Netflix, Prime, Peacock, oh my! Are the countless NFL broadcasts across multiple platforms hurting or helping the sport or the fans?
HealthWise
Dr. Marina Claudio of Molina Health shares tips to help plan for a happy and healthy 2025.
Cover Story: bruce springsteen
In her new book, "We Take Care of Our Own: Faith, Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen," local author June Skinner Sawyers follows the singer’s life, examining his albums and a variety of influences (both musical and nonmusical), especially his Catholic upbringing and his family life, to show how he became an outspoken icon for working-class America.
inside streetwise
Vendor Paula Holmes interviews two priests St. Clement Church, where she sells StreetWise.
Voice of the streets: op-Ed
StreetWise participant Clarence Bryant addresses the inequalities of homeless services.
The Playground
THIS PAGE: Bruce Springsteen performs (Danny Clinch photo, courtesy of Shore Fire Media) DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, positions or strategies expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of StreetWise.
Dave Hamilton, Creative Director/Publisher dhamilton@streetwise.org
Amanda Jones, Director of programs ajones@streetwise.org
Julie Youngquist, Executive director jyoungquist@streetwise.org
Ph: 773-334-6600
Office: 2009 S. State St., Chicago, IL, 60616
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT RECOMMENDATIONS
Compiled by Dave Hamilton
Tradition fused with Contemporary!
Elisa Harkins, 'Wampum' Artist and composer Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee) created "Wampum" as an expression of Indigenous Futurism, blending electronic dance music with Indigenous languages to revitalize and celebrate them through live performance. Presented in partnership with the Center for Native Futures, this innovative performance features Harkins singing in a combination of Cherokee, English, and Muscogee (Creek). Back-up dancers move rhythmically to electronic dance tracks inspired by Indigenous music. Both dreamy and intense, the evening fuses tradition with the contemporary to transform how pop music looks and sounds. The evening begins with a short opening set by interdisciplinary singer/songwriter Kalyn Fay (Cherokee/Muscogee). Known for her “quintessentially Oklahoma” sound driven by folk, rock, and country, Fay’s music explores her relationship with place, home, her home-state and its values, people, and the land. January 31 & February 1 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chciago’s Edlis Neeson Theatre, 220 E. Chicago Ave. Tickets are $30/ $10 for students and teachers at mcachicago.org
Books & Music!
Author
Talk: Neko Case
The Fine Arts Building and Exile in Bookville will co-present an evening in conversation with critically acclaimed Grammy-nominated musician and author Neko Case about her new memoir, “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” on February 4 at 7 p.m. at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave. Case's authenticity, lyrical storytelling, and sly wit have endeared her to a legion of critics, musicians, and lifelong fans. In her book, she brings her trademark candor and precision to a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisible girl “raised by two dogs and a space heater” in rural Washington state to her improbable emergence as an internationally-acclaimed talent. It is a rebellious meditation on identity and corruption, and a manifesto on how to make space for ourselves in this world, despite the obstacles we face. Tickets are $50 and include a pre-signed copy of the book at fineartsbuilding.com/events/neko-case
A Reenvisioned Landscape!
‘Sustenance & Land: Five Artists Consider Our Relationship with the Earth’ “Sustenance & Land: Five Artists Consider Our Relationship with the Earth” is a group exhibition exploring human connection to the land and the many ways the earth sustains us. Participating artists work in a variety of methodologies addressing human relationships to the land, exploring a broad spectrum of themes including nutrition, cultural relationship to food, scientific investigation, spirit, history, and the future. Humor and creativity are woven throughout, guiding viewers through a rich tapestry of ideas about how we interact with the earth. On display January 25 - April 27 at Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst. FREE. For more information visit elmhurstartmuseum.org
A Hidden History!
‘A Pressing Call: Women in Printing’
“A Pressing Call: Women in Printing” features the stories of women who have worked in the print trade as publishers, print shop proprietors, typesetters and compositors, and booksellers. The history of women’s contributions to book production has been obscured by the societal constraints placed on women’s labor, and they were often hidden behind the names of men or corporate bodies. If one knows how and where to look, however, it becomes clear that thousands of books were printed by women. This exhibition features the work of women who led printing houses in the 16th century, such as Charlotte Guillard, Yolande Bonhomme and Katherine Gerlach, as well as modern and contemporary printers and book artists, including Emily Faithfull, Virginia Woolf and Tia Blassingame. On display through April 18 at The University of Chicago Joseph Regenstein Library, 100 E. 57th St. FREE.
Movies meet Architecture!
Architecture & Design Film Festival
Chicago Architecture Center (CAC), in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., and the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., present ADFF:CHICAGO—an international festival highlighting the best films dedicated to the creative spirit of architecture and design. The festival program showcases films with both a design focus and a human story that will appeal to a broad audience of industry professionals, designconscious consumers, and fans of nonfiction storytelling. It presents 13 feature-length screenings in two downtown venues—with many screenings including Q&As with the filmmakers. Tickets are $15 - $30 per showing. A full schedule is available at architecture.org/events-programs/adff-2025
What a Fool Believes!
‘Fool for Love’
Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted St., presents a searing revival of Sam Shepard’s dark and beautiful masterpiece “Fool for Love,” playing January 30 – March 16. In a sweltering motel room in the Mojave Desert, May and Eddie lick their wounds and get ready for another relentless round. This brawl is eternal and infernal. And the Old Man is always watching. Perhaps the sexiest, most haunting play of the 20th century, "Fool for Love" is a twisted and tequila-soaked love letter from Sam Shepard, one of the greatest American playwrights, indulging the need to get inside someone just to tear them apart. Tickets start at $56 at steppenwolf.com
‘Knockout’
Yummy in your Tummy!
Chicago Restaurant Week
This 17-day celebration (January 24 - February 9) of Chicago’s award-winning dining scene is one of the most anticipated culinary events of the year. Diners can enjoy special prix fixe menus for brunch and lunch ($30), and/or dinner ($45 or $60) at more than 470 restaurants across the city. Explore the full list of participating restaurants and book your tables at choosechicago.com/chicago-restaurant-week
A Movie Score Reimagined
Yakuza plays ‘Golem’
WBEZ and Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St., present a special screening of the 1920s classic film “Der Golem (The Golem),” featuring a live score by local metal band Yakuza at 8:30 p.m. on January 25. Over their 25-year career, Yakuza has shared stages with countless iconic bands and released seven full-length albums, including “Way of the Dead,” “Of Seismic Consequence” and “Sutra.” The film is a classic early horror masterpiece and hallmark of German Expressionism, and the theme blends with the sound of the band. Tickets start $22.50 at thaliahallchicago.com
T K O!
A fierce duet between two women, "Knockout" is a self-possessed, ever-morphing cinematic dance that jump cuts through a thrill-ride of fight sequences, toothful camp, intimacies, power dynamics and relationships, and that asks what happens in the disorienting moment between point of contact and before we hit the floor? TKO, baby. January 24 - February 2 at Steppenwolf, 1650 N. Halsted St. Tickets are $20 at steppenwolf.com
Lookingglass Reopens!
‘Circus Quixote’
For more than 400 years, Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote of La Mancha” has inspired readers and cultures across the globe. Lookingglass’ production of "Circus Quixote," first incubated at The Actors Gymnasium, brings this literary classic to life anew in 2025. Somewhere in La Mancha there lived a man who read so many books about chivalry that his brain dried up. In this world premiere, Lookingglass transports audiences tiltingly and acrobatically into the dreamy madness of Don Quixote and his impossible folly-filled quest to bring good deeddoing back into the world … whether the world wants it or not. Playing through March 30 at the newly renovated Lookingglass Theatre Company, 163 E. Pearson St. Tickets start at $30 at lookingglasstheatre.org
trying to Catch the big game
John: There are many different NFL games on TV in the regular season and in the playoffs, not only free, but payfor-view. Is this good for the league or not?
Russell: A lot of people don’t have cable, can’t afford Prime. Thursday night, you’re watching on Channel 7 and you find out it’s on Prime TV, you’re like, “Oh, no, I gotta try and find the game.” I got Prime TV because I got tired of missing the game on Thursday night. And I got Peacock, but I want to cancel after football season. I can’t afford it, but I like watching football games. It will benefit the league, because it will make more money. Keep in mind, if it’s on ESPN, nine times out of 10, it will be on ABC because they’re the same people. [Ed: ESPN is 80% owned by ABC, an indirect subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co.]
Allen: Everybody can’t afford it. I am not going to invest in
it, because I can easily get the score on my phone. I won’t actually see the game, but I can get the score and afterward, I can see some clips. I can punch in the name of the team and it’ll give me statistics. And I don’t have to watch the game all of the time. I will be driving my car and communicating with Russell. I can’t spend a whole lot of money, because I’ve got kids. But if the NFL is making some money off it and it trickles down to the teams, the players, that’s a good thing.
But there are many avenues of getting the results. You can listen to the results on the radio, your telephone. That’s all that matters: the results. Like when Chicago beat Green Bay.
John: It’s a mixed bag. As far as the NFL is concerned, it’s good there’s more access. But what’s bad is what Allen said, a lot of people can’t afford to watch it. Like in the old days,
NFC had CBS2 and Fox; AFC had NBC5. Now you have games that crisscross each other. You don’t know where to find the Bears. But what’s good is that if you can afford it, you can watch it on your iPhone or Android. You don’t have to go to a bar.
The NFL is in a unique situation. It can do anything, and it isn’t like Major League Baseball or the NBA.
Russell: The NFL benefits, the fans miss out. You can’t find a decent Cubs game, Blackhawks game no more. When I was coming up, all that was free. I got Prime TV, you got to go to too much trouble: unplug this, plug in that, the game be over with.
Allen: The good thing about it is, it brings people together. Like John mentioned, you can go to a bar or go to a friend’s house; find out who has cable. Like my uncle has cable, I can go to his house. But me being
alone, I am not going to pay for it. I am going to shake a hand, make a friend, LOL.
Russell: I have cable TV, but I don’t have Prime included in my package. They charge extra. That ain’t right.
Allen: And if you want it just for the season, they might switch on you. If you don’t have the whole football package like John has, you still might be at a loss, because it might be on pay-per-view. They want their money.
John: And on Christmas this year, you had two NFL games on Netflix; that’s another monkey wrench. You might as well listen to the game on the radio.
Any comments, suggestions or topic ideas for the SportsWise team? Email StreetWise Editor Suzanne Hanney at suzannestreetwise@yahoo.com
Vendors A. Allen, John Hagan and Russell Adams chat about the world of sports.
Planning for a great 2025
As the new year approaches, it's a great time to think about the past and plan for the future. Here are some simple steps to help you get ready for the new year.
Review the Past Year
Before setting new goals, take a moment to think about the past year. Can you make a list of those goals that you achieved or, at least, started last year? What did you achieve? What challenges did you face? Even small steps toward a desired goal can be considered an achievement. A fun and creative way to track achievements throughout the year is to make a list of new and ongoing goals. Monitor your progress throughout the year. Put each achievement, no matter how big or small, on a piece of paper and add them to a jar. At the end of the year, you will be amazed at how many things you have done!
Set Specific and Realistic Goals
When setting goals for the new year, be specific and be realistic. Set clear goals like "exercise three times a week" or "save $200 each month” instead of simply saying “get healthier” or “save money”. Break down big goals into smaller ones to make them easier to achieve. It's better to set a few realistic goals than too many. Even if you set and achieve only one goal in the new year, you still come out as a winner.
Make a Plan
Once you have your goals, create a plan. Use tools like planners, calendars, or apps to keep track of your progress. List the steps you need to take to achieve each goal and set short-term and long-term deadlines. This will help you stay organized and focused. You can set short-term deadlines throughout the year to check in on your progress.
Don’t Forget About Self-Care
While working towards your goals, don't forget to take care of yourself to stay motivated. Continue hobbies or explore new ones. Give your body regular exercise. Spend time with loved ones. Also, spend time getting to know yourself better through solo activities such as journaling, walks, or listening to your favorite music.
Be Flexible
by Dr. Marina Claudio
Life can be unpredictable, and things might not always go as planned. Stay flexible and be ready to adjust your plans/goals, if needed. If you face obstacles, don't get discouraged. Remember, the journey is just as important as the destination.
Celebrate Your Successes
Don't forget to celebrate your successes, no matter how small. Take time to appreciate your progress and reward yourself for your hard work.
Planning for the new year is a chance to start fresh and set a positive tone for the coming year. By reflecting on the past, setting clear goals, making a plan, taking care of yourself, staying flexible, and celebrating your successes, you can make great things happen. You got this!
Dr. Marina Claudio is a board-certified family physician who has been in practice since 2003. She is currently a Medical Director at Molina Healthcare of Illinois/Wisconsin. She's a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago and completed her residency in Family Medicine at the UIC/Advocate Illinois Masonic Family Medicine Residency Program.
The BOSS
In her new book, JUNE SKINNER SAWYERS examines how BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN became an icon for working-class America
by Suzanne Hanney
Bruce Springsteen is “a complicated patriot who sees his country through gray-colored glasses,” says Chicago author June Skinner Sawyers in her new book, “We Take Care of Our Own: Faith Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen,” (Rutgers University Press) the title taken from a song on Springsteen’s 2012 album, Wrecking Ball
“More precisely, in spirit Springsteen is an anachronism, an old-fashioned FDR liberal stuck in 21st century conservative, stripped-down America. He believes Americans should take care of their own at a time when distrust of government is at an all-time high.”
Sometimes called the “rock and roll laureate of the United States” or the “everyman prophet,” Springsteen has spent much of his more than 50year career examining the gap between American reality and the American dream, alternating between pessimism and optimism, Sawyers writes.
“You can’t have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can’t get on the train,” Springsteen said at the 2012 press conference in Paris for Wrecking Ball. “There is a point where a society collapses. You can’t have a civilization where something is factionalized like this.”
Wrecking Ball is named for the demolition of Giants Stadium in New Jersey, not far from Springsteen’s hometown of Freehold, 15 miles west of his adopted hometown of Asbury Park. Asbury Park was an Atlantic seaboard resort idealistically named for the father of the American Methodist Church, but rundown by the early 1970s.
Roman Catholicism, not Methodism, however, is part of Springsteen’s ethos, Sawyers writes. He loves the community that comes from people gathered at church, the rituals, and imagery like Jesus’s crown of thorns, or water and light – but not the dogma that comes down from the Vatican, Sawyers said in a telephone interview. The priest/author Andrew Greeley called him a “Catholic minstrel,” she wrote.
Catholic Social Teaching – the fundamental right to life and its necessities, including employment and healthcare – is a subset of this ethos. "The Catholic faithful are obliged to promote social justice and to assist the poor, the sick, the elderly and victims of injustice and oppression. According to CST, how moral a society is can be determined by how it treats its most vulnerable members,” she wrote.
The inherent dignity of work is yet another facet. Having grown up working class poor, Springsteen writes about what happens to families when the male breadwinner feels lost. His father, Douglas, quit school at 16 to work in a rug mill (which closed in 1964) and later at a Nescafe factory, a Ford assembly plant, as a truck driver and as a guard at the local jail. He spent his evenings with other men like himself at the local saloon or by himself at home. He was a Democrat, because Democrats fought for the working man. “An unknowable man” is how Springsteen described him to Barack Obama in their joint book, “Renegades: Born in the USA” (Penguin Random House: 2021).
Photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy of Shore Fire Media.
From Chicago to New Orleans
From the muscle to the bone
From the shotgun shack to the Superdome
There ain't no help, the cavalry's stayed home
There ain't no-one hearing the bugle blown
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own
Where the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where the hearts that run over with mercy
Where's the love that has not forsaken me
Where's the work that set my hands, my soul free
Where's the spirit that'll reign, reign over me
Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea
Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
We take care of our own Excerpt from “We Take Care of Our Own”
In his memoir, however, Springsteen says that the older he gets, the more he looks like his Irish father. Mostly Italian and Irish, Springsteen’s early persona is familiar to Martin Scorsese film aficionados, Sawyers writes. “Think of the bravado of "It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City" on Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., (Columbia, 1973), his first album – that partly recycled Presley and Dylan with a touch of Marlon Brando but with a strong Jersey flavor.” The name “Springsteen,” however, is Dutch and dates to the 1600s, one of the oldest names in New Jersey.
Springsteen’s mother, Adele, worked as a legal secretary to keep food on the table, amid a love for country music and Elvis Presley. It is from her that he gained his notable work ethic. And it was while watching The Ed Sullivan Show with her at age 9 that he saw Presley and said, “I wanna be...just... like...that.”
Springsteen’s first album and also his second (The Wild, the Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, (Columbia, 1973)) focused primarily on hot girls, hot cars and freedom along the Jersey Shore, but Sawyers sees something deeper too: a sense the characters are biding their time on the way to better lives somewhere. Born to Run, (Columbia, 1975), his third studio album and breakthrough, is when his characters became less eccentric – “they could have been anybody and everybody,” as he noted in Songs
He began to feel a serious concern for his friends back home stuck in a dead-end town and a broken economy, a trend that continued with his fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town (Columbia, 1978), where he said he had found his adult voice. He wanted to stay home, surrounded by people he knew, and tell their story, as he told Obama in “Renegades.”
After his next album, The River (Columbia, 1980), he began seeing a therapist and spending time by himself analyzing his dysfunctional family and thinking of the depressed economy of the Reagan era. In the process, he also began seriously listening to country music, especially the direct language of Hank Williams. A community college dropout, Springsteen had nevertheless excelled in an English composition class and considered attending journalism school at Columbia University; he continued to be self-educated.
The acoustic Nebraska album (Columbia, 1982) came next. Written in a rented ranch house in Colts Neck, N.J., it is considered by many to be Springsteen’s masterpiece, Sawyers notes. It dug into the isolation he felt growing up in his father’s house, but most listeners saw it as an indictment against Reagan-era governmental policies that led to economic failure and social malaise.
As late as 1992, Springsteen refused to endorse a presidential candidate, but under the administrations of Reagan and both Bushes, he saw the U.S. drifting away from "its historic sense of economic and social justice," Sawyers wrote.
In 2004, he wrote a New York Times op-ed supporting John Kerry and John Edwards. Four years later, he endorsed Obama and simultaneously rolled out the album Working on a Dream, which had been in progress. On his website, Springsteen said that Obama, "speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit."
As for himself, Springsteen told Obama in "Renegades" that, "God has given me this opportunity to come out at night and to have that kind of impact on some individual in the crowd... That's something worth living for."
Springsteen’s 21 studio albums have sold 150 million records worldwide and made him Billboard’s 24th Greatest Artist of All Time. After Nebraska came the 17-time platinum album Born in the U.S.A., which featured the song “My Hometown,” with its imagery of vacant stores amid a textile mill shutdown.
Wrecking Ball, his 17th album, bookends Nebraska, Sawyers says, for its focus on the Great Recession of 2008, which hit the working class even harder than Reaganomics, 30 years earlier. The song, “We Take Care of Our Own,” is at the album’s heart, Sawyers argues, with its references to Hurricane Katrina, “from the shotgun shack to the Superdome... There ain’t no help, the cavalry stayed home.”
In 2012, the year the album was released, the Pew Research Study noted that “the middle class had shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means all – of its characteristic faith in the future.” A typical Walmart worker earned less than $25,000 a year, but the company CEO took home $23 million, as Thomas Piketty wrote in his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” The level of inequality in the United States today is “probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world,” Piketty wrote.
“We Take Care of Our Own” is Sawyers’ fifth book on Springsteen, among 30 she has written or edited. It began in 2013 as a long-form essay, but as the musician passed his 70th birthday and appeared in “Springsteen on Broadway,” she wanted to augment it with this new material. She added a bibliography, poems and photographs, to create a book on the influence of faith, class and politics on Springsteen’s music that could be read at one sitting.
When she read “Townie,” the New York Times-bestselling memoir of Andre Dubus III, she noticed that he quoted a line from Springsteen’s "Born to Run." She figured he would have an affinity for the musician and was pleased that he did – and was willing to contribute the book’s afterword.
Dubus wrote that he had been a street kid “living in a halfdead mill town on a polluted river, my single mother trying to raise four unhappy kids alone.” When he was 16, Springsteen’s music made him feel less alone and less afraid. He praised Sawyers’ handling of Springsteen’s lapsed Catholicism “yet lingering sacred vision, his fine eye and ear for the ravages of a class system in a supposed democracy and his innate call to political action without his art ever becoming didactic or polemical.
“This may be Springsteen’s greatest gift to us, his refusal to look away from the world’s injustices, most notably the powerful lording over the powerless, yet he still celebrates his daily faith that there is grace everywhere if you simply allow yourself to see it.”
From Top Left: Author June Skinner Sawyers (Theresa Albini photo). The cover of "We Take Care of Our Own" (courtesy of the author & Rutgers University Press). Springsteen in 1973 (Roz Levin photo)*. Springsteen in 1980 (Joel Bernstein photo)*. The Nebraska album cover art (Columbia Records). Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1985 (Neal Preston photo)*.
Vendor Paula Holmes interviews Priests at St. Clement
Paula has been a vendor for four years, mostly at St. Clements on Deming Place and also Mariano's. What’s special about St. Clements?
“The people, The priests. I have this one lady who comes up and talks to me about different things. When I don’t sell the magazine in the wintertime, everybody always asks Lee, my husband, about me.
“They gave me clothes, gave me shoes, different things I need, Chicago Shares when we didn’t have any food, extra money. I love them.”
The people of the parish were also Paula’s example of kindness in this year’s Thanksgiving issue of StreetWise, when church members gave food to a bystander between masses. Although raised Baptist, she also goes to church there.
“I like their services. They are more open to let you look at the [mass/hymnal] books to see what they are talking about. If I ask questions, they are willing to answer.
As a result, Paula decided to interview two of the priests of the parish, Father Brett Williams and outgoing associate Father Matthew Litak.
Father Brett Williams
“I am a priest of the archdiocese of Durban, South Africa. I have been a priest for nearly 19 years now. Prior to that, I was a professor of animal science at a technical university in Durban.
“I have a brother and sister, and both live with their families in Bath, England. My mother still lives in Durban, South Africa.
“I came to Chicago in January 2024 for three years to work for a nonprofit foundation established by the archdiocese of Durban that aims to uplift and develop the disadvantaged people of my province. It is primarily focused on education and leadership development, the uplift of women and supporting sustainable projects for health care.
“Before taking on this new role, I was pastor of a city parish in Durban and chancellor and acting vicar general of my archdiocese for eight years.
“While I am here, I am assisting Fr. Peter as associate pastor at St. Clement in Lincoln Park. I have been made very welcome and feel very much at home in the community. I have been able to see many sights around Chicago already. It seems like a wonderful city."
How long have you been here? Four years.
When did you decide to be a priest?
I was young, preschool age, when I started thinking about the priesthood, but really, college is when I got serious about it.
What brought you to St. Clement?
The priest placement board of the archdiocese and the Cardinal assigned me here, but I wanted to come because of how it would help me grow as a priest while also allowing me to help Lincoln Park know Jesus.
How do you feel about the priest abuse crisis?
Obviously a tragedy that goes against what the church stands for and caused harm that reverberated out. Abuse is a universal problem, but all the more tragic when, as a priest, you’re looked up to and trusted. The entire church is affected and harmed by abuse. As a priest, I know how to be all the more sensitive and held accountable and to be a part of healing.
How do you feel about leaving St. Clement?
I think about St. Paul who had to do the same thing, and move and love people in different spots. I will miss people but am confident in God. I am moving to St. Catherine of Alexandria in July.
- as told to Suzanne Hanney, Father Brett Williams, and Father
Father Matthew Litak (Interviewed in June)
Matthew Litak
by Paula Holmes
StreetWise Vendor Paula Holmes with Father Brett Williams (left) and Father Matthew Litak (right)..
StreetWise participant Clarence bryant addresses inequality in homeless services op-ed
by Clarence Bryant
In a world filled with hate, deceit and prejudice, we are surrounded by one known fact.
Women, children and house pets, for the most part, are the ones who receive unconditional love. Especially when they’re homeless. The world caters to the homeless women, and even more so if they have children. They get the best shelter, with thriving programs to help them in almost every area of their lives. Assistance with life is profound and plentiful for women in this country, whether or not they’re homeless.
So why isn’t that same assistance offered to men who have fallen on hard times, are homeless, or who simply need help? Why don’t men have nice shelters with thriving programs to help them succeed in life? Instead of rundown shelters, in dormitory form, nasty, infested with mice, and other bugs and insects. Where the food is unhealthy and almost too old or outdated to eat. Instead of proper sleeping arrangements, men in shelters are literally sleeping just inches from each other. They call these overnight shelters. I know because I’ve lived in one. Oh, and let’s not talk about the lack of care and concern from staff.
My point is this. We say that men and women are equal: equal rights, equal treatment from the government, equal pay from the same jobs. But that’s not really factual – is it? Because if it was, then why aren’t men and women of the homeless community truly taken care of by the same government that claims to care for its citizens. Where are the thriving programs for homeless men, where are the equipped shelters and the equal treatment? I have my opinions. But what are yours?
Prejudice isn’t always about race. But’s it’s definitely prejudice to mistreat those that are homeless, for whatever reasons, as if they are not human beings. Living under bridges and overpasses, in abandoned buildings, in alleyways, etc. And true, oftentimes those in these unfortunate situations don’t ask for help. Afraid to ask for help, not because of pride, but because those that are in power look at those people with disdain. It’s important that we understand, people who are hurting, oftentimes will not ask for help. They stay silent and suffer. So instead of judging, offer help that will produce productivity. The homeless communities all over THIS country need the powers that be to truly care, and not just to talk a good game for the cameras, just for ratings, or for some political agenda to look good for the people. Remember, that homeless person could be you, your son, daughter, niece, nephew, mom, dad, uncle or aunt. So have a heart, help where you can, and be compassionate. The homeless are still human, and humans deserve to be treated with humanity.
Editor's Note: Clarence Bryant stays at a homeless shelter on the West Side and spends daytimes at StreetWise. He graduated from William Harper High School at 65th and Wood Streets and from a preapprenticeship program in carpentry. He is a carpenter, musician, family man and a lover of love.
Born and raised in Chicago, in the Robert Taylor Homes, he struggled as a teen with drugs, gangs and poverty. “But I am not a product of my environment, and that’s a choice. Homelessness may be part of my life, but it’s what I make of it that determines my future."
Although men comprise 68% of the people who are homeless in Chicago, only 22% of the shelter space was available to them. On December 11, North Side Housing and Supportive Services opened up a new shelter for 70 men in 35 bedrooms. This new non-congregate model for the city of Chicago was developed during the pandemic, when people who sheltered in hotels to avoid contagion had better health and moved to housing more quickly. StreetWise Jan. 1-6, 2025.
