March 6 - 12, 2024

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Arts & Entertainment Event highlights of the week!

SportsWise

The SportsWise Team discusses who could win the 2024 NCAA college basketball titile.

Cover Story: 1910-11 Garment workers strike

Three teenage girls led the men out of the Hart Shaffner Marx factory in 1910, sparking a city-wide strike that would lead to the establishment of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America trade union, in this Women's History Month feature.

inside StreetWise

Vendor A. Allen writes about downtown Vendor Ruben Garcia, who is also an artist and photographer.

The Playground

ON THE COVER: Image of a parade of women during the garment workers' strike in Chicago, Illinois. This parade took place on Dec. 12, 1910, during United Garment Workers of America strike (Chicago History Mueseum, Chicago Daily News collection photo DN-0056264). THIS PAGE: Women during the garment workers' strike, Chicago, Illinois. From the book "The Official Report of the Strike Committee: Chicago garment workers' strike October 29, 1910-February 18, 1911," by the Womens' Trade Union League of Chicago (Chicago History Museum photo ICHi-067059). 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

Suzanne Hanney,

Julie

Chicago, IL, 60616

RECOMMENDATIONS

Personal Stories!

‘Notes from the Field’

This strikingly intimate piece presents snapshots from a variety of real people, documenting their intersections with the American dream and obstacles to it. Using verbatim dialogue from 250+ accounts by students, faculty, prisoners, activists, politicians, and victims’ families, “Notes from the Field” takes audiences on an emotional journey through an American criminal justice system seemingly more focused on incarceration than education. Deeply human, profoundly moving, and full of humor, compassion, and resilience, it’s a masterful work that asks you to observe, be present, and join the call for urgent and necessary change. Originally performed by creator Anna Deavere Smith as a one-woman show, TimeLine’s Chicago premiere features three actors weaving together narratives of change makers, activists, and those caught within the system. Playing through March 24 at Timeline Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Ave. Tickets are $57 at timelinetheatre.com

Jazz for Good!

Jazz Night for Chicago Lighthouse

Join nonprofit The Chicago Lighthouse for an evening of jazz featuring award-winning, West Coast-based pianist Lisa Hilton and her quartet in music from their new release, "Coincidental Moment." Reflecting on influences of Count Basie, Horace Silver, George Gershwin and Robert Johnson, Hilton will share the stories behind her creative process in crafting this new album. The evening will also include a performance by local jazz singer Nikki George, whose warm personality and amazing voice has been heard on Chicago radio stations WRRG and WNUA, as well as WGN and WYIN television. The Chicago Tribune has said of Ms. George: “She is sensational, electrifying … and obviously an accomplished singer.” Proceeds will support The Chicago Lighthouse’s life-changing programs for people who are blind, visually impaired, disabled, and veterans. Tuesday, March 12 at Winter’s Jazz Club, 465 N. McClurg Court, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $75 at chicagolighthouse.org

You're A Winner, Baby!

Winning Works

The Joffrey Academy of Dance, official school of The Joffrey Ballet, presents four world premieres for the 14th annual Winning Works Choreographic Competition. Following the Joffrey’s national call for ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American) artists to submit applications for the competition, this year’s winners include Jainil Mehta, Martha Nichols, Manoela Gonçalves, Houston Thomas, and Chicago-based winner Xavier Núñez (Recipient of the Zach Lazar Winning Works Fellowship). Each has choreographed an original work for the Joffrey Academy Trainees and Studio Company, featuring a commissioned score by a chosen composer collaborator. With three additional performances added this year due to popular demand, Winning Works will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s Edlis Neeson Theater, 220 E. Chicago Ave., on March 8-10 and 15-17, at 7:30 p.m. Friday & Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday & Sunday, Tickets are $30 at joffrey.org/winningworks.

A Homecoming, of Sorts!

Curtis on Tour with Benjamin Beilman

Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston, welcomes acclaimed violinist and Music Institute of Chicago alumnus Benjamin Beilman (pictured) as part of The Nina von Maltzahn Global Touring Initiative of the Curtis Institute of Music. Joining Beilman are celebrated violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, award-winning cellist Oliver Herbert, and a trio of emerging artists from the Curtis Institute: violinist Na Hyun Kyun, violist Emad Zolfaghari, and cellist Francis Carr.

The program includes Richard Strauss’s Sextet from his final opera "Capriccio," a rare performance of Brahms’s exhilarating “String Sextet No. 2 in G Major,” Alban Berg's “Piano Sonata in B minor Op. 1,” and a commission by Alyssa Weinberg (b. 1988), “Illuminating Arches.” Saturday March 9 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $30-$60 at nicholsconcerthall.org

True Spectacle!

MOMIX in ‘Alice’

The Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive, presents MOMIX, the internationally renowned company of dancer-illusionists founded by Moses Pendleton. Known for presenting works of astounding inventiveness and physical beauty, MOMIX returns to the Auditorium for the first time since 1997. MOMIX will take a trip down the rabbit hole for “Alice”, inspired by “Alice in Wonderland” with a signature MOMIX twist. As Alice’s body grows and shrinks and grows again, Pendleton’s dancers extend themselves by means of props, ropes and other dancers creating a family-friendly journey that is as magical and fun as it is beautiful and mysterious. One-night-only, Saturday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $30 at auditoriumtheatre.org. This production is recommended for audiences age 6 and up.

Transport to Another Place!

‘Ouroboros’

““Ouroboros” by Nejla Yatkin is an interactive theatrical solo dance. The audience enters a nomadic tent setting and embarks on a celebration of the life-affirming power of a gathering circle. Through dance, live song by Nejla, and live finger cymbal/zill players, the performance weaves together multiple languages (English, German, Turkish, Movement, and ASL) and invites active audience participation in a journey of memory, place, paradoxes, and the cyclical nature of time and culture. March 8-10, 7 p.m. at Links Hall, 3111 N. Western Ave. Tickets are $16-$42 at linkshall.org

Beauty for Sale!

Illinois Orchid Society Spring Show and Sale

See hundreds of rare and unique orchids from private collections as top growers in four states compete in 130 classes, March 9-10, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. The Illinois Orchid Society's spring show and sale is the longest-running amateur orchid exhibition in the Chicago area. Shop for orchid plants and supplies from its network of commercial growers and collectors. Free with admission to the Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, starting at $9.95 adults. Reserve your timed entry at chicagobotanic.org

90-second Newbery Film Festival

Kid's Creativity!

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery award-winning books in just a few minutes. Creative takes are encouraged: think “Charlotte’s Web” as a horror movie, or “The Tale of Despereaux” as a musical. FREE, 2 p.m. Saturday, March 9, in Pritzker Auditorium of Harold Washington Library 400 S. State St. Reservations suggested but not required at 90secondnewbery.ticketleap.com/90second-newbery-chicago-2024

Thrilling Compositions!

Verdi’s ‘Aida’

While "Aida" delights audiences with its visual splendor, it also captivates them with a score ranging from exquisitely intimate arias to deeply dramatic duets and trios, and the most thrilling choruses Verdi ever composed. At Lyric Opera of Chicago, each of the five principal artists boasts not only a sumptuously beautiful voice, but also the charismatic presence to bring these characters and the opera's story of a riveting love triangle vividly to life. Conducting Francesca Zambello’s striking production will be Music Director Enrique Mazzola, acknowledged internationally as an exceptionally authoritative Verdian. Only showing in 10 performances from March 9 - April 7. Tickets start at $41 at lyricopera.org

An Irish Tradition!

Old St. Patrick’s Siamsa na nGael

The 25th Annual Siamsa na nGael on Monday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m., will feature an exploration of St. Brigid, who was known for being a unifier, healer, and inspirer. Through song, dance, and story, the Celtic celebration will honor 1,500 years of her feast. Returning after a three-year hiatus at the Chicago Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave., the event will feature WXRT radio icon Terri Hemmert as guest narrator and soloists from the Old St. Patrick’s Concert Choir, Metropolis Orchestra, Irish Trad band, Trinity Dance and bagpipers. Tickets are $30$60 at www.oldstpats.org/siamsa.html

NCAA Basketball Contenders

John: Russell, how many teams do you think can win the NCAA college basketball title in 2024?

Russell: My favorite team right now? UConn. But also North Carolina and Kentucky, especially Carolina. Teams to watch also: Duke, Marquette, Arizona. You never know. Anybody can beat anybody on any given day. Just like last year: San Diego State. No way, no way, they could make it to the Final Four, but they made it to the championship, killed my brackets. This year, I’m ready for them.

John: Three teams in particular have the best chance to win. UConn – the defending national champion -- is the best overall team. They have the best scheme and last year they whipped San Diego State. Another team is New Mexico. Even though

they are in the same Mountain West Conference as San Diego State, one thing they have going for them is tremendous guard play. But the thing about New Mexico is to play the right matchups. If they play a team like UConn or maybe Purdue or North Carolina, they might get an early exit. But if they get the right matchup, they could be the San Diego State of last year.

And another team that can very well win it all, like in 2019, is Virginia. That's right, Head Coach Tony Bennett –not to be confused with the late singer – can really coach up a storm. He's got teams always playing great defense and always well-disciplined with the basketball. Some other studs include North Carolina, Purdue -- even though I can't trust Purdue because every year Purdue has a great regular season.

And then once they get into the tournament, they turn into a pumpkin. Tennessee and Rick Barnes -- I don't know how he got to one Final Four with Texas, but he did. And Alabama: their basketball team is not like the football team.

Russell: Some teams play good, but get snubbed. Then you got teams with losing records playing each other to get to the final 64. And talking about the men, let’s talk about the women too. Caitlin Clark of Iowa, she is real baad, better than some of the men. Remember, anybody can beat anybody. I am pulling for my local teams too, like Illinois, but I don’t know how far they will go.

John: I like to see North Carolina win for the men’s side, maybe UCLA, but I don't think UCLA’s getting in. That’s more of a pipe dream.

But I love Caitlin Clark from Iowa. She's an awesome, awesome player. She could be the Michael Jordan of the WNBA if she wants to go there, she's that good.

But as far as overall things are concerned, we're gonna wait and see what happens because we're taping this as of late February, early March. Brackets could change every day. Even those on the outside looking in, like Villanova, could find a way in. We’re gonna sit back and have fun.

Any comments, suggestions or topic ideas for the SportsWise team? Email StreetWise Editor Suzanne Hanney at suzannestreetwise@yahoo.com

Vendors (l-r) John Hagan and Russell Adams chat about the world of sports.

Held to commemorate the lives of our neighbors who were buried by the Office of the Cook County Medical Examiner

Wednesday May 22, 2024

12:00 Noon - 1:00 PM 77 West Washington — Chicago

Featuring:

Luciano Antonio, Guitarist

Heitor Garcia, Percussionist

Keynote Speaker

DR. BRAD BRAXTON

President and Professor of Public Theology for CTS Chicago

Official Greetings from Ms. Toni Preckwinkle President of The Cook County Board of Commissioners

“To live and die alone is a human tragedy, but not to be remembered and mourned after earthly life is an ugly blemish on human dignity.”

W. Earl Lewis (1949-1999) Founder, The Interfaith Memorial Service for Indigent Persons

Three Teenage Girls Spark a City-Wide Strike

by Stella Kapetan

In 1910, 19-year-old Bessie Abramowitz worked up to 10 hours a day sewing men’s pants seams at Chicago’s Hart, Schaffner & Marx clothing factory at 18th and Halsted Streets for the meager wage of 4 cents a seam. At her foreman’s suggestion, she began threading her sewing needles at home in the evening to make it easier to reach her production quota. The foreman then urged the other girls to do the same, using Bessie as an example. When they did, the company lowered the wage one-quarter of a cent.

This was the last insult the young women would take, and on September 10, Abramowitz, Hannah Shapiro and Esther Feinglas put down their needles, put on their hats and walked out the door with 11 other girls behind them. Over the next five months, more than 30,000 garment workers – out of the approximately 38,000 in the city – from Sears Roebuck & Co., Kuppenheimer and dozens of other garment factories throughout Chicago joined the sometimesviolent, deadly strike that led to the use of arbitration and collective bargaining in the industry and the eventual founding of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America trade union.

Small, unorganized, random walkouts had occurred in the industry over the years but were generally unsuccessful. Strikers were usually fired, and any gains made during the busy season were lost in the slow season, when workers were desperate for jobs. There was no reason to think that this time was any different. But the resentment from years of poverty-level wages, long hours and mistreatment had reached the boiling point.

Hart, Schaffner & Marx employed 8,000 workers – mostly European immigrants - in 48 shops.

Employers took full advantage of these unskilled newcomers who spoke little or no English. In the book “Labor Will Rule,” Steve Fraser writes about the story an Italian girl told to an Illinois Senate committee investigating the strike, which typifies foremen’s attitudes toward the immigrants they called “greenhorns.” She had told her foreman that she knew of experienced girls he could hire, to which he replied: “I want no experienced girls. They know the pay to get. I got to pay them good wages, and they make less work. But these greenhorns,...they cannot speak English, and they don’t know where to go, and they just come from the old country, and I let them work hard, like the devil, and those I get for less wages.”

“It is not always the men who lead the women.”

-Bessie Abramowitz Hillman

Teenage girls and young women had always rebelled against the abuses. In his book “Sidney Hillman Labor Statesman,” George Soule writes that one girl who protested on behalf of the other girls against a wage cut was told by her foreman: “If they cannot make it, here is the window, and here is the door…if they don’t want to go from the door they can go from the window…I have lots of greenhorns.”

Production quotas were so high workers worked up to 14 hours a day during the busy season. Foremen gave girls called "pacemakers" inducements to speed up production and set the quota for the others. Piece rates were reduced when earnings rose due to increased production.

Foremen, who earned bonuses based on the company’s profits, routinely imposed so many excessive and arbitrary fines on infractions, such as making even the slightest error on a garment and using excessive bathroom soap, that workers reached payday with little idea of the amount of money they would receive.

After the 10-hour day was passed a year before the strike, foremen often made employees work before and after they punched the clock.

Workers complained that there was no way to present their grievances to employers and that wages were often based on how well a teenager could negotiate with shrewd, powerful employers.

This was the world Abramowitz entered at 15, after she fled Russia in 1905 to escape the services of the local marriage broker who had married off her four older sisters.

Born Bas Sheva and renamed Bessie by an immigration agent, she quickly found work in the garment industry, where she fought against mistreatment. Two years before

the the Hillman

the strike a foreman falsified her worksheet to show a lower pay rate. She organized a protest and was fired. She then found work at Hart Schaffner & Marx.

Shapiro, already a veteran of the garment industry at 18, had worked in worse conditions. She started at 13, upon her arrival from Russia, in the sweatshops that contracted with the large companies.

These contract shops were usually one-room operations in basements and attics or above saloons in the worst tenement buildings that often had light bulbs removed to save money. Workers were packed into these rooms that were filled with the stench of the unpaved alleys they faced. In one case 29 people toiled in a 20 feet by 28 feet space. The roof of one frame cottage was so sloped workers could stand upright only in the middle. Diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid and other diseases ravaged through these buildings.

It was in defiance of these conditions that the garment workers walked out.

At first the men at Hart, Schaffner & Marx laughed at the women who walked out, according to the book “Sidney Hillman – Labor Statesman.” Hillman, a 24-year-old cutter who would play an important role in the strike and in Abramowitz’s life, later said: “I remember we made fun of it, five girls working against Hart, Schaffner & Marx to join them, and after several days the men walked out.”

The work from the shop where the girls worked was sent to the other Hart, Schaffner & Marx shops, but the workers refused to do it. Day after day, walkouts at different companies continued, and within three weeks, 35,000 garment workers had joined the strike.

The unplanned, disorganized nature of the strike’s beginning meant there was no clear leader or formal mandate.

Left: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman (University of Illinois photo). Below: Cartoon of a worker approaching her boss. From the book "The Official Report of the Strike Committee: Chicago garment workers' strike October 29, 1910-February 18, 1911," by the Womens' Trade Union League of Chicago, page 29 (Chicago History Museum photo CHi-067060).

Marie Felski, a pocket maker at Kuppenheimer, recalled how she and the other girls joined the strike after the piece rate was reduced when a new pants style required an additional pocket.

“…we got up and left after Mr. Wolf told us if we didn’t like the prices we could quit. We walked over to Hart, Schaffner & Marx to see if we could get work there, and we found they had a strike. We knew nothing of it, but of course we wouldn’t scab.” After about a week the girls returned to the Kuppenheimer factory and found scabs in their place. “Then the great strike came – not just the separate little strikes, but one whole strike. When the foreman hears us all talking about it, he said, “Girls, you can have your pockets and your cent again if you’ll stay.’ But just then there was a big noise outside, and we all rushed to the windows and there we saw the police beating the strikers on our account, and when we saw that we went out.”

Italian worker Carla Masilotti’s account of how the strike came to her Hart, Schaffner & Marx Blue Island shop is recounted in the book “The Clothing Workers of Chicago 1910 – 1922.” “I knew they were striking in all the shops, so I told the girls, I said, ‘The first whistle we hear in the window, that means for us to strike.’ So one day, it was dinner time, quarter after twelve and we hear a big noise under the window, and there was about two hundred persons were all whistling for us to come down and strike, so I was the first one to go out and get the other girls to come after me.”

The strikers called for help on Jane Addams and Hull-House’s Women’s Trade Union League, which had been formed several years earlier so that working women could pool their money to support those on strike.

Wealthy women patrons joined the League’s board and knew that public support of the strike outside the labor movement was critical to the movement. They arranged for Abramowitz and other girls to tell their stories in the homes of the wealthy. At a breakfast at a downtown restaurant, Abramowitz and 11 others talked about their lives in the factories. Abramowitz said that despite the Illinois Ten Hour Law, during rush periods she was forced to work up to 13 hours without extra pay for overtime.

The League also raised money for relief efforts from hundreds of individuals and organized labor.

This Page: Police putting a woman into the back of a police wagon during 1910 Garment Workers Strike (Chicago History Muesum, Chicago Daily News collection photo DN-0056132) Opposite Page: A parade of men and women along West Jackson Boulevard on

The bloodshed started in early December when a private detective shot and killed striker Charles Latinskas, who was arguing with two scabs on their way home from work. After his funeral, 30,000 strikers and sympathizers marched through the West Side waving red flags, the symbol of revolution, behind the bands playing the Marseillaise, the rallying anthem of the French Revolution.

Violent clashes between strikers and the police and employer-hired thugs erupted on December 15 after police shot and killed Lithuanian striker Frank Nagreckis.

Around Christmas, strikers killed 18-year-old John Donnelley, who was delivering goods to home workers from a nonunion shop. Three days later private detectives killed union supporter Ferdinand Weiss. The fifth victim was Fred Reinhart, an especially hated Hart, Schaffner & Marx guard, who was killed while escorting two scabs home.

The wives of prominent, reform-minded lawyers who provided free services to the strikers, joined the picket line and were roughed up by police and arrested. Mary Wilmouth, who was from a prominent family, bailed strikers out of jail.

Ellen Gates Starr, social reformer and Hull House co-founder, and other women from the League marched alongside the strikers to enable them to testify in court to what really happened on the picket line and to protect the strikers from police and employer-hired thugs.

“It is perhaps the most important service that any group of public-spirited women can render their younger sisters in times of industrial struggle,” one League member said.

These League women found that the strikers were fighting, not only for better conditions, but also for their pride. “We all went out,” Shapiro said. “We had to be recognized as people.” One picketer wrote on her placard: “We Are Striking for Human Treatments.”

Abramowitz heard Hillman speak at a rally and thought he was too careful and cautious and did not trust him. When their strike work brought them together, she found someone who treated her as an equal and shared her dedication to the strike. The two lovers announced their engagement in 1916 by leading arm-in-arm thousands of clothing workers

in a May Day parade down Halsted Street. They married two days later.

On Jan. 11, 1911, Hart Schaffner & Marx offered its workers a settlement that covered only that company and did not recognize a union. But Hillman, who had become the unofficial strike leader due to his rousing speeches, convinced strikers to accept the agreement. He foresaw that a provision in the agreement would open the door to a functioning labor organization and collective bargaining. The provision called for the establishment of an arbitration board where any employee had the right to present grievances themselves or through a ‘’fellow worker.” The workers soon elected Hillman the “fellow worker.”

Although the agreement called for wage increases and the establishment of a minimum wage, no definite amounts were agreed to and were left to future arbitration. Other provisions called for improved sanitary and health conditions, a 50-hour week, with time and a half for overtime and a regular dinner hour.

Workers at other companies went back to work demoralized. Most gained nothing and many were blacklisted, unable to return to their former jobs. But the collective bargaining concession the Hart, Schaffner & Marx employees won was an important victory for the workers there.

In 1914 a group of workers voted to create the union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Abramowitz nominated Hillman as its president, and he unanimously won. But she never let people forget that she was the one who instigated the 1910 strike and had led Hillman out of the factory.

“I was Bessie Abramowitz before he was Sidney Hillman,” she would say.

As for the other two girls who walked out of the factory with her, Shapiro and Feinglas, after the strike, Shapiro married a printing shop owner whom she met at a party during the strike and quit working, as was usual for girls in those days.

Shapiro’s daughter Shirley said in 1976 that she did not know of her mother’s involvement in the strike until 50 years later when she found her newspaper clippings in an old scrapbook. Shapiro told her that her father did not want her talking about the strike, and she didn’t think anyone would be interested.

Shapiro was wrong. In 1976 she spoke at the opening of the Institute on Pluralism and Group Identity exhibit “Forgotten Contributions: Women in Illinois History,” in which she was featured.

Esther Feinglas disappeared into history soon after the strike. She may have been blacklisted and changed her name, possibly being forced to leave the city. Or she may have married and not talked about her strike activity.

Abramowitz, on the other hand, threw herself into union activity, alongside her husband and on her own. She orga-

nized workers for the Amalgamated in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Connecticut.

In 1937 she became education director of the Laundry Workers Joint Board, a partner of the Amalgamated. She emphasized training in union leadership as well as cultural programs.

Abramowitz spoke at union conventions, urging members to support civil rights, peace and economic justice. She served with the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committees, the CIO Community Services Committee, the National Consumers League, the American Labor Education Services, Inc., the Committee on Protective Labor Legislation, the American Association for the United Nations and the Child Welfare Committee of New York. John F. Kennedy appointed her to the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Abramowitz and Hillman had two children, Philoine and Selma. Hillman died in 1946.

Abramowitz died in 1970 at age 81. She wrote her dying words on a slate to Philoine: “I’m only sorry to say good-bye to my union.”

Abramowitz, Shapiro and Feinglas – three teenagers – had no idea when they walked out of Hart, Schaffner & Marx that day in 1910, that 35,000 workers would follow, including the men.

“It is not always the men who lead the women,” Abramowitz said.

Bessie

Vendor to vendor: A. Allen on Ruben

by A. Allen

A. Allen

Ruben Garcia came to StreetWise in late October 2022, referred by veteran vendor Keith Hardiman. He has been a good, consistent vendor since starting at StreetWise. He is also an artist. Ruben showed me, A. Allen, some of his artwork one day, and I was overwhelmed by its quality. The first piece was a colored pencil drawing of a cartoon character. After seeing his work, I asked Ruben to draw a picture of Underdog for me. I have felt like the Underdog most of my life. Seeing the picture that Ruben drew of Underdog seemed to depict my life story.

Ruben’s life story is even greater than this story of how we met. His life story is amazing. Ruben started drawing at age 11. In 2014, he was incarcerated in Huntsville, Texas, charged with a DWI for driving while under the influence. He served 8 years in prison for a non-violent crime. More importantly, he utilized his time and talent wisely while there. This is where he perfected his skills. He also learned to write with his left hand, even though he is right-handed. Ruben is a man of many artistic talents. He is also a professional photographer. He sells prints of his photos for $10.

Ruben is a man who is much like myself. Ruben came to StreetWise because he was having problems getting a regular, conventional job because of his criminal background. We both came to StreetWise as a last resort, in hopes of making an honest living. Ruben is working hard to recover from eight years of setbacks. Ruben chose Madison and Wells as his vending location.

If you would like to meet this talented young man, you can find him there Monday to Friday from 5 – 10 am. He can also be reached by email at rubemgg63@gmail.com

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