July 14, 2022

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

Editor-in-Chief

Volume 9, Issue 21 Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor

Adam Przybyl

Senior Editors Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Martha Bayne Arts Editor Education Editor Housing Editor Community Organizing Editor Immigration Editor

Isabel Nieves Madeleine Parrish Malik Jackson Chima Ikoro Alma Campos

Contributing Editors Lucia Geng Matt Moore

Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Jocelyn Vega Scott Pemberton Staff Writers Kiran Misra Yiwen Lu Director of Fact Checking: Kate Gallagher Fact Checkers: Grace Del Vecchio, Hannah Farris, Savannah Hugueley, Caroline Kubzansky, Yiwen Lu, and Sky Patterson Visuals Editor Bridget Killian Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Colleen Hogan Shane Tolentino Tony Zralka Webmaster Pat Sier Managing Director Jason Schumer Director of Operations Brigid Maniates The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We publish online weekly and in print every other Thursday.

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 Emanuel Love

IN CHICAGO Use of force: a double standard On the morning of June 27, Akron, Ohio police fatally shot twenty-five year old Jayland Walker. Seven white officers and one Black officer shot Walker, who was unarmed, with more than sixty rounds. According to CNN, The Fraternal Order of Police Akron Lodge 7 stated “The decision to deploy lethal force as well as the number of shots fired is consistent with use of force protocols and officers’ training.” This is questionable considering the continued lack of force used to deescalate and disarm the perpetrators of mass shootings, such as the tragedy that transpired in Highland Park just a weekend after Jayland Walker was murdered.

Robert Crimo III managed to fire more than seventy rounds into a Fourth of July parade taking place in the Illinois suburb while perched on top of a building. He then fled the scene, dressed in disguise as a woman. Crimo, who legally obtained the firearms he used in the shooting, was later arrested and taken into custody unscathed. Seven people were killed and over thirty more were injured as chaos erupted in the community of Highland Park, where many of the residents are Jewish. Crimo was alleged to have attempted to enter a synagogue during passover in April, but was turned away, suggesting that the attack could have been rooted in anti-Semitism. The question of use of force protocols in certain situations as opposed to others has been of recent discussion in light of the Robb Elementary School mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where police officers refused to enter the building and barred parents from rescuing their children as a gunman claimed the lives of nineteen students and two teachers. It wasn’t Uvalde PD that fatally shot the gunman after the rampage, but rather a Border Patrol Agent who’s child and wife were inside the school.

The Weekly extends our condolences to the loved ones of Jayland Walker and the victims of the Highland Park shooting.

Fifty-one migrants die in trailer truck On Monday, June 27, fifty-one migrants died inside a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio Texas. According to investigators, smugglers abandoned the truck before carrying them to cross the U.S. border to avoid detection at immigration checkpoints. Texas state officials said that thirty-nine of the victims were men and twelve were women and that among them five were children. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard tweeted that those found dead include people from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. In response, president Joe Biden said he wants to go after the “multi-billion dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants.” Yet, immigration advocates nationwide think the U.S. needs better immigration policies to prevent instances like this from happening in the first place. Responding to the deaths, Xanat Sobrevilla with Organized Communities Against Deportations, a Chicago-based immigration advocacy organization, said more legal pathways to enter the U.S. are needed: “Our hearts are full of grief and rage. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that migrants of all ages have been killed attempting to cross into the U.S. It is clear to us that as long as we continue to have political candidates and legislative policies that prioritize border enforcement and the criminalization of immigrants, the lives of people migrating across the border will continue to be at risk and in danger. This administration cannot claim shock at this tragedy because it is, in fact, their own attitudes and policies that led to the outcome of the death of 51 migrants.

We will continue to demand that our administration invests in our lives, the lives of migrants and undocumented people, and divest from law enforcement agencies like ICE and CBP Customs and Border Patrol which only cause greater harm.”

At least 650 people have died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border this year.

IN THIS ISSUE 1st district voted From the Chicago Elections Archive, see how Chicagoans voted in this race at the precinct level. pat sier, adam przybyl............................4 how the

jonathan jackson wins congressional primary

1st

district

Son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson is favorite to replace Rep. Bobby Rush.

aaron gettinger, hyde park herald.....5 city battling monkeypox outbreak with limited vaccine supply

There are now over 100 cases of monkeypox in Chicago. aaron gettinger, hyde park herald.....6 er doctor conveys health inequities at south side hospital

The Inside Scoop on Trauma Care at the South Side’s Biggest Nonprofit Hospital.

max blaisdell...........................................7 the exchange

The Weekly’s poetry corner offers our thoughts in exchange for yours.

chima ikoro..............................................9 you make hits like a girl

Chicago artists talk about their journey, their craft, and what it’s like to be a woman navigating a male-centric music scene. chima ikoro............................................10 30th anniversary The annual picnic dates back to 1990 when it was a free gathering behind the Museum of Science and Industry. emanuel love, jacqueline serrato......14 house picnic

torture trail between chicago and guantanamo

An exhibition explores the connection between torture and war in Chicago and Guantanamo Bay. nadia hernandez, emily soto...............17 un vínculo de tortura entre chicago y guantánamo

Una exposición explora la conexión entre la tortura y la guerra en Chicago y la Bahía de Guantánamo nadia hernandez, emily soto...............19 public meetings report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. documenters, scott pemberton..........20 calendar

Bulletin and events. south side weekly staff.......................22

POLITICS

How the 1st District Voted From the Chicago Elections Archive, see how Chicagoans voted in the race to succeed Rep. Bobby Rush at the precinct level.

BY PAT SIER, ADAM PRZYBYL

O

ver 300,000 Chicagoans voted in Illinois’s June 28 primary, or about twenty percent of registered voters, the lowest turnout in nearly a decade. On the ballot were Democrats and Republicans vying for the Governor’s office, Secretary of State, Congress, and state legislature, among others.

One of the most contested races was for the state’s 1st Congressional district, which had been held by Rep. Bobby Rush since 1992. Since Rush announced he was retiring earlier this year, nearly two dozen people fought to take his place, including seventeen Democrats. The Weekly covered the race a few weeks ago by sending a questionnaire to each candidate and publishing the answers of those that responded.

The 1st District encompasses much of the South Side, including all or parts of Bronzeville, Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Chatham, Auburn Gresham, Washington Heights, and Morgan Park, among other neighborhoods. Outside Chicago, the district includes all or parts of Blue Island, Calumet Park, Evergreen Park, Harvey, Oak Lawn, Orland Park, and Tinley Park, to name a few.

Next year, the district’s boundaries will shift and extend further south.

Jonathan Jackson won the Democratic primary for the district with about thirty percent of the vote.

Runner-ups were 3rd Ward Alderperson Pat Dowell with twenty percent, and then Karin Norington-Reaves and State Senator Jacqueline ‘Jacqui’ Collins with around twelve percent each.

Pulled from the Chicago Elections Archive, which features interactive maps of all races, is a map of the Chicago portion of the 1st district race, down to the precinct level. It doesn’t show the rest of the district outside of Chicago, where Jackson was also winning, except for Will county, where Norington-Reaves led. You can check out the rest on southsideweekly. com/primary-election-results

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 14, 2022

MAP CREATED BY PAT SIER

POLITICS

Jonathan Jackson Wins 1st District Congressional Primary Son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson is favorite to replace Rep. Bobby Rush.

BY AARON GETTINGER, HYDE PARK HERALD

J

onathan Jackson won the seventeencandidate contested Democratic congressional primary to replace retiring fifteen-term Rep. Bobby Rush (1st) in Washington.

Jackson, the son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, took a plurality of the vote in his first run for elected office. Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) came in second, and Karin Norington-Reaves, former CEO of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership and Rush’s endorsed candidate, came in third.

A fifty-six-year-old graduate of North Carolina A&T State University with a master’s degree in business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Jackson has worked as a partner in a beer distribution business and as a business professor at Chicago State University.

He also has a long history of activism alongside his father and in the Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition. He is the brother of former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-2nd), is married with three children and lives in Chicago.

“I love the South Side of Chicago,” Jackson said at his election night party at the DuSable Black History and Education Center, 740 E. 56th Place. “I thank God for having blessed our family and so many friends and having guided us and ordered our steps along this way and kept us in perfect peace and courage.”

“We’ve got some challenges that are ahead of us, and I want to thank you for bestowing upon me this high and great honor, to trust me with your vote to represent you in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “This is a fight for the future of

our nation. The South Side has been left behind, and I want you to know that the South Side of Chicago matters…I have been taught to lift as I climb; the South Side is going to Washington, D.C., with me.”

He noted local challenges, such as the large gaps in life expectancy between downtown neighborhoods and ones on the South Side like Englewood, as well as food deserts. Jackson said he could work with the federal departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development on these issues.

He thanked Rush for his decades of congressional service and invited his primary opponents to a unity breakfast, saying “there is serious work to do” before the November general election.

In a questionnaire distributed by South Side Weekly in mid-June, Jackson said his platform is focused on guns, groceries and gas—rising inflation and the area’s endemic violence. Among his proposed solutions, Jackson said he wants to pass legislation to enable the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to revoke “troublesome” gun stores’ licenses and increase fines for compliance violations.

Regarding reparations for Black people, an issue overwhelmingly supported by 1st Congressional District candidates, Jackson said a reparations policy should take the form of launching “constructive economic and social programs, policy reforms and public investments.” Additionally, he supports codifying abortion rights into federal law.

In a late-May candidates’ forum, Jackson expressed support for “Medicare for All,” a single-payer health care system,

as well as codifying abortion rights and a Green New Deal. Chief among Jackson’s political endorsements is Vermont Senator and two-time presidential contender Bernie Sanders.

Jackson’s win is not without controversy. On June 21, the Chicago Sun Times reported that his campaign benefited from more than $1 million in outside expenditures from three PACs with ties to the cryptocurrency industry.

The Protect Our Future PAC, bankrolled by cryptocurrency billionaire Samuel Bankman-Fried, reportedly spent more than $500,000 in television ads for Jackson.

Asked if he would be beholden to Bankman-Fried in post-celebration conversations with reporters, Jackson said, “We have followed the Federal Election Commission guidelines, and we’ve run a campaign on integrity and abided by all the laws.”

“Gas and groceries”—commodity prices rising because of inflation—are issues more under the purview of the Federal Reserve than Congress. Jackson said the conversation should be on “assetinsecure” people, arguing that far more people than the statewide percentage living under the federal poverty line are unable to make ends meet.

“We’ve got to make sure that we have a federal government program to help those who cannot withstand the sting of this inflationary period,” he said.

“Starting at $15 an hour is a start, but we’re also seeing record profits going into the gas companies. We’re seeing record profits going into the pharmaceutical companies. Are they price-gouging the average consumer?”

As of late-Tuesday night, Jackson appears to have won the primary with under a third of the vote. Asked what he will do to earn more support between now and November with the district’s voters, he said, “I won the most votes, and I’m very excited about it. Originally published in the Hyde Park Herald on June 28. Reprinted with permission.

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Please contact Clarendale Six Corners for a preapplication form and more information at https:// clarendalesixcorners.com/affordablehousing or 872-895-9696. Applicants meeting income requirements will be placed on a waitlist. All apartments to start leasing in October 2022 with applications to be considered on a first-come, first-serve basis.

These apartments are subject to monitoring, compliance, and other restrictions by the City of Chicago’s Department of Housing. For more information visit www.chicago.gov/ARO. 6-22

JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

HEALTH

City Battling Monkeypox Outbreak with Limited Vaccine Supply There are now over 100 cases of monkeypox in Chicago.

BY AARON GETTINGER, HYDE PARK HERALD

M

onkeypox vaccines are trickling into Chicago, though nowhere near enough to give anyone who wants shots at will.

Chicago Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said at a Monday press briefing that the current plan is not to aggressively vaccinate to stop the spread, either nationally or in Chicago. If the virus was lethal, the circumstances would be different, but the goal right now is to keep numbers as incontrol as possible as the supply of vaccine ramps up.

There are now more than 100 cases of monkeypox in Chicago, mostly among men who have sex with men, and testing capacity is being dramatically scaled up, with most commercial laboratories getting tests online. Tests are taken by swabbing skin lesions.

The disease is primarily spreading through close skin-to-skin contact with the pox itself or body fluids. Monkeypox can also spread through prolonged intimate contact via respiratory secretions; i.e., around three hours. The rash can also contaminate sheets, clothing, dishes and silverware.

People are not spreading the disease, however, unless they are symptomatic.

People experiencing symptoms should go see their health care providers; those without health care providers can call 312-746-4835—typically the city’s COVID-19 hotline, but in which operators can connect people to care.

If people are sick, they should stay home and be sexually abstinent until getting checked out by a health care provider. Current research suggests that 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 14, 2022

disease spread is not happening until people are showing symptoms.

Dr. Janna Kerins, a CDPH veterinarian who focuses on zoonotic diseases, which spread from animals to people, noted that some sexual activities are more high-risk than others.

Anonymous sex with multiple partners is riskier than talking to partners about their sexual and physical health before any activity. Arwady recommended getting contact information from anyone with

“Monkeypox doesn’t really give a (expletive) if you’re gay or not, but it cares who you’re having sex with and who your close contacts are.”

- Dr. Anu Hazra whom people have close intimate contact.

There are antiviral drugs available for monkeypox as well as vaccines. Jynneos is a vaccine designed to protect against both smallpox and monkeypox. It’s a two-dose vaccine given four weeks apart, with full protection coming two weeks after the second dose.

Around 10,000 Jynneos doses have come to Chicago already. Just under 100,000 more doses nationwide are expected in the coming weeks, with 1 million more projected to arrive by the beginning of September. Three million more doses are expected after that.

CDPH has distributed vaccines to providers who work with highest-risk

people, who have had contact with people who have monkeypox or are likely to have contact with those who may have the disease. The second category includes men and transgender people who have sex with men in a social or sexual venue, who have multiple or anonymous partners, or who have given or received money or other goods in exchange for sex. These guidelines may change as vaccine supply changes.

Vaccines can be taken after monkeypox exposure to stop someone from getting the disease, and the CDPH is holding some in reserve to ensure that they will be able to vaccinate close contacts of identified cases.

“We’re using this ring vaccine strategy now, around the highest-risk individuals,” Arwady said. “As there’s more vaccine, you will then be able to move to a potentially larger-population strategy. As always, the goal is to minimize morbidity and mortality. And thankfully at this point, we’re not seeing mortality, although we are seeing some morbidity. And we’d like to use a combination of vaccine, treatment and behavioral awareness to limit the spread as much as we’re able.”

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arwady said her department has had contracts already in place to do mobile vaccinating events and partner health care organizations who could vaccinate.

She said high demand has made CDPH setting up its own vaccination clinics an unfeasible option. Eligible people should talk to their health care providers; if people do not have health care providers, they can call the COVID-19 hotline or go to a CDPH sexual health clinic.

Dr. Anu Hazra, an infectious diseases specialist at UChicago Medicine who practices at Howard Brown Health, was at that clinic’s July 2 pop-up at the DuSable Museum for Chicago Black Pride, where hundreds of vaccines were administered.

He thinks that the public health response, from a local level to the CDC to the World Health Organization, “has been really frustrating,” particularly with the latter declaring the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, and stressed the need for targeted messaging about monkeypox’s spread, specifically through sexual networks of gay and bisexual men.

“Monkeypox doesn’t really give a (expletive) if you’re gay or not, but it cares who you’re having sex with and who your close contacts are,” he said. “That just happens to be tighter sexual networks among gay and bisexual men who have sex with men, particularly those who may be traveling between countries.” (The outbreak first materialized in patients who had been to big gay parties in Berlin, Belgium and the Canary Islands.)

That monkeypox is spreading among gay men who travel a lot to big, expensive parties does not mean that it will not eventually spread to, say, low-income men who have sex with men on the South Side. There have been hundreds of Pride events nationwide since the outbreak began, during which the disease can spread between new people.

“When you think about sexual networks, you think about not only the people you have sex with, but the people they have sex with, because they confers your own risk,” Hazra said. “Let’s keep

HEALTH it to STIs, because that might be easier to understand: You may only have one partner, but if that partner has multiple partners, then your risk of an STI increases exponentially.”

Chicago’s sexual networks are typically ZIP code-based—people here have sex with people who live around them—so people who live in neighborhoods with high levels of sexually transmitted diseases tend to relate to a higher risk of contracting an STD, regardless of how many sexual partners a person has.

Both the North Side lakefront neighborhoods that are home to a disproportionate percentage of Chicago’s LGBTQ population and segregated, majority-Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides have the city’s highest rates of STDs. Hazra noted the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on communities of color versus richer, whiter communities in Chicago as well.

People with monkeypox are to stay at home until they have recovered, when the scabs fall off and a new layer of skin has grown underneath. This can take weeks, presenting a problem for a large number of people who cannot work from home.

The CDPH is working with other state and local health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to revise this guidance in light of the fact that it disproportionately affects certain people. No decisions have been made about policy changes, though, as new epidemiological information is arriving day by day.

“When you are talking about hundreds of individuals who have been diagnosed with an expectation that that will become more, for me, that kind of guidance unless you’ve got some kind of set-up to help take care of people is just not feasible,” Arwady said.

“We’re learning a lot about this and continue to be reassured that it is this close intimate contact that is of the greatest concern. We are careful. I always feel very strongly about staying aligned as much as possible across federal, state and local guidance, because I think it can be confusing to people, frankly, if there’s different pieces coming out. But we have been raising, as others have, the need to

HEALTH, LIT balance what is possible and practical with risk.”

While she said it is premature to say for sure, Arwady said federal guidance may allow people to end their isolation if their pox are covered and other necessary precautions are taken.

In any situation, many, many more people are going to contract monkeypox in the coming weeks.

“Our only ways of tamping down transmission are improving education at the individual level of how to protect yourself, improving testing access and improving vaccine access,” Hazra said.

"These are bread-and-butter ways to reduce transmission. And these are the same pains that we had during the COVID-19 pandemic that we are experiencing again right now.”

Right now, Hazra said there are other ways or smarter ways people can think about having sex, particularly if they fall in the monkeypox at-risk categories.

People should think about their partners and take a look at them, specifically inspecting their and one’s own genitals for lesions, bumps or abnormalities. Condom use is not a total fail-safe because they do not cover all parts of the skin where the pox can be, but they can be helpful.

Hazra said those who do not want to use condoms could reduce their risk of acquiring monkeypox by changing their sexual practices during this outbreak.

“It’s important to note that the lion’s share, over eighty percent if not ninety percent, of cases of monkeypox globally are in gay and bisexual men who have sex with men,” Hazra said. “And we can’t ignore that, that this is spreading primarily intimate close contact, and that this seems to be spreading through sexual networks amongst this population. I think we can talk about it without it being stigmatizing, but it’s ultimately important for a population that’s disproportionately infected by a disease to feel educated and empowered about a disease so that they can make informed choices about how they want to live their lives.” Aaron Gettinger is a staff writer at the Hyde Park Herald.

Doctor Conveys Health Inequities at South Side Hospital The Emergency chronicles an ER doctor’s experience on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic, while also treating the spate of gun violence victims on the South Side.

BY MAX BLAISDELL

T

he incessant wail of ambulances speeding down Cottage Grove Avenue on their way to University of Chicago Medical Center (UCM) gave me a second-hand sense of the enormous impact of COVID-19 on the South Side. And so, I was eager to read an account straight from the floor of the trauma center when I heard about The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER by Thomas Fisher, MD, MPH. Fisher is an emergency room physician at UCM who also served as a White House Fellow in the first term of the Obama administration and an insurance executive in Chicago. Growing up on the South Side, he attended Kenwood High School before going on to study at Dartmouth College and coming home for his medical training at University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. His book chronicles his experience serving on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic, while also treating the spate of gun violence victims rushed to his ER at the same time.

Practicing emergency medicine

during the pandemic feels, for Fisher, akin to Sisyphus’ ordeal: “Every day I push the boulder; every day it rolls back.”

In quick succession, Fisher faces a litany of illnesses and injuries in the ER— diabetes, chronic pain, burn trauma, gun-shot wounds, and head gashes— and very little time to address each, not to mention getting the time to uncover the stories of the patients. “But I want to know the twists in the path that led them here, sitting in front of me in an ER bay for three minutes. Without these details, by the end of a four-hour block, patients start to blend together in my mind,” Fisher writes.

To recapture the sense of each patient as an individual human being with a rich and complex life history, Fisher writes letters to them, included in alternating chapters of the book.

What, asks his correspondent, were the confluence of events that led you to my ER unit that fateful day?

The answer he partly supplies himself in detailed accounts of the systemic inequalities in the American healthcare system and the particular JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

HEALTH, LIT social circumstances of the South Side.

In one such passage, Fisher writes about the stark racial disparities in Chicago: “Opportunities and safeguards are concentrated on the North Side. As a result, Black people, who densely populate the South Side, are forced to endure a gauntlet of health risks: jobs that maim, food that sickens, air that chokes, and guns that kill. This would be a simple story of winners and losers, except there is no competition—not a fair one at least.”

Fisher explains that while this result is “consistent with the values of market capitalism…the losers pay with their lives.”

One of the health myths Fisher seeks to expose in his letters is the idea that health is solely a matter of personal responsibility and individual choice.

Instead, our health is mostly determined by our genes or social and economic factors like level of education, wealth, and neighborhood.

But, by detailing this in a letter to a twenty-five-year-old patient with kidney trouble and a recent gunshot injury, I couldn’t help asking if reading it would be any salve for his wounds both apparent and latent? Reading Fisher’s epistles, I found myself fretting over this and similar questions.

Is the form of letter writing, so ably used by James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates to name just two prominent examples, more than a sleight of hand for Fisher by which to convey the wealth of knowledge he’s absorbed over a long career? Did he even go to the post office to mail these voluminous letters? I’m skeptical. So while the intention of the letters appears to be a noble attempt to connect with his patients, it comes off as little more than a narrative device for what is an exhaustive and damning account of Chicago's healthcare system.

And data confirms that Chicago is a dispiriting outlier in terms of racial health disparities. According to an analysis by New York University’s Langone Medical Center, Chicago had the largest gap in terms of life expectancy across neighborhoods at thirty years among the 500 largest U.S. American cities. Whereas in Englewood, where ninety-five percent of the population is Black, the average life expectancy is only 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 14, 2022

sixty years old, in predominantly white Streeterville, residents live, on average, until they are a venerable ninety years old. Just for reference, the average life expectancy for residents of Englewood is lower than that of residents in wartorn countries like Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Although Fisher makes ample note of these facts, the biggest revelations contained in the letters are twofold. First is the story of how UCM’s management after the Financial Crisis proposed to close a significant number of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds reserved for trauma patients, many uninsured, poor, and Black South Siders, and reserve them for so-called ‘Patient of Distinction,’ meaning white well-to-dos with private insurance, some from the North Side but even catering to those from as far afield as Wisconsin and Indiana.

Fisher plays a leading role in putting the kibosh on this plan through some savvy politicking with his fellow staff. He sends an email to the other physicians, organizes his younger colleagues, and promises to resign from the Center if the plan goes through. This collectively raises enough stink that, Fisher says, the higher-ups killed a plan that would have effectively segregated the hospital while also driving up wait times for Black patients due to the scarcity of available beds.

Nonetheless, today, out of 811 available beds at UCM, at least 240 are private, but only 146 are for ICU patients.

And Fisher throughout the book decries the wait times his Black patients endure remain interminable and that even when they do get to see a doctor the quality of care is sometimes poor. So although he may have won the initial battle, the war is clearly far from over.

The second revelation I took from the book is that most nonprofit hospitals, despite the enormous tax breaks they get as a part of their status, typically invest less than two percent of their total revenues in providing community benefit or charity care. Digging into UCM’s 2021 financial statement reveals they provided about $31 million dollars of charity care out of total revenues exceeding $2.78 billion dollars. That’s a scant 1.1 percent.

This charity care is something UCM is legally obligated to do to keep their coveted nonprofit status. That title itself is something of a misnomer. “Revenue and gains in excess of expenses and losses” was over $500 million dollars in 2021, which translated from legalese into standard English means UCM raked in $500 million more dollars than they spent. Put differently, $500 million in profit for a nonprofit hospital. Where they pocket that money is beyond my forensic accounting skills, but I’m sure Fisher would have some good ideas for how to reinvest it into improving patient outcomes and ameliorating the stark racial health gap in Chicago.

Whereas the letters do enlighten and inspire moral indignation, chapters set in the ER bay, written in a straightfaced, clinical tone, sometimes provoke a gag reflex or a guffaw. “Despite her shoe and sock I can smell the odor of rotting meat coming from her foot. Diabetes is eating her alive. She could end up with an amputation. Evan takes furious notes. I determine what to order, file it away in my mind, and then we move on to the next.”

The next man up, “high as a kite” and dapperly dressed, charms the socks of the nurses, bringing levity to what has otherwise been a dour day of death and despair. Without venturing a guess, Fisher asks the man what he took?

“Since getting out the pen I get high on embalming fluid.”

“Do you drink it?”

“Nah, smoke.”

“How do you smoke a liquid?”

Clueless, a nurse fills Fisher in. Turns out embalming fluid is slang for PCP. Although Fisher doesn’t admit to any self-medicating of his own, many doctors turn to drugs and alcohol, just like their patients, to cope with the travails of their stressful and frenetic occupation.

The book closes, though, with a neartragic episode that strikes close to home.

Fisher’s own mother develops an acute illness that Fisher suspects is malignant cancer, and she seeks care at UCM. For hours doctors there fail to administer anything for her pain and are ultimately unable to send her home with a firm diagnosis as to her condition.

Fortunately, she turns out okay after getting treatment at her hospital, but Fisher is indignant and sends his superiors a sternly worded letter calling out the poor quality of care for even the mother of one of the hospital’s star physicians.

It is in a letter to his mother that Fisher issues this final plea for healthcare in the United States: “A humane and just system requires everyone to come together—all of us citizens—and demand moral transformation.” But while moral transformation is certainly a necessary condition for social change, the lack of significant legislation around gun reform in the aftermath of numerous mass shootings up until the one in Uvalde demonstrates that moral outrage is simply not enough. The perverse incentives of the privatized American healthcare system must be reconfigured by policy action too. And local entities like UCM can and should do more. Max Blaisdell is an educator and basketball coach based in Hyde Park. He is originally from New York City and later served in Peace Corps Morocco. He last wrote: Chicago’s Diaspora Communities Reflect on the Tigray War.

MUSIC

Our thoughts in exchange for yours.

T

he Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.

THIS WEEK'S PROMPT: “WHAT LOVING LESSONS HAS THE SOUTH SIDE TAUGHT YOU?” OR “WHO DID THE SOUTH SIDE MAKE YOU?” Submissions to this prompt will be featured in a special Literary Edition of the South Side Weekly and must be submitted by Friday, July 22nd, 2022

This could be a poem or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces.

Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com.

Concrete to Shoreline

selective amnesia

As a retired outside baby, I learned that scraped knees aren’t the worst wounds.

Now, my tucked lips hold back tidal waves, these days journal holds the rain that I cannot see or take shelter from. But when I’m trying to stay dry, it’s like mopping the ocean– I make sandcastles on these curbs. Something soft to play in, or get buried under.

Dye the white parts black, call it a candle light vigil, or revolutionary.

These waves make sharp glass and litter soft, and call it sand some day. This I know; what once could make me bleed will become smooth, if I make enough saltwater to cleanse the wound.

i remember it. fragments come to me in a nightmare. at 18 when she called. tears welled in her eyes as she tried to piece the night together on the bus at 21 when he placed himself between my thighs. in the middle of a lecture at 22 after his hands had the liberty of meeting every inch of me.

by chima

“naira”

ikoro

by anonymous

moments of glee that are tainted. mundane moments are tainted. i remember some of it maybe that’s godsent.

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You Make Hits Like A Girl Chicago artists talk about their journey, their craft, and what it’s like to be a woman navigating a male-centric music scene.

BY CHIMA IKORO

I

f the term “female rapper” is commonly used to describe women who create rap music, why aren’t men who rap referred to as “male rappers?”

The distinction suggests that rap, or hiphop music in general, was created for and by men. There’s no doubt that men who make rap or hip-hop adjacent music are the most celebrated faces of these genres.

But women have always been an integral part of hip-hop culture and music.

DJ Kool Herc is commonly considered one of the founding fathers of hip-hop, having created the recordmixing, beat-break style of DJing.

However, Herc and his techniques may not have reached such popularity had it not been for his sister, Cindy Campbell.

On August 11, 1973, Campbell threw a back-to-school party to raise money for new clothes with the main attraction being her then sixteen-year-old brother spinning all night. The party was a huge success, and Herc was catapulted to popularity all over the Bronx.

Campbell and her brother continued to throw parties and outdoor events as Herc became more and more famous.

Masters of Ceremonies, or MC’s, would shout out names or quick rhymes to entertain the crowds. The sounds of their voices married between beat-breaks and loops were the genesis of rap music.

Women were among the first rappers too. Not long after the birth of hip-hop, The Mercedes Ladies were founded, a group of women by the names of Sheri Sher, DJ RD Smiley, Tracy T, Eve-a-Def, Zena-Z, DJ La Spank, and DJ Baby D. “Forget what ya heard about rap being a man’s world,” Sheri Sher states in her book, Mercedes Ladies (2008) 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 14, 2022

“Women have been a part of hip-hop from the very beginning. And before all the others was us, The Mercedes Ladies, the first all-female DJ and MC crew.”

In her book, Sher details the trials, tribulations, and triumphs the group faced, including the struggle for respect from their peers. “The promoters would pay the L Brothers and Grandmaster flash, but when it was time to pay the Mercedes Ladies, we didn’t get paid.”

In the summer of 1979, Sylvia Robinson heard the underground sounds of hip-hop music at a club in Manhattan and grabbed hold of the genre, inviting it to the mainstream music industry. Earlier that year, Robinson and her husband founded the Sugar Hill Records label and were in search of artists to pioneer.

With the help of her son, producer Robison and Sugar Hill Records championed the label’s first song, “Rappers Delight” featuring Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright, Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson, and Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien, who became The Sugarhill Gang. “Rappers Delight” became the first rap song to sell over a million copies and the first rap single listed on the Top Forty of Billboard’s Hot 100.

Hip-hop and rap music were taking their first steps during such a fruitful time for many genres spearheaded by Black, Latinx and Caribbean folks in New York.

Meanwhile, DJ’s Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, childhood friends, were two prodigies taking over the Gallery, a disco club in Manhattan, in the late 1970’s.

When a group of promoters from Chicago recruited Knuckles to DJ at a new nightclub opening in West Loop called the Warehouse, it was a turning

point in Chicago music history. House music, forged from funk, disco and hiphop subculture with a largely gay, Black and Latinx crowd, spread across the City and beyond. While the earliest rappers and hip-hop artists were not from Chicago, the urban music scene in the City made itself known very quickly.

With house music fused with hiphop as a stepping stone, many artists emerged as Chicago’s first well known rappers. Among these talents was Da Brat, who grew up on the West and South Sides of the city. Funkdafied, her debut album, made her the first female rapper to achieve platinum status on a project, selling over one million copies. In 1997, Da Brat was featured on Missy Elliot's debut album, Supa Dupa Fly, which also went platinum and was subsequently nominated for a Grammy. Missy Elliot, another prominent woman in rap music and music in general, became the first female rapper to be nominated for the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.

Missy Elliot’s rise to fame in the 90’s ran parallel to several other great women.

MC Lyte became the first Grammy nominated woman in rap in 1994, and then the next year Queen Latifah and Salt-N-Pepa took home the first Grammy win for female rappers.

But the historical feats of these artists are not limited to “firsts'' as women. In 1999, Lauryn Hill became the first rap artist, regardless of gender, to ever win Album of The Year at the Grammys. Hill is considered one of the most influential rappers of all time; seated on the list of Most Grammys Won by rappers she ranks sixth with eight Grammys in total.

It’s clear that women have been at

every historical turning point in hiphop, rap, and all adjacent genres as they journeyed to the mainstream, yet many artists still find themselves counted out and outnumbered by men. Still, that hasn’t stopped women from continuing to make their mark in the music industry.

Among the endless list of talented women in Chicago are Jasmine Barber, Brittney Carter, Senite, and King Marie.

The Weekly sat down with these artists who are navigating this ever-evolving music scene to talk about their journeys, wins, and grievances, and how their identities shape their worlds and how the world sees them.

Meet Brittney Carter, Jasmine Barber, Senite, and King Marie “I think one of the things that gets under my skin though, being a woman and doing what I do, it’s probably the lack of people not understanding that I’m a layered human,” said Brittney Carter.

Brittney is a rapper from the South Side who entered the city’s music scene in 2015 when she started frequenting workshops and open mics. She started creating music more seriously around 2018.

Among her inspirations are 2Pac, Nas, Brandy, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, J.Cole, Lil Wayne, and, of course, Ms. Lauryn Hill. “Oh, man, she was like the standard,” Brittney said.

“I remember when I was going to the open mics, I wasn’t going to perform.

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I was honestly going to listen,” Brittney recalled. She remembers meeting a lot of women who were artists at various open mics, even if they didn’t perform. “I didn’t see too many women performing there.”

“I’ve definitely felt like it’s way easier for men to support men than it is for men to support women,” said Senite, who makes neo-soul, R&B, lo-fi, and alternative hip-hop music. Although she’s from the North Side, where she started and cultivated her talents, she’s found community in the South Side in recent years as well.

Earlier this month, Senite curated “All About Love,” an event centered around women and marginalized gender identities which took place at the new FOURTUNEHOUSE Art Center in Bronzeville. The idea for the event stemmed from the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the realization that there is a lack of spaces where women and non-men could connect with each other and express themselves in a comfortable environment.

Both Brittney and Senite have found themselves wondering or searching for ways to connect with more women who make music, which they coincidentally had a conversation about recently, prior to knowing they were both a part of this story for the Weekly.

“I had a conversation with Brittney Carter,” Senite began, “I was telling her that there’s not a lot of women that I know in this shit and it really sucks.”

“I don’t know too many women in the scene who rap in Chicago. I have no idea,” Brittney said. “I know they’re out here. But as far as like, having a relationship with or like where they are?

I have no idea.”

She feels that the disconnect stems from some artists not being given the platform they deserve. “As a female artist, it’s really difficult to have a full non-male band—I couldn’t even tell you a long list of people that are not men that are able to be in a band with me, or in general,” Senite said. “I’m purposely making connections that are not men because of it, but it shouldn’t be like that. I shouldn’t

BRITTNEY CARTER, ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO

be trying my hardest to find who’s in this bitch.”

A common space for musicians to gather and commune are recording studios. Artists may invite friends or other musical peers to sit in on their studio sessions as they lay down tracks and create songs. “Usually when I pop out to sessions, it’s mainly to honestly just kick it sometimes. I’m there to learn something, and watching other artists in the studio is very interesting,” Brittney said.

The studio environment can be fun and inspiring for most, but women can easily face obstacles or feelings of discomfort being outnumbered in these spaces. “I was actually recording at the studio. And for some reason, there were a lot of different men just invited to the studio. I don’t know really what they were there for. But it made me uncomfortable.

Like, they weren’t recording, they weren’t doing anything. They were just there

smoking,” Brittney said.

While she normally has a good experience at the studio, citing that her favorite sessions are those where R&B artists are present, sometimes she just wants to lay her track down and leave.

Senite’s sentiments for male dominated studio spaces and shows have at times caused concerns surrounding her safety. If she’s invited to perform at a show and notices she’s one of few, if not the only, woman on the bill alongside men she’s unfamiliar with, it makes her anxious. “I’ll be the only woman in this greenroom and, on some real shit, I’m like

terrified,” she said, “I definitely learned I don’t always have to say yes.”

“I’m always scared at the back of my mind. Like if somebody wanted to, in this soundproof studio they could do whatever they wanted to me and I have no way to defend myself,” Senite said as she describes how she thinks of what she knows is the worst case scenario, but still possible. “If I don’t trust you and I feel like you’ve proven to me that you’re not someone I can trust or be comfortable around, there is no room for me to see if that’s true or not.”

On the other hand, she has also made close friends with guys that she’s met in artist spaces as well whom she refers to as her “brothers.”

“I feel definitely supported by, you know, a portion of people in this shit with me. And I found those people so I feel really great and solid in that I’m comfortable. But it’s definitely not an easy thing to navigate,” she said.

Jasmine Barber, also known as J Bambii, makes it a point to practice gratitude for the good in tandem with recognizing the bad. “I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of support as a music artist.

I’ve had a lot of support, especially in other places. Also, my support has been very…my supporters are really honest—I feel like real niggas listen to my music,” Jasmine said.

Having grown up on the South Side, her parents and siblings all had some type of creative inclination, whether it was a love for music or the creation of art.

When she was a freshman in high school, one of her teachers introduced her to a poem on Def Jam Poetry, a series that centered the Black experiences and urban culture as artists expressed themselves through spoken word.

“I got homegirls, including myself, that are rapping circles around these niggas.”

–Jasmine Barber, or J Bambii JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

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does not mean that the show you threw that didn’t sell out or only sold half the tickets was not a good show,” she said.

“If I could go back and tell my younger self anything, I would definitely be like, ’I belong here,’” Brittney said as she recalled feelings of insecurity that stemmed from comparisons in her creative journey as well. “I think for a long time I just felt like because I hadn’t went through all of the stuff that everybody else went through, that it somehow invalidated what I was doing. I was definitely really hard on myself and really critical in the beginning.”

“Just go where the love is until the people that didn’t support see it happening,” King Marie advised her younger self, “because a lot of the times people don’t support because they don’t understand and they don’t know how.”

“I think that a lot of times people just need perspective,” Jasmine said. However,

she also acknowledges that she’s not immune to feeling disturbed by the way inequalities fueled by gender and race put the work of others on a pedestal.

“I’ve been fucking enraged by not having no support and watching niggas support weak ass shit, or support nonblack people doing the same exact thing, or supporting men who are weak as fuck, and I got homegirls, including myself, that are rapping circles around these niggas.”

W

hen I first started DJing there was really only two big women DJs in Chicago, and they were both white,” said King Marie, whose connection to music is influenced by her own Filipina culture and roots.

Still, she relinquishes no power to the idea of a “male-dominated industry,” stating that “it only exists if we allow it to be that.”

JASMINE BARBER, ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO

“I just remember being like, ‘I’m so moved. This nigga makes me want to write about my feelings, too, my sadness, my anger,’ you know? And I didn’t know you could do it like this. I didn’t know you could yell. I didn’t know you could talk like this,” she said.

Poetry was also an integral building block for King Marie, a musical artist, singer, songwriter, rapper, and DJ. Similarly to Jasmine, she comes from a creative and musical family; her mother is a singer, and both of her brothers are DJs. “Writing and then putting melody to the poems, that was like my early

stage of songwriting,” King Marie said.

“Singing, songwriting, has always been me; I wanted to be just like my mom, and I’m like, oh, you know, the boys in my family, they DJ, that’s cool,” she said, expressing that she wasn’t initially the most interested in DJing.

J

asmine has learned to divorce measuring her craft with the same merit-based metric that school systems use to grade assignments. “Just because Cardi B is charting the Top 100 does not mean she’s a better rapper than me. Just because a nigga sold out a show,

“Stop making music to prove somebody wrong or prove something to somebody else. Make music for you.”

–Jasmine Barber, or J Bambii

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SENITE, ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO

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“I’ve definitely felt like it’s way easier for men to support men than it is for men to support women.”

–Senite Cognizant of clubs and promoters who still fail to hire anything but male DJs, and grateful for her brothers and mentor who were also men, her focus is on how beautifully diverse their communities have become. “I love the fact that it was like, okay, well, there’s no space for us, we’re gonna do it ourselves.”

After moving to New York when she graduated college, she discovered how much work achieving her dreams would take. “’Damn, I should have started DJing,’” she recalled telling herself, “that’s the guaranteed ’I’m gonna get a bag at the end of the night.’”

King Marie learned the basics of DJing from her brothers initially, but when she started taking the craft more seriously she realized that it was a way for her to still feel connected to music as well as her journey took twists and turns. While many people might only speak of their wins, she covets the lessons she’s learned along the way. “I feel like the hardest parts of the journey need to be glorified as well, because it wasn’t overnight,” she said.

For Senite, some of these lessons include discerning what opportunities are beneficial, and which ones to decline.

Having grown up in an immigrant household as well, she innately has a mindset that assumes “every opportunity that comes my way is like a God-given one,” she said. “I learned that sometimes being in those [unsafe] spaces is like a lesson learned on navigating; how to move, how to act, who to be with, who to be around, how to feel safe. It sucks to say that I was in spaces where I was terrified, but I know now how I could possibly give guidance to other people that have a possibility or likelihood to be in that same space at some point.”

F

eatured in her upcoming show, King Marie boasts a lineup featuring only women and nonbinary artists.

“It’s time, you know what I mean? Like we’ve been in the shadows long enough,” she said. “There are supportive men also, so I don’t want to discredit and group them all [together], but it’s been a really beautiful thing.”

Although she’s found community with women who DJ, work in fashion, and create visual art, it’s less frequent that she meets musicians and rappers that are women as well. “I would love to collaborate with more women when it comes to creating music. I just don’t think I’ve ever found a full space to where it’s only been women.”

“I started doing shit for me and the people who actually want to be there,” Jasmine said. “Sometimes we just gotta stop putting value in who or what is or is not listening to our music and really value who is.”

“Men support me a lot, girls do too, but there’s a lot of men that hold space.

And I just think that what’s part of being a Black woman rapper is, you gotta make these niggas support you!” she said. “You gotta be willing to say the things that might get you put out, that might get you banned, that might get you censored.”

“Now that we’re full circle, now I’m DJing and breaking my own records, because I can do that, you know what I mean?” King Marie said as her hard work has begun to pay off, “Or I’m singing and performing behind the DJ booth because I could do that. So it’s like, I’m doing all of the things that I love. And now it’s not one or the other.”

Jasmine also spoke about the importance of focusing on those who

KING MARIE, ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO

connect with her music in a metaphysical way, regardless of relatability to the content. She feels that a good audience can vibe with music even if they don’t completely understand the experiences in the message being shared. “I have a song called The Undesirables, and it’s about being bigger and dark skin, and how that truly kept me, “supposedly”—in quotes— kept me, from things, you know? I feel like my music career has been based on raw real talent and character.”

All of the women relate so much of their growth to regaining sight of, and staying true to, themselves despite the expectations of their surroundings. “To be able to share what I love to do with the people that I love has been a full life, you know, and I’m very grateful,” said King Marie. “God made music and music saved me, and we’re here.”

“There’s definitely been a number of people that had been trying to tell me

what to wear, telling me what to post, telling me what music to make, telling me how to act, telling me how to talk,” Senite recalled, “and I almost never said ’no’ out of fear.”

“I feel like I’m just more confident in my ability and what I’m doing so it’s like, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do,” Brittney said, laughing.

“I think it’s important that niggas know that my music is me,” Jasmine said as she concluded. “Stop making music to prove somebody wrong or prove something to somebody else. Make music for you.” Chima Ikoro is the community organizing editor for the Weekly. She last wrote about Kina Collins running for Congress in Illinois’ 7th Congressional District.

JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

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House Picnic 30th Anniversary

BY EMANUEL LOVE AND JACQUELINE SERRATO

E

voking an old-school but timeless energy, the pioneers of Chicago House music threw down once again on the 30th anniversary of their namesake event, The Chosen Few Picnic and Festival.

In spite of the construction for the Obama Presidential Center taking up space around Jackson Park, tens of thousands of people navigated traffic on July 2 to attend the return of the festival post-COVID-19.

The annual picnic dates back to 1990 when it was a free gathering behind the Museum of Science and Industry. But the legacy of the founding collective of DJs—including Wayne Williams, Jesse Saunders, Tony Hatchett, Andrew Hatchett and Alan King—harkens back to the 80s, when Chicago-style House was born in underground clubs and party spaces largely in the Black Belt and east of the I-90.

House was developed by young DJs, producers, promoters, and LGBTQ and Black and brown partygoers. As the Weekly wrote in 2017, “Disco had ruled the underground for nearly a decade, hip-hop was in its infancy in New York, punk and New Wave were spreading in popularity, and DJs like the Chosen Few couldn’t resist the thrill of mixing them all together in seamless, genre-hopping sets.”

In recent months, Drake and Beyoncé have incorporated House beats into current hits (“Falling Back” and “Break My Soul”), marking the resurgence of House music in the 21st century and ultimately its transition to the mainstream. In the age of social media, it also means Chicago is getting due credit.

This year, guest performers included Osunlade, DJ Spen, Teddy Douglas, Natasha Diggs, J Star, D Train and Dajae. Emanuel Love is a self-taught photographer from South Shore who has attended the House picnic “since the beginning” and started photographing it in 2012. He likes to capture the essence and vibe of the people, especially the candid moments, as shown here. Follow him on IG @emanuellove2

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Torture Trail Between Chicago and Guantanamo An exhibition at DePaul Art Museum explores the connection between torture and war in Chicago and Guantanamo Bay.

BY NADIA HERNANDEZ AND EMILY SOTO

T

he exhibition, “Remaking The Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantanamo,” connects local Chicago police violence to human rights violence in Guantanamo Bay prison. Several Chicago Police commanders took their torture tactics from Chicago to Guantanamo.

Guest co-curators from the “Tea Project” wanted the exhibition to connect war to individuals’ lives. The Tea Project is named after “when someone sits, sips, and reflects over a cup of tea there is space to ask questions about one’s relationship to the world,” according to the website.

Guantanamo Bay is a military detention camp in Cuba.

While Guantanamo Bay imprisons people from all around the world as part of the U.S. military's international regime, the Chicago Police Department has a similar history of enacting state violence and brutality at home.

“The Tea Project [is] about our ongoing relationship to being at war,” said co-curator Amber Ginsburg, who is from Hyde Park. “For most Americans, [it] seems rather far away, but for those of us who live in Chicago, it’s actually quite close.”

“This transitions to Chicago because it turns out that Richard Zuley, who was a Chicago police commander, was taken to Guantanamo to train in what is termed enhanced interrogation,” Ginsburg said.

“In other words, torture.”

Zuley was a CPD commander from

1977 to 2007 who trained Guantamano officers on his Chicago torture methods in 2003. He was in charge of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s interrogation in Guantanamo, the Guardian reported.

Zuley’s torture methods between Chicago and Guantanamo involved shackling suspects to police-precinct walls, accusations involving planted evidence and threats of harm to family members.

Slahi’s interrogation involved “multiple death threats, extreme temperatures and sleep deprivation,” according to reports.

CPD’s Commander Jon Burge tortured over 120 innocent people into false confessions under CPD command from 1970-1992. A majority of the victims were Black men. In 2016, twenty of Burge’s torture victims were released from prison.

In the exhibition, there are several dedications to Burge’s survivors. Quilting artist Dorothy Burge (no relation) made quilts depicting all the survivors who are still incarcerated. There is also a wall dedicated to naming all of Burge’s victims in the effort to combat who gets named in history, according to Ginsburg.

“The connection [is the] officer’s history of violence here in the city and forced confessions and the way he brought that to Guantanamo, and then how that was brought to Abu Ghraib by General Miller,” said co-curator Aaron Hughes, who is from Edgewater. “We were able to kind of trace these things out through these firsthand accounts to reveal more and more.”

PHOTO BY EMILY SOTO

Ginsburg and Hughes started the “Tea Project” in 2009. It is an antiwar movement that slowly turned into an abolition movement focusing on transformative justice, according to Ginsburg. Over the decade, they have researched and connected with Chicago and Guantanamo torture survivors.

“It’s always a digging, uncovering, exposing and revealing process,” Hughes said. “Coming out of my experience in Iraq, I was very motivated to end the war

in Iraq and very critical of the global war on terror and our U.S. foreign policy in general.”

There are ongoing efforts from activists to advocate for Chicago torture survivors. Chicago awarded Burge survivors $5.5 million in reparations in 2015 and a public memorial for the survivors is underway.

Ginsburg and Hughes also share a reparations bill for Guantanamo survivors on the Tea Project website. The JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

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bill includes the US government formally acknowledging its role in “systemically engaging” in physical and psychological torture and would close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, believes the exhibition can be the initial steps towards learning about local human rights violations. “[Remaking the Exceptional] provides an entry point into understanding what the actual magnitude is of state violence on society as a whole domestically, and then connecting it to the way that the U.S. military enacts state violence internationally is really, really important,” Pulley said.

Laura-Caroline De Lara, director of DePaul’s Art Museum, said that there’s been lots of interest from the public. “It is just really introducing new generations of students and community members and art museum visitors to the history and information itself but [also] considering what a museum’s role is and helping to tell those kinds of stories and really wanting to make sure that we can be a place that doesn’t shy away from having difficult discussions,” De Lara said.

Although the topics are difficult, confronting history is necessary, according to Pulley. “In the process of naming and acknowledging the impact of that harm, we’re then better able as a society to respond to whether or not that harm is acceptable to us as a people,” she said.

Using art to teach about torture and reparations is unique but can also humanize the topics to those unfamiliar with them.

“Art continues to be such a powerful tool of conveying information and allowing people to see and experience some really complicated, traumatic and hard topics in a way that may be more palatable than other mechanisms of conveying information,” Pulley said.

Along with the exhibition, Ginsburg and Hughes have a book releasing July 14 and a podcast.

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PHOTO BY EMILY SOTO

“It helps us see the deep humanity, which is hopefully motivating for real political change, to actually go into the world and make demands,” Ginsburg said. “There’s many beautiful ways of articulating those demands across many different media.”

Attendees have the opportunity as they exit the exhibition to reflect about what they have learned and what they want to do next. “People write directly onto our gallery walls their responses to these questions, to give folks that moment, as they’re getting ready to leave the show to put their responses directly on the wall,” De Lara said.

Pulley encourages attendees to visit the Chicago Torture Justice Center

and help fund mutual aid requests for survivors. There are also opportunities to sit in on court cases for survivors.

“We have so many examples of areas in in the city and also in this country where harm is being perpetuated and harm is being created,” she said. “What the exhibition asks is for us to become involved and the question is, how will you become involved?”

In a society undergoing a global pandemic and gun violence, there are chances for opposition.

“We are all living in a time of profound trauma, personal trauma, community trauma, existential trauma, and individuals that have been in some of the most painful and violent and

brutal places, and experienced, things that are unimaginable have found ways to transform that violence into meaning into beauty, into resistance,” Hughes said.

The exhibition runs through August 7 at the DePaul Art Museum at 935 W. Fullerton with free admission. Nadia Hernandez and Emily Soto are studying journalism at DePaul University.

Nadia is a managing editor at The DePaulia and the president of NAHJ DePaul. Emily is the photo editor at The DePaulia.

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El vínculo de tortura entre Chicago y Guantánamo Una exposición en el Museo de Arte de DePaul explora la conexión entre la tortura y la guerra en Chicago y la Bahía de Guantánamo.

POR NADIA HERNÁNDEZ Y EMILY SOTO. TRADUCIDO POR ALMA CAMPOS

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a exposición de arte, “Remaking The Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantanamo”, conecta la violencia policial local de Chicago con la violencia de los derechos humanos en la prisión de Guantánamo. Varios jefes de la Policía de Chicago llevaron sus tácticas de tortura allá.

Los curadores de arte quieren que la exposición universitaria sirva para hacer una conexión entre lo que es la guerra y nuestra relación con ella. El “Proyecto Té”, como le dicen en inglés, debe su nombre al concepto de tomarse un té, “cuando alguien se sienta, toma y reflexiona con una taza de té y hay ese espacio para hacer preguntas sobre nuestra relación con el mundo”.

La Bahía de Guantánamo es un campo de detención militar en Cuba. Mientras que en la prisión de Guantánamo encarcela a personas de todo el mundo como parte del régimen internacional del ejército estadounidense, el Departamento de Policía de Chicago tiene un historial similar de ejercer la violencia y la brutalidad del estado en casa.

“El Proyecto Té [se trata] de nuestra relación permanente con la guerra”, dijo la co-curadora Amber Ginsburg, residente de Hyde Park. “Para la mayoría de los estadounidenses, [parece] bastante lejano, pero para los que vivimos en Chicago, en realidad está bastante cerca”.

“Esto aplica a Chicago porque

resulta que Richard Zuley, quien era un comandante de la Policía de Chicago, fue llevado a Guantánamo para entrenar en lo que se denomina una interrogación mejorada” dijo Ginsburg. “En otras palabras: tortura”.

Zuley fue comandante de la policía de Chicago entre 1977 y 2007 y en 2003 entrenó a los agentes de Guantánamo en sus métodos de tortura provenientes de Chicago. Estuvo a cargo del interrogatorio de Mohamedou Ould Slahi en Guantánamo, reportó el diario The Guardian.

Los métodos de tortura de Zuley entre Chicago y Guantánamo incluían el uso de cadenas para atar a los sospechosos a las paredes de la comisaría, acusaciones con pruebas falsas y amenazas de daño a los miembros de las familias de las víctimas. El interrogatorio de Slahi incluyó “múltiples amenazas de muerte, temperaturas extremas y privación del sueño”, según reportes.

El comandante Jon Burge del Departamento de Policía de Chicago (CPD, por sus siglas en inglés) torturó a más de 120 personas inocentes para que hicieran confesiones falsas bajo el mando de CPD entre 1970 y 1992. La mayoría de las víctimas eran hombres negros. En 2016, veinte de las víctimas de tortura de Burge fueron liberadas de prisión.

En la exposición hay varias dedicatorias a los sobrevivientes de Burge. La artista de costura, Dorothy Burge (ninguna relación), hizo colchas

PHOTO BY EMILY SOTO

que representan a todos los supervivientes que aún están encarcelados. También hay un muro dedicado a nombrar a todas las víctimas de Burge en un esfuerzo por combatir a quiénes típicamente son incluidos en la historia, según Ginsburg.

“La conexión [es] la historia de violencia del oficial aquí en la ciudad y las confesiones forzadas y la forma que llevó eso a Guantánamo, y luego cómo eso fue transmitido a Abu Ghraib por el General Miller”, dijo el co-curador Aaron Hughes.

“Fuimos capaces de rastrear estas cosas a través de estos relatos de primera mano para revelar más y más”.

Ginsburg y Hughes iniciaron el “Proyecto Té” en 2009. Se trata de un movimiento contra la guerra que poco a poco se convirtió en un movimiento abolicionista centrado en la justicia transformativa, según Ginsburg. A lo largo de la década, han investigado y se han puesto en contacto con sobrevivientes de la tortura en Chicago y Guantánamo.

“Siempre es un proceso de investigación, descubrimiento, exposición y revelación”, dijo Hughes. “Al salir de mi experiencia en Irak, me sentí muy motivado a poner fin a la guerra en Irak y me mostré muy crítico de la guerra global JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

LAS ARTES contra el terrorismo y de nuestra política exterior estadounidense en general”.

Los activistas están realizando esfuerzos para defender a los sobrevivientes de la tortura de Chicago.

Chicago otorgó a los supervivientes de Burge $5.5 millones en reparaciones en 2015 y un monumento público para los sobrevivientes está en proceso.

Ginsburg y Hughes también comparten un proyecto de ley de reparaciones para los sobrevivientes de Guantánamo en el sitio web del “Proyecto Té.” La propuesta incluye el reconocimiento formal por parte del gobierno estadounidense de su papel en la “participación sistemática” en la tortura física y psicológica y cerrar la prisión de Guantánamo.

Aislinn Pulley, codirectora ejecutiva de Chicago Torture Justice Center, cree que la exposición puede ser el paso inicial para conocer las violaciones locales de los derechos humanos. “[Remaking the Exceptional] proporciona un punto de entrada para comprender cuál es la magnitud real de la violencia del estado sobre la sociedad nacional, y luego conectarla con la forma que el ejército estadounidense ejerce la violencia estatal a nivel internacional es muy, muy importante”, dijo Pulley.

Laura-Caroline De Lara, directora del Museo de Arte de DePaul, dijo que ha habido mucho interés por parte del público. “Se trata de introducir a las nuevas generaciones de estudiantes y miembros de la comunidad y visitantes del museo de arte a la historia y a la información en sí, pero [también] de considerar cuál es el rol de un museo para ayudar a contar ese tipo de historias y de querer realmente asegurarnos de que podemos ser un lugar que no evita tener conversaciones difíciles”, dijo De Lara.

Aunque los temas son difíciles, enfrentar la historia es necesario, según Pulley. “En el proceso de nombrar y reconocer el impacto de ese daño, estamos mejor capacitados como sociedad para determinar si ese daño es o no aceptable para nosotros como pueblo”, dijo.

Utilizar el arte para enseñar sobre la tortura y las reparaciones es algo único, pero también permite humanizar estos temas para quienes no están 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 14, 2022

familiarizados con ellos. “El arte sigue siendo una herramienta muy poderosa para transmitir información y permitir que la gente vea y trate algunos temas realmente complicados, traumáticos y duros de una manera que puede ser más aceptable que otros medios de información", dijo Pulley.

Además de la exposición, Ginsburg y Hughes publicarán un libro el 14 de julio y la emisión de un podcast. "Nos ayuda a ver la profunda humanidad del tema, que se espera que impulse un cambio político, para salir al mundo y hacer demandas”, dijo Ginsburg. “Hay muchas formas hermosas de articular esas demandas a través de muchos medios diferentes”.

Los visitantes tienen la oportunidad, al salir de la exposición, de reflexionar sobre lo que han aprendido y lo que quieren hacer al respecto. “La gente escribe directamente en las paredes de nuestra galería sus respuestas a estas preguntas, para brindar a la gente esa oportunidad, cuando se preparan para salir de la exposición, de dejar sus respuestas directamente en la pared”, dijo De Lara.

Pulley anima a los visitantes a ir al Chicago Torture Justice Center y donar a las solicitudes de ayuda mutua para los sobrevivientes. También hay oportunidades para asistir a los casos judiciales de los sobrevivientes.

“Tenemos tantos ejemplos de áreas en la ciudad y también en este país donde se está cometiendo daño y se está generando daño”, dijo. “Lo que pide la exposición es que nos involucremos y la pregunta es: ¿qué vas a hacer?”.

En una sociedad que sufre una pandemia mundial y la violencia armada, hay oportunidades para oponerse.

“Todos vivimos en una época de profundos traumas, traumas personales, traumas colectivos, traumas existenciales, e individuos que han estado en algunos de los lugares más dolorosos y violentos y brutales, y han experimentado cosas inimaginables, han encontrado formas de darle sentido a esa violencia y transformarla en belleza, en resistencia”, dijo Hughes.

La exposición estará hasta el 7 de agosto en el Museo de Arte DePaul, en el 935 W. Fullerton, con entrada gratis. ¬

Public Meetings Report A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.

BY DOCUMENTERS AND SCOTT PEMBERTON

June 21

During its meeting, the City Council Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards passed a proposed heating and cooling ordinance introduced after three residents died from heat exhaustion in the James Sneider Apartments in May. The ordinance would require apartment buildings with more than one hundred units and senior living buildings for those fifty-five and older to establish “cooling centers,” usually a common room or lounge, when the heat index is above eighty degrees.

Various issues were debated, largely pitting the difficulties in efficiently switching buildings from heating to cooling against the need to prevent resident health issues and deaths, before the measure was approved for the full Council. Also, twenty-five rezoning requests were rapidly approved.

The City Council Committee on Committees and Rules approved the single agenda item at its meeting, recommending Monique Scott to fill the 24th Ward aldermanic vacancy left by her brother Michael Scott Jr., who resigned as alderman to accept a job with Cinespace Chicago Film Studios. Eighteen other ward residents applied for the position and were considered by a four-member selection committee that included ward residents. Monique Scott has served as a park supervisor for the Chicago Park District.

June 22

During its fifth meeting since its creation in February by the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the Alternative Health and Intervention and Response Task Force—established to develop a pilot mobile mental health response service—heard a presentation about the Cook County Sheriff ’s Office treatment response team (TRT).

The TRT was created in 2019 to provide additional support for drug overdose-related 911 calls. During the pandemic, the program has relied on virtual mental health visits via computer tablets. TRT officers field 911 overdose calls and determine whether a virtual mental health visit is required. Also discussed at the meeting was the task force’s work on a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the current suburban Cook County crisis intervention landscape. The task force’s report is due August 1.

Amid a recent spate of traffic-related deaths, the City Council considered at its meeting—and then deferred and published—a proposed ordinance related to speed cameras. The ordinance would raise the threshold for ticketing by the cameras to ten miles per hour over the speed limit from six, with proponents highlighting that the cameras disproportionately ticket Black and Latinx drivers. Others pointed out that June alone saw three children killed by drivers, one each in Uptown, Lincoln Square,

DEVELOPMENT

and, most recently, near Douglass Park. The Council heard from public commenters about several other issues, including calls to raise taxes to care for the homeless; to preserve several historic Chicago buildings, including Pilsen’s St. Adalbert Catholic Church and St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church at 83rd and South Shore Drive; and to replace Chicago’s residential combination sewer system that mixes rainwater and wastewater.

June 24

At its meeting, the Cook County Land Bank Authority (CCLBA) Board of Directors approved the contingent transfer of land to 548 Development for a mixeduse project in the South Chicago neighborhood as part of the Invest South/West initiative. The Board voted to increase the unilateral decision-making power of the CCLBA’s executive director, Eleanor Gorski, to approve transfers of property up to $100,000 in value. This move is designed to expedite property transfers and reduce the number of required meetings. The land bank plans to hire a real estate attorney to work with municipalities. The Board also heard an update on environmental issues in connection with installation of solar panels at a former petcoke facility on the Southeast Side. Before work can proceed, the Illinois EPA is requiring additional testing to clear up several issues. Federal Superfund money is apparently available for remediation, and the site could be cleaned up within four years.

A special City Council Joint Committee meeting called for by thirty alderpersons focused on the city’s crime and how it’s being approached as a “public health crisis” by the Mayor’s office, especially gun violence. Some Council members contend that the Council has not been included in the decision making. Over three hours, the Council members heard from and interacted with an array of top appointees, including Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, Chicago Park District Superintendent Rosa Escareño, Office of Emergency Management and Communication Executive Director Rich Guidice, and Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health Allison Arwady.

The meeting was framed by Mayor Lightfoot’s “whole-of-government” program of applying lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to the City’s “public health crisis” of gun violence. Concerns revolved around safety in several arenas: short staffing in the police department, unruly groups of youths, and shootings, including a recent one on North Avenue Beach.

June 27

The City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations learned at its meeting that an updated COVID-19 vaccine may be available this fall. The number of new cases in the city has increased, though the City doesn’t plan to impose new requirements or mandates unless hospital services are threatened. The Chicago Department of Public Health has several pilot programs based on community health, both in the mental health space for responding to crises and in communities through the Healthy Chicago Equity Zones program. The initiative, explains the City’s website, “deploys hyper-local strategies to confront the social and environmental factors that contribute to health and racial inequity—with the ultimate goal of closing Chicago’s racial life expectancy gap.”

June 30

At its meeting, the Cook County Forest Preserves District Equity, Cultural Sensitivity, and Inclusion Task Force demonstrated that it’s struggling with the process of determining whether the names of historical figures, including organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic, would be appropriate for naming Forest Preserve facilities. Seventeen individuals and organizations were reviewed by four teams and received numerical ratings based on their advancement of equity. Task force members debated the validity of the ratings, however. A challenging factor, for example, was how to compare standards of behavior and equity in different time periods. The task force has received an extension to complete its work from the County Board, which would make the final determination of naming facilities. Public hearings are being considered, as is increasing social media exposure about the task force’s work.

JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

ILLUSTRATION BY THUMY PHAN

BULLETIN Queer Yarning Bridgeport

Richard Daley Chicago Public Library, 3400 S. Halsted St. Saturday, July 16, 2pm.

Free. bit.ly/3RvJ1Vp The Queer Yarning and Craft Club is a crafting group started by queer crocheters and knitters. All artists and crafters are welcome. They meet weekly at the Bridgeport branch of the Chicago Public Library. (Kate Gallagher)

City Bike Giveaway

Across the city. Monday, July 18–August 4.

Paper or online application required. chicago. gov/bikechicago The city's Department of Transportation is giving away 500+ bikes this summer, in the first of a multi-year effort to distribute a total of 5,000 bikes. The giveaway for eligible residents 14 and older includes helmets, locks and lights. Depending on demand, the City may implement a lottery for the subsequent years of the program. For now, an online and paper application will open on July 18. Check out chicago.gov/bikechicago for income and other eligibility requirements. ( Jackie Serrato)

Together We Heal Creative Place Program Grants

Deadline is Wednesday, July 20, 5pm. bit. ly/3RsAUsH The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and the Office of Equity & Racial Justice are looking to fund artists and community organizations who will "create projects that activate 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 14, 2022

public spaces; promote health and safety; encourage movement, dialogue, and connection; beautify communities; and celebrate local culture." The program is meant to address "the public health and negative economic harms created by the COVID-19 pandemic." Grants can be between $25,000 and $500,000. Deadline to apply is Wednesday, July 20 at 5pm Central. Check out the link for more information. ( Jocelyn Vega)

‘Never Normal Again’ Release Party Citlalin Gallery, 2005 S. Blue Island Ave. Wednesday, July 20, 6-11pm. Free.

An anthology by The Hoodoisie collective titled “Never Normal Again” features thinkpieces from Chicago activists, culture makers, and scholars examining radical possibility after the pandemic.

Attend the release party and meet the contributors, hosted by Ricardo Gamboa and Charles Alexander Preston, with sounds by Sadie Woods. ( Jackie Serrato)

Resisting Surveillance & Winning

Thursday, July 21, 6-8pm. Free, registration required. bit.ly/PH-AAAN Watch two of the Arab American Action Network's youth organizers, Nadiah Alyafai and Reema Rustom, talk about the AAAN's new, groundbreaking report (aaan.org/cerp-report) on racial profiling by law enforcement, organized by PeoplesHub, an online movement school.

Learn and ask questions about how Arab youth, and immigrant and refugee women, are resisting and organizing to end surveillance programs in Illinois!

(Hatem Abudayyeh, Arab American

Action Network (AAAN))

Big Marsh Madness Race Training Series

Big Marsh Park, 11559 S. Stony Island Ave. Wednesday, July 27, 5:45pm. $0-15. instagram.com/bigmarshchicago/ Friends of Big Marsh's new Wednesday night series will help bikers of all ages and experience levels learn and train how to race mountain bikes. Helmets are required and those 17 and under must have a parent/guardian signed event waiver. There are sections for different ages and experience levels, starting at 5:45pm for those who are just learning to race. 6:15 is for Juniors (15-18) and Youth (9-14), 6:40 is for beginners, 7:10 for intermediate, and 7:45 for experts. Expert and intermediate costs $15, everyone else can attend for free. Next dates are June 1, June 15, June 29, July 13, and July 27. Races will take place after training.

(Adam Przybyl)

Fiesta del Sol 50th Anniversary

1000-1600 W. Cermak Rd. Thursday, July 28–Sunday, July 31. Free. fiestadelsol.org Dubbed “the largest Latino festival of its kind in the country,” this will be the 50th anniversary of Fiesta del Sol, taking place from July 28 to 31. It will take up several blocks along Cermak Road and feature music, carnival rides, dancing, and more. There will also be a lot of food, everything from tacos and pambazos to enchiladas and elotes. Those who want access to unlimited carnival rides can buy a megapass ahead of the festival for $60.

(Adam Przybyl)

EDUCATION Museum Discounts for Link and WIC Card Holders Free. museums4all.org

Through Museums for All, a national program, people receiving food assistance can gain free or reduced admission to a list of museums in Chicago and throughout the country simply by presenting their SNAP EBT or WIC card. Admission ranges from free to $3.00 per family, depending on the museum.

Some participating local museums are the Adler Planetarium, the Art Institute, the Field Museum, the Botanic Garden, Shedd Aquarium, the DuSable Museum, and the Museum of Science and Industry. ( Jackie Serrato)

Chicago Race Riots Bike Tour Chicago Military Academy, 3519 S. Giles Ave. Saturday, July 30, 10am-2pm. Free, donations accepted. bit.ly/3awx2Gq

Since 2019, the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project has been hosting a bike tour once a year that takes attendees around the key places and people connected to the 1919 Chicago Race Riots. The riots were ignited by the killing of Black teenager Eugene Williams at a Chicago beach, and spread over the city as white mobs attacked Black residents and workers, with the latter organizing to form defensive resistance groups. Dozens of Black residents were killed and houses destroyed. The tour goes around Bronzeville and Bridgeport and begins at the Chicago Military Academy. There will be a program briefing at 10am and the ride begins at 10:30am. Attendees are

encouraged to bring helmets and water. In the event of rain, the tour will be moved to the following morning.

(Adam Przybyl)

Inaugural Words of Wonder Literary Festival

Dr. Conrad Worrill Track & Field Center, 10201 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Saturday, July 30, 11am–5pm. Free. bit.ly/3Ovvdbn Designed with readers and writers of all ages in mind, the W.O.W. (Words of Wonder) literary festival will feature "interactive literacy and art programming, opportunities for youth and families to connect with community resources, animated storytelling by Black authors and illustrators, a diverse group of book vendors and installations for all ages, story-based dance, interactive writing workshops, Indigenous and African styled drumming" as well as live music, food, giveaways, and more. This year's author headliner is Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming, Miracle's Boys, After Tupac and D Foster, and the illustration workshops will be taught by E.B. Lewis. Event organized by Burst Into Books. Free but register in advance online. (Adam Przybyl)

FOOD & LAND Wooded Island Bird Walk

Wooded Island, Stony Island Ave and 59th St, Saturday, July 16, 8am. Free.

Weekly, every Saturday, year round, weather permitting. The Walks are free and open to one and all. Newcomers are warmly welcomed. Please wear masks if you have not been fully vaccinated and respect everyone’s physical distance. Bring binoculars, field guides, and dress for the weather. The walks cover a distance of two miles, walking through Wooded Island and Bobolink Meadow. In the winter the group also drives to the Outer Harbor near La Rabida Hospital to check the lakefront and the harbor for wintering ducks. Meet on the west side of the Columbia Basin (north lagoon) at 8am.

Park on Stony Island, near 59th street, walk east across the parkland area, then cross Cornell Drive to reach the spot.

Next dates are July 16 and 23.

(Kate Gallagher)

61St St. Farmers Market

Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave., Every Saturday, 9:00am–2:00pm.

Free to attend. experimentalstation.org/

market

ly/2022bronzevillearttour

Come find farm-fresh vegetables, seedlings, and other products from local farmers and creators. Vendors include Ellis Family Farms, Mick Klug Farm, Gorman Farm Fresh Produce, Faith's Farm, Mint Creek Farm, Stamper Cheese, The Urban Canopy, and others.

As ever, the market accepts LINK and Senior Farmers Market Coupons, and will match LINK purchases up to $25 per customer per market day, as long as funding holds out. Customers must wear masks while inside the building.

The market will be every Saturday until October 29. (Martha Bayne)

Taking place every third Friday of the month, take a hop on a double-decker bus and tour five Bronzeville art galleries and spaces. The tour will visit Blanc Gallery, Bronzeville Artist Lofts, Gallery Guichard, Faie Afrikan Art, and South Side Community Art Center. Register online for more information. Next tour date is June 17, followed by July 15, August 19, and September 16.

(Adam Przybyl)

ARTS Chess Records Tours

Chess Records, 2120 S. Michigan Ave. $20 donation. info@bluesheaven.com Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven, the foundation that owns the building formerly known as Chess Records, is resuming tours of the place that saw some of the most legendary Black artists in the '50s and '60s: Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Etta James, among them.

The second floor is dedicated to Dixon, and the recording studio displays period artifacts. Tours are Thursday through Saturday afternoons. (312) 808-1286 ( Jackie Serrato)

An Evening of Intergenerational Jazz with Theopilus Reed

Schulz Auditorium, Galvin Tower, Illinois Tech, 10 W. 35th St. Saturday, July 16, 7-9pm. Free. bit.ly/3u51qOr Veteran vocalist, pianist, composer and arranger Theophilus Reed will be joined by special guest Thaddeus Tukes, a vibraphonist, composer, arranger and bandleader, in an evening of jazz that "blends traditional jazz standards with the modern rise and fall of chords that end with freer improvisation." The concert is at Schulz Auditorium in the Michael Paul Galvin Tower at Illinois Tech.

Parking is available in the visitor lot on State St between 33rd and 35th streets.

Masking is required during the concert.

Register online. (Adam Przybyl)

Music Under Glass with Shawnee Dez

Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central Park Ave. Wednesday, July 20, 6-7pm. $10. bit.ly/3u4akMs As part of Garfield Park Conservatory's Music Under Glass series, Shawnee Dez will be performing Moody Umbra: There’s Solace in the Shadows, a work that "explores the unconscious mind as a means of piecing together the true memories, repressed desires and unspoken secrets which make us whole." Get ready for active listening, as attendees will be asked to reflect on "fragments of themselves that may be hidden or repressed," an experience that is sure to get interesting while surrounded by green ferns and fragrant flowers. You must buy tickets ahead of time via the website. Contact Mattie Wilson at mwilson@garfieldpark.org at least 72 hours before the concert if you need any accommodations. (Adam Przybyl)

Music in the Parks or Make Music Chicago Pianos in the Parks at McKinley McKinley Park Fieldhouse, 2210 W. Pershing Rd. June 22–July 31. Free. bit. ly/3IEYsq7

Through July 31, there will be a piano at the McKinley Park Fieldhouse, free and accessible for anyone to play and experiment with. It is part of the Piano in the Parks program, which is part of Make Music Chicago, intended to build community and expand the arts. This year there will be a QR code from the International Music Foundation on the piano that links to a video of a beginner's lesson. The pianos were donated by the Alden Piano Company and private individuals. (Kate Gallagher)

Bronzeville Art District Trolley Tour Friday, July 15, 6-9pm. Free. bit.

JULY 14, 2022 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

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• Cornices • Bay Windows • Ornaments • Gutters & Downspouts • Standing & Flat Seam Roofs

ROOFING WORK:

• Slate • Clay Tile • Cedar • Shingles • Flat/Energy Star Roof

(773)

286-6212

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PLASTERING CO. PLASTER PATCHING DRYVIT STUCCO FULLY INSURED

(815) 464-0606

PICTURE YOUR BUSINESS HERE! Advertise in the Business & Service Directory today!!

MASONRY -

CLEANING -

MASONRY, TUCKPOINTING, BRICKWORK, CHIMNEY, LINTELS, PARAPET WALLS, CITY VIOLATIONS, CAULKING, ROOFING.

Licensed, Bonded, Insured. Rated A on Angie’s List. FREE Estimates

708-599-7000 Accurate House Cleaning Services

Family owned since 1999

www.bestmaids.com

MOVING -2 587+ MICHAEL COMPANY 5(02'(/,1* Serving Hyde Park and

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Moving, Delivery and Cleanout Jobs

surrounding communities

773-977-9000

Build Your Business!

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Place your ad in the Business & Service Directory!

HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW! Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory today!! email:

malone@southsideweekly.com

PLUMBING -

KELLY

PLASTERING CO. PLASTER PATCHING DRYVIT STUCCO FULLY INSURED

Exterior & Masonry 773-592-4535 (815) 464-0606

MOVING -

CONSTRUCTION -

PLASTERING -

Build Your Business!

Place your ad in the Business & Service Directory!

Residential Plumbing Service SERVICES INCLUDE:

Plumbing • Drain Cleaning • Sewer Camera/Locate Water Heater Installation/Repair Service • Tankless Water Heater Installation/Repair Service Toilet Repair • Faucet/Fixture Repair Vintage Faucet/Fixture Repair • Ejector/Sump Pump • Garbage Disposals • Battery Back-up Systems

Licensed & Insured • Serving Chicago & Suburbs

10% OFF Senior Citizen Discount License #: Call 773-617-3686 058-197062

ROOFING Conrad Roofing Co. of Illinois Inc.

SPECIALIZING IN ARCHITECTURAL: METAL WORK:

• Cornices • Bay Windows • Ornaments • Gutters & Downspouts • Standing & Flat Seam Roofs ROOFING WORK: • Slate • Clay Tile • Cedar • Shingles • Flat/Energy Star Roof

(773)

286-6212

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HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW! Advertise in the South Side Weekly’s Business & Service Directory today!!