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, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds. Volume 8, Issue 12 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editor Martha Bayne Senior Editors Christian Belanger 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 Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan Joshua Falk Lucia Geng Matt Moore Francisco Ramírez Pinedo Robin Vaughan Jocelyn Vega Tammy Xu Scott Pemberton Staff Writers AV Benford Kiran Misra Jade Yan Data Editor
Jasmine Mithani
Director of Fact Checking: Charmaine Runes Fact Checkers: Susan Chun, Grade Del Vecchio, Hannah Faris, Kate Gallagher, Maria Maynez, Olivia Stovicek Visuals Editor Haley Tweedell Deputy Visuals Editors Shane Tolentino Mell Montezuma Anna Mason Staff Photographers milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators Mell Montezuma, Shane Tolentino Layout Editors Haley Tweedell Davon Clark Web Editor Webmaster Managing Director
AV Benford Pat Sier Jason Schumer
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
Cover Illustration by Shane Tolentino
IN CHICAGO
IN THIS ISSUE
A win for the Southeast Side Following intervention by the new Biden-appointed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Michael Regan, Mayor Lightfoot announced the City would delay a permit for metal-scrapper General Iron’s parent company, RMG, to move the facility from Lincoln Park to the Southeast Side. The announcement came after years of organizing against environmental racism by Southeast Side residents, who have felt the health effects of industrial pollution in their community for decades. That struggle culminated in a month-long hunger strike in February to protest the planned move. In a statement about the decision to delay the permit, which activists called a victory, a coalition of environmental justice organizations said, “It’s past time that the city began addressing the cumulative impacts of pollution on communities of color that are overburdened and include the community in the process of making these zoning policies that have great impacts on our lives.”
public meetings report
Search warrant policy revised On May 6, the Office of the Inspector General issued a second interim report on the Chicago Police Department’s execution of search warrants. Residential raids triggered by search warrants, such as the one that traumatized Anjanette Young in 2019, have sharply declined in the two years since that night, though it’s unclear if the decline was at all due to the pandemic. A whopping 95.9 percent of residential search warrant subjects between 2017 and 2021 were logged as Black or Hispanic/Latinx and clustered in neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. Black men were targeted for search warrants twenty-five times as often as white men, and Black women eleven times as often as white women. Changes to the existing search warrant policy drafted after the OIG released its first ireport are slated to go into effect by Memorial Day. The changes would require that all warrants be approved by a deputy chief or higher-up, and would require female officers to be present at all raids, among other reforms. But the proposed “Anjanette Young Ordinance” backed by Alds. Sophia King (4th), Leslie Hairston (5th), Stephanie Coleman (16th), Jeanette Taylor (20th) and Maria Hadden (49th), which would among other things ban “no-knock” raids such as the one endured by Young, rather than simply limit them, has yet to get a hearing in City Council.
A report meant to make the mayor’s case for qualified immunity showed ten years of CPD lawsuits that cost Chicago taxpayers more than half a billion dollars. jim daley................................................8
Emails hack reveals City Hall secrets In December, hackers obtained hundreds of thousands of emails from the Jones Day law firm, including thousands the City apparently provided to the firm for its review of the 2019 police raid on Anjanette Young’s home. On April 19, in response to the police killing of Adam Toledo, the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets published 4.6 Gigabytes of the emails, and Lucy Parsons Labs posted pdfs online (bit.ly/LPLemails). The emails were sent to or from City Hall insiders such as Lightfoot, former Chief Risk Officer Tamika Puckett, former Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Susan Lee, and others between 2019 and 2020. On May 7, the Weekly was first to report on the contents of the emails (“Lightfoot Quietly Lobbied for Qualified Immunity, p. 8”), and the following day the City publicly acknowledged the data breach, which officials became aware of in February. The mayor has not disputed any of the reporting that has resulted from them.
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level. olivia stovicek......................................4 advocates fight against outsourcing chicago’s mental health care
Nearly a decade after the City shuttered half of its public mental health facilities, stakeholders grapple with the consequences of that decision during a pandemic. madeleine parrish................................5 lightfoot quietly lobbied for qualified immunity
op-ed: chicago needs a new day, not another daley
Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson should step down. phan le.................................................10 half of my heart back there
Torture survivor Elijah Gerald Reed and his mother Armanda Shackelford. lucia geng and britt dorton...........12 the party venues of the ’90s hip-hop scene
“I don’t think people realize how liberatory that space was for us to have that experience.” evan f. moore, sun-times....................18 absence felt at st. sabina
“More than four months after the initial accusations, with little information from the archdiocese, some community members are getting impatient.” yilun cheng.........................................20 op-ed: access to the calumet river
The people of the Southeast Side would like to have the same amenities of the North Side and downtown. jack paul rocha...................................22
Public Meetings Report ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLEY APPOLD
Apr. 22 The Forest Preserves of Cook County Conservation and Policy Council passed a resolution at its meeting opposing a bill to disband the Forest Preserves police and transfer jurisdiction to the Cook County Sheriff. The disbanding effort was spurred by a 2018 incident in which a Forest Preserves officer failed to intervene in harassment. Despite nods to wanting to improve the police force, council members argued Forest Preserves officers have conservation-related responsibilities that would make sheriff ’s police a poor replacement. Apr. 28 The first week after Chicago Public Schools high schools reopened for in-person learning on April 19, around a quarter of students attended in person, according to data presented at the Chicago Board of Education meeting. Though far more students are learning virtually for the full school week, nearly a fifth of all high schoolers were absent entirely. More change is coming during this tumultuous time: days later, CPS CEO Janice Jackson announced her June resignation. A plan to close three North Lawndale schools and open a new STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) school is moving ahead, according to a report at a meeting of the North Lawndale Community Action Council. The proposal was delayed in December after some parents protested, calling for investment in existing schools instead. But a presentation highlighted recent work on logistics and engagement. CPS aims to hold a final vote on the plan by February 2022. Apr. 29 A proposal to rename outer Lake Shore Drive after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the first non-Indigenous permanent settler in Chicago, was approved at a contentious meeting of the City Council Committee on Transportation and Public Way. Ald. David Moore (17th Ward) called a last-minute attempt by the mayor to amend his proposal to honor du Sable, a Black man, “racist bullshit.” City Council committees have heard public comments supporting the renaming for months, but opponents had raised concerns about cost and convenience. Moore’s version of the proposal was passed unanimously and now awaits a vote by the City Council. Apr. 30 About a quarter of the more than 395,000 members of Cook County’s Medicaid health plan, CountyCare, are unhoused or housing insecure, according to data shared at a meeting of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System Board of Directors. CountyCare officials said they want to do more to identify those members and connect them to housing and mental health support. CountyCare’s enrollment has increased over twenty percent in the past year. May 1 Five council members announced the formal creation of the Democratic Socialist Caucus of the City Council. The council members, which include South Siders Ald. 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2021
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level for the May 13 issue. BY OLIVIA STOVICEK
Jeanette B. Taylor (20th Ward) and Ald. Byron Sigcho López (25th Ward), said in a statement that they have worked together informally in the past and are forming the official caucus “to center working class Chicagoans and their movements for justice in our legislative efforts” and “to address the shared challenges our communities face of wealth inequality, climate change, police violence, and structural racism.” May 3 At a meeting of the City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations, Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health Dr. Allison Arwady argued Chicago has had the most equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution in the U.S., but added that vast racial disparities remain. The percentages of Black and Latinx Chicagoans who received at least one dose as of April 29 (29 and 35 percent, respectively) are far less than the 51 percent of white Chicagoans who are similarly vaccinated. Ten of the fourteen least-vaccinated city ZIP codes are on the South Side. May 4 Council members questioned Chicago’s strategies for addressing summer violence at a joint meeting of the City Council Committee on Public Safety and the Committee on Health and Human Relations. Norman Kerr, acting deputy mayor for public safety, said the City will be implementing a plan for the fifteen “most violent” police beats; other officials discussed summer jobs and youth programming. Public commenters argued increased investments in resources like parks, mental health services, and affordable housing are better ways to prevent violence than police. The Systems Subcommittee of the Task Force on Infant and Maternal Mortality Among African Americans discussed advancing recommendations from its 2020 report during its meeting. One recommendation was to establish community-based programs to certify birth doulas, who are people trained to provide non-medical support during pregnancies. Some states pay certified doulas through Medicaid, the task force reported, and larger open meetings to develop detailed suggestions for Illinois are planned. May 6 A proposal to prioritize “neighborhood anchors” for 2021 restoration grants was approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks during its meeting. Adopta-Landmark Fund applications will be evaluated on their potential “positive, catalytic impact.” Criteria will prioritize projects in communities targeted by the City’s INVEST South/West program, which includes ten South and West Side neighborhoods. This information was collected, in part, using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org
HEALTH
Advocates Fight Against Outsourcing Chicago’s Mental Health Care
Nearly a decade after the City shuttered half of its public mental health facilities, stakeholders grapple with the consequences of that decision during a pandemic.
BY MADELEINE PARRISH
A
fter she lost her son in 1996, Diane Adams sought help from the Auburn Gresham Mental Health facility, where she started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. “He taught me ‘bout my medicine, and ‘bout my illness,” she said of her therapist. “And once he did that, then I start making goals for myself. And all the goals I made, I achieved them all.” “It was to make sure I get back in Bible class. That I can stay in church. I wanted my own place. I stopped smoking. I had a dog,” she continued, itemizing her goals. A few years after Adams started going to the clinic, she began psychosocial rehabilitation, “where they teach you how to live back into the community.” She attended the clinic as many as five days a week until it was halted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the Auburn-Gresham Mental Health facility was closed during Rahm Emanuel’s administration in 2012, along with five more of the city’s twelve public mental health clinics, Adams followed her therapist to the Englewood Mental Health Center. But she had fought for the six facilities to remain open. In April of 2012, she was one of twenty-three people arrested for barricading herself inside the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic to protest the planned closures. While fighting the
closures, she joined Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), where she has been advocating for the reopening of the public mental health facilities ever since. “You know that during this pandemic a lot of people is going through a whole lot, especially the ones that have mental illness that can’t get out. They homebound,” she said. “See, when the pandemic come to an end, [we’re going to] need these clinics.”
The mayor’s plan to outsource instead of rebuild During her campaign, Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to reopen the shuttered public mental health facilities. She has since gone back on that promise, instead announcing in 2020 that thirtytwo existing organizations providing mental health services would receive $8 million to expand their capacity. But many advocates have pushed back, arguing that outsourcing these services to private organizations is not the same as reinvesting that money into public mental health. Advocates say the need for public mental health services now is greater than ever. According to the Collaborative for Community Wellness’s 2021 report,
which surveyed 378 respondents across the city, sixty-three percent reported symptoms of anxiety and fifty-six percent reported symptoms of depression. While ninety percent of the respondents responded “yes” or “probably yes” to whether they would go to a City-run mental health clinic in their neighborhood that offered free services, seventy-three percent of the respondents did not know the City of Chicago still operates five mental health clinics. “What we know is that, because they have razor thin margins, a lot of these health centers, that the additional money could just be used to supplant the existing operations and the existing staffing. So the concern, of course, is that you’re not necessarily able to add capacity,” said Dr. Arturo Carrillo, a licensed clinical social worker, the lead organizer for the Collaborative for Community Wellness, and the director of Health and Violence Prevention at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. In contrast, those $8 million dollars could have created fifty clinical positions and reopened the public facilities, he said. Critics also note that outsourcing mental health services to the private and non-profit sectors makes accountability difficult. “Right now, I cannot go up to a private provider or a nonprofit provider and ask ‘how many people are you serving,
what are you doing?’ That’s not open record, that’s not public information,” said 25th Ward Alderman Byron SigchoLópez. “There has to be accountability to make sure that we are able to see where we are in terms of needs, where we are in terms of addressing this issue of mental health, and public accountability is key.” “The public mental health clinics, to this very day, have a community mental health board advisory council,” explained Carrillo. “That’s open to the public. Consumers, advocates are part of that space. And there’s a direct line of communication between the public and administrators of public health to share information to take input from the public.” Carrillo said that he understands that many people are happy with the services they receive from their non-profit or private provider. “If doing behavioral health appointments at your clinic works for you, then great, keep doing that, no one’s taking that away,” he said. But public mental health facilities are also unique in that they are meant to serve everybody, whether or not they have health insurance, and provide a wide range of services, including long-term, trauma-focused care. Not all non-profit or private providers provide this type of care. “What we are saying is that also, if it’s not working for you, you shouldn’t have to change your clinic to start switching for mental health provision,” said Carillo. “You should have the option to walk, like you do currently, to your library—it’s a public setting, a public institution—and say this is the service I need and when can I see your therapist?” Building mental health services into public infrastructure also can also shore up their longevity. “We’re talking about building up the City’s public infrastructure so that people have the facilities they need, not only in the short term but in the long term,” explained Dixon Romeo, campaigns director for United Working Families and a member of the Right to Recovery coalition, made up of more than thirty organizations and a dozen elected officials. “The way that you ensure that it becomes part of the fabric of our communities is by—just like the libraries MAY 13, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
ILLUSTRATION BY JULIA ZELER
PHOTO OF DIXON ROMEO BY GRACE DEL VECCHIO
and the school system and firehouses— you build them into the operations of the City,” said Carrillo.
A call for social workers instead of police In addition to pushing for Lightfoot to reopen the closed public mental health facilities, advocates are demanding that the City fund the Treatment Not Trauma non-police crisis response pilot. This model would send a clinical social worker and an EMT or registered nurse, instead of police officers, to respond to mental health crisis calls received by 911. It is inspired by a thirty-one-year-old program in Oregon, and is being planned in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Albuquerque, and Denver. Advocates say that this plan is urgent, citing the high number of incidents of police violence in response to mental health crises; in Chicago in 2018, WBEZ reported, there were 150 mental health calls a day to 911. And nationally, at least twenty-five percent of people killed by police have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness. “Imagine when you have—especially now we see the multiple issues of police brutality cases—to call the police for a 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2021
mental health issue,” said Sigcho-López. “As a mother, as a father, as a sibling, as a family member or friend, you’re not going to put anyone at risk. It’s a model that does not work.” The proposed Treatment Not Trauma ordinance was introduced in September 2020 by 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez. It urges the City to develop a publicly funded Chicago Crisis Response and Care System within the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), with twenty-four-hour crisis response teams staffed by a clinical social worker and an EMT or registered nurse. But Lightfoot countered with a separate plan that called for a co-responder model, which would send a police officer along with a social worker to respond to 911 calls involving a mental health emergency. “That sort of crisis response model has been tried in other cities, and most cities have started walking away from that model because there really isn’t a need for police to be present in crises,” said Carrillo. Advocates and aldermen pushed for a non-police element to Lightfoot’s plan within the 2021 budget and received a concession. Instead of two co-responder teams, the City will now have two crisis response teams—two staffed with police and two without.
This program is supposed to go into effect in June, according to Carrillo. But advocates are continuing to lobby for $5 million for the pilot to operate out of two public mental health facilities, with the ultimate goal of expanding it to the entire city.
Advocates push for federal relief funding to address a dire need When Chicago received $480 million in discretionary federal CARES Act funding, Lightfoot gave $281 million to the Chicago Police Department. Now, the City is about to receive $1.9 billion in unrestricted funding through the American Rescue Plan, and advocates are asking for $25 million to be spent on reopening the closed public mental health facilities and expanding the crisis response program. The Right to Recovery coalition has posted a survey asking Chicagoans where they would most like to see funding directed. The disparities in mental health services across the city are stark— according to a study conducted by the Collaborative for Community Wellness in 2018, the number of clinicians in the Gold Coast is 4.45 per 1,000 residents,
whereas on the Southwest Side, it is 0.17 per 1,000 residents. According to the most recent Census data, about ten percent Chicagoans have no health insurance. After the 2019 aldermanic elections, the aldermen who were proponents of reopening the clinics were able to gain concessions by holding up the nomination of Commissioner of Chicago Department of Public Health Dr. Allison Arwady. Among them were $2 million for the existing public mental health clinics to “get them to be baseline operational,” Carrillo said, as well as half a million dollars to promote the public mental health clinics to communities at risk. “So the money was there for the funding to be utilized in 2020 to promote the public mental health clinics at probably, you could argue, the most necessary time, during the pandemic, for people to know about these mental health clinics. And they chose not to do so. The money was on the table,” he said. “That’s a real failure of leadership.” ¬ Madeleine Parrish grew up in New Jersey and is currently a University of Chicago political science undergraduate. She last wrote about vaccines in Chicago homeless shelters.
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POLITICS
Lightfoot Quietly Lobbied for Qualified Immunity
A report meant to make the mayor’s case for qualified immunity showed ten years of CPD lawsuits that cost Chicago taxpayers more than half a billion dollars. BY JIM DALEY
“The bottom line is, due to State Law and the CBA, cops rarely feel the sting of their own misbehavior in their own pocketbooks.”
ILLUSTRATION BY CAM COLLINS
8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2021
D
espite widespread grassroots and legislative momentum toward ending qualified immunity, the practice that protects police officers from being personally sued for civil rights violations, documents reviewed by the Weekly indicate Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her staff were already lobbying against efforts to ban the practice last summer. On March 25, the Illinois House Restorative Justice Committee advanced legislation to end qualified immunity. Two states have banned it, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and endorsed by President Joe Biden in his April 28 address to Congress, would limit it in every state. In Illinois, the SAFE-T Act, a wide-ranging criminal justice reform bill signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker in February, established a task force to “review and reform” qualified immunity. The documents—emails between Lightfoot and staff—indicate that in July 2020, the mayor instructed her staff to “gather data” on qualified immunity to prepare for “the push during budget to ‘defund’ the police, and efforts underway in Springfield,” according to one. The mayor was likely referring to last year’s efforts by grassroots groups and some City Council members to reduce the CPD’s outsize share of Chicago’s budget, as well as legislative efforts last year to enact statewide reforms in policing. The emails also revealed that civil
rights lawsuits due to police misconduct have cost taxpayers more than $500 million since 2009, while individual officers were responsible for paying about $2 million in settlements. The emails—a cache of thousands from accounts of four individuals at City Hall, including Mayor Lightfoot—were hacked by anonymous attackers and published online by the group Distributed Denial of Secrets, as first reported by the Weekly. The communications indicate the mayor’s staff prepared data to present to U.S. Senator Dick Durbin’s staff regarding those issues. In public, Lightfoot—who included police reform as a pillar of her 2017 campaign for mayor—has remained tight-lipped about qualified immunity. Privately, her staff were apparently lobbying Durbin’s office to convince him qualified immunity is not a roadblock to holding police officers accountable for misconduct. “There is a suggestion that the Legislature is going to push for stripping away qualified immunity because the plaintiffs’ bar is falsely claiming that police officers are never held accountable,” the mayor wrote. She directed her staff to consider how to present data on how much the City has spent on “police settlements, judgments and attorneys’ fees” in misconduct and civil rights lawsuits, apparently to bolster her case. While preparing to meet with Durbin’s staff about the issue, the mayor’s staff gathered data on how many federal civil rights lawsuits (or “FCRL”) had been
POLITICS dismissed because of qualified immunity in 2019. That year, according to emails between the mayor and her staff, there were two such dismissals. “FCRL has 100s of cases,” one email from a staffer to the mayor read. The mayor’s office also engaged the City’s corporation counsel to draft an analysis of police lawsuits between 2009 and 2019, apparently in an effort to prove the case for keeping qualified immunity. While the resulting analysis was unable to include information about individual officers being held accountable for misconduct, it did detail the collective cost of CPD’s civil rights violations to the City. The results, according to an email from a member of the mayor’s staff, were “eye-opening.”
T
he Weekly reviewed a spreadsheet on CPD lawsuits prepared for the mayor’s office and a summary of the report’s findings sent to staffers by then-Chief Risk Officer Tamika Puckett. Lightfoot originally hired Puckett— who resigned in November 2020 after eighteen months on the job—to curb the City’s massive spending on police misconduct settlements. The payouts detailed in the spreadsheet range from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands, and include allegations of illegal searches, false arrests, unwarranted car stops, harassment, and brutality. One settlement for $11,000 stems from a lawsuit alleging officers arrested a man in 2014 and took him to the notorious interrogation site at Homan Square, where they stripsearched him while threatening him with a Taser and stuck a gun in his mouth. Another, settled for $100,000, accused the police of falsely arresting a Jackson Park man in November 2019 and having “shot their puppy ‘Duce’ twice.” In a $200,000 settlement, the police were accused of ransacking a house in 2019 and breaking “many items” while “shielding themselves” from a home security camera. Taken together, even the smaller settlements reveal the many ways Chicagoans are disparaged and abused, or have their lives irrevocably disrupted, in encounters with police. One $500
civil rights settlement in 2018 stemmed from allegations that detectives stopped a man as he exited a store, made him remove his pants and shoes, and accused him of selling drugs. In a lawsuit settled for $1,500 in 2017, police stopped a man and impounded his car; lacking transportation, he had to quit his job. A $3,000 settlement in 2017 went to a plaintiff who said “unknown officers” physically abused him after transporting him from Cook County Jail to the Fifth District police station. It is unclear whether any of these incidents resulted in terminations or other disciplinary action for the police officers involved. According to one email from a deputy corporation counsel in response to a request for such data from Puckett, that department does not “keep info” of how many police disciplinary cases result in recommendations such as placement on administrative duties or termination. Apparently, because CPD alone had data on the consequences to individual officers for their misconduct, it was omitted from the report. But the collective consequences— the cost of these lawsuits to the City— were detailed in a summary of the report that, together with the spreadsheet, show a steady stream of settlements for the misconduct of sworn officers who are shielded from personal liability by qualified immunity even as they upend the lives of Chicagoans.
T
he report and related emails appear to indicate the mayor was working to protect qualified immunity last summer. In another exchange about the issue, Michael Frisch, the mayor’s thensenior advisor and legal counsel, wrote that Lightfoot was looking for a data visualization showing what the City had paid out in police-related settlements, judgments, and attorney fees in CPD lawsuits. Frisch’s email made clear the data collection was designed to help the mayor and her staff “make the argument against those seeking to limit qualified immunity.” “The point she wants us to get across is that qualified immunity is NOT preventing plaintiffs lawyers from
receiving compensation for their clients when they sue the city,” Frisch wrote. “We have 500-600 civil rights cases pending against us at any one time, and so the qualified immunity defense only affects a very small percentage.” In an email on August 6, 2020, Puckett sent the report summary to others on the mayor’s staff. She reported that 2,272 federal civil rights cases against the department were adjudicated between 2009 and 2019. Such cases made up fiftyone percent of CPD settlements during that ten-year period. Police settlements accounted for half of all federal civil rights payouts by the City, and about eighty-four percent of the total cost. Seventy-seven percent of federal civil rights lawsuits were settled between 2009 and 2019 for a total of more than half a billion dollars, according to the summary: “Total damages paid arising from FCRL cases between 2009 and 2019 cost $511,878,676.34.” Taxpayers shouldered
that cost. The total civil-rights punitive damages—which cops are personally responsible for paying—were $2,014,500, the summary says. “The bottom line is, due to State Law and the CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement], cops rarely feel the sting of their own misbehavior in their own pocketbooks,” Frisch wrote. The mayor's office did not respond to requests for comment by press time. On May 8, after this story was published online, the City acknowledged the breach of emails (which they reportedly became aware of on February 11) in a news release. ¬ Jim Daley is the Weekly’s politics editor. He last co-interviewed Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchelll, Jr.
MAY 13, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
OPINION
Op-Ed: Chicago Needs a New Day, Not Another Daley Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson is corrupt and ineffective. BY PHAN LE
O
n April 29, news broke that Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson (11th Ward) had been indicted for seven felonies—two for knowingly making false statements to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, and five more for filing false income tax returns. But the latest allegations against Thompson are only a small part of a larger pattern of corruption. What has been more damaging to Chicagoans than an alderman lying on his tax returns is the simple fact that Thompson consistently fails to administer processes for a functioning and equal democracy. During the pandemic, his constituents, myself included, have had to contend with month after month of cancelled meetings, unresponsiveness, secrecy, gaslighting, and a visible contempt for our right to a participatory democracy. Thompson is the grandson of Richard J. Daley, mayor from 1955 to 1976, and the nephew of Richard M. Daley, who ran the City from 1989 to 2011. The alderman defended himself by saying, “I discovered the tax error and paid the small amount of taxes I owed.” What he did not disclose was that the “small amount” hovered in the tens of thousands of dollars per year. To someone whose taxable income in 2015 was $1.8 million, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars does seem to be an inconsequential sum. Let’s start with the sale of valuable riverfront property at 2420 S. Halsted St. to logistics real estate developer Prologis, which was in discussion with Thompson about converting the site’s zoning at least as early as June 2019. The Metropolitan Planning Council and a coalition of Southwest Side neighborhood groups all 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2021
opposed this development, and called for mixed use of this land. Despite tactics to keep the tenant agreement a secret, it’s widely known that the site’s building will be leased to Amazon. Before, during, and months after the deal had closed, the alderman kept us in the dark. Thompson announced the deal to residents during a community meeting in June 2020, which was a “community notification process masquerading as a community input process,” according to one resident who spoke at the Plan Commission hearing months later. To my and my neighbors’ knowledge, the developer has not publicly engaged with residents—who will inevitably see hundreds of Amazon vehicles pass through every day. The events surrounding this development epitomize everything wrong with political dynasties like the Daleys and political machines like the one they ran for over four decades. They tout their connections and bureaucratic know-how to justify their fitness to serve us, but what benefit are those things to us if these officials perpetuate the culture of broken democracy in America? We have no use for folks who call themselves political insiders precisely because they do not recognize the problem with keeping democracy inside closed doors and out of the hands of the people. With the Halsted logistics development, insiders gave Chicagoans no opportunity to have input, much less control over their community. Worse, we were actually punished for speaking out. At the September 2020 quarterly meeting, which was held online via Zoom, Thompson grew agitated when
a community member pointed out his connection to the law firm DLA Piper, which represents Prologis. Simultaneously, residents flooded the Zoom chat box with objections, citing evidence that the project will do more harm than good. At the next quarterly meeting, held in March 2021, Thompson disabled the chat. Minutes into his remarks, he lost his composure and was forced to shut down the meeting after an unknown person hijacked his presentation. Residents are still waiting to hear back for a rescheduled date. Now, neighbors fear that further pushback would only invite more political retaliation from the alderman, further exclusion from community planning, and increased secrecy around future real estate dealings. Ultimately, we are just pesky gadflies to the politicians who control the mic and have an outsize say in how history is recorded. Members of the elite do not lose sleep over being held accountable to misdeeds if public meetings are not recorded and hearsay can easily be swept under the rug. On November 17, 2020, Thompson issued a statement updating residents about changes to the Prologis plan. This statement came only two days before a hearing before the Department of Planning and Development at which the developer’s request for rezoning was considered. Such short notice gave ward residents virtually no time to further inquire about the issue before it was ultimately approved by a split 8-6 vote. His statement was riddled with misleading assurances, claiming that he had heard us, but in reality obfuscating all the concerns that were raised over the potential
warehouse. For example, neighbors had requested the elimination of an entrance at Senour Ave., but it was simply moved a few hundred feet south and still poses a hazard to the residents living directly in front of it. Still, the most pernicious claim is that the jobs created by Amazon, the alderman asserted, “will generate significant real estate taxes and have a positive economic impact on our community.” Not only is this conjecture disguised as fact, it belies the ostensibly disparate impact that Amazon’s warehouses have had on communities of color. A report published in October 2020 by WBEZ and the Better Government Association revealed that Amazon warehouses have collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars more in tax incentives to build in communities with large racial minority populations than ones that are predominately white. While large corporations like Amazon have figured out how to exploit cash-strapped cities, it is the politicians who run those cities that have made the moral and political judgment that Black, brown, and Indigenous people, and other people of color, should bear their undue burden. Here in the 11th Ward, there is no community-driven development process. No transparency over how “menu money,” the roughly $1.3 million each alderperson can use for capital improvement projects, gets spent. Oftentimes, it feels as though we are paying a six-figure salary to an office that is a glorified community notification board, not a public steward. On matters of social justice, Thompson is no better. He offers his sympathies to injured police officers but does not acknowledge the Black and brown Americans, including thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo, who are brutalized by a broken justice system. No ward that is majority non-white, like the 11th is, should tolerate such disregard for systemic racism and public safety. Nor should we accept Thompson’s vacuous words on the issue of anti-Asian violence. For an alderman who consistently avoids dialogue with his constituents, doling out platitudes at a rally in Chinatown feels far from genuine and offers no solutions. Reforms to reporting and prosecuting hate crimes? Relief to Chinese businesses who saw revenue decline long before state
ILLUSTRATION BY DECLAN GATENBY
lockdown? Targeted COVID-19 outreach to Black, Latinx and Asian residents? Crickets. In almost all respects, Thompson has done close to nothing to protect the full rights of his constituents—especially his non-white constituents—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Instead, he has indulged himself in large helpings of dirty money, tax fraud, and backroom deals, habits of a man dedicated to widening the chasm between the haves and have-nots. Politicians like Thompson are no asset to ordinary Chicagoans.They urge residents to shop local, but strike deals that enrich e-commerce. They claim to support entrepreneurship, but erect legal barriers that disproportionately
affect minority- and immigrantowned businesses. They tout economic development plans, but welcome corporate franchises that exploit labor, depress wages, and exacerbate economic inequality. Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson blocks the road to equity, transparent politics, and participatory democracy, and we must demand this road to be cleared. Thompson must resign or commit to not seek reelection. ¬ Homegrown in the Chicagoland area, Phan Le is an 11th Ward resident, former software engineer, and a passionate advocate for racial and class justice. This is their first piece for the Weekly.
“What has been more damaging to Chicagoans than an alderman lying on his tax returns is the simple fact that Thompson refuses to do his job correctly, consistently failing to administer processes for a functioning and equal democracy.”
JUSTICE
Half of My Heart Back There Elijah Gerald Reed and his mother Armanda Shackelford in their own words. BY LUCIA GENG AND BRITT DORTON
Content warning: includes descriptions of police torture, violence, and prison In 1990, Elijah (Gerald) Reed was sentenced to natural life in prison after he was convicted for a double murder based on a confession that Chicago police tortured him into signing. In October of that year, Detectives Victor Breska and Michael Hill, who worked under notorious then-Commander Jon Burge, beat Reed to force him to confess. During the interrogation, Breska repeatedly kicked Reed in his right leg, where Reed had a metal rod and pins due to an old gunshot wound. Breska’s torture caused Reed “extreme pain,” according to a 2012 finding by the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission. The commission concluded that “by a preponderance of the evidence,” Reed’s claim of torture was credible and merited judicial review. Reed’s mother, Armada Shackelford, has fought tirelessly for three decades to free both her son and other torture survivors held in Illinois prisons. She has been a constant presence at Reed’s court hearings, penned op-eds arguing for the rights of incarcerated people, and worked with groups such as the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity. In December 2018, Cook County Judge Thomas Gainer threw out Reed’s confession, vacated his convictions, and ordered a new trial. But on Valentine’s Day 2020, Judge Thomas Hennelley reversed Gainer’s decision and ordered that Reed serve the rest of his life sentence. 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2021
On April 1, 2021, Governor J.B. Pritzker commuted his sentence, and Reed walked free and was reunited with his mother. What follows are Elijah Gerald Reed’s and Armanda Shackelford’s own words, as told to the Weekly.
ELIJAH GERALD REED
M
y name is Gerald Reed; I go by the name of Elijah. I prefer people to call me Elijah, because I’m walking into a new man, with a new perspective in life, to help as many people as I can because so many people came along the way to help me. So it’s my job now to turn back to what was given to me. I used to wrestle over what I’mma be when I come back to this world again, because it’s like two different worlds: prison’s world and society’s world. I want people to understand what I went through. What made me a stronger person to where I am today. So I went on this journey towards my spiritualness. I’m not a Muslim, I’m not a Christian. I just believe in a higher power. A lot of people say, “Well that Muslim attire, you must be a Muslim.” I’m a man that believes in a higher power, higher than myself. And with that being said, I don’t take on religion. Religion, you know, it’s gotten too far out of hand. I deal with
the relationship. So my relationship with God is like, I’m not gonna say perfect, but I’m a work in progress. I’m not going to be a failure. I’m that person, I like to study things, I just study, study, study. You know, bring awareness. So I began to work on my weaknesses. I wrote this book called "Life After Torture." When I went back to the prison [in February 2020], my spiritual self got to thinking on something. And this spirit just kept getting me, “Go on and finish the book, and when you finish the book you going home.” Okay. “If this what you said, I’mma gonna go home, I’m finna finish this book then.” Everything I wrote, I wrote from my heart. My writing was how I got people to change. I never let up. Every single day people say, “Why you always writing?” I hope I planted the seed for them, for their future because the writing that they see me do every day, it paid off for me. A lot of times in prison people be banging and yelling and hollering and screaming. I can’t take that. And I think, for the last year, I took that. I put myself through some horrible hardship on my own. I could have easily went and got me a TV, radio, had everything that every other prisoner had. I chose to be punished in my own mind. So, I don’t know what kind of obstacles may be before me when I come home, so I can be strong enough, so when those obstacles come, and I never seen them, I know how to deal with them.
S
ome days I used to think this system was gonna break me. When I go to court on my birthday. I go to court on my momma’s birthday. We expecting this, we expecting that. And always failing. And that comes from an overzealous prosecution, courts, and people just pushing them to do the worst to a person. Man, some of that pressure, some people can't take. I done seen plenty of people die in prison because of the same pressure. And for me, it just, that’s why I say it made me stronger. To see that it broke somebody. And I see how bad it broke them and I see how they can’t speak for themselves now, because they way down, six feet under. It’s my job to explain and expose why it went this way, because they didn’t care. Money is like the root of all things for most people that’s in those systems, instead of life, and I always thought about it like, life is more important. Life is more important to me than money. So my life is important. Stateville has really horrible conditions. Wintertime, you can feel the outside. Summertime, you got all kinds of bugs and gnats. You go to the chow hall to go eat, you got birds flying above you where you eating at. They will yam-ya in your tray, if y’all know what I mean. You were like, obviously, go get another tray, but go get another tray don’t take that out of my mind, though. That this bird’s just pooted in my tray or pooted on my shoulders. I’m not saying prison should be a
ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO
“If it weren’t for my case y’all wouldn’t know nothing about me. Now imagine there’s some more Elijahs out there. They’re screaming every day.”
luxurious place, but prison should be a place where you have a constitutional right to eat, sleep, and live as a human being. Showers got mold in it, and you wonder why guys get pain, cancer. It’s just so much. The whole ceiling in the shower just fell out just a couple of years ago, just fell down on the guys. In the shower! Now, I stopped going in the shower after that. I just do it in my cell, in the sink. Because do I want to die? Who’s to say that ceiling
wouldn’t have fell and killed somebody? It knocked one guy’s shoulder out of place, and one guy had a gash in his head. Other than that, it didn’t kill nobody. But this is what you call “corrections.”
C
lemency is when the governor pardons you, and just throw the whole circumstance out. Commuting is when they give you a time cut. I got a time cut, which I didn’t want because I’m innocent. Because
throughout going back and forth to court, they was offering me time served. It’s the same thing as what I got. It was about seven years in the court system, and they just kept playing, and playing, and playing. So the governor felt as though Mr. Reed shouldn’t have to endure something like this; his family shouldn’t have to go through this; the citizens should not see nothing like this. So, instead of exposing the system for what they really are, the
governor said “Well, let’s get Mr. Reed on out of here.” If I had pleaded guilty, that means I did, I had some involvement. I refused to do that. I want to say my name is clear right now, but I’m still in court as we speak to clear my name. The gentleman [Assistant State’s Attorney], he knows everything about my case, he knows I’m an innocent man, but he wants to portray it as if he’s doing a great job to keep me locked up, and he’s so mad I’m out. I’m MAY 13, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13
ILLUSTRATION BY SHANE TOLENTINO
“Anybody who reads this, if you’ve got a family member that’s locked up or you got friends that’s locked up in prison, fight for them. Don’t give up when things look like it’s not gonna work out.”
like, what you mad about? You should be mad at your peers from behind, way back then. Don’t be mad at me, ‘cause I ain’t do nothing. I was so hyped about the first day out of prison. Everyone in prison was like, “the first gonna be a wonderful day.” And I just felt it. But when we talked, my lawyer Sheila Bedia said no news is better than good news. But then I went back to my cell, and just got to feeling something. 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2021
And someone said I should call my lawyer. So it was like twelve o’clock, police gave me the phone. She say, “Mr. Reed, I need you to call me back. I’m on the phone with the lieutenant governor. I think we got good news.” Okay. They say good news is on the way. So I’m like, “Wow, alright.” So 2:30 came, 2:45 came, she picked up the phone, she said, “Hold on.” And I said to myself, “I’ve been holding on for
thirty years. How much longer do I got to wait?” So she came back to the phone again, then said: “We won!” And I just got numb. I was numb from then. She was like, “Gerald?” She would say, “Gerald!” And I finally popped out of it. I’m like, I finally finna see what society is. So later on that day, I knew I wasn’t going home that day, because if the process wasn’t done by three o’clock,
you got to wait ’til the next day. So after packing up my stuff, I gave away all my food. People’s like, “Man, you going home for real?” I said, “Yeah, I’m going home for real. I made a meal for everybody.” They said, “you got a lot of food in there!” I said, “Yeah, and a lot of food I wanna give away too.” So my whole motto was to be a blessing. How to receive a blessing, you must be a blessing. And I’ve always been
JUSTICE
a person that tried to help someone out, even if it’s just a smile, say “Hello, how you doing today?” That really makes my day for me. And when that news came in, I was numb all that night, but I can focus though, I could still take care of everything I was doing. It didn’t really hit me ’til that morning. They woke me up at 4:30 in the morning. Just to sit all the way to 2:30 in the afternoon. I didn’t leave at 2:30. They wanted to congratulate me, all kinds of people’s coming up saying, “So you gonna come back and do a program with us, Mr. Reed?” I said, “Yeah,” That’s my plan B. I wanna stop some of the violence. And that’s my number two goal before I leave this earth. I want to at least be the solution to the violence because I once was one of those kids that did violence at a young age. So what more can I be used for? A tool to help them open up. You can do better. You can be better. Violence and everything, everybody that—every cop that has a badge on him don’t mean he’s a bad cop. That’s what I bring to the table. The next day, I was so happy. My niece came here, hugged me so tight I’m like, “Oh no, baby, hold on, you gonna crush me!” She was like, “I ain’t never get any chance to hold on to you this long,” because they only give you like ten seconds to get a hug in prison. I don’t know where they got that from, but that’s out of my range. But that’s how I felt. And right now today, I’m still numb.
I
love doing hair. Cosmetology was my trade before I went to prison. I don’t even see that no more. I just think I’mma be an activist-slash-paralegal, help other people that are left behind. I see a system that’s failed not only me, but them. So how do we begin to restructure the system back towards erasing recidivism. They say reform, they say a second chance. How do we do all that in one package? You have to let people that’s on the inside share what they had changed. And that change before you end up just shutting the door on them. Because they say everybody gets a second chance, right? It’s a lot of men, they were there ever since they was kids, babies. How do
they get a second chance when you gave them natural life? There’s no second chance for them, because of your prior friends, prior engagement with the legal system, or whatever it may be. So I’mma be advocating on their behalf. I’m seeing how many people I can come together with: lawyers, students, activists, organizations and colleges. Anybody who’s about wanting to make a difference in Chicago, I wanna be there when they do. This is only just the tip of the iceberg. And I know we should change something. Just got to believe in each other, talk to each other, stop downgrading each other. There’s so many people that’s in jail, prison, that shouldn’t be there. But the only time it really comes to the forefront is when they get out. And they somebody now, because if it weren’t, for my case, y’all wouldn’t know nothing about me. Now imagine there’s some more Elijahs out there. They’re screaming every day. Man, come on. I get calls every day: "Man, my brother called me, he told me to call you, and help him out with his case. I told him hold on a little while. I told him give me thirty days." I couldn’t wait thirty days, because I wouldn’t want myself to be in that position and somebody start telling me that hold on another thirty days. So I started in the first week. Give me one week, I’m gone. Strap my boots up and I got to get on the road. And I’m not gonna stop until the day I die. I don’t see nothing else, and I can’t, I don’t see myself doing anything else.
I
look at the guys I left behind at Stateville, the majority of them guys like my brother. Because my real brothers in the streets that I was raised up with, which I wouldn’t even call them my brothers, I call them my bloodlines. We don’t even talk. We got two bloodlines, we don’t even talk. Because all I ever asked them was to look out for my mama; don’t send me money. I’mma be alright, I’m a grown man. But the majority of my friends and brothers that I left behind, we was like a family. And still are. That’s why I say I left half of my heart back there, because they hold on to
it. I say my heart is with them because I did see the ups and downs; somebody dies, somebody gets sick. When I got sick, they was there for me. It’s like what a family would do. And you just not gonna leave your family behind and not speak about them. I miss my brothers behind the wall a whole lot. I want to let them know how deeply I am gonna miss them, and I will be their voice for change in Chicago. My thought is: where do we go from here? Do this end at this article, or do we assist? How do we help the guys that’s back there that don’t have nobody? Because I have a laundry list of guys that’s innocent. My question to you all is, do it stop here? I hope I can just turn a notch a little bit, and somebody else could turn it a little bit, you know, we all take our time to turn it a little bit.
ARMANDA SHACKELFORD
M
y name is Armanda Shackelford. I am the mother of Gerald Reed, who had his sentence commuted by the governor. This happened on the first of April, and he was released from Stateville prison on the second of April. When I got the news, oh, I screamed! [laughs] Oh yes, I screamed, I was so happy. I found out Thursday and his case was in court the same day. So later on after court, a young lady called me
to tell me that the lieutenant governor had contacted her and that she would be calling back later. And I guess it was after two o’clock when I got the news that the lieutenant governor had stated that the governor had commuted Gerald’s sentence. But we didn’t know at the time when he would be released. And this happened on a Thursday. The first. We didn’t know whether they would do it on the second or it would be on the fifth—Monday. But they went on and did it that Friday. The second, and we were happy—oh, my! Oh, my my my! I just wish that the governor had given him a full pardon. But I’m happy for what he’s gotten. His lawyers have done a great job. I’m very appreciative of all of their work and—it’s sad, also, at the same time, a man spending thirty years in prison, thirty and a half years, for two crimes that he did not commit. They never had any evidence to prove that Gerald did these crimes. But at the same time, these special prosecutors offered him a plea deal. If I’m not mistaken, there was four deals altogether that was offered to him and he turned down all of them. Because he said that if he had taken the plea deal, those cases would have been on him for the rest of his life. So he would be agreeing to murder, which he did not do. And they had no evidence to prove that he did these crimes. And because he wasn’t willing in 1990 to sign the statement, they tortured him. They tortured him so bad they broke the bone in his right thigh and he had a rod inside that bone—they
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broke it off him because he wouldn’t sign the statement. And then after the physical and mental abuse that was given to Gerald, he got tied up doing these things to him. So he went on and agreed, and he signed the statement. But, you know, I think that police have gotten even worse because now they’re killing. And I feel as though the higher ups, like the mayor and the alderpersons, would put forth an effort and show the police officers: you continue to do that, we gonna have to take some actions against you. You will be fired and you will not be able to get no pension, nothing. Because, I mean, you got to start showing them that what they’re doing is not right. Saying it is not enough. You got to show it. I didn’t support Gerald alone. I had a lot of help. I had a whole lot of help. The support that they gave in court—it was dynamic. There was so many people that showed up, people that I didn’t even know, that didn’t even know Gerald. And to show concern and care for someone that has been abused and tortured the way he had. And God is the one that mainly gave me the strength ’cause there would be days when I would come home and cry after court. Thinking everything would be different. And this judge and this prosecutor would stop doing the things that they were doing without any proof, any evidence to back themselves up. Sometimes I would say, you know, I’m not going to cry again. But then when something really bad happens again, I wind up crying. Instead of me, whenever he would call me after court, guess who would be doing the lifting up? He would be lifting me up, encouraging me. Telling
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me, “Mama, it’s gonna be alright.” But he’s the one who’s behind bars. And once them bars get to him, it’s hard to get them off. It’s hard. I mean, I’ve been fighting for thirty and a half years. Even while he was in prison, Gerald lifted my spirits when I was down. He is a caring person. There were times when he was behind the bars. Some of the guys who were coming into the prison, the new guys were going through some things there, and Gerald would call me and he would say, “Mama, would you talk to this person.” Most of them were young guys in their twenties. My son is fiftyseven. And he would ask me to talk to them so they would feel better. I never would say no because whatever time I have, if you call me asking me to do something—to encourage someone, to say a prayer, he called me and asked me to do that, and I did it—because I feel like God put me here for a reason, and as long as my son was locked up, I was gonna do whatever he asked me to do long as I know it’s the right thing to do—and Gerald’s not gonna ask me to do nothing wrong because he knows who I am. When I would finish talking to one of those guys, Gerald would get the phone back and he would say, “Mama, that person is smiling, he’s got a smile on his face.” And that made me feel good and feel that I did something that God wanted me to do. Talking can uplift your spirits. That’s what I’m here for.
And I can see outside, see light. And that is so great to be able to say, now, I see the light! The tunnel is over. But then there are men and women that are still in that tunnel. So the fight is not over. Even in Gerald’s case, his name has to be cleared; we believe that that’s going to be done also. But the men and women that are still behind the bars, that’s just beginning. I’m not gonna be happy until all of them that’s not supposed to be there get out. Those people should be released also. And it hurts to know how the judges and the prosecutors and the state’s attorney are not doing enough. The judges really are not doing anything, especially in Gerald’s case. One judge overturned his conviction and granted him a new trial. And all the people that was coming to court for support—they heard it, it wasn’t just me. All of them heard exactly what was done on the day, on the 14th of February 2020, when this new judge reversed the former judge’s decision. This new judge, he wasn’t higher than the former judge. Both of them had the same status. But for him to reverse that decision was a disaster. I lost faith in the judicial system. The judicial system is lousy. It’s horrible. And I think about, how would they feel if this was their son, their father, their uncle, or some relative. And that person, if a judge and a prosecutor would do these type of things to their family member, I wonder how would they feel.
or the governor to do this, it was a blessing. Oh Lord, it was such a blessing. Years and years ago, somebody had asked me to do a speaking engagement. And I told them, and I said, “It’s just like walking through a tunnel, and you don’t see no light anywhere.” Now, the light is there. The tunnel is open.
he one thing I would say is, if your family member tells you that they did not do the crime, that someone beat them, tortured them badly, to get them to sign a statement—when they tell you that, that proves the police have no evidence. And if there’s definite evidence another person did the crime, or a witness was there at the time the crime was done, and you can be sure of that witness, that’s good. But if you do not have a witness, a substantial witness, or you don’t have the evidence to prove that another person did these crimes—fight like the dickens, with all of your might, for that family member, whoever it is. Even if it’s not a family member, you just know that person, fight
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for them. Because once they are inside, they can’t do no fighting. It’s up to you. And don’t give up. Because there are gonna be days when it’s hard. And there gonna be days when you’ll be crying. You got to keep on fighting. Because if you believe that person did not do that, fight for them. Until someday, someone is going to see that all of your fighting is true. And they gonna have to give in. But that’s the thing about them, the prosecutors and the judges. They don’t want to give in because whatever amount of years that person has spent in prison, they gonna have to accept they were wrong. If they give in and let that person go, then they are admitting, “I did wrong. That person shouldn’t have been kept in prison all of those years.” And it hurts. And some people don’t even know these types of things were going on. But then some do know, but they have stoppers in their ears and blindfolds on, like if I don’t hear, I don’t see, then it didn’t happen. But then it’s not your family, it’s my family. And you just can’t ignore it, like it’s going to go away. It’s there. Open your eyes and see. Take those stoppers out of your ears and hear what these people are saying. And they gonna say that when they catch them, this officer, these types of things didn’t happen. It’s got to be real, it’s got to be for real. It happened. And until you start doing something about it, start realizing that these types of things are going on, it’s gonna keep getting worse like it is now. There are different organizations that support torture survivors, like the Chicago Torture Justice Center, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. We have a mamas and papas support group, and we develop strategies to get the attention of the governor or the state’s attorney or the attorney general to help them help us. And make them aware of the problem around what our family members have been charged with. The group is another way of showing concern and care about the family members and how important it is to keep fighting. It helps give you support so it’s not all on your family. That’s important, especially if you know for sure that your
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family member did not commit the crime they have been charged with. If you find out, get involved! Don’t just think that if you tell this person or these people about your son or husband going through certain things [it’s going to help]. You got to show them. They’re not going to do nothing by themselves. And don’t give up, stay with it.
O
n the day he was released, Gerald asked me—he loves lemon meringue pies and he said, “Mama, you got my pie?” And I said, “I haven’t fixed it yet, but I plan to go shopping tomorrow!” And I got the things to make his lemon meringue pie. Yesterday he came by with my godson and I made spaghetti for them. But his favorite is lasagna. He also loves greens, he loves vegetables. So this weekend, if he
can get somebody to bring him, I plan to fix some greens and probably bake some chicken, and cornbread and macaroni and cheese. That’s what I plan to have for dinner. But you know, on Friday when he was released, he said “I left a lot of friends back there. And I’m not just out to not do anything to help them. I’ve got to help them also.” And I was glad to hear that because I felt like now I got some help! So we gonna be out here fighting together. You know, we have had so much hatred going on. People that don’t show care. That’s been going on for years. And there was a higher-up, a person in the White House showing Black and brown people that they not important. So if we start showing love, and believe me, I have seen so much love from
all colors. And that is such a blessing. To see people care. When they found out about Gerald being released that Thursday evening, I got so many calls. I left after Gerald was released, I went where he was and I didn’t come home from Friday to Monday. When I looked at my phone [laughs], I had forty-eight missed calls. I said, “Maaaaan! Look at that!” [laughs] And that just touched my heart, to know how concerned people are now. That’s why I say: what I do, we got to do the same thing for every last one that’s there that shouldn’t be there. Just have to keep on going. And I’ve told people, I said, “God kept me from here. This is what I will be doing.” Anybody who reads this, if you’ve got a family member that’s locked up or you got friends that’s locked up in prison,
fight for them. Don’t give up when things look like it’s not gonna work out. Always think the opposite. Even when things don’t look good now, it’s gonna get better. And if you see one person getting out, be happy for that person, and think, “That person is out, Mine’s coming. I don’t know when, what day, what hour, none of that. But it’s coming.” ¬ Lucia Geng is a contributing editor for the Weekly who’s on Twitter @luciageng. She last wrote about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected higher education programs in Illinois prisons. Britt Dorton is an activist whose work focuses on the intersection of prisoners’ rights and disability rights. This is her first piece for the Weekly.
MAY 13, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17
MUSIC
A GROUP PHOTOGRAPH OF NACROBATS, A HIP-HOP CREW FROM CHICAGO. PHOTO COURTESY OF PUGS ATOMZ, AN MC IN NACROBATS.
The Party Venues of the ’90s Hip-Hop Scene
How churches and community organizations became safe spaces for Chicago teens.
“During the rise of Chicago’s hip-hop underground party scene, many teens in the South and West Sides believed they had to choose between hip-hop (a scene some viewed as homophobic and mysogynistic), house music, and gang culture.”
BY EVAN F. MOORE, SUN-TIMES
W
hen John Monopoly was thirteen, he’d throw parties and other events, lying about his age so he could line up South Side venues such as Hyde Park’s Blue Gargoyle Youth Services, a space founded by University of Chicago divinity students. Monopoly, who later became the manager of Chicago hip-hop legend Kanye West and local fashion designers Don C and Virgil Abloh, told venue 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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officials he was working on a class project. “When I was getting these venues, I was always lying, to be honest,” said Monopoly. “I would always make up some kind of fictitious organization. It was always a finesse. I’d say: ‘I gotta do this thing for school, blah, blah, blah, and by the time it came over that some child had conned them, it was too late.” The Blue Gargoyle, which closed in 2009, was one of the handful of spaces
hosting generations of South Side teens who were hip-hop aficionados— breakdancing, graffiti writing, MCing, and DJing. Other venues included Longwood Manor’s St. Margaret of Scotland Church, the South Shore Cultural Center, Hyde Park’s Promontory Point, and the United Church of Hyde Park. “I think it was oftentimes easier for people to get access to facilities
via their parents because it gave kids something ‘constructive’ to do,” said Jua Mitchell, a finance and accounting advisor for entertainment, e-commerce, and cannabis companies. “These parties back in those days, we were breakdancing and DJing—those were actual activities. It wasn’t a ‘party’ per se. I don’t think our parents thought it’s a party [laughs].” Party promoters weren’t the only ones throwing these hip-hop parties.
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PROMO FLYERS FOR HIP-HOP EVENTS. LEFT: "RINGIN THE ALARM" WAS HELD AT HYDE PARK'S BLUE GARGOYLE VENUE ON FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1992. FLYER PROVIDED BY JOHN MONOPOLY. RIGHT: NACROBATS HOSTED AN END-OFSUMMER EVENT AT PROMONTORY POINT IN HYDE PARK ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1996. FLYER PROVIDED BY PUGS ATOMZ.
Euphonics, Nacrobats, 3993, and Ill Nature, among many other of those crews, cliques, and nations—including the Chicago chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc.—also did. “Me and my mom would talk to people to convince their parents that it’d be cool—because they’re dropping their kids off to Englewood,” said Nacrobats MC Pugs Atomz, who said his first party was at Englewood’s Boulevard Arts Center. “You were desperate to find hiphop at that time. The flier culture was so big back then; it was a competition who had the best fliers for their events.” During the rise of Chicago’s hip-hop underground party scene, many teens in the South and West Sides believed they had to choose between hip-hop (a scene some viewed as homophobic and mysogynistic), house music, and gang culture. “House was gay-friendly—hip-hop wasn’t,” said Mitchell. “The house scene was very inclusive, whereas hip-hop is the exact opposite way—very crew-based and competitive.” Duane Powell, a house music DJ who grew up in Roseland, also saw the culture clash play out. He believes the
impetus had to do with gay stereotypes of the genre and the lack of girls/women at hip-hop parties. “It was definitely a thing,” said Powell. “A lot of people don’t realize that house culture, and its inception, was actually a revolutionary act that happened among the Black queer community because Chicago segregation kept them out of spaces.” South Side native André Zachery, now artistic director of New York-based Renegade Performance Group, attended some of those parties, and he said those parties offered Black ownership of comfortable spaces. “I don’t think people realize how liberatory that space was for us to have that experience,” said Zachery. “For those elders and parents to agree, they were saying: ‘We know that this is a necessary part of their development.’ ” Why did the parties stop? Euphonics member “The Architect” DJ Phonz says he saw a change in what partygoers wanted in terms of the music. This era existed in concurrence with the aftermath of the East Coast-West Coast beef that’s been blamed in the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
“I saw a shift when people were coming back from college, getting jobs and wanting to show off what they have,” said Phonz. “This new era forced DJs to play new music in order to get booked for shows.” South Side-based rapper Ang13 grew up in Rogers Park and says she attended parties all over the city. “It was important for young Black kids to have those spaces because everyone didn’t like house—or gangs,” said Ang13. “Shit, [the parties] kept us out of gangs;
it gave us a pass from gangbangers who would say: ‘Oh, he/she on that rap shit. They cool, let him/her through.’ ” ¬ A version of this story was originally published in the Sun-Times on March 31. It has been edited for length. Evan F. Moore covers culture and entertainment for the Sun-Times. He was born and raised in South Shore. He last wrote for the Weekly about the lack of local AAU basketball recruitment.
NEXT LEVEL EVENT VENUE Above the Good Life Soul Food Cafe 11142 S. Halsted, Suite 2 Chicago, IL 60628 • 773-217-0079
MAY 13, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19
RELIGION
Absence Felt at St. Sabina Community members in Auburn Gresham and beyond continue to grapple with the sexual assault allegations against Father Pfleger. BY YILUN CHENG Content warning: Sexual assault
S
ergio Dixon was scrolling Facebook when he first saw the allegations that Rev. Michael Pfleger, the head of St. Sabina Church, with whom he had volunteered for more than ten years, had sexually assaulted two minors decades ago. The thirty-three-year-old father of two has lived his whole life in and around Auburn Gresham, where St. Sabina is located. Though not a member of the church, Dixon regularly attends community events where he has seen Pfleger protest for the rights of Black residents like himself and bring people from homeless shelters to the church not only to feed them, but also to make sure that they would have holiday gifts for their children. Dixon was devastated that their work for the community might have to be put on pause. “People in our community look at Father Pfleger as a light of hope,” Dixon said. “In a time when there’s so much killing and people are suffering from the economic crisis due to the pandemic, who can afford to go through this type of season without some type of hope?” Pfleger, a white priest serving a predominantly Black congregation, has been an outspoken advocate for Chicago’s Black communities. His longtime activism has earned him national recognition–– with former President Barack Obama calling his work “heroic”––and strong support from many community members since the sexual assault allegations surfaced at the beginning of this year. In January, Pfleger stepped away from his ministry at St. Sabina when two brothers, now in their sixties, accused him of repeatedly molesting them when they were minors. In March, a third man, now fifty-nine, came forward and said that 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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Pfleger made an unwanted sexual advance on him when he was eighteen. The pastor denied the allegations in a letter to his partitioners, but the investigation by the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Independent Review Board, which began in January, is still ongoing. More than four months after the initial accusations, with little information from the archdiocese, some community members are getting impatient. “There're not many people in his stead here in Chicago that can do what Father Pfleger can,” Dixon said. “So of course people are upset, of course they are saying, bring our hope back, bring our help back.” Pfleger’s relationship with Auburn Gresham started in the 1970s, when, inspired by the work of Martin Luther King Jr., he decided to pursue a career as a Catholic priest at St. Sabina, according to a biography of Pfleger by journalist Robert McClory. After becoming the youngest pastor in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1981, he began to respond to the many challenges facing Black neighborhoods in an unapologetic and often provocative way. He has also worked closely in other South and West Side neighborhoods to combat gun violence, unemployment, disinvestment, and other persistent challenges. Over the years, Pfleger was arrested dozens of times for civil disobedience while campaigning against the sales of guns, cigarettes, alcohol, and drug paraphernalia in local stores. In 2000, he drew more controversy by buying time from sex workers in order to offer them counseling and job training, which the archdiocese considered “out of the norm.” In 2003, he invited pro-choice civil rights activist Al Sharpton to St. Sabina’s Black History Month celebrations, over the objections of Cardinal Francis George,
who was then the Archbishop of Chicago. While Pfleger’s unconventional approach offended many conservative Catholics as well as church leaders, as McClory noted, it also helped him win the trust of residents. Despite the gravity of Pfleger’s alleged misconduct, supporters have not shied away from expressing their loyalty to Pleger. Soon after the initial accusation, more than fifty community members rallied outside the church to defend their beloved pastor, wearing shirts that read “We stand with Father Pfleger” and demanding his return to the parish. Eric Russell, who has known Pfleger for three decades, was among the first to voice his support. He said his faith in Pfleger came from the pastor’s consistent efforts to advocate for Chicago’s Black residents. The two have collaborated on various campaigns on issues ranging from drug abuse to police brutality. In the 1980s, Russell recalled, when the AIDS epidemic and the influx of crack cocaine ravaged the city’s Black neighborhoods, Pfleger was one of the few priests who stood up for both causes and fought the battles alongside Black activists like himself. In 2016, amid the growing national outcry over police brutality, Russell started a group called Tree of Life Justice League to advocate for police accountability in Chicago and beyond. He grew to respect Pfleger even more when the pastor openly called out members of law enforcement for racist behavior, Russell said, and risked damaging St. Sabina’s relationship with city officials. “He strained some of his relationships by standing with me … when a lot of preachers that look like me and look like the people that are being oppressed didn't stand up,” Russell said. Calling Pfleger his “blue-eyed soul brother,” Russell said
the work of the priest “put some of the African-American preachers to shame.” Though not a member of St. Sabina, Russell plans to have his two-year-old granddaughter baptized by Pfleger in the summer. “If I thought he was a sexual predator or a pedophile, surely I would not be sending my grandbaby into his care to be a part of his community,” he said. Natasha Green, a resident of Englewood for two decades, sent her son to St. Sabina Academy, the church’s educational outreach ministry, from the age of five to thirteen. Having witnessed firsthand how young Black boys were being killed on the street in her neighborhood, Green said Pfleger provided much-needed guidance for those like her son, who is graduating from high school this year. “You're in a community that financially is impoverished and you have no guidance because a lot of the fathers are incarcerated and the single parents are trying to work and trying to maintain a home,” Green said. “Father Pfleger was definitely a role model.” But not everyone is ready to rally behind the priest. Some remain critical of the type of unconditional support that the community has shown Pfleger, especially in the face of long-standing sexual abuse scandals involving Catholic priests and the pattern of cover-ups in dioceses across the country. Elizabeth Marino, a sixty-five-yearold Chicagoan who was born and raised a Catholic, distanced herself from the church a long time ago due exactly to authorities’ mishandling of widespread sexual assault cases. Familiar with Pfleger’s work, Marino is inclined to believe in the pastor’s innocence, but she does not want to discount the claims of the alleged
victims, especially since the brothers recently passed their polygraph exams. “Unfortunately, there is a history of huge amounts of diocese-level resources used to hide the bad actions of priests, and silence believers coming forward,” Marino said. “It is a history that pushed many Catholics out, and keeps them away.” The accusers and their attorney have emphasized that Pfleger’s contributions to local communities has nothing to do with the validity of the allegations. In a March affidavit, one of the brothers said that “Mike, the very flawed person” is separate from “Father Pfleger, a priest who has also done good.” “There’s no question that Father Pfleger has done some really good work, but one allegation of sexual abuse is one too many,” said Eugene Hollander, the brothers’ attorney. The protests organized by Pfleger’s supporters and the “victim trashing” that took place in recent months, according to Hollander, have impacted his clients and will make it difficult for other potential victims to come forward. In April, Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, accused St. Sabina of employing “inappropriate and intimidating tactics,” like flooding the archdiocese’s phone line in order to put pressure on the investigators in support of Pfleger. In a letter to Rev. Thulani Magwaza, who is officiating at St. Sabina in Pfleger’s absence, Cupich threatened to move the case to another diocese and start the process all over again if the parish continued its current practices. On St. Sabina’s website, which has continued to publish written statements from Pfleger during the investigation, the church is encouraging supporters to write directly to the Independent Review Board instead of calling. Supporters like Dixon are
ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN MAC
optimistic that Pfleger will bounce back from the allegations and resume his work for the community. “If he was found guilty, he should be prosecuted,” Dixon said. “But he’s already done his work in a way where you cannot take it away from him. He’s stood up for the community. He’s fought. He’s spoken up. People will follow him.” ¬ Yilun Cheng is a freelance journalist who reports on housing, immigration, race relations, and other social justice issues in and outside Chicago. She is currently working toward her MSJ degree at the Medill School of Journalism. She last wrote for the Weekly about displacement in Chinatown.
“In a time when there’s so much killing and people are suffering from the economic crisis due to the pandemic, who can afford to go through this type of season without some type of hope?” MAY 13, 2021 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21
ILLUSTRATION BY MELL MONTEZUMA
Op-Ed: Access to the Calumet River
The people of the Southeast Side would like to have the same amenities of the North Side and downtown. BY JACK PAUL ROCHA
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T
he Southeast Side of Chicago is known for its industrial legacy, and the Calumet River is the foundation of that legacy, but this is an identity that many in the community would like to change. The City of Chicago identifies the Calumet as an industrial corridor and working river, and currently, there are no legal public access points to it, despite the river being identified as an official recreational water trail. The area along the river is zoned industrial and is privately owned. The UIC Great Cities Institute is leading a project to create a public access point along the west bank of the Calumet River between 96th and 100th Streets. The 100th Street Calumet River project is focused on creating a community site concept developed from engagement and input through online conversations and digital events. Due to the limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, outreach has been largely through social media and word of mouth.
DEVELOPMENT Working with private owners and government officials, the project team is helping to identify potential site restrictions. The site concept will share the wants of the community working within the regulations of the current owners of the site (a group made up of multiple utility companies). The final concept will then be used to work with the owners and the City to obtain an easement or community access point along the properties closest to the river. Like any community, residents of Chicago’s Southeast Side want better infrastructure, good schools, and green parks. One of the largest vacant industrial sites in the community, the former United States Steel South Works near the mouth of the Calumet at 87th Street and the lake, contains three new underdeveloped parks: Steelworkers Park, Park 566, and Schafer Park. Steelworkers Park on the south end of the site along Lake Michigan is largely a collection of different components piecemealed together since the park's
opening in 2011. Park 566 is just north of Steelworkers Park and has yet to receive any development or even public access points. Schafer Park is on the far southwest corner of the former steel mill site. Once a part of the community and later consumed by U.S. Steel, Schafer Park used to be a parking lot at the south gate of the steel site. As a former parking lot, the park is flat with little to no features, though the south end of the park is controlled by the Urban Growers Collective, and the public area is a walking trail. Over time, parks change and adapt features to fit with the changing needs of their communities. These Southeast Side parks will be updated one day, but will they meet the same levels of quality as North Side and downtown parks? As an example, only very recently did the Southeast Side receive a park feature that caters to dog owners, while dog parks are common on the North Side. Community residents worked with the 10th Ward aldermanic office to allocate
funding for the creation of the dog park within Calumet Park. The fact is, right now the current residents are paying the same taxes for an area of Chicago that is currently underserved. Before leaving office, former Mayor Richard M. Daley supported the creation of two new downtown parks. The first, Millennium Park, completed in 2004 quickly became a global draw and one of the jewels of Chicago. Maggie Daley Park followed suit almost 10 years later. It is clear, based on their downtown location, why Millennium Park and Maggie Daley Park were so well planned and funded, but what about communities outside of the downtown area? What if Steelworks Park, Park 566, and Schafer Park were designed with the care of Millennium Park, Maggie Daley Park, or even Palmisano Park? Palmisano Park, for example, which opened in 2009, was developed at the site of a former quarry. It is one of the most interesting parks in Chicago, and is an example of a great park that did not contribute to
displacing residents. Bridgeport, the community that surrounds the park, has traditionally been a working class community. Now with more than ten years since the park’s opening, the community has a growing Asian and Latinx population and the housing stock and commercial growth adjacent to the park has seen few changes. The people of the Southeast Side would like to have the same amenities of the North Side and downtown. This lack of amenities, in combination with decaying infrastructure, and the continual loss of commercial development is contributing to population loss. There are some that are working to change the internal perception of the community with the goal of reversing these trends. They and many more in the community would like to see a change. The 100th Street Calumet River site, and the U.S Steel site parks, should meet world class design standards, as should any new or renovated Chicago park. ¬ If you would like to share your input about the 100th Street Calumet River project, visit go.uic.edu/100thStreet. Jack Paul Rocha is a community development planner at UIC’s Great Cities Institute, where he helps facilitate community dialogue and engagement in the planning of communities.
A MAP SHOWING THE GREAT CITIES INSTITUTE'S 100TH STREET CALUMET RIVER PROJECT, A PROPOSAL FOR PUBLIC ACCESS POINTS ALONG THE WEST BANK OF THE CALUMET RIVER BETWEEN 96TH AND 100TH STREETS. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE GREAT CITIES INSTITUTE