14 East 2017 Anthology by 14 East

2016-2017 Anthology

Ivana Rihter Editor-in-Chief

Brendan Pedersen Managing Editor

Bea Aldrich Associate Editor

Devin Bohbrink Associate Editor

Madeline Happold Associate Editor

Maxwell Newsom Multimedia Editor

Aiden Kent Data Editor

Jack Ladd Director of Development

Marissa Nelson Social Media Editor

Amy Merrick Faculty Advisor

◊◊◊ Compiled and edited by Madeline Happold, Ivana Rihter and Brendan Pedersen All rights to material published in this magazine belong to the individual authors or artists. Any reproduction or reprinting may be done by their permission only.

Table of Contents Breaking the Gender Binary.............................................................. 4 The Elephant in the Room.................................................................. 13 First Generation: Student Artists Take a Leap................................. 24 The Art and Peril of Guantanamo’s Teacups.................................... 28 Open Adoption: Giving Birth Mothers a Choice................................ 31 ‘Nightcrawler’ is a Mirror and We Can’t Look Away....................... 41 Femdot................................................................................................ 44 Lights Out........................................................................................... 48 Lights On............................................................................................ 53 What Happens Over Steak................................................................ 56 Children’s Story.................................................................................. 59 Trump Tower...................................................................................... 62 Women’s March.................................................................................. 66 The Czech Traveler............................................................................. 70 Maureen Herman Will Not Be Silenced.............................................. 74 Mr. Mickey, One of Us......................................................................... 81 The Cleveland 4.................................................................................... 87 The Shoes on the Sideline.................................................................... 102 Ken Butigan Journeys for Justice....................................................... 106 Birth Justice is Social Justice.............................................................. 112 The Pursuit of Aletheia........................................................................ 120

Sept. 8, 2016 Copy editing on the floor of a London hostel, I tried not to wake the 16 strangers sleeping in bunk beds around me. The light from my laptop screen was blinding and my typing echoed off the ceiling. It was my birthday. It was also the day 14 East Magazine published the first lineup of this school year. This would be the first of many Thursday nights spent frantically reading through stories one last time before they went out to the world. At that point, we were all unaware of what 14 East would become, how close our staff would grow and the impact our stories would have. I am humbled by this publication every day. As its first Editor-in-Chief, I set out to create a culture of collaboration and support in our makeshift newsroom. Our staff, always willing to give up sleep and sanity for this magazine, has taught me what it means to put your whole being into something, and our body of work has surpassed my every expectation. What you hold in your hands now is more than just a collection of articles. It is a historical account of 9 p.m. cups of coffee and tears shed reviewing court documents for the fourth time. It is a tangible artifact of 14 East Magazine’s first year, a year which I am honored to have been a part of. Our staff is a collection of awe-inspiring young journalists, writers and editors. Their compassion shines through every story they write, edit and bring to life. Their dedication to this publication has been nothing short of miraculous. Nothing we have done would be possible without this staff, composed of collaborative spirits whose ability to care for one another through all the chaos and wonder of running this publication moves me deeply. We set out to publish work that humanized issues bubbling to the surface right now. We worked every day to broaden our perspectives as journalists and give marginalized communities a platform to share their perspectives. Over the course of a year, 14 East Magazine has changed shape week to week but our mission remained the same: to bring meaningful work into the world, to respect our writers and to illuminate some of Chicago’s amazing nooks and crannies. Our stories have taken our readers into the cells of Guantanamo Bay, into the heart of Chicago’s protests and into an FBI informant case. We have sat down with ghost experts, inmates and musicians alike, eager to tell their stories. This is just the beginning of 14 East, and I was lucky to be there for it. It is my privilege to share with you our first anthology. Enjoy.

Ivana Rihter

Breaking the Gender Binary Shelley K. Mesch May 20, 2016

“It’s weird. I call it my weirdness.” The “weirdness” started with a YouTube video. Their senior year of high school, Grace Walker watched the coming-out story of transgender YouTuber Alex Bertie and began to draw some significant parallels between themself and Bertie, who spoke in his videos about feeling uncomfortable with the gender with which his body presented and the comfort he felt when someone would refer to him as male. All of these parallels related to the internal feeling and external expression of gender. This is was the catalyst for Walker’s journey as a non-binary person. Walker would get misgendered as male on occasion, and they remembered not caring or even finding it funny. Classmates who knew Walker as a girl would assume they were a lesbian, which made them start to question their sexuality, but that didn’t feel right to them. Walker knew this had nothing to do with the people they felt a physical and emotional attraction to. Even though these parallels relating to expression of gender existed, Walker still didn’t feel like they could completely relate to the story of Bertie. “I was pretty sure I wasn’t totally trans,” Walker said. “But then I found out gender fluid was a thing, and that made sense to me.” When Walker tells people they are gender fluid, they are referring to their gender identity. Gender identity falls on a spectrum that is bookended by male and female identities, but there are many in between. Gender fluid is one of those identities that falls in between. It means that Walker doesn’t have a static identity. One day they may feel completely feminine, on another they may identify as a man, and on another they may be some mix of the two.

He, Her, Their: Using preferred pronouns People with different gender identities may choose to use pronouns other than he or she. Walker isn’t particular about what pronouns are used to identify them, but since their day-to-day identity can change, this article will use the pronouns they, them and their to describe Walker. Walker also uses the names Grace and Charlie; they aren’t particular about that, either.

Walker’s story isn’t particularly unusual. Many other people identify as something other than male or female. These identities are categorized by the umbrella term non-binary identities, meaning they break the idea that gender has to fall in a binary. Joey Shelley, a PhD student at University of Illinois Chicago, also identifies as non-binary, but they use the term genderqueer, which means they consistently identify as the same gender, but that gender is both male and female.

“Shelley likened their discomfort in their gender to being stuck in an airplane seat with no room to move or relax” Shelley spent most of their life being referred to as “she.” They weren’t completely comfortable living a life being identified as female, but they didn’t know there was another option until they were researching trans identities to be a better ally to a friend who recently came out as transgender. “I found the term genderqueer, and I thought, ‘Wait a second, you mean everyone else doesn’t already feel like this?’” Shelley said. “This is me. This is me all over. This is all the things I’ve never understood. This is the disconnect I felt with femininity. This is the disconnect I felt with masculinity. I am not one of these things. I am these things mushed together in some weird recipe for gender non-normativity.” Shelley likened their discomfort in their gender to being stuck in an airplane seat with no room to move or relax. To them, finding a non-binary term to identify with was like being moved to an exit row. “Finding genderqueer was finding room,” Shelley said. “Instead of being squished into a label that didn’t make sense with who I was, I just got rid of it and the idea that I needed to be more womanly to be part of womanhood or be more manly and be completely trans masculine. I didn’t have to choose.”

Men’s and women’s rooms: Living in a binary world DePaul University in Chicago has programs and policies that acknowledge non-binary gender identities, and most of those policies are spearheaded by the Office of LGBTQA Student Services in the Center for Identity Inclusion and Social Change. Katy Weseman, the student services coordinator, works with students who identify as non-binary as well as other students. Weseman is a cis woman, meaning she identifies with the gender she was assigned at birth.

According to Weseman, people assume that gender identities are very easy to place, and many people still believe that there are only two options for gender identity. “There are as many gender identities as there are people, and unfortunately we like to put things in really rigid boxes,” Weseman said. “But really when people start exploring, or thinking, or talking about their gender, it’s often way more complex.” Elon Sloan also works in the Office of LGBTQA Student Services at DePaul. They work as an office assistant and also facilitate and founded the discussion group “Gender?” that is run through the office. Sloan identifies as trans and non-binary, and they don’t use any more specific terminology to identify their gender. “I realized that I didn’t have to stay within this label that I never felt comfortable with and I never felt described me,” Sloan said. “I’ve spent so

Kiersten Hickman

much of my life thinking that there was nothing that could release me from that and I was feeling very dysphoric about it.” Dysphoria is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a state of feeling unwell or unhappy” and has been used in transgender and non-binary communities to describe the overwhelming feeling of discomfort with one’s own body. Because of their long-standing discomfort with presenting as the gender they were assigned at birth, Sloan didn’t spend a long time questioning their gender identity. They discovered the term non-binary in the latter part of middle school and quickly embraced it. “From the moment that I understood what gender was, I realized I was trans,” Sloan said. “And from the moment that I fully understood what trans was I realized I was a non-binary person.” As a whole, American society is focused on placing people into simple categories like male and female. Because of this, Sloan faced people who were dismissive or insensitive about their personal gender identity. “I feel like there are many different levels of challenges,” Sloan said. “I think that people feel like it’s not real, and they feel like it’s academic. I’ve literally had someone ask me if I read a certain book and that changed my gender identity.” Many people aren’t even aware that non-binary identities exist, or they aren’t willing to accept them. The lack of acceptance can be seen through use of pronouns. “[One of the struggles non-binary people face] is people not understanding or people not being respectful,” Weseman said. “Something that I see a lot with students who use they, them and their pronouns is people refusing to use those pronouns. They’ll just default to the way that they read the person, which is often the sex the person was assigned at birth.” Shelley altered their gender presentation away from clothing that fit their birth-assigned gender because it would be easier for people to see their identity as valid. Instead of dressing and presenting as a female, Shelley began to dress more masculinely. They did this not for themselves, for the sake of other people understanding, which led to its own complications. “People have a hard time with non-binary identities,” Shelley said. “For the first six months after I started going by a different name, I don’t think I wore a single skirt. I don’t think I wore a dress. I basically dressed in masculine or non-gendered clothing. It was so hard to get people to acknowledge what I was already asking of them that I felt like if I was doing a mixed-gender presentation, they might question the legitimacy of my claim.” Identity erasure is common for people who do not fit into the gender binary. Identity erasure is when a person or groups of people refuse to acknowledge the existence of an identity. This leads to a culture of exclusivity where a person must fit predesigned specifications to be included in that

society. Ways non-binary identities are excluded from common spaces can be seen in phrases like “ladies and gentlemen” or “boys and girls.” “What I notice with non-binary students is your baseline threshold of what to expect, you expect not to be included,” Weseman said. “That’s where I feel like people are at, unfortunately, such that it’s exceptional that people would include [non-binary people]. How sad is that? And I think a lot of that speaks to the need for a larger culture shift.” Examples of erasure can also come in different forms like structural spaces. Many places don’t have gender-inclusive facilities like restrooms or locker rooms, which forces non-binary people to choose a gender. States like North Carolina instated so-called “Bathroom Bills,” which mandate that people must use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth. While protests arose claiming these bills are anti-trans, the bills also affect non-binary people who may identify and outwardly present differently each day.

Unexpected reactions: Coming out to family, friends Sometimes the struggles non-binary people face are not with strangers or society. Coming out as non-binary to family can cause tensions at home. Shelley wasn’t ready to have a discussion about gender with their parents when they posted a video of themselves in a dance competition. Their parents enjoy seeing Shelley dance, and they just tagged their parents in a video on Facebook. Shelley didn’t remember that in this competition, they were announced as “Joey” rather than by their birth name. Shelley’s parents noticed, and they immediately prompted a conversation despite Shelley’s efforts to put it off. Since Shelley was at work at the time, and their parents demanded to talk about it, Shelley ended up explaining their gender identity through a text message. That was a year ago. “They still don’t get it in a lot of ways,” Shelley said. “My mom feels like I am rejecting what womanhood is because of her, which is super un-

“What I notice with non-binary students is your baseline threshold of what to expect, you expect to be included” fair. That’s not what’s happening.” While Shelley’s mother hasn’t always been completely understanding of their gender identity, she does make efforts. “My mom has tried to embrace it in the way that she does, which means sewing me bowties for Christmas instead of skirts and shopping in different departments because she shows her love through gifts,” Shelley

said. Walker came out to their parents in a more intentional way. They came out to their parents as gender fluid about six months after finding the term. They expected them to be supportive, but it still was difficult to find the right time. Instead of sitting their parents at the table and telling them, Walker went a different route. As they were heading to their room in the basement, Walker shouted from the stairs, “And by the way, I’m gender fluid.” Then they went to bed. The next morning at the breakfast table, Walker’s mother asked them what they said from the stairs, and that started the discussion. Their parents immediately accepted them, but their brother had one question: “What does that mean?” Once they explained that it meant they weren’t always a girl or always a boy, their brother went back to reading his book. To come out to their friends, Shelley used Facebook. Two years after first identifying as genderqueer personally, they made a secret group including people they felt they could trust that wouldn’t disrespect their identity. Shelley told them that they would prefer to be called Joey, and they asked the members of the group to inform others if the situation came up. Overall, Shelley feels their friends have been supportive. Shelley’s spouse has also been supportive of their gender identity. They were already married when Shelley started identifying as genderqueer, but that hasn’t impacted their relationship. Although, one day, when Shelley expressed that they were considering top surgery, a procedure that removes breast tissue, their husband Braden Nesin said he might not feel the same way about them with a different body. Shelley was understanding of this, but Nesin retracted that thought a week later, saying that he married them for their brain, not their body. Although both Nesin and Shelley say their relationship hasn’t been effected by Shelley’s gender, Nesin did become concerned when Shelley decided to change their name to something less feminine than their birth name. “The name change made me suddenly worried that they were going to change, be a different person,” Nesin said in an email. “They didn’t, they’re still the same person I fell in love with.” Shelley isn’t comfortable being open about their gender identity in every environment. They are not out at their college because they may face discrimination. “To be honest, I’m probably scared for nothing,” Shelley said. “I don’t think anyone would intentionally jeopardize my career, but I don’t want to find out.” Sloan experienced coming out in a neutral way. They began openly identifying as non-binary their freshman year of high school, and it never became a topic of conversation.

Sloan did experience situations where people would invalidate their identity. People would debate with them the existence of non-binary identities or tell them that their identity is academic and doesn’t exist in the real world. Sloan said this removed their ability to feel affirmed in their identity. Many people do not understand that gender can exist on a spectrum rather than in a binary. According to Weseman, it is easier for people to understand identity changes when it is on a linear and binary level. She credits this understanding in part to growing media attention on trans issues and trans people such as Caitlyn Jenner. In Weseman’s ten years working in higher education, she has seen “tangible growth” in areas relating to education around pronouns and gender inclusivity. Although there has been progress in terms of non-binary gender visibility, non-binary people are often expected to justify their identity and existence to people who don’t identify as a gender other than male or female. “The burden of education is placed on the person with the identity,” Sloan said. “And that can be very hard when you are just trying to have your identity acknowledged, and you’re just trying to get through your day and not have people constantly contest your identity to you.” Part of the struggle non-binary people face is due to immediate misidentification. Since many people see others on a binary of male and female, initial assumptions are made about a person’s gender based on their physical appearance. This leads to dysphoria. Shelley chooses their clothing to fit their gender identity by mixing feminine and masculine clothing like a miniskirt and a bow tie with a button up shirt, or by wearing gender-neutral clothing like jeans and a t-shirt. Despite this, Shelley still doesn’t feel like the way they look represents their identity.

“Part of the struggle non-binary people face is due to immediate misidentification” “If I were a vaguely androgynous, female-bodied person with less than 42 inches of booty, I might not even be considering any kind of surgery,” Shelley said. “It would more be about presentation choices, but my body IDs me as female far faster than I want it to.” While Shelley has considered top surgery to make their appearance less feminine, they don’t see that as their only option. Currently, Shelley chooses to wear a binder on most days. A binder is an article of clothing that is used to minimize the appearance of breasts. They are often uncomfortable, as they are made of extremely tight nylon or spandex. Binders can even be dangerous to wear for extended periods of time because their tightness restricts the chest’s ability to expand and take deep breaths.

“The mental comfort of wearing a binder is so much higher than the physical discomfort,” Shelley said. “I’m less aware of my body as an impedance. I do a much better job of forgetting about my body when I wear a binder until I can’t breathe, which is the problem.” Another option for people experiencing dysphoria is hormone replacement therapy (HRT). HRT is used for people who want to physically transition from one end of the gender binary to the other. People assigned female at birth can take testosterone to achieve a masculine appearance, and people assigned male at birth can take estrogen to achieve a feminine appearance. However, this option is not often used by non-binary people because most non-binary people aren’t trying to physically look like either end of the gender spectrum. Sloan also likes to display their gender identity using masculine and feminine clothing. They also wear a binder on most days, except for when it could affect their asthma, like in the colder months. Sloan hasn’t medically transitioned and doesn’t intend to. “I think for a lot of people there’s a fascination and sort of exoticized focus on surgery,” Sloan said. “So many people don’t go on hormones, or if they do, they don’t have surgery. A medical transition is not for everybody.” When dressing, Walker tends to focus on comfort. They wear men’s jeans most frequently because they are more comfortable than jeans designed for women, and they like the deeper pockets. They occasionally wear dresses, but they don’t find the skirts very comfortable. Since Walker is gender fluid, their outward presentation of their gender is more dependent on their identity that day.

The Name Game: Choosing an Identity Part of Walker’s gender presentation is their name. Walker was named Grace at birth and is still uses that name, but they also use the name Charlie to fit the days when they felt more masculine. “I went through a big, long list of names and narrowed it down to a few that I thought were really cool or I wouldn’t mind being called,” Walker said. “I talked to my friend Noah, and I talked to my friend Celestia, and both of them had insights. And we kind of ended on Charlie because it was masculine, but it wasn’t excessively masculine.” Shelley also adopted a different name from the one they were given at birth. Shelley’s name comes from a penname they created for a blog. They used the name “Joey G. Lovelace,” which is in homage to actor Joseph Gordon Levitt and mathematician Ada Lovelace. Shelley recently completed the legal process to officially change their name to Joey Shelley, which includes multiple forms and fees totaling

around $500. While Walker chose the name Charlie when they were still in high school, it wasn’t until arriving in Chicago that they decided to first use that name. “Charlie did exist on the first day of school here at DePaul. It was a split-second, last-minute decision to be like, ‘Hi, my name is Grace. Or Charlie.’ It was very much like a moment of panic. Like, if any time was the time to do it, the time was now,” Walker said. Walker still goes by Grace at home in Minnesota. They use the name Charlie frequently at DePaul but not all the time, so they didn’t realize the impact that their gender inclusive name could have. “I didn’t really notice it until I went back home for break, and I was just Grace and I was a female for two-and-a-half weeks. And then I came back and somebody called me Charlie, and I’m like, ‘Say that again.’ That was really cool.”

The Elephant in the Room Brendan Pedersen May 20, 2016

For every action, there is an equal, opposite reaction. Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others. – Ambrose Bierce If I were a liberal Democrat, people would say I’m the super genius of all time. The super genius of all time. If you’re a conservative Republican, you’ve got to fight for your life. It’s really an amazing thing. – Donald J. Trump If you spent any time at DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus in March, you may have noticed a miniature drama unfolding alongside bulletin boards and flyer-splattered columns. Or maybe a comedy, depending on your politics. On a Tuesday afternoon, for instance, a student was walking by one of the boards when she stopped mid-stride. Squinting to read one poster’s smallish text, she gasped before ripping it down and then in half. Even from across the room, Nicole Been could see the disgust on the student’s face as she shoved her way out of the building through the revolving doors. Nicole grinned. With the perpetrator out of sight, Nicole jaunted back to the board with an identical flyer in one hand and unhinged stapler in the other. After a thwack, her organization’s poster was restored. She took a moment to admire her handiwork: a rainbow flag behind the iconic “Don’t Tread on Me” snake that invited DePaul’s “closet conservatives” to find a safe, understanding home with College Republicans. She shrugged. “DePaul approved them,” she said, somehow hinting at a wicked sense of destruction. It might have seemed more appropriate coming from the mouth of an anarchist than it did from the 20-something blonde-haired college student standing in front of me, dressed by Vineyard Vines with a healthy dollop of pearls. Nicole Been, a junior, doesn’t really know why she chose DePaul University. She isn’t sure she’d choose it again if she had the chance; Chicago isn’t particularly fertile ground for conservative castaways.

She’s no Dorothy – plucked out of Kansas and hurled into Oz – even if it feels that way sometimes. She goes out, she has friends, favorite teachers, stories that don’t (entirely) hinge on her political belief. Her favorite bar is the Houndstooth in Wrigleyville, although regulars will tell you it’s more of a saloon than anything else. She can get a taste of the life she might have had here, one she’d like to get a hold of in the future. It’s the honky-tonk music, bits of Alabama football everywhere she looks, and the bartenders that call her “hun” – a pocket of warmth in an otherwise desolate, liberal wasteland. Watching someone rip down your posters should probably piss you off. Nicole lives for the moments like this – moments where she gets to bask in the righteous heat of progressive indignation, cranking out her message with the windows rolled down. “I crave making the liberals at DePaul angry,” she said to me at one point. Again, she shrugged. “I think it’s fun.” It wasn’t until winter quarter of freshman year that I got sick of my dorm room and walked into an extracurricular meeting. I decided I wanted prestige and A-list social recognition. I joined the congressional debate team. After the meeting was over, I texted a friend back home some good news: “found a conservative punching bag lol.” I walked into that room, saw a Republican caricature, and was ecstatic. Nicole looked the part at least, decked in a white sweater, pearls (always pearls), boat shoes, and a tan that was at least mildly suspicious for January in Chicago. Now, to be clear, “punching bag” wasn’t an expression of malice; it was genuine excitement, even respect. In every classroom-style debate or discussion I’d had in high school, opinions that stepped outside the norm would always be lofted within the tepid frames of “well, let’s say that…” or “suppose…” or, worst of all, “I’m going to play the devil’s advocate for just a second here.” Half-formed, half-believed speculations of someone else’s truth felt empty. It was like sparring with the air.

“Decked in a white sweater, pearls (always pearls), boat shoes, and a tan that was at least mildly suspicious for January in Chicago” But then you’ve got a punching bag hooked up and hanging from the ceiling; a 150 pound bulk of leather, ripped-up mattress, and tire rubber asking what you’re going to do about it. If you’ve been throwing punches at the wind for the past 20 years, that first swing is probably going to sting. I’ve known Nicole for about a year now. I’m not sure if she’d call me a friend, but we’ve always been friendly. She left the debate team after a

quarter of fighting with the club’s president – he was her political opposite, save the magnitude of their shared self-righteousness – and has since lead DePaul’s College Republicans. As an infrequent DePaulia contributor, I come to her whenever I need a dash of adversity. She’s always more than happy to oblige. There are people at DePaul University who despise Nicole Been. In a post on the Class of 2019’s Facebook page last month, she invited “those of you who don’t get offended” to visit College Republicans on Monday

Nick Anderson

nights. The reception was less than friendly. One comment referred to “all those rightwingers [sic] that think that their freedom of speech is under attack because they can’t say the n word.” Another extended the invitation to anyone who wanted to “throw around some misguided bullshit.” The closing line, dated Feb. 7, 2016 at 11:57 p.m., reads “wow you support trump why am i [sic] even talking to you,” and was posted by someone who had commented in the thread 28 times. I’ll admit the average Facebook interaction is not humanity at its best – it wouldn’t be fair to presume much about the spirit of campus politics from a single post. But even offline you can feel it; this pervasive, background sense of vitriol. People’s faces would contort when I told them about the profile I was writing: a deep blink of disbelief and arched eyebrows, followed by a compulsively blurted “why?!” That’s a hell of a reaction for someone who isn’t exactly a public figure. Talking to members of College Democrats, though, there’s an unmis-

takable hum of admiration when they talk about Nicole – even if they’re in the middle of condemning her. Nassir Faulkner, president of CD, described her diplomatically as “very passionate about what she believes in, and I admire that about her because she doesn’t always believe in what’s popular.” Kyla Patterson, the Democrats’ director of membership, said she “respected the fact that she’s so secure in her views.” “She’s a diehard Republican at a very liberal school in a very liberal city,” Kyla said. “She’s unapologetic about it. She owns it, and I think that’s really cool. Do I agree with her? No.” It’s February of last year, and Nicole is manning an informational table for College Republicans. It’s one of her favorite ways of finding new recruits, especially on the days that high school students visit with their families. Walking by, parents from the suburbs would always give their kid a quick elbow and a nod towards Nicole’s eager footsoldiers, telling them they’d “better join that one.” This time, she’s tabling at the Student Center solo. Waiting patiently for innocent passersby to get caught staring, her body suggests she’s behind enemy lines; open and friendly enough to invite fellow dissidents aboard while also intense and lightly rigid, as if she would cut you if you tried something. It also happens to be Ash Wednesday, and the black smudge on her forehead has a vague kinship with the face on her Chicago Blackhawks jersey. She’s twisting at her strand of pearls. It has been a slow day. A girl with short dark curls walks up to the table. She asks a few questions. Nicole answers and hesitantly offers some literature. The girl is a feminist, she says, and a lesbian, and her parents (Catholic) had kicked her out for it. Nicole realizes her smudge has become a billboard. She apologizes, but doesn’t come across as incredibly sympathetic. Questions jerkily turn into accusations, hurled across the plastic banquet table that didn’t ask for any of this. Nicole is standing now, engaged, irritated, on the defensive, but “Engaged, irritated, on also just kind of confused. Critiques of capitalism and abortion are vocalized the defensive, but also loudly, and insults (“apparently my roots were too long”) quickly follow, just kind of confused” flying back and forth for what seems like an eternity. By the time it’s over, Nicole is sitting down, her adrenaline fading, mind reeling. The anger is still there, although what’s left is mostly just frustration. As the girl gets dragged away by a friend, one thought spins through Nicole’s mind; she had a class with this person twice a week, and that was probably going to be uncomfortable. Her name was Sarah. I’ve heard Nicole tell this story three times over the last year. In retrospect, what strikes me is the consistency to her narrative; she remembers the same moments, lines, and insults every time. She doesn’t seem to for-

get. The version she told me a year later was identical to the old tellings in all but one way; how she remembers feeling, what she thought directly after the encounter. A year ago, she was mostly just pissed off. But as time passed, she must have thought about it, gone back to the moments, about what she saw, or wondered what could have been going through Sarah’s mind. Nicole called her unstable, but I don’t think she intended that as an insult. There was a flash of sympathy there, masked between a balance of fear and feigned indifference. She remembered the way Sarah had laughed and cried at the same time, and had been frightened she was going to walk away and kill herself. “I guess now I see less of ‘they’re angry’ and more ‘they just don’t know the other side of it,’” she said. “So looking back, I’m sure they are angry, and I’m sure they have a lot of things built up inside them that they can’t fix, and that’s frustrating to them. “I get it,” she said after a little while. “I feel like a Democrat would feel a lot more comfortable at our meetings than we would at theirs,” Nicole said, “even if they disagree with everything we say.” Having been to a DePaul College Republicans meeting, I respectfully disagree. There’s something electric to the College Republicans. Even from the din of pre-meeting conversation, it’s impossible to ignore the quiet intensity that simmers below every reference to Hillary, DePaul, the Dems, ad nauseam. The Democrats feel sterile by comparison, with their raised hands and talking points. Nicole knows how to work a room without working the room; she lets the Republicans be angry. She puts on her reprimanding teacher voice now and again – I witnessed one half-hearted attempt to save a visiting Student Government Association senator who did not know how to work a room – but she’s not there to be a babysitter or a referee. She’s a conductor. Nicole’s own politics are specific. Abortion is murder, unless the mother’s life is in danger. Contraceptives are immoral, unless you’re paying for your own (“I’m not one of these super conservatives,” she said). She has referred to Bernie Sanders as the literal Antichrist and posted pictures of her actual tears on Snapchat when Rick Santorum dropped out of the 2016 presidential race – she has not only been a staunch supporter of his since 2012, but met and prayed with his family before one of the televised “happy hour” debates. Did Rick Santorum ever have more than a single percentage point in a national poll this year? Did it matter? For a while, Rick was the only candidate that she felt she could support without sacrificing one value or another; Trump wasn’t really religious enough, Bush and Rubio were tainted by immigration reform, Kasich expanded Medicaid in his state. But the faith that she and Rick shared

was key. “I don’t want to say that I use my religion as a backing for my arguments,” she said to me at one point. “It forces me – because I know what I believe, even if non-religious people won’t accept that as a reason – it forces me to come up with different reasons that abortion and gay marriage are wrong.” But despite her commitment to “stick with Rick,” things are a changin’. Jeb Bush, the one-time heir apparent to the GOP nomination, dropped out of the race after only three state primaries. Scott Walker suspended his run so long ago, you can barely make out the smoke on the horizon. Christie’s out. Huckabee’s out. Jindal, Fiorina, Paul, Carson, Graham, Perry, Rubio, Santorum (R.I.P.), even Kasich and Cruz, out out out out out out aaaaand out. So when the eight-month GOP front runner knocks on your door in February and asks you to be the national northern director for “Students for Trump,” who are you to say no? She’d had her doubts – “you’ve got to deal with liberals and establishment Republicans” – but “he’s winning,” she said. “So, yeah.”

Brendan Pedersen

It’s March of last year, and the room is too small. A cynic would have said it was by design (and I’d agree), but the fact remained; it didn’t take much for the fishbowl conference room inside the Office of Student Involvement to become standing room only. Usually it was fine, but not tonight. Tonight it’s too small. It’s a Thursday night, cold and dry – the kind of cold that smacks you

around right before spring hits, just for good measure. DePaul’s Student Government Association meets on Thursday nights, and usually the room works fine; it has just enough chairs for the senators wearing their usual blue (I believe the motto goes something like “on Thursdays we wear blue or face death by firing squad”). What the room lacks in space, it makes up for in overbreathed air. Nicole had skipped both her classes today. She isn’t happy about it, but she had to be ready for this. Her mind is an anxious, steady maelstrom as her nails click against the table, sitting with her fellow senators and

“The peanut gallery wraps around the room and has players from the most powerful political organizations on campus present, Democrats, Republicans, and Feminists among them.” waiting for the agenda item that appeared to have filled the room past fire code regulations. She knew she was probably going to lose. The item on everyone’s mind is a “resolution to voice student concerns” on sexual health policy. The university was being asked to consider (in non-binding terms) some changes. Among them was a request to reconsider distributing condoms to the student body, as well as an addition to the Office of Health Promotion and Wellness to make room for a new sexual health advisor. The push had made waves. The peanut gallery wraps around the room and has players from the most powerful political organizations on campus present, Democrats, Republicans, and Feminists among them. Moxie is one of my favorite words. It’s not one you hear tossed around a whole lot anymore, but it calls to mind a certain picture of dynamic audacity, of boldness. Ernest Hemingway had moxie. Theodore Roosevelt had moxie. Angela Merkel has moxie. Say what you will about differing motives, time, and place, but when Nicole stood up in front of the most sex-crazed demographic on the planet to tell them they couldn’t have free condoms, she had moxie. DePaul University was a Catholic institution, she said. If the Vatican said no, the answer was no – student and donor dollars couldn’t be used to encourage what was technically “mortal” sin. That’s another way of saying hell-worthy, for all you heathens out there. But she didn’t stop at Catholicism. After a series of contentious back and forth speeches, she gave another of her own – this time, about sexual assault. Condoms would increase the amount of rape at DePaul, she said. A vote for this bill was a vote towards giving frat boys easier access to birth control, which could embolden them to have drunken sex that they otherwise might not have been able to. It is a precarious argument. It’s entirely based on conjecture and as-

sumptions about the male psyche, and Nicole didn’t have the data at the time to back herself up. When I asked her about it a year in retrospect, she didn’t exactly sell me on the logic. I wasn’t sure that she herself was sold on it. “Is there proof and data that shows that?” Nicole had asked. “I don’t know! But for me, the logic of a teenage boy – ‘Oh look! Free condoms! Oh look! Alcohol! Oh look! Hot girl!’” Luke Kula, another senator at the March 4 meeting, described the three hour ordeal as “enlightening.” He and Nicole had run on the same ticket for SGA the year prior, despite his Democratic affiliation and her Republican one. He has not retained many warm fuzzies with regard to their partnership. “She has often been so out of touch with reality and so fervent in defending her opinions that it bordered on narcissism,” he said of her politics. “What other word is there to describe it?” “Just because a person has the right to their own opinion doesn’t change the fact that their opinion, based on the overwhelming weight of scientific and moral evidence, is wrong,” he said. In this case, the burden of proof was on Nicole. Nicole rejected Luke’s definition of narcissism. She asked, “Why would I put myself on a crucifix at DePaul to stand up for my values? To be hated by most people?” Even so, the measure failed. It didn’t have enough answers to certain logistical questions, like where the money for all the changes was supposed to come from. Nicole won – she just didn’t make many friends in the process. Why do Nicole’s politics matter? Why should anyone care? Everyone has some notion of how the world works; how we could solve this problem with this solution, and how that solution would definitely destroy life as we know it. We all have these different ideas of virtue, moral clarity, the way justice and equality are supposed to play out around us. Everyone has some idea as to what is going on and everyone is probably wrong. But the existence of genuine conservatives at DePaul is striking, as they exist as the exception to not only one but two rules: supposedly, that higher education makes the impressionable youth more liberal, and that living in a city tends to shove people to the left as well. To be fair, Chicago is an island of deep blue in a convincingly red state. For the first time in almost 15 years, the city government has to contend with a Republican in the governor’s mansion. It’s not insane to expect DePaul to have some degree of conservative presence, even if they are by no means the norm. Conservatives in this town face a singular dilemma; their political philosophy aims at maintaining a nationwide status quo, but, at DePaul, it’s in the hands of a minority. Surrounded by a dull roar of accusations – their privilege, bigotry, racism, delusions – it’s as if they have no choice

but to dig in and be twice as loud. Sofia Fernandez is the leader of Young Americans for Freedom’s DePaul chapter, a conservative activist organization that’s closely partnered with Nicole’s College Republicans. Similarly, she’s been no stranger to a less-than-warm reception by the student body for her beliefs. “Sometimes you have to take a step back and say, ‘they’re just attacking your views,’” Sofia said. “But sometimes it’s not just your views; it’s your person.” There have been two official debates this year between the College Republicans and Democrats, the most recent of which was on March 1: Super Tuesday. The crowd has never been particularly kind to the Republicans, but most people who participated or watched considered it to be a civil enough affair. Usually. When a Republican freshman articulated the rationale behind a southern border wall last October, snickers rippled through the audience. Five months later, when Nicole declared it was time for the wall, she was drowned out by boos. Joseph Mello, an assistant professor of political science at DePaul University, facilitated both of this year’s debates. He said that he didn’t think it was an illusion that the school’s Republicans were a minority, and didn’t rule out that they were a socially persecuted one. But it was also possible, he said, that it was an identity that they created for themselves. “It’s empowering to feel like you’re the one that’s courageous and standing up to oppression,” he said. “No one wants to feel like the sort of recalcitrant majority holding down someone else. You want to be oppressed!” John Minster, a freshman in College Republicans, agreed in part with the logic, but pushed back on the idea that conservatives at DePaul encouraged enmity. “It’s not something that we want,” Minster said. “Being a part of a group that’s looked down upon by the university is kind of empowering – it’s cool, like you’re a rebel. But it’s a reality. It’s something we deal with every day.” “You’ve just got to deal with the hand you’re dealt,” he said. At a political science faculty meeting last spring, Mello recalled that the issue of DePaul’s institutional liberalism came up, raised by donors. Some instructors had been deeply troubled and eager to address the problem. Others believed they should be telling their students “what’s right.” Mello chuckled and sighed. “Reality has a liberal bias, right?” It’s a little known fact among heathens that basic Christian theology is reflected in the design of church pews; comfort is not a priority. Nicole Been is sitting in the belly of the St. Vincent de Paul Church, her back high and straight against wood that would have been considered well-worn 30 years ago. Her eyes are trained on the ceiling. There’s a weight to everything about this place – a heaviness laced

with incense that makes you breathe more deliberately. Following the arc of the cathedral’s red and gold buttresses as they reach up towards the heavens, the ceiling is miles away. Sound is heavier here. Every word – spoken and sung – hangs in the space. The choir is going now, and their melody seems to swell from everywhere at once, as if the stones themselves are humming along. Nicole’s gaze eventually lazes to the side of the room, where the choir is performing. A moment passes, and she has to blink. She blinks again. After the service is over, she makes herself wait in the pew. She has to make sure. As the congregation begins to filter out, a girl with bobbed, curly brown hair makes her way out of the church with a music binder held across her chest. She was still a few aisles away, but Nicole saw she had been right; it was Sarah, the girl who had cursed Nicole for the ashes on her forehead just a few weeks earlier. She didn’t know what to make of it – whether she should feel happy or sad for Sarah, or maybe even be angry with her. Was it some kind of a stupid joke? Post-ironic performance art? Nicole took a moment to breathe. She picked up her purse, jacket, and walked out through the double doors into the Sunday night air. It was warm. She decided to let it be.

First Generation: Student Artists Take a Leap Aiden Kent September 9, 2016

As children, Vada Briceno would study her older brother while he drew. She wanted to pull lines across paper the way he could. Twelve years later, that dream has come true. In June, Briceno graduated from the Theatre School at DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in lighting design, making her the first in her family to graduate from college. Briceno joins nearly 6.47 million college students nationwide who identify as first generation. These students’ parents have either never attended or did not complete college. Neither Briceno’s parents nor her brother attended college. Before they moved to Chicago in 1989, their world was vastly different. “My mom grew up in a country where the goal as a woman was to have babies, take care of the house, and make sure that her husband was pleased every day, and my dad’s job was to make money, get drunk before he comes home, and eat whatever my mom cooked,” Briceno said. Like many first-generation students, Briceno’s parents were thrilled she wanted to continue her education. But their expectations were lofty. “They wanted me to be a lawyer, something with nice income, as I think every parent does,” Briceno said. She was scared to tell her parents about her desire to pursue lighting design. Dr. Linda Banks-Santilli is an associate professor of education at Wheelock College in Massachusetts. She also happens to be a first-generation college graduate herself. “Often, families don’t see value in studying subjects that don’t translate to a professional career, as they typically have not had the luxury of learning for learning’s sake,” Banks-Santilli said. When Briceno finally decided to tell her parents about her dream, they were hesitant. She soon realized it came from a misunderstanding, and they were quick to support her. “Once I told them I wasn’t interested in becoming a physical therapist, they embraced it and are super happy with my decision,” Briceno said. “They realized my passion, but they just didn’t really know anything about theatre.” Not all are so lucky.

Identity Crisis Kelly Neibert was born in rural Pennsylvania and loved to draw during her childhood. But when she told her parents she wanted to study painting in college, they were shocked she wanted to continue her education at all. “My parents are wonderful people and they’ve given me so much. But it was just really scary for them. Completely uncharted territory and a lot of money,” she said. “I was excited to go. It felt like my ticket out of Waynesboro.” Like Briceno, Neibert’s parents did not attend college. Her father completed high school, but her mother did not. “[College] was just so foreign to them,” Neibert said. Since then, she’s completed an art degree at Messiah College not far from her home town, and she recently was accepted into School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA painting program. According to Banks-Santilli, some first generation students feel like they must balance two worlds: their world at home with family, and their world at college. “I call this a renegotiation of identity, where the FG student is trying to recreate themselves and wants to expand their worldview,” Banks-Santilli said. This duality can come with guilt. A disconnect may form between parent and child, and the student’s shifting identity can add enormous pressure to an already stressful time. While Neibert’s parents have accepted her choices, she struggles to

Aiden Kent

connect with her extended family. “I have a completely different worldview from my family. I worry that when I try to express my point of view, sometimes it comes off as being pretentious or thinking I’m smarter than they are,” she said. Briceno also experiences disconnection from her extended family. While her father’s side now lives nearby in the U.S., her mom’s side lives in Belize. “They don’t understand what I’m doing or that there is a career here,” she said, tears quietly falling down her face. “When we do family gatherings, if I don’t eat a certain Belizean dish or when I dyed my hair blonde, I’m ‘White gyal’ or white girl. It’s been a thing all my life.”

Unequal Ground According to research by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, 50 percent of first generation students are low income. 4.24 million first generation students relied on family support in 2015, and 4.01 million needed loans. According to Banks-Santilli, navigating financial aid is often difficult due to a lack of resources for parents to learn how to manage the system. “Doing financial aid was really hard because I had to do it all myself. My parents really had no grasp on doing any of that stuff,” Briceno said. Though Neibert also faces a lifetime of loans despite family support, she understands the value of her investment. “I’ve wanted to do this for my entire life, so it’s not a waste of money. This is a really great program, and I’m going to learn a lot. So no regrets,” Neibert said. Briceno has been lucky. “My mom has a sticker on her car that says ‘DePaul Mom’ and some lady mentioned she knew people in Chicago that do theatre,” she said. “My mom got me a connection somehow, if only because she’s so social.”

“Navigating financial aid is often difficult due to a lack of resources for parents to learn how to manage the system” Neibert uses her campus connections, but has had similar luck. Recently, her hometown has seen an unprecedented boom in the arts community. Her father happened to know someone involved, and was able to secure his daughter a show. Unfortunately, students like Briceno and Neibert are rare cases and have seen great success. Many first generation students cannot pursue their dreams.

“I really feel for people in my situation that didn’t have the resources that I had,” Neibert said. “My parents eventually did come around but some peoples parents just never do.” Briceno hopes to teach one day, and Neibert plans to complete her MFA. In the true spirit of college, both plan to make a difference in the world with their art. Recently, Neibert started the MFA program and feels like she is being challenged every day. Her work continues to improve, and she is thankful she took a chance. Briceno moved to Seattle for a year-long lighting apprenticeship at Seattle Repertory Theatre. She is excited to apply the skills she learned at school to a professional setting while exploring a new city.

The Art and Peril of Guantanamo’s Teacups Ivana Rihter September 9, 2016

Furious shouting erupted from the back of the auditorium. Arabic words were spat through clenched teeth, their severity evident. Despite all his cultural sensitivity training from the Unites States military, Aaron Hughes knew no Arabic. He was helpless behind the microphone. All there was left to do was wait while this stranger ran at him, the man’s arms flailing violently in all directions as he got closer and closer to the stage. This is it, Hughes thought. This guy is going to come beat the s– out of me and I guess that is fine because it’s his country. Only moments away, the man’s face shined with sweat, red from the force of his heated words. As he finally reached the stage, a delayed translation came through Hughes’s earpiece. “I just want to come up on stage and give this gentleman a hug,” rang through his brain and Hughes, without time to process this information, was suddenly wrapped in the arms of a stranger. Tears came instantly. This is the origin story of the Tea Project: an organization using art to pay homage to the detainees of Guantanamo Bay and as an outlet for social justice dialogue, performance and expression – all rooted in tea. Performances and tea engagements took up temporary residence in Links Hall at 3111 N. Western Ave between April and March of last year. Hughes was deployed to Iraq in 2003 after joining the Illinois Army Guard just outside of Chicago in North Riverside. Overseas, the interactions he remembers with the local population were limited, and prejudice ran deep within all civilian relations. Despite being in the midst of an invasion, the locals exuded an air of generosity and compassion that came forth in the form of tea. “Not only are we occupying their space, their land, but at times when they had very specific needs around survival like food and water, we would refuse to provide these things that we had. And they would still offer us tea,” Hughes said. Hughes and his entire unit would refuse it. Upon deployment, everyone was united in a profound distrust of the Iraqis and the Kuwaitis, so the local hospitality was far from welcome. Everything was Haji – a sloppy slang word used by U.S. soldiers for the Iraqi people as well as Middle Easterners more broadly. Everyone was Haji, their markets were

Ivana Rihter

Haji-markets, the trucks kicking up dust in the distance were Haji-trucks. Racialization worked to dehumanize the individuals that the army was instructed to interrogate, fight and kill. There was no use for their tea. “We called it Haji-water. It could be poisoned, it could be all these things; you could never trust it,” Hughes said. After the war, Hughes became an active member in Iraq Veterans Against the War. He advocated for VA benefits, reparations for those the war harmed and education about consequences for the invasion. On his trips back to Iraq as a peace delegate in 2009, Hughes was finally able to accept the generosity of the people he was forced to fight. “I was crying and they sat me down and they gave me tea and that was the first time I had Iraqi tea,” Hughes said. Tea is a common thread between Hughes’ experience overseas and the narratives of Arab people experiencing oppression, violence and Islamophobia everywhere. The Styrofoam cup art instillation was inspired by the experiences of Chris Arendt, a colleague of Hughes and former Guantanamo Bay guard. Hughes created an intimate window into the ritual of tea by creating 779 marked cups. One for each detainee of Guantanamo Bay. They’re now cast in porcelain with the hopes of being returned to their rightful owners after release from the United States military prison that detains them. Inside Guantanamo Bay, Styrofoam cups turned into canvases. Grown men delicately inscribed them with intricate arrangements of flowers every day of their imprisonment. For the detainees of Guantanamo Bay these cups were a form of expression created in the cells they occupied indefinitely. The marks left on them by the prisoner’s fingernails turned the cups into security threats, collected meticulously every night by guards and given to military intelligence to record and dispose of. “He thought it was a ridiculous process because every time he would

go down to these detainees to collect these cups, they would be scrawled all over with flowers,” Hughes said. “Just flowers.” Arendt wanted to use his experiences to bring justice to the detainees, and the cups often remained at the forefront of his mind. He realized that this act of creation became a way for him and the prisoners he guarded to hold onto their humanity in a place that was built to dehumanize. Hughes was able to turn Arendt’s memory into something tangible with the help of Amber Ginsburg, the artist behind the cups now made of porcelain. At Links Hall, the first contact guests of a tea engagement had was with these teacups. As masses of people filtered in along walls lined with cups, the sound of ceramic clinking and wood creaking filled the air as everyone picked theirs for the evening. The tea served was sweetened, but unconventionally so. Michael Rakowitz, who brewed the evening’s tea, spoke to the gallery, sharing memories of his grandmother relentlessly begging his grandfather to make an Iraqi specialty. “She complained for years that no one could make date syrup the way my grandfather used to make it,” Rakowitz said. “The tea you are drinking here tonight to honor these men and the stories of Arab people everywhere is sweetened not by honey or sugar, but date syrup from Iraq.” The tea is earthy and dark against the luminously white ceramic cups, all scribbled with distinct floral patterns. These are not decorative flowers, but hold the weight of a certain history and humanity behind them. Hughes and Ginsburg have crafted 779 teacups for each person held captive in Guantanamo Bay. Each cup is ornately designed to include the state flower of each detainee, their names and their country of origin. 220 tea cups were made for the Afghan majority and on every cup are 220 tulips. Every cup is a statistical document. “They have names,” Ginsberg said. “This might seem like a small thing. But when you are in a detention camp or a prison, you do not have a name; you have a number.” According to all accounts, the original cups from Guantanamo were destroyed. Hughes submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense for any documentation of these cups with no response. From the desolate cells of Guantanamo Bay, the Styrofoam teacups have not been forgotten by the outside world. The Tea Project has made Chris Arendt’s accounts of the detainees hope into something tangible. “This love story and these flowers are really for me kind of the heartbeat of story. It shows the impulse to make something exists even in one of the darkest places imaginable places I could dream of,” Ginsburg said.

Open Adoption: Giving Birth Mothers a Voice Devin Bohbrink September 30, 2016

There are three choices. Each one sounds more perfect than the last. The intricate letters and beautiful photographs overwhelm your mind. Only one couple can be chosen, and they will be the new parents of your child. In 1989, 21-year-old Margie was faced with this choice for the child she was carrying. Margie was placing her baby with adoptive parents, and no decision had ever been harder. Thanks to two women, Dean Borgeson and Enid Callen, Margie was able to choose the birth parents for her child, and be a part of the process. Had Margie had to make this decision a few years earlier, she may not have had the option to choose the parents herself. Before the late â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;80s, adoption was usually a closed process. This meant that all records of the birth family would be sealed off to the adoptive family. Open adoption, which involves the birth mother meeting the adoptive parents and maintaining contact, can range from letters and photos every few months, to a close relationship involving face-to-face visits. Two years earlier, in 1987, Enid Callen and Dean Borgosen wanted to make sure birth mothers would have the assistance and options Margie would have. Working at Links, a health clinic in Northfield, Illinois, Dean was volunteering as a clinic coordinator. Many of the women who came in would terminate pregnancies, but for the ones who wanted to carry to term and place, Dean was ready to help. While at Links, Dean housed a total of eight birth mothers in her home while they worked out their adoption plans. The process was very informal, but Dean and Enid felt that the birth mothers were the most important part of the equation. Dean is an adoptive mother herself, with three biological children and two adoptive children. She was also adopted in a closed adoption, so she has never had any information on her birth family. Having three children at the time, Dean felt like it was time to take off work and try being a stayat-home mother. Very quickly into it, she knew it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for her. Dean got in touch with Links and was connected with Richard Pearlman, who was in the process of opening an adoption agency. Dean contacted Enid.

“I don’t know how I know, but I felt like she would want to help,” Dean said about Enid. “She always felt that birth mothers were the most important, too.” The two embarked on a journey to help open an adoption agency, but soon realized this was not the path they wanted to take. “We were never in it for the money,” Dean said. “Enid and I had realized she and I had a different idea of what we wanted to do.” After parting with Richard, Dean and Enid got right to it. They had their purpose, and in June 1988, The Adoption Connection opened for business. At this point, only one-third of adoptions in the US were considered open adoptions. However, the term “open” can be used very loosely. The Adoption Connection was going to change this. By 1993, 79 percent of agencies offered open adoptions. Dean and Enid were changing the game. They wanted the process to be simple, and for the only middleman to be a lawyer facilitating “Open adoptions allow birth the paperwork. During the first mothers to choose among year of operation, they had anticadoptive parent profiles” ipated placing three babies. By the end of the year, they had already placed 12. “We were doing something that hadn’t been done before,” Dean said remembering their first year. “We were serving a niche that hadn’t been reached yet.” Before making her decision to place her child through adoption, Margie had met Dean while she was working at Links. Dean had given Margie information on adoption. “She was shocked to hear from me, I guess I didn’t seem particularly friendly the first time,” Margie remembered about the first time she called Dean back. Margie would become one of the first birth mothers they would help place. At this point in her life, Margie was 20 years old and “doing nothing” as she put it. When asked if she had a career or was in college she laughed out an “oh, please! I think I worked at Kohl’s, a bridal store, I don’t even know.” Margie knew she wasn’t going to terminate her pregnancy, but she knew she couldn’t keep the baby. “I knew I couldn’t give her a life,” Margie said about making the decision. After contacting Dean and Enid, they began the open adoption process. Open adoptions allow birth mothers to choose among adoptive parent profiles. During the early ‘80s, most adoption agencies restricted adoptive families to almost an impossible group. The “ideal” adoptive parents were in their 30’s, had a fertility problem hindering them from having biological children, and made a certain amount of money. Dean and Enid wanted a broad spectrum of people to be able to adopt.

The prospective parents had to create profiles, including a letter, which usually starts out with “Dear Birth Mother,” along with pictures and some family history. “I remember me, my roommate, and the father all reading them and picking the same family,” Margie said. “They just seemed like really amazing people.” The decision had been made. Shortly after, Margie met the adoptive parents. The three first met at The Adoption Connection, and then progressed into going out for dinners. “They were so easy to talk to,” Margie remembered. She describes the whole process during her pregnancy as very easy to deal with because they were so great. As the birth of the child approached, the adoptive parents agreed not to be there when the baby was born. Margie was given two days with the baby girl before they came to pick her up. Two days is typically the standard amount of time a birth mother spends with the baby in an open adoption. She remembers taking her aggression out on the woman who was there to witness her sign the adoption papers. “This poor woman was just trying to do her job, and all I could do was scream and cry in her direction.” After two days, it was finally time. Margie did not want to see them while they were in the hospital either, but as luck would have it they bumped into each other on the way out. Awkwardness aside, Margie was glad to see how happy they looked with their new daughter. The parents sent Margie photographs and beautiful letters every three months. They would go out to dinner, but the baby would not be present. Margie wasn’t ready to meet her yet. The meeting wouldn’t happen for another six years. As time went on, Margie was happy to see how well they were taking care of her. “She had a pony, so obviously she was having a very tough childhood,” she joked, remembering photos she received. Margie knew she was okay, and that was enough for the time being. Life went on for everyone, and Margie decided she was ready to meet her daughter. At this point, she was married and pregnant. “I figured if I was pregnant again, it may be less threatening for them having me around, and it was just kind of time,” she said. After the first meeting, Margie was able to see her daughter at least once a year. She is now 25, and the two are still in contact. They have a very healthy relationship. Margie and the adoptive parents continued to work with The Adoption Connection, attending benefits every year such as silent auctions and pool parties for the families and birth mothers. Margie spoke on birth mother panels at events, along with Vicki, another one of The Adoption Connection legacies, as Enid likes to call them.

In 1994, 20-year-old Vicki was faced with this choice for the child she was carrying. She was placing her baby with adoptive parents, and no decision had ever been harder. Vicki was living on the East Coast working at Wal-Mart. She found out she was pregnant in July, already three months into the pregnancy. Not having much time to decide between termination and parenting, Vicki and the father decided to keep the baby. Once Vicki started attending doctor’s appointments, the father stopped showing up. He was gone, and she was going to have to raise the child on her own. At this point, Vicki’s mother and father had disowned her for being pregnant with a black child. “My dad said I was never going to be able to walk into the house with my black son ever again,” Vicki remembered. “My entire family disowned me because I was pregnant with a black baby.” “I couldn’t think anymore, so took my car and came here,” she said. Vicki moved to Gurnee while eight months pregnant to live with her grandmother. She continued to work at Wal-Mart, and still had to figure out what she was going to do. While planning to keep the baby, Vicki’s grandmother introduced her to a counselor who worked at The Adoption Connection in Highland Park. When she first found out she was pregnant, Vicki didn’t think “If you think about the adoption would be an answer. She stereotype of a birth mom, was pregnant with a biracial child. She called The Adoption Connec- they’re crack whores who tion and they sent her informa- live under bridges” tion. Since Vicki had reached out to them for adoption, it didn’t take her long to make the final decision. She was given three profiles, and the choice was easy. Vicki’s main worry was whether she would be good enough for the family she chose. “When you look at these profiles all the families look so perfect,” she said. “All I kept thinking is I don’t want my son in that kind of place! What if he’s not perfect?” One factor about the adoptive parents she chose stuck out to Vicki. “When I found out that the father smoked, I was like ‘Great! I love these people! They’re not perfect either!’ ” she said remembering her choice. Vicki isn’t the only birth mother to make the choice over something humanizing like that one of the parents smokes. “One of the girls we had chose a family because they were White Sox fans,” Dean remembers. “Sometimes all it takes is that simple connection.” Three months later, Vicki had her son. Both parents were there for the birth, but Vicki doesn’t remember much about being there. However, she does remember her mother coming around and flying in to be there for her during the birth.

“We were going to have pictures and letters because that’s what open adoption meant back then,” Vicki explained. “There wasn’t going to be any other contact.” By the time her son was a year old, they were having visits at the house at least once a year. It wasn’t entirely easy at first for the adoptive father to let Vicki into their home. “If you think about the stereotype of a birth mom, they’re crack whores who live under bridges,” Vicki laughed. “It’s this imagination of who they are, not normal women who are trying their best.” Vicki knew that her son’s parents didn’t think of her this way, but there was always the fear that she would screw up and they could take away the visits. She remembers a time she was running ten minutes late for a visit, and all she could think was that they would cut off contact because she messed up. “If I can’t be on time, they’re not going to let me see my son anymore,” Vicki remembers from that day. Everything worked out fine. Vicki is very close with her son’s adoptive parents, and her now 21-year-old son. Along with Margie, Vicki continued to work with The Adoption Connection speaking on birth mother panels. Unfortunately in 2005, Dean and Enid had to close The Adoption Connection’s doors on account of a new legislation. “We were the only place of our kind in Illinois, so they wouldn’t make an exception,” Dean said. The legislature passed made it so private adoption needed to be overseen by a licensed agency. Dean and Enid didn’t see this as an option, and so they closed. However, an organization in Evanston, the On Your Feet Foundation, reached out to ask them to take over running a place for birth mothers. “It seemed like the right fit,” Enid said. Moving to On Your Feet brought their focus onto birth mothers post adoption. The organization provides a sense of community for birth mothers with all different stories. Once Dean and Enid took over, Vicki also started working for On Your Feet as a caseworker. Enid is now retired, but still keeps in touch with birth moms and families she has helped over the years. Dean and Vicki are on the board at On Your Feet still, and Vicki helps put together retreats. The era of On Your Feet has connected The Adoption Connection to a new generation of birth mothers, and has given them the opportunity to help them go through what they went through years ago. In 2004, Sheena was 20 years old and enjoying her time in college. The last thing she was expecting was an unplanned pregnancy. However, this is exactly what was handed to her. Sheena was living with roommates at the time, and decided to move back in with her parents. Still undecided on termination or carrying to term, Sheena decided abortion wasn’t for her pretty quickly. “I thought about it for like two minutes,” Sheena said. “Abortion was not something

I would have been able to live with. I thought that was going to be a lot harder of a journey.” Sheena remembers feeling very angry at the time, since she was only doing the same things as her friends. “We were all in college, going out, and had boyfriends,” she said. “I just happened to be the one who ‘got caught’ is what I always say.” During her pregnancy, Sheena lost touch with a lot of friends. “I was

Devin Bohbrink

embarrassed and I didn’t want to see anyone.” She remembers it being a sad time and just wanted to get through it. Even though she had decided termination wasn’t the answer, the final decision had not come to her yet. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do parenting or adoption-wise until about six or seven months in,” Sheena remembers. “I was 20 at the time, when you’re old enough that you could do it. It’s not like I was fifteen.” Once she had decided to pursue adoption, Sheena contacted The Cradle, located in Evanston. “I had talked to some other places, but I figured I would have more options through a bigger agency out of Chicago.” Unlike at The Adoption Connection, Sheena was given a huge binder to go through of prospective parents. The decision was tough. “When you’re picking parents for your children, you want to pick maybe more than what you had,” Sheena said on the decision. “I wanted someone to raise my child that was excited about travel, had degrees, working in a corporate environment! Those kinds of things,” she explained. “I had some basic criteria I was looking for,” she said. “Of course college educated, in the Chicago area, Catholic, and that was really it. After a long search, one couple stood out to Sheena. The couple she

chose already had a biological daughter. Sheena felt that this would help the adoptive mother to understand the struggle she was going through. “I wanted my son to have siblings, and it would be great for him to have one right off the bat.” Once Sheena had made the decision to place her child with a set of adoptive parents, the meetings began. Since Sheena was so far along, they had a short time to get to know each other. The trio would have dinner, talk on the phone, and send pictures. “The dynamic is interesting,” Sheena remembers. “It’s very awkward at first. They’re strangers, and you’re promising them your baby.” During the pregnancy, a birth mother can change her mind and decide to keep the baby, while the adoptive family is assisting in cost for medical bills as part of the process. Sheena and the adoptive family got to know each other as well as they could over the next few months. When the day Sheena went into labor came, she kept telling herself this was going to be the worst part and then it would be over. She was very wrong. “After I had him everything changed,” Sheena said. “I never thought that it wouldn’t be hard, I knew I was going to be upset, but I think until you go through that you don’t know how it feels.” Sheena had feelings she never thought she would after she gave birth to her son. When a birth mother has a baby through open adoption, they are typically given two days with the baby. A request can be made for more, but two is standard. This gives the birth mother some time to process what is going on and finalize her decision. Many birth mothers have second thoughts during these days, and counselors are present to help them through it and remind them of the decision they have made. While in the hospital for those two days, Sheena was overcome with love for her new baby boy, and also guilt. Knowing these will be the only two days she would be able to have with him like this unless she took him home was heart wrenching. The type of love Sheena felt was indescribable and she had never felt it before. The guilt would end up overriding the love for Sheena.

“Many birth mothers have second thoughts during these days, and couselors are present to help them through it” “I felt guilt because if I brought this baby home, it would be because of my pain,” she said. “Not because he’s better off with me.” Sheena knew that she wasn’t going to be able to give her son what he needed at that point. She knew her initial decision was the right thing to do. She doesn’t know where the strength came to sign the papers, but she signed them, and that was that. After Sheena had gone home from the hospital, she was asked to come

back to see her son and the adoptive parents before they took him home. She didn’t want to see her son, but she did want to see his new parents. The memory she has of seeing them is her puffy-faced and crying. Sheena wanted them to see how devastated she was, so someday when her son asked about his birth, they would be able to tell him they saw how hard it was for her to make this decision. Sheena’s son is about to turn 12, and they have a very close open adoption relationship. He has even met some of her family. “If someone had told me all those years ago this was how it was going to turn out, I would have thought they were crazy,” Sheena remembers. Sheena found The On Your Feet Foundation six months after her son’s birth. She’s on the board, helps plan retreats, and is very involved in the birth mother community they have created. “I really truly feel that it’s been my purpose in life to do this work,” she said. Through the On Your Feet community, Sheena met a young woman named Shanyce on a retreat, who had a much different experience with her pregnancy. Shanyce was attending college in Iowa when things started to get difficult. College wasn’t working out for her, so she went to visit her dad in Tennessee. The visit resulted in an unplanned pregnancy for a 23-year-old Shanyce. Once Shanyce realized she was pregnant, she moved back in with her mother. By the time Shanyce found out she was pregnant, she was too far along for termination to even be considered. This was brought to her attention while at a clinic to inquire about termination. Shanyce was already very close to finishing the term, and much to her surprise, she was carrying twins. The only person that Shanyce told was her best friend. On the day her water broke, she managed to walk to the hospital by herself. Not wanting her mother to know, she told her she was staying at a friend’s house. Only one week prior did Shanyce talk to a counselor about looking into adoption. “I already knew what I wanted,” Shanyce said remembering her parent choice. “I wanted a two-parent household, religious, and a very open adoption.” Unlike Sheena’s endless options of adoptive families, Shanyce was brought one portfolio. They were exactly what she wanted, so she chose them. Shanyce went into labor a week before Christmas. The adoptive parents were away for the holidays, but flew in so they could be there when she gave birth. They were the only two in the room. With twins, it is very common to be premature, which was the case with these two. They were taken to the NICU, and Shanyce was asked to return every day for a week to breast feed them. Shanyce was sent home with the breast pump materials, and still keeping the secret from her family, she pumped in secret and

would sneak off to the hospital. After getting to spend the week vising with the twins, on the sixth day Shanyce had to sign the adoption papers. “It was probably the worst day of my life, to this day,” Shanyce said. “I just kept thinking that they would hate me if I signed them.” Once the twins were well enough to go home, Shanyce stopped going to the hospital, and continued to keep her secret from her family. Shanyce was worried about how the open adoption was going to work. She didn’t just want letters – she wanted to be a part of their life. Since the twins were born around Christmas, she didn’t get to meet them until the end of January. The first meetings were at the adoption agency, but quickly moved to the adoptive family’s house. Shanyce was nervous because she had already lost her children once, and didn’t want to go through it again. The visits became very regular, and Shanyce still sees the twins at least once a week. They’re five now. She is so close to the adoptive parents that she will even go over to their house just to spend time with them. Regardless of having a close relationship with the adoptive family, Shanyce still couldn’t talk to anyone about it. She was scared to tell her family. During her struggle, the counselor that assisted her during the adoption got her in touch with The On Your Feet Foundation. She met with Vicki about a year after the twins were born. “I usually work through everything on my own,” she said. “But this was too “She didn’t just want much for me to handle.” While working with On Your letters – she wanted to Feet, Vicki helped Shanyce get back in be a part of their life” school. Vicki bought her a bus pass, so she could get to the community college. Assisting with class tuition and transportation are two of the services On Your Feet offer to help birth mothers get their lives back together. Sheena helped Shanyce get a job as an intern at her office. Shanyce will be starting at DePaul in the spring to finish her bachelor’s, thanks to the assistance she received from On Your Feet. Four years later, through a chain of gossip, Shanyce’s family found out about the twins. Trying to figure out how to tackle it, Shanyce gave her mother a letter she had written while she was in the hospital. To her surprise, her mother was very supportive of the situation, as was the rest of the family. In fact, her mother met the twins recently at a birthday party. This is one of the first times Shanyce has told her story. The Adoption Connection and On Your Feet Foundation have changed the face of adoption, making it possible for birth mothers to come out of the shadows and have a voice. Having a community of other women going through similar things gives birth mothers people to talk to when

they may not have had anyone before. Within the last twenty-five years, birth mothers have come to embrace the labor of love that is doing what they do. About 95 percent of adoptions in the US have openness now, whether it’s just letters and pictures or in-person visits. They all agreed it is a different time for them now. It’s not a secret anymore. “Birth mothers wear it on their arm like a badge of honor now,” Sheena said, smiling. “It’s a truly amazing thing.”

‘Nightcrawler’ is a Mirror and We Can’t Look Away Steven Long October 14, 2016

Contrast is elemental to movies. Halloween is basically a movie about a girl babysitting in the suburbs. It just also happens to feature a character with no face who wants to cut said girl into at least two pieces (it’s never clear). A lot of what makes scary movies so scary is how they use contrast, the degree to which they throw something abnormal and strange and terrifying into our natural world and sensibilities. The intersection of the familiar with the unfamiliar is where we start getting nervous. With respect to this formula, Nightcrawler isn’t really a traditional scary movie. Virtually everything that happens in it also happens in real life. Nightcrawler is set in Los Angeles. It opens with static views of the streets and corner shops and vacant lots that will appear in our story. This is easily recognizable as America today. This is what happens here. This is how it looks. What’s scary about Nightcrawler is Lou Bloom. Lou is the distillation of everything dark and horrifying about the world of Nightcrawler, a world that thrives on crime stories and grisly accidents—our world. Within minutes of our meeting Lou, he stops to absorb the scene of a flaming car crashed on the side of the highway. Voyeuristic, yes, but nothing that many of us wouldn’t do. It’s when a seasoned stringer squeals in (the always underrated Bill Paxton) and shoves his camera in the most graphic angles of the ongoing accident that we see what makes Lou different in this scenario from us. As the stringer speeds off to sling his raw footage to the highest-bidding news station, we watch Lou realize that there is an industry behind accidents like this one. He sees the same dark fascination that caused him to pull over and investigate the scene for himself being monetized. And he sees it as a perfect fit. We don’t know much about Lou except that he is eager for work. Maybe desperate. And on the surface, Lou is doing everything right as a man trying to make it in America right now. He sees opportunities and seizes them in order to advance his position and increase his value. He is constantly extolling the teachings he got from an online business course. What makes us uncomfortable is just how calculating Lou is within the framework of entrepreneurship. He treats relationships like transactions, and we watch it works out swimmingly for him. He is neither likable

nor personable—his flash-frozen eyes and ceaseless persistence betray the phoniness of his friendly temperament—yet he encapsulates the ambition that we instill in our youth. The second scene of the film sees Lou offering a definition of himself in hopes of a job: “Who am I? I’m a hard worker, I set high goals, and I’ve been told that I am persistent.” He offers his motto: “If you wanna win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy a ticket.” He grins. He likes that line. Lou is the engine for the scariness in Nightcrawler, his predictably pragmatic thinking rendering him terrifyingly unpredictable, but moreover, he is the engine for every step of the plot in Nightcrawler. Writer/ director Dan Gilroy described the genesis of Nightcrawler as an “antihero success story,” and this is the distinction that elevates it above just some character study of a brooding psychopath. It is plot-centric but character-driven: every sequence results from a new angle of Lou’s mounting ambition, and it is the scope of that ambition that suggests to us that he may in fact be psychopathic. He knows that his footage has emotional shock value, but he is impervious to it. Lou only sees the corpses in his footage as dollar signs. Lou is in the death business, and business is booming. In addition to the character of Lou, the cinematic elements of Nightcrawler are equally powerful in eliciting our fear—our fear of what Lou might do as his efforts are continually rewarded. Nowhere is this contrast wielded more effectively than in Nightcrawler’s score. Gilroy doesn’t give into the temptation to lay on Reznor/Roth stylings; there are no pulsing synths here to soundtrack Lou’s feverish nighttime shoots. Instead, the music of Nightcrawler is almost quirky in its inconsistency with the horrifying events of the story—as he fills his library of segments with titles like “Nursing Home Nightmare,” “Toddler Stabbed,” and “Carjacking/Woman Dragged,” a distorted guitar kicks into gear, throwing out a looping riff that effectively says Look at him go! The music seems to concede that, yes, people are dying, but look at how well our hero is doing! It’s brilliant filmmaking that indicates an absolute commitment to the narrative rather than the cinematic style du jour. And I could go on about the masterfully crafted aesthetics of Nightcrawler—the searing shadows and washed-out lights of cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood), the near-perfect performance from

“The scariest part of Nightcrawler is its commentary on capitalism and its role in American journalism in the age of communication” Jake Gyllenhaal, every scene between Lou and KWLA coordinator Nina Romina—but, per our Halloween theme, I feel an obligation to the specif-

ic properties that make this movie scary; in this respect, the scariest part of Nightcrawler is its commentary on capitalism and its role in American journalism in the age of communication. Lou might be a scary guy, but he is rewarded by the system at every turn—and that’s the bottom line. In Nightcrawler, Lou’s work and his centric role in KWLA’s ratings are symbolic of our distinctly American demand for easy, copy-and-paste, crime narratives. We can’t get enough of them. We digest them like Chinese food. Local news is not News so much as a report on the bloodiest local crimes, and the pulpier, the better. In the hierarchy of crime cuisine, the high-functioning Kenneth Lays and Bernie Madoffs are the lobsters and steaks; they thrive in the high-minded world of Journalism, which you have to pay for and keep up with to comprehend in the juicy terms of human casualty. The OJ Simpsons and Jodi Ariases are the McDonalds fries; they’re splattered across People and the seedy magazines that we eye at the grocery checkout. And below even these, way down at the bottom, are the Twinkies and Fun Dips of crime—homicides and hit-and-runs; drunk drivers that kill and home invaders that rape. These events happen daily in cities all over the world, and it makes them ripe for local broadcast. As Nina tells Lou at his very first footage sale, “To capture the spirit of what we air, think of our newscast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.” Nice. So while it freaks us out that Lou is so earnest in his belief in the personal responsibility narrative, and while it definitely freaks us out that he takes this enthusiasm, unadulterated with guilt, to shootings, stabbings, fires, crashes, assaults, there is truthfully nothing about Lou that isn’t already part of our DNA as Americans. He is everything that is subliminal and innate in the economy of media, distilled into the form of a man. And you know what, he seems like he might just have a bright future ahead of him.

“Local news is not News so much as a report on the bloodiest local crimes, and the pulpier, the better”

Femdot. Jack Ladd October 14, 2016

“I’m not just a rapper,” Femdot said to me. “I’m not just a scientist,” Femi said to me. Femi Adigun would sit next to me at work, or sometimes across from me, in an office housing dozens of college students working online customer service for a large furniture supplier. Sitting in the brick building in the West Loop, Femi was constantly working on biology homework with pounding music radiating out of his headphones. His dark ebony face, always shadowed by a baseball cap, stared intently at lab assignments while he artfully juggled appeasing furious customers with calm words and very little assistance. This is customer service, after all. It wasn’t until months after I met Femi that I saw a video he shared on his personal Facebook account from a separate page on Facebook called “Femdot.” The video is an excerpt from Chicago documentary “The Culture.” I watched Femi rap for one minute and ten seconds. Funeral homes, only thing that’s recession proof Politicians always stretching truth Shuttin’ down schools and that’s just a lesson too All the sons that made it to 18, that’s a blessin’ too Got children killin’ children Got the pastor losin’ faith in religion Got mothers havin’ more children anticipating the loss of one They smoked my homie, they put him in a coffin, son As he spoke about the Black experience in Chicago, I had never seen Femi’s eyes light up like this before. I had no idea about his talent, his passion or his experience as a Chicagoan. He wrote his first verse when he was six years old. In DePaul’s Arts and Letters Hall, Femi sat at a table on the ground floor rocking a vintage mesh Chicago White Sox jersey, his signature carved elephant necklace and a hat from The Illmore at SXSW, riding off the success of his EP, “fo(u)r.” He was featured on Pigeons and Planes’ Best New Artists of the Month for April. Lyrical Lemonade declared him one of the “20 Chicago artists to look out for in 2016.” He was invited by Red Bull Sound Select to perform with Soulja Boy on June 8 in Denver and is featured on Andrew Barber’s renowned Chicago hip-hop/R&B publication Fake Shore Drive. Over a thousand fans on Facebook. Thousands of plays on Soundcloud. 21 years old. health science student.

“I kept seeing his name throughout this year,” said Fake Shore Drive editor Andrew Barber. “I get so many rappers, hundreds of e-mails a week from aspiring rappers from Chicago and the Midwest who want to be featured on the site. But, I’m a true believer that the cream rises to the top. And I heard his project, his EP ‘fo(u)r,’ and ‘97’ – ‘97’ is personally my favorite track off the project, and probably one of my favorite tracks of 2016. I heard it and I was like ‘this kid is official, he’s legit.’ So I looked him up, did some research and saw that he’s a great student and has an interesting background.” Barber was one of the original curators for Red Bull’s Sound Select program, which puts on shows globally to promote new artists. “So, for Red Bull, we’re always looking for new talent, looking for a fresh perspective and for someone who, you know, can excel in the music world.” Femi’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria in the 1980s. Since then, Femi has had amazing success in the Chicago music scene. His sister happens to be a 2012 Nigerian Olympic athlete. One of his brothers is a comedian in Los Angeles, and the other inspired Femi to start rapping at age 6. Femi juggles his health science major studies (with a concentration in biology), performing, creating new work, and his customer service job in “I didn’t want to be a the West Loop. “I omit sleep. I try to do everything, so sleep is the first to college dropout that’s go.” All free time is allocated toward rapping. I want to be so studying, working and creating. Femi tries to be involved politically, too. much more than that.” “People think I’m crazy because I sacrifice sleep so often, but I’m trying to be the best,” Femi said. “It’s been a great experience working with Femi,” said Farhan Shakeel, Femi’s manager at his job in the West Loop. “We started working at the company at the same time and I’ve never seen his motivation slow down. If anything, it’s gotten stronger with time.” With all of the political happenings at DePaul, Femi said that it was the “right place” for what he has wanted to do. The rapper said that the university is a reflection of Chicago as a whole with its diverse political views and relationships between marginalized and non-marginalized communities, which he loves to “dissect.” “Why health science?” I asked Femi. “I don’t want to be a stereotype,” Femi said with a smile on his face. “I didn’t want to be a college dropout that’s rapping. I want to be so much more than that. I want to be able to talk to you about the top 50 greatest rappers of all time and the entire process of glycolysis. I can do anything I put my mind to.” On his music, Femi said, “I want it to show that I’m human. I want people to play my music and know me and I want it to show that it’s okay

to be who you are. I’m not trying to be a role model or one-dimensional.” His EP “fo(u)r” launched in late April and each of the four songs on the project have been played over 13,000 times on Soundcloud. “97” has been played over 46,000 times on the streaming site so far. Femdot says that ‘90s R&B and hip-hop influence most of his music. He likes to study the culture and the history of the rap music scene but he grew up on a lot of Jay-Z. Kendrick Lamar is the rapper who has “all of his attention” right now. “I’m a fan of him, but it’s not like I’m trying to be like him. I’m trying to surpass him in every way.” Femdot performed with Soulja Boy and Catch Lungs in Denver at the Bluebird Theatre on June 8. “He has a super good ear for beats, for melody and his wordplay is super advanced,” said Andrew Barber. “And it’s not

Alexandra Amendola

just me. Red Bull had to listen to him, ultimately they get the final say on everything, and they heard it too.” “The 13-year-old me is unnecessarily excited,” said Femi. “It’s super dope to perform with Soulja Boy. I know all of the dances by heart. And now I’m like a Red Bull girl with all these free drinks.” After the show in Denver, Femi used the summer to continue to work on new music, with the goal in mind being a full-length mixtape. This summer Femi released “thr(we),” an EP featuring more music that Femi describes as an introduction to himself, something on the “nostalgic” side. The video for “341,” one of the songs off “fo(u)r,” was just released on Russell Simmon’s digital platform, All Def. Praise in the YouTube comments included some fire emojis, “Femdot is THE TRUTH,” and “an early

90s vibe.” Nostalgia was what Femi was looking for, and that’s what he achieved. With two shows coming up this month, it doesn’t look like Femdot, or Femi, is slowing down anytime soon. “I, as a black man, can do whatever I want to do. I choose to rap but I can do whatever I put my mind to, and I want people to see that. I want to show my little cousins that they can do whatever they want to do. And I can actually back it up, I’ve gone through all this education and I’ll have a degree next year and I’m still going to rap. Everyone has kept saying it’s impossible, but impossible is just a word people use as filler until something is done.”

Lights Out Ivana Rihter October 14, 2016

The pat downs happen three people at a time. It is early, and you are standing on the cold floor without shoes on so that even the soles of your feet can be thoroughly examined. The pat downs do not leave any crevice unchecked; shoes and bras must be shaken out. All papers and notebooks are checked. Makeup, jewelry and revealing clothes are forbidden. Past the Visitor Center, you will see the inmates with special privileges working: doing laundry, preparing food, sewing uniforms. Six gates act as a barrier separating the outside world from those inside. Each massive steel blockade towers in silence, lined up in 50 foot increments, acting as checkpoints for additional inspections of notebooks and paper. Past the dining hall, you walk into a school house and wait for students to arrive. “At first, most people are scared of the prisoners,” Alexandria Boutros said. “By the end of the class, they are scared of the prison.” This is her second quarter inside the Stateville Correctional Center through DePaul University’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, where undergraduate students and prisoners sit in the schoolhouse together to learn about social issues and each other. The program allows DePaul students to study restorative justice, politics and inequality within the 33-foot concrete walls of the Stateville Correctional Center. The origin of the program can be traced back to Temple University, Philadelphia. It was created to form a relationship between prisons and institutions of higher learning where the approach to social justice is impacted by the learning environment itself. “Outside” undergraduate students and the same number of “inside” incarcerated students have class together within a prison and learn lessons of justice and truth from each other. Howard Rosing, executive director of the Steans Center at DePaul University, brought the Inside-Out Program to DePaul from Temple. As a faculty member of the Community Service Studies program, he has always had an interest in bringing justice to the incarcerated. “This seemed to be a way to do that that provides dignity to all parties,” Howard said. “I don’t feel that incarceration provides any sense of dignity to the inside students, so we use this program to infuse human dignity into the prison system. This is not just a means of learning; it is a solidarity movement.” Alexandria has come to know the ritual of pat downs, visitor passes and checkpoints well. She has heard the stories of men entrapped by a system that exploits them. She has seen their pain. “Learning in this way deconstructs what incarceration means to us,”

Howard said. “Within the program, the inside students are treated as equals to outside students, even though they are not equal. The outside students get to walk out.” Until Nov. 1 this year, an institution rooted in the notion that everyone should be afraid of prisoners sat just three miles down the road. The Statesville Haunted House was designed to emulate the inside of the Stateville Correctional Center. The “haunted” prison describes the setting of their maze vividly, sparing no detail of the horror visitors are about to enter into: The Prisoners have rioted, the guards have fled, a darkness has seized control of this Maximum Security Prison and our Warden has opened the gates for visitors. After the prisoners have processed “The Meat/Visitors,” you will be forced to find your way through 23 maximum security cells and come eye-to-eye with over 100 criminals that were too evil to die. Statesville Haunted Prison®. No one escapes. Paul Siegel, founder and president of the Statesville Haunted Prison, grew up across the street from the original correctional center. According to Kaity Siegel — Paul’s daughter and general manager of the haunted prison — the idea behind the attraction arose from a rather dramatic childhood story; according to family lore, an inmate knocked on their door ten years before Paul was born, demanding the keys to his father’s car in the midst of a great escape. He and an accomplice got one mile down the road before the police caught up with them, but the narrative left an impression that would eventually lead to the Statesville Haunted Prison. The family enterprise started as a hay ride in 1995, according to Kaity, and a 7,000 square foot maze was opened a year later — five minutes away from the actual prison. It’s been growing and thriving ever since. According to the family, the Statesville Haunted Prison was not thrown together impulsively; research and work went into choosing the featured pris- “Not only does it oners. “Our thinking was: ‘why not base it exist in the realm off of something actually scary?’” Kaity said. “What better way to make something scary of fantasy, but it than base it off of real life and real people?” further entrenches While the attraction has been praised and enjoyed by many since its creation, some negative stigma advocates for prison reform argue that this surrounding the representation is nowhere near the truth; incarcerated” not only does it exist in the realm of fantasy, but it further entrenches negative stigma surrounding the incarcerated. Kaity disagreed, saying that their haunted prison was a Halloween attraction like any other. “We are not doing this to mock anyone,” Kaity said. “We did our re-

search on the scariest prisoners to come out of Stateville Correction Center like John Wayne Gacy and Richard Speck. So many of our ‘prisoners’ are based off of them and the things they did.” Despite the family’s intentions, the distinction between Stateville and Statesville is confusing by design — only the letter “s” identifies one from the other. According to Kaity, people periodically make the mistake of sending letters meant for inmates to Siegel family grounds. Others who call the haunted prison looking for incarcerated loved ones are met with a voicemail, along with a default explanation of how to contact the real Stateville prison. Kaity said these mistakes are common, and that some visitors even think the haunted prison is located inside the actual correctional center. One of the first questions on the FAQ page asks, “is Statesville Haunted Prison a real prison?” The answer is no — it takes the “format and plot” of one. The haunted prison is an extremely successful business endeavor with top ratings from must-see Halloween attraction lists. Last month, DePaul’s weekly newspaper — The DePaulia — published an article highlighting the inner workings of the haunted prison and its artistic merits. The DePaulia’s characterization of the enterprise — praising “its ability to make everything look real,” for example — frustrated the students participating in the Inside-Out Program. The students, who have taken classes with actual Stateville inmates, believe this implication of realism tacitly promotes the haunted prison’s demonization of these human beings. The gruesome images of corroded cells, flooding septic systems and ravenous men contribute to the haunted prison’s continued success at the expense of the men for whom Stateville is a reality. “I am so disappointed in The DePaulia and all of its members for their lack of research and knowledge, for their exploitation of a marginalized identity for a story,” said Maria Vega, another student currently taking classes at Stateville. When 14 East reached out to The DePaulia for a response, editor-in-chief Jessica Villagomez declined to comment directly on the criticisms from Inside-Out students. “If readers are questioning our editorial process and decision-making please guide them to me,” she wrote. The haunted house industry has a straightforward goal: terrifying people in every way possible. Whether it be through elaborate mazes, masked actors or monsters popping out behind corners, their intentions are rarely evil. When haunted houses use mental institutions or prisons as a setting, however, ethical lines begin to blur. People shrieking in straight jackets and prisoners reaching blood-soaked hands through cell bars are not just edgy or harmless Halloween characters; they are a grossly exaggerated depiction of the underprivileged and systemically oppressed human beings who spend time in these institutions.

The characters portrayed inside Statesville Haunted Prison are “guilty” of torture, mass killings and mutilation. They even have their own files modeled to look like actual criminal records. According to the students who spend time with these men, the terrifying depictions of prisoners consumed by crime and bloodthirst within the prison cannot be further from the truth. Shamiah Byrd refused to accept the Statesville Haunted Prison as anything but an act of dehumanization. “To glorify an occasion that depicts human beings as animals or scary, or to belittle someone’s sanity?” Shamiah asks. “To go through a haunted house right across from a prison because it’s ‘the scariest haunted house in the state’ is to be completely ignorant of what is actually taking place.” According to a 2013 study conducted by the John Howard Academy, Stateville’s staff of mental health professionals are assigned an average of 95 patients each. Furthermore, hundreds of prisoners seek mental health treatment without success, becoming statistics lost in a sizable backlog. “The Statesville Haunted House depicts these prisoners as crazy, insane monsters with axes in their heads,” Alexandria said. “Mental illness is already extremely stigmatized when it should be viewed as a health problem. The haunted house plays off of the fear of mental illness and the lack of resources prisons have to deal with it.” Many would argue that the Stateville Correctional Center does not need Halloween decorations or masks to evoke fear. It is home to the nation’s last operational panopticon — an architectural design where cells are arranged around a central tower of light from which prisoners can be observed at all times. The use of these in prisons has been widely discontinued due to the inhumane and animal-like conditions it often provides prisoners. According to inmate accounts, rats, cockroaches and flooded toilets are common in their cells. Violence at the hands of both correctional officers and other inmates is often unavoidable. Actors performing with live rats and smearing feces on their faces is no laughing matter for the students who actually know individuals living in squalid conditions. “Just being in Stateville is violence against you,” Alexandria said. She has personally heard the unbelievable measures prisoners must take, sometimes having to heave their bodies against cell doors in order to get any aid from the officers. “These inmates are human beings and their feelings are valid!” Shamiah said. “Their presence is more than just a show-and-tell for a haunted house. As a human being, you should take a moment to think about your privilege and what it means to dehumanize someone who cannot enjoy that same privilege.” Students who make the drive out to Crest Hill, Illinois every week and take classes in the Stateville Correctional Center have found complexity, goodness and beauty in this incredibly bleak place. “The students I learn with inside Stateville Correctional Center are some of the strongest, most influential people I have been fortunate

enough to meet and share a unique learning space with,” Megan Escobosa, another student involved with the Inside-Out Program, said. The current Inside-Out class centers on restorative justice — a theory of criminal justice that focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and within the community at large. The student voices supporting those held in the Stateville Correctional Center do so because the prisoners they have come to know are all registered DePaul students who are unable to defend themselves from inside the walls. Despite the message of the Statesville Haunted Prison, the men inside the correctional center are not defined by their crimes, their pasts or outward perceptions of their humanity. They are not the sum total of their charges, they are not case files and they are not incarceration statistics. They have homework, class discussions and final projects like every other DePaul student seen walking through Lincoln Park. “The way in which being in that space has changed me is indescribable,” said Maria. “Sharing experiences, learning and being taught in those highly charged and oppressive spaces has allowed me to see the resilience and strength of the people who have been incarcerated.” Professor Kimberley Moe has been teaching the Inside-Out Program for five years. The relationship she began fostering with Stateville was one rooted in need; according to Kimberley, the first class she brought in ended an educational drought that had lasted since the Clinton administration. “To bring education into these spaces makes you remember what liberal education is all about,” Kimberley said. “During one of the first sessions of “The men inside the the course, I had one of the inmates tell correctional center are me, ‘When I’m in class here, I don’t feel like I am in prison.’ It hit me that this not defined by their what liberal education is about: knowlcrimes” edge for the sake of knowledge.” The class she is currently teaching inside the correctional center is the first in DePaul’s history to give official college credit to the inmates. “The inmates feel victimized by the system, and they can experience validation; their frustration becomes smaller against the backdrop of a bigger perspective,” Kimberley said. As a professor, Kimberley feels privileged to belong to a university that not only permits but encourages this kind of restorative work through education. It allows both the inside and the outside students to face stereotypes, fears and implicit biases about incarceration. “The haunted house is just one of a billion ways people are demonized, but it is more direct with this,” Kimberley said. “It is right across the street, it is using the same name and undoing the work we are doing.”

Lights On Ivana Rihter October 14, 2016

The minimum sentence for Stateville is 20 years, meaning all of the prisoners that share a classroom with Alexandria, Maria, Megan and Shamiah will spend a significant portion of their lives behind bars, if they haven’t already. The continued existence of Stateville Prison and its uniquely dehumanizing structures of confinement seem inconsistent with our modern conceptions of justice. So too should Statesville Haunted Prison agitate our sensibilities with its archaic depictions of incarcerated Americans as innately predatory and violent creatures. If the men featured in this story had not shared their experiences here, you would never know them. Their stories would stay locked with them behind six security gates in cells where many of them will spend the rest of their lives. This story seeks to give voice to these Americans whose experiences would otherwise be lost to narratives that thrive on their stigmatization and do little to encourage their rehabilitation. No matter its intent, ignorance can be harmful. It takes a lot more than a two-part article to change a systemic issue rooted in the economic fabric of this country. The purpose of sharing the words of the incarcerated is not to shame all the publications who have sung praises for Statesville Haunted Prison, nor is the purpose to instill crippling guilt in all the visitors who have come wanting to see its attractions. It is to illustrate a wrong that deserves to be made right, that those who have the privilege of freedom would use it to exploit those who do not. Below are the personal accounts of prisoners involved in the Inside-Out program, transcribed from handwritten answers to a questionnaire provided to 14 East. It is our privilege and honor to share them with our readers. Having bought into the ‘Haunted Prison’ and fed into it when I was 16 and now at age 27 here is the so called “Haunted Prison” itself I feel gives me a very unique perspective. Still working on developing that through. But I was let down when I got there because it was not physically in an actual prison. And now I live in Stateville Prison and see I am one of these scary, dangerous inmates. But to be honest the most amazing and wonderful people are here. People with beautiful souls live behind those walls and I would bring a lot of them home to meet my mother. Not ALL but a good amount of relationships have blown the negative stereotypes and stigmas society put in my mind prior to my incarceration away. Prison

is not what I had come to believe from TV and literature. There are some truths, but not everything can be believed. My education and growth, the reforming of my perspectives from behind the walls is something I feel that needs to be shared with the masses. – Todd I feel conflicted. That your attraction is a complete contradiction of our reality. You profit off the sorrows of men who were more than than the sum of their mistakes. – Jamal I don’t feel very good about it. It makes me feel like I’m being made fun of, like I’m being mocked and personified as some type of scary, vicious, dangerous monster– someone to be feared by the “normal” people in society, so to speak. I would want to say to the owners, visitors and or actors of the Statesville Haunted House that it is unproductive and unhealthy to feed society’s psyche the notion that people in prison are dangerous monsters to be afraid of. It’s bad enough that our country is capitalizing off of its citizens’ misery via the massive unjust prison industrial complex (resulting in mass incarceration) and effectively dehumanizing us, warehousing us and labeling us unworthy of redemption, education, reintegration all for the sake of monetary profit, but for people in society to do the same and to promote it to others is tragic and inhumane. – Marcos I think the owners should allow the kids of the prisoners in free, because if they are going to make money off our pain, they should give something back. – Spree I don’t have any feelings about a haunted prison being nearby, I have a problem with the fact that instead of just having a haunted prison with ghosts etc. in a prison, you are actively demonizing real people, using real names and perpetuating the false stereotype of “criminals” and “prisoners” as being the enemy of society and to be feared. – Joe Frankly, I’m not offended at all. In this capitalist country where many people have lost their jobs because of companies and corporations moving abroad to take advantage of cheap labor or tax loopholes, I think a “haunted prison” attraction was a brilliant idea. I would only ask that at the end of the experience of going through the haunted house, they have something posted like a disclaimer informing the public that the owners or actors know nothing about the people incarcerated in Stateville or their cases. – Delgado It’s humiliating and offensive. Stop what you’re doing, you guys are doing more harm than help. – Chico

It’s poor judgement. Why not use part of proceeds to invest in programs to help rehabilitate prisoners since you’re portraying inmates. – Mike D. To most people it may seem like a small thing, harmless entertainment. But they don’t realize that they’re being fed some of the worse, most sensationalized stereotypes about prison and prisoners. It serves to reinforce deep rooted biases that a lot of people don’t realize they have. These are not only biases about prisoners, but about the ethnic group that comprises the majority of those who hold this title. – Andre It playing on what people already thinks of us and don’t help the way society sees us. Get a chance to know us then you can do whatever you like. Get a human feel from us. – Dante A haunted house so close by, under the pretense of prison and capitalizing from the location only stigmatizes those in prison more as far as being monsters, scary people, etc. People in prison are more than what we are perceived to the public. I strongly feel this haunted house does not help at all but hurt how the public perceives people in prison. – Jesse

What Happens Over Steak Mariah Woelfel, Evelyn Baker, Joseph Lu, Antonio Serna November 4, 2016

Serving up juicy slabs of steak and perilously full martinis since 1944, Erie Cafe sits on a quiet corner in Chicago’s River North district. The restaurant boasts a 4.4-star review on Zagat Chicago, with median entree prices in the mid-thirty dollar range. Erie’s offerings don’t veer far from every other Chicago steakhouse. What makes it unique is the $42,272 spent there in 2016 alone by the Illinois campaign committees of various aldermen, congressmen, and members of the Cook County Circuit Court. Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios has accumulated 360 receipts at Erie Cafe since 2007, totalling $67,520. That’s according to Illinois Sunshine — a campaign spending watchdog and part of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. The organization tracks the funding and expenditures of Illinois political committees. The total amount spent at Erie by politicians in 2016 grossly outweighs those accumulated by other steakhouses of similar ratings, cost, and location. Chicago Cut Steakhouse received about $7,441 during 2016 from various committees like Citizens for Luis Arroyo Jr., Citizens for Alderman Reilly, and Elect Dan McConchie. Smith & Wollensky’s, also located off the Chicago River, had no expenditures listed under 2016. Morton’s Steakhouse had two expenditures under 2016 from the same committee — Sylvestri for Cook County Commissioner — for a total of $8,202. RPM Steak had one expenditure in 2016: $2,007 from Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce PAC. Gibson’s expenditures in 2016 amount to $15,230. There are over 80 pages of expense reports listed under Erie Cafe, spanning back to 1999, with some single receipts surpassing $4,000. Erie’s political clientele is varied: state representatives Louis Lang, Jim Durkin, Robert “Bob” Rita, Luis Arroyo, 36th Ward Alderman Gilbert Villegas, Elmwood Park Village President Angelo Saviano, Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, Cook County Judge Brendan O’Brien are among its patrons. The long list does not come as a surprise, considering Erie’s proximity to City Hall and view of the Chicago skyline. Politicians contacted for this story cited the restaurant’s free valet parking, city view, back outdoor patio and, yes, good steak, as reasons for their frequent visits.

“We happen to know the manager is Latino and most of the waiters are Latinos, and they give us a good price and the food is good, and it’s on the outskirts of downtown,” said Arroyo. “I’m probably in and out four or five times a year.”

Joseph Lu

A manager at Erie Cafe initially declined to comment on why so many politicians prefer Erie. She added that she doesn’t answer questions about her clientele, and it’s that sort of discretion that makes politicians feel comfortable there. Since 2010, Erie Cafe has failed three food inspections and is currently listed as Risk 1 (High). The Department of Public Health has classified Risk 1 as fairly common, usually requiring a quick fix such as re-cleaning cooking surfaces or reaching out to pest control. Arroyo denied that he goes there for discretion, citing his willingness to talk to reporters at Erie in the past. “I appreciate a reporter’s job, so I’m not going there for the discretion,” he said. In an email to reporters for this story, WTTW journalist Carol Marin described the restaurant as the place where “powerful pols go for expensive big steaks, ice cold martinis and each other’s company.” “I from time to time go there to ‘run into’ some of them,” she said. Some politicians declined to comment entirely and Berrios — the biggest spender since 1999 according to Illinois Sunshine — could not be reached for comment. Cook County Judge Brendan O’Brien said he likes the food, but declined to comment further citing his current re-election campaign. Deba Shore, who spent nearly $5,000 at the restaurant during a cam-

paign event in June — and over $37,000 total since 1999 — said she goes there for its connection to the Chicago River. She’s a decades-long board commissioner for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and holds an annual summer solstice for her donors on the back patio of Erie, which sits on the Chicago River. But while Shore declined to comment on the suggestion that politicians patronize Erie for its discretion, she did say that there is value in talking over steak. “I think as long as there are no violations of the Open Meetings Act, it’s important for elected officials to meet with each other and members of the public to hear what they’re thinking and to help train their approaches to things,” Shore said. “Being able to do so in a setting that’s comfortable and maybe not so noisey is important.” The Open Meetings Act makes it illegal for public bodies to negotiate on matters that affect the public behind closed doors. It requires public disclosure of times, places and subject matter of public body meetings. While it would be a stretch to say that politicians are breaking the law by speaking over steak, it’s apparent that Erie Cafe sees itself having a stake in the political system. The restaurant has donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Alderman Brendan Reilly, former mayoral candidate Gery Chico, Chicago Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke, 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis and others throughout the years. After further inquiry, a manager at Erie agreed to speak with DePaul reporters. Over the phone, Gabriella Lenzi explained Erie’s popularity with Chicagoans in general, not just political figures. However, she also noted Erie’s discretion could play a part in attracting Illinois politicians. “Everyone likes to come to the Erie because we’re reminiscent of days gone by,” Lenzi said. “We treat customers with respect, honor privacy, and treat them all equally. We have a loyal following since we opened in 1944.” Shore agreed, citing Erie’s old-school Chicago feel as her guess for why politicians love to frequent it. According to Lenzi, elected officials do not make up the brunt of the Erie’s customer base; she did acknowledge their presence at the cafe, however. “We have a wide swath of people who work in all levels of government and they respect the Erie as an institution,” Lenzi says.

Children’s Story Madeline Happold November 11, 2016

It was my tenth birthday. My family and I were going to celebrate with a trip to the city: visit Lincoln Park Zoo, walk along the Lakefront, and ride the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. But first, a quick trip to the hospital. If my family was taking a day trip to the city, it usually included a stop at Children’s Memorial Hospital. At the age of two, my brother Maclain was diagnosed with leukemia, a type of cancer that affects blood-forming tissue. He was admitted to Children’s Memorial Hospital for treatment, a place my parents rarely let us visit if we could avoid it. Yet, it was my birthday, and my brother needed his check-up. From the outside, the hospital was like none I had seen before. The large exterior loomed menacingly, and I felt small approaching, craning my head out the back of a minivan window. In my youth, the blinding white tile rose and towered like a city skyscraper, appearing sterile. I would try to count the rows of windows and concentrate hard on looking inside, wondering how many children there were and what brought them here, if they were all sick like my little brother. Now, the once pristine tile is stained and weathered. In fact, half of

Madeline Happold

the hospital is no longer standing. “It was a landmark for over a hundred years and a second home to many of us,” said Dr. Elaine Morgan, who has worked with the hospital since 1975. Earlier this year, Children’s Memorial Hospital was set for demolition. Now, in its place lays a wasteland of drywall, pipes and cracked tile. Founded by Julia Foster Porter in 1882, Children’s Memorial Hospital started as an eight bed cottage at the corner of Halsted and Belden under the name Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital. The hospital was the first in Chicago dedicated to the care of children and pediatrics. The main Lincoln Park location on Lincoln and Fullerton was built in the 60s, where it remained until June of 2012. “It was worse seeing the building looking dirty and not kept up,” said oncology nurse Maureen Haugen, who has been with Children’s since 1981. “That was harder than hearing that it’s being torn down.” While Children’s Memorial Hospital was expanding, the building had no room to grow. Haugen describes working “elbow to elbow,” with crowded waiting rooms and outdated equipment. “[We] outgrew the building in Lincoln Park and there way no way to increase the size at all on the footprint that [we] had,” said Haugen. On Saturday, June 9, Children’s moved 150 patients to the newly built Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago on Chicago Ave in Streeterville. Accompanied by 30 Chicago Police Department (CPD) aides, along with 25 of the hospital’s own ambulances, CPD closed Fullerton from Lincoln and Lake Shore Drive for the three and a half mile move. “It was just amazing, shutting down Lake Shore Drive and Fullerton just to get to see all the kids being carried,” said Haugen.” It was just really an amazing day and all the coordination and care that needed to happen in order to get it done.” Bought by McCaffrey Interests, the vacant hospital was set for demolition. “It’s obsolete,” said Dan McCaffrey, CEO of McCaffrey Interests. “The professional term is functional obsolescence.” In real estate, functional obsolescence refers to a property that is unpractical, or undesirable. In the hospital’s place, the six-acre lot will feature a new consumer center complete with restaurants, parking garages, storefronts and 600 new residencies of luxury apartments and condominiums. “The clinic waiting room was always full of patients and families that were talking and laughing and networking, and the new hospital clinic really prides itself on privacy,” said Haugen. “Even though… we all worked elbow to elbow, it in fact was a way that staff and patients and family got to talk and know each other well.” Children’s was its own community. As we waited for my brother’s blood count, my mother would chat with other families, sipping on Mc-

Donald’s coffee from the food court. My sister and I would spend our time in the children-friendly waiting room, equipped with crafts, board games and coloring pages. We interacted with other patients and families, sharing crayons or making Lego worlds together. I tried to be nice without being intruding, always taught not to stare, and to remember that we were guests. We were the lucky, healthy siblings. “Downtown we are just part of a big hospital complex and have lost the unique identity of the old Children’s Memorial,” said Dr. Morgan. “ It was clear from day one that Lurie was a new entity not an old one “Time passes, and rubble reconceived.” now lays where there once Ten years later, I walk past the hospital lot each day on my was life” way to school. My brother is now nine years in remission, and the hours spent at Children’s Memorial Hospital feel like another normal, childhood memory. Time passes, and rubble now lays where there once was life. Soon the lot will be filled, revitalized by other citizens and young professionals beginning families of their own. I call my brother as I pass the building. I ask what he thinks about the hospital being demolished. He said he can’t remember much besides patient waiting rooms, hospital masks and the emergency room. He tries not to think about it too much. Plus, he said, the new hospital has free food and video games. I hang up. The streetlights dance off the shattered glass, and a gaping hole exposes the skeleton of old patient rooms. Now, I can clearly see inside. Sometimes, I imagine myself standing in the rooms again. I focus on coloring pages, McDonald’s coffee and white tiles. I focus on my brother.

They Took to the Streets: Trump Tower January 23, 2017

Daanish Rizwan

“You know, my country’s true colors have been revealed,” activist William Jones said, walking under the orange street light down the middle of Wacker Drive in a neon green vest. “Some sort of inaction, some sort of being upset about it won’t do the work.” “Actually,” he said, “right now, I’m here to keep people safe.” Then, he disappeared into the crowd. Donald J. Trump was sworn in as President of the United States on the overcast morning of Friday, Jan. 20. In the aftermath of the most chaotic, nasty election in recent memory, countless Americans have taken to the streets in opposition to a candidate considered by many to be uniquely unfit for office. In Chicago, protesters from across the city gathered in Grant Park, Daley Plaza, in front of Trump Tower and beyond to make their dissent heard.

Matt Sekany

I am completely horrified that the United States elected Donald Trump as president. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime. I never dreamed it possible. I think a lot of the ugliness that was exposed by Trump was there all along â&#x20AC;&#x201D; for example, the racism â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but I think he has lit that on fire. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Betsy Rubin

Matt Sekany

It’s Chief Wiggum — Wiggum for short — Clarence Wiggum. His satanic name is Baphomet. I don’t like not taking him anywhere when it’s logistically possible. I just don’t like being separated from him. I figure, I bring him down, he says a few words… he was at the protests last week and people seemed to like him. It brings out a different mood out of people, like a therapy animal for the masses. — Kenny Mayle

Matt Sekany

Our group is Sousaphones Against Hate and Baritones Resisting Aggression. We started when there was a fundraiser for Trump in Bolingbrook a couple months back, and we thought it was going to be a one-time thing. Unfortunately, he has continued along the path, so we decided to come out tonight and do the same thing. The sousaphone is one of the lowest instruments, kind of like the opposite of a trumpet. With a trumpet you might have a king marching in. Someone you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care for is going to get the sousaphone. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Steve D

They Took to the Streets: Women’s March January 23, 2017

Maxwell Newsom

We are here because we are really disappointed that Hillary is not our president, and we are scared for the future of our country. We are really scared — especially for women — and I think it’s really important that people stand up peacefully and make our voices known. — Noreen G. And just the fact that Trump had so many issues with women, and the things he said about women and the things he did to women and that he’s a sexual predator basically – Eileen T. A sexual predator is now our president. — Noreen G.

Maxwell Newsom

I came here with my two friends from law school and we are obviously disappointed with the results of the election; not in the sense that it was not our party that won, but in the sense that it was a demagogue who is not going to be fighting on behalf of the people. And so that’s one of the reason as to why multiple ones of us are pursuing public interest law, because now we have someone who is not working in the public interest. We need to have more people being activists, being able to mobilize and organize and be working on the public’s behalf. We aren’t going to have someone like Obama who supported us so incredibly, and also to feel like we are apart of something. Everybody needs a pick up after the election and this is our pick-me-up; seeing all these people out here for the same reasons and the same cause like love is inspiring, and I needed that. — Daryl G.

Maxwell Newsom

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m here because I want to set an example for my children as to what civil disobedience is about, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something that I feel is is particularly important now. I want them to feel that empowerment as well. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ilene S.

Maxwell Newsom

It’s really incredible; I’ve actually never been to a rally or protest of any kind before. I’ve always wanted to and I am just nervous in crowds. I really wanted to do this, so I woke up this morning and said to my boyfriend, ‘I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN!’ But he got me on the train and I am so glad I am here. — Lindsay Goldstein

The Czech Traveler Nikolai Ewert January 27, 2017

Katerina Fager, an 18-year-old Czech woman, stood in a very long line at McDonald’s. People had come from out of town to go to one of the first, if not the very first McDonald’s in the Czech Republic. The year was 1994, four years after the fall of communism in the former Czechoslovakia, and capitalism was in full swing. Jeans, junk food and commercials were all entering daily life, and everyone wanted a bite. For Katerina and her teenage friends, capitalism was exciting. They grew up wearing the same communist manufactured sweaters and shoes. There was no variety, only what the state offered. This didn’t stop Katerina from having a fantastic childhood, but hers didn’t include spending weekends at the mall. Soon though, the idea of a mall wouldn’t seem that foreign. Twenty-two years later, Katerina doesn’t like to go to McDonald’s. Instead, she might go grab something at Water Tower Place, Chicago’s most iconic mall. It’s only a five minute walk from her office on Michigan Avenue, where she works as a multilingual psychotherapist. While the Chicago Water Tower might resemble the castles in Prague, the life Katerina lives in Chicago is quite different from the one she planned on living in the Czech Republic, but she loves how it all turned out. “Everything happens for a reason,” Katerina said. This is one of her favorite quotes. She doesn’t say it passively, as if to excuse misfortune; she genuinely believes this. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer” is Katerina’s other favorite quote. Before she ever stepped foot out of the Czech Republic, she had fallen in love with geography and started to memorize the world’s different countries. “You could wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me the capital of any country in the world and I could answer it,” Katerina said. For life under communism though, travel wasn’t an option. Geography class was the closest Katerina could get to exploring the outside world. After the fall of communism, the opportunity to travel finally arrived. Katerina’s mother saved up for months in 1991 to take a 10-day bus ride around Europe with her daughter. They went to Germany, Austria and Italy, leaving with literally no money in their pockets, only taking enough food to last them 10 days. There was no money for hotels, so they slept every night in their bus seats. For the the first time in her life, Katerina felt poor. She saw people eating out and buying clothes, and she and her mother could not afford any

of this. Even today, it’s hard for her to describe the feelings this gave her. After taking a long pause to reflect, Katerina settled on one “This trip was also the first word: trapped. She felt trapped by her lack of wealth. She felt moment in Katerina’s life trapped in a world where mon- that she thought to herself, I ey buys you the better things in need something better” life. All she could do was look from the outside in, and imagine what it was like to have money. How amazing it must be, she thought. With these ideas running through her head, she ate her prepared food, saw the sights that didn’t charge, and eventually, retreated to her bus seat. This trip was also the first moment in Katerina’s life she thought to herself, “I need something better.” She needed a life where she could afford to travel and see the world. She needed to be free. She took the bus back to the Czech Republic telling herself, “I’m going to work my ass off in school.” Her new perception wasn’t a reason to lament. It was a reason to keep pushing for something better. Three years later, at the age of 18, Katerina found herself on another bus, this time headed to Manchester, England. She was going to work for an English family, and was excited to improve her English. The English were far from welcoming. The first family she worked for viewed her as an inferior Eastern European, not as an ambitious, intelligent young woman. The second family was not any better. The last person Katerina worked for was Sandra, a single mother of two. While talking about Sandra, Katerina was forced to take another pause. She hunched over in her chair. “The memories are giving me chills,” Katerina said. Katerina was not allowed to wash her clothes in the same cycle as the family because she was considered dirty. Katerina wasn’t allowed to eat at the dinner table with the family because she was considered less than. Katerina wasn’t allowed to leave the house unless Sandra allowed it, because Katerina wasn’t her own person – she was Sandra’s. This tall, thick, muscular English woman loomed over Katerina, like a black shadow. Eventually, Katerina hit a breaking point. She cried to Sandra, pleading for her to let her leave. Sandra said no. “If you try to leave,” Sandra said, “I’ll call deportation services. I’ll tell them you stole from us. You’ll never come back to England.” “I was scared to death,” Katerina said “I was too scared to tell anyone.” Soon after this, Katerina started planning her escape. Two months later, she approached Sandra, ready to lie her way out of this. Katerina told Sandra that her family member had died and that she had to go back to the Czech Republic. “Fine,” said Sandra, “but I’m not paying you, not one penny.” At the age of 21, three years after coming to Manchester, Katerina was

finally going home. With the help of some friends, Katerina bought a bus ticket to the Czech Republic. While this was a traumatic experience, Katerina values it. It helped her realize she never wanted to be treated this way again, and she told herself she never would be. Like the bus trip with her mother, this experience motivated her to do well in school. She believed education would give her the freedom to travel. While Katerina valued school, the itch to travel proved to be too strong. Within a year of getting back from Manchester, Katerina had moved to Kuwait and began working as a stewardess for Kuwait Airways. After the painful experience of Manchester, Katerina was finally traveling in the way she had always dreamed of. She was eating some of the world’s best food, and she was working with people she loved and respected, and they loved her back. Just like in geography class, Katerina studied the globe. She moved her finger from one country to the next, except this time she went where her finger pointed. She wasn’t a poor and trapped young girl, or a terrified au pair. She was finally free. In 2002, after five years at Emirate, Katerina decided to go back home. Even though it was hard to leave, she wanted to finish her education. In her first year back, she met her future husband, Dusan. He had flown in from Chicago for the wedding of Katerina’s best friend, and within a year, he had moved to the Czech Republic to stay with Katerina. By 2004 they were married, and by 2007, the couple had a daughter and a newborn son. In 2008, before Katerina could finish her graduate studies, the family moved to Chicago. While they only planned to stay two years, they started to get comfortable. Maybe this could work, Katerina thought. In 2014, Katerina graduated from Northeastern Illinois University’s graduate psychology program in Chicago. She now works full-time for DCFS (Department of Children and Family Services) and works part-time as a multilingual psychotherapist for families and couples. She believes that her experience in Manchester has helped her better empathize with the children she works with, and she believes her experience at Kuwait Airways, where she flew all over the world and experienced many cultures, has helped her become a better multilingual therapist. Katerina looked for Sandra on Facebook. She couldn’t find her. Katerina’s not sure what she was hoping to find, or say. She thinks maybe she just wanted Sandra to see her new life, a life filled with success. If Sandra ever did see Katerina’s Facebook page, she would see a picture of Katerina smiling brightly. In her intro, Sandra would see Katerina’s professional credentials as a therapist, and her home, Chicago, Illinois. How about that Sandra, the profile picture seems to say with a smile. How about that?

Ivan Gugel-Dawson

Maureen Herman Will Not Be Silenced Maxwell Newsom March 3, 2017

Piles of books litter the corners of the small, cozy motel apartment where Maureen Herman resides. Among the immense collection are many that Maureen intends to review for Boing Boing, a publication she frequently writes for. “Pardon the mess,” she says while pouring me a cup of coffee. “Didn’t do the dishes. Meant to.” Upon entering Maureen’s abode, I was not met with walls covered in punk posters nor did I hear archetypal stories of punk rock partying and hard drugs from the ex-bassist of one of the most seminal bands of the ‘90s. Rather, I was met with in-depth conversation in the home of a fellow writer and past musician. Maureen conveyed her experiences through anecdotes that would evolve into tangents filled with smiles and laughter, or sorrowful moments of silence; the digressions ultimately revealed important details of a life story plagued with hardships but filled with optimism. She took notice of my audio recorder in the middle of one particularly involved story, and expressed concern for my potential workload. “Now I’m thinking of you trying to transcribe this and I’m going ‘oh god he’s going to hate me,’” she laughed. Maureen Herman, a journalist and the long-time bassist of ’90s punk band Babes in Toyland, lives in Studio City, an artistic neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. But Maureen refers to her home with a different name, one that resonates with several others living in the area. “It’s not Los Angeles,” she said. “It’s Libertyville West.” Maureen grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. Since she moved to Los Angeles, 26 others from her Libertyville High School friend group have relocated there, including Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Adam Jones of Tool. It was as if the community picked itself up and collectively moved toward the Pacific, though Maureen is quick to say she was the first one to settle there. She notes that many from the Chicago suburb’s artistically driven niche of high school students went on to become successful writers, filmmakers and musicians, and that their paths have crossed in unexpected ways. The mainstage Lollapalooza lineup of 1993 turned a major concert into a mini high school reunion. “Three of us, me, Adam Jones from Tool, and Tom Morello from Rage

Against The Machine, were in Lollapalooza the same year — that’s weird,” Maureen said. But before she moved to Los Angeles, Maureen was an integral part of the ’90s Libertyville and Chicago DIY music scenes, which she describes as a tight-knit community of musicians driven by a strong work ethic. “You had Steve Albini, and Touch and Go Records, and all these other indie labels,” she said. “The independent attitude and do-it-yourself ethic of the Chicago music scene totally was instructive to me throughout my life and as a writer and every other way, because people were doing what they loved.” Maureen first arrived at the Chicago DIY scene in 1989 when she moved in with her boyfriend, David Wm. Sims, bassist for The Jesus Lizard at the time. Sims and Maureen were students; Sims was studying accounting at DePaul and Maureen was studying comedy writing at Columbia College. Soon after she moved to Chicago, she started a band called Cherry Rodriguez, an “all female band with a guy singer who looked like a biker,” Maureen said. The biker-looking singer was Lance Turbow, a staple of Chicago DIY who passed away in 2014. According to Maureen, when Nirvana blew up with the 1991 release of Nevermind, “it all changed” for independent music. Nonetheless, “that ethic, that scene remained” in Chicago, she said. Chicago was important enough to her that even after she joined Babes in Toyland — based in Minneapolis — Maureen remained in Chicago. She said Chicago’s scene was also mostly devoid of rampant drug addiction, which plagued Minneapolis’ scene. In Chicago, people weren’t “overdosing every two days” like in Minneapolis. Kathleen Hanna, the singer of hardcore punk band Bikini Kill and the frontrunner of the Riot Grrrl movement, often cites a Babes in Toyland concert as the catalyst for Bikini Patrick Pfohl Kill’s conception. Thus, Babes in Toyland is generally credited with pioneering Riot Grrrl, a movement of ‘90s Pacific Northwest punk that featured female-fronted bands and powerful feminist politics. Maureen is honored that her music is considered inspirational, but finds her band’s common association with the Riot Grrrl movement to be irksome.

“It’s just another name that people put on us,” Maureen said with an eyeroll and a chuckle. “We were just kind of living our lives and then all of a sudden we were called Alternative, and then we were Grunge, and then we were Riot Grrrl.” When you’re a woman in the male-dominated scene of underground rock music, it’s typical to be depicted as a Riot Grrrl, simply by virtue of being a woman who plays loud music. Babes in Toyland was no stranger to the journalistic oversight that failed to make that distinction. They were a Midwestern band that emerged from a unique Midwestern underground scene. As a result, they never felt connected to the Riot Grrrl movement with their sound or their ideals. “We would get compared sonically with two bands that I think couldn’t sound more different from us, like L7 and Hole,” Maureen complained. “Why weren’t we compared to the Cows or The Jesus Lizard? Or whatever! Things that actually sounded like us.” It should be noted that neither L7 nor Hole identified as part of the Riot Grrrl movement. Both respective bands had an alternative ‘90s sound that was both accessible and produced enough to fit in with FM radio; at the very least, they fit better than Riot Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill or Sleater-Kinney, whose classic hardcore punk sound was arguably more abrasive than bands like Nirvana. The Midwestern noise-rock, post-punk sound that came from bands like Babes in Toyland, Cows, and The Jesus Lizard didn’t fit the mold either. But Riot Grrrl and Babes in Toyland had different approaches to playing underground music. “Early on, a lot of the Riot Grrrl bands kind of prided themselves on their lack of musicianship,” Maureen said. The Riot Grrrl approach is a classic punk aesthetic with a punk attitude, but associating Babes in Toyland with Riot Grrrl comes off offensively to Maureen; she recalls practicing hard with Babes in Toyland to perfect their intentionally noisy music. They were known for their excellent live shows, withholding sloppy noise until they considered it musically important. For Babes in Toyland, noise was an intentional spice, not the main ingredient. The tendency for music journalism to box female musicians together remains a problem for women in underground music. Ellen Kempner and Allison Crutchfield of Palehound and Waxahatchee have been critical of music journalism for its consistently peripheral, misleading and static reports on women in music, particularly within independent music scenes and punk rock. Maureen recalls repeatedly answering questions like, “What’s it like to be a girl in a band?” “Like literally, how do you answer that?” she said. In addition, Riot Grrrl bands proudly wore their femininity as an icon of power. Kathleen Hanna would shout “girls to the front,” at Bikini

Kill shows, physically moving the men who dominated punk scenes to the backs of the crowd. The Riot Grrrl movement actively pushed for a bigger role for women in independent music. Maureen recognizes the role Riot Grrrl played for feminism in the ’90s, but deep down, Maureen considers Babes in Toyland to be a punk band — not an “all-girl band.” Maureen deems her feminist principles consistent and strong, though her ideology is independent and occasionally strays from her feminist allies. As a writer, she has focused her material on important feminist issues as her life

“The more hidden it is, the more it happens,” Maureen warned. “Silence just begets more.” has intersected with them. In a 2015 Boing Boing article, she argued that she will never feel comfortable utilizing “trigger warnings,” a tool some writers have adopted within recent years. Though she acknowledges that the debate surrounding trigger warnings is complicated, Maureen describes them as “lazy” tools for journalists to come off as “politically correct or compassionate.” “When you put a trigger warning in front of an article, you’re telling people that they’re about to read something uncomfortable,” she said. “You’re already defining what’s uncomfortable for them.” As a rape and incest survivor, Maureen feels strengthened by women who come forward with their stories, not triggered. She argues that if a trigger warning stops people from reading something, it reinforces silence on the very issues they intend to destigmatize. “And the more hidden it is, the more it happens,” Maureen warned. “Silence just begets more.” Maureen has been an academic her whole life and remains an avid reader. But ultimately, she is defined by her vast life experiences after her departure from Babes in Toyland in 1996. Maureen says she was a mostly functional alcoholic during her years with the Babes in Toyland. But after she left, she faced homelessness and addiction to crack-cocaine in the midst of a pregnancy. Maureen argues that if she were homeless, pregnant and addicted to crack in the current political environment, she wouldn’t have been able to recover like she did. In her memoir, Maureen says she will illustrate her perspective on specific legislation she considers to be politically under attack. “I’m kind of personifying these different issues – homelessness, poverty, mental health – that so many people misunderstand,” she said. She remains composed as she talks — she’s comfortable with her past, darkness and all. “I don’t think I would survive,” she said. “Anybody who wants treat-

ment should be able to get it immediately. No matter if they have the money or not.” Her parenting philosophy is directly informed by her interest in destigmatizing misunderstood topics of conversation. Maureen does not hide the heavy, troublesome aspects of her past from Anna, her 13-yearold daughter. As Anna has grown older, Maureen has become more and more transparent about these issues, including her drug use, her struggles with mental health, and her pregnancy that she says was a result of gangrape. “I’m not ashamed that I’m a recovering addict. I’m not ashamed that I have major depressive disorder any more than I’m ashamed that I wear contacts,” she said. “And if I were to hide that from [Anna] then I would be sending her the message that that’s something to be ashamed of.”

Alexandra Amendola

Maureen’s acceptance has yielded her the strength to see positivity in the most unconventional of places. She even admits to a gratefulness toward her crack addiction, seeing that it pushed her to seek treatment for substance abuse, relinquishing her from “years of pain.” “I could have gone on for years as an alcoholic and kind of got by being a freelance writer,” she said. “But crack brought me to my knees within two years. And because of it I was able to get sober.” Now, as a mother, Maureen lives a life driven by her politics and her writing. Though Maureen will always define herself as one of the Babes in Toyland, she now identifies as a writer more than she does a musician. Since the Babes in Toyland broke up in the ’90s, she has only reunited with her bass guitar for what was supposed to be a reunion tour in 2015. The band, however, fired and replaced Maureen in the middle of the tour due

to personal differences. According to City Pages, Maureen says her Boing Boing rape culture article was what caused the band to let her go. “Despite the severe fallout from my own bandmates about writing the article, and it being the catalyst for me getting kicked out of my band, I regret nothing,” Maureen wrote in a statement on her Facebook. “I will never be silenced, by ANYONE.” Maureen’s article is centered on Jackie Fox, the original bassist of The Runaways, who disclosed to Huffington Post in 2015 that the late Kim Fowley had raped her when she was 16. Fowley was a music producer in the ’70s Los Angeles rock music scene. It was his idea to create an “allgirl band” which ultimately led to the conception of The Runaways. Jett and Cherie Currie, singer of The Runaways, were present in the same room during the incident, according to Fox. Currie describes the incident in her own memoir, though she did not mention Fox’s name. After the Huffington Post’s article was released in 2015, Currie called Fox’s disclosure “courageous,” according to Maureen. Maureen’s article is particularly critical of Jett, who dismissed Fox’s assertion that she had been present during the incident. “Anyone who truly knows me understands that if I was aware of a friend or bandmate being violated, I would not stand by while it happened,” Jett wrote in a Facebook post. “For a group of young teenagers thrust into 70s rock stardom there were relationships that were bizarre, but I was not aware of this incident. Obviously Jackie’s story is extremely upsetting and although we haven’t spoken in decades, I wish her peace and healing.” After Jett’s dismissal, Currie rescinded her supportive remarks about the incident in a Facebook post of her own. “I have been accused of a crime,” she wrote. “Of looking into the dead yet pleading eyes of a girl, unable to move while she was brutally raped and doing nothing. I have never been one to deny my mistakes in life and I wouldn’t start now.” Though Maureen did not know Fox personally before writing her article, they have developed a friendship since. Lori Barbero, the drummer of Babes in Toyland, has professional connections with Jett, according to Maureen. In a 2015 phone interview with City Pages, Barbero acknowledged Maureen’s article was personally bothersome, but denied that it had anything to do with Maureen’s release from the reunion tour. “The relationship didn’t work out and we moved on,” Barbero said to City Pages. “And that’s really the bottom line.” Maureen’s account of what happened will be explored in her memoir, which is tentatively set to be released in 2018. Kat Bjelland, singer and guitarist of Babes in Toyland, confirmed to Maureen that neither Bjelland nor Barbero read Maureen’s article. Even after Maureen sat Bjelland down

to have her read it, she still declined, according to Maureen. “So I was literally fired for an article that was not read,” she said. The completion of the memoir will be a big move for Maureen, since she physically lost an old draft of the book back in 2002. “I wrote the book once, and then I sold the computer it was on for drugs… without downloading the files,” she said. “Because I couldn’t wait.” A vinyl record featuring songs supplementing each chapter will be included with special editions of the memoir, Maureen said. So fans of her work can look forward to hearing new recordings of Maureen playing her bass. It will primarily feature musician friends she has gathered over the years. “It’s not a solo album,” she clarified. “I would like to play on some of the songs.” The songs will be a mixture of originals and covers, and each song will be attached to a theme of a chapter. A portion of the proceeds from each of the songs will be donated to various non-profits with ideals relevant to each song’s themes. Rape And Incest National Network (RAINN) is among the organizations that is expected to receive donations from the record’s profits. The album has not yet been recorded. “I’ve had that idea for fifteen years,” Maureen said. “And it’s taken me this long.” After my departure, Maureen sat on a porch outside the motel room she and Anna call their home. She lit a cigarette and sat in the warm “Libertyville West” December sunlight, taking a break from her life as a mother, as a writer, as a musician who has inspired many. Maureen’s life is a story that begs to be told; it’s dense with twists and turns and hardships she has overcome against the strongest of odds. “It’s a Memoir, Motherf*cker” will fit in well in Los Angeles, a city with its own unique relationship to punk rock and poverty, to homelessness and drug addiction, to despair and optimism. “Everybody has a story,” said Maureen. “Some of us more than others.”

Mr. Mickey, One of Us Jack Ladd March 10, 2017

Patrick Pfohl

Paper Magazine’s editorial director may rule New York, but he’ll always be a jewel in Chicagoland’s crown. Michael Charles Boardman always had the feeling he needed to find where his people were. Even in Hanover Park, Illinois. As a young boy, Boardman knew that it wasn’t the Stepford Wives on his street that he’d hang out with one day. The closest thing to the future he wanted for himself in Hanover Park was the fourth grade Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) teacher, Mrs. Creek, who became the talk of the street for her divorce and subsequent interracial relationship. It probably wasn’t her divorce, or her relationship, that necessarily made him think they would be friends if they were the same age. But she was different. She didn’t seem boring. Boardman (you can call him Mr. Mickey now) has grown his circle of friends, to say the least. His Instagram profile tells a visual fairy tale of a man jetsetting to every fashion week, working on shoots with Ciara, Bella Hadid, Kim Kardashian and, just this month, Rihanna. Did we mention he was a judge for the Miss Universe pageant in Manila last month yet? Mickey Boardman, editorial director of Paper Magazine, has taken the world by storm — and he’s one of us. A Chicagoland boy, Mickey was born in Skokie, Illinois, and later moved to Hanover Park. He attended Purdue University to study the Spanish language and studied abroad in Madrid. After Purdue was Parsons School of Design, where he butted heads with staff and didn’t finish school. But, after working the front desk at Paper and working his way up, Mickey is now a curator of style in America’s cultural capital. He is a social media connoisseur and an advocate for feminism. He’s been in the same apartment for 24 years, the same job for almost 25 years, and, having stumbled upon the perfect place for him, there’s no sign he’ll be leaving Paper (or his apartment) anytime soon. At Cafetal Social Club on Mott St. in New York City, Mr. Mickey sat in a Chloe sweater and custom-made necklace glimmering with foreign coins he’s collected over his years. The server there knew Mickey’s order and, upon exiting, he turned to me and said “any friend of his is a friend

of ours.” This is the point in the story where I should mention that my mother has many gay friends. However, only three have ever been given the title of “Guncle,” which you may have guessed is a portmanteau for gay uncle. Two out of the three guncles were on the infamous year-long study abroad trip in Madrid, Spain, that my parents both somehow survived. I’m not sure whether there was an official knighting ceremony for Guncle Mickey that I was too young to remember, but I’m looking at the “Royal and noble ranks” Wikipedia page, thinking it needs an addition. I grew up watching Mickey via Facebook and Twitter, desperately wanting to be him. Perhaps it was all of the fashion weeks he got to attend, or the people he got to interview. But, mostly, I just wanted to be happy like him. I was gay, too, (and still am, thank you very much) and watching Mickey’s life from afar was like walking toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Moving to New York City to attend Parsons, Mickey decided he wanted to be a fashion designer. Really, he thinks he might have just wanted to go to New York City and be gay, which his family was “not that enthusiastic about.” They told him they would not be subsidizing a life they did not approve of — so he went anyway. “That rocked their world,” Mickey said. Parsons ended up being the wrong fit for Mickey in his 20s. Drug addiction, coupled with his artistic vision’s total clash with Parsons’ “commercial, 7th Avenue” vision at the time, landed him a failing grade in one of his classes senior year. Luckily, a friend he met abroad knew Paper’s managing editor at the time, and Mickey became an intern during his fashion studies. Mickey always loved magazines; at 10 years old, he would buy Vogue magazines at his local Dominick’s grocery store. He didn’t know what road he would take to get there, but Mickey calls himself an advocate of “positive visualization.” Paper was Mickey’s perfect fit. He loved them, they loved him, and he says he totally “blossomed.” Before he failed one of his last classes at Parsons, he had already finished his first interview for Paper — Mickey sat across from the dreamy Rupert Everett, who was wearing a mesh tank top for half of the interview on the roof of the Peninsula Hotel. After he left Parsons, he started answering the phones at Paper. That was almost 25 years ago, and now he’s editorial director. As editorial director, Mickey is far from what he thought he might be when he grew up. In Skokie, Mickey would watch the Good Humor man come around the neighborhood to sell ice cream and think to himself, “He’s so popular. If you were the Good Humor man, you must be so rich and popular because everyone’s excited to see you.” Confessing he didn’t truly know what he wanted to be when grew up, he says he always envisioned himself “driving a convertible, wearing fancy clothes, surrounded

by glamour.” Paper Magazine was founded in 1984 as a black and white, 16-page fold-out and has grown into a monthly digital and print magazine. In his 25 years at Paper, Mickey says the heart of Paper, discovering new talent, has always been there. The magazine has been the source for the coolest bands you haven’t heard of and the pulse of the up-and-coming in fashion. But, with the addition of “genius” creative director Drew Elliott (you may recognize him as a judge on VH1’s reboot “If you were the Good of America’s Next Top Model), Paper has become more “pop culture-facing.” Humor man, you In 2014, Paper “broke the internet” with Kim Kardashian’s cover shoot with must be so rich and Jean-Paul Goude and, just popular because ev- photographer this month, Paper is “breaking the rules” eryone’s excited to see with Rihanna, sporting a spiked LadyLiberty-meets-punk-rock hairstyle. Evyou” ery cover rattles the notions of what can be seen in print, making headlines and hashtags every month. Mickey admits he’s horrible at asking people for things (except money from his mother back in the day). But he wouldn’t be where he is now if he couldn’t visualize what Paper needed from him for each issue. Many of his experiences in Spain painted Mickey’s world with new colors: new understandings, new friends, new cultures and new lessons. Mickey, being a magazine man himself, was locked and loaded with an anecdote to illustrate this for publication. As I sit back and listen, I realize that he’s doing a lot of my job for me. “Was he editorial directing my interview?” I dramatically ask myself using my perfected Carrie Bradshaw impression. The aforementioned anecdote begins: “A happy life in the bathroom is the foundation of joy,” Mickey smirks. He’d never been constipated in his life until he got to Spain and he was deathly afraid of pooping anywhere but his home. Touring tiny Spanish towns, the moment had come. He certainly didn’t want to ask to use the bathroom in a bar. But this was it. After three weeks of not going number two, he had to ask for help. We’ll get back to pooping in Spain in a moment, but first we need to transport to Paper’s New York office to introduce TV’s Kirsten Dunst. Kirsten Dunst and Jake Gyllenhaal came to Paper’s office in New York for a photoshoot for Dunst. Mickey had just been hired full-time. The always sexy Gyllenhaal, standing in stiff, blue Levi’s in an era of acid-wash denim, made Mickey feel some fuzzy feelings. Fear, anxiety, lust — Mickey was feeling all of it. He was transported back to the bar in the tiny Spanish village. Standing with crossed legs, he thought to himself, “poop anywhere, anytime,

regardless of the consequences, or you will die.” And he “chose life.” Time-traveling back to New York in his mind and swallowing his fear, he walked up to Dunst and Gyllenhaal to introduce himself. “Oh, we know each other,” Dunst said. “We’ve met!” They hadn’t. He always remembers when he meets movie stars, which he said to me in a vaguely Bette Davis voice. His patterned Chloe sweater reminded me of Davis’ 1983 interview with Johnny Carson, when she wore a cheetah coat and matching cap. When I was first getting to know Mickey in high school as more than just a family friend, I thought he was a massive namedropper. He also didn’t like NBC’s SMASH, which put us at odds on my drama club’s New

Patrick Pfohl

York City trip, but I guess that’s beside the point. Over the years, I’ve reached a different conclusion. Partying with Tory Burch. Hanging out at the office with Priyanka Chopra. Backstage at the Yeezy Season 5 NYFW show with Kim and Kylie. These are just the people that he interacts with on a day-to-day basis. These are his coworkers in his career as newsmaker. “I never saw a famous person until I was 12 and I went to Woodfield Mall to see Grease. Johnny Morris, the sportscaster from Channel 2 was in line with his wife Jeanne Morris and I felt like I had seen Madonna.” It’s true that Madonna wasn’t a superstar yet, but you get what we’re saying. It was this defecate-or-die motto that Mickey credits to his success. He learned that if he wanted to make it, he needed to be able to talk to anyone and ask for what he needed from them. Whether it’s a topic that the interviewee didn’t want to talk about or an opportunity for the magazine that would bring the story to life, Mickey knows what he wants and he asks for it. And, he’s made it. In January, Mickey was a judge for the Miss Universe 2016 pageant in Manila and he showed up ready to shine. He chose his “black Ashish sparkle track suit and sequined leopard top,” according to his Feb. 4 New York Times article, titled “My Time as a Miss Universe Judge.” But on a serious note, Mickey wrote in the article that the Miss Universe pageant felt “uplifting and empowering” in a world where isolation-

ism, walls, Trump and divisiveness dominate the headlines. “I’m a feminist, and I know that pageants can been seen as a relic of bygone days,” Mickey wrote. “But I could see the women’s joy and satisfaction at being given a global platform to show off not only their legs but also their intelligence and accomplishments.” It’s not every day that Mickey is published in the New York Times. But, with 39,600 Instagram followers and 61,800 Twitter followers, Mickey has the unique privilege of using social media as a platform for change. Mickey’s Instagram feed is cluttered with pictures of Paper Magazine coverstars, dazzlingly sparkly outfits at NYFW or PFW (there are so many

Alexandra Amendola

FWs, who can keep up?), and many, many political pictures. Whether it’s a bright pink picture that says “FASHION STANDS WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD,” regramming Women’s March pictures from all over the world, or a post on Trayvon Martin’s birthday, Mickey has mastered the art of social media activism. His diverse, curated profiles tell stories and stand up for what Mickey believes is right. His profiles use humor, wit, compassion and fashion to keep his followers engaged. Mickey’s apartment is decorated with accent walls of bright green and (slightly yonic) wallpaper. Along the walls there are framed pieces of art — one is literally a sketch of a pile of dead babies, another that pictures a cartoon Mickey with some of the great royal women of Europe. The small space is littered with knickknacks and Mickey Memorabilia from over the years, including a framed picture of my parents above his kitchen cabi-

nets. Yes, the Ladds were making out in a photobooth at Berlin, Chicago’s gay bar under the Belmont “L” stop, in the ‘90s. I have no idea why that’s there. Mickey doesn’t really answer my question, either. His favorite places in Chicago include IKRAM and IKRAM Cafe, (perhaps because Chicago fashion queen Ikram Goldman is another of Mickey’s anything-but-boring comrades) Millennium Park and the Architecture Boat Tour. His less-than-favorites include Water Tower Place, which, he says, has lost its glamour. Reminiscing, Mickey said, “I don’t know if it’s something about Chicago but, I just feel so happy about everything, in a way. It’s a lame thing mothers and parents say but, it’s just a great place to grow up. It has all the good stuff New York or L.A. has, but it also has super nice people and it has a human pace. It’s not brutal and hideous.” After almost a quarter of a century (and half his life) at Paper, Mickey is thankful he’s ended up exactly where he’s supposed to be. He wishes the same for everyone else. “One of the things [Drew Elliott] always says is ‘Everyone wants the best for you,’ except maybe Donald Trump. People want you to do well and people want you to succeed,” Mickey said. His advice for young people looking to get into the creative world is to go to the creative worlds (New York, LA, Chicago) and surround yourself with creatives. “If you want to write a book, write a book.” No one wants to see you fail.

The Cleveland 4 Bea Aldrich March 10, 2017

Justine Strehle was awoken on a Monday morning by a phone call from a friend. Her boyfriend, Brandon Baxter, had been arrested. It was a Cleveland spring just under five years ago. At first, Strehle thought it was a joke. She lived with Baxter at the time and describes him today as one of the sweetest people she has ever dated. The couple was essentially homeless back then ― living in a warehouse that the Occupy Cleveland Movement had rented with as many as 20 other people at a time. Baxter’s room was nothing more than a tent, stocked with the few possessions he had brought from his dad’s house that was being foreclosed. At one point, half of their mattress was covered in black mold, causing Strehle to become sick after nights of sleeping on it. Baxter nursed her back to health. He had paid their bills and made sure they could eat. Then he was arrested. Baxter and four others ― Douglas Wright, Connor Stevens, Joshua Stafford and Anthony Hayne ― were arrested on April 30, 2012, in what the FBI characterized as a sting operation. According to court documents, the five had been charged with conspiracy to use explosives, attempt to use explosives and malicious attempt to destroy a northeast Ohio bridge. However, Strehle believes that it was actually FBI entrapment, and that they were manipulated by FBI informant Shaquille Azir to participate in the attempted destruction of the bridge. According to the Justice Department, entrapment is a criminal defense that argues the government has coerced innocent people into criminal acts in order to prosecute them. In the court of law, this defense can rest on “mild coercion, [pleas] based on need, sympathy, or friendship [or] extraordinary promises of the sort ‘that would blind the ordinary person to his legal duties.’” Anthony Hayne, according to court documents, pleaded guilty on July 25, 2012. He was followed by Wright, Baxter and Stevens, who pleaded guilty on Sept. 5, 2012. Stafford took his case to trial and was found guilty on all charges June 13, 2013. Baxter and Strehle are no longer a couple. But Strehle still cares deeply about him and the other members of the Cleveland 4 ― a name that supporters created after the arrest. Strehle said a lot of political prisoners have a name, and it was an easy way to refer to them all. She runs their support website that has updates about their sentencing and new information about their case.

Part 1: The Beginning Baxter is blond and well built. In 2011 he had one-half of his head shaved; he would wear a bandana around his neck or sport a colorful tiedyed shirt. Sometimes, he would go by the nickname “Scavi,” according to Strehle (this is different from the criminal complaint that indicates his nickname was “Skabby”). Baxter first realized he was an anarchist in 2010 when the Occupy Movement was just beginning. He was 18 years old and had a growing dissatisfaction with government and a drive to fight corruption. Most of the others in the Cleveland 4 identified as anarchists in 2011, according to Strehle. “It was not an identity which I created for myself. Rather, I had an epiphany one day that government is inherently bound for corruption,”

Justine Strehle

Baxter wrote in a personal statement in support of his petition for clemency, which he made in the fall of 2016. Baxter surrounded himself with friends who felt the same and became involved with Food Not Bombs, an organization filled with activists trying to provide food to those living in poverty. “I love to cook, and I love being on the streets meeting all of its wonderfully idiosyncratic characters,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. Food Not Bombs provided food to those involved in Occupy Cleveland,

heartily filling the stomachs of all protesters from one tent on the street. Baxter first attended Occupy Cleveland in its early months representing Food Not Bombs, and became more and more engaged in the protest. The Occupy Movement was a protest that started on Wall Street ― commonly known as Occupy Wall Street. The goal was to fight back against big banks and the one percent that owned them ― going by the slogan “We are the 99 percent.” The movement popped up in major cities across the country ― including Cleveland and Chicago ― and protested the “corrosive power” of the big banks and corporations controlling the global market, according to the Occupy Wall Street website. Baxter had solid friends in Occupy and Food Not Bombs, including the other members of the Cleveland 4: Doug Wright, Connor Stevens and Josh Stafford. There was a whole community. The Food Not Bombs tent was turned into a pantry that was open all day and night for the protesters to feast from. Baxter’s girlfriend at the time, Justine Strehle, was a part of this community. She rotates her hair color, but in 2011 it was bright red. She met him on her very first day of working at Occupy in the fall of 2011. Stevens was also involved in Food Not Bombs for a time, as well as the Anarchist Black Cross ― a movement “supporting those imprisoned for struggling for freedom and liberty,” according to their website. But he met most of the others that would become the Cleveland 4 at Occupy. Another close friend was Gus Hurst, a protester who shared Baxter’s political viewpoints. Hurst is skinny with slicked-back light hair. A rolled cigarette sat between his gap-toothed smile during an interview last spring. While he is a bit hazy about some of the details of what happened five years ago, other memories remain crystal clear. “They weren’t idiots,” Hurst said. “They were smart people with good intentions.” Baxter expressed interest in wanting to help people, then and now. “I got involved with Occupy Cleveland not with the intent to terrorize and cause chaos, but to be part of something to affect [sic] substantial change for the better,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “I just had no idea what I was doing back then.” The beginning was good, but the movement was crumbling with each passing day. According to Strehle, at the time of Baxter’s arrest, a divide was developing between anarchists and liberals within the Occupy Movement. Or, as Strehle describes it, it was a divide between those who wanted to cooperate with the police and those, like Baxter, who did not think it was necessary. But she insists this protest was never intended to be violent. “[The members of Cleveland 4] were picked out and assembled for the ability to be alienated,” Hurst said. According to a document released by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), the FBI treated the Occupy Movement as a potential terrorist threat and had been monitoring the organization since August 2011, at least a month before the protests actually began. In some cases, the FBI

notified businesses and the public of Occupy action before the movement organizers had announced anything. FBI spokesperson Christopher Allen declined to comment on this particular case, but said in an email that the “FBI does not investigate individuals based solely on First Amendment-protected activity.” Although five people were arrested in spring 2012, Cleveland 4 only refers to Baxter, Stevens, Wright and Stafford. The fifth man, Hayne, is not included because he testified against the others in court, according to Strehle and Hurst. Hayne took a plea deal for a shorter sentence than the other defendants eventually received. The court rejected the original plea deal between Hayne and the government on Nov. 30, 2012. He received six years in prison and life on parole. Hayne was the oldest of those involved, approximately 37 years old at the time of the arrest. By testifying, Hayne lost the others’ trust, Hurst said. That is why the convicted are known as the Cleveland 4 and not the Cleveland 5, as seen on the support website Strehle runs.

Part 2: The Informant It was autumn. The FBI had directed a paid informant ― going by the name of Shaquille Azir ― to investigate any suspicious or potentially threatening activity at an Occupy Cleveland protest on Oct. 21, 2011. It was there Azir met Douglas Wright. Wright was in his mid-twenties; he had black hair and a mohawk. He was part of a group of men that the court documents describe as suspicious ― walkie-talkies hanging around their necks and masks covering their faces, wearing black clothes and holding anarchist flags. Wright told Azir he had been identifying as an anarchist for the past 12 years, showing him scars of a broken nose and missing teeth from previous protests turned riots, according to the criminal complaint― a document of evidence the FBI presented to the court. The two exchanged phone numbers and, from that point on, Azir made himself a fixture in Wright’s life. “He was always a lot closer to Doug,” Baxter wrote in an email interview in early 2017. “He met Doug first and used Doug to lure the rest of us into the conspiracy. He spent a lot more time with Doug. Azir definitely tried to insert himself as a parental figure in Doug’s life. Mine as well, but to a lesser degree.” According to Hurst and Strehle, Wright did not have a relationship with his family. Strehle recalls a conversation she had with Wright where he had stated that being involved with Azir was the first time he had ever felt like he had had a father figure. Hurst was 16 at the time and had a very close relationship with his family, which is why he believes he wasn’t targeted like the others.

“Call it entrapment or not,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “The fact remains that Azir took advantage of my poverty by buying me meals, giving me money, giving me a job working directly for him, offering me a place to stay rent-free, and dozens of other promises to assist me in various ways, some more significant than others.” Baxter first met Azir at a 24-hour restaurant in Cleveland in November 2011. Wright, who was a friend of Baxter’s, had introduced them. “We wanted to affect [sic] tangible change, but realized our limitations,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency explaining why meeting with Azir was enticing. According to Baxter, the Occupy encampment had been evicted downtown and there was nowhere for them to go. According to Strehle, they had

Justine Strehle

been living in an abandoned church around this time. And Azir made it easy to talk with him. Right off the bat, he gave them money to cover the meal they were sharing. “Here we were, a group of young white men, torn black jeans, tattoos, piercings, disheveled and dirty from days and weeks on the streets and on the road, a very odd lot smoking re-rolled cigarette butts and copious amounts of marijuana, sitting in a storefront diner in a decent neighborhood with a middle-aged black man dressed in crisp casual attire and studs in his ears, having what happened to be a strange business meeting,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. Azir was a paid informant of the FBI. According to the criminal com-

plaint, he was paid approximately $5,750 and $550 for expenses. He had a long criminal record, including one conviction for cocaine possession in 1990, another for robbery in 1991, and several more for passing bad checks. And here he was, working undercover. Azir came with the promise of money and food, and with that a sense of hope. He offered the friends jobs flipping houses, an offer they could not pass up. Baxter’s father was going through his second divorce and was close to being evicted from Baxter’s childhood home. “I had taken to leaving home for long stretches at a time, sleeping wherever I happened to be that night, or not at all,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “If I didn’t have a place to crash I’d sleep outside tucked between buildings, under a bench, behind a dumpster. It didn’t matter.” Food was sparse; sometimes Baxter would have to eat meals out of a dumpster. At the same time, Baxter was suffering from drug addiction. He would take and re-roll cigarette butts that he found in ashtrays. At one point Azir gave him Adderall. “He signed a statement claiming that I told him I was prescribed [adderall] and had forgotten to take my dose that day, and he had a prescription and was only trying to help me,” Baxter wrote in an email interview. “But that was bogus, twisting words, something I had said along the lines about wishing that I was prescribed it because I felt that it leveled me out. And he gave me more than a prescribed dose.” Azir offered Baxter stability. He said he was going to teach Baxter how to drive (he never actually did). But, on a bigger scale, according to Baxter, Azir offered to buy his father’s house that he was close to being evicted from, selling it back to him at a rate he could afford. “If Azir didn’t say stuff like this regularly, his constant offers of assistance, I probably would have steered very clear of him and his talk of explosives,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. When they first met Azir back in November, Baxter remembers that Azir wanted to know about specific actions they could take beyond just protesting. According to Baxter, he had never viewed the conversation as anything serious ― jokes at best. It was not until February 2012 that any conversations between the group and Azir were recorded after three months of contact. According to the criminal complaint, this was because Wright “did not discuss more definite or detailed plans for criminal activity.” They met up again about three months later. According to the statement Baxter wrote for his clemency petition, he did not even remember Azir’s name. On Feb. 15, 2012, Azir picked Wright up from a local drugstore to get breakfast. Again, he asked Wright about any plans to follow through with their talk of tearing down bank signs. According to the criminal complaint, Wright had not talked with the four others for some time, and they weren’t

as sure about getting involved with Azir. By Feb. 20, the Occupy Cleveland movement was beginning to crumble. All that was left was one booth, according to Baxter, and he had nowhere to go. He felt constrained, like he could not do anything of actual significance as an activist, sensing an overall apathy among his peers. “Whenever I hear the phrase ‘hanging out’ I imagine clothes drying on a line, being blown this way and that by the wind, not doing much of anything,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. Azir was the guy with the money ― someone to help them out financially in ways they could not help themselves. And so, conversations with Azir continued. At one point, Baxter recalls kidding about doing a protest at a newly opened Cleveland casino. “I joked that we could find people to lock themselves to the casino doors and take bets on how long it would take for them to be arrested,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. He viewed this as nothing more than a joke. The next meeting Wright and Baxter had with Azir, on Feb. 24, 2012, was the first meeting that was recorded. Court documents suggest that Wright mentioned buying explosives at this meeting as well, but there is no recorded evidence, only what Azir told the FBI after the meeting. Azir met two more members of the group during the third meeting: Connor Stevens and Anthony Hayne. This was the first meeting that was taped by Azir. The next several meetings, according to court documents, were about the group potentially obtaining a copy of the “Anarchist Cookbook,” which details how to build weapons and explosives. When reading back over the transcript of the recordings, Strehle is doubtful that actual plans for violence were ever set in motion. “They sounded like a joke,” Strehle said. “It was like reading a really bad movie plot.” In one conversation, Wright is shown to have laughed when talking about the “Anarchist Cookbook.” Azir went on to ask Wright how much money they might need to make explosives, which Wright was unsure about. “I haven’t really read too much into yet [sic], um, I’ll have to get into that,” Wright said on the tape. Azir kept pushing the need for explosives, saying, “Well you gotta get with me,” to Wright. Baxter said he was wary of getting explosives during these conversations with Azir, but there is one piece of incriminating evidence in the transcript ― a single line ― that suggested Baxter was in favor of blowing up a bridge. The statement was laid out plainly, easy to reach like low-hanging fruit. However, a lot of the conversation around this line is described as unintelligible by the court documents. There is nothing written down

about what was said beforehand, and much of what comes after are select snippets of an incomplete conversation. On March 28, 2012, Azir arranged a meeting with a man who he said could supply them with explosives. In actuality, this man was the undercover FBI agent. Wright, Baxter and Azir discussed obtaining riot gear that

“Azir arranged a meeting with a man who he said could supply them with explosives. In actuality, this man was the undercover FBI agent” they could take to the NATO summit protest in Chicago. The informant showed them pictures of possible explosives they could could purchase, which Wright and Baxter turned down. “Yeah, we are going to wait on that,” Wright said, according to the court documents. “We definitely might be interested later but not right this minute.” Baxter claims there are hours of missing conversations they had with the informant. According to Baxter, Azir would not let the idea of getting explosives go, but this interaction wasn’t recorded. As a result, it didn’t make it into the evidence provided by law enforcement. “Azir always took the lead, while crafting the situation so as to lead from behind,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “He told Doug to make the call to the agent. He would give Doug this look, one that said, ‘I’ll let you do the talking.’ Doug looked up to Azir. Azir validated Doug. Fed his ego.”

Part 3: The Summit Gus Hurst was also planning to go to the NATO summit protests in Chicago with Stevens. The two had bus tickets until Stevens was arrested with the rest of the Cleveland 4. The protest was meant as an anti-war demonstration. Former President Barack Obama held the summit of NATO leaders in Chicago to discuss the war in Afghanistan in May 2012. Protesters from the Occupy Movement were in heavy attendance. In a case that is similar in many ways to the Cleveland 4’s, three activists dubbed the NATO 3 were arrested in May 2012. The three had been charged with making Molotov cocktails – a destructive device made from a flammable substance that is normally alcohol – in preparation for the NATO summit meeting in Chicago, according to a report by the Chicago Tribune. Like the Cleveland 4, they were young male anarchist activists who had gotten caught up in an FBI sting operation that many supporters

of the three men believe to be entrapment. According to a 2014 article by the Chicago Tribune, the judge in charge of the case gave lighter prison sentences to the NATO 3 than the prosecutors had sought. All three were found not guilty of any serious terrorism charges because the judge and jury did not believe that a serious, cunning plan was ever set in motion. Instead they were convicted of “possessing an incendiary device and misdemeanor mob action,” according to the Chicago Tribune. This is perhaps the biggest difference between the two cases: The Cleveland 4 were viewed as national terrorists, while the NATO 3 were not. According to a report from In These Times, the police and FBI were investigating numerous activists ― particularly those who identified as anarchists ― leading up to the NATO summit protest in Chicago. And it was the Occupy Movement that was targeted the most. Following the NATO 3 arrests, Chicago police officers acknowledged that undercover investigations were going on and that law enforcement was targeting anarchists. Meetings were monitored by informants or by electronic surveillance with help from Chicago police. It was an investigation that seemed like an undercover anarchist witch hunt. According to a report by The Guardian, big banks played a role in the government’s investigation of Occupy. They worked with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and local police. The arrests were brutal. According to The Guardian, police action was characterized by “group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, [and] people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves.” This all came with the FBI insistence that the Occupy Movement was a terrorist threat.

Part 4: The Arrest Joshua Stafford ― a friend of the others ― was unaware of any potential use of explosives until April 27, just a few days before the arrest. He went by the nickname Skelly, according to Strehle (this is different from the criminal complaint that indicates his nickname was “Skully”). He is lean with curly hair. At that point, talks about picking up the explosives from the undercover agent were underway. According to court documents, Wright had told Stafford about retrieving explosives and Stafford had agreed to go with Wright and Azir. This delivery was originally supposed to be on Saturday, April 28. However, Wright, Stevens and Baxter all said they could not make it because there was another protest event they wanted to attend. Azir called Baxter that Saturday, according to court documents, at which point Baxter said he was concerned with police surveillance from

the protest happening later that day, but “[Baxter] wanted the plan [of bombing a bridge] to proceed.” This phone call was never recorded. It was one of several phone calls that went unrecorded that day ― another one with Baxter and one with Wright. The taping wouldn’t resume until the next day. On Sunday, Azir picked up Wright, Baxter and Hayne to retrieve the explosives, along with vests and gas masks. Shortly after purchasing the explosives, Wright became nervous about being arrested, even turning on the television to muffle their conversation in case they were being bugged.

“I never touched the devices or the detonators. You couldn’t have paid me to touch them” According to court documents, Azir assured him that everything was fine. Hayne tossed around some ideas of what they could potentially blow up, but Azir told him that they would be placing the explosives on a bridge off a highway. As the actual threat of violence seemed more and more real, Stevens wanted out. According to court documents, he had told Wright that he did not want to be a part of this, but still wanted to work on rehabbing houses with Azir. But it was already too late. “I played lookout the day we set the fake explosives at the bridge,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency.“I never touched the devices or the detonators. You couldn’t have paid me to touch them.” Baxter owns up to his own actions that late Sunday night, fading into early Monday morning. “I’m not saying that in the end I wasn’t there, in the middle of the night, under that bridge. I was,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “But how we got to that point doesn’t follow the FBI narrative of a simple sting operation.” They attempted to detonate the explosives from a remote location, according to court documents. Baxter was only 20 years old at the time of his arrest. And on May 3, 2012, the five were charged “in a three-count indictment with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction,” according to court documents. The first count, according to court documents, charged that they “did knowingly conspire to use a weapon of mass destruction.” The second count charged that they “did knowingly attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction.” And the third count charged that they “maliciously attempted to damage and destroy, by means of explosives… real property used in interstate commerce, specifically the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge, and aided and abetted each other to do the same.” Hayne was the first to plead guilty on on all three counts on July 25, 2012, according to records retrieved from Public Access to Electronic Court Records (PACER).

In August 2012, Stevens argued in court that the obtainment of his statement was a violation of his Miranda rights – that allows arrested individuals the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney – as outlined in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). The FBI agents interrogating Stevens took his statement despite Stevens saying several times he did not want to talk. The motion to suppress his statement was denied, according to court documents, because the interrogation was in the interest of public safety. However, police officials insisted in a recorded 2012 press conference that the public was never in danger during the course of the sting operation. On Sept. 5, 2012, Baxter appeared in court. The judge told him he was not required to plead guilty: Baxter pleaded guilty to the charges. Wright and Stevens also pleaded guilty that day. “I didn’t fully understand the law surrounding entrapment when I was awaiting trial,” Baxter wrote in an email interview. Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency that for the first three months of his pretrial detention he was placed in solitary confinement. Baxter feels his court-appointed attorney – John Pyle – did not have enough time “This was the to work on his case. “When he would come to visit me in the moment that the pretrial facility in Youngstown, Ohio, he was Cleveland 5 became also coming to visit up to half a dozen oth- the Cleveland 4” er prisoners he was representing,” Baxter wrote in an email interview. Pyle, however, said that there was no shortage of time devoted to Baxter’s case. “I am very comfortable with the advice I gave him,” Pyle said in a phone interview. In November 2012, Anthony Hayne’s testimony was presented in court. It was a petition for a plea deal that intended to give him a shorter sentence. In his testimony, he claimed there was discussion of explosives without the informant, Azir, present. This was the moment that the Cleveland 5 became the Cleveland 4. Hayne later said in the testimony that the undercover FBI agent taught them how to use the explosives step by step. Anthony Hayne did receive a shorter sentence — six years in prison and life on parole. According to the Cleveland 4 website, Hayne was recently released from prison into a halfway house. Strehle only found out he had been released because Hayne had messaged her on Facebook asking for forgiveness. She responded once to see if it really was him and then did not message again once she was sure. According to Strehle, she was not the only person that Hayne had messaged. Hayne could not be reached for comment. According to previous court rulings ― precedents that were used in this case ― there are two things a case needs to be a federal crime of terror-

Justine Strehle

ism, and neither necessarily have to be considered violent. The first is that the act must attempt “to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” The second is that it includes one of the crimes described in the “Terrorism Transcending National Boundaries” clause of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, such as assault or murder. Wright was sentenced to 11 years and six months in prison. Baxter was sentenced to nine years and nine months in prison. Stevens was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison. All three received life on parole after release. Baxter’s attorney argued before the sentencing on Nov. 20, 2012, that the court should give Baxter a lesser sentence based on the fact he “had a traumatic childhood, and is a reparable individual, the explosives were inert, and an FBI paid informant… played a major role in facilitating the offense.” The court agreed with many of the attorney’s arguments and sentenced Baxter to less than what the federal guidelines suggested. Stafford went to trial, not agreeing to plead guilty like the others. The jury found him guilty on all three counts on which he had been charged. He received the second-longest sentence with 10 years in prison and life on parole. “If I would have had half the comprehension of the law that I do today, I would have done everything differently,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “I would have gone to trial.”

Part 5: The Aftermath Baxter has about three years and nine months left on his sentence. He spends his days studying to become a paralegal. Baxter is quiet and maintains a soft tone when speaking over the phone. There was a mix-up over time zones as to when he was supposed to call me. He apologized profusely, despite it being my fault for not indicating I am in Chicago. But, mostly, he sounds exhausted ― almost as if the place is devouring his very being. “Someone told me early on that this time can be used for great “Nothing about this things. I’ve never stopped holding system is conductive to onto those words, sometimes for growth, and I continue to dear life,” Baxter wrote for his pefor clemency. grow despite this reality” titionBaxter believes becoming a paralegal will give him many options to pursue. He can provide prisoner support. “I can assist a criminal defense attorney, and as a former prisoner I will have invaluable experience and perspective to offer,” he wrote for his petition for clemency. Baxter has a bigger goal: He wants to start a nonprofit organization that is meant to help those living in poverty. “Ultimately what I want to do is reduce the cost of living for as many low-income people as possible because I want to empower these people,” Baxter wrote in his statement for his petition for clemency. “And I believe in the potential they can achieve if their struggle weren’t constrained by day-to-day survival.” Baxter’s goal of helping those in poverty is not too different from what it was in 2011; he believes that it is just more thoroughly articulated now. “When I was 19 I would say that I was still trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do, and that I was merely moving in a direction,” Baxter wrote in an email interview. “I’d say that I’m still only moving in a direction, but that that direction is more clear to me now.” Prison has, by no means, been easy for Baxter. He wrote that resources are limited ― he does not receive the same opportunities for education as he would on the outside. But he will not let this hold him back. “Nothing about this system is conducive to growth, and I continue to grow despite this reality,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. “Imagine a flower growing between the cracks in concrete, then imagine how that flower can blossom into a beautiful garden once transplanted into a field with all it needs to be nurtured.” Baxter spends long stretches in solitary confinement ― or, as it is commonly referred to, the SHU. He once did nine months in the SHU,

immediately followed by six months. He said a lot of the reason why has to do with prison politics. He said the longest time he spent in the SHU was for disciplinary action. He was accused of assaulting an officer, who Baxter said actually assaulted him. “The assault infraction was dropped down to making a threat because there was absolutely no evidence that I had made an assault,” Baxter wrote in an email interview. Baxter and Stevens have been moved around to different prisons quite a bit over the course of their sentences. Baxter has stayed in prisons from Indiana to California to Louisiana. Stevens is currently in Kentucky. “[But] overall it is a deadly monotony. This is perhaps the most dangerous part of prison life: the dull, mind-numbing, soul-defacing routine,” Stevens wrote in an email interview. “This is the real threat: not so much to the flesh, but the almost imperceptible damage wrought against the soul, such that we become like automatons, cut off from our souls, our depth, the endlessly rich content of our psyches which can find no expression in outward forms.” Stevens spends his days writing poetry. He started writing when he was 13 years old, and now most of his work is published on the Cleveland 4 website. “I believe that at this point in my life, my poetry has been perhaps my greatest contribution to the world,” Stevens wrote in an email interview. “Which isn’t saying much, really, but I do believe there is some worth to it, and folks often tell me how it resonates with them.” He signs his email “Warm Regards, Connor Stevens,” almost as if he is reaching through the computer screen with a heartfelt embrace. Wright and Stafford could not be reached for comment. Baxter has been in prison for the past five years. In 2015, he motioned to the court to have his sentence corrected. The motion was denied. According to the court documents, the judge responded to Baxter’s argument that Azir had been manipulating him with, “And I know… you want to tell me how bad the [informant] is but you didn’t ― you pled guilty, so entrapment is not a defense. The [informant] is obviously a facilitator, but a facilitator does not mean it’s a defense.” The court also ruled that Baxter could not show that any lack of preparation by his attorney – John Pyle – affected the proceedings. In June 2016, lawyer Amanda Schemkes says she started working on Baxter’s case. The two were connected through the National Lawyers Guild. Baxter had wanted help submitting a Freedom of Information Act request through a National Lawyers Guild support committee for political prisoners. Baxter and Schemkes began working on a petition of clemency, requesting his sentences be commuted to time served in prison and a fiveyear cap on his supervised release. The petition for clemency is made to the President of the United States.

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Former President Barack Obama was still in office when the petition was made last fall. According to Schemkes, dozens of friends and family wrote letters on Baxter’s behalf, as well as several people that Baxter did not even know, including people from advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as journalists and professors. Obama granted clemency to 1,927 people during his time in office, the most petitions granted since Harry Truman. Baxter was not one of them. Schemkes said that it is not uncommon for the FBI to target vulnerable young men in the name of fighting terrorism. A year and a half before the members of Cleveland 4 were arrested, Mother Jones released an investigation conducted with the University of California-Berkeley. In 2011, the FBI had over 15,000 paid informants working for the bureau, according to FBI records. Upon reviewing 508 prosecution cases, the researchers concluded that, of the 158 prosecutions that relied on sting operations, 49 of the defendants were led by “an agent provocateur ― an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.” In response to the Mother Jones investigation, FBI spokeswoman Kathleen Wright said, “We are prohibited from using threats or coercion.” “It’s a pretty horrific trend,” Schemkes said, tying it to the Patriot Act ― a national security bill that expanded government surveillance on a massive scale after the 9/11 attacks. Baxter will not give up trying to reduce his sentence, grasping at even the faintest glimmers of hope. “I need the chance to see what it means to go from being a flower growing out of concrete to being a flower in the world,” Baxter wrote for his petition for clemency. He’s not finished yet.

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The Shoes on the Sidelines Madeline Happold April 7, 2017

Patrick Pfohl

Jake Gatziolis wears Jordans. Air Jordan Ones with faded blue jeans, a monogrammed, DePaul Blue Demons polo and grey puffer jacket. If the DePaul affiliation wasn’t clear enough, slung over one shoulder he carries a stuffed backpack emblazoned with a DePaul logo as well. It’s hard to miss Jake. He’s always the tallest in class – 6 feet 6 inches with a slow walk and short brown hair. Today, his eyes are sunken with bags and a faint bruise sits underneath the right eye – caught an elbow during practice, he mentions nonchalantly. It’s late afternoon and he has just gotten out of his 1:30 p.m. advanced marketing class, but has been up since about 8 a.m. He didn’t go to sleep until after 2 a.m. Actually, he didn’t arrive in Chicago until after 2 a.m., returning on a charter flight from Providence, R.I., following a basketball game against Providence College the night before. Jake didn’t touch the court, though. At least, not during game time. Jake isn’t a DePaul Men’s Basketball player. Hard to believe when he’s 6 feet 6 inches, right? But Jake attends every game. Every practice. He’s there to set up before, he’s there to clean up after. Wash the uniforms, take stats, grab breakfast and set up the gym for practice. Jake Gatziolis is a student manager, dedicating almost 40 hours a week to the sport that’s shaped his life. As a student manager he’s the underdog in the background, always courtside but never in the game. For Jake, though, it’s the energy surrounding the game rather than the limelight. Jake has been playing basketball since he was 5 years old, when he started playing in park district leagues. His first pair of basketball shoes were a pair of Shaquille O’Neal hightops, though he would never part with his Nikes now. He tried other sports — football and volleyball, but nothing was quite like basketball. The sport was a family affair, from pick-up games in the driveway to having his father coach his middle school team. He played all four years at Elk Grove High School, a suburb northeast of Chicago, and worked to become a starting varsity his junior and senior years, alternating positions between center and power forward. College was a different ball game. Jake chose to study marketing at DePaul, an NCAA Division 1 school for basketball. He felt his skills

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couldn’t compete at the level, but he couldn’t give up the game. His father mentioned that the team was scouting for student managers for the upcoming season. Jake decided to apply. On a mid-July afternoon, Jake and his father drove to DePaul’s athletic center for an interview. It was one of his first visits to the campus. According to Jake, his “playing knowledge of the game” and “willingness to put in the work,” helped land him the position, which included an $8,000 scholarship and a six day-a-week commitment, not including travel for games, extra strength trainings or impromptu shoot-arounds. The commitment also meant four more years of basketball involvement and experience with professional coaches and staff. He accepted, and has now been a student manager all four years of his college career. A typical day for Jake starts at 6 a.m. He’ll take the brown line to DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus for basketball practice. Before stepping into the gym, he’ll buy breakfast for the team, picking up bagels or break- “He’s not just on the fast sandwiches. Then, arriving to the bench, but is literally gym between 6:30 or 7, practice set up begins – fill Gatorade and water, grab bumping elbows with basketballs, set up the racks, make sure the players” practice jerseys are clean and placed in designated lockers and, if needed, set up film roles for upcoming or previous games. All before 8 a.m. During practice, Jake alternates between ballboy, water runner or jumping in as an extra man on drills. Once practice is over, he’ll collect uniforms, put practice equipment away and maybe meet with the coaches to draw up plays. But wait, don’t forget about school. Jake is still a full-time student, shuffling from practice to DePaul’s Loop campus for business classes. Jake is a marketing major, graduating in June 2017. Taking the next big step, Jake plants to continue focusing on basketball, but specifically shoes. Jake describes shoe brands “like a cult.” He could never part with his Nikes, rotating different pairs for different wear (old Jordan’s for outdoor games, black Nikes for indoor, mesh in the summer but never when it’s raining). His favorite Nike products include original Air Jordan Ones or the retro Jordan 4 design. He would ultimately like to combine his experience with basketball and business to work in sports marketing as an employee for Nike, helping to develop and sell new shoe brands. “I always liked looking at the new shoes and liked the concept of marketing, of working with people,” Jake says. “With sports marketing I could do promotional work to help bring in fans or help endorse new products.” A coaching position is still on the table, whether it be a high school or collegiate team. A student manager position also allows Jake to interact with some of the industry’s top coaches and players. He’s not just on the bench, but is literally bumping elbows with the players. Explains the

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bruised eye. Whichever course Jake chooses after college, basketball always remains at center court. “The fans, the electricity, it’s addicting,” Jake says. “Really any basketball in person is fun, even if I’m just experiencing it on the sidelines.” Since Jake works mostly with post players, or the “big guys” closest to the baseline as he says, he spends practice as an extra hand for assistant coach Patrick Sellers, who played in the British Basketball League and coached fellow Big East teams like Creighton University. Jake describes their relationship as a mentor-student type, but Sellers likes to view it as big-brother advice. “Between practice he’ll come to the office and we’ll go over work, but also just laugh and joke,” Sellers says. “The team is like a family.” The two talk basketball — whether concerning practice, the Big East or NBA – but also about life, graduation and the future. Jake reminds Sellers of a former student manager, Adam Glessner, who now works for the Detroit Pistons. “A phrase we use a lot is ‘nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm,’” Sellers says. “Jake encompasses that. With basketball, you need high energy and Jake brings that. He’s what great programs have.” On Monday March 6, the team boarded a plane yet again, this time for New York City. The Big East Conference tournament began on Wednesday, March 8, and determined which teams advanced to the NCAA finals. It is Jake’s second time attending the tournament, having also traveled with the team last year. Games and practices are held at Madison Square Garden, which Jake refers to as “the mecca for basketball.” The arena houses both the New York Knicks and 35 years of Big East tournaments. He could feel the energy surrounding the upcoming tournament and the excitement of being where some of the greats stood. The night before the official tournament commences, the student managers of each Big East team compete in their own mock-tournament. “The game before the game,” Jake says. Sponsored by Jordan Brand, the mini-tournament is held at the Terminal 23 court located across the street from Madison Square Garden (used by the likes of New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony). Each school gets the opportunity to play in new uniforms and new shoes. Jake plays in custom Air Jordan 31s, appropriately colored red, white and blue (for DePaul, of course). The tournament is as much marketing as it is competition. Different Patrick Pfohl brands promote their products hoping

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to secure business with different schools or make an impression on tournament attendees. “You get to see how real companies interact with the schools,” Jake says. “There are different tiers for schools based on brand or the team’s reputation and it’s cool seeing all the different styles they bring.” Playing Xavier again in the first round of the Big East tournament, DePaul’s 2016-17 season ended early with a first round loss, closing the season with an overall 9-23 record. The team packed up the same night and headed home, greeted by winter quarter finals. Yet, Jake’s mind was still on basketball. With his final season over, there was finally time to breathe. But the new downtime was unsettling. He spent the weekend watching the finals of the Big East tournament, flipping between other NCAA games. He was there. What could they have done to still be there? After a much-needed spring break comes off-season workouts and preparation for a better upcoming season. For Jake, it’s time to focus on life after school. He’s considering graduate school and working as a graduate assistant for another collegiate team. I talk with Jake after University of North Carolina won the NCAA Championship game. He says his bracket was awful but recalls the feeling of the final buzzer, bringing the season to a close. It all went by too quickly. Four years and he’s still wearing his Jordans.

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Ken Butigan Journeys for Justice Marissa Nelson April 28, 2017

Patrick Pfohl

It was February 1990 when Ken Butigan received a phone call. Corrale de Piedra, a village in El Salvador, had been attacked by the Salvadoran Air Force. The country’s military wouldn’t allow anyone into the village to see what had happened; not the media or international human rights groups. A delegation was traveling to the area to see if they could get the word out about what had happened. They requested that Ken go along. The goal was to document what had happened, if allowed in, and the task would likely include nonviolence work – something Ken specializes in. At this time, El Salvador was in the midst of a civil war that began in 1980 and would not end until 1992. Throughout the 12-year span, in a country half the size of Illinois, 75,000 civilians were killed by government forces. Throughout the civil war, the Salvadoran government received more than $4.5 billion in aid from the United States. Ken and a group of activists immediately applied for visas. Within days they were in the violence-stricken country, making their way to the village. What should have been a two-hour drive turned into a two-day trip because of military checkpoints. Minutes from the village, at the final checkpoint, Ken and the other 24 delegation members were not allowed through. With armed soldiers in their way, the group prepared for a long night. They weren’t going to leave until they were allowed into Corrale de Piedra. A few hours later, the activists noticed a truck on the other side of the line of soldiers, making its way down the hill. The truck was packed with women and children. “How wonderful international solidarity is,” a woman said on an old public address system in Spanish. “How wonderful you have come to see how we live. We are here to take you to our village.” Ken remembers the soldiers gripping their M16s. No one was going to get through, but no one was planning on leaving. After an hour, nine young girls began to slowly step off of the truck and make their way towards the delegation, squeezing between the soldiers. Each girl approached a different activist. “I’m taking you to my village,” a young girl said to Ken in Spanish, motioning for him to grab her hand. Despite his concerns, he found him-

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self accepting, placing his hand in hers. He began to follow her towards her village. Approaching the blockade, a soldier placed his hand on Ken’s chest. He asked where Ken was going. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go,” Ken said in broken Spanish, shrugging as he pointed towards the young girl. Sharing a moment of understanding with the soldier, Ken noticed uncertainty in his eyes. The soldier let him through. The moment didn’t last long. After Ken and eight others made their way past the blockade, the soldiers snapped out of their daze and refused to allow the other 16 activists through. Making their way up the hill toward the village, a man who worked for the local bishop offered the delegation members a ride. They accepted and traveled to a corn mill where a father and three children had been killed four days before during a helicopter gunship attack. “Now we will pray,” a man leading the group said in Spanish. There, Ken had the most intense religious experience of his life. The delegation was able to get the story of the attack out to the world.

His Introduction to Nonviolence Born in Seattle, Ken Butigan is the oldest of eight children. His father worked in sales, so he moved often. Mostly, though, he and his family resided in Washington State. They weren’t a political family, he laughs, so his philosophy of nonviolent resistance, action and social change didn’t come from there. If anything, he sees his Catholic values as having an impact on the path he took towards nonviolent resistance. However, for a while it seemed he was headed in a different direction. In high school, Ken wrote a paper on civil disobedience. He was against it. This was at the height of the Vietnam War, when protests were surfacing around the country. According to 17-year-old Ken, the protests were ruining the country. Little did he know his life’s work would be built upon nonviolence. After a summer of contemplation and realizing he could be drafted to fight, Ken’s views on the war shifted. He was no longer in support of the war, but he wasn’t inclined to fight against it. So the war continued and so did Ken’s academic career. After graduating high school, Ken studied history at the University of San Diego and spent a year in England at Oxford University. In 1975, as Ken neared the end of his undergraduate career, the Vietnam War ended. In order to graduate, Ken was required to take four religious studies

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courses. Uninterested in the subject, he delayed taking the classes until the end of his undergraduate career. Ken ended up taking all four courses at once, immersing himself within theology. The courses explored the intersection between religion, peace and injustice. It was a perspective Ken had never been exposed to – a perspective, once Ken grabbed hold, he would never let go of. These courses, along with his deepening connection with God, pushed him to attend the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California for graduate school. It was then that nonviolence began to take shape in his life. One night after traveling, Ken found himself sitting in the Manhattan apartment of a Catholic priest. Father Daniel Berrigan S.J., a powerful activist throughout the 1960s and into the Vietnam War, gave Ken a piece of advice that would enter his being and follow him throughout the rest of his life. After a three-hour conversation about the violent culture of death in the world, Fr. Berrigan asked Ken to decide if he wanted to be a part of the culture of life. Ken did and asked what he could do for Fr. Berrigan before he went back to his grad school. “Don’t do anything for me. Find some people you can pray with and march with,” Fr. Berrigan said. When Ken traveled back to “Ken gave up his graduate graduate school, that is just what career in order to focus on he did. While taking classes on psy- ‘one strange and beautiful chology, feminism and social justice, Ken met a group of people nonviolent action after who were involved in nonviolent another.” resistance. They were preparing to do civil disobedience at a U.S. nuclear arsenal in California. A nonviolent training session was being held to prepare activists for what was to come. Intrigued, Ken attended the training session. Halfway through, Ken decided that he would be participating in the nonviolent action. “And that was just the beginning of my criminal life,” Ken says with a smile. At his first nonviolent action, Ken was arrested and spent a week in county jail. Ken refers to this as his baptism into the world of nonviolence. This led him from one action to another. Eventually, Ken gave up his graduate career in order to focus on “one strange and beautiful nonviolent action after another.” Ken had found his people. The people he could pray with and march with. His eyes glisten.

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The Letter One day, Ken received a letter from Nicaragua. There was no return address. The letter described the destruction U.S policy was supporting in the country. All of which, Ken was already aware of. As he held the letter in his hands, Ken had a surreal experience. Standing before him in the flesh, he saw a man holding a bloody child. Ken pauses, taking a deep breath. Decades later, the vision still strikes him to his core. The bottom of the letter read: “We are telling you now so that, 10 years from now, you cannot say you did not know. Do everything you can to end this carnage.” At that moment, Ken felt powerless. What could he do? What could one person do? “When I was a baby activist, I was the kind of person that would sit in the back of the room and never open my mouth,” Ken says. “I didn’t start with a sense of power.” After reading an article about 50 people who had committed themselves to engaging in nonviolent action should the U.S. have invaded Nicaragua in 1983, Ken refused to believe the situation was out of his hands. So he thought, he read and he sat down to write a pledge. He called it, “The Commitment to End the Killing in Central America.” In the summer of 1984, many were organizing around Central America. Ken attended meetings in San Francisco on the issue and presented his pledge: to get a group of people together to commit to civil disobedience should the U.S. invade another country. Hopefully, this would make the U.S. think twice. If the U.S. went ahead, those who pledged would take

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action. Nobody liked the idea, but Ken persisted. He continued to present it to different organizations, and continued to receive the same message: No. One day, Ken received a phone call from David Hartsough at the American Firm Service Committee. He wanted to learn more about Ken’s pledge. After an hour and a half discussion in which Hartsough pointed out every flaw in the pledge, Ken received his first yes. Before Ken knew it, Hartsough had cleared a spot in his west San Francisco office. With Hartsough’s address book in hand and $50 a week, it was Ken’s job to start a movement. The next six years of his life were dedicated organizing around Central America. In 1984, Ken met with Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization and magazine, to finalize the pledge he had written and talk strategy for the movement. Working closely with activists around the country, a movement emerged. Nearly 100,000 people signed the pledge at rallies, demonstrations and trainings around the nation. In 1987, Ken became the national coordinator for the Pledge of Resistance campaign in Washington D.C. This is where Ken learned the process of a movement. “You’ve got to pull down the pillars of public support for the policies,” Ken says. “I saw this in action.” Four years later, the U.S. House of Representatives voted cut off aid to “contra rebels” fighting the Nicaraguan government on February 2, 1988. Ken was in the Capitol Building the night the vote took place.

Mainstreaming Nonviolence In 1990, Ken began working at Pace e Bene, a nonviolence training organization. He moved from Washington D.C. back to San Francisco. There, he became extremely involved in organizing around U.S. wars. This included the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. In 2008, Ken joined Witness Against Torture, a national organization opposing U.S. policies of torture. When prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were denied due process, Ken and others in the organization dressed in bright orange jumpsuits with black hoods covering their heads. They silently knelt onto the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. Once arrested, instead of giving their own names, they gave names of prisoners in Guantanamo. Ken gave the name Gul Zaman. According to Ken, it was the first time Gul Zaman’s name was entered into the American criminal justice system. Ken and the other activists were taken to trial, and along with them they took the names of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. A few weeks after the trial, the Supreme Court ruled that inmates in Guantanamo must be granted due process and can challenge their detention.

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At the same time that he’s organizing nonviolent initiatives, Ken is training the next generation of activists. Since 1999, Ken has taught at multiple institutions, integrating the practice and teaching of nonviolence into the classroom. He is currently a professor at DePaul University in the Peace, Justice and Conflict studies program. Ken also takes the training outside of the classroom into the world. Since joining Pace e Bene, Ken has traveled around the world to conduct nonviolent workshops. He is an organizer for Pace e Bene’s Campaign Nonviolence, as well as a part of the Vatican initiative aimed to reorient the church around Jesus’ teachings of nonviolence. In 2000, Ken completed his Ph.D in religious studies at the Graduate Theological Union in California, where he studied nonviolence in the world’s religions. His goal through all of his work is to mainstream nonviolence. “We will always likely face violence and injustice,” Ken says. “When I think about mainstreaming nonviolence, it is not saying we are going to have a perfect world, but it is equipping ourselves and others with the tools to engage in and transform those forms of violence and injustice in a humane way.”

Patrick Pfohl

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Birth Justice is Social Justice Emma Krupp April 28, 2017

Isabel Gonzalez-Smith is angry — a silent, simmering, heart-pounding kind of anger. She’s standing in the lobby of a hospital with a woman who’s just 24 weeks pregnant but experiencing intense contractions, a sign of dangerously early labor. Babies born at this point have around a 50 percent chance of survival, and the mother is scared. It’s her second visit to the hospital today. This time, a man sits behind the reception desk and asks the mother a series of increasingly private questions. They reverberate through the crowded space, echoing off the walls and into the ears of strangers. Isabel tenses, but remains quiet as he jots down her responses. What’s your date of birth? What’s your insurance policy? How many pregnancies have you had? The answer to this one is high. The man looks up from his notepad suddenly, raising his eyebrows. What? he asks, incredulous. “I was like, what the hell is going on? It was just a complete disregard for her privacy,” Isabel says, her eyes flashing at the memory. “He took us to the labor and delivery floor. But I was so shocked that right when you walk in, that’s how she was treated the moment she walked in the door.” It should be noted that this pregnant woman—who did not end up going into premature labor that day—is African-American. Isabel is Latina, and although she’s seen this kind of behavior before, it never fails to rouse a deep, smoldering frustration inside of her. She remembers glancing over at the pregnant mother, expecting protest, insult, embarrassment. Instead, the mother remained unfazed. “Perhaps that’s the saddest thing,” Isabel says. “And I didn’t say anything to her because I didn’t want to make her upset—she was already upset about the situation. But inside, I was just screaming.” Isabel is a librarian at the University of Illinois-Chicago and doula on the side, trained to assist and support women during their pregnancies. Her job is to remain steadfast and calm—a voice of reason in the often-hectic throes of pregnancy and childbirth—and for the most part, she’s become good at playing nice. But she’s sick of seeing women like this mother slip through the cracks.

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Isabel works with and was a founding member of a group called the Chicago Birth Workers of Color (ChiBiWoCo). It’s one of several Chicago-based organizations fighting to increase access to healthcare and combat discrimination via affordable doula services. Formed in February 2016, the group calls for rallying marginalized communities through birthing services and reproductive empowerment. “We envision communities that are able to thrive, self-determine, and live autonomously, free from judgment, ridicule, and criminalization as it relates to their choices of parenting and birth,” their Facebook page reads. For Isabel and the other members of Chicago Birth Workers of Color, birth work offers more than just a friendly face during pregnancy and childbirth — although they certainly place a high value in the community-building, emotional aspects of their services. They repeat a mantra: birth justice is social justice. “There are people who, from the get-go, have less access, less opportunity and less value put on their lives and their wellbeing,” Isabel says. “If you recognize that, then you see that it’s more than going back to the way it was. It’s an equalizer. It’s straight-up social justice work.” Birth wasn’t always like this—the hospitals and waiting rooms and the cold impartiality of bureaucratic healthcare. Throughout much of history, the birth of a child has been a collective event, a time for women in the community to gather and prepare for a new life to be brought into the world. From Ancient Greece to medieval Europe and beyond, a baby was born in the confines of the home, either with the assistance of a midwife, town doctor or a group of women. This part sometimes makes people twitch, because it feels so archaic. But what about modern medicine? We cringe just thinking of the women who died in childbirth before the advent of hospitals, the full-throttle pain of laboring and fading away while their families watched helplessly. It’s undeniable that hospitals have, on a whole, improved birth outcomes drastically. In certain U.S. metropolitan areas, nearly one-third of babies born in 1900 died before reaching their first birthdays. Mothers died in droves, falling victim to hemorrhaging and eclampsia and puerperal fever from dirty hands. But in just 10 years—from 1938 to 1948, as hospital births went up from 55 percent to 90 percent—maternal mortality rates decreased by 71 percent. Today, the average American woman can feel reasonably assured about her own safety and the safety of her baby. Infant mortality rates are at around 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. The maternal mortality rate is at 28 deaths per 100,000 births, a number that is higher than it’s been in recent years but still a vast improvement in comparison to the beginning of the 20th century. Yet the numbers start to seem less confident when broken down by

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demographic. Here’s a laundry list of statistics: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), non-Hispanic black babies have an infant mortality rate that’s nearly two times higher than average at 11.1 deaths per 1,000 live births. Hispanic infant mortality rates hover around the average U.S. rate, but the figure is growing and has increased 11 percent since 2005. Perhaps most shockingly, black women die in childbirth at a rate of around three to four times higher than their white counterparts. The problem is pervasive in Chicago, seeping into different neighborhoods in different ways. Chicago has an average low birth weight rate of 10.1 percent citywide. In Hispanic and black communities on the South and West Sides, that number soars to nearly 20 percent. A low birth weight sets a child up for a slurry of health and behavioral problems down the road, including higher high school dropout rates, decreased wages and accelerated aging. And although there’s little data on infant mortality rates in the city, the state of Illinois has a black infant mortality rate of nearly 12 per 1,000 births, placing it in lockstep with problem-stricken countries like Libya and Venezuela. All this is happening in the shadow of Chicago’s state-of-the-art medical centers, where families in need could theoretically receive some of the best care in the country. Resolving the disparity isn’t about finding the right hospital or developing new medical techniques—it’s a matter of getting those families access to the innovations we already have. Whether because of financial reasons, educational gaps or even just the underlying racism pulsing throughout the healthcare system, black and brown communities continue to face vastly unequal birthing options and outcomes. And its tangible ramifications are harming women and babies throughout the city and the country. This is where doula services and other forms of birth work come into the picture. The concept of doula work has not yet made its way into mainstream American pregnancy culture. DONA International, the world’s first doula-certifying organization, launched only in 1992. Since then, it has trained 12,000 doulas worldwide, roughly 500 of whom currently operate in the U.S. Unlike a midwife, a doula has no “Black and brown formal medical training—in most cases, communities continue just a weekend-long class, some required reading and a series of births she must to face vastly unequal attend before obtaining official certificabirthing options and tion. She does not even wear scrubs. Instead, she offers a three-pronged service outcomes.” of physical, emotional and educational

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support over the course of several prenatal appointments, the birth itself and a postpartum visit or two. This covers a lot of territory, ranging from breathing exercises to breastfeeding techniques to murmurs of encouragement during the most punishing throes of labor. But doula work is not just a matter of maternal comfort. A 2016 study from the medical journal “Birth” found that women who received doula care had around a 22 percent lower rate of preterm birth, along with decreased likelihood of C-sections and higher newborn Apgar scores, which determine the healthiness of a baby at birth. Researchers estimate that trained doulas could save Medicaid and private insurers almost $1,000 a birth.

Nick Anderson

And yet, if you’ve heard of doula work at all, it’s likely been in the context of upper-middle-class culture. It’s a word that conjures images of candlelit home births, of flashy alternative medicine, of placentas packed into pills and tucked into a designer purse. These are the doulas for the affluent and white, people who can afford to think about birth in terms of experience rather than necessity. Isabel playfully calls them “chi-chi doulas.” The cost of private doula services ranges anywhere from $800 to $1,200—sometimes as high as $3,500 or more, depending on where you live. These numbers aren’t wholly unreasonable. Doula work spans the course of several months. And during the last few months of a pregnancy, doulas are on call 24 hours a day, waiting for their clients to go into labor. For a family in the West Loop making an average of $98,000 a year, $1,200 might not even be a significant burden. For a family in Garfield Park making around $15,000 a year, accessibility dwindles.

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Doulas of color maintain a tenuous balance between their need to make money and their desire to serve underprivileged communities. Many of the doulas at ChiBiWoCo offer a “sliding scale” method of payment, which allows families some flexibility in deciding what they can pay. Isabel hasn’t been officially certified yet, so her prices already start fairly low compared to the average private doula rates in Chicago, yet she still is willing to negotiate with families. Right now she’s teaching a birthing class at a reduced rate for her “sister’s best friend’s sister,” who was excited to find out that Isabel offered doula services but couldn’t afford her price point. “Instead of being like, ‘If you can’t afford me, you “Doulas of color maintain a don’t deserve me,’ you can be like, ‘I’m going to be a tenuous balance between their businesswoman and try to need to make money and their do the most that I can for myself,’” Isabel says. “But desire to serve underprivileged I’m also going to balance communities” that out with volunteer doula-ing for a family that really, really needs it and doesn’t have the means to pay me what I would expect a family that does have that money to be able to.” Even then, having the money to pay for a doula may only be half the battle. For women who live in food deserts or crime-ridden areas of the city, survival takes precedence over pregnancy stretches, or which essential oils will make them the most relaxed during childbirth. They may not even know what a doula is, or how they could go about finding one. “There really is a big access issue to not simply having a doula, per se, but to education around birth and just reproductive justice generally,” says Shanika Helaku, another founding member of ChiBiWoCo. “So just having access to quality healthcare that is respectful to people’s individual cultures and their individual needs and, really, their identities.” Shanika has been a certified doula since 2016. Isabel describes her as “poetic” — she speaks with an artful passion, referring to her two-yearold son and unborn child as “starseeds.” She wears long, dangling glass earrings and makes all-natural soaps and other body products on the side, offering them to her clients as part of an herbalist birthing package. “That helps people feel empowered to have a birth the way they want it — whether they want to use interventions or not.” As a doula, her work focuses on people of color and queer communities, teaching birth classes about how they can advocate for themselves in a hospital setting — how to avoid stories like Isabel and the mother she took to the hospital. “They can kind of come in prepped to know what their rights are, to

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have education about some basic offerings that they have at the hospital,” Shanika says. “So that they don’t have to get their information from someone who might have a coercive tactic around sharing [that information].” Shanika teaches her clients to know what kind of paperwork they’ll be presented, the drugs they’ll be offered and the questions she’ll be asked. She’s not concerned about whether or not the women accept the hospital’s offerings — though she prefers the idea of a medication-free birth, she feels the decision should ultimately be left to the mother. Being informed can help women feel as though they are in control of the way their birth goes. “That helps people feel empowered to have a birth the way they want it—whether they want to use interventions or not,” Shanika says. “But they feel empowered to have the choice.” Both Shanika and Isabel are also passionate about the benefits of breastfeeding, which can sustain a baby exclusively for up to six months and supplement their diet for a year or more. Poor women and women of color are less likely to breastfeed their children than their whiter, wealthier counterparts — even though they stand to benefit from the most from the free source of food. Recently, ChiBiWoCo traveled to the Freedom Square encampment site to hand out a zine they made on the topic, which offered general lactation information alongside breastfeeding tips and tricks. “Statistically, the people who need to be breastfeeding, or could benefit from breastfeeding, don’t even have support in doing something like this,” Shanika says. “We created that zine to provide some education and support, and also to get our name out so that people know you can always come to us for whatever it is that we need.” ChiBiWoCo isn’t the only organization mobilizing the birth justice movement in Chicago. Amy Catania, a doula based out of Humboldt Park, bristles at the idea of doulas being an exclusive, for-profit industry catering to the wealthy, white and holistically inclined. “It definitely represents a significant segment of who’s doing doula work,” she says. “But it’s not actually the majority of what’s happening in Chicago.” Amy is the executive director of Chicago Volunteer Doulas, an organization aligned with the birth justice movement that offers free doula services to low-income women in the Chicagoland area. She and the rest of the board of directors lead around 60 volunteers, who provide doula services to around 125 families a year. They don’t have an office, and they operate on a budget of around $70,000 a year. That’s up from $45,000 last year, thanks to the addition of an optional donation button on their site. “We’re tiny, I have to say,” she says, laughing. “We come across as being bigger and flashier than we are.” Jane Bradley, a senior studying health sciences at DePaul, volunteers

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as a doula at CVD on the weekends. Like the rest of CVD’s on-call volunteers, she signs up for 12-hour shifts—either 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or vice versa—and dutifully waits to see if she’ll get a call from a midwife. Around one out of every four shifts, she’ll get called in to one of seven hospitals around Chicago.

“The first thing I really do with people, if it’s appropriate, is explain who I am and what I’m there to do,” Jane says. “I ask them if there’s anything they would like, or if they have any expectations and that kind of thing. But for the most part, they don’t have expectations, which is also really cool.” Amy, who is a mother of three, has roots in Chicago—she was born and raised in the city’s Near South Side in a family of seven girls. Growing up, she says she was always encouraged to speak up for herself and what she believed in. Her career in social justice began when she was just 9 years old, marching and fundraising for handgun control. Later, she worked in anti-domestic violence and sexual violence organizations. This work has affected her life across all spectrums, particularly in regards to her doula work. CVD, for instance, runs a four-hour intercultural communication workshops that focuses on birth in connection to power and privilege. Participation is mandatory. “Not everybody approaches being a doula as a movement,” she says. “Some people think of it as an industry, which is a relatively recent development. For me, I couldn’t have thought of it any other way.” Other programs simply incorporate doula services into their broader work in Chicago communities. Kirbi Range is the director of Project Hope, a program operating out of the Marillac Social Center in East Garfield Park, which specializes in assisting teen mothers. Alongside prenatal and parenting classes, the young women in the program receive doula service from their seventh month of pregnancy onward. “I think with children and families going through so much these days, they need to have quality services and resources to help them kind of just navigate through daily things,” Kirbi says. “And challenges that they might be going through, whether it’s getting food on the table, or paying for their bills, or finding housing, or learning how to be a mother at a young age. If we don’t have these things for them, it just kind of sets them up for failure.” Kirbi’s background is in child development with a specialty in infancy,

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“Birth is only the beginning.” and she’s worked for several nonprofits over the course of her career. She stresses the importance of the “birth-to-5 demographic,” which researchers say fundamentally affects human cognition, behavior and learning outcomes. Making sure that these children receive health care and quality parental care from this age onwards is key to setting them up for a viable future. “We want to ensure that we’re starting as early as possible to make sure that they’re getting everything they need to succeed in life,” she says. Because of the need for early life care, birth justice means that doulas are invested not just in birth, but in the overall development of the child. Their work doesn’t stop once the baby is out of the womb — birth is only the beginning. “Doulas sometimes are for life,” Shanika says. “We kind of keep track with parents and babies even after birth, because we are invested in the family. We are invested in the longevity of this new life.” If one doula can’t make it to a new mom’s house, no problem — another can volunteer to pop by and check in on her, see how the breastfeeding process is going. If a new mom is feeling lonely and scared, a doula can come bring her a home-cooked meal or find someone to mind the baby for a while. “This child could fall into the gaps, so it’s like a village mentality — a community mentality,” Shanika says. “As many people that can wrap our arms around them as possible — let’s do that. And that’s one of the beautiful things I’ve found about doulas, period.” Last week, Isabel gave birth to her second baby. Shanika will follow soon after in May. For a while, they will retreat from birth work and into their own private spaces with their babies—take some time to revel in the joy of having created new life. But soon, the desire to resume their efforts will begin, the fluttering anxiousness of knowing there is still work to be done. It calls them to action. Isabel says the call runs in her blood. “It makes me feel like everything that I do, there’s a reason and purpose for it,” Isabel says. “If something were to happen to me and I’m no longer around for my son, then other people can tell my kid what I stood for. And he can keep doing that, too.”

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The Pursuit of Aletheia Brendan Pedersen May 5, 2017

It was springtime in Chicago, and the city was burning. It shuddered and gasped in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968. Riots on the West and South Side decimated entire blocks, and the glow from the fires could be seen from the Gold Coast neighborhood – over five miles away. West Madison Street was deserted. Loose bricks were scattered across the pavement, and a sea of broken glass flashed orange under a few streetlights. The road ahead was empty – with the notable exception of the military checkpoint that Joseph Link and Martin Lowery were rumbling towards in a rust red station wagon. Over 3,000 members of the National Guard had been deployed to the city before the weekend was over. Another 2,000 in the suburbs were on high alert. Lyndon B. Johnson sent the Army’s 5th infantry division to O’Hare Airport at the request of Mayor Richard J. Daley, who believed his city was on the edge of insurrection. The mayor infamously ordered his boots on the ground to “shoot to kill” the arsonists and “shoot to maim” the looters they saw. By Sunday morning, he had put a 7 p.m. curfew in place for everyone under the age of 21. Link cranked his window down as he rolled up to the checkpoint. A soldier in full uniform looked him and Lowery over – a couple of cleancut kids in sweaters and slacks – and asked them a few questions. They answered politely, sitting up a little straighter and speaking slightly deeper than normal. Of course they were 21 and of course they were on their way home. The soldier could probably tell they were lying, but he waved them through. He’d heard the reports of snipers shooting at (and hitting) cops the previous week, and he didn’t want to be out in the open any longer than he had to. Link thanked him and pulled through, cranking the window back up and wincing at the crunch of glass under the tires. It wasn’t his car – he was borrowing it from Thom O’Connor, and he didn’t exactly have the money to buy new tires. As soon as the window was sealed, Lowery let himself breathe before he turned back to gingerly open the manila folder on the seat behind him. He smiled. It looked good. The galleys were ruler-straight, the ink was fresh and the pictures were clear. Link was white-knuckling the steering

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wheel – for good reason – but Lowery let himself chuckle. It looked like The Aletheia was getting published this week after all.

I. The Banquet On the top floor of DePaul University’s Student Center, thickframed photographs cover the walls of a wide, beige elevator lobby. Each is blown up, some nearly to life-size, and weave a rough tapestry of DePaul history. One that always caught my eye is the Nun Playing Soccer: a white habit flying across the field and a student defender whose stance suggests either a fear of being run over, of God, or some confused mix of both. The photograph I missed – until recently – is on the other side of the room. It’s nondescript and monotone. You can tell they’re protesters, at least. They’re in suits – which is sort of weird – and it looks like they’re in the Loop. But their signs offer more questions than answers: a faint imperative to “Save the STUDENT VOICE” from the back, something about student publications in the middle of the crowd. There’s even some representation from Loyola University on the far left expressing solidarity with the “DePaul Cram-In.” The Cram-In went something like this: In 1967, on a sunny afternoon in May, Father T.J. Wangler made his daily commute downtown to the Lewis Center. At the time, he was DePaul’s vice president of student affairs

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– one of the highest-ranking administrators at the university. In the warm stone-tiled lobby, he stepped into an elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor as the doors closed behind him. Then, once they’d opened, he tried walking into his office. He couldn’t. The small hallway leading into it was blocked wall-to-wall by a dozen or so student journalists sitting cross-legged on the floor, pretending to study for finals. That year, DePaul University’s official student newspaper – The DePaulia – had a staff around forty-strong. The paper was dynamic and bold, covering abortion, questioning the newly installed quarter system and, at times, criticizing the school’s administration. On May 20, 1967, the university hosted the Publications’ Banquet inside the Edgewater Beach Hotel for both The DePaulia and DePaulian – the school’s now defunct yearbook. At the banquet, members of the faculty and administration recognized campus writers and announced next year’s editorial leadership. As the yearbook wryly noted the following year, Sometimes a leader is appointed and sometimes a goat. The forced smiles and languid handshakes are everywhere. The retiring editors are given the chance to reflect, for last year the smiles and handshakes were theirs. Yet how many of them proved meaningful when the chips were down and the going rough? For the new editors, vague promises and those same smiles and handshakes. At the 1967 banquet, faculty advisor Marilyn Moats Kennedy announced The DePaulia’s next editor-in-chief: a sophomore by the name of Mike Walters. The staff quit. Each member handed a letter of resignation to Kennedy before walking out the door. 1966 had been Kennedy’s first year with The DePaulia. Twenty-three and fresh out of Northwestern, she wasn’t much older than the staff, and their relationship was a rocky one. For one, she stayed clear of the office. According to the ex-staff, Father Wangler advised her to keep her distance in order to avoid the possibility of any “indirect censorship” from faculty supervision. “The immediate misinterpretation by Mrs. Kennedy,” one ex-staff member later wrote, “was that ‘avoiding the office’ was tantamount to ‘ignoring the staff.’” In the weeks leading up to the banquet, they claimed Kennedy had kept the name of the new editor-in-chief in a sealed envelope – “sort of like a Miss America contest.” Then, in May, she made the announcement. The outgoing editors had recommended Mary Jeanne Klasen, a junior and the paper’s managing editor. But Kennedy had picked Mike Walters. It’s hard to say why exactly Kennedy picked a 19-year-old to lead The

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DePaulia. Ernie Kopczynski – one of the graduating editors – told the University of Michigan’s daily paper that Kennedy cited Walters’ “ability to write, journalistic potential, and future plans for the paper” when she announced his appointment. It’s not hard to see why the staff objected. Walters was a sophomore whose name didn’t appear in the paper until five months before the banquet. They claimed he’d written a total of eight articles for the paper, on top of having no idea how to set type or prepare the articles for publication – an intense technical process before anyone had bothered to invent a digital word processor. Whatever the criteria Kennedy used, seniority and experience didn’t seem to top the list. James Krokar – a professor emeritus of history at DePaul today – attended the university in the late 1960s. He remembers choosing the school in part after seeing a copy of The DePaulia on a newsstand. A story on the front page was criticizing the administration, and the pa“A few days later, he per’s outspokenness stuck with him. He found a newsroom enrolled soon after. By the time he was on the staff, in between him and Krokar remembers The DePaulia as a paper unafraid to stir the pot. In 1962, his office: the DePaul a front-page editorial had challenged Cram-In” the administration to do more for black students, urging them to “take action [to] overcome the many racial barriers that exist.” In 1964, they openly mocked a construction project after the school made a show of tearing down some railings by the Science building: “What a monument to scientific endeavor!” an anonymous writer rejoiced. At one point or another, The DePaulia may have crossed a line. By the time Kennedy arrived as advisor, the administration seemed to be itching for a more sedate student voice, according to Krokar and other alumni. In 1967, two people had the power to appoint The DePaulia’s editor-in-chief: Kennedy and Father Wangler. It seemed all they had to do was agree, and they agreed on Mike Walters, and by the end of the Publications’ Banquet, he was left with a staff of none. The ex-staff did not go quietly. A few of The DePaulia’s graduating seniors met with Father Wangler the following Monday, asking him to form an Ad Hoc committee – made up of three uninvolved students, three faculty members and an administration official – to formally investigate Walters’ qualifications as an editor. But the resigned staff also issued a memo: “The proposals we have made are in no way an attack upon Walters or Mrs. Kennedy,” they wrote. Wangler declined the offer. A few days later, he found a newsroom in between him and his office: the DePaul Cram-In.

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“We were very angry at the time, very agitated,” Joseph Link recalled. “The administration, and especially Father Wangler, was the enemy in a sense. But looking back, from my perspective now, my personal feeling is that they were very tolerant of us. They could have had us thrown out! And they didn’t.” Father John Cortelyou – DePaul’s president at the time – didn’t seem particularly bothered. “They can stay until doomsday if they’re orderly and quiet,” he said to a student reporter from The Michigan Daily. The protest didn’t confine itself to the Lewis Center for long. “We were very clever,” Martin Lowery told me. Just as the sit-in began, he placed a few calls. The next day, the Chicago Daily News showed up to cover the sit-in. Then, a few Chicago TV stations followed their lead. Lowery remembered student protests popping up “across the city” on their behalf – from Lincoln Park to the Loop with students from Loyola University and beyond. The students in the Lewis Center hallway held their ground for three days and two nights, sleeping in bursts against the wall or curled up on the worn-thin carpet. At the end of the third day, Wangler caved. An investigation was launched. Nothing happened. By the end of the summer, each segment of the committee had submitted a statement: one from the students, the faculty members and the administrator. They all declined to challenge Walters’ appointment and his qualifications. On a cool summer afternoon in August, after they heard the news, a handful of ex-staffers trudged to O’Connor’s Lincoln Park apartment. He lived at the intersection of Dickens and Dayton. They slouched down the stairs to the basement, silent except for the creaking of wood. They sat for a while. It had been a long summer of waiting and sweating, and they were exhausted by the anticlimax. Then – and nobody could remember exactly when – they started to talk. “There were a group of about six of us, licking our wounds,” Lowery remembered. “And there was a group decision. We said, ‘We’re going to start our own newspaper.’ And I remember the moment. It was a very heady moment.” They decided they’d call it The Aletheia.

II. The Student Voice The word “aletheia” translates roughly to “truth” in ancient Greek. In the 20th century, the philosopher Martin Heidegger resurrected the term to invoke a sense of absolute honesty and disclosure. It was extreme and pure, in an abstract sort of way. “It was a little bit ironic, considering what we’re facing today,” Lowery

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said over the phone. “It was a hubris idea, that, you know, ‘We’re going to speak the truth.’ A little bit pretentious, I would say.” After I processed that, I had to interrupt him. “You’re saying the name was… a joke?” He laughed. “There was a bit of irony,” he said. “There was always that

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sense of – a little bit of Stephen Colbert. Most definitely.” Before he graduated, Lowery would become the publication’s editor-in-chief. The Aletheia would be free. It would be independent – financially, editorially, logistically and spiritually. It would be the unchained student voice, free from the long arm of DePaul’s bureaucratic complex. The only trick was making it happen. Advertising has been the lifeblood of journalism for decades, and a student paper starting from scratch would be no exception. At some point that summer, it occurred to the group that it would take more than donations from sympathetic faculty members to get The Aletheia off the ground. That’s where Mike Eichberger came in. A childhood friend of Lowery’s, Eichberger was never a part of The DePaulia himself. He volunteered to sell advertisements for the upstart paper, even though no one was quite sure what that would entail. Link, who would eventually become the paper’s managing editor, remembers one evening sitting in the apartment at Dickens and Dayton. A table in the middle of the room was covered with paper – some future Aletheia stories – and the group was beginning to lose hope. Eichberger had been gone for hours, trying to sell something to someone. Then, he burst through the door. “I SOLD ADS!” he yelled, laughing. He was waving something around in his hand – money, receipts, maybe just paper scraps for the sake of dra-

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matics – it didn’t matter. For the first time, the group realized they were onto something. They had something. The Aletheia’s staff formed a non-profit company: the Dickens & Dayton Publishing Corporation, mailing address 849 West Dickens. Less than 40 days later, on Sept. 28, 1967, they printed their first issue. They started out printing with Campus Press – the same organization that printed The DePaulia. The Campus Press handled a lot of the technical aspects of publication, like stitching together the stories, developing the masthead and headlines and – of course – printing the issues. They also happened to be expensive as hell. So The Aletheia looked elsewhere. After their first few issues – published biweekly – they eventually discovered the Students for Democratic Society (SDS). They offered free printing at their headquarters on West

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Madison, several miles away from Lincoln Park. They were a little out of the way and weren’t great at making deadlines, according to the alumni familiar with the process, but they usually got the job done. Since SDS could only print – not format or develop – they bought a Varityper typesetter. It was a marvel – a physical, shining word processor created decades before the world ever heard of Microsoft. It could align and italicize text, change font and more. They paid $509.25 for it – a value well over $3,000 today. With its newfound freedom, The Aletheia tore into campus life, the administration and local politics in its first year of publication. It was pug-

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nacious and relentless. According to an “informal content analysis” compiled by Joseph Link – something he put together completely unprompted after I first interviewed him – The Aletheia published a total of 67 stories on campus news by the end of their first year. They often managed to scoop The DePaulia – which, to be fair, wasn’t altogether surprising, since the staff had been The DePaulia a year earlier. The competition didn’t go unnoticed. Bill Bike, writing for The DePaulia in 1978, admitted that after The Aletheia’s success and “a lapse of a few years in the early 1970s, The DePaulia began to concentrate on investigative journalism more than ever in the middle of the decade.” All things considered and under the helm of Mike Walters, The DePaulia seemed to do just fine. After a year or two, The Aletheia’s staff and The DePaulia’s were even friendly. DePaul was a much smaller school back then; it would have been hard for them to avoid one another. Before he graduated, Walters started a breakfast program with a few friends that fed kids in Lincoln Park. More than a few of The Aletheia’s younger alumni remember meeting each other there. Walters could not be reached for comment. It was just after midnight in the winter of 1968, and the Schmitt Academic Center (SAC) was quiet. On Kenmore Avenue, the only source of light was a street lamp down the block, which reflected a dull orange off the building’s glass doors. After a moment, a figure appeared. They checked their watch. Five minutes later, a few more had arrived. They waited. The watch was checked again. Then, from down the street, a final person crept into view. As they got closer, they nodded. Empty. A coat hanger appeared from inside a jacket, and one of the shadows hunched over the door. After a minute of scratching and a moment of vulgarity, click – the door swung open. They stepped in, popped on their flashlights and started down the hall. The building was theirs to roam. In October, The Aletheia had published an editorial on campus security, claiming whatever DePaul had wasn’t enough. After three months and sensing little had changed, the staff decided to make its point a little more clearly. Inside, the first floor was pitch black and the escalators dead still. The elevator doors had been locked for the night, so the raiding party swung around to the south stairwell. The beams of their flashlights cast deep shadows around the corners and on the stark concrete walls as they climbed – past the second floor (too many windows), past the third and fourth floor (too many alarms from the library), all the way up to the fifth floor. There, the doors were unlocked. The room opened up to a small sea of secretarial desks and typewriters – costly IBM Selectrics, no less. The group fanned out, wielding small slips of paper and Scotch tape. Every few desks, they tagged typewriters,

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staplers and chairs with a tight, typed message: If we were burglars or vandals, we would have stolen or destroyed this valuable item.

DePaul Richardson Library

They popped back down to the fourth floor through the escalator well into what was then part of DePaul’s library, taping every aisle. On the third floor (one coat hanger later), they used their final few slips on a priceless collection of Irish history books before hauling an “Irish Throne” – a chair over six feet tall and weighing a hundred pounds – down two flights of stairs to sit in the middle of the main floor. They were giggling at that point – their initial seriousness had dissolved into giddiness from the adrenaline and lack of sleep – and decided they’d done enough journalism for one day. Around 2 a.m., a Chicago police cruiser rolled slowly down Kenmore Avenue past the SAC. If the lights inside had been on, the officers may have noticed the trespassers standing stock still ten yards from the street. They did not. As soon as the car was out of sight, the staffers dipped out of the building and scattered into the frigid night. Suddenly, they had a frontpage story to write.

III. The Dragon Slayers It’s difficult to appreciate how incredible – how traumatic – the 1960s were to the people who lived them. Americans watched police brutalize nonviolent protesters across Alabama on the nightly news in 1965. They watched the sky above Los An-

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geles darken with smoke from the Watts Riots in 1966. By the end of the decade, tens of thousands of Americans had been killed in Vietnam. The world was watching when Chicago got rocked by the 1968 Democratic National Convention, featuring a legendary clash between anti-war protesters and the Chicago police. That night, a wave of sky blue helmets crashed on top of students with tear gas and nightsticks on national television, and millions of viewers were shocked to their core by the violence. America changed. So did The Aletheia. The Aletheia began to call itself a “journal of issues.” It looked outside of Lincoln Park and Chicago. According to Link’s informal analysis, stories with a campus focus dropped from 1968 through 1970. Their first year featured nearly 70 stories about DePaul news. That dropped to 22 in their second year, and then only 10 in the third. “It was just the times,” Link told me over the phone. “It was just so unsettled, and very difficult to find an outlet for that kind of protest.” In a world long before you could express any angst in a Facebook monologue, The Aletheia filled a critical gap in the 1960s: self-expression. “I don’t think there were many print vehicles that captured that sense of energy and protest,” Link said. Lynne Adrian attended Bradley University in central Illinois during the late 1960s, but a friend from high school – Kenneth Stikkers – went to DePaul. He worked as a staff writer for The Aletheia. After reading some of his coverage, Adrian wrote a letter to Stikkers asking if the paper would be interested in a “downstate correspondent.” When they said yes, she mailed back a few articles about the 1969 Vietnam War Moratorium. She captured the massive crowd that marched through the streets of Peoria, Illinois, showing DePaul students that their own anti-war sentiments weren’t an isolated phenomenon. Today, Adrian is the department chair of the American Studies program at the University of Alabama. When I talked to her in March, she said that writing for The Altheia was her first brush with activism, which she pursued as a second-wave feminist in the 1970s. “It was the first way the political drive I was developing came out,” she said. As she watched the protesters and police clash outside the 1968 Democratic Convention on TV, she was “literally about to go down to the Loop and file paperwork for the demonstrators to get them out of jail and stuff.” “My parents said ‘oh-hell-to-the-no,’ but I think in that sense it was reshaping – to be able to see that there were things you could do,” Adrian said. But as the world turned, The Aletheia couldn’t keep up forever. Only one new writer joined the paper in the fall of 1970, three years after the founding. Recruitment had dried up. At the same time, in the wake of the Kent State Massacre, there was a sense among student activists that they’d hit a wall.

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John Fitzgerald was an Aletheia staffer in the paper’s later years, and he remembered the beginning of the end for America’s counterculture. “When Nixon said the war was over and we started to pull troops out of Vietnam,” he said in a phone interview, “it was like a balloon, where all the air goes shhhhhh out of it.” There was also the issue of money. Despite its early success with advertising sales and faculty support, the place was always run on a shoestring. While the staff was never paid, there were good months and bad months. It became harder and harder to pay the rent as interest dissipated. The staff decided to suspend publication indefinitely following the Feb. 24, 1971, issue. In the final paper – issue number 42 – the editors filled the entire second page explaining why they’d decided to shut down production. Gerry Czerak, an executive editor at the time who had worked on The Aletheia almost from the day it began, had the first word. “The reasons behind the decision are basically two,” he wrote. “The current staff has no more dragons to slay, and there appear to be no others who would like to inherit the role of editorial dragon slayer.” Thomas Hartmann, another Aletheia alumnus, remembered the move-out. “The day they closed shop on us,” he told me, “either the landlord had taken a dislike to us or we weren’t paying our rent, but they let their dogs dirty up the place. We walked down there, and the stench of dog in there – it was pretty striking.” “That was the end of the paper,” he said.

IV. The Alumni As I interviewed more and more former members of The Aletheia, I noticed something remarkable: nearly every person had a copy or two of the paper in their possession. They’d managed to hold onto them for almost fifty years. Some of them sat in a box under the stairs – or in the attic, or in the crawlspace – for years, but they had them. Gerry Czerak thought he had every issue the paper had ever published, but he couldn’t be sure.When I spoke with him, he spent more than a few minutes digging through manila folders and shoving boxes around. The Aletheia has stuck with a lot of people. Even Marilyn Moats Kennedy – the paper’s old “nemesis” who died in January 2017 – said she respected the publication in a farewell interview with The DePaulia, 10 years after The Aletheia was born. “Those kids were talented,” she said. “They had a mission, and they were perceptive enough and had enough nerve to point out the bad things at DePaul.” I asked alum Dr. Martin Lowery – now an executive with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association – the last time he’d thought about The Aletheia. I expected the answer to be in months or years. He surprised

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me.

“I actually think about it all the time,” he said. “I’ve found it to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.” “I can remember a time on the North Side – when the issues would arrive, people grabbed them up like it was the most important thing for them to be reading,” he said. “And it was a hugely formative experience for me, to see the power of the press.” Joseph Link, who went on to work at McGraw Hill for 30 and Bloomberg News for eight years, echoed that: “The way we looked at issues – the way we questioned things – always stuck with me,” he said. “I believe that throughout the rest of my career, the experiences I had from The Aletheia helped me question things around me, in my own workplace and life. That inquisitiveness never left me.” After graduation, most of The Aletheia’s founders I managed to contact had drifted across the country. Lowery lives in Maryland, Link made it to New Jersey. Czerak did journalism and PR in Chicago for a few years before moving to the suburbs to work at Illinois Benedictine College (now Benedictine University). Mary Jeanne Klasen, The Aletheia’s first editor-in-chief, taught high school math in Chicago until she died in 2013. She lived in her apartment at 847 West Dickens – next door to The Aletheia’s original office – long after the paper had shuttered. Names tend to warp over decades. For instance: Joseph Link spent the entirety of his undergrad writing under his middle name – Larry, short for Lawrence – before switching back to Joe post-graduation in order to avoid the alliteration. As I started to make contact and talk to old members of The Aletheia, they had a tendency to ask the same questions: who had I managed to contact? Who was still around? How were they? Gerry Czerak was one of the first people to ask who I’d found. It was early in my research, and I had just sent out my first batch of emails. When I replied to him, I quickly listed a handful of people who’d responded, as well as a couple of people I’d found in obituaries: Mary Jeanne Klasen, and – for reasons I will never fully understand – Larry Link. A few days later, I got a reply from Czerak. “Ouch,” he wrote. “Larry Link was one of my best friends from the DePaulia and Aletheia. Sad to hear.” My stomach dropped a few inches after I’d read that. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but I hadn’t wanted to bring anyone grief. Then I looked back at my inbox. Two emails above Czerak’s, a message had appeared from a Joseph Lawrence Link, who was – in fact – very alive. My stomach plummeted. I immediately responded to Czerak with an emphatic JUST KIDDING before apologizing effusively and giving him Link’s email. I assumed he would not be interested in an interview.

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Thankfully, I was wrong. In early April, we talked for a couple hours, and afterwards he emailed me to say thanks for putting him in contact with Link. The two had been catching up, and Czerak forwarded me the first letter he’d sent in the exchange. In a five-page letter with single-spaced, 11-point Garamond font, he wrote: Certainly you are among the old friends from our earlier times, and we treasure that fact. Now we can get reacquainted via the ether, but that is better than not at all…. I am sure we both look exactly now like we did on pages 152-53 of the 1969 DePaul yearbook (the last one I was able to keep my hands on)! Odd too that you wrote the story in Year 1 about how the paper came about, and I wrote in 1971 about how we decided to end it…. Looking forward to future catch-up with you – glad to know you are happy and well. Whenever you talk with Barbara again, please say hello for us. Cheers for Easter and Spring! Gerry

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1969 DePaulian: DePaul Richardson Library

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Left to right: Jack Ladd, Aident Kent, Bea Aldrich (front), Ivana Rihter, Madeline Happold (front), Marissa Nelson, Devin Bohbrink, Brendan Pedersen, Maxwell Newsom

Special thanks to DePaul Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence as well as Student Activity Fee Board funding â&#x20AC;&#x201C; without these contributions, the anthology would not have been possible.

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