September 2, 2020 by South Side Weekly

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SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, photographers, artists, and mediamakers of all backgrounds. Volume 7, Issue 25 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editor Martha Bayne Senior Editors Julia Aizuss Christian Belanger Mari Cohen Christopher Good Rachel Kim Emeline Posner Adam Przybyl Olivia Stovicek Sam Stecklow Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editors Ashvini Kartik-Narayan Michelle Anderson Literature Editor Davon Clark Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan Joshua Falk Lucia Geng Robin Vaughan Jocelyn Vega Tammy Xu Jade Yan Staff Writer

AV Benford

Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler, Lucy Ritzmann, Kate Gallagher, Matt Moore, Malvika Jolly, Charmaine Runes, Ebony Ellis, Katie Bart Visuals Editor Deputy Visuals Editor Photo Editor Staff Photographers: Staff Illustrators: Tolentino

Mell Montezuma Shane Tolentino Keeley Parenteau milo bosh, Jason Schumer Mell Montezuma, Shane

Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Webmaster Managing Director

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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

IN CHICAGO

IN THIS ISSUE

Jacob Blake hits close to home After Kenosha police shot twenty-nine-year-old Jacob Blake in the back on August 23, we learned of his Illinois roots and of his late grandfather who had been a pastor in Evanston and had preached desegregation decades earlier. On Wednesday, August 26, Chicago residents held a vigil for Blake in Union Park that attracted more than a thousand people, including student activists who had been protesting the Board of Education for voting to renew their police contract. Civil rights figures like Fred Hampton Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson went to Kenosha individually to stand with the Blake family, and on August 29 there was a rally in Evanston at the grandfather's old church, Ebenezer AME. When George Floyd was murdered by police, the Weekly wrote that as Chicagoans we stood in solidarity with all Black people and people of color in the Midwest—aware that the KKK was birthed in the Midwest and that some towns up here rank among the most racist in the country—and we remain in solidarity with the people of Kenosha, Minneapolis, Detroit, Louisville, and beyond.

opinion: build a solar farm in altgeld

Emmett Till Sixty-five years after Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, and after years of erratic lobbying by family members and preservationists, the fate of the former Woodlawn home of Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, may finally be secured. This week, Preservation Chicago is slated to submit a proposal designating the brick two-flat at 6427 S. St. Lawrence a landmark to the Department of Planning & Development. The process is expected to take some time, but if approved, the building would join the Roberts Temple Church of God In Christ in Bronzeville—site of Till’s open casket funeral— as well as the homes of Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ida B. Wells as sites critical to preserving Black history and culture on the city’s South Side.

from prison, rico clark fights a murder

NBA and WNBA players withhold their labor When the Milwaukee Bucks made the historic decision not to play on August 26 in what is known as a wildcat strike, or a strike not approved by their union, it triggered all other NBA teams scheduled to play that day, including the LA Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers, to cancel their games in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The WNBA has been vocal about social justice since the beginning of their season, even forming a Social Justice Council, and also sat out their games and wore t-shirts that had seven painted red circles for the times Blake was shot, while others players took a knee. Michael Jordan, who serves on the NBA Labor Relations Board, and former President Barack Obama, joined virtual meetings with NBA players and the National Basketball Players Association, to listen to players and negotiate their demands for social justice and self-expression within the league and avoid what could have resulted in a long-term strike. The NBA announced that all team-owned arenas will serve as polling sites during the November presidential elections as play resumed Sunday.

mohawk johnson on hip-hop, activism, and skating

It’s time for CHA to follow through cheryl johnson.................................................4 opinion: stop treating the southeast side as disposable

The fight against polluters and SROs is a movement against structural racism carlos enriquez................................................5 opinion: chicago’s second red summer

“History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” brady chalmers................................................8 croSSWord

jim daley............................................................9 conviction and covid-19

“It’s always on my mind what I’m doing locked up. Because I had nothing to do with this.” stender von oehsen and milan rivas, injustice watch..............................................10 fact-checking police supt. david brown on august 15

How accurate were CPD’s assertions about the downtown protest? jim daley and jason schumer........................12 “Regardless of how you feel about the methodology, these people are in pain. Art creates an avenue for that pain.” jim daley..........................................................14 pandemic lessons

Past outbreaks, and national history, inform hospitals’ response to COVID-19 yiwen lu...........................................................17 finding water

The pandemic has made it even harder for some Chicago residents to access clean water neya thanikachalam.....................................19 fish stories

South Side fishermen talk about life on the line morley musick.................................................20 trivia

martha bayne ................................................23

Cover Photo by Jason Schumer

ENVIRONMENT

Opinion: Build a Solar Farm in Altgeld It’s time for CHA to follow through

BY CHERYL JOHNSON

hicago’s segregated history has led to unequal outcomes for Black communities across the city. For far too long we’ve known what it’s like to feel forgotten. Though 2020 has only exposed what I’ve known for decades—unequal health outcomes in African-American neighborhoods, racial profiling by police— this year provides a unique opportunity to achieve lasting progress for communities in the far South Side. Out of all the policies proposed by elected officials and community activists, there’s one that can directly benefit the residents of Altgeld Gardens: a solar farm. Solar is a clean, efficient, and affordable source of energy that provides electricity to communities that need it most. Unlike fossil fuels, solar doesn’t produce methane and other pollutants. As a lifelong community advocate from Altgeld, I know how devastating these toxic chemicals can be for Black families. Too many have lost loved ones because of the pollution harming our community. Transitioning away from fossil fuels will prevent future residents from needlessly dying from their effects. There are also financial benefits to solar energy. Through tax credits, solar can provide significant savings for property owners and renters in low-income communities. Besides these benefits, solar energy is an excellent opportunity to hire locally and spur job growth. Training programs in solar installation and electrical apprenticeships give residents the dignity of a well-paying job while also supporting the community’s technical needs for decades to come. With all of the benefits from solar energy, it’s exciting to know that a solar farm is in the works. Altgeld’s planned solar farm is expected to take up ten acres of undeveloped land in the neighborhood. According to a feasibility study conducted by Cook County in coordination with Chicago 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Housing Authority (CHA), it would consist of 6,100 panels with enough energy to power 360 homes every year. The CHA is expected to use forty percent of the panels installed for residents in Altgeld while the remaining sixty percent will be leased out to other residents in the community and surrounding CHA facilities. Customers will not have to pay an upfront cost, thanks to the Illinois Solar for All initiative to finance community led programs that was passed by the Illinois state legislature in 2016. For us, bringing a solar farm to Altgeld Gardens isn’t just an environmental or economic issue, but a call for racial justice. Credits from the energy used in the solar farm will be reinvested into the community. This is a great chance to address some critical issues on the disparity of outcomes and resources in Altgeld. Throughout the summer, People for Community Recovery (PCR) has been asking residents about what they would like to see. From a survey of nearly ninety participants, fifty-eight percent said they wanted to see a grocery store in the community. Altgeld currently doesn’t have one, even though there’s ample space to construct one. Besides a grocery store, residents also pointed to a lack of child programs and job training. A solar farm could produce short-term construction jobs while also creating lucrative technical jobs for future solar infrastructure projects. Energy credits can be used to create programs that support job training, while also investing in the future generation by supporting activities that motivate and inspire kids to be change makers. The potential benefits of a solar farm aren’t confined to saving money and being environmentally friendly, but also seeing nutritional food options return to Altgeld, training residents to have marketable skills in the solar industry, and cultivating a new generation of leaders. For all of these possibilities, however,

progress has been slow. While we know the solar farm won’t be built overnight, the Chicago Housing Authority must continue the work done over the past several years. A feasibility study was completed three years ago. Illinois Solar for All is up and running. PCR has organized and educated residents about the benefits of a solar farm. The clear next step is for CHA to continue discussions with residents and create a fair request for proposals (RFP) for solar developers. Our two demands to make the RFP inclusive are to encourage hiring locally while also keeping the community engaged and informed throughout the entire

project development. The RFP is important because it allows organizations to bid on the proposal and finally start developing the solar farm. Defining it on terms beneficial to our residents is crucial for any lasting change toward community resilience and sustainability. We want to continue to work with CHA, and now is the time for CHA to follow through on their part. ¬ Cheryl Johnson is executive director of People for Community Recovery, an environmental justice organization based in Altgeld Gardens, on Chicago's far Southeast Side.

Join us

Tuesdays at 9:00 am

via Zoom for a series of informational sessions on a variety of De La Salle topics.

Date

Topic

September 15

De La Salle’s Return to School Plan

September 22

Admissions Process & Tour of De La Salle Campus

September 29

De La Salle Assistant Principal and Academic Deans of Applied Science & Language Arts

October 6

Technology

October 13

Student Services

October 20

Social Sciences & Theology

More topics in coming months. Check our website for the link to the next Zoom meeting. Miss a meeting? You can catch up by visiting our website at www.dls.org for past sessions. For more information please contact Mr. John Brogan, Director of Admissions, De La Salle Institute at 312-842-7355 x 147 or email broganj@dls.org 3434 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616 • 312.842.7355

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 DLS SouthbSide weekly ad.indd 1

8/24/20 9:11 AM

JUSTICE

Opinion: Stop Treating the Southeast Side as Disposable The East Side’s fight against polluters and SROs is a movement against structural racism BY CARLOS ENRIQUEZ This piece is part of a series that explores the various perspectives around defunding the police.

he Southeast Side community on the Calumet River, has historically been an industrial corridor. The longtime home of the old steel mills has recently become the city’s designated dumping zone, and residents struggle with exposure to petcoke, manganese, and landfills. The area is eighty percent Mexican and has been making headlines lately due to the current struggle to stop General Iron Industries from relocating their metal recycling facility from a North Side neighborhood. And one of its high schools, George Washington High School, voted 6-5 to remove the School Resource Officers (SROs) as part of the citywide movement to get Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers out of the Chicago Public School (CPS). While on the face of it, these two struggles may not seem to have an obvious connection to one another, to many members of the community, they are two sides of the same coin. To many in the Southeast Side the current $33 million contract that was just approved between CPS and CPD and the failure of elected officials to step in and deny the permit that would allow a notorious polluter to move in highlight the lack of prioritization of the needs of the people living furthest from downtown. “Throughout the eighteen years that I have lived in the Southeast Side of Chicago, I cannot remember a single year where I have not smelled the stench coming from some of the factories around the neighborhood,” said Washington alum Liliana Muñoz at a forum hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union Climate Justice Committee in July. It’s hard to ignore the racial component

when it comes to the question where exactly the city decides to locate polluters. The General Iron metal scrapping facility slated to be relocated to the neighborhood would be operating less than a mile away from the high school and, based on the wind trajectory in the area, the brunt of the particulate matter emitted from the facility would be blown in the direct path of the school. “I definitely fear for my health and safety from being exposed to high numbers of dangerous chemicals,” said Lauren Bianchi, social studies teacher at Washington. “But as a teacher that doesn’t live in the community, I’m most concerned about the health and safety of my students and coworkers that live in the area. This neighborhood has a high number of health problems.” “We already have a high number of students that have asthma, have dealt with cancer in their families,” Bianchi continued. “I fear that my students won’t be able to learn due to health issues, things like asthma attacks would obviously disrupt learning.” There’s another threat to the immediate safety of Washington students. Although Black students only make up about five percent of the high school’s population, they’ve faced a disproportionate amount of harassment at the hands of the school SROs. The current struggle to get CPD out of CPS is part of the largest civil rights movement we have seen in a generation. The ongoing Black Lives Matter movement has called for police departments to be defunded and for those funds to be invested back into marginalized communities. Among many other demands have called for police officers to be removed from public schools. According to the CopsOutCPS Report, despite only making up about thirty-six percent of the entire student population,

Black students are subjected to police notifications at four times the rate of white students in Chicago. Furthermore, more than ninety-five percent of police incidents in CPS have involved students of color. “We’re creating a hostile, unsafe environment for our Black peers by allowing CPD to constantly criminalize them,” wrote LSC student representative Trinity Colon in The Triibe. “Too often our community only focuses on issues that affect Latinos, and these are serious, valid issues that need to be addressed. However, we need to keep that same energy when it comes to the injustices occurring within other marginalized groups of people. We must strive to protect and value all of our students; we can’t cherrypick which minority groups we’re going to fight for.” The infrastructure that made it possible for students to mobilize to have the Local School Council (LSC) vote go their way actually began somewhat at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Teachers and staff at Washington set up a mutual aid fund, similarly to what a few other schools in Chicago did. The mutual aid project brought teachers together with members in the community and made it possible to expand outreach beyond their immediate networks. Through virtual means, teachers met with student leaders, including the Students Voice Committee and the Black Student Alliance, to share data on SROs once it became known that the CPS school board was about to discuss the current contract. The youth-led Black and Brown solidarity actions that occurred earlier in the summer at the start of the ongoing uprising against police brutality showed many that attitudes in the neighborhood were changing in a progressive way.

The other key factor was being able to position Washington students as leaders in those talks. After being introduced to the issue, the students felt strongly about the pattern of discrimination and took the lead from there. “We aren’t protecting and caring for our Black students, and that’s a problem,” said the high school junior. “Not only is racism a clear factor in this discussion, but with it comes serious adultism. Adults are refusing to acknowledge the voices of young Black and Brown people when we say how having CPD in schools makes us feel unsafe and afraid. It doesn’t matter if we’re calm and collected or if we’re screaming from the top of our lungs: they dismiss what we’re saying because of their ideals.” The response by teachers like Washington science teacher Chuck Stark made it possible for students to raise their voice and have their agency be taken seriously by the status quo by challenging the notion of “adultism,” as Colon wrote. “If we want to prepare students for the real world, I don’t want my students walking out to a system that takes advantage of them,” said Stark. “I want them to challenge that system.” The vote to withdraw the SROs out of the school successfully removes the threat of what some teachers called “armed surveillance” patrolling the lunch room with guns in hand, in a setting which should be a place of safety for students. Just as data revealed that SROs were disproportionately disciplining students of color, data shows that the emissions that would come out of a new metal shredding facility would be harmful to the health of everyone residing or working in the area. Considering the current health crisis, any additional emissions would be further devastating to the community.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

JUSTICE

East siders have recently announced the filing of a civil rights complaint against the City of Chicago’s zoning policies, alleging that their history of relocating industrial facilities have been deepening housing segregation and racial discrimination in the area. “According to the permit they are not breaking any rules,” said Stark. “They fall within those legal limits allowed by the EPA. They are releasing particulate matter that the EPA themselves admit is harmful to your health, but they are still allowing it. Yet another fire has to be put out.” The energy and passion in the neighborhood is there. But to cultivate the type of push needed to move Mayor Lori Lightfoot and City Council to step in and stop General Iron, the entire City of Chicago may need to demand that elected officials and industrial polluters stop treating the community in the Southeast Side as disposable. One of these elected officials is 10th Ward Alderwoman Sue Sadlowski Garza, a former Chicago Teachers Union member who during her most recent campaign promised that the Southeast Side would no longer be the city’s dumping ground. However, she has failed to come out in strong opposition of the relocation of General Iron, and in some instances has even endorsed it. “In getting CPD out of CPS,” said Bianchi, “I want us to reimagine what schools look like. Schools are one of the main places racism manifests, in an extremely racist society. They should not just be a place you learn about this, but also where you learn to challenge that. Schools should be where you fight for freedom.” By the same token, stopping General Iron can lead to a new vision of what the Southeast Side could be for the folks in the community. Community members want to see broad action taken to regulate industrial facilities. They want the city to question the zoning that allows for neighborhoods of color to bear the brunt of pollution. Defeating General Iron could also lead to more collaboration between different marginalized communities involved in fighting racism and environmental injustice, such as the CTU-organized forum connecting the General Iron fight to the struggle against the MAT asphalt plant in McKinley Park, and the struggle in Little Village against Hilco, the company responsible for the botched demolition of the Crawford coal plant that covered the neighborhood in ash and dust. 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

LINOCUT PRINT BY SARAHI RODRÍGUEZ/THE COLLABORATIVE PRINT SHOP AT UIC

Reinvesting the money from the SROs program back into public schools could go a long way to ensuring that working-class Black and brown kids have the same access to a quality public education that kids in affluent neighborhoods have. The entire CPD budget is $1.65 billion; by defunding the police department funds could be used to offer health care and medical assistance to neighborhoods that have been disproportionately exposed to high rates of pollution and now have adversely suffered from the health repercussions of it. The money could also be used to fully fund environmental protections and

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

programs—such as hiring more inspectors, requiring community input on new permits, or reinstating the city’s Department of the Environment—to make sure industries are operating safely, and with a goal to fully divest from harmful fossil fuels and other dirty industries. The battle to stop General Iron, much like the battle to remove SROs from CPS, needs to be won in the citywide battle for public opinion. East Side residents have been told that their community would never be the Riverwalk, but that doesn’t mean that the people of that neighborhood don’t deserve substantially better than what

the city has offered them for decades. Both movements are rooted in the reimagination of what the Southeast Side could look like if the safety and the future of the residents were prioritized by City Hall. ¬ Carlos Enriquez is an activist involved in the campaign to Democratize ComEd and has done consulting for the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke. This is his first contribution to the Weekly.

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old Black man, in Englewood. It was the latest local police shooting in a summer in which the country has risen up in protest over the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others by the police.

Opinion: Chicago’s Second Red Summer

BY VASHON JORDAN JR.

Cutting River North and the Loop off from Chicago’s Black residents has made Chicago a twenty-first century sundown town BY BRADY CHALMERS

n 1918, an unarmed Black teenager visiting Chicago for the first time took a Sunday stroll on the South Side. He walked down Wentworth Avenue, which unbeknownst to him was the unofficial dividing line for Black Chicago and white Chicago. He was a high school student who, in his own words, “went out walking alone to see what the city looked like.” The border he unwittingly crossed separated white, Irish Bridgeport from the rest of the Black South Side. At some point, it’s believed that he walked past the Hamburg Athletic Club, a private neighborhood club that counted Chicago’s future mayor and patriarch, Richard J. Daley, among its members. The Hamburg Athletic Club had a reputation, as did Bridgeport. The teenager later reported that a group of Irish ruffians told him, “[We] didn’t allow n—— in that neighborhood.” They beat him savagely, leaving him with black eyes, a swollen jaw, and an introduction to Chicago that he would never forget. 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

That Black teenager was Langston Hughes, who would later become America’s most celebrated poet and a founding father of the Harlem Renaissance. He would never forget his time in the City of Big Shoulders—a sundown town where Black residents had best stay in their place and be home before it gets dark. Chicago, it seems, would always remember its unwritten rules for Black people too. Less than a year later, American white supremacists waged a national campaign of violence against Black people. The attacks were widespread and indiscriminate. As GIs returned home from World War I, they competed for jobs and housing. Black GIs believed they were entitled to their fair share of the post-war economy and made moves to advocate for themselves. White supremacists erupted. Acts of terror occurred in dozens of cities in what would be known as The Red Summer, aptly named for the amount of bloodshed. In Chicago, Eugene Williams, a seventeen-year-old Black teenager, was swimming off the 25th Street beach when

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

he drifted south into waters near what whites considered “their” beach. They threw rocks at Williams and his friends, hit Williams in the head, and drowned him. When Black Chicagoans raised this issue with authorities, white Chicagoans rose in open rebellion. They went neighborhood by neighborhood attacking Black people, burning down nearly 2,000 Black homes, and killing dozens of Black people. Those who had proximity to white people and those who needed to access other parts of the city to go to work were explicitly targeted for retribution. Largely Irish police and firefighters ignored the violence and burning homes. Black people were not allowed to congregate or travel safely from one neighborhood to another. Access to downtown and the North Side was impossible without being met with white police or a posse. If this sounds familiar, it should. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. In mid-August, Chicago police shot and wounded Latrell Allen, a twenty-year-

hat we’ve been witnessing during the last several months in Chicago is nothing less than a second Red Summer of 1919. The pieces have changed. This time, the mayor unleashing police devastation onto the citizens of Chicago is a Black woman, something that would have been unheard of in 1919. Yet some things remain eerily familiar. If you think it’s unconscionable that a Black mayor could condone acts of white supremacy, you haven’t been paying attention to how she has responded to Black youth activists since the day she was inaugurated. In June and then in August, in response to looting and property damage by a fraction of the city’s myriad protesters, Lightfoot raised the bridges connecting the Loop to the North Side of Chicago. By severing the affluent white areas from the rest of the city after 9pm, Lightfoot effectively turned Chicago into a Sundown town again. Her decision to cut off public transportation connecting the North and South Sides of Chicago also harkened back to a time when Black Chicagoans were not allowed to be in white parts of town. The line separating white Chicago from Black Chicago has moved further north as whites have largely abandoned the South Side over the course of the twentieth century. During the curfews that were declared this summer, the unstated rules said anyone caught downtown between the hours of 9pm and 6am who had the temerity to protest their condition could be brutalized by police and charged with felonies. The mayor is telling Black people that they are second-class citizens. Chicago had a fifty-three percent murder arrest rate in 2019. Crimes against the Black community go unsolved. The people of these communities are angry and feel abandoned. If you speak with residents of Black Chicago, a common concern is that the Black mayor and her new Black police superintendent are not looking out for Black people. She and her mostly white police rank and file are sending messages to Black Chicago that say, “You may live here, but you are not who we’re working to protect. We do not care what happens to you as long

GAMES

as it happens away from white people.” When looting occurred in Black areas of the city in late May, police merely lounged, uninvited, in Congressman Bobby Rush’s office. When vandalism occurred in downtown Chicago, in late May and again in mid-August Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor, sent an overwhelming police presence to crack down on looters and protesters alike and cleaved the city in half. Like the Red Summer of 1919, there are roving mobs of white supremacists active across the country again. On August 15, the Proud Boys, a white supremacist posse founded by a former Vice Magazine cofounder, brutally attacked protesters in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Now, the attacks are closer to home and more extreme. On August 25, seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, a white self-styled militiaman from Antioch, Illinois, is alleged to have driven across state lines armed with an AR15 and murdered two people during protests against the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Of course, this isn’t the first time a Chicago mayor has used brute police force to crack down on unruly protestors. During the Democratic Convention of 1968, police beat, gassed, and arrested thousands of antiwar demonstrators deemed to be too dangerous to exercise their democratic right to assembly. Lightfoot’s decision to attack the typically peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters with a violent and mostly white police force echoes the tactics used by thenMayor Richard J. Daley. If Langston Hughes were alive today, he would recognize this city. Likely from the back of a squad car, with two black eyes and a bruised jaw, he might say, “Summer 2020, same as summer 1919.” A Red Summer, yet again. ¬ This article on Medium.

was

originally

published

Brady Chalmers is a dad, writer, and digital strategist who writes about race, politics, faith, sports, and hip-hop. He lives in Chicago with his wife Jillian, daughter Naomi, a dog named Bear and a cat named Eartha Kitty.

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34 Sue Grafton novel "_ __ for Killer" 35 Forcefully or hastily (archaic) 36 Activist and former NFL QB Colin, for short 37 Short skirts, to boomers? 39 Military ration (abbrev.) 40 Antigonish: "_ ___ _ man who wasn't there" 43 ___ Vegas 44 In "Jurassic Park," dino DNA was recovered from a mosquito trapped in it 46 Subject of Boseman biopic Thurgood 48 Spike Lee film starring Boseman "Da 5 ______" 49 Stand at ____ (relax) 50 Texas Democrat O'Rourke 51 With "Black," title of film in which Boseman played 20-Across

54 Boseman's final film (based on the August Wilson play of the same name) "Ma _______ Black Bottom"

58 Former Cub Moises (he was allegedly thwarted by Bartman) 59 Monastery head 61 "I had no ____" 62 Ambivalent 63 Japanese luxury watchmaker 64 Old-timey exclamation of surprise 65 Gulp of liquor 66 Country south of Saudi Arabia 67 Zaire strongman Mobutu ____ Seko DOWN 1 Obscene material 2 Snitch on; or the type of cop an informant might talk to 3 Mormons make up about half of this state's population

4 Noblest Round Table knight 5 Grinned 6 Cougars, or Adidas competitor's shoes 7 Promoted tweets, for short 8 Doctor's determination 9 Cause (oneself) to be loved 10 SCUBA or NASA, e.g. 11 Abel's brother 12 26-Across is one (abbrev.) 13 Good clean daytime TV? 21 Oral tradition 23 "Bye-bye" 26 Judge, in Islam 27 44 28 Windshield blade 29 Last exam of the term 30 Former ANC president and anti-apartheid revolutionary Oliver 31 Sent money via Western Union 32 Niners minus eighters? 34 Deadly stinger 41 Chinese Communist leader Mao 42 "__ ...__ ... choo!" 44 They're below soprani 45 Followers of the Unification Church, informally 47 "__ ____ as pie" (or "as 1, 2, 3") 48 Pound, as a drum 50 Penniless 51 Butter units 52 Keep _ ___ profile 53 Sushi seaweed 55 U2 guitarist, with "The" 56 Nays' opposites 57 "Soldier of Love" and "Smooth Operator" singer 60 Korean dish Bi ___ Bap

Answer Key Pg 23

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

JUSTICE

From Prison, Rico Clark Fights a Murder Conviction and COVID-19 Detectives on the 2006 case have been dogged by allegations of witness coercion BY STENDER VON OEHSEN AND MILAN RIVAS, INJUSTICE WATCH

n September 24, 2006, nineteenyear-old Damion Kendricks was shot and killed in an alley near 76th and Dorchester in the Grand Crossing neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Witnesses said they saw four men with hoodies pulled over their heads running from the scene holding guns, according to police. Only one of the men named by witnesses, Rico Clark, was convicted of the crime, and sentenced to fifty-five years in prison. But Clark has maintained his innocence all these years. “It’s always on my mind what I’m doing locked up,” Clark told Injustice Watch during a phone call from prison. “Because I had nothing to do with this.” An Injustice Watch investigation found that the case against Clark included problems often seen in wrongful convictions, including allegations of police coercion, recanted witness statements, and inadequate defense. Two of the three witnesses who named Clark as the shooter recanted at trial, testifying that Chicago police detectives forced them to make statements. Detectives Brian Forberg and Kevin Eberle have a pattern of alleged misconduct, including allegations of evidence tampering and witness coercion, according to several civil lawsuits and pending appeals. Clark’s defense attorney was later disbarred for misconduct he admits was a result of alcoholism. And the judge in Clark’s case has faced his own legal troubles. Clark, who was nineteen at the time, was arrested for the murder in March 2007, barely a week after his daughter was born. Before his conviction, his family says he had a great sense of humor and enjoyed putting on rap shows with his brother Lester Owens. “All he talks about is trying to get home to his family and his child,” said Jasmine Smith, who is engaged to Owens. 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

“It’s always on my mind what I’m doing locked up. Because I had nothing to do with this.”

Now, his family and attorneys said, Clark has contracted COVID-19 in prison, while his latest post-conviction petition has been stalled by the court’s coronavirus slow-down.

‘Really weak case’

here was no mention of Rico Clark when detectives Forberg and Eberle first interviewed witnesses on the night that Kendricks was shot, according to court records. Kendricks’ brother-in-law, Leroy Moore, told the detectives at the scene that he heard gunshots from inside his apartment a couple of blocks away, ran outside, and saw a man with braids running away and holding a gun. Later that night, Kevin Eson, who detectives interviewed at the police station, told them he had been walking and saw the victim with four men. Police said he told them two of the men carried guns, but he didn’t identify them. Authorities did not officially link Clark to the case until December 4, 2006. According to court records, Moore picked him out of a photo lineup administered by Detective Forberg. Two months later, police arrested Demetrius Murry for cannabis possession, and detectives questioned him about the murder. He pointed out Clark and Corey Manuel as the shooters and later identified them in a photo lineup. In March 2007, prosecutors took the case to a grand jury, which rendered indictments for murder against Clark, Manuel, and a third man, Marcellus French. Prosecutors dropped the charges against French, but Clark and Manuel went to trial in October 2009. No physical evidence linked them to the crime. “This was an all-identification case,”

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

said Eric Bisby, one of Clark’s attorneys. Moore was the only witness who testified consistently with his written statement. The two other key witnesses changed their stories, testifying that their identifications were coerced by detectives Forberg and Eberle. Murry testified that he told detectives what they wanted to hear because he was afraid he would be sent back to prison for violating his parole with the marijuana charge. Eson also walked back the statement he signed for Forberg and an assistant state’s attorney implicating Clark, testifying that he agreed to sign the statement because he was eager to leave the station. Detective Forberg contested both those claims and testified that there was no coercion. Manuel was acquitted. But in October 2009, based largely on Eson and Murry’s initial statements and Moore’s testimony, the jury found Clark guilty. “It was really a weak case [against Rico], and you have a known detective who has engaged in misconduct,” said Jennifer Blagg, one of the attorneys representing Clark in his post-conviction petition. “That’s not grounds for establishing [guilt] beyond a reasonable doubt.”

‘Turning a blind eye to patterns’

n the years after Clark’s conviction, the detectives who helped put him behind bars have been accused in multiple cases of alleged witness coercion and mishandled evidence, according to an Injustice Watch

review of civil lawsuits and court records. Forberg, a twenty-five-year veteran of the force, was named in a $3.4 million wrongful conviction lawsuit filed in 2011 by Maurice Patterson. Though Forberg’s role in his case was not explicitly stated, the lawsuit accused him and eight other officers of manipulating witnesses, fabricating evidence, and withholding DNA results in the 2002 investigation. Patterson was exonerated in 2010 after a previously withheld state lab report showed someone else’s DNA was found on the alleged murder weapon. The city settled with Patterson but did not admit fault. “I still feel broken,” Patterson told Injustice Watch in a phone call in late June. “[The settlement] didn’t make up for the time that I went through being wrongfully convicted.” In two other cases around the time of Clark’s arrest, alleged misconduct by Forberg and Eberle led prosecutors to drop serious charges, according to civil lawsuits filed by the defendants. In 2005, the detectives accused Terrance Lofton of robbing a Dunkin Donuts three separate times, according to a lawsuit he later filed. Lofton was held in jail for nearly three years, even after a man who matched the description of the robbery suspect was shot and killed by police in the middle of an armed robbery of a different Dunkin Donuts in the southwest suburbs. The owner of the Dunkin Donuts eventually told an assistant state’s attorney he had picked Lofton out of a lineup because Forberg told him Lofton was the

JUSTICE

offender and had a “bad record,” according to Lofton’s lawsuit. Prosecutors immediately dropped the charges. In another case, from 2006, murder charges against Sara Bridewell were dropped after prosecutors found several problems with Forberg and Eberle’s investigation, according to facts agreed upon by Bridewell and the city in a civil lawsuit she later filed, which was dismissed on a techinicality. Bridewell had been riding in a car with three passengers when a man named Walter Chandler hit them on Chicago’s Southeast Side. The car Bridewell was in chased Chandler into a dead-end alley, and an altercation ensued. Chandler died of a gunshot wound to the head. According to the civil suit, DNA swabs taken from the gun found in the car where Chandler was killed were not immediately tested and, when they were, yielded no results. A lie-detector test taken by one of the other passengers who implicated Bridewell was “not so much an objective liedetector test as it was a ‘completely biased’ investigation,” according to the agreed-upon facts of the case. And all of the passengers of the car tested negative for gunshot residue. Clark and his attorney argue that these cases show that the detectives have a pattern of coercing witness statements. “I didn’t know Forberg and Eberle personally. I just knew they were coming around a lot, picking us up off the street,” Clark said. “I really didn’t know nothing about police misconduct and stuff before I got locked up, and really understand that what they’ve been doing all this time was wrong.” Forberg and Eberle did not face any known discipline for any of these cases, according to Chicago Police records. Forberg was promoted from detective to sergeant in February 2014. Last year, records show, Forberg was one of the highest-paid officers in the department, bringing in over $118,000 in overtime in addition to his sixfigure salary. Eberle remains a detective. The officers could not be reached for comment. “The existence of a significant number of complaints of coercion should be a red flag, because those complaints generally are grossly under reported in terms of complaints to the police department,” said Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor and director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. “Turning a blind eye to patterns is just contrary to any notion of sound investigative practice,” he said.

A troubled defense

ave Wiener, Clark’s trial attorney, has since been disbarred for failing to adequately represent his clients, according to records from the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. In an interview with Injustice Watch, Wiener acknowledged that he had struggled with alcohol abuse and anger management issues that led to arguments with his clients. “It happened because I had an anger management problem,” Wiener said of

the necessary steps to pursue his clients’ interests in three criminal cases,” and for not returning $13,000 in unearned client fees. Within a year, Wiener was disbarred when he failed an alcohol screening test. He claimed it was mouthwash, but the testing lab determined the amount of alcohol in his system to be “far in excess of normal.” Clark said he didn’t know at that time that he could have reported what he saw as Wiener’s problematic behavior. “I didn’t know my constitutional rights,” Clark said. “I didn’t know that he would have gotten in trouble if I told the judge, because he

BY ALEJANDRA FERNANDEZ

his disbarment. “I argued a great deal with many of my clients. And I had an alcohol problem.” Clark blames Wiener for failing to adequately represent him. He said he could sometimes smell alcohol on Wiener’s breath and that his demeanor was unpredictable. Wiener failed to appear at several pre-trial hearings in Clark’s case due to a payment dispute, which left Clark with a public defender unfamiliar with his situation. But Wiener denied ever drinking during the trial and said he remembered little about Clark’s case but “felt very, very badly” for losing his case. The Illinois Supreme Court suspended Wiener for a year in 2015 for failing to “take

would’ve been reported.” Judge Joseph Claps, who presided over Clark’s case, was arrested in 2018 on a misdemeanor gun charge after surveillance video captured a gun falling out of his jacket in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. He pleaded not guilty. Two Cook County Sheriff ’s deputies allegedly saw him drop the weapon, too. But a judge from neighboring Will County later acquitted Claps, saying the prosecution failed to prove that the object that dropped was in fact a gun, despite the testimony of the two sheriff ’s police. Claps was initially put on administrative duties, but he has returned to the bench and is assigned to hear Clark’s post-conviction petition.

Looking forward

lark remains incarcerated at Menard Correctional Center, where he has waited for his hearings to resume since March, when the coronavirus-related court shutdown delayed his post-conviction petition. A coronavirus outbreak at Menard has now affected at least sixty-six staff and ninety-four incarcerated people, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Clark told his family in an email on August 12 that he had contracted the virus. “My heart hurts, it’s hard for me to breathe. I can’t taste or smell anything,” he wrote to his aunt, Tanya Clark-Washington. In an interview in July, Clark described the facility as “nasty and dirty and filthy,” and said people there were living in segregation and given masks, but not adequate cleaning supplies. The court’s coronavirus slowdown has stalled post-conviction petition hearings like Rico’s since March, including twenty petitions taken up by the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender. Some hearings have resumed via Zoom in addition to in-person, according to the office. “It’s been a slow appeal process with my financial situation,” said Clark, who has worked on this specific petition since 2014. “But I’ve got a lot of issues that work in my favor. I’m ready.” Those close to Clark are hopeful that his current post-conviction appeal will be successful and he’ll be able to come home. “Rico was funny, Rico was loving. All he wanted to do was be around his family, crack jokes on everybody,” said Smith. “He was just full of life.” As Clark's attorneys prepare to return to court on September 16, he's hopeful that authorities will free him after taking another look at his case. “I can only keep myself up and keep hope alive that I get out of [prison],” Clark said. “What am I supposed to do, just give up?” ¬ Injustice Watch is a non-partisan, not-forprofit journalism organization that conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality. Stender Von Oehsen and Milan Rivas are reporting interns at Injustice Watch. This is their first piece for the Weekly.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

JUSTICE

Fact-Checking Police Supt. David Brown on August 15

How accurate were the CPD superintendent’s assertions about the downtown protest? BY JIM DALEY AND JASON SCHUMER

n August 15—days after announcing a new and more aggressive tactical posture toward protesters downtown—Chicago police in riot gear faced off with demonstrators who wanted to defund CPD and abolish ICE at the intersection of Michigan and Wacker. The bells of the DuSable Bridge rang out nonstop. Raised bridges prevented the march, which had originated near the Bean in Millenium Park, from making its way farther north toward the Magnificent Mile; a line of riot police blocked the demonstration from turning east toward Lake Shore Drive.

At some point, the demonstrators assumed a defensive stance toward police, shielding themselves with umbrellas and standing behind a line of bicycles. It’s unclear what, precisely, precipitated the skirmish that followed. Protesters and independent journalists shared videos in real time on social media that showed police grabbing umbrellas and bikes from protesters, and later on, chasing them down Michigan Ave., blocking their ability to leave (a practice commonly referred to as “kettling”) and beating demonstrators in alleys.

The following Monday, CPD released an edited video on social media that included captions describing the police’s version of the events. In press conferences held the evening of August 15 and again on August 17, Superintendent David Brown presented the department’s view of the confrontation. Brown blamed the violence on “agitators” who “hijacked” the otherwise peaceful protest by opening umbrellas and hurling “projectiles” at officers. While defending the police’s actions, Brown made several statements that

strayed from the facts. The Weekly reviewed dozens of videos and photographs, some never before published, and collected eyewitness accounts from demonstrators. We compared the evidence we collected as well as CPD’s own video to what Brown said at the two press conferences and factchecked his statements, providing context and explanation. ¬ Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor and Jason Schumer is managing director.

BY MADISON MULLER

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

“Multiple agitators hijacked this peaceful protest. This group deployed large black umbrellas, changed their appearance, and began pushing our officers and eventually assaulting them.” (8/15) This is misleading. The assertion that agitators hijacked the protest assumes there was an organized, successful effort by a group of violent conspirators. The Weekly could find no evidence that was the case on August 15. Nearly a dozen protesters provided eyewitness accounts to the Weekly that flatly contradict CPD claims that demonstrators initiated the conflict. Multiple witnesses said, backed by video footage, that police began taking umbrellas and bicycles from protesters first. What little evidence CPD provided to support their assertion—namely, surveillance video showing some protesters donning ponchos, which CPD claims the “agitators” did in order to signal one another who would lead the violence—is inconclusive at best. The Weekly obtained audio from a CPD radio scanner in which police can be heard claiming that bottles were being thrown at the same time protesters were donning gas masks and opening umbrellas. The CPD’s own video seems to contradict the timing of those claims. One possible reason protesters may have had to open umbrellas and put on ponchos could be as makeshift protection against anticipated chemical agents from police. Another could be that it was beginning to rain.

“To protect the peaceful protesters as well as their fellow officers, our officers responded proportionately to get the situation under control.” (8/15) This is inconclusive. To assert that officers “responded proportionately” carries with it the implication that they were provoked, or that protesters started the fight. Several witnesses independently told the Weekly that police assumed an aggressive stance from the very beginning of the confrontation, and that police attacked protesters, unprovoked. Some of the earliest video evidence the Weekly was able to obtain shows police officers brandishing their batons before any confrontation occurred. It’s unclear how (or from whom) deploying OC spray would have protected peaceful protesters in the crowd. At what point the situation was “under control,” if it ever was, is also open to debate.

“Seventeen officers were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries due to being assaulted, and maced, by skateboards, bottles, bicycles and other projectiles.” (8/15) This is partially true. Some officers did seek medical treatment for injuries. Some protesters did throw objects at police during the upheaval. Multiple protesters were injured by police, too. Videos we reviewed show protesters standing behind their bicycles in a single line in front of the crowd before any escalation occurs. None of the videos we reviewed show protesters charging at officers with bicycles or mace, although several show police grabbing bikes and tossing them behind the police line. One eyewitness told the Weekly that police were striking cyclists’ hands to force them to let go of their bikes. A few videos, including the one CPD released, show improvised objects (including sticks and plastic water bottles) being thrown at police after police charged into the crowd with batons.

“Number one, the crowd moved and we just tried to trail along to the point where it became confrontational, when they began assaulting our officers is when we moved the crowd and eventually it dissipated.” (8/15) This is false. Officers chased demonstrators. Multiple videos the Weekly reviewed show a formation of police advancing south on Michigan Ave. toward the demonstration, first at

BY MADISON MULLER

a walk and then at a brisk jog. Five witnesses independently told the Weekly that police chased them down and attacked protesters who did not immediately disperse. The crowd “dissipated” only after police searched their bags and allowed them to leave.

“A lot of officers were hit with, uh...one particular one caught on video that we’ll be releasing tomorrow is, an officer was just beat in the head with a skateboard, repeatedly.” (8/15) This is partially true. The video CPD released appears to show one protester swinging a skateboard at a helmeted officer. However, the video also shows that the confrontation appeared to have began when multiple police charged into the crowd to attack other protesters. When the officers retreated, no one followed or attempted to continue the confrontation.

“Demonstrators had mace as well.” (8/15) This is unsubstantiated. None of the videos we reviewed, including the one CPD released, show any demonstrators using mace. None of the arrest charges we reviewed, including the four made for “battery on a peace officer,” appear to be for use of chemical irritants, either.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

“I stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the ground with the men and women in blue, witnessing the verbal abuse and dodging bottles and other street debris.” (8/17) This is misleading. Brown said he “stood shoulder-to-shoulder” with other officers; multiple videos show he was positioned well behind the line of riot police, accompanied by a security detail. What he was able to witness from that vantage point is unclear. Taunts can be heard in several videos, but they most likely fall under First Amendment protected speech. The Supreme Court ruled in Houston v. Hill (1987) that verbally challenging police officers is protected speech, and in Lewis v. City of New Orleans (1974) that cursing police officers is similarly protected. In the video CPD released, plastic bottles and sticks are thrown only after police moved forward into the crowd, swinging batons.

“At some point, there was a concerted effort that I saw to agitate officers to pull them into more conflict and confrontation physically. And I saw the officers remain calm, keep the professionalism, and take only the proportional appropriate action when confronted with violence.” (8/17) This is inconclusive. Videos do show protesters linking arms and standing nonviolently near the police line. Captions accompanying the video CPD released say a protester in a green bike helmet “initiated a scuffle” after protesters approached the police. But the same video, as well as videos filmed by reporters from other angles, show police officers snatching umbrellas and bicycles from protesters before the “scuffle” occurs. Once it begins, several police officers charge forward into the crowd, swinging their batons indiscriminately. A few protesters did throw plastic water bottles and sticks after the initial police charge, and one also appeared to swing a skateboard.

“But you can see clearly on the video the umbrellas go up. Protesters put gas masks on, they change their clothing. You see the skateboard comes up and the skateboard used as a weapon. You see the more aggressive pushing into the police officers.” (8/17) This is misleading. The timeline Brown presents here is selectively muddled, and it skips over the initial confrontation between police and protesters. The crowd was standing in close proximity to the line of riot police, behind bicycles and umbrellas, when police started grabbing them. The altercation involving a skateboard happened only after police rushed into the crowd with batons—which according to CPD’s own video they did in response to a single protester in a green bike helmet.

“I haven’t heard those allegations that there was kettling going on. Again, there's video captured. People can judge for themselves, and you're entitled to your own opinion, but just not your own facts.” (8/17) This is misleading. Multiple photographs and videos clearly show police surrounding a group of demonstrators, who are pinned against a wall on Lasalle St. Demonstrators were allowed to leave only after they consented to CPD searching their bags. Four witnesses who independently spoke to the Weekly said they were kettled by police. While Brown may not have “heard allegations” about kettling, in at least one video he can be seen standing directly behind the line of police who were corralling the group. Check out southsideweekly.com for photo and video footage.

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¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

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Mohawk Johnson on Hip-Hop, Activism, and Skating The Chicago rapper and activist sits down with the Weekly BY JIM DALEY

ohawk Johnson defies a label. He’s a musician, rapper, standup comedian, activist, and skater, but none of these boxes really capture the totality of the introspective twenty-fiveyear-old Chicago native. Johnson grew up in Auburn Gresham and went to TEAM Englewood Community Academy High School on 61st and Stewart. While there, he attended classes at the UofC, and he later majored in creative writing and minored in acting at Columbia College. His music—a collection of singles and EPs released on Bandcamp and other online platforms—similarly strains against being put in any single genre. It’s hip-hop, of course—but on any given track, Johnson is just as likely to deliver spoken word as to rap, and his beats are as eclectic as the posse of producers he works with. The few dozen tracks that comprise his two-year-old discography show influences of house music and juke, drum & bass, industrial, trap, and heavy metal. His lyrics address themes ranging from colorism, racism, and toxic masculinity to dating and self-esteem. Johnson started listening to music early, but “bloomed late in regards to hip-hop culture,” listening to it on the sly. “My mom was kind of strict about the type of music I was allowed to listen to,” he explained. “She relegated my access to stuff. I’m not mad at her about it.” He counts Masego,

Kaytranada, Rakim, early Yasiin Bey (“when he was calling himself Mos Def ”), Kanye (“back when Kanye was Black”), old Jay-Z, and Megadeth among his favorites. He dropped his first single in January 2018, hoping to win back a musician exgirlfriend after a break-up, “which didn’t work,” he said. “That’s not how that works. But I just fell in love with the craft and I started making music.” He has released around thirty tracks since.

ohnson sprang to local notoriety when, at a protest in the Loop on August 15, he was arrested for allegedly defending protesters from police by swinging a skateboard. The Chicago Community Bond Fund paid his bail, but he spent nearly a week in jail while electronic home monitoring was set up. Upon being released, he addressed the situation with characteristic humor, tweeting: “I have two neck tattoos and I have now been to jail. Will y’all please go listen to my music now?” The week before the protest, Johnson released “Blacked Out, Pissed Off ” with artist TYGKO. “They can torture us / We standing there wit recorders,” Johnson raps, addressing a city still grappling with the legacy of Jon Burge and awash in cell-phone videos of police brutality. “In a borderline state / I can’t take no more of it.” The lyrics are starkly topical amid a

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOHAWK JOHNSON

summer of rebellions against state violence. Johnson said he thinks the song will remain relevant until the system is changed. “I think it was relevant during the Civil Rights Movement; I think it was relevant during the Black Panther Party’s movement; I think it was relevant during the Black Arts Movement,” he said. “The general message of being angry with white supremacist violence in any context is ever relevant.” It isn’t his first issues-oriented song: with 2018’s “DGS” (or “dat gay shit”), Johnson performs a soliloquy repudiating homophobia and toxic masculinity over a Naughta-produced beat that is equal parts juke, wonky, and dancehall. “I wanna live in a world where men are free of that, where we can hug and cry and scream into the void with our voices instead of our fists, and where our brother can say ‘I love you’ and it isn’t gay, and if it is it doesn’t matter because gayness isn’t scary,” he says over the tightly frenetic beat. “...I want me and my n——s to be free.” In early October, he plans to release the album Fire-Type, which he describes as “Pokémon trap music.” In a recent phone call, the Weekly spoke to Johnson about his music, comedy, skating, and activism. An edited transcript follows.

What role should artists have in social movements and revolutions? I not only think artists are part of them, I think they’re integral, especially if we’re talking about mass consumption and understanding of any social movement. You might look at people protesting and think, “I don't agree with that, because television told me that these people are criminals,” but then you might listen to some music that explains what we’re saying—because you couldn’t hear it at the protest because you weren’t in the space to listen—or you might look at a piece of art that gets to the gist of what we’re talking about. I think art is absolutely integral to bringing people together. And I also think it’s cathartic for people like me who are furious at what’s going on, and carrying this with us everyday and not able to put it into something. I think what people aren’t seeing in regards to these movements is that no matter how you feel about property destruction, rioting, kneeling, no matter how you feel about any of it, most people hate all of it. If people didn’t like Kaepernick taking a knee, then of course, they're not gonna like what happened at Nordstrom’s. So no one’s happy about anything [we do] because nobody wants us

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

MUSIC

to do anything. But I think what people need to understand is that regardless of how you feel about the methodology, these people are in pain. Art creates an avenue for that pain, and a line of communication for that pain that people might not get if they just look at activism as contextualized by the news. Do you consider yourself an artist or an activist? I don’t think I have to be an artist or an activist; I think I’m both. I think if you make art about activism, you’re an activist. I think all of these things are inextricably linked for people like me who create art and also go to protests and participate in multiple forms of action. In my art and my activism, I think it’s important that people recognize that part of the reason I do what I do is because of how wrong I have been, socially and politically. I’ve done a lot wrong, I’ve thought a lot of wrong, and I’ve definitely Facebook-posted a lot of wrong, like sexist stuff or stuff like that. I think it’s important that people know that so they understand that growth is nonlinear, that I am not perfect—there probably ain’t no perfect activists—but that the work is constantly being done and as long as you’re constantly doing the work, you’re doing the right thing, and to be open to that growth. It’s important that people who want to get into me understand that I’m not coming from a place of deep understanding. I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but the little bit of understanding that I do have comes from a myriad of trial-and-error experiences. Skaters have shown up often at protests lately. Why do you think that’s happening? Skating has always been countercultural. Skating has always been very alt, and even at its most commercial, everyone wasn’t doing it. I believe as spaces got more diverse, as skate parks got more diverse, and skaters became more diverse, when you bring in different groups of people, their social issues come with them. And then conversations happen. In regards to class, we all have more in common with each other than we do with millionaires, and skating can be a rich-kid game, but it doesn’t have to be, and for a lot of people it isn’t. And a lot of skaters listen to rap. If you’re not doing the cognitively dissonant thing of listening to and consuming Black art while refusing to understand it, or not agreeing with that violence when it gets pointed at you, then there’s room for real conversation there. 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

You can’t spend every day listening to rap music and not learn something. You cannot listen to Public Enemy while skating and being told “you can’t skate here” by the man Public Enemy is yelling at, and not make connections there. Skaters and Black people, in regards to culture and being told what to do, are sort of mad at the same people. You’re being told “no, you can’t skate here, you can’t do this, you can’t do that,” always by cops and security, and that’s who rappers are mad at. I would hope that clicks for you, and I would hope you’ll be able to find commonality there. Because we’re having the same conversation; our conversation is just a bit more dire, depending on the color of the skater.

parents’ generation to take responsibility for that. I think with both of those songs it was imperative that I criticized culture, because I am making it, and if I cannot be critical of the culture I make, and if I cannot think critically about the culture that I participate in and the culture that I consume, I run the risk of making myself sick and the people around me sick. It’s like if you don’t think about what you eat and the people around you eat, somebody could get sick.

In “DGS,” you critique toxic masculinity, and in “Mumblehawk” you push back on old-school heads looking down on contemporary hip-hop. What role does your art play in criticizing culture?

My first producer wasn’t a hip-hop producer; he was an EDM [electronic dance music] producer. He’s one of my best friends. I love him very dearly. He listens to all types of music, but he made this industrial hip-hop track or me for my first song, and then he introduced me to a community of EDM artists and hip-hop artists. From there, I met a lot of producers who I’ve gotten the opportunity to collaborate with, which I appreciate immensely. I appreciate simplicity, but I don’t want the entirety of my music to be a drum loop and a saxophone. I don’t want to drop an album where the tracks all sound the same. They could be similar for the sake of narrative consistency and aesthetic consistency. I do believe consistency is important in regards to dropping a single project, and if you’re building a fan base, it helps fans immensely if they come to your music and know what they’re going to get from you. But I do want people to be able to get multiple things from me.

“DGS” absolutely is about hypermasculinity, toxic masculinity, and homophobia. All of those things are informed at the root by patriarchy, specifically a white-supremacist patriarchal framework. I think the culture needs to have conversations about music and homophobia and music and toxic masculinity. It has informed a culture of violence against women and violence against the LGBTQ community. And I will not abide that in the culture that I build and participate in. I refuse to abide that. “Mumblehawk” is just me bragging on old people ‘cause they hate new-school hip-hop. It’s wild. They’re making fun of us for drugs and I’m like, shut up, you sold our parents crack. There’s a rose-tinted-glasses thing going on when we think about oldschool hip-hop. And [older heads] should do a little more work to find people who are working out here and doing good stuff. And, also, understand that in regards to the machine, to capitalism, a lot of elders sold out hip-hop to white interests, and white interests reproduced gangsta rap, and that led to trap music and the music got worse and the songs got shorter and the lyricism became less important. Then, streaming became a thing and people needed to drop forty songs every month to stay relevant. And it’s hard to compete and gain attention when you’re making less than a cent per stream, which did irreparable damage to the music industry. So there are just myriad cultural things that have nothing to do with making music that went wrong [with hiphop] before we were born, and I need my

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

You work with a lot of producers, and your music production is richly diverse. How did you wind up working with all these different people?

Some of your songs, such as “Peen,” are really funny. What role does comedy play in your art? One, with regard to my music, it shows that I’m a diverse artist. It shows that I’m not just mad, or sad—because I have a lot of sad songs too—and it shows that I have depth and breadth and can accomplish myriad things. As most people can, because most people, if not all, are multi-dimensional. And I can’t be angry all the time; that’s not good for me, so I have to laugh at myself. The muscles are actually the same in regards to stand-up comedy versus rap, because no matter what I’m doing, I’m writing. A lot of my comedy is political. The expression is different, and the nerves

I’m trying to strike when I write for comedy versus when I write for music are vastly different. Both [comedy and music] are selfish in a way, because when I make music I don’t care what people think. I don’t care if you like it if you’re a white suburban kid who’s about to inherit their dad’s company and doesn’t care about queer Black youth; I’m not making music for you. My comedy is much the same way. I make the type of music that I want to hear in the world, and I do jokes that I would laugh at. If people agree with me, great. The people who don’t agree with me can go to a different show. You have previously talked about the problematic aspect of white fans’ consumption of hip-hop. Could you say more about that? I think what we’re seeing and what I’m speaking about with voyeurism and hip-hop, and the violence that occurs, is just prevalent throughout every artistic movement that has been spearheaded by Black people in this country, in any social movement. White people love watching Black people fight [one another], but they don’t want to be fought themselves. White people love rioting; they love tearing things up when the Cubs win, but if somebody throws a rock at a Target because Black people got murdered, their reaction is different. White people love the Boston Tea Party, but don’t understand a rally. In regards to hip-hop, white people love hip-hop. They love violent hip-hop; they love DMX; they love NWA; they love all these “violent” artists—and I don’t mean violence in a bad way; if you live the lifestyle, you make art that reflects your life, and that is honest and true, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just amazing that white people love watching Black death and are fascinated with Black death. There’s an utter lack of empathy there. And there’s a conversation about white people always being allowed to enjoy things while not being able to handle participation, because white people live in a world where they have been exempt from the violence they incite on other people. ¬ You can find Mohawk Johnson’s music on Spotify, Soundcloud, and at www.mohawkjohnson. bandcamp.com. Fire-Type will be released on Bandcamp on October 2. Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor.

HEALTH

Pandemic Lessons

Past outbreaks, and national history, inform hospitals’ response to COVID-19 BY YIWEN LU

t has been more than five months since a stay-at-home order was first issued in Illinois due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Despite limited reopening of parts of the U.S., COVID-19 continues to devastate many communities. The number of deaths has reached more than 180,000 as of August 31, making this the secondmost fatal pandemic in the U.S., only outnumbered by the 1918 Spanish Flu’s 675,000 deaths. The country has also seen more recent global pandemics, but none of them have affected the U.S. as dramatically as COVID-19. During the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which ended with more than 28,600 cases worldwide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) trained more than 6,500 U.S. health care workers, but in the end, only eleven people were treated for Ebola in the United States. Between 2009 and 2010, the H1N1 swine flu pandemic caused an estimated 60.8 million cases in the U.S. and resulted in 12,469 deaths. Back in 2003, the SARS outbreak lasted for nine months, but there were only eight confirmed cases in the U.S. and no deaths. Now, in dealing with COVID-19, the health care system’s current strategies for managing a pandemic are under scrutiny around the country, including in Chicago. “What coronavirus has done is that it exposed chronic problems with how infectious diseases are handled,” said Dennis Kosuth, a part-time nurse at Provident Hospital in Grand Boulevard. Kosuth was involved in the protest against the closure of Provident Hospital’s emergency room in early April, when the pandemic had just started to significantly hit Chicago. To Kosuth, the closure showed incapacity for a COVID-19 surge and the deep roots that caused it. “[This happened] not because people aren't smart or doctors don't know what to do, but that the health system is all based around profit, rather than based around what people need,” he said. Looking at where we are today in the history of pandemics in the U.S., and

the history of the federal government’s management of medical supplies for pandemics and other emergencies, we can see what we’ve learned and been able to apply to COVID-19—and what we’ve failed to address. While Ebola was deadlier than the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the CDC was able to efficiently contain it in the U.S., in part because the disease was not spread by respiratory droplets, according to Dr. Emily Landon, executive medical director of infection prevention and control at the University of Chicago Medicine. At the time, UChicago Medicine tested and isolated potential patients who came to the hospital. But in the end, there were no confirmed cases, John Hieronymous, a nurse at UChicago Medicine, told the Weekly. (The Weekly attempted to contact four other hospital systems on the South Side, but none responded.) During the H1N1 flu pandemic, however, with the need in the U.S. orders of magnitude greater, the hospital experienced a stretch in intensive care units (ICU) and supply capacities. Many health care centers and governments in the U.S. had begun to prepare plans for disease outbreaks during the 2003 SARS epidemic and 2005 avian influenza outbreaks, according to HealthDay News, and were able to benefit from activating those plans. But in the reality of a pandemic, there was more to learn. Landon told the Weekly that UChicago Medicine’s experience with H1N1 taught the hospital to use its supplies “smartly,” to screen patients at entry so that they could be more promptly isolated, and to restructure the design of the emergency room. “When we built our new emergency room, we built a pandemic wing, so that we could change the airflow quickly and lock off a number of rooms. They could be used for exactly this [COVID-19] scenario,” she said. “We were able to make use of the stuff that we invested in because of what we learned from 2008.” In addition to making the emergency department more compartmentalized

than before, allowing patients to be better separated from each other, Landon said that the new building construction also allowed the hospital to expand its ICU capacity in many more rooms.

hile hospitals have learned from past pandemics how to improve their infrastructures in response to increased demands for medical treatment, the supply chain still lags behind. Though UChicago Medicine, for example, built ICU capacity and the ability to separate patients into its physical infrastructure, bolstering its ability to handle a pandemic, Hieronymous, who was involved in the organizing efforts at National Nurse United, is concerned that its supply management strategy still makes the situation “chaotic.” Like most American hospitals,

UChicago Medicine uses just-in-time logistics, meaning that the hospital only purchases medical supplies needed for a few days or a week. Because it would be costly or potentially wasteful to stockpile more vaccines, drugs, and disposable equipment, keeping the inventory low seems to these hospitals to be the most efficient option. In a pandemic, there are fewer options when critical supplies run low. “There is no wiggle room in the system. Everybody is impacted negatively, so that ability for the system to flex and provide support in a local or regional area is not available,” said Chris Martin, a spokesperson for the Illinois Nurses Association. Hieronymous alleged a just-intime strategy left UChicago Medicine “completely unprepared.” “With changes happening day-to-day, it was clear that there was no set plan. There were no supplies

UChicago Medicine converted roughly 7,000 square feet of space into COVID testing/treatment space in early March, shortly after cases started to spread in Chicago. PHOTO COURTESY OF U OF C MEDICINE

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

HEALTH

stockpiled,” he said. And in late April, as shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers were being reported nationwide amid a huge increase in demand, other UChicago Medicine nurses noted supply pressure. "Our faces are bruised and blistered from nonstop use of masks of all kinds. We go hoarse from our inability to hydrate, since we are instructed to conserve PPE, and we need to yell through masks to be able to be heard in normal conversation," critical care nurse Cassandra Callaway said during a rally at shift change over concerns about being overworked and understaffed, according to the Hyde Park Herald. In an email to the Weekly, Eric Tritch, the Supply Chain & Logistics Vice President at UChicago Medicine, said that it’s “100% untrue” the hospital was not prepared for COVID-19 and that the preparation process started as early as January. “UChicago Medicine maintained (and continues to maintain) regular inventory management safety stock plans in conjunction with local, state and federal guidelines. Obviously, the impact and the duration of this pandemic is more than anyone expected to see, but UChicago Medicine’s supply chain quickly responded to bring in the products needed to keep staff and patients safe with PPE and other supplies,” hospital spokesperson Jamie

Bartosch wrote in an email. But whether supply management posed problems at UChicago Medicine or not, the contention over the issue—multiple hospitals in Chicago saw nurses alleging they had minimal or insufficient PPE early in the pandemic’s course in Chicago—highlights that potential problems with “just-in-time” business practices in a pandemic have been criticized for years, going at least as far back as 2006. Public health advocacy group Trust for America’s Health issued a report that year concluding that thirty-five states were not fully prepared to distribute emergency vaccines, antidotes, and medical supplies from the national depository, and half of states did not have enough hospital beds to meet estimated need within two weeks of a moderately severe pandemic flu outbreak. Federal government actions around that time highlight its role in maintaining a status quo without significant stores of supplies. In November 2005, George W. Bush’s White House unveiled a report on the possibility of implementing a national strategy in the face of a flu pandemic, for which Congress appropriated $3.8 billion, far below Bush’s request. Though the White House Homeland Security Council then issued such a strategy and an implementation plan, neither have been updated since 2006 (though at least one plan issued by another

PHOTO COURTESY OF U OF C MEDICINE

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federal agency has been). And these, like most other federal response plans for pandemics, do not involve a “broader, allhazards approach,” according to the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and the federal government still “lacks a publicly available plan for how to identify, characterize, and develop medical countermeasures against a novel pathogen.” Even before the influenza plan, the federal government had long been unwilling to pay manufacturers to stockpile vaccines. The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), a national repository of critical medical supplies, including vaccines and antibiotics, was hamstrung in early 2005 when three out of four companies that used to supply children’s vaccines to the SNS withdrew, citing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accounting guidance as the reason. The guidance said revenue for the vaccines would not be recognized until they were delivered to customers, meaning that when companies produced vaccines for the federal stockpiles, they would not be immediately paid. At the start of the next flu season in December 2005, the SEC issued an interpretive release stating that vaccine makers could recognize the revenue when the vaccines were placed into the federal stockpile, regardless of whether they were delivered. The U.S. has not experienced major shortages of flu or childhood vaccines since. But the SNS has continued to face problems when it comes to other supplies years later. A 2017 study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the CDC found that supplies in the Strategic National Stockpile “might not suffice to meet demand during a severe public health emergency.” The SEC accounting seems to still play a role; in an updated 2017 guidance, the 2005 interpretation was reaffirmed, yet it also specified that “it is not applicable to transactions other than the sales of enumerated vaccines by vaccine manufacturers.” A Competitive Enterprise Institute blog post interpreted this to mean manufacturers of ventilators, PPE, and other important medical supplies would not be able to immediately book the revenue under the guidance, and thus they might lose revenue if they contribute to the stockpile of federal supplies. In the case of ventilators, one machine costs thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. A disease like COVID-19 undoubtedly

puts unusual pressure on ventilator resources, but the problem is never new. A CNN report in March 27 detailed more than ten government reports in the past two decades that warned about a critical lack of ventilators when facing a viral outbreak. As Marcia Crosse, the former director of health care at the Government Accountability Office, told CNN, “The CDC has been well aware, [the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)] has been well aware, the intelligence community has been well aware...of course, nobody would know the specific details, we didn’t know it would be a coronavirus from China, but the threat of a respiratory illness was known.” The SNS plays a major role in preparing supplies for pandemics, but it’s only one of a number of ways that the federal government can affect supply management. In one example that touches on hospitals more directly, in February, the Trump administration proposed a budget plan for the 2021 fiscal year that included lower hospital reimbursements, a $465 billion cut from Medicare, and a nine percent reduction in HHS funding. More hospitals and health care organizations then would tend to turn to just-in-time supply management strategies as they face tighter profit margins. “As a country, we may have gotten a bit complacent, and we have underfunded public health. We saw the effects of that with the inadequacy of testing, and there [are] not enough people to do all the contact tracing,” Landon said. “It wasn’t possible for us to contain this epidemic, not because we don’t have the sufficient facilities, or because we don't have great enough hospitals, but because our public health system was not strong enough to be able to do it.” “If this country wanted to get in front of it, what they should have done was [to] get on the phone with the infectious disease doctors in China back in January when it was clear that it was going to be becoming a problem around the world,” said Kosuth. “The people who run this government are so racist that they don’t care about people dying, they would have no problem with that.... They don’t run health care in a sensible way. [They run it] for making money.” ¬ Yiwen Lu is a reporter for the Weekly who primarily covers politics. She last wrote about South Side artists finding ways to continue their work and support their communities through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finding Water

The pandemic has made it even harder for some Chicago residents to access clean water BY NEYA THANIKACHALAM

ince the pandemic began, I Grow Chicago, a West Englewood-based nonprofit, has made more than 4,000 essential deliveries to neighborhood residents. Many of these deliveries, director of development Zelda Mayer explained, are of something residents of other neighborhoods often take for granted: clean drinking water. The COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened disparities between Chicago residents, as many people unable to afford their utilities are forced to make hard choices in order to meet basic needs. “When we look at job access, income inequality, housing inequality, and we look at that big picture, housing and income are two of the biggest factors in water access,” Mayer said. “Because water, as it is right now, is an amenity you have to pay for. ... No one should be able to go without water.”

Complex causes

era Young, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, has studied water insecurity—insufficient access to safe, clean water—on both the local and global scale. She says there are two root causes of water insecurity in Chicago: when people can’t physically access running water, because they can’t pay their water bills or because of other infrastructural issues, and poor water quality for those who can access water. However, Young explained that addressing these issues isn’t that simple. For instance, there still aren’t standardized, efficient ways to measure different water contaminants in much of the city, she said, while even the highly standardized realm of utility payments often lacks the data necessary to understand exactly who is being affected. These shortcomings make it hard to create large-scale solutions to increase the affordability of water. “I think that's step one, to know how big the problem is,” Young said. “And step two is to figure out who are the people who are really suffering from this. Is it the elderly? We don't know. Is it just people in one part of the city? I don't think we know that either.... wouldn't want to try to say

what the solution is to a problem [when] we don't fully understand what the problem is.” It may be difficult to understand the extent of the issues that limit Chicago residents’ access to water. Despite this, it’s clear that the cost of utilities is a significant barrier to a safe water supply, said Jude Gonzales, the supportive services director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH), an organization that provides legal and supportive services to improve housing stability. “Things can get very desperate very quickly for folks,” Gonzales said. “What we’re saying is that of course, people should seek out resources.”

The need for representation

he burden of utility payments is especially severe in communities of color, Gonzales said, a problem only exacerbated by the pandemic. In Chicago, as throughout the nation, there have been a disproportionate number of illnesses and deaths due to COVID-19 among people of color, and especially within Black communities. The CDC reported that Black people are almost five times more likely to be hospitalized after being infected with COVID-19 and about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white people. Higher rates of crowded housing and intergenerational households, increased stress and anxiety (which can weaken the immune system), inconsistent access to health care—a trend exemplified by the planned closure of Mercy Hospital in Bronzeville in 2021—and higher rates of chronic health conditions all combine to heighten the impact of the illness in communities of color. Gonzales said that the majority of people who contact the LCBH are from the South and West Sides of Chicago, primarily from Black communities. He added that many of them work in essential services, making them more vulnerable to COVID-19. “We are seeing the same communities that were hit hard prior to COVID are getting hit harder now because of COVID,” he said.

The public health crisis has led to an economic crisis, leaving many financially strapped. Many have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic—the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation’s unemployment rate in July was 10.2 percent, or 16.3 million people. While there are unemployment benefits that people can access, it’s uncertain how long they will be extended, Gonzales said. That’s why it’s important that residents immediately reach out for legal help if there are any concerning issues surrounding their housing stability or their access to utilities, Gonzales said. LCBH has a model that pairs lawyers and social workers to more effectively address the problems that Chicago residents face surrounding their housing stability and related services. “We've been able to do a number of things that hopefully don't just react to the crisis but actually respond to it for the immediate and then hopefully the long term,” Gonzales said.

Available Aid: Utility Billing Relief Program and Illinois Housing Development Authority

n early July, the City of Chicago and the Community and Economic Development Association, or CEDA, launched the Utility Billing Relief (UBR) program in an effort to make water and sewage bills more affordable for Chicago residents. Residents who are incomeeligible for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program can qualify for the UBR program. CEDA president and CEO Harold Rice said that the program is meant to relieve residents of some of the costs associated with their households, especially with the high unemployment rate. Although the program is meant to help all low-income Chicagoans, Rice added that he wanted to ensure the communities of color were given sufficient aid during the pandemic. “People of color, specifically from the Black and brown communities have been really hit hard during the pandemic, and we're making sure that those individuals are not left out like they normally are, in certain situations, or overlooked,” Rice said. However, the UBR program does have a limitation: it’s only applicable to homeowners. Chicago renters—who made up 55.3 percent of the population in 2017, according to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University—must use other options to access aid.

Right now, the LCBH is helping renters who can’t afford their utilities by tapping into the state and the city’s homelessness prevention funds, Gonzales said. The federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) has also been a major source of aid nationwide. Chicago residents had the option to apply to receive $5,000 through an online portal run by the Illinois Housing Development Authority. However, the applications were only available until August 28, and grants are only given to 30,000 residents. Gonzales said he hopes that there is greater funding on an ongoing basis so that people who don’t get Emergency Rental Assistance still have the chance to receive aid. “It’s great that a grant of $5,000 is going to help 30,000 Illinoisians,” Gonzales said. “But there are going to be way more than 30,000 people who need this money.” Housing instability and homelessness has been a significant factor preventing West Englewood residents from accessing water, I Grow Chicago’s Mayer said. Despite this, Mayer said the factors that heighten water insecurity are extensive and not limited to housing instability. This only highlights how “no issue can really be viewed in isolation,” she said. Underlying problems, such as income inequality, poor water quality, and utility affordability, need to be addressed in order for people throughout the city to access a safe water supply. “It really does boil down to looking at who has access to resources and opportunities and who is profiting,” Mayer said. “Water is not our main issue. It's one of many issues that we're seeing our community face.” ¬ For more information about the Utility Billing Relief Program, see chicago.gov/city/en/depts/ fin.html. For more information about the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, see lcbh.org. For more information about Emergency Rental Assistance and Emergency Mortgage Assistance, see idha.org. For more information about Legal Aid Chicago, see legalaidchicago.org. Neya Thanikachalam is a student at Northwestern University. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

Fish Stories

South Side fishermen talk about life on the line BY MORLEY MUSICK

PHOTO OF DENNIS CASTILLO BY JASON SCHUMER

ishermen old and young gather summer mornings and afternoons in the Jackson Park harbor near La Rabida Children’s Hospital. Further south, others fish Lake Michigan around Calumet Beach. They fish for smelt, steelheads, crappies, and salmon, all stocked by the Illinois Department of Resources (DNR) with varying frequency. A DNR fishing permit is required to fish anywhere in Illinois. I spoke to fishermen in both locations in August, once approaching them as they fished and once after Wayne Hankins generously invited me to a barbecue. In my conversations, I learned that three of the Jackson Park fisherman learned the craft from their fathers, southern anglers who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. They have in turn come to understand the migration of fish, describing the seasonal procession of salmon in great detail. Their stories show fishing as an escape from the city, but also an activity shaped by the city’s ecological and political changes. Willie Duncan, who had been fishing for more than sixty years—in Vietnam, 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Okinawa, Thailand, and Jackson Park— said, “If there’s one thing a person should know, it’s that fish were here before man, and they’ll be here when man is gone.” In Chicago, Hankins—his friend—described fishing as “trying to hold on to what’s left.” The following are four interviews with South Side fisherman, edited and arranged for clarity. Wayne Hankins Wayne Hankins has been fishing all of his life on the South Side, having learned the craft from his father, Chicago boxer Wayne Hankins Sr. He now directs a YouTube series called Salmon Nightmares, which recounts fishing stories from fisherman friends. His incredible remix of Old Town Road, Kooler in the Back, is about salmon season in Chicago. He invites people interested in fishing to email him at tutfishing67@gmail.com.

grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood, Woodlawn. I remember one guy, one of my friends, got killed in the neighborhood. I was out spending the night

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

with the [fishermen], and they were just telling me, “Stay out man, you ain’t gotta go back over there.” And I didn’t want to ‘cause everybody was crying. It was sad. So that's when my deep passion for fishing really hit me, like, you know, I could be somewhere peaceful. There’s guys over there crying and loading guns and selling drugs and I'm up here catching salmon and having the time of my life. So it separated me from that and from then on out I just always been an angler. And then I’m an Aquarius, which is a water sign, so I think I have a natural love for water. You learn to fish, you almost become a fish outside the water. I feel like a fish out of water. I talk to them, and fish for them, and watch them turn. I know when the water’s hot, when it’s cold, what lures they like when the clouds are out, what lures they like when the sun is shining. I’ve been downtown fishing and didn’t even take a fishing pole, found line and string and a hook, and fished with my hands and caught fish. [Chicago] is one of the best fishing spots, I believe, in the world. The lake is pretty much like a fish market

when the salmon come around, because it’s not too many places in an urban city where you can just catch salmon left and right. A lot of Polish guys, Mexican guys [come out to buy] salmon, for ceviche, caviar. I know one lady that, anything salmon, she get it because she got glaucoma. I started filming [a web show called] Salmon Nightmares in 2019. Me and my best friend, we would come out fishing later at night. A lot of guys couldn't fish at night because they work. They'd be sleeping while we be out catching monster salmon and they wake up and they be all mad and looking crazy and be like, “Where you guys get these fish?” Fishing will sometimes give you nightmares, because guys be out fishing and you have a fish hooked on for hours straight, and all of a sudden your lines snap and you lose it. It becomes a nightmare because you go home and think about it, hour after hour, night after night. I just try to film all the guys because they're getting older, you know, most of my friends are in their late fifties, sixties, seventies, even eighties. I grew up learning to fish with these guys and that’s my way of

NATURE

paying homage back to them, recording, and giving them their flowers while they’re here. [Wayne’s friend Willie Duncan approaches and eventually starts talking to us about the shortage of fish in the parks. Duncan is a Vietnam War veteran who lived all over Asia before returning home to Chicago. He has fished in Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and the South Side of Chicago.] Willie Duncan: They stock nothing but salmon, coho, they don’t stock bluegill, they don’t stock catfish, they don’t stock no bass. That’s not being stocked. WH: What’s the mayor’s name, who used to advocate fishing? Daley. The dad. They say he used to stock up, but when he got out of office, they lost the love for it. WD: They even stopped stocking the parks. Matter of fact, we supposed to have three [fish stockings], but we only had one this year. [Ed. note: It is not clear how often the lagoon is stocked.] And the money is allocated, but I don’t know what they’re doing with it. I don’t understand. The city got that money but all I see is new trucks. WH: We from Chicago, the land of crooks. From Al Capone on down, they don’t do the proper things they should. Why isn’t fishing stocked when you got kids [who] can come fishing? WD: They actually trying to turn this into a golf course. They gon’ take away this fishing. [Ed. note: The Jackson Park Golf Alliance says the proposed golf course should not cut off fishing access.] And we pay taxes. WH: September there be two, three hundred guys out here. WD: How’s our taxes being spent if we don’t get nothing for it? WH: We not just fishing to be fishing, we fishing to hold on to what’s left as well. WD: When your kids get of age, probably won’t be none of this. Just parties, bars, and ride a Ski-Doo. They forget about people who like to fish.

Just the experience, to catch a fish, there’s something to it. Them fish I was showing you had me laying on the ground. You gotta be out here when we catching salmon. That’s a thrill. Aw man, you will see something. [I’ve been fishing with all of these guys] since they was kids. Since they was shorties, they were watching me fish. I watched a whole lot of ‘em grow up on this lake. It’s like a family. Everybody out here basically knows each other. And they growed up right here on this lake. We’ve been seeing each other for forty years, longer than that. I don’t care how bad and evil it is, but if you put a pole in [someone’s] hand, you’ll have a different person. Fishing is therapy. Meditation. I suffer from PTSD, and I go to my group and I tell them about it. If I want to calm down, I go fishing. I don’t care if I catch another fish. Just sit there and watch that water, and relax my mind, just relax. If there’s one thing a person should know, it’s that fish were here before man, and they’ll be here when man is gone. José Villeros José Villeros grew up near the steel mills on the Southeast Side, and fishes with his son and wife. He and his neighbors call themselves the Buffalonians.

started fishing out on this local area of the pier. I grew up on 87th and Buffalo, not too far from here. So I started fishing here at about ten, and we were using bamboo sticks at the time. I’m talking about the early seventies, this whole place was filled with people, this pier, the rocks, all that was fishing. At that time, you know, we were kids, we didn’t have money, so we basically took sticks from local trees and some of us found bamboo sticks that were left on the north side [of the beach] from the older guys, the steel mill guys. [At first] when my friends said, “Hey let’s go fish,” I didn’t know what it meant. I knew what fish were, but I didn’t know what “go fishing” meant. I asked one of the kids and he says, “Yeah, you take a rod, you need this, you need that,” and as soon as he kept saying you need a rod, I started eliminating myself, because you’re poor, you’re living in a neighborhood, it’s just,

PHOTO OF WAYNE HANKINS BY MORLEY MUSICK

“If I want to calm down, I go fishing. I don’t care if I catch another fish. Just sit there and watch that water, and relax my mind, just relax. If there’s one thing a person should know, it’s that fish were here before man, and they’ll be here when man is gone.” SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

you’re underprivileged in a sense of income. But my parents come from the mountains of Mexico and they taught us, you need to think ahead. We ended up walking the alleys of our neighborhood looking for glass bottles, Cokes. We would go into the local store and trade [them] in. Then one of the parents would take us to buy our fishing poles. The neighborhood kids saw us with all this fish and the smiles on our faces and our stories, so the next time we went out it was a whole scene of bikes. So yeah, I mean it actually brought a lot of kids together, even other kids from other neighborhoods. We were a very close community and we all went in each others’ homes. Everybody ate breakfast together, we had lunch, we had dinner, we watched movies in our neighborhood. Some of these kids were a lot worse off than we were. Because only one parent might have worked, like a father, he actually worked the steel mill, but was an alcoholic, was abusive, and the mother was also visiting the local bars. There was quite a

handful of those types of families, so these kids really were looking for a way out, or safety, or to forget about this for now, you know. I think having them out here sitting there and them not even saying a word, just watching the water, daydreaming, it helped them tremendously. When you're fishing you’re focused and a lot of times looking at the waves of the water, the color of water, and you look at that sometimes….It just catches your attention. Going into the homes and watching them, when the mills closed in the eighties, watching the alcoholism get worse, watching parents drinking more, getting more violent, and committing suicide....The community just started to split up. We started to see very few people out here fishing. Here, especially along the north end of the beach, the rocks, that was always filled. People were camping out just to have a spot over there. There’s also less fish, because this has been fished for a very long time. We’ve been fishing for years but we haven’t fished here in a long time.

PHOTO OF WILLIE DUNCAN BY MORLEY MUSICK

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

Dwayne Burnett Dwayne Burnett was fishing in Jackson Park with three of his friends, all taking advantage of a day off from work at the Jesse Brown VA hospital. His father taught him fishing, and he taught his daughter and grandson fishing. Many times his fishing pole shook, sounding a little bell, though he didn’t catch anything while I was around.

was born in Chicago, but I learned fishing from my pops. Most of the time me and my pops was together, we was either fishing or we was on the road going down South, and when we got down to Greenwood, Mississippi, we still went fishing. My pops from the South. When he was born he was a cotton picker, back in the twenties. Rest his soul, he’s not here with us no more. He drove a cab and did the best he could do, my mom too. The first fish I caught was a bluegill, and my father told me I had a big-mouthed bass. And I started running around as a little kid saying, “I caught a big-mouthed bass.” And

from that point on, I just been addicted to fishing. All my life, I enjoyed fishing. These fishes migrate through here every season, and you can tell when the season is changing because these certain fishes will be gone. When the salmon come through here, they come through eating the fish we’re catching. It’s a nice fight, it’s a real thrill to try to pull it in. They so strong! There’s a feeling that you get. It’s a beautiful feeling. It’s not as good as sex, but it’s a thrill. My best fishing story happened some years ago. We had had a heavy, heavy, heavy snow that winter and when the snow started melting away it overran into the lagoon in Washington Park. [Addressing his friend] Dona, do you remember that one? When you put your big old boot on and walk out onto the regular roads in the lagoon, and the water had come all the way out almost to Hayes Drive and fishes was just swimming everywhere? You had you a milk crate, or a bucket, and could just scoop ‘em up if you wanted to! It was carp. We was selling them to the Chinese restaurants. But even if you don’t catch no fish, it’s

PHOTO OF JOSÉ VILLEROS BY MORLEY MUSICK

Fish Trivia 1) What’s the official state fish of Illinois? 2) What are the most common species of fish caught in Bubbly Creek? 3) Lakefront perch fishing is legal year-round in Chicago except for what six-week period? 4) Which South Side park lagoon consistently produces the Park District’s largest number of fish? 5) What fish returns to the Lake Michigan shoreline waters from mid-August to October? 6) What two non-fish species are also covered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources fishing guidelines? 7) What South Side fish emporium was honored with a James Beard Award in 2010? 8) In 2019 Brighton Park resident Paul Burriss caught what rare fish off Chicago’s lakefront? 9) What controversial fishing technique is legal in Jackson Park harbor from October 1 to December 31? 10) Asian carp haven’t made it to Lake Michigan yet, but it’s not for lack of trying. What’s the closest they’ve been spotted?

just to get away from the city and pretend [laughter]—pretend we somewhere away from [here, but] before you know it, you back in the world again. The riots, tearing up all the stores. Why? What did it gain? What did you get from it? I know they going around with the Black Lives Matter thing—that’s real decent. I hope things do change, but as far as violence and fighting with the police, I don’t wanna get involved in none of that. [But] that’s one thing that the pandemic has done, and I’ve noticed what the protest has done...like us, sitting right here, and we got us a Budweiser, right? At one time, we would go up north, to Jefferson Park or somewhere up there, right, and sit along the parks with a cooler, beers. White people, no problem! Police ride through, no problem! Me, sitting here, with a Budweiser, and the police ride past there like now and don’t say nothing—ha! That’s amazing. No way in the world we would be able to sit here and have this bottle without cuffing it and sneaking. That I have noticed is a big change. Sometimes we actually bring our family out here, have a small little grill. We might come out here like twice a month. They farmraise fish that they put in lagoons in certain areas. I don’t know if Ms. Lightfoot is as good as the Daleys with stocking the parks.

Every holiday, Fathers’ Day [the Daleys] would stock ‘em up. The first stocking was… [suddenly a fish pulls on his line]. Okay! I thought I felt you! Come on, do it again! Teasing me huh? You didn’t get that? I was on it boy! I was on it, Jack! I didn’t even have to hear the bell ring, I seen it when it dropped! Yeah, they smart today. They smart. They smart. They smart! ¬ Morley Musick is a writer and reporter from Chicago. He founded Mouse Magazine with friends in 2019 and posts short essays on his blog. He last wrote for the Weekly about vacancies in CHA housing.

Answer Keys 1. Bluegill 2. Carp, channel catfish, and black crappie 3. May 1-June 15 4. Marquette Park Lagoon 5. Lake trout 6. Common snapping turtles (two allowed per day) and bullfrogs (eight per day) 7. Calumet Fisheries 8. A twenty-seven-inch walleye 9. “Snagging,” or the practice of catching mature salmon with weighted hooks as they return to their spawning grounds to die 10. Asian carp have been found in the Chicago River, nine miles from Lake Michigan—and Asian carp DNA has been found in Bubbly Creek.

PHOTO OF DWAYNE BURNETT BY MORLEY MUSICK

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September 2, 2020

Articles inside

pandemic lessons

fact checking police supt david bro n on august 15

fish stories

finding ater

stender von oehsen and milan rivas, injustice watch

opinion chicago s second red summer