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AUSTIN WEEKLY news ■
Vol. 32 No. 37
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September 12, 2018
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Circle Rock gets $1M for arts center,
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Also serving Garfield Park
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Ike pl Ik plays the th blues, page 3
West Side leaders react to mayor’s exit Rahm Emanuel’s decision not to seek re-election is ‘great’ news for West Side, some say By MICHAEL ROMAIN & IGOR STUDENKOV Editor & Contributing Reporter
The quake-like announcement delivered by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 58, last week that he would not seek re-election to a third term reverberated across the country, but West Side community leaders are still adjusting to the aftershock, according to statements and interviews conducted over the weekend. In a statement released on Sept. 4, the day Emanuel made the announcement, Rev. Ira Acree, the pastor of Greater St. John Bible Church in Austin and co-chairman of the Leaders Network, said that he wasn’t surprised by the news. “Mayor Rahm Emanuel announcing that he is not seeking reelection is not a big surprise to many of us who have protested and denounced his toxic policies that have hurt so many families on the West and South Sides,” the pastor, who helped organize the anti-violence march on Aug. 2 that slowed rush hour traffic along Lake Shore Drive to a halt. “This announcement is in essence a concession that he can’t defend his abysmal record of the tale of two cities and all of the problems he has failed to fix,” Acree said of the mayor. “Plus, the upcoming Jason Van Dyke trial highlights his role in the Laquan McDonald police murder cover-up, which is politically unforgivable.” During his two terms in office since his 2011 See RAHM EMANUEL on page 4
Courtesy Columbia College Chicago
Growing up, Prexy’s mother suggested he volunteer with Martin Luther King Jr. on a whim. The work changed his life.
Making the history he teaches
West Side native Prexy Nesbitt knew King and Mandela, worked with Obama By TOM HOLMES Contributing Reporter
Prexy Nesbitt, 74, never did finish his PhD work on African History, in large part because he was too busy making the history he was teaching at Columbia College
in downtown Chicago. If there was a struggle against colonialism or racism in the last 60 years in Africa or the U.S., there’s a good chance the West Side native was involved. He addressed Nelson Mandela by his clan name, Madiba, a sign of both respect and affection used in the Nobel Prize winner’s presence only by those who were close to him. He worked side-by-side as a young man with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he knows Barack Obama personally. The goal of his life’s journey, as well as the force that drove him, was literally to change the world. “The vision of those liberation movements [in Africa] that I sup-
ported,” he said in a 2009 interview with Columbia College Chicago, “was about creating just, equitable, participatory societies … and creating a world in which race would no longer be the dominant force that it is even today. It was about building a new human being.” That lofty vision grew out of experiences in the first two decades of the activisteducator’s life. Rozell William Nesbitt — he hates the name Rozell and always goes by Prexy — was born in Cook County Hospital in 1944 and grew up mainly in North Lawndale.
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See PREXY NESBITT on page 11