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A PROGRAM OF

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

Volume 7, Issue 8 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editors Martha Bayne Sam Joyce Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Jasmine Mithani Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, Adam Przybyl, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michelle Anderson Music Editor Atavia Reed Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor AV Benford Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Lucia Geng, Carly Graf, Robin Vaughan, Jocelyn Vega, Tammy Xu, Jade Yan Data Editor Radio Exec. Producer Social Media Editors Maya Holt

Jasmine Mithani Erisa Apantaku Grace Asiegbu, Arabella Breck,

Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editors Siena Fite,

Sofie Lie, Shane Tolentino Photo Editor Keeley Parenteau Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Siena Fite, Katherine Hill Interim Layout Editor J. Michael Eugenio Deputy Layout Editors Nick Lyon, Haley Tweedell Webmaster Managing Director

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

IN CHICAGO

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

Dear readers and neighbors, As Chicagoans, many of us know that uneasy feeling when we notice a news reporter step foot in our neighborhoods for the first time.

That’s because our stories and our truths—delicate, resilient, and many times misunderstood—lie in their hands.

As the incoming editor-in-chief, I’m excited to nurture community writers at the South Side Weekly. With years of experience in grassroots and non-profit media, I want to ensure that local sources are carefully portrayed in every issue, and that each neighborhood south of Roosevelt Road can feel represented by their newspaper.

As a volunteer newsroom with a modest budget, we don’t have the capacity to do breaking news—but we are serious about providing you with local narratives and thoughtprovoking analysis on the most urgent issues impacting Chicago’s South Side, and not just around election time.

Black and brown voices, and immigrant, young, and working-class perspectives are celebrated at the South Side Weekly. You will consistently read about people working for change, about people doing the most to survive, and people who are guided by love.

In this changing industry, we are on a learning curve, but we are determined to get it right with the support of our readership.

So thank you for taking the time from your busy week to pick up a paper!

Respectfully yours, Jacqueline Serrato Editor-in-chief @HechaEnChicago

IN THIS ISSUE bigger than a building

“The house is and has been a site of Black self-empowerment, conflict resolution, and community aid for decades.” text by gabe levine-drizin, photo by jacqueline serrato........4 discovering nancy hays

One image, of a girl jumping rope, is from a set enigmatically labeled “Concrete Repairs.” christian belanger..........................6 possible landscapes

“Waste is a good market these days.” ava tomasula y garcia, belt magazine...................................9 chicago votes celebrates its 2019

Chicago Votes’ work encourages young people to get involved in the political process. text by ryan rosenberger, photos by keeley parenteau.........12 queering the curriculum

“The more diversity of stories we have out there, the better for all students” anna attie.......................................15 families left out in the cold by catholic charities

“It’s not what they did, it’s how they did it.” jacqueline serrato.........................17 education is the journey

“I feel very welcome there. I like what I do... I mean that.” morley musick.................................18

The Weekly is produced by a mostly all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring.

Over the summer we publish every other week.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

Cover Illustration by Gaby FeBland

JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

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O

n a recent cold December day, a crowd of activists, journalists, and Black Panthers gathered in front of 2337 West Monroe Street, two blocks west of the United Center, to remember the fiftyyear anniversary of the West Side police raid that killed Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark. The original house was demolished years ago and replaced by a modern brick two-flat.

The vigil was one event amid a week’s worth of tributes, fundraisers, and musical performances remembering December 4th, 1969, the night Hampton was shot to death by police. Its organizers, led by son Fred Hampton Jr., sought not only to memorialize Hampton, but also to continue the “Save the Hampton House” campaign, an activist push to save Hampton’s suburban childhood residence from auction.

While the vigil was at times somber, focusing on the injustice of Hampton’s assassination, recalling its details, and holding a five-minute moment of silence with raised fists, its tone was overwhelmingly resilient: former Black Panther Party (BPP) members, current BPP Cubs members, and other activists look to the legacy of Hampton to confront violence directed at the Black community today, both in the city and the world at large.

REMEMBERING THE SHOOTING

JACQUELINE SERRATO

Bigger Than a Building

Fred Hampton Jr., and others, work to save his father’s boyhood home

BY GABE LEVINE-DRIZIN

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

I

f you’ve ever been under gunfire, five minutes is five hours,” said Akua Njeri to the crowd assembled at the fiftieth anniversary vigil. Njeri, formerly named Deborah Johnson, was engaged to Hampton and carrying his child at the time of his death. She spoke about her relationship with Hampton, the Black Panther Party’s programs in Chicago, and December 4, 1969.

Recounting the night of the raid at 2337 West Monroe, which served as the home of Hampton and Njeri and was frequented by other BPP members, Njeri recalled lying next to Hampton in bed as he drifted off to sleep, talking on the phone.

As the raid started in the early hours of the morning, another Panther rushed in to alert Hampton that the police were in the building and shooting, but Hampton could not be awakened, Njeri said. It would later be revealed that he had been drugged by a fellow Panther and FBI informant.

The shooting stopped only momentarily when another Panther shouted out that

Njeri was pregnant. She stumbled into the kitchen with her hands up, hoping she would survive, she recalled. Soon after, police entered the bedroom where an unconscious Hampton lay, and continued firing. With tears in her eyes, Njeri recalled an officer remarking, “He’s good and dead now.”

In the end, twenty-one-year-old Hampton and twenty-two-year-old Clark, who had been guarding the front door, lay dead. Police initially charged the seven survivors with unlawful use of weapons, aggravated assault, and attempted murder and held them on $100,000 bond, according to press reports. Four of the survivors were taken to the hospital and the other three went to Cook County Jail. After their bond was lowered, they were able to leave the jail and in May of 1970 the charges were dropped.

Though Hampton and Clark’s deaths were initially ruled “justifiable homicides,” a thirteen-year long civil rights case was settled in 1982 that proved a conspiracy and yielded $1.85 million on behalf of the survivors and family members of those killed.

Black Panthers present at the West Side raid, dubbed the “Massacre on Monroe,” did not need the settlement to establish what they already knew: the raid was an assassination carried out by the Chicago Police Department that formed part of an illegal FBI Operation named COINTELPRO that sought to target, surveil, discredit, and divide prominent leftist political groups like the Black Panther Party. The FBI in Chicago had monitored the BPP since the branch’s opening and an FBI informant had provided the CPD with a diagram of the apartment, the investigation found.

At the anniversary vigil, Fred Hampton’s son, a survivor himself, also spoke about the killings, although his vantage point was quite different: “Chicago Police put the pistol to my comrade mother’s stomach. The first piece of steel I ever felt... as opposed to the doctor’s stethoscope, was the Chicago Police Department’s revolver.”

Fred Hampton Jr., who is now the current Chairman of the Black Panther Party Cubs, described the site of Hampton’s assassination as the Black community’s “Ground Zero”—the location where the twin towers of Mark Clark and Chairman Fred fell in a single terrorist attack.

He spoke at length about his father’s legacy, the crucial work the BPP performed in underfunded Black neighborhoods in

JUSTICE

“The house is a beacon of Black pride for students, such as those at Hampton’s alma mater, Irving Middle School”

Chicago, and the issues that plagued the Black community then and remain today.

The fight to “Save the Hampton House” is itself still central to the activism of Hampton Jr. and others, for the house is and has been a site of Black self-empowerment, conflict resolution, and community aid for decades.

Its current protectors seek to enshrine it as a continued home base from which to build the type of future that Hampton and his BPP of old fought for.

SAVE THE HAMPTON HOUSE

T

he fight to save Fred Hampton’s childhood home is, in the words of his son, “bigger than a building.”

While it is a fight to save the physical home, it is also a fight to preserve the legacy of Hampton Sr.’s work, a legacy which has a great deal to contribute to the community it inhabits.

Maywood, a western suburb, is a mostly Black working-class community of around 24,000. Though small, it has a storied past: Maywood was home to a safe house for runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad and later sent eighty-nine men from its Tank Battalion to fight in World War II. The Hampton house is a key part of Maywood’s history. Fred Hampton’s family moved to the house at 804 South 17th Avenue in 1958, when he was only ten years old. Hampton’s childhood experiences would lay the groundwork for his extraordinary political leadership. At Irving Middle School, across the street from his home, Hampton ran morning homework sessions. As a fourteen-yearold, he organized a student chapter of the Maywood NAACP, and in high school he led activist committees and campaigns at nearby Proviso East High School.

Merely two years after graduating high school, in December of 1968, Hampton

became chairman of the Chicago Black Panthers, a chapter that ran a free medical clinic, formed key interracial links with other Chicago groups like the Young Lords and Young Patriots under the banner of the Rainbow Coaltion, and served up to 4,000 free breakfast meals daily. Soon after, he assumed the chairmanship of the Illinois BPP at-large and under his direction, it would become the largest and most powerful chapter nationwide, according to a history published in December by the Maywoodbased Village Free Press.

As Hampton’s influence and prestige increased, he more and more became a target of FBI informants, CPD raids, and trumped-up charges. On December 4th, 1969, his brilliant revolutionary life came to a tragic end. Fifty years later, the house in which he grew up is locked up in its own fight for existence.

While the family briefly saved the house from foreclosure in October 2018 with the help of activists, the threat of losing the house still looms large. Members of the Hampton family found out about the looming foreclosure merely a month before the scheduled auction date that October, the Village Free Press reported in 2018.

Faced with $71,000 in debt to US Bank from an adjustable subprime loan taken out

by Hampton Jr.’s grandparents in 2007, the family needed to raise money quickly.

Since foreclosure cases often take more than a year and banks are required to negotiate with the owner as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, the auction was stalled, according to Mario Reed, the former director of public information for the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, who was interviewed in 2018 about the house.

Community members and activists have scrambled to raise the funds necessary to stall the foreclosure threat once and for all, and to upgrade the house and turn it into a full-scale museum

The family created an organization by the name of Save the Hampton House as well as a GoFundMe that, as of press time, has raised $153,982 out of a goal of $350,000. An additional goal of the GoFundMe campaign is to upgrade the museum and make it into a more modern, comprehensive place of learning.

The community is at risk of losing a key actor that mediates disputes, serves as a base for Black Panther Party Cubs programming like free breakfast and clothing, and hosts birthdays and other community events. The house is also a beacon of Black pride for students, such as those at Hampton’s alma mater, Irving Middle School. Hampton Jr. pointed out that the house has had a positive effect on the students’ self-worth, knowledge of history, and politicization. “You can see the physical transformation: you can see their walk’s even different, their heads are held higher, their chests stick out,” he said.

Channeling the legacy of the BPP, the museum, as it has existed so far, depends on community itself. Hampton Jr. makes clear that the “people who come are not only receiving information but giving information.” Members of the community who visit the house have found Hampton Jr. to tell him their memories of Chairman Fred, detail how his life affected them, and bring photos to share for exhibition.

Part of the work to save the house is also focused on its physical structure, working on the interior and exterior to bring it back up to code. In this work, too, the house has been served by the community, both young and old, whether it be a house painter who worked on it for free or the time a seventytwo-year-old man was so awestruck by the dishes that Hampton used to eat on that he made sure they weren’t thrown away. The house is a space which brings generations together.

While in need of funds and repairs, and in the absence of the Panther house

on West Monroe St., the Maywood home’s present and future rests in good hands—as Hampton Jr., put it, “the people have been keeping us alive.” Gabe Levine-Drizin is a contributor to the Weekly. He last wrote about state legislative efforts to eliminate and reform gang databases in October.

JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

VISUAL ARTS

Discovering Nancy Hays

An unsung Hyde Park photographer begins to get her due

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER PHOTOS BY NANCY HAYS

W

hen professional photographers Becca and Mik Major moved into their Kenwood condo at 50th Street and Dorchester Avenue two years ago, the real estate agent told them they were following in distinguished footsteps: another photographer, Nancy Hays, had lived there before them. Up until her death in 2007, Hays had been an active community presence in Hyde Park as both a longtime news photographer for the Hyde Park Herald, and a fervent conservationist.

Intrigued, the couple contacted the 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

Hyde Park Historical Society, and learned that Hays had willed 167 boxes of film, negatives, correspondence, pamphlets, and other materials to the group; all of it was sitting, largely unexamined, in the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library.

“When we went to the library, we found a box that had four binders of negatives in it...and then we took them home and probably had them for about a year,” said Becca Major. Once the Majors got around to looking through them, the photos in the

box came to serve as the basis for “Nancy Hays: A Retrospective,” an exhibition in the Historical Society’s headquarters at 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue that opened in late October.

The show includes twenty-three blackand-white photos taken between 1987 and 1992, culled by the Majors from what they estimate were about 24,000 negatives. (To speed up the selection process, the couple scanned many of the prints using their iPhone’s negative mode, which shows the image as if it were developed.)

The full context of some of the pictures has been lost: Hays would annotate her files with short descriptions (“Toni Preckwinkle” or “IC embankment”) that don’t always describe, or do justice to, the photos contained within. One image, of a girl jumping rope, is from a set enigmatically labeled “Concrete Repairs.” Michal Safar, the president of the Historical Society, said she thinks it was taken at the Burnham Park fieldhouse down by the Point, but can’t be sure.

Several other photos allow for similar

VISUAL ARTS

detective work. In one, a woman helps a kid, oversized naval cap firmly bucketing half his head, climb a tree. It’s the kind of image — she seems patiently exasperated, he’s mildly apprehensive — found in family albums and nature documentaries everywhere.

But certain out-of-focus buildings in the background also reveal more concrete details about when the picture was taken: looking past the water, you can see the Flamingo Apartments and a taller beige building on South Shore Drive, but the Montgomery Place nursing home, built in 1990, is absent.

The 167 boxes sitting in the Regenstein probably map similar changes to a little area of Chicago over many decades, the obvious yet unobtrusive shifts taking place behind the people playing chess at Harper Court or sunning themselves on limestone by the lake.

Many of the other photographs in the retrospective also feature children: a row of Little League players eating ice cream, two kids sitting on a skateboard while watching construction workers dig up the sidewalk, a pool teeming with junior-age swimmers, a

now-demolished church in the background.

Children were a lifelong subject for Hays: one of the only exhibitions of her photographs put on during her lifetime, “The Ingenious Child,” was an exploration of children at play in Hyde Park during urban renewal. “You could tell she was a street photographer interested in people and lifestyles and moments, and she was really good at children,” said Becca Major.

As part of her conservation work, Hays helped found the nonprofit Friends of the Parks and served as president of

the Jackson Park Advisory Council; in the sixties, she was arrested for protesting Mayor Richard J. Daley’s plan to cut down trees to widen Lake Shore Drive. Her love of public parkland is also on display in the retrospective, albeit more subtly. Photos taken around Jackson Park, and particularly at the Point, demonstrate an eye for the possibilities of shared space, and the various ways people put it to good use. A woman holds a cardboard protest sign that says, “Independence? Freedom? What About For Women? Keep Abortion Safe, Legal, JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

VISUAL ARTS

“When we went to the library, we found a box that had four binders of negatives in it...and then we took them home and probably had them for about a year.” — Becca Major

+ Funded.” A couple of horseback riders in spurs and straw hats, the Black cowboys that still congregate for an annual picnic in Washington Park, trot through the grass.

There’s also the more everyday — a family reunion, bicyclists, basketball players.

“She was exploring the relationships between people and their land and their communities,” said Becca Major. “I think this was a really powerful statement when she was making it and seems really powerful now.”

Hays was born in Ann Arbor and got her start in New York, but moved to Hyde Park in her thirties. The forty-nine years she lived in the neighborhood ended up yielding, Safar estimates, hundreds of thousands of photos, some of them printed in the Herald and other outlets, but many of them only available in Special Collections.

Safar hopes the Historical Society can start seeking grants and fundraising to pay for the boxes to be examined and catalogued by archivists. (The organization raised $7,000 to put on the retrospective.) She also hopes the current exhibition can be shown at other venues around the city.

The Majors, for their part, plan to remain involved. “It’s very much a passion 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

DEVELOPMENT

project…We knew that we were gonna be volunteering our time, but were gonna be inspired by what we found,” said Becca Major. “It was great how observant she was to her space and community and other people. She had opinions and made them known, and I think that’s important.” ¬

Nancy Hays: A Retrospective, Hyde Park Historical Society, 5529 S. Lake Park Ave. Historical Society building open January 26, 2pm–4pm and February 1, 2020, 2pm–4pm.

Check website for other times. hydeparkhistory.org Christian Belanger is a senior editor at the Weekly. He last wrote about a biography of Nelson Algren.

LIZZIE SMITH

Possible Landscapes

The future of the Calumet and South Chicago region will have to contend with its infrastructure and layered history

BY AVA TOMASULA Y GARCIA, BELT MAGAZINE

T

he land I’m standing on is being “restored.” On the banks that join the Calumet River to Lake Michigan, a Midwestern prairie is slowly coming back to life. Red-winged blackbirds swoop between carefully-nurtured plants meant to eventually displace earth loaded with almost two hundred years worth of industrial contaminants. Crickets chirp, dragonflies whizz, and bees hum busily among milkweed and prairie clover—a welcome, if incongruous sight in the middle of Chicagoland’s industrial corridor. If you look just right, the scene almost seems “natural.” But it’s the product of herculean

organizing and community advocacy efforts against a backdrop of relentless developcrash-abandon capitalism.

It’s the end of summer, and I’m in Steelworkers Park on the Far South Side of Chicago, standing on ground owned, gerrymander-style, by U.S. Steel, the Chicago Parks District, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It’s land that U.S. Steel “reclaimed”—that’s the preferred word—from Lake Michigan more than one hundred years ago. Which is to say that I’m standing not on dirt and stone, but on slag and other waste from steel production that the company dumped into the Lake, JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

DEVELOPMENT

artificially expanding their industrial campus and evading property taxes for decades. The park is part of a huge swath of industrialized land, zoned for heavy industry, that stretches from Chicago to the south and east, across the border into the Calumet region of Indiana.

For U.S. Steel and its lawyers, arguing in 1900 courtrooms that the additional 327 acres had accreted out of the Lake naturally, “reclaimed land” sounded better than “manufactured land.” Reclaimed implies the righting of a wrong, a re-establishment of the natural order. But landscapes like these are decidedly created; there is little natural about them. Property, territory, real estate, brownfield, border…Dirt is never just “dirt.” And today, the landscape surrounding Steelworkers Park is as full of contention as it was one hundred years ago.

Fading signs put up throughout the park in 2015 by Spanish and Irish development companies that once dreamed of building on the remnants of the mill, tell a version of this story of struggle.

“Envisioning the future,” announces one at the park entrance. The board is divided into sections labeled YESTERDAY, TODAY, and TOMORROW, each illustrated with a photo: YESTERDAY comes first, represented by an aerial photo of U.S. Steel’s South Works campus in full sooty swing at the turn of the century, complete with belching smokestacks and miles-wide railroad sprawl. TODAY has a photo of the colossal remains of the mill’s concrete holding walls, built to receive Lake Michigan barges transporting ore to blast furnaces. Each one is two thousand feet long and thirty feet tall.

TOMORROW is a shiny concept illustration produced by Emerald Living, the international developer who had bid to build twenty thousand homes on the site by 2017. “To prepare the South Works site for redevelopment, approximately 100 buildings were demolished by 1990, which created a unique opportunity for the city of Chicago, urban planners, designers and developers to begin imagining what the site could become.” The image is of a futuristic city paradise: a roller skater passes a vibrant park; kids play on eco-friendly playground equipment; and sleek, modular-style homes shimmer in the background. Now, the signs are all that are left of Emerald Living’s grand plan, their vision of TOMORROW as much a relic as the ore walls. Theirs was just the latest in a line of grandiose plans to redevelop the brownfield site, lured by access 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

“Well, what did you expect? A green paradise? The area’s zoned for industry anyway.” to premium Lakefront property.

The sign presents a neat encapsulation of a developer’s understanding of history: Starting with nineteenth-century industrialization, the land suddenly pops into view, legible only as industrial infrastructure is laid in place. (“Unused” land, after all, is wasted land—this is something that the early white colonizers of Chicago agreed on.) But one hundred years of pumping contamination into the air, water, and soil; of lives cut short by cancers; of threats to move the whole operation elsewhere should anyone make a fuss—all this leads to a new kind of decline. The land, wasted by overdevelopment, is left to molder as a brownfield.

Never fear, though: waste is a good market these days. As Emerald Living announces on a sign that remains present tense despite itself: “The dream of creating a vibrant economic engine to revitalize South Chicago is coming true. From its brownfield industrial past, Lakeside is being transformed into an area rich in community, innovation and vitality.”

But some forms of waste are harder to repackage. Emerald Living finally threw in the towel not because of overhead costs, but because of that waste. Soil contamination was an impediment to construction. This was the second time a multi-billion development plan for the area had failed. And so the land rests in development limbo—a community park that could be oh-so-much-more lucrative.

Years of pressure by local environmentalists, parents, and community organizations on the city have resulted in the present-day park, named in honor of the steelworkers that made and re-made the face of Chicago. Visitors can now walk right up to the old ore walls, climb their titanic sides during a free community event, or come to a summer movie projection. Normally, though, they are silent and foreboding as any ruin, and inspire the awe that all monuments to crumbled pasts do. Swifts, darting in and out of nests wedged into the concrete, complete the image.

Not thirty feet away, a very different vision of the past-restored-as-future is unfolding in the shadow of these foiled

dreams. The park’s prairie flowers end abruptly at a chain link fence surrounding boulders, cranes, and the Chicago Area Confined Disposal Facility (CDF).The CDF is a low-lying precipice jutting out into Lake Michigan, designed to look as innocuous as a boardwalk. It was built in 1984 to hold the fifty thousand cubic yards of toxic sediment dredged annually from the Calumet River in an effort to keep it functioning as a federal waterway connecting shipping ports.

Thanks to ceaseless community pressure, by groups and organizations like Friends of the Park, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, the Southeast Environmental Task Force, and Calumet Connect, the Army Corps of Engineers dedicated itself to capping the dumping site in 2022 and handing the land over to the Parks district, easing the environmental burden on South Chicago residents. This past April, however, the Army Corps reneged. Not only will the dump’s life be extended for another twenty years, but the site will be expanded as well.

It’s almost as if some backroom deal has been made: We tried livable redevelopment, that didn’t work. So let’s keep dumping.

A coalition of community members and organizations continues to fight to prevent this from happening.

The CDF gives the lie to any characterization of this land as “postindustrial.”

Businesses have transmuted but not ceased to exist, using the infrastructure of their previous incarnations to take on new life. Capitalism exerts a forever-downward pressure on wages, livelihoods, health, time, environment, and life—this is a pressure that leads to constant and cruel “innovation.”

U.S. Steel shuttered South Works in 1992, after years of layoffs and ruthless cuts to pay and benefits in exchange— or so promised the company—for job preservation in the face of a decline in steel production. These were empty promises that Union workers fought tooth and nail, but the heady, neoliberal economic shifts of the Eighties and Nineties rolled on. This was the “deindustrialization” that laid the infrastructure for the Rust Belt of today: the shifting of dirty industry farther and farther into the global South (geographically and

politically), and the closing down of North American factories. Unionized, industrial jobs throughout the United States were replaced by the low-wage, temp, and unregulated positions that define South Chicago’s economy now. What to do with the resultant waste—the chemical, toxic excess of industry past and present—is more and more of a problem, and a business.

The steel industry is still a large presence in South Chicago, and the parts of it that have closed have left in their wake a host of new. Today, the HS Bell Company makes money storing manganese. Last year, the company settled with the EPA after failing to control toxic dust. Some twenty thousand predominantly Black and Latinx people live within a mile of the facility. Chicago’s store of industrial salt for wintertime use on sidewalks and highways sits uncovered, a mountain of electric blue and white slowly leeching into the Calumet, and later into Lake Michigan. The latest boom in Canadian tar sands oil has made Whiting’s BP refinery a new “re-industrialized” hub, and flare stacks blaze as methane and carbon dioxide belch into the air. The Chicago Area Waterway, a series of federal ports and channels linking Milwaukee, Chicago, and industrial harbors in Indiana, transports fifteen million tons of cargo through the Midwest annually: coal and coke, petroleum, grain, chemical, steel. Yet another CDF—this one holding PCB-contaminated soils dredged from the Indiana Harbor—sits just across the state line, as do two fully functional steel blast furnaces. It’s a classic story: A recent report found what reports have been finding for the past fifty years: More than half of the people who live within two miles of toxic waste facilities in the U.S. are people of color; water contamination is more likely in low-income communities; white communities have the lowest exposure index for most pollutants.

The surrounding landscape makes Emerald Living’s plans for the Lakeside development—and the Chicago politicians that pushed for it—show themselves as tone-deaf. Instead of communitycontrolled reinvestment, stronger workplace and environmental protections, grants for women- and POC-run cooperative businesses, increased public transportation, the City decided that “revitalization” was best served by developing a shiny, segregated pocket of the future.

And yet: Just a hop and a skip away from Steelworkers Park and developers’ disaster-opportunist dreams is Catatumbo Farm, an emerging immigrant, queer

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workers’ cooperative that is reclaiming land in its own way. Participants have spent the last year revitalizing dirt, and plan to launch a CSA program soon. Over in Bronzeville, Your Bountiful Harvest, a Black-run organization, sells seedlings to urban farmers throughout the south side. The Southeast Environmental Task Force runs “Toxic to Treasure” tours led by community members throughout the corridor, and keeps up the fight to recreate the land for justice and health. Recently, Southeast siders sat under a tent at a happening organized by the Hoodoisie Radio show and the Alliance for the Great Lakes, listening to organizers, political art-makers, and residents talk through the history of water issues in the neighborhoods, and present-day battles.

People have never taken the City’s word as a final answer, and continue to organize on behalf of each other, their communities, and a better future.

Just as politics does not unfold solely in the world of government, lobbyists and laws; so “infrastructure” isn’t solely a city’s blueprints. Infrastructure is the architecture of our world, the traces of what used to be becoming what is. It’s the metal skeleton of Chicago, yes—the transportation routes that favor certain communities and drop off for others. It’s also the zoning laws that have made the Calumet region of Indiana a corporate manganese-and-petcoke haven for a century. Infrastructure is the blood spilled to make Fort Dearborn the future city’s birthplace, the lives ruined as “Chicaugou” became “Chicago” and the Potawatomi were “removed” from the Calumet region, clearing the land for development. Infrastructure is the racist redlining that split Chicago, and the suburbanization of poverty to the south.

Infrastructure is chemical and metal excess, soil contaminants, lead in the air. It’s the material world emerging from behind social constructs like “blight” and “waste” and “revitalization.” It’s the mental framework behind one stakeholder’s comment about the Calumet CDF: “Well, what did you expect? A green paradise? The area’s zoned for industry anyway.”

Infrastructure is a two-way street, a constant back-and-forth between the material and ideological worlds. It may seem trapping. But it’s also what gives us the scaffolding to imagine the world we want: what plants should be growing here; what air we could breathe; who we could be if our geographic, political, and environmental arrangements were different.

One thing is true: whatever becomes of

the region in the future will have to contend with its layered history. The Calumet region is an amazing conglomeration of classic industry (steel mills, both past and present), new “postindustrial” industry (toxic waste markets), and developers’ hopes for future industry. All of this lays the groundwork for two different kinds of dreams about the future: one, a truly radical transformation for survival and thriving out of a sacrifice zone; the other a disaster capitalist dream where “revitalization” looks very different.

The question is: which will it be? Belt Magazine (beltmag.com) is a digital publication by and for the Rust Belt and greater Midwest. This story is part of a collaboration with the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, supported by the Buell Center’s project “POWER: Infrastructure in America.”

Find out more at power.buellcenter.columbia. edu. Originally published online January 6.

Reprinted with permission.

Ava Tomasula y Garcia was born in Chicago and grew up in Indiana. After a year working at an environmental justice organization in Mexico City, she is currently a labor and immigration organizer at Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, a community workers center in the industrial corridor of Chicago.

Saturday, January 18 11:00 am Grant Park issue areas 5 • 2020 Census • • • •

Climate Change Gun Violence Prevention Women’s Health Rights and Access Get Out The Vote

www.womensmarchchicago.org outreach@womensmarchchicago.org

Open a Door to Hope and Healing

If you know a young person, 11 to 16 years old, who needs a safe, supportive place to live and emotional healing, Mercy Home could be a solution. Reach out to us today, and you can make a difference in a young person's life.

Learn more at www.MercyHome.org/OpenADoor JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

PHOTO ESSAY

Chicago Votes Celebrates its 2019

Concert fundraiser supports voter registration efforts TEXT BY RYAN ROSENBERGER, PHOTOS BY KEELEY PARENTEAU

O

n Wednesday, December 11, local voter registration and education nonprofit Chicago Votes hosted its annual "Give A Gift" fundraiser event in celebration of the year's accomplishments, as well as to raise money to support its work in 2020.

Taking place at Emporium in Wicker Park, the event included food, drinks, arcade games and a concert featuring several local artists.

Included on the concert bill was an all-women DJ lineup, featuring DJ Mo Mami, Evie the Cool, and DJ Ca$h Era. There were also sets by other prominent Chicago artists such as rapper Stock Marley, indie singer Amira Jazeera, and, most notably, rapper Mick Jenkins, who also serves on the board for Chicago Votes. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx also made a special appearance.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

Chicago Votes’s work encourages young people to get involved in the political process, as the Weekly profiled in a May 2019 cover story. It also takes on an activist role by advocating for the passage of specific pieces of legislation, including several laws expanding and protecting the right to vote.

One of Chicago Votes's 2019 accomplishments was the passage of SB 2090, which ensured that eligible voters who are incarcerated in pre-trial detention are able to vote. This piece of legislation also included voter education programs, as well as a form for people who are looking to re-enter the voting process, according to the Chicago Votes website.

Another piece of legislation that Chicago Votes had a hand in getting passed was HB 2541, which brings basic civics courses to those who are incarcerated by the Illinois Department of Corrections. ¬

PHOTO ESSAY

JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

PHOTO ESSAY

Ryan Rosenberger is a Chicago-based freelance music writer with more than a years’ worth of experience. Specializing in Chicago’s hip-hop scene, he runs his own blog on ChicagoNow and has also written for several music publications throughout the city.

Keeley Parenteau is a photojournalist and music photographer based in Chicago, but originally from San Francisco. She currently works as the photo editor at South Side Weekly.

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

EDUCATION

Queering the Curriculum

GABY FEBLAND

Making LGBTQ history visible in the classroom

BY ANNA ATTIE

L

ast summer, Illinois passed the Inclusive Curriculum Law, making it the fifth state in the U.S. to require public schools to teach LGBTQ history. The bill, signed by Governor Pritzker on August 9, mandates that students learn the “roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the history of this country and this State” before they graduate eighth grade. The law will go into effect in the 2020–2021 school year.

Many activist organizations agree that

a curriculum that incorporates LGBTQ people’s contributions to history is crucial to creating safer school environments for LGBTQ students. The Inclusive Curriculum Law was an initiative of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, Equality Illinois, and the Legacy Project. In a statement from Equality Illinois following its passage, Victor Salvo, Executive Director of the Legacy Project, called the bill “life-saving.”

An inclusive curriculum “creates a sense of belonging and acceptance that is baked

into the DNA of a school,” Salvo told the Weekly. According to students, teachers, and advocacy organizations, student safety goes hand in hand with a diverse curriculum.

In their 2017 National School Climate Survey, advocacy group GLSEN reported that LGBTQ students in schools with an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum experienced lower levels of bullying, were less likely to miss school because they felt unsafe, and felt a greater sense of belonging in their school communities.

Although Illinois expanded its antibullying laws in 2014, requiring all school districts to develop policies to protect LGBTQ-identifying students from harrassment, it is unclear whether students have actually seen any positive impacts from that policy. In January 2019, GLSEN reported that eighty percent of LGBTQ students in Illinois have heard homophobic remarks at school, while seventy-two percent have been harrassed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Twenty-eight JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

EDUCATION

percent of students were disciplined by their schools for public displays of affection. The report attributed these numbers to a lack of school policies protecting LGBTQ students.

Sarah Baranoff, a drama teacher at Hancock High School, a selective enrollment public school on the Southwest Side, said she is unsurprised by these statistics. “I came out when I was fourteen. I’ve been stood on, I’ve had trash cans thrown at me. So having been through that, it doesn’t surprise me, because those kids are now parents.”

M, a recent graduate from a public school in the southwest suburbs who didn’t want to use her full name, came out during an oral history class in her senior year.

When students in the class were asked how their senses of identity had changed over the course of the year, M decided to share her experience of balancing her queer and Muslim identities.“It takes a lot for you to come out of that shell and be really open about your queerness, especially being raised Muslim, or raised religious in general…There were sixty people in that class and none of them knew I was queer except my group of five friends…That really caused a shift.”

M received numerous rape threats after she came out. Though she felt supported by the teacher of her oral history class, M didn’t consider talking to the school administration about the harassment she endured. “I’m a queer Muslim, I’m a woman…I don’t believe [the school administration] will change anything…Every time a minority speaks out against something that happens to them, it’s a he-said, she-said situation.”

Some school administrations may be more supportive of LGBTQ students than others. Baronoff said that the Hancock High School administration was quick to provide gender-neutral bathrooms, and recalled an incident in which administrators, teachers, and students rallied to the side of a student who was publically shamed for being queer. Baronoff applauded her school’s administration for being “very forwardthinking in a way that other schools are not.”

Baranoff said that at her school, harassment against LGBTQ students often comes in the form of “micro-aggression style” comments, such as saying “that’s so gay” or misgendering trans students. She said many of her students face more mistreatment at home than they do at school. “I’ve had students whose parents have thrown them out, who have hauled them off to church to be prayed over, who have thrown out their possessions…I think a lot of the time, the parents are worse than the other students.”

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

“I want to make sure that the curriculum isn’t whitewashed, and that it includes the contributions of people of color to the [LGBTQ] movement” Despite the threats she faced from her peers, M was able to find an affirming community at school. After growing up in a religious community that felt overwhelmingly straight, she surrounded herself with queer friends in high school.

“We were all gay people of color, and it was just amazing…I was so grateful for them.”

N

athan Petithomme, the founder of Lindblom High School’s Gay Student Alliance (GSA), said that spaces for queer students of color are especially important on the South Side, where resources for LGBTQ youth can be sparse. He believes there is a perception that queer and trans youth don’t exist on the South Side. “People see being gay as a white thing. We don’t have people of color who are gay in the media as role models….People of color, especially Black people, have a harder time coming out as gay.”

The Lindblom GSA seeks to create a sense of community for queer students of color on the South Side. They hosted the South Side’s first GSA prom, and organized a mandatory workshop for teachers to discuss LGBTQ issues.

“Before GSA, there was definitely bullying, like using the f-slur, or using ‘gay’ in a derogatory way,” Petithomme said. “And I will say, after GSA’s formation a lot of that language died down. Teachers started to talk more about LGBT identities in their classrooms, and they started asking students what their preferred pronouns were.” Still, Petithomme suspects that there might be more GSAs in schools on the North Side than there are on the South Side.

Now a sophomore at Loyola University, Petithomme, who has contributed op-eds to the Weekly, is majoring in education because he believes that schools play a “big role in shaping social attitudes.” When it comes to the Inclusive Curriculum Law, Petithomme said that thorough implementation will be crucial. “The law can be made, but there are laws about Black history, and we only get

taught a certain type of Black history…I want to make sure that the curriculum isn’t whitewashed, and that it includes the contributions of people of color to the [LGBTQ] movement.”

Indeed, in 1991, Illinois passed a state law to ensure that all public schools teach a unit on African American history. In 2013, twenty-two years after the law’s passage, community activists pressured CPS to fully comply with the law, citing complaints that Black history was only occasionally being taught during Black History Month. Later that year, CPS committed to implementing a curriculum which would go beyond the traditional subjects of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. Despite this commitment, in 2016, teachers and activists still asserted that CPS had fallen short, claiming that Black history curriculums were being overlooked in favor of preparing students for standardized tests.

Implementing an LGBTQ history curriculum has also been a slow process in California, which was the first state to pass a law like the Inclusive Curriculum Law. Even though the law was passed in 2011, the state didn’t approve its first LGBTQinclusive textbooks until 2017, in part due to pushback from parents and conservative organizations. In 2018, the Bay Area Reporter predicted that it would take years for the textbooks to actually reach every classroom. “We have seen a lot of schools dragging their feet,” Dominic Le Fort, executive director of a California-based nonprofit called Queer Education, told the Reporter.

How widely the curriculum changes will be implemented across the state is left largely in the hands of local schools and individual teachers. The Inclusive Curriculum Law does not include specific mandates regarding which histories must be taught, or how many LGBTQ figures must be included in a school’s curricula.

Technically, a school can comply with the law by including just one positive mention

of an LGBTQ person in their lessons.

But Victor Salvo, executive director of the Legacy Project, is hopeful about the implementation of the Inclusive Curriculum Law. Salvo considers even minor changes to curriculum a “triumph,” particularly in downstate school districts where discussing queer issues might be particularly taboo.

He said California’s FAIR Act was unique in that California was the first state to pass such a bill, and they faced well-funded, wellorganized opposition at the time. Unlike the Inclusive Curriculum Law, the FAIR Act required the printing of new textbooks, which made it easy for conservative organizations to oppose the bill based solely on the financial strain it placed on the state. The Inclusive Curriculum Law was explicitly written to require no new funding, so districts are not required to buy new textbooks.

Together, the Legacy Project, the Illinois Safe School Alliance, and Equality Illinois are working to ensure that the Inclusive Curriculum Law is implemented smoothly. The Illinois Safe School Alliance is creating professional development programs for teachers, while the Legacy Project is collecting materials that teachers will be able to reference as they develop curricula for the 2020-2021 school year. Because all of the materials will be available online, Salvo predicts that costs to school districts will be negligible. The sampling of lesson plans on the Legacy Project’s website includes lessons about a diverse range of LGBTQ historical figures, including Alan Turing, James Baldwin, Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde, and Jane Addams. According to Salvo, many of these figures are already part of the curricula, but there is often no mention of their LGBTQ identities.

Hancock High School teacher Sarah Barnoff agrees that student safety is inseparable from an inclusive curriculum.

She said that her job is to ensure their students get a good education, which can only happen if they are safe. Representation matters, she adds. “The more diversity of stories we have out there, the better for all students,” Barnoff said. “What we need to be teaching them is that every voice matters, and that their story is powerful, and that they are capable of having their voice heard and respected.” Anna Attie is a student at the University of Chicago studying English Literature and Human Rights. She is a first-time contributor to the Weekly.

EDUCATION

Families Left Out in the Cold by Catholic Charities Questions remain about whether the closures were avoidable

BY JACQUELINE SERRATO

P

arents whose children were affected

by Catholic Charities’ sudden lateNovember closure of three day care centers say the transition still has them scrambling in the middle of the school year. Advocates claim the loss is affecting children of all ages beyond the centers’ Head Start programs, and disrupting the daily rhythm of countless families in Back of the Yards, Chicago Lawn, and Little Village, as the Weekly first reported. They believe it could’ve been prevented.

Lucero Montero watched her two kids play in the basement of St. Joseph Church in Back of the Yards on the last day of programming in the three centers. She shook her head at the prospect of quitting her job in order to pick up her third and fourth graders every afternoon, something she had never worried about with Catholic Charities’ After School Care program, which mentored children up to twelve years old.

Staff at St. Joseph Child Development Center would walk students from six different schools in the high-traffic area to the after school program, which fed about eighty children daily, provided homework help, and allowed for indoor play time.

According to parents, most of those elementary students have not found an alternative within walking distance during the afternoon, when minors are at the highest risk of going unsupervised.

Montero was among the dozens of parents attending the evening GED classes at the center, too. English and computer literacy classes were also offered by instructors from the University of Illinois at Chicago free of charge. Since the center’s closing, English-language classes have been relocated to San Miguel School Community Center and other adult courses were moved

to the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council.

“The truth is, not even the teachers knew they were going to close,” Montero said. “They even told the teachers to go out and recruit new students over the summer, and to what end?”

Teachers and staff were not authorized to speak to the media, but hugged their students and took selfies together on the last day of school before the holidays. They will be left without a job.

State Representative Theresa Mah, whose district includes parts of Back of the Yards and Little Village, was equally perplexed by the rushed closures of Catholic Charities when their facilities were often filled to capacity.

“They said it wasn’t financially feasible.

They told me the Head Start contract is five years at a time, and that they couldn’t sign a five-year contract because they knew they couldn’t… fulfill the entire term,” Mah said. “They would’ve known well before November 30th… It’s not what they did, it’s how they did it.”

Catholic Charities director of communications Brigid Murphy maintained that they made their decision in October, “when a number of existing financial challenges… were exacerbated by other factors,” like funding streams that didn’t materialize.

In the summer of 2017, the city consolidated the early learning programs and their associated funders: federal Head Start, state Early Childhood Block Grant, and local Ready to Learn.

The new system created a redistribution formula that significantly reduced or eliminated funds for a long list of day care providers. Murphy acknowledged that while scores of early childhood classrooms were

hurt by the city’s new funding structure, Catholic Charities “had no issues with the city’s RFP.” The city’s Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) confirmed that in August they awarded grants to Catholic Charities through November 2020. Murphy said her organization declined the funds in October, shortly before sending out letters to Head Start parents, as the DFSSadministered funds were not enough to offset the deficit caused by chronic gaps in both state and private funding.

Moreover, DFSS said Catholic Charities was not eligible for the two emergency funding extensions offered by the city, as Catholic Charities “did not receive a large funding reduction through the RFP process.” Selected day cares, like Little Angels in Englewood, which lost funds equivalent to its operating budget, qualified for a DFSS extension until June, the end of the school year.

“I believe that if [Catholic Charities] really wanted to keep the Head Start program open, they could’ve found partnerships just like they do with their other services,” Mah said.

Days before Catholic Charities ceased operations at St. Joseph, Mah’s office held a resource fair for parents who needed guidance to transfer their kids. She said Catholic Charities made little effort to refer parents to local Chicago Public Schools, so she invited a bilingual CPS representative, as well as nonprofit day care providers like El Hogar del Niño, Gads Hill Center, Chicago Commons, and Illinois Action for Children.

“The city’s Universal Pre-K initiative means that there’s one application system for all preschool classrooms [both CPS and community-based organizations],” said Claudia Ballesteros, a CPS Family

Engagement Coordinator who tabled at the fair. “We still have full-day seats in different schools, but most children have to be four to qualify.” There are some half-day slots open for three-year-olds, and five-year-olds qualify for full-day kindergarten if they had a birthday by September.

The shutdowns were felt by more than 500 children between two and five years old who were enrolled in the Back of the Yards, Chicago Lawn, and Little Village sites, and it had a ripple effect on more than one hundred school-aged students and adult learners.

The Archdiocese of Chicago did not respond to requests for comment as to what would happen with the shuttered facilities that once served as community hubs.

“That’s still to be determined. They are ready to work with other providers if they take over the programs and want the space,” Murphy said. “Any interested providers who want to run programming out of our old facilities would work directly with the Archdiocesan real estate office as new tenants.”

The city set the goal of universal pre-K for all four-year-olds by 2021. Parents who are looking for preschool programs in Chicago can apply year-round at chicagoearlylearning.org. Jacqueline Serrato is the editor-in-chief of the South Side Weekly.

JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

EDUCATION

COURTESY OF THE ODYSSEY PROJECT

Education is the Journey

The Odyssey Project brings world-class opportunities to Chicagoans who need it most

BY MORLEY MUSICK

F

ifteen minutes before the 6pm Wednesday night class at the Stony Island Arts Bank, most of the students in the Odyssey Project’s South Side location had already arrived and begun discussing Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye along with 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

their plans to see Oedipus Rex at the Court Theater that weekend. It was the literature section meeting, the second section of this thirty-two-week, free humanities program for low-income Chicagoans.

Now entering its twentieth year

in Chicago, the Odyssey Project is an outgrowth of the Clemente Course in the Humanities at Bard College. The Clemente Course is a national, nine or ten month-long humanities program for income eligible adults, founded by the Chicago writer

Earl Shorris in 1995. The Odyssey Project continues to be offered in conjunction with the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, though it is now overseen by Illinois Humanities, receiving additional support from the University of Chicago’s

EDUCATION

Civic Knowledge Project and Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Its first year program classes meet twice weekly in the evenings, with the South Side chapter at the Arts Bank, as well as a West Side chapter in Austin, a North Side chapter in Rogers Park, and a Spanish speaking section in Cicero.

The first year’s coursework includes classes in art history, critical thinking, literature, and philosophy, and the second year, should students choose to pursue it, combines the previous disciplines in concentrated investigations of particular themes. Successful completion of each year of the program enables students to receive six credit hours (for a total of twelve credit hours over two years) to be advanced toward a college degree. The Odyssey Project also maintains ties with local arts organizations, offering pathways for students to advance their humanities education through career and volunteer opportunities at the Smart Museum. Students can apply online (the application window is listed as MaySeptember of the starting year, although firm due dates for 2020-2021 year are not currently listed online) so long as they are eighteen or older, live at or below 150% of the federal poverty line, and do not currently have a four year college degree. It is a wellbeloved program among its students, not only for its educational and career opportunities, but also for the community it provides.

This sense of community was evident at the Wednesday class on November 20, where students were already making arrangements to give each other rides home and later, to the weekend Court Theater performance of Oedipus Rex. The degree of intimacy in their discussion of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye was welcome and surprising.

Student and teacher alike shared life stories while interpreting the text.

A student named Althea discussed how a passage concerning the face of the protagonist Pecola’s father, Cholly Breedlove, reminded her of the struggle to read her own father’s moods in his expressions. Later, she shared her first encounter with the n-word, prompting Tara Betts, a poet and a faculty member in the Creative Writing department at the University of Southern Maine, to do the same.

Students also made explicit connections between conflicts in the book and conflicts in the real world. A student named Pamela Davis framed a scene in which a group of Black boys attack another group: “This book

“The Odyssey that has been our life is what gets us entered into the program.” is about distraction. We pick at each other when really it’s the whole society that needs to be changed.” She also discussed a scene in which the protagonist, Pecola, encounters racist treatment at a store, apparently leading her to change her opinion of herself and the beauty of a common flower. After class, Davis said, “It's about who has the power to determine what's beautiful and what's not beautiful. Usually that comes from the oligarch and whoever has the money and the power at the time.” Betts connected student comments to Morrison’s essays, read earlier in the literature section, and Morrison’s own views as expressed in an interview with Charlie Rose.

Chris Guzaitis, Director of Education for Illinois Humanities and former director of the Odyssey Project, explained the strength of community was partially a function of people sharing their lives. She was pleasantly surprised at the level of care students had for one another: “The thing that really surprised me was the way that students would quite quickly [start] checking in on other students if they didn’t show up, or how some students would be real eager to have a phone tree,” she said.“That was something that wasn’t necessarily the case when I taught at the undergraduate level. Or, you know, someone heard from another student that their parent had passed away, and a student might make a card for everyone to sign for them.”

Audrey Petty, the current director of the Odyssey Project, affirmed this sentiment.

She discussed how, when teaching her course on journeys, she had a student who wrote about traveling south to the homes of her descendents. Odyssey Project students, Petty said, “bring their lives to the table.” Odyssey Project teacher Christophe Ringer, who is also an Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics & Society at the Chicago Theological Seminary, provided an example of how this kind of openness lent vigor to abstract questions: “One of the most rewarding parts of the Odyssey Project is that the students raise issues that the author wouldn’t have thought of because of their experiences,” he said. He recalled one student who had been homeless for years, who challenged “assumptions about what homeless people want or need” and helped

his class to “think more broadly about how people become homeless.”

Ringer said students rarely question the merits of philosophy and its applicability to events in their lives. “They recognize that [this class] is an opportunity that, for a variety of reasons, they don’t have access to.

And they’re able to... make the connections and [see] the practical relevance in ways that those who are in a traditional philosophy class are not,” he said. “As opposed to people who have been in school a reasonable number of years, [Odyssey Project Students] see [the importance] because they’re living life.”

Petty added that, in teaching undergrads, getting conversations going “could be a muscular activity—but I did not have that experience in the Odyssey Classroom.”

Nicole Bond, an Odyssey Project alumni (and current Stage & Screen editor of the Weekly), also emphasized the merits of having an experienced group of students: “We’re all grown, we’re all fully grown by the time we get to the Odyssey Project. So, our life is what it is. Of course, you know, we had to go through some things even to be eligible to apply. The Odyssey that has been our life is what gets us entered into the program,” she said. “So there’s that. So it’s not like we’re coming to it like ‘How is this gonna get me a job?’ We’ve already had like sixteen jobs, we know it’s not gonna help us get a job. How is it gonna help us open our mind?”

Guzaitis estimated the average age of Odyssey Project students to be forty, and explained how the Odyssey Project supports its adult population, providing transit and free childcare during classes.

Guzaitis helped to expand the Odyssey Project classroom offerings beyond Western canonical texts, and into more contemporary material concerning issues like housing, racism, and citizenship. Audrey Petty added classes in the Austin neighborhood, as well as an enrichment summer program for high schoolers, named Sojourner Scholars, in 2017.

Petty and Guzaitis strengthened extracurricular activities as well, which have included, in the past, a visit to Kerry James Marshall’s artist lecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and in 2019, a

workshop surrounding the Envisioning Justice exhibition. Students participated in discussion surrounding this series of gallery shows and events, all centered on the impact of mass incarceration. The Odyssey Project also trains former students, including Nicole Bond, in facilitating discussions and book groups within their communities.

Many students and alumni emphasized how the classroom style and extracurricular opportunities made the Odyssey Project different from their previous classroom experiences.

“I have never been in an environment like [the Odyssey Project],” Toy Robinson, an alumni who currently leads a James Baldwin discussion group at the Grand Crossing Library, said. “I feel very welcome there. I like what I do... I mean that. From the bottom of my heart.” Student Sylvia Fredrick echoed this statement. “Back when I was an eighteen year old going to college, I didn't have the compassion and the caring that I received here from these [instructors] through the Odyssey Project. You were just a number.” She added, “I feel like my education is just as valuable as if I went to Harvard or Princeton,” and said that the class was helping her hone her writing skills.

She hopes to employ these skills toward completing her own writing, concerning her transition from a house music maker in the eighties to a Christian Step singer.

Another current student at Wednesday night’s class, Audrey Forrest, aims to use her class credits towards a nursing degree.

She learned of the program after a Harold Washington librarian found an ad in the Weekly. “I will have furthered my education and raised my GPA. It's no written tests, no cramming, and it's not an accelerated course,” she said. “What counts the most is my voice.” Morley Musick is a writer and reporter from Chicago.

JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

EVENTS

BULLETIN Book Discussion: Hidden Chicago Landmarks Clearing Branch Library, 6423 W. 63rd Pl. Wednesday, January 8, 6pm–7:30pm. Free.

(312) 747-5657. bit.ly/HiddenChiMarks Chicago history is steeped in bigshouldered idiosyncrasies, including a cemetary inside a working scrapyard and a church that was constructed with no nails.

Historian and fifth-generation Chicagoan John Schmidt has documented these and other notable curiosities in Hidden Chicago Landmarks (2019, The History Press), along with ten “lost” landmarks that he says should have been preserved, but weren’t. The book has over fifty illustrations, so you can get a complete tour of the city’s neglected history without ever leaving the Clearing library! ( Jim Daley)

Jeff Huebner: Walls of Prophecy and Protest 57th Street Books, 1301 W. 57th St. Thursday, January 9, 6pm–7pm. Free. bit.ly/MuralsBook Arts journalist Jeff Huebner has covered public and community-based art in Chicago for decades. In his latest book, Walls of Prophecy and Protest, Huebner delves into the life of William “Bill” Walker, a muralist and cofounder of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) who was largely responsible for “The Wall of Respect,” an iconic twostory mural, originally painted in 1967 at 73rd and Langley, that depicted AfricanAmerican heroes. Walker, who died in 2011, painted dozens of murals in Chicago.

Huebner interviewed him over two decades and based Walls, which includes forty-three images of his work, on those conversations.

Muralist Bernard Williams will discuss the book with Huebner. ( Jim Daley)

Candidates Forum: Illinois Supreme Court & Appellate Court Quinn Chapel AME Church, 2401 S. Wabash Ave. Saturday, January 11, 1pm–3:30pm.

Free. (630) 222-0636. bit.ly/ILSupremes When Charles Freeman, the first AfricanAmerican justice on the Illinois Supreme Court, retired in 2018, veteran appellate judge P. Scott Neville was appointed to fill 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

the vacancy. Court terms run ten years, but because Neville was finishing out Freeman’s term, he is already up for reelection. Seven judges are challenging Neville for the seat in the March 17 Democratic primary. On Saturday, David W. Posley, Jr. hosts a panel of candidates for that race, and appellate court races, in a Q&A forum moderated

by Maureen Forte and Joe Zeilger, Jr. ( Jim Daley)

goals. The latest installment of TRiiBE Tuesdays will discuss the project and hear from residents about what it should be examining. ( Jim Daley)

can find artwork by Carlos Barberena, Liz Gomez, Jennifer Ligaya, Damon Locks, Zakkiyyah Najeebah, and Yasmin Spiro.

(Christopher Good)

John Mark Hansen: The City in a Garden

Opening Reception: Silke OttoKnapp, “In the waiting room”

For Couples: Shifting Communication Patterns

The Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Monday, January 20, 6pm–7pm. Free. bit.ly/JMHansenCoop John Mark Hansen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, chronicles the history of the Hyde Park and Kenwood communities through the lived experiences of their residents in his latest book, The City in a Garden (the title is cribbed from Chicago’s motto, Urbs in horto). The book includes stories from and about local activists, professors, artists, and politicians. Hansen and John Boyer, a professor of history at the University, will discuss The City in a Garden at the Seminary Co-op. Audience Q&A and book-signing follow. ( Jim Daley)

The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., Fourth Floor. Opening reception Saturday, January 11, 5–8pm. Artist talk 6pm. On view through March 29. (773) 702-8670. renaissancesociety.org

Beverly Therapists, 10725 S. Western Ave. Saturday, January 11, 3pm–5pm. $10 per person. Register online at beverlytherapists.com In this month’s discussion, Beverly Therapists’ monthly wellness series continues with an opportunity for couples to hone their communication skills.

Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Kanosha Leonard will lead couples in an open discussion about communication in relationships and help participants identify patterns and shift outcomes of conflict.

Space is limited. (Nicole Bond)

South Side Code & Coffee Robust Coffee Lounge, 6300 S. Woodlawn Ave. Tuesday, January 14, 7am–10am. Free. bit.ly/RobustCode The rotating meetup of software developers and enthusiasts gets together at a different South Side coffee shop every Tuesday morning. The group meets to talk tech and work on projects in a shared workspace.

Upcoming meetups include next week’s at Bridgeport’s Robust Coffee Lounge, and another on January 21 at A Cup of Joe in Garfield Ridge. ( Jim Daley)

TRiiBE Tuesday: Can Lori Lightfoot Transform Chicago?

Farm on Ogden, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesday, January 14, 6pm–8pm. Free with RSVP. bit.ly/TRiTue Last year, seven local news orgs—the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, Chalkbeat Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza, and The TRiiBE—launched the “Lens on Lightfoot” project, an ongoing series that tracks how (and whether) the administration is meeting its stated

VISUAL ARTS Conjuring: Black Histories in Jewelry South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. On view through February 28. Open Wednesday–Friday, noon–5pm; Saturday, 9–5pm; Sunday, 1–5pm. (773) 373-1026. sscartcenter.org Under the curation of LaMar R. Gayles Jr. (and with the support of the Society of North American Goldsmiths), the “first ever exhibition focusing solely on Black diasporic jewelry” is now on display in Bronzeville. The show traces this history from artisans like Winifred Mason, thought to be the first Black jeweler practicing in the United States, to the present day.

(Christopher Good)

The Petty Biennial.2 NYCH Gallery, 2025 S. Laflin St. Opens Friday, January 10, 6–10pm. On view Monday–Saturday, 11am–7pm, through February 14. (773) 413-9565. bit.ly/PettyBiennial2 The Petty Biennial—a multifocal, multi-site happening— highlights “the connective tissue of social systems” to challenge art world conventions. At Pilsen’s NYCH, you

London-based painter Silke OttoKnapp makes singular use of watercolors, rendering hazy visions in a washed-out monochrome. On Saturday, she’ll discuss her body of work with curator Solveig Øvstebø. (Christopher Good)

3D Applications Workshops Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop St. Studio 420. January 11, 18, and 25; 1–4pm.

Free. (312) 850-0555. bit.ly/mana-3d Mana artist-in-residence Philip Mulliken will host a series of workshops on the creation of computer-rendered images, with each session exploring a new focus: gloss, then flesh, then detritus. Attendees are “encouraged to bring devices loaded with their 3D software of choice.” (Christopher Good)

Tender as the Language Ignition Project Space, 3839 W. Grand Ave. Opening reception Friday, January 17, 6–9pm; on view through February 22. acreresidency.org In her second solo exhibition in Chicago, installation artist Yesenia Bello interrogates language and bilinguality through sculpture.

These works, curated for this show by Elizabeth Lalley, evoke her account of the word: something “nonlinear and kinetic.”

(Christopher Good)

MUSIC Scrunchies Live on WHPK WHPK, 88.5 FM. Up the stairs at the Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University Ave. Friday, January 10, 8:30pm–10pm. whpk.org Minnesota-based rock band Scrunchies has been described as “indisputably Minneapolis's loudest band.” They’ll be

EVENTS

performing at Logan Square’s Bric A Brac Records on Friday, but the real treat for South Siders will come afterwards: an hour-and-a-half live concert on WHPK’s Pure Hype. (Sam Joyce)

BODY The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, January 12, 9pm–2am. bit.ly/Body0112 The BODY weekly dance party—featuring reggae, soca, hip-hop, and Afrobeats— brings Hyde Park to life, as the event page reads. (Sam Stecklow)

Remember Frankie Knuckles Frankie Knuckles and the Power of Liberatory Space: Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Sunday, January 19, 1:30pm– 3pm. rebuild-foundation.org Sunday Service: Remembering Frankie Knuckles: Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Sunday, January 19, 3pm–7pm. rebuild-foundation.org For Frankie! A Celebration of His 65th Birthday: Metro, 3730 N. Clark St. Sunday, January 19, 9pm–4am. smartbarchicago.com Celebrate the life and music of Chicago house legend Frankie Knuckles with this trio of events, organized by those who loved and worked with him. Stony Island Arts Bank resident DJ Duane Powell, utilizing artifacts from the Bank’s Frankie Knuckles collection, will lead participants in an investigation of how house music spaces provided sanctuaries for marginalized groups. That will be followed by his regular Sunday Service set, wrapped up with a special edition of Smart Bar/Metro’s big weekly queer dance party, Queen!, which Knuckles used to be a resident DJ for. (Sam Stecklow)

The Pop Up Get Down Whiner Beer Company, 1400 W. 46th St. Thursday, January 16, 6pm–9pm. $10 admission (includes 1 beer). bit.ly/popupgetdown Join a selection of Chicago food producers, including Bike a Bee, ARIZE Kombucha, Tuanis Chocolate, and several more, for Backyard Fresh Farms’s monthly Pop Up Get Down. But this isn’t just a regular old farmers market—Mo Manley of Soul

Summit will transform the evening into a funk & soul dance party. In addition to all the food and the dancing, Whiner Beer Company will be providing beer and pizza, and a tour at 7pm will offer a glimpse of the inner workings of The Plant. (Sam Joyce)

STAGE & SCREEN The Mousetrap Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Performances run Thursday, January 16 through Sunday, February 16. Wednesdays– Fridays 7:30pm, Saturdays and Sundays 2pm and 7:30pm. Ticket prices vary. Call or visit the box office at (773) 753-4472 or courttheatre.org.

Sean Graney directs Agatha Christie’s must-see murder mystery, where four snowed-in guests learn there is a killer in their midst. Kate Fry (The Belle of Amherst) returns to Court Theatre as Mollie Ralston, and Allen Gilmore (Radio Golf ) returns as Giles Ralston. (Nicole Bond)

Doc Films Winter 2020 Schedule Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th St. General admission tickets $7. (773)702-8574. docfilms.uchicago.edu One of the South Side’s best cinema houses has their Winter 2020 film schedule out with something for everyone. Check the calendar for complete listings. Here are a few must-sees (or must-see-agains): Network, the 1976 newsroom drama starring Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway.

Thursday, January 9, 7pm.

Eraserhead, Davis Lynch’s surreal first feature film. Thursday, January 9, 9:30pm.

Casablanca, Bogart and Bergman classic.

Sunday, January 12, 7pm.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, groundbreaking cannibal slasher flick.

Tuesday, January 14, 7pm.

Tsai Ming-Liang Retrospective.

Programmed by Weekly interim layout editor J. Michael Eugenio and featuring the striking, slow, queer cinema of MalaysianTaiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang.

Screenings of Neon God January 10 and 12; Vive L’Amour January 15 and 17; The

River and My New Friends January 24 and 26; and many more into March. (Nicole Bond & Sam Stecklow)

The Frunchroom, Vol. XX: Twenty to Start 2020 Edition Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th Street.

Thursday, January 16, 7:30pm–9pm. $5 donation requested. bit.ly/frunchroom2020 The popular reading series returns with real stories from the real Chicagoans you know and love. This edition features stories from Ada Cheng, Lisa Colleen, Tonika Johnson, Madeline O’Malley and Jessica Scheller.

(Nicole Bond)

Hyde Park Community Players – Auditions Augustana Lutheran Church, 5550 S. Woodlawn. Wednesday, January 8, 7pm– 9pm; Saturday, January 11, 2pm–4pm. hydeparkcommunityplayers.org All are welcome to audition, and no preparation is required, for a chance to take to the stage in the HPCP production of She Kills Monsters, written by Qui Nguyen and directed by Meara Hammond. (Nicole Bond)

FOOD & LAND Farmers Markets Saturdays 61st St. Farmers Market, Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Jan. 11, Feb. 8, March 14, April 11, 9am–2pm. This market accepts Link/SNAP & Link Match. experimentalstation.org/market Multiple Days: Pilsen Community Market Blue Island Ave. and 18th St. Sundays, January 16 and February 9, 11am–3:30pm. facebook.com/pilsenmarket Pilsen Community Market strives to provide fresh, quality farm products, arts and crafts, music and information to a diverse community. With the stated mission to educate visitors about options for food sources and sustainability, the PCM was formed as a community market first, connecting local artisans, farmers and makers to their local consumers and providing a meeting place for the community to come together. PCM is

comprised of an entirely minority board.

(AV Benford) Farm on Ogden Food Stand, 3555 W. Ogden Ave. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11am–7pm; Wednesdays, Fridays, & Saturdays, 10am– 6pm. bit.ly/ogden_farm

Farmers Stand / Mercado De Cultura A Cup of Joe (Reboot), 6806 W. Archer Ave. Saturdays and Sundays. Starting January 18, 9am – 4pm. bit.ly/joemercado A Cup of Joe’s Farmers Stand / Mercado De Cultura promises vendors selling fresh tamales, custom jewelry, clothing, locally grown vegetables, produce, and much more, plus live music. A Cup of Joe (Reboot) is a coffeehouse concept that came about because the owner couldn’t find any cool and hip coffeehouses on the city's Southwest Side. They found themselves always traveling to the North Side for a good cup of coffee, an open mic night, or a free comfortable work space. The idea is to provide a platform where artists can express themselves without limitations. (AV Benford)

Chinese New Year Dumpling Making Dinner Hing Kee Restaurant, 2140 S. Archer Ave. January 18 and February 1, 3:30pm–6:30pm.

(312) 842-1988. $40–45, tickets at bit.ly/2020dumpling Join the Chicago Chinese Cultural Institute in this Year of the Rat and celebrate Chinese culture with the sixteenth annual Chinese New Year Dumpling Making Dinner. In this highly anticipated Chinatown tradition, guests will learn the history and significance of the dumpling, eat a delicious meal, and participate in other cultural activities. Come and share the joy and prosperity of the Chinese New Year. Seating is limited, and this event often sells out quickly. (AV Benford)

Invest S/W Celebrations Quad Communities, South Shore and South Chicago: Gary Comer Youth Center, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave. Saturday, January 25, 11am– 2pm. Roseland: Pullman Community Center, 10355 S. Woodlawn Ave. Friday, January 31 5pm–8pm. Free. Families welcome, food served. bit.ly/InvestSouthWest JANUARY 8, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

EVENTS

Promising $750 million in funding over the next three years for South and West Side commercial corridors, Mayor Lightfoot and the Department of Planning and Development’s Invest S/W project is a major neighborhood initiative worth learning about. The DPD will continue its series of Invest S/W community information sessions-slash-celebrations this month with two meetings in South Shore and Roseland. Attend to hear a general overview of Invest S/W, learn how to apply for grants, and celebrate the promises of the plans. (Sarah Fineman)

Before the Skyscrapers: Chicago’s Natural History Richard J. Daley-Bridgeport Branch Library, 3400 S. Halsted St. Tuesday, January 14, 6pm–7:15pm. chipublib.org This talk, presented by urbanologist and author Max Grinnell, will explore how the landscape that underlies Chicago has changed over the past centuries. Or, more succinctly: what happens when you reverse a river, raise the Loop, and dig a Deep Tunnel? And what does all that history matter to us today? (Sam Joyce)

Trade Talks with Commissioner Cox The Green Living Room, 6431 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Friday, January 17, 6pm–9pm. blacksingreen.org Blacks in Green will host a networking social with Maurice Cox, Commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development. This is a great opportunity to learn about the opportunities in the green economy from one of the people shaping the development of Chicago’s neighborhoods. (Sam Joyce)

Cottage Constructions with Tanya Scruggs Ford Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Saturday, January 11, 1pm–4pm. Free, recommended for kids age 4–12, all ages welcome. Children must be accompanied by an adult. bit.ly/CottageConstructions No one is too young to start engaging with their neighborhood’s buildings or dreaming of architectural pasts and futures.

Indulge your child’s budding interest in 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JANUARY 8, 2020

Chicago’s architectural history and present by attending the upcoming Cottage Constructions Family Day workshop at the Smart Museum. Artist Tanya Scruggs Ford will lead youth participants in assembling their own paper houses and wood-block cities. All art materials provided. (Sarah Fineman)

Openings University Village—Phlavz Bar and Grille Since Phlavz opened two years ago as a food truck, this opening is really an expansion: Phlavz Bar and Grille has a new home on Maxwell Street. According to coowners Phil Simpson and Andrew “Dilla” Bonsu, their “urban jerk” is a departure from the typical half-chicken-and-sides offerings found at many Jamaican jerk restaurants, The menu is inventive and diverse, and includes items like loaded jerk chicken fries (cilantro, onions, sour cream, jerk sauce), fried jerk wings, and salmon egg rolls. Phlavz.com. 717 W. Maxwell St. (AV Benford)

Closings Beverly / Morgan Park— Ellie’s Café According to a flyer released to their customers on December 30, beloved local haunt Ellie’s Café is closing after almost eight years as a neighborhood mainstay.

They called it “a long strange ride” and left contact information. Patrons are leaving heartbroken messages on the Cafe’s Facebook wall and calling it a “loss to the community.” Ellie’s was known for “indulgent comfort food” like sweet potato hash browns, as well as for hosting local music events. Contact (773) 941-4401 or elliescafe.com. (AV Benford)

NATURE Aquaponics with Plant Chicago Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Friday, January 10, 3pm–4pm. chipublib.org Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (growing plants without soil). At this workshop led by Plant Chicago, you’ll be able to learn more about the science behind aquaponics, as well as build your own aquaponics system. (Sam Joyce)

Going Green in Chicago Mount Greenwood Branch Library, 11010 S. Kedzie Ave. Saturday, January 11, 3pm– 4:15pm.

Beverly Branch Library, 1962 W. 95th St. Monday, January 13, 6pm–7:15pm.

Toman Branch Library, 2708 S. Pulaski Ave. Wednesday, January 15, 6pm–7:15pm. chipublib.org “Going green” seems to be all the rage, but what does that actually mean for Chicago?

This talk, presented by urbanologist and author Max Grinnell, will look at how both the public and private sectors are undergoing a sustainable transformation, through initiatives like community gardens, green roofs, improvements to the city’s public transportation system, and more.

(Sam Joyce)

Conservation Expo Amos Alonzo Stagg High School, 8015 W. 111th St. in Palos Hills. Saturday, January 11, 11am–4pm. Free. homes4monarchs.wixsite.com The second annual Conservation Expo at Stagg High will feature more than fifty local organizations and small businesses, ranging from the Shedd Aquarium to the Sierra Club to the Oak Lawn Children’s Museum, showcasing their work on behalf of nature and ways for community members to get involved. Additionally, the event includes an indoor market with dozens of local food and craft vendors, a craft area for kids, live animals, live music, and — courtesy of the Field Museum — a life-size replica of a T-Rex skull. (Sam Joyce)

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St. Wednesday, January 15, 6pm–7:30pm. Free. chipublib.org Dan Egan is a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal and the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. His book explores the history of the Great Lakes, the threat humans pose to their natural ecosystems, and the future of water conservation in the region. Seating at this talk is first-come, first-served. Books will be available for

purchase, and Egan will stick around to autograph books after the talk. (Sam Joyce)

Southwest Environmental Alliance Community Meeting National Latino Education Institute, 2011 W. Pershing Rd. Thursday, January 16, 6:30pm– 8pm. (773) 629-2184.

1cleanairplease@gmail.com The Southwest Environmental Alliance, an organization fighting to hold polluting industries accountable for their impact on air quality on the Southwest Side, will host a town hall in McKinley Park to discuss the problem of industrial pollution in McKinley Park and surrounding neighborhoods, as well as possible policy solutions. Alderman George Cardenas, County Commissioner Alma Anaya, State Rep. Theresa Mah, State Sen. Tony Muñoz, Rep. Chuy García, and Rep. Dan Lipinski have been invited to attend.

All Mushrooms are Magic Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St. Friday, January 17, 3pm–4pm. Free. chipublib.org Join Full Circle Fungi to learn how mushrooms can be used in our everyday life, even as packaging materials. This lecture is presented in conjunction with the Library’s Materials Science exhibit, on display through January 30 on the 3rd floor of the Harold Washington Library. (Sam Joyce)

Artecito: Illinois Antes y Ahora CC’s Little Village Boys & Girls Club, 2801 S. Ridgeway Ave. Friday, January 17, 4pm–6pm. Free. bit.ly/artecitoantes This afternoon of art gives kids an opportunity to learn about the natural world by painting and creating. Co-hosted by the Lincoln Park Zoo and OPEN Center for the Arts, this event will teach children about the natural history of Illinois while also offering a chance to make art. (Sam Joyce)

Wolf Lake Winter Wonderland Environmental Education Center, 2405 Calumet Ave. in Hammond, Ind., and the William W. Powers State Recreation Area, 12949 S. Avenue O. Saturday,

EVENTS

January 18, 9am–3pm. (312) 220-0120. wolflakeinitiative.org Join the Association for the Wolf Lake Initiative for their 19th annual Bi-State Winter Wonderland festival. This event is open to the public and showcases ways to enjoy the lake even during winter, like skating and cross-country skiing, as well as informational talks and exhibits. Morning activities are held at the Environmental Education Center in Hammond, while afternoon activities are held around the visitors center on the Chicago side of the lake. (Sam Joyce)

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KING DAY FESTIVAL Celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and create a vision for the future guided by Chicago artists, activists, and poets. Enjoy live music, spoken-word performances, and art-making activities.

Monday, January 20 Ryan Learning Center, Modern Wing 10:30–3:00 FREE Illinois residents receive free museum admission on King Day.