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AUSTIN WEEKLY news ■
Vol. 32 No. 21
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May 23, 2018
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Green Team’s Mary Peery honored,
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Also serving Garfield Park
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Meet Trinisa Williams, page 9
A ‘farm lab’ grows in Chicago
Urban farm — right outside of Austin — teaching students, building community By TIMOTHY INKLEBARGER
O
Staff Reporter
n a windy Saturday morning at a former soccer field in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, just outside of Austin, students from Prosser Career Academy (which boasts students from the West and South Sides) and neighbors from the surrounding area have gathered to begin their work digging in the soil. The students and residents have assembled here for a variety of reasons but all with the same end game – to get something growing. Within weeks, the space will be teeming with corn, collard greens, lettuce, tomatoes and just about anything you can imagine. Chicago Farm Lab, located in Hanson Park, is in its fourth season and is described by one of its founders, Marnie Ware, a Prosser science teacher, as “two acres of fenced-in gorgeousness.” Ware gives direction to her high school students, planting a tree near one of the entrances of the urban farm. They’re trying to make it the same distance as another tree already installed there. “What do you guys think?” she asks students Daniela Barrera, a 15-year-old sophomore, Christopher Rodriguez, a 17-year-old junior, and others as they place the tree. “Is it the right distance to make it symmetrical?” Another student uses the handle of a shovel to measure off distance between the tree and entrance. “You are so freaking innovative,” Ware said, praising the teen. See URBAN FARM on page 4
ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer
STARTING OVER: Cleanslate workers during a May 17 press conference held to announce that the organization’s Ward by Ward initiative will expand into Austin’s 29th Ward.
Wanted — workers seeking clean slates Cleanslate’s new initiative seeks to create jobs, clean Austin’s 29th Ward
By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Maurice Person, 28, of North Lawndale, had been bouncing around from one temporary job to another and exhausted from “a thousand” fruitless interviews when an old friend recommended on Facebook that he look up an organization called Cara. Founded in 1991 by entrepreneur and philanthropist Tom Owens, the organiza-
tion offers job training and employment to people who, like Person, traditional employers may consider untouchable. Person had been to state prison for 10 months in 2013. He has three felonies on his record, all of them drug-related, he said, matter-of-factly, when asked about his background last week. “I haven’t seen a jail since then,” Person said, with a not insignificant measure of pride that was tinged with a steely resolve. And he has no plans of going back anytime
soon. That much he didn’t have to say, because it was communicated in the tone and tenor of his voice. Person is married and has three children. The West Side native wore a bright green t-shirt, a gray vest and a gray hat, both bearing the name Cleanslate — one of Cara’s many subsidiary programs. During a press conference on May 17 held on the steps of Austin Town Hall, 5601
Austin Chamber of Commerce on the move... 773.854.5848 • www.austinchicagochamber.com
See CLEANSLATE on page 8