July 22, 2021

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

Volume 8, Issue 17 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editor Martha Bayne Senior Editors Christian Belanger Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Arts Editor Politics Editor Education Editor Housing Editor Community Organizing Editor Immigration Editor

Isabel Nieves Jim Daley 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 Data Editor

Jasmine Mithani

Director of Fact Checking: Charmaine Runes Fact Checkers: Susan Chun, Grace Del Vecchio, Hannah Faris, Kate Gallagher, Maria Maynez, Olivia Stovicek Visuals Editor Haley Tweedell Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Anna Mason Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma, Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Tony Zralka Web Editor Social Media Editor Webmaster Managing Director Director of Operations

AV Benford Davon Clark Pat Sier Jason Schumer Brigid Maniates

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

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

Cover Illustration by Mell Montezuma

IN CHICAGO

IN THIS ISSUE

Delta variant As of July 20 fifty percent of Chicagoans are vaccinated, according to South Side Weekly's tracker on Twitter @ChiVaxBot. While we’re hopeful that Illinois and the rest of the country are overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic as more people are gradually getting the shots, the coronavirus variant known as Delta is still a concern for areas that have low rates of vaccination.

Health officials are keeping an eye on a resurgence in the neighboring state of Missouri and thirteen counties in southern Illinois were recently given a warning level. Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said the surge in Illinois is small and those who are vaccinated shouldn’t worry.

public meetings report

Car jackings Hundreds of carjackings are stressing out many drivers in the South and West Sides and the county courts. A seventy-threeyear-old vet, Keith Cooper, lost his life in Hyde Park when he was picking up his medications at a CVS on July 14. As two young men attempted to hijack his car, they struggled to turn it on, and in the process struck Cooper in the head and chest, his daughter Keinika Carlton wrote on Facebook. Services are being held for Cooper. The suspects, seventeen and eighteen years old, are being held without bail. News reports suggest that many car thefts don’t result in physical injury or death, but are nevertheless forceful or threatening and traumatizing. A BGA analysis found that over half of those arrested for carjacking in 2020 were teenagers, and there is a lack of effective programs to engage the minors charged.

south/west

CPD grossly unprepared for protests Maggie Hickey, the independent monitor appointed to determine whether the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is complying with a 2019 court-ordered consent decree, released her office’s report on CPD’s response to last year’s protests against racism and police violence. The report was scathing: it detailed numerous incidents of brutality by police and found the department was totally unprepared for protests—but also concluded that even if it had anticipated the protests, CPD did not have “policies, reporting practices, training, equipment, data analysis, community engagement, or inter-agency coordination required to respond effectively.” In a response to the monitor’s findings, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul urged CPD to comply with the consent decree and added his office is “concerned… about emerging reports suggesting that CPD employed its 2020 Summer Operations Center (SOC) to surveil community groups on social media and collect intelligence about political demonstrations,” citing the Weekly’s reporting earlier this month that found the SOC—whose mandate was gun-violence prevention—monitored dozens of demonstrations last year.

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. documenters, scott pemberton, jacqueline serrato, alma campos..........................................4 ‘we

can’t wait’

As federal judge blocks new DACA applications, Chicago advocates push to pass overdue immigration reform. alma campos..........................................................5 the community engagement challenge of invest

Auburn Gresham residents grapple with the City’s vision for development on 79th Street. jonathan dale......................................................8 cps layoffs shock teachers

“Whether or not CPS is directing principals to retaliate against outspoken teachers and people that are active in the union, I don't know. But from my perspective, it certainly looks and feels that way.” lily levine............................................................12 cps high schools vote to keep all, some, or none of their police officers

Thus far, of schools located on the South Side, one voted to keep their three SROs, ten voted to keep both of their SROs, fourteen voted to remove one, and three voted to remove both. madeleine parrish..............................................16 criminalizing childhood

A proposal could institute fines and mandatory counseling for families. samantha guz and durrell malik washington sr..........................18 reading blackness

The new Anthology of Black American Literature celebrates the diversity of Black experience. tina jenkins bell................................................20 calendar

Bulletin and events.

South Side Weekly Staff..................................22

Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD

July 7 An extension comprising three acres at 1926 W. Harrison St., near the Medical District, would accommodate two market-price residential towers with commercial space to be developed by Marquette Companies at a cost of $140 million. At a hearing of the City Council Committee on Finance, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development presented a report supporting the project. "This project will bring a new development to a large parcel, improving a desolate stretch of Ogden Avenue," the report noted. Approval would provide the developer with about $2 million in state and local tax incentives. The committee was scheduled to vote on the recommendation July 19. The State Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity makes the final decision.

July 8 At a People’s Budget Chicago community meeting hosted by Chicago United for Equity (CUE) and Yollocalli Arts Reach, youth participants used a game to suggest how to allocate the city’s budget. The exercise revealed significant differences between current allocations and where community members wanted the money to go. Notable discrepancies were in health care, housing, and the carceral system, defined as the Chicago Police Department and police accountability structures. Views on the causes of crime and how to allocate crime-prevention dollars varied. One participant considered crime to be mostly a mental health issue, for example, suggesting that more money be allocated to mental health services. Another noted that the high amount of gang violence means budget money should be provided for the carceral system, which now receives about thirty-six percent. (In the game, participants proposed reducing the carceral system budget by almost two-thirds.) Others emphasized preserving the culture and identity of La Villita neighborhood while creating an equitable environment by addressing issues of gentrification, pollution, crime, and unguided youth. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said she will introduce her budget proposal in September.

July 9 The Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and Chicago United for Equity hosted a People’s Budget Chicago activity at a joint block party. The more than one hundred community members attending were asked how communities can be safe and thriving.

Responses in Spanish and English identified police and security, activities for families and children, support for single mothers, hospitals and health clinics, and affordable housing and jobs as ways to ensure vibrant communities. At times, community members seemed confused about the City’s current budget, with some saying they don’t see how the budget invests in their community. A youth participant commented that "it seems like a lot of stuff we took into more consideration [during the activity] is stuff that they don’t really seem to put a lot of money into." Finding volunteers to bring community input forward to the City Council beyond the mail-in slips was challenging.

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level for the July 22 issue.

BY DOCUMENTERS, SCOTT PEMBERTON, JACQUELINE SERRATO, ALMA CAMPOS

July 13 Lightfoot and Michael Fassnacht, CEO of World Business Chicago, visited San Francisco on July 7 and 8 to attract tech companies like Uber and Salesforce to the city. At the City Council Committee on Economic, Capital, and Technology Development hearing, Fassnacht said Chicago needed more lab space for life sciences and film production studios. “We positioned Chicago as the next big thing in life sciences,” he said. Ald. Walter Burnett said he's "bumping heads with residents with [building] height and things like that" with new developments like Lincoln Yards, but Fassnacht said zoning is out of his purview. Ten Special Service Area Commissioners appointed or reappointed by the mayor were also approved.

The City Colleges of Chicago Committee on Finance and Administrative Services and Board of Trustees received budget information at their first meetings since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public commenters, largely from Clerical and Technical Employees Local 1708, expressed concerns over working conditions, including rodent infestations, lack of hot water and heat still “blasting” in some facilities, and students refusing to wear masks. Another individual asked that the CCC achieve an eighty percent vaccination rate by October 1, keep vaccination sites open, and improve ventilation. The majority of schools are in ZIP codes that are less than fifty percent vaccinated. The City Colleges of Chicago’s FY2022 budget totals $509 million. A key goal, according to a presentation to the Board of Trustees, is stabilizing the cash position, which was depleted because of the state’s failure to pass a budget in recent years. The cash position is the amount of cash a company or organization has on hand. It’s improved from a 2017 low of $55 million to the 2021 projected operating balance of $122 million. Chancellor Juan Salgado also reported that the tuition hourly rate will be the same for the sixth straight year.

July 13 The Community Development Commission gave the go-ahead to two significant performing arts building projects in South Shore and Bronzeville. 'The Chi ' producer Derek Dudley presented the commission with a proposal to purchase a vacant property near the Chicago Skyway on 71st and Stony Island to house Regal Mile Studios. The commission approved selling the property to Dudley for $31,000. Dudley, who has been managing the rapper Common, talked about his excitement for the $60-million project and for working in Chicago. Two days later the commission unanimously backed zoning for the project. The commission also approved the redevelopment of a warehouse on 43rd and Cottage Grove. That plan calls for the property to be transformed into a performing arts center consisting of a 350-seat theater and a 100seat black-box venue. Construction is scheduled to begin within a year. The nonprofit developer, Lillian Marcie Legacy Company, will receive $3 million in TIF assistance from the city and more than $2 million in New Market Tax Credits.

July 14 The Department of Housing received approximately 27,000 applications in one month for rent assistance through the Keep Chicago Renting Ordinance. The ordinance offers protections for renters when a building goes into foreclosure and a total of $137 million in requested aid. The City has more than forty people processing applications with a goal of paying out $4 million a week, Commissioner Marisa Novara said at the City Council Committee on Housing and Real Estate meeting. The acquisition of fifteen parcels at 79th and Exchange, in South Shore, was approved for private development. The Resurrection Project, a non-profit developer in Pilsen, also sought a multi-family loan for the construction of Casa Durango, two new “elevator buildings” of affordable housing on Racine Ave.

IMMIGRATION

‘We Can’t Wait’

PHOTO BY ALMA CAMPOS

As federal judge blocks new DACA applications, Chicago advocates push to pass overdue immigration reform.

BY ALMA CAMPOS

“I

am tired,“ said Elizabeth Cervantes from the podium at an immigration rally outside the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago on July 8. “I’m tired of waiting for the right moment to have the same basic rights as everyone else. How much longer must we wait?”

A pathway to citizenship would prevent the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—a policy that provides temporary relief from deportation as well as work authorization

to approximately 800,000 undocumented young people across the country—from constantly being attacked and suspended, advocates say. Just last Friday, July 16, a federal judge in Texas blocked new DACA applications. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, along with a group of states suing to end the program, argue that it was illegally created by former President Barack Obama in 2012.

This was a fear expressed by people who attended the “We Can’t Wait” rally to push citizenship for all and a stop

to deportations. Organizations such as Casa Michoacán, Arab American Action Network, Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community, Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and many more attended the event and lifted colorful signs that read “We Can’t Wait”, “End Deportations” and “Citizenship for All.” The lawsuit against DACA, which was filed in November 2020 during Donald Trump’s presidency, claims that states face irreparable harm because they

bear extra costs from providing health care, education and law enforcement protection to DACA recipients, but makes no mention of their value to the economy or the pandemic as essential workers. Research from the American Action Forum (AAF) shows that granting DACA recipients work authorization has resulted in huge economic benefits.

An estimated 380,000 employed DACA recipients contribute an average of $109,000 each to GDP per year.

Over 30,000 active DACA recipients lived in Illinois in 2020, according to the American Immigration Council, and 400,000 undocumented immigrants lived in Illinois in 2016.

The decision is not expected to affect current DACA recipients, only those applying for the first time.

At least five million essential workers have played a crucial part in the country’s pandemic recovery. Despite it, essential workers who are undocumented have been largely excluded from COVID-19 relief, are subject to exploitative working conditions and more than two-thirds of U.S. undocumented immigrant workers serve in frontline jobs in essential industries. “These essential workers should have a path to citizenship in the country they call home. They have been there for all of us, now it’s time for all of us to be there for them,” Illinois Rep. Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (D) said.

“The DACA ruling was a wake up call,'' said Marcelo Ferrer, director of immigration services for Logan Square Neighborhood Association. “We are tired of the turmoil that our DACA brothers and sisters have endured for the past couple of years. That is why we are calling on Congress to pass either a standalone Dream Act or include immigration reform in the budget and pass it through budget reconciliation. We are in the fight of our lives.”

At the rally, activists from the nonprofit Brighton Park Neighborhood Council chanted “La gente unida, jamás será vencida (The people united will JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

IMMIGRATION

never be defeated).” They wore orange shirts and banged pot lids, tin cans and wooden spoons. The crowd at the Thompson Center chanted along and held up their fists under the summer phosphorescent sky.

“The first time I attended an ICIRR rally to demand citizenship I was a twenty-year-old undocumented college student, and here we are still fighting...", said Cervantes. Now she is thirty-two years old and protected under DACA. In addition, Cervantes sits on the board of ICIRR and believes there is a real chance to pass an immigration reform bill that creates a pathway to citizenship for millions of working immigrants. “We have an opportunity...but we need our members of Congress to fight. They won’t do it unless we push them.”

During his presidency, Trump threatened the rights and freedom of immigrants and refugees, as he pointed the finger at immigration as one cause of a declining future for white workingclass and middle-class Americans.

He repeatedly criminalized Mexican immigrants to justify the creation of a wall on the Mexican-US border and reinforced the detainment of thousands of Central American children seeking asylum.

In 2017 he imposed a travel ban that prohibited issuing visas to immigrants from seven largely-Muslim countries, and in 2020 he expanded that to thirteen.

For four years, advocates had to defend DACA from Republicans who wanted to dismantle the program. In 2017, the Trump administration abruptly ended the DACA program, triggering multiple lawsuits challenging it. The United States Customs Immigration Services (USCIS) rejected all new and renewal applications received after that October. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could not carry out its plan to shut down the program because it failed to give an adequate justification.

N

ow under Biden, progressive politicians believe they have the clout to pass immigration reform

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and are leaning on budget reconciliation as a way to get it done. It takes at least sixty votes to pass a bill through the Senate, but budget reconciliation provides another way to pass legislation with a majority vote in the House and Senate during a process that takes twenty hours. This process is typically only utilized when the same party controls both chambers of Congress and the presidency.

A few weeks ago, García announced he would not back the budget reconciliation if it did not include a pathway to citizenship. “We have The White House, Senate, and House—the moment is now,” he said.

García told the Weekly he expects the bill to focus on a pathway to citizenship for DACA youth, immigrants under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) who are confronting armed conflict or environmental disasters in their country, farmworkers, and other essential workers.

A bill introduced in February defines the type of essential work. Undocumented immigrants working in healthcare, manufacturing, domestic work, food and hospitality, warehousing and more could be eligible.

"We are encouraged to see Senate Democrats responding to the calls for a pathway to citizenship happening here in Illinois and across the country,'' said Brandon Lee, the communications director for ICIRR. “While this is a critical step, we are still early in negotiations with many steps to go before a final budget is passed. What we know, however, is that organizing is working…”.

In Illinois, a bill that would close ICE detention centers and limit the way police interact with ICE is expected to be signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker later this summer. Pritzker attended the rally at the Thompson Center and promised to sign the bill that would make Illinois the third state to end detention contracts with ICE. “Our moment is now. I want our immigrant community to know that Illinos is and always will be your home,” he stated. But advocates worry because this won’t stop deportations, only interrupt them.

“We have an opportunity... but we need our members of Congress to fight. They won’t do it unless we push them.”

PHOTO BY ALMA CAMPOS

IMMIGRATION

PHOTOS BY ALMA CAMPOS

The last time there was a pathway to citizenship in the U.S. was thirty-five years ago when then-president Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. It was sold as a crackdown; the bill enforced tighter security at the Mexican border and penalties for employers that hired undocumented workers. However, the amnesty allowed permanent residency for about two million immigrants.

If the pending policy would only apply to DACA recipients, TPS holders, farmworkers and essential workers, it would still leave out people like Bo Thai of the HANA center in Chicago, a non profit that empowers Korean, Asian and multiethnic immigrants. Thai is not eligible for DACA because he arrived in the U.S. in 2009. One of DACA’s rules is that applicants must have lived in the U.S. since 2007 up to the present time.

There are strict rules to qualify for DACA. For example, the U.S. government will not grant DACA to people convicted of either a felony or what USCIS calls a "significant misdemeanor", such as burglary, unlawful possession or use of a firearm, driving under the influence of alcohol and others. Additionally, people do not qualify if they do not have a high

school diploma, GED or are not enrolled in a program to obtain a GED. Applying for DACA is also a huge expense to undocumented immigrants and they must renew every two years at a cost of $495 each time.

“Being undocumented has shown me that I don’t have access,” Thai said.

He has struggled to find work and healthcare and cannot obtain a driver’s license because of his status. Thai came to the U.S. at the age of thirteen to live with his aunt and uncle, but his relationship with his parents and other family members greatly deteriorated after the separation.

On the day of the rally, Thai said he got a call with the bad news that his friend’s DACA had expired and got fired from his job. “This is a reminder that DACA was never enough,” he said. The Migration Policy Institute has estimated there were about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2018. However, less than 10 percent of the undocumented immigrant population qualified for DACA. Thai thinks the program has pinned the immigrant community against each other. “DACA creates a narrative of good immigrants, who are deserving to be in

this country because they are highly educated, versus bad immigrants,” he said.

While immigration advocates like the ones present at the downton rally said they want citizenship for all, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D), like García, alluded to the fact that all may not get it in this bill. “But we will get it, and we will get it this year,” she said.

Illinois Rep. Marie Newman (D) said at a minimum there should be a roadmap for DREAMers and essential workers, but that it does not end there. “The fact that we have to ask for a pathway to citizenship [for essential workers] is ridiculous. They got us through the damn pandemic for God sakes. We will get everybody a pathway to citizenship.”

At the rally, both Schakowsky and Newman vowed they would also push to reduce excessive funding from ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and invest them in community projects to promote citizenship.

They also both committed to putting pressure on the secretary of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, to greatly limit who is a priority for deportation through

prosecutorial discretion.

The drummers from the HANA center gathered at the front of the stage, beating their drums and banging their copper cymbals. In 2006, these same streets saw the largest pro-immigrant demonstration in Chicago’s history with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets for the very same rights that never came. Chicago was the initial impetus for many of the immigrant rights protests which followed throughout the country that year.

Afterward, people marched to the Federal Plaza, and on Wabash Ave., amongst the crowd a mother pushed her baby in a stroller. To her side was her young daughter raising a sign that read “Legalization for All” drawn with pink hearts around it. Her mother held up her fist in solidarity. Children and youth from the United African Organization held up banners and chanted, “Abolish ICE“.

Like they did in 2006, the crowd raised a multitude of signs in the air again, but one was new, “We Can’t Wait.” Alma Campos is the Weekly’s immigration editor. She last wrote about the vaccine disparity in the south suburbs.

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

DEVELOPMENT

The Community Engagement Challenge of Invest South/West

Auburn Gresham residents grapple with the City’s vision for development on 79th Street

BY JONATHAN DALE

I

n a lively and contentious Auburn Gresham virtual town hall meeting on June 8, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) ran an exercise to make a map. The exercise was to gauge community-backed uses for 838 W. 79th St., a vacant City-owned lot located a block west of Halsted on 79th and Green St., which DPD is attempting to develop.

But there was one problem: plans for the lot had already been decided, and it seemed to some residents the meeting was called in part for damage control.

Residents wrote goals for the 79th Street commercial corridor on digital yellow sticky notes, which were added to the Google Maps-view of the neighborhood. As the presentation zoomed out to accommodate all of the suggestions being offered, ideas stretched to Gresham’s boundaries and beyond: from 79th and Halsted north into Englewood, east into Chatham, and west past Damen. Watching residents’ ideas take up an increasingly large section of the South Side makes it clear that as development comes, it is going to involve a lot of people.

Auburn Gresham is one of ten neighborhoods emphasized by Invest South/West, Mayor Lightfoot’s citywide development initiative meant to reinvigorate key commercial corridors across Chicago’s South and West sides.

Almost two years in, projects are beginning to take form. Since its inception shortly after Lightfoot took 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

office, Invest South/West has had a massive scope—regularly billed as bringing $750 million public dollars of reinvestment to economically abandoned communities. But public funding is only part of the equation. The City’s thinking is that public development will catalyze private development, and that the mix of the two will create generative commercial corridors.

DPD put out a request for proposals (RFP) in September 2020 and in March of 2021 announced winning proposals for sites in Austin, Englewood, and Auburn Gresham. But in Auburn Gresham, DPD in fact received only one proposal: for a mixed-use affordable housing building, estimated to cost $19.4 million, developed by Evergreen Real Estate and the Imagine Group.

Development near 79th and Halsted and its ripple effects are poised to change the 79th Street corridor and beyond. With a new Metra stop slated to open three blocks east of the site, the intersection is considered equitable transit-oriented development (eTOD), and thus prioritized by the City.

Across the street, the Healthy Living Hub will soon open, bringing many amenities including health services, office space, and a restaurant. The $15.9 million Hub, which is being developed by the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation (GAGDC), will receive up to $2.1 million in City TIF money as well as $10 million from the Chicago

“Many community members felt as though they were only made aware of the project after it was already decided.”

Prize, a private development award from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation.

DPD officials have stated during community meetings that they want Evergreen Imagine to “develop off of the Healthy Living Hub.” Changes to the streetscape are already affecting residents’ perceptions of the project. Traffic and parking were two concerns brought up in community meetings. 79th Street, already one of the busiest streets in Chicago, would only become more congested with both Evergreen Imagine and the Healthy Living Hub opening. One resident, in a public DPD meeting, complained, “You have to account for the increased traffic jams, you guys have added in all these bike lanes so where we had two lanes [for cars] we barely have one lane.”

According to DPD, “High-density, mixed-use developments were identified in multiple Invest South/West meetings as best-practice strategies that foster pedestrian activity, economic vitality,

community cohesion, affordable housing opportunities, public safety, and other community benefits.”

But in DPD-led roundtables, residents spoke against the density of an eTOD corridor, instead lobbying for safe public spaces, locally owned business incubation, and stronger steps toward increased homeownership. A community center was one example repeated often. Above all, a desire for space that benefits the residents already living in Auburn Gresham outweighed units for new residents.

Disagreement over the proposal in Auburn Gresham brings into focus the difficult ongoing work of community engagement in development. During the pandemic, in-person opportunities for engagement were closed, limiting consensus-building and leading to a more opaque development process. This has led to an initial proposal that doesn’t align with the wants of some current residents.

As part of the bungalow belt,

DEVELOPMENT RENDERINGS BY ROSS BARNEY ARCHITECTS AND NIA ARCHITECTS

Gresham residents take pride in homeownership.

Auburn Gresham’s 2016 collaborative Quality of Life Plan, “Your Voice Matters,” states “We take pride in the longevity of our residents and celebrate their continued commitment in our community. The Great Recession made homeownership more difficult to attain for many, and disproportionately affected households in Auburn Gresham and surrounding communities.”

In town hall meetings, residents’ collective emphasis on strengthening homeownership options versus bringing in new rental units is at the heart of tension. According to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, 44.6 percent of housing is owner-occupied in Gresham, higher than neighboring community areas like Chatham and Englewood.

This tension, ultimately, is about making sure that neighborhood growth is benefitting the residents who have worked hard to remain here, they said.

Negative perceptions of low-income housing are a boogeyman across Chicago.

Residents in Auburn Gresham expressed concern that bringing new residents in without also supplying necessary resources and spaces won’t add up to a

positive. Auburn Gresham homeowners are protective of their property values, which are slowly rebounding from 2008’s crash. Between the fourth quarters of 2019 and 2020, single family sales prices increased 17.3 percent.

Residents are wary of rentals being prioritized over commercial development but Gresham residents aren’t against affordable housing as a whole. “They just don’t want it there. That’s it,” says Cheryl Johnson, a Gresham resident and urban planner who helps manage 79th Street’s Special Service Area (SSA) #32.

“I think DPD has good intentions,” continued Johnson. “I think what happened was they heard ‘affordable housing’ and just ran with it. They looked at this stretch of land along 79th Street, ‘Ok this is where we’re going to do InvestSouth/West,’ instead of looking at the commercial needs and how you could support existing businesses along 79th.”

It’s DPD’s “tunnel vision,” as Johnson puts it, that has hindered their own community engagement process. Many community members felt as though they were only made aware of the project after it was already decided.

GAGDC and its CEO Carlos Nelson have been at the table with DPD

since Invest South/West first rolled out.

Still, Nelson wonders if engagement wasn’t as long as it could have been.

“Only after [the City said it was going to develop the site for mixed-use housing] did they go to the neighborhood and say ‘what do you think about this idea we have?’” he said.

Nelson sees differences between how GAGDC worked to create its Healthy Living Hub versus how the City presented Evergreen Imagine JV LLC to the neighborhood. Speaking about Invest South/West’s more expeditious engagement process, he said, “There’s definitely a kind of perceived timeline, like the clock is ticking. And that’s not something that is generally the case when you have community planning.”

Since Auburn Gresham’s site for Invest South/West only received one proposal, and thereby the de-facto winner, options for the site were limited. Some residents feel as though they missed a step in the engagement process.

According to David Block of Evergreen, a reason he thinks Auburn Gresham received only one RFP might be the neighborhood’s signs of distress that have discouraged commercial developers from investing. Block cited the CVS,

Bank of America, and Save-A-Lot that have all recently closed as examples of disinvestment. “Folks who are in this business may have decided to save their resources for another opportunity,” said Block.

Austin and Englewood, the two other sites where winning proposals were announced, are both building off existing pieces of their respective neighborhoods.

Austin, renovating the Laramie State Bank building, is putting new use to a landmark that has defined the corridor for decades. (Though the City’s RFP process has also come under fire from Austin residents who believe that Austinbased Westside Health Authority should have won over the Oak Park Regional Housing Center and Heartland Alliance, because of its local connection to the community.)

In Englewood, the City is continuing to build out the Englewood Square shopping center, a plaza long in the making, and the new Invest South/ West phase will continue what has been growing for years.

Evergreen Imagine, however, is new construction on a vacant lot, and with other new development coming in, the corridor is in flux.

Maurice Cox, commissioner of DPD, doesn’t believe that the proposed development should stall out just because some neighbors are against it. Defending both the proposal and DPD’s engagement process in a June 24 roundtable, he said, “We always have the option to do nothing. But that’s what every administration before this administration decided to do. And we would like to do things differently.”

In Auburn Gresham’s Quality of Life Plan, residents spoke directly to how they view non-local investments: “Outside investment continues to threaten the long-term stability and affordability of our community.”

Looking at the stores that have left the corridor recently, it is hard to disagree.

National chains, with limited connection to the neighborhood, have abandoned 79th Street. Commercial corridors need the collaborative efforts of many different stakeholders to succeed. And when national chains—which provide necessary JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

DEVELOPMENT

ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO

services like food and medicine—leave, it can be an uphill battle to course correct.

17th Ward Alderman David Moore, speaking of the difficulties of finding willing vendors, recalls an anecdote of how previous mayors have had to strong-arm reticent companies: “When Walgreens didn’t want to come to Auburn Gresham, I remember clearly what Richard M. Daley told them. He was like ‘Well I hope you have...no problems with your zoning on the [stores] you want to do on the North Side.”

DPD noted in its June 8 meeting that 838 W. 79th St.’s square footage wouldn’t allow a grocer. But the project could be a catalyst for a grocery store. Both Evergreen Real Estate and Ald. Moore mention the idea that when enough households are in an area, the economics 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

could push a grocer to move in. “They don’t look at just spending power...they’re counting rooftops,” said Moore.

Many factors play into a corridor's vibrancy. Cheryl Johnson, who works with SSA #32 as well as #69 (which is bound by 80th and Ashland to 95th) believes that City development dollars should be going toward street beautification and public safety. “We need to get lighting along 79th.... So we can do decorations in the winter time, brighten up the street.

On 79th Street it’s so dark.”

The City has attempted to create more welcoming business corridors, but they haven’t been without fault. In Chatham, money from Together Now, a City-backed fund for small businesses, was used to create a boardwalk on 75th Street. But the boardwalk was removed in

June after a mass shooting and complaints of rowdy late-night behavior.

To Asiaha Butler of Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.), the boardwalk removal is a failure of the engagement process: “It wasn’t no engagement on what that conversation could have been with the people who really are out there at midnight.”

The 75th Street boardwalk’s failure has implications for Auburn Gresham and beyond. Public safety is a necessary component of a healthy corridor. And engaging with the community— regularly, and at multiple levels—is crucial for the City’s goals to not only materialize, but remain intact. As neighborhoods across the South and West Side get courted by corporations looking to invoke Invest

South/West for goodwill in City Hall, building a vibrant, walkable corridor is more than new infill development.

Elijah Brewer, who runs Brewer Coffee and Custard on 79th and Morgan, is unclear on why new construction is being prioritized. His cafe received a Neighborhood Opportunity Fund grant in 2020 to subsidize costs for a facade repair. “If you take a tour of the Auburn Gresham community, you will see several boarded up, vacant structures... there are numerous buildings that could be repaired to address the affordable housing issue.”

While many in Auburn Gresham aren’t happy with the City’s development process, their frustration has manifested positively as participation. Opposition to the Evergreen Imagine proposal, spurred

in part by an anonymous flyer, has led to increased dialogue between neighbors, the proposal’s developer, and the City.

The flyer announced a Zoom meeting where the City and DPD would explain why mixed-use affordable housing would be going to 79th and Green, and that “if you care about the future of this neighborhood do not miss this Zoom meeting.” If the goal of the flyer was to get people talking, then it did its job.

Referencing the flyer, Carlos Nelson said, “If you track the meeting cadences over the last one-plus years, you’ll see that there’s been a lot more participation over the last three or four months.”

DPD and Evergreen Imagine have held regular community meetings since the proposal was announced, and it seems that neighborhood engagement is changing the scope of the proposal.

One of the developers, Evergreen REG, has been responsive to the community’s input. “I think we heard pretty loud and clear from the community that what we had originally proposed...was too dense,” said David Block of Evergreen. “We are now working on a revised proposal...that will lower the density on that original site but put some units on another Cityowned site on the 79th Street corridor.”

While the revised proposal is moving forward, the developer isn’t over the moon about the route that DPD took them on to get here. “In hindsight,” said Block, “we all might have done this process a little bit differently.”

“What I applaud [the city] on,” said Shaka Rawls, principal of Leo High School, “is hearing the pushback from the community and then revising the process.

So I was really proud that the city took another look at the process, included community voices, and then started to move forward with the project again.

That should have happened on the front end, but it’s happening on the back end.”

In neighboring Englewood, a local community group is employing different strategies to engage the neighborhood around development.

Butler and R.A.G.E. have many irons in the fire, for example. One project she is working on is getting the shuttered Racine Green Line stop back open.

To engage with the community on this subject, R.A.G.E. has put up chalkboards by the old El stop so that pedestrians can put in their two cents. “When you’ve got people who are from here, who’ve done this, we know that there are all types of levels of engagement,” said Butler.

This different way of finding consensus, one that de-emphasizes technology and is led by trusted community leaders, is a way to get a more rounded understanding of what a neighborhood needs. “If folks on the fifth floor could be open to a different way of how community development is done, I think we could have a win-win situation,” said Butler. “We’re still trying to get them there because it’s still this power dynamic of ‘We come in, we do this. Y’all don’t do this, you just live here.’”

While Evergreen’s initial proposal wasn’t well-received by Auburn Gresham, the fact that they could agree on a compromise is a good sign for the corridor. Community-backed development is inherently difficult— trying to find consensus amidst an often disparate group of stakeholders, all with their own interests, expectations, and dreams, often creates disagreement. The City and Evergreen Imagine still have an uphill battle, though. “Right now you have a community that feels a bit betrayed,” said Rawls. “So as opposed to building a relationship, you’re repairing a relationship. That makes things much more difficult.”

In Auburn Gresham, any proposal will still have to go through the City’s Planned Development (PD) process.

According to the developers, the hope is that groundbreaking might occur in the spring of 2022. “What is encouraging here [is that] they want to invest dollars in the area to resurrect it,” said Brewer.

“But how they go about it—the devil is in the details.” Jonathan Dale is a freelance journalist focusing on issues related to the urban built environment. He is a Chicago native, and last wrote for the Weekly about the community organizations that competed in the Chicago Prize.

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

EDUCATION

CPS Layoffs Shock Teachers

CPS unceremoniously lays off 443 educators, including those in the arts, dual language, and special education departments.

BY LILY LEVINE

O

n Friday, June 18—the last day in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) school calendar before summer break—fifth grade dual language teacher Sophia Lukatya was abruptly called into her principal’s office at Carl Von Linné School in Avondale. To her surprise, she was handed a letter notifying her that her position had been eliminated due to budget cuts.

Since the Local School Council (LSC) had recently approved a budget for the next school year, Lukatya assumed that the teachers would have been alerted earlier if there were going to be cuts.

Wholly confused, she asked questions to clarify the cuts, all of which her principal said she was not able to answer.

“I was absolutely devastated. I was just heartbroken,” Lukatya said. “I was not thinking about how this affects my personal financial situation; I was thinking about how devastating it would be for my students...I'm still part of their community and the adults that they know care for them. So to be so intensely and forcibly, without any care or tact, told that I'm removed from that, it's all like an absolute punch in the gut.”

Unfortunately, Lukatya’s experience is not unique. In fact, staff cuts occurred a lot at the end of this school year—more than 400 times. Though hundreds of staff cuts occur every year, this year’s layoffs may inflict additional trauma on students in the wake of a global pandemic. Worse, though CPS said the cuts are part of a “normal allocation of resources,” many teachers felt that their actions were retaliatory.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA

EDUCATION

“Whether or not CPS is directing principals to retaliate against outspoken teachers and people that are active in the union, I don't know. But from my perspective, it certainly looks and feels that way.”

On June 21, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) received Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s layoff list, which included over 443 arts, music, and drama teachers; teacher assistants; English Learner Program Teachers; bilingual staff; restorative justice supports; and more.

These cuts come after President Joe Biden announced his American Rescue Plan of 2021, which sent $1.8 billion in federal funds to CPS specifically to help the district recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and to prevent layoffs.

According to the CTU, the large majority of these cuts occurred in underserved communities including North Lawndale, Little Village, and Englewood, which were also disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and where, in North Lawndale, three neighborhood schools were targeted for closure just last year.

One of the main factors contributing to the unequally large amount of layoffs on the South and West sides is StudentBased Budgeting (SBB), which was implemented by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013. Though previously CPS allotted each school a certain number of teacher slots and covered the cost of the teachers regardless of their salary, under this new system, the district distributes money to schools on a perpupil basis, regardless of the students’ needs, potentially impacting the number of positions teachers can fill on an annual basis.

While CPS claims that this type of funding is “fair and equitable,” since the dollars follow the students, a 2019 study conducted by the Illinois Labor and Employment Relations’ Project for

Middle Class Renewal found that SBB contributes to racial inequality by starving schools of resources almost exclusively in Black neighborhoods.

Specifically, the study finds that “low budget schools are clustered in Black neighborhoods experiencing distress from low incomes and unaffordable housing.” CTU also notes the exodus of families from these schools and states they are caused by City policies such as shutting down public housing, placing a charter school nearby, or promoting gentrification.

CTU wrote, “When families leave the neighborhood school suffers. As a result, majority-Black and a growing number of Latinx schools have lower percentages of librarians, music, or art teachers compared to other schools in the district.”

“There’s a lot of societal difficulties that are making it harder for parents to bring their kids to school. It's more disenfranchised communities that are being further disenfranchised by this policy,” said Lukatya. “So I think the school-based funding, and the attendance-based funding then creates larger ripple effects, which allows for mass layoffs at the end of the school year.”

To Mary Fahey Hughes, Special Education Parent Liaison at Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, SBB hurts the schools in greatest need, such as those that don’t have programs like arts, music, and drama. Departments such as these can make the difference between a student staying in school or dropping out. “[SBB] has been anything but supportive,” said Hughes. “It undermines the idea of a whole school, like a holistic

learning where every student has access to all the wonderful things that CPS has to offer. It’s a racist and classist system right now that benefits whiter, wealthier families and really undercuts the neediest students, and it's morally reprehensible that the Mayor, the Board, and CPS support and have stood by the system that lets go of teachers every June.”

In the wake of the teacher layoff announcement, an overwhelming number of teachers from South Side schools have come forward to express their grievances, according to the CTU press release and press conference. At Fenger Academy High School in Roseland, six staff members were laid off, including the assistant principal and reading in the social sciences teacher Xochitl Infante, who spoke at the June 23 Board of Education (BOE) meeting.

Curie High School in Archer Heights school clerk Denna Myron was also laid off after publicly speaking about the need to accommodate educators with medically vulnerable household members, and teacher assistant Willie Cousins at Carrie Jacobs Bond Elementary School in Englewood was cut even after being an active paraprofessional and schoolrelated personnel leader during the 2019 strike.

Cheryl Dudeck, a science teacher at King College Prep in Kenwood, was also laid off, despite having taught in CPS for twenty years, nineteen of which were at King.

“On Friday, I was called down to the principal’s office and read a script regarding my position elimination due to budget constraints,” Dudeck said at a CTU press conference. “When I tried to engage in conversation, I was given the hand and told that there could be no conversation. I was not thanked, nothing else was said to me. I was told I needed to follow the directions in the letter from human resources. The conversation that

I wanted to have with the principal was regarding my endorsements. My national board certification endorses me to teach all science courses. I’m also endorsed to teach special education. Recently, a physics teacher with no classroom experience has been hired, which is a board policy of making decisions based on saving money rather than student needs.”

To Dudeck’s understanding, King College Prep will no longer offer human anatomy and physiology for physical education credit, and there will not be any science electives or Advanced Placement science classes for her students to take next year.

A

t the onset of the pandemic, drama teacher Lauren Kullman, who’d been at Florence Nightingale Elementary School in Gage Park for ten years, had been dealing with myriad health issues, including myelofibrosis, autoimmune disorders, and thyroid disease. These conditions prompted her to begin the long, drawn out process of filing for an accommodation. On top of this, daycares were closed due to COVID-19, so Kullman and her husband stayed home to care for their three- and five-year old children.

In April, CPS began requiring all vaccinated staff to either return to inperson work or to seek a new doctor’s certification saying they could not.

Kullman re-submitted paperwork on her ongoing health issues and childcare situation, and two weeks before the fourth quarter began, her accommodation was denied.

As her only available option, Kullman was forced to apply for an unprotected, unpaid leave of absence. A day later, she was told that due to lower enrollment, the school would be closing her position to acquire a counselor or social worker instead. To Kullman, however, drama

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

EDUCATION class is social-emotional learning and has been an essential beam of light during the dark days of the pandemic.

“The arts and theater support us so emotionally—that’s how we get through.

The kids who come through my theater program, by the large majority, aren’t going to go into the world of theater for a profession, but they have a release there, they have a place they feel accepted. They have a place where no one judges them, especially with people who are in the LGBTQ community…[the theater has] historically been a place of acceptance…

And CPS wants to be thought of as a top-rated education. You can't not have the arts in a top-rated education at all schools.”

Along with providing emotional support during the pandemic and beyond, participation in the arts also correlates to better educational outcomes.

Students with high arts participation and low socioeconomic status are five times less likely than their peers to drop out of school, according to findings from four longitudinal studies. Furthermore, according to the College Board, students who take four years of arts and music classes score on average more than150 points higher on the SAT than students who take only one-half year or less.

Kullman worries that her students are not going to be supported in the same way now that her position has been cut.

“Most will just swallow the fact that there is no more drama and move on, and it will be a really sad reality that they will not have the support of a teacher who cares deeply about them and who they care about. I taught so many students

online through this whole year and last year, and we've built relationships that are even deeper on some levels. And that is going to be pulled from under them without a real explanation.” aving received her master’s in bilingualism in Spain, Lukatya believes that multilingualism is important for children’s development and should be prioritized in the classroom.

“The vast majority of the human population on this earth is multilingual.

And for us to be only teaching one language in school is detrimental for students’ brains, detrimental to their worldview, and detrimental to their culture,” she said. “[For] Chicago, having such a ginormous and beautiful and vibrant Latino community, it's just so devastating that the public education, in my own personal case, tears Spanishspeaking teachers from schools and consistently devalues the needs of bilingual education. Because our kids deserve for their home language to be spoken in schools, they deserve it, you know, and anything less is detrimental to their academic and emotional growth.”

To Lukatya, the job cuts have destabilized the community she has worked so hard to make a welcoming space. Not only did she give her time and energy to her eighty-five students, on August 20, 2020, she was also arrested at an eviction protest with the CTU in order to keep her students in their houses.

And yet, in return, she feels CPS’s actions diminish teachers to mere numbers in a calculation.

“We have our logging number, our ID number, even our school number;

H

Free Writing Classes To Ignite Your Creativity playonthepage.com This project is partially supported by an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency through federal fundsSOUTH provided by the National Endowment the 2021 Arts.

14 SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULYfor22,

we're just like numbers on a spreadsheet,” she said. “And that's how CPS chooses to treat all the amazing educators throughout the districts, but that's not how our students see us. They’re not reaching out to me, because they want their grades to be good. You know, they're reaching out to me, because they know that I care about them.”

H

aving taught for eight years, and being a CTU member and special education teacher herself, Katie Osgood believes that CPS needs every possible teacher that it can get, not less.

Hughes emphasizes the importance of special education and states that firing special education teachers, especially at this time, can have devastating, longlasting effects on students’ futures. “[The students are] not getting the robust supports they need. There are so many special ed classrooms that have long-term subs who are not certified special education teachers. And there's a reason there's a certification for special education, because it requires more knowledge, more intensive supports, more detail, more planning, more relationship building with the students. And so if they don't have that special ed teacher with that sort of extra training, [that] is when you miss out.”

According to Hughes, special education teachers that get laid off in June are often unsure if they will be rehired, so they obtain work in the suburbs. Thus, they are no longer in the CPS talent pool, leading to a shortage of special education teachers in the district. Hughes argues that these teachers have extra value and need to be treated in a way that reflects this.

Furthermore, she has heard from frustrated parents about many children who have been left behind in the past year and whose needs were not met. “That they would be laying off anyone is criminal,” she said. “It’s just so short-sighted and cynical. It just doesn't support the kind of restorative education necessary in this climate.”

According to a letter CTU published on June 21, CTU will actively oppose every layoff, including those that are

retaliatory.

At the CTU press conference, Thad Goodchild, CTU deputy general counsel said, "At worst, many of these layoffs appear to be retaliatory. Amongst the 443 educators notified they would be laid off are several CTU delegates and prominent activists who publicly advocated for safety as CPS moved to reopen school buildings during the pandemic. Retaliation for that sort of activity is prohibited both under our contract and under Illinois law."

Having just gotten full bargaining rights back and on the verge of getting an elected school board, Lukatya—a CTU member herself— suspects the CPS administration’s actions are merely hiding behind the facade of a budgetary issue when in reality the layoffs are a counter against active union members.

She believes this could be the case at many other schools in the district as well.

“The budget thing doesn't line up.

On my last day in the building, [my school] posted a position on the CPS careers website,” she said. “There is a lot of retaliation going on, whether or not CPS is directing principals to retaliate against outspoken teachers and people that are active in the union, I don't know.

But from my perspective, it certainly looks and feels that way.”

Osgood agrees that the layoffs are imbued with anti-union sentiments and on June 23 posted a letter for the BOE on Twitter urging them to start investing in CPS staff. This letter was one of many remarks read at the CPS board meeting that same day, in which multiple teachers relayed heart-wrenching stories about their feelings toward the mass layoffs. As of yet, the mayor and the board have not replied to their grievances.

“People understand that the district's responses [are] cold and callous and wrong,” said Osgood. “And they could reverse these layoffs today. They're acting like their hands are tied. They're not— they have hundreds of millions with more coming in at their disposal right now to make this kind of thing, this kind of instability, stop. And they're choosing not to, and they're doing all these other nonsensical things that no one cares about.”

With the influx of extra funding

EDUCATION available, Lukatya also hopes the board reverses the layoffs and that the union continues to support teachers and their individual grievances. Lastly, she hopes that funding can be restructured to be more equitable across the City. Instead of spending money on cops in schools and on revamping standardized testing, she hopes that CPS will prioritize its students with smaller class sizes and safe spaces for them to build relationships.

In a recent statement, CPS said they will be hiring for over 2,000 teaching and staff positions for the upcoming school year. While this is more than the number of cuts, Kullman highlights the fact that the teachers who have lost their jobs have already spent years building trust and forging strong, interpersonal connections with the students, most notably during a remote year. And now, after a year of tremendous effort to support their children, they are being torn away from that community without explanation.

“I feel like especially when we get higher up into the politics, the funding, we forget that it's the kiddos that this affects,” said Lukatya. “[The board is] not thinking about the actual kids, and what is really tragic about this is that the teachers are the people that are thinking about the kids, you know, because we're with them all day, every day, and we're the ones that get hurt. It's us and the kids that face the consequences of these really immoral decisions.”

After being laid off on that Friday, Lukatya said she has no regrets for standing up for what she believes. “I'm not able to let an injustice be there right in front of me, and not say or do anything about it. So perhaps that makes me a bad teacher. Does it make me a bad person for my students? Absolutely not. Does it make me a bad teacher to two principals?

Probably.” Lily Levine grew up in Los Angeles and is a current student at the University of Chicago studying global studies and health and society. She last wrote about hospital food pantries at U of C Medical Center.

CPS High Schools Vote to Keep All, Some, or None of their Police Officers Keep track of each school’s SRO vote

BY MADELEINE PARRISH

ILLUSTRATION BY ALEJANDRA FERNANDEZ

O

ver the past few months, Chicago high schools voted on their respective Whole School Comprehensive Safety Plans. These plans include decisions on their school’s school resource officer (SRO) status—whether to keep all, some, or none of their cops.

Unlike before, a school will receive funding for each officer taken off duty.

Chicago police officers are assigned to individual Chicago Public Schools (CPS) through the School Resource Officer program. Last summer, the appointed school board voted against terminating the district’s $33 million contract with police, and later, high school Local School Councils (LSCs) chose between keeping or getting rid of their SRO program, resulting in fifty-five schools deciding to maintain their SROs and seventeen schools voting to remove them. The Weekly kept track of how South Side schools voted.

Schools are also voting on a variety of options offered in CPS’s Safety Plans.

Five non-profit organizations developed “a menu of trauma-informed approaches ... as alternatives to the School Resource Officer program.”Their recommendations include holistic restorative justice practices, increased focus on social emotional learning and mental health by providing access to professionals, and training for designated intervention employees such as safe passage workers, counselors, social workers, behavioral health teams, administrators, and security officers.

For the first time, for each officer a school chose not to retain, they will receive at least $50,000 from the district to go toward their alternative safety plan. During LSC meetings, schools’ safety committees presented a range of options:Hirsch Metropolitan in Greater Grand Crossing plans to use the funding from removing one SRO for a full-time social worker, a social and emotional learning curriculum, and a partnership with a girls mentoring organization;

North-Grand plans to spend the $50,000 on a safe passage program; and Hyde Park Academy plans to use the money for a dean of culture and climate.

As students slowly returned to classrooms this spring after a year at home following COVID-19 guidelines, CPS decided SROs were “not necessary at this time” due to overall reduced inperson attendance.

Over summer break, high school LSCs held virtual meetings to discuss and vote on their SRO status. Thus far, of schools located on the South Side, one voted to keep their three SROs, ten voted to keep both of their SROs, fourteen voted to remove one, and three voted to remove both.Visit bit.ly/LSCSafetyPlans for the final citywide tally.

Madeleine Parrish is the Weekly’s education editor. She last wrote about the state of mental health in Chicago.

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

EDUCATION *Schools located on the South Side are denoted with an asterisk.

High Schools with SROs

Results

Air Force Academy*

Vote Date

High Schools with SROs

Results

Vote Date

7/6/21

Julian*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/8/21

Amundsen

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/22/21 6:00 PM

King College Prep*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/10/21 6:00PM

Austin Academy*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/17/21 4:00 PM

Kelly College Prep*

Not voting this year

N/A

Bogan*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/21/21 5:00 PM

Kenwood*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/8/21 6:00 PM

7/7/21

Kennedy*

N/A

Lake View

Remove 2 of 2 SROs

7/8/21 6:00 PM

7/12/21

Lindblom Math and Science*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/7/21 6:00 PM

Bowen* Bronzeville*

Not voting this year

Carver Military Academy*

7/6/21

Chicago Military Academy*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/14/21

Little Village Lawndale*

Chicago Vocational*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

5/18/21

Manley Career Academy*

CICS - Ralph Ellison*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/14/21

Marshall*

Clark Magnet

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

5/13/21

Morgan Park*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/16/21 6:00 PM

Collins Academy*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/22/21

North Grand

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

7/6/21 5:00 PM

Corliss*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/12/21

Orr

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

5/18/21 4:30 PM

7/14/21

Prosser Career Academy

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/22/21 4:30 PM

Crane Medical*

7/28/21 10:00 AM Keep 2 of 2 SROs

5/12/21 7/8/21

Douglass Academy

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

5/10/21

Raby*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

7/13/21 8:00 AM

Dunbar Vocational*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/21/21 5:30 PM

Richards Career Academy*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/10/21

Dyett Arts*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/15/21 6:00 PM

Schurz

Remove 2 of 2 SROs

7/13/21 6:00 PM

Englewood STEM

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/10/21

Simeon*

Keep 3 of 3 SROs

6/14/21 6:00 PM

Farragut Academy*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/9/21 3:45 PM

Solorio Academy*

Remove 2 of 2 SROs

6/10/21

Fenger*

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/15/21

Steinmetz

Foreman

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

5/18/21 5:00 PM

Taft

Keep 4 of 4 SROs

6/16/21 5:30PM

7/6/21

Tilden*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/14/21 3:45 PM

6/8/21 6:00 PM

Von Steuben

Remove 2 of 2 SROs

6/9/21

7/10/21

Washington Prep*

Not voting this year

N/A

Gage Park* Goode STEM Academy*

Remove 2 of 2 SROs

Harlan* Hirsch Metropolitan*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

7/12/21 4:15 PM

Wells Community Academy

Hubbard*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

6/9/21

Westinghouse College Prep*

Hyde Park Academy*

Remove 1 of 2 SROs

7/1/21

Williams Prep*

Jones College Prep*

Remove 2 of 2 SROs

6/10/21 6:00PM

Young Magnet

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

7/14/21

7/12/21 Keep 1 of 1 SROs

7/13/21 5:45 PM TBA

Keep 2 of 2 SROs

6/17/21 4:00 PM

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JUSTICE

Criminalizing Childhood

A proposal could institute fines and mandatory counseling for families.

BY SAMANTHA GUZ AND DURRELL MALIK WASHINGTON SR.

O

n June 25th 15th Ward Alderman Raymond Lopez proposed a new ordinance (O2021-2870) that would fine youth charged with crimes related to staying out past curfew, intoxication, selling alcohol, possession of cannabis, hosting parties where alcohol is consumed by minors, possession of firearms, and assisting minors' engagement in the listed behaviors $1,000 dollars and refer the youth to mandatory family counseling.

Though the proposed ordinance attaches the fee and the mandatory family counseling to youth, it could also have major implications for guardians who may be liable for the fee and participation in family counseling. If youth and guardians do not pay the initial $1,000 dollar fee and do not attend mandatory counseling, they will be fined an additional $1,500 dollars.

Matthew O’Shea (19th), Silvana Tabares (23rd), Anthony Napolitano (41st), and Brendan Reilly (42nd) cosponsored the proposal. None responded to the Weekly’s requests for comment. The ordinance proposal is in 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

its first draft; on the same date it was introduced, the proposal was also referred to the Committee on Committees and Rules, which Lopez and other cosponsoring alderpeople are members of.

In a recent interview with WGN Radio, Lopez, whose ward spans neighborhoods on the Southwest Side, blamed families as a cause of violence in Chicago. “I know nobody likes to bring this up. We’ve seen that throughout the entirety of conversations about Adam Toledo,” Lopez said. “But if we keep ducking and dodging that root cause of what is going on in our city, in our families, in our neighborhoods we’re never going to have an impact.”

Lopez said he also doubted the effectiveness of anti-violence programs, suggesting that carceral interventions were necessary. “Unfortunately a number of my colleagues are trying to focus on, you know, spending more money on programs and social justice-type issues without confronting the elephant in the room, which is that gangs and criminals are emboldened in this city while parents are asleep at the switch,” he said.

“Fining and locking up families or locking up youth or arresting them is essentially contributing to more pain, more hurt.”

Dr. Franklin Cosey-Gay, the executive director of the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention, a center actively involved in communitydriven anti-violence programs on the Southeast of Chicago, called Lopez’s proposal “short-sighted” and said he was “disappointed to hear that further fines are viewed as a solution.”

Cosey-Gay countered the carceral and punitive ideologies behind the proposal, stating that a root cause of violence in Chicago was not guardian neglect but rather structural neglect by government systems. Placing the proposal within the historical context of racist policies and practices layered over decades, he cited the mass closure of public housing followed by the mass closure of public schools as an example of multiple city systems impacting the wellbeing of South Side families of color.

Referencing Chicago’s shrinking Black population, Cosey-Gay noted that this ordinance, if passed, would be one of many that makes Chicago “an unlivable place for many Black families.”

Jennifer Gilbert, a licensed professional counselor and Marquette Park resident, said the fine would place “excess stress on the families” and added that the family counseling mandate could mean a variety of things depending on the therapeutic model, the provider, and number of sessions required.

Access to mental health services is a longstanding issue on the South Side, and GIlbert had questions regarding the family counseling mandate. “Are they going to be given resources to attend these sessions?

Or is it just going to be ‘yeah you have to attend therapy look it up yourself?’” she said. “There are also sometimes a lack of resources depending on communities.”

JUSTICE

ILLUSTRATION BY HALEY TWEEDELL

These remain outstanding questions, as the ordinance proposal does not provide information on how the mandated family counseling policy would be implemented.

Chatham resident and licensed clinical social worker Akilah Baker shared Gilbert’s concerns. While Baker was open to the idea of accountability, she said she had mixed feelings about the proposal.

Notably, Baker referred to the fine as a “punishment” and said, “I think it could be traumatizing to the parent especially if it’s a fine that they can’t afford”. Offering her professional expertise as well as her personal experience as a mother, Baker expressed a desire for prevention and separated a preventive approach from the proposal’s mandates, “I think that prevention is that they have an option to attend these services” prior to arrest.

Rather than mandating therapy after

harm has been caused, a more progressive and preventive approach includes ensuring that mental health resources are affordable and accessible to families prior to interaction with the criminal legal system. Baker also spoke about the ways structural racism would influence the implementation of the ordinance and, ultimately, its impact on families of color. She said she believes racism will play a role because of the discretion police officers have over whether to arrest youth for the targeted charges. “I think that sometimes Black and brown people are treated [more] harshly than people who are not,” she said. “Whereas [white] people may be given just a warning, I believe that Black and brown people will probably get hit with a fine quicker.”

Compared to state-level reforms that remove mechanisms of racial and

economic exploitation in the criminal legal system, Cosey-Gay described Lopez’s proposal as a step back. “I think what the state is doing is promising, and also the Biden administration is now looking at a larger investment in prevention instead of continuing to dump money into policing,” he said.

Rather than instituting regressive fees and expanding the legal system, Cosey-Gay stressed the importance of funding community-driven coalitions, and in particular, funding communitydriven infrastructures as opposed to single, standalone programs. Within this Cosey-Gay cited research that demonstrated “the power of collective impact programs, doing work that is community-driven, doing work that is directed at those that are the highest risk [for causing harm].”

This work is part of what he described as looking “further upstream at the root causes. Fining and locking up families or locking up youth or arresting them is essentially contributing to more pain, more hurt.”

Though he called the ordinance proposal “disappointing,” Cosey-Gay said he remains proud of Chicago. “I’ve been proud of the grassroots activism that’s happening,” he said. “I’m proud that there are new offices of equity and racial justice in the city for the first time ever.”

Instead of investing political energy and time into the current ordinance proposal, Cosey-Gay said that the “emphasis should be on racial justice, on social justice, and equity.” Samantha Guz is a social worker and PhD student at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.

Durrell Malik Washington Sr. is a PhD Student at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.

This is their first story for the Weekly.

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

LIT

Reading Blackness

The new Anthology of Black American Literature celebrates the diversity of Black experience.

BY TINA JENKINS BELL

B

eing Black is not a monolithic existence. You can’t know one of us and know all of us. You can’t truly know the Black experience—or any other than your own—without living it, being immersed in it from innards to outwards.

Yet in reading the Chicago Quarterly Review’s new Anthology of Black American Literature, where gifted writers, poets, andartists shed their truths, anyone of open heart and mind can empathize with the joys, struggles, accomplishments, and recursiveness of being Black in America.

Though the table of contents is divided by genre—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art—the work within is interspersed so that you don’t know what you’re getting until you get there. Though the purpose of the anthology is to “capture the great diversity of thought, feeling and life of Black America,” according to CQR managing editor Gary Houston, I read from one story, poem, or essay to the next, glad that I could not predict the essence of the piece but also thankful for the cultural and human connections.

In his introduction to the collection, National Book Award-winning novelist, philosopher, and guest editor Charles Johnson discusses the work in the anthology as it relates to six cultural themes: the collective Black past; historical reimagining of that past; group trauma; the existential pain some struggle within their Blackness; cultural appropriation; and intersection of worlds, cultures, people, and circumstances.

Johnson was right to do so, considering the recent isolation, death tolls and life compromises of the pandemic, the gun violence happening in neighborhoods populated by people of color, the poor, and the hopeless, and the political upheavals 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

that have divided family, friends, and neighbors.

I found the work in the Anthology of Black American Literature to be like studying an impressionist art form, where understanding and perspective can be individual as well as collective. From my own prism, I developed my own categories based on the wide realm of emotions and vulnerability.

When I began to read “Doctor King’s Queens,” an excerpt from the recently completed novel My Gingerbread Shakespeare, by Cyrus Cassells, I was quickly drawn into to the conversational and sometimes conspiratorial narrative of Duncan Thaddeus Metcalfe, the great love of fictional Harlem Renaissance poet Maceo Hartnell Mitchell and a celebrity in his own right, known to the press and his fans as the “Black Gable.” A baritone singer and an actor, Duncan has been asked to sing, per the request of Maceo’s sister, at the funeral of slain civil rights activist Dr. Frederick Douglas Kinnison. Before affirming his participation, Duncan decides to do a little reconnaissance. In Doc Kinnison, Duncan discovers a kindred spirit, a gay man with a colorful past and like himself, one of the many gay men recruited by Bayard Rustin to join Dr. Martin Luther King in the fight for civil rights.

“We were all of us battle-ready privates in Bayard’s fast-growing army; in his giant Hell no! to unjust Jim Crow,” writes Cassells. Reading Duncan’s tales was like “dishing tea” with a friend while also stirring in the unspoken contributions of gay Black men to the civil rights movement. Duncan’s “tongue and cheek” narrative vacillates between lighthearted and serious tones, particularly when

LIT

“Each piece in the Anthology of Black American Literature takes you on a journey that can be terrifying, disturbing, beautiful, tender, moving, or enlightening.”

his young lover and freedom fighter is murdered while teaching Mississippi Delta kids how to read.

The short story “that’s why darkies were born,” by David Nicholson, also won my attention. In it, Nicholson tackles that African proverb that says, “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

Nicholson allows the lions of classics like Huckleberry Finn and Gone with the Wind to speak their truths. James reframes the story of Huck Finn by admonishing Huck or misrepresenting the actual way James ( Jim) spoke or the real reason they’ve joined forces. In Nicholson’s reimagining, James was a free, educated man from a family of means until he left home to travel, but before he could reach his destination, his manumission papers were absconded by the law and ruled fraudulent by a judge who allows James to be sold into an institution of slavery his family had not experienced for two generations.

“I was seized, chained, and thrown rudely into the frame hut that served as a jail,” writes Nicholson, in Jim’s voice.

“In the morning, Judge Thatcher ruled my letter no proof I was free, the law recognizing only manumission papers filed with the court and certified by the legislature. I protested, cajoled, threatened even, in the end, offered bribes. It was no use. I was declared property and sold in short order. Once James, a free man, I was now N***** Jim, diminished in name and status.”

Afterwards, Jim concocts a way to

reclaim his freedom by throwing in with a shiftless young man who has a raft and pole and knows his way around a river.

In “that’s why darkies are born,” among other prose and poems in the collection, the writers allow formerly subdued voices to rise to the surface and tell their own stories.

Two poems, “Of Walking In,” by Aaron Coleman, and “Brother Eric Garner,” by David Henderson, speak to the concept of shared trauma, acting as gateways to hard but necessary conversations and posing various ways to look at common social ailments, from the challenge of simply walking while male and Black to the murders of unarmed Black men by the police.

With “Of Walking In,” Coleman tackles the common dilemma faced by Black men who need to present the façade of living with dignity and freedom in America, even if it is an act: Shout-singing their favorite pop hip hop songs In order to perform a riddle and posture Of freedom.

Later he writes: But I know I felt the black weightlessness In the practice of letting go Of public fear and private shame In public space. Untaken, but noticed.

Henderson’s “Brother Eric Garner” shatters the fallacy that portrays Garner a criminal.

To be clear, yes, Eric Garner sold

single cigarettes to people “who lacked the funds to invest in a 13-dollar pack of smokes.” But, on the day of his death, he wasn’t doing anything unlawful. In fact, according to Henderson, he was on his way to pick up groceries for his family and stopped to help the police break up a fight before they turned on him. At the end of the poem, Henderson wonders if Garner would have lived had he fought the men in blue who unwarrantedly attacked him. This left me thinking fight or flight, with the wrong officer, while retaining your life is toss-up.

A common conservative complaint about Black Lives Matter and other social justice activism is that Black people are always complaining about the police when they are killing each other, even though the U.S. Department of Justice found the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicides similar, at around eighty and ninety percent. Even so, the fear, anger, sadness, and frustration of dealing with neighborhood violence hits you in the gut when you read “Off the Wall” by Tsehaye Geralyn Hérbert.

In this short work, Josie, a mother and teacher who wears sensible shoes, takes on the apathy of a community content to build memorials for kids who have been shot down or killed in their prime. Tired of memorials that do nothing but expand, Josie purchases several cans of spray paint from an auto shop and at her own peril, sprays over a memorial of slash marks (one for each murder) amidst a growing crowd of dissenters and supporters. Josie questions the purpose of creating one

memorial after another when another child is posed to die. “I am sick and tired of the killing,” writes Herbert. “These are our kids.”

Each piece in the Anthology of Black American Literature takes you on a journey that can be terrifying, disturbing, beautiful, tender, moving, or enlightening.

The writing is impressionistic in that two people may read the same prose and have different insights or perspectives, but each reader will walk away lifted in knowledge or empathy. The anthology is a long-time investment. My own copy is already dogeared and populated with protruding post-it notes and marginal annotations.

I will return to these essays, stories, and poems often for my own edification and that of my students because the Black experience as chronicled in the Anthology shows our humanity in all its beautiful imperfections, struggles, and triumphs. Charles Johnson, guest editor, Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol. 33: An Anthology of Black American Literature, Chicago Quarterly Review, $24/2 issues, 254 pages.

Tina Jenkins Bell is a freelance journalist.

She has written for Shareable.net, Alaska Magazine, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Free Press, Crain's Chicago Business, CNet, the Villager, and a host of other publications. She routinely blogs for Chicago Writers Association, For Love of Writing (FLOW), and AuthorPublish. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

Scan to view the calendar online!

ILLUSTRATION BY THUMY PHAN

BULLETIN Community Repair Clinic 2124 W. 82nd Pl., Saturday, July 24, 11:00am–2:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3kDTRuj Volunteer fixers from Community Glue Workshop and the Chicago Tool Library will be on hand to repair your broken household goods, toys, furniture, jewelry, and more—all with the goal of keeping otherwise functional items out of landfills. This event is in partnership with Creative Chicago Reuse Exchange; please, no computers or printers.

A second repair clinic is slated for September 16 at this site. (Martha Bayne)

Third Annual CRR19 Bike Tour Chicago Military Academy, 3519 S. Giles Ave., Saturday, July 24, Gather at 9:00 AM; ride at 10:00am–2:00pm.

Free; donations suggested. bit.ly/3rdannualbiketour This four-hour bike tour commemorates the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. The tour will travel through the Bronzeville and Bridgeport neighborhoods and mark key sites in the worst episode of racial violence in Chicago history, as well as other locations highlighting the history and resilience of the Black 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 22, 2021

community, including the sites of the Chicago Defender and Chicago Bee newspapers, the Binga Bank, the Ida B. Wells monument, and more. BYO bike; helmets are strongly recommended and unvaccinated riders are asked to wear masks and practice social distancing.

Organized by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project, it's part of a larger ongoing effort to spark conversations about racism in Chicago and the nation. (Maddie Parrish)

Eugene Williams Headstone Unveiling Lincoln Cemetery, 12300 S. Kedzie Ave., Saturday, July 24, 3:30pm, Free.

In 1919, a white mob murdered Eugene Williams, a seventeen-year-old Black boy, for the "crime" of swimming too close to an unofficial "whites-only" beach on the South Side, sparking the race riots that became known as Red Summer. Williams was buried in an unmarked grave at Lincoln Cemetery.

The Eugene Williams Memorial Committee raised money to place a headstone on his grave, and it will be unveiled on Saturday. Contact Tammy Gibson for info at sankofatravelher@ yahoo.com or 708-606-7380. ( Jim Daley)

EDUCATION Chicago Public Schools Vaccination Site Chicago Vocational Career Academy, 2100 E. 87th St., Tuesday, July 27, 9:00am– 1:00pm. Free. bit.ly/cpsvaccinations Every Tuesday from July 12 through the start of the school year, CPS hosts a vaccination site at Chicago Vocational Career Academy. The vaccine is free for all, no ID or insurance is required, and walk-ups are welcome. Anyone under eighteen must have a parent or guardian present to provide consent. Make an appointment at bit.ly/cpsvaccinations.

(Maddie Parrish)

Little Village Lawndale SRO Vote Online, Wednesday, July 28, 10:00am.

Free. bit.ly/littlevillagelawndalesrovote Little Village Lawndale High School will be hosting a Local School Council meeting during which they will be voting on their School Resource Officer status for the coming school year. Join by Google Meet at bit.ly/ littlevillagelawndalesrovote. (Maddie Parrish)

Chicago Public Schools Board of Education Meeting CPS Loop Office, 42 W. Madison St, Garden Level, Board Room, Wednesday, July 28, 10:30am. Free. cpsboe.org Watch the livestream of July's Board of Education meeting at cpsboe.org. You can register to speak at the meeting from July 26 at 10:30am until July 27 at 5pm, or until slots are filled at either cpsboe. org or by phone at (312) 989-7313.

(Maddie Parrish)

THE ARTS Gabriel Villa's Metamorphosis Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave., Through Saturday, July 24, 10:00am– 7:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3kxUmWT It's not too late to enjoy the last days of an exhibition by Pilsen-based artist and former director of Yollocalli Arts Reach Gabriel Villa. Villa seeks to seamlessly translate the language of Mexican traditions and the personal urban American experience into charged intimate narratives. His stream-ofconsciousness approach to painting and drawing expose the heightened reality found in everyday objects and places. The exhibit closes July 24; walk-ins allowed. ( Jackie Serrato)

EVENTS

All Power to All People

House City

House of Sol 2021

Englewood Village Plaza, 5801 S. Halsted St., Through Monday, August 30, Free. bit. ly/36QZi0I

Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave., Friday, July 23, 3:00pm– 9:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3xlBON9

Standing twenty-eight feet tall and weighing 24,000 pounds, Hank Willis Thomas's sculpture All Power to All People combines the Afro pick and the Black Power salute, two potent symbols of Black identity and social justice. The work is part of the Monumental Tour, a national touring exhibition intended to foster social change through the arts, presented by Kindred Arts. It's on display through August 30. (Isabel Nieves)

House City is a ten-part series of free events throughout the summer in the neighborhoods that helped create House music more than thirty-five years ago.

This Friday DJs Elbert Philips, Duane Powell, and Lori Branch perform at an event co-presented by the Stony Island Arts Bank. (Isabel Nieves)

Fiesta del Sol, 1400 W. Cermak, Thursday, July 29,12:00pm–8:30pm. Free. bit. ly/36eThuw

Big Wheel Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. Martin Luther King Dr., Through Monday, August 30, Free. bit.ly/36QZi0I Another piece of the Monumental Tour, Arthur Jafa's Big Wheel is made of four seven-foot tires—gargantuan things, made for monster trucks by a Colorado manufacturer—each laced with a mesh of iron chain; in lieu of hubcaps are abstract medallion sculptures that are 3-D printed from melted chains. It's on display through August 30. (Isabel Nieves)

Brave Space Tuley Park, 501 E. 90th Pl., Thursday, August 5–Friday, August 6, 3:00pm– 4:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3kDWoVd Aloft Circus Arts presents a free performance of the company's 2019 show Brave Space, in which an allfemale ensemble of aerialists and acrobats explore concepts of trust and collaboration. Inspired by the challenge to create community in trying times, the intimate show, adapted for COVID restrictions and outdoor performance, features juggling, cyr wheel, duo trapeze, and more. BYO chair or blanket; masks required for audience members. Some audience participation may be requested.

Additional performances August 5 and 6 in other Chicago parks. (Martha Bayne)

CircEsteem Around Chicago Bogan Park, 3939 W. 79th St., Friday, July 23, 6:00pm. Free. circesteem.org/summer-tour-2021/ CircEsteem's 2021 summer tour makes multiple stops on the South Side, bringing clowning, juggling, acrobatics, and more as part of its mission to use the circus arts to unite youth across all backgrounds and effect social change.

The tour also hits Arrigo Park in Pilsen at 6pm on Friday, July 30. Visit the CircEsteem website for more dates in August. (Martha Bayne)

House of Sol is a free four-day DJ showcase dedicated to the city’s homegrown sound of House music. The event is featured as a part of Fiesta del Sol, a four-day street festival. Since its inception in 2007, HOS features local DJs and producers who continue to make a name for themselves in some of the city’s biggest venues. (Alma Campos)

Center Sunday Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave., Sunday, August 1, 1:00pm–4:00pm.

Free. bit.ly/centersunday Hosted by the Hyde Park Art Center, Center Sunday is family friendly day filled with intergenerational art making activities, artist workshops, open studios, curatorial tours of their exhibitions, and community collaborations. Register at bit.ly/centersunday. (Maddie Parrish)

FOOD & LAND

Paint Your Own Alebrije with Puech Ikots' Carlos Orozco

Community Gardens as Neighborhood Resource

Online, Saturday, July 24, 12:00pm– 1:30pm. $10.00-$35.00. bit.ly/3rkP1Ua

Rainbow Beach Park Fieldhouse, 2873 E. 75th St., Saturday, July 24, 10:30am– 1:00pm. Free. chicagohumanities.org/ events/community-gardens

Learn how to make your own handcarved alebrije under the instruction of artist and Indigenous activist Carlos Orozco from Puech Ikots, an Indigenous arts collective of eighty families based in Oaxaca, Mexico. Their mission is to preserve their traditional artistic traditions, especially the creation of copal wood alebrijes in traditional Oaxacan style, while also learning about their culture, sustainability practices of Indigenous peoples, and the beautiful artistic traditions of Mexico's Isthmus region. Event recurs every Saturday through the end of the year.

(Alma Campos)

The Chicago Humanities Festival partners with South Side organizations for this celebration of the role community gardening plays on the South Side, in and around the historic Rainbow Beach Victory Garden.

Featuring a panel discussion with L. Anton Seals, Lead Steward of Grow Greater Englewood; Naomi Davis, founder of Blacks in Green; and UIC anthropologist Dr. Molly Doane, whose work centers on the relationship between people, the environment, and community activism. The first activity to take place at Rainbow Beach in more than a year, the program also offers tours, a scavenger hunt, and more. (Martha Bayne)

Wood Street Farm Stand 1844 W. 59th St., Every Thursday until October 31, 11:00am–5:30pm. Free.

Hosted by Growing Home, the farm stand includes cooking demonstrations with free samples and recipe cards for healthy meals. Free farm tours are also available. WIC, SNAP, EBT and Senior Coupons are double-valued. The Farm Stand takes place every Thursday until October 31. (Maddie Parrish)

Englewood City Market Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Roller Skating & Bowling Center, 1219 W. 76th St., Every Saturday until September 18, 10:00am–2:00pm. Free.

Hosted by the City of Chicago, this market takes place every Saturday until September 18. The market accepts Link.

(Maddie Parrish)

Family Yoga at McKinley Park Community Play Garden 3518-28 S. Wolcott Ave., 3518-28 S. Wolcott Ave., Every Saturday through August, 11:00am–11:45am. Donations requested. bit.ly/3rmxc6Z Families are invited to the McKinley Park Community Garden on Saturday mornings through August to get fresh air, sunshine, and exercise in a yoga class designed for all ages. Participants should bring their own yoga mats, and water.

(Alma Campos)

Plant Chicago Farmers Market Davis Square Park, 4430 S. Marshfield Ave., Every Saturday, 11:00am–3:00pm.

Free. plantchicago.org/farmers-market Plant Chicago hosts a weekly farmers market featuring locally grown produce and flowers, plus honey, coffee, baked goods, and more. The nonprofit also runs a community composting site where residents can drop off their food scraps.

Link card purchases are matched up to $25. (Martha Bayne)

JULY 22, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23