale).The coalition held a groundbreaking for the new Go Green Fresh Market, an independent grocery store at 1207 West 63rd Street intended to be an anchor of the Go Green on Racine development, on February 27. Three weeks later the city shut down in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic; to date fifty-four people from Englewood and West Englewood are recorded as having died from the disease. On Sunday, May 31, in the aftermath of protests against police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd, Englewood was one of many South Side neighborhoods severely damaged by looting. The Weekly spoke with Butler on June 3; this conversation has been edited for clarity.
I
probably have to give two different perspectives, because it's one perspective as the R.A.G.E. president, you know, working on revitalization and all that work. And then it's my perspective as a resident who had to witness the looting from my porch for the last forty-eight hours. It's kind of hard a little bit, so just bear with me. 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ JUNE 10, 2020
PHOTO COURTESY OF ASIAHA BUTLER
From a community revitalization standpoint, we knew our communities lack economic vitality. We know that at least thirty percent of the people in Englewood are living below the poverty line. We have the highest unemployment. We kind of know those facts already exist in Englewood, and when opportunity comes up for some of those people to take advantage of a store that has taken advantage of them or businesses that are not clean, that disrespect the very people that solicit those and consume those stores… When that uprising happened, I wouldn't say it was justified but I would just say that we didn't have much anyway, right? You're talking about a group of folks who have been through the system of racism that bred such destructive behavior. And I
don't know what other ways that they've been able to express themselves, but I know for me that was the first time…that I have seen an intense level of desperation, and an intense level of destruction. I have never witnessed something like that before. Was that energy probably already boiling over? Sure. It’s been 400 years like this. It is not a secret that we are all oppressed. And now [with COVID] … to have been slowly and steadily trying to turn that curve, and to kind of like slowly but steadily turn that curve and then to be knocked down so quickly, in a matter of twenty-four hours... There’s no words to describe how most of us are feeling. We only have three banks in our
community—all three banks are all closed. Most folks in our community actually depend on the currency exchange. Many of our seniors depend on the currency exchange. And those are all looted and vandalized. We know that most people need prescription medicine and there is not a place here that you can get that. We're not the North Side, so we don't have local drugstores; we depend on Walgreens and CVS. We know we are a food desert. We don't have many options for groceries here. And now we have none. So it’s a lot to take on and I’m really at this point... if it’s not really reparations and a whole, like BET is saying, trillion dollar investment, I don't know how we will bounce back.
