July 8, 2021

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 16 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 Photographers Davon Clark 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 Eva Azenaro Acero

IN CHICAGO Nurses strike About 900 nurses and thousands of hospital staff picketed Cook County Health (CCH) and its affiliated facilities on June 24. The nurses and affiliated union workers say the hospitals are greatly understaffed and are demanding investment toward higher pay and more staff during a pandemic that still lingers. John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital, the flagship of CCH, has one of the busiest level-one trauma centers in the nation and treats more gunshot victims than any other hospital in Chicago. Historically, they serve mostly marginalized populations in the city. Still, nurses and staff feel as though they are not being paid wages that are inline with the amount of hard work they do. On June 24, the nurses striked for a day, but other hospital staff such as clerks and environmental workers are continuing to strike. Following the actions, Cook County Health approved a four-year contract to handle lack of staff and other concerns voiced by the union. These changes include hiring hundreds of staff and potential pay increases.

Cook County Jail demolition Divisions 1 and 1a of Cook County Jail—the row of unused century-old buildings next to the Criminal Courthouse and parallel to the jail wall—are getting demolished to cut expensive maintenance costs and given the relatively significant drop in the jail population. When the announcement was initially made, La Villita residents had a panicked flashback to the botched demolition of the coal plant smokestack a year ago, but officials assured residents that explosives would not be used. Buildings are being taken apart “precisely and piece by piece,” officials said, and water systems will control air-borne dust. Air monitors have been installed and residents can check for updates online. The job is expected to be completed by February 2022.

Miracle Boyd case On June 29, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) delivered its findings to Superintendent Brown from an investigation of a Chicago Police officer who attacked GoodKids MadCity organizer Miracle Boyd in July 2020, after a demonstration at the Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park.

COPA’s finding said the officer, whom the Weekly first identified via Freedom of Information Act requests as Nicholas Jovanovich, “extended his left arm and struck Ms. Boyd’s cell phone from her hand, causing the phone to hit her face which resulted in several injuries.” The Weekly sued COPA in March after it refused to release body-camera video of the attack in response to our FOIA request, and hearings are pending. As of May 27, COPA’s position was that producing the records would interfere with a pending law enforcement proceeding and active administrative enforcement proceeding. COPA’s role in that proceeding is now complete.

IN THIS ISSUE public meetings report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. documenters, jacqueline serrato, and scott pemberton.........................5 surveilling dissent

The City’s gun-violence prevention center was operational for just one week before it trained its gaze on political dissent. jim daley................................................6 op-ed: the in-between

New parole laws for people convicted as young adults won’t offer relief retroactively. phil hartsfield.....................................9 cook county’s sizable vaccination disparity remains in black and brown suburbs

Chicago’s systemic racism reaches beyond its municipal boundaries. cicero independiente and south side weekly..............................11 vaccine disparity grows in chicago’s south suburbs

When COVID-19 hit the South Side aggressively in the spring of 2020, nearby suburban residents could only brace themselves for what was to come. jacqueline serrato and alma campos........................................14 community leaders in cicero step up to address vaccination disparities

A look at vaccination efforts in west suburban Cicero, Berwyn, and Stickney. abel rodríguez, cicero independiente........................18 discombobulated and dark, angry blackmen are on the rise

“The production is chaotic, but not disjointed.

In fact, the hectic sounds feel quite fitting for present times.” donna das............................................23 calendar

Bulletin and events. south side weekly..............................25

Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD

June 21 The City Council Committee on Finance changed how the City collects taxes on food app deliveries. Taxes will now be collected directly from the delivery apps instead of the restaurants. This action reflects similar state reforms that went into effect on January 1. The committee also decided that about $18 million in Tax-Increment Financing (TIF) funds will go to support a series of parks projects. Garfield Park and river access projects will be most affected. The City awarded $1.8 million to five plaintiffs in connection with a sexual harassment lawsuit filed in 2018. The lawsuit alleged sexual harassment by Chicago Fire Department employees.

June 23 During public comments at the City Council meeting, a minister said news coverage describing a "compromise" on renaming Lake Shore Drive for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable was troubling, explaining that the original proposal would be "best, right, and honorable." The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression expressed support for the Empowering Communities for Public Safety ordinance to allow community oversight of public safety. Ald. Raymond Lopez, followed by Ald. Jeanette Taylor, asked that the nomination of Celia Meza as Corporation Counsel be deferred in light of her predecessor’s handling of the Anjanette Young case. The request caused Mayor Lori Lightfoot to walk up to Taylor for what became a confrontational exchange. Annette Nance-Holt was then confirmed as Chicago Fire Department Commissioner, the first Black woman to lead the fire department, before the meeting was abruptly adjourned.

June 24 The City Council Joint Committee on Health and Human Relations and Public Safety heard from several gender-based and sexual violence prevention organizations in connection with a resolution sponsored by fifteen council members. R2020-805 calls for “hearing(s) on expanding community-based domestic, sexual and gender-based violence prevention programming.” The organizations are asking for the reallocation of $35 million from police department funds to their programs. One program, The Network, has published a proposal, Shifting Resources & Saving Lives, which provides background information on funding domestic violence prevention services.

In an INVEST South/West Auburn-Gresham community roundtable, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) asked virtual attendees to weigh in on questions of housing, the appropriate mix of resident-owned and rental housing in the community, and public space. A small group of homeowners believe that too many low-income developments already exist and that more could bring crime. A developer of Evergreen Imagine, a mixed-use proposal at 79th and Green, said the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit is not accurately named. He said it is for working professional

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level for the July 8 issue.

BY DOCUMENTERS, JACQUELINE SERRATO AND SCOTT PEMBERTONTO

people who earn approximately $35,000 to $50,000 per year, not for Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) tenants who may have relied solely on government assistance. DPD Commissioner Maurice Cox said that crime and development must be addressed to “grow this community.”

June 25 The Cook County Health and Hospitals System Board of Directors learned that the system has received a $25.2M grant from the Centers for Disease Control. The grant will be used to build up public health and data infrastructure, address health disparities, establish an office of health equity, and engage communities to increase vaccination rates. Nine hundred nurses and two thousand other workers went on strike to protest staffing shortages at Cook County Health (CCH) hospitals. In past board meetings dozens of nurses have testified that staffing shortages lead to reductions in the availability and quality of patient care. Regarding the strikes, which he called “workforce events,” CEO Israel Rocha Jr. said that management is actively engaged in conversations with unions and are trying to "do everything possible to come to an agreement, as soon as possible."

In a follow-up City Council meeting, a compromise was passed 33-15 to add the name of the first Black and non-Indigenous settler in Chicago to Lake Shore Drive.

The new name will be Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive. The day before, a variety of council members sent the mayor an open letter calling on her to honor Robert's Rules of Order at City Council. At the meeting, the Council confirmed Meza, the City’s first Latina Corporation Counsel. Chamber of commerce representatives supported Lightfoot’s Chi Biz Strong Initiative, which according to one, “will make the city more business-friendly, eliminating some red tape.”

June 30 Police should no longer run after a suspect in an alleged crime for anything less than a Class A misdemeanor, according to an interim foot pursuit policy, the subject of a community conversation hosted by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Class A misdemeanors include aggravated assault, driving under the influence, and retail theft. Examples of offenses that don’t meet the foot-pursuit threshold are low-level traffic violations, disorderly conduct, and littering. The U.S. Department of Justice had flagged the lack of a foot pursuit policy as dangerous for both police and the public, but CPD had not developed a policy before the fatal police shootings of Adam Toledo and Anthony Alvarez in March. In one facilitated breakout discussion, attendees offering different perspectives were skeptical that a policy would lead to meaningful change “in the moment” during encounters.

July 2 A special City Council meeting about CPD's summer public safety strategy was convened at the request of multiple council members before the 4th of July weekend.

Superintendent David Brown said he wouldn't "divulge specific numbers on officer deployments," but that nearly 6,000 guns have been taken off the street, including 240 "assault weapons." In line with the mayor's past statements, Brown blamed the Cook County court system for not being punitive enough, adding that the "explosion of electronic monitoring [is] harming our city."

This information was collected in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.

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POLICE

Surveilling Dissent

How CPD used the City’s gun-violence prevention center to monitor demonstrations last summer.

BY JIM DALEY

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t a press conference near the lake on the Friday before Memorial Day 2020, David Brown, the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, announced the launch of the Summer Operations Center (SOC), a multiagency gun-violence prevention hub. Brown said the center had a singular mission: “Reducing murders and shootings this summer.”

But internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that almost immediately after the SOC’s creation, with the onset of citywide protests against racism and the police murder of George Floyd, the police department began using the violence-prevention center to monitor and share intelligence about political demonstrations. The police continued to use the SOC to surveil political organizing throughout the summer and fall—even going so far as to quietly add protest monitoring to the center’s stated mission.

Gun violence typically increases during summer months in Chicago.

Under Superintendent Brown, who joined CPD in April 2020, violence prevention became the departmental watchword. The SOC—modeled on the department’s district-level surveillance hubs, called Strategic Decision Support Centers—was central to that mission.

The SOC was housed in the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) headquarters in the West Loop, and was staffed by employees of the CPD, the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, the Chicago Transit Authority, Streets and Sanitation, the Chicago 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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Housing Authority, the Chicago Park District, and other agencies. A May 20, 2020 letter from OEMC to agency heads described the SOC as a “partnership with CPD and the Mayor’s Office...over the summer to support citywide coordination around violence reduction.”

The center operated overnight every Thursday through Sunday from May to October, with interagency briefings each evening. Notes from the welcoming statement for the SOC’s first evening briefing on May 23 said the center’s purpose was “a coordinated effort across all city resources, using geographic and crime analytic procedures in deployment of city resources to promote the reduction of violence.”

To achieve that, SOC briefings reviewed intel on recent shootings and planned violence-suppression missions that blanketed target areas with surveillance technology such as license-plate readers, gunshot sensors, and thousands of video cameras, as well as sending “surges” of CPD personnel and police cruisers with flashing lights to strategic locations across the South and West Sides. How successful these efforts were in preventing gun violence, which reached historic levels in 2020, is unclear.

What is clear is that the CPD also used the Summer Operations Center’s wide-ranging surveillance apparatus to monitor political organizers and plan missions to police demonstrations all summer.

On May 25, then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, and a widely shared cell-phone video of the killing sparked protests and uprisings in cities across

The SOC, whose mission was originally the prevention of gun violence, included surveillance of a peace walk in Washington Park and a ‘Gloves Up Guns Down— Deter Violence’ rally in the West Side neighborhood of Austin in its September 5 briefing. the country. In Chicago that Saturday, helmeted police escalated confrontations with demonstrators by attacking them with batons and chemical irritants. Police cars were soon set ablaze. Hoping to protect businesses in the Loop, the City raised bridges and suspended bus and train service. That evening’s SOC briefing included a “Protest Update” that outlined how traffic and bridges were being shut down and noted that “multiple arrests” had been made.

Around the same time as the evening briefing, someone at the SOC sent police officers and Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) inspectors to the Chicago Freedom School. The SOC sent the inspectors there because the school opened its doors and ordered pizza for youth who were trapped in the Loop amid the evening’s chaos. “The allegations were that they were providing shelter and preparing and distributing food to the

protesters,” wrote Ivan Capifali, a deputy commissioner at the BACP, in an email to CPD Commander Mark Harmon. “The request came from the Summer Violence Reduction Center (SOC) which BACP is also a part of.”

At the next day’s morning briefing, the SOC’s mission had changed: it was now, “Continuing a coordinated citywide response to any demonstrations.” The briefing laid out the CPD’s “outer perimeter footprint” designed to protect the “Central Business District.” The City’s gun-violence prevention center had been operational for just one week before it trained its gaze on political dissent.

The CPD—and by extension, the SOC—likely found out that the Chicago Freedom School was sheltering protesters by monitoring social media. At a press conference in August, Superintendent Brown announced the department was expanding its “capacity of looking at intelligence” (i.e., public social media

POLICE plan accordingly,” the email read.

Luke Kula, one of the organizers of the 46th Ward sidewalk rally, said it was meant to be a communitybuilding and engagement activity centered on Cappleman’s opposition to proposed legislation that would give the community more control over the police.

“We had the idea of having a block party, a sort of protest where we could hand out food and water and have music and art,” Kula said.

Dozens of police on bicycles filled the street. “It made everything more tense,” Kula said. “Instead of having a community event that’s focused on getting our alderman to do the right thing...now we’ve got to worry about whether these officers are going to start cracking heads.”

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ILLUSTRATION BY LUCAS MARTINEZ

posts) to prevent looting, but internal records show the social media task force actually began operating weeks earlier.

Detectives and patrol officers assigned to the unit worked round-the-clock trawling Facebook and Twitter for signs of unrest: CPD records show at least ten cops earned overtime while monitoring social media last year. The intelligence they collected was shared with other agencies via the Summer Operations Center. SOC briefings eventually included detailed reports from the social media unit on the timing, locations, and number of people who had responded to

public event announcements.

In the weeks following the May 30 rebellions, the SOC continued to coordinate surveillance of political activity alongside its violence-reduction missions. Internal documents show that starting at an evening briefing on June 13 and at subsequent meetings that summer, the center’s mission was now described as “Coordinat[ing] City resources to monitor protests in addition to our continued mission to reduce violence during the summer months.”

The “City resources” referred to in those meetings included other agencies

that CPD both drew upon for help and to whom it communicated intelligence.

In one example, a July 5 email from the OEMC Operations Center to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) security director listed four demonstrations scheduled to take place across Chicago that weekend: a Black Pride Day at Rainbow Beach in South Shore, a bike ride for Black Lives Matter on the far Southeast Side, a sidewalk rally on the block where 46th Ward Alderman James Cappelman resides, and a “honk for justice” rally in West Ridge on the far North Side. “All City Departments please

wo weeks later, on July 17, a demonstration in Grant Park escalated when protesters confronted police who were guarding a statue of Christopher Columbus. The police initially retreated before returning in force and attacking demonstrators.

After the Columbus statue debacle, the CPD adopted a more aggressive posture at demonstrations and ramped up intelligence-gathering. The next weekend’s SOC briefing included detailed intel on five demonstrations scheduled to take place in the Loop on July 25, including information on how many people indicated interest or plans to attend on social media event pages.

The briefing outlined a departmental protest response that drew personnel from CPD’s Critical Incident Response Team, Community Safety Team, SWAT and summer mobile units, detectives, canine and mounted units, Intelligence, and the News Affairs office. As part of that weekend’s surveillance, the director of News Affairs even approved a “First Amendment” investigation into protest activity.

The SOC continued to keep tabs on political organizing through August and into the fall. An email to the CHA security director on August 9 detailed another bike protest at 85th and Commercial Ave. and a rally in Lincoln Park in support of a Civilian Police Accountability Council.

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLICE Plans for an August 15 Black Lives Matter march along the Dan Ryan Expressway in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood on the city’s South Side drew particular attention from the SOC, along with another in Douglass Park near the notorious Homan Square black site and a march to defund CPD in the Loop on the same day. The SOC’s morning briefing that day focused entirely on containing protests. That weekend, sixtyfour people were shot, seven fatally, in Chicago.

The August 15 briefing included an overview of a Central Business Protection Infrastructure Plan that noted that “City Agencies will have assets staged in key locations to be put in place within 15 minutes,” and included a map of bridge closures and “community access points” around the Loop. Dozens of police lined the march route in Grand Boulevard that morning, preventing demonstrators from getting to the expressway. Downtown on Michigan Ave. that afternoon, under the shadow of the raised DuSable bridge, police attacked protesters with batons

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and chemical irritants, kettled them, and made arrests.

Over Labor Day weekend, Summer Operations Center briefings included intel about no fewer than twenty demonstrations. The causes the SOC monitored included a labor action at a Walmart in Kenwood, a rally to defund the University of Chicago Police Department in Hyde Park, an Indigenous Peoples’ Day event in the Loop, and a candlelight vigil in the Medical District for frontline health workers who died during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SOC, whose mission was originally the prevention of gun violence, included surveillance of a peace walk in Washington Park and a “Gloves Up Guns Down—Deter Violence” rally in Austin in its September 5 briefing.

On September 20, Freedom First International, which describes itself as a human rights organization, held a press conference about the upcoming presidential election with various partner organizations at the former headquarters of the Chicago Urban League in

Bronzeville. The SOC noted the event in its weekend briefing, and police were there in force. Bishop Gregg Greer, Freedom First’s CEO, said he believes CPD was following the group’s events closely on social media. “Every last event that we had, there was a Chicago Police presence, and even at some of the smaller events they always had cars that would be at press conferences,” Greer said.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, the Illinois Handmaids’ Coalition held a tribute to the Supreme Court Justice’s legacy at Federal Plaza. The Handmaids wore costumes from the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale to silently rally for reproductive rights. The Ginsburg vigil was one of the last demonstrations the Summer Operations Center kept tabs on before shutting down for the fall.

“We encourage people to follow the law, we encourage people to vote,” said Annie Williams, a state coordinator for Illinois Handmaids. “What really pisses me off is that the police are saying [the SOC] is for one thing, which is

investigating gun violence, and they’re using it for something else.”

Ahead of Memorial Day 2021, Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown announced the Summer Operations Center would again be part of the CPD’s violence-suppression efforts; internal documents indicate the department’s social media task force also remains operational. In response to questions about whether either unit would be monitoring political organizing again this summer, a department spokesperson said “The Chicago Police Department monitors activity citywide as part of our crime prevention strategy. This includes reviewing publicly available, opensource social media to ensure the safety of all individuals, including those who are exercising their First Amendment rights.” Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor.

He last wrote about the overtime cost of staging Streets and Sanitation trucks ahead of protests in April.

OPINION

Op-Ed: The In-between

of the sentences themselves. Therefore, instead of a convicted person doing ten to thirty years for a murder, for example—which would average twentytwo-and-a-half years, from a range of twenty to sixty years, because sentences were indeterminate, meaning that with sentence reductions for good behavior in prison, aka “good time,” one might get out sooner—now, convicted people must serve one hundred percent of their sentences. There are no good-time allowances, and no adjustment for range.

Other states adjusted the range because they understood the ramifications of TIS laws, but Illinois apparently just didn’t care.

According to at least one study, people who are incarcerated and are released early for good time are no more likely to be convicted for crimes than their peers who serve their full sentence. Good time also gives people hope. It makes the Department of Corrections a truer definition of its role, correcting behavior!

Without it, prison is just a warehouse for people.

ILLUSTRATION BY CAM COLLINS

New parole laws for people convicted as young adults won’t offer relief retroactively, leaving many caught in a legal purgatory.

BY PHIL HARTSFIELD

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eorge Gomez, a thirty-five-yearold Mexican American, adores his beautiful daughter Nayelli.

His mother Eloisa and sister Maria both love and support him, and he has brothers, nieces, and nephews. However, Gomez doesn’t get to spend the time with them that they would like. When Eloisa looks at him, she still sees the adolescent boy that she last remembers from before he went to prison. Maria still sees the little brother who never had a fair chance at growing up—and maybe never will.

Gomez, like many others and myself—I was incarcerated at age 19 in 2004—is caught in the in-between. No, this isn’t the upside-down of the fictional universe in the Netflix series <i>Stranger Things</i>, but a very real, strange thing, illogical to the point that it leaves you scratching your head. The in-between is a sort of purgatory that has left these youths

languishing for decades. And without a few simple changes, it will continue to do so for many more. It’s a legal limbo in which some will not benefit from recent laws designed to offer parole to people who were convicted as young adults.

There are two legal barriers that make up the in-between. One was set several decades ago, and the other put in place more recently, and both are both simple and complex. Gomez, I myself, and thousands of other Chicago youth are caught in the legal limbo that lies between them. he first barrier was set in place when then-President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the 1994 Crime Bill—which was most detrimental to poor and minority communities in its policies and enforcement, and which Clinton

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has since said he regretted. President Joe Biden has also expressed regrets over the 1994 bill and has vowed to do his best to put pressure on states to change it as well.

The 1994 Crime Bill placed financial incentives and political pressure on states to enact truth-in-sentencing laws (TIS) at the state level. The bill included $9.7 billion in funding for prisons. Within these incentives there were also grants for states to enact tougher truth-insentencing laws. Illinois built nine new prisons in the 1990s. The 1994 bill only kept the ball rolling!

Illinois passed a TIS law in 1998 that meant that all convictions for violent crimes would result in very long—and sometimes, effectively life—sentences.

Under the new law, Illinois changed the amount of time required to be served to between eighty-five and one hundred percent of a sentence, but not the range

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he second barrier is simple, and yet a little more complicated.

Think about your eighteenth birthday, or that of your son, daughter, niece, or nephew. Was there some magical button on that day that was pushed to make you or them a logical, responsible, mature adult? Absolutely not! This is why the drinking age is twenty-one: because being a mature responsible adult doesn’t come overnight.

That simple fact is where much of the science and the validation comes from in the 2019 youthful offender parole bill (730 ILCS 5/5 – 4.5 110 Public Act 1001182). This bill grants those who were convicted of a crime when they were under the age of twenty-one the opportunity to apply for parole after serving ten or twenty years of their sentence, depending on what they were convicted of. The law is far from perfect, but at least it opens the door for possibility in the future.

The law stems from research that was validated by the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case Miller v.

Alabama, which found that the young mind is not done developing until around the age of twenty-five—specifically the JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

prefrontal cortex, which governs decision making, impulse control, handling volatile situations, and understanding and weighing consequences.

So this new law should help and not hurt, right? So then why would I call it a barrier? Because the law is not retroactive, meaning it doesn’t apply to those who fit the law’s criteria, but were sentenced before June 1, 2019, the date the law went into effect. So if you were under twenty-one when you were sentenced, on a date that fell between the installment of Illinois' 1998 TIS law and June 1, 2019, you are caught in the inbetween.

But why not make the law retroactive? For many years Illinois was at the forefront of juvenile justice, being the first state to set up a court strictly for juveniles. However, this would later lead the way to having an expansive juvenile detention system as well. That juvenile system, court and all, would see you through until— guess when? Until you were twenty-one years old!

Many people caught in the inbetween, like George Gomez—who was not convicted of personally discharging a firearm in his case—didn’t actually harm anyone but themselves. TIS laws mean these youth were effectively given a life sentence even when they didn’t take a life.

Many of these youth have languished in prison for decades, rehabilitated themselves, and statistically have the lowest recidivism rates of most returning citizens. If the youthful offender parole bill applied to them, the years they have already served might allow them to already be going home. Similarly, if they had been convicted pre-TIS they would be home now as well. But since George Gomez and so many others were convicted between 1998 and June 1, 2019 they are stuck, set aside as a different species in purgatory, never to be released.

Illinois legislators have essentially said that yes, they believe that Illinois youth up to age twenty-one, coming from less stable environments, having certain mitigating factors, are less culpable and deserve a chance at life other than behind these walls. Yet, they stopped short in saying this is so only if they are sentenced after June 1, 2019. Apparently neither the 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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science, the evolving standards of society, or even the other states that have since changed their laws don’t influence Illinois lawmakers.

To add insult to injury, another new “criminal reform” bill, HB 3653, was recently passed. This has established yet another way for those sentenced pre-TIS to receive time off of their sentence for other programs. Now, this is good for them, and it also gives them the first crack at these programs. But it is another example of pathways that continue to be opened for others and yet remain closed to George Gomez, myself, and so many others.

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o in the end, what can be done?

Well, for starters we need real justice reform that affects everyone equally. The kind where politicians aren’t afraid of fear-mongering and political games played by their opponents. The kind that makes actual sense, and affects real change. The law can simply be made retroactive; this would be the most logical solution.

However the bill, as it stands, needs work. It does nothing to address the needs of the people who were incarcerated at such a young age. That could be accomplished by setting goals for them to reach when they see the parole board, as well as having the board restructured, since Illinois hasn’t really had a parole board in over thirty years. Essentially, this is a whole new process for Illinois and to truly meet the task there needs to be real change.

How we treat our youth speaks volumes about our society. The schoolto-prison pipeline is all too alive and well in the state of Illinois. But, now, we have a real chance to change that and release some of the former youth like George Gomez and myself who are caught in its grip. Will we? We have the power to. Phil Hartsfield is a social activist who earned his bachelor’s degree in the history of justice with a sociological and psychological perspective, and is currently earning his masters degree in criminal justice. This is his first article for the Weekly.

HEALTH

Cook County’s Sizable Vaccination Disparity Remains in Black and Brown Suburbs

Despite allocation of federal funding, vaccines are still hard to get in many suburbs.

BY CICERO INDEPENDIENTE AND SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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hicago’s systemic racism reaches beyond its municipal boundaries.

Like the West and South sides of Chicago, city-adjacent suburbs are largely composed of Black and brown cash-poor communities that have weathered the COVID-19 pandemic with little resources in health care deserts.

These areas are composed of a large number of essential workers who already faced exploitative and unsafe working conditions before the pandemic.

Cook County is the second most populous county in the country, with 5.2 million residents, fifty-nine percent of whom live outside the City of Chicago, and close to fifty percent of them people of color.

In many of these municipalities, local governments have been slow, sometimes unwilling, to respond to changing racial demographics and rarely do they make it easy for non-English speakers to participate in civic life. Past studies have additionally found pharmacy deserts in Black and segregated communities in Chicago that can be reasonably assumed to extend further west and south.

Historically, large industries that emit pollutants into the air and water have received tax breaks and other benefits to attract them to set up shop in these areas. These industries have also driven in- and out-migration to these towns. For generations, heavy industry has made residents vulnerable to chronic health conditions, like asthma, that increase the risk of developing a severe case of COVID.

ILLUSTRATION BY EVA AZENARO ACERO

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

HEALTH

“If we're going to move towards recovery, you have to invest in communities that have already been decimated and devastated by structural racism and white supremacy.”

Cook County’s stated goal is to vaccinate at least eighty percent of all its residents. In April 2020, officials received $428.6 million in COVID funding from the CARES Act. They established a subcommittee specifically for the redistribution of federal funds and distributed $51 million of the relief among over 300 units of government.

Last March, the Cook County Department of Public Health announced that thirty-two west and south suburbs of Cook County would be the focus of the County’s vaccination equity efforts. Cicero, Berwyn, Harvey, Dolton, Calumet City, and Blue Island received the highest amounts of federal aid.

Three months later, vaccination rates in at least seven of those communities, all of which are predominantly Black and Latinx suburbs, still lag far behind Cook County’s whiter, more affluent suburbs.

The gap in average vaccination rates between these seven suburbs and the rest of suburban Cook County widened from one percentage point at the end of January to nearly ten percentage points in May. This difference has since diminished slightly (from 9.8 to 8.9 percentage points), but a sizable gap still remains.

In mid-March, Cook County opened five mass vaccination sites, including one at South Suburban College. On March 31, the majority of essential workers in Cook County became eligible for the vaccine.

While forty-seven percent of Cook County’s population has been fully vaccinated by now, an analysis by the Weekly and Cicero Independiente shows that vaccination rates in seven suburbs— Blue Island, Calumet City, Dolton, and Harvey to the south; and Berwyn, Cicero, and Maywood to the west—where a majority of the population are people of 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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color, range from twenty-two to fortyfour percent; and the vaccines took relatively long to come by.

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning estimates that many of the census tracts in these suburbs have a high percentage of essential workers.

Residents and community advocates in these areas highlight similar barriers: a general lack of health care, exploitative workplace practices that make it difficult to take any sick time off, a lack of assistance in languages other than English, and general disinvestment in these areas that result in residents having to travel for miles to access basic needs.

For months Cicero has remained as the suburb with the highest number

of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Cook County, including an early outbreak at a large nursing home. In late April, only twenty-three percent of Cicero’s population was fully vaccinated.

More than one million dollars in CARES Act funds were allocated to the Town of Cicero, and Cicero Independiente recently found that one hundred percent of the COVID-19 funds were given to the police department. Moreover, forty-two percent of the federal funding allocated to the entire county went toward covering labor costs for the Cook County sheriff ’s office.

Today 39.2 percent of Cicero residents have been fully vaccinated, largely because community-based

organizations in the area have since hosted a number of hyperlocal pop-up vaccination clinics and registration drives to address vaccination barriers such as lack of access to technology, language barriers, transportation issues, and limited sites and appointment hours.

In April and May, the County established priority vaccination sites intended for people who live in the thirty-two municipalities they identified as high priority, and later began to allow walk-in vaccinations.

“Hyper-local vaccination sites are part of our overall strategy to remove barriers to vaccine access while recognizing that many people are more comfortable in their community,” said

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Cook County Health CEO Israel Rocha Jr. in a statement. “Our vaccine strategy has been designed to reach every corner of Cook County.”

In Harvey, a majority-Black city near the southern county limits, only 22.9 percent of the population had been fully vaccinated by mid-June. In Wilmette, a suburb located in the north of Cook County with a similar population size to Harvey, more than sixty percent of residents have been fully vaccinated.

Wilmette is eighty-three percent white, according to recent Census data.

“If we're going to move towards recovery, you have to invest in communities that have already been decimated and devastated by structural racism and white supremacy,” said Cook County Board Commissioner Brandon Johnson about what Cook County needs to do in order to address the inequities faced by western and southern Cook County suburbs that had already been divested of resources prior to the pandemic.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said funding public health had not previously been a priority to former CEOs of the Health and Hospital system. She said “going forward [the focus will be to] beef up our public health department and strengthen it in its ability to deal with challenges like this.

I'm afraid that this is not the last global pandemic you’re going to see.”

Cook County will directly receive over $1 billion from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan and is in the process of developing a spending plan for immediate recovery needs and to improve public health infrastructure. ¬

This piece is part of a collaboration that includes the Institute for Nonprofit News, The Beacon/KCUR 89.3; Bridge Michigan/Side Effects Public Media; Cicero Independiente/ South Side Weekly; Detour Detroit/Planet Detroit/Tostada Magazine; Evanston RoundTable/Growing Community Media; Madison365/Wausau Pilot & Review; and MinnPost/Sahan Journal. The project was made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with additional support from INN's Amplify News Project and the Solutions Journalism Network.

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

HEALTH ILLUSTRATION BY JENNIFER CHAVEZ

Vaccine Disparity Grows in Chicago’s South Suburbs

Slow vaccine rollout still looming large in south suburban Harvey, Calumet City, Dolton, and beyond as residents face long-standing inequities.

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO AND ALMA CAMPOS

T

here isn’t a clear border that distinguishes Chicago from the suburbs to the south. In fact, the South Side of Chicago appears to continue for miles on end, as historic north-south streets like State, Halsted, Western, and Pulaski run seamlessly into the suburbs.

Infrastructure that is characteristic of the city can also be found in these towns, 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 8, 2021

sometimes at higher concentrations, like certain housing stock, industrial corridors, railways, bridges, and even air and water pollution. Their demographics are predominantly Black and brown, with a high percentage of essential workers.

Some things do change, however, as people leave the City of Chicago and enter small municipalities in Illinois. The local

politics are more self-contained, public services vary, there’s a modest corporate footprint, local media outlets are few, and access to healthcare is inconsistent. So when COVID-19 hit Chicago aggressively in the spring of 2020, particularly so on the city’s South Side, nearby suburban residents could only brace themselves for what was to come.

Of the thirty-two municipalities that County officials identified as the most vulnerable at the height of COVID-19, half of them were in the south suburbs— twelve of them are clustered right outside the city boundaries: Blue Island, Calumet Park, Riverdale, Dolton, Burnham, Calumet City, Robbins, Posen, Dixmoor, South Holland, Harvey, and Markham.

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Though it’s not unusual for larger, historically white suburbs in Cook County to have more capital or to have individual departments of health, the majority of the south suburbs cannot even claim their own local hospital.

This means that during the onset of COVID-19, the region directly south of the city had to depend heavily on neighboring municipalities with more resources, but also on federal funding and the coordination of Cook County and its county-wide department of health.

The Cook County Department of Public Health (CCDPH) managed from afar all things COVID-19 in low-income municipalities, primarily outreach, testing, and vaccine rollout, using guidance from state and federal authorities. In April 2020, Cook County received approximately $429 million from the CARES Act. They distributed $51 million of the relief among over 300 units of government.

“Historic disinvestment in certain communities within the region has resulted in an unequal capacity for all

municipalities to respond to the challenges that COVID-19 presents,” wrote county officials and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency of Planning (CMAP) in an April 2020 report.

Cynthia Rodríguez, director of organizing at Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU), an immigrant workers’ justice organization in the area, understands the uniqueness of the south suburbs. Southland, another name to describe the South and Southwest Suburbs, is mostly made up of people that have either been there for generations or have left Chicago recently, she said.

Ninety-two percent of Dolton’s population is Black. Almost seventy-five percent of Calumet City residents are Black. In Harvey, to the west, two-thirds of the town are Black and a quarter are Latinx. And in Blue Island, a fifteenminute drive northwest of Harvey, fortyseven percent of residents are Mexican or Latinx.

But there are also people that are arriving from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras for the first time. In Blue

Island, forty-two percent of people over the age of five speak a language other than English at home. CTU offers free legal representation for immigration, labor, eviction and housing, and expungement cases. “We serve both the Southeast Side and the south suburbs because these areas overlap. There is an overlap between people who live in Chicago and work in the south suburbs...and vice versa,” said Rodríguez.

The organization was founded in the Southeast Side of Chicago, yet staff has had to extend their work out to the suburbs. “Here in the South Side of Chicago, we know there aren’t enough services, but if you go further south to Posen, Harvey, Dolton, South Holland, Calumet City, etc., almost all have even less,” said executive director Ana Guajardo.

Rodríguez said that local residents of the south suburbs are aware that Chicago has more resources available than they do, and the pandemic magnified this feeling. “Right from the beginning of the pandemic, we were hearing a lot from community members about the lack of resources and how the pandemic only exacerbated... racism and socioeconomic issues. We heard how difficult it was for folks to even access testing sites once they were more prevalent because of [the lack of ] transportation.”

Many essential workers that CTU serves brought up concerns about the vaccine. Residents worried about getting side effects and potentially needing to see a doctor after getting the shot, or simply finding the time to make it to a vaccination site, which could translate to time off from work. But Rodríguez said those concerns are rooted in the material lack of healthcare access—and a borderline exploitative workplace culture.

“These hesitations that people were bringing up have always been something that we want to take really seriously, because often they come from something much larger and more systemic.”

It is difficult to estimate exactly what percentage of each town’s population are essential workers, but based on the available data, many south and southwest suburbs have a high percentage of residents doing exactly the kind of work

that makes them most vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19 such as healthcare support, food preparation, maintenance and more.In Calumet City and Blue Island, between twenty-five and fifty percent of residents in most of the towns’ Census tracts are essential workers.

The share is even higher in Harvey, where anywhere between fifty and seventy-five percent of residents are essential workers. In March, when the majority of essential workers were still not eligible for the vaccine, only five percent of local residents had been fully vaccinated. In early April, Harvey was just under ten percent fully vaccinated, a full five percentage points below the suburban Cook County average at the time.

In May, a priority vaccination site opened in Harvey as part of the county’s efforts to increase vaccination rates in Lansing, Calumet City, Chicago Heights, South Chicago Heights, Harvey, South Holland, Dolton, and Burnham. The site at Thornton Township High School was recently offering tickets to Six Flags and a food pantry voucher for people who would get vaccinated.

Harvey Mayor Christopher Clark did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Guajardo said at first she had to apply for two COVID-related grants to enable organizers at the center to work as health promoters in charge of disseminating information about testing, contact tracing, and vaccinations to residents in Harvey, Calumet City, South Holland, Blue Island, Alsip, and beyond.

The plan involved recruiting sixty health promoters who would go to each suburb to distribute masks and hand sanitizer during the beginning of the pandemic to families, schools, churches, local businesses, and workplaces.

Later on, the health promoters visited families door to door and put out tables in the community to inform people about testing and vaccination access as it became available through CCDPH. But getting these types of grants is challenging. Guajardo said nonprofits are competing for funding and most of the support goes north.

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

“In Calumet City and Blue Island, between twenty-five and fifty percent of residents in most of the towns’ Census tracts are essential workers. The share is even higher in Harvey, where anywhere between fifty and seventy-five percent of residents are essential workers.”

A USED FACE MASK ON THE GROUND BY ONE OF CALUMET CITY’S FAMOUS SMILEY WATER TOWERS ON MONDAY, JULY 5, 2021. PHOTO BY ALMA CAMPOS

Community groups like CTU met multiple times with CCDPH, and through this exchange CCDPH recognized that community members are the best at talking to their own fellow community members about the vaccine and the pandemic in general.

“It’s important for health departments to be able to put trust and fund technical support and capacity building towards local community organizations... and community members to do this work directly,” said Rodríguez.

The County health department distributed the CARES Act federal funds to government officials in each of the suburbs in the cluster, ranging from $452,000 to $767,000 per town. The disbursement amounts were based on various criteria including local population size and socioeconomic factors indicating need such as median income, percentage of population under the “Economic Disadvantaged Area” Census designation, and COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 at the time of the allocation.

Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson said local bodies of government have the autonomy and flexibility to do whatever they please with the aid, though there were restrictions set by the Trump administration that “were very much intentional to make it difficult or almost impossible for bodies 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 8, 2021

of government to be creative with those resources.”

South Side Weekly approached the Village of Dolton and Calumet City on the other side of the Calumet River, which were on the higher end of the relief distribution scale, to learn from officials about their respective COVID-19 strategies as they related to reaching and vaccinating its residents.

Sean Howard, the spokesperson for both municipalities, said the mayors could not speak on the topic since they have both been recently elected. Mayor Tiffany Henyard and Mayor Thaddeus Jones are both first-time Black mayors in Dolton and Calumet City, respectively.

Henyard is also the town’s first Black woman to take the seat after having defeated her general election opponent in April of 2020. After several attempts to reach Henyard’s office, her administrative assistant said questions about vaccine accessibility were “irrelevant” because she is a new mayor with a new administration.

Howard did not respond to specific questions about the towns’ plans, but gave a statement by phone to the Weekly: “Mayors Henyard and Jones are more than happy with the response from the county and state and the federal government. Those monies and assistance went a long way in us having to communicate with our residents to get

them to truly believe in the entire concept of being vaccinated. We believe that we touched every household within the city to ensure that people were aware… that they were educated about the importance of vaccinations.”

The Weekly interviewed Sixth Ward Alderman James Patton Jr. from Calumet City and also spoke to the fire chief at Calumet City’s Fire Department, Glenn Bachert, in a three-way phone call coordinated by Howard.

Patton said when the federal government first announced that the vaccine would become available, residents were excited. “We finally arrived at the point where, you know, there was kind of at the end of the tunnel.”

Soon after, residents in his ward flooded his office with phone calls about where to get the vaccine and who was eligible. “The number of calls that came into my office from residents… was the most unprecedented amount of calls I've ever gotten in the four plus years of being an alderman.”

Guajardo’s family lives in Calumet City. She shared that it was difficult for members of her family to get information about vaccinations. “My family had no clue where in the city to get the vaccine.”

She said multiple members of her family called City Hall to ask with no avail. “It is your duty as an elected official to step

up on important issues like this and try to bring in those resources into the community,” she added.

But for about two months, Patton said, information about where to access the vaccine was very slow. He said in the beginning, it was difficult to provide concrete information to his constituents.

“The rollout process was kind of chaotic and not quite as organized at the beginning.” Patton said it took a few weeks until things got more organized in Calumet City. “It took us a little bit of time...to actually get some good, solid information through to our residents.”

For Calumet City and Dolton, a vaccination site known as a POD or a point of distribution at South Suburban College in South Holland, a ten-minute drive south, was huge; Patton estimated that eighty percent of residents were able to get vaccinated there. “That was incredibly helpful, and I think that was the biggest step in helping us get our community vaccinated quickly.”

“We started out with mass vaccination sites and we've moved to PODs, so we're working with communitybased organizations,” said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in an interview with the Weekly. “I've been around the county at a number of those sites where either faith communities or community-based organizations have

BLUE ISLAND HOMEOWNER LEO OLIVA STANDS IN HIS FRONT YARD MONTHS AFTER HE AND HIS FAMILY SURVIVED COVID-19 ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2021.

PHOTO BY JACQUELINE SERRATO.

said, you know, ‘we'll marshal, we’ll mobilize people in our community.’”

The site opened in April and closed in June, while Chicago opened mass vaccination sites in early February and many remained open until late June.

Fire Chief Glenn Bachert of Calumet City said the fire department was tasked with scheduling vaccine appointments for homebound seniors who were unable to get to a vaccination site or a hospital.

He saw things run smoothly, though he noticed residents experienced confusion about eligibility in the beginning. “The [Cook County Health Department] did their best,” Bachert said.

To the west, Blue Island homeowner Leo Oliva said his wife Veronica and two adult kids were vaccinated at the first federally funded mass vaccination site at the United Center, twenty miles north, after they had all contracted and overcome the virus.

Sixty-one-year-old Oliva said he was the first one of his family to get COVID-19 and after three months hospitalized, he feels lucky to be alive.

The long-time resident explained that the town’s only hospital, St. Francis, shut down a couple of years ago and is part of a larger trend of companies that have been moving out of Blue Island in the last fifteen years.

At the time, the then-mayor Domingo Vargas called it a devastating closure that was “one of the major, if not the major, employers in the area,” according to the Tribune.

The newly elected mayor, Fred

Bilotto, did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Last March, when Oliva was experiencing symptoms and wasn’t admitted to local clinics, an ambulance rushed him to the neighboring town of Evergreen Park at the Little Company of Mary Hospital, and he was then transferred to Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn. After what seemed to him like an eternity being plugged into a respiratory machine, often unconscious, Oliva was released from the ICU. He said the doctors were amazed at his recovery.

While recuperating in the hospital, the native of Zacatecas, México noticed other immigrant patients struggling to communicate with the nurses, with human translators seldom in sight, so he would offer to help whenever he could.

“They were having a hard time with the tablets… A lot of the much older Mexican people, they’re not used to using those types of technologies, they didn’t know they had to talk to the tablets so [the tablets] could translate.”

Oliva has since been going to therapy and a pulmonary doctor, and he was vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine by his former employer. But he pointed out that many residents didn’t know how to obtain the vaccine at first. Some people “are not familiarized with a computer and you got to rely on your kids, and if you don’t have any kids, you have to rely on the neighbor.”

The popular vaccination sites in his city are the Blue Island Health Center,

the Robbins Community Center, and Walgreens and Jewel pharmacies.

As of mid-June, vaccination rates in south and southwest suburbs were still lagging behind the suburban Cook County average; in Blue Island, fortysix percent of residents had received a complete vaccine series. Calumet City and Dolton were both around thirty-six percent. Harvey was thirty percent fully vaccinated.

“The best way I believe in which we can take advantage of this moment,” said Commissioner Johnson, “is to have some coordination around how the County spends its money with local villages and cities. If we can do that, we could set a new course that actually transformed generations to come. That's what we're going to be pushing for.” This piece is part of a collaboration that includes the Institute for Nonprofit News, The

Beacon/KCUR 89.3; Bridge Michigan/Side Effects Public Media; Cicero Independiente/ South Side Weekly; Detour Detroit/Planet Detroit/Tostada Magazine; Evanston RoundTable/Growing Community Media; Madison365/Wausau Pilot & Review; and MinnPost/Sahan Journal. The project was made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with additional support from INN's Amplify News Project and the Solutions Journalism Network.

Jacqueline Serrato is the editor in chief of the South Side Weekly. She last wrote about where to get a COVID shot in Chicago.

Alma Campos is the Weekly’s immigration editor. She last wrote about the legacy of Palestinian solidarity and resistance in Chicago.

BEGINS JULY 11 Chicago’s most iconic street, State Street, closes to traffic from Lake to Madison on select Sundays this summer and transforms into an open street full of surprises.

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A PROJECT OF:

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

HEALTH

Community Leaders in Cicero Step Up to Address Vaccination Disparities A look at vaccination efforts in west suburban Cicero, Berwyn, and Stickney.

BY ABEL RODRÍGUEZ, CICERO INDEPENDIENTE

O

n a chilly day in early May, Catalina Prado, Erika Saucedo, and Yesenia Mata gathered outside El Porvenir grocery store in Cicero with care packages full of personal protective equipment and flyers for an upcoming vaccination event. The three women are part of the health navigators team with Family Focus, a non-profit with offices in Chicago, Cicero, and various suburbs in northeastern Illinois.

Over the past few months the team has been encouraging Latinx community members to get vaccinated.

Located west of the City of Chicago, Cicero is one of the largest suburbs in Cook County and is home to a mostly working-class, Mexican population, many of whom are essential workers who had no choice but to work through the pandemic. For many of them, the vaccine brought on a glimmer of hope but getting one was not easy.

“Many people don't know how to use technology and don’t know how to get an appointment and have had to travel far to get a vaccine,” said Prado.

This is why she became a navigator and chose to talk to people in person outside the grocery store.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Cicero has led the west suburbs in confirmed cases of COVID-19. It wasn’t until February 2021 that cases in Cicero finally dropped below the Cook County average.

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 8, 2021

Yet local efforts to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, such as access to testing and vaccination, lagged behind other municipalities in Cook County.

Data analysis reveals that the majority of vaccines distributed by the Cicero Health Department in January and February were not going to Cicero residents and a Cicero Independiente investigation revealed that federal monies meant to alleviate needs created by the pandemic ILLUSTRATION BY JENNIFER CHAVEZ

went instead to pay police salaries.

Although vaccination rates have improved since then, Cicero still lags behind the Cook County averages for fully and partially vaccinated individuals.

Cicero Independiente spoke to residents, service providers, public health officials, and local leaders, like Prado, to reflect on how they have come together to address local health disparities exacerbated by COVID.

C

icero was one of the first municipalities in Cook County to adopt a mask mandate, in April 2020, and for months remained as the suburb with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. This included an early outbreak at City View, a large nursing home with over 200 confirmed COVID cases. Nursing staff and union representatives at City View repeatedly said they were not provided

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with personal protective equipment.

Despite the mask policy and restrictions at stores and restaurants, COVID-19 cases ballooned in Cicero, where a vast number of residents continued working despite shutdowns. In May 2020, Cicero was identified as one of the top five ZIP codes in Illinois with the highest numbers of positive COVID-19 cases. At the time, thirty percent of people who were getting tested for COVID were testing positive but Cicero had no local testing sites. These numbers peaked in November. According to data published on the Town of Cicero’s website, the month of November saw close to 3,000 new COVID infections.

Testing sites in other communities in nearby Chicago had already been set up, such as the Loretto Hospital testing site in nearby Austin, but Cicero did not get its first testing site until May 22, 2020, when Howard Brown Health Center hosted a one-day testing location at Laramie and 34th.

When asked why it took so long to get a testing location in the area, Maria Punzo-Arias, the Town of Cicero clerk, blamed it on the high cost of testing. “We wish we could have done this [testing] a lot sooner…but as many people know, times are challenging right now and [as] the Town of Cicero we feel that we’ve gotta be able to spend taxpayer money wisely,” Punzo-Arias told Cicero Independiente during the event. “The way we see it, as elected officials, why do we have to use taxpayer money to do testing that is supposed to be free?”

A permanent testing location finally opened in late May at the Cicero location of ACCESS Community Health.

However, appointments were limited and required a registration process and a video telehealth consultation, which made it difficult for residents to get appointments.

These disparities continued during the vaccination rollout.

Cicero is one of the few municipalities in Cook County with a local health department. The Cicero Health Department began administering scarce vaccines as early as January 2021. However, data obtained by Cicero

Independiente shows that in the early months of the rollout a majority of the vaccines went to non-Cicero residents.

Freedom of Information Act requests reveal that from early January through mid-March less than half of the vaccines administered by the Cicero Health Department went to people living in the 60804 ZIP code.

From January 13 through midFebruary, Cicero's Health Department administered 7,446 individual vaccines.

Only 2,615 of those went to Cicero residents. During this time, Cicero saw a spike in COVID-19 cases, according to data from the Cook County Department of Public Health. Updates published by the Town of Cicero show that in late January, Cicero had a positivity rate of 8.2 percent.

Between February 22 and March 19, the percentage of vaccines that went to Cicero residents increased slightly but still remained relatively low. During this period, the department administered 7,771 individual vaccines but only 4,031 shots went to Cicero residents.

People from Riverside (284), Westchester (197), Oak Park (177), La Grange (166), Downers Grove (73), and Wilmette (67) received Cicero’s vaccines from January through March. At least fifty-two doses went to individuals living outside of illinois. Some of the data lacked complete ZIP codes so those numbers are not reflected in this count.

The Town of Cicero spokesperson did not respond to questions about the disparity.

Early on, the process to register for a vaccine at the Cicero Health Department was confusing. The Cicero Health Department used a different registration form that was separate from that used by the Cook County Health Department and local pharmacies. To register for a vaccine in Cicero, the Town’s official social media pages first promoted sending an email, then a Google form, and eventually at least one way for people to register in person.

Some residents were also granted special codes to register using a different online registration form, but it is unclear how those codes were distributed.

“There should have been an effort, like an aggressive effort, to get those vaccines to Cicero residents, especially given the COVID rates,” said Carolina Guzman, who was tasked with getting appointments for her parents. “It's really disheartening to hear about this disparity… sometimes they can be like abstract notions, like statistics and numbers, but it's very real for people and their families.”

Guzman’s parents live in Cicero and qualified for early eligibility. They needed tech assistance so Guzman tried to find them appointments. She called the Cicero Health Department and filled out the online forms but she said she never heard back or secured an appointment.

“It was a frustrating experience just opening the form and seeing submissions are closed, and that being the end of the route,” said Guzman.

Eventually Guzman was able to find appointments for her parents at the United Center vaccination site in Chicago.

V

accine hesitancy amongst Latinx people has dominated conversations, but other factors contribute to low vaccination rates, according to Dr. Arshiya Baig, a researcher and doctor with the University of Chicago, who focuses on addressing health disparities in Latinx communities.

“Access is a bigger issue than vaccine hesitancy,” said Baig, pointing to a study from March 2021 by Kaiser Health News that suggests that sixty-one percent of Latinos plan to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Sixty-four percent of white Americans planned to get vaccinated, according to the same study.

“A lot of the modalities that we're using to get people signed up for the vaccine are pre-scheduling so that may be challenging for people who are shift workers,” said Baig. “If you need to have a smartphone or WiFi or a laptop or computer to access those schedules then that's another barrier.” Language accessibility, such as registration forms only being in English or phone operators not speaking Spanish, is another factor that could have affected vaccine

registration in the early months of the rollout, said Baig.”

Access to healthcare in Cicero was already difficult pre-pandemic. A study published by the Cicero Community Collaborative in 2016 found that free or low-cost clinics were the biggest need in Cicero. Access to mental health services and prenatal care were also listed as areas that need more resources.

Currently Cicero only has two public health clinics: the Cicero Health Department Clinic and the Morton East Clinic, which was under threat of shutting down during the COVID-19 peak in November 2020 due to funding issues. The Morton East Clinic has since become a vaccination site operated by the Cook County Department of Public health (CCDPH).

The Town of Cicero spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions about the Town’s vaccination efforts and outreach.

V

accination rates in Cicero have increased in the last two months thanks in large part to the work of community-based organizations who have had to address disparities exacerbated by the pandemic.

Pillars Community Health is one of the non-profit groups in Cicero and suburban Cook County that have worked to address vaccine inequity.

Using information obtained through ten different listening sessions, Lorena Alvarez, who leads the education efforts at Pillars, said they have created culturally sensitive workshops and materials specifically for the Latinx community.

While these bilingual education efforts to address hesitancy are important, Alvarez said that the organization has also spent a lot of time connecting people to vaccine appointments.

“A lot of clinics don't have the capacity to have evening hours or weekend hours, which is what we have seen with the COVID testing. It's really hard for folks to take the day off to get a vaccine, and so not everybody kind of has that privilege,” said Anna Padron-Sikora, vice president of Pillars Community Health.

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

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Which is why Black Workers Matter, an organization headed by former Bimbo Bakeries factory employees in Cicero, has advocated for local employers to commit to paid time off and no counted absences for employees who choose to get vaccinated. Black Workers Matter has also hosted several vaccine pop-ups in Cicero’s industrial corridor.

Sandwiched between several large factories, including a new Amazon warehouse and Bimbo, where employees have voiced COVID safety concerns, the Austin-based organization set up their vaccine site in a vacant parking lot. They passed out flyers, and spoke to workers as they arrived for their shift about getting vaccinated and unfair labor practices.

Kimberly Alfaro said she had been driving by when she spotted the sign advertising the vaccine event. She didn't plan on getting vaccinated but decided to stop. She spoke with the organizers of the event and ended up receiving her first dose. “I was scared,” said Alfaro. “But I didn't want to wear a mask anymore and I was thinking of the well-being of my family.”

Daniel Giloth, an organizer with Black Workers Matter, said that more than seventy workers from the Bimbo factory were vaccinated at the event.

To attract essential workers at the factory who had yet to receive their COVID vaccine, Giloth said that Black Workers Matter was able to get cooperation from management for workers to get paid time off to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects that could arise.

Originally, Black Workers Matter attempted getting approval from the CCDPH for a pop-up testing site after workers reported lax COVID guidelines in the factory, but by the time they were approved vaccines were readily available and it made more sense to administer vaccines instead.

Commissioner Brandon Johnson, whose district includes majority Black suburbs to the west side of Chicago, recognized that coordination and engagement between Cook County government and these municipalities was strained even before the pandemic.

BLACK WORKERS MATTER ORGANIZED A POP-UP VACCINATION SITE TO PROVIDE COVID-19 VACCINES FOR CICERO WORKERS. THEY ALSO DEMANDED PAID TIME OFF FOR THOSE WHO RECEIVED A VACCINE AND BETTER WAGES FOR WORKERS OF THE BIMBO FACTORY IN CICERO, IL. WEEKS PRIOR, KIMBERLY ALFARO WAS HESITANT ABOUT RECEIVING THE COVID-19 VACCINE, BUT DECIDED TO DO SO AFTER SPOTTING THE BLACK WORKERS MATTER VACCINE POPUP EVENT WHILE SHE WAS DRIVING IN CICERO, IL. ON TUESDAY, JUNE 15TH, 2021.

PHOTOS BY ABEL RODRÍGUEZ

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Cicero’s commissioner, Frank Aguilar Jr., did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The West Side non-profit Family Focus Nuestra Familia has also been helping residents find appointments for vaccines and has held their own vaccination events in Cicero. In order to reach residents who might not have internet access or have found it difficult to fill the online registration form, Family Focus put together a mobile unit of health navigators to go to local stores and supermarkets and reach people there.

“I personally worked at grocery stores during the Census [outreach] and there's a lot of foot traffic,” said Jennifer Jimenez, lead health navigator with Family Focus.

Because of their successful experience conducting in-person outreach for the Census at grocery stores, Jimenez said it made sense for health navigators to conduct vaccine outreach there as well.

The pop-up vaccination events in Cicero have been important in connecting residents who otherwise would not have gotten vaccinated.

At an event organized in mid-May

by Catholic Charities, dozens of parents showed up with their teenage children after the Centers for Disease Control approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for teens sixteen and older. Parents interviewed at

the event by Cicero Independiente said they decided to come to the site for its convenient location. People wanting to get a vaccine could walk into the gymnasium and within minutes receive the vaccine without an appointment.

“My arm feels a bit weird but I’m happy,” said Evelyn Availa, a teen who attended the event with her father because it was nearby.

To get the word out about the event, organizers made announcements during services at the Saint Frances of Rome congregation in Cicero.

“My mom told me about how Catholic Charities is promoting vaccines and also, Saint Frances of Rome was promoting it,” said one teen. Prior to the event he had heard about another vaccine event organized by Family Focus that took place a week earlier.

Diego, who asked we only identify him by his first name, said that he did not know where to get vaccinated prior to the day of the event. But his girlfriend found out about the Catholic Charities event and called to register him for an appointment.

B all

esides the Cook County Department of Public Health, Cicero, Berwyn and Stickney have their own public health

EVELYN AVILA WAITS THE REQUIRED 15 MINUTES ALONGSIDE HER DAD AFTER RECEIVING HER FIRST DOSE OF A COVID-19 VACCINE AT A CATHOLIC CHARITIES POPUP EVENT HELD AT SAINT FRANCES OF ROME SCHOOL ON SATURDAY, MAY 15TH, 2021 IN CICERO, IL. PHOTO BY ABEL RODRIGUEZ

departments. The Cicero and Berwyn Health Departments did not respond to requests for interviews about how they have addressed the pandemic. But in a public forum held on February 6, Marge Paul, the previous president for the Berwyn Health Department, said she would have given the district an F for their response to the pandemic.

President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, Toni Preckwinkle, said public health in general and across the country was not adequately prepared to respond to the pandemic. “We've come to understand that we've underinvested in public health and that our public health departments did not have the breadth or the resilience to respond to a pandemic,” she said in an interview.

Cicero’s neighbor to the south, Stickney, also has its own public health district which oversees several cities and two unincorporated areas that make up Stickney Township. Early into the pandemic, the Health District began distributing personal protective equipment to long-term care facilities and doctors offices in the township.

They also started a drive-up test site in partnership with the Burbank location of Pillars Community Health. Burbank lies just south of Stickney and is still part of Stickney Township, and hired staff to conduct contact tracing in June 2020.

Dr. Christopher Grunow, who heads the Stickney Public Health District, said that cases in the township peaked in November 2020 when they began prepping for vaccine distribution. In January the health district received its first shipment of vaccines.

Initially, Grunow said the health department reached out to employers, including local restaurants and day care centers, to distribute vaccines to their employees.

Data obtained by Cicero Independiente shows that between January and March the district administered fewer vaccines than the Cicero Health Department, but a higher percentage of the vaccines went to residents of the township.

According to the data, a total of 3,258 vaccines were administered and 2,215 went to residents of the 60459, 60402,

60455, 60638, 60629, 60804 ZIP codes, all of which correspond with Stickney Township. Though the 60804 and 60402 ZIP codes are associated with Cicero and Berwyn, some areas of Stickney also use the ZIP codes.

In total, Stickney Township residents received just under seventy percent of the total vaccines distributed by the health district.

Grunow believes that local health departments play a crucial role in addressing health disparities that led to such high COVID rates in the area. “I think that one of the reasons our society was so burdened by this is we're not a healthy society… [and] access to health care is not really good,” said Grunow.

Though for the past few months the health district has been focusing on addressing COVID-19, it still offers several other resources such as dental services, behavioral health services, nutrition services, and medical checkups all free of charge for Stickney Township residents.

“I think as a society, we have to seriously look at the health of our communities and realize that a strong public health infrastructure is like having a strong fire department. You don't defund the fire department because they're not having to put out a fire for a couple months,” said Grunow.

“The people of Stickney Township back in 1946 voted by referendum to establish the health department. That's the type of wisdom that every community needs to have,” Grunow added.

Cicero Independiente requested similar datasets from the Berwyn Public Health District. However, at the time of request in mid-April, they had not yet started administering vaccines and were unable to provide such documents. Their health director was not available for an interview.

According to the CCDPH, 58.7 percent of Berwyn residents have received at least one COVID vaccine and 45.9 percent are fully vaccinated.

M

any in Cicero and Berwyn have seen their lives affected by COVID-19. Moving forward

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

HEALTH

A

lvarez and Padron say community education will be a main focus as the county begins to recover.

As of late June, 45,763 Cicero residents have received at least one COVID vaccine and 33,047 residents are fully vaccinated, according to the CCDPH. It is unclear whether the vaccines administered through the Cicero Department of Health are reflected in this data.

Alvarez predicted that much of the summer will be spent connecting people to vaccines and providing health education, but as immunity builds, other types of resources will be needed.

“We've all been impacted by COVID-19 this year, and some of us in more dramatic ways than others... We just have to keep talking about the loss, and now look for the hope. [COVID] might have caused some to lose their job or created food insecurity, now we’ll focus on how we can help connect to those resources, said Padron.

Jimenez said that health navigators with Family Focus have started going door to door to help register residents for vaccines and also help with DACA renewals and citizenship services. For Jimenez, human connection has been key to convincing people to get vaccinated.

“Our job has definitely been to educate and to promote facts. In the Latino community sometimes we have that distrust towards the government, or [people] were scared because they were undocumented and thought that they couldn't get vaccinated,” said Jimenez.

“When they meet the health navigators, when they talk to them, get to see their personality and their passion.... It has

definitely helped people change their minds.”

Funding for the health navigators program expired at the end of June.

However, Jimenez said that they are heavily involved with the community and aid residents in any way possible. “Health navigators are so amazing… they're very involved in the community and whether or not they're in the program, they're always volunteering, they're always there, and I can say for sure that if they’re not health navigators we will definitely see them again.”

For Giloth, having a trustworthy organization was key to getting workers vaccinated. “We thought that involving a group that already had a reputation for fighting for worker justice would be

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more trusted than then other institutions, governmental or nonprofits that workers weren't familiar with,” said Giltoh.

Securing employer cooperation was another lesson learned by the organization. Giloth said he also would have liked to have seen more effort from the union representing Bimbo workers to secure vaccines.

“There's a narrative out there that workers are hesitant to get the vaccination… but really, workers are just really practical. They're working twelvehour shifts… and they’re also getting points deducted for absences,” said Giloth. “So we wanted to take away all the practical obstacles, we wanted to put the vaccines in the flow where workers already are.” ¬

This piece is part of a collaboration that includes the Institute for Nonprofit News, The Beacon/KCUR 89.3; Bridge Michigan/Side Effects Public Media; Cicero Independiente/ South Side Weekly; Detour Detroit/Planet Detroit/Tostada Magazine; Evanston RoundTable/Growing Community Media; Madison365/Wausau Pilot & Review; and MinnPost/Sahan Journal. The project was made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with additional support from INN's Amplify News Project and the Solutions Journalism Network.

Abel Rodríguez is a contributing reporter for Cicero Independiente. He covers environmental injustice and police accountability. This is his first piece for the Weekly.

(L TO R) ERIKA SAUCEDO, CATALINA PRADO AND YESENIA MATA ARE PART OF THE HEALTH NAVIGATORS PROGRAM WITH FAMILY FOCUS. THEY STAND OUTSIDE GROCERY STORES WHERE THEY DISTRIBUTE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT AND HELP REGISTER RESIDENTS FOR COVID VACCINES OUTSIDE EL PORVENIR GROCERY STORE IN CICERO, IL, ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 5TH, 2021. PHOTO BY ABEL RODRIGUEZ

MUSIC

Discombobulated and Dark, Angry Blackmen Are on the Rise The hip-hop duo sits down to discuss their latest projects, joining Deathbomb Arc, and their course moving forward.

BY DONNA DAS

“W

e constantly want to reinvent our sound,” Quentin Branch tells me.

“We’re seeing how to bend music in a certain way,” Brian Warren adds. “We’re trying to get weird and go all out.”

Branch and Warren are the Chicago-based rappers behind Angry Blackmen (ABM), and since forming in 2017, the pair have become known for their sharp bars and explosive beats. Last March, after the pandemic shut down their live performances and day-to-day activities, ABM refocused their energy and doubled down on recording music.

Through collaborations with a rotating set of producers and constant writing, they developed the momentum for relentless experimentation. In September 2020, Angry Blackmen signed with Deathbomb Arc, the esteemed independent record label where groups like Death Grips and JPEGMAFIA released early material. “That was damn near monumental,” Warren says. “[The signing]had me pumped to do more work.”

The album HEADSHOTS! debuted soon afterwards in October 2020. It’s a

project that exemplifies ABM’s ability to package revolutionary thought into laconic lyrics. Now, a mere nine months later, ABM’s latest EP, REALITY! iterates the duo’s ever-evolving nature.

“The overall vibe [is] discombobulated and dark,” Branch says. The new EP is notably different from previous works: its lyrics are less political, more centered on being trapped in a system, and more focused on paranoia and fear.

This can be heard as they rap in the title track: “Paranoia got me tripping/5am something wicked/ Hearing voices in my kitchen/Demons lurking with a whisper/ All I hear silence, crickets/birds chirping in the distance/N****s feel kinda distant/ While I question my existence.”

The production is chaotic, but not disjointed. In fact, the hectic sounds feel quite fitting for present times.

REALITY! was soft-released via Bandcamp on Juneteenth, with an official drop across all streaming platforms on July 2. Comprising four tracks and just over ten minutes in length, your one complaint may be that the EP isn’t longer. According to Branch, the shorter duration is because “for newer artists,

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ISABELLA SCOTT

it’s a race against time to get and keep people’s attention.” Warren compared their songs to juice cups as “It’s short, sweet, easily digestible”and similarly effective in packing a punch.

However brief, the EP is unquestionably their most free-form venture to date. In “BLUEPRINT!”— arguably the most political track of the EP—Branch raps, “Black male, twentysix, suspect, usual/ dumb it down for these white kids so it’s suitable/ make it consumable, package it, movable/ profit off of Black skin, pain, and their funerals.”

These bars are blunt, and characteristic of

ABM’s focus on societal hypocrisy (and what it might look like turned in on itself ).

ABM employs an impressive modulating cadence to their rhymes on tracks “VOMIT!” and “REALITY!” This pairs nicely with Derek Allen’s production, which is dramatic and ominous and, at times, evocative of the sci-fi show Stranger Things. The song “HAYWIRE!” is more percussive, filled with cicada-like buzzes. Warren and Branch’s parts are distinct, but bridged by an eerie “I’m coming for you” cackling halfway through.

JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

MUSIC

“The new EP is notably different from previous works: its lyrics are less political, more centered on being trapped in a system, and more focused on paranoia and fear.”

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ISABELLA SCOTT

“The production is chaotic, but not disjointed. In fact, the hectic sounds feel quite fitting for present times.”

Whether it’s industrial rap or electrifying punk, Angry Blackmen are honing their skill at making cohesive works of music. “We make it a point to work with our producers to create a certain sound or a vision we all share. We want to expand our horizons, we don’t want to make the same thing twice,” Branch says. Side by side, REALITY! and HEADSHOTS! clearly accomplish this goal—and even more so when one compares them to their earlier projects.

ABM’s drive to challenge themselves musically is also driven by other creative outlets. Warren teaches story-building with the organization After School Matters.

He also works on haikus in his spare time, and tries to write a story a day. Moreover, he has been sharpening his skills as a producer—and is playfully mischievous when he mentions this, alluding to producing tracks on future ABM projects.

24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 8, 2021

According to Branch and Warren, Angry Blackmen are just getting started with another album in the works (possibly to be released within the year). “If we attack it with the same mindset, it will come out,” Warren says. This project will include multiple past producers— a talent supergroup akin “to the Avengers,” Branch says with a laugh.

When asked how they hope their music affects people, Angry Blackmen’s answer is simple: “You have to angrily get to work,” Warren says. Branch adds, “You gotta stand for something, life is too short.” Donna Das (she/her) is a freelance writer and cyclist from Colorado. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

Scan to view online!

BULLETIN Go Grind at La Villita

La Villita Park, 2800 S. Sacramento Blvd.

Friday, July 9, 4:00pm–7:00pm. Free. bit.ly/gogrind The Chicago Park District and Chicago Action Sports are hosting "Go Grind," a series of free clinics taking place at various Chicago skateparks to get youth involved in action sports. Equipment will be available for those who do not have their own, and anyone interested can come receive instructions from expert skateboard coaches. The event will also feature contests, graffiti artists, and music. (Madeleine Parrish)

Healing in the Park

Washington Park, E. 53rd St. and S. King Dr., Saturday, July 10, 12:00pm–5:00pm.

Free.

Healing in the Park is an “intergenerational healing event which will center BIPOC voices to share, process, and heal from experiences with police brutality, gun violence, and other forms of state-sanctioned violence.” It will feature healing circles, art making, acupuncture, food, reiki, and spoken word. It's hosted by GoodKidsMadCity, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Organized Communities Against Deportations, Únete La Villita, and ChiResists. (Madeleine Parrish)

EDUCATION CPS Virtual Academy Focus Groups: Spanish Session Virtual, Thursday, July 8, 10:00am–

11:00am. Free. bit.ly/VirtualAcademyFG (Spanish Session) Chicago Public Schools will launch a Virtual Academy option for the upcoming school year for students who qualify as medically fragile. Join online to learn more about this remote learning option and provide feedback to inform better planning.

Register at bit.ly/VirtualAcademyFG. (Madeleine Parrish)

CPS Virtual Academy Focus Groups: English Session

Virtual, Thursday, July 8, 2:00pm–3:00pm.

Free. bit.ly/VirtualAcademyFG (English Session) Chicago Public Schools will launch a Virtual Academy option for the upcoming school year for students who qualify as medically fragile. Join online to learn more about this remote learning option and provide feedback to inform better planning.

Register at bit.ly/VirtualAcademyFG. (Madeleine Parrish)

A National Priority: Investing in Public School Infrastructure

Virtual, Friday, July 9, 9:30am. Free. bit.ly/hscanationalpriority Hosted by the Healthy Schools Campaign and the Center for Green Schools, this will be a virtual event featuring U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and other guests discussing why the country can no longer delay investing in school infrastructure and the status of legislative initiatives to boost infrastructure funding. The forum will also spotlight Space to Grow, a partnership to bring green schoolyards to Chicago schools.

Register at bit.ly/hscanationalpriority.

(Madeleine Parrish)

Asian American Summer of Advocacy: Authenticity in Chinatown

Virtual, Saturday and Sunday, July 10-11, 7:00pm–8:30pm. Free. bit.ly/advocacysummer The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community is hosting a virtual conference for all youth in the Chicagoland area. Join other young Asian American activists, community organizers, and storytellers to uplift Asian American communities through art, policy change, and grassroots community work. The Saturday session will explore the values that Asian Americans put onto Chinatown and whether or not it has remained authentic to its culture. The Sunday session will teach character design and storytelling, centering the Asian American experience. Sign up at bit.ly/ advocacysummer. (Madeleine Parrish)

LSCs Working Together Monthly Q&A

Virtual, Wednesday, July 14, 6:00pm– 9:00pm. Free bit.ly/lscmonthly Lugenia Burns Hope Center is hosting an LSC's Working Together Monthly Q&A, where local school councils come together online to discuss school improvement. Register at bit.ly/ lscmonthly. (Madeleine Parrish)

ARTS Journey Through South Asia

Chicago Women's Park and Gardens, 1801 S. Indiana Ave.,Thursday, July 8, 6:00pm– 7:00pm. Free.

bit.ly/journeythroughsouthasia An exploration of South Asian performing arts, this evening of performance will feature live music and narration of poetry and folk tales, along with Kalapriya’s signature folk dances performed by Chicago youth. Presented

by Night Out in the Parks. (Madeleine Parrish)

Drums for Peace Summer Series

On the corner, W. 63rd St. & S. Halsted St., Saturday, July 10, 10:00am–12:00pm.

Free.

The sixth annual Drums for Peace invites people of all ages and skill levels to bring a drum (or borrow one of theirs) and a chair for this ongoing Saturday morning event. Hosted by the Live the Spirit Residency, drum circles embody an inclusive village space, fostering dialogue and cooperation among community. ( Jacqueline Serrato)

The Color of Normal

Juliet Art House, 1750 S. Union Ave., Sunday, July 11, 4:00pm–6:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3Awu3pt Closing July 11, "The Color of Normal" is a solo exhibition by Rebecca Baruc.

On display will be pastel portraits of Chicago community members alongside figurative oils, acrylics, and digital artworks. The work is inspired by a prompt asking people "to meditate on how they’ve changed, personally and collectively this past year." Sales of the artwork benefit Pilsen Alliance. Juliet Art House is a new space in Pilsen founded by Chicago Public Schools teachers that prioritizes community and educational partnerships in its creative JULY 8, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

BULLETIN practice. RVSP at bit.ly/3Awu3pt.

(Isabel Nieves)

Viejitas pero bonitas: Karaoke comunitario

El Paseo Community Garden, 944 W. 24th St., Sunday, July 11, 4:00pm–8:00pm.

Free.

An afternoon of singing "oldies but goodies" in Spanish in Pilsen's community garden, dedicated to the elderly in the community. Email pserrano79@gmail.com for vending opportunities. ( Jacqueline Serrato)

Celebrate Community Changemakers

Back of the Yards Coffee, 2059 W. 47th St., Thursday, July 15, 4:00pm–7:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3qXG82D The CatchLight Local Chicago visual storytelling initiative and the Institute for Nonprofit News celebrate the release of work by CatchLight Fellows April Alonso and Brian Herrera. Herrera's comix-style work illuminates the undocumented immigrant community in Chicago through the stories of a street vendor/community activist, a chef, and a social justice-driven band.

Alonso documented the work of mutual aid workers and community volunteers during the pandemic. Both were published in partnership with Borderless Magazine as part of “Mi barrio me respalda [My neighborhood has my back]”, a month-long bilingual series reported by, for, and with Latinx Chicagoans. The event will feature a selection of their images wheat-pasted in the neighborhood, and the launch of a free zine distributed to the community, as well as free coffee, pastries, and tamales. Sonorama DJs will also spin.

(Martha Bayne)

Bronzeville Art District virtual and in-person trolley tour 2021

Gallery Guichard, 436 E. 47th St., Friday, July 16, 7:00pm–8:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3hGKc39 Every third Friday of the month, from July 16 to December 18, the Bronzeville Arts District will be offering in person 26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JULY 8, 2021

and virtual trolley tours. Participants can learn about and experience Chicago’s vibrant African-American culture in these visual arts spaces: the Blanc Gallery (in-person only), the Guichard Gallery (in-person and virtual), the Faie Afrikan Art Gallery (in-person and virtual) South Side Community Art Center (virtual), and the Bronzeville Artist Lofts (virtual). (Alma Campos)

House City

North Lawndale, TBA, Friday, July 16, 4:00pm–7:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3xlBON9 Sponsored by DCASE, House City is a new, ten-part series of free events popping-up throughout the summer in the neighborhoods that were the incubators for Chicago's House music scene more than thirty-five years ago.

Tonight's North Lawndale event features DJ Selah Sey. (Isabel Nieves)

Zine Not Dead

Address provided with ticket purchase, Saturday, July 17, 7:30pm. Tickets $10. bit.ly/3qMeHbU Bridgeport comics and reading series Zine Not Dead offers two shows of readings by Lyra Hill, Kevin Huizenga, Caroline Cash, Same Hensley, and screenings by Steve Smith. Tickets are limited to four per customer and can be purchased at zinenotdead.com. (Isabel Nieves)

Pilsen Vendor Market

Pilsen Art House, 1756 W. 19th St., Every Sunday, 12:00pm–5:00pm. Free.

Hosted by the Pilsen Art House, the Pilsen Vendor Market is a weekly event featuring local artists and makers in an indoor and outdoor space. (Isabel Nieves)

FOOD & LAND CPS Grab-and-Go Meal Sites

Virtual, 9:00:00 AM– 1:00:00 PM. Free. bit.ly/cpsgrabandgo This summer, Monday-Friday from 9am to 1pm, CPS will be providing free meals. Families can pick up three days worth of meals for every child in their

household. ID is not necessary. Find meal sites and distribution schedules at bit.ly/cpsgrabandgo (Maddie Parrish)

Celebrate Summer in Ping Tom Park

Ping Tom Memorial Park, 1700 S. Wentworth Ave, Saturday, July 10, 12:00pm-2:00pm. Free.

Celebrate summer in Chinatown’s Ping Tom Park with cultural performances, storytelling, and giveaways. This event will also feature Chinatown organizations and small businesses.

(Madeleine Parrish)

61st Street Farmers Market

Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave., Saturday, July 10, 9:00am–2:00pm.

Free. bit.ly/2UqRuQo Chicagoland farmers, cheesemakers, bakers, and others hawk their wares every Saturday outside the Experimental Station. The market accepts LINK and Senior Farmers Market Coupons, and all LINK purchases are matched up to $25.

(Martha Bayne)

Lettuce Meet Up/Alegría En La Granja

Urban Growers Collective South Chicago Farm, 9000 S. Mackinaw Ave, Sunday, July 11, 10:00am–2:00pm. Free. bit.ly/3ys5qbU A farm volunteer event for Black, Indigenous, and people of color hosted by the Chicago Food Policy Action Council. The event will give BIPOC community members the chance to learn

about farming and participate in handson activities outside. The space will feature live Bomba music, story sharing, and opportunities to build community.

Preregistration requested; see bit. ly/3ys5qbU. (Chima Ikoro)

Hyde Park Farmers Market

5400 S. Lake Park Ave., Sunday, July 11, 9:00am–1:00pm. Free.

Hyde Park's farmers market, now presented by the South East Chicago Commission, has moved to the parking lot behind Hyde Park Bank. It runs Sundays through Sept. 26 and plans to offer live entertainment and art installations throughout the summer.

(Madeleine Parrish)

Pilsen Market at the Park

Dvorak Park, 1119 W. Cullerton St., Sunday, July 11, 4:00pm–8:00pm. Free. www.pilsenmarket.com Pilsen Market at the Park kicks off Sunday, July 11, and runs every Sunday, with food, live music, and local vendors.

(Isabel Nieves)

Free Food Distribution at Haines School Playground

Haines School Playground, 247 W. 23rd Pl., Sunday, July 11, 2:00pm–5:00pm.

Free. https://twitter.com/CBCACchicago/ status/1412099503046467589?s=20 Black Men United, World Vision, and PLCCA will be holding a large food distribution of USDA boxes. 1000 boxes will be given away, and no tickets are needed. (Madeleinxe Parrish)

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 funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.